Authors: The Ladys Companion
The widow nodded, averting her eyes in embarrassment. “I wanted you all to think that I was in control of things.” She looked at Susan again, reaching for her. “The ink is too faded now! I have sat with those letters for a year now, and I must hear them! I have no other family around me except these ghosts . . .” Her voice trailed off as she gestured weakly at the letters on the bed.
Moved to tears, Susan grasped Lady Bushnell’s hands and stared down at them until she felt controlled enough to speak. “It will be my delight to read them to you.” She looked at the widow then, her voice more firm. “And not only tonight, but any time you wish.” She glanced at the letters. The writing was faded, but she knew it was not beyond her capacity. “Only let me get a shawl and bring another lamp close to the bed. And perhaps some shoes; my feet are cold.”
“No wonder! Did he yank you out of bed?” Lady Bushnell said as she arranged the letters, some right side up, some not.
Susan nodded and laughed. “It’s a good thing I don’t sleep in just a chemise!”
“Or less!” Lady Bushnell said, joining the fun. “I have an idea. My daughter and I used to read together in bed.” She made a move to pull back the coverlet.
“Then we shall, too, if that is your wish,” Susan declared. “But first, a lamp.” She brought the lamps from the desk and dressing table and put them on Lady Bushnell’s nightstand. “Very good.” She added more coal to the fire in the hearth, then climbed in bed with Lady Bushnell, wondering what David Wiggins would think if he could see them. And where are you, David? she asked herself. Please hurry with the doctor.
The widow lay still, her eyes closed, exhausted by the double exertion of speech and confession. She opened them when Susan slid into the bed beside her, then settled herself lower, and closed her eyes again.
Susan looked at the letters in her lap, righting the upside-down ones, reading the salutations. “These are mainly letters to your daughter?” she asked in surprise.
“Yes, this batch,” the widow said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. “For a while, she lived in a convent school in Lisbon. There are some letters from my husband, when he served in India with Wellington and I was left to chafe in Calcutta with a baby while he took to the field. Charles was born in India.”
“I would like to travel someday,” Susan said.
“No, you wouldn’t, my dear,” said the widow, amused. “You’ll be a wonderful homebody.”
Susan smiled and pulled out another letter. “And here is one from your son.” She squinted at the date and title. “Louisiana? My goodness.”
“Wretched place, wretched battle,” Lady Bushnell muttered. “Trust Americans to hide behind cotton bales! Can you imagine?” She sighed, and shook her head. “Don’t read that one. I think that too little cannot be said about the Battle of New Orleans.” She make a dismissing gesture. “I want to hear of Spain.”
“Very well, my lady,” Susan said, tucking the letter from Louisiana at the bottom of the pile. “Here is one. ‘Retreat from Burgos, somewhere west and south of Salamanca, November, 1812,’” she read.
“That one, yes, that one,” Lady Bushnell murmured.
Susan edged the lamp closer to the letter, cleared her throat and began.” ‘My Darling Lizzie, How happy I am that you are well and safe in Lisbon, even if you are not intrigued by Pythagoras and profess that Latin is a humbug and you cannot tell the verbs from the objects.’” She looked at Lady Bushnell. “I gather she was in school then?”
The widow nodded, her eyes still closed, a slight smile on her face. “And loathing every moment of it! After the third time she ran away to join us on campaign, Edward relented and let her stay. Please continue.”
Amused, Susan read on. “‘We have been retreating and retreating. For all that Hookey says that a good general knows when to retreat and to dare to do it, I am heartily weary of it. It is a sad business, too. We leave so much behind to lighten the load. It is everlasting hardtack, acorns mashed, boiled, sautéed, and stewed, and endless pork barely cooked enough to stop the squeal. The rains damp out the fire before anything is well done.’” Susan looked up from the page. “Acorns?”
“They taste surprisingly like roasted chestnuts.”
“ ‘We have blown each bridge we crossed, the last one a Roman structure at Valladolid. Think how that would have bothered your grandfather, Latin scholar that he was!’ Not Lady Elizabeth, however,” Susan said to Lady Bushnell.
“No! That child was only happy in the saddle,” the widow said, her features more relaxed now. “Excuse me, Susan, but Edward once wondered if we could have conceived her on horseback. I told him he was dreaming, of course! But she was a daughter of the regiment. If only Charles . . .” she began, then stopped.
Susan thought of the bailiff and his remarks about young Lord Bushnell. So Lizzie had the heart for combat, and Charles did not? she reflected, looking at the letter again.
“Here I am. ‘It is wine country; between Burgos and Salamanca we have passed any number of vats full of the harvest. Finally, one Dragoon could stand no more. He and his comrades fired their pistols into a vat. You should have seen the men break ranks and line up at the bullet holes like pigs to teats! Your father brought me a drink in his hat.’”
“It was so good that I could overlook the hair tonic,” Lady Bushnell said, her voice dreamy now. “I wanted more, and Sergeant Wiggins gave me half of his. In a tin cup,” she added, chuckling. “He always had a better sense of what was proper.”
Susan turned over the letter. “‘I will send this from Salamanca, if it is possible. Do study harder, my love, and try not to chafe the nuns so much. Love and kisses, Mama.’”
“I sent it on with Wellington’s dispatches from Salamanca,” Lady Bushnell explained, her voice more energetic now, as if she gathered strength from the letters. She struggled to sit up, and Susan fluffed the pillows behind her. “Then we started the worse part of the journey, Susan. The French were everywhere, trying to beat us to Ciudad Rodrigo and the border. Look for that letter. I believe it is dated December 10, 1812.”
Susan shuffled through the letters. “Here it is. ‘Dearest Lizzie, It is mud all day and all night. We sleep in it, the men march in it, we drink it. We are hounded by chasseurs, who cause such trouble in the rear. We were cut off yesterday and forced to hide in the woods until dark. Corporal Frasier even gave me a loaded pistol. We moved faster after that, stopping for nothing. Sergeant Wiggins’ woman was in labor then, and we dared not halt. I think I will hear her in my sleep, screaming and screaming in that springless baggage cart.’”
Susan stopped and put down the letter. I was seventeen years old that winter, she thought, living warm and safe and still hopeful of a comeout. My biggest worry was whether I would get a blue dress or a pink one at Christmas. “What happened?” she asked, not caring if Lady Bushnell heard the ragged edge to her voice.
“She labored for three days and could not deliver that baby. They died,” Lady Bushnell said simply. “All the men tried to help Sergeant Wiggins dig their grave, but he said he would do it by himself, and he did.” The widow took hold of Susan’s hand. “In the rain. Every now and then he would stop and just wail. I wonder if it was a Welsh thing,” she said.
Or a lover teetering on the raw ledge of grief, Susan considered. What a life you have led, sir. No wonder you crave the peace and solitude of your wheat. “It is so sad,” she said, then surprised herself by bursting into tears.
Lady Bushnell let her cry, then with a slight smile, held up a corner of the sheet. “We can wash these tomorrow,” she said as Susan blew her nose fiercely, then scrubbed at her cheeks.
“Tomorrow? You’ve decided you don’t want to die tonight?” Susan asked.
“No, I don’t,” Lady Bushnell agreed. “We have too many letters to read.”
Susan continued reading, following the retreat to Ciudad Rodrigo, then to safety over the Portuguese border and behind the works at Lisbon. She forgot to worry about David and the doctor, or whether Lady Bushnell would survive the night. They curled close to each other, the widow’s feet on her legs for warmth as she read the letters. The hours passed, the clock ticked on serenely, and Lady Bushnell seemed at peace, absorbed in the letters, breathing evenly. Susan felt as though someone had taken out her eyeballs, dipped them in sand, and replaced them. She read on, jumping from year to continent as Lady Bushnell rode with her beloved army again.
The clock chimed two. Susan looked up, thinking she heard footsteps, but it was just rain scouring the windowpanes behind the drawn draperies, “‘Poor Colonel Whitehead, Lizzie,’” she read, raising her voice a little to be heard over the rain. “‘He went to vast trouble to procure such a beefsteak most of us could only dream about. It was hissing merrily in the pan when a six-pound shell dropped down from nowhere and sent the steak into a better world.’” She smiled. “It seems to me, Lady Bushnell, that soldiers worry mainly about battle and food, and I am not sure which is more significant. What say you, my lady? My lady?”
She was almost afraid to look down at the woman curled beside her, but then she heard the reassurance of even breathing, and just the hint of a snore. Thank God, she thought as she pulled the coverlet higher around the frail shoulders and sank herself lower in the bed, exhausted with reading and worry. She gathered the letters quietly together, careful not to rustle the paper.
The letter from Louisiana was at the top of the pile now. She looked at it, then glanced at Lady Bushnell. “January 22, 1815, aboard the Statira,” she read silently, the fading page close to her face. “Dear Mama, I have supervised the stowing of Generals Pakenham and Gibbs in rum casks, sealed against the return to London and grieving families. On, Mama! We could get no closer than five hundred yards to the Americans behind those damned cotton bales. Where did they learn to shoot like that? I cannot tell you what happened to the men, but they began to fire in column. Column! Even poor Lizzie would have known not to do that! I could not rally them after General Gibbs was killed, and they ran. You have never seen such murderous fire.
I do not ever wish to hear of New Orleans again.
And now you write in your letter of November 15 that I am to command Papa’s dear Fighting Fifth, now that he is gone? Mama, I cannot. Please, may we talk about this when I see you next at home? Yrs. in haste and sorrow, Charles.”
The anguish in the words leaped off the page at her. Susan hastily pushed the letter to the bottom of the pile again and looked at the sleeping widow, her eyes troubled now less with exhaustion than great unease. What did you tell him, Lady Bushnell, you who have the heart and spirit of a soldier? Did you remind him of his duty? Did you flog him with words from room to room until he caved in? Did you dare to assume that just because he was your dead husband’s son, he was fit to command his regiment? Lady Bushnell, how could you?
The bailiff woke her again, but this time his hand was gentle on her back as she snuggled close to Lady Bushnell. She thought his lips just touched her cheek, but she could have been mistaken, because she was dreaming about soldiers.
“Susan, wake up,” he whispered, his hand warm on her back. “I’ve brought the doctor, and the Skerlongs will be here soon.”
She reached up and touched his face to let him know that she heard, then carefully disentangled herself from Lady Bushnell. “She was cold and wanted me to get in bed and read her letters,” she explained to the doctor, who was peering close at the sleeping widow. “She said she felt more calm when I was lying close by.”
She thought she heard the bailiff say, “I am sure I would not,” as he turned away, but her mind was still fuzzy with sleep. She got up slowly, careful to tug down her nightgown and acutely aware of her undecorous appearance. What seemed perfectly necessary during last night’s emergency struck her as almost ludicrous now, especially with Lady Bushnell slumbering so peacefully, the picture of old age propriety.
Wishing earnestly for a robe or shawl now, Susan stood beside the bed and watched the physician. “She really frightened us last night,” she offered, aware of how lame it sounded.
To her relief the doctor nodded. “I do not doubt that for a minute,” he replied. He looked at the bailiff. “I had my suspicions when you summoned me after her fall.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Long night, Wiggins, long night. Now, if you will excuse me, I will see if I can do Lady Bushnell any good.”
Susan started to leave, but he touched her arm. “I would rather you remained.”
“Let me get a robe,” she said. “Mr. Wiggins, could you build up the fire? I’ll be back in a moment.” She hurried down the hall, took a moment to refresh herself, then stood by her window in robe and slippers, watching the dawn make its early false attempt. Against her own will, she thought of the Battle of New Orleans, with its smoke and fog and terrifying accuracy of frontiersmen’s muskets and frightened men marching in columns and firing long before they should have. And there was Charles Bushnell, no leader of men, his own deficiencies uncovered by the death of his commander, with no idea what to do. “It is too bad,” she said as she drew Charles’ name on the icy pane and circled it before leaving the room.
David waited for her outside Lady Bushnell’s door. “I’m tired,” he said as he leaned against the wall. “Used to be I was fresh for forty-eight hours, but now . . .” He shrugged. “Peace makes me soft.”
She looked at him, her mind and heart still on poor Charles, and tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, David, the things I have learned this night,” she began. “Charles . . . Young Lord Bushnell . . . was no leader of men.”
“I’ve already told you that. And knowing that, I wonder why he took command that spring before Waterloo.”
“I think I can tell you, but it will have to wait.” She opened the door, then looked back at him. “Where did you find the doctor?”
“Delivering a crofter’s baby far away from here. That child didn’t particularly want to make an appearance, so I had to wait.”
He turned bleak eyes on her, and she was reminded of his sad part in Lady Bushnell’s letter. How hard was it to cool your heels in the crofter’s and listen to a woman in travail? No matter; she knew she never needed to ask. The answer was in his eyes. Impulsively, she held his hand for a moment, whispered, “I know,” then went inside and closed the door behind her.
Lady Bushnell was awake now, resting demurely in the center of the bed, her letters still scattered around her. “I am feeling fine,” she assured the doctor with a glance of determined defiance directed at Susan when the man began to rummage in his bag. “Never better. It must have been a touch of indigestion last night, Dr. Pym.”
The doctor gave a noncommittal “Hmmm,” practiced in its neutrality, and removed a slender tube from his bag. The widow’s eyes widened. “I am fine,” she insisted. “I have seldom been better.”
“Lady Bushnell, you are a prevaricator of the first water, and I do not scruple to tell you,” Dr. Pym said smoothly. “Miss Hampton, do me the honor of pulling aside Lady Bushnell’s frills just slightly and positioning this tube where her heart is. I will, of course, not look, Lady Bushnell!”
***
“You were right to call me,” the doctor said to Susan and David as they stood in the hall later. He moved aside for Mrs. Skerlong to hurry in with breakfast on a tray and good cheer on her lips almost before she entered the room. “Although she is not in obvious distress right now, there is still some irregularity to her heartbeat. It is certainly angina pectoris, and would indicate other cardiac maladies incidental to advancing years, and less easy to diagnose.” He rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “You must inform young Lady Bushnell at once.”
“Oh, but surely . . .” Susan began.
“At once,” he repeated, then fixed the bailiff with a stare. “Perhaps I was unwise to listen to you after her slip on the stairs. I should have insisted then that Lady Bushnell make that final move to the family estate, where she can be watched over day and night.”
“It will kill her to sacrifice her independence!” Susan burst out.
“It will kill her to stay here!” Dr. Pym argued, exasperated, out of sorts, and looking for the world like a man who wanted his bed. “My dear Miss Hampton, I’ll give you and Mr. Wiggins three days . . .”
Susan burst into tears and threw herself on his chest, sobbing, crowding so close to the doctor that he had no choice but to put his arm around her or topple over. And once his arm was around her, suddenly it became his problem.
“Now, see here, Miss Hampton . . . oh, do not cry . . .!” He cast a desperate glance in the bailiff’s direction, but it was a wasted effort, because the bailiff was minutely examining the wallpaper as though it were a new discovery, and humming to himself. “This unmans me, Miss Hampton! Oh, very well, one week!”
Susan managed to detach herself from the physician. “Oh, thank you, Dr. Pym!” she exclaimed, careful to keep her dry eyes averted. “I can’t tell you what this means!”
The doctor took her by the shoulder and shook his finger at her. “And if a week from today I do not receive a missive from you or Mr. Wiggins, stating that you have done as I said, I will personally go to London and deal with young Lady Bushnell!” He nodded to the bailiff, who was standing closer now. “Sir, if you would send someone to the apothecary in Quilling, I will have a compound stirred up for Lady Bushnell that will ease her angina. Good day now.”
With a nod and one last uneasy glance at Susan, who was still sniffing dangerously, he trotted the length of the hall and clambered down the stairs with a velocity surprising in one of his years. When she heard the front door close, Susan began her own inspection of the wallpaper.
She was appalled at her behavior; she had never done anything so blatant before. Perhaps some men are simple, she considered. I wouldn’t dare attempt such a stratagem with the bailiff.
He seemed to read her mind, which further disconcerted her, because it was not the first time. She was beginning to think that was the problem of dealing with a man who knew women as well as the bailiff did. Now, someone like the vicar would be forever in the dark if she attempted subterfuge. But the bailiff was speaking.
“Susan, that was the most . . . the most . . .” Words failed him for a moment. “Don’t ever try that on me.”
“Why would I do that?” she asked. It was an innocent enough question, and she wondered why her cheeks burned from the asking of it. Can it be that I think it is a useful tool, or is it that something tells me I’ll find much better ways of getting what I want out of the bailiff? she considered as her face flamed and he laughed.
She was spared fumbling around any more conversation when Mrs. Skerlong opened the door, her face serious. “Lady Bushnell is this close to sleep now, thanks to that draft from the doctor, but she wants to see you two for a moment.” She opened the door wider.
Lady Bushnell’s eyes were closed and her face relaxed and calm, likely the result of the sleeping potion. She opened her eyes, patted the bed, and Susan sat down. She held Susan’s hand.
“My dear, thank you for putting up with my crotchets this night,” she said, her voice low and dreamy.
“I didn’t mind a minute of it,” Susan said, and meant every word.
Lady Bushnell held up her hand to the bailiff, who grasped it, a half smile on his face. “But now you’ll sleep, my lady, and we promise to tiptoe around and not disturb you.”
She nodded and closed her eyes. Susan got up to go, then sat down again when Lady Bushnell tightened her grip.
“My dears, I have two favors to ask of you,” she said. “Simple things, really.” She opened her eyes, as close as she could come to a look of mischief, with the doctor’s sleeping powders doing their work.
“Say on, my lady,” said the bailiff.
“You and Tim the cowman can get my harpsichord up here sometime tomorrow, and Susan and I will resume our lessons as soon as we have rested a little. Susan, don’t sigh and bite your lip like a baby! I wish Hamptons had some backbone!”
The bailiff laughed. “I am certain we can do that. And the other thing, my lady?”
“I want to go to Waterloo,” she said in the same conversational tone, but drowsy now, her words elongated. “Do you realize I have been on every major battlefield the army has fought over for the last two decades, except that one? Arrange it, Sergeant Wiggins. I want to see where Charles died.”
“Well . . .” He hesitated and she tightened her lips into a straight line and looked daggers at him. “Perhaps when you’re better, Lady Bushnell.”
“Arrange it,” she repeated, then closed her eyes in sleep. Her hand relaxed, and released Susan’s fingers.
***
David closed the door behind them and walked slowly beside Susan. “She is planning a bolt across the Channel to Waterloo, and
we
have to tell her that she’s about to be incarcerated at the family estate?” he asked no one in particular as they strolled along as though it were the middle of the afternoon. “Oh, Susan.”
Oh, Susan indeed, she thought, her mind foggy with sleep. “And I have bought us a week’s time for what? David, she will be so disappointed in us, so betrayed when she ends up on a golden chain of young Lady Bushnell’s forging! And all this done out of kindness. Oh, I am provoked.” She sniffed back her tears and glared at him. “But I am not going to waste my tears on you, sir! It would be quite useless.”
“Quite,” he agreed. He steered her to her room and followed her inside. It should have surprised her, but at the sight of her bed she felt her bones start to melt and she forgot about him.
“I am so tired,” she said, looking at her pillow almost lovingly.
“So am I,” he agreed. “Go to bed, Susan. I’m sure Kate Skerlong will hold our porridge until the noon hour.”
She nodded, shucked off her robe, and crawled into bed, too tired to object when the bailiff tucked the covers around her and then sat on the bed. “You need to know something,” she began as her eyes closed.
“Hmm?”
He sounded so close, and then she realized that he had flopped back on her bed and was lying draped across it, his feet dangling over the edge. She was so fuddled that it seemed perfectly logical. She wiggled her toes down until they met the resistance of his body outside the covers, then stopped.
“She can’t read anymore. She’s been fooling us with those letters on her lap,” Susan said as she turned onto her side and tucked her legs closer to her, since she couldn’t stretch out with the bailiff lying there.
“What?” The bed jiggled as he turned over. She could feel him flop back again, and his voice sounded disgusted. “And here I think I am so clever and take care of her so well! I had no idea.”
She opened her eyes and raised up on her elbow so she could see him in the faint light of earliest dawn. “She had me read some of her letters to her while we waited for you to return with Dr. Pym. Oh, David, her son’s letter from New Orleans is a study in anguish! Charles was so desperate to not ever command men again, and I know she forced him into it.”
“And that is why we got Charles at Waterloo, I suppose,” he finished. He reached out and rested his hand on her ankle as it lay outlined by the covers. “She was the warrior and he was not.” He patted her ankle.
“I don’t want to be alone like that when I am her age, with nothing to comfort me but letters I cannot read,” she said, offering no objection when his fingers remained on her ankle. He didn’t really need to rub it that way, but it would take too many words to object.
“Well, you could have accepted my offer,” he said.
“But I didn’t,” she reminded him as she closed her eyes. “I read about Jesusa on the withdrawal from Burgos. Oh, David.”
His fingers were still then, but remained resting on her ankle. His sigh was so huge she felt it through the mattress.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
He was silent so long she thought he had fallen asleep, except that his fingers were massaging her ankle again. “Never mind. It was a long time ago.”
“Not so long,” she said, drowsy again with the rhythm of his fingers.
“Long enough. Jesusa was a wonderful part of my life.”
She knew he was near sleep, too, because his voice was slow and heavy. She shifted her foot, wondering if he would let go. He did, but she discovered that she missed his fingers. “Did you love her?” she asked.
He nodded, scooting himself farther onto the bed and raising up on his elbow. “She could love me cross-eyed, Susan,” he said frankly. “I cannot begin to express what a relief she was to me after the terror of a battle. I could forget everything but reveille in her arms.”
My blushes, she thought. Why is this man so blunt? The gentlemen she was acquainted with would perish with mortification before they would describe a relationship with a woman in such terms. Then again, a woman would never have to wonder what was on David Wiggins’ mind. She thought of her own kind—the bows, the simpering, the smirks, the quizzing, the games—and smiled. I could ask this man anything, and he would tell me. He would even tell me if he loved me, if I asked him. I do not know if I am that honest. Or that brave.