The Sultan's Daughter (73 page)

‘No,' replied the Captain. ‘As yet nobody there will have risen. My orders are to leave you in charge of the Officer of the Guard at the Horse Guards, then report your arrival to Lord Grenville as soon as he is available.'

That was more or less what Roger had expected. He then told Denistoun that before the war he had lived for some time in London and that he had heard just before leaving Paris that a great friend of his, the Countess of St Ermins, was dangerously ill; so he was anxious to enquire about her.

The Captain agreed that they should call at the St. Ermins mansion in Berkeley Square. When they reached it the blinds were down. Roger, dreading the worst, was almost incoherent with distress; but Denistoun, fearing some trick by this ‘frog-eater' of whom he had been given charge, would not let him leave the coach. Instead he got out, knocked up the house and himself made enquiries from a sleepy footman.

He returned to say that Lady St. Ermins was at Stillwaters, her country home in Surrey. The servants in Berkeley Square had had no news of her for the past two days; but they were greatly worried, as it was feared that she would not recover from her illness.

Roger breathed again. At least she had still been alive the previous day, or they would have been sent news of her death. Now he must get to Stillwaters at the earliest possible moment. After some argument, on the plea that his business was of the utmost urgency, he persuaded Denistoun to take him straight to the Foreign Office.

By then it was seven o'clock. The Groom of the Chambers, who happened to be in the hall on their arrival, told them that His Lordship was not yet up, but was taking his morning chocolate in bed. Roger asked for pen, ink, paper and sealing wax, then wrote a brief note, which ran:

My Lord
,

I pray you, show no recognition on receiving me. I am come to London under escort as Envoy Extraordinary from
General Bonaparte. My business is most urgent, so I beg you to receive me without delay
.

Having signed the note with his own name he sealed it, slipped a gold louis into the palm of the Groom of the Chambers and asked him to take it up. Five minutes later he was taken upstairs and shown into the Foreign Secretary's bedroom.

Lord Grenville was by nature a cold man and as little given to showing emotion as his cousin the Prime Minister. But on this occasion he did express surprise and his greeting was warm. Without a moment's delay Roger plunged into his business. Producing two letters, he said:

‘My Lord, I bring great news. General Bonaparte has now been elected First Consul of the French Republic, with virtually dictatorial powers, and he desires Peace. This letter gives expression to his sentiments. The other is from M. de Talleyrand, who is again Foreign Minister., and it sets out the basic terms upon which the French are prepared to negotiate.'

‘Overtures for Peace!' Grenville exclaimed, taking the first letter. ‘And from the Corsican, of all people! I can scarce believe it.' Breaking the seals of Bonaparte's letter, he opened it and quickly read it through. As he laid it down on the counterpane, he said:

‘It has the air of honesty and must receive our most earnest consideration. As soon as I have risen I will take it to the Prime Minister.'

‘How soon can Your Lordship expect to hand me a reply?' Roger asked.

Grenville considered for a moment. ‘It must be laid before His Majesty, and my colleagues in the Cabinet must be given time to consider the terms that are proposed. Three days should suffice. Today is the 28th, a meeting of the Cabinet could be called for the morning of the 31st. I could let you know the result that afternoon.'

‘Until then, my Lord, I pray you to excuse me. Most urgent private affairs claim my attention. I pray you, too, to relieve me of my watchdog, a Captain Denistoun, who waits
below, and also to lend me a horse. I must at once ride down into Surrey.'

The Foreign Secretary made a mild protest, as he would have liked Roger to remain with him for some time and give him the latest news from France; but, seeing Roger's extreme agitation, he rang his bell and gave the orders that had been requested of him. A quarter of an hour later Roger was on his way out of London.

The village of Ripley, near which Stillwaters lay, was no more than twenty-five miles distant. Roger was now very tired. It was over forty-eight hours since he had had a chance to do more than doze, and for more than half that time he had been swaying from side to side in fast-driven coaches. Yet his desperate anxiety gave him the energy to fight down fatigue, and he reached Stillwaters soon after ten o'clock.

Throwing the reins of his horse over a stone vase, he ran up the steps and into the hall. A footman, carrying a tray, was crossing it. White-faced, Roger shouted at him:

‘Her Ladyship! Is she alive? Is she alive?'

The man nodded. ‘Yes, sir; but, alas, very low.'

‘Is Colonel Thursby here?'

‘Yes, sir. He is up in Her Ladyship's boudoir.'

Roger mounted the stairs three at a time and burst into the room. Georgina's father looked up with a start. He had been another father to Roger and Georgina was the greatest treasure in the world to both of them. Coming to his feet, the Colonel exclaimed:

‘Roger! Dear boy, how glad I am to see you. But you find us in dire distress.'

‘How is she?' Roger gasped.

The Colonel shook his head. ‘Alas, we now have little hope for her. It was scarlet fever. But you must have heard. She caught it from the children. They, thank God, are now fully recovered. But for an adult the disease is serious; or rather, its after-effects.'

‘May I see her?'

‘Yes. But she will not recognise you. She is in a coma.'

They went next door, into the big bedroom. Georgina was lying in her great canopied bed, pale as a corpse. Jenny, her faithful maid, her eyes red with weeping, was sitting
beside her. Turning down the sheet, Roger took Georgina's wrist and felt her pulse. Looking across at the Colonel, he groaned, ‘It hardly beats.'

Tears welled up into the Colonel's tired eyes. ‘I know it I fear she is sinking fast.'

‘She is so deathly pale,' Roger murmured. ‘Did they purge and bleed her? They must have, for her vitality to be so low.'

‘Yes. They did it to reduce the fever. It is the usual practice, as you must know.'

‘Then the fools bled her too much,' cried Roger furiously. ‘It is lack of blood from which she is dying. Upon what are you feeding her?'

‘A little milk is all that she can take.'

With an impatient shake of his head, Roger cried, ‘ 'Tis not milk she needs but iron.'

‘Iron?' repeated the Colonel, with a puzzled look.

‘Yes. While on my travels I learned that iron is the sovereign remedy for loss of blood. In many aspects of medicine, the peoples of the East are more knowledgeable than ourselves; for among them the learning of the ancient Greeks has not been smothered by Christian taboos and monkish superstition. When I was residing in Alexandria with the Greek banker Sarodopulous, one of his servants attempted to commit suicide by cutting her wrists with a knife. Before she was found and her wounds bound up, she had lost so much blood that she certainly would have died had they not promptly forced her to swallow all the iron she could stomach.'

‘But, my dear boy, one can neither eat nor drink iron. How it is possible to administer it to a patient?'

‘I'll show you. But let's not waste a moment.' Roger turned to Jenny. ‘Quick. Run downstairs. Get me a bottle of Claret and a large pewter mug.'

As Jenny ran from the room, Roger said to the Colonel, ‘The Greeks heat an old sword or dagger in the fire until it is red hot, then plunge it into the wine. Among the ignorant, this practice has come to be regarded as magic, owing to the symbolical union of virtue and strength giving the potion life-saving properties; but in fact it is the essence of the iron entering the wine that fortifies the body and makes new
blood. To use a weapon is unnecessary. Any piece of iron that has a roughened surface will serve our purpose.'

Crossing the room, Roger seized the poker and thrust it into the heart of the glowing log fire.

A few minutes later Jenny came bustling in with a pint tankard already filled with Claret. Impatiently they waited until the end of the poker was red hot, then Roger took it from the fire and plunged it into the wine. The liquid hissed and bubbled fiercely. When it had settled down, he withdrew the poker and put it back into the fire until it was again red hot. Three times he repeated the process, then with a spoon tasted the mulled wine to test its heat. Satisfied that if each spoonful was first blown upon it would not burn Georgina's mouth, he carried the tankard over to her bedside and, while Jenny held her mistress's head, he carefully fed a dozen spoonsful between her pale lips.

When they had done, Roger said to the Colonel, ‘I have come at all speed from Paris and am near the end of my tether. If I do not get to bed soon I'll drop; so I pray you to excuse me. As you have seen, the preparation of the potion presents no difficulty. I'll leave you to give Georgina a further dozen spoonsful of a new brew every hour, then, when I am restored by a few hours' sleep, I will rejoin you.'

Jenny gave him a pale smile. ‘Seeing how fatigued you looked on your arrival, sir, when I went downstairs for the wine I told them to get your usual room ready at once. By now there should be a fire lit there and a warming pan in the bed.'

‘Bless you for a good, thoughtful girl, Jenny,' Roger smiled back. Then he left them, crossed Georgina's boudoir to the bedroom beyond it, struggled out of his clothes and at last relaxed between the warm sheets.

For the next five hours he lay as though dead himself, then he was roused by Colonel Thursby, who said, ‘The doctor is here, Roger, and I have told him about the method by which we are endeavouring to save our dear Georgina. I woke you only because I felt you might wish to discuss her condition with him.'

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Roger murmured, ‘I see nothing to discuss; but I welcome the opportunity to tell him
that if she dies it will be through his excessive application of leeches, and for that I'll kill him.'

‘Nay,' the Colonel shook his head. ‘Be not too hard upon him, Roger. He is a very decent man and has done only what any other practitioner would have done in a case where it was necessary to bring down a high fever. Moreover, he takes no umbrage, as many others would have done, at you, a layman, having arbitrarily decreed a treatment of your own for his patient. Indeed, he expressed interest in your belief in the efficacy of iron to make blood.'

Slipping on a chamber robe that had been brought to him, Roger accompanied the Colonel into Georgina's bedroom and greeted the doctor with restrained civility. Together they looked down on the still figure in the great bed. Georgina showed no sign of life and no stranger, seeing her now, would have believe that only a few weeks ago her face had been richly coloured and radiant with beauty. There were deep shadows under her closed eyes, her once-pink cheeks had fallen in and their flesh had taken on a transparent hue, her lips had a bluish tinge and, already, she had the appearance of one dead.

In vain Roger searched her features for some slight indication that his remedy had bettered her condition, but, if anything, they seemed more drawn and lifeless than when he had arrived at her bedside that morning. The doctor said in a low voice:

‘Mr. Brook, as I have already told Colonel Thursby, I can give you little hope; and there is nothing more that I can do for her Her Ladyship. Were she in a better state I would take exception to your most unorthodox conduct in treating her without consulting me. As things are, I can only regret that she shows no signs of responding to your remedy. I fear you must now prepare for the worst; for I doubt her living out the night.'

‘I'll not yet despair,' declared Roger hoarsely. ‘It may be that the iron needs longer to be absorbed into her system. She is as healthy a woman as any I have ever known. She has sustained no injury and is sound in every part. ‘Tis only blood she needs and iron can give it her. Of that I am convinced.'

The doctor nodded. ‘You may be right, sir. I recall a patient of mine who had travelled in the distant East once telling me that the Japanese use iron filings to cure serious cases of anaemia. At the time I doubted such a thing being possible, but…'

Roger swung round upon him. ‘Iron filings! How did they enable the patient to swallow them?'

‘The iron was ground very fine, almost to a powder, then dissolved by stewing with acid fruit and administered to the patient in the form of a purée.'

‘We'll give her that too, then. The acid, of course, would act upon the iron. Apple should serve for that.'

Colonel Thursby took Jenny by the arm. ‘Off with you, Jenny, to the apple store. Pick out some sound cookers and take them to the kitchen. I'll to the stables and have our farrier grind down one end of a new horse-shoe.'

It was then decided that every hour Georgina should be given a few spoonsful of the ironised wine and the ironised apple purée alternately and, should it appear that her heart was giving out, a few sips of champagne to reanimate it. The doctor administered to her the first spoonsful of the apple purée and swallowing it had the effect of temporarily bringing her out of her coma. For a moment they feared that she was going to sick it up but she kept it down, then relapsed into her previous inertia, except for a low, hesitant breathing.

The two days that followed were filled with hopes and fears. During the first night Roger remained beside Georgina. He did not close his eyes but sat watching the firelight flickering on the ceiling as he listened in the heavy silence to the faint whispering of her breath. It was so light that on three occasions he thought it had stopped and, in a panic, hurriedly forced a few swallows of champagne between her pale lips. But when morning came, they were granted a ray of hope, for they all agreed that there was a very slight colour in her sunken cheeks.