“I’ve just got to lie down for a bit,” he said. “I couldn’t manage the stairs.”
“Yes, sir,” Will said doubtfully.
“Like old times, ain’t it, Will? You helping me to bed because I can’t walk any longer?”
“No, sir. This is different.”
Tristan considered, lowering himself gingerly to the pallet. “I suppose so,” he said. “Is the house locked up?”
“Yes, sir. You were the last to come in. The women are locked up in their room, and Mr. Reston is in bed. He was fretting, sir, but he’s asleep now.”
“Fretting about me,” Tristan said. He lay his head on the pillow and looked up at Will. “You’re tired, Will. Go to bed.”
“Yes, sir. Gratefully.”
“All our guests tended and quiet?”
“Yes, sir. Fed and washed and sleeping.”
“Good. Rest up. There will be plenty of work for us tomorrow.” He was almost asleep now, the rough pallet as comfortable as the deepest of feather ticks. “Plenty of work. Piles of work. Mountains….”
He dreamed
, nightmares of wandering through mountains of bodies, piled sky high, looking for Charles. He’d catch a glimpse of what he thought was him, and climb up the piles, stepping on arms and legs and faces bloody and waxen in death, and hear the moans and cries of the wounded, who all seemed to be buried inside the hills of bodies. But when he’d climb to where he thought he’d seen Charles, it would be a stranger with dead eyes, and he would know Charles was lost, lost forever in the mountains of corpses and soon-to-be corpses. Weeping, he would climb back down and wander more, lost himself among the dead.
When morning finally came he was not much more rested than he was before, but the watery sunlight was a relief from his dreams. He managed to get himself up to his room, the sole spot in the house aside from the maid’s room not occupied by wounded soldiers, since even the room Will and Reston shared had a few extra pallets in it, and washed and changed his clothes. At least he felt a little more refreshed after that, and went down the stairs without having to hold onto the railing.
Reston was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs and led him into the kitchen, where toast and eggs and ham were set on the table. He fell on them as if he were starving. In between shoveling eggs into his mouth, he asked, “What’s the word from the field?”
“Will’s gone to find out,” Reston said. “I sent him to the Richmonds’; we thought that their servants would have the most recent reports. Your patients are all stable; we’ve fed the ones that could eat and given them all water. Their dressings still need to be changed.”
“I’ll do that while we wait for Will,” Tristan said, “then I’ve got to go out and find Chamberlain. He was still working when I left last night.”
“Mr. Chamberlain came ’round about an hour ago. He said for you to stay home, that Mr. Maartens had told him that most of the wounded would be tended on the field, the fighting having stopped about midnight. The local doctors would be dealing with those that came in overnight, and they would call on you if they had need. Mr. Chamberlain also said he was going to go home and ‘Get around a beefsteak, then sleep for five hours, battle be damned.’” He coughed delicately. “That was a quote, sir.”
“Do we know the results yet?” Ham. Had Tristan ever appreciated the taste of ham before? It was amazing, sweet and salty and tender. “No. That’s right, you sent Will to the Richmonds’. God, I’m tired.”
“Perhaps you should take Mr. Chamberlain’s course of action, sir?”
“Perhaps,” Tristan said, folding a piece of toast around a pile of eggs and stuffing the whole thing in his mouth. Reston only smiled and poured him more coffee.
He was
just finishing up when the kitchen door burst open and Will flew in. “We’ve
won
!” he shouted, then he noticed Tristan sitting there and reined himself in. “Good morning, sir!” he chirped. “Boney’s beat and the Prussians are chasing him back to Paris!”
“Hurrah!” Tristan said, grinning at the footman. “Tell us more.”
“I don’t have much more than that, sir, just that the French made one last big push late last night, and thought they had us, but the Duke had kept some troops in reserve and they stood against them just when the French had thought they’d won through. Broke them entirely and crushed them between our forces and the Germans, just about ten o’clock. The Duke sent Blucher after them.” The jubilant grin faded from Will’s face. “I guess our troops were pretty badly shattered for the Duke to give the Germans th’ honor of pursuit. They say there are too many wounded to even take them off the field. Nowhere to put them.”
“Piles of wounded,” Tristan murmured. “Mountains….”
“Sir?”
“Never mind, Will. Go on.”
“Not much else to say, sir, only that the Duchess of Richmond told her majordomo to tell me to tell you that if you’d like to stop by today, she’ll be happy to give you what news she has. She said she’ll be receiving after lunch.”
“Thank you, Will.” Tristan pushed away from the table and rose. “Well. Excellent work, Will. Reston, see that the staff gets something in honor of the good news, and some rest. I’m going to take Mr. Chamberlain’s advice and sleep a little longer; if he comes by, wake me.” He nodded at Reston, Parks the cook-maid, and Will, then went back upstairs. Lying on the bed in his clothes, he stared up at the drapery of the bed curtains. The battle was over, won—at ten o’clock, Will had said. It was five now.
Seven hours. And no word from Charles.
It would have been a busy seven hours, he was sure. The Duke was a demanding master, and Charles’s job wouldn’t have been done just because the battle was. He was probably riding hither and yon, coordinating follow-up efforts for His Grace. Someone had said last night that a number of the Duke’s staff had been killed or wounded; that would have put more responsibilities on Charles’s shoulders. It would probably be three or four hours before Charles would have the opportunity to send word to Tristan. Maybe more. He should sleep, and when he woke, Charles would have sent word, or better yet, arrived. He would wake Tristan the best of all possible ways, with gentle hands and kisses, climbing into bed with him and holding him safe. Safe. The two of them, together, safe.
The thought gave him hope, and he drifted off into a more restful sleep this time.
But
Charles did not come. Early in the afternoon, Tristan had Brat saddled and rode out down the Waterloo road to seek his own answers, rather than getting them thirdhand from the Richmonds. The road was crowded with soldiers heading back to barracks, wounded limping along with the help of their compatriots, baggage wains, carts of wounded, even carriages that had been co-opted or volunteered to carry the injured. Brat picked his way along the muddy verge, shying at every opportunity, too fresh from being kept cooped up for several days. Tristan knew how he felt.
At every juncture, he heard the same information about the battle, and nothing about Charles. The farther he got from the suburbs, the worse the traffic got, so he turned back toward the city. When the way was clear, he gave the gelding his head, and if his vision grew blurry, he blamed it on the wind whipped up by Brat’s passing. He needed the exercise every bit as much as Brat; tired as he was, he needed this, the speed, the exhilaration, the freedom. He always found that the faster he went, the less he thought.
He didn’t want to think at all right now. If he could have flown, he would have, at a thousand miles an hour, faster and faster until he was nothing but a blur, a streak across the sky, a nothingness. Free, empty, mindless and careless.
There
was a strange man standing in front of the house when Tristan rode up. The groom came from the side garden at the sound of Brat’s hooves, and Tris dismounted, giving the reins to Michaels and turning to the soldier. He wore sergeant’s stripes on the shoulders of his muddy red uniform. “May I be of assistance?” he asked politely, then saw the rectangle of pasteboard in the man’s fingers. It was soaked with blood, but the embossed black letters were clear against the brownish-red stain.
Tristan Northwood
.
“I’m looking for Mr. Northwood,” the soldier said.
“I’m Northwood.”
“You’d be a relative of Major Charles Mountjoy?”
There was a roaring sound in Tristan’s ears. He clenched his fists against the blackness that threatened to overcome him. “He’s my brother-in-law.” His voice sounded very far away.
“My name’s Keighley. I’m with the 52nd. I found this in the major’s pocket so I knew where to come. He’s hurt, badly. He’s laid up at a farm not far from here, about ten miles out toward Wavre. If you know a doctor, you might want to bring him.”
“
Michaels!
” Tristan shouted, “bring my horse!” He demanded, “Where is your mount?”
“Not a cavalryman, sir. I walked….”
Michaels reappeared, Brat dancing alongside him. “Sir?”
“Major Mountjoy is injured and I’m going to him. I need you to fill the carriage with blankets, pillows, whatever you have, and drive it toward Wavre. We’ll meet you on the road. You, sir, will come with me.” Tristan threw himself into the saddle, and reached down a hand. Keighley stepped on his foot and scrambled behind Tris.
Just as he did, Derek Chamberlain came around the corner on foot. “Hi, Northwood!” he called. “Where are you off to?”
“The sergeant here has brought word of Charles. He’s injured, somewhere out on the Wavre road.”
“You’ll need transport. Can I help?”
“Michaels will follow with the carriage. But we probably will need help. Care to ride along with him? It’s only about ten miles; shouldn’t take more than an hour, unless the traffic out that way is as bad as it is westward.”
“Certainly. But you’ll need your medical kit. Particularly if the carriage is delayed.”
“Damn it! You’re right.”
“Hold on a moment,” Chamberlain said, and he ran into the house. He came back a moment later and tossed the bag up to Keighley. “Hang on tight to that, man. Tris, I’ll see you in an hour or so, hopefully.”
“Bless you,” Tris said, then, grimly to Keighley, “hang on,” and he kicked Brat, who took off like one of what Charles called “Whinyate’s rockets.”
He didn’t let himself think of Charles. He didn’t dare imagine what condition he was in, how badly hurt. He focused on keeping Brat moving, never more glad for the gelding’s energy and temper. They flew down the road, keeping to the center and out of the ruts as much as possible, although sometimes they had to resort to leaping to the verge to pass some vehicle struggling along in the mud. Thankfully, few; there wasn’t the traffic he’d encountered on the way to the battlefield.
Keighley hung on tightly, a steady, silent, balancing weight at Tristan’s back, one arm clamped around Tristan’s waist and the other around the bag with his kit. He’d apparently had some experience with riding pillion
ventre-a-terre
and neither shifted nor spoke during the whole ride. When he finally spoke, it was to shout, “There! There, sir!”
Tristan pointed at the crossroads. “Which way?”