Virginia Henley (26 page)

Alex slipped her hand around Sara’s and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Sara. I had no idea.”
No idea that such slums even existed!

“If Hopkins, the butler, ever finds out where I came from, I shall get the sack.”

“I promise that you will always have a position in Berkeley Square, Sara, and I shan’t let Hopkins know anything about you; I know that servants can be bigger snobs than the
ton
.”

The maid took Alex into a ramshackle building occupied by dozens of one-room hovels. The stench was putrid. Alex pinched her nostrils together and waited while Sara knocked on a battered door. It was opened by an old woman; Alex realized with a shock that this was Sara’s mother, only in her forties but aged beyond her years.

“Lawks, ye shouldn’t bring yer fancy man ’ere, luv!”

Sara lapsed into her mother’s cockney and explained who Alex was. They spoke so rapidly, often in rhyming slang, that Alex only understood every tenth word, though she was fascinated.

Sara’s mother was clean and the room was neat, a marked contrast from the other hovels in the squalid four-story building.

“Are you an only child?” Alex was clearly mystified how such a place had produced Sara.

“No, my mother had seven; I was the youngest. The boys are all grown and gone, Lord knows where; two older sisters are dead, God rest their souls.”

“Who taught you how to speak? How did you acquire the airs of a lady, Sara?”

“That was Maggie, who lives across the hall. She took me in when I was a little girl and my mother had too many mouths to feed. Maggie was a gentlewoman fallen on hard times. I owe it all to her. I’ll take you to meet her, but don’t get too close,” Sara warned. “She has the consumption.”

Before they left, Alex watched Sara hug her mother and give her money. She decided on the spot that she would speak to Dottie about giving her maid a raise. Then they went across the hall. Maggie’s face radiated pure joy when she saw Sara, but a lump came into Alex’s throat when she saw the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes of the woman who had saved Sara from a living hell.

“Maggie, this is my friend Alex.”

“How do you do, sir? It is a distinct pleasure to make the acquaintance of a gentleman who is Sara’s friend.”

Alex bowed. “My lady, the pleasure is all mine.” Alex wondered if Maggie had ever been beautiful. If so, the only thing of beauty that remained was her voice. Alex imagined she had once been tall, slim, and elegant; now, however, she was thin and hunched, as if she protected a painful chest. Alex stepped a distance away so that the two could talk privately.
How unendurable this existence must be for a woman who was born to privilege. How does she bear it?
Alex’s hand closed over the money in her pocket. She drew out the seven shillings she had earned from the newspaper, and slipped it onto the mantelpiece above the empty hearth.

As they left, Sara pointed to a four-story derelict building across the street. “That’s a flash house—the top two floors.”

Alexandra now understood that the children who became thieves to better their lot in life were completely justified. Since Society didn’t give a tinker’s damn about them, they had no choice but to look after their own interests, no matter what laws they broke.

“That’s where I would have ended up if Maggie Field hadn’t intervened.”

“Have you any idea what her circumstances were?”

Sara shook her head once, then said, “I think I took the place of her own daughter, who she lost through tragic circumstances, perhaps of her own making.”

When the young women arrived back in Berkeley Square, unfortunately, Dottie was in the reception hall. She swept a disapproving glance over shawl-wrapped Sara and shabbily-clad Alex. “I would like a word with you upstairs, Alexandra.”

Dottie entered her own chamber, and Alex had no choice but to follow her grandmother into her territory. “When I saw you before in male attire, I assumed it was a one-time lark. What in the world are you playing at, Alexandra?”

“Dottie, I’m doing what I love: learning about the world and writing articles for the newspaper. There are so many wrongs that need righting! Let me show you my article on climbing boys.”

“I read it in the
Political Register.
It was most commendable, but what happened to the novel you were intent upon writing? Such an endeavor, while wearing a morning dress and sitting at a writing desk, would be far more suitable for a lady, I warrant.”

“The novels I’ve read recently are piffle! We need reform, and the government does nothing. My articles just might fire up the public into demanding that the government make changes. My next article will be about flash houses. Disguising myself as a male makes it both easier and safer to move about London.”

“And if I forbid it?” Dottie looked as militant as a warhorse, ready to breathe fire.

Alex clasped her hands together in unconscious supplication. “Oh, please don’t forbid me. Doing this has given me the freedom for which I’ve longed and opened my eyes to what goes on beyond the narrow confines of the
ton
. It makes me feel alive, as well as worthwhile. It also is broadening my mind and giving me an education that I couldn’t get from books alone.”

“Fiddle-faddle! You think those arguments will sway me? You must make the most of being in London, Alexandra. You should be socializing and using it to your advantage. Men are not enthralled by ladies who devote themselves to good causes; they view them as fanatics!”

“I promise I won’t become a fanatic! Please allow me this taste of life before you compel me to settle down to marriage.”

“You will have to promise far more than that, Alexandra.”

Alex clutched at straws, ready to bargain. “I will promise anything within reason.”

“If I allow you freedom to pursue this
calling
, racketing about London with all the riffraff and ragtag, I want your faithful promise that you will marry Lord Hatton next year.”

“I . . . Christopher may not choose to marry me!”

“Piss and piffle, Alexandra! That is the biggest load of claptrap I’ve ever heard! The man does not do the choosing; the woman does. Females are far more interesting and fascinating to males than vice versa. A clever woman such as yourself can hold any man in the palm of her hand and make him do her bidding.”

“Are you willing to give me
complete
freedom?”

Dottie hesitated, thought about qualifying it to
within reason,
then decided against it. “Complete freedom in exchange for your promise to become Lady Hatton.”

Fleetingly, Alex thought of Nicholas, her first love. The love that was now dead. She had mourned it, and purged herself of it, and now accepted the fact that marriage with Christopher was inevitable. She realized that it had always been inevitable. “I faithfully promise, Dottie.”

“And I promise you won’t regret it, darling.”

 

Lieutenant Nicholas Hatton asked himself if he regretted joining the Royal Horse Artillery, and though it had turned out to be a supreme challenge, he knew he had acquitted himself well so far and had few regrets.

His men, however, were becoming extremely restless, because the end of October was in sight, yet still besieged Pamplona had not surrendered. Finally, Lieutenant Hatton decided to go on the offensive to help matters along. The Artillery forces had an excess of gunpowder that had not been used in the siege of the Spanish town, and Hatton came up with an idea to put it to good use. He asked for volunteers, and selected young, unmarried men who as yet had no families.

On the last day of October, they carried twenty barrels of gunpowder and spaced them out along the outside walls of the town near the fortress. He instructed his volunteers to form a line like a bucket brigade, but what they were to pass from hand to hand were barrels of gunpowder. Hatton and Sergeant O’Neil stationed themselves at the ready with fuses and lit tapers, and as the gunpowder was thrust into their hands, the two men lit the fuses and flung the barrels over the high wall. The barrel brigade kept up a steady rhythm, never missing a beat, as one explosion followed another, filling the air with acrid black smoke.

Lieutenant Hatton’s arm was totally numb from wrist to shoulder before they finally saw the white flag of surrender, fluttering through the choking clouds of smoke. A great cheer went up from his men and from the other soldiers who had gathered at the first explosion. When General Rowland Hill entered the town to accept its surrender, a grinning Nicholas Hatton went down his line of courageous volunteers to shake each man’s hand and murmur a brief “Well done.” The two words felt like the greatest praise they had ever received.

As his troops entered Pamplona, through his vigilance and aided by Sergeant O’Neil, his men did him proud. Because they committed no vile acts upon the conquered men nor depraved lust upon the females, he turned a blind eye to their looting, happy that they set no fires. Nick was vastly relieved that Pamplona fell with no casualties to his men.

The good fortune did not last. Now that Pamplona was secure, General Hill gave his officers orders to move their men toward the French border to join with Wellington’s force, which would soon be doing battle with General Soult’s army. Nick bade his men break camp. Because of the unrelenting rain, which had turned the ground into a quagmire, it was a gargantuan task to move the gun carriages upon which the cannon were mounted, especially in such hilly terrain. For more than a week, Nick spent eighteen hours a day in the saddle, riding the line. The only times he dismounted were to help dig out wheels sunk into mud over their axels, tend a lame horse, or fall into his bedroll for four or five hours of sleep.

As Hill’s army got close to the border, the French, fearing retaliation for the atrocities they had committed against the Spanish, attacked with a vengeance. In the bloody skirmish, two of Hatton’s men were killed and one was struck by a shot that shattered both bones in his left leg. Nick was out of the saddle in a flash; he cut makeshift splints from a nearby tree and put on a field dressing. He knew if the leg was not tended properly, the soldier would lose it. He ordered two recruits to use a blanket to carry the wounded man to the medical officers who had set up a field hospital. Only then did he turn his attention to the dead. He knew their names by heart and where they came from in England. In the cold, wet hours before dawn, he wrote to their families, offering his sympathy and describing their courage.

When Hill’s forces arrived at the River Nivelle, they found the rushing, swollen waters impossible to cross. Wellington’s forces, on the far side of the river, were fighting off attacks from General Soult’s French army, and Hill’s battalions would mean the difference between defeat or victory. Hill directed his officers to have their men search up and down the riverbank for boats, but their efforts proved fruitless. Lieutenant Hatton sought out General Hill. “Sir, Wellington’s men obviously had to cross the River Nivelle before us.”

“I warrant that it was less swollen than it is now.”

“Undoubtedly, General. But cross it they did, and I conclude that the boats and watercraft they used must all be on the other side of the river.”

“A logical supposition, Hatton. Can you suggest a solution?”

“I volunteer to swim across to get the boats, sir.”

“Swim those raging waters? The risk is great, Lieutenant.”

“At Hatton, we not only have a lake on our property but the River Crane, a branch of the Thames that swells every spring. I could swim it at seven, sir; both ways at eight. I won’t allow a foreign river to defeat me, General.”

Nick Hatton put his men in the charge of Sergeant Tim O’Neil, as well as his pistols and his mount, Slate, then he slipped into the icy water of the Nivelle and began to swim against the tide. He wasn’t even halfway across before the cold seeped into his bones, and he realized that the sparse rations coupled with long days in the saddle had robbed him of his usual energy. But he knew the strenuous activity of his duties had toughened and hardened his muscles, so he cut through the roiling, brown water as cleanly and efficiently as he could.

When he was in the middle, a memory from his youth suddenly surfaced. He had been swimming the River Crane, egged on by his twin and Rupert, when suddenly Alexandra decided to try it. She jumped in and managed a few strokes before the swirling current dragged her under. In a flash he had swum to save her, but as he held her bright head above water and began to stroke toward shore, she had hit him and cried, “No, no, I want to go to the other side! Help me to get there, Nick.”

He smiled inwardly as he eyed the water with grim determination.
Help me to get there, Alex
.

He feared his lungs might burst, but eventually he reached the far side of the Nivelle and dragged himself up on the muddy bank, gasping for breath. He searched up and down the river for more than an hour, finding only a skiff and a small rowboat; finally, when his legs were starting to shake with fatigue, he struck gold! He came upon four large, flat, wooden barges roped together. The find sent renewed energy surging through his body. He attached the skiff to the barges, cut their mooring rope with his knife, and began to pole slowly back across the river, thanking all the saints in heaven that on the return journey the current was with him. When he got back to camp, not only his own men cheered him; all General Hill’s forces celebrated his daring feat.

That night, under cover of dark, the men, their animals, and all the cannon and artillery were transported across the river so that Hill’s forces could join with Wellington’s. The following day, Lieutenant Nicholas Hatton was promoted to captain. Nick didn’t know whether to be flattered or dismayed; now he commanded four times as many troops.

Wellington was overjoyed. “Soult has been building up fieldworks. Now I can pour greater force on certain points than the French can concentrate to resist me!”