Coimbra - Looking for Maggie Evans

[He already seems to know...]

"If you would - he will need the letter from Captain Vickery if he is to safe from the Provosts." Father O'Dwyer handed over the 'ticket' and smiled at Miss Evans. "Then I will take my leave. I will pray for your recovery, if you do not mind prayers said in a foreign tongue, rather than English. I think God probably understands both - and more."

She grinned shyly, a little more like herself. "I hope so. Thank you again."



[I know. But Maggie doesn't know that he knows]

Father O'Dwyer returned the smile, happy to see it. "Though it is said that the language the angels prefer is the Irish... May they look after you, and guide you, Miss Evans. I shall carry the news of you to Captain Vickery, and to Gabriel Cotton." He stayed for another minute, his hand on the door. "You have a difficult decision to make. Pray for guidance, before committing yourself to anything."

Her troubled look returned and she nodded in reply. She wanted to ask him to advise her, but at the same time she did not. Suddenly she found herself longing for her mother. "Good bye, Father O'Dwyer."

"Goodbye - or God be with you. As He will be." The Father blessed her, and left. He would not catch up with the column until they had camped, but he should reach them before dark, if he and Patience hurried.

Maggie watched him leave, followed by Sister Teresa, and then she called for Jenny who was waiting just outside.


[Jenny continues here]

Some time later Maggie awoke to find that it was nearly evening. The bit of sky she could see through the window was rosy orange. She realized with a sudden pang just how accustomed she had grown to being with Cotton. Usually this time of evening was when they reunited in camp after marching separately for most of the day.

Jenny and Newbury were gone, of course. She had expected that they would be, but she felt a lonely disappointment with their absence. When she looked at the chair where Captain Vickery's letter was lying, she noticed that Jenny had dashed off a note on the back to tell her that they would return in the morning. She had left the pencil, too, a simple wooden lead holder with a sliding ring, probably borrowed from one of the sisters.

Maggie drew the chair towards the bed and placed the letter face down on its hard surface. She wished she had written more sensibly to Cotton. She was adept at writing out letters for other people, but she had rarely had the need to express her own messages in writing. She had written to Jem's mother, dear Mrs. Balstrode, but there had never been anyone else.

"Dear Gabe," she began automatically. Already it felt false. They had brought her some food earlier, and there was still a corner of bread on the plate, already dried out. She rubbed the dry bread crumbs across the paper to erase the words and then started again, writing more faintly this time.

"My Gabe." She sighed and stared at the wall until she realized with a start that the light was going, and she did not expect it would be easy to procure a candle. "I miss you and I love you and I wish I was with you instead of here, and safe and happy. You are so" - and she stopped. What was he? He was Gable, and he made her feel safe and comforted, and yet now there was this new thing between them. Plenty of men enjoyed the company of prostitutes on a regular basis, but that had never been Gabriel Cotton, not that she could see. He had known about Balstrode, but he had also known that they planned to marry, once back in England, at a church, with their families there. But this was different, altogether different - the man had even left money. And Gabe - he was the son of a hard-working farm laborer who had toiled in the sunshine and served a respectable family and loved his wife - his first wife, and then when she had died, his second wife - and the loving marriages had produced many loving children, probably all as industrious and upright and kind and golden and - "good. So good." He would deny that, of course, but this was irrefutable: "Captain Vickery knows you are good." Too good to read such a letter. She covered her eyes with her hands for a moment. How could she write this to someone so good? How?

"I would never want to hurt you or give you pain." Writing any more pain would automatically put him on the defensive, swearing to her again that the flogging had not been her fault. There was no point in dredging up that old game of guilt and denial and forgiveness and goodness. Was the man a saint? She did not want to find out. It was better left alone. Let him be.

"It might be that you"... What? How to phrase it to avoid an immediate denial and an outburst of heroic self-sacrifice on his part? Gently, or else it would sound like she was accusing him of being a scrub. "that your feelings"... She stared at the ceiling, now violet. She balled her hands into fists and rubbed at her brow. He was not a scrub, not at all. He was good. That was the problem. That made it all the harder. He would feel a duty toward her. And then, of all horrors, what if there was a child? How long before she would know, one way or another? What sort of a child was got from such a man? Her heart felt a jabbing hot surge of venom that made her want to be sick.

She scrawled "take me to the cottage with the roses" and quickly folded the paper several times and dropped it with the pencil into her shoe beside the bed. She rolled over onto her side, clutching the pillow hard to her heart as if to withhold it from bursting.


[continued in Coimbra, Friday morning, 19th May