A Close Run Thing by Allan Mallinson Read Free Book Online

come from the weather, for it was seasonally warm and dry outside. Hervey’s sick-quarters were no cell in the purely figurative sense, for they had every appearance of the clink’s lodgings. The walls were white and in poor repair. A crucifix above his bed was their one adornment. The bed was the only piece of furniture except for a prie-dieu with three books. As Johnson arranged the breakfast in a niche of the thick wall, Hervey picked up each book in turn. The Latin bible, strangely perhaps for a son of the cloth, was the first he had ever opened, and he felt a mild revulsion at seeing the scriptures rendered thus – the Englishman’s revulsion at the martyrdom of Tyndale and others for the vernacular. The second volume was in Spanish,
El Via de Perfección
, and he puzzled for a time whether this was ‘The Way
to
’ or ‘The Way
of
Perfection’, for his Spanish was still rough. But he understood enough to learn that it was the testimony of St Teresa, the mystic from Avila about whom he knew little, and
that
only because his father had once made a study of the works of St John of the Cross. If he had felt uneasy at the Vulgate, however, the third volume might have thoroughly revolted him, for in the common consciousness of Hervey and his kind the very word
Jesuit
proclaimed every perfidy imaginable, and this volume was the work of St Ignatius of Loyola, no less.
    But the title intrigued rather than repelled him –
Exercitia Spiritualia Sancti
. The coupling seemed somehow discrepant: he had studied books on exercises for light cavalry, manuals on sword exercises and pistol exercises, signalling exercises even, but
spiritual
exercises – an altogether arresting notion. He sat down and began to leaf through its pages while at the same time struggling to wrest the stringy meat of the fowl’s leg from its bone.
    Meanwhile, Private Johnson had slipped from the cell without his noticing. By the time he reappeared only bones remained of the fowl, and Hervey was wholly engrossed in
The Spiritual Exercises
. Johnson was grinning broadly but unseen, for Hervey did not immediately lift his head.
    ‘Mr Evans says this sister will change thee bandages now, sir!’ announced his groom at length.
    In his struggle with the complex Latin constructions of St Ignatius’ epilogue, Hervey did not catch this communication from the surgeon. Nor did Johnson wait for any acknowledgement: he was out of the door with the speed of one of the ferrets which travelled in his valise and supplemented the rations with rabbits. He had no intention of being the butt of Hervey’s protests when he tumbled to.
    Hervey looked up absently and was all but transfixed by the image of other-worldliness. A white-habited nun, head bowed, holding strips of cloth and a bowl of steaming water, stood framed in the arched doorway like a phantom, albeit of a distinctly celestial kind. As she stepped into the cell, and light from the window fell on her, he saw that her overmantle was more blood-stained than white, though the habit beneath was brown like those of the nuns in Spain. Her face, what little of it was revealed by the wimple, was also smeared with blood and looked excessively drawn, though it was not old. In other circumstances it might have been described as prettyish, but a haunted look made any such worldly adjective inappropriate. It was certainly unlike those of the Spanish sisters, some of whose more sensual features had been decidedly tempting.
    Suddenly he recollected himself and sprang up, though pain stabbed his thigh as he did so, adding to his discomposure.
    ‘I am sorry, Sister, but I was not expecting—’ he began in French. ‘I really think it better if the surgeon attends to this.’
    ‘Sir, the surgeon has been working throughout the night,’ she replied, in the measured voice of the Languedoc, by contrast with Hervey’s more guttural Alsace, and with evident distaste. ‘There are many soldiers – private soldiers – French