Julia Gregson - Band of Angels

Also by Julia Gregson

East of the Sun

JULIA GREGSON

A TOUCHSTONE BOOK
PUBLISHED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY

Touchstone

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2004 by Julia Gregson

Originally published in Great Britain in 2004 by Orion, an Hachette Livre
UK company

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof
in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights
Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone trade paperback edition May 2010

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Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gregson Julia.

Band of angels : a novel / Julia Gregson.

p. cm.

1. Young WomenEnglandFiction. 2. NursesFiction. 3. British

UkraineCrimeaFiction. 4. Crimean War, 18531856Fiction. I. Title.

PR6107.R44494B36 2010

823.92dc22

2009042198

ISBN 978-1-4391-0113-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4391-1778-1 (ebook)

For Vicki, Richard, Caroline, and Poppy

Id like to thank Daphne Tilley, for taking me on a long-distance ride across Snowdon to the Lleyn Peninsula, where I discovered the drovers roads and the beginnings of my story. Jenny and David Clifford, for lending me their house. Turkish Airlines, for flying me to Istanbul, where I took a boat across the Bosphorus and saw Florence Nightingales room at the Barrack Hospital; Alex Attewell, director of the Florence Nightingale Museum at St. Thomass Hospital in London for his advice. Special thanks to Delia.

For love and support, thanks to my late mother, Vicki Sutton; to my sister Caroline; to Sarah, Charlotte, Hugo, Natasha, and Poppy; and, of course, Richard, for patiently reading all those drafts. I owe Kate Shaw a big debt of gratitude for her advice and support, and many thanks to my agent, Clare Alexander, for her professionalism and encouragement.

Wales 1844

When I say Charge, said Deio, Charge!

She hesitated for a moment. The sea was high and her pony already excited. She leaned forward.

Wait! Wait! Wait! he bellowed against the wind. Not till I say.

The flounces on her pantaloons were streaked with mud and the dark stains from her stirrup leathers would not wash out. Mair would be so angry.

Now, he said. Go!

It was always the same, the split second between the order and its execution, the moment when she saw it all: her pony red-eyed, iron-mouthed, out of control. The shock of falling, the crunch of her bones. Mother and Father, Eliza and Mair, trudging behind her small coffin. Mothers one red rose hurled into the raw earth.

I am coming, she shouted into the snarling wind. For Wales, for glory.

Now that they were galloping, the wet sand made a thrumming sound under Plovers feet and the waves crashed like falling buildings.

I am flying, she thought. I am God and I am flying. Ahead, in a cloud of sand, was Deios pony, and beyond him the waves and the cliff.

They were turning now, jumping the swirling eddies, jumping through air, around the curve of the beach, faster and faster. When he wrestled his pony to a halt near the rock pools his face was wet with wind tears.

Oh Deio, she said. She flew. I could hardly hold her.

His pony, a mad little black thing scarcely broken, snatched at its bit and showed the whites of its eyes.

Again, she said. Come on.

No.

Why not, peasant? You are not the boss of everything.

Dont call me that. The charge is over. We won. You dont keep doing a thing once youve done it.

She watched him pull an old fob watch from his buckskin breeches. Almost everything he did had magic for her. He was twelve years old, with jet black hair and dark green eyes. A cast in his right eye, more pronounced when he was being perverse or was tired, gave him a certain air of the gypsy.

Oh goddamn and blind it. Tis half past one, he said.

Please, Deio, dont tease, dont. If Im late, Ill get a lathering.

Caw, caw, caw, he cried at a group of seagulls flying above his head. He leaned over his ponys shoulder and flicked her with the length of elder he used as a crop. It hurt a bit, but she wouldnt tell-tale-tit any more than she would about the other tests.

I am going with Da to the blacksmiths. His father was a drover, he always had interesting things to do.

Now they were climbing up the narrow sheep path that led to the bad stretch of cliff that they called Giants Mouth, and the wind was tugging at her hair with a ferocity that pleased her. They loved this place, forbidden to all local children ever since Ceris Jones, a fishermans daughter from Abersoch, had gone over the edge during a picnic and been carried home stone-cold dead on a sheep hurdle.

Up here the air was pure and earthy, with the boom of the sea below and waves bashing and bubbling like great gobs of spit between the black teeth of the rocks, and you could hardly breathe for fear that your foot would catch a loose stone or a piece of wet grass and youd go plunging and cartwheeling down through space, down and down and down forever.

They got off their ponies and stared toward the horizon. It was clear enough to see Bardsey Island. Without looking at her and with no change of expression he put his arm around her.

Theres an apple tree in the Dinas Field, he said. Well get some tomorrow. Ill hold you up to the branches.

They cantered to the top of the track where it joined the main road to Aberdaron. He was always in flight and she was always half glad. At the top he made a comrades clenched fist. His house, Pantyporthman, the Drovers Hollow, was two miles to the left, up a track gouged with cattle hooves.

After she caught up with him and theyd said good-bye, there was a pain in her chest as she watched him canter back down the road. His wordsbugger bastardbut she needed them now and it was a bugger wanting to go back with him and wanting to go home, too. Ill hold you up to the branches, she whispered.

Now she stood with her back to the sea and looked down on the green blur of hills dotted with whitewashed cottages. The Lleyn Peninsula. Deio, who had ridden to London on a drove and who knew, said this was the end of Wales.