The woman followed his gaze and added with dignity, “I am a widow, m’sieur.My husband died fighting for the Emperor.I help this little one when I can, but when my own children are going hungry...”She gave another fatalistic shrug.
Marcus nodded.“I’ll speak to the smithy,” he told Tessa.Will you be all right here?”
“Of course.”
#
THE SMITHY WAS DUSTYand unlike the one in his home village, it was untidy and looked neglected, with tools dropped where they fell.There was no sign of life.He called out, but nobody answered.Yet the forge was still warm and he could see faintly glowing coals inside.
He called again, and heard a grunt inside.He followed it through a door and found a man of fifty or more, disheveled, unshaven and dirty, sitting on a chair.On the table beside him was a board with cheese, half a loaf, a bowl of olives and a tumbler of wine.
The man gave him a hostile look and swilled a mouthful of wine around his mouth before swallowing.He made no attempt to get up.He merely eyed Marcus with a baleful expression.
“You are the smith?”Marcus said, hoping the man spoke French.
The man lifted his shoulder slightly, which Marcus took to be assent.
“I understand you are responsible for that little girl outside.”
The man spat.“Not my blood, not my responsibility.”His accent was thick, but understandable.A native Flemish speaker, no doubt.
Marcus held his temper.“Then whose is she?”
The smith shrugged, as if to say, ‘who cares?’
“The woman outside said she was yours,” Marcus persisted.
The smith gave him a long look, drained his glass and said, “My son, he go off to fight for l’Emperor”—he spat again, seeming not to care that it was his own floor, albeit filthy.“He bring back a woman—a wife, or so he say.A foreigner.From Avignon.”He snorted.
“Then l’Emperor returns and the fighting starts again.”He gestured in the rough direction of Waterloo.He shrugged.“My son never come home.“His woman go looking for him, but instead she come back with a wounded man. An English aristo!”He spat perilously close to Marcus’s boot.“An officer.”He spat again.
“And so?”Marcus prompted grimly
“She look after him.He get better.He go back to Angleterre.”He spat again.Much more and he could mop his floor with it, Marcus thought.
“Two weeks later she tell me she have a bellyful.”He pointed outside.“With that.”
“Then the child is your respons—“ Marcus began.
“Not my blood, not my problem!”the man snarled again.
“She’s filthy and neglected and starving to death.”
The smith gave him an insolent look.“Is in the good lord’s hands.”His tone was mocking.“When the priest come he can take the brat, give her to the sisters to raise.In the meantime...”He gave an evil smile.“She sleep with the dog.”
Marcus’s fists were tight knots of rage, but he wasn’t going to let this sorry excuse for a man to provoke him.“Very well then,” he snapped and strode out the door.
Tessa was holding the child on her hip.She had twisted the ragged bunch of flowers into a little tiara and placed it on the matted curls.
“M’sieur, he claims he will give the child to the next priest that visits, to be raised by the sisters,” the shabby woman told him in a low voice.“But there has been no priest here for over a year and the Abbey at Nivelles was destroyed during the revolution, more than twenty years ago.Who knows what happened to the sisters?”
He nodded, pressed an unobtrusive handful of coins into her hand, and signaled the boy to bring the horses.
She looked at the coins in her hands and gasped.“Gold Louis?Mais m’sieur...“ she began.
“You did what you could,” he said brusquely.“Look after your children.”
She pocketed the money, her eyes filled with tears.“Bless you, m’sieur, God bless you.”
