The Dead Queen's Garden (5 page)

Captain Penbury had crashed to the floor with his hand clutched to his chest, the weather-beaten colouring fading rapidly from his broad, square face.

L
ADY
F
RAMPTON
STOPPED
in mid-bellow as Charlotte rushed to her side.

‘Sit down, Gran,’ she urged once she had ascertained that the old lady was unhurt; all her shouting had been for her granddaughter to come to the aid of the captain. ‘At once, do you hear? I’ll see to this.’

There was still a clamour of voices shouting
‘Help, murder
!’ as she knelt beside the stricken sailor to loosen his collar. ‘Cease that nonsense this instant,’ she commanded and raised her head to seek assistance. ‘Someone clear the room at once, if you please, ah, Mr Knightley? Thank you. And someone else please enquire whether Dr Perry has arrived, I know he is expected. Ask him to attend the captain directly.’

She bent to her task. Captain Penbury was breathing, although he looked distressed and his colour was still poor; she prayed that he was not having a heart attack. Charlotte slipped an arm beneath his head and looked up in gratitude as someone handed her a cushion.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and glanced round again, looking anxious. ‘Is there another cushion, please? I believe he will be more comfortable if we can raise him a little higher.’

A second cushion was passed to her and presently a warm rug offered, which was placed over the patient, while a glass of brandy appeared to hand as if by magic.

‘Thank you once more.’ She looked up and was startled to see the heroine of the Crimea bending beside her. Charlotte nodded gratefully and helped the captain to take a restorative sip. ‘I think he’ll recover now, do not you, Miss Nightingale?’ Her words were
more hopeful than she felt but she saw to her relief that the naval man was showing some sign of improvement and making an attempt to sit up.

‘Come, Captain,’ she soothed, gesticulating hastily for a basin lest the captain’s queasy-looking countenance should indicate actual vomiting. ‘There,’ she murmured as her patient regained some colour in his cheeks. ‘Lean back against the wall for a few more minutes then we’ll find some strong arms to help you to the morning-room where you may lie upon a sofa in peace until you are more composed.’

She rose and looked around the room for help and indicated to the hovering butler that a footman was needed. The captain’s colour continued to improve so she moved a little to one side, to give him air, but ready to assist if need be.

‘I am impressed, Mrs Richmond.’ Standing near her, Miss Nightingale astonished Charlotte with a nugget of praise. ‘Most impressed. I like to see a woman of resolution, particularly when the rest of the room is filled with squawking geese and silly sheep, all milling around to no purpose. I suppose you would not consider….’ A slight commotion outside in the hall caused her to break off in mid-question and raise her eyes, while a sardonic smile lightened her expression for a moment. ‘Oh dear me, our troubles are all at an end,’ she murmured, a sarcastic note in her voice, ‘now that I see Dr Chant is upon us. I spotted his giddy young wife here. At present he is said to be the Capital’s most celebrated physician, even rumoured to be in occasional attendance upon the Prince Consort, no less. I trust the captain has a fat wallet and a strong constitution for he’ll need it if the good doctor is to be let loose upon him. And that goes for the Prince Consort too,’ she added thoughtfully.

Charlotte glanced up and saw a well-dressed, grey-haired man in the doorway, expostulating with Dr Perry who had made a belated appearance.

For a moment, Charlotte thought Miss Nightingale had a smirk on her face as she went on, ‘The bearing of an archbishop,’ was her whispered aside, ‘and the soul of a petty clerk. The good doctor doesn’t approve of intelligent women who are taller than he is
himself.’ Yes, however unlikely, Charlotte was convinced the great lady sported a broad grin. ‘He doesn’t approve of me,’ she added. ‘And he certainly won’t take to you, my dear.’

A pompous-looking fellow, Charlotte decided, but he’ll get no change out of Dr Perry so there can be no need for me to rush to Captain Penbury’s assistance. She hid a smile as she took note of the captain’s wife who was indulging in a small fit of the vapours on her own behalf with little success, as the assembled guests merely quickened their steps, averting their eyes as they passed by her.

‘Oh dear,’ Charlotte sighed as she realized nobody else was likely to do anything, certainly not Dr Perry who bent over the fallen sailor, took his pulse, barked a few chastening words, and took his leave. ‘Do pray excuse me, Miss Nightingale but I must rescue the poor captain, not only from the doctor you mention, but from his own wife.’ She bowed politely. ‘It has been an honour to make your acquaintance.’

From the lady’s frowning expression, Charlotte suspected her own timely escape bid had rescued her from being badgered for a donation, but Miss Nightingale pursed her lips and nodded, saying only, in what Charlotte felt to be an ominous under-tone, ‘I shall write to you, Mrs Richmond.’ The words were accompanied by an enigmatic twitch of her brows. After a moment, she continued, ‘I knew your late husband, you know, when we were children; we were much of an age. On one occasion he tied me to a tree and left me there for hours. He was a bully and a coward and you are exceedingly well rid of him.’ Charlotte could only bow politely and agree with this unexpected but only too accurate assessment of her late husband’s character. As she administered common-sense to Mrs Penbury, along with a glass of brandy, she observed that Miss Nightingale had followed her.

‘Oh, oh,’ gasped Melicent, fluttering a hand to her meagre breast. ‘Oh, my valves.’ Charlotte stared in surprise and Melicent went on, ‘I have valves in my heart, you know. They are a sore trial to me.’

‘Nonsense,’ Miss Nightingale interrupted fiercely. ‘Everyone has valves in his heart. It’s perfectly clear to me that there is nothing
amiss with you, my good woman, apart from hysteria and a fit of attention-seeking.’

Charlotte tried to bite down the gurgle of amusement that rose to her lips, but was forced to feign a coughing fit before she set about pacifying the shocked patient. A few moments later, Lord Granville hove into sight with a smile for Charlotte, but upon
realising
that Miss Nightingale was at her side, hastily made some apology and veered off to the other side of the room.

‘Dear me,’ Florence Nightingale looked grimly amused. ‘Poor Lord Granville, I seem to have terrified him.’ She watched him go, ‘However, he has a sanguine temperament and does not dwell on things. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.’ The great lady gave a brisk nod and turned away to seek further voluntary contributions for her nursing fund, leaving Charlotte to listen to Melicent’s complaints.

Lady Granville, her fine eyes narrowed, had been staring thoughtfully at the stricken captain, her hand held to her heart, her face, first pale but now suffused with an angry flush. Now a frown further darkened her brow as she stared round the room but Charlotte could see no reason for the lady’s dismay. Her husband, now safe from other women, was gossiping with some visiting gentlemen, and her long-suffering son was firmly clamped to her side. As Charlotte herself glanced around, all the while exhorting Melicent Penbury to compose herself, she saw Miss Nightingale pull out a small notebook from her pocket. Beneath the reddish-brown hair, the famous heroine’s furrowed brow became smooth once more and a grim smile lightened her face as the august lady scanned the list therein, making pencil marks as she did so. It was evident that she was adding the sums written down and that the total had proved satisfactory. This task completed, Charlotte was amused to see that the lady had no further use for Finchbourne or its inhabitants. However, she had underestimated Miss Nightingale’s determination.

‘Another word, if you please, Mrs Richmond,’ beckoned the great lady who, if she was much the same age as Charlotte’s
thankfully
-deceased husband, could only be about thirty-eight, although illness made her look older. ‘I understand you are lately come from India, and before that, from Australia?’

Charlotte submitted to a brief interrogation. Yes, she had been caught up in the Mutiny last year in India when her stepfather had sadly succumbed to a fever, and yes, she had indeed been married, and promptly widowed, shortly afterwards.

‘But was there not some tale of your husband, Major Richmond, having been falsely declared dead?’ Miss Nightingale’s handsome eyes expressed a lively interest.

‘Indeed yes,’ Charlotte’s response was brief and guarded. ‘He was injured, but he was able to make his way home where he died of a fever.’ Not for all the tea in China would Charlotte go into details of that return and death, nor would she be pressed upon her upbringing in Australia, however imperiously Miss Nightingale enquired. No, she thought decidedly, it is no business of anyone else if my mother and stepfather were transported, and not the free citizens they had claimed to be.

She decided to throw the lady a sop. ‘My godmother was Lady Margaret Fenton,’ she said casually, suppressing a smile at the image of that illustrious lady beating an importunate admirer about the head with her parasol. Meg had declared, in her impeccably well-bred accent,
‘I may be a whore, sir, but I promised my brother, the earl, that I would be a circumspect whore. He would never allow me to stoop to an affair with a pork butcher.’
Charlotte stifled the bubble of laughter that threatened to escape her lips as she recalled Meg’s afterthought.
‘That is, unless the pork butcher in question were to offer me a very large inducement in guineas.’

‘I see that you suspect me of vulgar curiosity,’ Florence Nightingale surprised her. ‘Acquit me of that, Mrs Richmond, for I have a scheme in mind that could work to our mutual advantage.’

At that point, Barnard bustled into the room bent on jollying his guests into further excesses of food and drink and managed, by deafening her with his jovial bellow, to bully Miss Nightingale into tasting the wassail brew.

‘Here we are, here we are,’ he cried, seizing the silver ladle and starting to dole out generous helpings of the steaming, spicy liquid from the enormous silver bucket Lily had unearthed in the cellar. ‘All the traditional ingredients,’ he announced, though Charlotte was well aware that Lily and her cook, having despaired of finding
a recipe, had concocted their own. ‘Wine and spices and currants, slices of oranges and apples, um, other fruits, berries, you name it. What do you call ’em? Er, yes, raisins, that’s right, you’ll find ’em all in the Finchbourne Wassail.’

He looked so absurdly pleased with himself that those of his guests who were clustered around the dining-table laughed and shrugged and suffered him to hand them a glass. Charlotte, glad to see no evidence of rats or kittens swimming in this particular brew, looked askance at the cinnamon and spices floating on her drink along with odds and ends of candied fruit, but she nodded and smiled and raised her glass, so Barnard was satisfied. It was warming on a cold day, she supposed, though the taste of cinnamon was strongly dominant and that was not a spice she particularly relished.

‘As long as it’s hot and wet and alcoholic,’
as her beloved stepfather, Will Glover, had once remarked,
‘it’ll do the trick.’
That was when someone had handed him a glass of something resembling rum, distilled somewhere on a sugar cane plantation. Hot, certainly; the temperature had made a mockery of the thin muslins and
sunbonnets
that Charlotte and her mother were wearing, and everyone who tasted the potion had become instantly flushed in the face. Wet also, and potent too, in spite of the cornucopia of berries floating on the amber liquid. Charlotte could recall, as clearly as though it were yesterday rather than ten years earlier, the startled widening of Will’s blue eyes as the full force of the alcohol he had injudiciously gulped down, had struck him.

Soon most of the guests were willingly toasting the baby’s health along with hearty greetings for Christmas and the New Year. Lord Granville was there, nodding and smiling, genial as usual, but still, Charlotte thought, peering round at every lady who came within his orbit. She had been watching Lady Granville skilfully circumvent her lord’s every attempt to approach any female guest. He would bob up in one direction, only to find his wife appearing from another. It was like watching a dance, Charlotte reflected, deciding that his lordship was quite outflanked by his determined lady. Indeed, as Charlotte watched idly, the gentleman shook his head disconsolately, perhaps believing himself to be mistaken. He
shrugged and allowed his wife to shepherd him towards Lily Richmond at the other end of the room.

The delighted Lily was not likely to give up her prize easily and Lady Granville left him in her clutches while, with young Oz in tow, she made her way to the small crowd clustered about the table. There, she fussed about giving the boy a taste of the wassail punch. Charlotte had just raised a glass to her own lips when she spotted the elder of Lily’s new friends take a sip of the brew and wrinkle her nose. She murmured something to her sister who laughed and took the glass from her. Charlotte overheard her say, ‘Well,
I
certainly have no objection to the taste of cinnamon, my dear Sibella; in fact I’ll drink a second glass with pleasure.’

Charlotte heard Lady Granville exclaim aloud, though what she said was indistinct as Dr Chant chose that moment to lean forward and speak to his wife as she sipped at her drink.

‘Pray take no more punch, Verena, it is very strong and cannot be considered a suitable drink for a lady in your position.’ He bit off his remark, as she laughed in response, and continued. ‘Besides, the carriage is outside now and waiting to take you and your sister back to Winchester. Pray do not delay, it will not do to keep the horses waiting in this inclement weather.’

‘In my position, dear husband?’ The young lady’s blue eyes snapped in what looked like malicious amusement. ‘As the wife of Prince Albert’s trusted confidant? Or….’ Yes, Charlotte thought, there was definitely malice there. ‘Perhaps you meant to say – in my delicate situation, did you, my dear husband?’ The glance she shot at him was arch and suggestive and her husband, about to turn on his heel, halted and stared at her, his face darkening.