by Nita Abrams
She heard a murmur of voices; heard quick footsteps coming into the hall; saw a tall, familiar figure, blurred through a film of unshed tears. She started to explain why she was there, but her sentences were broken and disjointed; she could barely speak without choking. And then two strong arms were around her; her head was resting on something reassuringly solid and warm; a deep voice was repeating her name gently, telling her that everything would be all right.
For years she had been the responsible one, had been careful and sensible, always calm and correct, as if she could prove by her behavior that she was not as fragile and uncertain as she felt inside. Now she was tired of pretending. She let him hold her. She let the tears fall. She let herself imagine that she was not alone.
24
Henrietta Woodley was clearly suspicious of her daughter’s friend, and Diana, in all fairness, could hardly blame her. Diana had been afraid to attempt an extended letter in her mother’s handwriting, so the forged reply to the Woodleys invitation was almost insulting in its brevity. The tale of the broken carriage pole, which she used to justify her arrival at the Woodley’s in a hackney cab—and her lack of a portmanteau—had not stretched to explain why no maid or footman had accompanied her across London. And the small bag she had brought with her horrified the practical Mrs. Woodley by its contents or, rather, lack of contents. Diana had assured her hostess that her trunk would find them at Dover, but to her secret relief Martha had been ordered to provide a spare set of linens “just in case” Diana’s own luggage failed to appear.
If there had been more time for questions, Diana’s brittle network of lies might have collapsed then and there, but fortunately for Diana there was no time. Within an hour of her arrival, the Woodleys had set out for Dover in two coaches; they had made only the briefest of halts on the road and instead of staying overnight at the port, as Diana had expected, they had embarked at once to take advantage of favorable wind and tide. By then it was so late that everyone had retired immediately to their cabins and attempted to sleep. As a result, Mrs. Woodley was not able to act on her suspicions until the following morning, as the ship was coming into port.
When Martha appeared, looking rather nervous, and stammered that her mother wanted to see Diana in her cabin, Diana did feel a twinge of anxiety. She told herself firmly that it would be far too much trouble now for Mrs. Woodley to send her home, that the worst she could expect was a scolding. So she stepped into the adjacent cabin, hoping her fears were unjustified but resolved to take her chastisement meekly if necessary. A little voice at the back of her head was warning her that what she had done was far more serious than a schoolgirl prank, and that this would be no ordinary scolding. She tried to ignore that voice.
Mrs. Woodley was seated on her berth, frowning down at a letter. Diana had an uneasy feeling that she recognized it.
“Good morning, ma’am,” she said. “Martha said you wished to see me?”
“There is one,” muttered Mrs. Woodley, peering at the letter. She looked up. “Miss Roth, how do you spell ‘obliged’?”
Flustered, Diana did her best to produce the correct spelling. She was not sure if the word had one d or two. Evidently it had only one, because Mrs. Woodley winced when she inserted one after the i. “I cannot think how I came to insult your mother so dreadfully,” was Mrs. Woodley’s comment as Diana fell silent. She held up the forged letter. “I had met her several times, and I was still prepared to believe that she was both discourteous and illiterate. She did not write this, did she?”
Diana dropped her eyes. The enormity of what she had done was becoming clearer every moment.
“Does she even know you are here? Did you leave her a note?”
“I sent her a letter from the inn yesterday,” Diana said in a small voice.
“Have you any notion of what she must have suffered when she found you gone?”
No response was expected, but Diana for some reason found herself remembering the old days—they were not so very long ago—when she had been allowed to see her mother only twice a year. In particular she was remembering the tight, frozen look on her mother’s face whenever it was time to say good-bye.
Mrs. Woodley sighed. “I should have trusted my own judgment more. Do you know what I thought when I first met you?”
Diana bit her lip. “No.”
“I thought you were too pretty for your own good, and I was right. You are not much used to hearing the word ‘no,’ are you? You wanted to come to Brussels, and your mother said no, and so you have made me and my daughter accomplices in fraud.”
“She didn’t say no,” said Diana fiercely. She blinked back tears. “I did not ask her, because I knew she would never agree. She hates soldiers and she hates war and after what happened in France she hates them even more, and she doesn’t care that Anthony enlisted and I was not even able to say good-bye.”
“So that part, at least, was not a lie,” Mrs. Woodley said. “There is actually an Anthony.”
“He is a private.” Her voice wobbled only very slightly. “In an infantry regiment.”
The older woman looked at her sternly and held up the forged letter. “Did Martha know about this?”
“No! No!” Diana willed her to believe it. “I swear it!”
“Well, that is something, at any rate.” She sighed and put it down. “I must send you home, of course, and it will be very inconvenient. We have only the two servants with us. I suppose we will have to hire someone in Ostend to escort you back. Or perhaps one of the wives I know from the regiment will be traveling home.”
Diana was stunned. “You are going to send me home?” she said, half-disbelieving. It had never occurred to her that Martha’s mother would share most of Abigail’s views on proper behavior. Diana had thought that her mother was unusually strict. She was beginning to understand that the opposite was true: her father had been unusually permissive.
“Of course.” Mrs. Woodley looked stern. “Apart from my obligation to return you to your family as quickly as possible, I do not care to have you keep company with my daughter and my niece.”
As painful as the thought of her mother’s anxiety had been, this was even more painful. Guilt was familiar to Diana. Shame was not.
“For the moment,” Mrs. Woodley went on, “I am afraid I must lock you in my cabin. We are just coming into Ostend now, and I cannot take the chance that you would run off and find the Belgian version of a hackney cab. I will return as soon as I can discover what arrangements can be made for you.”
Diana wanted to object, to argue, to promise to behave, to beg for a reprieve. But before she could say anything, Mrs. Woodley had gone. She heard the lock protest as it was forced home, and then, to add to her humiliation, Mrs. Woodley’s voice giving orders to a seaman that no one was to let Miss Hart out of her cabin for any reason whatsoever until she returned.
She sat in the cabin for what seemed like hours. At first she got up eagerly whenever she heard footsteps or voices, but after a while she realized that on a small packet like this one she would hear every sailor or passenger who walked anywhere nearby. As the ship was warped in to the dock, those noises were added to the confusion. She gave up and lay down on the bed, feeling wretched. Somehow her own picture of this voyage as a heroic adventure was impossible to recapture after Mrs. Woodley’s pointed questions. Indeed, her own conscience was asking her other, equally disturbing questions about her penchant for excitement and her willingness to stoop to practices such as forgery.
When the door was finally unlocked, she struggled up onto her feet. It was Mrs. Woodley, followed by a rather frightened-looking Martha.
“It appears that we will not be able to send you home,” said Martha’s mother. Her face was taut. “Our forces met the French yesterday afternoon near Brussels, and the British civilians in the city, as civilians are wont to do, are panicking and spreading rumors of disaster. Consequently the docks are swarming with foolish people clamoring to be taken off at once. It is simply not p
ossible to get you safe passage on a boat at the moment.”
Diana, who did not share her mother’s distrust of the military, saw no contradiction at all in the notion that it was safer to proceed towards a battlefield than to travel home with hysterical Londoners who were fleeing in terror.
Mrs. Woodley looked at her daughter. “Martha has engaged to be personally responsible for your good behavior until I can return you to your mother. That means that consequences for your actions will fall not only on you, but on her.”
Diana looked at her friend. “Thank you,” she said faintly.
“You will write a letter to your mother right now, to be sent with the captain of this packet. You will explain to her that Martha and I were not aware of the true situation. You will give her our address in Brussels and will tell her that unless I hear from her I will send you home as soon as I can find a safe means of doing so.”
Diana nodded.
“Do you have any questions?”
Yes, she had a question. A very urgent question. “Please—forgive me if I sound ignorant. But you said our forces met the French. Does that mean that they fought?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Woodley, her expression almost kindly. “Not all of our men, of course. Just a few regiments.”
“Do you know which regiments were there? Were any of the soldiers killed?” She strained to remember the suddenly elusive, all-important number. “Anthony—Mr. Roth—is in the 44th Foot.”
“I am afraid that division was involved, yes,” said the older woman gently. “And there were quite a few casualties on both sides.”
Diana had seen the word “casualties” in the newspapers. It had seemed very impersonal and abstract until now. She swallowed. “I am very good at nursing,” she offered. “Truly. And I know how to set bones, if they are only broken a little.”
“Do you?” Mrs. Woodley looked at her thoughtfully. “In that case I may not be in such a hurry to send you home after all.”
Under a gray, threatening sky the remnants of the second battalion of the 44th Foot were huddled around a small fire making tea. It seemed very strange to Anthony that they should be having tea, as though this were an ordinary morning. A few miles away eight thousand corpses were lying scattered around a little rural crossroads, and the men here could not really explain why they were alive while their comrades were dead.
Yesterday afternoon Anthony had finally understood the purpose of drills. Drills were boring and exhausting; battle was boring and exhausting and terrifying. If you had drilled enough, the similarities (boredom and exhaustion) outweighed the differences (terror) and when the sergeant screamed “fix bayonets!” you moved quickly enough so that the charging enemy met a wall of blades instead of a helpless man with an unloaded musket. Anthony had not drilled enough. He knew that it was sheer luck that he was not dead.
“Here,” said a freckled soldier, handing him a tin mug. He took it gratefully. It tasted foul, but it was hot, and it was liquid. Since yesterday afternoon he had been constantly, fiercely thirsty. Between the smoke and the sun and the residue of gunpowder in his mouth, Anthony had thought at times that he would be willing to kill simply for a drink of water.
“That was your first battle, wasn’t it?” the other man asked, watching Anthony drink.
“Yes.” Anthony handed back the empty mug. “And you?”
“My tenth. I’ve been in since ’09. Been wounded twice.”
“What did you think of yesterday?” Anthony asked cautiously.
He himself had absolutely no idea why they had fought at that particular place. The crossroads seemed to him a perfectly ordinary one, indistinguishable from countless others they had passed on their hurried march to relieve the Dutch forces. When they had arrived, things had become even more incomprehensible. So far as he could tell, his company had done nothing but stand there and get shot at by French cannon. Occasionally some French infantry would attack; then they were allowed to shoot back. Even more occasionally, the French cavalry would attack. That was a break in the monotony: everyone would scramble into a tightly packed square facing out. The horses would shy away from the wall of bayonets, the 44th would send a volley of musket fire after them, and the excitement was over until the next cavalry charge. But most of the time they stood there in the smoke and waited for cannon balls to smash into their ranks.
Evidently the battle had not made much sense even to the veterans; his companion spat in disgust and then growled: “It was a bloody mess, that was what it was. Half a division wiped out, and then we abandon the damned crossroads anyway and come north.”
As the morning wore on, the phrase “bloody mess” seemed to be the general consensus about Quatre Bras. The supply wagons had never caught up to the troops. So there was no food, no spare gear, and, most importantly, no grog. When the dark clouds finally split open and disgorged a brutal, soaking rain, the men began complaining even more bitterly. Why were they marching out in the open, when in the nearby woods they could at least find some shelter? Where were the supplies? Where, for that matter, was the rest of their division? They continued north, going more and more slowly as the roads and fields turned to mud. In places it was ankle-deep, and several men had to stop and retrieve boots that had been sucked off their feet. Eventually the rain slowed to a drizzle, but the mud persisted.
In the middle of the afternoon, a rider in the blue coat of a staff officer pulled up to the weary troop. He was met with catcalls. “Where are the damn wagons?” several men yelled. “Where are our mates?”
He ignored them and addressed the nearest officer. “Lieutenant Tomkins?”
“No, sir. I’m Willoughby. Tomkins was killed yesterday.”
“Sorry to hear it.” The rider looked grim. “Do you still have a trooper named Roth? Or was he killed as well?”
“He’s here, sir.” Willoughby turned and bellowed “Roth! ”—then blushed furiously when he saw Anthony standing a few feet away.
The man danced his horse sideways so that he was facing Anthony. “You’re the one who speaks German?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you ride? Nothing fancy, we’re not recruiting you for the cavalry.”
Anthony hesitated. “Yes, sir.”
“You’re to report to headquarters, then. They’re forming a messenger corps for the next round. Requisition a horse when you get to the next village.” He turned back to the lieutenant. “Tell your colonel this man has been seconded to Major Barnes.” Then he wheeled his horse and rode away.
“You lucky dog,” said the man next to Anthony, giving him an envious look. “Swanning around headquarters nice and dry while we slog through the mud. The ladies are very partial to a man just returned from battle, you know.” There was a chorus of agreement, and some suggestions as to what Anthony might do with the ladies.
Anthony merely grunted and kept walking.
“Do you have a girl in Brussels?” his companion asked, curious.
“No.”
There was a gigantic crack of lightning as he spoke, and rain began again, harder than before.
25
The storm finally subsided around midnight. Abigail, venturing out of her tiny cabin, saw that the boat was under way again, and the terrible sense of frustration eased somewhat. Five hours, the ship’s master had said. Five hours more to Ostend, and then seventy miles to Brussels. What was the road like? she had asked. How long would it take to cover that seventy miles? He had shrugged. He was a sailor, he told her. He never went more than two miles inland if he could help it.
She knew how long it had taken to drive from London to Ramsgate: eight hours. Meyer had arranged everything. He had sent to her house for a change of clothing and her maid; he had arranged for money; he had even made sure that any letters Diana might send would be intercepted at the coast and forwarded on. Then he had commandeered one of the bank’s fastest coaches and they had sped away south. A boat had been waiting for them in Ramsgate. Unlike the luxurious coach, it was a rather
small and suspicious-looking craft, and Abigail had been forcibly reminded that her escort had made many illegal trips to France. The boat was seaworthy, however, and that was all she cared about. They had set sail at around nine in the morning and Meyer had told her they would be in Ostend by late afternoon. Master Cooper’s boat was very fast, as were the bank’s teams of horses; Abigail might well find herself only five or six hours behind Diana when they reached Belgium.
That was before the storm. It had come up from the west very suddenly at noon. At first they had been able to run before it, heading straight for Calais instead of angling northeast. But as the squalls grew stronger, the ship’s master had reluctantly reefed all but a few sails, and they had limped into a sheltered cove to sit it out. The waiting nearly drove Abigail mad, especially when the winds died down towards early evening. She had demanded to know why they were not putting out to sea again, and when Cooper had pointed to a second line of black clouds scudding towards them she had retreated to her cabin (more accurately, the cabin) in despair.
Now it was as though the storm had never been. The winds were gentle and steady. The sky was overcast, but the moon created a luminous glow behind the thinner clouds, and in a few places far to the west you could even see the occasional star. After hours in the close, dark cabin it felt wonderful to be outside. She took a deep breath of salt and pitch and damp wood. In the cabin, all she had been able to do was fret. Now they were moving. The clock had started again: so many hours to Ostend, so many to Brussels.
A dark figure detached itself from the group at the stern of the boat and made its way over to her. “How is your maid?” Meyer asked.
“Better, thank you.” Rosie had been very seasick during the storm. She had also been sick in the carriage. So far Abigail had been waiting on her rather than the other way around, but she knew that the reason Meyer had insisted on fetching Rosie had very little to do with hairdressing or with bringing cups of chocolate in the morning.