With This Ring (15 page)

“
Very well, sir.” She removed her
cloak and put on the apron she had left on his bed the day before.
As the surgeon approached, Major Reed took her arm.

“
Miss Perkins, I really wish that
you would leave now,” he said, and she could not overlook the
concern in his voice. “I suppose it is one thing to sit among the
wounded, but these men are really desperate now, and ill beyond
redemption.”

“
And therefore in more need than
ever, sir,” she said as she gently removed herself from his grasp.
“I did not come day after day to ladle out broth, coo, and pat
hands, Major Reed. It follows that I have not changed, now that
they are all dying.”

Brave words, Lydia, she told herself
as she stood at the entrance to the lady chapel. She stood silently
for a moment, her hands folded in front of her, gathering her
courage.

“
If you’re determined to stay, sally
forth, Miss P.”

She turned around. The major was
close by and watching her, solemn, but with just a glint of
understanding in his eyes.

“
I may need a push this morning,”
she confessed.

“
Then, I will provide it.” He came
closer. “Miss Perkins, if you decide to marry me in the next day or
two, I’m certain I can be found.” He smiled and gave her a push.
“It would certainly forward my scheme of inheritance, and give my
aunt no end of pleasure to find out that I wasn’t
lying.”

“
But you were! Oh, bother it, Major
Reed. I do not know you, sir, and it’s quite out of the
question.”

He gave her another nudge, this time
with his shoulder, and stood much too close. “I contend that you
know me very well, Miss Perkins,” he said, looking entirely too
serious to suit her.

She shook her head and stepped away
from him. “Depend upon it, Major. You now get to reap the rewards
of a two-year-old joke on your relatives, unless an amazingly
compliant female—which I am not!—can be found.”

He nodded. “I suppose you are right.
Lying on my stomach at the Picton’s certainly did not produce a
wife, and my time is up here in London. Ah, well, Miss Perkins. Go
to it.”

With another shake of her head at
the folly of some people, she went into the nave. The rows and rows
of wounded were gone now, some men repaired, others released from
the army, but most dead and buried. The stubborn ones, in whom the
flames of life still refused to go out, were gathered together in
an area closer to the main altar.

There was warm water in a pail
beside the altar, so she took a pan from the altar, dipped some
water, and added a touch of vanilla extract from the vial she had
left there earlier in the week. Cook had given it to her. She took
a cloth from her apron pocket and put it in the water. “Oh, this is
puny remedy,” she murmured. “Lord, help me.”

If I were dying, what would I want?
she asked herself as she went down the rows with the few other
women who were as dogged in their duty as she. She wiped faces, sat
and talked, where the soldiers were coherent, and just sat where
others were not. I would want to know I was not alone.

It took her a moment to take the
hand of the first man who looked close to death. Like the other
women, she had busied herself in the last two weeks by cutting
hair, shaving and washing faces, and attending to the most
superficial of wounds that the surgeons would permit. There were no
more men remaining to laugh and tease and flirt just a little as
men did, no matter what their state of discomfort.

These were the dying now. They were
silent, for the most part, beyond the world but still inhabitants
of it in a curious way she could not explain, and which only left
her in awe. Fear left her, and was replaced with a feeling of
reverence. If mine is the last touch, their last connection with
the only world we are sure of, she thought, then let it be a gentle
touch, something perhaps like the one that ushered them into the
world.

The man was not from Battery B, but
as the census of veterans had continued to shrink throughout the
week, she knew of him. He was a sergeant, one of the late arrivals
from Toulouse. His hand lay hot and already lifeless on his rough
blanket. She hesitated only a moment before she took hold of
it.

Her grip was different from the
surgeon’s, who only took up a hand at the wrist to get a pulse. The
sergeant’s eyelids fluttered and then he opened them to look at
her.

“
Hello,” she murmured. “You don’t
mind if I just sit here, do you?”

After a supreme effort, he shook his
head. Another effort, and he spoke. She leaned far forward to hear
him. “Tired, miss?”

How can you joke? she asked herself,
her wonder far outweighing any squeamishness that remained. She
smiled, surprising herself with how easy it was to do, and wiped
his face with the vanilla-scented water. “Of course I am tired,”
she replied. “No one ever told me how exhausting soldiers
are.”

He smiled, and closed his eyes. She
held his hand hour after hour, tightening her grip when he seemed
to struggle with whatever was killing him, then loosening it when
the pain subsided. He died at noon with a sigh that went on and on.
The pain left his face, and his hand relaxed so completely that
almost it felt part of hers.

She did not feel inclined to move,
and she remained where she was. I am sitting in what is rapidly
becoming a charnel house, holding the hand of a corpse, and I have
never felt such serenity, she thought. Some part of her brain that
was not intensely occupied with what was happening to her found a
moment to think about Kitty and Mama, and their pouts and
precocities over the most minute irritations. I recommend St.
Barnabas’ strange catechism, my dears, she thought as she stroked
the man’s hand one last time and let it rest on the blanket. I
think even you would have to agree that we worry about the most
trifling matters.

She stood, trying to lift what felt
like blocks of wood from her shoulders, and remained in silence,
looking down at the man. “I know nothing about you, Sergeant,
beyond your name, and the fact that some overworked surgeon should
have removed your leg weeks ago instead of four days past,” she
whispered. “And I watched you face your last enemy with uncommon
grace.” His eyes were already closed, but she put her hands on them
for a moment. “And you gave me some inkling how I should face death
someday.”

She turned away in tears. Major Reed
sat close by with one of his men, watching her. He started to rise,
but she shook her head. In another moment she was seated beside
him, head bowed as she cried as quietly as she could.

“
Here.” He gave her his
handkerchief. Beyond a close look full of sympathy, he said nothing
more.

When the worst of her calamity
passed, she blew her nose and calmly tucked her hair back in place.
The major leaned toward her then, a slight smile on his face. “I
know you are better now. After years and years of living with my
sisters and other female relations, I have discovered that the
moment a lady smoothes her hair again, and makes herself tidy, she
is better.”

Lydia nodded. “How do you get used
to death?” she asked in a whisper.

“
I never do,” he replied promptly,
“which is why I would say that my Peninsular service has been a
trial, to say the very least. I take each death personally, Miss
Perkins, and I hate it.”

“
Then, how do you manage?” It was a
quiet question, but he seemed to be expecting it, as though he had
begun to anticipate her. How odd, she thought.

“
I used to get quite drunk, my
dear,” he said, “but on one of my sober days, I noted that the
drunkards among the officer’s corps seemed to have shorter life
spans than I wished for myself, so I stopped.” He sighed. “Now I
think of home, and grassy meads, and the door opening at my manor
house, and Mama coming out to meet me.”

“
You should be there now, sir,” she
said. “There isn’t any more you can do here. You’ve told me that
much.”

“
And been ignored by you, I might
add,” he said, and she had the grace to blush. “You are right; I
have been here too long.” His voice hardened. “And done little good
for these men, beyond adding my halfpenny’s worth to a report that
Lord Walsingham will present in all sincerity, and then file in
some box and place on a shelf. I will go ….” He looked at the
man lying on the cot. “… after he is gone.”

She looked, too, chagrined to see
that it was the private with the bad leg, the one who had joked
with her that first day, and grown increasingly quiet as the
infection spread. “I had not thought he would survive the night
yesterday,” she whispered, leaning close to the major. “I wish he
had not. Look how even his face is now swollen with the infection
from his leg. Oh, why did they not amputate?” She spoke more loudly
than she intended, but she could not help herself. She gestured
toward the body of the man she had just left. “And why was his leg
amputated too late? Oh, I do not understand!”

The major did not release the hand
of his private, but he took hers in his other hand. “Lydia, we know
so little. I leave it at that, else I would become more bitter and
cynical than I know I am already. You just have to let it
alone.”

“
I cannot!” she said, and the
ferocity of her voice startled her.

“
You must,” he insisted, and
squeezed her hand before he released it.

She sat in silence beside him,
wanting suddenly to lean her forehead against his shoulder, but
knowing much better. After lengthy reflection and inward
admonition, she turned her attention to the major, who was
beginning to stoop over again.

“
I thought you stayed at the
Picton’s for a rest,” she accused him. “You need to lie down, don’t
you?”

He nodded. “General Picton’s private
surgeon decided to tinker with me. Were you aware of that portion
by my right shoulder that was so red?”

She nodded, remembering how he
favored it.

“
He opened the wound
again …”

“
Oh, God!”

“… 
and extracted a portion of
my uniform, which the saber had driven into my back. That was
causing the infection.”

She looked at him in horror, and he
shook his head at her concern. “It’s a common problem, Miss P, so
don’t get bug-eyed! My shoulder began to feel better immediately. I
am certain I am almost well.” He returned his attention to the
private. “Unlike this poor devil, I had the advantage of a better
man of science.” He touched the soldier’s cheek. “And now I go to
one home, and he to another.”

She sat a moment more in silence,
then took a deep breath. “Major Reed, you will undo all your
surgeon’s good work if you do not lie down! I can sit here in your
place. His name is Charles, isn’t it? And he is from
Bath?”

He nodded. “Yes. A workhouse there.
There is much more, of course, but we are reduced to these
essentials, eh, Charlie Banks?” he said.

There was no response, but from the
major’s tone, he had expected none. “Go lie down, sir. I can
manage,” she said, getting up. In another moment she was seated in
the major’s place, running the cool cloth over Charlie’s face. When
she finished, she took his hand in hers.

The major stared down at them both
for a moment more, then made his way back to the lady chapel. She
watched him go, making sure that he lay down upon his cot. As
though I could do anything about it if he did not, she thought. She
noted with amusement that he carefully retied the white satin bow
on her hatbox before he lay down.

Men are strange creatures, she
thought. Kitty regularly boasts that they are simple beings, but in
this, as in other areas involving thought and observation, I think
she comes up short. “Go home, Major Reed,” she whispered. “You
cannot do any more here. Nor can I, if ever I could.”

The afternoon wore on longer than
most afternoons. She had hoped to leave early, to get the smell of
the hospital from her skin before she dressed for the Capitulation
Banquet. Instead she sat in silence, listening to the sounds of
revelry and bands playing in the streets outside as London went
wild for the victors who had sent Napoleon to exile on Elba. Some
fashionables came into the church for a look around, but they did
not stay this time, driven out, she supposed, by the odor of
putrefaction that was everywhere and unavoidable.

The sound of revelry faded as the
shadows lengthened, and all she heard was the shallow breathing of
Charles before her. It became more rapid, and she nearly called for
Major Reed. I will wait, she told herself, even as she felt her own
fears returning. Major Reed will never recuperate if he is
continually jumping up and down to satisfy my own nerves, she
reasoned. Willing herself into a steely sort of serenity, she
carefully wiped the dying man’s face and smoothed the hair back
from his forehead. “You will do now,” she whispered. “You are as
clean and tidy as I can make you, and I will not let
go.”

To still her own anxiety, she hummed
to him, and noticed that he seemed to relax. One or two times he
forgot to breathe. She held her breath until he began again, but
the rhythm was off now, and she knew he was close to
death.