Web of Love

Chapter 7

LORD EDEN HAD DECIDED TO ATTEND THE Duchess of Richmond’s ball even though his division was already under orders and it was perfectly obvious that he would be on the march before the night was out. The house on the Rue de la Blanchisserie was, in fact, crowded with officers of all ranks. The entertainment was perhaps the perfect outlet for nervous energies that found it difficult, if not impossible, to wait quietly.

Lord Eden danced and smiled and conversed with the ladies, and listened to numerous conflicting reports of what was happening and what was about to happen on the borders between France and Belgium. He was as eager as anyone else for some definite word, and he looked, as everyone else did, for the duke, and wondered what his absence might mean.

He happened to have Susan Jennings on his arm when some Scottish soldiers, splendidly clad in their kilts and full Highland dress, marched into the ballroom to the music of the bagpipes and entertained the company with reels and strathspeys. It was difficult to imagine that the same soldiers might be in battle before another day was done. Difficult, that was, unless one stood quite still for a moment and felt the very tangible tension behind the surface gaiety of the ballroom.

“How wonderful they are!” Susan said. “I wish I were Scottish every time I see them.”

“I think I am glad I was never called upon to use my wind to blow into those pipes,” Lord Eden said. “Has your husband left already, Susan? I have not seen him.”

“He is still here,” she said. “And please do not talk about his leaving or anyone else’s leaving. I shall faint quite away at the very thought.”

“You, Susan?” he said, smiling down at her. “You have a great deal more courage than you will admit to, my dear. You were in Spain. And you have remained here.”

“I try,” she said, raising large tear-filled eyes to his. “I try to be brave, my lord, but I am just a poor timid thing, as you must know. I must be a burden on those who know me.”

“I am sure you are not,” he said. “I am sure your husband honors your courage, Susan. It takes far more fortitude to appear brave when one feels afraid, you know.”

“I try to be brave,” she said, one tear spilling over and down her cheek. “You understand how hard it is for me, my lord. Thank you. My husband is sometimes rather brusque with me. Though I do not believe he means to be unkind.”

Lord Eden smiled and was relieved to see that the orchestra was ready to begin the next set of dances. He was engaged to dance it with Madeline.

The Duke of Wellington, looking as genial and relaxed as he always did in society, arrived at the ball soon after midnight. But any hope-or fear-that the latest rumors and panic were as ill-founded as all those that had preceded them was almost immediately put to rest. The duke, normally reluctant even to mention military matters at a social event, admitted that the troops were finally off to war the next day.

Later, during supper, a dispatch was delivered to the Prince of Orange with the news that Charleroi had fallen and that the French were already twenty miles into Belgian territory. But the news caused a sensation only to a very depleted gathering. Most of the officers had already taken their leave in order to rejoin their regiments.

Lord Eden sought out Madeline before he left. He drew her into the hallway beyond the ballroom, but there was no chance of any great privacy. It did not matter. Under the circumstances, two people could find all the privacy they needed merely by looking into each other’s eyes.

She clung to his hands. “You are going, Dom?” she said. “I am glad I have stayed. I have always hated you for this, you know, and have thought it all so senseless. But sometimes the most senseless and brutal deeds are necessary. And this is. I can see it, having been here for a while. You have every reason to go. You are using your life heroically. I am very proud to be your twin.”

He was rather white-faced. “Mad,” he said, and swallowed, “I always hate this business. You know that. What can I say that will have any meaning?”

She smiled. “Nothing,” she said. “We don’t need words, you and I. Just go, Dom. Go now, my dear.”

He squeezed her hands until she bit her lip with the pain. “Don’t grieve too much for me,” he said. “If anything happens, go on living, Mad. And be happy. This is something I want to do, and I do not regret what it may cost me.”

“Go,” she said, still smiling. “Kiss me once and go.”

He held her hands still as he kissed her. “I’ll be back,” he said with a sudden grin before turning and hurrying away down the stairs. “I have no intention of relinquishing my claim to be the elder twin, you know.”

She stood smiling after him until he was out of sight. And then the fan that she held broke in two in her hands.

Lord Eden hurried back to his billet to change out of his ball clothes, and found Captain Norton all ready to leave, alert and smartly dressed now that it was time to go into action.

“You go on ahead,” Lord Eden said when it seemed that the captain would have waited for him. “I promised to call on Simpson if there was need. We will catch up to you somewhere.”

His friend grinned at him. “Don’t delay too long,” he said. “You might miss all the fun.”

“Not a chance!” Lord Eden said with a laugh, hurling a silk shirt to the floor and trampling over it a moment later as he went for his boots.

Charlie was not in bed, he found less than half an hour later as he knocked on the door to his rooms. There was light within. If he knew his friend, he was probably all ready to leave.

Their faces were very set and without expression, he saw immediately when Charlie opened the door. He tried to smile. “It’s time to go,” he said.

He would have turned and left, but Charlie went from the room, and Mrs. Simpson stood looking at him. Her face was quite composed and quite without color. She held out both her hands to him.

“You will take care of yourself,” she said.

“Yes.” He smiled and took her hands. “And you, ma’am.”

There was a wonderful comfort in her presence. He never had known what caused it. He would have avoided taking any leave of her if he could. But he was not sorry now that he was holding her hands and looking down into her eyes. Perhaps Charlie was to be envied after all. He squeezed her hands.

“Come home again,” she said quietly. “Please come back again.”

“Yes,” he said.

And when he released her hands, she came into his arms and raised her face for his kiss. And he felt none of the terrible sick panic he had felt with all the others-with Edmund and Alexandra and the children, with Madeline. Only a certain peace as he kissed her and then hugged her to him and breathed in that fragrance from her hair that had haunted him for a few days. And a release of new energy that was no longer nervous energy, but a purposeful desire to go out and do the job that he was trained to do.

He smiled down at Ellen Simpson as she released him. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. And he looked up briskly at his friend, who had been standing quietly in the room since she had spoken her last words. “I’ll see you outside in a few minutes, Charlie.”

Ellen turned to her husband and looked at him as if down a long tunnel. He held out his arms to her.

“Well, lass,” he said.

“Charlie.” She put herself against him, her face pressed to his shoulder.

And he rocked her in his arms. They communicated at a level far deeper than words. He put her from him eventually and held her face in his hands.

“My precious, precious treasure!” he whispered, and kissed her once, briefly, on the lips. “My sweetheart.”

“Go now,” she said as she always said to him on such occasions.

And after the door had closed quietly behind him, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. She did not dare move. Not yet.

So. It was done. She had sent her men on their way, and there remained only the wait to see if either or both of them would come back to her again.

Charlie, her love. The light of her life. The precious only light. The only person on this earth she would gladly, gladly die for. The only person she could not-dared not-contemplate living without.

And Lord Eden-Dominic. Her husband’s friend. Her friend. Beautiful, smiling, charming Lord Eden, whom she had seen reluctantly, unwillingly, in the past weeks as a man. As a very attractive man of her own age. And now he was going with Charlie into the carnage of war. She might never see him again.

And so she had sent him on his way with her love. She had kissed him as a mother might. As a sister might. And perhaps a little differently from either.

And Charlie was gone.

Charlie was gone.

She continued to stare at the door even when, eventually, it blurred before her eyes.

THE FOLLOWING DAY was the worst waking nightmare Madeline had ever lived through. She began the day badly, rising for an early breakfast, though she had hardly slept at all. Lady Andrea’s manner, she found, was as brisk and as heartily cheerful as it ever was, though the colonel too had left from the ball to join his regiment, without returning home to change from his evening clothes. The two ladies were alone in the house apart from the servants. Mr. Mason, Lady Andrea’s father, was already out seeing what news he could discover.

And they were to spend the day, Madeline discovered, laying in as many supplies as they could, both of food and of medical necessities, clearing rooms of unnecessary furniture, and gathering as many sheets, blankets, and pillows as they could lay their hands on. It mattered not at all that there were servants in the house who might be set to performing these tasks.

“Soon it will not signify whether we are tavern maids or the Queen of England or anything else in between,” Lady Andrea said. “They will send the wounded back here, you know, and before we know it, there will be scarce room even in the streets for them all. We will be ready to take in as many as we can.”

Madeline blanched at the mental image of wounded soldiers-those same soldiers whom she had seen thronging the streets and dancing at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball only the day before.

“There will be surgeons?” she asked.

“They will probably all stay at the front,” her friend said, seemingly quite unmoved by the horror of her own words. “The wounded who are sent back here will be dependent upon our care. We must be ready for them.”

“I have no experience. I will not know what to do.” Madeline swallowed awkwardly.

Lady Andrea allowed herself a short bark of laughter. “Yes, you will, my dear,” she said. “Of course, I forget that you are raw out of England. Believe me, Madeline, my dear girl, by this time tomorrow or the day after, you will know exactly what to do. You will see need and you will be there to supply it. We do not know what inner resources we have until they are called upon.”

But she had none, Madeline thought. She would not even be able to shut herself away in the kitchen and cook broths for the wounded. She did not know how to cook. And the sight of blood made her feel faint.

“Don’t worry,” Lady Andrea said, patting her on the arm and rising resolutely from the breakfast table. “When the time comes, you will be far too busy to remember that you are a delicately nurtured young lady.”

Perhaps there was some truth to that, Madeline thought as the day proceeded and she rushed about without maid or chaperone, though the streets were far more crowded than usual. Although a surprising number of people seemed to be going about their business as usual, there was also an unusual press of vehicles in the streets, piled high with baggage and furniture, often pulled by fewer horses than was customary with the particular conveyance.

People were leaving Brussels in droves. But it was not easy, one chance-met acquaintance told Madeline. Some other mutual acquaintances who had tried to leave by barge on the canal to Antwerp had found that there were no barges available. They had all been commandeered under the duke’s orders for the purpose of bringing artillery up to the front. Horses were selling for a king’s ransom, and the crudest wagon for a fortune. People were panicking.

Madeline was glad that she had more than enough to do. There was no time to panic or to worry about Dom. She would not think of Dom. She bought all the bandages and all the laudanum that one chemist was willing to sell her and hurried back home with them.

There was no news, though Mr. Mason made frequent outings during the day and both ladies were constantly in and out of the house bound on some errand. But the guns began in the afternoon. Madeline was outside and looked up in some surprise to find that indeed there were no clouds either above or on the horizon that could presage a thunderstorm. And then she realized that the sound was not thunder and felt her knees turn to jelly and her stomach perform a somersault.

And it was not quite accurate to say that she could hear the guns, she realized. She could feel the guns. The sound was too deep and too distant to have any great effect upon the ear. But the echoes and vibrations could be felt to the very marrow of the bones.

Dominic!

She was greatly relieved to recognize Mrs. Simpson hurrying across the street toward her, head bent.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” she said, catching the lady by the arm. “Can you hear them too?”

Ellen looked up, startled. “Oh, Lady Madeline,” she said, “it is you.” And she stopped walking and looked more closely. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “you have never experienced this before, have you? Are you going to faint? Bend your head sharply forward and take some deep breaths. Come, I shall walk with you for a little way. I was on my way to a grocer’s. My poor maid had the hysterics this morning. She is fresh from England, poor girl. I succeeded in getting her a place on the cart of a neighbor, bound for Antwerp and home.”

Madeline was glad of the quiet cheerfulness of her voice. “I am very silly,” she said. “I am ashamed of myself.”

“It would be a great deal more shameful to feel nothing when you hear those guns,” Mrs. Simpson said. “But you must not worry about being missish. When the wounded begin to arrive, as they surely will by tomorrow, you will find that you have a strength you did not even suspect, and that there is no room at all for squeamishness.”

“That is what Lady Andrea Potts says,” Madeline said. “I am afraid I will disgrace myself.”

Ellen squeezed her arm, which she had taken for support. “You will not,” she said. “And if you do vomit at first, you will pick yourself up after and do what the rest of us will be doing. I have every faith in you.”

“Do you think they are up there where those guns are?” Madeline said. “Dominic, I mean. And Captain Simpson.”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said. “There is no way of knowing at the moment. And that is the very worst of battle-the not knowing. You must train your mind not to think of it. Deaden your mind. Once the wounded begin to arrive, it will be better. You will have no time to think. Each wounded soldier will become your brother, and you will care for him because he might be your brother and because some other woman somewhere may be doing for Lord Eden what you are doing for him.”

“Yes,” Madeline said. “That will help, will it not? Is that how it is done? Do you see your husband in every wounded soldier? I think perhaps I will not faint or vomit if I can see Dom each time. Will there be very many, do you think? Oh, how very senseless it all is. Yesterday they were here with us. Today we are feverishly gathering bandages and whatever else we can in the certainty that the city will be filled with the wounded. And what about the dead? Will they be brought in too? Or are they left where they are?”

Ellen had a very firm grip on her arm. “No,” she said. “No. Deaden the mind. Keep yourself busy. Dominic will come back to you, even if only in the wounded, thirsty body of a stranger-they are always thirsty, poor souls. He will come. I promise. Do you wish me to take you home?”

“No.” Madeline shook her head and smiled as brightly as she was able. “That would be shameful. I would never be able to look you in the eye again. Here is a grocer’s shop. This is what you need, is it not? Good-bye, then. I shall see you probably within the next few days. And thank you.”

And what was shameful, she thought all the way home, and scolded herself roundly with the thought, was that she had forgotten her own errand. Why was she out wandering alone about the streets? There must have been a reason when she left the house. She concentrated on her own stupidity as she hurried along, and even had an inward laugh at it, imagining herself telling the joke against herself years in the future to Dom and Edmund and Mama.

She could feel the guns from the brim of her bonnet to the toes of her slippers.

THE BATTLE WAS RAGING on two fronts. And the Duke of Wellington had been taken by surprise after all. The whole of the French forces were concentrated to the south. Bonaparte himself led the charge against the Prussians at Ligny, dispelling any suspicion that he might be waiting with the flower of his army on the western border. Seven miles away Marshal Ney led the attack against the few allied troops who were in position at the crossroads of Quatre Bras. Most of Wellington’s army was still on its way from Brussels and Nivelles and other points to the north.

The fun and games would probably all be over by the time they got there, the men in Lord Eden’s company grumbled as they trudged south in the dust from Mont St. Jean, where they had been halted for a long time awaiting orders. Here they had been sitting around on their rear ends for weeks, some of the men complained to their sympathetic mates, with nothing to do except watch the Dutch wenches and try to learn enough of their language to bring a blush to their cheeks.

And standing around half the bleeding night, a young private added while desperately trying to walk with the swagger and talk with the careless assurance of the veterans surrounding him, when they might have been amusing themselves with some of those wenches without the need of any tongue at all.

“Yer mean yer hain’t never used yer tongue on a wench even when yer can’t talk ter her?” some wag called from several lines behind the unfortunate private, and was rewarded for his wit by loud guffaws of rough laughter. “Yer should go back ter school and do some real learnin’, lad.”

All they would get from this march would be holes in their ruddy boots, another soldier complained to anyone who cared to listen. Most of them were listening to the guns ahead of them. “Johnny’ll be beat before we come up to ’im, and all we’ll ’ave to amuse ourselves with is diggin’ pits to shovel in the dead. You mark my words.”

It seemed that several did mark his words. There was a murmur of grumbled assent.

However, even the most eager rifleman of the Ninety-fifth saw all the fighting he could desire before the day was over. By the time they arrived at half-past three in the afternoon, the situation for the allies was looking somewhat grim. The Brunswickers and the Nassauers had been severely battered and the Duke of Brunswick even killed. The Ninety-second, the Gordon Highlanders, had been almost cut to pieces. And the cavalry had still not arrived. Only the constant presence of the Duke of Wellington, riding coolly up and down the line, always where the action was thickest, seemingly quite unconcerned for his own safety and leading his usual charmed life, had prevented a rout, so it was said.

They must be thankful, it seemed, for the rolling nature of the country. If only Marshal Ney could have seen clearly ahead and been sure that the Duke of Wellington was not up to his old trick of keeping the bulk of his army hidden behind a rise and ready to attack at a moment’s notice, then surely he would have pressed on with far more boldness than he did. And he would have swept to certain victory.

As it was, the Ninety-fifth was sent straight into action, and it was many hours before those who were still alive could look about them to discover the fate of friends and comrades, not to mention that of their whole army. Had they won or lost? They were still in the same position as they had taken up in the afternoon, and the French had retired for the night. But what would happen in the morning? Would old Ney push on again at first light? And were there enough of them left to hold him? And what had happened over at Ligny, where they had heard old Boney himself was attacking the Prussians?

Trust old Blucher to hold him, some said. But Bonaparte himself was leading the attack, others added. There seemed to be no answer to that one.

However it was at Ligny or with the army generally, most of the men were concerned first and foremost with themselves and with those who had fought elbow to elbow with them for hours. There was an appalling number of dead. Everyone looked about him warily and anxiously to see who was left and-more significant-who was not. One grieved for a close friend who had fallen, once the day was over and one had leisure to grieve, that was. One did not grieve for a fallen comrade, but merely assured those close by that it was tough luck; old so-and-so had been a good lad. Unnecessary grief put too much of a strain on the emotions. One buried one’s dead comrades if they were close enough to the lines to be reached in safety. One left them where they were if they were not.

And one looked to the wounded, trying to find a stretcher for those too badly hurt to fend for themselves, encouraging those who were at least on their feet to begin the tramp back behind the lines or even all the way to Brussels if it seemed that they would not be fit for action on the next day. Those who were hurt only slightly, or those who were too tough to admit that their wounds were severe, bound up their cuts as best they could and jested to one another.

“Yer’d better get some mud on that bandage,” someone called to a brave lad who stayed at the front though he had a nasty slash on the forehead, “or Johnny’ll be usin’ it fer target practice.”

“It’s the merest scratch,” the same private who knew of no other use for his tongue than to talk with assured the burly sergeant who bound up his arm for him. “Scarcely even needs a bandage.”

The sergeant, more kindly than some of his peers, looked closely at the youth and did not remark, as well he might, that the boy’s face was almost of a color with the bandage. He ruffled the boy’s hair when he was finished and said gruffly before moving away, “You’ll do, lad.”

Lord Eden found Captain Norton and Captain Simpson and breathed with something like relief before squatting down beside the latter. “A close thing,” he said.

“Just a nice little skirmish to warm up with,” Captain Simpson said. “Good practice for the boys.”

Lord Eden grinned. “You don’t think this is it, then, Charlie?” he asked. “You don’t think Boney will turn tail and run now?”

The captain chuckled. “Will the sun fall from the sky?” he said. “Scared, Eden?”

Lord Eden squeezed his friend’s shoulder and rose to his feet again. “Only a Johnny Raw ever answers no to that question,” he said. “You can’t catch me out with it any longer, Charlie. My knees are knocking, if you want the truth. And my teeth clacking. I am trying to get them coordinated so that at least there will be a pleasing rhythm.”

“Stay close,” his friend said. “I’ll add my stomach rumblings to the music. Excuse me. I have to go over to talk to that young private over there who is pretending not to be sniveling. Poor lad. He wants his mother, I’ll wager my month’s pay. He was doing well until the guns stopped.”

Lord Eden smiled without a great deal of humor as he turned back to his own company. It did not seem so long before that Charlie had been comforting another lad-though not such a young one-who had wanted his mother after his first taste of action. And without in any way belittling or humiliating him. He wondered if anyone had done as much for Charlie Simpson when he was a raw recruit.

It was time to snatch some sleep, he thought, looking down at the hard, uninviting ground ruefully and trying not to look at the faces around him or-more to the point-the faces that were not around him. Like Captain Simpson and unlike many other officers, Lord Eden had always made a point of bivouacking with his men under exactly the conditions they experienced, instead of using his rank to commandeer more comfortable accommodation.

ELLEN WANDERED OUT into the streets the following morning, unable to remain indoors. Any news she heard might be wildly inaccurate, but even rumors and distorted truths seemed preferable to the silence that had haunted her all night after the guns had stopped. And even the night had not been totally silent. There had been noises, frightening noises, that she had resolutely ignored.

There had been a panic, she learned from one acquaintance, in the very early morning when heavy artillery being moved through Brussels toward the front was thought to be in retreat. And further panic when a troop of Belgian cavalry had galloped through the city shouting that all was lost and the French on their heels. But the French were still not there.

The Prussians had been defeated at Ligny, she heard later, and General Blucher severely injured. No one seemed to know what was happening at Quatre Bras, except that casualties had been heavy.

Ellen did not listen too closely. She watched the walking wounded who were beginning to trickle into the city, a sad and tattered remnant of those who had marched out so gallantly less than two days before. She looked closely at each separate one, her heart thumping painfully, and she found herself taking the arm of one soldier around her own shoulders to relieve his companion, who was himself wounded. She sat with him on the stone steps outside a house and wiped the dust from his face with her handkerchief and some eau de cologne. But he would not let her touch his dangling arm. It was broken, he said. He must reach his brother. Fortunately the brother was found just emerging from his home one street away.

She must go home and fetch bandages, Ellen decided, hurrying along toward the Rue de la Montagne and looking anxiously into the faces of the men about her. But she recognized no one. There was a young soldier wandering alone not far from her own door.

“A drink of water, lady,” he said as she came up to him, his voice apologetic and not very hopeful.

“Of course,” she said, touching his one arm and noticing the blood caked on the sleeve of the other. “Oh, you are hurt. Do you have a billet here?”

“I live in Somerset, lady,” he said. “A drink of water, please.”

“Come,” she said, setting her arm about his waist and guiding him to the door of the house in which she had rooms. “Come, my dear. I will soon have a soothing bandage on that arm and a warm, comfortable bed for you to sleep in. And you shall have your drink.”

He was a child, she thought in some horror. She doubted that he was sixteen. And his eyes were already brightening with fever.

She lowered him carefully to the sofa in the parlor and went for a glass of water before removing his boots or tackling the sleeve that was stuck firmly to his right arm together with a heavy bandage.

“They removed the ball,” the boy said. “I thought they was going to take my arm off. I reckon they was too busy. Don’t touch me, lady. Let me be. Don’t touch me.”

“You shall lie down in bed,” she said gently. “I will not hurt you, my dear. And you will feel so much better afterward. I promise you. I have nursed many boys like you, you know. You must pretend that I am your mother. Do you have a mother?”

She coaxed him to the bed that had been Jennifer’s and stroked her hand gently over his dusty hair on the pillow until the panic had receded from his brightened eyes. “There, there,” she said, smiling at him, “it will be all right, my dear. No one is going to hurt you anymore.”

Was some woman murmuring comfort to Charlie somewhere in the city? Was he too badly hurt or too delirious to remember where he lived? Was some woman trying to cleanse and bind Lord Eden’s wound, wincing herself at every hurt she knew herself to be inflicting on him?

Or were they out there somewhere unhurt, preparing to fight again? Or actually engaged in battle? But there was no sound of guns today.

Or were they lying dead somewhere?

Deaden the mind.

Remove the sleeve and the bandages inch by cautious inch to reveal the red and swollen flesh. Murmur comfort to the boy who had fought like a man the day before and who was trying very hard not to sob like a child. Keep talking to him. Smile kindly into his eyes. Let him know himself loved.

And deaden the mind.