Chapter Fifteen
The English declare they will no longer respect neutrals on the sea; I will no longer recognise them on land.
Napoleon Bonaparte
A Coruña, Spain—January 16th, 1809
Captain Lucien Howard, the Earl of Ross, thought his nose was broken. His neck, too, probably, because he couldn’t move it at all. His horse lay upon him, her head bent sideways and liquid-brown eyes empty of life. A good mare she was, one that had brought him up the hard road from Lisboa through the snows of the Cantabrian Mountains and the slippery passways of mud and sleet. He swore silently and looked away.
It hurt to breathe, a worrying thought that, given the distance from any medical help. Another day and Napoleon and his generals would be all over the harbour. It was finished and the British had lost, the harsh winter eating into what was left of resistance and a mix-up with the ocean transports in from the southern port of Vigo.
God, if he wasn’t so badly hurt, he might have laughed, but the movement would have most likely killed him. It was so damn cold, his breath fogging as he fought for what little air he could drag in, but a mist had come up from the sea to mingle with the smoke of battle hanging thick across the valley.
Lucien was not afraid of death. It was the dying that worried him, the length and the breadth of it and the helplessness.
Lying back, he looked up into the heavens, hoping that it would be quick. He couldn’t pray; that sort of hope was long since past and had been for a while now. He could not even find the words to ask for forgiveness or penance. He had killed men, good and bad, in the name of king and country, but once one saw the whites of an enemy’s eyes, the old troths and promises held less sway than they once had.
A man was a man whatever language he spoke and more often than not a family would be waiting at home for their return. As his was. That thought sent a shaft of pain through the greater ache, but, resolving not to die with tears in his eyes, Lucien willed it away.
It was late, that much he did know, the sun deep on the horizon and only a little left of the day. He could see the lights of resin torches further away along the lines of the olive trees and the aloe hedges, searching for those who still lived. He could not summon the strength to call out as he lay there, a rough stone wall to one side and an old garden of sorts on the other.
Lucien imagined he could smell orange blossoms and wild flowers, but that was surely wrong. He wondered about the warmth that he felt as the peace of a contrition he long since should have made came unexpectedly.
‘Forgive me, Jesus, for I have sinned.’ Not so hard now in the final moments of his life. He smiled. No, not so hard at all.
* * *
The English soldier was covered in the blood of his horse, the residual warmth left in the large animal’s pelt saving him, allowing him life in the frigid cold dark dawn of a Galician January winter.
But not for long; his blond hair was pinked in a puddle of blood beneath his head and a wound at his neck wept more. The daybreak was sending its first light across the sky and as far as the eye could see there were bodies. English and French, she thought, entwined in death like friends. Only the generals could have imagined that such a sacrifice was worth it, the prime of each country gone before they had ever had the chance to live. She cursed out loud against the futility of war and removed the gold signet ring from the soldier’s finger to give to her father.
When his eyes flicked open the pale in them was startling in the early-morning light, almost see-through.
‘Not...dead...yet?’ There was disappointment and resignation in the broken question phrased in Spanish.
‘What hurts?’
He smiled. ‘What...does...not?’
The wide planes of his cheeks were bruised and his lip was badly cut, but even with the marks of war drawn from one end of him to the other he was beautiful; too beautiful to just die here unheralded and forgotten. Anger fortified resolve and she slashed at the gorse to one side of him, using the cleared ground to stand upon.
With space she pried a broken stake from a fence under his mount’s neck and managed to lift it up enough, twisting the carcass so that it fell away from him, swirls of mud staining the air.
He groaned, the noise one makes involuntarily when great pain breaks through a consciousness that cannot quite contain it.
‘Scream away, Ingles, if you will,’ she told him. ‘I most certainly would. Your friends have been evacuated by way of the sea and the French are in charge of the township itself, so nobody at all should hear you.’
My God, how tired she was of iron wills and masculine stoicism. Death was a for ever thing and if men taking their last breaths in a land far from their own could not weep for the sacrifice, then who else should?
Not her. Not her father. Not the officers safe with their horses on the transports home across a wild and stormy Biscay Bay. Other steeds roamed the streets of A Coruña, looking for succour, their more numerous and unluckier counterparts dead beneath the cliffs overhanging the beach, throats cut in clumsy acts of kindness.
Better dead than at the mercy of the enemy. Once she might have even believed that truism. Now she failed to trust in anything or anyone. The fury within alarmed her at times, but mostly she did not think on it. Adan and Bartolomeu had joined her now, their canvas stretcher pulled in.
‘You want us to take him back?’
She nodded. ‘Careful how you lift him.’
As Tomeu crouched down he scratched at a muddied epaulette. ‘He’s a capitán.’ The tinged gold was undeniable and her heart sank. Her father had begun to be uncertain of a Spanish triumph and was distancing himself from the politics of the region. An officer would be less welcome than a simple soldier to Enrique. More complex. Harder to explain.
‘Then we need to make sure he recovers to fight again for our cause.’
For some reason the man before her was beginning to mean something. A portent to victory or a prophecy of failure? She could not tell. All she did know was that the damaged fingers of his left hand had curled into her own, seeking comfort, and that despite all intentions to do otherwise she held them close, trying to bring warmth to his freezing skin.
He groaned again when they rolled him on to the canvas and she got the first glimpse of the wounds on his upper back, the fabric of his shirt shredded into slivers and the flesh hanging off him between it.
More than one sword had been used, she thought, and there had been a good deal of hatred in the action. The blood loss
