smiled and sniggered. Dammartin held up a hand to silence them.
Josie took a step closer to the French Captain, the weight of the raised rifle pulling at her arms. She showed no weakness, just tightened her finger slightly against the trigger and took another step closer, keeping the rifle’s muzzle aimed at Dammartin’s chest. ‘Lower your sword, sir,’ she said, ‘or I shall put a bullet through you.’
‘No, Josie!’ came her father’s strained voice.
‘Think of what my men will do if you pull the trigger,’ Dammartin said.
‘I think of what you will do if I do not,’ she replied.
Their gazes locked, each refusing to look away, as if that would determine whether the sabre blade or the rifle trigger moved first.
‘Josie!’ Her father coughed again, and she heard his gasp of pain. ‘Lay down your weapon.’
Her eyes darted to her father’s face, unable to believe his words. ‘We will not surrender,’ she said in a parody of his earlier words.
‘Josie.’ His bloodstained fingers beckoned her down, their movement weak and fluttering with a control that was fast ebbing.
One last look at Dammartin, who let his blade fall back a little, and, keeping the rifle pointed in his direction, she crouched lower to hear what her father would say.
‘Our fight is done. We can do no more this day.’
‘No—’ she started to protest, but he silenced her with a touch of his hand.
‘I am dying.’
‘No, Papa,’ she whispered, but she knew from the blood that soaked his jacket and the glistening pallor of his face that what he said was true.
‘Give up your weapon, Josie. Captain Dammartin is an honourable man. He will keep you safe.’
‘No! How can you say such a thing? He is the enemy. I will not do it, Papa!’
‘Defiance of an order is insubordination,’ he said, and tried to laugh, but the smile on his face was a grimace, and the effort only brought on a fresh coughing fit.
The sight of the blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth brought a cry to Josie’s lips. ‘Papa!’ Without so much as a glance as Dammartin, she abandoned the rifle on the floor, and clutched one hand to her father’s. The other touched gently to his face.
The light was fading from his eyes. ‘Trust him, Josie,’ he whispered so quietly that she had to bend low to catch his words. ‘Enemy or not, the Dammartins are good men.’
She stared at him, unable to comprehend why he would say such a thing of the man who looked at them with such hatred in his eyes.
‘Promise me that you will yield to him.’
She felt the tremble in her lower lip and bit down hard upon it to hide the weakness.
‘Promise me, Josie,’ her father whispered, and she could hear the plea in his failing voice.
She said the only words that she could. ‘I promise, Papa.’ And she pressed a kiss to his cheek.
‘That’s my girl.’ His words were the faintest whisper.
Josie’s tears rolled, warm and wet.
‘Captain Dammartin,’ Lieutenant Colonel Mallington commanded, and it seemed that something of the old power was back in his voice.
Josie’s heart leapt. Perhaps he would not die after all. She felt him move her fingers to his other hand, watched him reach out towards Dammartin, saw the strength of his hand as he gripped the Frenchman’s fingers.
‘I commend Josephine to your care. See that she is kept safe until you can return her to the British lines.’
Her father’s gaze held the Frenchman’s. It was the last sight Lieutenant Colonel Mallington saw. A sigh sounded within the cold stone room of the Portuguese monastery, and then there was silence, and her father’s hand was limp and lifeless within Josie’s.
‘Papa?’ she whispered.
His eyes still stared unseeing at the Frenchman.
‘Papa!’ The realisation of what had just happened cracked her voice. She pressed her cheek to his, wrapped her arms around his bloodstained body, and the sob that tore from her was to those that had heard a thousand cries and screams of pain and death still terrible to hear. Outside the room men that had both perpetrated and suffered injury for the past hour stood silent with respect.
When at last she let her father’s body go and moved her face from his, it was Dammartin’s fingers that swept a shutting of the Lieutenant Colonel’s eyes, and Dammartin’s hand that took hers to raise her to her feet. She barely heard the order that he snapped to his men, or noticed the parting of the sea of men to let her through. Neither did she notice Captain Dammartin’s grim expression as he led her from the room.
* * *
The French camped that night in the same deserted village in which they had fought, the men sleeping within the shells of the buildings, their campfires peppering light across the darkness of the rocky landscape. The smell of cooking lingered in the air even though the meagre stew had long since been devoured.
Pierre Dammartin, Captain of the 8th Dragoons in Napoleon’s Army of Portugal, had wanted the English Lieutenant Colonel taken alive. The only reason that he had tempered his assault against the riflemen hiding in the empty monastery was because he had heard that it was Mallington who commanded them. He wanted Mallington alive because he wanted the pleasure of personally dispatching the Lieutenant Colonel to his maker.
For a year and a half Dammartin had wanted to meet Mallington across a battlefield. He had dreamt of looking into Mallington’s eyes while he told him who he was. He wanted to ask the Englishman the question he had been asking himself for the past eighteen months. Barely an hour ago it had seemed that his prayers had been answered and Mallington delivered into his hands in the most unlikely of places.
Mallington had not been easily beaten despite the difference in numbers, one section of a British company against one hundred and twenty mounted men backed by a whole battalion of infantry. Indeed, Mallington’s men had fought to the death rather than let themselves be taken, refusing Dammartin’s offers that they surrender. The fight had lasted longer than Dammartin could have anticipated. And even at its conclusion, when Dammartin had walked into that blood-splattered room in the monastery, he had not been satisfied. True, Dammartin had looked into Mallington’s face and revealed his identity. But Mallington’s reaction had not been what he expected, and there had been no time for questions. The moment for which the Captain had so longed had left him unexpectedly disgruntled. Especially because of Mallington’s daughter.
He stood by the window in the dilapidated cottage that was situated at the foot of the road that led up to the monastery. A few men still drifted around the place. He could hear the soft murmur of their voices and see their dark shapes by the light of the fires. Soon they would be bedding down for the night, just as the thousands of men in the canonments around Santarém not so far away to the south would be doing. Above, the sky was a spread of deep, dark, inky blue studded with the brilliance of diamond stars.
