Page 31 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer
Ellen looked across the table at another woman. ‘And where do you sleep, and live, when the men are camped?’
‘Wherever we may, ma’am. We share our men’s tents, and they are put up and taken down often if the men are on the march. It is only if they are defending a place or preparing for battle that we camp in one place?—’
‘But the Captain will be billeted,’ one of the other women interrupted, looking at her friend, not at Ellen.
‘Yes,’ her friend agreed. ‘The officers, if we are to remain in any one place for long, will find an inn or a farmhouse to take them in, or anywhere they may be sheltered. They are only in their tents if the regiment is marching and there is nowhere close by.’
‘If the men are in barracks though,’ another woman added, ‘our husbands must find us accommodation nearby.’
Ellen looked along the table at Paul. He talked animatedly with the men, then laughed before he took a sip from a tankard.
Ellen swallowed another spoonful of the foul broth, then asked, ‘What have you seen of war?’ She looked from one woman to another, asking them all.
The women glanced at each other, expressing a silent unease. Then one of the women leaned forward and answered in a whisper, ‘Many horrible things, ma’am. Many things a woman should never see. But that is war, and I would rather be with my Michael here than in England alone, not knowing if he is alive or dead, or will ever return to me.’
‘And I could not bear to let Tommy go to America and not see him for months or even years, ma’am,’ another woman chimed in, smiling nervously at Ellen.
She looked the closest to Ellen in age, perhaps a couple of years older. Nancy. Her name flew into Ellen’s head, plucked from all those she had been told in the last few days. She had been introduced as Mistress Bowman but had asked Ellen to call her by her given name.
‘And what do you all do to fill your days?’ The question came out on a breath of longing, as the life Ellen had left behind tumbled through her thoughts… a life very different to the one she would have where she sat now.
The women smiled, apparently amused by the question. ‘Why, we wash the men’s clothing and cook for them,’ the first woman who spoke answered. ‘There is little time for anything else, ma’am.’
The question proved Ellen’s naivety. Their needles would work on clothing not embroidery, and they had possibly never seen a pianoforte, and certainly never sat in the warmth of the sun engrossed in a book – they probably could not read. A warm blush rising in her skin, Ellen asked what the men did when they were not fighting or marching.
When it came time to sleep, the trestle tables and benches were collapsed and secured along the sides of the galley.
The low-ceilinged room, which forced Paul to bend over constantly, then became a dormitory for a hundred or more men, all rolling out pallets. Ellen watched as Paul laid out theirs. The thin mattress was only wide enough for one.
‘Do you wish to undress, or sleep in your clothes?’ he whispered as he slipped the buttons on the coat of his uniform free.
Biting her lip, Ellen shook her head. ‘I will sleep in my dress, but I will remove the pins from my hair and plait it.’ She had shared a room with her sisters when she was younger, but sharing a bed in a narrow space with over a hundred men… She would suffer two nights in her dress.
She sat on the mattress as she withdrew the pins from her hair, and lay them into a handkerchief. The women’s conversation haunted her, they had spoken mostly of a harsh way of life. What if it was always to be like this? Must she endure such sleeping quarters all the way to America?
The crowded low-ceilinged space was too enclosed. Most of the lanterns hanging from the low beams had been extinguished, but a few still burned, one near the ladder leading to the upper deck and a couple beside some of the men’s pallets. They creaked as they swung with the rock of the ship.
All about her the men were in varying states of dress and undress as they retired, though none were naked; she tried to look only at the ship’s wooden planking.
She turned her eyes to Paul. He lay down, clothed in his shirt and underwear, and lifted the wool blanket for her to join him on the mattress. Nervousness warring with embarrassment, she lay down with her back against his chest, and rested her head on his muscular arm. His other arm surrounded her, and his palm settled over her stomach.
‘The women said that when the regiment camp, you are billeted,’ she whispered. ‘Do you share that accommodation too?’
‘Sometimes,’ he whispered back. ‘But that is only during war, when we are fighting. In America we will most often be in barracks, and then I will hire lodgings to share with you and not live among the men. America will be different to the Peninsular War. The situation is not the same.’
‘And the woman you said you will hire for me…’
‘Will have her own room. She will be your maid of all work, Ellen. You shall not live exactly as the wives of the soldiers live.’
She was out of her depth without servants; she longed for a woman to help her navigate her new life. She did not think herself proud but she had been sheltered. This was so different from the rooms in her father’s Palladian mansion. She would beg Paul to secure them a cabin for the longer journey.
She did not sleep, merely lay there, her thoughts absorbed by the odd rock and sway of the ship, and the sound of so many men breathing heavily in the shadow-filled space.
When she woke, Paul was rising, moving from behind her, and about them others stirred. She felt as though she had just a moment’s sleep.
‘I am sorry, you must get up,’ he said quietly as she pulled on his scarlet coat. ‘You will learn to shut your eyes and sleep no matter where you are in the end, because if you do not, you will never rest.’
Ellen nodded and sat up, rubbing her eyes. Then she stretched. He had said this life would be hard. She had not imagined it like this…
