Chapter 1; Ends
Napoleon was dead and the Devil's Favourite could not rise like Lazarus again. He had dominated my life, as he had countless millions. The moment I got that news, a dark cloud lifted from my soul.
The news echoed around the globe, reaching even this tranquil village in rural England. How could it not? Boney had been the looming figure of darkness for, well, for most of my life. Repeatedly wars had erupted and battles had been fought across Europe because of him. Men from all over the British Isles had left to fight, some to die, many to be crippled and all lost some of their soul to that Devil.
Countless fucking Frenchmen had tried to kill me too many fucking times because of him. I couldn't recall a time before Napoleon, but I could relive all too well the years of fighting. We had fought him and thought him well beaten in 1814 only to have to beat him anew a year later at that last bloody battle. Waterloo.
Now the Devil lies buried on a desolate island in the heart of the Atlantic Ocean. I wouldn't again form the line and pour out four rounds a minute to scythe down the French columns every fucking time they tried and they tried every fucking time. Not that it had ever been easy. Never fucking easy. I knew the high cost of defeating the Devil: many friends lost and dozens, hundreds of my own soldiers killed following my orders.
Now, the wretched Devil lay dead, which meant and end to the haunting worry of another comeback, another fucking war. Maybe I could finally quit drinking to calm the demons. I had slowed in recent months but not yet quite stopped.
I had inherited the family house and land last winter without ever expecting to, and I just moved in this week. Not a great house with thousands of acres with dozens of tenants. But a large, country residence with enough farming tenants that during the war, the boom years for farming, it had been rebuilt with all the latest fittings, though some rooms were unfinished.
This windfall hadn't quite sobered me up, but had given me back a sense of purpose I had lacked. The village looked to the big house for some kind of lead on civic matters. And God forbid any see me as some kind of fucking hero but I wanted others to think well of me with my unexpected wealth. Having my soldiers learn writing had really helped improve their spirits out on the Campaign so far away from their families. Men who could write and read letters from home, became better soldiers because of it
I hoped to start out with a good name in this village where fate had brought me. I knew the value of learning and I felt sure I could earn that by reinstating a stipend to the school that I read in the files in the house had lapsed when my late Aunt died. So, I finished my walk at the green gate set in a drystone wall encircling a cottage that was said to be the school. As I approached, I had few actual ideas but was sure the school mistress would have those.
"You can give me the beady eye, but it's been two weeks!" I heard a woman’s jocund voice as she leant over a pleasantly, promisingly plump hen pecking from her hand as some lesser birds circled. "Any longer and your reign as queen of the coop may have an end." She added, getting a resounding flurry of furious clucks back. "Oh, it could!" The woman laughed in response, in an imagined conversation with the chicken.
"I doubt that!" I couldn't help but laugh. As she spun around with her red hair swirling, the grains slipped from her fingers, triggering a frenzied dash of hens since all was now in play.
"Oh! I did not realise I had company." Instinctively she straightened down her plain bits and pieces linen dress, patched with thrifty repairs. She was younger, much younger than expected for the teacher. This must be the daughter I had heard about, Lizzy I believed.
"I'm sorry if I caught you off guard. In Spain, we had an aged hen we weren't able to part with. She became our mascot and got us through some fierce fights. Whoever had her in his haversack always made it through." I made to open the gate. "She turned into a good luck charm for us. I guess like your old bird there." I nodded down at the plump old feathery matriarch. "We never could, never did..." I wrung my hands to mimic dispatching a hen.
"Was she a good listener, too?" She smiled as she tilted her face, a most delectable sight.
"Indeed she was!" There was a guileless ease to this young woman with whom I was chatting about an old hen, for fucks sake.
"So glad to hear, I thought you would say...well they all say I should, and I know I should." She chopped a hand down to mimic that end to a hen.
"Oh, we were louts back then, but not brutish enough to eat our lucky charm." I said wistfully, finding myself strangely at ease talking about a hen with this young woman, who seemed far more a lady than suited a rustic school.
"Brutes? I hear the one true brute is dead, you, you were all just young men serving in a foreign land." Her head tilted to one side. We had walked closer and I could now see her lively, captivating eyes. She wasn't just much younger than a school mistress should be but, up close, also more attractive.
"That brute, aye." I found myself staring away, not seeing what was in front of me now. But for a moment back there, then. "Young men with five thousand fucking Frenchmen marching at us all chanting ‘Vive L'Empereur’." I shook my head and gave an involuntary shiver. “By that they meant, ‘we are here to fucking kill you’.”
"But you fucking stopped them." She replied and her use of my such foul language shook me out of my dark reverie.
"Yes! Oh, so sorry for my cursing, I..." I began, but she laughed to stop me.
"I had, have older brothers. I often heard worse!" She smiled, eyes twinkling. "It's quite fucking refreshing to curse with a stranger again!" Her hand reached across to touch my wrist. "I spend so much time with the children or their parents and I have to pretend to be prim and proper! But I think you are not perhaps here to talk about fucking chickens or fucking Napoleon?" The light contact with her snapped me out from the dark, forbidding clouds Napoleon summoned up.
"No, fuck no. So sorry, just an old soldier swearing like a fucking trooper." I could feel myself blushing, I hadn't ever swore in anything but the lowest female company, and rarely here at home.
"I am certain, quite sure, an old solider never needs to apologise for being old." Lily held my gaze, direct, with no hesitation. "It is, after all, better than being fucking killed."
"It is, well, it should be." I agreed, finding her infectious grin at cursing so freely warmed my heart. She must run rings round the rustic parents, I reckoned, prim and proper or not.
"You do not so much look an old soldier, perhaps a young, former soldier?" She examined me, tilting her head. "And who might you be...?"
"Haha, not dead, yet!" I laughed back. "That is, I suppose, true. But forgive me again, I am looking for Mrs. Brewster, the teacher, the school mistress, the headmistress, who runs the school." I turned to glance at the low cottage as if expecting that person to walk out.
"Ah, she must be a busy woman with three jobs...I am..." She bit her lip as if unsure. "...I am Lily Brewster."
"Oh, her daughter?" I knew the widow teacher had set the school up from scratch eight years ago and had a daughter, Lily it seemed not Lizzy, easy mistake.
"No. The teacher Lily Brewster." She replied, much amused at my presumption. I noticed quite how carefully she had phrased things as I had asked for "˜Mrs. Brewster' but she had neither answered to nor given that name back to me.
"Fuck no!" I could not contain my surprise, as Lily was just too fucking young. Too young now, let alone eight years ago when I had read in my aunt’s papers they had taken her on to start the village school.
"Fuck yes, although I seem to be a disappointment?" Her face narrowed, and Lily took a step back, damn it, she must have taken my shock for dismay. Boy, did she have that wrong. She was stirring body as well as my soul, my stiffening cock was certainly not from disappointment.
"Oh no, no, no, not at all Mrs. Brewster, no, no, no, not disappointing at all. No, no, no please, I was, umm, well..." I flustered and strangely could not complete my denial as Lily smiled and laughed, stealing all rational words out of my mouth.
"Sorry! I didn't mean to embarrass you so!" Lily stepped forward as I began to sweat a little with my blushing clumsiness. "I have over the years had several reactions to..." She gestured at herself with a nodding bow and then at the school. "Me, this! My being here, my doing this. But never one quite as, umm." She raised an eyebrow, to mock me as I deserved. "Quite as fucking pithy."
"I meant no disappointment, no, not at all. It's just...well, its just, well you are so much younger and..." I stumbled to a stop, thinking prettier but not saying it as I appraised her figure in the plain patched gown, all too easily imagining her out of it. "Teachers should be old, grey, and not at all...umm, no, not at all." I bit my tongue as I was about to be even more forward as she looked but best not say, fucking lovely.
"Well!" Lily straightened herself and again smoothed her dress down. "I am Lily Brewster, teacher here, just the plain teacher but not old and I think." She pulled a lock of her auburn hair forward and examined it carefully. "Not yet grey. As for umm...you must be the judge of umm, Mister...?" She proffered a hand and with a shock, I realised I had still not introduced myself to this alluring young woman.
"Oh, yes." I wiped my palm on my britches before offering it up. "Nathan Rice."
"Colonel Rice?! Fuck no!" Lily declared, echoing my words and tone from earlier. "Why, colonels must be getting younger these days! They used to be old, grey, and not at all...umm, no, not at all, umm." She laughed, teasing me with my own words, hands on hips as she now appraised me up and down.
"Now you are mocking me!" I protested, laughing along.
"Am I being very cheeky." Lily frowned, looking and sounding worried. "I meant to give no offence, Colonel Rice."
"Nathan! Please! And neither being too cheeky nor giving offence or..." I mimicked cocking the hammer on an upright duelling pistol. "I would need to challenge you to a duel!"
"Well, I must be careful then as I am sure you are the much better shot!" Lily pinched her lips. "But I cannot call you Nathan. We have only just met and, well, our disparate positions are such, I..." she stepped back, looking down and circling a foot in the loose gravel.
"Please do. Too few do these days, and as for our disparate positions... I know who our Lord God ranks highest, and it is the teacher of men." I took a breath as after our cheeky banter this was sincerely meant. "It is I who should defer to you, Lily Brewster, a teacher but hardly just plain, so please call me Nathan." She was still staring down at her circling foot. I couldn't help but reach out and lift her chin, feeling my heart skip a beat as she caught my gaze, a flickering, fleeting smile dancing on her lips.
Fuck it, looking like that I was captivated by her presence. Not that Lily was so obviously pretty but, oh but. There was a liveliness, a brightness to the eye, a boldness to her beyond what was obvious, and it made my sad soul soar high into the bright blue sky.
"Then." Lily nodded and held my gaze. "Then Nathan, please call me Lily." Then, with a slight catch in her voice added softly. "As too few do these days."
"Well, that is agreed." I drew a breath and decided the long dance around our introduction was over. "Lily, I am here as I would like to see if, how, I can use my, well, my good fortune to benefit the school." This time when I offered my grip she took and shook it. "I am sure you have some opinions on that account."
"Oh, I certainly do, Colonel..." Lily began, but then paused and smiled as she squeezed my hand one final time before letting go. "Oh I do Nathan. I have many, many ideas." She clapped her hands at that then gestured at an old, sun bleached bench. "Please take a seat, may I get you a drink on this lovely day?"
"Yes, I would love a coffee, thank you." It was a habit I had acquired in Spain, the beans travelled well, were crushed easily and the sharp, bitter taste was always welcome.
"Oh." Lily sucked her cheeks in and again tilted her head to look at me blushing anew. "I am sorry I do not have any. It's so...well, sadly I have none." She glanced away as if upset. Dammit, what had I done?
"I see, sorry, right, well, anything then." I made to sit down, but hesitated. "I fear I upset you by asking?" Lily turned to head into the cottage, stopped and spun round to face me.
"No, it was not you Nathan. I, I, oh!" Lily bit her lip and glanced away, which all rather belied her words, before she again looked back at me. "Do you know how expensive coffee is? I, I, well..." Lily straightened herself and looking down, ran her hands down the patches on her gown made, it seemed, of quarters from different bolts of cloth. A dress that displayed her skill with a needle not for style or fashion but out of the cruel, pinching necessity, patched and repaired for want of money to replace. She glanced back and lifted her head.
"Forgive me, I, well, I sign the bill so I do, but without regard to the cost." Now I felt myself blushing for my disregard at my own good fortune. "I know what pittance my uncle paid to the school, but had assumed that was not, could not be all of your stipend." I reached out to take her hands, mortified that I could have been so careless of her feelings.
"Oh Nathan, no never mind." Lily sighed, looked at my hands then took them and gave them each a squeeze before jigging them three times, then dropping mine and raising her palms up as if some old childhood pat-a-cake game. I went along with the frivolity, lightly slapping my hands to hers and we both laughed to mark the end of that awkwardness.
"I read some of my aunts papers, it’s a free school, a morning school, I believe?" I asked as we stood there, fingers just touching, such a promising connection, or so I hoped.
"It is, but first let me fetch you an elderflower cordial, this year's vintage is especially fine!" Lily sprang off to the door at the far end of the little school. Surely, I wondered, they could not both live in it as well.
I sat down and tried to gather my pell-mell racing thoughts as I rested in the warm sun, wondering about Lily and quite how she came to be here. Then Lily walked out the door, carrying two odd glasses of cloudy cordial, squinting in the bright sun. And at that fucking moment, I felt my heart go off on some mad dance.
Had I found what I had been looking for, here, today? The sudden epiphany felt good, so good that I found myself unable to speak. So good I felt a tear form in one eye which I could tell myself, fool myself, was from squinting at the sun. That it wasn't my looking at this lithe, lively, lovely young woman in her scrag end, raggedy dress I so readily imagined off her that made me so. When it was.
"Home prepared." Lily gave me a glass. "We picked the flowers where you must have passed." I took it as she sat onto the bench beside me, so close I felt her hip brush my thigh as she settled. A clever, wise and smart comment fluttered before me like the butterflies on the elderflowers, but I could not quite catch the flitting thought to make words. “Do not tell, but close by there is are a wonderful patch of wild raspberries, they will be ready soon!” She pretended to whisper from behind her hand, as if revealing a state secret.
"Oh I will not tell, and thank you!" managed the instinctive, basic courtesy, took a sip and savoured the fresh, refreshing flavour in my mouth. "Wow, this is good!"
"I was taught the recipe and we had some sugar given. They give what they can." Lily replied, looking round and slightly up at me.
"They, what, for the schooling?" I responded, hoping that talk of the school itself might still my racing, raunchy thoughts.
"Yes, some, most, do, when they can. It's not required!I...well, I am here for..." Lily gestured back at the school, round at the wider world, the village. "Well, it's not for the money." She gave an ironic chuckle as she looked sideways at me.
"Oh, no. So what is here, at the school, do you live here as well?" I gestured back at the far end Lily had gone into for the drink.
"Yes, it is a cozy room, small but a home." Lily nodded, her hair drifted forward and she brushed it back, a simple, instinctive gesture that, somehow, again stole my rational thought. "Most is the school room, from the window to that end." She added, pointing to her left then nodding to her right, towards me.
"Oh, right, I see." I looked down the length of the building. "It must be cozy indeed. Umm, my aunt gave a little more before she..."
"Yes, your aunt was very kind, well, more than kind. It was her especial, particular resolve that started the school. It was her notice in the ladies gazette that caught my eye when I...well, was in want, in need of that which brought me here." Lily looked away, her eyes drifting back those last few years when her want of need brought her here. Whatever caused that need, its memory still cast its shadow on her her all these years later.
"It must have been very difficult, starting everything, I believe, from scratch here." I said, finding my left arm settling on the back of the bench and touching her nearest shoulder.
"Oh." Her hand reached up and round, easing my hand onto her shoulder and holding it there. With a gentle squeeze, she turned and smiled at me. "Challenging yes. But oh Nathan, surely not anywhere near as hard as standing before five thousand fucking Frenchmen marching to kill you?" Such was true on the face of it, and yet...softly I replied,
"But I did not stand alone." I squeezed her hand back. At that Lily shot me a sharp side glance, bit her lip, raised her head and turned her face to stare ahead, presenting me with her fine, sun kissed profile.
"Yes, alone. You must wonder why?” Her words were a whisper. Well, I could hunt out the past, her past that brought her to be here as a woman alone, rich in spirit but poor in means. For what circumstances would, or could, lead a well raised, so almost certainly well-bred young woman to sit in a bits and pieces dress outside this little rustic school? None good and many awful. And with a ten-year-old child? Then it hit me, the way she had introduced herself to me as we chatted over a fucking chicken. I had made a first enquiry that she had answered in a very specific way.
That would explain it. Her want of need then that brought and kept her here scratching by on a penury stipend and charity from the locals. Yes, that would explain. Or I could continue to hunt out that past. The past Lily was gazing back into in a melancholic reverie, in a way I was all too familiar with. Staring ahead, chewing her lip I felt Lily tremble. My next questions could hunt and force out that past she didn't wish to be here in the present.
Lily was afraid I would ask her questions, the natural questions that she didn't wish to answer. Five thousand fucking Frenchmen be damned. I had paid my price to live my life on terms that I willed. And that didn't include, not now and I hoped never, wanting to hurt Lily or cause her distress.
Fuck to hunting down the past. Napoleon was dead. A different future was ahead. The old world I had always known was gone, today was different. Today, life felt much brighter and Lily had made it so. Now, if my past was behind me, why not Lily's? If Lily was so afraid of me asking the questions that it made her tremble, then I wouldn't fucking ask them.
"Where's Lizzy?"
"Where's Izzy! Lily corrected me with a smile of relief. 'You mean Izzy, my Isobel.' From looking straight ahead she turned to look at me, took a relaxing sigh to let out the tension as she realised I was taking us down another path. "Izzy? The daughter you were disappointed to find out I wasn't?" She raised an arched eyebrow.
"I wasn't disappointed!" I protested.
"I know!" Lily giggled, digging an elbow into my ribs. "I was teasing. With the children, the parents, I haven't been able to tease often since...oh." She went from a cheery smile to turning away from me, slumping a little and this time let out a sad sigh. "Before." That word sounded loaded with portent. Before. Before this, before that which what brought her here, the before that haunted her still.
"I think, perhaps, we both have too much ‘before’ for us, Lily." I smiled, I hoped reassuringly. “Sometimes it’s best left there, not here.”
"I don't normally think of it, or try not to, not day to day. Too much to do!" Lily straightened back up and let that sweet smile return.
"I tried to drink it away." I confessed. It wasn't something I had ever admitted to another and surprised myself by blurting it out now. But there was something about this woman that kept me honest. "Didn't work, so almost given up on that remedy. Almost." I felt like I wanted to reassure Lily that she was not alone in having, well, a fucked up life before that haunted me still.
"Oh Nat, I am sure you must have endured so much burtality?" Lily's hand rested on mine, a thrilling touch. “Into the valley?” She asked and I knew what she meant, that one; the one of the shadow of death where I had feared evil.
"Too many times Lily, too many fucking times.” I sighed. “Well, we are clearly neither of us innocents. Talking of which...Izzy?" I took the chance to turn our conversation away again from what lay behind us to what lay before.
"Oh, yes, Lizzy-now-Izzy, well, Friday afternoon she goes to read and write for Mrs. Coles, letters to and from her sons, or just read for her if there are none." Lily said, sounding proud.
"That is a kindness."
"Oh, Mrs. Coles always sends her back with a nice cake, a very nice cake!" Lily regained her bright smile, which I couldn't help but feel myself reflect.
"That sort of thing helps you?" I asked, interested in quite how the school kept going on so little actual cash.
"Yes." Lily picked at her dress. "Anything really." She glanced around at me.
"When your aunt died and her support stopped I, well, I feared we could not endure. People didn't have cash to spare in the hard times after the war." Lily looked at me. "But I, we wanted to stay here. It, the school makes such a difference, and it is our home now, so I resolved to endure."
"I know what difference learning can make. What would help?"
"Oh, where to start? Perhaps I should show you. It won't take long!" Lily sprang to her feet, and I followed, stooping through a low door into the schoolroom. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dark and cool after the sunlight. A simple, rustic room with the cold stone walls whitewashed, worn wood floor, a few rows of crude benches and trestles. Slates stacked at the door, a chalkboard at the head of the classroom, a few scruffy old books and some old newspapers piled up. Functional, a bare minimum.
"I know it's not much." Lily stood in her domain, a slight catch in her voice betrayed though that to her, it was much, very much; hers. "Three hours each morning, Monday to Friday. We are always full, twenty." She pushed a ledger on the front desk towards me "Start in autumn to next harvest, most do two years, some more.
"Lily, this is much, you run this on your own, on just the little my uncle gave you?" Lily nodded as she opened a thin ledger, eyes shining in the low light.
"Soon our hundredth pupil will start, after harvest break." Lily showed me the ledger, numbered with a name at 97. "It isn't much, but Izzy is now helping ever more. It's not about the money though, that's not why I came or stay here, I wanted, I needed to..." Her voiced trailed from proud to uncertain as she spoke. “To get away from, no, to find, well, something.” Lily said haltingly, unwilling to venture into the past again.
As I sensed a shadow of the past looming I flicked a page by way of diversion, back to see my Tom, the all round help as steward. My finger traced his name amongst the first few ever listed. "He was always a bright boy, keen to learn, to do well, to do better. And he has." Lily said, proudly.
"And almost a hundred others, because of..." I looked up from the ledger at Lily. "You, on your own, in here. That is very much indeed and that, they, are very good work. You should be, you really must be proud."
"Yes! I am, if that's not immodest." Lily bobbed up and down a little, enjoying the accolade, knowing it was well deserved.
"It is not, not at immodest all. It is a great purpose indeed, if that is what you needed to find here." I nodded at her, the ledger, the room.
"Yes. Yes, I think it was. I..." As Lily started I heard the church bell chime for the hour of three.
"Oh excuse me, Lily my uncle's solicitor is calling on me, especially come from town, now." I had to interrupt, blushing at my carelessness of the time.
"At three?" I nodded in reply. "Then you must hurry."
"I still wish to discuss your ideas for the school. Call by tomorrow, for lunch, perhaps?" I needed to rush without wanting to leave.
"At the House?" Lily sounded surprised.
"Yes, of course. Have you been there?"
"No, we met here, mostly. And Izzy, may she?"
"Yes, of course Izzy may come, yes. Sorry I must dash, Lily it has been quite, umm, quite..." I held her eyes as I struggled to find the right words, so again thrust out my hand. "It has been an honour to meet you Lily, an honour indeed."
"All mine Nathan, the honour is all mine. Noon then?" Lily gave a slight dip as our hands shook and I bowed to concur with the appointment. I took her grip a little longer than needed, savouring her gentle touch. Wanting to say something that might be intemperate, I kept my tongue. I bowed and rushed out to march the mile back at the light infantry double time.
On my walk to the school a little earlier, one person and one person alone, Napoleon, had consumed my thoughts. On the return it was Lily and her smile, eyes, head turn, lip bite, sigh, nervous glimpses...fuck it, everything, including that raggedy patched dress especially as it slipped off her shoulders in my imagination.
There was much I didn't know about her, yet at least, but one thing I knew. Lily had made me feel alive in a way I had not for a long time. That delightful feeling of wellbeing stayed with me through the dull bore of a meeting with the solicitor and wading through the legal pages. And through the pie and mash Mrs Bridges had prepared to also leave cold for Saturday and Sunday whilst she and Tom, her son, went to visit her own ailing mother.
And that night, for the first time in years, I didn't feel the need for a drink in order to forget. No, I didn't want to forget, but to relive every moment with that beguiling, beautiful woman. By the time I was to bed, my thoughts had stilled, my mind felt more at ease than, well, forever and I went to sleep with one thought settled in my mind.
I needed to marry her.
