Though at last I no longer burned alive with it, I was still weak and somewhat confused about my change of circumstance. I knew I was in Lucien's home and fell asleep not long after a recollection came to me of Lucien arguing with a doctor, refusing to allow me to be bled. This was confirmed by the doctor when I awoke the next morning. He chuckled. "No, wouldn't let me bleed you, and offered to— how did he put it now? Oh yes, he promised to draw my own claret if I caused you to lose one more drop of yours. Well, my fine captain, I'd as soon fight Boney himself than cross swords with the earl." My wounds, he told me, would leave me with a few scars and a permanent limp. "But only two days ago I tried to convince his lordship that your funeral service should be arranged, so you are in far better case than expected."
Not much later Lucien himself came into my room, under strict orders not to make his visit a long one. I told him I did not want to burden him with the care of a lame stepbrother who was weak as a cat and not of as much use.
"I shall fetch that doctor back," Lucien said, "and demand a return of his fee. He distinctly told me you were no longer delirious, but here you are, speaking utter nonsense!"
"Lucien—"
"No, wait! Tell me you aren't feverish, for I'm only allowed a short visit and I shall be driven mad by your nephew if he isn't allowed to at last lay eyes on his Uncle Edward."
"He's here?" I asked.
But my question was answered by the entrance of a small boy who, over his nursemaid's protests, opened the door and ran toward his father. He was the spit and image of Lucien. "Papa!"
"Your lordship," the flustered nurse said, "I beg your pardon! I'll take him right out again."
"Oh no, madam!" Lucien exclaimed in mock horror. "Leave him with me. My brother has seen enough warfare as it is."
She left us, and no sooner had the door closed than Charles's questions began.
Did I feel better? Yes.
Had I hurt my head? Yes, that was why I wore a bandage.
Had I hurt my leg, then, too? Yes.
Did a Frenchy hurt me? Yes.
He offered to send his father to hurt the Frenchy in return. I thanked him but said I would prefer we all just stayed home together for a time, for I had missed my brother, and would like to become acquainted with his son.
Why was my skin so brown? A soldier spends a great deal of time in the sun.
"That will do, Master Pokenose," Lucien said, causing his son to giggle. Obediently, though, Charles ceased asking questions. He sat quietly while Lucien discussed plans for removing to the countryside. Quite against my will I began to fall asleep. Charles brought this to his father's attention, which brought a rich laugh from Lucien. "Indeed, youngster, you are right. We'll let him rest for now."
I murmured an apology, stirring awake as I felt a small hand take my own.
"Papa says you're a great gun and we must help you to get better."
"My recovery is assured, then," I said, "but it is your papa who is the great gun."
Over the next three years, I would come to believe more and more in the truth of that statement. Fibbens was made my valet, a job that for some months involved the added duties of attending an invalid. I came to value him greatly. As my physical strength returned, though, it was Lucien and his son who would not allow me to retreat from the world. Charles's energetic encouragement and Lucien's refusal to permit me to mope over my injuries kept me from falling into a fit of the dismals. Before long I seldom thought so much of what I could not do as of what I could. Charles continued to delight me— I could not have been more attached to him if he had been my own boy.
On the night following Lucien's funeral, recalling my brother's life, I wondered how I would be able to comfort Charles over the days to come when the numbness I felt now would undoubtedly wear off.
When Lucien's horse, Fine Lad, had returned riderless to the stable three days earlier, a large group of men began a frantic search— servants, tenants, and neighbors. It was I who found him. I'd followed a route he often took through the woods when he rode for pleasure and discovered his motionless form along this path. He lay pale and bleeding beneath a shady tree— a thick, broken, bloodstained branch beside him. I did my best to staunch the wound on his head and to keep him warm even as I shouted for help.
All along the way back to The Abbey, the men who helped me carry him on a litter, and then to place him in a wagon, recounted several strange riding accidents of which they had heard. It was their way, I realized later, of trying to make sense of what seemed impossible— that Lucien, an excellent horseman, would be so careless while riding among low-hanging branches.
I had the broken branch with me, though, to prove it, as much to myself as anyone. And I would show it to Lucien, I vowed, and ask him what the devil he was about.
A fractured skull, the doctor said. Lucien never regained consciousness.
I knew the sort of blind rage that is the consort of our worst grief. I thought of burning the branch that had struck him. I thought of taking an axe to the tree, felling that which had felled him. I thought of shooting the horse.
I did none of these. Perhaps it was the horse's name that cleared my mind: Fine Lad.
Charles needed me.
That single thought cooled my rage.
Lucien's will made me Charles's guardian and trustee. I knew he did not merely want me to keep Charles's fortune safe and take care that he was sent to the best schools. I was to teach him what The Abbey meant to his family, what it meant to be the Earl of Rolingbroke, what he owed to his name, and owed to the memory of two good men who had held the same long list of titles before him. I had no fear that Charles would fail to be a credit to them— he was already so much his father's son.
* * *
That evening sitting before the fire remembering Lucien, I knew I would protect my young godson with my life. As the clock struck midnight, I vowed I would do my damnedest to keep Lucien alive in his memory.
I had no sooner made this vow than the library door flew open, startling me. Charles, pale and tearful, ran toward me, frantically calling my name. I opened my arms to him, taking him up on my lap and waving away the small army of concerned servants whose grasp he had eluded.
As the door to the library closed again, I tried to soothe him. "What's wrong, nipperkin?" I asked, certain that I already knew the answer.
"Papa's alive again," Charles sobbed.
"What?" I said, thinking I must have misheard him.
"Papa's alive. But he was dead, and now he scares me."
Was this some strange manifestation of a child's grief, I wondered? "What do you mean, Charles?"
The boy shivered. "I mean I saw him. His ghost."
I sought an explanation. "You were sleeping—"
"It was not a dream!" he insisted, with a familiar obstinacy.
I hesitated, then asked, "Charles, have you been speaking to the Banes?" The odious family was there— the dowager, Henry, William, and Fanny. The Banes had insisted on sleeping in a different wing from the one they had last occupied, although Henry now pooh-poohed the ghost story, saying it was undoubtedly one of Lucien's larks.
They had arrived, clearly, not so much for the funeral as for the reading of the will, and to say they were angry with its terms is to vastly understate the matter. Had William not intervened, the dowager, it seemed, would have been carried off on the spot by an apoplexy. "It is of no use, Mama," he said. "You should have known how it would be."
The dowager continued to bemoan her faithless nephew's lack of consideration for his own family, but not quite so intensely. Nevertheless, there was enough ill-concealed venom among the Banes to recall to me my first encounter with them, and I made sure Charles was never left alone with them.
"No," Charles said now. "I don't like them."
"You are a wise young man."
"Then why don't you believe me?"
"Did I say I did not believe you? Kindly refrain from making assumptions."
"What are those?"
"Er— don't believe you know something until you're sure you do know it."
He frowned as he puzzled this out, but he had stopped crying.
"Do you know, Charles, the more I think about this, the more I'm sure there is nothing to be frightened of here. Your father loved you very much and would never harm you."
"Yes," he said slowly. "And I have a great many things I should like to say to him that I have been thinking of these past few days. But one can't help but be frightened of ghosts, even good ghosts."
"No one can blame you for feeling frightened. I'm glad you came to me. I promise I'll protect you, Charles. Your father asked that of me, and I gave him my word that I would."
He sat quietly with me for a time, lost in his own thoughts. He was past the age when he wanted to be carried or held, which gave me some idea of how terrified he was now. I was sure he had merely dreamed of Lucien, but I knew he did not believe this to be the case.
"Do you think he was trying to tell me something?" Charles asked.
"Perhaps he was," I said.
"What?"
I reached for a packet of fragile papers lying on the small table next to us. "Let's see if we can guess. When I was fighting in the Peninsula, and your father and I were far away from one another, he wrote these letters to me. Would you like me to read them to you?"
He nodded, and I chose one of the letters Lucien had written about him. He was pleased and laughed at Lucien's comical descriptions of him as an infant, then asked me to read another. So we continued, until he suddenly said, "I smell smoke."
"You
have
been listening to your Aunt Sophia."
But before he could protest, I heard the shouts of the servants, and cries of "Fire!"
"We must help them put it out!" Charles said, jumping up from the chair.
I knew the same impulse, but what came quickly to mind were a series of drills that Lucien had insisted upon. I had always had the role of finding Charles in whatever room he might be in and taking him to safety. I used to argue with Lucien, saying that a man with a pronounced limp was hardly the most suitable person to be saving his heir, but he remained stubborn on this point. Remembering my vow of hardly more than an hour before, I grabbed Charles's hand before he was out of reach. "Your lordship," I said sternly, using the form of address which he knew to be a command to be on his best behavior. "You must not run toward the fire. You must allow me to keep you safe— just as we practiced. Come now."
I saw the briefest mulish cast to his face before he relented and allowed me to lead him out of the library. Fibbens, his face blackened with soot, was rushing down the stairs. "Oh, thank goodness!" he cried in relief. "Forgive me, captain— we feared the young master had returned to bed! His chambers are on fire!"
"My room!" the young master wailed.
"He will tell you more when we are all safely outside," I said, more shaken by Fibbens' announcement than I cared to admit. "What of the staff and the other guests?" I asked as we made our way.
"Everyone accounted for, sir. The fire has not spread beyond the young master's chambers. If you do not mind, I'd like to assure the others that his lordship is safe—"
"Yes, of course."
"Thank you, sir. Those who are not attempting to put out the fire should be downstairs shortly."
At the front steps it occurred to me that we were without cloaks, and Charles was without shoes. A fault in our drills, which had taken place in summertime. There had been little snowfall of late, but it was cold. I placed my coat around Charles's small shoulders— much to his delight— and lifted him into my arms.
Soon the Banes began to join us on the front drive. Aunt Sophia was wrapped in what I recognized to be William's many-caped driving coat. She'd not had time to put on her wig and looked a positive fright. Fanny seemed to have borrowed boots from one of her brothers but wore no coat— she shivered in a rather unbecoming nightgown. Henry appeared before us still fully dressed but rather well-to-live as the saying goes— from his unsteady walk, I suspected he had made substantial inroads on The Abbey's wine cellars. William too was dressed, although from his mother's criticisms, it was clear that he had remained in the building longer than she believed safe.
"And look! Your new coat from Weston— ruined!"
The expensive coat of blue superfine was indeed smudged. "Unlike others I could name," he sneered, looking reproachfully at Henry, "I attempted to make sure the old pile didn't burn down around my family's ears!"
Henry waved a vague hand of uninterest and stared at the building. Smoke had stopped billowing from the window of Charles's room. I prayed that meant the fire was under control.