16. Do Not Halloo Till You Are Out Of The Wood.
DO NOT HALLOO TILL YOU ARE OUT OF THE WOOD.
The journey from Mayfair to the furthest reaches of Whitechapel had presented Miles with a microcosm of London within two rain-sodden hours.
It had begun with the elegant townhouses of the gentry, then given way to the commercial delights of Oxford Street, before his hackney had trundled down Great Russell Street, judiciously avoiding St Giles Rookery.
The smart area of Holborn with its ancient legal entities had passed – Gray’s Inn and the Old Bailey Courts – then, likely no coincidence, Newgate Prison.
Saint Paul’s Cathedral had loomed large through the rain, then set them forth into Cheapside – not so cheap as it was home to the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange.
Aldgate had come and gone, where the defensive gates to the original city of London had been situated, before his destination of Whitechapel had arrived, its spine being the Great Essex Road and a plethora of coaching inns.
The driver now trundled aside the white-painted Saint Mary’s Chapel, continued past the workhouse and halted at a long building with modest north facade and Doric porch.
With instructions to collect him in an hour, Miles disembarked. For these less salubrious outskirts, he’d worn one of his old army coats over plain clobber, walking cane left at home although the comforting muzzle of his double-barrelled flintlock still nudged his hip.
He removed his gloves and studied the building.
Opened some fifty years ago as a purpose-built infirmary, The London Hospital was funded by annual subscriptions and charity donations.
Admission was restricted to non-contagious ailments, but it did cater to the impoverished populace as much as possible and was a testament to the determination and philanthropy of the founders that it had been built at all.
Nigh three hundred patients could be accommodated, the rear wing and two to the south containing the wards.
And a certain Jacob Dempster.
For another grubby lad had found his way to the kitchens this morning to deliver a message from the Prince…
Jacob Dempster
The London Hospital Whitechapel
Ward 5
So here he was.
To find the soldier who Miles had seen demoted and transferred, see if he bore a grievance.
Of course, Miles could well discover that Dempster was in no fit state to carry out any misdeeds, but perhaps an acquaintance had been persuaded into it.
He entered the hospital and, with permission from a doctor, went in search of Ward Five, which he’d been told was for ex-soldiers. Windows were thrown open within, likely to catch the breeze from the east countryside, while nurses and families thronged the corridors.
“Excuse me.” The nurse held a bowl of indeterminate contents. “I’m seeking a Mr Dempster in this ward. He’s an old army friend.”
“That cheeky blatherer.” She tutted. “Halfway down. Bed ten. They’re numbered.”
“My thanks.” And Miles wandered the row. All were widely spaced as doubtless bed bugs were rife.
At Bed Ten, an unshaved fellow was sitting up dealing cards to himself.
One-handed as his other sleeve was neatly pinned at the shoulder.
He looked gaunt but not at death’s door.
“Dempster?”
A blue gaze that Miles now vaguely remembered peered up.
“Bloody ’ell, Captain Firth, as I live and breathe. Wot yer doing ’ere?” He struggled to sit up straighter. “Visiting someone?”
“Yes. You.”
“Me?” He puffed a breath. “Well, best rest yer arse on me silk chaise here, put yer feet up and I’ll send fer tea.”
Miles could not withhold a laugh as he sat on the too-small rickety wooden chair that looked to have come from a schoolroom; he missed army humour.
But as to the purpose of his visit.
“I… I’m just searching out some of the men who served under me at any point. See if they need anything?”
“Aye, a new arm.”
Miles laughed again. “What happened?”
“Bloody cannon fire. I woke on the field to a damn headache and no arm.”
“Waterloo, I assume?”
He nodded. “After my er…hijinks in those dragoons o’ yours, they transferred me to the 44th East Essex.”
“A courageous regiment.” Nicknamed the Little Fighting Fours because, well, a large number of the men were short in stature. Nevertheless, short or not, they’d all received commendations for resilience and courage.
“We did our bit. Good bunch o’ lads although I missed the horses.”
Miles shifted. “You were…disgruntled with your transfer, were you not? I played a part in that.”
“I were at first, being such a cocky young bugger full of fire and piss, but…it were deserved, in truth. And as it turned out, that transfer were the best thing to happen ter me. 44th were more me than them spruce dragoons. No offence, Captain,” he added with a broad gap-toothed grin.
“None taken.”
“And Jacob’s being modest,” chipped in a voice, “as cannon fire was only the half of it.”
Miles twisted to the young lad who’d called over from the next bed, his leg in some brace contraption.
“How so?”
“He got the bed in this place as he was nominated by the lieutenant whose life he saved from that same cannon fire.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well…” The young lad swallowed. “We’d held steady in our square formation all day when Imperial Guard cannon fire came at us.
We regrouped but there were dead and wounded scattered with the lieutenant unable to move.
Jacob, with just a whistle from that gob of his, managed to call a riderless horse over, hoisted the lieutenant across its saddle and sent it galloping back to safety.
Then he went back for the injured sergeant an’ all but… ”
“Those bloody cannons,” muttered Dempster to his side. “Sergeant didn’t make it.”
Miles breathed deep, saluted his thanks and twisted back. “A gallant act.”
Dempster shrugged.
Yet Waterloo had been two years back and customarily the hospitals pushed one out the door at the first opportunity. “But why are you still here, if you don’t mind me asking? Is that arm not healing as it should?”
“Nah, I’m back in fer me third stint. Keeps gettin’ bloody infected but this time they cut shrapnel out.
Nurses say to get out of London’s filthy air and into the countryside, but to do wot?
Ain’t no work here, let alone in the country for a one-armed man.
The lieutenant, gawd bless him, is trying to find me a place at Chelsea Hospital as they need the bed here but… ”
Miles nodded. Chelsea had been opened by Charles I to care for those ‘broken by age or war’, as he’d described it, but it was not straightforward to gain admittance as places were so limited.
“But?”
“I’ve only two and thirty years, Captain. No disrespect but I ain’t quite ready to spend the rest of me days treated as an invalid.”
Miles sat back and pondered. Dempster was not behind any of the mishaps to befall him. And he liked him. He liked him very much.
“You mentioned you missed the horses when you were transferred from the dragoons?”
“Aye. Working with ’em was why I first joined your lot. Problem was I preferred the horses to the officers. Other than you, C’tain, goes without saying.”
Miles returned the chap’s grin. “What would you say to a job at a country estate? As groom? Can work up as well.”
“I’d bite yer bleedin’ hand off. Whose is it?”
“The Earl of Stonewold’s.”
“Who’s that fancy prig, then? And won’t the rum cove mind a groom with one arm?”
“Doubt it as it’s me.”
“Bloody ’ell.” He whistled through his teeth. “How’d that happen?”
Miles rubbed his jaw. “It’s odd isn’t it, Dempster. With all the damn battles we went through, I ended up outliving my elder brother who lost his footing and fell off a mountain in Scotland.”
“Poor bugger. Well, condolences to yer. Fate can be a right pissy bugger, can’t it? Always ready to give us a good kick in the arse when we least expect it.”
“Never a truer word. So you’ll accept?”
“Too right I will.” Dempster nodded. “Will I have ter tug me forelock at yer?”
“Yes.” Miles winked. “And you do have to get well. I’m not returning to the estate for a month or so but if they need the beds here, you can come and recover at mine and have one of the rooms in the mews.”
A salute. “Yer won’t regret it, Captain. My thanks.”
Miles nodded but twisted in his seat to the chap in the next bed. “And what about you, my lad? Will you be getting out of here soon? Do you need work?”
The lad smiled but shook his head. “Thankin’ yer, Captain, but I’m going back to my girl in Berkshire. Her folks got a farm there. The regiment’s surgeon set me broken leg wrong so I’m just having it reset. Hurt like blazes but I shouldn’t limp so bad.”
“I wish you well th–”
“Time for your medication, Mr Dempster. Hmm?”
Miles swivelled again on his schoolroom chair – nigh collapsing it – to find a stout nurse with a glass of… Well, it looked green and foul and lumpy.
“No! I beg yer,” Dempster cried, his one hand to his heart. “Have mercy! I can’t take no more!”
“All of it, you cheeky rascal.” And with a narrow-eyed glance, the nurse placed it on the side table and returned to her trolley of treats.
Dempster smirked. “Strict as a curate on Sunday mornings, she is. Some of ’em pocket a bit of coin on the side from relatives to treat yer better but not that one.”
“Do you have relatives here in London?”
He shook his head with a twist of lip. “Nah, no one. But that nurse looks out for me in any case. The Angel offered her somethin’ on my behalf but she wouldn’t have it. A good ’un.”
“Angel?”
“Aye.” Dempster closed his eyes. “Been blessed by her a few times now.”
Miles had never pegged Dempster as a pious man. “Is she a nun?”
He shook his head and laughed. “Nah. First clapped me eyes on her when I came back from Waterloo, over at St Thomas’.
Such a sight for a battered soldier and with a voice gentle as a Spanish summer breeze.
Then when I came here…must’ve been two-month past, though it feels a bleedin’ year to the day, she came by again. ”
“What does this Angel do?”
“Draws stuff.”
“Draws?”
“Aye.” He opened his eyes – pure as a lake.
“She asks about m’time in the army and then draws…
battles and stuff. Bit odd, if you ask me, but she’s so pretty and asks so nicely.
Gives some coin fer it too and brings blankets and food.
Most of the army men in the hospitals know her. We all call her the Angel.”
“Well I never.”
“And she’s asked about you once or twice too…” He winked. “Or thrice.”
“Me?”
Dempster sipped the green stuff and grimaced. “Hmm. Seems to have heard of yer. Went over the Vitoria set-to once. Wanted every detail, she did.”
Rather stupefied, Miles sat back in the chair, its wooden legs groaning.
He’d seen a painting of that battle by The Witness. The one that hung upon the army major’s wall.
A coincidence?
Or…
If the artist had never actually been a soldier, had never been to battle, it would make sense to ask the actual men who’d been there for a true account…
With brush in hand, the artist became both witness and scribe, committing the men’s words to canvas: the fury, the confusion, the victory, the anguish.
In each stroke, the echo of cannon fire; in every hue, the shadow of grief, thus rendering not merely the likeness of battle, but the very soul of it…
No wonder they were so bloody good.
But where did this Angel fit in?
Did she work for the artist?
Drawing preliminary sketches?
Or…
Could she in fact be The Witness?
Many would say that women could not draw such horrors, their temperaments too delicate.
But he’d been a soldier, seen women bury their menfolk with mattock and tears and courage, watched camp followers hold down writhing men while the surgeon’s saw did its grisly job.
He’d witnessed the hardship that war had wrought upon the womenfolk of many a town…
Yet still they endured, fended for their families, with no time for delicate temperament.
“Angel knows ’bout plants too.”
Miles snapped the chair forward. “How do you mean?”
“I were in a pretty bad way during m’first stint in hospital, and I were rambling about my childhood in Essex.
Ever so patient, she were, at listening.
I said how I longed to see an English bluebell before I cocked m’toes, so she drew me one.
Here, open that drawer. I still keep it close.
Reminds me of m’parents, gawd bless their souls. ”
Miles realised his hand was trembling as he reached for the drawer, his emotions in turmoil but his mind oddly sharp.
The drawing was torn from a notebook – a perfect bluebell.
Dempster leaned over. “Next time she came, even brought some pastels with her and coloured it fer me. Good, innit?”
“Yes,” he barely managed to rasp. “It’s perfect.” Magical and lifelike, as though you could lift it from the page and smell its scent.
An everlasting flower captured upon paper.
And he would know the artist anywhere.