She continued to stare at the door even when, eventually, it blurred before her eyes.
THE FOLLOWING DAY was the worst waking nightmare Madeline had ever lived through. She began the day badly, rising for an early breakfast, though she had hardly slept at all. Lady Andrea’s manner, she found, was as brisk and as heartily cheerful as it ever was, though the colonel too had left from the ball to join his regiment, without returning home to change from his evening clothes. The two ladies were alone in the house apart from the servants. Mr. Mason, Lady Andrea’s father, was already out seeing what news he could discover.
And they were to spend the day, Madeline discovered, laying in as many supplies as they could, both of food and of medical necessities, clearing rooms of unnecessary furniture, and gathering as many sheets, blankets, and pillows as they could lay their hands on. It mattered not at all that there were servants in the house who might be set to performing these tasks.
“Soon it will not signify whether we are tavern maids or the Queen of England or anything else in between,” Lady Andrea said. “They will send the wounded back here, you know, and before we know it, there will be scarce room even in the streets for them all. We will be ready to take in as many as we can.”
Madeline blanched at the mental image of wounded soldiers-those same soldiers whom she had seen thronging the streets and dancing at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball only the day before.
“There will be surgeons?” she asked.
“They will probably all stay at the front,” her friend said, seemingly quite unmoved by the horror of her own words. “The wounded who are sent back here will be dependent upon our care. We must be ready for them.”
“I have no experience. I will not know what to do.” Madeline swallowed awkwardly.
Lady Andrea allowed herself a short bark of laughter. “Yes, you will, my dear,” she said. “Of course, I forget that you are raw out of England. Believe me, Madeline, my dear girl, by this time tomorrow or the day after, you will know exactly what to do. You will see need and you will be there to supply it. We do not know what inner resources we have until they are called upon.”
But she had none, Madeline thought. She would not even be able to shut herself away in the kitchen and cook broths for the wounded. She did not know how to cook. And the sight of blood made her feel faint.
“Don’t worry,” Lady Andrea said, patting her on the arm and rising resolutely from the breakfast table. “When the time comes, you will be far too busy to remember that you are a delicately nurtured young lady.”
Perhaps there was some truth to that, Madeline thought as the day proceeded and she rushed about without maid or chaperone, though the streets were far more crowded than usual. Although a surprising number of people seemed to be going about their business as usual, there was also an unusual press of vehicles in the streets, piled high with baggage and furniture, often pulled by fewer horses than was customary with the particular conveyance.
People were leaving Brussels in droves. But it was not easy, one chance-met acquaintance told Madeline. Some other mutual acquaintances who had tried to leave by barge on the canal to Antwerp had found that there were no barges available. They had all been commandeered under the duke’s orders for the purpose of bringing artillery up to the front. Horses were selling for a king’s ransom, and the crudest wagon for a fortune. People were panicking.
Madeline was glad that she had more than enough to do. There was no time to panic or to worry about Dom. She would not think of Dom. She bought all the bandages and all the laudanum that one chemist was willing to sell her and hurried back home with them.
There was no news, though Mr. Mason made frequent outings during the day and both ladies were constantly in and out of the house bound on some errand. But the guns began in the afternoon. Madeline was outside and looked up in some surprise to find that indeed there were no clouds either above or on the horizon that could presage a thunderstorm. And then she realized that the sound was not thunder and felt her knees turn to jelly and her stomach perform a somersault.
And it was not quite accurate to say that she could hear the guns, she realized. She could feel the guns. The sound was too deep and too distant to have any great effect upon the ear. But the echoes and vibrations could be felt to the very marrow of the bones.
Dominic!
She was greatly relieved to recognize Mrs. Simpson hurrying across the street toward her, head bent.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” she said, catching the lady by the arm. “Can you hear them too?”
Ellen looked up, startled. “Oh, Lady Madeline,” she said, “it is you.” And she stopped walking and looked more closely. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “you have never experienced this before, have you? Are you going to faint? Bend your head sharply forward and take some deep breaths. Come, I shall walk with you for a little way. I was on my way to a grocer’s. My poor maid had the hysterics this morning. She is fresh from England, poor girl. I succeeded in getting her a place on the cart of a neighbor, bound for Antwerp and home.”
Madeline was glad of the quiet cheerfulness of her voice. “I am very silly,” she said. “I am ashamed of myself.”
“It would be a great deal more shameful to feel nothing when you hear those guns,” Mrs. Simpson said. “But you must not worry about being missish. When the wounded begin to arrive, as they surely will by tomorrow, you will find that you have a strength you did not even suspect, and that there is no room at all for squeamishness.”
“That is what Lady Andrea Potts says,” Madeline said. “I am afraid I will disgrace myself.”
Ellen squeezed her arm, which she had taken for support. “You will not,” she said. “And if you do vomit at first, you will pick yourself up after and do what the rest of us will be doing. I have every faith in you.”
“Do you think they are up there where those guns are?” Madeline said. “Dominic, I mean. And Captain Simpson.”
“I don’t know,” Ellen said. “There is no way of knowing at the moment. And that is the very worst of battle- the not knowing. You must train your mind not to think of it. Deaden your mind. Once the wounded begin to arrive, it will be better. You will have no time to think. Each wounded soldier will become your brother, and you will care for him because he might be your brother and because some other woman somewhere may be doing for Lord Eden what you are doing for him.”
“Yes,” Madeline said. “That will help, will it not? Is that how it is done? Do you see your husband in every wounded soldier? I think perhaps I will not faint or vomit if I can see Dom each time. Will there be very many, do you think? Oh, how very senseless it all is. Yesterday they were here with us. Today we are feverishly gathering bandages and whatever else we can in the certainty that the city will be filled with the wounded. And what about the dead? Will they be brought in too? Or are they left where they are?”
Ellen had a very firm grip on her arm. “No,” she said. “No. Deaden the mind. Keep yourself busy. Dominic will come back to you, even if only in the wounded, thirsty body of a stranger-they are always thirsty, poor souls. He will come. I promise. Do you wish me to take you home?”
“No.” Madeline shook her head and smiled as brightly as she was able. “That would be shameful. I would never be able to look you in the eye again. Here is a grocer’s shop. This is what you need, is it not? Good-bye, then. I shall see you probably within the next few days. And thank you.”
And what was shameful, she thought all the way home, and scolded herself roundly with the thought, was that she had forgotten her own errand. Why was she out wandering alone about the streets? There must have been a reason when she left the house. She concentrated on her own stupidity as she hurried along, and even had an inward laugh at it, imagining herself telling the joke against herself years in the future to Dom and Edmund and Mama.
She could feel the guns from the brim of her bonnet to the toes of her slippers.
THE BATTLE WAS RAGING on two fronts. And the Duke of Wellington had been taken by surprise after all. The whole of the French forces were concentrated to the south. Bonaparte himself led the charge against the Prussians at Ligny, dispelling any suspicion that he might be waiting with the flower of his army on the western border. Seven miles away Marshal Ney led the attack against the few allied troops who were in position at the crossroads of Quatre Bras. Most of Wellington’s army was still on its way from Brussels and Nivelles and other points to the north.
The fun and games would probably all be over by the time they got there, the men in Lord Eden’s company grumbled as they trudged south in the dust from Mont St. Jean, where they had been halted for a long time awaiting orders. Here they had been sitting around on their rear ends for weeks, some of the men complained to
