Scarlet Shadows

by Elizabeth Darrell

  Inquiries of everyone she knew produced no other maidservant who would be willing to go up to the Crimea. The stories had gone around Constantinople; there was no one who did not possess a vivid imaginative picture of an icy purgatory.

  Resigning herself to failure, Victoria returned to the hotel on the day before the Sirocco was due to sail and said to Letty, who had complained of a headache and remained by her fireside, “There is nothing for it, I fear, but that we must fend for ourselves until we can find some clean, honest woman already at Balaclava. Have you a talent for making tea, Letty?” She smiled at the girl as she sat to warm her hands before the flames. “You look so much better for remaining indoors today. The color in your cheeks is most encouraging.”

  Letty did not smile in return. In fact, she seemed ill at ease.

  “Is something wrong?” Victoria asked with sudden foreboding. “It is not Hugo?”

  “No, my dear. Hugo is suffering from nothing more than having to say goodbye to you tomorrow…as I am.” She left her chair and went to sink down beside the other girl, taking her hands in warm emotion. There was the brightness of unshed tears in her eyes, yet something seemed to have put life back into them. “I cannot come with you to Balaclava.”

  “You have changed your mind and will return to your papa?”

  “Yes…for the very best of reasons. Victoria, I am to have Jack’s child. I thought it could not be so, but the symptoms were so insistent I called on the doctor this afternoon.”

  Victoria could do no more than gaze at her friend in astonishment, as all the implications of such news filled her mind.

  “We had such a short time together in Balaclava before that terrible day,” said Letty softly. “We always wanted a child. It is very poignant that one afternoon in the tent on a battlefield should have brought us our desire.”

  “But…how will you manage?” asked Victoria, still bewildered.

  “Papa is a doctor, as you know. I shall be in good hands. I have spent the afternoon coming to terms with this and see quite clearly the overall pattern. Jack was taken from me, but I still have part of him. As he lay dying he was reborn in our child. I shall have someone who loves and needs me. Is that not all any woman wants?”

  “Yes,” said Victoria bleakly.

  *

  Her baggage and boxes were collected by two of the ship’s crew the following morning and, soon after breakfast, Victoria went to say goodbye to Hugo. She got as far as the door then her spirits failed her. How could she say the only word that should never pass between them? How could she find the courage to walk away from all she had ever wanted in her life and go back to the man who had started by terrifying her and now filled her with a hatred that was even harder to bear?

  For a moment she leaned back against the door, reliving the kiss that had been such a riotous, anguished, ecstatic mistake, for it had proved her dreams of a passion that was as much a joy to a woman as a man. While it had been only a dream it had been containable, but that she had heard the overture, her senses craved the crashing chords and the soaring final crescendo. Driven by that need, she turned and knocked on the door of the room that had become so familiar.

  Hugo was dressed and shaved, and got to his feet when she appeared. “See how fit I am,” he greeted her, with the ghost of a smile. “Soon, I shall be taking a turn about the square outside.”

  She could not smile back. “No one would recognize you for the ruffian who arrived seven weeks ago. I am certain my reputation was quite lost when word flew around parlors and public-rooms.”

  “For your husband’s brother, society allows you to do all that humanity demands.”

  She searched his face with her eyes. “But you are not his brother, are you?”

  Seconds passed, then in a voice grown husky, he said, “I have never said thank you.”

  “And I have never asked if you forgive me for reading your letter to Charles.”

  “There are things that do not have to be said between us, Victoria. We both know that.”

  “Yes.”

  He walked with great care in her direction, but halted several feet away from her — too far for her to reach out and touch him, as she ached to do.

  “Will you mind too much when I am forced to give you no more than a cool nod when I return to Balaclava?”

  She looked at him appalled. “Hugo, they cannot order you back to duty!”

  “No…but I shall go.”

  “You are too ill. You can scarcely walk. You are…”

  “I am lucky to be alive. The minute I can sit on a horse without falling off I intend to return to the regiment. I have to see out this campaign.”

  She looked down, unable to face the swell of bandages beneath his coat, and the scar that cut so deeply into his cheek. All at once, the crashing chords were too near, and she had an overpowering urge to hear the full sound. Trying to steady herself with quick indrawn breaths she said, “Have you any notion what it will do to me to know you are in danger once more — that it could all happen again?”

  Tension was suddenly between them with dangerous force, and his voice showed that he knew it.

  “Have you any notion what it does to me to see you go off to that place today?”

  It was impossible to remain strong. With her throat thick with tears for their parting she brought up her head and challenged him. “No, I have not. Everything you have ever said to me has been something unsaid. You know that… I do not have to tell you…some things do not have to be said between us.” She felt the tears well at the back of her eyes, and the pain catch at her breast. “I do not know…you do have to tell me. It is time some things were said between us. Hugo,” she begged desperately, “I want to hear you say what it will do to you when I leave here. For seven weeks we have been loving each other in silence. This might be the only moment in all our lives that you can speak of what really lies beneath that armor of honor. You died once without leaving me any token of what is within your heart. I could not live if you died a second time with the words still unspoken.”

  He turned away, as if by doing so he would be immune from her challenge. When he answered, it was with difficulty. “I…there have been moments of such blazing…understanding between us, it seemed to me that words would be pale, in comparison. Dear God… Victoria, these seven weeks have been a mixture of heaven and the fires of hell, you know that.”

  “No… I do not know! I have heard so much from you of honor, duty, and loyalty, but nothing about love — a love that can be so strong yet remain hidden even through seven weeks as we have just spent. Tell me about that kind of love, Hugo. Show me!” she cried. “Put it into words that I shall never forget.”

  He had gone white, and his eyes were brilliant in the scarred face. “What is it you want of me, Victoria? Is it a man who can see only you and his passion? Do you want a man who would take you into his bed at every possible opportunity, and have the hotel servants reporting of Madame naked beneath her brother-in-law’s sheets when they took in breakfast? Do you want someone who will sit toying with his mistress on his knee while the salons, drinking-parlors and mess-halls resound with her name and coarse laughter? Is it your wish that I should take you under my protection, cut us both off from families and friends, live in countries that harbor rogues and outcasts from society? Do you want no more from me than I have given countless women in the past? If that is so I will take you here and now. I will put into words you will never forget and I will show you with a vigor that will set you moaning just what I have been wanting these seven weeks…but I will leave you crying on my bed for all that was between us that has been lost in that one act of passion.” He stood fighting for command of his voice, but it remained unsteady. “That is not the way I love you, Victoria. You are my soul, my very life. Words are nothing when they can be used by the whole world; passion is easily spent. I believed… I believed…”

  She could stand no more. She put up a hand to cover his mouth, but he snatched it away and covered i
t with kisses. Then, he reached out with his other hand and followed one of her tears as it rolled down her cheek. “It breaks me to let you go, but only remember this. Every time our eyes meet, I love you. Each time I salute and pass by, I love you. When you feel you can go on no longer, I love you. That is my token for you.”

  Knowing she would never leave if she did not go at once, Victoria drew her hand away and turned blindly for the door. Without turning to look at him, she asked, “How…how shall I know when you are returning to Balaclava?”

  The answer was a long time coming. “It will be the same as it always is. One day you will look up, and I shall be there.”

  She opened the door quickly and went out, knowing the pain she felt was his also, but she had to ride it out for ten minutes before she felt sufficiently able to face anyone.

  Letty was waiting with Captain Porchester in the public-room, and their farewell was less of a strain. All the same, when the carriage pulled away from the hotel leaving Letty waving until they were out of sight, Victoria felt quite desolate. Behind her was warmth, friendship, and love; ahead lay a frozen world.

  The sea-captain was astute enough not to attempt to cheer his guest and merely made the normal polite remarks on the way to the ship, then left her to settle in her cabin until they sailed.

  “The officers and I hope you will honor us with your company at dinner, ma’am,” he said at the door. “They have been looking forward to renewing your acquaintance, and, to make you feel at home, there will be two military officers joining us. As you know, we are taking a batch of new recruits up to Balaclava and two officers traveling with them, Surgeon-Major Prescott and Lieutenant Marshall of the artillery.” His pale eyes twinkled. “I have taken the liberty of informing them that you are an old campaigner who can give them some advice on conditions before the enemy.” He chuckled. “The younger one is no more than a boy who will, no doubt, turn pale and tremble at the knees when he hears one of his own guns firing. When he hears from your own lips what you have witnessed, it might put some courage into him.”

  Reluctant to mix with company, Victoria nevertheless found her depression vanishing as the evening wore on. She liked the doctor immediately. Gray-haired and dignified, with a ready wit that flashed when least expected, he was intensely interested in all she had to say, and if his expression betrayed the belief that no lady should be asked to return to such hardship, he did not say so. The young lieutenant was fresh-faced and fair, with beautiful manners and an obvious pedigree that set the seafaring men against him unfairly. Though his extreme courtesy and air of grandness did seem out of place in the tiny cabin, he did not deserve the ragging he received, and Victoria retired in the firm belief that the young man was doomed to be carried back to his cabin as drunk as a lord before the night was half over.

  She expressed her fear to Major Prescott, who escorted her back to her cabin. “I beg you to take pity on Mr. Marshall, sir. The ship’s officers have a gleam in their eyes that bodes no good for him.”

  The major laughed. “Rest assured, ma’am. Mr. Marshall can take care of himself. If anything suffers, it will only be his surplus of dignity.”

  She turned at her door. “I have seen men reduced to creatures, Major Prescott. Where he is going he will need every scrap of dignity he can muster. Good night, sir.”

  “Good night, ma’am,” said the major thoughtfully.

  That was the start of a bond of understanding between them. Every day they could be found taking a stroll around the deck, muffled in rugs and thick gloves, deep in conversation. The doctor questioned her ceaselessly on the landscape and climate of the area before Sebastopol, where the army was still holding a siege enforced more by the weather than their strength. In turn, Victoria asked him searching questions about the prevention of such catastrophes as she had seen at Scutari. On one occasion she put to him the advisability of fighting cholera by remaining on one’s feet and walking back and forth.

  He raised his eyebrows a little. “Anything that prevents the patient from simply giving himself up to the grave from the first symptom is beneficial, ma’am. What you suggest is rather drastic, however. Only a man with great courage or fanatical determination could carry it off.” He cast a sideways glance at her profile. “That alone would not cure him if the disease took complete hold. Only the Almighty could save him, then.”

  She smiled faintly. “I think the Almighty is on his side, sir.”

  He stopped and faced her frankly. “Mrs. Stanford, you are quite remarkable. I would say I know of no other woman with whom I could have such a conversation. Even my own very dear wife prefers to speak to me of bonnets and morning calls.”

  Victoria laughed quite gaily. “How very fortunate for you, sir. Imagine how dull it would be to spend each evening by your fireside speaking of nothing but boils and amputations.”

  Reluctantly he smiled back. “Ma’am, I see now why you have survived so much and can return to it. I shall write of your courage to my wife, with your permission.”

  “If you wish, Major. I hope that you will become one of our frequent visitors when we reach Balaclava. I fear all my former friends are gone.”

  “I shall be honored and delighted to become one of your new friends.” He gave her a wry look. “I very much fear Captain Porchester feels I monopolize too much of your time already.”

  Victoria took the news calmly. “I am sorry for that. He has been so very kind to us and our friends. To make amends, shall we take a cup of tea with him? I have been invited at any time I wish. We can collect Mr. Marshall on our way.”

  The major laughed. “Much better not, ma’am. The young man is already contemplating blowing out his brains whenever you smile at another.”

  “Then I must smile at him more often,” she said quietly, lost in memories of Harry Edmunds and a valley washed in sunlight.

  *

  To Victoria the sight of Balaclava was dismaying. Although the sun was making mockery of all the tales of a bitter winter, the warm yellow light only served to clarify the shambles the little town had become. The beach was littered for as far as the eye could see with debris, planks, masts and tangled rigging — all that remained of the ships that were pounded to pieces and sunk during the hurricane of November. Victoria was very moved by evidence of such a disaster, remembering how the harbor had looked when she first entered it with Letty beside her on this same ship four months before.

  The little row of houses where they had made their home had gone — pulled down to make way for a railway line running up from the harbor toward Kadikoi. Captain Porchester deplored the fact that it had not been laid before winter set in, to prevent the terrible inability, caused by the winter wind, to reach the vast number of camps. Victoria went further and condemned the authorities for having no foresight in any aspect of the war and was borne out in her judgment by the ghastly presence in the harbor of floating human limbs thrown into the sea from hospital wagons after battlefield amputations, with no thought that the tide would not carry them out to sea. In such a landlocked port, flotsam remained where it was tipped, to rot and putrefy the air for months.

  Each jetty was crowded with wagons and carts of every description, taking off the great sacks, boxes, baskets and crates of provisions, the wooden walls and roofs of stout huts, the medical packages with a cross on the side, bales of warm clothing, barrels of grain for man and beast, and the inevitable and desperately needed round shot and shell for the constant bombardment of Sebastopol.

  To counterbalance the inland flow of supplies there was a thin, constant stream of sick and wounded coming down from the trenches, some of which were now only a mile or so from the Russian defenses, where men stood thigh-deep in mud for twenty-four-hour watches or had their hands and feet eaten by frostbite as they manned the guns.

  Hugo had spoken of the scarcity of pack animals, but there was evidence of an influx to replace those poor starved creatures. Everywhere were oxen and white bullocks, patient-faced mules — even dromedaries
— and great sturdy dray horses. But what could be seen of the troop horses of the Dragoons and Lancers, in Balaclava on various errands, suggested that regiments were still suffering from lack of healthy mounts.

  Despite the sunshine, a freezing wind blew through the gap in the hills, and those who came aboard when they hove to spoke of snow several inches deep up in the camps. As it was still a labor of patience to ride past Kadikoi over a road that melted to sticky slime when the sun shone Victoria was obliged to remain on the Sirocco for the night. She had no horse and must wait until Charles came down from the cavalry camp to make arrangements for her residence. Major Prescott came to bid her farewell and promised to get a message to Colonel Stanford as he went up the road.

  “As soon as you are settled, ma’am, send me word. We shall then see about accepting your help in my hospital — wherever it might be.” He smiled. “I mean to put you straight to work, you see.”

  “Thank you, Major. I cannot tell you how glad I am that fortune decreed we should travel together. When I felt Constantinople I thought I had seen an end to my usefulness, but you have given me a new lease of life.” She laughed. “Dear me, this war has made me a creature who must be busy all the time. Whatever shall I do back in England, needed no longer?”

  He kissed her fingers in salute. “I cannot imagine a time when someone will not need you, ma’am. Au revoir. I trust you will find your husband fit and in good spirits.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, having forgotten Charles in the subject of her hospital work. “Au revoir, Major.”

  Lieutenant Marshall bade her a sadly ardent goodbye. She treated him with gentleness and cheered him with a promise to ride over to the artillery camp to see how he did just as soon as she could. She remained on deck after they had gone, watching the new arrivals disembarking and marching away across the mud. They were all pale and ill-assorted, their new uniforms mocking the ragged winter campaigners who stared at them, lost in the wonder of having once looked that way themselves.