Elizabeth’s passions for these were not always indulged, for Napoleon could not long be awake without engaging in some kind of international conflict. The longest period in which Elizabeth thought herself settled— when Colonel Fitzwilliam was part of the British Army of Occupation, after Napoleon’s first abdication, and had begun to transition a little, from soldiering to peacekeeping— came to an end in March of 1815. Napoleon had tired of the tiny island of Elba, and decided to take back France. Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam at once quitted Kent (causing Lady Catherine to no end of speeches against the rudeness of Napoleon, to an approving Anne, a resentful Lydia, a simpering Mrs. Jenkins, a fawning Mr. Collins, a resigned Mrs. Collins, and an increasingly silent Mr. Darcy), and raced back to Paris. Colonel Fitzwilliam was much surprised by his orders, when he returned. Given his military record and particular skills, he had assumed they were to mount a defense of Paris, but instead they found they must march to Belgium, and meet with the Allied forces headed towards Paris from the Congress of Vienna.Despite the tendency of the French to abandon the government foisted upon them by their neighbors in order to violently support the one of their choosing, the British and their allies had not really thought the new French Bourbon government in very much danger. Then, when that fell, they did not really think Napoleon would seize Paris. Then, when he had, they did not really think that he would reach the Belgian border.Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam found themselves at a ball in Brussels, thrown by the Duchess of Richmond, when the British and their allies reached the height of incredulity: not only had Napoleon done all this, he had crossed the Franco-Belgian border and was marching to Brussels.Of course, none knew of this but the Duke of Wellington; Elizabeth saw an aide-de-campe deliver a note to the Duke at supper, but thought little of it. She was tired and found the severeness of Belgian etiquette a trial; her thoughts had been turned longingly towards home for some hours. She merely commented to her husband, “Do you suppose Signoria Grassini has sent him a billet-doux, or is Tsar Alexander hoping His Grace will be his second, the next time he challenges Metternich to a duel?”“I should think it more probable the Prussians are lost again, and begging for directions.”“That sounds very likely, but I find my theories are more amusing,” said Elizabeth, hiding a yawn behind her fan. “How late would you like to stay?”“We may return any time you like,” said he, bending close. His breath stirred the curls at the nape of her neck and she shivered pleasantly. “I do not know how it is, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, but even though I have been privileged enough to see you nearly every day for three years now, I could scarcely take my eyes off you all evening.”“The wonders of French fashions,” said Elizabeth, trying not to shew how this had affected her. “I have a whole trunkful of things that I purchased in Paris; should you care to see the full extent of my extravagance?”Elizabeth had changed her gloves for the hinged gold bracelet it was now the fashion to wear at dinners and suppers; Colonel Fitzwilliam, still bent towards her, touched his fingertips to the inside of her forearm, at the crook of her elbow, and slid them down to rest just under her bracelet. His fingertips just brushed the bottom of her soulmark. Elizabeth felt herself beginning to flush.“I think,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, smirking a little, “that I should enjoy that a vast deal more than obeying every stricture of Belgian etiquette. Shall we cause a mild scandal and slip out now?”
“I have been longing to slip out since the Gordon Highlanders danced their reel.”They bid their hasty adieus and were soon very comfortably ensconced in their lodgings. It was perhaps unsurprising that Colonel Fitzwilliam should be undressed and Mrs. Fitzwilliam dressed when one of Wellington’s aides-de-campe knocked on the door, and delivered the news that all officers were to report to their regiments by three-o-clock. Napoleon’s forces were already in Belgium and had engaged with the Prussian army; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s battalion was to hold the crossroads at Quatre-Bras, so that the bulk of the Anglo-allied forces could come to the Prussian’s aid, and to prevent the French from marching onto Brussels. He also added, “His Grace the Duke of Wellington told me particularly to say that he knows you are closeted with Mrs. Fitzwilliam at present, and even so, you must make haste; His Grace would prefer to be closeted with Mrs. Fitzwilliam as well, but he is already ahorse.”Elizabeth, flushed, but with hair and gown in tolerable order, opened the door enough to reach out and take the hastily writ orders the aide-de-campe held out to her. “Thank you sir, and please convey to His Grace both my blushes, and my husband’s alacrity and obedience.”The aide-de-campe grinned and touched the brim of his bicorn. “With great pleasure, Mrs. Fitzwilliam."
“Wellington is a rogue,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, searching for bits of uniform scattered about the room and crammed in trunks.
“I am used enough to Army humor,” said Elizabeth, shutting the door. “I have had three— nearly three and a half years of it, by now. But Good God— the French in Belgium already!”
“I don’t think anyone expected it, or if they did, expected it quite so soon.”
“How could Napoleon have come so far so quickly?” Elizabeth asked, sitting down to ready her husband’s pistols. It was by now as easy and automatic a task as rolling bandages or stitching up a hem.
“Recall the Spanish campaign, Lizzy,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Napoleon knows how to march. We do not. My gorget—have you seen it?”
“On the dresser.”
Elizabeth was more flustered than she had ever been before a battle, not only because it had come by surprise, when she was not precisely in a state to receive visitors, but because she did not know what to do. It had been her habit to attach herself to the traveling hospitals, but the medical service had been disbanded the year before. The battalion surgeon, Colonel Dunne, was just as flustered, and, still in ball dress, ran past Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman, and nearly burst into the bedroom.
“We are popular this evening,” said Elizabeth. “Colonel Dunne, it is very lucky for you I was finished with the pistols. Pray, will you shut the door behind you? My husband is still dressing.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam called out from behind the dressing screen, “Colonel Dunne, how d’ye do?”
“Badly,” said Colonel Dunne, running a hand through his hair. He affected a Brutus crop, and now it all stood on end, making him look more eccentric than usual. “Colonel Fitzwilliam, I come to you in great perplexity. I have some supplies, and my saws and scalpels, but I have no staff. My two assistants were turned off on half-pay in Toulouse last October, after Napoleon seemed to have abdicated, and I have no notion where any of the stewards are. How can I tend to the wounded with no staff?”
“You have Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “if you will forgive my volunteering you, my dear.”
“I am very happy to be of some use,” replied Elizabeth. “And I am certain I can round up at least half-a-dozen other ladies of the regiment. Where should you like us, sir?”
“We can perhaps pitch a tent as close to the field as we dare,” said Colonel Dunne. “I have a wagon for supplies, but no stretcher-bearers—”
“I shall give an order that any foot soldier of mine whose comrade has fallen must be given immediate leave to escort the injured to the medical tent,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, emerging from behind the dressing screen, in the usual, rather beaten-up uniform he wore into battle. “Pick the strongest two privates to be your stewards. What else do you need?”
“Linen, as much as can be got. I have... sufficient, I suppose lint to pack the wounds, but nothing to bind them.”
Elizabeth at once flung open the trunk full of sheets and Holland covers from their Paris lodgings— they had left too quickly to cover any of the furniture— and said, “Well sir, here you are. I hope we will not need all of these, but it is of very good quality.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “I wish you would take those old Spanish shirts, too, Mrs. Fitzwilliam; they do not wear or wash well, and I would much rather see them on my men as bandages than on me as shirts. I’ll keep an eye out for the properest spot for the medical tent, and send an ensign to guide you thither. Will you help me with my sword?”
It was habit with her to buckle on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sword herself, as (illogically, she acknowledged), it made her feel as if her last embrace before a battle actually offered some physical protection. She held onto him a moment longer than she usually did and felt him press her to him tightly, before kissing her.
“There now, my dear,” said he. “We were surprised, but we are not routed. We shall hold them at Quatre Bras, and, if not, at Waterloo. They shall not reach Belgium, not with Wellington in command. I shall see you very soon.”
Elizabeth was for some time distracted by her duties, for there were many, and they were more complicated than they had ever been before. Of the forty British regiments in Brussels, perhaps half of them had all their medical officers, and the others were in the same circumstances as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s regiment. Her Brussels neighbor, Mrs. Patrick, a wife of an officer in the 28th Foot, told Elizabeth her regiment had only an assistant surgeon for all six hundred men. There were no plans in place, no municipal hospitals, no ambulances. What supplies there were were limited, far more than even the last stages of the Spanish campaign, after the countryside had been picked over by the world’s two largest armies.
“It is a mess,” said Colonel Dunne, as Elizabeth delivered another round of Holland covers ripped into bandages. (The last few ladies she had sent had remained at the main tent, to immediately apply the bandages and sticking plasters they had manufactured.) “Such a mess! I dread to have the other regimental surgeons see me. I have ladies, respectable ladies, wives of officers, attending to men our own general calls the scum of the earth. Some of the men even take their shirts off!”
“We have all followed the drum since Spain, at least,” said Elizabeth. “We have seen considerably worse than men with their shirts off.”
To Elizabeth had fallen the aggravating lot of organizing people, supplies, and influx of soldiers. Though she had never hosted a ball at a great house, Elizabeth fancied it was much the same, if the house was comprised of three tents pelted with rain, the servants had all quit, the orchestra was comprised entirely of canons, bagpipes, fife and drum corps, and a very slightly tone-deaf cavalry trumpeter, and the guests were all bleeding. She spent most of her time running supplies to the main medical tent and the surgery tent, from the tent where the more decorous or more inexperienced ladies were rolling bandages and trying to make up for a lack of apothecary with what skills they had brought from the stillroom.
She was therefore one of the first to hear Colonel Fitzwilliam’s aide-de-camps shouting, “A doctor for the Colonel; he has been shot!”
Elizabeth at once dropped the chair cover she had been picking apart, and raced out of the tent. She was extremely relieved to see Colonel Fitzwilliam looking annoyed and clutching his upper right arm. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said he, spotting her, “covered in mud again, I see.”
“It is my natural state, sir,” she managed to get out.
He cracked a smile. “Do not look quite so frightened; I was incautious enough to be injured, but it is not severe. If Colonel Dunne can dig the bullets out of my arm, I shall be right enough.” Then, seeing she was not satisfied, he sighed and raised his gloved hand, so she could see the injury herself. “As you see: two bullet holes in front, none in the back. It does not hurt enough for the bone to have been hit. It is a very simple injury. Will you fetch me a fresh shirt from your rag bag?”
She do so with alacrity. Her husband was quoting John Donne at Colonel Dunne when Elizabeth returned. Colonel Dunne bore this with good humor, as he always did, and said, “Ah, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I have good report of the patient. He only swore at me once and I got two bullets and part of a uniform out of the meat of his arm. Have we any vinegar left?”
“No sir; I was only able to procure a couple of bottles before we rode out.”
“Blast. And I’ve no wine or oil either— well, no matter. It would be best if I could wash the blood away to see better, but I wiped away what I could.” He squinted at the wound. “I... believe it is clean? Damn it, I would trade my epaulettes for a little vinegar. Strings like the devil, but it keeps the blood from flowing long enough for a good look. A surgeon friend of mine in the Coldstream Guards swears that washing his hands in the stuff before operating does wonders, too.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam grimaced dramatically as Colonel Dunne gave one last prod at the wound. “Oh yes, that gentleman has told me of his theory many times, though I must admit, I hardly ever attended him. Something to do with miasmas?”
Colonel Dunne carefully applied a lint pad over the wound, before taking the fresh bandage Elizabeth offered him. “Aye, you’ve the right of it. The scent of the vinegar is so strong, it keeps bad air from entering into the body through the wound.”
“Like smelling a vinaigrette, for faintness?” asked Elizabeth.
“Oh aye, much the same idea as that, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. A strong scent to drive out the bad ones. I have often wondered if perfume might have the same effect. Certainly since you and the ladies of the regiment have been assisting me, the men are far less likely to die of infection as they once were.” He took a critical look at his handiwork. “Well, the day’s business is only just begun; the air cannot be too bad. I do not think there can be much fear of infection.”
One of the privates hastily promoted to a hospital steward came running into the cordoned off section of the tent where the three of them stood. “Sir, Lieutenant Hawkins took a bayonet to a, er....” He glanced at Elizabeth and coughed. “To a, er, delicate place, sir.” He let fall the sheet as Lieutenant Hawkins came waddling by, looking more vexed than gravely injured.
Colonel Dunne sighed. “And now, I must to the next patient.”
“I can clean this part of the tent for you,” offered Elizabeth.
“I am much obliged! So obliged, in fact, that I shall even return the bullets to you.” He gestured at the basin beside him, as he ducked under a hanging sheet to the next patient. “You may have them made into ear-rings, a souvenir of Belgium.”
“I shall cede my part of the spoils,” said Elizabeth, taking the bloody shirt and putting down the fresh one in its place.
“Thank you my dear,” said the Colonel. He was bare from the waist up, and Elizabeth was relieved to see no other injuries, though she was still concerned enough to check the bloody circles of red wool in the basin against the holes in his uniform coat.
“I am afraid you shall have to sew up the hole rather than patch it,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, pulling on the new shirt. “It is such a comforting thing, to have a wife; I spend half of what I once did on clothes since you fix them all for me. Though I think the shirt may be lost. Can you turn it to bandages?”
Elizabeth looked at it critically. “I am sure the stain can be washed out— but hold a moment, there is a hole here— I think the balls took part of your shirt as well as your coat.”
“Colonel Dunne saw only wool, not linen. It is one of the shirts you had made for me in Spain; they do not wear well.”
As she turned over the shirt in her hands, she became convinced this was otherwise. “Perhaps I may have packed this with your Spanish shirts, but I made this one myself. I do not see any other holes. I really do think—”
But then came in the lieutenant-colonel, too seriously injured to ride, and Colonel Fitzwilliam put on the rest of his uniform at once.
“Do you really think it wise?” Elizabeth asked, though she still assisted him with coat, shoulderbelt, sash, and sword. “I have seen too many injuries imperfectly cleaned to be easy. I should hate to see it turned septic.”
“I should hate to see us routed by the French, even more,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, fastening on his gorget. “If we keep control of these cross-roads, Ney and his forces cannot make it to Brussels, even if the Prussians lose their battle at Ligny."
“I think you underestimate the danger,” said Elizabeth, by now sincerely worried.
“Of what, infection, or the French?” Colonel Fitzwilliam kissed her forehead. “If anything, you overestimate the danger, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. If it will satisfy you, I shall have Colonel Dunne poke at my arm again, when the day’s business is ended. But I must away; I do not like leaving the captains entirely to their own devices, in so hot an action.”
***
The day’s business tumbled headlong into the next. Colonel Fitzwilliam's regiment had arrived on the 16th at Quatre Bras, where the fighting had begun the day previous, and been ordered to hold the nearby Bossu Woods. This they managed to accomplish, though with more injuries than they would have wished, and with the loss of nearly the entire 69th division and its standard. While in defense of the woods, he came across a small cottage, hastily abandoned by its occupants as soon as they had seen the French army advance; this he requisitioned for Colonel Dunne, and the ladies of the regiment, when they were too exhausted to tend to the wounded. Elizabeth had never felt so tired in her life, but still found herself to compelled to remain awake, for lack of sufficient bedrooms, and roll bandages in what passed for the sitting room.
“I have not been sick at the sight of a battlefield in some years,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said wearily to her, dropping down next to her, on the divan, “But I was this evening. We have the crossroads, but at a ghastly cost.”
Elizabeth shivered. She had flung an evening cloak and an apron over her ball gown, but still felt insufficiently attired. “Have you heard if the Prussians were equally successful?”
“Not yet.” He sighed and said, “Forgive my importuning you, my dear, but my head aches with sleeplessness and the noise of the guns— may I?”
“If you do not mind the mud?”
“My dear, I should not recognize you without it, by now.”
Elizabeth moved the rolls of bandages off her lap, and Colonel Fitzwilliam put his head there. It comforted her to stroke the hair off his forehead, though she was alarmed at how hot he felt to the touch. “You are overheated, sir.”
“I shouldn’t doubt it,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “This is the first time I have dismounted my horse since I was injured earlier, and we have been firing continuously all afternoon.” He managed to sleep what remained of the night, and Elizabeth part of it, until the rain began, and two of the lieutenants’ wives came rushing into the sitting room in a panic, as the secondary medical tent had been halfway ripped out of the ground by the wind. Elizabeth slid out, arranging her husband on the divan, and once more committed herself to the cause of getting her petticoats a full twelve inches deep in mud.
It was unfortunately in this state the Wellington saw her, trying to salvage what she could before everything was spoilt by rain.
He tipped his bicorn at her and said, “Unusual eggs you have found, Mrs. Fitzwilliam."
Elizabeth, clutching a very damp peasant’s straw hat to the top of her head, and hugging an eggbasket full of bandages to her side, replied, “Yes, the byproduct of Holland covers, Your Grace. They shall hatch shortly as bandages.”
“You ferry medical supplies yourself?”
“Only when the regiment’s medical staff has been reduced to Colonel Dunne, and Colonel Dunne alone, sir. One physician cannot supply the wants of six hundred men.”
Wellington gestured at one of his aides-de-campe. “Attend Mrs. Fitzwilliam, will you? See to it she gets all this to Colonel Dunne, or onto his medical wagon. I take it Colonel Fitzwilliam is inside?”
Elizabeth directed His Grace to the sitting room, before overloading her helper with baskets and bottles. They had moved nearly everything inside, or on the wagon by the time Wellington came striding out again. She let down her apron and the skirt of her ball gown, to try and hide the worst of the mud as she curtsied, but she was uncertain of her success. Wellington merely quirked his upper lip at her, in his version of a smile, and said, “No need; it is when you are not covered in mud, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, that I am alarmed about the —th Foot,” before bidding her good day and mounting his horse again.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was now awake, and feeling refreshed enough to be sarcastic as he looked at a map he’d spread out over his lap. “What,” he asked, as Elizabeth came back in, futilely shaking the rain off her cloak, “is the point of having allies? They do nothing but make us scramble. The Prussians were defeated at Ligey and are said to be marching to Wavre.”
"Are we retreating?” asked Elizabeth.
“Yes, along the Brussels road to some village called Waterloo that Wellington has had in mind for its hills. People say Wellington is a difficult man to please, but really, all he wants in life are a few hills, and a few competent men to march up and down them.”
“Marching up and down hills seems quite contrary to your usual assignments.”
“Oh no, I am used as I always am: to hold. My regiment is to help hold an estate near the village— Hougoumont, I think it’s called— to defend the right flank of the main force. Just fancy, Lizzy, I am at last master of a grand house and working farm, and lieutenant-colonels of the Coldstream Guards will be taking their orders from me. It is a nice homecoming; I went from Captain to Major in that regiment; it is a very great pleasure to be in command of even four companies of it, if only temporarily.” Colonel Fitzwilliam folded up the map, wincing a little at the movement of his right arm. “Unfortunately, I am stationed there because His Grace thinks any other commander is very likely to be overrun. Your makeshift hospital will have to be closer to Brussels than Hougoumont, my dear. I only hope we can get men to you.”
“I know you do not like to do it, but will you please pull rank and insist upon seeing Colonel Dunne, before he is sent away?”
This Colonel Fitzwilliam did, mostly to oblige her, for he was much pressed to finish his dispatches and letters before departing. Colonel Dunne had been sleeping off the worst of his exhaustion, in what had been the cottage’s pantry, and his first exclamation upon being brought into the sitting room, was, “Dear God, sir, I am behindhand already. I meant to see you before I slept, but there seemed to be twenty new cases of powder burns in indelicate places. Still, I ought to have—”
“You were seeing to the men as they came in, and had already seen me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a tired smile. “How should it be otherwise? But before we retreat to this escapement near Waterloo that Wellington has been dreaming about a year or more, I thought it wise to be sure I had full use of my sword arm.”
To Elizabeth’s mixed alarm and satisfaction, some slight inflammation of the wound was proof enough that she had been right, and though Colonel Dunne absolutely forbade her from assisting with any kind of operation (for reasons of both propriety and practicality— Elizabeth, fit and active as she was, had not the sufficient strength to hold down a grown man), the two privates he had arbitrarily selected as stewards did their duties well. Colonel Fitzwilliam was greatly relieved the infection was not so severe as to require amputation, merely new surgery and bandages.
Colonel Dunne was inclined to be optimistic, for he had matched the bits of linen to the holes in the shirt Elizabeth had preserved, and had even had the opportunity to bleed Colonel Fitzwilliam to treat his slight fever. Colonel Dunne waxed rhapsodic about vinegar again, but all that could be done with what they had, had been done.
“Let this be a lesson to me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, grimacing as he pulled on his shirt again. “I ought always to listen to you. Where on earth has my cloak got to?”
“Surely you do not mean to go immediately out into this?” asked Elizabeth, with an expansive gesture, to try and encompass all the rain, lightening and mud outdoors.
“I am afraid I must; all but the light infantry must be gone before midday, and it is now gone ten-o-clock.”
Elizabeth did not think marching hours in a thunderstorm to be a particularly wise idea in regards to her husband’s recovery, but it would be equally injurious to his health if the French found him. Such, she reflected, were the unhappy choices of war. “I suppose I ought to be glad you command a regiment of regulars, not light infantry, and shall be settled quite civilly into a chateau by this afternoon. What is the light infantry doing, covering the retreat?”
“Acting as decoys long enough that the cavalry may then be brought in, to distract Marshal Ney.” He paused to hold onto the back of the chair where his stock hung, and slowly shook his head, as if to clear it. “I always forget how long it takes for my humors to adjust after a blood-letting. It is a pity; I always prided myself on being good humored.”
Elizabeth tucked herself under his arm, so he might have something to lean on both sides. Colonel Fitzwilliam pressed his forehead to hers. It still felt alarmingly warm.
“This is a damned close-run thing,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, softly. “I hate to admit it, Lizzy, but I have no idea who will win. Wellington himself said we have been humbugged. Do not wander too far from Colonel Dunne and the other ladies. I’d try and make you go to Antwerp and then to England, if I thought for a moment you’d agree to it.”
“Of course I won’t.” Elizabeth said, in a rallying tone. “I doubt you could make me go farther than Brussels. I know Frenchwomen are even more involved in the action; if it would not so outrage English sensibilities, I would take water and brandy onto the field like the French vivandieres.”
He raised his head and, pulling on one of her damp, wind-blown curls, said, “You are a rare woman, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Now, my sword?”
Elizabeth felt a sense of encroaching dread as she put her arms about Colonel Fitzwilliam. She tried, instead, to feel pleased that the Duke of Wellington had so singled out her husband— it was a great compliment to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s understated competence— but this did not hold.
“What’s this, Lizzy?” asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, in a tone of forced and unconvincing cheerfulness. “Fearsome Mrs. Fitzwilliam, overset?”
“Only a little,” said she, wiping her eyes on the lapel of his uniform. “I am merely tired. And a little embarrassed that so august a person as the Duke of Wellington should still have seen me looking quite so disreputable.”
“Really?” he teased. “After all your talk of Paris fashions... dear God, was it only yesterday?”
“Oh yes, the whole ensemble is straight out of La Belle Assemble. Battledress: A round-gown of soft white satin with demi train; bosom and sleeves embellished with primrose ribbon; eight to twelve inches of mud on the petticoat, height left to the wearer’s discretion. Brown leather riding boots to be laced tight over white silk stockings. A blood-stained linen apron, drenched evening cloak of dirty primrose satin, and a moulding straw hat is fancifully worn over the whole.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed and kissed her. “There’s my Lizzy! Ensign Leigh is acting as a courier for me; if you want to write any letters, add them to the pile there— though, now that I think on it, I shall need you to be sure everything’s wrapped in oilskin and taken. Will you see to it?”
“You may rely upon me.”
“I always do.” He rallied tolerably, but when she walked him to the door, he paused, took her left hand, and kissed her soulmark, very nearly in public. “Te amo, my dear Bennet.”
Elizabeth took a moment to press her palm against his unshaven cheek. “Te amo, my dear Fitzwilliam.” Her voice cracked slightly, but it was easier for both of them to pretend it hadn’t, and that their parting was entirely dry-eyed and composed.
Upon her return to the sitting room, Elizabeth noticed, amongst the more formal dispatches, letters to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s family. The letter to Georgiana had not been finished or closed; she sat down to finish writing it so that she would not be staring stupidly out the warped glass of the window at her husband chivying his men into their ranks. It was not a coherent letter, featuring mostly her riff on La Belle Assemble, and she closed it with accidental honesty:
The regiment is to hold Hougoumont, the principal estate, I believe of the village of Waterloo. Richard is not sanguine. It alarms me more than I can presently write. He, who always underestimates danger, and even yesterday thought I was being too anxious over an injury he received in the arm...which, by the by, turned out to be as serious as I thought! It gave him a fever (though he was bled for it this morning and expects to shortly be better).
I have been many times anxious for his safety and my own, but for the first time, I am truly frightened.
***
The rest of the day was devoted to moving, to paying very bewildered Belgian farmers for the use of their buildings, and to what snatches of sleep could be gotten in cramped corners. Elizabeth managed to wash, but not to change her gown, for the only trunk she had taken with her from Brussels was full of linen for bandages. One of the other ladies at least gave her a clean shift to put on, but as she must then put back on a gown and petticoat not satisfactorily cleaned, it did not make her feel very much more refreshed.
Sunday, the 18th of June, was misery of the acutely kind. The heat was oppressive, and the canons close and loud enough to set windows and teeth rattling, and for a choking, acrid fog of cannon smoke to hang over them all. The defense of Hougoumont began sometime mid morning, and the closeness of the action and the numbers and position of the French meant that they did not hear from the company proper until well after the engagement was over. The wounded retreated from the grounds and courtyard not to the distant Colonel Dunne, but instead into the house, where the assistant surgeon of the Coldstream Guard was taxed to his limit.
When Elizabeth and the other ladies were not busy with men wounded at Quatre Bras and in the retreat to Hougoumont, they tormented themselves by deciphering each trumpeted command and naming each regiment’s fifes, drums, and bagpipes. They knew who had engaged in battle and when, but not where, and not to what effect. By the afternoon, Elizabeth felt stupid with nerves and lack of sleep and was for some time irritable over so late a start to that day’s battle.
“Really?” asked Mrs. Kirke, who paused at four-o’-clock to drink tea and eat plain bread with Elizabeth. Mrs. Kirke’s brother had taken over the farmhouse across from Colonel Dunne and the visit had the absurd air of a village social call. “I am surprised at you, Mrs. Fitz. You are always joking about mud and now you pay no attention to it.”
“What can you mean?”
“Why, Boney is an artillery officer, my dear! Just as Wellington is a cavalryman. Early training always tells. Wellington can maneuver. It is easy to move horses and men in mud. Boney cannot. You cannot move a cannon until the ground has firmed.”
Elizabeth did not respond; soldiers from other regiments, deserters and injured men alike, were now bringing reports that the fighting at Hougoumont had grown so hot the chateau itself was on fire.
Mrs. Kirke was troubled but two hours later was sanguine once again. “The day is not lost quite yet; there are three points of conflict: Hougoumont, La Haie-Sainte, and Le Havre. I have heard only that La Haie-Sainte has been taken, according to reports I trust. I would weep if your husband was at La Haie-Sainte, but he is not. Hougoumont is still held, even if it is on fire. We would have seen more men fleeing this way if both farms were taken. Stiff upper lip, Mrs. Fitz.”
Elizabeth found this impossible. Of the three points of conflict one had already been won by the French. After so long a war, after so desperate a battle, she did not expect the French to treat any British civilian kindly. The other ladies were equally despondent. When they heard the marching song of Napoleon’s own personal guard, the Old Guard, who had never retreated or been defeated throughout all the years of war, some even fled back to Brussels. Mrs. Kirke blamed them, but Elizabeth could not. Only the obstinate thought that here, at least, she was doing something useful, kept her so close to the battlefield. Her own death had seemed remote and unlikely before; now Elizabeth consoled herself with the thought that for a woman of four-and-twenty, she had no cause to repine never reaching five-and-twenty. She had been happy and had accomplished a great deal. “See to it,” she wrote to Jane, in a fit of gallows humor, “that they write, ‘HERE LIES ELIZABETH BENNET FITZWILLIAM, AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN’ on my tombstone. I do not know if I shall lie under it, but it will comfort me to know I have got the very last word against Miss Bingley.”
Then came to Elizabeth the sweetest music she had ever heard: the very distinctive sound of Prussian regiments on the march.
It gave her much more pleasure to write, “Do not pay the stonemason just yet! My dear, I have never before wept to hear drums, but I can scare write I cry from such relief. Napoleon could have defeated Wellington or Blucher, but he cannot defeat both at once! Jane, the battle is won!”
Around nine or ten-o-clock, Elizabeth began to see some of their own regiment. The French had spent far too many of their forces at Hougoumont, which refused to fall; upon seeing Napoleon’s Old Guard fleeing from the field, these broken remnants gave up and fled as well. One of the companies, under the command of Colonel Fitzwilliam's most trusted captain, chased after them, and it was the men injured in this action that made it to the hospital.
No one could at first give a full account of Colonel Fitzwilliam, except through his orders to the four companies under his command. Elizabeth was not very worried, particularly as a couple of NCOs and a handful of privates were able to give her an eyewitness account of Colonel Fitzwilliam from about noon. An axe-wielding madman, according to one private, or French sub-lieutenant with an axe, according to his sergeant, managed to cut down the wooden doors of the north gate.
“And now Napoleon sends against us literal gatecrashers,” Colonel Fitzwilliam had apparently said. “These French officers are no gentlemen. Shall we teach them some manners?”
(Another group of privates maintained Colonel Fitzwilliam had said something about barbarians at the gate. Elizabeth was inclined to believe her husband said both of these; they both sounded sarcastic enough to be true.)
Colonel Fitzwilliam and a small party of mostly regular footsoldiers, with three or four officers and NCOs, fought through the melee. Only Colonel Fitzwilliam, and two members of the Coldstream Guard, Lieutenant-Colonel James MacDonald, and corporal James Graham, reached the gate. Colonel Fitzwilliam slammed shut the doors; Corporal Graham lifted and set in place the beam to bar the door; Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald lead the effort to barricade the gate with flagstones. The French sub-lieutenant, seeing that he and his men were now trapped without hope of escape, had taken his axe to Colonel Fitzwilliam, who had not been expecting it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was at first clumsy in his defense and had been somehow injured, though it was not clear how, or why, but multiple soldiers assured Elizabeth that he had not injured enough to retire from the field. He had continued to fight until the French company had surrendered, and only then gone indoors to have his wounds dressed, and to see how the southern gate held.
The last anyone had heard, Colonel Fitzwilliam had gotten orders from Wellington himself to hold the chateau at all costs, which lead to the assembled company spending the last part of the battle physically at Hougoumont fighting fire, as much as the French, but no one was entirely sure what had happened to the Colonel once the fire had been doused and the French gone. Later men were equally unable to give their reports. The orders for injured men to find their regimental surgeons had presumably been given by Colonel Fitzwilliam, but had been announced by the captain of each squadron.
Elizabeth’s early ebullience was beginning to fade. As in character it was for Colonel Fitzwilliam to follow his orders to the letter (probably grumbling all the while), his continued absence, especially with a fresh injury, was a source of increasing anxiety. She became really convinced that something was wrong, that he had been injured more seriously than had been understood, and settled it with one of the lieutenants she liked best in the regiment, a Lieutenant Brandon, that if Colonel Fitzwilliam was not back by midnight, she would ride in search of him.
***
Lieutenant Brandon had gathered together two or three other junior officers well enough to ride, by the time Elizabeth had finished bandaging the last mild burn left to her. The line of men with worse injuries, or with injuries in places too indelicate for a lady to see, was still full long, and she looked upon it with dismay. But it was now midnight, and she thought she might go mad if she waited any longer.
Colonel Dunne was in an exhausted heap in a hallway, waiting for a private to finish re-sharpening the dulled bone saws, before he returned to his surgery in what had once been a dining room. He had rolled his shirt-sleeves; one could dimly see ‘Hippocrates’ in Greek characters, through the crust of dried blood on his left forearm.
Elizabeth touched him gently on the shoulder as she passed. “I hate to leave you, sir, but....”
Colonel Dunne roused himself. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I hate more that I cannot accompany you. I should have liked to see to that axe wound myself.”
“You would take on more work?” Elizabeth asked, attempting to tease.
“Aye,” said Colonel Dunne. “I still have amends to make for not catching the bits of shirt in the wound; my only excuse was that I was so pressed for time, rushing from one surgery to the next, that I did not look twice.”
“I am sure my husband did not encourage you to look twice.”
“No, but I ought to have overruled him. You know his temperament; he would have grumbled, but submitted.”
“You know him well, sir.”
“Oh aye. You cannot avoid become intimate friends with a man after you’ve spent... what, is it five years now? Yes, five years pulling bits of metal out of him. God speed Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and send an ensign at once if you need me.”
Elizabeth agreed to this, though, as she watched the stream of men leaving Hougoumont streaming back to Brussels, and past their makeshift hospital, she was less and less inclined to do so. She had thought the morning and afternoon’s crowds had been bad, but it was nothing to this, now that the severely injured were beginning to be carried off the battlefield. Spain and Portugal had their moments of horror, but never had they been so concentrated.
Hougoumont was itself alarming enough to fill her nightmares for years afterwards. There were two doors to Hougoumont— the northern door to the farm, which was still bolted and still bore axe marks, when they passed it, and the southern door, to the chateau. Though the French had not breached this second set of doors, they had essayed it a great deal, and Elizabeth’s party had to move slowly, to avoid stepping upon the dead and the wounded. She had thought to equip herself with a perfumed handkerchief, and put this over her mouth and nose, to disguise the worst scents of battle, and to limit the effects of the smoke— the chateau had been burnt to several still smoldering walls and all was still confusion. The wounded were in every room that still remained a room, and several that had neither walls nor roof, merely the suggestion of having once been part of a building. Elizabeth had dismounted and was passing out what medical supplies she had thought to bring with her, before a corporal of the —th Foot recognized her and directed her and her escort towards what remained of the stables. The last he had heard, Colonel Fitzwilliam had been intending to ride out.
She was still carrying a basket of bandages when she finally saw her husband, drooping over the neck of his horse— though as he drew nearer, she saw he was not drooping, he was draped.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was unconscious.
Elizabeth dropped her basket. Bandages rolled pell-mell. She leapt over them. She very nearly ran into Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman, who was leading the horse, and almost ricocheted into a second horse and rider.
This gentleman dismounted and, coming into the light, was revealed to be in the uniform of the Coldstream Guards. His epaulettes and braid proved him to be a lieutenant-colonel.
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I presume?” asked he. “I am Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald. I had the great honor of serving as your husband’s second-in-command here at Hougoumont.”
Elizabeth said something, she knew not what, and reached up to her husband. She took the dangling left arm and felt for the pulse under her own name. “I cannot— he is alive?”
Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald took off his bicorn and pressed it to his sooty breast.
“Mostly, madame. He took an axe-blow to the ribs at half-past noon that was stitched up, as soon as we had possession of the courtyard once more, but it slowed him a great deal, and after we put out the fire, he seemed fairly extinguished himself. When the French left, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Our guests finally realized that they were not welcome, did they? I thought barring the door a pretty strong hint,” and collapsed. He is very feverish. We bled him, and after a little rest, decided it would be best to try and move him to Brussels. There isn’t a carriage to be got about here for love or money, so— well, he managed to indicate he could ride, and did mount himself, but—” He swallowed. “Well. He is as you see, madam.”
She had found a pulse, weak and uneven. Elizabeth turned her head over her shoulder and cried, “Quickly now, a surgeon for Colonel Fitzwilliam!”
The only doctor present was one of the assistant surgeons of the Coldstream Guards. His chief and fellow assistant had remained with the bulk of the guards, on the plains of Waterloo, and he was upset to the point of humiliation that his best efforts had not been enough.
He spoke despairingly of the air, thick with smoke, still, and full of the scent of corruption. This must have infected the colonel’s axe wound, for the blood-letting had done nothing to ameliorate the fever. Elizabeth asked, if the blood-letting was not effective, if anything else could be done, but the surgeon seemed really near tears at her request. He demanded to know what could be done, when all the medical supplies currently at Hougoumont were what she and her escort had brought with her. He had been taking bandages off the dead to use on the living for hours now; there was no ice; there was not even water.
“Something must be done,” insisted Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald. “For God’s sake, man, at least try to bleed him once more.”
Men at once crowded Elizabeth out, to get her husband off his horse— after passing forward her evening cloak, as it was the closest thing anyone had to a blanket, Elizabeth rushed to the well, incredulous that there could be no water.
She had never drawn her own water before and was finding the experience remarkably difficult. Her bootheels sank into the mud; she strained against the rope. Then she heard faint cries in French from the interior of the well.
Frozen with incredulity, nearly at an angle with the ground in her efforts to haul up the bucket, Elizabeth at first did not notice Wellington and his staff entering the courtyard.
“You call yourselves gentlemen, and make Mrs. Fitzwilliam haul her own water?” came Wellington’s voice.
At once a half-dozen ensigns and sub-lieutenants took the rope from her and heaved, bringing up not a water bucket, but a French lieutenant. He meekly offered his sword before daring to let go of the rope and collapse in a wet heap on the ground, and reporting a number of other comrades, living and dead, still in the well.
“Hm,” said Wellington. “No wonder you were having trouble, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”
Elizabeth was, for the first time, rather too stupefied to be clever. “Well,” she said, and hoped this passed for wit.
“To more pleasant subjects— where is your husband, madam? He has done magnificently. I sent only twenty-one battalions here; Napoleon sent thirty-three, and yet Hougoumont is ours. Even the clerks and copy-boys of Whitehall must be pleased with these figures.”
“Sir, I fear he must decline,” said Elizabeth, pale and agitated. “He took an axe blow when defending the northern gate, sir, and he had been already wounded at Quatre Bras. At present he is too ill to even be moved. I do not know—”
Wellington at once dismounted and strode into the farmhouse, where Colonel Fitzwilliam had been taken. Elizabeth went into the courtyard, in search of a good place to cry without being observed, but here she found only more anguish. There was blood upon the gate, an axe on the ground, an empty trench of dirt where the pavement had been ripped up. The bodies, at least, had been taken away, but the detritus on the cobblestones bore witness of their passing.
She did not know how long she walked around it, looking about, trying to piece together the battle from what scraps remained, but it could not have been long. When Wellington came out again he found her at the wooden doors, studying the axe marks as if trying to make out the writing on the Rosetta Stone.
“The success of the whole battle depended on the closing of this gate,” said he. "You may depend upon it that no troops but the British could have held Hougoumont, and only the best of them at that."
Elizabeth did not know how to ask what she chiefly wished to know.
“Have you any family in Brussels, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?” asked Wellington, after a moment.
This was answer enough. Elizabeth cleared her throat, but her voice did not sound like her own when she said, “No, sir, but my friend Mrs. Kirke, and her brother are not far down the road, and my father-in-law should still be at Matlock House, in London.”
Wellington nodded. “Major Percy rides with news of my victory; I shall include a note to the Earl of Matlock.” He mounted his horse, tipped his hat to her and said, “Give one of my aides your address in Brussels, madam; I shall call on you when the Colonel has been moved.”
***
By Tuesday, the roads had somewhat cleared, a cart had been procured, and Colonel Fitzwilliam had been moved (though he was thoroughly insensible of it). The awful day spent nursing her unconscious, feverish husband in a ruined farmhouse, punctuated by her desperate attempts to move him, and to find and procure any kind of cart of carriage, had left Elizabeth almost without strength. A bath and a change of clothes had not made her feel very much more human, only, ironically, less capable of doing anything. That evening found her sitting on the floor of the hallway from the bedroom to the sitting room in her lodgings. Her aim had been to bring fresh tea and a bowl for bloodletting to to Colonel Dunne, who attended Colonel Fitzwilliam in the bedroom, but the enormity of the past week suddenly overwhelmed her, and found she had to sit, from actual, and unconquerable weakness.
It was in this state of exhausted shock that Elizabeth first heard a quick, but deliberate step come up the stairs. The footsteps stopped at the fourth floor, where the Fitzwilliams had their suite of rooms, and ended with a knock upon the door; Elizabeth idly wondered how bad it would be to receive the Duke of Wellington while sitting on the floor, her arms balanced in her raised knees, and her head tipped back against the wall.
Elizabeth’s maid, Mrs. Pattinson, opened the door, as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman was assisting Colonel Dunne, and said, very puzzled, “Good evening, Your Gr—er, good evening sir, are you expected?”
“I daresay I am not,” came the voice of Mr. Darcy.
Elizabeth was so shocked, she remained where she was, quite unable to believe the evidence of her own senses.
“Are your master and mistress at home?” said what was unmistakably Mr. Darcy.
Mrs. Pattinson stepped back in some confusion. “Lord bless me! Mr. Darcy, sir?”
It was Darcy, unshaven, great coat crumpled, with one of its capes inside-out over his shoulder like a foxhound’s ear after a long chase. Impatiently, tersely, he agreed this was his name and was halfway through asking again after Elizabeth and the colonel when Elizabeth began struggling to her feet with an astonished cry of, “Mr. Darcy, how is this possible?”
He was at her side in two quick strides, taking her unconsciously outstretched right hand in his own, and putting arm about her waist to help her straighten up. “Georgianna received your letter at breakfast Monday. I departed no more than an hour after she had finished reading it aloud. I was able to hire a yacht from Ramsgate easily enough; the real delay was in getting from Antwerp to Brussels. The roads are truly appalling, even on horseback.”
“From London to Brussels in two days! Impossible man, you must not have slept in all that time.”
“I slept during the Channel crossing.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “You could not know if we had won or lost when you set out.”
“No,” said Mr. Darcy, gravely.
Elizabeth pressed his hand. “What would you have done if you arrived in Antwerp, and heard of Napoleon's great victory?”
He ignored this question and instead steered her into the sitting room, giving orders to the still astonished Mrs. Pattinson to see if his horse, being held downstairs by some urchin or other, could be stabled, and his saddlebags brought up. Mr. Darcy looked down at Elizabeth’s pale, wretched face and a added, “And a glass of wine for your mistress— she is unwell.”
“Truly, it is exhaustion only,” said Elizabeth, brushing tears from her cheeks. Mr. Darcy sat her down at her work table, which was still littered with half-cut linen and rolls of bandages, and a grubby, sooty letter to her father about the action at Hougoumont. “Darcy, I am well, I promise you I am well.”
He flung his greatcoat over an easy chair by the fire, looking askance at the muddy, ruined ballgown still draped over the screen hiding the copper bathtub from view. “Hm.”
Elizabeth followed the line of his gaze and managed a watery laugh. “I beg you will never mention seeing that to Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. Word arrived of the French invasion in the middle of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. We rushed out to Quatre Bras so precipitously I had not the chance to change my gown until a few hours ago.” She was able to get through Quatre Bras, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s orders to hold Hougoumont at all costs, and her own activities and interrogations of her patients with perfect equanimity. She found she could give a tolerably composed account of the fight for the gate, but could not go on after that.
Elizabeth cut and rolled bandages as she talked, but now stared at the linen before her, unsure what to do with them. Darcy put one of his hands over hers and asked, quietly, “Where is Richard?”
“Our regimental surgeon is with him now. But I cannot— I do not— Good God, I thought I had written this enough times to speak of it with composure. These attentions I fear come too late. What can be done, now that infection has set in? I know nothing can be done, and yet— I cannot bear to accept it.”
Colonel Dunne then came out in search of the blood-letting bowl and, seeing Elizabeth crying over a pile of half-rolled linen strips, with an unknown gentleman gripping her hand and staring fixedly at her, was at first inclined to throw Darcy out on his ear.
“No, no,” said Elizabeth, hastily, “this is our cousin, Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy, this is Colonel Dunne, the regimental surgeon. Sir, please, will you explain the colonel's condition to him? I cannot. I have tried but I cannot.”
Colonel Dunne sat by Elizabeth, still inclined towards suspicion, and sketched out the matter with a great deal of Latin.
Darcy translated, “You are inclined to think the injury sustained at Quatre Bras to be the cause of the fever that has now made him insensible.”
“Aye,” said Doctor Dunne. “I blame myself for not having properly cleaned the bullet wound, or having a poultice to properly draw out the infection from the wound, or any kind of tincture to treat the fever. The infection, I believe, caused him no little pain Sunday, and made him clumsy in the melee. The fever by then must likewise have dulled his reactions.”
“Can anything be done to treat it now?”
“Not now. Perhaps we could have cut off the limb and saved him that way, but he sustained a laceration across the ribs at Hougoumont that likewise became septic. We cannot cut off a man’s torso. Medical science has not advanced that far.” He ran a hand through his short hair and turned to Elizabeth. “I am sorry with all my heart, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I ought to have insisted on amputating Saturday.”
“You would have taken his sword arm before he set out to fulfill the most important orders of his career?” Elizabeth asked, her tears a little more under control. “Just because two bullet wounds were a little red? He would never have allowed it.”
“Is there any benefit to bloodletting now?” Darcy asked.
Colonel Dunne said, “There is no harm, at least.”
Mrs. Pattinson came in then, with a very modest repast, and a bottle of burgundy. No one felt much like eating, and Elizabeth was still crying so constantly she did not touch her meal, for fear of its becoming rather oversalted. Darcy watched her with an expression of mixed pain and compassion. He finished his dinner within five minutes of it's being put in front of him and, pushing his plate away, asked, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, when is the last time you ate? When is the last time you slept?”
Elizabeth did not have satisfactory answers for either, and Darcy said, in a tone of gentle command, “Come, you must do both. I shall sit with Colonel Fitzwilliam until you are both a little recovered.”
“You have not even washed off the dust from the road!”
“Will you be so good as to ask your maid to prepare me a can of hot water, and loan me Colonel Fitzwilliam’s shaving kit? I assure you, that is all I need to be perfectly refreshed.”
This accomplished, Elizabeth wearily unpinned her apron and her long-sleeved round gown of dark blue muslin, took off her cap, and slept a few hours on a camp bed set up in her dressing room. Her maid sat at the door, picking apart a long traveling coat to dye black.
Elizabeth was never sure, later, what woke her: the noise of Mr. Darcy sending for Colonel Dunne, asleep in the sitting room, or her own maid kicking over her workbasket to run to the door, or if there was truth to the old superstition about soulmates knowing the moment of each others’ death. She only recalled sitting up abruptly, straining to hear what was happening; then flinging aside the bedclothes and stumbling into the sickroom while still pulling on her light summer dressing gown. Colonel Dunne and Mr. Darcy, looking drawn and grim, were by the right of the bed. Elizabeth looked to them for confirmation of what she already knew.
There are few things worse than tragedies which one expects and yet for which one resolutely refuses to prepare.
For some moments her mind rebelled and she refused, categorically, to accept that nothing more could be done. Mr. Darcy and Colonel Dunne were good enough to try what she demanded, but their work had no effect, and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s breathing grew fainter and more erratic.
She dropped almost fainting onto the camp chair on which she had passed most of the day and seized Colonel Fitzwilliam’s left hand in both her own. Her agitation was extreme and yet she could not find any way to express it, nor had she any idea what to do or what she be done. She felt she made a foolish, ridiculous figure sitting in a short-sleeved summer peignoir of diaphanous white silk gauze, her hair scandalously streaking unbound down her back, her left arm bare from her elbow to her fingertips, and yet could make no move to cover herself or get up to dress. To move would mean accepting there was nothing more to be done.
She pressed his hand again, vainly trying to chafe life back into it. “Please Richard, do not leave me. Dearest, do not make me live without you.” There was almost some response at this; Colonel Fitzwilliam turned his head slightly towards her. “It's me,” she cried, “it is Elizabeth— it is your Bennet. My dear—”
He seemed almost to know her; he pressed her hand in response and, when he had not sufficient strength to continue, his hand slid limply out of her grasp, brushing her bare left wrist, and then he was gone.
章 10: 10. Which is extremely muddy
Elizabeth’s passions for these were not always indulged, for Napoleon could not long be awake without engaging in some kind of international conflict. The longest period in which Elizabeth thought herself settled— when Colonel Fitzwilliam was part of the British Army of Occupation, after Napoleon’s first abdication, and had begun to transition a little, from soldiering to peacekeeping— came to an end in March of 1815. Napoleon had tired of the tiny island of Elba, and decided to take back France. Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam at once quitted Kent (causing Lady Catherine to no end of speeches against the rudeness of Napoleon, to an approving Anne, a resentful Lydia, a simpering Mrs. Jenkins, a fawning Mr. Collins, a resigned Mrs. Collins, and an increasingly silent Mr. Darcy), and raced back to Paris. Colonel Fitzwilliam was much surprised by his orders, when he returned. Given his military record and particular skills, he had assumed they were to mount a defense of Paris, but instead they found they must march to Belgium, and meet with the Allied forces headed towards Paris from the Congress of Vienna.Despite the tendency of the French to abandon the government foisted upon them by their neighbors in order to violently support the one of their choosing, the British and their allies had not really thought the new French Bourbon government in very much danger. Then, when that fell, they did not really think Napoleon would seize Paris. Then, when he had, they did not really think that he would reach the Belgian border.Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam found themselves at a ball in Brussels, thrown by the Duchess of Richmond, when the British and their allies reached the height of incredulity: not only had Napoleon done all this, he had crossed the Franco-Belgian border and was marching to Brussels.Of course, none knew of this but the Duke of Wellington; Elizabeth saw an aide-de-campe deliver a note to the Duke at supper, but thought little of it. She was tired and found the severeness of Belgian etiquette a trial; her thoughts had been turned longingly towards home for some hours. She merely commented to her husband, “Do you suppose Signoria Grassini has sent him a billet-doux, or is Tsar Alexander hoping His Grace will be his second, the next time he challenges Metternich to a duel?”“I should think it more probable the Prussians are lost again, and begging for directions.”“That sounds very likely, but I find my theories are more amusing,” said Elizabeth, hiding a yawn behind her fan. “How late would you like to stay?”“We may return any time you like,” said he, bending close. His breath stirred the curls at the nape of her neck and she shivered pleasantly. “I do not know how it is, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, but even though I have been privileged enough to see you nearly every day for three years now, I could scarcely take my eyes off you all evening.”“The wonders of French fashions,” said Elizabeth, trying not to shew how this had affected her. “I have a whole trunkful of things that I purchased in Paris; should you care to see the full extent of my extravagance?”Elizabeth had changed her gloves for the hinged gold bracelet it was now the fashion to wear at dinners and suppers; Colonel Fitzwilliam, still bent towards her, touched his fingertips to the inside of her forearm, at the crook of her elbow, and slid them down to rest just under her bracelet. His fingertips just brushed the bottom of her soulmark. Elizabeth felt herself beginning to flush.“I think,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, smirking a little, “that I should enjoy that a vast deal more than obeying every stricture of Belgian etiquette. Shall we cause a mild scandal and slip out now?”
“I have been longing to slip out since the Gordon Highlanders danced their reel.”They bid their hasty adieus and were soon very comfortably ensconced in their lodgings. It was perhaps unsurprising that Colonel Fitzwilliam should be undressed and Mrs. Fitzwilliam dressed when one of Wellington’s aides-de-campe knocked on the door, and delivered the news that all officers were to report to their regiments by three-o-clock. Napoleon’s forces were already in Belgium and had engaged with the Prussian army; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s battalion was to hold the crossroads at Quatre-Bras, so that the bulk of the Anglo-allied forces could come to the Prussian’s aid, and to prevent the French from marching onto Brussels. He also added, “His Grace the Duke of Wellington told me particularly to say that he knows you are closeted with Mrs. Fitzwilliam at present, and even so, you must make haste; His Grace would prefer to be closeted with Mrs. Fitzwilliam as well, but he is already ahorse.”Elizabeth, flushed, but with hair and gown in tolerable order, opened the door enough to reach out and take the hastily writ orders the aide-de-campe held out to her. “Thank you sir, and please convey to His Grace both my blushes, and my husband’s alacrity and obedience.”The aide-de-campe grinned and touched the brim of his bicorn. “With great pleasure, Mrs. Fitzwilliam."
“Wellington is a rogue,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, searching for bits of uniform scattered about the room and crammed in trunks.
“I am used enough to Army humor,” said Elizabeth, shutting the door. “I have had three— nearly three and a half years of it, by now. But Good God— the French in Belgium already!”
“I don’t think anyone expected it, or if they did, expected it quite so soon.”
“How could Napoleon have come so far so quickly?” Elizabeth asked, sitting down to ready her husband’s pistols. It was by now as easy and automatic a task as rolling bandages or stitching up a hem.
“Recall the Spanish campaign, Lizzy,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Napoleon knows how to march. We do not. My gorget—have you seen it?”
“On the dresser.”
Elizabeth was more flustered than she had ever been before a battle, not only because it had come by surprise, when she was not precisely in a state to receive visitors, but because she did not know what to do. It had been her habit to attach herself to the traveling hospitals, but the medical service had been disbanded the year before. The battalion surgeon, Colonel Dunne, was just as flustered, and, still in ball dress, ran past Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman, and nearly burst into the bedroom.
“We are popular this evening,” said Elizabeth. “Colonel Dunne, it is very lucky for you I was finished with the pistols. Pray, will you shut the door behind you? My husband is still dressing.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam called out from behind the dressing screen, “Colonel Dunne, how d’ye do?”
“Badly,” said Colonel Dunne, running a hand through his hair. He affected a Brutus crop, and now it all stood on end, making him look more eccentric than usual. “Colonel Fitzwilliam, I come to you in great perplexity. I have some supplies, and my saws and scalpels, but I have no staff. My two assistants were turned off on half-pay in Toulouse last October, after Napoleon seemed to have abdicated, and I have no notion where any of the stewards are. How can I tend to the wounded with no staff?”
“You have Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “if you will forgive my volunteering you, my dear.”
“I am very happy to be of some use,” replied Elizabeth. “And I am certain I can round up at least half-a-dozen other ladies of the regiment. Where should you like us, sir?”
“We can perhaps pitch a tent as close to the field as we dare,” said Colonel Dunne. “I have a wagon for supplies, but no stretcher-bearers—”
“I shall give an order that any foot soldier of mine whose comrade has fallen must be given immediate leave to escort the injured to the medical tent,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, emerging from behind the dressing screen, in the usual, rather beaten-up uniform he wore into battle. “Pick the strongest two privates to be your stewards. What else do you need?”
“Linen, as much as can be got. I have... sufficient, I suppose lint to pack the wounds, but nothing to bind them.”
Elizabeth at once flung open the trunk full of sheets and Holland covers from their Paris lodgings— they had left too quickly to cover any of the furniture— and said, “Well sir, here you are. I hope we will not need all of these, but it is of very good quality.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “I wish you would take those old Spanish shirts, too, Mrs. Fitzwilliam; they do not wear or wash well, and I would much rather see them on my men as bandages than on me as shirts. I’ll keep an eye out for the properest spot for the medical tent, and send an ensign to guide you thither. Will you help me with my sword?”
It was habit with her to buckle on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sword herself, as (illogically, she acknowledged), it made her feel as if her last embrace before a battle actually offered some physical protection. She held onto him a moment longer than she usually did and felt him press her to him tightly, before kissing her.
“There now, my dear,” said he. “We were surprised, but we are not routed. We shall hold them at Quatre Bras, and, if not, at Waterloo. They shall not reach Belgium, not with Wellington in command. I shall see you very soon.”
Elizabeth was for some time distracted by her duties, for there were many, and they were more complicated than they had ever been before. Of the forty British regiments in Brussels, perhaps half of them had all their medical officers, and the others were in the same circumstances as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s regiment. Her Brussels neighbor, Mrs. Patrick, a wife of an officer in the 28th Foot, told Elizabeth her regiment had only an assistant surgeon for all six hundred men. There were no plans in place, no municipal hospitals, no ambulances. What supplies there were were limited, far more than even the last stages of the Spanish campaign, after the countryside had been picked over by the world’s two largest armies.
“It is a mess,” said Colonel Dunne, as Elizabeth delivered another round of Holland covers ripped into bandages. (The last few ladies she had sent had remained at the main tent, to immediately apply the bandages and sticking plasters they had manufactured.) “Such a mess! I dread to have the other regimental surgeons see me. I have ladies, respectable ladies, wives of officers, attending to men our own general calls the scum of the earth. Some of the men even take their shirts off!”
“We have all followed the drum since Spain, at least,” said Elizabeth. “We have seen considerably worse than men with their shirts off.”
To Elizabeth had fallen the aggravating lot of organizing people, supplies, and influx of soldiers. Though she had never hosted a ball at a great house, Elizabeth fancied it was much the same, if the house was comprised of three tents pelted with rain, the servants had all quit, the orchestra was comprised entirely of canons, bagpipes, fife and drum corps, and a very slightly tone-deaf cavalry trumpeter, and the guests were all bleeding. She spent most of her time running supplies to the main medical tent and the surgery tent, from the tent where the more decorous or more inexperienced ladies were rolling bandages and trying to make up for a lack of apothecary with what skills they had brought from the stillroom.
She was therefore one of the first to hear Colonel Fitzwilliam’s aide-de-camps shouting, “A doctor for the Colonel; he has been shot!”
Elizabeth at once dropped the chair cover she had been picking apart, and raced out of the tent. She was extremely relieved to see Colonel Fitzwilliam looking annoyed and clutching his upper right arm. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said he, spotting her, “covered in mud again, I see.”
“It is my natural state, sir,” she managed to get out.
He cracked a smile. “Do not look quite so frightened; I was incautious enough to be injured, but it is not severe. If Colonel Dunne can dig the bullets out of my arm, I shall be right enough.” Then, seeing she was not satisfied, he sighed and raised his gloved hand, so she could see the injury herself. “As you see: two bullet holes in front, none in the back. It does not hurt enough for the bone to have been hit. It is a very simple injury. Will you fetch me a fresh shirt from your rag bag?”
She do so with alacrity. Her husband was quoting John Donne at Colonel Dunne when Elizabeth returned. Colonel Dunne bore this with good humor, as he always did, and said, “Ah, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I have good report of the patient. He only swore at me once and I got two bullets and part of a uniform out of the meat of his arm. Have we any vinegar left?”
“No sir; I was only able to procure a couple of bottles before we rode out.”
“Blast. And I’ve no wine or oil either— well, no matter. It would be best if I could wash the blood away to see better, but I wiped away what I could.” He squinted at the wound. “I... believe it is clean? Damn it, I would trade my epaulettes for a little vinegar. Strings like the devil, but it keeps the blood from flowing long enough for a good look. A surgeon friend of mine in the Coldstream Guards swears that washing his hands in the stuff before operating does wonders, too.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam grimaced dramatically as Colonel Dunne gave one last prod at the wound. “Oh yes, that gentleman has told me of his theory many times, though I must admit, I hardly ever attended him. Something to do with miasmas?”
Colonel Dunne carefully applied a lint pad over the wound, before taking the fresh bandage Elizabeth offered him. “Aye, you’ve the right of it. The scent of the vinegar is so strong, it keeps bad air from entering into the body through the wound.”
“Like smelling a vinaigrette, for faintness?” asked Elizabeth.
“Oh aye, much the same idea as that, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. A strong scent to drive out the bad ones. I have often wondered if perfume might have the same effect. Certainly since you and the ladies of the regiment have been assisting me, the men are far less likely to die of infection as they once were.” He took a critical look at his handiwork. “Well, the day’s business is only just begun; the air cannot be too bad. I do not think there can be much fear of infection.”
One of the privates hastily promoted to a hospital steward came running into the cordoned off section of the tent where the three of them stood. “Sir, Lieutenant Hawkins took a bayonet to a, er....” He glanced at Elizabeth and coughed. “To a, er, delicate place, sir.” He let fall the sheet as Lieutenant Hawkins came waddling by, looking more vexed than gravely injured.
Colonel Dunne sighed. “And now, I must to the next patient.”
“I can clean this part of the tent for you,” offered Elizabeth.
“I am much obliged! So obliged, in fact, that I shall even return the bullets to you.” He gestured at the basin beside him, as he ducked under a hanging sheet to the next patient. “You may have them made into ear-rings, a souvenir of Belgium.”
“I shall cede my part of the spoils,” said Elizabeth, taking the bloody shirt and putting down the fresh one in its place.
“Thank you my dear,” said the Colonel. He was bare from the waist up, and Elizabeth was relieved to see no other injuries, though she was still concerned enough to check the bloody circles of red wool in the basin against the holes in his uniform coat.
“I am afraid you shall have to sew up the hole rather than patch it,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, pulling on the new shirt. “It is such a comforting thing, to have a wife; I spend half of what I once did on clothes since you fix them all for me. Though I think the shirt may be lost. Can you turn it to bandages?”
Elizabeth looked at it critically. “I am sure the stain can be washed out— but hold a moment, there is a hole here— I think the balls took part of your shirt as well as your coat.”
“Colonel Dunne saw only wool, not linen. It is one of the shirts you had made for me in Spain; they do not wear well.”
As she turned over the shirt in her hands, she became convinced this was otherwise. “Perhaps I may have packed this with your Spanish shirts, but I made this one myself. I do not see any other holes. I really do think—”
But then came in the lieutenant-colonel, too seriously injured to ride, and Colonel Fitzwilliam put on the rest of his uniform at once.
“Do you really think it wise?” Elizabeth asked, though she still assisted him with coat, shoulderbelt, sash, and sword. “I have seen too many injuries imperfectly cleaned to be easy. I should hate to see it turned septic.”
“I should hate to see us routed by the French, even more,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, fastening on his gorget. “If we keep control of these cross-roads, Ney and his forces cannot make it to Brussels, even if the Prussians lose their battle at Ligny."
“I think you underestimate the danger,” said Elizabeth, by now sincerely worried.
“Of what, infection, or the French?” Colonel Fitzwilliam kissed her forehead. “If anything, you overestimate the danger, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. If it will satisfy you, I shall have Colonel Dunne poke at my arm again, when the day’s business is ended. But I must away; I do not like leaving the captains entirely to their own devices, in so hot an action.”
***
The day’s business tumbled headlong into the next. Colonel Fitzwilliam's regiment had arrived on the 16th at Quatre Bras, where the fighting had begun the day previous, and been ordered to hold the nearby Bossu Woods. This they managed to accomplish, though with more injuries than they would have wished, and with the loss of nearly the entire 69th division and its standard. While in defense of the woods, he came across a small cottage, hastily abandoned by its occupants as soon as they had seen the French army advance; this he requisitioned for Colonel Dunne, and the ladies of the regiment, when they were too exhausted to tend to the wounded. Elizabeth had never felt so tired in her life, but still found herself to compelled to remain awake, for lack of sufficient bedrooms, and roll bandages in what passed for the sitting room.
“I have not been sick at the sight of a battlefield in some years,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said wearily to her, dropping down next to her, on the divan, “But I was this evening. We have the crossroads, but at a ghastly cost.”
Elizabeth shivered. She had flung an evening cloak and an apron over her ball gown, but still felt insufficiently attired. “Have you heard if the Prussians were equally successful?”
“Not yet.” He sighed and said, “Forgive my importuning you, my dear, but my head aches with sleeplessness and the noise of the guns— may I?”
“If you do not mind the mud?”
“My dear, I should not recognize you without it, by now.”
Elizabeth moved the rolls of bandages off her lap, and Colonel Fitzwilliam put his head there. It comforted her to stroke the hair off his forehead, though she was alarmed at how hot he felt to the touch. “You are overheated, sir.”
“I shouldn’t doubt it,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “This is the first time I have dismounted my horse since I was injured earlier, and we have been firing continuously all afternoon.” He managed to sleep what remained of the night, and Elizabeth part of it, until the rain began, and two of the lieutenants’ wives came rushing into the sitting room in a panic, as the secondary medical tent had been halfway ripped out of the ground by the wind. Elizabeth slid out, arranging her husband on the divan, and once more committed herself to the cause of getting her petticoats a full twelve inches deep in mud.
It was unfortunately in this state the Wellington saw her, trying to salvage what she could before everything was spoilt by rain.
He tipped his bicorn at her and said, “Unusual eggs you have found, Mrs. Fitzwilliam."
Elizabeth, clutching a very damp peasant’s straw hat to the top of her head, and hugging an eggbasket full of bandages to her side, replied, “Yes, the byproduct of Holland covers, Your Grace. They shall hatch shortly as bandages.”
“You ferry medical supplies yourself?”
“Only when the regiment’s medical staff has been reduced to Colonel Dunne, and Colonel Dunne alone, sir. One physician cannot supply the wants of six hundred men.”
Wellington gestured at one of his aides-de-campe. “Attend Mrs. Fitzwilliam, will you? See to it she gets all this to Colonel Dunne, or onto his medical wagon. I take it Colonel Fitzwilliam is inside?”
Elizabeth directed His Grace to the sitting room, before overloading her helper with baskets and bottles. They had moved nearly everything inside, or on the wagon by the time Wellington came striding out again. She let down her apron and the skirt of her ball gown, to try and hide the worst of the mud as she curtsied, but she was uncertain of her success. Wellington merely quirked his upper lip at her, in his version of a smile, and said, “No need; it is when you are not covered in mud, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, that I am alarmed about the —th Foot,” before bidding her good day and mounting his horse again.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was now awake, and feeling refreshed enough to be sarcastic as he looked at a map he’d spread out over his lap. “What,” he asked, as Elizabeth came back in, futilely shaking the rain off her cloak, “is the point of having allies? They do nothing but make us scramble. The Prussians were defeated at Ligey and are said to be marching to Wavre.”
"Are we retreating?” asked Elizabeth.
“Yes, along the Brussels road to some village called Waterloo that Wellington has had in mind for its hills. People say Wellington is a difficult man to please, but really, all he wants in life are a few hills, and a few competent men to march up and down them.”
“Marching up and down hills seems quite contrary to your usual assignments.”
“Oh no, I am used as I always am: to hold. My regiment is to help hold an estate near the village— Hougoumont, I think it’s called— to defend the right flank of the main force. Just fancy, Lizzy, I am at last master of a grand house and working farm, and lieutenant-colonels of the Coldstream Guards will be taking their orders from me. It is a nice homecoming; I went from Captain to Major in that regiment; it is a very great pleasure to be in command of even four companies of it, if only temporarily.” Colonel Fitzwilliam folded up the map, wincing a little at the movement of his right arm. “Unfortunately, I am stationed there because His Grace thinks any other commander is very likely to be overrun. Your makeshift hospital will have to be closer to Brussels than Hougoumont, my dear. I only hope we can get men to you.”
“I know you do not like to do it, but will you please pull rank and insist upon seeing Colonel Dunne, before he is sent away?”
This Colonel Fitzwilliam did, mostly to oblige her, for he was much pressed to finish his dispatches and letters before departing. Colonel Dunne had been sleeping off the worst of his exhaustion, in what had been the cottage’s pantry, and his first exclamation upon being brought into the sitting room, was, “Dear God, sir, I am behindhand already. I meant to see you before I slept, but there seemed to be twenty new cases of powder burns in indelicate places. Still, I ought to have—”
“You were seeing to the men as they came in, and had already seen me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a tired smile. “How should it be otherwise? But before we retreat to this escapement near Waterloo that Wellington has been dreaming about a year or more, I thought it wise to be sure I had full use of my sword arm.”
To Elizabeth’s mixed alarm and satisfaction, some slight inflammation of the wound was proof enough that she had been right, and though Colonel Dunne absolutely forbade her from assisting with any kind of operation (for reasons of both propriety and practicality— Elizabeth, fit and active as she was, had not the sufficient strength to hold down a grown man), the two privates he had arbitrarily selected as stewards did their duties well. Colonel Fitzwilliam was greatly relieved the infection was not so severe as to require amputation, merely new surgery and bandages.
Colonel Dunne was inclined to be optimistic, for he had matched the bits of linen to the holes in the shirt Elizabeth had preserved, and had even had the opportunity to bleed Colonel Fitzwilliam to treat his slight fever. Colonel Dunne waxed rhapsodic about vinegar again, but all that could be done with what they had, had been done.
“Let this be a lesson to me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, grimacing as he pulled on his shirt again. “I ought always to listen to you. Where on earth has my cloak got to?”
“Surely you do not mean to go immediately out into this?” asked Elizabeth, with an expansive gesture, to try and encompass all the rain, lightening and mud outdoors.
“I am afraid I must; all but the light infantry must be gone before midday, and it is now gone ten-o-clock.”
Elizabeth did not think marching hours in a thunderstorm to be a particularly wise idea in regards to her husband’s recovery, but it would be equally injurious to his health if the French found him. Such, she reflected, were the unhappy choices of war. “I suppose I ought to be glad you command a regiment of regulars, not light infantry, and shall be settled quite civilly into a chateau by this afternoon. What is the light infantry doing, covering the retreat?”
“Acting as decoys long enough that the cavalry may then be brought in, to distract Marshal Ney.” He paused to hold onto the back of the chair where his stock hung, and slowly shook his head, as if to clear it. “I always forget how long it takes for my humors to adjust after a blood-letting. It is a pity; I always prided myself on being good humored.”
Elizabeth tucked herself under his arm, so he might have something to lean on both sides. Colonel Fitzwilliam pressed his forehead to hers. It still felt alarmingly warm.
“This is a damned close-run thing,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, softly. “I hate to admit it, Lizzy, but I have no idea who will win. Wellington himself said we have been humbugged. Do not wander too far from Colonel Dunne and the other ladies. I’d try and make you go to Antwerp and then to England, if I thought for a moment you’d agree to it.”
“Of course I won’t.” Elizabeth said, in a rallying tone. “I doubt you could make me go farther than Brussels. I know Frenchwomen are even more involved in the action; if it would not so outrage English sensibilities, I would take water and brandy onto the field like the French vivandieres.”
He raised his head and, pulling on one of her damp, wind-blown curls, said, “You are a rare woman, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Now, my sword?”
Elizabeth felt a sense of encroaching dread as she put her arms about Colonel Fitzwilliam. She tried, instead, to feel pleased that the Duke of Wellington had so singled out her husband— it was a great compliment to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s understated competence— but this did not hold.
“What’s this, Lizzy?” asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, in a tone of forced and unconvincing cheerfulness. “Fearsome Mrs. Fitzwilliam, overset?”
“Only a little,” said she, wiping her eyes on the lapel of his uniform. “I am merely tired. And a little embarrassed that so august a person as the Duke of Wellington should still have seen me looking quite so disreputable.”
“Really?” he teased. “After all your talk of Paris fashions... dear God, was it only yesterday?”
“Oh yes, the whole ensemble is straight out of La Belle Assemble. Battledress: A round-gown of soft white satin with demi train; bosom and sleeves embellished with primrose ribbon; eight to twelve inches of mud on the petticoat, height left to the wearer’s discretion. Brown leather riding boots to be laced tight over white silk stockings. A blood-stained linen apron, drenched evening cloak of dirty primrose satin, and a moulding straw hat is fancifully worn over the whole.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed and kissed her. “There’s my Lizzy! Ensign Leigh is acting as a courier for me; if you want to write any letters, add them to the pile there— though, now that I think on it, I shall need you to be sure everything’s wrapped in oilskin and taken. Will you see to it?”
“You may rely upon me.”
“I always do.” He rallied tolerably, but when she walked him to the door, he paused, took her left hand, and kissed her soulmark, very nearly in public. “Te amo, my dear Bennet.”
Elizabeth took a moment to press her palm against his unshaven cheek. “Te amo, my dear Fitzwilliam.” Her voice cracked slightly, but it was easier for both of them to pretend it hadn’t, and that their parting was entirely dry-eyed and composed.
Upon her return to the sitting room, Elizabeth noticed, amongst the more formal dispatches, letters to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s family. The letter to Georgiana had not been finished or closed; she sat down to finish writing it so that she would not be staring stupidly out the warped glass of the window at her husband chivying his men into their ranks. It was not a coherent letter, featuring mostly her riff on La Belle Assemble, and she closed it with accidental honesty:
The regiment is to hold Hougoumont, the principal estate, I believe of the village of Waterloo. Richard is not sanguine. It alarms me more than I can presently write. He, who always underestimates danger, and even yesterday thought I was being too anxious over an injury he received in the arm...which, by the by, turned out to be as serious as I thought! It gave him a fever (though he was bled for it this morning and expects to shortly be better).
I have been many times anxious for his safety and my own, but for the first time, I am truly frightened.
***
The rest of the day was devoted to moving, to paying very bewildered Belgian farmers for the use of their buildings, and to what snatches of sleep could be gotten in cramped corners. Elizabeth managed to wash, but not to change her gown, for the only trunk she had taken with her from Brussels was full of linen for bandages. One of the other ladies at least gave her a clean shift to put on, but as she must then put back on a gown and petticoat not satisfactorily cleaned, it did not make her feel very much more refreshed.
Sunday, the 18th of June, was misery of the acutely kind. The heat was oppressive, and the canons close and loud enough to set windows and teeth rattling, and for a choking, acrid fog of cannon smoke to hang over them all. The defense of Hougoumont began sometime mid morning, and the closeness of the action and the numbers and position of the French meant that they did not hear from the company proper until well after the engagement was over. The wounded retreated from the grounds and courtyard not to the distant Colonel Dunne, but instead into the house, where the assistant surgeon of the Coldstream Guard was taxed to his limit.
When Elizabeth and the other ladies were not busy with men wounded at Quatre Bras and in the retreat to Hougoumont, they tormented themselves by deciphering each trumpeted command and naming each regiment’s fifes, drums, and bagpipes. They knew who had engaged in battle and when, but not where, and not to what effect. By the afternoon, Elizabeth felt stupid with nerves and lack of sleep and was for some time irritable over so late a start to that day’s battle.
“Really?” asked Mrs. Kirke, who paused at four-o’-clock to drink tea and eat plain bread with Elizabeth. Mrs. Kirke’s brother had taken over the farmhouse across from Colonel Dunne and the visit had the absurd air of a village social call. “I am surprised at you, Mrs. Fitz. You are always joking about mud and now you pay no attention to it.”
“What can you mean?”
“Why, Boney is an artillery officer, my dear! Just as Wellington is a cavalryman. Early training always tells. Wellington can maneuver. It is easy to move horses and men in mud. Boney cannot. You cannot move a cannon until the ground has firmed.”
Elizabeth did not respond; soldiers from other regiments, deserters and injured men alike, were now bringing reports that the fighting at Hougoumont had grown so hot the chateau itself was on fire.
Mrs. Kirke was troubled but two hours later was sanguine once again. “The day is not lost quite yet; there are three points of conflict: Hougoumont, La Haie-Sainte, and Le Havre. I have heard only that La Haie-Sainte has been taken, according to reports I trust. I would weep if your husband was at La Haie-Sainte, but he is not. Hougoumont is still held, even if it is on fire. We would have seen more men fleeing this way if both farms were taken. Stiff upper lip, Mrs. Fitz.”
Elizabeth found this impossible. Of the three points of conflict one had already been won by the French. After so long a war, after so desperate a battle, she did not expect the French to treat any British civilian kindly. The other ladies were equally despondent. When they heard the marching song of Napoleon’s own personal guard, the Old Guard, who had never retreated or been defeated throughout all the years of war, some even fled back to Brussels. Mrs. Kirke blamed them, but Elizabeth could not. Only the obstinate thought that here, at least, she was doing something useful, kept her so close to the battlefield. Her own death had seemed remote and unlikely before; now Elizabeth consoled herself with the thought that for a woman of four-and-twenty, she had no cause to repine never reaching five-and-twenty. She had been happy and had accomplished a great deal. “See to it,” she wrote to Jane, in a fit of gallows humor, “that they write, ‘HERE LIES ELIZABETH BENNET FITZWILLIAM, AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN’ on my tombstone. I do not know if I shall lie under it, but it will comfort me to know I have got the very last word against Miss Bingley.”
Then came to Elizabeth the sweetest music she had ever heard: the very distinctive sound of Prussian regiments on the march.
It gave her much more pleasure to write, “Do not pay the stonemason just yet! My dear, I have never before wept to hear drums, but I can scare write I cry from such relief. Napoleon could have defeated Wellington or Blucher, but he cannot defeat both at once! Jane, the battle is won!”
Around nine or ten-o-clock, Elizabeth began to see some of their own regiment. The French had spent far too many of their forces at Hougoumont, which refused to fall; upon seeing Napoleon’s Old Guard fleeing from the field, these broken remnants gave up and fled as well. One of the companies, under the command of Colonel Fitzwilliam's most trusted captain, chased after them, and it was the men injured in this action that made it to the hospital.
No one could at first give a full account of Colonel Fitzwilliam, except through his orders to the four companies under his command. Elizabeth was not very worried, particularly as a couple of NCOs and a handful of privates were able to give her an eyewitness account of Colonel Fitzwilliam from about noon. An axe-wielding madman, according to one private, or French sub-lieutenant with an axe, according to his sergeant, managed to cut down the wooden doors of the north gate.
“And now Napoleon sends against us literal gatecrashers,” Colonel Fitzwilliam had apparently said. “These French officers are no gentlemen. Shall we teach them some manners?”
(Another group of privates maintained Colonel Fitzwilliam had said something about barbarians at the gate. Elizabeth was inclined to believe her husband said both of these; they both sounded sarcastic enough to be true.)
Colonel Fitzwilliam and a small party of mostly regular footsoldiers, with three or four officers and NCOs, fought through the melee. Only Colonel Fitzwilliam, and two members of the Coldstream Guard, Lieutenant-Colonel James MacDonald, and corporal James Graham, reached the gate. Colonel Fitzwilliam slammed shut the doors; Corporal Graham lifted and set in place the beam to bar the door; Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald lead the effort to barricade the gate with flagstones. The French sub-lieutenant, seeing that he and his men were now trapped without hope of escape, had taken his axe to Colonel Fitzwilliam, who had not been expecting it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was at first clumsy in his defense and had been somehow injured, though it was not clear how, or why, but multiple soldiers assured Elizabeth that he had not injured enough to retire from the field. He had continued to fight until the French company had surrendered, and only then gone indoors to have his wounds dressed, and to see how the southern gate held.
The last anyone had heard, Colonel Fitzwilliam had gotten orders from Wellington himself to hold the chateau at all costs, which lead to the assembled company spending the last part of the battle physically at Hougoumont fighting fire, as much as the French, but no one was entirely sure what had happened to the Colonel once the fire had been doused and the French gone. Later men were equally unable to give their reports. The orders for injured men to find their regimental surgeons had presumably been given by Colonel Fitzwilliam, but had been announced by the captain of each squadron.
Elizabeth’s early ebullience was beginning to fade. As in character it was for Colonel Fitzwilliam to follow his orders to the letter (probably grumbling all the while), his continued absence, especially with a fresh injury, was a source of increasing anxiety. She became really convinced that something was wrong, that he had been injured more seriously than had been understood, and settled it with one of the lieutenants she liked best in the regiment, a Lieutenant Brandon, that if Colonel Fitzwilliam was not back by midnight, she would ride in search of him.
***
Lieutenant Brandon had gathered together two or three other junior officers well enough to ride, by the time Elizabeth had finished bandaging the last mild burn left to her. The line of men with worse injuries, or with injuries in places too indelicate for a lady to see, was still full long, and she looked upon it with dismay. But it was now midnight, and she thought she might go mad if she waited any longer.
Colonel Dunne was in an exhausted heap in a hallway, waiting for a private to finish re-sharpening the dulled bone saws, before he returned to his surgery in what had once been a dining room. He had rolled his shirt-sleeves; one could dimly see ‘Hippocrates’ in Greek characters, through the crust of dried blood on his left forearm.
Elizabeth touched him gently on the shoulder as she passed. “I hate to leave you, sir, but....”
Colonel Dunne roused himself. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I hate more that I cannot accompany you. I should have liked to see to that axe wound myself.”
“You would take on more work?” Elizabeth asked, attempting to tease.
“Aye,” said Colonel Dunne. “I still have amends to make for not catching the bits of shirt in the wound; my only excuse was that I was so pressed for time, rushing from one surgery to the next, that I did not look twice.”
“I am sure my husband did not encourage you to look twice.”
“No, but I ought to have overruled him. You know his temperament; he would have grumbled, but submitted.”
“You know him well, sir.”
“Oh aye. You cannot avoid become intimate friends with a man after you’ve spent... what, is it five years now? Yes, five years pulling bits of metal out of him. God speed Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and send an ensign at once if you need me.”
Elizabeth agreed to this, though, as she watched the stream of men leaving Hougoumont streaming back to Brussels, and past their makeshift hospital, she was less and less inclined to do so. She had thought the morning and afternoon’s crowds had been bad, but it was nothing to this, now that the severely injured were beginning to be carried off the battlefield. Spain and Portugal had their moments of horror, but never had they been so concentrated.
Hougoumont was itself alarming enough to fill her nightmares for years afterwards. There were two doors to Hougoumont— the northern door to the farm, which was still bolted and still bore axe marks, when they passed it, and the southern door, to the chateau. Though the French had not breached this second set of doors, they had essayed it a great deal, and Elizabeth’s party had to move slowly, to avoid stepping upon the dead and the wounded. She had thought to equip herself with a perfumed handkerchief, and put this over her mouth and nose, to disguise the worst scents of battle, and to limit the effects of the smoke— the chateau had been burnt to several still smoldering walls and all was still confusion. The wounded were in every room that still remained a room, and several that had neither walls nor roof, merely the suggestion of having once been part of a building. Elizabeth had dismounted and was passing out what medical supplies she had thought to bring with her, before a corporal of the —th Foot recognized her and directed her and her escort towards what remained of the stables. The last he had heard, Colonel Fitzwilliam had been intending to ride out.
She was still carrying a basket of bandages when she finally saw her husband, drooping over the neck of his horse— though as he drew nearer, she saw he was not drooping, he was draped.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was unconscious.
Elizabeth dropped her basket. Bandages rolled pell-mell. She leapt over them. She very nearly ran into Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman, who was leading the horse, and almost ricocheted into a second horse and rider.
This gentleman dismounted and, coming into the light, was revealed to be in the uniform of the Coldstream Guards. His epaulettes and braid proved him to be a lieutenant-colonel.
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I presume?” asked he. “I am Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald. I had the great honor of serving as your husband’s second-in-command here at Hougoumont.”
Elizabeth said something, she knew not what, and reached up to her husband. She took the dangling left arm and felt for the pulse under her own name. “I cannot— he is alive?”
Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald took off his bicorn and pressed it to his sooty breast.
“Mostly, madame. He took an axe-blow to the ribs at half-past noon that was stitched up, as soon as we had possession of the courtyard once more, but it slowed him a great deal, and after we put out the fire, he seemed fairly extinguished himself. When the French left, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Our guests finally realized that they were not welcome, did they? I thought barring the door a pretty strong hint,” and collapsed. He is very feverish. We bled him, and after a little rest, decided it would be best to try and move him to Brussels. There isn’t a carriage to be got about here for love or money, so— well, he managed to indicate he could ride, and did mount himself, but—” He swallowed. “Well. He is as you see, madam.”
She had found a pulse, weak and uneven. Elizabeth turned her head over her shoulder and cried, “Quickly now, a surgeon for Colonel Fitzwilliam!”
The only doctor present was one of the assistant surgeons of the Coldstream Guards. His chief and fellow assistant had remained with the bulk of the guards, on the plains of Waterloo, and he was upset to the point of humiliation that his best efforts had not been enough.
He spoke despairingly of the air, thick with smoke, still, and full of the scent of corruption. This must have infected the colonel’s axe wound, for the blood-letting had done nothing to ameliorate the fever. Elizabeth asked, if the blood-letting was not effective, if anything else could be done, but the surgeon seemed really near tears at her request. He demanded to know what could be done, when all the medical supplies currently at Hougoumont were what she and her escort had brought with her. He had been taking bandages off the dead to use on the living for hours now; there was no ice; there was not even water.
“Something must be done,” insisted Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald. “For God’s sake, man, at least try to bleed him once more.”
Men at once crowded Elizabeth out, to get her husband off his horse— after passing forward her evening cloak, as it was the closest thing anyone had to a blanket, Elizabeth rushed to the well, incredulous that there could be no water.
She had never drawn her own water before and was finding the experience remarkably difficult. Her bootheels sank into the mud; she strained against the rope. Then she heard faint cries in French from the interior of the well.
Frozen with incredulity, nearly at an angle with the ground in her efforts to haul up the bucket, Elizabeth at first did not notice Wellington and his staff entering the courtyard.
“You call yourselves gentlemen, and make Mrs. Fitzwilliam haul her own water?” came Wellington’s voice.
At once a half-dozen ensigns and sub-lieutenants took the rope from her and heaved, bringing up not a water bucket, but a French lieutenant. He meekly offered his sword before daring to let go of the rope and collapse in a wet heap on the ground, and reporting a number of other comrades, living and dead, still in the well.
“Hm,” said Wellington. “No wonder you were having trouble, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”
Elizabeth was, for the first time, rather too stupefied to be clever. “Well,” she said, and hoped this passed for wit.
“To more pleasant subjects— where is your husband, madam? He has done magnificently. I sent only twenty-one battalions here; Napoleon sent thirty-three, and yet Hougoumont is ours. Even the clerks and copy-boys of Whitehall must be pleased with these figures.”
“Sir, I fear he must decline,” said Elizabeth, pale and agitated. “He took an axe blow when defending the northern gate, sir, and he had been already wounded at Quatre Bras. At present he is too ill to even be moved. I do not know—”
Wellington at once dismounted and strode into the farmhouse, where Colonel Fitzwilliam had been taken. Elizabeth went into the courtyard, in search of a good place to cry without being observed, but here she found only more anguish. There was blood upon the gate, an axe on the ground, an empty trench of dirt where the pavement had been ripped up. The bodies, at least, had been taken away, but the detritus on the cobblestones bore witness of their passing.
She did not know how long she walked around it, looking about, trying to piece together the battle from what scraps remained, but it could not have been long. When Wellington came out again he found her at the wooden doors, studying the axe marks as if trying to make out the writing on the Rosetta Stone.
“The success of the whole battle depended on the closing of this gate,” said he. "You may depend upon it that no troops but the British could have held Hougoumont, and only the best of them at that."
Elizabeth did not know how to ask what she chiefly wished to know.
“Have you any family in Brussels, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?” asked Wellington, after a moment.
This was answer enough. Elizabeth cleared her throat, but her voice did not sound like her own when she said, “No, sir, but my friend Mrs. Kirke, and her brother are not far down the road, and my father-in-law should still be at Matlock House, in London.”
Wellington nodded. “Major Percy rides with news of my victory; I shall include a note to the Earl of Matlock.” He mounted his horse, tipped his hat to her and said, “Give one of my aides your address in Brussels, madam; I shall call on you when the Colonel has been moved.”
***
By Tuesday, the roads had somewhat cleared, a cart had been procured, and Colonel Fitzwilliam had been moved (though he was thoroughly insensible of it). The awful day spent nursing her unconscious, feverish husband in a ruined farmhouse, punctuated by her desperate attempts to move him, and to find and procure any kind of cart of carriage, had left Elizabeth almost without strength. A bath and a change of clothes had not made her feel very much more human, only, ironically, less capable of doing anything. That evening found her sitting on the floor of the hallway from the bedroom to the sitting room in her lodgings. Her aim had been to bring fresh tea and a bowl for bloodletting to to Colonel Dunne, who attended Colonel Fitzwilliam in the bedroom, but the enormity of the past week suddenly overwhelmed her, and found she had to sit, from actual, and unconquerable weakness.
It was in this state of exhausted shock that Elizabeth first heard a quick, but deliberate step come up the stairs. The footsteps stopped at the fourth floor, where the Fitzwilliams had their suite of rooms, and ended with a knock upon the door; Elizabeth idly wondered how bad it would be to receive the Duke of Wellington while sitting on the floor, her arms balanced in her raised knees, and her head tipped back against the wall.
Elizabeth’s maid, Mrs. Pattinson, opened the door, as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman was assisting Colonel Dunne, and said, very puzzled, “Good evening, Your Gr—er, good evening sir, are you expected?”
“I daresay I am not,” came the voice of Mr. Darcy.
Elizabeth was so shocked, she remained where she was, quite unable to believe the evidence of her own senses.
“Are your master and mistress at home?” said what was unmistakably Mr. Darcy.
Mrs. Pattinson stepped back in some confusion. “Lord bless me! Mr. Darcy, sir?”
It was Darcy, unshaven, great coat crumpled, with one of its capes inside-out over his shoulder like a foxhound’s ear after a long chase. Impatiently, tersely, he agreed this was his name and was halfway through asking again after Elizabeth and the colonel when Elizabeth began struggling to her feet with an astonished cry of, “Mr. Darcy, how is this possible?”
He was at her side in two quick strides, taking her unconsciously outstretched right hand in his own, and putting arm about her waist to help her straighten up. “Georgianna received your letter at breakfast Monday. I departed no more than an hour after she had finished reading it aloud. I was able to hire a yacht from Ramsgate easily enough; the real delay was in getting from Antwerp to Brussels. The roads are truly appalling, even on horseback.”
“From London to Brussels in two days! Impossible man, you must not have slept in all that time.”
“I slept during the Channel crossing.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “You could not know if we had won or lost when you set out.”
“No,” said Mr. Darcy, gravely.
Elizabeth pressed his hand. “What would you have done if you arrived in Antwerp, and heard of Napoleon's great victory?”
He ignored this question and instead steered her into the sitting room, giving orders to the still astonished Mrs. Pattinson to see if his horse, being held downstairs by some urchin or other, could be stabled, and his saddlebags brought up. Mr. Darcy looked down at Elizabeth’s pale, wretched face and a added, “And a glass of wine for your mistress— she is unwell.”
“Truly, it is exhaustion only,” said Elizabeth, brushing tears from her cheeks. Mr. Darcy sat her down at her work table, which was still littered with half-cut linen and rolls of bandages, and a grubby, sooty letter to her father about the action at Hougoumont. “Darcy, I am well, I promise you I am well.”
He flung his greatcoat over an easy chair by the fire, looking askance at the muddy, ruined ballgown still draped over the screen hiding the copper bathtub from view. “Hm.”
Elizabeth followed the line of his gaze and managed a watery laugh. “I beg you will never mention seeing that to Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. Word arrived of the French invasion in the middle of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. We rushed out to Quatre Bras so precipitously I had not the chance to change my gown until a few hours ago.” She was able to get through Quatre Bras, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s orders to hold Hougoumont at all costs, and her own activities and interrogations of her patients with perfect equanimity. She found she could give a tolerably composed account of the fight for the gate, but could not go on after that.
Elizabeth cut and rolled bandages as she talked, but now stared at the linen before her, unsure what to do with them. Darcy put one of his hands over hers and asked, quietly, “Where is Richard?”
“Our regimental surgeon is with him now. But I cannot— I do not— Good God, I thought I had written this enough times to speak of it with composure. These attentions I fear come too late. What can be done, now that infection has set in? I know nothing can be done, and yet— I cannot bear to accept it.”
Colonel Dunne then came out in search of the blood-letting bowl and, seeing Elizabeth crying over a pile of half-rolled linen strips, with an unknown gentleman gripping her hand and staring fixedly at her, was at first inclined to throw Darcy out on his ear.
“No, no,” said Elizabeth, hastily, “this is our cousin, Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy, this is Colonel Dunne, the regimental surgeon. Sir, please, will you explain the colonel's condition to him? I cannot. I have tried but I cannot.”
Colonel Dunne sat by Elizabeth, still inclined towards suspicion, and sketched out the matter with a great deal of Latin.
Darcy translated, “You are inclined to think the injury sustained at Quatre Bras to be the cause of the fever that has now made him insensible.”
“Aye,” said Doctor Dunne. “I blame myself for not having properly cleaned the bullet wound, or having a poultice to properly draw out the infection from the wound, or any kind of tincture to treat the fever. The infection, I believe, caused him no little pain Sunday, and made him clumsy in the melee. The fever by then must likewise have dulled his reactions.”
“Can anything be done to treat it now?”
“Not now. Perhaps we could have cut off the limb and saved him that way, but he sustained a laceration across the ribs at Hougoumont that likewise became septic. We cannot cut off a man’s torso. Medical science has not advanced that far.” He ran a hand through his short hair and turned to Elizabeth. “I am sorry with all my heart, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I ought to have insisted on amputating Saturday.”
“You would have taken his sword arm before he set out to fulfill the most important orders of his career?” Elizabeth asked, her tears a little more under control. “Just because two bullet wounds were a little red? He would never have allowed it.”
“Is there any benefit to bloodletting now?” Darcy asked.
Colonel Dunne said, “There is no harm, at least.”
Mrs. Pattinson came in then, with a very modest repast, and a bottle of burgundy. No one felt much like eating, and Elizabeth was still crying so constantly she did not touch her meal, for fear of its becoming rather oversalted. Darcy watched her with an expression of mixed pain and compassion. He finished his dinner within five minutes of it's being put in front of him and, pushing his plate away, asked, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, when is the last time you ate? When is the last time you slept?”
Elizabeth did not have satisfactory answers for either, and Darcy said, in a tone of gentle command, “Come, you must do both. I shall sit with Colonel Fitzwilliam until you are both a little recovered.”
“You have not even washed off the dust from the road!”
“Will you be so good as to ask your maid to prepare me a can of hot water, and loan me Colonel Fitzwilliam’s shaving kit? I assure you, that is all I need to be perfectly refreshed.”
This accomplished, Elizabeth wearily unpinned her apron and her long-sleeved round gown of dark blue muslin, took off her cap, and slept a few hours on a camp bed set up in her dressing room. Her maid sat at the door, picking apart a long traveling coat to dye black.
Elizabeth was never sure, later, what woke her: the noise of Mr. Darcy sending for Colonel Dunne, asleep in the sitting room, or her own maid kicking over her workbasket to run to the door, or if there was truth to the old superstition about soulmates knowing the moment of each others’ death. She only recalled sitting up abruptly, straining to hear what was happening; then flinging aside the bedclothes and stumbling into the sickroom while still pulling on her light summer dressing gown. Colonel Dunne and Mr. Darcy, looking drawn and grim, were by the right of the bed. Elizabeth looked to them for confirmation of what she already knew.
There are few things worse than tragedies which one expects and yet for which one resolutely refuses to prepare.
For some moments her mind rebelled and she refused, categorically, to accept that nothing more could be done. Mr. Darcy and Colonel Dunne were good enough to try what she demanded, but their work had no effect, and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s breathing grew fainter and more erratic.
She dropped almost fainting onto the camp chair on which she had passed most of the day and seized Colonel Fitzwilliam’s left hand in both her own. Her agitation was extreme and yet she could not find any way to express it, nor had she any idea what to do or what she be done. She felt she made a foolish, ridiculous figure sitting in a short-sleeved summer peignoir of diaphanous white silk gauze, her hair scandalously streaking unbound down her back, her left arm bare from her elbow to her fingertips, and yet could make no move to cover herself or get up to dress. To move would mean accepting there was nothing more to be done.
She pressed his hand again, vainly trying to chafe life back into it. “Please Richard, do not leave me. Dearest, do not make me live without you.” There was almost some response at this; Colonel Fitzwilliam turned his head slightly towards her. “It's me,” she cried, “it is Elizabeth— it is your Bennet. My dear—”
He seemed almost to know her; he pressed her hand in response and, when he had not sufficient strength to continue, his hand slid limply out of her grasp, brushing her bare left wrist, and then he was gone.