Defend and Betray

1
 
Hester Latterly alighted from the hansom cab. A two-seater vehicle for hire by the trip, it was a recent and most useful invention enabling one to travel much more cheaply than having to hire a large carriage for the day. Fishing in her reticule, she found the appropriate coin and paid the driver, then turned and walked briskly along Brunswick Place towards Regent’s Park, where the daffodils were in full bloom in gold swaths against the dark earth. So they should be; this was April the twenty-first, a full month into the spring of 1857.
 
She looked ahead to see if she could discern the tall, rather angular figure of Edith Sobell, whom she had come to meet, but she was not yet visible among the courting couples walking side by side, the women’s wide crinoline skirts almost touching the gravel of the paths, the men elegant and swaggering very slightly. Somewhere in the distance a band was playing something brisk and martial, the notes of the brass carrying in the slight breeze.
 
She hoped Edith was not going to be late. It was she who had requested this meeting, and said that a walk in the open would be so much pleasanter than sitting inside in a chocolate shop, or strolling around a museum or a gallery where Edith at least might run into acquaintances and be obliged to interrupt her conversation with Hester to exchange polite nonsense.
 
Edith had all day in which to do more or less as she pleased; indeed, she had said time hung heavily on her hands. But Hester was obliged to earn her living. She was presently employed as a nurse to a retired military gentleman who had fallen and broken his thigh. Since being dismissed from the hospital where she had first found a position on returning from the Crimea—for taking matters into her own hands and treating a patient in the absence of the doctor—Hester had been fortunate to find private positions. It was only her experience in Scutari with Florence Nightingale, ended barely a year since, which had made any further employment possible at all.
 
The gentleman, Major Tiplady, was recovering well, and had been quite amenable to her taking an afternoon off. But she was loth to spend it waiting in Regent’s Park for a companion who did not keep her appointments, even on so pleasant a day. Hester had seen so much incompetence and confusion during the war, deaths that could have been avoided had pride and inefficiency been set aside, that she had a short temper where she judged such failings to exist, and a rather hasty tongue. Her mind was quick, her tastes often unbecomingly intellectual for a woman; such qualities were not admired, and her views, whether right or wrong, were held with too much conviction. Edith would need a very fine reason indeed if she were to be excused her tardiness.
 
Hester waited a further fifteen minutes, pacing back and forth on the path beside the daffodils, growing more and more irritated and impatient. It was most inconsiderate behavior, particularly since this spot had been chosen for Edith’s convenience; she lived in Clarence Gardens, a mere half mile away. Perhaps Hester was angry out of proportion to the offense, and even as her temper rose she was aware of it, and still unable to stop her gloved fists from clenching or her step from getting more rapid and her heels from clicking sharply on the ground.
 
She was about to abandon the meeting altogether when at last she saw the gawky, oddly pleasing figure of Edith. She was still dressed predominantly in black, still in mourning for her husband, although he had been dead nearly two years. She was hurrying along the path, her skirts swinging alarmingly and her bonnet so far on the back of her head as to be in danger of falling off altogether.
 
Hester started towards her, relieved that she had come at last, but still preparing in her mind a suitable reproach for the wasted time and the inconsideration. Then she saw Edith’s countenance and realized something was wrong.
 
“What is it?” she said as soon as they met. Edith’s intelligent, eccentric face, with its soft mouth and crooked, aquiline nose, was very pale. Her fair hair was poking out untidily from under her bonnet even more than would be accounted for by the breeze and her extremely hasty progress along the path. “What has happened?” Hester demanded anxiously. “Are you ill?”
 
“No …” Edith was breathless and she took Hester’s arm impulsively and continued walking, pulling Hester around with her. “I think I am quite well, although I feel as if my stomach were full of little birds and I cannot collect my thoughts.”
 
Hester stopped without disengaging her arm. “Why? Tell me, what is it?” All her irritation vanished. “Can I help?”
 
A rueful smile crossed Edith’s mouth and disappeared.
 
“No—except by being a friend.”
 
“You know I am that,” Hester assured her. “What has happened?”
 
“My brother Thaddeus—General Carlyon—met with an accident yesterday evening, at a dinner party at the Furnivals’.”
 
“Oh dear, I am sorry. I hope it was not serious. Is he badly hurt?”
 
Incredulity and confusion fought in Edith’s expression. She had a remarkable face, not in any imagination beautiful, yet there was humor in the hazel eyes and sensuality in the mouth, and its lack of symmetry was more than made up for by the quickness of intelligence.
 
“He is dead,” she said as if the word surprised even herself.
 
Hester had been about to begin walking again, but now she stood rooted to the spot. “Oh my dear! How appalling. I am so sorry. However did it happen?”
 
Edith frowned. “He fell down the stairs,” she said slowly. “Or to be more accurate, he fell over the banister at the top and landed across a decorative suit of armor, and I gather the halberd it was holding stabbed him through the chest.…”
 
There was nothing for Hester to say except to repeat her sympathy.
 
In silence Edith took her arm and they turned and continued again along the path between the flower beds.
 
“He died immediately, they say,” Edith resumed. “It was an extraordinary chance that he should fall precisely upon the wretched thing.” She shook her head a little. “One would think it would be possible to fall a hundred times and simply knock it all over and be badly bruised, perhaps break a few bones, but not be speared by the halberd.”
 
They were passed by a gentleman in military uniform, red coat, brilliant gold braid and buttons gleaming in the sun. He bowed to them and they smiled perfunctorily.
 
“Of course I have never been to the Furnivals’ house,” Edith went on. “I have no idea how high the balcony is above the hallway. I suppose it may be fifteen or twenty feet.”
 
“People do have most fearful accidents on stairs,” Hester agreed, hoping the remark was helpful and not sententious. “They can so easily be fatal. Were you very close?” She thought of her own brothers: James, the younger, the more spirited, killed in the Crimea; and Charles, now head of the family, serious, quiet and a trifle pompous.
 
“Not very,” Edith replied with a pucker between her brows. “He was fifteen years older than I, so he had left home, as a junior cadet in the army, before I was born. I was only eight when he married. Damaris knew him better.”
 
“Your elder sister?”
 
“Yes—she is only six years younger than he is.” She stopped. “Was,” she corrected.
 
Hester did a quick mental calculation. That would have made Thaddeus Carlyon forty-eight years old now, long before the beginning of old age, and yet still far in excess of the average span of life.
 
She held Edith’s arm a little closer. “It was good of you to come this afternoon. If you had sent a footman with a message I would have understood completely.”
 
“I would rather come myself,” Edith answered with a slight shrug. “There is very little I can do to help, and I admit I was glad of an excuse to be out of the house. Mama is naturally terribly distressed. She shows her feelings very little. You don’t know her, but I sometimes think she would have been a better soldier than either Papa or Thaddeus.” She smiled to show the remark was only half meant, and even then obliquely and as an illustration of something she did not know how else to express. “She is very strong. One can only guess what emotions there are behind her dignity and her command of herself.”
 
“And your father?” Hester asked. “Surely he will be a comfort to her.”
 
The sun was warm and bright, and hardly a breeze stirred the dazzling flower heads. A small dog scampered between them, yapping with excitement, and chased along the path, grabbing a gentleman’s cane in its teeth, much to his annoyance.
 
Edith drew breath to make the obvious answer to Hester’s remark, then changed her mind.
 
“Not a lot, I should think,” she said ruefully. “He is angry that the whole thing has such an element of the ridiculous. It is not exactly like falling in battle, is it?” Her mouth tightened in a sad little smile. “It lacks the heroic.”