Four Days in June. Iain Gale
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with the utmost eloquence. It was, he felt, true to the spirit of the age. A marriage of intellect and beauty. He recalled her sisters – their pretty, sprigged muslin gowns, their giggling at the advances of his brother officers.
Afterwards they had travelled to Dunglass, as husband and wife. And then ten days of perfect bliss. How he loved her. And in the gardens again, where the spring was everywhere, she had turned to him, her beautiful eyes filled with the need for assurance.
‘We shall never be apart.’ Almost a question now.
‘Never. My dear, darling Magdalene. I shall never leave you.’
Their time had been brief, though, and continually subject to interruption by one of her family. He had not minded, such was his happiness. And her father had opened his mind to so many new things.
Sir James had introduced him to an entirely different way of looking at the world. Had taken him to the cliffs on which Dunglass stood, towering above the waves. Had shown him the rocks. Had told him their secrets. Of the formation of the earth. Of sandstone and schistus. Of the immeasurable force which had torn asunder the then so solid fabric of the globe. And there, in that instant, high above the waves, he had felt himself transported back to a time when the rocks on which he stood were yet at the bottom of the sea. A topsy-turvy time before time. Before revolution and war had blighted the perfection of the earth. His mind had seemed to grow giddy, looking so far down the cliff – so far back into the very abyss of time. He had felt himself on the brink of some great realization. And then Sir James was talking to him. ‘It is, as Hutton says, that we can find no vestige of a beginning to the world –no prospect of an end.’ No end. World without end. He had felt suddenly light-headed. Had seen how his own reason was taking him further into something perhaps than his imagination might care to follow. Had felt an intimation of something like … eternity.
Before he lost himself entirely in that vortex, Magdalene was there. Come, she said, to ‘rescue’ him from her father. And later, when he had told her of his fascination with what Sir James had said, she had taken him to show him the ‘museum of stones’ – stones which she herself had gathered on the nearby beach below the cliff. And then they had climbed down and she had kissed him on that narrow strip of pebbles – there below the cliff. Had made him close his eyes as she stooped to pick something up and then pressed into his hand one particular stone. Quite small, pale golden-yellow, marbled white. Then she had whispered into his ear, her voice barely audible – soft, against the rolling of the waves.
‘Forever.’
He felt the stone again now, its cool roundness, tucked away as it always was, in the pocket of his waistcoat. Ran it between his finger and thumb. Stones. Stones of an incredible age. Stones that seemed to echo the sense of permanence of his new family. Stone on stone, through the generations, he thought. The Halls had their own vault, made from local sandstone, in the parish church – their church. Stones which somehow echoed his own need for a sense of permanence. His need for Magdalene. Like the stones, she was immovable. Utterly dependable in a world in which too often he had seen friendships vanish into atoms before him in the flash and thunder of gunfire. Magdalene, like the stones, was eternity.
And so it was that, together, as husband and wife, they had travelled to London. Wellington had asked for De Lancey particularly as his Quartermaster General – de facto Chief of Staff. It was not quite the post that he had wanted – a colonel on the Staff. But it was an honour, and he was happy to go. To be in at this final reckoning with Boney. And though it was only an acting post while they waited the arrival of Sir George Murray from military operations in Canada, here at last seemed to be the path to promotion for which he had looked so long.
At the end of May he had arrived in Brussels. It was only a week now since Magdalene had joined him – for what had proven to be the most wonderful seven days of his life.
He was only required to attend the Duke – ‘the Peer’, as De Lancey and his brother officers liked, with respect, to call him – for one hour a day, and from their grand lodgings in the house of the Count de Lannoy, on the Impasse du Parc by the Parc Royale, they had taken daily promenades about the town.
De Lancey had delighted in showing his young bride the wonders of the continent – almost as much as he enjoyed showing her off to the many beaux and beauties of British society who had crossed the Channel in expectation of the coming battle. But the couple had avoided all the dances and formal dinners, preferring to spend their time together, alone.
Even this evening they had spurned an invitation to a ball being held by no less than the Richmonds. The Peer, he believed, proposed to attend. Such appearances were vital for morale, and he was well aware that Wellington relished the attention of the ladies. But for his own part De Lancey had contrived the clever excuse of a small private dinner with his old friend Miguel d’Alava, from which he knew he would be able to steal away early to rejoin his wife. Now, having dismissed his valet, Jervis, for the evening – the servants too would have their dance – he was beginning to regret his generosity. He fumbled with his coat.
‘Damn these medals.’ He had never been good with intricate things. ‘My darling. Do help me, please. These confounded decorations. How does one put them on?’
She took his Knight’s Cross – along with the other shining gold and silver circles and crosses – the material proof of his bravery, and with her tiny hands began to pin them on to his coat. As she did so she gazed up at him. Those eyes.
‘Tell me again, William, about Talavera. And Bussaco. About how our boys came up over the ridge and chased the Frenchies down the hill. And of Badajoz. Oh, how I love that tale. All those poor, brave boys of yours in their hopeless attacks on the ramparts. And then the glorious victory. And the Peer in tears. And all the tragedy. Do tell me, William. Oh, what it must be to be a soldier!’
‘It is not quite the grand thing that you imagine, Magdalene. Mostly it is spent in marching. And waiting. And when the battle does come it is the most terrible thing you have ever seen. But it is glorious. Perhaps the most glorious thing a man can know … apart from love.’
‘Oh, William. Do you suppose that I might see a battle? Might come with you? Some wives do. Mrs Fortescue told me that the wife of Quartermaster Ross of the 14th has been with her husband on many of his campaigns, these full ten years, and that she fully intends to be with him in the coming battle.’
‘Magdalene. Dear, darling Magdalene. You are not the wife of a quartermaster. I am the Quartermaster General. A colonel.’
‘But I should so love to see you go into action, William.’
‘I have told you before, my darling. I do not “go into action”. My action is all about taking and giving commands. I shall be with the Peer throughout the battle. By his side. Issuing his orders. That will be my “action”.’
‘But I do so want to see your brave boys finish Bonaparte at last. It will be the last battle. Everyone says so.’
‘I daresay that in that one thing at least “everyone” for once is right, my darling. One last battle.’
She hugged him, smiling. ‘Is he really as awful a monster as they say, William? Have you seen him? Papa says that at Brienne he was really a very quiet little schoolboy. Very kind-natured. Clever. Good at snowball fights, he says.’
‘Your father, darling Magdalene, with respect, did not know the Bonaparte that we play with. The man is a tyrant. We presumed that we had rid the world of him. And now he has returned. He was not satisfied with an honourable peace. He still desires to have the world. To possess our world. Your world. He would reduce free-born Britons to slaves and put the world in chains to his own despotism. He proclaims his cause as freedom, but it is no freedom that I know: the freedom for which we fight. If you had seen, Magdalene, the things that I have seen. Terrible things. In Spain. Things done in his name. You would not talk of schoolboys and snowballs. He is a tyrant, Magdalene. A curse. An evil. And now we must silence him. Forever.’
‘I … shall not ask again, William.’ She let him go.
‘And