by Deryn Lake
Fortune’s Soldier
Deryn Lake
Copyright © Deryn Lake 1985
The right of Deryn Lake to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1985 by Frederick Muller.
This edition published in 2018 by Lume Books.
Acknowledgements
To my Magic Three:
Bill Lampitt, the inspiration
Jacqueline Getty Phillips, the catalyst
Geoffrey Glassborow, the guru
and to Heather Burbidge, Beryl Cross, Amanda Lampitt, Brett Lampitt, Erika Lock, Zak Packham, Deborah Richardson-Hill, Shirley Russell and the staff of Hastings Public Library for all their help and patience.
My thanks are also due to Maureen Bickford for access to the memorabilia of Lady Northcliffe; to Joan and Godfrey Shaw for the loan of Captain Francis Salvin’s personal diaries; and to Colonel Maximilian Trofaier for his advice on the British soldiers of fortune in the Army of the Emperor of Austria.
Table of Contents
Fortune’s Soldier
Deryn Lake
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Part Two
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Bibliography
Author’s Note
Fortune’s Soldier is presented as fiction but most of the principal characters and events are based on actual people and happenings.
Prologue
The dream, in its way, was beautiful. He slid from his body as easily as a snake shedding a skin and looked about. Just beneath him a shell, once human, was lying upon a stark camp bed. But though he was aware that the poor corpse was himself, he cared not at all. He was free, ready to progress, to go adventuring.
Yet the pallor of the face — his own face — made him pause for a second. Once — could it really have been only two days ago? — it had been tanned and handsome; the eyes, closed firm in death, the clear dark blue of distant sea storms. But now he was cold and still and no one would call him fine any more.
And yet he knew that he had died at the thick of it — if that were meant to be a soldier’s consolation. For through the flapping walls of the tent, the morning was made terrible with noise. Cannon shot and mortar pounded at the walls of a beleaguered fortress and bricks and stone cracked and splintered beneath their pitiless crunch.
But beneath that barrage of sound came a distant moan far more terrible. For cholera raged amongst the men of that encampment and the toughest and the strongest of a whole generation were calling out for help. What a terrible, wild and futile anthem it made — the guns and the screams and the sad harsh voices of the dying.
The dead soldier looked down upon his deathbed and knew why he must linger a moment more. He saw a woman, arms curled about her sleeping head, sitting in a chair by his side and leaning forward across his bed. Her hair glowed foxfire in the amber sun, her face was ivory streaked with dirt. She had nursed him as best she could and even now in her sleep held his chilling hand in her own. She was as warm of spirit as the sun-filled orchards of long ago, as loving as the splendid days of youth.
Without hesitation he forced his straying soul to enter once more the harness of his wasted body; would rather taste the bitter darkness than slip away without a word to her. The rasp was agony in his chest but he managed to speak.
‘Horry!’
She opened her eyes. ‘John Joseph.’
His eyes were searing with pain but he focused them upon her and she bent her head over him to hear the whistling voice.
‘Leave Sutton Place, Horry. Leave that accursed house.’
As his fingers fell from hers he saw his wife clasp his lifeless form to her and weep aloud. And then, as if his sleeping mind could encompass no more, he woke up.
All about him the shapes of his nursery focused and took on meaning in the dim light of a lamp that his nanny kept burning at night. He made out his kite, his bowling hoop and his sister’s dolls’ house. And there too was her bed and in it the slumbering form of Mary herself.
They shared a room now that the two youngest — Matilda and Caroline — had come along. Not that there was really any need, for their new home — recently inherited by their father — was vast and dark and scaring. Rooms enough for each child to have its own bedroom — had they so wished. But who would want that in Sutton Place, that loomed so large over four small children?
John Joseph Webbe Weston sat up slightly and whispered to his sister.
‘Mary!’
She sighed in her sleep and turned over.
‘Mary!’
‘What is it? You’ve woken me up. Is there a ghost?’
‘No. But I’ve been dreaming again.’
She yawned. ‘What?’
‘I’ve been dreaming. That one where I die on the battlefield — though not of wounds — and my wife is there.’
‘Oh, that one. I think it’s silly. I don’t like her.’
‘My wife?’
‘Yes.’
Despite her brother’s solemn face Mary giggled. It was such silly talk coming from a boy of ten, especially as she was only eight herself.
‘Is she fat?’
‘No.’ He looked cross. ‘She’s not. But, do you know, I’ve never seen her properly.’
‘I thought you often dreamed of her.’
‘Not of her in particular — but of dying. Mary, you’re laughing.’
He leapt out of bed and hit her in the stomach with his pillow but she only giggled the more and pinched him through his nightshirt.
‘Be quiet. You’ll wake Nanny.’
‘I hate her — she smells of ham. Why have you never seen your wife?’
‘Her face is always turned away, somehow. But she’s got red hair.’
‘Ughh!’
‘It’s not ughh! It’s beautiful.’
‘Well I think it sounds horrible.’ Her face grew still for a moment and she said, ‘I believe it’s this house that makes bad dreams. You didn’t have them in London, did you?’
John Joseph was equally still as he answered, ‘The servants say this is an unlucky place. That the heir always dies.’
‘But you’re the heir now.’
‘I know,’ answered her brother — and without another word went back to his bed to stare into the darkness.
*
She was in a sea dream, a little trick of hers when she was in labour: in her body the waves of contraction rising and falling, and in her mind the playful billows of the sea and herself swimming boldly into them. Boldly, and without fear, because, belying her small stature and blonde ringleted hair, she had always taken life by the throat, determined to extract every ounce from her time on earth.
She smiled to herself, burying her face deeper into the pillow so that the midwife would not see. She knew that her silence worried the nurse — and she knew that this would be reported back to her husband and, in turn, make him rise moodily from his chair and pace the library of Strawberry Hill, lined with the books of his kinsman Horace Walpole.
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br /> She had taken him to the altar by storm. Insisted that he married her when she was pregnant with their second child, and thus forced her way into the aristocracy. And, though this had taken rather longer than she had hoped, it had all been part of her life’s plan. For there was absolutely nothing that would have persuaded her to remain simple Miss Anne King, daughter of a nondescript army chaplain from Hastings. Ambition burned in her little body like a naughty furnace.
‘My Lady, are you asleep?’
She opened her wide blue eyes and stared straight into those of the physician.
‘No, Sir, I am not. I am contemplating getting shot of this child.’
He looked rather startled but took the rebuff in his stride. After all he had delivered her of three others — the two little boys already dead and in their graves — over the last six years.
‘Yes, my Lady.’
‘So return in an hour and then we’ll make haste.’
‘Yes, my Lady.’
‘And, Dr Carteret, kindly see to it that the Earl does not consume too much brandy while he waits. But on the other hand do not let him go to sleep before the matter is resolved.’
The doctor smiled. The Countess Waldegrave’s fragile appearance and china-blue eyes did not deceive him for a moment. He knew and appreciated a tough fighter when he saw one.
But when he was gone Anne sighed and turned her head into the pillow once more. The sea of birth was growing rough and she must swim into the great breakers before she could reach the shore. She bit her lip and heard the November wind whip up the Thames and roar at the casement of Horace Walpole’s Gothic villa. A mighty pang caught her unawares and she fell beneath a foaming wave and cried out.
It seemed to her then that she had left her body for a moment and was standing in a nursery in a great gaunt house, looking at two sleeping children. The boy opened his eyes, said, ‘Is that you, Mother? I have had such a bad dream,’ and then went back to sleep. At that she started to weep but did not know why.
‘There, there, Lady Waldegrave — don’t take on. It will all be over in a moment. Just push a little more, my dear. Why, there’s the head.’
Time had telescoped inwards; she had almost given birth to her sixth child. She strived obligingly and the midwife said, ‘Why, it’s a girl. A dear little soul. God bless her heart but she’s got a mass of red hair.’
Anne was in full command of herself again as she said, ‘Then that will be Horatia Elizabeth — a pretty name don’t you think? Be so kind as to despatch a maid for the Earl and another to bring me some tea.’
The baby, wrapped in a white shawl, was passed to her and she looked at it appraisingly. A very fair-featured child with what would appear to be a determined mouth. It looked up at her with startled new-born eyes.
‘Well, Miss,’ said Anne, ‘let us see what you make of the world.’
The Earl, looking owlish and smelling of the decanter, appeared in the doorway.
‘James, my dear, come and meet your new daughter. She shall be known as Horatia.’
The Earl Waldegrave smiled and bowed. He had long since given up arguing with his wife about anything that he considered of no real importance to himself.
*
Jackdaw had never quite known what the blazing comets in his head signified. But since his third birthday — and that had been three years ago — he had felt the sensation of dancing stars four times. Immediately after they had faded, he had seen a picture reflected in a bright object which could not really have been there at all.
On the first occasion he had seen a vision of his cat going beneath the wheels of a carriage — four days later it had been dead; the second time a new-born girl had been lying in a white lace-trimmed cot, a mass of red hair fuzzing about the infant face. But the third image had frightened him, for his aunt — his mother’s twin who had died when she was seventeen years old — had lingered in his doorway for a second before vanishing. She had smiled and stretched out her hand.
‘Mother, why did she do that? I thought she was dead?’
‘That only means on the other side of life, Jackdaw. You have a gift that allows you to see her.’
‘What gift is that?’
‘A family one, my dear — some of us have always had it, though I personally do not. We are descended from a Romany who lived over three hundred years ago. She had a child by the great Duke of Norfolk, who became an astrologer and mystic — Zachary was his name. That is what you have inherited.’
Jackdaw had nodded his head, glad that old wild blood ran on his mother’s side. His father was remote — John Wardlaw, the army man — but Helen Gage, as she once had been, was warm and exciting, full of fire and dark as a raven, yet with bright light eyes.
Her father had been Jacob Gage — one of the three magic children of the house of FitzHoward. Her uncle had been his twin, James, and her aunt, Pernel — all of them fathered by Garnet Gage the Jacobite. Their grandfather — Helen’s great-grandfather — had been the famous rake Joseph Gage, though Helen had once heard a horrible whisper, when she and her dead twin, Melanie, had been young girls, that he was not so in fact. There had been a terrible scandal in the family and somebody else — somebody altogether unknown — had been Garnet’s true father. She had put this awful thought from her. She felt if she were not really descended from the legendary Joseph then she would rather not be alive.
But nobody had ever spoken of such a wicked thing in the confines of the family and she doubted that her grandfather, Garnet, had ever heard the evil rumour. She hoped not, for the idea would have destroyed him.
But whether her father, Jacob, had known the story was a different thing. If he had then he had said nothing and had gone on to have a brilliant career. First as a Colonel in the Spanish Army, and then as a peer of the British realm, rewarded by George III — despite the known Jacobite leanings of the whole family — for a delicate mission which had brought about a trading treaty between Britain and Spain.
Jackdaw knew that all those old people were still alive. Not Joseph or Garnet, of course, but Great-Aunt Pernel and Great-Uncle James. And Grandfather Jacob, living in Dorset, and enjoying in his old age the life of an English aristocrat.
His wife, Lady Gage, was Castilian — the twin daughter of a Grandee — and it was from her that Helen, and Jackdaw too, had inherited their vivid dark looks. All together an attractive and brilliant family and small wonder that the Hon. Helen Gage and the Hon. Melanie Gage had been two of the most sought-after girls in English society.
And, indeed, even smaller wonder that John Wardlaw — brought up to be so prim and boring by his mean-hearted mother — had fallen madly in love with them. He would have married either gladly, been grateful if they had so much as given him a glance — which they never did — but after Melanie had died of high fever, Helen had, in fact, turned to the correct young soldier for her solace and he had gained his heart’s dearest wish.
Jackdaw, the second-born of their children, always thought that he must have been a bitter blow to his father. Small and with one leg three inches shorter than the other, there was no possibility that he could follow the double family tradition and join the army. Nonetheless, he had been christened John after his father. But his dark looks and quick eyes coupled with his name — John Wardlaw — soon earned him his nickname. He was the Jackdaw and it was left to his elder brother, Robert, to be big and amiable and just what their father wanted.
But Helen saw the potential in him. She had realized when he was a baby that he had not only taken after her side of the family in looks but also in the magic gift of second sight that had been theirs for centuries. So that he could walk properly she had had special shoes made for him, and very early on his brilliant brain had been obvious and she had taught him how to form characters, to read — and also to speak Spanish.
And now on this windy November night the comets were dancing in Jackdaw’s head again. Round him he heard a roar like a dragon drawing breath and then, clearly visible in
his sister’s toy bell, he saw a reflection. First it was a baby, but this faded into a child with burnished hair, and blurred once more to become a grown woman whose wild tresses burst about her shoulders in a blaze of foxfire. He almost heard her name but the vision was beginning to fade from him.
He strained his nerves to stretching point.
‘Who are you?’ he said aloud.
A thousand million echoes were in the voice that answered, ‘Horry.’
Part One
1
It was the most frightening thing Horry had ever seen. At one moment her brother had been laughing with her, picking her up in the air and throwing her above his head only to catch her again. At the next he had dropped her roughly and had fallen at her feet, frothing and foaming and choking upon his tongue, his body jerking as hard and as cruelly as a whiplash.
She had been too terrified to cry, simply staring at the unrecognizable creature threshing on the ground before her, and it had been her brother George who had saved the day. He had sprinted forward from where he was throwing a ball vigorously at their sister Annette Laura and jerked J.J.’s tongue from his mouth, pressing down hard upon it. With his other hand he rent J.J.’s collar like a rag as he pulled it away from his throat.
At the same time he called out to Annette, ‘Take the children into the house. Quickly! And fetch Mother. J.J.’s having a fit.’
Horry had never heard the word before and that evening — long after J.J. had been carried into the house by a footman and the doctor had been sent for — she had asked the nursery maid what it meant.
‘I can’t tell you that, Lady Horatia. You must ask her Ladyship about it. Though little girls should be seen and not heard, you know.’
But as night fell and the Earl and Countess Waldegrave, on their way to dine with King George — the fourth to bear that title — made the formal round of the nurseries to bid sweet sleep to their five children, Horry spoke up.
‘Mother, Father — what is a fit?’