oOoOoOo
Wednesday 27th March 1793
"Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam!"
The gentleman's head shot up as she called his name. She was certain he would not know who she was, as the extent of their acquaintance was a ten-minute conversation months ago, and yet the moment their eyes met, she saw recognition. Col. Fitzwilliam did not look as well as he had when they met – he had lost weight, and his face was slightly gaunt, the hollows under his cheekbones only emphasising the interesting arrangement of his features. A large yellow-green shadow was spread across his temple, and he had an angry purple bruise on the side of his jaw. She quickly drew her eyes over his body, and noted the bandaging around his right calf.
"I would exclaim similarly, miss, but you never bestowed me the honour of knowing your name," Col. Fitzwilliam said. There was a tiny twinkle in his eyes as he said this that indicated he might be amused, but the set of his mouth was hard, as though it did not know how to smile – she only knew differently because of their previous meeting.
"Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn, Hertfordshire, sir, though presently I reside here in London."
"You are a gentlewoman?" Elizabeth attempted to remain unoffended by his tone of surprise. In response, she raised a sardonic eyebrow. The Colonel had the grace to look sheepish.
"I suspected as much, from your outfit, but I have been introduced to most of the eligible young ladies in London, and I had not met you. I meant nothing by my comment."
"Ah, so the matchmaking mamas had already paraded their stock past you by the time we met," she laughed, "now I understand." Col. Fitzwilliam's twinkle had returned, slightly brighter than before, but a smile was still elusive.
"Come now, my good Colonel, let me take a look at you." Elizabeth made her way to the bed with all the forceful efficiency she had developed since she started volunteering at the hospital. "You must let me know if I am hurting you." She gently moved his leg so it was closer to her and began unwinding the bandage. "Tch, tch, this is far too loose," she tutted at him, "who on earth wrapped this?" The Colonel seem to understand the question was rhetorical, preoccupied as he was with wincing. "The edges are inflamed… you have been bled, I assume?"
"When I got in to Southampton."
"You may need it again, I will keep an eye on it – or rather, I will ask the other nurses to. You see, I am dreadfully inexperienced, and the ladies who have been doing this longer do not like it if I make decisions by myself."
"You appear to me to be quite the adequate nurse," Col. Fitzwilliam observed.
"I am a country miss at heart you see – I know how to treat a scraped knee or a broken bone, so I think of these injuries as just a little more serious."
"You have broken a bone?"
"Of course. One does not spend their nursery years climbing trees not to fall out at least once. This particular fall was spectacular indeed – there is a grand, tall oak at the top of a hill called Oakham Mount, on the edge of Longbourn's park. I reached right to the top, but unfortunately I disturbed a bird's nest just as I stood on a thin branch, so the birds flew up at me, and I lost my balance. I fell straight out of the oak and promptly went careening down the hill. At some point along the way, I broke my forearm, but luckily it was a clean break and was easily set. It was fortunate I did not roll any further, because the bottom of the Mount is a water meadow which was flooded at the time. [1] There we go." The gentleman had been listening so intently to her story that he had not noticed her clean and rewrap his wounded leg.
"I will leave you to rest now, I cannot imagine the journey form the port was comfortable for you."
"No, indeed it was not," he grimaced in remembrance. Elizabeth tidied up around the room, which was set up for one occupant only – she assumed it was because of Fitzwilliam's rank, or perhaps he had important relatives – and lay an extra blanket at the end of the bed.
"The nights are quite cold at the moment," Elizabeth explained as she emptied the dirty water from the cloth bowl out of the window, and placed it back in its position by the jug. She picked up the used cloths to take with her, and nodded her goodbye to her patient.
"Miss Bennet," he said solemnly, "thank you."
oOoOoOo
Thursday 28th March 1793
"Good morning Colonel," Elizabeth exclaimed cheerfully as she breezed into his private room.
"I would not call it that," he grumbled from where he was buried under several layers of blankets. "I could barely sleep all night, and these blasted sheets were pressing on my leg, but that officious nurse who came in after you would not let me take them off." Elizabeth would have been inclined to laugh at the childish pout on his lips if she were not so sympathetic of his discomfort.
"Let me tend to you first, and then we can see about making you more comfortable." Elizabeth unwrapped the wound and gently cleaned it with a cloth and a bowl of water, which she poured from the jug on the wooden stand. As she was a maiden, and a gentlewoman, Elizabeth never bathed the soldiers in their beds, or helped them to dress, but she saw more of the men than most women of her station saw. The first time she dressed a wounded leg she was both terrified and intrigued – she had not seen a male leg since the neighbouring boys she played as a child graduated from shorts to breeches.
The Colonel did not take his eyes from her as she dressed his leg, and tidied away after herself. His gaze was intense, but not hard, so Elizabeth took no notice of it. "Your leg is quite swollen today, sir, did you do something to aggravate it?"
"No Miss Bennet, I have done nothing at all, which is half the problem." Colonel Fitzwilliam's pout had returned.
"You cannot be up and about when your leg looks quite so terrible as it does," she replied firmly, "until somebody much more knowledgeable than either of us tells us you can begin walking again, you stay right there in that bed."
"Goodness, you sound almost as bad as the woman from last night, Nurse Mitchell."
"But I am not, which is why we are going to put our heads together and find a solution for your blanket problem," she informed him pertly. The Colonel had several suggestions which Elizabeth summarily discarded as useless, saying,
"You may be an accomplished military strategist or an educated scholar, I do not know, but you left all of your intelligence outside of this room, I believe."
In the end, she tightly rolled two blankets, which she draped over his leg either side of his injury. When she drew his covers over it, the rolled blankets took the weight and no pressure was placed on his wound.
"You are a Goddess among men, Miss Bennet," her patient declared.
oOoOoOo
Friday 29th March 1793
Elizabeth entered the Colonel's room carrying something which was hidden by the sheet draped over it. It was vaguely rounded in shape and approximately a foot in height and width.
"Today, sir, I come baring gifts," she announced.
"Good morning, Miss Bennet."
"That is an improvement to be sure – yesterday you were truly miserable. Did you sleep better?"
"Indeed I did, thanks to your ingenuity, Miss Bennet. My leg bothered me no more than it does during the day." Elizabeth placed the mysterious object in the corner and moved his blankets aside so she could check his leg. When she saw that it was much the same as the day before, she turned to face his and grinned a disarming smile.
"Would you like to see your presents?"
"I could think of nothing that would please me more, Miss Bennet." The corner of his mouth flicked up slightly in a ghost of a smile, though nothing truly emerged. Elizabeth reached under the sheet, withdrawing a book.
"I am quite sure that half the reason you are so melancholy is that you are stuck alone in this room, without any company or entertainment. To rectify this situation, I have brought you Songs of Innocence. It is one of only a few copies; it is written by a clever fellow, William Blake. It should keep you occupied for a little while at least, I think." The Colonel took it from her outstretched hand, and ran his hand lightly over the cover.
"Your other gift is a little more practical – I spent yesterday evening fashioning it." She removed the sheet, and revealed a wicker construction, a flat rectangle that had been bent into a U shape, and secured by several ribbons which ran from one short end of the rectangle to the other. The result was a woven arch of sorts.
"It is for your leg, to stop the blankets causing you discomfort," Elizabeth explained as she carried it toward the bed. "I slip the ribbons under your leg like so, and it goes just over your injury, so the blankets do not hurt you." [2] She settled the contraption above his right calf and pulled the blankets over it. "It should be close enough to keep you warm while taking all of the weight of your covers." The Colonel stared at the supported sheets for several long seconds, then caught Elizabeth's eye. For the first time since she met him in November, she saw a gentle smile settle on his lips. It was a small smile, a soft smile, but for Elizabeth, it was enough.
oOoOoOo
Monday 1nd April 1793
When Elizabeth entered Col. Fitzwilliam's room the next Monday, he was looking sullen.
"You did not come yesterday, Miss Bennet. You were not here this morning either."
"Yesterday was Sunday, Colonel, I had myself, and my eternal soul to tend to – I was not able to tend to soldiers as well."
"I was expecting you… I was waiting for you." The Colonel's words were quiet, and spoken in the direction of the window, past her shoulder, rather than directly to her.
"Perhaps, sir, I can write down the times I come here, so you a never left disappointed," she offered, wishing to dispel his melancholy. "Here, I shall write them down on this paper: I volunteer on Monday afternoon, and Wednesday, Friday and Saturday morning. On Tuesday, I wait with my Aunt for callers, but if we do not have calls to return on Thursday, I come in the morning." She wrote all this neatly on a blank piece of paper she found in the pile of the Colonel's notes, where the physician wrote his instructions. He thanked her, and placed the paper next to his bed within easy reach.
"Are the other ladies not looking after you adequately? It seems you were waiting for me especially."
"They are competent nurses, I am sure. But none of them… they are not you, Miss Bennet." Touched by his praise, she squeezed his arm in gratitude, then proceeded to tend to his leg. When it was redressed and covered, she turned her attention back to him. All the while she was caring for him, his eyes gaze had remained on her face.
"Your bruises are healing better, I think, Colonel." The shadows on his temple had almost faded, although his jaw still looked painful. She reached out a tentative hand and lay her palm against the side of his face. Col. Fitzwilliam's eyes fluttered closed for a few seconds, and when they opened he fixed his attention entirely on her.
"It does not hurt you, does it?" she asked.
"Less and less – it barely bothers me now," he replied. She withdrew her hand, but he caught it in his, and held it on the bed.
"Can I ask, that is to say, are you allowed to tell me…" she began tentatively.
"How I was injured? I should not really, but since we are truly at war now, I suppose it does not matter anymore. I was sent to perform a covert mission, the details of which I cannot disclose. We had officially been at war for over a month by the time I was injured, but I had cultivated some useful informants in the months prior, so I was told to remain as long as possible. Sufficed to say, I was found in a place not safe for an Englishman to be, by some very suspicious men. Luckily my batman made it out without being discovered, and I heard that he is back in the country. I was held in unsavoury conditions – the like of which I will not repeat to a lady – for several days, and when I attempted to escape, I was caught. I was stabbed by a pigsticker in the confrontation, injuring my leg. [3] I was rescued the next day, by a group of our soldiers doing reconnaissance, but there was a skirmish, and we all came out a little bruised." Elizabeth had remained quiet as he spoke, much to her credit, but tears had gathered in the corners of her eyes, and her grip on his hand strengthened.
"Thank you, Colonel," she cried earnestly.
"Why are you thanking me?" he asked, baffled.
"You, and your fellow soldiers, are prepared to put yourselves in such awful situations, for us." He squeezed her hand one final time before he let it go.
"Coming home makes it all worth it."
oOoOoOo
Wednesday 3th April 1793
When Elizabeth visited Colonel Fitzwilliam next, she brought along a selection of sweet things.
"I was not sure what you would like, so I brought lemon drops," she checked each of the paper bags and handed the over as she named them, "some barley sugar drops, pistachio prawlongs, and Cook's home-baked Seville orange jumbles." [4] The Colonel thanked her, and for the first time since his arrival, a true smile formed on his lips. It was not wide, nor particularly cheerful, but it was sincere and heartfelt. He proceeded to sample all the sweets, several times.
"No, sir! You cannot eat them all at once!"
"Indeed I can, Miss Bennet. I have an interminable appetite for everything that is sweet, and you have seen fit to indulge it."
Elizabeth carried out her usual actions in a contented silence, but once she was done, the Colonel interrupted to quiet.
"My cousin came to visit me yesterday. Its seems it has taken this long for my family to notify him that I was back, and where I was. I haven't been much up to writing, you see."
"Are you and your cousin close?"
"As close as any cousin can be. While we did not grow up together, we were much in each other's company when our families were in town, and his estate is only one county over from my families, so was an easy distance to travel for short visits."
"A county over is an easy distance? Unless each estate was very close to the border, I wonder at your reasoning."
"With a well-sprung carriage, Miss Bennet, anything is possible," he retorted with a small grin. "My family are at the estate in Yorkshire – my brother's wife is in her confinement, my mother wished to stay with her and my father remains by her side whenever possible – but they have recently had very heavy snow and could not travel down, my cousin Darcy told me. He was already in town for the Season – he finished University last year, so is facing his first outing as an eligible bachelor. I wish I could be there to watch it," he sighed with fraternal delight. "He is very awkward, and gets himself into the funniest scrapes because of it. It is lucky he has a such a large estate," the Colonel laughed to himself, "I am certain the society matrons would not be quite so forgiving otherwise."
"I am glad your cousin visited, sir, for it seems to have cheered you greatly."
"Seeing Darcy buoyed my spirits, but have no doubt, Miss Bennet, he is not the one responsible for my improved mood. That accomplishment lies entirely at your door." His tone was direct, and his intense gaze left Elizabeth with no hesitation as to his meaning. She blushed becoming and turned her eyes to the floor.
"Tch, tch, none of that now," he told her, "I shall not have you pretending to be shy, not now, after everything."
"I am not shy," she defended firmly, even as she blushed deeper. The Colonel just chuckled, a deep satisfied chuckle, and they continued on as they had before.
oOoOoOo
[1] A water-meadow is an area of grassland, which is subject to a type of controlled irrigation. On the flat, a water-meadow had to be carefully constructed, but on a sloping field the water was fed to the top, and gentle sloping terraces were formed along which the water could trickle in a zig-zag fashion down the field. The water could be used again for fields lower down the slope. Working water meadows largely disappeared from Europe in the 20th Century.
The suffix ham could be derived from two words – the Saxon words ham (meaning settlement) or hamm (meaning water meadow). Oak-hamm, Oakham… see what I did there?
[2] Elizabeth has designed a precursor to the blanket lift. I tried to find if something like this existed in the eighteenth century, but I could not find record of anything predating the Crimean war.
[3] Pigsticker was the informal name for a spike bayonet. This was the early form of musket bayonet – the knife and sword style bayonet did not appear until the early nineteenth century.
[4] Prawlongs were pieces of fruit or nuts dipped in hard caramel.