Truth about Leo (4 page)

“I don't know. I'm too exhausted to contemplate doing anything with food that doesn't involve stuffing it into my mouth. I just knew we had to have something or we'd starve. And speaking of that, if you look in my bonnet, there's a half loaf of bread. I think we're due some bread and cheese. Do we have any berries or early apples?”

“No, but once you have eaten, I really must tell you something of much importance.” Julia bustled around the small, cold room, fetching a cutting board and their sole knife.

“At this moment, there is nothing more important than that cheese.”

Dagmar watched Julia hack away ineffectually at the cheese until she could stand it no longer and took charge of making a meal from the bread and cheese.

“I'm sorry I'm such a failure,” Julia said a few minutes later, handing Dagmar a cup of weak tea. “Here you brought home a veritable feast, and all I have to show for my day is a hole in my boots and an Englishman.”

“We'll have to get you a new pair,” Dagmar said when she had consumed enough bread and cheese to subdue the ever-growling beast in her stomach. She paused, looking up. “An Englishman? What Englishman?”

“The man in the garden. He's English. Or at least I believe him to be. He's not exactly speaking coherently.”

“He woke up, did he? Is he still in the garden?” Dagmar ate the last of her bread and eyed another piece, knowing she should save it but mightily tempted nonetheless.

“Yes, but dearest Princess, I begin to suspect that he's not the drunkard that we first believed him to be. There is blood seeping through his coat, and he appears to be delirious. I think the two of us together should be able to carry him.”

“Why on earth would we want to carry some strange, wounded man?” Dagmar set down her cup and delicately sniffed the air. There was a faint, familiar aroma. “You didn't happen to visit the small shed near the man, did you?”

“No, Princess, I assure you that I was most attentive to your wishes that I watch the man. It's true that I discovered a bottle of brandy…er…it must have been the Englishman's, since I found it near him…but I took only the tiniest of sips from it, just a medicinal amount to warm my blood. You know how my blood suffers in this climate.”

Dagmar continued chewing, having no doubt at all that Julia found the bottle where she had last left it in the shed. “Yes, I know how you suffer. What did the man say to you?”

“Nothing that I understood. It was more feverish rambling than anything else. Thus, as soon as you have contented yourself with this delicious meal, I will assist you in bringing him inside the house.”

“I don't need an injured man in the house. What I need is passage for us to England, and then some capital with which we can open a shop.”

“What sort of shop?” Julia asked, clearly sidetracked.

“I'm not sure. Obviously it should be a shop for something we know a good deal about. What sorts of things do you know about?”

Julia's face wore its usual slightly vacant, vaguely worried expression. “My father always said I was quite capable at darning socks.”

“Socks. Hmm.” Dagmar allowed herself to relax against the chair, wondering if there was good money to be had in sock darning.

Julia cast an anxious glance toward the dirty window. “Dearest Dagmar, don't you think we should commence to rescuing the wounded Englishman? The sun will be setting soon, and I'm sure he'd be more comfortable inside than out.”

“Allow me to state right here and now that I have absolutely no intention of fetching any man to the house, wounded or not,” Dagmar said, closing her eyes and allowing the exhaustion to sweep over her. Hopefully, Julia would sleep off her intoxication. “Not unless he comes bearing large quantities of money or passage on a ship. Preferably both.”

“But, Princess—”

Clearly, she was going to have to adopt a practical line of objection. “No, Julia. We are not bringing home a stray, wounded man. We haven't enough food to feed ourselves, let alone shelter two days from now, and although it might be entertaining to see Frederick's face when he has to ship a man along with us to a French convent, that amusement palls when accounted with the trouble we'd have to acquire said man. No more mention of wounded people of either sex, please. I'm sure if we leave him alone, he'll go away on his own.”

“But—”

Dagmar opened her eyes and gave her companion a very firm look. She didn't like to have to do such things, but Julia was like a terrier once she got her teeth into a subject, and if one didn't take control, she'd run amok. “I shall tell you about my conversation with the British colonel, and after that you will not be able to think of such petty things as wounded men in our back garden.”

Julia's eyes widened as Dagmar did exactly that, filling her in as well with Frederick's threat of a convent.

“But we're not Catholic,” Julia protested.

“You see? That is exactly what I said to him, and he just threatened to send us to France where they have convents.”

“I don't want to go to France!”

“Nor do I, but unless we can change that stupid colonel's mind, I'm afraid we're doomed.” Dagmar absently tickled her mouth with the fringe of her shawl while her brain, charged up by the consumption of foodstuffs, whirled around busily.

“It's too bad that you don't know one of the officers,” Julia said forlornly. She wrapped her shawl tighter around her arms. “You could marry him, and then the colonel would have to send us to England.”

“Mmm. I don't know any English officers. And I highly doubt if I were to meet one that he'd offer to marry me in the next two days.”

Silence fell over the house. Dagmar continued to worry away at the problem, thinking all sorts of thoughts of daring escapes from Frederick's men en route to the French convent, but sadly resigning them all to the rubbish bin when she realized that she was responsible for Julia, the least daring person she knew.

“I wonder if he could be an officer.”

Dagmar dragged herself from a dark reverie. “Hmm? He who?”

“The person you told me not to mention again.” Julia was barely visible in the gathering twilight, but Dagmar could see the silhouette of her arm as she gestured toward the door, adding in a whisper, “The wounded man.”

“Oh, him. I'm sure he's just some merchant.”

“He didn't look like a merchant. He had documents written in English in his boot.”

Dagmar sat up and stared into the deepening shadows. It was one thing for Julia to have a few nips of brandy and become overly concerned about a drunkard in the garden, but another for her to create such an odd detail. “How do you know what he had in his boot?”

“One of them was partially off, and I saw a bit of paper, and naturally, I thought it might give some insight into who he was, so I peeked at it. It appeared to be something about the Czar in Russia, but it was most definitely written in English. And no merchant would have that, would he?”

Dagmar sat silent for a minute, considering this. “The English navy attacked four days ago…I suppose it's possible that he might be one of them. But he wasn't wearing a uniform.”

“No, but his clothes were very nice. Dirty and torn and bloody, but you could tell they were of a good quality.”

Dagmar gave in to the inevitable. She hadn't at first believed the man could truly be wounded, since she hadn't seen any signs of injuries, but Julia's tale was beginning to cast an ominous light on things. She couldn't leave a wounded man to lurk about her garden. Directly on the heels of that thought came another, one that had so much potential, she allowed it to dance in her brain, illuminating all sorts of very interesting possibilities. “His driving coat did seem to be made of nice cloth. And you say the rest of his clothing was similar?”

“Very nice quality, yes. As nice as the crown prince's garments, I would say.”

“He might be someone visiting the ambassador. Or one of the ambassador's staff, itself. How very interesting.” Dagmar sat indecisive for a moment, then got to her weary feet. There was no avoiding the fact that she needed to go see if this man was as injured as Julia said. Her sainted mother had brought her up to take care of those less fortunate, and she knew full well that Mama would haunt her to the end of her days if she shirked that responsibility. There was no reason she shouldn't benefit from such generosity, however. “It's entirely possible that he's English and of some worth, and if that's so, then he must have family somewhere who would pay good money to have him back.”

“Princess!” Julia gasped as Dagmar scrabbled around under the stove until she found a length of tattered rope. “What are you saying?”

“Were you never taught history as a girl? Dearest Papa used to tell wonderful tales about knights of yore and how they were always capturing each other and then ransoming their captors back to their families for massive mounds of gold and jewels.”

Julia weaved a little. “You don't mean…you can't really intend to hold that poor man hostage, can you?”

“Of course I can. It's the most logical thing ever.” Dagmar ticked the items off on her fingers. “It will allow us to get the money we will need once we get to England. It will allow us to save that man without draining our meager resources to the point where we might as well march down to the dock this very evening and begin harlotting, and it may very well force that annoying ambassador into sending us to England.”

Julia gawked at her. “But…what you suggest is illegal, surely.”

“There is a time and place for nice morals, Julia, neither of which is here and now.” Dagmar, invigorated by the mouthwatering thought of a veritable mountain of gold, flung open the kitchen door. “Now let's go fetch our captive.”

“No.”

Dagmar was halfway down the path through the kitchen garden before the softly spoken word attracted her notice. She marched back to where her companion stood in the doorway. “What do you mean, no?”

“No, I will not help you commit a sin so great as holding a poor, injured man prisoner and selling him to his family.”

Dagmar slapped her hands on her legs in a most unprincessly manner. “But Dearest Papa's knights of yore did it!”

“What was right for a knight then isn't right for a princess now,” Julia said primly, her hands folded as tight as her lips.

“We aren't going to hurt him. If anything, we'll be saving him, since his family won't want to pay for a corpse.”

“It's wrong, and you well know it.” Julia's stubborn expression, barely visible in the gloaming, softened as she laid a hand on Dagmar's arm. “My dear, you know yourself that it is wrong. You are simply grasping at the idea of salvation because the crown prince put you into a temper.”

“What I am grasping at is the only avenue we have open to us.” Dagmar took a deep, calming breath, and tried to reason with her friend. “It's this or harlotry, Julia. I cannot go to the French convent. I'm not at all the sort of person who would thrive in such a strict environment, and if you had any love for me, any love at all, you would help me ransom that hurt man!”

“There are always other options. You said yourself that if you were married to an officer—”

“But I don't know any officers!” Dagmar rubbed her forehead. They were arguing around and around in a circle, and it was starting to give her a headache. “I've explained to you already that I don't know any Englishmen, let alone officers.”

“You could know the wounded Englishman. Perhaps he would marry you out of gratitude for saving him.”

“Oh, come now. That's not very likely.”

“But it's a possibility, and you said we had no other possibilities.”

Dagmar made a face and snatched up a lantern near the door, quickly lighting it. “
If
he wasn't already married, and
if
he survives whatever wounds he has, and
if
he is, in fact, English, not to mention an officer in their navy, then yes, that might be a possibility, but those are an awful lot of ifs, and I don't intend to hang my future on anything so nebulous.”

Julia slid her arm through Dagmar's and beamed at her. “If he is English and unmarried, then you would agree to marry him?”

“If it got us to England?” Dagmar thought for a moment. She'd been betrothed from a very early age to a distant cousin who had died some four years before, and hadn't particularly felt the need to encourage her father to find her a replacement. Marriage tended to restrict one's activities, since husbands frequently felt they had the right to tell one how to live, but if Julia's man was indeed English and unmarried, she could do worse than consider him as a suitor.

The mental image of a dark, cold French nun's cell came to mind. She shivered and hurried forward. “Possibly. Come along, turtle! Let's go see if this man of yours is still alive before we start planning a wedding.”

A princess does not approach a strange man and ask if she can have what's in his breeches. A princess remembers that not only is it not nice to ask others for things, but also that not every man plays a game wherein he hides sweets in his clothing so his daughter can find them.

—Princess Christian of Sonderburg-Beck's Guide for Her Daughter's Illumination and Betterment

Leo had died and gone to hell. He accepted the fact that the men who had set upon him had been right to leave him for dead—obviously, he died from the wounds inflicted by them. He had a vague memory of dragging himself through the woods to the faint glimmer of light flashing off windows, but clearly that was a delusion, a fevered imagining of a brain that had ceased its primary function.

Dammit, there was a root poking up into his spleen. He shifted irritably. It was just his luck to end up in the hell where roots ensured that the dead did not rest easily.

Then there were the harpies. Shrill female voices argued and squabbled over his head, no doubt trying to decide who would get to rend his flesh and commence the torment of his soul.

Blast it all, the harpies had started at his feet. Cold air swept over his toes as his boots were removed. The voices of the harpies shifted and changed to less cacophonous sounds, although they still argued. That irritated him. He was dead, after all, in hell, with a blasted root the size of a small heifer attempting to bore its way through his tender organs, and yet the harpies continued to squabble and fuss at him.

He opened an eye to glare at them. “Can you give a man no rest? Must you strip me of my boots now? I haven't been dead that long, you know. Isn't there some sort of a period of respite before the torment commences?”

One of the harpies was holding a lantern up to a piece of paper. She looked over at him, and he felt a sense of surprise that she wasn't old and hag-like and the bearer of plentiful warts upon her grisly visage, as any proper harpy ought to be. In fact, her visage wasn't grisly in the least. She had an oval face that reminded him of a Botticelli. If she hadn't been a harpy, he would have thought her pretty.

Whoever heard of a pretty harpy? Death must be playing with his ability to reason.

“You are deficient in warts,” he told her, closing his eye and waving a hand toward her. “I will have nothing to do with you.”

“Warts!”

“Oh, thank the Lord, he is still alive.”

“Julia, did you hear that? He told me I had warts!”

“No, dear, I think he said you were deficient in warts, although that was indeed a very odd comment to make. Sir, what is your name?” a soft voice said near his ear. He brushed at his ear, squirming a little to try to find comfort on that damned root. “Are you, as I suspect, English?”

“Of course he's English, Julia,” the other harpy snapped, and to his further annoyance, began to tug at his sleeve. Odd that he couldn't feel his arm. He could feel his toes. He wiggled them. They were cold now that the harpies had stripped them bare to his stockings, and he wanted to inform them of that fact, but he figured they would just laugh and tell him that was what happened to men who died and went to hell. Still, he worried a bit at the lack of feeling in his left arm. “He sounds very English. What I want to know is if he's an officer.”

“Madam, I was a major in His Majesty's army before I died and arrived at this place,” he said stiffly, trying to convey to the harpy through the coldness in his voice just how irritated he was, but she, like all the other heartless beings of hell, paid no mind to his wants or desires and continued to rip the clothing from his poor, naked body.

“Army? Well, hell!”

“Princess!”

“I think I'm allowed to swear in this circumstance, Julia. An army major is no earthly good to me, especially one that thinks I have warts and is under the delusion that he's dead. What I want is a navy major.”

“I don't believe they have majors in the navy, dearest. I think they're called something else.”

Leo frowned to himself, and before he could think better of it, protested aloud, “There is nothing wrong with the army.”

“I didn't say there was, you annoying—oh, no. Julia, you didn't tell me he was bleeding this much.”

Cold seemed to leech into his body from the ground, starting at his left arm and slowly radiating outward. He shivered.

“I didn't know since I did not remove his coat. We should move him as quickly as may be. Can you not see that he is feverish? To lie out here in the damp and cold is to court disaster.”

He wished he had the strength to open his eyes and look again at the harpies, but at that moment, he felt as drained as a newborn colt.

Still the harpy on the left of him, the wartless one, tugged at him, peeling off his heavy coat and making him aware of the cold and discomfort. He didn't like her one bit, and turned his head to tell her so. “This certainly wasn't evident before. Look: it appears he's taken a saber blade to the arm and I suspect chest, if the blood is any guide. No doubt the attacker thought he had killed him outright. Julia, hand me the blanket. No, the old one. We'll bind his arm and chest tightly before we move him. That might stop some of the bleeding.”

“What a most excellent idea. I knew that you would know how to deal with him once you saw him.”

“Don't be heaping praise on my head yet. He's lost a lot of blood, and the fever is upon him. He may well die before I can speak with Colonel Stewart again. Ready? Lift on three.”

Leo was confused about whom they spoke, but was distracted by the sudden sensation of floating. The root that had been ground into his back drifted away as he lurched along some sort of wind, one that swore and grunted quite a bit, not to mention threatened to drop its burden and let the vultures have at it.

It must be some other soul the harpies had focused on now that he had drifted off out of their reaches. “Don't let them take your boots,” he warned. “Your toes will never be warm again.”

Odd, that, when you thought about it. He'd always been taught that hell was filled with hellfire and brimstone, not cold and numbness.

The harpies were back, once again arguing. He dragged his attention from where it had wandered, and tried to focus on what they were saying.

“It is utterly out of the question. You are unmarried, and this gentleman is not your relative. What would your mother say to the idea of him occupying your bed?”

“My mother would commend me for trying to save the life of one of her countrymen. Now stop arguing, and let's get him settled so you can fetch the doctor.”

“But your sheets! We just washed them two days ago!”

“And we can wash them again. Julia, my hands are getting tired, and if that happens, I'll drop the poor man. Will you please stop arguing over silly points of etiquette and put him down?”

Pain spiked through him suddenly, a dull, cold pain that seemed to nag at him, dragging him downward into a black pit.

The hellfire came at last, burning at him, ripping away his sinews and flesh with metallic claws. He heard a man screaming, followed by the low rumble of a male voice speaking in Danish that gave way to another, this one female, that seemed to bore into his brain, urging him to be calm so that the doctor could do his work.

“It's too late for a doctor,” he argued, moving restlessly, lying in the pit that alternated cold and fire. “I've died and gone to hell.”

“I've done what I can, but I'm afraid it's too late. He won't last the night through.”

“But…he was talking! And moving his limbs. Are you sure there is nothing we can do for him? Perhaps a draught or some other physic? My sainted mother used to say that if the fever was attended to—”

“I have been physician to His Royal Highness for more years than your mother was alive. I know the look of death when I see it, and I say this man will not last until morning. If, by some miracle of God, he does survive the night, then I will bleed him.”

“Over my dead body you will,” he heard the first harpy say in a firm voice. “My mother always said that bleeding made people weaker, not stronger.”

He wanted to agree with her, but it was too much effort to speak, so he simply nodded his head.

“Your mother was
not
a physician,” the man answered. Footsteps and the sound of a door slamming told of his leaving.

Good
, thought Leo. He sounded singularly unhelpful.

“Oh, Princess, what will we do now?” one of the harpies asked, wringing her hands as she stood at the foot of his bed.

“Go fetch me what remains of my mother's herbs. I'm going to make him a fever draught.”

“But you heard what the doctor said! He won't last the night.”

“Perhaps not, but it won't be for the lack of me trying. Go, Julia, and get some water boiling.”

The older harpy moved slowly toward the door, casting a worried look back at him. “If he's not going to live long…Princess, you must marry him.”

The pretty harpy turned to her, astonishment clearly writ on her face. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Quite the contrary. If you marry him now, and he…” She made a vague gesture. “Then you will be his widow, and the colonel will have to send you to England.”

“I'm not so desperate to find a husband that I need to marry a man on his deathbed.”

“Aren't you?”

The wartless harpy looked as obstinate as a mule. For some reason, that amused Leo. He wondered vaguely who the poor man was who they wanted to marry.

“All right, I might be that desperate, but really, Julia. He's desperately ill.”

“All the more reason to do it now.”

“But…it seems so wrong to just marry him while he's not cognizant.”

“It won't matter at all to him if he goes to meet his maker wed, while it will mean everything to you and me.”

He closed his eyes, waiting to hear the fate of the poor, unmarried man. At last the first harpy said, “I suppose it wouldn't matter much. Go attend to the water and herbs while I fetch the last of the damson wine.”

Leo drifted for a little bit, coming back to awareness at a slight noise.

“Is it ready?” one of the harpies was asking.

“I hope so. His fever is increasing, so we have to get something in him. I just hope this draught helps.”

“I don't want to take a draught,” Leo said pettishly, trying with every ounce of strength to open his eyes. He managed to get one cracked to see the pretty harpy sniffing at a bottle of dark red liquid. “You can't cure death, madam.”

The harpy set the bottle down on a table, giving him a curious look.

“What have you done with my root?” he asked suspiciously. “How dare you take it away from me. It was you who spirited me here, wasn't it? Don't deny it, I can see by the look on your wartless face that it was. First you strip the flesh from my bones, then you take away the spleen root, and now you threaten to dose me with some foul concoction. I won't have it. Return me to the proper hell, the one that wasn't soft and warm and comfortable.”

He panted with the effort to speak, so exhausted he couldn't hold open his eye any longer. He wanted to gesture to the harpy, but his arm appeared to be turned to lead, and he didn't have the strength to lift it.

“What a very odd man you are. What's your name?”

“I do not converse with harpies. It's Leo.”

“Leo what?”

“Leopold.”

“No, I mean what is your surname? I can't call you Leo.”

“Why not? Is there some sort of harpy rule that says you are unable to use a Christian name?”

“Will you stop calling me a harpy? I'm a princess, dammit! A gentle, innocent princess, and I swear to heaven above if you don't stop being so annoying, I'm going to clunk you on the head with the chamber pot.”

He snorted, wishing he had the wherewithal to open his eyes again, but accepting that now that he was in hell, he wouldn't be granted any wishes. “I'd like to see you try.”

The harpy made an irritated noise and asked (in a way that sounded like she was forcing the words through her teeth), “What is your surname?”

“Mortimer. Do harpies have names?”

“I haven't the slightest idea. Are you married?”

“Not at the moment. What is your name, harpy?”

“Stop calling me that! I just told you I was a princess. I am Dagmar Marie Sophie, the daughter of Prince Christian of Sonderburg-Beck, the granddaughter of the Duke of Leesbury, and you, sirrah, may refer to me as ‘Her Serene Highness.' Do you understand?”

He smiled to himself, pleased he had tricked her into telling her name. “You need warts if you're going to be a proper harpy.”

“Gah!”

He heard the harpy stomp away, muttering to herself and slamming a door behind her. He chuckled silently to himself, feeling oddly contented for a man who had a lead arm and cold toes, and was tucked into a warm, cozy bed deep in the confines of hell. Perhaps he'd take another little nap, just so he was refreshed when the harpy next came to torment him.

Dagmar was worried. She didn't want to tell Julia just how worried she was, because Julia was a world-class worrier and, once started down a path, would worry to the point that Dagmar wanted to scream. But worried she was, and for once, that emotion was centered on something other than her own dire circumstances.

She considered the man who lay in her bed. He had been exceptionally dirty and covered in dried blood since the doctor that Julia had fetched hadn't felt it necessary to wash any of the muck off the Englishman. Dagmar, mindful of her mother's teachings, waited until the doctor left, and the man—Leo, that was his name—had lost consciousness before she fetched a bowl of water and, with Julia's blushing, gaze-averted help, managed to wrestle the man out of his upper garments.