Web of Love (11 page)

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.

 

T
HE 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 Blücher 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.

E
LLEN 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 Blücher 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.