AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I suppose I had better go to bed. I’m terribly tired, but I can’t seem to sleep these nights.”
“Would you like me to make you a draft?” Hester offered, rising to her feet as well. “Or a lavender pillow? Do you have one? They can help.”
“I expect so. I think there’s one in my handkerchief drawer or in the linen.” She went to the door without looking at Hester. “I can ask Martha. Good night, Miss Latterly.”
“Good night, Mrs. Sheldon.”
Perdita went out and Hester heard her walk across the hall and then silence. She went out herself a few moments afterwards, and upstairs to her room. She washed quickly in cold water and went to bed. She was too tired to lie awake.
In the morning she accomplished her usual duties for Gabriel, changing the linen and seeing that his bandages were fresh and the wound clean. The doctor had called the day before and there was no need to trouble him today.
She was in the stillroom sorting through the various herbs and oils kept in stock in the house when Perdita’s lady’s maid came in. Martha Jackson was a thin, dark woman who had probably been handsome enough in her youth, but now, in her middle forties, she was a little gaunt. The lines of hardship were etched deeply into her face but there was no bitterness in them, and no self-pity. Hester had liked her from the moment they met. She had gathered from the odd remark let slip that Martha had originally been Perdita’s governess but that circumstances had dictated that she remain in a secure position, and become her maid, rather than leave and seek another post as governess somewhere else, which could only be temporary again, as children’s schoolroom years always pass. Once she had been a senior, almost independent employee. Now she was a servant, albeit a necessary and trusted one.
“Good morning, Miss Latterly,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “How are you today? I hope you are settling in well. If there is anything I can do, please let me know.”
Hester smiled at her. “Good morning, Miss Jackson. Yes, I am very comfortable, thank you.”
Martha busied herself with making a paste for reviving the luster of tortoiseshell which had lost its shine and depth. She was carefully putting drops of olive oil into a teaspoon of jeweler’s rouge.
“Are you needing anything in particular, Miss Latterly?” she asked after a moment or two. “Perhaps there is something missing that you could use?” She started to apply the paste to the comb, rubbing the soft cloth around in small circular movements.
“More lavender,” Hester answered. “I think Mrs. Sheldon is not finding it easy to sleep at the moment.”
Martha was rubbing with the cloth automatically. She turned to face Hester.
“She’s so frightened,” she said quietly. “Is there anything you can say to comfort her? I’ve racked my brains, but I know so little about his condition; if I tell her something that isn’t true, she’ll never trust me again. She has no one else to turn to. Mr. Sheldon is no use—” She stopped abruptly. She had betrayed a family confidence, even if it was one Hester could have worked out for herself, and probably had. It was not what others knew that mattered, it was the breach of trust.
Hester saw the compassion in Martha’s face. It was more than duty or the pity anyone might have felt; it was the kind of love which cannot escape once obligation has been fulfilled, or walk away when conscience is satisfied. Martha had known and cared for Perdita since Perdita was a child. Perhaps she was the only one who had, closely, daily, seeing the weaknesses as well as the strengths, the temptations and disappointments, the failures; the only one who knew what effort or what price lay behind the outward joys.
“I don’t know,” Hester confessed. “But I am trying to think.”
“She loved him so much,” Martha went on. “You should have seen him before he went away. He was so full of life, so happy. He believed in everything … at least he seemed as if he did.” She pushed a strand of hair off her brow. “You can’t ever get back that innocence, can you.” It was a statement not a question, and it appeared as if she was thinking of other things as well, tragedies that had nothing to do with this.
Hester knew exactly what she meant. She had seen the raw soldiers arrive from the troopships, and then seen their faces again after one of the battles where
men were slaughtered by the hundreds, cut down uselessly, human beings sheared off like corn before the harvest. You could not ever get that hope, that unknowing, back.
“No,” she agreed. “She asked me last night if she should read about the Mutiny, about Cawnpore and Lucknow. I didn’t know what to say.”
Martha stared at her, her eyes dark, her cheeks hollow, as if she had borne all Perdita’s suffering; but there was still a kind of softness in her in spite of the angles and the sharp cheekbones.
“She mustn’t!” she said urgently. “She couldn’t bear it. You don’t understand, Miss Latterly, she’s never experienced anything … violent … in her life.” She lifted her hands helplessly, waving the cloth. “She’s never seen anyone … dead. In families like the Lofftens they don’t ever mention death. People don’t die, they ‘pass over,’ or sometimes they ‘take the great journey.’ But it is always peaceful, as if they have fallen asleep. She will have to learn this … very slowly.”
Hester reached for the jar of dried lavender flowers. “I don’t think there is time to be very slow,” she replied, realizing how little she knew of Perdita Sheldon or of the tenor of her marriage, the strength of her love for her husband. Hester could hardly ask Martha if Perdita was really only in love with the idea of love, of a handsome husband and a dream of happiness which simply moved, untrammeled by pain or reality, into an endless future. Asking Martha would be almost like making such an inquiry of her own mother.
And yet if she did not she might be losing the only chance anyone had to help Perdita—and Gabriel. He was maimed; he was disfigured. He had seen horror he would never forget and had lost too many of the flower of his friends not to be reminded—with every hot day, every military tune, every buzzing of flies—of what he had seen.
“Perhaps she should start with a history of India?” Hester suggested. “Begin forty or fifty years ago. Then the Mutiny would make more sense. By the time she reached it, she would understand at least a little of why it happened.” She smiled, remembering Schoolbook Latin. “Peccavi,” she said wryly. “That is what Clive said when he had conquered the province of Sind. He sent it in the dispatch home.”
Martha blinked.
“Peccavi,” Hester repeated. “It is Latin…. It means ‘I have sinned.’ ”
“Oh. I see.” Martha smiled back, some of the tension easing out of her face. “Of course. It is so long since I taught … and then it was mostly French, and a little Italian for music. I’m sorry.” She blushed, and began to buff the tortoiseshell gently. “Things have changed … but that has nothing to do with Miss Perdita now. Do you think Indian history would help? I suppose … she does have to know? You don’t think he—Lieutenant Sheldon—would be better if he could forget it, bit by bit? Would it be easier if she didn’t know?”
“If you were she, what would you want?” Hester asked, searching Martha’s face.
Suddenly Martha’s eyes filled with tears and she turned away, wiping her hand quickly across her cheek. “I should want to know!” she said fiercely. “No matter what the truth was … I should want to know!” Her voice was tight and brittle with the power of her emotions, and for a moment some pain within her was naked.
