Fic: Delirien (4/5)
Prologue
Part I
Part II
iii. Posterity, await for wretched years
When at their mothers' moistened eyes babes shall suck,
Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears,
And none but women left to wail the dead.
--Henry VI, Part I (I.i.48-51)
My darling Richard--
Just a few words, love. The stories we've heard have been the stuff of nightmares. Tell me you are alive.
He tucked the letter into his pocket, its sharp edges oddly comforting against his skin. Somewhere, he could hear explosions. He didn't even jump anymore, though Cecily had spoken to him of nightmares when he was last on leave. Nightmares of what had happened to John Lancaster and Cecily's brother, a shuddering, twitching, broken sleep from which he couldn't wake.
He would write to her. Just a field postcard, with too little space for detail. Ned was old enough that he would try to read them and Cecily would not thank him if he forced her to explain the trenches to their son.
Richard closed his eyes and Ned's face swam in his vision, a towheaded boy with his mother's smile--the smile he remembered from before the war, not the pale shadow he'd last seen. Richard, don't go back. For God's sake, don't go back there. God help him, he'd nearly said yes, and she'd seen that moment of indecision and the hope in her eyes nearly did him in. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. They'd held one another in silence after.
"York." He glanced back to find Vernon in the doorway of the dugout. "Talbot's got some new mad scheme. You'd best talk him out of it."
"When did John Bloody Talbot ever listen to me?" Richard sighed. "I'll do what I can."
But when he reached the neighbouring trench, Talbot had already run off, to God only knew where. Richard looked at the men clustered round the crate transformed into an impromptu card table. "What is he doing, then?"
"Unoccupied trench somewhere that way," one of them, an older, second lieutenant named Marston, gestured vaguely northwards, the flick of his hand reminding Richard of something he couldn't quite place. "He thinks we can take it tonight."
"Has he, in fact, lost his mind?"
Marston shrugged. "There's a fair bit of that going round. Cry havoc and loose the dogs of war, etcetera..."
"Well said, sir," Richard allowed, with a tight smile. The other returned it with what was practically a grimace. He was one of more recent conscripts, having arrived the previous November, but his eyes were already dulled from strain and grief.
There was something in his face that nagged at Richard, but he hadn't the time to think on it further. It was only as he crept through the curtain of rain in search of Talbot that he realised where he'd seen that expression before. He hadn't thought of his uncle Edward, his father's elder brother, since before the war, before his marriage, even--Talbot had known him, though he referred to him somewhat uncomfortably as a man of 'unusual tendencies'. But it wasn't his uncle's tendencies, unusual or otherwise, that pricked him now. It was the last time he'd seen him, some few months before his father's death, at Carnarvon.
Long after he'd been put to bed, Richard had crept down the stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghost of dead, mad Richard Perrivale who, according to Cook, haunted the library. Instead, he'd found his uncle with their host, who had been briefly introduced to him as Henry Lancaster. His foot had accidentally hit a creaky board and, before he could duck behind the door, they'd both looked up.
"What have we here?" There was something needle-sharp beneath Mr Lancaster's question, however cheerfully couched. "Your nephew, Edward, isn't it?"
"Richard," his uncle said, shaking his head. "What have I told you about sneaking out at night?"
"I wanted to see the ghost. I've never seen a real one before." He straightened. "I'm not afraid."
"That," Mr Lancaster said, eyes narrowed, "would depend on the ghost, I should think. Who are you looking for?"
"Let me put him to bed, Harry," interjected Uncle Edward. "He's just a boy."
Wide-eyed, Richard let his uncle lead him from the library into the darkened front hall, but stopped at the foot of the stairs. "Did I do something wrong?"
Uncle Edward's smile was so small and weak it nearly got swallowed by his beard. "No, Richard, you didn't do anything wrong."
"But I want to see a real ghost. Father says they don't exist but I think they do. Especially here," he added, looking round warily. "You can hear things."
"Can you, now?" There was a new light in his eyes now, as if he were desperately looking for something and couldn't find it. "I can't--not anymore."
Richard nodded and pointed at a gilt-framed painting that hung beside the doors to the library. "He looks like a ghost."
Uncle Edward swallowed. "I suppose he does," he said, his voice rasping like sandpaper. "It was never finished properly, you see."
The man in the painting had grey eyes that seemed to stare right through Richard. Something in the set of his face reminded Richard rather of Mr Lancaster, although the portrait seemed sadder somehow. Reaching out, he squeezed Uncle Edward's hand. "Did you know him?"
His uncle nodded slowly. "A long time ago."
"Did he die?"
"We all die eventually, Richard. It's just a matter of when and how."
Uncle Edward had died of brain fever in the Transvaal within a year of Richard's father. At least, Richard thought grimly, he'd avoided this great bloody mess.
"Ah, Major York. Looking a bit the worse for wear, aren't we?" Talbot, it seemed, had found him.
Richard straightened and saluted quickly. "Sir, what's this about taking that trench?"
"Orders, young man, orders from the Commander-in-Chief himself." Brigadier John Talbot was perhaps slightly younger than Richard's father would have been, had he lived, and had spent most of his life serving the British Empire in a scattering of far-flung locales. Before he'd known Richard's uncle in the Transvaal, he'd been acquainted with little Henry Lancaster's grandfather in India. He was, in turns, the most courageous and most infuriating man Richard had ever met. "We're moving forward."
"In this, sir?" Richard gestured to the mud that had all but captured his boots. "It's suicide."
"Orders."
He bit his tongue. That was the problem with Talbot. He'd made his entire, illustrious career out of following orders to the letter and somehow wrangling successes out of the worst odds. If anybody could take that benighted trench, it would surely be Talbot.
"After sunset," Talbot said. "Hold your men in reserve. We can't commit everyone at the head, but you'll need to be ready."
There was no arguing with him. York bowed his head. "Yes, sir."
"Major Somerset has my left and you my right, York." He peered at Richard through beady, scowling eyes. "There are more important things than your petty squabblings, York. Them," he gestured into the pervasive damp mist that obscured No Man's Land, "for instance."
"Yes, sir." He could feel the heat rise in his neck. "Of course, sir."
He supposed it was inevitable that he would meet Somerset sooner or later; one couldn't spend three years in a war where men were moved like so many pawns without running into the one person guaranteed to make things even worse. But that didn't change the fact that his humiliation of Somerset seven years before had made the other man loathe him all the more.
Richard had just turned to return to his dugout when a young and suspiciously clean young man brushed past him to catch Talbot's arm.
"Johnny!" For the first time since Richard had met him, some emotion that wasn't anger or irritation entered John Talbot's voice. "What the devil are you doing here?"
"I joined up, Father. I had to." He couldn't have been a day over seventeen. Ned's face flashed even sharper across his memory and Richard shuddered. Talbot's expression echoed this horror as he shook his head slowly.
"My God, Johnny, you shouldn't be here. You can't be here. York, take him--"
Richard had taken two steps forward before young Johnny Talbot flung up one hand to stop him. "I'm not leaving. I couldn't stay back there, not while you're at the front. Father, I'm here to help you."
"Christ, boy." Talbot bowed his head but Richard caught the glimmer of tears in the lantern-light. "I'm begging you. Don't stay here."
"We'll explain that it was a mistake," Richard heard himself say. "He can't be eighteen."
"Don't you dare!" Johnny flared. "I'm not going back. I'm staying with my father."
Richard met Talbot's eyes, hit with such a painful upsurge of hope that he caught his breath. He didn't dare look out to No Man's Land. However, Talbot closed his eyes before pitching his voice so the entire trench could hear. "We go over tonight. After sunset."
Turning away from his son, he rounded the corner to the next dugout. Richard retreated as well and settled down to write to Cecily.
Darling--
He stopped, tapping the pen against his teeth. The last of the light had melted away. Talbot would be making his charge soon.
I will come back to you. Whatever it takes.
After dropping the postcard into a mail pouch, he snatched up his kit and made his way to where he had last seen Talbot. Through the mist, he could see the blurred outline of shells crashing down on the trench the Brigadier had indicated before.
"They're being slaughtered, sir." Vernon's face looked green in the scant light. "Do we go?"
The seconds crawled by as Richard watched the red-starred horizon. "Wait for Somerset."
"But sir--"
"Wait. We can't do anything on our own. Even with his numbers, we may not stand a chance, but we're definitely for the chop otherwise."
Whatever it takes. He could see Sir John Lancaster's smile, grim and steely as it had been just over a year before, further west across this blasted landscape. A shell had taken him within twenty yards of the trench from which he'd just emerged. Cecily's brother Thomas, shrapnel clinging like thorns to his face. So many others whose names he'd never learnt. I will come back to you.
Somerset didn't move.
"Major York, sir, we can't just let them die," Vernon whispered. "We can't."
"And what good would it do, Vernon, if we died with them?" Richard asked bitterly. "Tell me that." Live for me, Richard. I would do very badly without you. Further along the trench, Somerset's men were silent. Slowly, the shelling ground to a halt. Richard relaxed his grip on the rifle and closed his eyes. "It was a bloody stupid idea."
"You don't think there's a chance...?" Richard shook his head. Vernon shuddered. "Someone will need to report this."
"I will. We made the only decision we could under the circumstances. If Somerset had given the least indication that he was going over, we'd have followed." If he said the words over and over, perhaps he could convince himself they were true, that he truly would have charged into No Man's Land if things had gone as planned.
At daybreak, the medics returned empty-handed.
***
Outside the window, the rainswept Berkshire countryside spread across the horizon in a blur of grey and green. Cecily spread her hand across her belly as the baby moved beneath it. The doctor had insisted it was another boy but even now she wondered--he was still so very small compared to how Ned and George had weighed on her by her ninth month.
"He'll come back," she found herself telling him--or her. "He has to come back."
But the words rang hollow. They'd had a letter from Thomas a bare two days before the field telegram arrived. Mother had sent her to Carnarvon with the boys, insisting that London was no place for an expectant mother and that if she wanted to be useful, Humphrey Lancaster's wife had taken in several men still not quite well enough to return to their families.
"They always like having women about. They can think about something other than death." The lines on Mother's face had deepened to furrows since Thomas' death. "Just let them pretend, Cecily."
It seemed, however, that all the patients did at first was ask about Richard--where he was stationed, what he'd seen--and Cecily had answered as well as she could. Her husband's letters were cryptic at best, no doubt because he knew she wouldn't be the only person to read them. Only in those brief days when he returned to England on leave did she even catch a glimpse of the truth in all its horror.
It was only the second time he'd come home. The first had been at Christmas, six months after Sir John Lancaster had died at Ypres, and he'd awakened her with nightmares on all but the first night--nightmares he could not remember in the morning. Somehow the dull-eyed silence more than a year later was almost worse, as if it no longer surprised him. If there were nightmares still, he kept them to himself and she forced herself to let him, at least until a frigid morning in January when she awakened alone in sheets soaked with sweat and she realised she could stand it no longer.
"Richard?" she whispered, a pit opening somewhere in her stomach as it occurred to her that she might have imagined it all, that he was still in France--one might as well have named it Hell-- "Richard, where are you?"
She crept from the bed and groped for her robe in the twilight. As she pulled it snug around her, she saw the shadow in the window-seat. He was staring blankly into the garden, his eyes miles away. "Richard, come back to bed, love." Cecily could see him start, every muscle in his body tensed as if he were on the verge of leaping to his feet. "Richard, it's me," she whispered, holding out her hand even as she sought to hide the fear clawing at her. "Don't you know me?"
For several seconds, he just stared at her. Cecily froze in place, one hand still outstretched. Finally, he shook his head a little. "Cecily?"
"Yes?" She could barely hear herself.
He drew a shuddering breath. "Christ." Another shake of his head before he pressed his fingers to his temples. "I'm sorry, Cis. I didn't mean to wake you."
"Nonsense," she said, swallowing the lump that seemed to have lodged in her throat. "Tell me what's wrong." Settling beside him, she reached out and took his hand. "Please, Richard."
"It's nothing," he said, voice flat and unconvincing. "I couldn't sleep, that's all."
"Don't you dare lie to me, Richard York--"
"For God's sake, Cis, let it be!"
"No, damn you, I won't," she snapped, perilously close to tears. "Why won't you tell me what's happening?"
"I can't," he whispered. His eyes finally met hers, the colour of the clouds outside, and he reached out to cradle her cheek in one freezing hand. "I can't, Cis."
"Why not?" Tears pricked at her eyes. "My God, Richard, do you think me blind? Mother and I visit the hospitals several times a week, for goodness' sake. I've heard the stories, I've seen the scars, and I've woken men from nightmares that--"
"To each man his own hell." He pressed his lips to her hand. Cecily shifted closer, resting her head against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. "You are everything that is not the war--everything that isn't filth and death and the awful crippling sameness of it all." There was the ghost of a smile in his voice even as Cecily squeezed her eyes shut against the threatening tears. "Did you think I wouldn't notice that you put scent on your letters?"
"The first time Mother and I went to St Bartholomew's, we met a young man named Simon Harford. He couldn't have been more than nineteen," she said, hearing the catch in her own voice. "He'd lost a leg near the Marne and he said that he could always smell lilies on his wife's letters. She kept a flower shop in Galway."
"I loved it."
Tears seeped from Cecily's eyes and soaked into his shirt. "Richard, don't go back. For God's sake, don't go back there."
His words were muffled against her hair. "I couldn't live with myself if I didn't."
"You can't possibly mean that." But she didn't believe the words even as she spoke them. "You're not permitted to die, you hear? I will never forgive you if you do."
"I'll hold you to that." He kissed her forehead, laughter buzzing briefly against her skin. "I'd be a bloody idiot if I did. I'll always come back, Cis. Even if you grew so sick of me that you'd rather I didn't."
She knew, in her heart, that he had no control over that and she did not ask him again, though her very heart bled to keep silent. And when she found herself pregnant once again, she bit back her curse at the unfairness of it all; that she would bear yet another child who barely knew Richard. George hadn't recognised him at all on this last leave, peeking warily out from behind the banister at the gaunt, bedraggled man his mother insisted was his father.
Even Richard's response seemed strained, though it was difficult to tell in writing. Now was no time to bring another child into the world, but the alternative was unthinkable. It was as much to lift Cecily's spirits that her mother had seen fit to send her to Carnarvon with Ned and George; at the very least, Ned would have the run of the estate and the somewhat startled attentions of his cousin Henry, who had been withdrawn from Eton but was still preparing for his Oxford examinations.
He was an odd young man, Henry Lancaster. In the first place, he seemed quite unnerved by her, as if he'd never seen a pregnant woman before. Of course, it did occur to Cecily that he probably hadn't, without younger brothers or sisters or cousins. He did, however, have the patience of a saint in Cecily's eyes for his willingness to indulge Ned's relentless questions.
"Cousin Cecily?" Henry was standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor. "I'm afraid...I asked Ned to fetch me a book I'd left in my room and it's been half an hour and I don't know where he's gone..."
Cecily sighed. "You ought to know better by now, Henry, than to trust Ned not to wander off. Very well." Making her way to the door, she laid one hand on his arm and felt him flinch. "Oh, for goodness' sake, Henry, you can't hurt it!"
"I'm sorry, Cousin Cecily--"
"It's all right. Just help me down the stairs and I'll find Ned."
It was, she suspected, with a great deal of relief that he left her to retreat to the library. Cecily only had to wait a few moments for the sound of Ned's voice to pipe up from the direction of the back parlour.
"Ned!" Cecily halted in the doorway and pressed her hand to her swollen belly as she caught her breath. "You know you're not meant to be here. These gentlemen need their rest."
Her son resembled her to an uncanny degree, or so she'd been told innumerable times. He was easily the most beautiful boy she'd ever seen--even excepting a mother's bias. "I was telling him about Father," he said, gesturing to the soldier in the bed behind him. "He told me about a boy raised by panthers!"
To Cecily's enquiring look, the soldier, a private from Northamptonshire, vouchsafed a sheepish smile. "He wanted a story. I couldn't refuse the lad."
"Mother, can we get a panther?"
"I'm afraid there aren't any panthers in England, dearest." Cecily met the soldier's eyes as he muffled his laughter in his sleeve. "You may need to travel to India for that."
"Just like Cousin Henry's great-grandfather," Ned said, nodding sagely. "He killed a tiger with his bare hands and brought home its skin to Lancaster House."
"How dreadful," murmured Cecily, resigning herself to the disappointment on her son's face. "Now, come along, Ned. It's nearly teatime."
The prospect of tea, rationed as it was, proved sufficient distraction for Ned, who charged off down the corridor toward the parlour. Cecily followed at a more sedate pace, wincing as a sharp pain shot through her belly.
"Mrs York?" Eleanor had convinced a hospital sister from Henley to stop in once or twice a week, and it was Mrs Winston who took Cecily's arm now. "Is it the baby?"
Cecily nodded slowly. "I think it must be. Will you help me to my room?"
"Of course, ma'am. And I'll ring the doctor for you."
They had nearly reached the staircase when the room began to spin. "Mrs Winston, I..."
It was the last thing she remembered before time itself lost all meaning, flying past and crawling at once somewhere through the haze of agony. There was a point when she could have sworn her mother was beside her, holding her hand as she spoke over Cecily's head to the doctor.
"...this can't go on. It's been four days already. There must be something you can do, man!"
"Four days?" Cecily croaked, trying to see the doctor's face. "But that can't be right."
"Don't talk, dearest. Save your strength," Mother said. "Something must be done, and if you won't do it, I'll find someone who will. If the child isn't dead by now, it's a miracle."
"He's not dead," whispered Cecily. "I can feel him. He's moving. He just...something's wrong."
The doctor bent closer. "It's dangerous, Lady Neville. You know the risks."
"But if you don't cut, they'll both die. I can't understand it; she's had two boys already, each as easy a birth as one could want." Mother's face was pale and drawn as if she hadn't been sleeping. Cecily didn't want to imagine what she looked like. "Do it, Doctor Caux. I can't think of any other way."
When Cecily awakened, the room was quiet--deathly quiet. She could almost imagine nothing had happened, that it had all been a dreadful dream, at least until she tried to sit up and pain seemed to cleave her in two.
She must have cried out, for when she opened her eyes she found her mother bending over her, familiar fingers clasped round her hand. "Mamma--"
"I knew I shouldn't have left her," she was saying to someone on the far side of the bed. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Cecily turned to see Doctor Caux, his face grey with worry.
"Doctor, where is he?" Cecily said. She could barely recognise her own voice, hoarse and grinding like broken glass. "The baby. What happened?"
Doctor Caux was not looking at her any more; his eyes had met her mother's and they seemed to have an entire silent conversation before he held out a small vial to her, filled with dark red liquid. "Drink this, Cecily. You're not strong enough."
"Strong enough for what?" Her eyes narrowed as she glanced from one to the other. "Mama, tell me what happened. You must tell me." She could hear the catch in her own voice as she spoke the inevitable words, "He's dead, isn't he?"
"He isn't, Cecily." Her mother would not look at her. "Your son is alive."
There was something in the words, something that made Cecily's skin crawl on instinct. "But what?"
"You nearly died, Cecily," Doctor Caux grasped her other hand and brought the vial to her mouth. "You must regain your strength, young lady--"
Her grip was surprisingly strong as she pulled him closer, drops of laudanum splashing like bloodstains across the coverlet. "Tell me, for God's sake. I have the right to know."
"Drink first."
Without further hesitation, she tossed back the remaining liquid in the vial, grimacing at its heavy sickly-sweetness. "Now tell me."
She had forgotten the cradle at the far corner of the room; it had been Ned's and then George's, and she had brought it to Carnarvon, intending it for her third child. Her mother paused beside it now, reaching down to retrieve an impossibly small, wrapped bundle.
The last thing Cecily remembered before the laudanum haze claimed her was quiet, chilling eyes the very colour of Richard's gazing into hers as one skeletal, withered hand reached out to her.
***
The last place in the world in which Marguerite Lorentz expected to fall in love was the Brasserie Claudette near the Rue Saint-Denis on a rainy night in March of 1917. And yet, much to her chagrin, that was precisely what happened.
Madame Grieux was famous for her authentic Alsacien tartes flambées and infamous for knowing everything about anyone who entered her brasserie. Marguerite wouldn't even have been there that night had Nadine Monteuil's father not unexpectedly arrived on leave from Salonika. Thankful for the chance for extra money, Marguerite sent her grateful friend on her way
It was a busy evening, unsurprisingly. Nadine's father was not the only soldier on leave--a group of Englishmen had taken over the benches closest to the bar, the unfamiliar uniforms and appalling French all but drowning out the usual patrons. After about two hours of balancing glasses and plates, she begged Madame Grieux for five minutes to catch her breath and got a harried nod and a small glass of Madame's eau-de-vie.
"I apologise for my companions," an English voice said from the shadows beside the door. "It's been some time since they've had a decent meal."
"No offence taken, monsieur," she replied with a shrug as she relished the burn of alcohol down her throat. "But for you, we would all be speaking German now."
"I shouldn't go that far." She could hear the smile in his words. "But thank you...what is your name, mademoiselle?"
"Marguerite Lorentz," with a grin, she added, "Monsieur l'ombre. A face or a name would be helpful if you cannot provide both."
His laughter warmed her almost as much as had the eau-de-vie, but when he stepped into the light, she could only catch her breath. Marguerite was not a fanciful person by nature but the young man facing her had a face like one of da Vinci's angels in the Louvre. She had not thought to find beauty outside those walls in these days of mud and death.
"Lieutenant William Suffolk at your service, mademoiselle Lorentz." He bowed over her wine-stained hand as if she were a grand lady. "And, if I may be so bold as to say, you are the most beautiful thing I have seen in all of Paris."
"You are bold," she echoed, laughing herself. "My maman told me to beware of men and their compliments."
"She was right. We are all rogues and not to be trusted." He did not let go of her hand, all the same. "Where is your mama?"
"Far away from here. A village called Le Wantzenau, near Strasbourg."
"How did you end up here, then?"
She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. What's one more wanderer in Paris? I would not trade it for the world."
"You're very brave, you know," he said after a moment spent lighting a cigarette. "On your own in the middle of a war."
"I barely remember what it felt like to not be in the middle of a war." Draining the last of the eau-de-vie, she turned back to the door. "I'm afraid I can't stay. Au revoir, monsieur."
It had not occurred to her to think anything of the conversation, and it could easily have found itself filed away at the back of her memory to be pondered on rare moments many years later. But Lieutenant William Suffolk would not have it so.
As it neared midnight, the brasserie began to empty out and one of the two barmen settled at the rickety piano in the corner as he tended to do when things were quiet. Like clockwork, Alphonse, who liked to boast of having played for the Empress Eugénie herself at the Jardins de Luxembourg, opened his case and pulled out his accordion.
On her way back to the bar with a tray of discarded glasses, Marguerite was forced to a halt as someone grabbed her hand.
"Dance with me." His voice was low, his fingers grasping her wrist. "Marguerite. Margaret."
The Anglicised vowels, though strange to her ears, lent her name more urgency as his eyes searched hers. On the far side of the brasserie, the pianist played a series of ascending notes soon picked up by Alphonse beside him. "Bien."
Setting the empty glasses on the table, she followed him to the musicians' corner. He smelled of cigarette smoke and English cologne and she couldn't help but wonder how he'd acquired such luxuries at the front. As if reading her mind, he offered her an impish smile. "My mother is a wonderful woman who sends me parcels."
"You are a lucky man indeed, Monsieur."
"Call me William. Or whatever it is here. I'm sure it will sound far nicer from you," he said, all but pouting at her. "Please, Margaret."
It was an awful idea. Patrons, and especially soldiers, would take everything they could possibly get in the gospel according to Madame Grieux. She had no interest in her hired help becoming filles de joie because they hadn't had the sense to refuse a man in uniform. Marguerite glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder to make sure the usually hawk-eyed owner of the Brasserie Claudette hadn't seen her dancing with the dangerously handsome Lieutenant Suffolk.
"I had a friend of mine request the tarte flambée. She won't be back for at least ten minutes."
"You are persistent," she said primly. "But I shall tell you frankly. I will not flatter you, Monsieur."
"I don't want flattery." His voice lowered, breath catching as he looked at her.
Marguerite stepped away from him to hide the shiver. "You are...not a wise decision."
"Not wise. Never wise." Reaching out, Guillaume brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. "But I can promise you'll forget the war ever happened."
"Who are you?" Marguerite's laughter seemed to crack the very air. "Don Juan? Casanova? You forget, Monsieur Guillaume Suffolk, that love is a goddess and not a man." Much as he had, she felt her tongue stumble over the unfamiliar consonants.
"Prove it to me, then." Suffolk smiled and it seemed as though the entire room had tilted on its axis. "And I was right about the name."
Marguerite did have a voice of reason. She was not, however, known for listening to it. And, as René, Madame Grieux's long-suffering husband routinely pointed out, they might be dead tomorrow. He was of the opinion that nothing mattered but the moment. Madame, who did not agree, put him to work as her sous-chef. René had lost his left arm at Verdun, a small price paid when every other man in his battalion had died. Slowly but surely the men in Marguerite's village had vanished, telegrams taking their place, first, one at a time, and, on one inappropriately beautiful summer day, ten at once.
Her parents had been convinced that she was pining for one of those men and had acquiesced to Marguerite's request to pay an extended visit to her aunt in Paris. It was simply her misfortune that Tante Olympe had succumbed to the influenza a bare few days before Marguerite's arrival and her small house near the Cimetière Père-Lachaise sold off to pay her debts. Madame Grieux had been a close friend of Tante Olympe and had taken Marguerite in without question and put her to work at the brasserie. She supposed she could have returned home, but the thought was one she did not relish. At least in the bustle of a massive city, she could find some respite from death.
"You can't possibly make me forget," she told Guillaume Suffolk. "But I would wish to think of something else for a few hours." And, she thought to herself, like as not, she would never see him again.
Madame Grieux stopped her in the doorway as she left at the end of the night. She pressed a small, oddly shaped parcel into Marguerite's hand. "You seem a lucky girl, but one can never be too careful."
She did not see him again for another six months, when he reappeared in the doorway of Brasserie Claudette and Marguerite, heedless of the patrons' eyes, threw herself into his arms without a trace of shame. She scoured the papers for reports from the Somme, her heart thudding as she read growing tales of horror. Every six months, like clockwork, he came to her doorstep like a man dying of thirst.
The English in the brasserie gradually gave way to young Americans, at least three of whom offered to whisk Marguerite across the Atlantic to cities whose names she'd never heard before--Pittsburgh, Saint-Louis (pronounced very oddly indeed), San Francisco. It had not been six months, but on the day the Armistice was signed, Marguerite began to watch the doorway compulsively.
A week before Advent, she found him in the corner of the brasserie and kissed him in full view of Madame Grieux. "Thank God it's all over. I can stop worrying that I'll never see you again."
Guillaume's eyes didn't quite meet hers as he looked at her. "You are the most magnificent woman I have ever met, Marguerite Lorentz." She told herself it was only the words that mattered.
Some hours later, she opened her eyes at well past midnight to find him awake, the red glow of the cigarette revealing that he stood beside the window of her attic room. Marguerite groped for the lamp and a dull light bloomed across the room. "You're distracted."
Madame Grieux had stopped her once more in the doorway--she had made no mention of Suffolk since that first day--and looked her in the eyes. "See that he marries you or he'll answer to me." It hadn't actually occurred to Marguerite, but the more she thought on it, the more appealing she found the idea. He had seen her each and every time he was on leave. Surely that meant something.
Suffolk put out the cigarette and settled himself beside Marguerite. "It's just strange is all. That it's all over now. I don't even remember what it meant."
Marguerite disentangled herself from the covers, despite the winter chill, and wrapped her arms around him. "You came back. That's all that matters in the end."
"No, Margaret, it isn't." He was staring determinedly at a pool of shadows near the wall. "I'm returning to England next week. I'm going home."
She couldn't have said why she had expected to hear anything more. He had never promised her anything, nor she him. "Paris bores you in peacetime?"
He sighed. "Don't be flippant, Margaret. I don't want to."
"Then don't," she said. "Stay with me, Guillaume."
"I have a wife in Cheltenham."
And there it was. Marguerite's arms were still linked round his shoulders, her lips pressed against his neck, but it was as if his skin had suddenly turned cold. "And if the war had gone on? Would you have told me?"
"No." The word was muffled against her hand. "Because I can't bear to look at you now you know it. This wasn't meant to happen."
She backed away across the bed. "You never promised me anything, Guillaume. But I cannot help but wonder how you plan to explain your absences to this wife."
"Margaret--"
"You understand, do you not, why I might think about such a thing." She was shaking now. "Exactly how much leave did you have, Monsieur Suffolk? Enough to satisfy a wife as well?"
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. "I understand that you're upset--"
"Oh, yes, I'm quite upset. Are you so very surprised?"
"I never meant to hurt you, Margaret." She turned away and heard him move closer, his voice pitched just beside her ear. "I meant what I said before. You are magnificent, my Margaret."
Before she could think better of the idea, she whipped round and her hand connected satisfyingly with his face. "I am not your Margaret. Least of all now that I know I'm not the only woman you're keeping."
The silence seemed to stretch indefinitely until he spoke again, the words barely audible. "For God's sake, Margaret, why do you think I kept coming back? Alice and I...it was only ever convenience. An alliance of interests. I had a position and lacked money; she had money and wanted a position. We barely speak to one another. And when I met you--"
"Stop it."
"Margaret, I love you."
She looked up at him, barely able to form words for rage. "How dare you. Get out of here, you filthy salaud." It was the worst insult she knew and the sudden realisation of just how little she'd understood even now, how provincial and pathetic-- "Get out!" she shrieked, shoving him backward until he stumbled against the bed. "I hope your insides rot. I hope your wife throws you into the streets. I hope you--"
"You've made your point." He held up his hand, weariness sketched across his face. "Adieu, Margaret."
He did not slam the door. It might have been more satisfying if he had. Sinking onto the bed, Marguerite cast about for something she could throw at it, but there was nothing but a nearly empty jar of lip rouge on the dressing table. Her hands were shaking and she could hardly breathe, as if something had formed in her throat to cut off her breath.
It was only when she looked in the mirror that she realised her face was covered in tears. For Suffolk. It was unendurable.
She stood slowly and deliberately, pulling her worn dressing gown tightly round herself. After splashing cold water on her face, she sat before the dressing table. A pinch of powder and kohl around her eyes would hide the redness.
There was an envelope lying on the dressing table. Marguerite frowned at it, at her name inked in unfamiliar handwriting. Holding it gingerly, as if wary of it bursting into flames, she carefully slit it open with nail scissors. The notepaper was pristine, thick and velvet-soft, the letters HRL embossed in script across the top.
Dear Mademoiselle Lorentz,
No doubt you must wonder who I am, and I cannot blame you. My name is Henry Lancaster and I believe you once knew my mother, though perhaps only as Catherine Vaillant.
Marguerite had one memory of Catherine Vaillant and that was of a quiet, sad lady--though she must have only been a girl, even that had seemed old to Marguerite, a few months past her fourth birthday--watching a glittering room filled with dancers as if looking for one in particular. When he appeared, Marguerite realised she'd replaced him in her mind with Suffolk.
"Damn and blast you, William Suffolk!" she hissed. Forcing her attention back to the letter, she read on.
I regret to inform you that my mother passed away three weeks ago. Please forgive me for the delay; it took some time to find your present address. Quite luckily, a close friend of my uncle's happened to meet you--perhaps you recall Lieutenant William Suffolk.
Marguerite closed her eyes and prayed for patience. Whoever this Henry Lancaster was, she did not approve his choice of friends in the least. But as she read on, weaving together his memories of his mother, a woman she'd barely known if at all, Marguerite began to wonder about him. He was young, to be certain, but seemed somehow unashamed of it.
They say the war is over now. I would have been old enough to enlist a month after the Armistice and perhaps it is cowardly of me to admit it, but I am glad. I don't know why I'm admitting it to you, but perhaps it is because you are a stranger and in France--surely it must be a relief that it is finally finished.
There was something oddly disarming about such bald truths written out to a perfect stranger. Even more so when she reached the end of the letter.
Suffolk has told me so much about you and I hope you will not find it presumptuous if I tell you that, should you ever wish to come to England, I would be honoured to meet you.
She sat at the dressing table for a very long time afterward before she began to write a response. In exchange for the confidences he'd offered she told him stories of the brasserie and its colourful patrons. Before she could change her mind, she posted the letter the next day.
William Suffolk did not reappear at Brasserie Claudette and she told herself it did not matter, that there was an entire new world in which he need not play the smallest part. And, perhaps, she would look forward to another letter from Henry Lancaster.
She was eighteen years old and had her entire life to forget William Suffolk.
Epilogue
Part I
Part II
iii. Posterity, await for wretched years
When at their mothers' moistened eyes babes shall suck,
Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears,
And none but women left to wail the dead.
--Henry VI, Part I (I.i.48-51)
My darling Richard--
Just a few words, love. The stories we've heard have been the stuff of nightmares. Tell me you are alive.
He tucked the letter into his pocket, its sharp edges oddly comforting against his skin. Somewhere, he could hear explosions. He didn't even jump anymore, though Cecily had spoken to him of nightmares when he was last on leave. Nightmares of what had happened to John Lancaster and Cecily's brother, a shuddering, twitching, broken sleep from which he couldn't wake.
He would write to her. Just a field postcard, with too little space for detail. Ned was old enough that he would try to read them and Cecily would not thank him if he forced her to explain the trenches to their son.
Richard closed his eyes and Ned's face swam in his vision, a towheaded boy with his mother's smile--the smile he remembered from before the war, not the pale shadow he'd last seen. Richard, don't go back. For God's sake, don't go back there. God help him, he'd nearly said yes, and she'd seen that moment of indecision and the hope in her eyes nearly did him in. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. They'd held one another in silence after.
"York." He glanced back to find Vernon in the doorway of the dugout. "Talbot's got some new mad scheme. You'd best talk him out of it."
"When did John Bloody Talbot ever listen to me?" Richard sighed. "I'll do what I can."
But when he reached the neighbouring trench, Talbot had already run off, to God only knew where. Richard looked at the men clustered round the crate transformed into an impromptu card table. "What is he doing, then?"
"Unoccupied trench somewhere that way," one of them, an older, second lieutenant named Marston, gestured vaguely northwards, the flick of his hand reminding Richard of something he couldn't quite place. "He thinks we can take it tonight."
"Has he, in fact, lost his mind?"
Marston shrugged. "There's a fair bit of that going round. Cry havoc and loose the dogs of war, etcetera..."
"Well said, sir," Richard allowed, with a tight smile. The other returned it with what was practically a grimace. He was one of more recent conscripts, having arrived the previous November, but his eyes were already dulled from strain and grief.
There was something in his face that nagged at Richard, but he hadn't the time to think on it further. It was only as he crept through the curtain of rain in search of Talbot that he realised where he'd seen that expression before. He hadn't thought of his uncle Edward, his father's elder brother, since before the war, before his marriage, even--Talbot had known him, though he referred to him somewhat uncomfortably as a man of 'unusual tendencies'. But it wasn't his uncle's tendencies, unusual or otherwise, that pricked him now. It was the last time he'd seen him, some few months before his father's death, at Carnarvon.
Long after he'd been put to bed, Richard had crept down the stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghost of dead, mad Richard Perrivale who, according to Cook, haunted the library. Instead, he'd found his uncle with their host, who had been briefly introduced to him as Henry Lancaster. His foot had accidentally hit a creaky board and, before he could duck behind the door, they'd both looked up.
"What have we here?" There was something needle-sharp beneath Mr Lancaster's question, however cheerfully couched. "Your nephew, Edward, isn't it?"
"Richard," his uncle said, shaking his head. "What have I told you about sneaking out at night?"
"I wanted to see the ghost. I've never seen a real one before." He straightened. "I'm not afraid."
"That," Mr Lancaster said, eyes narrowed, "would depend on the ghost, I should think. Who are you looking for?"
"Let me put him to bed, Harry," interjected Uncle Edward. "He's just a boy."
Wide-eyed, Richard let his uncle lead him from the library into the darkened front hall, but stopped at the foot of the stairs. "Did I do something wrong?"
Uncle Edward's smile was so small and weak it nearly got swallowed by his beard. "No, Richard, you didn't do anything wrong."
"But I want to see a real ghost. Father says they don't exist but I think they do. Especially here," he added, looking round warily. "You can hear things."
"Can you, now?" There was a new light in his eyes now, as if he were desperately looking for something and couldn't find it. "I can't--not anymore."
Richard nodded and pointed at a gilt-framed painting that hung beside the doors to the library. "He looks like a ghost."
Uncle Edward swallowed. "I suppose he does," he said, his voice rasping like sandpaper. "It was never finished properly, you see."
The man in the painting had grey eyes that seemed to stare right through Richard. Something in the set of his face reminded Richard rather of Mr Lancaster, although the portrait seemed sadder somehow. Reaching out, he squeezed Uncle Edward's hand. "Did you know him?"
His uncle nodded slowly. "A long time ago."
"Did he die?"
"We all die eventually, Richard. It's just a matter of when and how."
Uncle Edward had died of brain fever in the Transvaal within a year of Richard's father. At least, Richard thought grimly, he'd avoided this great bloody mess.
"Ah, Major York. Looking a bit the worse for wear, aren't we?" Talbot, it seemed, had found him.
Richard straightened and saluted quickly. "Sir, what's this about taking that trench?"
"Orders, young man, orders from the Commander-in-Chief himself." Brigadier John Talbot was perhaps slightly younger than Richard's father would have been, had he lived, and had spent most of his life serving the British Empire in a scattering of far-flung locales. Before he'd known Richard's uncle in the Transvaal, he'd been acquainted with little Henry Lancaster's grandfather in India. He was, in turns, the most courageous and most infuriating man Richard had ever met. "We're moving forward."
"In this, sir?" Richard gestured to the mud that had all but captured his boots. "It's suicide."
"Orders."
He bit his tongue. That was the problem with Talbot. He'd made his entire, illustrious career out of following orders to the letter and somehow wrangling successes out of the worst odds. If anybody could take that benighted trench, it would surely be Talbot.
"After sunset," Talbot said. "Hold your men in reserve. We can't commit everyone at the head, but you'll need to be ready."
There was no arguing with him. York bowed his head. "Yes, sir."
"Major Somerset has my left and you my right, York." He peered at Richard through beady, scowling eyes. "There are more important things than your petty squabblings, York. Them," he gestured into the pervasive damp mist that obscured No Man's Land, "for instance."
"Yes, sir." He could feel the heat rise in his neck. "Of course, sir."
He supposed it was inevitable that he would meet Somerset sooner or later; one couldn't spend three years in a war where men were moved like so many pawns without running into the one person guaranteed to make things even worse. But that didn't change the fact that his humiliation of Somerset seven years before had made the other man loathe him all the more.
Richard had just turned to return to his dugout when a young and suspiciously clean young man brushed past him to catch Talbot's arm.
"Johnny!" For the first time since Richard had met him, some emotion that wasn't anger or irritation entered John Talbot's voice. "What the devil are you doing here?"
"I joined up, Father. I had to." He couldn't have been a day over seventeen. Ned's face flashed even sharper across his memory and Richard shuddered. Talbot's expression echoed this horror as he shook his head slowly.
"My God, Johnny, you shouldn't be here. You can't be here. York, take him--"
Richard had taken two steps forward before young Johnny Talbot flung up one hand to stop him. "I'm not leaving. I couldn't stay back there, not while you're at the front. Father, I'm here to help you."
"Christ, boy." Talbot bowed his head but Richard caught the glimmer of tears in the lantern-light. "I'm begging you. Don't stay here."
"We'll explain that it was a mistake," Richard heard himself say. "He can't be eighteen."
"Don't you dare!" Johnny flared. "I'm not going back. I'm staying with my father."
Richard met Talbot's eyes, hit with such a painful upsurge of hope that he caught his breath. He didn't dare look out to No Man's Land. However, Talbot closed his eyes before pitching his voice so the entire trench could hear. "We go over tonight. After sunset."
Turning away from his son, he rounded the corner to the next dugout. Richard retreated as well and settled down to write to Cecily.
Darling--
He stopped, tapping the pen against his teeth. The last of the light had melted away. Talbot would be making his charge soon.
I will come back to you. Whatever it takes.
After dropping the postcard into a mail pouch, he snatched up his kit and made his way to where he had last seen Talbot. Through the mist, he could see the blurred outline of shells crashing down on the trench the Brigadier had indicated before.
"They're being slaughtered, sir." Vernon's face looked green in the scant light. "Do we go?"
The seconds crawled by as Richard watched the red-starred horizon. "Wait for Somerset."
"But sir--"
"Wait. We can't do anything on our own. Even with his numbers, we may not stand a chance, but we're definitely for the chop otherwise."
Whatever it takes. He could see Sir John Lancaster's smile, grim and steely as it had been just over a year before, further west across this blasted landscape. A shell had taken him within twenty yards of the trench from which he'd just emerged. Cecily's brother Thomas, shrapnel clinging like thorns to his face. So many others whose names he'd never learnt. I will come back to you.
Somerset didn't move.
"Major York, sir, we can't just let them die," Vernon whispered. "We can't."
"And what good would it do, Vernon, if we died with them?" Richard asked bitterly. "Tell me that." Live for me, Richard. I would do very badly without you. Further along the trench, Somerset's men were silent. Slowly, the shelling ground to a halt. Richard relaxed his grip on the rifle and closed his eyes. "It was a bloody stupid idea."
"You don't think there's a chance...?" Richard shook his head. Vernon shuddered. "Someone will need to report this."
"I will. We made the only decision we could under the circumstances. If Somerset had given the least indication that he was going over, we'd have followed." If he said the words over and over, perhaps he could convince himself they were true, that he truly would have charged into No Man's Land if things had gone as planned.
At daybreak, the medics returned empty-handed.
***
Outside the window, the rainswept Berkshire countryside spread across the horizon in a blur of grey and green. Cecily spread her hand across her belly as the baby moved beneath it. The doctor had insisted it was another boy but even now she wondered--he was still so very small compared to how Ned and George had weighed on her by her ninth month.
"He'll come back," she found herself telling him--or her. "He has to come back."
But the words rang hollow. They'd had a letter from Thomas a bare two days before the field telegram arrived. Mother had sent her to Carnarvon with the boys, insisting that London was no place for an expectant mother and that if she wanted to be useful, Humphrey Lancaster's wife had taken in several men still not quite well enough to return to their families.
"They always like having women about. They can think about something other than death." The lines on Mother's face had deepened to furrows since Thomas' death. "Just let them pretend, Cecily."
It seemed, however, that all the patients did at first was ask about Richard--where he was stationed, what he'd seen--and Cecily had answered as well as she could. Her husband's letters were cryptic at best, no doubt because he knew she wouldn't be the only person to read them. Only in those brief days when he returned to England on leave did she even catch a glimpse of the truth in all its horror.
It was only the second time he'd come home. The first had been at Christmas, six months after Sir John Lancaster had died at Ypres, and he'd awakened her with nightmares on all but the first night--nightmares he could not remember in the morning. Somehow the dull-eyed silence more than a year later was almost worse, as if it no longer surprised him. If there were nightmares still, he kept them to himself and she forced herself to let him, at least until a frigid morning in January when she awakened alone in sheets soaked with sweat and she realised she could stand it no longer.
"Richard?" she whispered, a pit opening somewhere in her stomach as it occurred to her that she might have imagined it all, that he was still in France--one might as well have named it Hell-- "Richard, where are you?"
She crept from the bed and groped for her robe in the twilight. As she pulled it snug around her, she saw the shadow in the window-seat. He was staring blankly into the garden, his eyes miles away. "Richard, come back to bed, love." Cecily could see him start, every muscle in his body tensed as if he were on the verge of leaping to his feet. "Richard, it's me," she whispered, holding out her hand even as she sought to hide the fear clawing at her. "Don't you know me?"
For several seconds, he just stared at her. Cecily froze in place, one hand still outstretched. Finally, he shook his head a little. "Cecily?"
"Yes?" She could barely hear herself.
He drew a shuddering breath. "Christ." Another shake of his head before he pressed his fingers to his temples. "I'm sorry, Cis. I didn't mean to wake you."
"Nonsense," she said, swallowing the lump that seemed to have lodged in her throat. "Tell me what's wrong." Settling beside him, she reached out and took his hand. "Please, Richard."
"It's nothing," he said, voice flat and unconvincing. "I couldn't sleep, that's all."
"Don't you dare lie to me, Richard York--"
"For God's sake, Cis, let it be!"
"No, damn you, I won't," she snapped, perilously close to tears. "Why won't you tell me what's happening?"
"I can't," he whispered. His eyes finally met hers, the colour of the clouds outside, and he reached out to cradle her cheek in one freezing hand. "I can't, Cis."
"Why not?" Tears pricked at her eyes. "My God, Richard, do you think me blind? Mother and I visit the hospitals several times a week, for goodness' sake. I've heard the stories, I've seen the scars, and I've woken men from nightmares that--"
"To each man his own hell." He pressed his lips to her hand. Cecily shifted closer, resting her head against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. "You are everything that is not the war--everything that isn't filth and death and the awful crippling sameness of it all." There was the ghost of a smile in his voice even as Cecily squeezed her eyes shut against the threatening tears. "Did you think I wouldn't notice that you put scent on your letters?"
"The first time Mother and I went to St Bartholomew's, we met a young man named Simon Harford. He couldn't have been more than nineteen," she said, hearing the catch in her own voice. "He'd lost a leg near the Marne and he said that he could always smell lilies on his wife's letters. She kept a flower shop in Galway."
"I loved it."
Tears seeped from Cecily's eyes and soaked into his shirt. "Richard, don't go back. For God's sake, don't go back there."
His words were muffled against her hair. "I couldn't live with myself if I didn't."
"You can't possibly mean that." But she didn't believe the words even as she spoke them. "You're not permitted to die, you hear? I will never forgive you if you do."
"I'll hold you to that." He kissed her forehead, laughter buzzing briefly against her skin. "I'd be a bloody idiot if I did. I'll always come back, Cis. Even if you grew so sick of me that you'd rather I didn't."
She knew, in her heart, that he had no control over that and she did not ask him again, though her very heart bled to keep silent. And when she found herself pregnant once again, she bit back her curse at the unfairness of it all; that she would bear yet another child who barely knew Richard. George hadn't recognised him at all on this last leave, peeking warily out from behind the banister at the gaunt, bedraggled man his mother insisted was his father.
Even Richard's response seemed strained, though it was difficult to tell in writing. Now was no time to bring another child into the world, but the alternative was unthinkable. It was as much to lift Cecily's spirits that her mother had seen fit to send her to Carnarvon with Ned and George; at the very least, Ned would have the run of the estate and the somewhat startled attentions of his cousin Henry, who had been withdrawn from Eton but was still preparing for his Oxford examinations.
He was an odd young man, Henry Lancaster. In the first place, he seemed quite unnerved by her, as if he'd never seen a pregnant woman before. Of course, it did occur to Cecily that he probably hadn't, without younger brothers or sisters or cousins. He did, however, have the patience of a saint in Cecily's eyes for his willingness to indulge Ned's relentless questions.
"Cousin Cecily?" Henry was standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor. "I'm afraid...I asked Ned to fetch me a book I'd left in my room and it's been half an hour and I don't know where he's gone..."
Cecily sighed. "You ought to know better by now, Henry, than to trust Ned not to wander off. Very well." Making her way to the door, she laid one hand on his arm and felt him flinch. "Oh, for goodness' sake, Henry, you can't hurt it!"
"I'm sorry, Cousin Cecily--"
"It's all right. Just help me down the stairs and I'll find Ned."
It was, she suspected, with a great deal of relief that he left her to retreat to the library. Cecily only had to wait a few moments for the sound of Ned's voice to pipe up from the direction of the back parlour.
"Ned!" Cecily halted in the doorway and pressed her hand to her swollen belly as she caught her breath. "You know you're not meant to be here. These gentlemen need their rest."
Her son resembled her to an uncanny degree, or so she'd been told innumerable times. He was easily the most beautiful boy she'd ever seen--even excepting a mother's bias. "I was telling him about Father," he said, gesturing to the soldier in the bed behind him. "He told me about a boy raised by panthers!"
To Cecily's enquiring look, the soldier, a private from Northamptonshire, vouchsafed a sheepish smile. "He wanted a story. I couldn't refuse the lad."
"Mother, can we get a panther?"
"I'm afraid there aren't any panthers in England, dearest." Cecily met the soldier's eyes as he muffled his laughter in his sleeve. "You may need to travel to India for that."
"Just like Cousin Henry's great-grandfather," Ned said, nodding sagely. "He killed a tiger with his bare hands and brought home its skin to Lancaster House."
"How dreadful," murmured Cecily, resigning herself to the disappointment on her son's face. "Now, come along, Ned. It's nearly teatime."
The prospect of tea, rationed as it was, proved sufficient distraction for Ned, who charged off down the corridor toward the parlour. Cecily followed at a more sedate pace, wincing as a sharp pain shot through her belly.
"Mrs York?" Eleanor had convinced a hospital sister from Henley to stop in once or twice a week, and it was Mrs Winston who took Cecily's arm now. "Is it the baby?"
Cecily nodded slowly. "I think it must be. Will you help me to my room?"
"Of course, ma'am. And I'll ring the doctor for you."
They had nearly reached the staircase when the room began to spin. "Mrs Winston, I..."
It was the last thing she remembered before time itself lost all meaning, flying past and crawling at once somewhere through the haze of agony. There was a point when she could have sworn her mother was beside her, holding her hand as she spoke over Cecily's head to the doctor.
"...this can't go on. It's been four days already. There must be something you can do, man!"
"Four days?" Cecily croaked, trying to see the doctor's face. "But that can't be right."
"Don't talk, dearest. Save your strength," Mother said. "Something must be done, and if you won't do it, I'll find someone who will. If the child isn't dead by now, it's a miracle."
"He's not dead," whispered Cecily. "I can feel him. He's moving. He just...something's wrong."
The doctor bent closer. "It's dangerous, Lady Neville. You know the risks."
"But if you don't cut, they'll both die. I can't understand it; she's had two boys already, each as easy a birth as one could want." Mother's face was pale and drawn as if she hadn't been sleeping. Cecily didn't want to imagine what she looked like. "Do it, Doctor Caux. I can't think of any other way."
When Cecily awakened, the room was quiet--deathly quiet. She could almost imagine nothing had happened, that it had all been a dreadful dream, at least until she tried to sit up and pain seemed to cleave her in two.
She must have cried out, for when she opened her eyes she found her mother bending over her, familiar fingers clasped round her hand. "Mamma--"
"I knew I shouldn't have left her," she was saying to someone on the far side of the bed. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Cecily turned to see Doctor Caux, his face grey with worry.
"Doctor, where is he?" Cecily said. She could barely recognise her own voice, hoarse and grinding like broken glass. "The baby. What happened?"
Doctor Caux was not looking at her any more; his eyes had met her mother's and they seemed to have an entire silent conversation before he held out a small vial to her, filled with dark red liquid. "Drink this, Cecily. You're not strong enough."
"Strong enough for what?" Her eyes narrowed as she glanced from one to the other. "Mama, tell me what happened. You must tell me." She could hear the catch in her own voice as she spoke the inevitable words, "He's dead, isn't he?"
"He isn't, Cecily." Her mother would not look at her. "Your son is alive."
There was something in the words, something that made Cecily's skin crawl on instinct. "But what?"
"You nearly died, Cecily," Doctor Caux grasped her other hand and brought the vial to her mouth. "You must regain your strength, young lady--"
Her grip was surprisingly strong as she pulled him closer, drops of laudanum splashing like bloodstains across the coverlet. "Tell me, for God's sake. I have the right to know."
"Drink first."
Without further hesitation, she tossed back the remaining liquid in the vial, grimacing at its heavy sickly-sweetness. "Now tell me."
She had forgotten the cradle at the far corner of the room; it had been Ned's and then George's, and she had brought it to Carnarvon, intending it for her third child. Her mother paused beside it now, reaching down to retrieve an impossibly small, wrapped bundle.
The last thing Cecily remembered before the laudanum haze claimed her was quiet, chilling eyes the very colour of Richard's gazing into hers as one skeletal, withered hand reached out to her.
***
The last place in the world in which Marguerite Lorentz expected to fall in love was the Brasserie Claudette near the Rue Saint-Denis on a rainy night in March of 1917. And yet, much to her chagrin, that was precisely what happened.
Madame Grieux was famous for her authentic Alsacien tartes flambées and infamous for knowing everything about anyone who entered her brasserie. Marguerite wouldn't even have been there that night had Nadine Monteuil's father not unexpectedly arrived on leave from Salonika. Thankful for the chance for extra money, Marguerite sent her grateful friend on her way
It was a busy evening, unsurprisingly. Nadine's father was not the only soldier on leave--a group of Englishmen had taken over the benches closest to the bar, the unfamiliar uniforms and appalling French all but drowning out the usual patrons. After about two hours of balancing glasses and plates, she begged Madame Grieux for five minutes to catch her breath and got a harried nod and a small glass of Madame's eau-de-vie.
"I apologise for my companions," an English voice said from the shadows beside the door. "It's been some time since they've had a decent meal."
"No offence taken, monsieur," she replied with a shrug as she relished the burn of alcohol down her throat. "But for you, we would all be speaking German now."
"I shouldn't go that far." She could hear the smile in his words. "But thank you...what is your name, mademoiselle?"
"Marguerite Lorentz," with a grin, she added, "Monsieur l'ombre. A face or a name would be helpful if you cannot provide both."
His laughter warmed her almost as much as had the eau-de-vie, but when he stepped into the light, she could only catch her breath. Marguerite was not a fanciful person by nature but the young man facing her had a face like one of da Vinci's angels in the Louvre. She had not thought to find beauty outside those walls in these days of mud and death.
"Lieutenant William Suffolk at your service, mademoiselle Lorentz." He bowed over her wine-stained hand as if she were a grand lady. "And, if I may be so bold as to say, you are the most beautiful thing I have seen in all of Paris."
"You are bold," she echoed, laughing herself. "My maman told me to beware of men and their compliments."
"She was right. We are all rogues and not to be trusted." He did not let go of her hand, all the same. "Where is your mama?"
"Far away from here. A village called Le Wantzenau, near Strasbourg."
"How did you end up here, then?"
She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. What's one more wanderer in Paris? I would not trade it for the world."
"You're very brave, you know," he said after a moment spent lighting a cigarette. "On your own in the middle of a war."
"I barely remember what it felt like to not be in the middle of a war." Draining the last of the eau-de-vie, she turned back to the door. "I'm afraid I can't stay. Au revoir, monsieur."
It had not occurred to her to think anything of the conversation, and it could easily have found itself filed away at the back of her memory to be pondered on rare moments many years later. But Lieutenant William Suffolk would not have it so.
As it neared midnight, the brasserie began to empty out and one of the two barmen settled at the rickety piano in the corner as he tended to do when things were quiet. Like clockwork, Alphonse, who liked to boast of having played for the Empress Eugénie herself at the Jardins de Luxembourg, opened his case and pulled out his accordion.
On her way back to the bar with a tray of discarded glasses, Marguerite was forced to a halt as someone grabbed her hand.
"Dance with me." His voice was low, his fingers grasping her wrist. "Marguerite. Margaret."
The Anglicised vowels, though strange to her ears, lent her name more urgency as his eyes searched hers. On the far side of the brasserie, the pianist played a series of ascending notes soon picked up by Alphonse beside him. "Bien."
Setting the empty glasses on the table, she followed him to the musicians' corner. He smelled of cigarette smoke and English cologne and she couldn't help but wonder how he'd acquired such luxuries at the front. As if reading her mind, he offered her an impish smile. "My mother is a wonderful woman who sends me parcels."
"You are a lucky man indeed, Monsieur."
"Call me William. Or whatever it is here. I'm sure it will sound far nicer from you," he said, all but pouting at her. "Please, Margaret."
It was an awful idea. Patrons, and especially soldiers, would take everything they could possibly get in the gospel according to Madame Grieux. She had no interest in her hired help becoming filles de joie because they hadn't had the sense to refuse a man in uniform. Marguerite glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder to make sure the usually hawk-eyed owner of the Brasserie Claudette hadn't seen her dancing with the dangerously handsome Lieutenant Suffolk.
"I had a friend of mine request the tarte flambée. She won't be back for at least ten minutes."
"You are persistent," she said primly. "But I shall tell you frankly. I will not flatter you, Monsieur."
"I don't want flattery." His voice lowered, breath catching as he looked at her.
Marguerite stepped away from him to hide the shiver. "You are...not a wise decision."
"Not wise. Never wise." Reaching out, Guillaume brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. "But I can promise you'll forget the war ever happened."
"Who are you?" Marguerite's laughter seemed to crack the very air. "Don Juan? Casanova? You forget, Monsieur Guillaume Suffolk, that love is a goddess and not a man." Much as he had, she felt her tongue stumble over the unfamiliar consonants.
"Prove it to me, then." Suffolk smiled and it seemed as though the entire room had tilted on its axis. "And I was right about the name."
Marguerite did have a voice of reason. She was not, however, known for listening to it. And, as René, Madame Grieux's long-suffering husband routinely pointed out, they might be dead tomorrow. He was of the opinion that nothing mattered but the moment. Madame, who did not agree, put him to work as her sous-chef. René had lost his left arm at Verdun, a small price paid when every other man in his battalion had died. Slowly but surely the men in Marguerite's village had vanished, telegrams taking their place, first, one at a time, and, on one inappropriately beautiful summer day, ten at once.
Her parents had been convinced that she was pining for one of those men and had acquiesced to Marguerite's request to pay an extended visit to her aunt in Paris. It was simply her misfortune that Tante Olympe had succumbed to the influenza a bare few days before Marguerite's arrival and her small house near the Cimetière Père-Lachaise sold off to pay her debts. Madame Grieux had been a close friend of Tante Olympe and had taken Marguerite in without question and put her to work at the brasserie. She supposed she could have returned home, but the thought was one she did not relish. At least in the bustle of a massive city, she could find some respite from death.
"You can't possibly make me forget," she told Guillaume Suffolk. "But I would wish to think of something else for a few hours." And, she thought to herself, like as not, she would never see him again.
Madame Grieux stopped her in the doorway as she left at the end of the night. She pressed a small, oddly shaped parcel into Marguerite's hand. "You seem a lucky girl, but one can never be too careful."
She did not see him again for another six months, when he reappeared in the doorway of Brasserie Claudette and Marguerite, heedless of the patrons' eyes, threw herself into his arms without a trace of shame. She scoured the papers for reports from the Somme, her heart thudding as she read growing tales of horror. Every six months, like clockwork, he came to her doorstep like a man dying of thirst.
The English in the brasserie gradually gave way to young Americans, at least three of whom offered to whisk Marguerite across the Atlantic to cities whose names she'd never heard before--Pittsburgh, Saint-Louis (pronounced very oddly indeed), San Francisco. It had not been six months, but on the day the Armistice was signed, Marguerite began to watch the doorway compulsively.
A week before Advent, she found him in the corner of the brasserie and kissed him in full view of Madame Grieux. "Thank God it's all over. I can stop worrying that I'll never see you again."
Guillaume's eyes didn't quite meet hers as he looked at her. "You are the most magnificent woman I have ever met, Marguerite Lorentz." She told herself it was only the words that mattered.
Some hours later, she opened her eyes at well past midnight to find him awake, the red glow of the cigarette revealing that he stood beside the window of her attic room. Marguerite groped for the lamp and a dull light bloomed across the room. "You're distracted."
Madame Grieux had stopped her once more in the doorway--she had made no mention of Suffolk since that first day--and looked her in the eyes. "See that he marries you or he'll answer to me." It hadn't actually occurred to Marguerite, but the more she thought on it, the more appealing she found the idea. He had seen her each and every time he was on leave. Surely that meant something.
Suffolk put out the cigarette and settled himself beside Marguerite. "It's just strange is all. That it's all over now. I don't even remember what it meant."
Marguerite disentangled herself from the covers, despite the winter chill, and wrapped her arms around him. "You came back. That's all that matters in the end."
"No, Margaret, it isn't." He was staring determinedly at a pool of shadows near the wall. "I'm returning to England next week. I'm going home."
She couldn't have said why she had expected to hear anything more. He had never promised her anything, nor she him. "Paris bores you in peacetime?"
He sighed. "Don't be flippant, Margaret. I don't want to."
"Then don't," she said. "Stay with me, Guillaume."
"I have a wife in Cheltenham."
And there it was. Marguerite's arms were still linked round his shoulders, her lips pressed against his neck, but it was as if his skin had suddenly turned cold. "And if the war had gone on? Would you have told me?"
"No." The word was muffled against her hand. "Because I can't bear to look at you now you know it. This wasn't meant to happen."
She backed away across the bed. "You never promised me anything, Guillaume. But I cannot help but wonder how you plan to explain your absences to this wife."
"Margaret--"
"You understand, do you not, why I might think about such a thing." She was shaking now. "Exactly how much leave did you have, Monsieur Suffolk? Enough to satisfy a wife as well?"
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. "I understand that you're upset--"
"Oh, yes, I'm quite upset. Are you so very surprised?"
"I never meant to hurt you, Margaret." She turned away and heard him move closer, his voice pitched just beside her ear. "I meant what I said before. You are magnificent, my Margaret."
Before she could think better of the idea, she whipped round and her hand connected satisfyingly with his face. "I am not your Margaret. Least of all now that I know I'm not the only woman you're keeping."
The silence seemed to stretch indefinitely until he spoke again, the words barely audible. "For God's sake, Margaret, why do you think I kept coming back? Alice and I...it was only ever convenience. An alliance of interests. I had a position and lacked money; she had money and wanted a position. We barely speak to one another. And when I met you--"
"Stop it."
"Margaret, I love you."
She looked up at him, barely able to form words for rage. "How dare you. Get out of here, you filthy salaud." It was the worst insult she knew and the sudden realisation of just how little she'd understood even now, how provincial and pathetic-- "Get out!" she shrieked, shoving him backward until he stumbled against the bed. "I hope your insides rot. I hope your wife throws you into the streets. I hope you--"
"You've made your point." He held up his hand, weariness sketched across his face. "Adieu, Margaret."
He did not slam the door. It might have been more satisfying if he had. Sinking onto the bed, Marguerite cast about for something she could throw at it, but there was nothing but a nearly empty jar of lip rouge on the dressing table. Her hands were shaking and she could hardly breathe, as if something had formed in her throat to cut off her breath.
It was only when she looked in the mirror that she realised her face was covered in tears. For Suffolk. It was unendurable.
She stood slowly and deliberately, pulling her worn dressing gown tightly round herself. After splashing cold water on her face, she sat before the dressing table. A pinch of powder and kohl around her eyes would hide the redness.
There was an envelope lying on the dressing table. Marguerite frowned at it, at her name inked in unfamiliar handwriting. Holding it gingerly, as if wary of it bursting into flames, she carefully slit it open with nail scissors. The notepaper was pristine, thick and velvet-soft, the letters HRL embossed in script across the top.
Dear Mademoiselle Lorentz,
No doubt you must wonder who I am, and I cannot blame you. My name is Henry Lancaster and I believe you once knew my mother, though perhaps only as Catherine Vaillant.
Marguerite had one memory of Catherine Vaillant and that was of a quiet, sad lady--though she must have only been a girl, even that had seemed old to Marguerite, a few months past her fourth birthday--watching a glittering room filled with dancers as if looking for one in particular. When he appeared, Marguerite realised she'd replaced him in her mind with Suffolk.
"Damn and blast you, William Suffolk!" she hissed. Forcing her attention back to the letter, she read on.
I regret to inform you that my mother passed away three weeks ago. Please forgive me for the delay; it took some time to find your present address. Quite luckily, a close friend of my uncle's happened to meet you--perhaps you recall Lieutenant William Suffolk.
Marguerite closed her eyes and prayed for patience. Whoever this Henry Lancaster was, she did not approve his choice of friends in the least. But as she read on, weaving together his memories of his mother, a woman she'd barely known if at all, Marguerite began to wonder about him. He was young, to be certain, but seemed somehow unashamed of it.
They say the war is over now. I would have been old enough to enlist a month after the Armistice and perhaps it is cowardly of me to admit it, but I am glad. I don't know why I'm admitting it to you, but perhaps it is because you are a stranger and in France--surely it must be a relief that it is finally finished.
There was something oddly disarming about such bald truths written out to a perfect stranger. Even more so when she reached the end of the letter.
Suffolk has told me so much about you and I hope you will not find it presumptuous if I tell you that, should you ever wish to come to England, I would be honoured to meet you.
She sat at the dressing table for a very long time afterward before she began to write a response. In exchange for the confidences he'd offered she told him stories of the brasserie and its colourful patrons. Before she could change her mind, she posted the letter the next day.
William Suffolk did not reappear at Brasserie Claudette and she told herself it did not matter, that there was an entire new world in which he need not play the smallest part. And, perhaps, she would look forward to another letter from Henry Lancaster.
She was eighteen years old and had her entire life to forget William Suffolk.
Epilogue