Love Under Fire

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1813-3

Beautifully painted on ivory, the round young face with its blue eyes and fair hair, seemed almost that of an angel.

For a long time Elvina stared at it.

Then she kissed it gently and lifting the chain hung it round her neck. She was so small, or else the locket had been intended for a much larger person, that it hung low between her breasts and was hidden from sight.

She slipped the ring onto her little finger and put back the floorboard so that anyone entering the room would not notice that it had been moved.

Often at night she wore the things that had been her mother’s, but she had believed until this evening that her father had forgotten their existence and certainly she had not spoken to him of the locket for many years.

Now she was afraid. Juanita had a way of getting what she wanted, either by brutality or else by almost hypnotising things out of those who were afraid of her.

With her back sore from her beating, with her arms hurting her and the tears still wet in her eyes, Elvina felt a kind of peace come over her from the very moment that her mother’s possessions touched her skin.

She went to the window. It was only small and the street seemed a long way below. Yet the stars were nearer, coming out into the darkening sky as night began to fall.

It was then that a sudden idea came to her and jumping up she took a shawl from where it was hanging on a nail behind the door and, pulling it over her head, she went downstairs.

The house was in darkness for there was no point in wasting the precious and expensive candles on a man who was too drunk to see them and a girl who should have gone to bed supperless. Elvina felt her way along the familiar passages until she reached the door that led to the kitchen.

Old José might be sitting there and might ask her where she was going, but she had the idea that he would be out in the streets, drinking with his compatriots or staring at the guests proceeding to the ball at the Palace.

For fear she might be heard, however, she went on tiptoe until she saw that the kitchen too was in darkness and then, growing bolder, she pulled open the back door and let herself out into the street.

Here there was confusion and excitement.

The narrow streets were filled with people of all descriptions, gaping Redcoats who must just have arrived from England, Portuguese carrying guitars to twang beneath the windows where dark-eyed ladies, half-hidden in the shadows, would be waiting for them.

There were crowds of small beggar boys in rags and with bare feet holding out thin, bony little hands to anyone they encountered and begging monotonously for bread or alms.

There were peasants who had come in from the countryside because they had heard of the battle and who stared about them curiously afraid, as they had been for over ten years, of what would happen to them next.

But above the smell of the crowds, the dust and the slop-pails that were continually being emptied into the gutters, there was the scent of aloe and cypress, of orange groves and of rosemary and thyme growing in the gardens of the houses or being carried on the wind from the wild land beyond the confines of the town.

Elvina hurried along in the shadows. She was so small that no one noticed her and indeed she was used to moving unobtrusively about the town.

She soon found her way to the seafront and to the great white Palace surrounded by its gardens. Through the ornamental gates the carriages were passing in a long line.

Outside there were crowds of beggars and peasants pressing forward eagerly to catch a glimpse of the guests. It was a rare chance to see gentlemen wearing their decorations and orders beside women half-naked in their finery, their dark eyes flashing with excitement, their lips as red as the roses that many of them had arranged in their hair.

Elvina, however, avoided the gates and moved away towards the back of the Palace. This was old familiar ground for she often came here to be alone.

There was a spot where the top of the wall had crumbled and she could climb over into the Palace gardens.

Often she would sneak in and sit here alone and undisturbed when Juanita thought that she was shopping or when she knew that to return to the house would be to receive yet another beating for something which she had done or left undone.

The great rambling Palace gardens, neglected because all the young gardeners who tended them had gone to the War, were the one place where Elvina could feel at peace and know that she would not be disturbed.

Tonight she was not too sure that she could enter unperceived. But the sentries were not expecting strangers and were far too engaged with watching what was going on themselves to suspect that anyone might enter the grounds except by the main entrance.

With the help of an almond tree which she had used so often before, Elvina hoisted herself on top of the wall at the place where the sharp spikes, intended to repulse thieves, had long since fallen down, and let herself down on to the other side.

Here there was soft grass beneath her feet, the fragrance of roses and flowering shrubs that brushed against her swollen and bruised shoulders and seemed to heal her by the very delicacy and gentleness of their touch.

She moved slowly through the gardens, keeping in the shrubbery and behind the yew hedges until she came within sight of The Palace.

Then she stopped. Every window was a blaze of light. She could see the glittering chandeliers filled with candles and guests moving under them to the strains of an orchestra.

The music was sweet and melodious and, fascinated, Elvina drew a little nearer. Never had she imagined that people could look so beautiful in the candlelight.

There was jewellery glistening round the necks and on the heads of the women and the men seemed equally resplendent in their coloured coats, high white cravats and diamond-studded orders.

The music seemed almost hypnotic, as did the figures moving in time to it. Then, suddenly Elvina became aware that two people were walking from The Palace into the gardens, picking their way between the rose beds almost to where she was standing.

Hastily she ducked behind a shrub and crept along close to the ground until she was sheltered by a little arbour covered with climbing roses where there was a seat arranged with satin cushions.

“Shall we sit down?” she heard a man’s voice say.

“That would be lovely,” a woman replied. “It’s so hot inside. I am sure your Lordship must find it stifling after the cold of England.”

“You will recall that it was not so very cold when we left,” the man answered. “Although I admit the climate is much warmer here.”

“Don’t play with me, we have so little time,” the woman said quickly. “Must you return tomorrow?”

The question was almost whispered.

“I am afraid so,” the man replied. “As you know I only came to bring dispatches for the Duke of Wellington and certain letters for members of the Government.”

The woman sighed.

“We were unable to talk when the sea was so rough, can you not stay just a little longer?”

“I wish I could, but there is work for me to do in England.”

“We well know that the chief work that your Lordship is engaged on is to try and make the Prince Regent a little more popular with the people and more amenable to his Ministers!”

The man threw back his head and laughed.

“Your Ladyship must have been listening to the most flattering and ill-informed gossip.”

“On the contrary, my sources of information are impeccable,” the woman said. “Please, I beg you, stay a little longer.”

Elvina knew, without being able to see the couple who were speaking, that the woman laid her hand on the man’s arm.

Very very cautiously she raised her head.

They were sitting with their backs to her and she saw the man take the woman’s hand and raise her fingers to his lips.

“If I could stay, I would,” he answered.

The woman gave a sound that was almost one of exasperation and took her hand away.

“So, like many others, I have been refused by the all-conquering but elusive Lord Wye.”

He laughed again.

“You know me well enough to be sure that is not true. I would like to stay. I would like, above all things, to join Wellington’s army. But the Prime Minister’s instructions were explicit. I was to return immediately.”

“We had hoped to tempt you to defy the Prime Minister.”

“I know, your husband said the same thing. It was indeed gracious of you both. But my yacht has been replenished with provisions and water and unless the wind fails me, we sail at dawn.”

“So, we shall not meet again?”

“We shall meet in England.”

“And how long have we to wait for that? Oh, my dear man, have you any idea how many bruised and unhappy hearts you leave behind you everywhere you go?”

“Again you are flattering me,” Lord Wye said.

“I wish I was,” she said, a little sob in her voice. “But I have to remain in this horrible, dirty, flea-ridden country while you return to civilisation.”

“You must not be too hard on our oldest ally,” Lord Wye said gently. “The Portuguese have suffered greatly from the last six years of War. Did you see those children at the dock today? They were little skeletons. I wish I could feed them.”

“I am not interested in Portuguese children!” the woman exclaimed petulantly, “but in you!”

“I am deeply honoured by your interest in me.”

“If I could only believe that,” she sighed. “But we must go back. We might be missed and besides there are a great many Portuguese dignitaries you have not yet spoken to. You must not leave behind a bad impression.”

“No indeed I am trying to leave a good one,” he asserted.

She gave another sob and now her face was raised to his. For a moment he looked down at her.

To Elvina they were both in silhouette against the light streaming from The Palace.

Then Lord Wye bent and kissed his companion lightly. Just for a moment his lips touched hers and then, as she would have clung to him, he rose to his feet.

“We must go back,” he said.

Elvina could almost feel the despair that, like an arrow, seemed to pass through the woman at his side.

Then a sudden pride made her lift her chin high.

“I hope I may give you one more dance before you go,” she said.

“I shall insist on it,” Lord Wye replied.

They walked back to The Palace the way they had come and Elvina gazed after them until they passed out of sight.

Then she rose to her feet and quite suddenly she knew what she must do.

She slipped back over the wall the way she had come, slithered down the almond tree and ran as quickly as her legs could carry her back home.

A drunken soldier snatched at her as she flashed by, but she eluded him. Some small boys called after her, but she hardly heard them.

As she reached the house, she intended to awaken old José, but he was not back and the door was still ajar as she had left it. She went into the kitchen and, after kindling a light from a taper, found in the cupboard what she was looking for.

It was a bottle of walnut juice that Juanita had made her prepare a few weeks earlier for staining the boards where the sun had faded them.

She hurried upstairs, seeking in Juanita’s room for another bottle. It was full of dark liquid that her stepmother kept her hair raven black with.

Elvina took both bottles to her own attic bedchamber.

Here she pulled her shawl from her head and in the cracked mirror that stood on her chest of drawers she stared at herself for a moment.

Her fair hair, the same colour as her mother’s, waved softly until it reached to her waist.

Taking a pair of scissors, she began to cut it off!