Soldier of the Queen

by Max Hennessy

  Eight

  ‘I’m always meeting you hiding in outhouses,’ Colby said. ‘Why in the name of Heaven didn’t you get away before it was too late?’

  Ackroyd was helping a moaning Mrs Dabney into the carriage as Colby hurried Augusta down the path with a couple of Gladstone bags, the only luggage they had been able to pack.

  ‘Father was heading a trade delegation to the new government, so we all came.’ Augusta looked up at him. ‘I guess the reason for his visit disappeared with the government’s removal to Versailles.’

  She hadn’t grown any taller and she was still so slender he felt he could span her waist with his two hands. But she had filled out and now clearly had a behind under her bustle and a before in front. The peaky elfin face had rounded into smooth curves and those enormous violet eyes of hers had taken on a new beauty that was enhanced by the lavender dress she wore. Despite the din and the flying metal she seemed less frightened than excited at having found him again.

  ‘Where’s your father now?’ he demanded, reaching for the reins.

  ‘He’s in Germany. We’ve been everywhere since we crossed the ocean in February.’

  ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you go with him? It would have been a damn’ sight safer.’

  ‘Because Ma got ill and we had to stay. She was real bad, too.’

  ‘I was told the name was Putnam.’

  ‘That’s the owner of the house.’ She gave him a nervous smile as if she thought he might make it an excuse to abandon them. ‘They’re friends of Pa’s. We rented it.’

  As he reached for the whip, she scrambled from the tonneau of the carriage to the driver’s seat alongside him, treating Ackroyd, who had to climb into her place, to a view of a length of leg as she did so.

  ‘We were in London,’ she went on excitedly. ‘A friend of father’s at the Embassy looked you up in the Army List and I even found out where your home was. But when I arrived there you were in London. And when I reached London you’d gone back home. When I went there again you’d come to France.’

  ‘So you were the mysterious female who was always asking after me?’

  ‘I swore your sister to secrecy. I think she thought it was a good idea. I felt that she approved of me.’

  By God, Colby thought, gripping the reins, so do I. She was beautiful, she was brisk, she sounded intelligent and she had the most honest eyes he had ever seen. Brosy la Dell’s suggestion that it was time he married came into his mind at once.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Only one place to go,’ he said. ‘Apartment I’ve rented. Not very big but safer than here. Yesterday I could have got you out of the city. It’s too late now.’

  She said nothing but she gave him a glance that looked remarkably like one of triumph.

  A burst of firing broke out behind them and fragments of brick and stone were chipped from the walls above them.

  ‘You must have been mad to stay in Paris,’ he yelled as he lashed the wretched horse into a half-hearted gallop.

  ‘Don’t snarl at me, sir,’ she snapped back. ‘It wasn’t my fault!’

  ‘Why didn’t you get a protection pass then?’

  ‘The man wouldn’t give me one. I think he had his eye on me.’ She gave him a quick grin. ‘He told me his name was Rigault and started talking about sexual promiscuity and concubinage and saying I was too pretty to leave. When he suggested dinner, I thought I might suffer something far worse than the refusal of a pass so I left and didn’t go back.’

  ‘You damn near left it too late. There’s talk of shooting the Archbishop and rounding up all foreigners as hostages. We may have to go over the ramparts.’

  Finding a cross street where there was no firing, they stopped at an épicerie to buy food, wine and a bottle of brandy. The landlord told them barrels of gunpowder were being stacked in the sewers with men waiting with lighted torches to blow the city sky-high if the Versaillese got in. As they climbed back into the carriage, the rifle fire began to grow in volume and ragged men and women began to appear with mattresses which they piled on top of a barricade that was being built. Manoeuvring the old horse through them, the carriage bouncing in the potholes where the paving stones had been ripped up, they reached the end of the Boulevard St Germain. There was a small group of soldiers under a mean-looking sergeant who seemed no more than a child. Stopping them, he came to Colby’s side and demanded that he hand over the carriage. Before he knew what was happening, he was staring down the barrel of Micah Love’s huge LeMatt.

  ‘Get out of the way, mon petit,’ Colby murmured. ‘Or I’ll blow your head off.’

  The boy’s eyes glittered and he waved a hand. ‘Pass, friend,’ he croaked.

  Colby passed the gun back to Ackroyd. ‘If he changes his mind, Tyas,’ he said. ‘Shoot him dead.’

  Despite being in a state of near-panic, Augusta was studying Colby with pride mixed with alarm. The biggest part of civilised life came within a woman’s sphere and most occasions were dominated by them. But this one, she realised, was clearly not one of them. Colby was not a big man but at that moment he seemed strong enough and capable enough to deal with anything, and her heart almost burst with happiness. Overcome by curiosity, she was just glancing back to see what was going to happen when she felt her head pushed down between her knees, then, grasping the whip, Colby brought it down savagely on the horse’s rump. Hurt and startled, it leapt straight into a gallop.

  It was only a few yards to the corner and, as they turned it, they heard a shout behind them. The huge LeMatt exploded near her ear with a sound like a cannon firing, then a volley of shots splintered shutters and whanged against iron veranda railings. At the other end of the boulevard there was another barricade and Colby wrenched the horse into a side street leading to the Luxembourg. Another volley and the sound of bugles made him swing into another street, just as a flurry of men dived round the corner and bullets started to chip stone from the walls in a shower of sparks.

  ‘We’re in the middle,’ Ackroyd yelled.

  With a swing of his arm, Colby swept Augusta off the driver’s seat into the tonneau of the carriage in a flurry of white petticoats and flailing legs, and Ackroyd pushed her to the floor where her mother already cowered. As they reached the door of the apartment block, a volley stopped the old horse dead in its tracks. For a second, it stood trembling, its head up, blowing crimson spray through its nostrils, then it collapsed with a crash to the cobbles, the taut reins dragging Colby in a nose-dive from the box on top of it. As he sat up, sprawling across the dead animal, Augusta was alongside him, clutching him in an agony of apprehension.

  ‘For God’s sake, Tyas,’ he yelled, disentangling himself from the reins. ‘Get ’em into the doorway!’

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Augusta was shrieking at him over the din.

  ‘Of course I’m not bloody dead!’ he yelled back. ‘It takes more than a few dirty Froggies to kill me!’

  Ackroyd had got Mrs Dabney out of the carriage and leaning against the door. But it had been locked from inside and, as they struggled with it, a swarm of ragged men carrying a red banner ran past them towards the barricade. Another volley sent several of them sprawling, one of them falling right in front of them, a pool of bright blood spreading under his chest.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Augusta said.

  A gun banged in the distance and stone and splinters of wood rained round them, and leaves began to drift down from the trees. Men with rifles were crouching in the angles of the wall firing down the street and bullets chinked and whined overhead. The barricade burst into flame as a line of rifles fired, and a woman standing in a doorway opposite with her head out, watching what was going on, spun round as if she’d been snatched away by an invisible hand.

  The doorway where they sheltered was shallow and Colby was standing with his arms round Augusta, who was clutching his jacket in terror, trying not to scream. Ackroyd managed to kick the door open at last, but there was no sign of the conci
erge. His apartment was unlocked, however, and Colby began to drag a sideboard into the hall. To his surprise, he found Augusta alongside him, her hair coming down, leaning her small body against the sideboard, red-faced and panting as she worked with him.

  Jamming it against the smashed door, he added a table and chairs, then grabbing her hand, pulled her after him down a curving flight of stone stairs to a cellar where men, women and children from other apartments were sheltering. Outside a gun was banging away monotonously, close enough to bring plaster down every time it fired.

  They got Mrs Dabney to lie on a mattress which Ackroyd dragged down from upstairs, and Augusta bent over her, crooning encouragement, her small face taut and strained but showing no sign of fear. The firing was still going on outside as it grew dark and, under Colby’s direction, they dragged an old tallboy full of apples across the cellar and jammed it across the grill that opened on to the street. One of the men went upstairs and produced blankets and, as they settled down for the night, Colby found Augusta next to him.

  ‘Frightened?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice shaking and uncertain. ‘Why should I be, with you here?’ She paused. ‘I suspect you saved our lives, Mr Goff.’

  ‘Micah Love’s gun,’ he said. ‘It’s enough to frighten an elephant.’

  There was a long silence. The cellar was damp and smelled of decay and, after a while, Augusta’s voice came through the darkness.

  ‘Mr Goff,’ she said quietly. ‘May I come a little closer? I guess there’ll be mice. I don’t like mice.’

  They lived off wine and apples and stale bread for three days as fighting raged up and down the street. When it seemed safe to move out of the cellar and everybody vanished to their own apartments, they helped Mrs Dabney up the stairs and Augusta put her to bed. When it was safe to go outside and they emerged, stiff and dirty and tired, the barricade down the street lay in a heap of broken paving stones, sandbags and torn mattresses, with here and there a body sprawled among the bushes in the gardens alongside. The old horse that had brought them home still lay in the shafts of the carriage, its blood dried to a brown crust, its stomach swelling as the heat lifted its legs. Charred papers kept drifting down from the buildings the Communards had set on fire and, against the redness of the sky, the Butte de Montmartre stood out like a dark hump. As the last Communard resistance was blasted into tears of blood against the wall of Père Lachaise, summary courts martial were already being held in the theatres, the Communards condemned in batches and taken outside to be shot at once in the streets round the Panthéon.

  It was like coming into daylight after being through something from Dante’s Inferno. As he stood in the street, staring up at the smoke-filled sky, Colby felt Augusta’s hand slip into his and he drew a deep breath. It was summer now and the weather would be good in England. In France they were already looking round for scapegoats, and parliamentary weasels in France were even more spiteful than they were at home. He suddenly wanted to see Braxby. To hell with Wolseley. To hell with Disraeli. To hell with the Queen, come to that. He was going to take some leave – real leave – even if it meant going on half-pay.

  He turned to find Augusta watching him. It was as if she knew what he was thinking and, uncomfortably, he suspected she did. Why not marry the damn girl, he thought. He wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t let her down because, after thirty-five years of freedom, he had a feeling he would notice the reins more than she would, but at least he felt she would never let him down.

  Mrs Dabney was in no state to be moved so he made his way cautiously across the city to the American Legation, where Washburne informed him that the Archbishop and other hostages had been shot. ‘I think it was as well the Dabneys weren’t left where they were,’ he said. ‘I’ll see that a carriage’s sent round for them.’

  Returning to the apartment, he found Ackroyd, with an apron round his waist, polishing the glasses, and Augusta over the stove in the kitchen preparing soup.

  ‘It’s mostly vegetables,’ she admitted.

  It was curiously reassuring to see her busy. She seemed quite unperturbed and the place had a cleaner look about it that indicated she hadn’t wasted her time.

  ‘It’s not even our apartment,’ Colby pointed out.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘If anyone calls, it’s right that you should appear to be properly looked after.’

  There was a strange possessiveness about her and at the same time a comfortable feeling that she belonged there. They were polite to each other, greeting each other like old friends as she emerged from where her mother lay in what had been Ackroyd’s bed, and Colby began to find he was even enjoying it.

  Gradually the noise outside died down and, as Washburne’s carriage arrived, Augusta collected her belongings together. As Ackroyd helped her mother down the stairs and tucked her in with a rug, Augusta studied Colby.

  ‘I guess it’s a good job Ma was here with me,’ she said nervously. ‘I have a reputation for wildness and Pa would have been highly suspicious.’

  Suddenly he didn’t wish her to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘We have friends in Versailles.’ She paused as if she were waiting for him to protest. ‘Then home, I suppose.’

  She looked small and forlorn and was clearly hoping he would ask to see her again.

  ‘I still have the locket you gave me at the Burtle House,’ he blurted out.

  The forlorn look vanished and her eyes shone. ‘Why did you keep it?’

  ‘Thought it might come in useful. I also have the turkey feather and the sash. They didn’t protect me much. I was wearing ’em all when I stopped a piece of shell at Yellow Tavern.’

  She said nothing and he went on. ‘I also have the words you spoke when I left. I’ve never forgotten ’em.’

  As her eyes widened and her cheeks reddened, he swallowed, feeling remarkably nervous and unsure of himself. She was only twenty two and thirteen years’ difference could prove too much. Yet life was empty and he could see it stretching far away into old age, until he grew crusty and fat like George Laughton. He felt she could fill the emptiness and knew suddenly that more than anything else in the world he wanted her to.

  ‘Since you always said you were going to marry me,’ he managed, ‘why not let’s get on with it?’

  She stared at him. For a long time neither of them spoke and he thought he’d done it wrong.

  ‘Is that a proposal, Mr Goff?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Yes, dammit! I have to hurry because you move around like a streak of lightning and if I don’t act now you’ll probably disappear back to the States.’

  She seemed to hesitate. ‘We’ve not known each other long, Mr Goff.’

  ‘We’ve known each other years! I doubt if we’ve ever been apart.’ Her eyes shone, and he went on hurriedly, feeling suddenly desperate. ‘Marry me. I’m just a horse-smelly cavalry type and I’m not wealthy. But I’m not too much in debt. Just to my tailor and bootmaker and the saddler. You’d have to live in a garrison town, which consists of mothers and their daughters and then the army, but you’ll get to know countries you’d never heard of. I want you for my wife. I want you to say you will be.’

  Her eyes were like stars and made his head swim a little. For a second longer she stared at him as if she couldn’t believe her ears, then she flung herself into his arms.

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Goff,’ she said. ‘Please! It’s something I always dreamed of.’

  Nine

  Braxby was very different from Virginia. Instead of towering tulip trees and wooded rolling slopes, there were dry-stone walls and grey houses hugging the shelter of the valleys in twisting curves. Instead of bluejays and blood-red cardinal birds there were rooks, harsh tongued in the oaks that formed a wind-break for Braxby Manor. The days were darker, too, and the riding was harder, and they hunted over stone walls and banks, nine feet of which you descended before falling the rest, but there was beauty too, she discovered, and a gri
m sort of charm about the empty uplands that were devoid of everything except low, wind-blasted heather.

  ‘There’ve been Goffs in Braxby since the Dark Ages,’ Colby explained. ‘One was a judge. Another was beheaded during the Wars of the Roses. Mostly they’ve been a mixture of farmers and soldiers, and men from Braxby have been joining the 19th for a long time. I love the place. For me soldiering’s just one sortie after another from here.’

  There was not the slightest doubt that Augusta was welcome. The Ackroyd family – who seemed to fill a whole row of Home Farm Cottages – were all turned out on parade by Ackroyd to meet her, all the women sturdy country types, the men a mixture of straight-backed ex-soldiers and stoop-shouldered farmers who had followed the plough.

  The big house had a neglected look, because there had been no one to look after it for so long, but in spite of fireplaces that created enough draught to draw a cat up the chimney, it had possibilities. Oh, it had such possibilities, she thought delightedly.

  The fact that she could ride and understood animals got her off on the right foot straight away as they all trooped round the stables, accompanied inevitably by Ackroyd grooms and Ackroyd stable boys. It intrigued her to watch them all together, startled to realise that her husband-to-be had a supreme confidence in the correctness of his behaviour that came unquestioned from his background. He wasn’t acting a role and she realised that his family had behaved throughout all their history exactly as he was behaving now. He belonged to a privileged group and he paid for the privilege by accepting the responsibility for the people around him, treating them all with good humour and consideration, exactly the same with a dark-visaged horse dealer trying to sell him a horse and kicking its forelegs into a more becoming position as he was with the bishop, who was some relation and had agreed to marry them. It warmed her heart. The family – Colby, his sister, her husband – all seemed so unaffected by jealousy, envy, greed or anything else, they made her own entirely normal relations seem trivial by comparison.