The Confusion

A House Overlooking the Meuse Valley
APRIL 1696

BEFORE THE MANOR-HOUSE’S GATES, two equestrians parleyed: a stout, peg-legged Englishman in a coat that had been drab, before it had got so dirty, and a French cavalier. They were ignored by two hundred gaunt, shaggy men with shovels and picks, who were turning the house’s formal garden into a system of earthen fortifications with interlocking fields of fire.

The Englishman spoke French in theory, but perhaps not so well in practice. “Where are we?” he wanted to know, “I can’t make out if this is France, the Spanish Netherlands, or the Duchy of bloody Luxembourg.”

“Your men appear to believe it is part d’Angleterre!” said the cavalier reproachfully.

“Perhaps they are confused because an Englishman is said to reside here,” said the other. He gave the Frenchman an anxious look. “This is-is it not-the winter quarters of Count Sheerness?”

“Monsieur le comte de Sheerness has chosen to establish a household here. During intervals between campaigns, he withdraws to this place to recover his health, to read, hunt, play the harpsichord-”

“And dally with his mistress?”

“Men of France have been known to enjoy the company of women; we do not consider it a remarkable thing. Otherwise I should have appended it to the list.”

“But what I’m getting at is: There is a feminine presence here? Maids and whatnot?”

“There was, when I went out this morning to ride. Whether there is any more, I can only speculate, Monsieur Barnes, as the place has been invested, and I cannot get into it!”

“Pity, that. Say, monsieur, do tell me, is this French soil or not?”

“Like a banner in the wind, the border is ever-shifting. The soil we stand upon is not presently claimed by La France, unless le Roi has issued some new proclamation of which I have not been made aware yet.”

“Ah, that’s good-these chaps have not invaded France, then-now, that would be embarrassing.”

“Monsieur. There are some commanders in some armies who would find it embarrassing that two entire companies of their Regiment had deserted and wandered thirty miles from their assigned quarters and laid siege to the country house of a nobleman!”

“I believe it is now you and I who are laying siege to them,” observed Barnes, “as they are on the inside, and we on the out!”

The cavalier did not take the jest very well. “In wartime there are always deserters and foraging-parties. For this reason Monsieur le comte de Sheerness left orders, when he went to Londres, that musketeers were to be billeted in the stables, and the perimeters of the estate were to be patrolled night and day. In recent days these sentries have reported seeing more strange men than usual about the place, which I attributed to the spring thaw; I assumed, as anyone would, that they were French soldiers who had deserted from some regiment on the Namur front that had disintegrated from pestilence or want of food. Indeed, when I went out riding this morning, I had it in mind that when I returned to the house I ought to send word to a company of cavalry that is billeted some miles to the north, and ask that they ride down to round up a few of these deserters and hang them. Never did it enter my mind that they might be Englishmen until I was out for a gallop in a pasture down the road, and came upon a whole nest of them, and heard them talking in their jabber. I rode back to the house to find that, in my absence, upwards of a hundred men had emerged suddenly from the wooded ravines that lead down to the Meuse, and taken the estate in a coup de main! As I looked on in astonishment, the number doubled! I was going to ride north to summon help, but-”

“The roads had been blocked,” said Barnes. “And then haply I came along. Thank God! For there is still time to prevent this from developing into some sort of an incident.”

The cavalier’s eyebrows leapt up so high as to almost disappear beneath the verge of his periwig. “Monsieur! It is already an incident! Under no circumstances do the rules of war allow such a thing as this!”

“I agree fully, and you have my abject apologies as an English gentleman, monsieur. But only listen and consider what Count Sheerness himself would do, were he here. The Count is an Englishman, living in France, and commanding a regiment that, I need hardly tell you, fights nobly and loyally on the French side. Yet in the halls of Versailles, courtiers, who are not here to witness his gallantry on the field of battle, must be whispering, ‘Can we trust this Anglo-Saxon not to betray us?’ Ludicrous, I know, and unfair,” Barnes continued, holding up a hand to calm the cavalier, who looked as if he were about to lash the impertinent Barnes with his riding-crop, “but in these muddled times, an unfortunate fact of human nature. Now yonder band-”

“I should name them a battalion, not a band!”

“-of English deserters-”

“Strangely well-disciplined ones, monsieur-”

“Wandering lost, far behind enemy lines-”

“Is it wandering? Are they lost?”

“Have made camp, by a perverse accident, on the grounds of the quarters of Monsieur le comte de Sheerness. It means nothing, as you and I can plainly see; but there are those at Versailles who are bound to read something into it! Count Sheerness is detained in the Tower of London, is he not?”

“Obviously you know perfectly well that he is.”

“Some will allege, perhaps, that he is not so much detained as a willing guest, cooperating with King William, and with the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards, which happen to be headquartered in the Tower.”

The cavalier was now so incensed that all he could do, short of murdering Barnes on the spot, was to wheel his mount, gallop some yards down the road, wheel it again, and gallop back. By the time he had returned from this excursion, he had parted his lips to deliver some choice remark to Barnes; but Barnes, who had nudged his saber a few inches out of its scabbard, now drew it out altogether, and pointed it through the iron-work of the gate. This drew the cavalier’s attention, first to the saber itself, and then to half a dozen men standing attentively just inside the gate with loaded muskets cradled in their arms.

“These,” Barnes announced, “are the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards. I recommend we get them out of here as quickly as possible, before there is serious trouble.”

“As I suspected,” said the cavalier, “it is a kind of blackmail. What is it you want?”

“I want you to take this opportunity to be silent, monsieur, and to bide here for a time, so that I may go within and parley with their leaders, and convince them that it is in their best interests to depart immediately and without pillaging.”

The cavalier, after another look at the musketeers, and at another such formation that had appeared on the road nearby, accepted those terms with a nod. Barnes nudged his nag to the gate, which was opened for him. He dismounted and crunched down the gravel path into the chateau.

Five minutes later, he was back. “Monsieur, they will leave,” he announced. Which had been obvious anyway, for as soon as he had entered the house the men had ceased digging, and begun to gather their things, and to form up in the garden by platoons.

“There is a complication,” Barnes added.

The cavalier rolled his eyes, sighed, and spat. “What is the complication, monsieur?”

“One of my men came across something in the house that, I regret to inform you, is not the rightful property of Count Sheerness. We are taking the item in question with us.”

“So, monsieur, it is as I knew all along. You are thieves. What is this prize, I wonder? The plate? No-the Titian! I suspected you had an eye for art, monsieur. It’s the Titian, isn’t it?”

“On the contrary, monsieur. It is a woman. An Englishwoman.”

“Oh no, the Englishwoman stays here!”

“No, monsieur. She goes. She goes with her husband.”

“Her husband!?”

IT HAD BEEN UPWARDS OF thirty years since Bob Shaftoe had shinnied up a drainpipe to break into the home of a rich man. But the women of the household had, like birds, flown upwards by instinct, and availed themselves of every stair that presented itself to them, until they nested in an attic. An eyebrow window protruded from the roof, and worried faces flashed in it. Bob, rather than see doors smashed down and the house torn apart, ascended to that roof, belly-crawled up the roof-tiles, kicked out the window, somersaulted to the floor, and parried a rush and a thrust from some kitchen-wench who had thought to snatch up a butcher-knife before abandoning her post. He got this one by the wrist, spun her around into a hammerlock, pried the knife from her grip, and held her as a shield before him, in case any of the four other women in this attic had like intentions. She smelled of carrots and thyme. She shouted something in French that he was sure meant, “Run away!” but not a one of them moved. The booming on the attic-door proved they had no route of escape that way.

They looked at him. Their faces were turned to the light pouring in through the wrecked window. One was a crone, two were matrons, too old and stout to be Abigail. One was the right age, and shape, and coloration. His heart jumped and stumbled. It wasn’t her. “Damn it!” he said, “do not be afraid, you’ll not be touched. I seek Miss Abigail Frome.”

Four pairs of eyes shifted slightly from Bob’s face to that of the woman he was holding.

Then her entire weight was pressing him back, and he had to let go her wrist to catch her. In his life he had learned a few things about unarmed combat, including a trick or two for escaping from a hammerlock. This, though, was a new one: faint dead away into your captor’s arms.

SHE CAME AROUND THREE MINUTES later, diagonal on a bed one storey below. Bob bobbed in and out of her field of view. He’d draw near to count her freckles, then would remember that a life of military service had made him a frightful thing to look upon, and so, to spare Abigail’s tender eyes, he would withdraw, and make a circuit of the room’s windows, inspecting the trench-work of the soldiers below. Some of them were doing it a little bit wrong. He mastered the urge to fling up a sash and bawl at them. He flicked his eyes up to scour the horizon for vengeful French Horse-regiments. When Abigail reached up to rub her nose, he kept an eye on her, in case she had secreted on her person any more cutlery. But he need not have bothered. This was not a tempestuous assassin he was looking at. She was a schoolgirl from a small town in Somerset, of a sweet and level disposition, but inclined to be a bit daft about practical matters, which was how Bob had met her in the first place, and how he had lost his heart to her. To rush at him with a knife, as she had just done, was not typical of her character, but it was a fair sample of the less than practical side of her nature, which Bob, who had nothing but practical in his makeup, needed and wanted. He had seen this, eleven years ago, in the time it had taken his heart to skip three beats. And in a sort of miracle-the only miracle that Bob had ever been party to-this girl had seen in him what she wanted. Wanted, both in the sense that meant was lacking, and the sense that meant desired.

Beds of the time had a lot of pillows, as it was the practice to sleep half-sitting up. Abigail had been flung down flat by Bob, but now pushed herself up against the pillows so that she could eye him pacing about the room.

“Bloody hell!” were his first tender words to her. “There is no time! I know you remember me, or you would not have fainted.”

She was still pale, and not inclined to move more than she had to, but a smile came on her face, giving her the placid look of a Virgin Mary in a painting. “Even if I had it in me to forget you, my lords Upnor and Sheerness would have made it impossible. It was strange how oft they felt moved to relate the story of how you stood on the bridge and challenged Upnor on my behalf.”

“Oh, that was ignominious.”

“True, they told the tale to make fun of you; but to me ’twas a love-story I never tired of hearing.”

“Still, ignominious. As was my second meeting with Upnor, which you might not have heard about. Thank god Teague happened along with his stick! But we have no time for this. Oh, bloody hell, here he comes!”

“Who!?” cried Abigail.

“Didn’t mean to alarm you, Miss. It is not Monsieur le comte. It’s Colonel Barnes. He approaches. Do you mark his peg-leg beating time on the stairs? We must get out of this place.”

Bob moved toward the door of the bedchamber. Abigail watched with a wrinkled brow, not knowing whether it was Bob’s intention to flee; to barricade it; or to welcome the Colonel. But instead some detail of it caught Bob’s notice. He reached out and touched-caressed-the upper hinge: two straps of forged iron, one fixed to the door, the other to the post, joined by a short rod of iron about as thick as his little finger. “Quickly then: a few moments in Taunton market-square, eleven years ago, helping you with that silly banner, when the wind had gusted, and blown it down-you remember? Those moments are to my life what this hinge-pin is in the case of the door; which is to say that all pivoted, and pivots, about it; it is what I am about, as it were, and at the same time, it holds all together. Take it away-” And here Bob, not trusting his tongue, on an impulse drew a knife from his belt, shoved it under the mushroom-shaped head of the pin, and popped it loose. Lifting the door up with one hand, he jerked the pin up and out with the other; then he let go. The pin clanged to the floor. The door fell askew and cracked, and would not move properly any more, but hung sadly askew and wobbled.

“We’ve another moment now, unfortunately no longer than the first. What’s it to be, Abigail?”

“What do you mean exactly?”

Barnes stepped carefully into the room, eyeing the broken door. He gave Bob a Significant Look; then, remembering his manners, turned smartly toward Abigail and bowed. “Miss Frome! Sergeant Shaftoe has extolled your beauty so many times I have grown bored of him; seeing you in the flesh, I understand, and repent, and shall never again yawn and drum my fingers on the table, when the topic arises, but join in chorus with Sergant Bob.”

“Thank-” Abigail began, but Barnes had already moved on.

“Have you asked her yet?”

“No, he hasn’t,” Abigail said, for Bob was dumbstruck.

“Drop,” said Barnes, “ask.”

Bob smashed down on to his knees. “Will-”

“Yes.”

“Abigail Frome will you take-” began Barnes.

“I do.”

“Robert Shaf-”

“I do.”

“-nounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride-later. Let’s get the bloody hell out of here!” said Colonel Barnes, and fled the room; for he phant’sied he’d spied something through the window.

“Fetch me that hinge-pin, husband,” Abigail said, “in lieu of a ring.”

SEVERAL PLATOONS OF MUSKETEERS were already formed up anyway in the forecourt of the house, and so it did not impose any significant further delay for them to line up on both sides of the path and form an arch of bayonets for Mr. and Mrs. Shaftoe to run through. It was too early for spring flowers, but some private had the presence of mind to hack a branch from a budding cherry-tree and slap it into Abigail’s arms. A white horse was pillaged from the stables and bestowed on the newlyweds as a wedding-present. Members of the household staff looked on through windows, and cooed and waved tea-towels. The French musketeers who were supposed to be guarding the place, and who had been disarmed, and herded into a dry fountain, wept for joy and blew their noses. Even the cavalier who had been giving Barnes such a hard time could only look the other way, shake his head, and blink. He was indignant to have been made the small-minded villain in this story, and wished he could have spoken more to Barnes, and let him know that, if he had only been made aware of the nature of the errand, he might have served Venus instead of Mars.

Barnes and the Shaftoes, distributed between two horses, inspected the troops a last time.

“You have done well by your Sergeant to-day,” Barnes announced, “and repaid a small portion of that debt you owe him for having kept you alive through so many battles. Now, back to training! Today’s exercise is called ‘melt away into the countryside.’ It has already commenced, and you are already doing a miserable job of it, being bunched together in plain view!”

Private soldiers began to break ranks and vault walls. A senior sergeant approached Barnes, and lodged a protest: “There’s no countryside to melt into, sir! We’ve got one foot in bloody France, all the trees are cut down, we are thirty miles behind enemy lines-”

“That is what makes it such a superlative training exercise! If we were in bloody Sherwood Forest, it’d be easy, wouldn’t it? Here is a suggestion: As long as you keep your gob shut, they’ll assume you are starveling deserters from the French Army! Now, get you all gone. I shall see you all back at quarters in a few days. I must convey Mr. and Mrs. Shaftoe to the sea-coast, that they may go to London and set up housekeeping. You shall all be welcome at their house!”

Abigail here for the first time looked a little less than radiant. But the joy came back into her face again as those Black Torrent Guards who had not yet melted away into the countryside broke into cheers. Bob got the white horse moving, and trotted round the circuit of the gardens, accepting in turn the cheers of various small mobs of soldiers, of the French maids in the windows, and the musketeers in the fountain; and then it was through the gate and out on to the road. Following Barnes-who was halfway to the western horizon already-they took off hell-for-leather. Abigail, straddling the horse’s croup, pressed her cheek into the hollow between Bob’s shoulder-blades, wrapped her arms about his waist, and clasped her hands together. Bob, feeling a hard thing jammed into his belly, looked down to see Abigail’s fingers interlocked about the hinge-pin.