Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle (75 page)

Somerton’s eyes widened. “It’s only your youth, your idealism speaking, Emeline.”

“Oh! Is it? Do tell.”

“We all hope for a life that is not within our grasp when we are eighteen,” he said, assuming a preachy tone. “You women all have such imaginations. Soon — you’ll see — soon you’ll be more concerned about your dinner guests, and how many children you have in the nursery, and the receiving of a new ball gown will throw you into an impassioned level of excitement.” Somerton spoke so evenly, he could have no idea of the effect his words would have on her.

“Will it?” she hissed.

“I’m sure of it.”

“The women with whom you are acquainted, are they all like-minded?”

“I would say so. You women are all the same. Quite uncomplicated, I find.”

“Perhaps you should leave your estate more often, Lord Somerton.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I am younger than you, by at least ten years, I believe, and yet already experience has taught me that not all men are the same. Their thinking, their motives can be quite diverse. Why not say the same about the female sex?”

“I’m afraid my experience with your sex has not taught me otherwise.”

“How long have
we
been acquainted?” asked Emily, an edge surfacing in her voice.

“A week or so.”

“Can you really come to know a person in a single week?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Then, please, do not presume that parties and ball gowns will become the sum total of
my
existence.”

She brushed past him to return to the place by the southwest corner of the house where they had begun their walk, and only when he had arrived there himself did she bother to square off with him one last time.

“Thank you for the exercise,” she said tersely. “It was most refreshing.”

His earlier diffidence having vanished, he glared down at her; the contemptuous expression flickering on his face so eerily similar to his youngest brother, it startled Emily. With a prim bow of his head he strode off toward the stables, but not before uttering a few final harshly-spoken words.

“Yes, and the conversation most enlightening, though I fear for you, Emeline. I fear you shall end up
bitterly
disappointed.”

16

Thursday, August 19

11:00 a.m.

Winchester

Gus lay still in his
lumpy cot and cocked his ears to the sounds that reached the mullioned window of his attic room. There was a clip-clop on the cobbles of the backyard, followed by children squealing with delight and a kindly voice conveying words of greeting. At last, the doctor had come! Gus had been so hopeful he would visit today, for a whole week had passed since his last visit and feeling poorly as Gus was, Aunt Sophia was rapidly losing patience with what she termed
his refusal
to help her round the farm. At the very least, he needed the doctor to confirm the validity of his illness.

Hearing the old man’s slow footsteps approaching on the steep stairs, Gus anxiously studied the boundaries of his attic room. It was low ceilinged and so narrow there was space for nothing beyond his cot and a small chest of drawers. Where would the doctor sit as they visited? And was the money still laid out upon the top of the chest in the event he was carrying a surprise for him? Sitting up to reassure himself the three pence were still there — that Aunt Sophia or one of his little cousins had not already snatched them up — Gus was settling back under his frayed counterpane when the doctor’s smiling face appeared in the doorway.

“What’s all this, Mr. Walby?” he asked, setting his leather bag and broad-brimmed hat down upon the bare floor. “Your cousins told me you were not at all well.”

“I haven’t been well for the past two days, sir,” said Gus. “I’ve been feeling achy all over, and I have a cough that hurts my chest, and I don’t have much energy to help Aunt Sophia.”

“I was most pleased with your progress a week back. What’ve you been up to since then?” he admonished with an inquiring frown. When Gus, uncertain of how much to tell him of Aunt Sophia’s demands and expectations, did not answer right away, the doctor nodded his head and said, “Let me have a look at you.”

Gus shifted over in his cot to make room for the doctor to sit down, which he did, immediately reaching for Gus’s wrist.

“My goodness, Mr. Walby, your heart is pounding so rapidly I can barely count the beats.” With the palm of his hand he felt Gus’s neck and then his forehead. “You’re a bit feverish. Then again, it is stiflingly hot up here.”

“I’m anxious, sir.”

“Why is that?”

Gus’s words tumbled from his mouth. “Well, I was hoping maybe you had a letter for me.”

The doctor compressed his lips. “I don’t; I’m sorry.”

Sadly, Gus gazed at the three pence upon his chest of drawers. Aunt Sophia would surely find them before he ever had a chance to give them to the doctor in exchange for the long-awaited letter. It was a wonder he’d been able to keep them away from her for so long.

“I don’t understand, sir,” Gus said, trying hard not to choke up. “She said … she said she would write straightaway to let me know where she was.”

“Perhaps she’s been visiting with various members of her family, and therefore has not yet any permanence in address.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’m certain I shall find a letter awaiting you the next time I go to Winchester,” he assured Gus.

“I do hope so. I’ve been so afraid that something awful has happened to her.”

“With everything you’ve told me about your friend, Emily, I’m further certain she can take care of herself. The dangers on English roads are nothing compared to the dangers one must face on the sea.”

“Do you worry about your son on the sea, sir?”

“Yes! Every day! But he’s a grown man, and a most capable one.”

“That he is, sir.” Gus looked up admiringly at the doctor, who was so deep in thought and gentle with his poking and prodding. How fortunate he was to have the father of Leander Braden taking care of him. Emily had come so close to meeting the man that day the Duke of Clarence had brought them to this house. Would he ever have the chance to tell her of the coincidence? “Have you received any letters from your son, sir?”

“Not for a very long while. However, I do understand these things. My older brother was a sailor with a merchantman that sailed all over the world,” he said proudly. “Three years after he was drowned off the coast of Bermuda, my family received word of it.”

“Three years? How awful!”

“Apparently the ship carrying word of his merchantman going down was lost in a storm. It’s a wonder my poor parents ever learned the fate of their eldest son at all.” He paused to give Gus a pensive smile. “That is why I’ve been so grateful to hear what you’ve been able to tell me of
my
son, and to know that he survived the sinking of the
Isabelle
and his incarceration at the hands of Thomas Trevelyan. I will admit, knowing you had sailed with him was the reason I so readily agreed to take you on as a patient.”

“Did the Duke of Clarence know your relationship to young Dr. Braden when he retained you, sir?

“I think not. The message came to me by other means. I just happened to be in Winchester when the word went out that Master Walby, recently of HMS
Isabelle
, was in need of medical services.” The doctor placed his hands on his knees and stiffly stood up. “Now, I must go downstairs to speak with your Aunt Sophia.”

“Am I going to die, sir?”

“Not today, Mr. Walby,” he laughed, “but I believe that your symptoms may be relieved if we try bloodletting —”

“Not with leeches, please, sir, I couldn’t stomach those horrid things.”

“No, I’ll try making a small cut in your arm, and then perhaps a poultice will help for your chest infection.” Old Dr. Braden glanced at the open attic door. “I do wonder how it is you manage all the steps with that leg of yours.”

“It hurts climbing up every night, sir, and it takes me a while, but I think it’s helping to strengthen me.”

“Good! Now, I’ll need your Aunt’s help in preparing the poultice and locating a bowl for me. And while I’m down there I think I’ll have a chat with her about easing your workload.”

“Oh, she won’t like that. She already thinks I’m a burden to her, and not good for anything.”

“Well,” he said firmly, “if she has a problem with the arrangement I’ll pack you up and take you back to Steventon with me.”

Gus’s pale face lit up. “Would you, sir?”

“I just might. Now, I’ll be right back to fix you up.” At the attic door he turned around to beam at Gus, in a way that suggested he had a wonderful secret to divulge. “Let’s write a letter directly to the Duke of Clarence at Bushy House, and see if he will tell us where Emily is lodging.”

“Oh, thank you, I would like that.” Gus tried to sit up, thinking this was as good a time as any. “And sir? There’s — there’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you about your son. And just in case you don’t receive a letter from him for three years, I’d like to tell you now.”

Old Dr. Braden looked drawn all of a sudden. “Do you have bad news for me?”

“Oh, no, sir, I think you will find it is the
best
of news.”

There came a great sigh of relief. “Thank goodness,” he said, returning swiftly to Gus’s cot. “In that case, you must tell me now. The poultice can wait.”

Gus snuggled back under his counterpane while old Dr. Braden settled in at the end of his bed, and as he started in on his story he happily imagined the look of shocked surprise that would surely seize the doctor’s face when he informed him that his son loved a princess.

Noon

On a Prison Hulk in Portsmouth Harbour

Thomas Trevelyan shuffled
around the rotting fo’c’sle of what was once HMS
Illustrious
. Regardless of the fact that he now possessed a pair of shoes — or rather, thick pieces of wood strapped to his feet — the open wounds on his soles had not yet healed, and stabbing pains still aggravated his legs where, some weeks back, they had been assaulted by a miniature, dirk-wielding mongrel.

“Keep moving! That’s it! And give praise to the Lord for the sliver of space that allows you fresh air and exercise. Anywhere else … anywhere else and your emaciated faces would be pasted to the walls, and your noses in one another’s armpits,” taunted the lieutenant-in-command, a slovenly fellow who rested his thick haunches on the old capstan as he bellowed his palaver. Trevelyan was convinced the hapless man had been sent here to oversee the hollow-eyed beings on this forsaken prison hulk as a form of punishment for some naval misdemeanour: having falsified the muster books, or committed an act of insubordination, or sodomized one of the ship’s beasts — a goat perhaps. Despite his unkempt appearance the lieutenant was a sight better than the others who commanded the prisoners, among them a bloated master’s mate, a one-armed cook, twelve old seamen, and four ragged boys. In addition there was a more formidable-looking guard of soldiers, thirty in all, who manned the sentry huts and the gallery built along the water’s edge, but only because of the loaded muskets they carried.

As he plodded along, Trevelyan’s hooded gaze drifted toward the smoking, dismantled hulks moored in a line in the Portsmouth Harbour, at the mouth of the Portchester River. He had been told that they housed prisoners of war, rounded up from vanquished merchantmen and warships over the endless years of fighting Napoleon and France. Grilles of thick cast iron covered gunports, and where white sails had once billowed tattered laundry now stirred in the light breeze. Blackened walls rose ever higher from the weather decks to accommodate a disarray of rough-hewn cabins and sheds, and to separate the prisoners from those assigned to watch over them. It was hard to imagine those forlorn hulks ever having proudly circumnavigated the globe for England. In comparison, those on HMS
Illustrious
were fortunate indeed, only recently had she become a prison ship, and as yet her hideous transformation was not complete. But with boatloads of new prisoners arriving daily, forced at gunpoint along the sea-level platforms constructed all around her and up her rickety steps, it was only a matter of time.

Twitch caught up to him. The man was always hanging around, though Trevelyan had no idea why, for none of the other prisoners had ever said a word to him and therefore seemed ignorant of his name and history. What little information Trevelyan had on Twitch had been supplied by the man himself: he had been born Asa Bumpus in New Bedford, been seized from an American privateer, and subsequently considered unfit for His Majesty’s service. It was no wonder. His unfortunate frame convulsed whenever he spoke, as if he had developed the
itch
or had a most urgent need to visit the privy. Balancing on yardarms or heaving barrels upon his back would have proven impossible for the man, hence his transportation to this hellhole, anchored like a colossal wooden coffin in the harbour’s mud.

Trevelyan gave Twitch an apathetic glance. “I see you’ve acquired a new hat.”

“Won it gamblin’ from some poor naked bastard, who had nothin’ — no hammock, no blanket or bed — ’cept for this here tricorne,” said Twitch, whose smile revealed two lines of broken teeth, the result of an old game of cards that had ended badly.

“You could have suggested he wear his hat on other parts of his body besides his head,” said Trevelyan.

“He’ll be naked fer awhile yet. It’ll be months before they’ll be givin’ him another yellow round-about jacket and pantaloons.”

Trevelyan was only too happy to have sold off his provision of prisoners’ clothing — the coarse, tight-fitting, tawny-coloured inferior rags that distinguished those trapped in miserable captivity — within days of his arrival on the
Illustrious
. Most of the men, shuffling with him, were dressed thus, but not all; and what did it matter when it was plainly evident who was a prisoner and who was not?

“Perhaps you should cease your preying upon those who’ve no clothes with which to cover themselves up.”