Page 10 of The Count’s Charade

Jean-Marc was calling him. Henri … Henri! The light bobbed in the darkness as he turned, and a loud report echoed in his eardrums, so that he woke with a start. Blinking dazedly, he gazed upon the huge shadow that loomed over the bed.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but Miss Grace says as how you need this.”

Henri’s eyes focused upon a hulking young man, with an apologetic air and a deferential manner. One broad fist was folded around the handle of a china chamber pot. Relief flooded Henri, and he straightaway forgot the urgent instructions put to him.

“Oui, mon brave, very much I need it!”

Having partaken of a morsel of cold pie and some boiled chicken left over from the Frenchman’s broth Jemima had prepared, Grace felt renewed enough to embark upon the task that had lain like a cancer at the back of her mind, niggling with dangerous question.

The day had been long, and she meant to share the night watch with her maid. Jemima had been too busily employed in running errands, heating bricks, making broth and doing what she might to render the Frenchman’s sodden clothes habitable to have time to make dinner. Grace had fetched the maid to watch her patient at about four, while she snatched a hastily thrown together collection of leftovers, and then hastened back to her post. She had managed to persuade Mab to return to East Hall, on the pretext of requiring Reuben’s services, and herself nursed the Frenchman, calming him with soothing words, and watching anxiously for the slightest sign of worsening.

He had lain for the most part in a death-like stupor, interspersed with brief moments of partial awareness when she had spoon-fed him with barley water. Grace marked his pallor, and kept an eye upon his chest to note whether he breathed evenly. Instructing Jemima to keep bricks heating on the stove, she wrapped them in linen and packed them about the Frenchman’s body, two and three at a time, shifting them from place to place from time to time to keep him warmed all over, and renewing them as they cooled.

Towards evening, he had begun to look a little less like a waxen effigy, and signs of slight motion heartened her, though she was kept on tenterhooks as his features gained a trifle of colour, worrying whether fever was setting in. Reuben had arrived too early to be of immediate use, and Grace set him to help Jemima by cleaning the fellow’s mud-caked boots. It was with heartfelt relief that she had seen the Frenchman wake at last, the green eyes evidently aware. She was able to give him into the hands of Mab’s young stepson, with instructions to make him as comfortable as he could with a little washing and a nightshirt, together with those intimate necessities she had readily anticipated.

Alone now, Grace was finally free to turn her attention to the little stack of papers entrusted to her care at the outset of her acquaintance with her Frenchman. Indeed, they could be said to have instigated the possessive attitude she had adopted towards him. Her hand had rested upon them from time to time during the day, feeling the little bulge they made under her petticoats. Each time she experienced a tiny frisson of apprehension that an answer lay buried within her skirts as to the question of who had shot the Frenchman, and why.

She instructed Jemima to take up a bowl of broth once Reuben had done his work, and send the lad away. Even knowing the maid was occupied, and was set to remain above stairs until Grace went up to relieve her at the patient’s bedside, she took the precaution of opening her bureau and sitting down at it. If Jemima should come in and see her at the papers, she would assume Grace had taken opportunity to get some work done.

Her fingers quivered a little as she dug within the slit at her petticoats and withdrew the package. Not without difficulty, for the leaves had dried, moulding to the shape of her pocket. In the light of the candelabrum, Grace prized the different items apart, setting aside two that were sealed. There was nothing written upon the outside of these, no direction or instruction. There were three folded sheets, besides the one in which everything had been wrapped. That was blank, but for a small sketch which looked to be a map, but with only initials to indicate what streets or roads might be depicted thereon. Grace set it aside and turned her attention to the first of the open documents.

Her French was fair, but damp had rendered the ink fuzzy in places. She managed to decipher the gist, although a number of phrases eluded her. From what she could gather, the contents concerned a proposed trial, wherein the person accused had named witnesses who might speak in his behalf.

Disappointed, for she felt none the wiser, Grace took up another document, which proved to be a list of names, some of which were obliterated with smudges. There were parentheses beside several names, where someone had penned in comments — as to character? One was trustworthy, she thought. Another was being watched. A third had been marked with two asterisks. Beside two or three, there were merely other names. Of places? It was impossible to tell.

There was similarity in the handwriting of these two, and Grace wondered if they had been written by the man lying upstairs. She refolded the second paper and picked up the third. This was much more rewarding, for it was clearly an identity paper, fortunately little damaged by wetness. An official-looking seal was accompanied by a legality of tone Grace found difficult to translate. However, she could readily make out her Frenchman’s name.

He was called Henri Rousselle, and a quick calculation from his date of birth told her he was one and thirty years of age. His occupation was given as “aide”, but to what or whom there was no mention.

It gave her the oddest leap of pleasure to be acquainted with his name. Henri. She pictured his features, pale and lean with those high-boned cheeks, the dark hair that straggled yet, lengthy and unkempt upon the pillows. She remembered the green eyes, and thought how completely the name suited him. Henri.

Grace shook herself, brushing her fingers across the name as if she would erase its impact upon her. She refolded the identity paper, and shuffled again through the other two, rereading their contents without making them mean anything more. Her hand stole to the two sealed letters and she picked them up, turning them over, half tempted to break the seals. But, no. Henri Rousselle had begged her aid to conceal them, and she would not betray his trust. Instead, she stood up, holding the seals close under the candles in the holders of the three-pronged candelabrum she used for her work. There was nothing to be read from the mark of the seals, though they were the same.

Sitting down, she folded the open papers and made to pack them up again in the sheet that contained nothing but a little map, thinking of the place where she meant to hide them — a place where they could not be found, for none but she knew of its existence. Just as she began to fold the sheet over, using the creases to determine where the folds should be, something caught Grace’s attention. Pausing, she pushed the rest of the papers away and picked up the near blank sheet to hold it up to the light.

A watermark appeared. Grace studied it intently, a growing realisation creating a flurry in her heartbeat. It was unmistakably a coat of arms.

Heaviness lay across his legs, so that he could not move them. For a moment, as consciousness began to return, Henri wondered whether the numbness was the result of a bullet wound. He had a memory of having been shot, but what awareness was available to him could not immediately tell him where upon his body the injury had occurred.

Was he still on the marshes? No, it could not be, for he felt too warm and comfortable. Apart from the deadness at his lower limbs. He tried to shift them, and it came to him there was rather an obstruction there than a wound. Possessed of a feeling of lassitude, he did not want to open his heavy eyes, but there was no alternative if he was to discover what was holding him down.

A faint glow pervaded the area, and it came to him that the place where he was lying was a large wooden bed. Memory crept back. Had there not been a willing young fellow, who had washed and dressed him? His fingers, feeling towards his body, encountered a sturdy fabric that covered his nakedness. Someone had found him a nightshirt. Henri had a presentiment there was a debt of gratitude due somewhere, although at this present he could not have said to whom.

He raised his head, and instantly caused a shift of his body that told him, with an acute pang, exactly where he was wounded. Hastily he set his head down again. But he had seen, in that swift look, the unidentified hump that lay across his legs.

With far more care, he tipped his head slightly, peering down the covers. The shape took on form, and as the recollection of the sleeping face came to him, he could not avoid a shifting of surprise that made the woman start awake. In one convulsive movement, she threw herself up, and the burden lifted from his limbs.

Henri watched her blink dazedly, first at the dent her body had made upon the covers, and then at his face. She must have seen he was awake, for she leaned towards him, bracing herself with one hand upon the bed.

“I am so sorry! I’m afraid I fell asleep. Did I wake you?”

Henri smiled. “It makes nothing, mam’zelle.”

She appeared agitated. “But it does. You need to sleep more than anything, and you were so peaceful.” She reached out, and he felt the gentle touch of her hand at his brow. “How do you feel?”

“Most comfortable, merci.”

The smile he remembered came, and her hand was removed. “You have no fever, I thank God. Would you like a drink?”