Chapter 12 Toulouse
“Monsieur Darcy—Monsieur Darcy—êtes-vous réveillé ? Pouvez-vous m’entendre ?”
Fitzwilliam Darcy tried his best to swat away the annoying voice that was nattering away at him through a pounding headache, but it just kept droning on and on.
It took some time for the gentleman to work out that he was either addled, or the fly buzzing about his head was not speaking English.
It was all very confusing, and distressing, and confusing, and distressing—and—and—
He had just barely ascertained that he was going around in circles, or more likely going mad, when another voice interrupted.
“Darcy! Darcy! Wake up, old man! I can tell you from experience you do not want to be on our Babette’s bad side, and she seems to be losing patience.”
With a mighty effort, Darcy pried open the eye that hurt less than the other, though his addled brain would be hard pressed to say which one it was, and looked around, which in retrospect turned out to be a mistake.
“Vous allez bien ? Vous souvenez-vous de moi ?”
Darcy shook his head in confusion. He thought the language was French, in which he had reasonable skill, but he could make no sense of her words at all.
The deep voice from a moment previously said, “She is asking if you remember her, my good fellow. I assumed if you still lived you must. She is a hard one to forget, our Babette, hard as nails, but pretty as the day is long.”
Darcy looked up, and had to admit that Babette, whoever she was, would easily pass as a beautiful woman in any situation.
She was not especially tall and looked more Scandinavian than French.
She had blonde hair, neatly done up in a bun and covered by a neatly starched cap.
She wore a simple dress in a solid pattern, though he would be hard pressed to guess the colour, since his eyes had trouble distinguishing pink from black.
She had a neat, white, starched apron over the top.
Combined with the fact that he felt as if he had been run over by horses, he made the leap that she was a nurse, and therefore he must be very ill indeed.
He tried to croak out something, but only managed a strangled, pathetic sounding cough, so the nurse called out to a man at the other end of a long room for help.
With the man’s aid they lifted him to a sitting position and gave him a drink of water, waited a minute, and gave him a bit more, all the time hammering away at him in French, and occasionally slapping his back if he started coughing.
When he was unable to answer, the deep voice he had heard earlier continued, “She seems right put out by your reluctance to answer. Can you not understand her?”
Darcy groaned. “I recognise it as French, but it is too fast for me to follow.”
The man spoke in French for a moment to Babette, who threw up her hands, yelled “Méride!” and stomped off, while the orderly helped him gently back to the bed.
“Looks like you get a short reprieve.”
Darcy looked around, and noticed he was in a long, narrow room, in a modest but solid bed.
His chatty companion turned out to be a man of around forty, lying in the next bed over, with one leg missing below the knee and heavily bandaged on the parts he could see.
The room was cold. A couple of fires cut down the chill, but it was obviously nowhere near summer.
His companion continued, “You had best not try to talk too much. Babette, who will not tell anyone her surname, will no doubt get Nurse Dashwood. She is half English, half French and speaks better English than I do. You speak adequate French, but may have forgotten it.”
Darcy croaked out, “And you are?”
“Ah, sorry, my good man. Sergeant Ralston, at your service.”
Darcy was exhausted. “Where are we?”
“Ah, you forget. They were concerned about your memory. They speak quite openly, probably assuming my French is as bad as yours, or perhaps my bringing you into the fold is part of their plan. Losing some or all of your memories, at least temporarily, is a common occurrence for a man with your affliction. I have been here a week, maybe ten days. I have to say I thought you would be feeding the worms half a dozen times. They were ready to drop you down the well to cool you down a few days ago, your fever was so bad. I gather you have been in and out of fever for some time. Not sure why they do not just give up on you, which would be an awful lot easier, no offence.”
“None taken.”
“This is apparently your second or third journey down the fever tunnel. I think Mlle Babette mostly keeps you alive as a personal challenge, because it would offend her pride to lose you after putting so much work into your sorry carcass, no offence.”
Darcy chuckled, which led to a cough, and he felt no need to take offence again. “And you?”
That was all he could manage, though he had at least a dozen questions.
“I will report what I can, though it is sketchy at best. You appear to be some sort of significant personage, or at least they seem disinclined to let you die. You are in Hospital La Grave in Toulouse. Been here for centuries. It was right popular during the plague years in the seventeenth century, though one time every single inhabitant died, which I suppose is not ideal. At any rate, I only know that because there was a corporal here who liked to natter on for hours.”
Darcy coughed, and tried to get a bit more water, but he did not have the strength, so he gave up.
“Might want to go easy on the food and water. Don’t worry—our Babette will keep you alive, and she will no doubt bring Miss Dashwood when she feels like it. You know Toulouse?”
Darcy shook his head, which was a mistake, but it was at least clearing a bit.
“We are eight hundred km south of Paris, the way they measure things. Four hundred miles for you and me, about one hundred miles north of the Spanish border. No idea how you got here.”
“How did you—” was about all he could get out without a coughing fit.
“Ah yes! Right! You see, the French take care of fighters from either side during wartime—right civilised of them, if you ask me. Maybe Napoleon is not all bad. I was with a cavalry company doing reconnaissance, and we got into a spot of bother. The rest got away, but my leg was shot up too bad. They hauled me here. We were fifty miles away, just north of the Pyrenees at the time, and I suppose they wanted to practise on me for whatever is coming up. There is certain to be something. Napoleon is preparing to invade Russia.”
“Russia!” Darcy gasped.
“Yes, who would have thought? But it is fine with me. He called up 120,000 conscripts end of December, and to my mind, I’d rather have them fighting Russians than Englishmen, but maybe I’m just getting lazy in my old age.”
Darcy croaked, “You do not look like a man who will be fighting either way.”
“No, you have me there. I suspect they’ll have me back training the lads before long, or maybe they’ll pension me off with a nice pretty wife,” he said, which led to the man laughing uproariously, as if that was the oddest idea ever conceived.
Darcy tried to chuckle along but lacked the humour.
He was just working his way up to asking something else when Babette returned, leading another, much taller woman of five-and-twenty or so.
The woman saw his look of curiosity and confusion. “Ah, Mr Darcy! Do you remember me this time?”
He scrunched his forehead in thought. “I fear you have the advantage of me, madam. I apologise.”
She laughed. “No need. It will come back—or at least it has the last two times, but I suppose I should introduce myself and explain, since it will make no sense to you.”
“I would appreciate that, madam.”
“Your name is Fitzwilliam Darcy. Do you remember that much?”
“Yes.”
“That is good, I suppose. You are an English gentleman of some wealth and importance from Derbyshire, despite your propensity to cosy up with lazy, no-good sergeants.”
Ralston laughed loudly enough to set Darcy’s teeth on edge, but he tried his best to smile, while what appeared to be a senior nurse carried on.
“I am Nurse Dashwood. As Mr Ralston has no doubt told you, I boast a French mother and English father, both sadly dead. I spent many summers of my youth in England, so I get stuck with all the English patients.”
“A pleasure to meet you, madam. I hope I have not been too much bother.”
“Not too much; though if you completely recovered, Babette and I would not be disappointed,” she said with a smile, then gestured to the other nurse, “and this is Babette. If you ask her surname, you will get a different answer every day of the week, depending on her mood, is that not right, Babette?”
The other nurse stared at her, and Miss Dashwood continued, “She speaks English well enough, but cannot be bothered.”
Darcy nodded carefully. “A pleasure to meet you, Mlle Babette.”
Dashwood continued, “You speak French, sir. You should make an effort, because Babette will not speak to you otherwise. A bit of the staff sergeant in her blood.”
“I shall give it my best.”
A young orderly of eighteen carried up a chair. Babette gave what looked like a cross between a cringe and a curtsey, and left, apparently to continue her duties, while Nurse Dashwood sat down, pulling a small notebook and pencil from a pocket hidden somewhere on her dress.
“Let us get to business, Mr Darcy. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
Darcy thought for some time, his head starting to clear just slightly. “I think I got married—or did I?”
The nurse frowned. “I was hoping for something later, though our physician says it is a throw of the dice. Your wedding was nearly three months ago. Shall I catch you up?”
“I would be immensely grateful.”
“Very well. It is the fifteenth of March, and you have been here since the start of February. You contracted typhus in December or January, though that is guesswork. Are you familiar with the disease?”