The Sage of Waterloo (21 page)

5)  The next morning, I was taken away.

6)  About seven years after all that, Emmanuel liberated the colony.

That's quite a lot of activity, now that I see it on paper. There are always loose ends, though, aren't there? Theories are never watertight; hutches never close cleanly (or vice versa). I'm thinking specifically of Activity No. 4. Spode had mentioned only vaguely “a two-legged shape.” No clear description. A very long, loose end, one would say.

Who had liberated Old Lavender on the night before I was taken away?

Arthur was already primping himself in preparation for departure when I called him back down from the wall. “Who let Old Lavender out on the night before I left?” I demanded.

“Well,” he said, obviously stalling. He glided onto the grass in an impeccable landing. “The gate had been opened, apparently.”

“Yes, yes, I know that. But by
whom
?”

“A boy,” Arthur said.

Emmanuel!
Of course! So he
had
been held in too low regard. My innards relaxed and I sighed audibly.
Everything will be all right
, the boy had said as he loaded me into the banana crate. Maybe he'd noticed me frantically searching for Old Lavender, and was reassuring me that all would be well . . .
with her
. . . because he'd let her out himself the night before—possibly even watched her until she'd found a suitable hiding place in the meadow. If Arthur's story was to be believed, and the emboldened oaf Emmanuel had also let everyone else out seven years later, then liberation was clearly an important part of his destiny and we had all underestimated him cruelly.

“Fat and clumsy, was he?” I pressed Arthur, just to verify that Emmanuel had, indeed, been the unlikely hero, though my insides had seized up again. But then I remembered an indisputable fact about Emmanuel that my strained mental capacities momentarily overlooked, and that, when examined closely, tended to reduce the boy to his former, doltish dimensions:

Emmanuel never came to Hougoumont after dark . . .
never
.

I sighed again, but not with relief. I could see Emmanuel clearly in my mind, casting an anxious eye at the shadows lengthening over the Hougoumont meadow, throwing a handful of grain into the rabbit enclosure and lumbering off on his bicycle like a bear from a swarm of bees.

He just couldn't have come at night to liberate Old Lavender.

Arthur sensed my confusion. He sidled towards the begonias and dashed back again, as he often did when preparing an important thought. With altered tone he said, “Your grandmother . . . she . . .
saw things
, didn't she?”

The remark immobilized me. But perhaps not as completely as a question Old Lavender herself had asked, more than once:
Don't you ever see them, William?

“Yes, she did see things,” I muttered. “Well, she sensed them. Shapes. Movement. She called it ‘the traffic of souls.' ”

“Hmm,” said Arthur. He fell silent, then continued: “In that case, it wouldn't surprise you to learn that the boy who opened the gate for your grandmother seven years ago, and led her across the meadow with her wild, white lover was slender, nimble.”

Not Emmanuel, then.

“He was wearing a uniform.”

But it had to be. There was no other explanation.

“And he carried a drum.”

Author's Note

A
t this writing, Hougoumont Farm is at last being restored. The farmer passed away a few years after the liberation of William's family and the property was taken over by a consortium of local authorities. The hutch where William was born, and where his family continued to live after his departure to Brussels, has been razed, along with the antique dovecote. Neither structure figured in drawings of the farm from the Waterloo period.

These are cosmetic changes, however, and man-made: Nature did not join the consortium.

Go there and you'll see.

The three chestnuts still stand, though their vigil must surely be nearing its end. Their branches trace the battle's entire story against the sky, as if seeking redemption for the men buried at their feet.

The wind is laden with whispers and other, more precise sounds: the stamp of a horse's hoof, maybe. Or a tapping branch.

And if you're lucky, on days when the mists rise, you might see a flash of white near the eastern wall and wonder whether Hougoumont has just revealed one of its secrets.

William would be so pleased to know that it had.

A
veritable sea of books and essays has been
written about Waterloo, though comparatively few of them go into any detail about Hougoumont. Publications that were particularly helpful for this story include:
A Narrative of the Battles of Quatre-Bras And Waterloo with the Defence of Hougoumont
by Matthew Clay; “Keep Hougoumont—at What Price?” by Mick Crumplin from www.waterloo200.org; “Waterloo Days” by Charlotte Eaton, from
Ladies of Waterloo: The Experiences of Three Women During the Campaign of 1815
;
Waterloo: A Guide to the Battlefield
by David Howarth;
Hougoumont
by Julian Paget and Derek Saunders; “Waterloo” by D. H. Parry
,
from
Battles of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1
; and
Le Goumont 1815: Citadelle de la mémoire
by Claude Van Hoorebeeck.

Acknowledgments

U
nusual creative projects generally have few supporters at first . . . if any. People smile that smile, shuffle their feet and wish you well. Then the project dies. This paragraph, therefore, is short. But it's also the most important one in the book: Sarah McFadden, first-class editor and writer, you were brave enough to read the initial manuscript of
The Sage of Waterloo
, embrace it and offer some suggestions, without which I wouldn't have had the courage to send it to Norton and to you, Matt Weiland, editor extraordinaire. With insight and intuition you leapt into the Untried, and for that I am deeply grateful. Cindy Gesuale, beloved childhood companion: nurturing small animals together imparted lessons of love, loss and friendship that inspire to this day. And for the occupants of my extended hutch, Francombe and Maxson alike: thank you! When I announced that I was going to write about rabbits and Waterloo, you guffawed (who didn't?). But seeing that I was serious, you indulged me, and encouraged me, and made me believe that providence would surely lend a hand.

Copyright © 2015 by Leona Francombe

All rights reserved

First Edition

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Francombe, Leona.

The Sage of Waterloo : a tale / Leona Francombe.—First edition.

       pages cm

ISBN 978-0-393-24691-9 (hardcover)

I. Title.

PS3606.R3754S25 2015

813'.6—dc23

                                                                  2014044186

ISBN 978-0-393-24692-6 (e-book)

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