William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

feel it all the same. Another cross for her to bear, poor creature. Afflictions of health are among the worst.” She let out her breath in a little sigh. She regarded him closely with a slight squint of concentration. “Not that you would know, by the look of you. Well, I haven’t seen any Peeping Toms, but then I cannot see beyond the garden window anyway. My sight is going. Happens when you get to my age. Not that you’d know that either. Don’t suppose you are more than forty-five.”
    Monk winced, but forbore from saying anything. He preferred to think he did not look anything like forty-five, but this was not the time for vanity, and this outspoken old lady was certainly not the person with whom to try anything so transparent.
    “Well, you had better ask the outdoor servants,” she went on. “Mind you, that is only the gardener and sometimes the scullery maid, if she can escape the cook’s eye. Made it sound like a whole retinue, didn’t I? Ask them, by all means. Let me know if they tell you anything interesting. There’s little enough of interest ever happens here nowadays.”
    He smiled. “The neighborhood is too quiet for you?”
    She sighed. “I don’t get about as much as I used to, and nobody brings me the gossip. Perhaps there isn’t any.” Her eyes widened. “We’ve all become so terribly respectable these days. It’s the Queen. When I was a girl it was different.” She shook her head sadly. “We had a king then, of course. Wonderful days. I remember when they brought the news of Trafalgar. It was the greatest naval victory in Europe, you know.” She looked at Monk sharply to be sure he appreciated the import of what she was saying. “It was a matter of England’s survival against the Emperor of theFrench, and yet the fleet came in with mourning flags flying, and in silence—because Nelson had fallen.” She gazed beyond Monk into the garden, her eyes misty with remembrance. “My father came into the room and my mother saw his face and we all stopped smiling. ‘What is it?’ she said immediately. ‘Are we defeated?’ My father had tears on his cheeks. It was the only time I ever saw him weep.”
    Her face was alight with the wonder of it still, all the myriad lines subtly altered by the innocence and the emotions of youth.
    “ ‘Nelson is dead,’ my father said very gravely. ‘Have we lost the war?’ my mother asked. ‘Shall we be invaded by Napoleon?’ ‘No,’ my father answered. ‘We won. The French fleet is all sunk. No one will land on England’s shores again.’ ” She stopped and stared up at Monk, watching to see if he caught the magnitude of it.
    He met her eyes and she perceived that he had caught her vision.
    “I danced all night before Waterloo,” she went on enthusiastically, and Monk imagined the colors, the music, and the swirling skirts she could still see in her mind. “I was in Brussels with my husband. I danced with the Iron Duke himself.” All the laughter vanished from her expression. “And then, of course, the next day there was the battle.” Her voice was suddenly husky and she blinked several times. “And all that night we heard news and more news of the dead. The war was over, the Emperor beaten forever. It was the greatest victory in Europe, but dear God, how many young men died! I don’t think I knew anyone who had not lost somebody, either dead or so injured as never to be the same again.”
    Monk had seen the carnage left by the Crimean War and he knew what she meant; even though that conflict had been so much smaller, the spirit and the pain were the same. In a sense it was worse, because there was no perceivable purpose to it. England was under no threat, as it had been from Napoleon.
    She saw the emotion and the anger in his face. Suddenlyher own sorrow vanished. “And of course I knew Lord Byron,” she went on with sudden animation. “What a man! There was a poet for you. So handsome.” She gave a little laugh. “So beautifully romantic and dangerous. What wonderful scandal there was then. Such burning ideals, and men did something about them then.” She gave a little gasp of fury, her ancient hands clenched into fists on her lap. “And what have we today? Tennyson.”
    She groaned and then looked at Monk with a sweet smile. “I suppose you want to see the gardener about your Peeping Tom? Well, you had better go and do so, with my blessing.”
    He smiled back at her with genuine regard. It would have been much