by Nita Abrams
While not the most eloquent speech, this was a fair reflection of Abigail’s own state of mind, so she merely said, “I already told you, if no word has come by noon we will go out together. Perhaps Rosie will have heard something at the market. But you promised last night that you would not go out on your own, and I will hold you to it.”
That promise had been the result of a mother-daughter conversation which had surprised Abigail. She had expected Diana’s usual extravagant remorse and even more extravagant pledges of eternal good behavior, but after Meyer had left, Diana had said nothing except, “You must tell me what you wish me to do.” And Abigail had extracted the promise. Even more surprising was Diana’s halting description, late last night, of the revelation she had experienced yesterday at the gate when Abigail had found her. “And I cannot marry Anthony,” Diana had added. “At least not yet. Because I knew when I saw your face that I would not feel like that about him. I am fond of him, and worried about him, and I will be very anxious until we find him, but he is not my miracle.” The room had been dark; they were both trying to sleep. Abigail suspected the confession would never have happened otherwise.
Diana sighed and went back to her sheet.
A few minutes later there was a light knock at the door. Diana jumped up so quickly that the scissors flew halfway across the room from her lap. It was only a chambermaid, however, come to change the bed linens. She was scandalized to find them tearing up sheets, but after Abigail had reassured her that they did not belong to the hotel, she became very sympathetic and promised to see if she could find some older, torn ones that the innkeeper might be willing to discard.
After she left, Diana went over to the window again and perched on the broad sill, peering down into the street below. “I wish we were nearer the Namur Gate,” she said. “We are halfway across the city.”
“It is not that large a city,” said Abigail. The same light knock came at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Abigail, rising. “It’s the chambermaid with the spare sheets.”
She opened the door. The chambermaid was there, looking rather frightened. Behind her stood Meyer. Anthony was draped over his uncle’s shoulder; his eyes were closed and there was blood all down Meyer’s side.
Abigail gave a little cry of horror and backed into the middle of the room.
“I’m sorry,” Meyer said. He sounded as though he was speaking from a great distance. “I should have taken him to the hospital. There are so many men there, though, I thought—” he staggered slightly. “I thought he might do better here.”
Diana, her eyes enormous, was standing by the window clutching a piece of sheet.
“Of course he should be here,” Abigail said fiercely. She held the door open and helped Meyer set his burden down on the bed.
“I believe his arm is broken,” Meyer said. “And he has taken a nasty blow on the head.”
Her daughter was issuing low-voiced instructions to the chambermaid. Now she came over and stood looking down at the slight figure on the bed. “He needs a doctor,” she said, worried.
“They are in very short supply.” Meyer turned back towards the door, stumbling a little. “I will see if I can find one.”
Diana was already cutting off Roth’s jacket, easing it carefully away from the injured arm. “There is a great deal of blood,” she observed. “Not dried blood either. He must have a wound here that is still bleeding.”
Abigail, staring after Meyer, did not really hear her at first. She returned to the bed to find her daughter frowning down at Roth’s body, which was naked from the waist up. She was too exhausted even to be shocked.
“Do you suppose all that blood could be from his head?” Diana asked. Then she answered her own question. “No, for that is all dry now.”
“What blood?” said Abigail, emerging from her daze.
“Look.” Diana stooped and picked up the ruined jacket, which she had tossed onto the floor. The lower portion was sodden with blood. “He should have a wound here”—pointing to the stomach—“but there is nothing.” She covered her patient with a shawl and began sponging the sticky mess at his temples.
At this point the chambermaid returned with hot water and towels, which the two women accepted gratefully.
“Shall I mop up the floor, then?” asked the maid.
Abigail looked down. There were little splotches of blood leading to the bed—and back. She went to the door and opened it. Little splotches in the hall. One set to the door, one set away from the door.
“Diana,” she said, feeling faint. “It’s not Anthony’s blood.”
Her daughter looked up, startled.
“Stay here,” Abigail told her. “Do not leave. I am going to find Mr. Meyer.” She picked up the nearest roll of bandages, grabbed her reticule, and ran out the door, nearly knocking over the chambermaid, who was mopping the hall. Down the stairs. Through the front room. There were little splotches everywhere. When she reached the street she stopped, suddenly at a loss. It was a short, narrow street, with several alleys and cross streets angling off of it. The cobbles, unlike the floors of the hotel, did not show bloodstains. And she did not see Meyer anywhere. There were too many people, people hurrying past on foolish errands that did not involve someone dripping blood onto the floor. As she ran from one alley to the next, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, she began to understand what he must have gone through last night. She was searching for a wounded man in the daylight, in a small street full of healthy, ordinary people. He had been searching in the dark, in an enormous field full of corpses, not knowing whether he would find his son and his nephew alive or dead.
After a minute she gave up trying to spot him. She would have to guess where he might have gone. And since the only place in Brussels she knew, besides Mrs. Woodley’s house, was the Namur Gate, she began walking in that direction.
Meyer had actually passed through the gate before he realized where he was going and stopped. He closed his eyes. “No,” he whispered. Whatever monstrous undertow was dragging him back to the woods and fields of Waterloo, he would not give in to it. He turned around and walked back inside the walls. He knew he was not thinking very clearly. He had had no sleep at all; he had rummaged through piles of corpses; had shot a looter in the head; had been shot in turn; had walked for more than a mile carrying an unconscious man. There were holes in his memory, too. For instance, he could remember arriving in the city with Anthony in the supply wagon, but he could not remember getting into the wagon. And he knew he had promised to do something when he left Abigail’s room, but now he could no longer remember what it was. He wished that some of his other memories would also disappear. Unfortunately, they refused to leave.
He looked around, seeking a place for a man with ugly memories and a fogged intellect to rest and take stock. His arm ached fiercely, but he ignored it. His intellect was not that badly fogged; he knew he needed a doctor. He also knew his chance of finding one today in Brussels was virtually nonexistent. There were others who needed a doctor far more than he did, and most of them would not get one. For one moment he recalled his promise to Abigail. Doctor. Anthony. The next moment it was gone again.
A few yards down from the gate was a staircase leading up to a platform on the wall. It had been built to allow defenders to haul cauldrons of pitch up to the edge of the wall and it was now considered a charming relic of more barbarous times. Somehow that platform, with its gruesome past, seemed entirely appropriate to him as a retreat. He made his way over to the base of the stairs and started to climb. After a few minutes he realized that he had stopped partway up. He looked down. The staircase seemed very narrow and steep. Better to go up. He clutched the wall with his good hand and resumed climbing.
There was a magnificent view from the top. Facing in, he could see all the way across the city to the walls on the lower side. He could see the cathedral, and, nearly below him, the palace. In the other direction he could see the road to Waterloo, with its litter of bodies and abandoned artillery p
ieces. He could see the forest. He could not see the battlefield itself, but the wheeling birds told him where it was. Then he began to feel dizzy—or rather, even more dizzy. He sat down on the stone floor and leaned his right shoulder against the parapet. The day was already warm; the cool stone felt good, and now that he was seated he was in the shade. Not only that, he could no longer see the battlefield, only the city.
When the small, green-garbed figure carrying a sausage began to climb the stairs he paid no attention at first. He couldn’t imagine why anyone else would want to climb up ninety-six steps. They would become discouraged and go back down.
The figure kept climbing.
It occurred to him that he had seen that green dress before. Earlier this morning, in fact. That the cap—which was all he could see of her head from above—was also familiar. The sausage was a puzzle, but there was no doubt who it was. He watched her come closer and closer. She was climbing steadily—not fast, but at an even, disciplined pace. Every twenty steps she would pause, catch her breath, and then continue.
It occurred to him that he was trapped.
When she finally reached the platform, she glared at him. “Don’t bother to get up,” she said, dropping down beside him. “I suppose you think it is a great joke to drip blood all over my bedchamber and then come up here to hide like a wounded bird.”
She was angry. He didn’t understand that. He stole a quick glance at her profile, at her beautiful, perfectly modeled profile. He realized that she was not so much angry as frightened.
“It is just a flesh wound,” he said.
She was opening her reticule, which was the tubelike shape he had mistaken for a sausage. It was crammed with rolls of bandages. “Can you get your jacket off without hurting the wound more?” The answer was no, but he suspected that anyone who had brought bandages up to the top of the Namur Gate would also have scissors, and he did not want her cutting his clothing off in front of half the population of Brussels. With her assistance he managed to get his left arm out of the sleeve.
She sucked in her breath at the sight of his shirt. The scissors duly appeared. “Lean forward,” she said.
Obediently, he leaned forward.
“No wonder there was so much blood. The bullet went all the way through.” She began to bind on folded pads of bandaging, first on the front of his arm, then on the back. She tied the pads very tightly; his arm began to throb. “Good,” she said, standing up. “Let’s go.”
He began to laugh.
“What is so funny?” she snapped.
“Abigail, there is no possible way that I can go down those stairs. I am sleepless, injured, starving, and dizzy. I will kill myself, and if you try to help me I will kill you, too. I am doomed to stay here until I rot.” The word rot made him shudder slightly, remembering the pit. At least up here there was no mud.
“Why did you come up, then?”
“I don’t know.” But he did know.
“How am I going to get you down?” She sounded frantic.
“Why would you want me down?” He picked up the remnants of the blood-soaked shirt and held them up. “Would you want to wear this?”
She stared, bewildered.
“Last night,” he said, “I spent the whole night looking for my son and my nephew. And I found both of them. I even found them alive. I should be grateful, don’t you think? I found your daughter, too. Three in one day!”
He paused, then said thoughtfully, “Do you know what I had planned to do, after I found Diana? What I fantasized about, on the way to Ramsgate and Ostend? I was going to present her to you, like a trophy from a contest, and ask you to marry me. I was too much of a gentleman to ask you while you were so distraught, you see. But my plans went wrong. Anthony went missing, and James. I needed more trophies.”
Her eyes were wide with shock. He wondered if he seemed mad to her.
“I spent hours on that battlefield,” he continued. “It was dark, and I went from body to body with my lantern, looking at the regimental markings on the jackets—that was the quickest way, you know, because a lot of them didn’t have faces any longer. But the lantern can only show you one little spot. Two bodies. Three bodies. Maybe five or six. And I was still there when dawn came.” He shuddered. “I looked—I couldn’t help myself—I looked at the whole thing, at the miles and miles of corpses, and I thought of the tiny fraction I had been able to see as I searched, and I remembered what you had said.”
“What I had said?”
“That I send off reports, and thousands of people die. That I play games, and boys wake up without an arm, or a leg, or an eye.”
“No!” she cried, horrified. “You cannot blame yourself for this! You cannot believe I meant my words so literally!”
“It looked quite literal to me,” he said. “The thousands of people dying, in particular. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not accepting sole responsibility for that slaughterhouse. But even if I only accept a fraction—and I think I must—a fraction of that horror is too much. When I brought Anthony to you this morning, I felt unclean. I could not be in the same room with myself. I could not even be in the same building with myself. So I came up here.” He gestured. “No roof.”
“What if I accept a fraction?” she asked fiercely. “Shall I throw myself off the city walls as well?”
He stared at her. “You?”
“What if I had never interfered that night at Pont-Haut? What if you had been able to blow up the bridge? Would Napoleon have retaken France? Would all this have happened?” She waved towards the forest beyond the walls. “Perhaps not.”
He frowned. “That is different.”
“Well then, let us consider a much smaller, less complex problem. If you starve yourself to death over the Namur Gate because of some misguided, self-righteous remarks I made in a fit of temper, what is my responsibility for your death?”
“I am not going to starve myself to death.” He was beginning to feel a little calmer.
“Then you are coming down with me?”
He sighed. “Abigail, I am filthy. In every sense of the word. I will come down, yes. But not with you.”
“Because I am a woman of principle, and you are an unprincipled scoundrel?”
“Something like that.”
She sat up very straight, her hands clasping her knees. “Let me tell you about my principles,” she said. “Let me tell you about how pure and virtuous I am.”
“Abigail, don’t,” he said. He knew what she was going to say, or thought he knew.
“I let you make your confession,” she said. “And I assure you mine is infinitely more modest. I don’t claim to have destroyed the entire British army. Just my good name.”
He sighed.
“Did you know that I was married to two different Harts?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is very unusual, these days.”
“Paul, my first husband, died very young. And I had loved him, and I had wanted his child. I begged Aaron to marry me.” She paused. “Don’t imagine I was an innocent. I knew what he was; Paul used to worry about him constantly. Aaron was never sober after four in the afternoon. I didn’t care. I wrote to the rabbi of the Sephardic synagogue and asked him to send my family records of other cases where it had been permitted. I got my wish. I married Aaron, and I had a child. But Diana was not a boy. She could not be Paul’s child, as I had hoped. And after she was born I was told I could never have any more children. I had married a drunkard to have a child for a dead man, and I had failed.”
“You had Diana.”
“Yes, I had Diana. I tried to stay for her sake, but I couldn’t. Aaron loved Diana, loved her passionately; I knew he would never harm her except perhaps through overindulgence. He hated me, though. I had tricked him, as he saw it. I was to produce Paul’s son, and bring us Paul’s money. I did not keep my part of the bargain. But he would not divorce me; I was too wealthy.”
He put his good arm around her. “Abigail, stop.”
“No. N
o. You are the only one besides Fanny I have ever told.” She wiped her eyes. “I hired a man,” she said defiantly. “I suppose you would have to call him a prostitute. And I could not take a chance that Aaron would claim it was a fraud, so I—I went to bed with the man. And Rosie, poor Rosie, made sure that Aaron and Stephen would come in and find me.”
She looked up at him, her green eyes glittering with tears. “So you see, when I lectured you in France about deception and manipulation and playing games I was only condemning in you what I hated in myself. I lied to make Aaron marry me, and I lied to make him divorce me, and in the process I degraded myself in every possible way.”
“You did what you had to do,” he said helplessly. “Sometimes circumstances don’t allow us to be moral. Sometimes we have to choose between different ways of being immoral.”
“So you think I should forgive myself?”
He was weak from loss of blood, and a bit feverish, but he was not stupid. “This is a trap, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’ve argued me into a corner. I’ve fallen in love with the Spinoza of Goodman’s Fields.”
“Are you coming down?” she asked, very gently this time.
“Yes. I don’t know how we will manage it, though. Who will come up ninety-six stairs and help me down?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “This is Belgium.” And she stood up and waved her white cap in the air until some people began peering up at the top of the wall from the street below. “Good citizens of Brussels!” she called, in clear, carrying French. “Who will earn four gold pieces helping me carry my husband the banker down the stairs?”
Six men began running towards the stairs before she even finished.