Beloved Enemy, page 29
Ginny looked down the hill, down at what once had been the peaceful, verdant orchards of Kent. Now, there was only devastation, the fruit trees cropped for fuel, and in vengeance, fields and gardens laid to waste. She looked at Alex, sitting like stone on the charger’s back, gazing at what used to be the fertile lands of the Grantham estates. A gray stone manor house nestled at the foot of a small hill, but its park was no longer green, just the red brown of churned-up earth, scarring the countryside.
“Would it not be best to continue on your way?” she asked softly.
“I cannot. I have come this far and must go on. I must find out the worst, who is left alive . . .” His lips twisted in a grim smile. “There will be no welcome, of course. But if I may be of help, then I have to offer.”
Ginny made no reply as the cavalcade moved off down the hill toward Alex’s home. It was a small detour they made on the road to Scotland, and she had watched the agonizing process of decision as he had weighed up the knowledge that he would be regarded as an enemy at best, vilified as a traitor at worst by the kin whom he sought to help. She had offered no opinion, knowing that in this matter not even the lover had any rights, but a premonition of pain scudded over her soul as they approached the house, the pain that she would feel at his wounds.
The occupation of the Grantham estates had been thorough and vicious. The walls of the park land were tumbled, there were great bare patches on the grassland, where tents had been pitched and the blackened roots of tree stumps felled, presumably for firewood. Rich, brown plow land beyond the park was overgrown with thistles, with a few lean cattle scratching for subsistence. No smoke rose from the chimneys, and as they drew closer, they saw that the windows gaped, glassless, to the elements. The house looked shuttered and untenanted, except for a clothesline in what had once been the kitchen garden where hung a few garments flapping desolately in the breeze. Even the stone sundial had been smashed, the branches of the apricot tree wrenched from their tethers against the mellow stone wall so that they hung, broken, the fruit pulped on the ground beneath.
They rode beneath the gatehouse into the outer court, and there Alex gestured to his officers to remain, and he went forward alone into the inner court. Some instinct prodded Ginny into following. She looked up at the belfry and the weather vane, symbols of normality that alone seemed to have been untouched by destruction. Then a woman came out onto the steps, and Alex drew rein. Ginny followed suit, keeping behind him, not knowing whether he was aware of her presence or no; whether, if he was aware of it, he would bid her leave him to face the uncertainty of reunion alone.
“What more can you want with us?” The woman spoke slowly, weary with bitterness. “You left little enough standing on the last occasion, but I am sure you will find what little remains.” She turned back to the door.
“Joan, do you not know me?” Alex spoke, his voice sounding strangely unlike his own.
The woman turned, brushed a straggling wisp of faded brown hair from her eyes. “Alex? It is you?” She shook her head in disbelief. “What have you come for? To gloat? To see what we have become? You will find here only the elderly and infirm, the women and the children. Your brothers are not here to stand against you; your victory will be easy enough.”
Alex dismounted. “Joan, I am here to do what I can for you.” He walked toward her, and she stepped back.
“You dare to offer Parliament’s succor to those whom Parliament has destroyed?” The figure swayed, then crumpled on the step.
Ginny leaped from her horse, reaching the step as Alex knelt, lifted the inert figure against his shoulder. “She has but swooned,” she said swiftly, feeling for the pulse, lifting the eyelids.
Joan Marshall opened her eyes, looking directly into the haunted ones of her brother-in-law. “Lie still,” he said urgently as she struggled against him. “Ginny, what must we do for her?” He turned in appeal to Ginny who had stood up again, shocked at the women’s scarecrow thinness, the face that had clearly once been pretty striated with deep lines.
“It is exhaustion, I think,” she said quietly. “Lady, may I help you to your bed?”
“Not if you don’t wish for typhus,” Joan Marshall said, her voice stronger, acidulated now. “Take your army and leave us be, Alex. We’ve the sickness in the house, and you’ll not be wanting to come too close, not even to destroy.”
“Who has it?” Alex asked, ignoring his sister-in-law’s tone, brushing aside her words.
“Little Joe,” she gave him answer, and the tired blue eyes filled suddenly with the tears of utter desperation.
“Sweet Jesus,” Alex whispered. “He cannot be above six years old.”
“How many days?” Ginny asked, her voice sounding a note of brisk matter-of-factness in the quiet court.
“This is the ninth,” the sick child’s mother responded. “So far no one else has succumbed.”
“Has the fever broken at all?”
“No,” Joan shook her head, “he is wild with it, and I can do nothing to ease him, although he will allow no one else near him.” She stood up, allowing the support of Alex’s arm as if there was no energy left for the old quarrels. “I must go back to him directly. I only came down because old Martha saw your troops and was like to fall into a convulsion. You know how she can be?”
Alex nodded. “I am here to help, not harm, and I will tell her so myself.” He walked to the door, but Joan caught his arm.
“Alex, you cannot go to them. They would cut out their tongues rather than speak with you.”
A ghost of a smile hovered over his lips. “Then I shall not expect a response, sister. I will do all the talking, but I must go inside in order to discover what needs to be done.”
“Take me to the child, lady,” Ginny said. “Perhaps I may be of help.”
Joan Marshall looked at her curiously. “Who are you that rides with Parliament’s army?”
“The general’s mistress,” Ginny said with brutal candor. “Virginia Courtney.” She dropped a mock curtsy. “As good a Royalist as yourself, madam, for all that I love Parliament’s general and trail Parliament’s drum.”
Joan looked at Alex in bewildered disbelief, and he smiled faintly. “Virginia is never one to beat about the bush, sister. She speaks only the truth. Virginia, this is the Lady Joan Marshall, my brother Joe’s wife.” Then he took Ginny’s hand. “I do not wish you to enter the house, chicken.”
“I am not afraid of the sickness,” she said calmly. “I have nursed three people with it and have never fallen ill myself. It is a disease that passes me by. But you should not enter, or allow any of the men to do so, lest it sweep through the division.”
Alex frowned, remembering how four years earlier the scourge of typhus had decimated the armies on both sides of the fighting, killing more than ever died by the sword. “I was afflicted as a child,” he said, “so may enter with impunity. But you are right, no one else shall do so.”
“Then will you fetch my basket?” Ginny asked, “and bring it to me. I will go with Lady Joan now.”
Joan looked hesitant, and Alex said gently, “Ginny has some considerable skill, Joan, a gift aided with knowledge. Will you not trust her just because she rides with me?”
Joan passed a hand across her eyes. “I have no strength left for principles and causes. I will leave that to the men. Kit and Joe have enough hatred for you, Alex. You do not need mine, too.”
“No.” He shook his head, the green-brown eyes filled with a deep sorrow. “And my father, also, would prefer the son dead than traitorous.” Turning, he went out to the far court where waited his officers.
Ginny looked after him for a moment, her heart filled with his pain; then she turned back to Joan. “We each make our choices, lady, and live with their fruits. The best we can hope is that the reasons for making those choices stand firm. Alex is a committed man; he would not and could not see any alternatives to the actions he has taken in this business.”
“No,” Joan said quietly, leading the way inside. “We all know that, but for his father and brothers, there are no extenuating circumstances.”
“I do not think my father would find any, either,” Ginny said. “But he died at Naseby, so is spared the grief of knowing that his only child has thrown in her lot with a traitor.”
They passed through the great hall where the ripped paneling hung from the walls stripped bare of hangings. The stairs had been hacked loose, broken in places so that they had to tread carefully as they went up. “We live in the gallery,” Joan explained. “We have found sufficient hangings and the bare necessities of furniture for the one room.”
“And the child?” Ginny asked. “You do not keep him with the others?”
“No. We have taken up residence in a small chamber off the gallery.” A tear rolled slowly down the thin, drawn cheek. “I fear that he will not last the night, and I am so afraid for the other children. For myself, I care not, but I fear to go near them, and the little ones do not understand.” She opened a door at the end of a corridor, and Ginny found herself in the long gallery where a group of people looked up with eyes as hostile as they were fearful.
A string of tots hurled themselves at Joan Marshall, and she held them off. “Patience, I beg you take them.”
A young woman rose swiftly from the window seat and came to her rescue, hushing the children who began to whimper.
“Are they come again?” An old voice croaked, and an elderly woman tottered forward, leaning heavily on a stick.
“It is Alex, Martha,” Joan said. “He brings help.”
“Help! We want nothing from the traitorous whelp,” exploded a gray-haired man who looked able-bodied until Ginny noticed the club foot. “Who’s this?” He waved at Ginny.
“Mistress Virginia Courtney,” Joan said, somewhat helplessly. “I do not quite understand it, but she is no rebel, and she has some knowledge of the typhus.”
“I am the daughter of John Redfern, of the Isle of Wight, widow of Giles Courtney, of the Dorsetshire Courtneys,” Ginny said swiftly. “Will you not take me to the child, Lady Joan?”
Joan, with transparent relief, moved across the gallery and opened a door at the far end into a tiny antechamber furnished with a pallet and a stool. “They would not understand your relationship with Alex,” she murmured.
“No, I am sure they would not. I do not quite understand it myself,” Ginny said evenly, dropping to her knees beside the pallet where lay the almost inert figure of a small boy. She drew back the thin cover and raised his nightshirt, examining the red rash that covered his body. The child stirred, cried, and began to toss violently until he fell back, prostrated by the effort.
“We must break the fever,” Ginny said, almost to herself, feeling the weak, tremulous pulse. “It seems that the heart fails if the fever continues much beyond the eleventh day.”
The child’s mother moaned, a defeated little sound; then the door opened, and Alex appeared with Ginny’s basket. He touched the child’s burning forehead. “My godson,” he said quietly. “My brother Joe’s oldest child, after his father, the next earl of Grantham.”
“I need a brazier,” Ginny said, disregarding this information as totally irrelevant to the matter in hand. “With charcoal. Also, vinegar, and some hanging for the window.” She indicated the window slit high up on the wall where, like the others in the manor, the glass had been broken. “Lady Joan, if you will bathe in vinegar and burn those clothes you have on, you will not carry infection to the other children. I will nurse the boy alone. Alex, I am sure you can do something about making the house more habitable. It is shameful that they must live in only one room. You must see what supplies they have, and augment them from those you carry. There is enough flour, corn, and meat traveling with the division to feed more than one army.”
“I have already given the necessary orders,” Alex said dryly. “You see to your business, Mistress Courtney, and leave me to mind mine, as you once told me to do.”
“And monstrous enraged it made you,” Ginny reminded him with a slight smile that she then directed toward Joan Marshall. “Do not despair, lady. I have seen worse cases, but it will be as well if you were to leave me with him. When he is on the mend, he will be fractious and demanding, and you will require all your strength. ’Twould be as well to take what rest you may, now.”
“Come, Joan.” Alex cupped his sister-in-law’s elbow and propelled her back into the gallery. “Do as Ginny says and bathe and burn your clothes. I will procure the charcoal and brazier.”
“You take your black, traitorous soul out of here, Alexander,” the old woman hissed, waving her stick at him. “We’ve no need of the divil’s aid.”
“That is fortunate, Aunt Martha, since I am not sufficiently acquainted with the gentleman to beg him for favors,” Alex retorted. “But you may vilify me as you please; I am not leaving here until I have done something to make the place habitable.” He strode out of the gallery, down the stairs, and out into the sunshine. “Jed!”
“General?” Jed appeared instantly. “ ’Tis criminal what they’ve done to the place.”
“Aye,” Alex agreed, hard-faced. “It bears the mark of Colney’s troops. There’ll be a reckoning between him and me.” He was silent for a minute, as if forgetting what he had wanted Jed for. Then, with a soft oath he shook his head as if to dispel the train of thought. “Little Joe has typhus, Jed. Mistress Courtney wishes for a brazier, charcoal, and vinegar. Can you procure them?”
“Aye, sir.” Jed saluted, but then couldn’t help the question. “How bad is the little ’un, sir?”
“Bad enough,” Alex replied shortly. “It’s to be hoped the others remain well. Lady Joan has been tending him herself and has kept apart, so . . .” He shrugged. The progress of the disease was a mystery to them all. They knew only that once it caught hold, it spread like brushfire, cutting a swath of death through all who fell in its path.
“Colonel Bonham?” he called to the erstwhile major whose promotion had followed his superior’s. “Quarter the men in the park; they can do little damage to it, now. Then I want working parties to shutter the windows, repair the doors, and clear the debris from the kitchen garden. I want firewood cut and stacked, and the pantries filled with supplies.”
For two days, the Grantham manor resounded to the sounds of hammer and saw, to the cheery shouts of troopers who found themselves doing the tasks they had done all their lives until war had wrenched them from domestic toil and husbandry. And throughout, Ginny kept vigil by little Joe’s pallet, the room darkened by a hanging over the window, the candle kept shielded to protect the child’s aching eyes. The room was hot as the brazier burned, filling the air with the powerful aromatic scents of herbs that Ginny cooked in a skillet over the charcoal. Little Joe moaned and thrashed beneath the pile of heavy blankets that his nurse had requisitioned from the division. Whenever one scrawny little arm managed to push off the covering, she replaced it instantly, praying for the sweat that would bring the fever break. Every few hours, she raised the prostrated little body against her shoulder and forced a little of the herbal medicine between his lips in spite of the feeble resistance.
The food that Joan brought her remained mostly untouched; inactivity in the close atmosphere of the cramped space did little to promote appetite. On the evening of the third day, Alex and Joan both came into the little room, defying her interdiction.
Ginny waved them away impatiently. “You must not be in here. There is nothing you can do.”
“You must take a walk in the fresh air,” Alex said quietly. “I will watch Joe while you walk with Joan.”
“That is not necessary,” Ginny replied shortly. “And you do not know what to do for him.”
“You will tell me,” Alex answered. “It is necessary, or you will become ill yourself.”
“Nonsense.” Ginny brushed aside his hand as he moved to draw her off the stool. “I am perfectly strong, and this cannot continue for very much longer anyway. There must be a crisis soon, or . . .” Death was a fact of life they were all familiar with, and there was little point denying the truth.
“I will remain with you,” Joan said, touching her son’s wasted cheek with her little finger. “It is my place to be with him when the end comes.” Her voice was strong; the last three days had restored her, had brought relief from the burdens of caring for the little group who looked to her for leadership, for all decisions. Alex had taken over that responsibility, sublimely indifferent to the castigations of the elderly until their comments had ceased. Yet his sister-in-law knew that he was not indifferent, that each barb lodged deep. It had been hardest for him with the children, who regarded their uncle from behind adult skirts, fearful as if an ogre had come amongst them. They had not seen him for four years, and most were too young to have any very clear memory of the young uncle who had laughed and joked with their parents, had played with the little ones and tossed them in the air. But they had heard much talk of the traitor, the man who had betrayed king and family, who had sent their grandmother into her grave, who was considered no longer of Grantham kin.
“In the morning,” Alex said, “you will leave this room, Ginny, if I am obliged to carry you out.” It was a small assertion, but he felt compelled to make it. He could not say to her, not now when his nephew’s life hung in the balance, that he could not remain in Kent for more than one more day. He had done all he could to make the house habitable and had already delayed overlong in resuming the march to Scotland. If Ginny exhausted herself with nursing as she seemed inclined to do, she would have difficulty keeping up on a forced march, but he would not be able to slow the pace for her.
