Blood and Ice Page 13

  And she accepted the offer of a drink with the same alacrity.

  “Oh, sir, I would quite enjoy a lemonade,” Moira said, barely taking her eyes from the grandstands behind them, where a teeming multitude had gathered for the most celebrated race of the afternoon, the Ascot Gold Cup. “This sun is positively”-she paused, as if looking for the most aristocratic way of saying it-”parching.” She smiled broadly, happy at her choice, and Sinclair excused himself to go and fetch the drink. Once he was gone, Moira nudged Eleanor with her elbow, and said, “That chicken's already in the pot.”

  Eleanor professed incomprehension, but as with most of Moira's aphorisms, the point was plain.

  “Haven't you seen the way he looks at you?” Moira scoffed. “Or, to be sure, the way he looks at naught else? And such a gentleman! Are you sure he's not a lord?”

  Eleanor was not sure of much. The lieutenant was still a man of mystery in many ways. After she had stitched his arm at the hospital, a box of raspberry marzipan had arrived for her the next day, with a note addressed to “Nurse Eleanor Ames, My Sweet Angel of Mercy.” Miss Nightingale had intercepted the package at the door, and when she passed it along, it was with a distinct expression of disapproval.

  “This,” she had said, “is what comes of precipitous conduct,” as she swept back toward the garden, where she cultivated her own fresh fruits and vegetables. But Eleanor was hard-pressed to see the crime, and Moira didn't even pause long enough to look for one. She had pulled the lavender ribbon off the box, tucking it into her pocket-”it's too beautiful to waste, and you don't mind, do you, Ellie?”-and then waited, bouncing on the balls of her feet, for Eleanor actually to open the box. When she did, Moira dug right in, while Eleanor simply marveled at the smooth beauty and the sweet fruity aroma of the candy. The lid of the box, which she held in her hands as if it were a fine painting, had a gold fleur de lis stamped upon it, and the words CONFECTIONS DOUCE DE MME. DAUPIN, BEL-GRAVIA. No one had ever sent her candy before.

  A few days later, Lieutenant Sinclair had sent by messenger a note, asking when it might be convenient for him to call upon her, but she had had to reply that, apart from Saturday afternoon and evening, she received no time off; on Sunday morning, at 6:30, she again resumed her usual duties at the hospital. To which he had replied that he would request her company, then, on the Saturday next, at noon. He said he would brook no denial, and Moira, who'd read the note over her shoulder, said she should by no means offer any.

  A bugle sounded, and Moira said, “Look, look, Ellie!” as the horses were rounded up and settled into place behind a long, thick rope that was stretched between two poles on either side of the oval track. “Is the last race about to begin?”

  “It is,” Sinclair said, reappearing through the crowd, with two glasses in hand. He gave one to Moira, and one to Eleanor. “And may it please you, ladies, I have taken the liberty of entering a wager on your behalf.” He gave Eleanor a paper chit, with several numbers scrawled on one side, and the name “Nightingale's Song,” on the other. Eleanor did not entirely understand.

  “The name of the horse,” he said, as Moira leaned closer to see, “seemed especially lucky, don't you think?”

  “How much have we wagered?” Moira gleefully asked, though Eleanor wished she hadn't, and Sinclair said, “Ten pounds… to win.”

  They were both aghast at the very idea of wagering ten pounds on anything. Their salaries were fifteen shillings a week, and one meal a day courtesy of the hospital commissary. That you might lose ten pounds, in a matter of minutes, on nothing but a horse race, seemed well-nigh incomprehensible. Eleanor knew that to her family-a barely solvent dairyman with five children and a long-suffering wife-it would be worse than that; it would be sinful.

  Moira, in a quieter voice now, said, “And what do we win, if she does?”

  “At the present odds, thirty guineas.”

  Moira nearly dropped her lemonade.

  A portly man in a red cutaway strolled past the starting line, then up to the top of the judging scaffold, draped in red and gold velvet; a Union Jack rippled from a very tall flagpole behind him. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced through a speaking trumpet in stentorian tones, “we are now honored to welcome you to the running of Her Majesty's first Ascot Gold Cup!”

  There was a chorus of huzzahs and hooting and clapping that momentarily perplexed both Moira and Eleanor. Sinclair bent toward them and said, “Traditionally, this race has been known as the Emperor's Plate, after Czar Nicholas of Russia.”

  They immediately understood.

  “But given the situation in the Crimea,” Sinclair added, “the race has been renamed this year.”

  The clamor died down, and the bugle sounded again, a trill of rounded notes aimed at the topmost balconies in the pavilion, and the horses paced impatiently, as if anxious to stretch their long legs and run at last. The jockeys stood high in their stirrups to keep their weight off the horses’ backs until the last possible second, with their whips tucked under their arms, the silken sleeves of their jackets billowing out in the afternoon breeze. The portly man in the cutaway pulled a pistol from his cummerbund and raised it in the air. Two stable hands untied the rope wrapped around the poles and threw it in a coil onto the grass. The jockeys fought to maintain control of their steeds and keep them behind a chalk line in the dirt.

  “Riders, prepare!” the judge called out. “And on the count- one, two…” and instead of saying three, the gun fired, and the horses, bumping and jostling for position, stumbled or leapt forward onto the open track. There was a brief skirmish, as each horse and jockey vied for position, and then they were galloping off.

  “Which one is ours?” Moira cried, jumping up and down at the rail. “Which one is Nightingale's Song?”

  Sinclair pointed at a chestnut filly, currently running in the middle of the pack. “The crimson silks.”

  “Oh, she's not winning!” Moira cried in despair, and Sinclair smiled.

  “It's not even the first furlong,” Sinclair advised, “and there are eight in all. There's plenty of time for her to catch up.”

  Eleanor took a drink of her lemonade and hoped to appear composed

  … but inside she was as excited as Moira. She had never wagered on anything, even if it was with someone else's money, and until then she'd had no idea what that might feel like. But now she knew, and it felt oddly-wonderfully-exhilarating. The idea that thirty guineas was at stake-which, if she won, she would surely return to Sinclair, their rightful owner-was enough to make her head spin.

  And again, she could tell that Sinclair had intuited her excitement. In her feet, she could still feel the vibration of the thundering hooves, and from the grandstands she could hear a chorus of voices cheering and jeering and crying out instructions that no jockey would ever hear.

  “Keep to the inside rail!”

  “Use the bloody whip!”

  “Whatcha waiting for, Charger!”

  “Ascot,” Sinclair confided to Eleanor, “is a hard track.”

  “How so?” To Eleanor it looked like a wide and inviting oval, with a center expanse of deep green grass.

  “The dirt is hard-packed. It takes a great deal out of the horse, more so than Epsom Downs or Newmarket.”

  But unlike those racecourses, which Eleanor had never heard of, this one had the royal imprimatur. When she had come through the towering, black wrought-iron gates, she had noted the golden crown mounted in relief at their crest, and it was as if she were entering Buckingham Palace itself. There were rows of concession stands, selling everything from barley water to toffee apples, and all manner of customer, from well-dressed gentlemen with their ladies on their arm, to scruffy young boys hawking and shilling-and once, she could swear, stealing-from the carts and stands. Sinclair, with Eleanor on one arm and Moira on the other, had navigated through the crowds with absolute assurance, and taken them to this spot, which he assured them provided the best viewing of the race.

  It certai
nly seemed so to Eleanor. The horses were rounding the first curve, and together they made a beautiful blur of black and brown and white, colored by the shimmering costumes and silks of the jockeys. The summer sun beat down on the field, and Eleanor had to fan herself-and beat away the persistent flies-with a program Sinclair had purchased for her. He stood close, much closer than any man would customarily stand to her, and it seemed only in part due to the pressing crowd. Moira was leaning halfway over the railing, her plump arms planted on either side, calling out encouragement to Nightingale's Song.

  “Move along!” she cried. “Move your arse!”

  Eleanor stole a glance at Sinclair, and they shared a private smile. Moira turned, abashed.

  “Oh, do forgive me, sir! I forgot myself.”

  “It's quite all right,” Sinclair replied. “It wouldn't be the first time such a sentiment was uttered here.”

  Indeed, Eleanor had already heard far worse, and working in a hospital-even one that was dedicated to the care exclusively of women with some breeding-had inured her to both grisly sights and desperate oaths. She had seen people whom she knew would have been perfectly upright and respectable if she had met them in the normal course of their lives, reduced to violence and rage. She had learned that physical anguish-and sometimes merely mental perturbation-could warp a person's character out of all recognizable shape. Meek seamstresses had screamed and writhed and forced her to tie their hands with bandages to the bedposts; a governess, from one of the finest houses in the city, had once ripped the buttons off her uniform and hurled a dirty bedpan at her. A milliner, from whom a tumor had had to be removed, had scratched her arms with sharp nails and cursed her in language Eleanor thought only sailors might use. Suffering, she had learned, was transforming. Sometimes it elevated the spirit-she had seen that, too-but more often than was generally admitted it simply ran roughshod over its helpless victims.

  In words as well as in actions, Miss Florence Nightingale had taught her that lesson. “She is simply not herself,” Miss Nightingale would say, overlooking whatever transgression had just occurred.

  “Look! Look, Ellie!” Moira cried. “She's gaining! She's gaining!”

  Eleanor looked across the racecourse, and yes, she could see a flicker of crimson, like a tiny flame, beating its way, slowly but surely, toward the front of the pack. Only two other horses-one black, one white-were running ahead. Even Sinclair seemed excited by the turn of events.

  “Good show!” he shouted. “Nightingale, come on! Come on!” He squeezed Eleanor by the elbow, and she felt as if her whole arm-no, her whole body-was galvanized. She could barely focus on the race at all. Sinclair's hand stayed where it was, though his eyes were on the horses charging around the far post.

  “The white one, she's faltering!” Moira called out with glee.

  “And the black one looks fagged, too,” Sinclair said, rapping his own rolled-up program nervously on the rail. “Come on, Nightingale! You can do it!”

  There was something so boyishly charming about Sinclair just then-the rapt enthusiasm, the pale moustache made nearly transparent by the direct sun. Eleanor had not failed to notice the attention he drew from other women; when they had come through the crowd, parasols had twirled brightly, as if their owners were hoping to catch his eye, and one young woman, on the arm of an elderly gent, had gone so far as to drop a handkerchief in his path-which he retrieved and returned, with a half smile, while moving on. Eleanor had become more and more conscious of her own attire, and wished that she, too, had something more colorful, or stylish, or becoming to wear; she had but this one fine dress, and it was a rather somber forest green, of ribbed taffeta, with old-fashioned gigot sleeves. It buttoned firmly up to her throat, and on a day like this especially, she might have wished for something that bared at least a bit of her neck and shoulders.

  Moira had simply opened the collar of her own dress-a peach-colored affair that neatly matched the color of her hair and complexion-and was even then pressing the cool but empty lemonade glass against the base of her throat. Still, she looked about to faint from the mounting excitement.

  The horses were barreling around the near side of the oval track, and the white one had indeed faltered. Its jockey was whipping it mercilessly, but the horse was falling farther behind every second. And the black one, a frisky colt, was simply holding its own, hoping to make it to the finish line without any greater exertion. Nightingale's Song, however, was not spent at all; indeed, the horse seemed only then to be stretching itself to its utmost. Eleanor could see every sinew and muscle in its legs pumping and its head bobbing up and down as the jockey, sitting uncustomarily far forward on its withers, spurred it on, the chestnut mane flying into his face. “By God,” Sinclair cried, “she's going to do it!” “She is, isn't she?” Moira exulted. “She's going to win!” But the black colt hadn't given up yet. As often happened with racehorses, this one suddenly felt himself being beaten-saw out of the corner of one eye the contender keeping pace-and unleashed a last burst of energy and drive. They were in the final furlong, virtually nose to nose, but something in Nightingale's Song, some reserve that had still been held in check for this critical moment, was released, and as if she had been borne forward by some sudden wind, she burst ahead of the colt, the crimson silks rippling like flames along its flanks, as she flashed across the finish line, streaming with sweat, and the judge on the scaffold waved a golden flag back and forth and back and forth.

  There was a tumult in the crowd, cries of disappointment from the losing horses’ bettors, but here and there a whoop of joy and astonishment. Eleanor gathered that Nightingale's Song had not been favored to win, which, even she knew, was what stood so much to their advantage. She studied the paper chit in her hand, and as Moira danced in place, from one foot to the other, Sinclair took it from her.

  “Will you allow me to go and collect your winnings?” Eleanor nodded, and Moira simply beamed. Paper chits, torn in half by the losing bettors, wafted like confetti from the grandstands and swirled in the air overhead. As Eleanor and Moira looked on, three of the jockeys walked their winded horses to the circle beside the judging scaffold. Each of them took off his colorful silk jersey, and one of the stable hands tied it loosely to the rope of the flagpole. Then the silks were raised-a yellow one at the bottom, a purple one in the middle, and at the very top, signifying its win for all to see, the crimson-and-white colors of Nightingale's Song. Eleanor felt, silly as it seemed, a surge of pride, while Moira seemed utterly beside herself at the prospect of her newfound riches.

  “I'll not tell my father about the whole of it,” she said, “or he'd surely come to town and beat it out of me.”

  At least Eleanor knew that her father would do no such thing.

  “But I will tell my mam I come into a bit o’ luck, and send some home to ease her days. The good Lord knows she do deserve it.”

  Eleanor was still resolved to return her share to Sinclair-after all, she hadn't wagered so much as sixpence out of the small sum she carried in her faded velvet reticule. When he came back, he stuffed a handful of coins and notes into Moira's mesh handbag, then waited for Eleanor to open her own. She declined.

  “But it's yours!” he said. “Your horse came in, at very favorable odds!”

  “No, it was your horse,” Eleanor said, “and your money.” She could see that Moira wanted no part of this nobility, and she was sorry if it made her friend uncomfortable.

  Sinclair paused, the money in hand, then said, “Would it make you feel any better if I told you I'd made my own packet, too?”

  Eleanor hesitated, as Sinclair dug into the side pocket of his trousers, withdrew a wad of pound notes and playfully shook them at her. “You two,” he said, gallantly including Moira, “are my lucky charms.”

  Eleanor had to laugh, as did Moira, and she could no longer argue when he opened her purse and slipped her winnings inside. It was far more money than she had ever possessed at one time, and she was glad to have the lieutenant there to
help guard it.

  Dark clouds from the west were only beginning to obscure the bright sun as they sauntered back toward the high main gates. They were just passing through them when Eleanor heard someone cry, “Sinclair! Did you have a winning day?”

  As she turned, she saw the two men who had accompanied Sinclair to the hospital that night, only now they were not in uniform, but in handsome civilian attire.

  “By Jove, I did!” Sinclair replied.

  “Then, in that case…” the big one-Captain Rutherford- said, extending his hand palm open, “you won't mind settling accounts?”

  “Are you sure you wouldn't rather consider it an investment and leave it where it is, to seek some future gain?”

  “A bird in the hand,” Rutherford replied, smiling, and Sinclair dutifully slapped some of the cash from his pocket onto the open hand.

  “But forgive me,” Sinclair went on, taking one step back in order to effect the introductions all around. Le Maitre's companion, a Miss Dolly Wilson, nodded-her face was almost entirely obscured under her wide-brimmed garden hat, garlanded with burgundy and mauve flowers-and Sinclair then asked, “Are you all traveling back to town? I was going to hire a carriage, but perhaps we could make the journey together.”

  “Capital idea,” Rutherford replied, “but I've already got a coach waiting, in the Regent's Circle. Plenty of room for all.”

  Eleanor glanced at Moira, who looked both thrilled and fearful-this day, for both of them, was taking so many unexpected turns that she herself began to feel as if she were riding a wild horse galloping off across the fields.

  “Then right this way,” Rutherford declared, brushing out his muttonchops with the tips of his fingers, “for time and tide…”