Tarleton's Wife

by Blair Bancroft

  * * * * *

  Darkness came and all was quiet. The steps of the watchmen were more cautious, lacking the jaunty bounce of earlier in the day. Clubs rested against walls, ready for instant use. The moon rose to glint off the barrels of shotguns and an occasional old musket. Men shied like skittish colts at the crack of a branch in the wind. The clatter of a well-shined pitchfork keeling over onto the stable floor sent half a dozen stout hearts plunging to the depths of dusty boots.

  The household waited. Ramsey Tarleton had returned shortly before supper with little news beyond what they already knew. He and his wife, Sophy, Julia and Daniel were gathered in the drawing room. Oliver had not been seen since his hurried conversation with Sophy that morning.

  “It’s ten o’clock,” Ramsey Tarleton announced as the ormolu clock in the drawing room finished its chime. “I fancy Nicholas was mistaken. Those devils are all home safe in their beds, laughing at our discomfort.”

  “No doubt you are right, my dear,” his wife murmured, reverting to her accustomed meekness. “Nicholas and Oliver will be along shortly, I’m sure.”

  “Hush!” Julia commanded sharply.

  From high above them came the shriek of female voices, answered by shouts from the men below. Unintelligible queries were tossed on the wind. Answers floated down from above. At their dormer window on the third floor the maids had caught the first sight of…something. Shouts of discovery from the men, the hum of excited voices. Running feet. A pounding on the great front door which abruptly ceased as Peters threw it open.

  “Fire, ma’am,” Louis Tyler gasped, as he burst into the drawing room. “At least the sky’s aglow to the west. The devils have set something alight. Can’t say where but I lay odds ’tis no burning of a Guy.”

  “Surely not Ellington Park?” said Sophy. “They would not dare!”

  Jeffries, clutching a club, burst through the door, skidding to a stop in front of Julia. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, Mr. Tyler, ’tis the dower house, I’m that sure of it. Fire’s brighter now, easier to see. ’Tis too far for one of our cottages and too close to be the Park. There’s been talk in the taverns, ma’am. I’m sorry to say there’s some as can’t tell a Spaniard from a Frenchie.”

  “But the mob can have no quarrel with them,” Julia protested. “The Spaniards are completely blameless. Harmless. You must be mistaken.”

  The young footman stood his ground. “’Tis easier to rouse men against strangers than against their own kind,” he said simply.

  “Dear Lord!” Sophy murmured. “I wonder if Don Raimondo even knows about the troubles.”

  “Nicholas would have sent word to them, I’m sure,” Julia said, frowning as she moved toward the door. With one accord everyone followed her out into the chill November night.

  Far across the rolling fields and belts of trees and hedges, the sky glowed red. Above it, an ominous blackness as smoke blotted out the stars. The mists turned red. And the skeleton turned to ash. Nicholas! Julia’s stomach writhed. “Mr. Tyler, Daniel, remain here to guard the house. Jeffries, tell the grooms to saddle three horses. They ride with me.”

  “And me, ma’am?” Jeffries inquired eagerly.

  “If you can ride.”

  “You’ll go nowhere without me,” Daniel declared, his Irish temper rising.

  “Your place is with Meg.”

  “Well I know I’d have to tie you up to keep you from going but the major’d never forgive me if I didn’t go with you. So I’m joining your little army, my girl, whether you like it or not.”

  The daughter of the regiment did not waste time in argument. “Quickly then, let’s be off.”

  “You’ll not ride like that,” said Pamela Tarleton, eyeing the new gown Julia was wearing.

  “There’s no time to change. My cloak, Peters,” Julia ordered, experiencing that odd rush of excitement which propels a soldier into battle.

  “A horse for me as well,” Ramsey Tarleton called to Jeffries who was running toward the stables.

  Within minutes Julia, at the head of her army of four, set out for the dower house, the skirt of her cream satin gown billowing in the wind, her thoughts fixed on Nicholas and Jack. And the fragile beauty of Violante Modestia Vila Santiago.

  The few short miles to the Earl of Ellington’s dower house were an easy ride. As Julia’s troop of irregulars came out of the trees, the modest park surrounding the house lay before them. They drew their horses to an abrupt halt. Surely hell could be no worse. Even at a hundred yards they could feel the heat. The stables were completely engulfed. Flames of red, orange, gold and blue jutted from the hayloft and rose through the roof. Horses screamed and reared as men struggled to bring them out of the inferno. The house itself was only partially alight on the side nearest the stables. Shouts, shots and the clash of steel rose above the hideous rush of the fire, even above the screams of the horses.

  The screams of the horses, the crack of bullets. The British army’s finest mounts dying on a beach in northern Spain.

  Julia blinked, returning to the battle at hand. The militia had preceded them to the fire. Dozens of shadows struggled against the fiery backdrop as the mob fought soldiers who had been too long frustrated in their attempt to capture the local troublemakers.

  Julia’s heart leaped as she saw a uniformed officer wheel his horse and dash toward a trouble spot. She heard him shout, though his orders were lost in the cacophony which surrounded them. Nicholas?

  Daniel’s hand was hard on her bridle. “You’ll not go into battle, missus,” he said in the same tone of voice he had used when taking the baby from her so long ago in Spain. “But I’m thinkin’ that’s not the major. ’Tis Captain Dunstan givin’ orders. I’ll lay odds the major’s in the house.”

  Julia moaned. Major Tarleton to the rescue. Of course. And Jack? Had he been overrun by the mob? Shot by the militia? For he must be here somewhere. The dower house was less than a mile from his cottage. Had he tried to stop the rebels? Was he one of the crumpled bodies beginning to dot the grass around them?

  Another area of action was forming. A bucket brigade, its men strung too far apart to be effective. The militia, still locked in combat, could not help. The household servants were few. The grooms, realizing they had done all they could, abandoned the stables and heeded the call of the young man attempting to get the few noncombatants into a line stretching down to the stream. Julia quickly ordered Jeffries and the two grooms from The Willows to join the effort. Ramsey Tarleton, astonished to recognize the leader of the bucket brigade as his younger son, rode after them. Julia could not recall the location of the stream near the dower house but she feared it was some distance. The line was too long too thinly manned. With each passing moment the flames spread, smoke billowed higher.

  A new sound rose behind them as two large farm wagons rattled up the drive at a spanking pace. They were still moving as, with a roar, men spilled over the sides, clubs in hand and joined the fray. Terence O’Rourke and his mercenaries.

  In surprisingly short order the pitched battle subsided into scattered wrestling matches, the slow-motion pantomimes of men who know they have lost. The struggles ceased. Around them there was only the fire and the long staggering line of the bucket brigade. The militia herded the remains of the mob into a tight cluster in the center of the park. With Avery Dunstan in charge, there would be no chance for the prisoners to escape into the woods.

  A few sharp words from Terence O’Rourke and his men turned as one to fill the gaps in the bucket brigade. Julia and Daniel drew a long breath. It was not yet fifteen minutes since their arrival. Just because they had not seen Nicholas or Jack, Violante, her father, or her aunt, did not mean that they were not somewhere nearby, obscured by smoke and shadows.

  And pigs could fly.

  Julia moved forward, maneuvering her horse around the subdued and sullen captives and found Oliver urging on the now fast-moving buckets of water. The men fighting the fire were finally making some headway on the less fiercel
y burning portion of the house near the front entrance. Heat washed over Julia in waves. Her horse balked, refusing to go closer to the inferno. Julia waved to Oliver, shouted his name. “Nicholas,” she cried above the noise of the fire. “Where is Nicholas? And Jack?”

  Rivulets of sweat ran down Oliver’s face, which was nearly coal black except for nasty streaks of red where burning bits of debris had caught him. “Inside,” he shouted back. “Both of them. The family’s still in there. Nick and Harding went after them.” Oliver jumped forward to grab a bucket from a liveried footman whose knees had suddenly buckled beneath him. He passed the bucket on, then added, “That’s why we have to keep the front door open if we can. There’s no hope of saving the house but if fortune is with us, we’ll give them a way out.”

  Oh, dear God. They’d been in there how long? Since before she arrived. Fifteen minutes. Twenty.

  Too long, too long, too long.

  Avery Dunstan posted guards around his prisoners, then set the remainder of his men to forming a second line of buckets with the aid of the outlying farmers and cottagers who had begun to arrive, buckets, shovels and rakes in hand.

  The forward end of the bucket brigade edged its way inside, attempting to clear a path to the stairs, some twenty feet beyond the entrance. All eyes, even those of the sullen cluster of prisoners, were on the front doorway. The other exits from the house were now completely blocked by flame. Anxiously, Julia searched the windows of the upper floors. The ground floor—from whose bedrooms the butler, housekeeper and footmen had easily escaped—was set halfway into the earth. The first floor of rooms rose well above the ground, the family bedrooms rising another fourteen feet above that. It would be a long jump but surely better than the alternative.

  Suddenly, from far above, movement. A blur of white. A high-pitched scream rose above the crackle of the flames. From the topmost story of the dower house a woman hung partway out of a small dormer window, the wide flowing sleeve of her white nightgown a beacon against the black smoke above. Violante? Julia cried out and all eyes shifted toward the small aperture just beneath the roof.

  A second face, white and staring, appeared behind the first. A third blurry image seemed to hover in the shadows. Oh, dear God, the maids were quartered on the floor above the family bedrooms, as they were at The Willows. Far beyond hope of jumping to anything but their death, even if they could avoid the flames jutting from the windows of the lower floors.

  Burning. Witches. The hair bristled on Julia’s arms. Her scalp prickled. Like an eerie echo escaped from some dark recess of her mind, the screams of the terrified young women filled her with an ancient horror. Not so very long ago, they had actually burned witches. Julia had never before realized the full horror of it. Women burned for mixing herbal potions, healing the sick, delivering babies, being wise in an age of ignorance. Women of all ages, women alone and unprotected, roasted over a pile of faggots in the town square. In another time Sophy Upton and Julia herself, might have been among them.

  Shouts rose from inside the front entrance. Julia—heart pounding, hope and fear clashing within her—shifted her eyes from the terrified women above. Amid rising cheers, a tall shape burst through the front entrance, dragging two slighter shadows behind him, one from either hand. As their headlong plunge slowed and came to a halt, the shadows became people. People with smoke-blackened but recognizable faces.

  Julia had never seen anything so wonderful in her life. She did not recall dismounting but suddenly, heedless of soot and sweat and ash, she threw herself into her husband’s arms. Her voice wouldn’t come. She simply clung and would not let him go.

  “Where’s Jack?” Nicholas’ question was hoarse but clear.

  Julia swallowed hard. “Didn’t he come out with you?”

  “No,” Daniel and Avery Dunstan said as one voice. “Only Nick and the ladies.”

  “He was to get Don Raimondo,” said the major. “Julia, take care of Violante and Doña Elvira. I shall be with you shortly.”

  “No!” Julia cried before she could stop herself. She clamped her teeth together. Her body shook. There was nothing for it. He would go. There was no stopping him. She knew better than to try.

  The Earl of Ellington himself appeared out of the darkness, adding what Julia could not bring herself to say. “There are women on the top floor, Major. On the west side. You’ll need help.”

  At that moment Jack came charging through the front door, supporting the gasping figure of Don Raimondo.

  They would go back, of course they would. The earl’s bastard was as bound by noblesse oblige as the officer and gentleman.

  As helpful hands upended buckets of water over Nicholas and Jack, the screams of the three women far above settled into a steady wail more horrible than the inferno around them. No noticed one member of the brigade who emptied his bucket over his own head before—long legs churning to catch up—following Nicholas and Jack into the burning building.

  Except for the crackling of the fire and the wailing from the upper floor, an unnatural silence enveloped those who waited. The line of buckets swung in their never-ending cycle, the fleetest young men catching the empty containers at the front of the line and ferrying them back to stream. Julia kept telling herself that Jack, knowing the house well, would find his way through the maze of hallways. But what about Nicholas?

  Violante, flanked by her father and aunt, stood with her eyes glued to the doorway, tears running down her soot-smeared cheeks. A few feet away Ramsey Tarleton stood, stiff and alone, unable to share his fear. The Earl of Ellington, not so aloof, patted Julia’s hand, softly murmuring words of reassurance. Julia felt his pain. He was as doubtful of seeing his elder son alive again as Julia was of seeing Nicholas.

  The wailing ceased. The ghostly waving hand disappeared from the window. The men had made it! Or had the women succumbed to the dense smoke which so frequently killed where flames did not?

  They continued to wait, picturing dark hallways, rippled by flames, obscured by smoke. Three flights of stairs. Overwhelming heat. Smoke that killed.

  The skeleton turned to ash.

  Prisoners forgotten, Avery Dunstan stood silently beside his father, waiting for his adored older brother. With Oliver Tarleton inside the house at the head of the line of buckets, Terence O’Rourke had taken his place as fire boss. His strong commanding voice urged the men to even greater effort, though he too, seldom took his eyes from the front of the house.

  Nothing. No movement beyond the steady swing of the buckets, the running shadows of boys returning the empties for another load.

  It was a long way down from the top floor, Julia told herself. But surely soon? One of them would make it back, so they would know… Dear God, at least one of them…

  Nicholas turned to ash…

  Julia prayed. Beside her Daniel murmured an accompaniment in Latin.

  A dark, oddly bulky shape stumbled out of the door, tumbling into eager waiting hands who swiftly hauled their prize down the steps and away from the house. The oddly shaped shadow resolved itself into two people. Jack was recognizable only from a glimpse of chestnut hair under a coating of soot and ash. The second, equally filthy form was that of one of the maids, who had exited the burning house over Jack’s shoulder and was now being supported by a variety of helping hands.

  Julia’s anxious eyes met Jack’s bloodshot gaze. “Behind me,” he gasped. “He was just behind me, Jule, I swear!”

  Except for the long snakelike lines of the bucket brigade the doorway was empty. Jack’s stride back toward the steps was halted by four strong hands, his brother’s and his father’s. And by Julia’s loud protest. “You will not!” she screamed at him. “You’ve done enough.”

  Sudden cries of alarm from inside the house. Oliver and the forward portion of the bucket brigade erupted through the entrance. A loud crack, a rumble of bricks and mortar. A cloud of dust obscured the entrance.

  “The ceiling,” Oliver gasped as he staggered up to them. “Came dow
n. We got out just in time. Oh, God, Julia, I’m sorry.” He turned to his father and with a gesture never allowed in childhood, buried his ravaged face against his father’s chest. Stiffly, awkwardly, Ramsey Tarleton closed his arms around his younger son.

  Out of the billowing dust and smoke a monstrous creature rose, its amorphous outline more grotesque than any of Julia’s Nightmares.

  Out of the mouth of hell…

  Men ran forward to take the two female forms Tom Pickering dumped into their arms before he turned and rushed back into the house.

  Tom Pickering. Of course, Tom Pickering, Julia thought. This was just another nightmare. Nicholas was not trapped and dying. None of this was real.

  Once again Pickering came through the swirling cloud of dust and ash, this time supporting a figure none failed to recognize. A figure bent but not broken, still able to place one foot before the other.

  “Beam fell on him,” said Pickering to Julia as he delivered his prize in person. “Told me to take the women and go, so I did. But I wasn’t about to leave him there. Beam was burned through, not hard to lift.” Pickering brought his hand up in a ragged salute. “Glad to have been of help, ma’am,” he said, grinning through his hideous mask of blood and ash.

  Ash. White ash. The remains of the ceiling. Nicholas was covered with it.

  Slowly, Pickering lowered his burned hand and gazed at it, lifting his other swelling mass of flesh up beside it. “Don’t guess I’ll be playing the fife for a while, ma’am,” he said.

  Somehow Julia clasped them all to her. Nicholas, Jack and Tom Pickering. It was difficult to find a dry eye in the crowd hovering around them.

  With a quirk of a smile for an evening’s work doubly well done, Terence O’Rourke ordered the bucket brigade to stand down.

  * * * * *

  Sunday passed in a blur of lotions, potions and bandages. And heartfelt prayers of thanks that matters had not been worse. When Nicholas came to his wife’s bed on Sunday night, he was wise enough to know he had come home at long last. There were words he hadn’t spoken. Necessary words. Words she might more readily believe.