A Perfect Encounter

CHAPTER ONE

Episode 1

Harcourt Manor, residence of the Beauchamp family. December, 1854.

The post, having just been received at the front door by the maid Millie, is casually walked up the staircase by her to the first floor and softly knocks on the door of Elizabeth Beauchamp’s bedroom, a mischievous smile creasing her cheeks.

‘Who is it?’ came back the reply from within.

‘Tis Millie, mum. I have two letters for you and one for the Major and the Mistress.’

‘Come in Millie …., is the Major’s letter from Quentin?’

‘It is Mum, but beggar your pardon, your other letter isn’t from Master Quentin; I’ve not seen this writing before.’

‘Thank you Millie.’

The maid left Elizabeth’s room and sought out the Major, whom she found in the garden admiring his roses and sniffing at the more fragrant ones, smiling as he did so, a smile and good temper that would be of short duration.

‘Aha! I have correspondence, thank you Millie.’

Very familiar with his eldest son’s handwriting, he tore the letter open without the use of a paper knife, too eager to open and read his treasured letter. His jovial mood soon turned to concern when he saw the origin of the letter.

Military Hospital

Constantinople

7th November 1854

Dear Mater and Pater,

It is with profound regret that I have to inform you that I will be invalided out of the Lancers due to injuries sustained during the battle at Balaclava.

I cannot, I must not relay the details of the action as the whole affair is under review. What I can say is, I was in a charge of the full light brigade and I was severely wounded, I think it is fair to say that your son Quentin would not be writing this now but for a corporal medical orderly who rescued me from the battlefield and stayed with me until I was in the care of the doctors.

The soldier, to whom I refer, is known to us both. He is Edward Seagrave, son of one of our farmers, Charles Seagrave, of Five Oaks farm. Please convey our respects to him, Charles that is and that he should be extremely proud of his son.

As for myself, I am too weak to travel yet so do not expect to greet me until the New Year. How I long to see you all.

Sincerely your eldest son

Quentin

PS

I have written to Lizzie but break the news to her gently before giving her the letter.

Major Timothy Beauchamp stood in his rose garden gathering his thoughts in stunned silence. Finally, recovering his composure, he headed off in pursuit of Millie who is about to go below stairs as the Major waylays her.

‘Millie! He calls in an urgent undertone. ‘Were there any other letters delivered today?’

‘Why yes Major, there were two others for Mrs. Beauchamp junior, she has them in her room.’

The Major is exasperated. ‘Millie, in future you are to bring all mail to me is that understood?’

‘Err…yes, Major, very good sir.’ She scampered off upset and confused. The Major, in exasperation, stormed off in search of his wife, Florence, whom he found in the morning room engrossed in her embroidery.

‘My dear, we have had some distressing news from, Quentin.’ Florence looked up from her needlework anxiously. ‘What has happened Tim. Is he alright?‘

‘He will be coming home, Florence, he has been badly injured in action. He states in his letter that there is some controversy, howsoever that may be, he asks that, Elizabeth, be forewarned before she opens her letter.’

‘Where is her letter Tim?’

‘Millie has already……….’ An agonized scream, pierces the Major’s reply mid-sentence, prompting looks of alarm on their faces.

‘Too late,’ the Major says sternly, ‘you must go and comfort her now, Florence; it is inadvisable in her condition to get so impassioned.’ The Major retired to his study to reflect on the events of the past half hour. He was there still when Florence, herself in tears, came in holding another letter. He studied her tortured facial expression, before rising and moving close to her, saying. ‘Come, come, my dear, whatever injuries he sustained he has overcome them and, thank God, he will be home directly.’ Florence merely raised her eyes to fix on him a glowering look of pained grief, then lifted the letter in her hand and offered it to him: the writing was not his sons.

Military Headquarters

Whitehall

17th December 1854

Dear Madam,

It is with much regret that it is my duty to inform you that after sustaining life threatening injuries in battle, 2nd Lieutenant Quentin Beauchamp was evacuated to the Ottoman Military Hospital in Constantinople.

After initially making a gradual improvement, the officer in question was due to be repatriated home, discharged unfit for duty. Unfortunately due to the insanitary conditions at the hospital, an outbreak of typhoid occurred that quickly became an epidemic.

I have to tell you that your husband contracted the disease and succumbed to it within two days. We are assured, the Turkish physicians did all they could to save Lieutenant Beauchamp, but it is believed that his injuries had weakened him too much.

Words I realize, cannot assuage the feeling, of the great loss you have endured, but you may take comfort in the heroic courage he showed under fire and in facing his destiny.

Sincerely

Yours in Sympathy

LT. Col. Henry Locke-Flint

The Beauchamp’s, demoralized and heartbroken, went into prolonged mourning. Each member of the family except one, Crispin, the younger brother of Quentin, were stricken with a grief so intense and all-consuming that days and weeks merged without any sense of purpose to their lives.

Quentin’s commendation of Edward Seagrave was all but forgotten, an obligation to be undertaken when reminded by time.

CHAPTER TWO

One year later.

It is November 1855. The Russians have evacuated Sevastopol and the allied army of Britain and France, Turkey and Sardinia anticipate a Russian winter better than the previous one out on the Russian steppe.

Edward Seagrave has spent a year and a half under canvas assisting the nurses looking after comrades or riding out on the occasional patrol or sortie. On one such sortie, he returned with two broken front teeth, and an angry sabre’s slash on his cheek: the result of being thrown from his horse after she had baulked at a jump, to his embarrassment; all the more acutely aggravated by the humour and ridicule of the troop in the mess.

‘Hey! Corp,’ a private shouted out, ‘they don’t give out medals do they for fallen heroes, or do they?’….. Snigger.

‘You’ll find out next time we go out, Pt. Laughlin, you can ride ‘Gypsy’. Edward’s bay mare. There is an immediate outburst of good humoured banter among the troopers. Edward Seagrave’s sabre cut healed quickly with minimal scarring; his teeth cracked and chipped were not unsightly: his pride being the principal injury. Edward, now twenty two and a veteran of two campaigns on the peninsula had seen in the New Year as acting sergeant. His good friend, Sergeant Angus Donald, company sergeant, had been fatally wounded after being run through with a lance in a skirmish with Russian cavalry and Edward was his replacement.

Angus Donald, a married man, left a poor wife, Mary and a young son of seven, Duncan. Mary Allen had loved Angus. Angus had taken pity on her when she had begged for food outside the Barracks in Cork. It had been 1846, the beginning of the great famine. A potato blight had overnight destroyed the major part of the potato crop (the staple diet and cash crop of the Irish), leaving hundreds of thousands of peasants without food or the means of acquiring it.

Military camp followers were prohibited from joining the Regiments after the Napoleonic wars, however that may be, certain essential trades and useful occupations were still required, also a certain number of married soldiers in a Regiment were allowed to have their wives accompany them to the colonies or wars.

‘Do yer need a wife sir?’ Mary had asked him, matter of factually in her Irish drawl. In actual fact he did. He obtained permission and she became his wife, nurse, and cook, taking in washing for payment from others in the Regiment who could afford it.

By early March 1856, the war in the Crimea was resolved and Sergeant Edward Seagrave and the Regiment (the 12th Lancers) prepared to withdraw from the peninsula, then board ships of the Fleet to repatriate them home to good ‘Old England’. Mary Donald, nee Allen, her prospects and those of her son, in grave doubt, (as it has been long since her husband’s demise) is making purposeful but devious plans to obtain a new husband, which, at a victory celebration she’d hoped would soon to transpire.

Edward is a dark brown haired, slim five foot eleven inch handsome but naïve young man, about to be ensnared in a matrimonial web.

‘Edward, will you not dance with me, or are you too drunk to put a foot before the tuther’. ‘I do not drink Mary, as well you know, neither do I dance.’ He said in mild truculence.

‘We’ll see about that mi lad,’ she says under her breath. ‘Come and take a cup of tea with me then for auld time’s sake and for poor Angus.’

‘Oh alright Mary, you do know how to tug at the heartstrings, do you not?’ ‘I’ll be tugging more than that before the nights end, my lovely, see if I don’t,’ she says quietly to herself.

Mary was a comely looking woman of twenty seven, with long black hair and of short but shapely stature. Contrary to the prevalent perception portrayed, she could be a most faithful and devoted creature to her chosen quarry. Edward had always admired and respected her and it never entered his mind that she was a ‘femme fatale’. So, as he sat down with her and consumed a large mug of tea, liberally laced with Russian Vodka, he had not the remotest notion of anything untoward; not even after he had stumbled outrageously and foolishly in an exhibition of what can only be described as gyrations bordering on hysteria, that he in delusion thought akin to dancing. He awoke the next morning to the sound of Duncan giggling then calling,

‘Mammy, he’s awake.’ ‘Wh… Where are my trousers and tunic, boy?’ Edward demanded.

The boy scurried off returning almost immediately with his mother.

‘Good morning, Edward, my lover, how are you today?’

‘What have I done, Mary, where is my uniform? ‘Oh! My wallet, where is my wallet?’ He is alarmed. Mary, annoyed at an apparent accusation of stealing, responds indignantly.

‘Your wallet is beneath your pillow, EDWARD. Do you not know me better? And your uniform has been washed. It was filthy from your bizarre behaviour last night,’ she attempted successfully to exonerate her own conduct.

‘I …. Forgive me Mary, I did not….. I have a headache, but tell me what happened last evening; was I improper or dishonourable in any way?

‘You are still virtuous, if that is what you are asking,’ replied Mary. Her scheme did originally include, in deceiving him into believing he had indeed been promiscuous. ‘But not for the lack of trying, I might add.’ She knew this to be true, because she had actively encouraged him until, feeling the pangs of guilt caused her to amend her designs.

‘I… I am in complete ignorance of what came over me, Mary. Please forgive me if I have caused you any grief. I truly am ashamed of my conduct; to have betrayed my best friend’s memory by vulgar behaviour towards his wife is deeply distressing for me to come to terms with. His eyes pleading, he asks. ‘Am I forgiven?‘

I love you, Edward, (she lied), of course you are forgiven, but then you would not require my forgiveness if we were married.’ Edward, taken entirely unawares, struggles to find the words to answer her… was it a, proposal, he wonders.

‘I had not thought of being married, Mary, and I would have thought it was too soon after, ‘Angus’s,’ death for you to think on it.’

‘Dear Edward, too soon are words I have not ‘tyme’ for.’

Mary’s accent becoming more pronounced as her emotions rose.

‘I may at any time be banished from the barracks, thrown out and with a little boy to take care of I am fearful.’

‘Mrs. Donald.’

A new but familiar voice enters the room.

‘May I enter?’

Without waiting for a reply, a 2nd Lieutenant representing the quartermaster walks into the married quarter. Edward hides behind the curtain of the bed. ‘Mrs. Donald, I am instructed to inform you that, since your husband, Sergeant Donald, is now deceased you are in breach of the terms of your contract with the Regiment. My advice Madam, err… is that you vacate your quarters within the week. If you do so, you will receive ten pounds of money owed to Sergeant Donald and a warrant entitling you to passage on one of her majesty’s ships returning to England. It is imperative that you act on this matter with urgency Madam, as the Regiment sails for India at the week’s end.’

Mrs. Donald became Mrs. Seagrave at a ceremony attended by the Regimental Chaplain, Registrar and Adjutant the next day, Sunday 9th March 1856.

CHAPTER THREE

A new addition to a grieving family arrived on 13th of March 1855, a baby girl, Caroline May Beauchamp. Little May was near worshipped by her mother and both grandparents: she would never know the loss felt by Elizabeth or her grandparents on the paternal side.

It had been three months since that dreadful day when the communication of Quentin’s death arrived at the manor. During the interim, both the Major and Florence were at turmoil with the world and each other. So the running of some family ventures fell unfortunately on the shoulders of Crispin Beauchamp.

Elizabeth felt alone, although Florence was constantly at her side during her confinement. But, after the birth of May, her feeling of isolation intensified when an incident occurred one morning whilst lying awake in bed.

‘Good morning sister.’ Crispin had entered Elizabeth’s bedroom un-invited and was leering at the young woman lasciviously.

Crispin, not a moral man, the complete opposite of his deceased brother and not worthy to replace him, had designs on Elizabeth.

‘What is the meaning of this, Crispin, do you never knock on doors and wait for an answer before you enter?’

‘Well, I am the master of the house now, until father is capable of being so, that is, and also his inheritor now that Quentin is dead. But you are right I should have knocked, I wish though, that in time you would come to see me as the ‘persona grata’, a natural successor