Chapter Thirteen
She sat up, fully awake. Without another word, the bailiff pulled her from the bed and into the hall, hurrying with her to Lady Bushnell’s room. He paused outside the door, still gripping Susan’s arm.
“I was late in the succession house. When I was walking back to my place, I noticed Lady Bushnell’s light on. She’s never up that late.” He spoke rapidly. “I came upstairs and tried the door, but it’s locked, and she didn’t answer when I called.” He released her arm. “I want you to go in first.”
She nodded, understanding his position, and stood back against the wall as the bailiff tried to shoulder his way in. “Damn!” he muttered under his breath when the door would not give. He stepped back then, and kicked the door, which crashed open, the lock sprung.
Susan hurried inside, her heart in her throat, but Lady Bushnell was not in sight. She ran to the other side of the bed and stared down at the widow, who lay there looking up at her, her hand on her chest, her eyes huge with fright.
“Oh, Lady Bushnell,” Susan exclaimed in a soft voice. She quickly pulled down the widow’s nightgown, which had ridden up around her knees and nodded to the bailiff, who stood on the other side of the bed. “You’ll have to help me, David,” she said.
The bailiff came around the bed, knelt down beside the widow, and picked her up gently. With a sob of relief, she turned her face into his chest and tightened her arm around his neck. “I knew you would come,” she said, her voice scarcely louder than a breath.
Susan felt tears start in her eyes as the bailiff swallowed, then held the widow close for a brief moment before lowering her carefully to the bed. Susan hurried forward to pull up the blankets and smooth down the pillow, then stepped back as the bailiff sat on the bed, holding tight to the widow’s hands. “Get her some water,” he ordered Susan over his shoulder.
Surprised at the steadiness of her hands, Susan poured the widow a drink, and handed the cup to the bailiff. She rested her hand on his shoulder for the smallest moment, and felt her own fear dwindling. “Just a sip now, Lady Bushnell,” said the bailiff in a tone that allowed for no argument. Your sergeant’s voice? Susan thought as she sat in the chair next to the bed. “Very good,” he said when the old woman obliged him. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Never taking her eyes from his face, the widow nodded. She gestured weakly to the pile of old letters strewn by the bed. “I was going to ... to read these before I turned out the light.” She paused, as though the sentence had worn her out, and pressed her hand to her heart again. Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
The bailiff raised her other hand to his chest and held it there. “No hurry, Lady Bushnell. Take your time, please.”
She smiled at him and closed her eyes for a moment. The bailiff looked at Susan and she could see his jaw working from the tension he was trying so hard to hide from the widow. Impulsively she leaned forward and touched his leg, the only part of him she could reach without getting up.
“My heart... I felt like I was suffocating, and all the time, my heart was racing,” the widow continued, her eyes, large now with amazement, on the bailiff again. “I got up to get a drink of water and I fell.” She closed her eyes again. “It was like that other time.”
The bailiff frowned and was silent for several moments, absorbing what she had said. “Do you mean this is what happened before, when you told me you tripped on the stairs?” he asked, his voice firm.
She sighed like a child caught in mischief and forced to confess. “It is. I told you I tripped on a loose rug. I didn’t tell you it was because my heart was racing and startled me.”
“Lady Bushnell...” he began, then stopped. “Oh, never mind,” he concluded, resignation evident in his tone.
“It’s happened a few other times,” the widow admitted. “I was ... afraid...”
”... I would tell your daughter-in-law,” he concluded with some asperity. “Lady Bushnell, you are a scamp and a rascal and old Lord Bushnell would scold you up one side and down the other, if he were here!”
She nodded, smiling now. “Yes, he would, wouldn’t he?” Her voice grew serious again. “But he’s not here, none of them are. And neither is the army, and the battles are over, and they have all left me behind! How dare they do that?”
She was silent then, the tears spilling onto her cheeks. Chilled to the bone by Lady Bushnell’s anguish, Susan knelt by the bed and wiped her eyes with the edge of the sheet. She rested her head against Lady Bushnell’s arm. “David has to go for the doctor, my lady. I’ll stay here with you,” she murmured.
“Sergeant, I insist that you do nothing of the kind. And that is an order!” she said, her voice weak but determined. “I’ll have you court-martialed!” she added, clutching his hand tighter.
“I wouldn’t care, madam,” he replied gently. “I’m still going for the doctor. You can dismiss me tomorrow.”
“And I will,” she insisted, but there wasn’t any fervor behind the threat. “You can be sure of it.”
David chuckled and leaned forward to kiss Lady Bushnell’s cheek. She stared at him. “Sergeant, you’re taking liberties,” she warned, but made no move to release his hand.
“I am for sure, but if you’re letting me go tomorrow, it doesn’t matter! Now hush and let Susan give you another sip of water. I’ll be back with the doctor.” Gently he loosened her grip on him and got up. He went to the door and with the slightest gesture, indicated that Susan follow him.
She got up quietly, rested her hand for a moment on Lady Bushnell’s cheek, then joined the bailiff at the door. He took her hand and tugged her into the hall.
“Just keep her quiet,” he whispered, his lips close to her ear.
She nodded, then turned toward him. “What if she dies? I’m afraid.”
He grabbed her in a quick hug then. “You’ll do, Susan. Take care of her for me.”
“I will,” she promised as he released her, “but I’m still afraid.” He was backing away from her down the hall. “Think on this then, Susan. You look really lovely in flannel, but I don’t care much for sleeping caps.”
You are a rascal, she thought as she went back into the bedchamber, took a deep breath to fortify herself, and sat in the spot the bailiff had vacated. Lady Bushnell was crying now, and Susan wanted to cry, too. She wanted to run back to her room, barricade the door, and wallow in her own fear. Instead, she took a firm grip on Lady Bushnell’s hand and wiped her eyes again.
“Is your heart still racing?” she asked, dreading whatever answer was coming.
Lady Bushnell nodded, the fright in her eyes unmistakable.
“Then let me help you sit up,” Susan said. “I’ll put this pillow behind your head. There. Is that better?” Please let it be better, she thought.
To her relief, Lady Bushnell nodded. “I could use another sip of water.”
Susan gave her another drink, dabbing at the comers of the widow’s mouth when half of it dribbled out. She tucked Lady Bushnell’s hair into her sleeping cap again and retied the strings. “The doctor will be here soon, and then we’ll see,” she said.
To her dismay, the widow began to cry again, noisy tears of childlike frustration layered over with equal parts of resignation and misery. Alarmed, Susan wiped her eyes again, murmuring soothing sounds that had no words as the widow clutched at her heart and gasped for breath. Casting aside the proprieties, Susan hugged the woman close to her own heart, as though willing its steady beat to communicate its regularity to the afflicted one. With a sob and a strength Susan would not have credited, the widow’s arms went around her and they rocked together on the bed.
In a few minutes, the tears turned into hiccups, and then silence. Susan held the woman close, running her hands over her back and feeling the delicacy of her bones, the fragility that age distilled. “That’s better now,” she soothed, letting the widow rest against the mounded pillows again.
Lady Bushnell closed her eyes for a moment, her hands tight around Susan’s. “Whatever happens, you must not tell my daughter-in-law,” she insisted, her voice weak but charged with fervor that came from a reservoir deep within.
“I do not know that the matter will be in my hands,” Susan whispered honestly, unconsciously matching the tone of her voice to the widow’s as though they shared a great secret
“It must be!” Lady Bushnell said, her eyes wide open and fierce, “else she will use this as the final excuse to pull me into her orbit and keep me there.”
“My lady, it may be that you need more attention than either David or I are capable of,” Susan tried to explain. “How wonderful, really, that she cares so much.” At least she will not look at you like Aunt Louisa, measuring your worth and value and begrudging food in your mouth.
“I will be an exhibit!” the widow hissed. “I will be a national relic!” She took Susan by the ties of her nightgown and pulled her closer. “Miss Hampton, I do not think you can understand this, but I have ridden with giants and I do not intend to be fed pabulum or turned into a shrine to be visited and tiptoed around!”
She lay back then among the pillows, exhausted by her exertion. She closed her eyes again, and spoke with the greatest effort. “My daughter-in-law will coddle me and cosset me and talk baby talk.” She seemed to sink into the pillow. “It is not a warrior’s end.” Eyes still closed, she turned her head restlessly toward the door. “Sergeant Wiggins would understand. He knows what it meant to be part of that adventure.” She slapped her hand feebly against the bedclothes. “I wish that you had gone for the doctor instead of him. He understands.”
So do I, Lady Bushnell, Susan thought. Oh, you don’t know. I feel all the cowardice of the Hamptons welling up inside me. Papa would blench and run, offering a thousand excuses with a charming smile. Aunt Louisa would bluster and gobble, and then before you know it, would have backed out of the room. But I must sit here because David told me to.
And she wanted to, Susan discovered with a shock as she went to the basin for a washcloth, squeezed out the moisture and added a drop of lavender. She wiped Lady Bushnell’s face, humming to herself something she remembered from Mama. The tune went back beyond her memory, before there were even words.
“Lullabies, Miss Hampton?” Lady Bushnell said finally, her voice more calm now.
“Is that it?” Susan asked, smiling in spite of herself. The lavender calmed her. “See now, if the sergeant were here, all you would get would be military tunes.”
To her gratification, Lady Bushnell smiled and opened her eyes. Her hand relaxed over her heart, but her eyes went to the door again. “I would like to hear his footsteps about now, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “He has a nice stride.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Lady Bushnell chuckled, then tightened her hand over her heart again. “Susan, imagine watching a whole army with that certain swing to their walk. Is it any wonder we did not so much mind riding in the rear?”
Susan laughed out loud, leaning forward to touch her forehead to Lady Bushnell’s. “Now you confess what kept you following the drum!” she teased gently.
The widow smiled back, her eyes dreamy now, the hurt and pain lessened. “Miss Hampton, do you know what it is like to be loved?”
Susan shook her head. “I wish I did,” she replied frankly, then grinned at Lady Bushnell. “Of course, there is the vicar...”
“No, not him,” the widow said almost impatiently. “He would probably think he had to ask permission to hold your hand, and then only after sitting in my parlor for a year or two.”
It was too many words at once. Susan brought the glass to her lips again for another sip. Silence followed, a silence so long that Susan thought she slept. The bailiff did not ask my permission to kiss me, she thought as she rested her hand lightly on Lady Bushnell’s arm. I think he could have done anything he wanted without a word of protest from me. “Maybe I could guess,” she ventured, her voice soft even to her own ears.
“In that case, get my letters,” ordered the widow, just the hint of command back again. “After all, if I am determined to die tonight, I want you to read them to me first. It has been so long.”
“But every day I see you with them in your lap,” Susan said. She knelt by the bed to pick up the letters closest to them, put them within Lady Bushnell’s reach, then went to the desk by the window, where she remembered others.
“Susan, let me give you some advice for when you are old.”
There was something so serious in Lady Bushnell’s voice that Susan returned to the bed and sat on the edge of it, the letters in her hand. “I like to think that I will appreciate useful advice,” she said. “No other Hampton does, so it must be a good thing.”
Lady Bushnell gathered the letters closer to her as a mother would gather her children. “When you are old, my dear, you may be surrounded by people who love you. Your children maybe there, your husband, too – and don’t look at me like that! I am certain you will find a husband.”
She held the letters close to her face for a moment, then rested them on the coverlet. “Or it may be that you will be alone, as I am, and relying on the help of paid employees.”
“Oh, but…” Susan began.
“Hush! I know David Wiggins cares about me; he always has. I am beginning to think that you do, too. But you are both in my employ, and that is not the same as family.”
“No, it is not,” Susan said simply.
“My advice is this, and perhaps it’s advice that you can use now: Don’t ever be too proud to ask for help.”
Lady Bushnell looked at her with a steady gaze as little spots of color blazed out from her cheeks, replacing her pallor. “So I am asking for your help now. If this is to be my last night, I want you to read my letters to me. They are all I have left of my loves, and it has been so long.”
Susan returned her gaze, confused at first, and then let out her breath in a sigh that came up from her bare toes as she began to understand. “I did not realize…we all thought…the letters on your lap,” she stammered, the words spilling out of her. “Oh my lady, a little trouble like this comes with age. We didn’t know it was so serious! Were you afraid that if David knew your vision was this diminished, he would tell your daughter-in-law?”
The widow nodded, averting her eyes in embarrassment. “I wanted you all to think that I was in control of things.” She reached for Susan. “The ink is too faded! 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 felt her voice grow strong. “And not only tonight, but any time you wish.”
She glanced at the letters. The ink was faded, but she knew it was not beyond her capacity. “Only let me get a shawl and bring a lamp closer to the bed. And perhaps some shoes. My feet are cold.”
“No wonder! Did he yank you out of bed?” Lady Bushnell asked as she arranged the letters, some right side up, some not.
Susan felt her face grow warm. “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.
“The we shall, too, is 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, 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 bed beside her, then closed her eyes again.
Susan looked at the letters, 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 moved 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 verbs from objects.’” Susan looked at Lady Bushnell. “I gather she was in school then?”
The widow nodded, 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. Such a sad business. we leave so much behind to lighten the load. We endure everlasting hardtack, acorns mashed, boiled, sautéed and stewed, and endless pork barely cooked enough to stop the squeal. The rains put out the fire before anything is well done.’”
Susan looked up from the page. “Acorns?”
“They taste surprisingly like roasted chestnuts. Read on.”
“’We have blown each bridge we cross, 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 our son Charles…” she began, then stopped.
Susan thought of the bailiff’s remarks about young Lord Bushnell, Lizzie’s brother. So Lizzie had a heart for combat and Charles did not? she reflected, looking at the letter again and finding her place.
“Here’s where I stopped, Lady Bushnell. ‘It is wine country. Between Burgos and Salamanca we have passed any number of vats full of the harvest. Finally, one dragoon could stand it no more. He fired his pistol into a vat. Others did the same. 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 from his hat.’”
“It was so good that I happily overlooked the fragrance of hair tonic,” Lady Bushnell remembered, 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 good sense of what was proper.”
Susan turned over the letter and continued. “’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 old letters.
She struggled to sit up, and Susan fluffed the pillows behind her. “Then we started the worst 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, moaning and screaming in that springless baggage cart.’”
Susan put down the letter, her mind and heart in turmoil. I was seventeen years old that winter, she thought, living warm and safe and still hopeful of a come out. My biggest worry was whether I would get a blue dress or a pink one for 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. He said he would do it by himself, and he did.” She took hold of Susan’s hand. “In the rain. Every now and then he stopped and wailed. I wonder if it was a Welsh thing.”
Certainly a lover teetering on the raw edge of grief, Susan thought. 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 burst 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 stated firmly. “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. They curled close to each other, the widow’s feet on her legs for warmth, as she read the letters.
Hours passed, the clock ticked on serenely, and Lady Bushnell seemed at peace, absorbed in the letters, breathing evenly. Susan felt as if someone had removed her eyeballs, dipped them in sand and replaced them. She read on, jumping from year and 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 windows 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 to a better world.’”
Susan laughed. “It seems to me that soldiers worry mainly about battle and food, and I am not certain in what order. 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, Susan thought, as she pulled the coverlet higher around frail shoulders and sank herself lower in the bed, exhausted with reading. She gathered the letters 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 and continued. “’January 22, 1815, aboard the Statira ,’” she read silently, the fading page close to her face. “’Dear Mama, I have supervised stowing the bodies 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?