I did not want to wake her, so I asked Lieutenant Jenkins whether he might give me whatever message he had for Harriet. I had to see him in the kitchen; the other downstairs rooms are all filled with wounded men.
Lieutenant Jenkins accepted my offer of tea and sat down with me at the big scarred kitchen table. And then he told me that he had been sent here by Colonel Forster, who greatly desired that his wife be reassured that he was alive, though gravely wounded.
At first I was so stunned I could only stare at him. And then I asked him what he could mean by coming here with such a message--because we had heard yesterday that Colonel Forster had been struck by a cannonball and killed.
Lieutenant Jenkins' brow furrowed--and then cleared as he said, "Ah, that must be Colonel Foster you heard of, miss. Colonel William Foster of the Coldstream Guards. I did hear he had been killed that way."
It must have taken me nearly a full minute to find my voice. "And this man--this Colonel Forster you say is alive--you are sure it's the right man? The same Colonel Forster who has rented this house here?"
Lieutenant Jenkins shrugged. Now that the first shock of the news had passed, I had attention enough to notice that he looked exhausted--beyond exhausted, really. His eyes looked as though some part of him were still reliving the battle he had just fought. "That I can't say, miss, never having met the man before the battle was fought. We're still working to carry the wounded off the battlefield. There's hundreds of men still there, lying out in the open and dying of their wounds. I carried this man to one of the wagons. And he said his name was Colonel Forster and begged me to take a message back to Brussels for his wife. He didn't give me an address--he's wounded as I said, and too weak to talk much. But I asked all over the city and finally found that a Mrs. Forster lived in this house. So here I am."
I thought quickly. And then I asked, "He's wounded you said--wounded how? Do you think he will live?"
The lieutenant shrugged again. Which might have seemed callous, except that he ran his hand down his face as though trying to conceal the spasm of pain that clenched his jaw. "Even odds, I'd say. His arm looked like it would have to come off. The surgeons will probably have done it by now. If the shock doesn't kill him, he could survive."
"And where is he now?"
"Mont St. Jean. One of the farmhouses--a great many wounded have been carried there."
I nodded--and then stood up and held out my hand to Lieutenant Jenkins. "Thank you so much for coming. I will make arrangements to bring Colonel Forster here. And I will see that his wife gets the message."
And I will. But not until I know for certain that the man Lieutenant Jenkins brought word of really is Harriet's husband.
After Lieutenant Jenkins had gone, I went, not to Harriet's room, but out into the stable yard, where Sergeant Kelly was sitting on an upturned barrel and eating a quick meal of bread and bacon before going out again. He looked up when he saw me coming--and I saw his blue eyes had the same distant look as the lieutenant's, the same look Edward's eyes have after a nightmare.
I keep trying not to think of Edward. But it seems everything reminds me of him.
At least Sergeant Kelly's arm seems very much better.
I came to a stop before him and said, "I need you to take me to Mont St. Jean."
Sergeant Kelly's shaggy eyebrows shot up, and I said quickly, before he could protest, "There is a man there--it may be Colonel Forster. It seems there's reason to hope he is alive after all. But I can't tell Harriet. Not until we know for sure whether this man really is her husband. She is so lost in grief now, thinking him killed. If we raise her hopes, I don't see how she could bear it if the man turns out not to be Colonel Forster after all."
Sergeant Kelly's eyes widened slightly with shock. Then he frowned and nodded slowly, "Well, and if that's true it wouldn't be the first time names have got mixed or a false report's been taken for truth. But you can't be going to Mont St. Jean, Miss Darcy. That's right on the edge of the battlefield. It's no place for a lady just now. You stay here, let me go."
I shook my head. "That won't work. You have never met Colonel Forster. You won't be able to recognise whether this man really is he. And the man is wounded--very seriously so. He might not even be well enough to be moved. He might be dying, even."
"Well, and if he is dying, surely it's a kindness not to tell his wife about him at all? She already thinks him dead."
I shook my head again. "No. If it is Colonel Forster, Harriet needs to know. Even if he is dying. She might be able to see him one last time. And I know she would want that. Even if it was just for five minutes, she would want to see him, be with him at the end. I know I would feel the same, if--"
I found myself rubbing the emerald on Edward's ring again, and stopped myself before I could finish. But from the look on Sergeant Kelly's face, he knew what I had been about to say. The words felt like sharp-edged rocks in my throat, but I couldn't stop myself from asking, "If you had news of him--of Edward--you would tell me, wouldn't you? Even bad news. You wouldn't try to keep it from me, to spare me pain?"
"Of course I would." Sergeant Kelly's voice was gruff. "But I still say, Miss Darcy, that you oughtn't to go out there to the battlefield. You don't know what it's like. You--"
I cut him off. I had been stuffing everything--anger, grief, worry, terror--away, trying to lock it all up in a box somewhere just so that I could go on and keep getting through the hours of each day. But Sergeant Kelly's words made the lock on the box suddenly spring open and everything come flooding out. It felt like being torn and pulled by the furious gale of a thunderstorm.
"I don't know? I don't know?" I was almost shouting but I couldn't stop myself. I gestured to my gown--which used to be blue sprigged muslin and is now smeared with rusty brown bloodstains picked up from tending to the wounded. There has been no time to do laundry, especially without any of the servants to help. "I have spent all morning holding a man's hand while he died of the blood in his lungs. I have wrapped wounds with lint and had to look at broken bones poking through the skin. I sewed up the cut on your arm. So don't tell me that I don't know what the aftermath of a battle is like!"
I felt my eyes sting and my throat close off and start to ache fiercely. But I blinked the tears furiously away. Let myself start to cry, and I would only be proving the truth of what Sergeant Kelly said--that I was too weak, too soft to bear going to Mont St. Jean.
Sergeant Kelly looked at me a long moment. And then shocked me completely by giving a low chuckle. He still looked tired, careworn. But just for a moment, there was a gathering of humour about the edges of his eyes. "Right, then, Miss Darcy. I'll see to bridling the horses and getting the carriage ready. If this wounded man really is Colonel Forster and can bear the move, we'll be needing it to bring him back here."
My breath went out and I nodded. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me, Miss Darcy. You won't feel like it much when you've seen what there is to see out there, I promise you." Sergeant Kelly's voice was bleak. But then just the briefest twist of a smile flashed across his face again as he looked at me and shook his head. "No wonder Colonel Fitzwilliam's so caper-witted for you."
That was half an hour ago. And I have to leave. I have gathered up all the blankets and pillows we can spare and packed them in the carriage. And Sergeant Kelly has the horses ready. We are to leave at once for Mount St. Jean.
Harriet is still asleep. I am praying that if this man is not her husband, we can be back before she wakes up again, and she will never have to know we were gone at all.
Later ...
We did take the carriage to Mont St. Jean. And it was--
If I am honest, Sergeant Kelly was entirely right. I did not know what seeing the ground where the battle was fought would be like. I thought myself prepared. But seeing the wounded in Brussels was only the palest rehearsal.
The ground is piled with the men killed in battle. Some have been buried in pits dug for mass graves. But there are so many of them tha
t here and there a dead hand or the toe of a boot sticks up out of the soil. That's not the worst, though. The worst is that there are men still alive, lying on the field. There are many working to get the wounded up and carry them away. But they have to start with those whom they have some hope of saving. So the worst-wounded ones are simply left to die where they fell in the fighting.
I understand. I do. And I can't see any other way. But I can still hear the groans and cries of pain.
Just as we reached Mont St. Jean, I felt Sergeant Kelly press something into my hand and looked down to see a handkerchief. It was only then I realised I was crying.
Every single nerve in my body felt stretched and raw with the need to run out onto the battlefield myself, and look at the faces of every man until I knew whether Edward was among those there. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, staying in the carriage until we reached the farmhouse Lieutenant Jenkins had directed me to. But it was the barest chance I might really find Edward in all the chaos and slaughter. And I had an actual chance of doing both Harriet and her husband real good.
So we kept on. And it was worth the effort--because the man at Mont St. Jean really was Colonel Forster. Very ill and weak--he had indeed lost his left arm--but alive. And not so weak that he could not be moved. So together Sergeant Kelly and I loaded him into the carriage and padded him carefully with all the blankets and cushions I had brought. The roads are horrible--all rutted by the artillery wagons, and the jouncing of the carriage must have been agony to Colonel Forster, but he bore it all with scarcely even a groan. And then sometime before we got to Brussels, he slipped into unconsciousness from the pain. He was still unconscious when Sergeant Kelly carried him into the house.
I got to be the one to give Harriet the news when she woke up towards evening. And the look on her face when I told her almost wiped out the images of the field of battle that kept flashing across my mind's eye.
The surgeon came and left some leeches--and Harriet actually applied them herself to the stump of Colonel Forster's amputated arm.
But there is still no word of Edward.
BOOK II
Thursday 22 June 1815
I do not know where to begin. The clock has just struck midnight.
And I am writing this in the new diary Sergeant Kelly brought me today.
I can't remember his ever seeing me write in my old book. But this morning he came to me after breakfast and simply handed me a book--this book--and said he had picked it up yesterday when he went out to buy food and other supplies. Some of the shops in Brussels have started to re-open as the townsfolk trickle back in from Antwerp.
And I don't even know how to write down what I feel right now. Relief. Terror.
Neither of those seems even to come close.
Maybe the closest I can come is to say that some moments I feel as though I am drowning, and the next as though I am somehow disconnected from myself, watching from a long way off.
Edward is alive. He's alive.
I keep reaching my hand out to touch him, just to make sure he is real. Staring at his face and all the while feeling as though I am trying to breathe underwater, my heart is pounding so hard.
Sergeant Kelly came back to the house soon after I wrote that last entry in my old journal book--the one I scribbled on the flyleaf.
I was changing the bandages of our nameless officer--the man who has lost his leg. He is still nameless, though he has been in our care for days, since he hasn't yet been able to talk. We were all afraid--truthfully, more certain than afraid--that he was going to die. But today for the first time I am beginning to think he might recover after all. He is still horribly weak, and his face is so gaunt it looks like paraffin wax smeared over bone. But I think the fever is gone, and this morning he drank a little broth before he lapsed back into a stupefied sleep.
At any rate, I had just finished with him when Sergeant Kelly came in, looking sober and very grave. And a voice in my head screamed at me to run, to get away before he could give me whatever terrible news he had brought. As though postponing it even a few moments could make it any easier to bear.
But then Sergeant Kelly opened his mouth and said, "Don't look like that, Miss Darcy, I've brought him back to you. He's still alive. Just terribly hurt is all."
I don't remember the interval between those words and the moment when I stood beside the farm cart Sergeant Kelly had driven to the door and first caught sight of Edward's face.
Mrs. Metcalfe had come with me--I suppose Sergeant Kelly was afraid I might faint--and I was vaguely aware of her saying something else to me and holding my hand. But I still scarcely heard her. I was staring down at Edward, lying on a rough straw pallet on the floor of the cart.
He was unconscious, and so still I thought for a single heart-stopping moment that Sergeant Kelly had made a mistake and that he was dead after all. Then I saw the faint--very faint--rise and fall of his chest. And suddenly every detail seemed unnaturally clear and bright. So bright it hurt my eyes. The tattered and filthy remains of the army uniform he still wore. The lines of Edward's face, gaunt and greyish pale beneath smears of blood and dirt. The bloodied bandage wrapped around his head.
The bandage concealed what must have been a terrible blow to his head. I saw it for the first time when between us all, we had carried Edward into the house and upstairs. I said at once that he could have my room, and I would either move in with Kitty or sleep on the floor.
Sergeant Kelly hefted Edward as gently as he could manage onto the bed, and then went to fetch hot water. And Mrs. Metcalfe and I started to cut away the muddied rags of Edward's uniform and take stock of his injuries.
The head wound is his only serious hurt. For the rest he has a few cuts and bruises, but nothing of note. The head wound is bad enough, though. Not that I know much about such things, but Sergeant Kelly flinched visibly when he caught sight of it, and Mrs. Metcalfe opened her mouth as though to say something, looked at my face and then fell silent.
All through the time we were bathing Edward, cleaning the mud and dirt of the battlefield away and tending the minor cuts and scrapes, Edward did not move. His eyes didn't even flicker; his muscles didn't even twitch.
A surgeon came a short while ago--a Mr. Powell--but he said there was very little he could do. He left some leeches and said I might apply them at three-hour intervals. I asked whether he thought Edward could hear me, and Mr. Powell shook his head and said, briskly, "Oh, no, I shouldn't think so. The blow is a severe one, and days old. He's quite insensible, poor man."
And then he said that if Edward were still alive in the morning, he could try bleeding him; that might do some good. But he was far too busy to spare time on lost causes when the city was filled with men he could save.
All the breath seemed to have been stolen from my lungs. Which was probably fortunate, otherwise I might have starting shouting at Mr. Powell. But when the darkness at the edges of my vision cleared, the surgeon had already gone. Mrs. Metcalfe was standing next to me again, petting my hair lightly--I can just remember my mother doing the same when I was very small.
"Don't pay him any mind," she said. "Half the time these long-faced surgeons don't have the smallest idea what they are talking about."
I looked up at her. "Do you really think that? Do you really think Edward may yet recover?"
Mrs. Metcalfe looked away--but not before I had seen the flash of pity in her eyes. She touched my hair lightly again and said, "There, child. We none of us are given more in this life than we can bear."
I am sitting in a chair beside Edward's--my--bed, writing this now. Edward's face looks ... remote in the flickering lamplight. Unreachable. He still has not stirred.
All the time he was missing, I kept promising myself and fate and God that if I could only have five minutes more with him, I would not complain of anything afterwards. But I lied. Whatever Mrs. Metcalfe says, I can't even think about Edward dying now.
Friday 23 June 1815
Colonel For
ster is out of danger now: awake, sensible, and recovering well. He is able to sit up and feed himself one-handed. And Harriet helps him with everything else.
Which should be such a happy ending to it all, even with the loss of his arm. But it really does seem that fate has a cruel sense of humour at times. Because even Colonel Forster's recovery is marred by the news we got the very same day Sergeant Kelly and I brought the colonel home. John Ayres is dead.
And there is no doubt about it, this time. We heard from another soldier in his regiment, a friend of Captain Ayres who had been with him at the end. Captain Ayres had given the other man a gold watch that had been his father's, and asked that it be brought to Kitty. It was his last request before he died.
Ever since, Kitty has gone about like someone sleepwalking. I have not seen her cry. Instead she changes bandages and writes letters for the wounded men and goes out to do the day's shopping with an absolutely expressionless face and a hard, bleak look in her eyes.
Edward's condition is unchanged.
Sunday 25 June 1815
It must be nearly dawn now. The sky outside the window is turning from midnight-blue to pearl-grey. Whatever Mr. Powell said, I have been talking to Edward--talking and talking and talking until my throat aches. Telling him about Elizabeth and baby James--because the last time Edward saw James he was just a tiny new-born. About our boat voyage to Ostend. Speaking to him of anything I can think of, and all the while holding his hand and hoping to feel some sort of a response, some sign he might be able to hear me after all.
But there has been none. And I have to rest at least for a little while. And since I don't want to fall asleep, I am resorting to writing in this book again.
Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2 Page 17