Holly and Hopeful Hearts

by Caroline Warfield

  The girl blushed furiously.

  Her father rebuked him, “Don’t tease the girl, Avram. She knew the Hebrew well enough and your meaning also. If you wish to talk of marriage, talk with her mother.”

  Sarah dropped her head to her hands while the entire table laughed. She began to clear dishes. “There is cake,” she said, “if my brothers can stop laughing long enough.”

  At the viscount’s puzzled expression, Adam explained, “The book is ‘Beginning.’ You would call it Genesis. He probably alluded to the quote, ‘for this a man shall leave his father and his mother…’ Marriage.”

  The young man grinned at that.

  “She reads it in Hebrew?” Will asked. “I’m impressed.”

  Impressed. Can Esther Baumann read Hebrew?

  “Aren’t we all?” One of her brothers guffawed, setting off another round of laughter.

  “You need not look so amazed, Adam Halevy,” Rebbe Nahmany said. “All my daughters read the Torah, but Sarah is particularly adept. Does not the Devarim compel us to teach our children the law? Who better to teach the children than their mothers?”

  “Deuteronomy, yes, but the Talmud at least is forbidden,” Adam said, helping himself to potatoes while struggling to keep his worldview from tilting on its axis. Doubt that began when he quarreled with Esther grew daily.

  The rabbi shrugged. “The Talmud and the oral traditions are complex. Few women wish to dedicate their lives to their study. The sage Ben-Azzai suggested fathers should teach their daughters sufficient Talmud to—”

  “But, Rabbi, Eliezer—”

  “Yes, yes, we all know what Eliezer taught. The man did not like women.” Rebbe Nahmany chuckled. “How can my daughters value our faith if they do not know it, I ask you?”

  How indeed?

  Cake arrived, and the conversation shifted. The education of women lost ground to ribald teasing, popular literature, and the emperor’s disastrous invasion of Russia. Nahmany, like many Jews, supported Napoleon initially. As reform morphed into new tyranny, the emperor's government pulled back earlier decrees on religious freedom. When the emperor’s grandiose ambitions led a generation of young men to war across Europe, and anti-Semitism reared its head in parts of France, Nahmany's support for him evaporated. The Corsican needed to be stopped for France’s sake.

  Late that night, Adam stared at the rafters of the attic, and the rabbi’s words returned to haunt him. Who would be his children’s first teacher? Their mother.

  Esther Baumann would make a wonderful first teacher. Her final words in London stayed with him while he drifted off to sleep and smiled in his dreams. I’ll pray for you, Adam Halevy.

  Chapter 5

  They left the next morning as six poor laborers driving three farm wagons pulled by oxen and loaded with hay and livestock. If stopped, they could say they carried provisions for whichever army stopped them. It seemed a good plan.

  Rebbe Nahmany rose at dawn to see them off and offer his blessing. “Son of my heart, will I see you when you return?”

  Adam accepted the old man’s embrace. “God willing, but I can’t promise we'll pass this way.” Once into the hills, things could change rapidly.

  “Go then, Adam, but if I don’t see you again, remember these words from a man who has lived long: keep an open heart.”

  Keep an open heart. During the long slow climb, Adam had ample time to ponder the rabbi’s meaning. He rode in the middle of the three wagons, while Viscount Rochlin—Will—rode on the lead wagon with muskets that lay hidden under a thin layer of straw within reach. He had certainly misjudged the man who had been nothing but friendly and tolerant the entire trip. Open mind or open heart? Have I closed mine? Did the old rabbi suspect his quarrel with Esther?

  The wagon lurched, drawing his attention back to the job at hand, and he prayed they wouldn't need those muskets.

  For two days, their journey toward Wellington’s headquarters went as planned. On the third day, they woke to icy rains and hellish roads. Progress slowed to a crawl. At the top of a rise, the third wagon slipped into deep mire and stuck.

  The men pulled the two lead wagons forward to a level part of the road and came back to help. Will pulled out two muskets. “Which of you can fire this?”

  Dan Nahmany raised a hand. “I’m a deft hand with rabbits,” he said.

  Tossing one of the muskets to the young man, the viscount scanned the clearing. “Good. Frenchmen are slower than rabbits.” He stopped abruptly. Every man there, Jew or not, was French. “Sorry. Let’s say the emperor’s unfortunate followers are slower. We’re sitting ducks out here in the open.”

  Avram, Sarah’s erstwhile suitor who had been driving the third wagon, began to dig around the axles of the mired wagon.

  Adam looked downhill at the work and back at his partner. “Won’t the guns make it obvious we aren’t poor farmers?” he asked.

  “If a patrol sees us, they may not ask what nationality we are,” Will said. “We can continue to be poor farmers, but I’ll feel better if one or two of us are hidden up that hill with the muskets.” He looked at Adam as if considering something. “Can you shoot?” he asked at last.

  “I can shoot,” Adam told him ruefully. “Probably better than I can shift wagons.”

  “I’ve moved my share of buried axels. You take Dan up and hide in those rocks, and I’ll help Avram and the others.” He stripped off his jacket without hesitation. “If a patrol approaches, stay down unless they appear to threaten us. If they do, shoot them.”

  From his perch atop a boulder, Adam watched the viscount work, skill and experience evidenced in every movement. He found it hard to match the fashionable lord he met in Baumann’s study with the sweating muscular man laboring beside Nahmany’s students as they dug, levered boards under wheels, and urged oxen forward. Finally, on the last try, the wagon rolled forward. As quickly as it did, it slid back with force.

  A shriek brought Adam and Dan to their feet.

  “Avram!” Will shouted. The scholarly young man had been pushing from behind.

  By the time Adam scrambled down the hill, the viscount was on his knees in the mud next to the young man. “Everyone, push!” he shouted.

  The wagon gave, and Will pulled Avram clear before the wagon sank back. They ordered Dan back up the hill, but Adam stayed.

  “The rest of you begin unloading that damned wagon,” Will said, his attention on the white face of the injured man. “Sorry, Adam. We should have unloaded before,” he said under his breath. His hands probed for injury. “His ribs feel fine, but that leg is badly broken. We’re lucky he passed out.”

  “We have to move him out of this rain. I’ll get a blanket,” Adam said. When he came back, he had a blanket, a flask of brandy, and an axe at his waist. At Will’s questioning eyebrow, he said, “I need to cut splits.”

  The viscount’s approving look warmed him.

  “I’m not completely worthless,” he muttered.

  “Not even slightly,” Will retorted.

  The two of them rolled Avram onto the blanket, carried him to a sheltered spot beneath an outcrop under Dan’s post, and began to set his broken leg.

  Adam was tying the last of the strips to hold the splints in place before Avram came around.

  “Easy, friend,” Will said. He brushed the young man’s hair back, raised his head, and offered a sip of brandy.

  The patient took it gratefully. “Am I going to die?” Avram groaned.

  “Not if we can help it,” Adam told him.

  “Of course not,” Will added. “You need to get back to that beautiful Hebrew scholar waiting for you in Mont-Ombre.”

  A faint smile from Avram rewarded that statement. “But the gold. You’ll have to leave me here. I can’t hold you up. I—”

  Will silenced him with another sip of brandy.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Will told Adam when the two men slumped down, backs to the rock under the overhang. “We will have to go back down and start over.”r />
  “If we do that, you’ll be weeks getting home,” Adam replied.

  Both men sat in silent thought for a while, each lost in regret at the delay.

  “We could leave one of the boys with him,” Adam suggested, “but we’d have to leave a musket.”

  “And load all the gold into the other two wagons. If we’re going to do that, we may as well send them back down to Mont-Ombre with one of the muskets.”

  More silent contemplation as rain poured down, and the other three men struggled to unload the recalcitrant wagon. Neither had a better idea.

  “My lord! Mr. Halevy!”

  Dan’s whisper from above them sounded frantic. Adam swung out of the shelter and looked where the young man pointed. A troop of soldiers had materialized out of the rain and mist—five, no eight. A patrol. In these hills, it could be either army.

  “Hold fire,” Will reminded them, squinting intently into the clearing. “Let’s see who they are and what they—Jamie!” he roared, and charged down the hill, leaping along and sidestepping rocks.

  The leader of the patrol jumped off his horse and ran to meet the viscount. Watching the two men embrace, Adam muttered, “Well, I guess they are friendly,” and started down the hill.

  “You’re two days late. We decided to come farther this way in case you had problems,” the major Will called Jamie said, taking in the stuck wagon, the mud, and the bedraggled workers.

  “I won’t pretend I’m not glad to see you even if you will remind me of this day for the next twenty years.” When Adam approached, Will didn’t hesitate. “Major the Honorable James Heyworth, may I present Mr. Adam Halevy, my partner in this enterprise.”

  The major put out his hand to shake before Adam could so much as bow his head. Honorable? Another one?

  “Jamie!” the major said, shaking Adam’s hand. “No room for the honorable nonsense out here.” He turned to his troops. “Well, you lazy slackers, let’s get this wagon out of the goo and get busy helping Old Hooky make payroll.”

  The transfer of gold took over an hour and turning the wagons another. By nightfall, gold had been stowed in the saddles and bags of a dozen horses, Avram had been loaded onto a bed of straw, and all three wagons were on their way downhill, Dan with a musket over his knees. The chickens that couldn’t be tied to soldiers' saddle horns for stew pots had been sent home with the wagons.

  Adam glanced at Will riding beside him several days later. November passed well into December, the chickens had all given their lives for soldiers’ dinners, and still the journey continued. They had divided into two patrols, Adam traveling with the one led by Jamie, and Will leading the other. When they had reunited just that morning, the delight the sight of his partner gave him stunned Adam. He had missed him.

  “How many days do you think it will take us to get back?” he asked.

  “Too long. Even with no load and assuming we talk Wellington out of faster horses—maybe half the time, but still too long,” Will answered sadly.

  “I’m sorry you’ll miss your holidays.”

  “And you already did, no?” The viscount looked sympathetic. They rode for a while, and then he went on, “Will Miss Baumann attend the Duchess of Haverford’s charity ball?”

  “Probably.” Almost certainly. “Baumann will see to it.”

  “They’ll be there until the new year,” Will mused. “You might—”

  A sudden quickening among the troops distracted them. The major stood in his stirrups ten yards in front and shouted, “Do you want a good hot meal and shelter or not? Headquarters is around that rise.”

  Wellington himself thanked them for delivering the prize intact, but the great man had little patience and no time for niceties. They found themselves summarily dismissed with properly signed receipts for the War Office and Baumann’s bank. The great man stopped at the door and turned to look at Will. “Did not expect to find you here again, Rochlin. Did Smithson give you your message?” The door shut behind him.

  It took them twenty minutes to track down Colonel Smithson. “Hard journey out there, eh?” the colonel said, rifling through piles on his desk. “Friends in the War Office, Rochlin? Message from Glenaire, of all people. Best not ignore that one, eh?” He pulled up a heavy vellum message, its impressive seals broken. The colonel didn’t apologize. “Your father has taken a turn for the worse. Glenaire’s yacht has been at the coast a week already. It'll get you home soonest. Best not tarry.”

  After one night in a warm bed and a good meal, they were on their way through friendly territory with fast horses and a light guard who waved them on their way before the sun dipped very far in the sky.

  “You’ll make it home on time,” Adam said as they climbed aboard the yacht.

  “Perhaps,” the viscount answered, accepting the captain’s greeting. “Wind and tide permitting.”

  Adam hoped it would be so for the man he now thought of as friend. For himself, he hoped only for the shortest route possible to Esther Baumann.

  Chapter 6

  Aunt Dinah complained when she stepped out of the carriage. “That step is too low.” She snarled at the footman, “Careful there! Don’t break my fingers. Hold me firmly so I don’t fall.” Then she stepped down on the uneven pavement, groaned, and grabbed the young man’s arm.

  The contradictory complaints made Esther’s stomach lurch. Her aunt’s fussing almost ruined her arrival at Hollystone Hall. Almost. Nothing could squelch Esther’s wonder at the long causeway through magical water gardens or at the building’s glorious façade with its banks of mullioned windows. The air, crisp and clear, filled her lungs. A girl—no, a woman, she reminded herself—who lived in London all her days had no idea how wondrous country air felt on the skin.

  Esther had caught sight of massive bushes, thick with berries from which the hall took its name, on the drive in and thought of her mother’s tiny patch of garden in Bishopsgate. Perhaps fresh air and well-tended plants might be the greatest luxury of all; city child that she was, she had never considered the idea.

  There was little time to ponder or to enjoy the grounds because a squad of servants flowed down of the massive front steps while the stern face of Stanley, the Hollystone butler, urged them to efficient efforts. Reba rescued Esther’s small bag before it disappeared up the steps along with her aunt’s sewing basket and the bulkier luggage being unloaded in lively fashion. Esther found herself swept along into the cavernous foyer of the hall with Reba right behind her.

  Ladies do not run. Ladies do not skip. Ladies walk with grace. She wanted to dance, but she knew ladies would not do that upon entering a home, either.

  “Her Grace apologizes for not greeting you herself,” an older woman said. “I am Mrs. Stanley, the housekeeper. Her Grace has been detained. She hopes to join you and the other guests in the gold drawing room after you’ve had a moment to freshen up. Maud will show you to your room.” A graceful hand gesture called forward a young girl, who bobbed a shallow curtsey. Esther suspected the girl must be the youngest, smallest maid.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Aunt Dinah sighed. “Travel wearies one so. Kindly give my regrets to Her Grace regarding this evening. I have blessedly brought my headache powders and will keep to my bed. Please see that tea is sent up.”

  If Aunt Dinah worried Mrs. Stanley, the housekeeper didn’t show it. She whispered a command to a footman, who disappeared into the house, probably to respond to Aunt Dinah’s demands. The aunt glared pointedly at Esther until her niece moved to follow the maid up the sweeping staircase. Esther looked longingly over her shoulder but didn’t linger.

  The sunny guest room astonished Esther with its simple but beautiful furniture, luxurious bed hangings, and, most wonderful of all, windows overlooking Hollystone Hall’s sweeping front drive. In short order, Esther’s cloak and bonnet had been stored, hot water for washing arrived, and Reba began to unpack. Esther felt torn between standing in the window, lost in the view, and hurrying downstairs.

  Through the connectin
g door, she could hear Aunt Dinah haranguing Maud, whose services she claimed for her own. Esther opened the door, shot Maud a sympathetic look, and spoke to her aunt. “I believe I’ll go down, Aunt. Her Grace seems to expect it.” She bit the inside of her lip and prayed her aunt didn’t want her to dance attendance.

  “Go, go then. Leave me to my misery. This one will do.” Aunt Dinah gestured toward Maud with a languid hand. “And shut that door. Your room has too much light.”

  Esther did as she was asked but stood looking at the closed door.

  Reba paused in her work long enough to smile. “Go then. I’ll make sure little Maud comes to no harm. Good luck to you and remember—”

  “—behave as a lady at all times.”

  “I was going to say, ‘You’re as good as any of them,’ but yes. Remember.”

  Esther took a few steps down the hallway and paused to remember the way. She suspected Maud had been assigned to make sure she knew the way, but she didn’t want to open her aunt’s door another time. Relief settled on her when she spied a footman carrying hot water jugs to another guest down the corridor. He couldn’t stop to guide her, but his directions sounded clear enough.

  It took Esther thirty minutes to reach the appointed drawing room. Something caught her eye at every step. She paused to study paintings along the halls, to appreciate the glorious wooden paneling on the first floor landing, and to run her hand along the polished banister. While servants bustled up and down the servants’ stairs, the main staircase and entrance hall were empty for now, and she could look her fill. A bookcase at the top of the stairs surprised her. A close inspection showed it to be full of novels, poetry, and travel books, the sort of things a guest might want to borrow for an evening’s read before sleep.

  The grandfather clock in the entrance hall pleased her. It appeared to be almost as fine as the one she delighted in at her father’s house. She examined it when an outburst of laughter reminded her of her destination. The sound of conversation drew her toward a door opened merely an inch, in front of which a footman stood ready to admit her. The others, she realized, had arrived the day before, while she and Aunt Dinah took their Sabbath rest at coaching inn.