The Victory (66 page)

And since her adult life had betrayed her, she turned
instinctively towards her childhood, which, at least in retro
spect, had been happy and uncomplicated. I'll go home, she
thought, and the idea seemed delightful and simple, and she
wondered she had not thought of it before.

‘
No,' she said aloud, 'not London. I don't want to go to
London. I have things to settle here first, and when all that's
done, I shall come home to Morland Place. If you'll have me?’

She looked questioningly at her brother, and Edward's
loneliness was warmed for a moment. He smiled and said, 'Oh
yes, do come, Luce. It will be like old times, to have you back.
We can go riding and have picnics and things, and be jolly.’

Héloïse, watching him, saw how the extraordinary inno
cence which had been both Edward's strength and his
weakness still remained unchanged, despite trouble and
sorrow. Just for an instant the eager face below the greying
hair looked more like that of a boy of fourteen than a man of forty-four.

*

Héloïse returned to Chelmsford House, to be received joyfully
by Mathilde, who was losing some of her shyness, and was
longing to tell dearest Madame about the balls and routs and
squeezes she had been at. Héloïse listened carefully for the mention of any young man's name more than another, but it
seemed that though Mr Such-and-such had been an agreeable partner, and Lord What-you-may-call was very droll and had
made her laugh a great deal, there was no-one who had either
captured her heart, or shewn a particular interest in her.

‘
She is still very young,' Roberta said comfortingly to
Héloïse when they were alone together, walking in the garden
under the falling blossom of the cherry trees. 'You have only
to see how she romps and plays with Bobbie, given the
chance, to know that. She is the dearest girl,' she added with
a warm smile, ‘and Bobbie doats on her, and she will make
someone a warm and loving wife one day.'

‘
But do you think she has taken well enough?' Héloïse
asked anxiously.

‘
Oh yes,' Roberta said. 'The hostesses think her a pretty-behaved girl, and she gets asked to the right places. Other
girls seem to get on with her, and she has partners enough at
the balls, though her lack of fortune will prevent her from making a brilliant match —'

‘
Oh, but I never wanted that, only that she should marry
well, and be happy,' Héloïse said quickly.

‘
I'm sure she will do that, given time,' Roberta said. 'But
you know, at the moment she has the most dreadful crush
upon the Duc.'

‘
Not really?' Héloïse said in amazement. 'But he is too old
for her. I'm sure he has never even noticed her, except
kindly.’

Roberta smiled. 'I did not say he had a crush upon her. He
thinks of her as a child, of course. But she gazes at him in the
most agonising way, and turns scarlet, poor child, if he speaks
to her.'

‘
But this is very bad. I must take her away, where she will
not see him,' Héloïse frowned.

‘
No, no, let it run its course. It won't do any harm. She will
find a man of her own age to love sooner or later. I believe,'
she added gravely, 'that every girl has to go through the stage
of admiring an older man. In my case, of course, I was lucky
enough to have married him.'

‘
Do you think, then, that you would have grown out of
him, if he had not died?'

‘
Well, no,' Roberta admitted, 'but that was different.’

 
‘
How different?' Héloïse demanded.

‘It was not a crush; it was love,' she said.

*

John Anstey came to visit, to find out from Héloïse how Lucy
and Edward had coped with their bereavement, and was glad
to hear that they were both going back to Morland Place.

‘
It will do them more good than anything else to go home,'
he said. 'Yorkshire air and Yorkshire food will soon set them
up.'

‘
Ah, but you Yorkshire people think that being there can
cure anything,' Héloïse said. 'You wonder that anyone can
ever bear to live anywhere else.'

‘
Quite true,' Anstey said cheerfully. 'I would not be in
London if. I did not have to be; but you, ma'am, I can't
understand why you are here, when you might be at home in
your snug cottage.'

‘
But you know very well, I am bringing Mathilde out,'
Héloïse said, thinking it best to take him literally. 'How else
shall she find herself a husband?'

‘
There are plenty of good lads in Yorkshire who would
make excellent husbands,' Anstey said with a twinkling eye.
‘You don't want her to marry a soft southerner, do you?'

‘
Don't dignify his nonsense with argument, Héloïse,'
Roberta advised.

‘
I shall not,' she replied easily. 'I shall ask him instead what
is so important as to keep him in London.'

‘
The peace negotiations, of course,' Anstey said promptly.
‘Putting an end to this tiresome war.'

‘
I think it is a mistake,' Héloïse said doubtfully. 'This
Napoleon is not one to trust. He will do anything and say
anything to get his own way. The truth is not in him.'

‘
Well, Fox is a shrewd man, and he'll make sure we don't
give anything away. He says he has two glorious things to do before he dies: to make peace with the French, and to abolish
the slave-trade.'

‘
Ah, that would be very good,' Héloïse said. 'It is very
abominable to sell the poor people's bodies so.'

‘But will he succeed?' Roberta asked.

‘
I think so. It has foundered in Parliament before because
those whose interest lay in maintaining the trade were in
united opposition, but now the Government consists of so many different factions, there will be no impetus of resistance.’

He waited while Roberta poured him more sherry, and
then went on, 'The other thing that has been occupying me in London is arranging the cartels of exchange for the prisoners
taken at Trafalgar. It's very sad in some cases. Villeneuve, for
instance, has no real wish to go back at all.'

‘
Ah, poor Villeneuve!' Héloïse exclaimed. 'It must be very
hard for him.'

‘Yes, indeed. He says he has been so kindly treated, and the
glimpse he had of our ships made him believe that he could
very happily have made his career in our navy. My boy John
tells me that Collingwood said he was a very English sort of Frenchman.'

‘
He meant that for a compliment,' Roberta explained
smilingly to Héloïse.

‘
So now he goes back to face Boney's anger —' Anstey
resumed.

‘Which will be very great,' Moïse interposed.

and probably a court-martial for his failure to win the
battle. But Villeneuve is not the only one who does not want
to go back. I came across a curious case the other day. It's a
young lad of about fifteen or sixteen who was picked up out of
the water after the
Achille
blew up, and has quite a strange
tale to tell.'

‘
Your French must have improved, my lord, if you under
stood it,' Roberta said genially.

‘
Normally, my dear Lady Chelmsford, I do not interview
the common sailors myself,' he replied with dignity, 'but in
this case I did go to see him, and though he speaks French, he
mixes it in a most curious way with English and German and
a vile patois they speak around the coast of Brittany. He
seems able to make himself understood amongst sailors of
both nationalities, and when you hear his story, you can see
why.'

‘Do tell us, then,' said Roberta.

‘
Well, it seems that the boy was working on a fishing-boat
out of a small harbour near Brest, when the French authori
ties pressed him and sent him on board the
Achille.
But he did
not come originally from Brittany. It seems that the owner of
the fishing-boat on which he was working bought him in
exchange for a case of brandy from the master of an English fishing-boat.'

‘
Bought him? Like a slave? How terrible,' Héloïse
exclaimed.

‘
Yes, indeed, and it seems as though he was treated with
great brutality by his previous owner, who kept him as a sort
of cabin-boy, doing all the menial tasks aboard the boat,
keeping him short of food, and punishing him harshly for
anything or nothing. When the men got drunk, which they
did regularly after a good catch, to celebrate, they would
amuse themselves by tormenting the boy in various ways too beastly to mention here. Needless to say, he was very glad to
be sold to a new master, and the French fisherman, though a
coarse and uneducated man, was at least not such a brute,
and treated him harshly, but fairly.'

‘
But how did he get into the hands of the wicked fisher
man?' Héloïse asked. 'It was not his father, I think?’

Anstey looked at her intently. 'Here the story becomes even
more interesting,' he said. 'The boy was in a shipwreck, of a
fishing-boat which foundered during a storm on the Goodwin Sands, about seven or eight years ago.' Héloïse paled a little,
and opened her mouth to speak, but Anstey lifted a hand.
‘Wait, let me tell all. After the shipwreck he was taken to a
foundling home, but he ran away from it to go back to the
sea, which was all he knew. He made his way on foot, with, I
imagine, great difficulty and hardship, to Hastings, and there
he was picked up, starving and in rags, outside an alehouse by
the man who was to treat him so brutally.'

‘
And before the shipwreck?' Moïse asked in the thread of
a voice.

‘
He does not remember anything clearly. He received a
blow to the head when the ship foundered, and his memories
of his previous life are merely unconnected fragments. But
there are two indicators which, though insignificant on their
own, make him rather more interesting to us. One is that,
though he cannot remember anything about his origins, he
undoubtedly speaks German as well as French. And the
second is that his name is Charlie.'

‘
Charlie?' said Roberta. 'Is that all? But Charlie isn't a
French name.'

‘
No surname. And of course, the French version would be
Charles,'
Anstey agreed.

‘Karellie!' Héloïse breathed.

‘
That's what I wondered,' Anstey said quietly. ‘If he had
said to the English fisherman that his name was Karellie, he
would probably have heard it as Charlie, and passed that on
to his new master when he sold him.'