The Lady’s Companion

Chapter Nineteen

I cannot believe I married such an idiot, she thought as she walked fast down the lane past the Waterloo wheat, and over the brow of the slope. I think if I had a sharp object in my hand, I would do him damage if he followed me. And he had better not follow me.

She looked over her shoulder then, wishing that he was behind her, even as she had wished him to hell only seconds before. “You numbskull,” she said at the top of the rise. “You haven’t even the good sense to follow me! Why was a woman ever plagued with such a husband? Well, never mind.”

She took off her apron and stuffed it in the crotch of a tree beside the main road to Quilling. I will walk until I cool off, then I will go back and apologize, she thought. Of course, I don’t know that I can apologize for being a Hampton, she reasoned as she walked along, scuffing at the pebbles in the road. But I can ask your forgiveness for doubting for even one moment that you loved me.

“That’s the only thing I am really sure of right now,” she said out loud, and felt immeasurably better. She stood still a moment, thinking about turning around, then decided against it as embarrassment washed over her again like a cold bucket of water. How could I be so hateful? she asked herself. And how could you say such a mean thing back?

All love and moans and groans aside, it’s hard to be married, she decided as she walked thoughtfully into Quilling an hour later. She wasn’t wearing a bonnet, and her face felt uncomfortably warm. She looked away from the sun, feeling the odd puffs of wind that blew here and there, as if as confused as she felt. The sky had a greenish cast to it and she felt a moment’s uneasiness. I should go right home, she considered.

But she was tired from the walk and the exertion of all that anger. With another frown at the sky, she went inside the public house. It was cool and dark, as she had hoped it would be. She sighed and sat down at a table, grateful there was no mail coach stopped now, with travelers clambering for attention. I shall sit here and feel sorry for myself for a few minutes, then go home and apologize to my dear husband. She smiled to herself. And he had better apologize to me, or I’ll...

“Would you like some tea, Mrs. Wiggins?”

It was the innkeep. She smiled at him and shook her head. “I never seem to come here with money for tea!”

He grinned at her, went back to the counter, and returned with tea. “I think I can trust you or David to stop by with a coin, next time you’re in Quilling.”

She gave him a grateful look and sipped the tea. While the cares of the world didn’t exactly roll off her shoulders, they did loosen up a bit. She looked at the brew in the cup. I wonder what other people in the world do without tea? she asked herself. They can’t imagine themselves civilized. She blushed a deep red. Not that I was so civilized an hour ago.

“Mrs. Wiggins... is everything well at the manor?”

She looked up at the innkeep, a question in her eyes. “Sir?” She put her hand to her hair then, realizing how wind-blown and blowsy she must look, she who never let a pin get out of place, except when David, drat him, played with her hair. And here I am without bonnet or gloves, she thought in dismay. No wonder he is worried.

So much concern deserved a straight answer. “No, no, we’re all fine at Quilling Manor,” she assured him, then took a deep breath. “It’s only that I’ve had a dreadful quarrel with my husband, and I stormed off the place.”

The innkeep chuckled and pulled out a chair. “May I?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He seated himself. “A bad fight?”

She rolled her eyes. “It was a brawl! I can’t believe how rude we were to each other.”

What am I doing saying this to an innkeep? she asked herself as she took another sip. She glanced at him then, and could see only sympathy, and a lurking good humor that made her glad all over again that she lived near such a friendly village. “It was awful. Ghastly.”

He nodded, serious enough, but with that smile playing around his lips. “So ghastly that you cannot go back and make up?”

“Oh, no! It’s just...”

“... hard to swallow your pride, Mrs. Wiggins?” he asked, his voice kind.

She nodded. “Hard for him, too, I think,” she said in a small voice.

“Welshmen are a trial, so I hear,” he agreed, shaking his head. “And we all know David’s past. He was quite a blackguard in his younger days, and you know those army men.”

“He’s a wonderful man!” she exclaimed, leaping to the bailiff’s defense. “And as for the army, there never was a better sergeant, I am sure! And if you could see him with his wheat, and the sheep, and...” She paused and looked at the innkeep, watching his smile grow larger and larger. “Oh, sir! I’m a goose.”

He laughed. “Only a little one, a mere gosling.”

She finished her tea, pushed the cup away, and rested her chin on her hands. “You’re married, I know. Do you ever have disagreements with your wife?”

The innkeeper leaned back in his chair. “Oh, ho, so now it’s just a disagreement?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “But I wanted to rip his arms out and beat him with them!” She paused. “For a few minutes.” She leaned toward the innkeeper. “I hope you’ll overlook this silliness, sir.”

The innkeeper smiled and looked around the room vacantly. “Did someone just say we had a conversation? Funny, I disremember it.”

She gave the innkeeper her sunniest smile and rose to go when the whole building shook with a clap of thunder. It was followed by a tumult of rain. She sat back down in surprise.

The innkeeper went to the door and looked out “This is a relief for us, isn’t it? I own I do not like it when the sky turns green and it’s hotter than Dutch love. Thank God the storm’s broke.”

She went to the door and peered out. The street was deserted now, with people seeking shelter in doorways and under awnings. The rain thundered down, breaking the oppression that had hovered all day. She watched it with equanimity. When it stops, I can walk home in the cool now, she thought.

A sudden blast of cold air from the north made her take a step bade from the doorway. The innkeeper closed the door against it and went to the window with her. “I don’t like that,” he muttered, looking intently to the north. “Someone’s getting a load of hail right now, I don’t doubt.”

She nodded in agreement, then sucked in her breath so suddenly that he stared at her in consternation. “The wheat!” she gasped. “Oh, the wheat!”

She wrenched open the door and ran into the street for a better look up to the north, up the road she had just stomped in such anger. The innkeeper followed her into the street and took her arm, but she shook him off. “I have to go home,” she shouted, over the wind and rain. “I have to.”

“David would want you to wait,” he insisted, even as he released her arm.

“No, he wouldn’t,” she contradicted. “I know him much better than you.” And I know what that wheat means to him, she thought as she ducked her head against the worst of the rain and ran up the road. It’s every dream he’s ever had, and it’s his salvation from Waterloo.

She was soaked to the skin before she left the village, but she ran on, stopping only long enough when her shoe strap ripped to fling off both shoes, tug up her skirts and run faster. The lightning frightened her, but it was a fast-moving storm, and left only flickers of light and sullen thunder to accompany the pounding rain. Her side ached as she ran toward the farm, past the turnoff to the sheepfold, and into the barley field to save a few minutes. And then she was over the rise and staring down at the Waterloo wheat, holding her side and trying to catch her breath.

She gasped in horror at the sight before her. The wheat, beautiful and lime green only an hour ago, lay flat and churned into the ground. Hail littered the field like canister shot. If a mighty army had fought over the field before her, she knew it could not have looked worse. Words failed her, even thoughts, as she stared at all that destruction then sank to her knees, utterly devastated. When she caught her breath, she sat back on her heels finally, and smoothed her hair away from her eyes, thinking that if she could see better, maybe it wouldn’t be as horrible.

It was worse. Every stalk seemed bent and disfigured from the storm. As she grieved and cried, she saw the bailiff walking slowly up the slope, his hands held out, palm down, as though he could only stare in shock and measure his phantom wheat still. She didn’t think he saw her, a muddy little figure toward the top of the slope, so she stood up and started toward him, slipping, but running faster and faster until she threw herself into his arms and nearly bowled him over backward.

“Suzie!” he said, his voice hollow with pain. “Suzie,” he repeated, her name a caress this time. “Suzie,” he whispered, and her name held the whole world in it.

She could only burrow her face into his shoulder and cry, so he clung to her until she was silent. Unable to look at him, she wiped her eyes on his soaked sleeve. “I am so sorry about the wheat, David. How can you bear it?”

She didn’t really think he could hold her any tighter, or closer, but he did. “Wheat? Who cares about the wheat, Suzie? It’s you! Can you forgive me for being so rude? I love you.”

Her eyes widened, and then she understood him perfectly. “Oh, David,” she whispered. “I’m more important than the wheat right now?”

“Oh, God!” he exclaimed, hugging her to him again. “I can plant this stuff again. It’s you I can’t replace, Suzie.”

The rain poured down and she felt herself sinking into the mud, but she never felt safer or more secure in her life than at that moment. “I’ll gladly forgive you, my love, if you’ll forgive me.”

“Done, then,” he said, “and over and forgotten.”

From the comfort of his soggy embrace, she looked at the field. “This is terrible.”

“It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” he replied. “Not by half.”

“Waterloo?” she murmured.

He kissed the top of her head. “Oh, no, Suzie, no. The worst sight in my whole life was your face on the stairs when I said those rude things.”

“But everyone knows how dreadful Waterloo was!”

He took her arm and started down the slope with her. “It was just a battle—granted, a huge ordeal—but still just a battle. I did my job, got my pay, and even a medal, too. But you’re my wife, and absolutely bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” He kissed her muddy hand. “The two don’t compare.”

She could only sigh and stare at him. “David.”

“That’s it?” he asked after a longish pause.

“Yes. I can’t think of anything else to say.”

They moved slowly down the slope. She stopped at the bottom and looked back at the wheat. “Will you plow it under and try again next year?”

He gazed at the destruction, his lips pursed, nodding to himself. “I have a better idea, Suzie. I’m going to leave it alone, and see what happens.”

“David, it’s dead!”

He turned her around and started her toward the manor again. “Since I swiped that handful of wheat from the granary at La Haye Sainte, I’ve been tinkering with it, adding strains of strong wheat from around here, and from Yorkshire and Kent. Let’s see how sturdy it is. Call this my ultimate experiment, if you want.”

“It might come back?” she asked, then looked over her shoulder in amazement.

Amused, he pointed toward the manor. “Let’s give it time, Suzie. Like us.”

She tried not to spend too much time looking at the wheat throughout the month of July, but without much success. She moved the desk in Lady Bushnell’s room so she wasn’t facing the window anymore, and that helped, but evenings found her looking, even though her devotion to that battered field amused the bailiff.

“I think you’re more worried than I am,” he said one night when they were in bed, drowsy from a day of summer work.

She backed herself more firmly into his slack embrace and tugged his arm over her. “Since you don’t seem to consider this one of your major decisions to worry about—I will remind you of that conversation—then someone must!”

“Silly,” he said, idly massaging her breast, then resting his cheek on top of hers. “Then here’s a matter of major importance for you: I’m feeling a huge urge to give you my best efforts right now.”

“I can tell,” she said mildly. “Well, if you refuse to worry, then I suppose I should humor a lunatic.”

She did, of course, with the greatest of pleasure. When he slept beside her, warm and heavy, she thought about Lady Bushnell. Each day took them closer to the end of the reminiscence, and each day saw her grow weaker, but continue to soldier on.

Susan kissed David’s shoulder and wrapped her arms around him as he stirred and muttered something. Lady Bushnell knows the end is near, she thought. The widow had said as much to David only the day before as the two of them sat beside her bed as she dictated her story to Susan. They had finished the last battle on Spanish soil, and were beginning the march through the Pyrenees that would lead to death and the end of the colonel’s story. Susan could see how the ordeal exhausted her, but when the woman refused to quit, Susan pleaded a headache. I’m not lying, either, she thought. I don’t feel so good myself.

“Let’s stop now, Lady Bushnell, for I am tired, even if you are not,” she murmured.

“Very well, Susan,” the widow said. “You can get my powders now.”

Susan did as she was bid, but stood still by the bureau, glass in hand, when the widow motioned her bailiff closer. He sat on her bed then, his hands on either side of her in a gesture so intimate that Susan felt tears in her eyes. Oh, Lady B, are you father and mother to both of us? I have not been much of a lady’s companion, but you have been a parent to me... and my husband.

The widow put her hand on David’s cheek, while Susan swallowed the lump in her throat. “My dear sergeant,” she began, her voice so weary. “I will not pester you about Waterloo anymore.”

“I wish I could have obliged you, my dear.”

She patted his cheek. “I know.” She turned her head slightly for a glance that took in Susan, too. “I must accept the fact that I could not go everywhere my dear army went.”

In the week that followed, they were diverted momentarily by a letter from Aunt Louisa, thanking Lady Bushnell for sending three hundred pounds to keep her wretched brother from Newgate, and assuring them that it would never happen again.

“Until the next time,” Susan said when she folded the letter. “Oh, my lady, thank you for saving him.”

Lady Bushnell nodded. “You must deal with him next time, Susan, you and your husband, and I fear it will not be easy.” She patted Susan’s hand, her eyes wistful. “I hope you will learn, in time, to forgive him for ... for not meeting your expectations.” She sighed. “Few of us do, I fear.”

“I don’t know that I can forgive him,” Susan said honestly.

“In time, my dear, in time,” the widow whispered, then closed her eyes, weary even of conversation.

It was a week of almost superhuman effort for Lady Bushnell. The widow dictated only in short sentences, her hand pressed to her chest most of the time, as if to block out continual pain. She called David sergeant now, and through her own grief, Susan was not sure that she even knew him as bailiff anymore.

“I cannot bear it,” she told her husband on the stairs as they went up after dinner to sit with her.

“You must, of course, Suzie,” he murmured, his arm around her. “I was so busy with the barley harvest today, I forgot to ask you at dinner: Is she almost done with the reminiscence?”

“We finished it this afternoon, David. It’s over now.” She began to cry.

He sat with her on the stairs, his arms around her until she could dry her eyes, square her shoulders, and march into the room with him.

To her surprise, Lady Bushnell was sitting in her chair by the window, the mound of letters in her lap, and the green case with the Waterloo medal on top.

“I’m tired of this room,” she announced, and to Susan’s relief, her voice sounded strong again. “Sergeant, I want you to take me out to that slope. Susan, you go ask Tom the cowman to take the chair. Sergeant, you can carry me.” As she smiled at him, the years seemed to tumble from her shoulders. “I remember that you carried me once, didn’t you? After Bussaco, when the river was high?”

“I did.”

Susan didn’t dare look at him. She knew that voice.

They did as she ordered, Tom carrying the chair and putting it where David quietly directed. Tom nodded to the widow and hurried back down the slope, shaking his head. The bailiff set Lady Bushnell in the chair, still clutching her precious letters and the medal case.

She was silent as she looked over the Waterloo wheat, watching it dance in the early evening breeze. It had returned, as its planter had predicted, battered but whole, the grain heads heavy now with the fruit of summer. Here and there were bare patches where the pounding had been too great, but the rest of the field stood and waved its own challenge to the elements.

“You were right about the wheat,” Lady Bushnell said, reaching up her hand for the bailiff to hold it “You are not always right, though. I ask one thing more of you, Sergeant Wiggins.”

“ Pues, le pídame, dama ,” he said, surprisingly, in his bad Peninsula Spanish.

She flashed him a smile that stripped away more years, until Susan had to turn away to keep her heart from cracking in two. Lady Bushnell, I love you so much, she thought. You are the bravest of the brave.

“Was I wrong to send Charlie to the regiment? Was he a coward at Waterloo? Be truthful now, you rascal, I beg of you.”

Susan bowed her head and looked away from the wheat to the field beyond, where the sun was starting to set. Please, David, do the right thing, she petitioned in silence.

“Yes, you were wrong. He was a coward and unfit to command us at Waterloo,” David said, his voice low and wrenched out of his body by the roots. “A lesser engagement he could have handled, but not Waterloo. We stayed alive because of Colonel March.”

“And you?”

“And me. And the other sergeants who didn’t make it out.”

It was a lot to digest, and Susan was not surprised at the silence from the chair. She turned around and leaned against David’s back. “Thank you a thousand times,” she murmured against his shirt. When she felt him tense, she knew Lady Bushnell was struggling to speak. She closed her eyes and listened with her heart.

“Do you think Charlie will understand that I only did what I thought was best?” she asked, in a voice destroyed with grief. “He was born into a family of warriors, so he had to be one, too. The times demanded it. Didn’t they, sergeant?”

“ S í , dama .”

“But tell me please, was he shot by his own? I have heard it rumored, no matter how you’ve tried to protect me. I must know all, Sergeant.”

“No, my lady. He died in battle. He was not shot by his own.” Lady Bushnell sighed then, a great sound of relief. “Thank God for that.” Her voice changed then, taking on authority. “Very well, Sergeant, I wish you and your wife would leave me alone here until the sun goes down. Go away for a while.” She managed a chuckle. “Susan, you should have brought a blanket with you. I have seen from my window what you and the sergeant do, when the mood was on you, and you thought I was sleeping!”

Susan laughed, took her husband’s hand, and kissed it. “That only encourages him. Come, Sergeant, let’s leave your dama alone for a time.”

He nodded, and released the widow’s hand. He kissed her on the cheek, pausing there a moment until she chuckled. “Sergeant, don’t you dare cry. I’ll lose all faith in the regular army, if you do! Kiss me, Susan.”

She did, determined not to cry.

“You weren’t much of a lady’s companion,” the woman murmured, her hand against Susan’s cheek. “You’ll never be a pianist, and I’m not sure modem novels are for me.”

“True. Actually, I felt more like a daughter, Lady Bushnell.” Susan dug deep within herself. “I love you, you know.”

“I know.” Lady Bushnell straightened herself. “Thank you for these letters. Now, go on. Take the sergeant somewhere for a stroll.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you might tell him what I’ve been suspecting, if you haven’t already.”

“How did you know?” she asked, suddenly shy.

“I’ve had two of my own, and I know the signs, my love.”

Susan led the bailiff away, and to her relief, he did not protest. She tugged him farther up the slope and over to the trees beside the road.

“Tell me what?” he asked when she finally allowed him to stop. They leaned against the fence beside the road. “I think I know, but please, let’s hear it.”

“Maybe someday you can write ‘Waterloo Seed Farm, Wiggins and Son,’ on the top of your order books,” she said quietly. “Or maybe ‘Daughter.’ Women are good at growing things, too.”

“Obviously you are,” he said after he kissed her. “Thank you.”

She rested against the fence, then turned to face him. “Now you owe me the truth, David.”

“I already told it. You heard me.”

“You did, but not all, I’m thinking. Charlie was killed by his own. You told me that before. Even in the end you could not tell her all the truth.”

He looked back at the hill as though he could see Lady Bushnell through it. “I do not think an old woman needs that much truth. She had enough information now to square herself with her son—and he with her.”

Susan placed herself in front of her husband and pulled him close to her, hooking her thumbs into the back of his trousers so he could not move away from the fence. “I know you.”

“I should think so,” he temporized, his expression cautious.

“I know you,” she repeated more firmly. “Who are you protecting still? I want to know. Is it... is it Colonel March?” She leaned her forehead against him for a brief moment. “Is it you?”

He hesitated, then looked down at her. “I can’t lie to you, can I?”

“No, you can’t. Your lying, stealing, thieving, poaching days are long gone, Sergeant, and you know it.”

He waited, and thought, and she did not press him further. Finally he put his arms around her. “It wasn’t anyone in the regiment, so there’s no shame there.” He sighed. “He had to die, Susan; we all knew it. This wasn’t the same regiment that fought in the Peninsula. We had green troops. You could see them weaken with each charge of French cavalry up that slope.”

He shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of the memory. “And there was poor Charlie, screaming and scurrying around inside the square, trying to burrow under corpses.”

She shuddered, unwilling to imagine the horror.

“The person who killed him didn’t belong to the regiment.”

“Who?” she demanded.

“Joel Steinman,” he said simply.

“God, no!” she breathed. “But... but you said. His arm...”

“It wasn’t all the way off then. That came later at the field hospital.” The bailiff’s arms tightened around her. “Joel watched Charlie through one charge, and how Major March and Sergeant Mabry and I worked like Turks to plug holes here and there, draw the men in, keep them battle ready, tell them to aim and fire. It just happened that I was watching him when he did it.”

“How?” she asked, barely breathing out the question.

“After that charge, he took a pistol from Lieutenant Chase’s body, propped it on his knee, and drilled Charlie right through the forehead.”

David spoke more freely then, as if the confession released him. His tone became almost conversational. “It was the neatest hole you ever saw, Susan. An engineer couldn’t have spaced the thing better, right there between his eyes.”

“Joel.”

“Joel. I’ll never forget the look on his face. He put down that pistol—it was slippery with his blood, dripping in it—and leaned back against that stack of corpses with a serenity I could never even attempt. Susan, I think the army missed out on a great warrior in Joel Steinman.”

Quietly, arm in arm, they walked back over the brow of the hill and stood, watching the Waterloo wheat in the last light before the sun set.

“She’s asleep, Suzie,” the bailiff said as he looked toward the chair.

“No, my love, she’s dead,” Susan said. “Stay here.”

To her relief, he did not follow her. Lady Bushnell sat with her head forward against her chest. Her eyes were closed, but she seemed to be staring at the letters in her slack grasp. As Susan watched in silence, grief, and love, the breeze picked up some of the letters and carried them into the wheat, to lodge fast against the stalks. She watched them go, peace in her heart.

The medal box had fallen to the ground. She picked it up, running her hand over the velvet cover, as Lady Bushnell had done so many times. She took out the medal, shaking it to the length of its ribbon, admiring it again.

“For heroes,” she whispered as she put the medal around Lady Bushnell’s neck. “For heroes.”