The Captain and the Cavalry Trooper

by Catherine Curzon

  The troopers went through an enormous pair of double doors and here was the source of the music and the laughter, the party in full swing for the king. Obsequious household staff bore bottles so that an officer should never suffer the indignity of an empty glass, and there were trays of dainties that Jack had never seen before in his life. Where were the stew and dumplings that had been his fare ever since he had left home?

  A band of elderly Frenchmen were set up on gold chairs in a horseshoe, their instruments battered but cared-for. Just as Jack and Bryn found their way in, the musicians struck up a tune and a blushing local girl with a rose in her hair started to sing. Jack recognized the song but he couldn’t have named it for worlds. It made his heart swoon.

  And through a gap in the milling crowd of uniforms, Jack saw Captain Thorne.

  He had never seen anything like it in all his days, certainly not in the Shropshire countryside. Like all of the officers, his captain wore full mess dress, vivid red and jet black, gold buttons and braid and epaulettes like flames beneath the glittering chandelier. There was no cap on Thorne’s head and his hair was, of course, immaculate. He was like something Jack might see on the cinema screens when he made his rare forays out to the pictures.

  And this man, this perfect, handsome officer, was his.

  Thorne was deep in conversation with the general, smiling at some tortured witticism from the older chap like a good soldier should. His hands were knitted behind his straight back and when his gaze casually fell on Jack, Captain Robert Thorne smiled.

  And it was marvelous.

  “He’s an arrogant bugger, your captain, isn’t he?” Bryn laughed and turned to greet Wilfred, who had just arrived.

  But Jack barely heard him. He approached Thorne, drawn like metal filings to a magnet, and gave him a perfect salute.

  “Good evening, Captain Thorne, sir. Good evening, General Bowes-Fitzgerald, sir.”

  “Trooper Woodvine, good evening!” The two men saluted in turn and Thorne turned placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “This is the chap I was telling you about, sir, the young man who has proved more than a match for Apollo.”

  “Well, it’s about bloody time.” The general took a sip of wine from the glass he held, the liquid a deep, dark red. “Do you know, lad, I believe we might have this bloody war won if you boys put the same effort into it as his horse does into stamping on the grooms. What do you say, eh, young man? Couldn’t we? Eh?”

  Loyalty fizzed in Jack’s belly. He took a moment to reply, ensuring that he didn’t wag his finger at the general for insulting his horse.

  “Ha ha, sir. Of course!”

  “Of course, sir!” Bowes-Fitzgerald echoed. “Send a few thousand Apollos off to the trenches, stomp those Hun into the mud, what?”

  Jack saw a muscle twitch in Thorne’s jaw.

  “I’m not sure he’d be too handy with a machine gun, though, sir. On account of him not having any fingers.”

  “Get the triggers ready for those big hooves instead!” Still holding the glass, the general pantomimed a spirited performance of a man with a machine gun, as though such men weren’t dying in thousands mere minutes from there. “Well, Thorne, what a smart young lad he is. A credit to his master.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Thorne gave a courtly nod of acknowledgement. “Woodvine’s an asset to the regiment, one of our shining stars.”

  Jack, aware that his mouth was hanging open, pressed his lips together tightly and executed a sharp salute.

  “Thank you, sir!” His focus was hovering somewhere on the middle distance. He couldn’t look at Thorne. Not with all these people here.

  “A good couple of chaps.” Bowes-Fitzgerald gave a lazy salute that the captain met with one of those whipcrack salutes of his own. “Enjoy the bash, I shall go and say a few words to your fellows. Buck them along, eh?”

  With that he pottered away, leaving the two men alone in the crowd.

  Jack allowed himself a second to give Thorne an appreciative glance. He could have stared at him in that getup for hours—days—and never, ever been bored.

  “You look splendid,” Jack whispered. He wanted to add, Robert, but that really was a step too far. Thinking even his first comment was too much, he corrected himself. “That is, the party is splendid—isn’t it, sir?”

  “As it should be for the king,” was Thorne’s perfectly proper reply. “You all look tremendously smart. Well done, soldier.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Jack wanted to ask Thorne’s opinion on his hair. But as he caught sight of himself in a mirror on the other side of the wall, he noticed that a strand of his hair had come loose. He could feel his cheeks redden. “Sorry that my hair’s still untidy, sir. I did try.”

  With a look that suggested nothing more than a senior officer attempting to show a more human side to his groom, Thorne reached out and gently placed the strand back in position.

  “There you are, Woodvine.” He smiled and dropped his voice. “You look lovely.”

  There was a surge in the crowd, allowing Jack to lean against Thorne for a moment. As if it were mere accident, to avoid losing his balance as the revelers shifted, Jack pressed his palm against Thorne’s upper arm and as quickly withdrew.

  Just as Jack was congratulating himself on that surreptitious touch going unseen, he noticed Queenie. And Queenie had noticed him. But whether the vicious groom had realized what that palm on Thorne’s arm signified was another thing entirely.

  But what did one touch on the arm matter when Queenie had turned up rouged and enveloped in silk scarves?

  He was like a butterfly fluttering in his colorful fabrics, dazzling against the plain, dull khaki uniform. His gaze met Jack’s but the look told him nothing, then Queenie turned away and, with a bray of laughter, made his way through the crowd toward them.

  “Isn’t this fun!” He saluted Thorne. “I must say, dashing good of you not to take the misunderstanding last night any further, sir. I let myself down, but no harm was intended.”

  How did Queenie get away with it? With all his viciousness, his thoroughly unsoldier-like appearance, his cheeking to the officers. Was Captain Marsh really so important?

  “It’s not a question of it going no further.” Thorne sniffed. “I’ve made a report. It’s out of my hands now.”

  He glanced across to the general and Queenie followed his gaze, his pretty face slowly lightening. This time, Jack knew, Quentin Charles’ smile was genuine, and it was triumphant.

  “Righty-oh!” He bowed. “Do enjoy your party, gents. I shall go and say hello to our guest of honor.”

  And with that he pranced away, placing one hand on Bowes-Fitzgerald’s shoulder as soon as he was within touching distance.

  Jack stared. Of all the insubordination! A trooper, being so familiar with a general?

  “Sir, where’s Captain Marsh? Shouldn’t he stop Queenie? What sort of a carry-on is that?” Which, Jack knew, was rich coming from the trooper who had frolicked in a bath that very morning, but at least that hadn’t been in the ballroom of a chateau.

  “Trooper!” Despite the stern tone, however, there was a gleam of affection in Thorne’s eyes. It dimmed when he, too, looked to Queenie and the general, whose pale, liver-spotted hand was resting lightly on the young man’s slender elbow. “Sometimes, one simply has to accept the unacceptable.”

  He nodded toward the musicians, the young lady by now trilling a gentle song and flashing her knees at the soldiers who were admiring her. “Enjoy the entertainment, have a glass of something and for one evening, forget that we’re at war.”

  “I’m not accustomed to drinking, sir.” But as a silver salver went by, Jack helped himself to some wine and took a swallow. He spluttered and nearly managed to spray red wine onto Thorne’s face. “Gosh, sorry, Captain Thorne.”

  “You’ll get used to it by the third glass, I’m sure.” Thorne patted his arm. “You’d better go and see your pals, Trooper, people will talk.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jack salute
d, wine glass in one hand, and drifted over to Bryn and Wilfred.

  His friends were laughing, Wilfred slapping his hand on his thigh from the excess of his mirth.

  “Hahaha, oh, bloody hell, you nearly spat in Thorne’s face! There’d be another dunking in that for you, hahaha!”

  Jack took another mouthful of wine, this time with ease. His mind was elsewhere. “Probably.”

  Chapter Eleven

  As the evening wore on and the wine flowed, Queenie Charles was left in no doubt that he need fear no punishment, regardless of what Captain Thorne might wish. He knew how to turn a general to his favor, how to bat his eyelashes, to tinkle his laughter and touch just the right spots on a man who was no stranger to his charms. Queenie might not fall into bed for the likes of Edmund Marsh, but for a gentleman like General Bowes-Fitzgerald, the same Bowes-Fitzgerald whom he had once encountered at a rather intimate members-only club in Islington, there was no such hesitation.

  He hadn’t been General Bowes-Fitzgerald then, of course, but a nameless gent who’d claimed to be visiting the city on business from somewhere conveniently out of town. He had asked Queenie to call him daddy and so, on the first day that Queenie had laid eyes on the almighty general, he’d known that his life in the army might turn out to be rather easy. Not quite so easy as he might like, of course, for his daddy was a tricky man to get hold of, yet here was the key to a place on the officers’ household staff, to leave behind the stinking stables and the crowded attic and move into the castle at last.

  And when he was living in his castle, what other mysteries might be revealed? Might he learn if something more than professional admiration lay behind that touch to Thorne’s arm? Might he discover where Jack Woodvine had been last night if he hadn’t been in the attic, nor with Marsh, who obviously intended to make the poor little lamb his victim one day soon?

  Perhaps, he mused as he looked from Jack to Thorne, the two men studiously avoiding each other as they stuck to their own classes, they were both in that stable. The horse had been misbehaving, but with far less fire than the moments when Jack Woodvine wasn’t there.

  When Marsh finally arrived in the ballroom, Queenie turned his back on the general and kept it like that, every ounce of attention devoted to ignoring his so-called daddy, to showing General Bowes-Fitzgerald that he wasn’t an unimportant little nobody when compared to the grooms who were his comrades-in-arms. Besides, he knew that nothing sent his no-longer-unnamed gent wild for his touch like being ignored.

  The sky was ink-black by the time Queenie decided it was the right moment for him to show the gathered men and those village girls who had somehow secured an invite exactly what entertainment meant. He retied the scarves around his neck until they were a riot of bows and silk, drained his glass of wine and wandered through the crowd toward the band.

  Queenie exchanged a few words with the musicians and, satisfied that they would be capable of not embarrassing him, cleared his throat and began to sing.

  “Si,” he paused until heads began to turn in the direction of the young man with the young woman’s voice, “Mi chiamano Mimi, ma il mio nome e Lucia.”

  And as he sang, as he embodied Puccini’s tragic heroine, he lifted one scarf, toying with it, making a prop of it that swept his forehead, his face, swirled daintily in the air. He could have any man in this room now, Queenie knew, and the women too, but it was the general whose eyes were fixed on him most intently, whose tongue licked along his thin lips, who might receive Queenie’s favors tonight.

  “Lei m’intende?” As he sang, he slid his gaze over to Marsh, seeing nothing there to challenge the promise of his tall, slim general. His white-haired general who liked to be spat on, who liked to be screamed at, to be trodden on.

  Come on, Marshy, Queenie silently crowed. Show me that you’re worth singing to and I might grant you a kiss.

  Marsh, his watery eyes looking first one way then another, assuming he was unseen, blew Queenie a kiss. A kiss that carried a trail of tobacco smoke with it. An officer standing beside him had seen and Marsh laughed it off, a dismissive flap of his hand in Queenie’s direction. It was all a jest, a joke, he had a wife and a son for heaven’s sake. Ho-ho-ho, what a lark—cross-dressing is what the Army’s all about. No fairies or pansies in the Army, of course not! No, not at all!

  Queenie pantomimed catching the kiss in the palm of his hand. He opened his clenched fingers as though examining an exotic insect then, not missing a note, squeezed his fist tight to crush that imagined creature. When he opened his palm a second time, he mimed blowing the dust from his fingers before going back to his song.

  And Thorne was looking at him, no more than a glance before it was over, that untouchable captain turning away to talk to another officer. Still Queenie continued to look, moving his gaze to Jack to see if he betrayed anything worth knowing or if it was just the cod-eye of the foolish lad.

  Jack was trying to push back his ridiculous forelock which had defeated the pomade that he had unaccountably chosen to wear. His face had turned very pink, but the room was not so warm as all that and Jack was standing near an open window with Bryn and Wilfred. And as Jack continued to toy with his hair, the direction of the new boy’s gaze was all too obvious. It was almost subtle, catching its target and drifting away again, but to the practiced eye of an invert like Queenie it was all too obvious.

  The lanky rustic was mooning over Captain Thorne! Of all the ludicrous notions, how could he possibly have imagined these two were a couple—if Queenie couldn’t catch the captain, then what chance did an unworldly calf like Jacky have? It was utterly laughable. The thought of the two of them together, the vain, sophisticated peacock of a captain embracing a farmer’s freckled son, was too ridiculous for words.

  Queenie’s eye roamed again, this time fixing on Captain Thorne. The officer would sneer at that look from Jacky, and Queenie would enjoy it.

  The moment, when it came, was delicious, as Queenie anticipated the crushing of that absurd look. Thorne turned slightly, just enough to meet Jacky’s gaze, yet there was no sneer, no roll of those dark, blazing eyes, but instead quite the opposite. Queenie saw the exact moment that the gazes of the peacock and the rustic met, and as if it were scripted, each raised his glass to his lips at precisely the same moment. A kiss exchanged across a room, a moment shared with a hundred spectators and with none all at once. It was almost enough to make Queenie Charles miss a note.

  Almost, but not quite.

  He reached the end of his aria with a flourish, pushed along by the joy of the applause but more than anything by the secret that he, Jacky and Captain Thorne now shared.

  Chapter Twelve

  At midnight the party was officially ended by the sudden silencing of the band and the barking of an NCO.

  “Three cheers for his majesty, George V!”

  Glasses were raised, and with ruddy-faced bonhomie, the room cheered, “Hip-hip—hooray! Hip-hip—hooray! Hip-hip—hooray!”

  Having done his bit for the king, the NCO then bellowed orders at the grooms—it was time for the encroachers, the rabble from the lower orders, to head back to their quarters.

  Jack, unable to see Thorne as the party broke up, scuffed his way back to the stables with Wilfred and Bryn. Wilfred had drunk heroic quantities of booze and yet could still stand. As they crossed the yard, Jack broke off to check on Apollo.

  The horse was dozing, his stable peaceful. Jack, not wishing to disturb the stallion from his sleep, made little fuss, tucking his blanket around him as though he were a child.

  The moon in its cloudless sky cast a silver glow across the yard. Rather than go up to the attic and his narrow bed, Jack felt himself drawn back to the chateau. Not taking the front door—how could he?—Jack wandered into the garden and marveled again at the carved stone figures on the long switched-off fountain. Neptune, balancing on one foot upon the back of a fish, several nudes twined about him. The moonlight gave the stone figures a strange cast, as if they were almost alive.
Perhaps they were, and had been frozen for some long-forgotten transgression, or at the vengeance of a foe.

  As Jack stared up at the fountain, as still as a stone figure himself, he heard a footstep. He glanced round, his heart racing for a moment. On the warm evening air he detected that unmistakably masculine scent of the captain.

  “Did you enjoy yourself tonight, Trooper?” Thorne’s voice was formal, infused with just a touch of wine-flavored merriment.

  “I had a wonderful time, sir.”

  Jack watched as Thorne emerged from the shadows, the moonlight throwing silver over his chiseled features.

  “I…I just came back from checking on Apollo. I wanted to look at the fountain again.” Jack realized how guileless that made him sound and he bit his lip. “Did you—did you enjoy yourself, Captain?”

  “It was pleasant enough.” He moved to stand beside Jack and dropped his voice. “It was torture, because I had to stand with a damned general when I wanted to dance with you.”

  A thrill ran through Jack and he put out his hand, but brought it back again.

  “Are we alone?” he whispered.

  Thorne’s answer was to take Jack’s hand in his own and bring it to his lips, holding it there for a long moment.

  “You could dance with me now, perhaps?”

  But even as Jack said it, it seemed a daft suggestion. The moonlight glare was so strong that anyone who happened to look out from an upper window of the chateau would see them. Even as the thought occurred to him there came the sound of singing on the breeze. He knew the voice right away as that of Trooper Queenie, trilling another of his operatic arias.

  Thorne pressed a finger to his lips and gestured for Jack to move toward the chateau, away from the sound of Queenie’s song and the gentle, appreciative cooing of an upper-class bray.