Web of Love (13 page)

General Picton was dead. They all saw him fall a moment after yelling encouragement to his men to push back the advancing French infantry lines. That was real to them.

And then late in the day La Haye Sainte did fall to a concerted attack, and the last surviving defenders fought their way out and back to the crossroads.

“Now all hell will break loose!” someone at Lord Eden's elbow remarked, and was proved right without further delay.

The men fought doggedly on, all the odds against them. Yet when it seemed they must break, encouragement came that no British soldier could ever resist.

“Stand fast, Ninety-fifth,” the steady voice of the Duke of Wellington said above the din. “We must not be beat. What will they say in England?”

The men fought on, the duke with them, until it was clear to him that they would not break.

But the battle and the world ended for Lord Eden during a momentary lull in the action. A swift glance to either side of him revealed Charlie Simpson lying on the ground, a corporal kneeling over him. Lord Eden elbowed his way through the throng of his own men and fell to his knees beside his friend.

“You have been hit, Charlie?” he asked unnecessarily. “Lie still. I'll have a stretcher brought up. We'll have you back from here before you can count to ten.”

But there was that long-familiar look in his friend's face. The look of sure death.

The glazing eyes searched for his and found them. “I'm done for, lad,” Charlie said.

And they were too old and experienced soldiers to live a lie. Lord Eden closed his mouth, which had opened to make a hearty protest. He took his friend's limp hand in his own.

“I'm here, Charlie,” he said.

“Ellen.” The voice was faint, dreamy almost. “Jennifer.”

Lord Eden leaned forward until his face was a few inches from Captain Simpson's. “They will never be in need,” he said. “I swear that to you, Charlie. I will always take care of them. Do you hear me?”

But Charlie was looking through him, beyond him, with eyes that were fast clouding. And then the eyes were lifeless.

His friend was dead.

Lord Eden fought panic and tears. There was no leisure now to grieve. He grasped his sword and started to get to his feet.

And then he knew, with some surprise and no pain at all, that he had been hit. There was a rush of warmth about his ribs. His eyes widened before he fell forward across the body of his friend.

 

E
LLEN KNEW THAT
she could not shut herself into her rooms tending the needs of one poor boy. There were more men out there, men in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, and they would need all the nurses that could be found. Besides, Charlie might be out there. She must look for him. Or other men of her acquaintance. She must look for them. Lord Eden might be out there.

And so she ventured out in Saturday afternoon's torrential rain when the boy had settled into a rather fevered sleep, his arm swathed in a fresh bandage, swollen and angry-looking, it was true, but with the wound clean. She had hopes that she could save him from amputation. It was amazing that the arm had not been sawed off before he left the battlefield. The surgeons had not had time to amputate, the boy had said. In her experience, the very fastest treatment field surgeons knew for arm and leg injuries was amputation. But most of them were unnecessary, she had always felt. She would save the boy. She did not know his name.

The wounded were being carried inside the cathedral not far from where she lived. She stepped sharply over to one sodden bundle whom no one was making any attempt to move. He was Charlie, she thought with a sick lurch of the stomach. But he was a stranger. She knelt and put a hand to his wet brow. He stared straight through her arm.

“Carry this man inside out of the rain,” she called in French to a man who had just emerged from the cathedral.

“It is not worth disturbing him,” the man said, not unkindly. “He will not last.”

“But he will not die untended and unloved,” she said, rising to her feet and running back in the direction of home. A few minutes later she was hurrying back again with two of the menservants from the other part of the house in which she lived. And together they carried the soldier to her rooms and set him down on the bed that had been the maid's.

“Thank you,” she said as the two servants withdrew, but she did not take her eyes from the wounded soldier, who had not made a sound beyond one faint moan when they had first lifted him. His eyes were open, but they were neither living nor dead.

“It is all right, my dear,” she said softly, taking a towel and dabbing lightly at his wet face and hair. “You are safe now. No one will harm you.”

His boots came off easily, she was thankful to find. She set herself the task of cutting the rest of his clothes away so that she would not have to move him. It looked as if no one had tended his wound, a gaping hole in the stomach that should surely have killed him instantly. Ellen patted him dry and went for one of Charlie's silk shirts to make a light pad to set over the wound. She covered him with a blanket and smoothed her hand over his bald head. He must be of an age with Charlie.

His eyes were on her, she saw.

“You are dry now,” she said, “and warm. You are safe now. I shall care for you. No one will harm you.”

He continued to look at her. She did not know if he heard her or saw her.

“I will bring you some water,” she said. “You are probably thirsty.”

And the boy was thirsty, she found, and tossing feverishly on his bed and groaning when his bandaged arm touched the mattress. She spent some time with him, straightening the sheets, smoothing back his hair, bending to kiss his forehead when he looked up at her with a boyish trust and hope in his fevered eyes.

Before the day was out, the door to her rooms was permanently open. The house became one again as it filled with wounded and Ellen was called upon to give advice from her experience with tending injured soldiers. Servants from the house watched over her wounded when she occasionally went outside that day and the next and the next. A great battle was raging to the south, she heard. A great disaster. A great defeat, perhaps. No one knew, and the wounded brought conflicting reports, though most seemed agreed that it was going badly for the allies.

But she no longer cared for news. Only for the suffering in the city and her own helplessness to alleviate more than a very small portion of it. And her obsession with looking into the faces of all the soldiers stumbling past or stretched on straw beds in the streets.

Was some other woman caring for Charlie? she wondered as she hurried back along the Rue de la Montagne after an hour away early on Monday morning. Was he well and still fighting somewhere? Was the battle still on? Was he dead?

Deaden the mind. She hurried on.

But she looked up sharply at a group of horsemen proceeding slowly along the street, all in military uniform. The one in the middle was slumped forward in his saddle. The soldier to his right held a steadying hand against him. She felt all the blood draining from her head.

“Do you know this man, ma'am?” the soldier on the left called, touching a hand to his shako. “He said the Rue de la Montagne, but that is all he seems to remember. I don't think he even knows his own name any longer.”

“Eden,” she said past lips and a tongue suddenly dry and feeling twice their size. “He is Lieutenant Lord Eden. Yes, this is where he belongs. Bring him in, will you, please?”

The soldier who had spoken to her saluted more smartly. “This is the house, my lady?” he said. “We are going to have a hard time. He can't move. All swollen up. Is there anyone who can help?”

“Go inside and call some servants,” she said. She was alongside the horse, touching his boot, seeing that indeed his legs were badly swollen, seeing too that he was not quite unconscious. His breath was being drawn in labored rasps.

“You are home,” she said softly. “You are home now, my dear. We will have you inside and in bed in no time. Just a few minutes more and then you can rest.”

She did not know if he heard her. The same two servants who had helped her carry the man from outside the cathedral came out of the house. Ellen had to turn her back and bite her lips as the four men eased Lord Eden from the saddle. He screamed when they first touched him, and moaned with every agonized breath after that.

She led the way up the stairs and into her own bedchamber.

“Set him down here,” she said. “Oh, how am I to get his boots off?” His legs were so swollen that the boots were cutting into his calves.

“I'll fetch a knife and cut them off, ma'am,” one of the servants said.

“May we leave, my lady?” one of the soldiers asked. “Is there anything else we can do?”

“No,” she said. “You have your duty to get back to, doubtless. I shall care for him now.”

“Lucky man to have his wife here,” the other said before the two of them withdrew.

And yet again she set about the task of cutting away an entire uniform. She washed the caked mud from his body and patted gently with a towel. She winced at the sight of the heavy bandage around his ribs and over his chest and at the sticky mass of blood that had oozed from the bandage and run down his right side and thigh. He moaned constantly.

“You are home, my dear,” she said, washing his face finally and looking down into the pain-racked eyes she had been afraid to look into until that moment. “You are home and safe now. And may rest. I shall not change your bandage until later. You are safe. No one is going to harm you now.”

“Safe,” he said thickly. “Always safe. Here.”

“Yes,” she said, touching his fair wavy hair and putting it back from his brow. “Safe, my dear. You are always safe here. Do you know where you are? Do you know who I am?”

His breathing was labored again. He closed his eyes and moaned. She stroked his hair.

“Charlie,” he said.

Her hand fell still. “Yes,” she said. “I am Charlie's wife. And I am going to look after you.”

“Charlie,” he said. His eyes were open again, glazed with pain.

“Yes?” she said softly. His hand was waving weakly above the blanket she had laid over him. She took it in both of hers.

“Gone,” he said. “He's gone. I was with him.”

“Yes.” She was stroking the back of his hand. “You must not let it worry your mind any longer. Rest now. You shall tell me all about it later. Thank you for bringing me the news. Is that why you directed those soldiers here? Thank you, my dear. You must sleep now. Sleep now.” She smiled down into the eyes that were looking into hers. “Sleep now.”

The boy was calling for water.

 

L
ORD
E
DEN HAD COME
to himself in a farm cowhouse at Mont St. Jean, seven hundred yards behind the crossroads. The shells were falling more thickly there, someone was saying, than at the front itself. He looked about him. The ground was thick with wounded. Was he one of them?

His chest felt so swollen that he could hardly breathe. He could feel blood oozing down his side. He was lifted to a table eventually. He rather thought that the scream he heard had come from his own mouth, though it was not by any means the only one he had heard during his half-hour of returned consciousness.

The surgeon who looked down at him with weary eyes was splattered with blood from head to waist. Lord Eden closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and concentrated on not shaming himself any more, now that he was expecting pain and it was not to take him by surprise.

He was fortunate enough to faint while the flattened ball was cut from his chest, but the gush of clotted blood that came from the wound brought consciousness and relief from the terrible pressure at the same moment. He heard himself groan, and cut off the sound in the middle as hands lifted him from the table and set him on the floor again.

It was amazing how small the world became when one was in pain, he thought. He was shuttered and enclosed by it, an agony of knifelike pain. He must have broken ribs.

He did not know how long he lay there before hands were lifting him again and setting him astride a horse.

“It's not the best, sir,” a voice said. “But the roads are so clogged up that it might take you days to get through on a wagon. You are one of the lucky ones.”

One of the lucky ones. The words ran like a refrain through his muddled, fevered, agonized brain for the rest of the night. He did not know where he was or who was with him. He did not know where he came from or why he was on this ride.

But there was something ahead of him. Someone. Someone he must reach, and then he would be safe. All would be well. Mama? She was in London. Edmund? Yes, Edmund. Alexandra would look after him, and Edmund would make everything right, as he always had done. A big boat, Christopher had said. A big boat. Edmund was gone.

Madeline? He had to reach Madeline. She would be worried. He had promised not to die. He mustn't die. Madeline would be fit to throw hatchets if he did. He had to get to Madeline. Where was she? Not at Edmund's. Edmund was gone. Where was she? Had she gone too? Was she in London? At Amberley? She shouldn't have gone. He needed her. She should have stayed.

Charlie. He would go to Charlie. The Rue de la Montagne. He must remember that. Rue de la Montagne. He said it over and over to himself. He said it aloud. There was comfort there. He would be able to rest there.
She
would be there, and she would not fuss him or talk too loudly. She would look after him. Yes, she was the one he had to go to.

He had something to tell her. She would look after him, but he had something to tell her first. He couldn't remember what. He would remember when he saw her. The Rue de la Montagne. The Rue de la Montagne.

And then he heard her voice. But he could not move. He did not dare move. Someone was touching him, pulling at him. They would kill him. Where had she gone? Was that him screaming again? Not again. He must not do that again. He would frighten her and disgust her perhaps. But who was making those sounds?