Читать книгу Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady - Diane Gaston - Страница 9

Badajoz Spain—1812

Jack Vernon dodged through the streets and alleys of Badajoz as if the very devil were at his heels. Several devils, in fact.

Drunken, marauding British soldiers poured out of doorways and set buildings afire, the flames illuminating their gargoyle-like faces. Bodies of their victims littered the pavement, French soldiers and ordinary citizens, men, women and children, their bright-hued Spanish clothing stained red with blood. Jack’s ears rang with the roar of the fires, screams of women, wails of babies, but no sound was as terrible as the laughter of madmen with a lust to rape, plunder and pillage.

Jack gripped his pistol in his hand while several red-coated marauders chased him, hoping for the few coins in his pockets. These were the same men at whose sides he’d scaled the walls of Badajoz earlier that day while French musket fire rained down on them. Now they would impale him with their bayonets for the sheer sport of it.

The men were consumed with bloodlust, a result of the desperately hard fighting they’d been through that left almost half their number dead. A rumour spread through the ranks that Wellington had issued permission for three hours of plunder. It had been like a spark to tinder. The rumour was untrue, but once they had begun there was no stopping them.

The real nightmare had begun.

After the French retreated to San Crisobal and the looting started, Jack’s major ordered Jack and a few others to accompany him on a patrol of the streets. ‘We shall stop the looting,’ his commanding officer had said.

The plunderers almost immediately turned on Jack’s patrol, who ran for their lives. Separated from the others, all Jack wanted now was a safe place to hide until the carnage was over.

He ran through the maze of streets, turning so often he no longer knew where he was or how to get out. Finally the pounding of feet behind him ceased, and he slowed, daring to look back and to catch his breath. He proceeded slowly, flattening himself against the ancient walls, and hoping the sound of his laboured breathing did not give him away. All he needed to find was an open door or a nook in an alley.

Shouts and screams still echoed and dark figures ran past him like phantoms in the night. The odour of burning wood, of spirits, blood and gunpowder, assaulted his nostrils.

Jack sidled along the wall until he turned into a small courtyard. From the light of a burning building he could see a British soldier holding down a struggling woman. A boy tried to pry the man’s hands off her, but another soldier plucked the boy off and tossed him on a nearby body. The man laughed as if he were merely playing a game of skittles.

A third soldier picked the boy up and raised a knife, as if to slash the boy’s throat. Jack charged into the courtyard, roaring like an ancient Celt. He fired his pistol. The soldier dropped the knife and the boy and ran, his companion with him. The man attacking the woman seemed to give Jack’s attack no heed.

Fumbling to undo his trousers, he laughed. ‘Come join the fun. Plenty for you, as well.’

Jack suddenly could see this man wore the red sash of an officer. The man turned and revealed his face.

Jack knew him.

He was Lieutenant Edwin Tranville, aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General Lionel Tranville, his father. Jack grew up knowing them both. Before Jack’s father had been dead a year, General Tranville had made Jack’s mother his mistress. Jack had only been eleven years old.

He stepped back into the shadows before Edwin could recognise him. He’d always known Edwin to be a bully and a coward, but he never suspected this level of depravity.

‘Leave the woman alone,’ Jack ordered.

‘Won’t do it.’ Edwin’s words were slurred. He was obviously very intoxicated. ‘Want her too much. Deserve her.’ A demonic expression came over his weak-chinned face and his pale blond hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it away with his hand and pointed a finger at the woman, ‘Don’t fight me or I’ll have to kill you.’

Jack stuck his pistol in his belt and drew his sword, but the woman managed to knock Edwin off balance and now stood between Jack and her attacker. She pushed at Edwin’s chest, driving him away while the boy vaulted on to his back. Edwin cried out in surprise and thrashed about, trying to pull the child off. He knocked the woman to the ground and finally managed to seize the boy by his throat.

Jack gripped the handle of his sword, but before he could take a step forwards, the woman sprang to her feet, the runaway soldier’s knife in her hand.

‘Non!’ she cried.

She slashed at Edwin like a wildcat defending her cub. Edwin backed away, but the drink seemed to have affected his judgement.

‘Stop it!’ he cried, the smile still on his face. ‘Or I’ll break his neck.’ He laughed as if he’d made a huge jest. ‘I can kill him with my hands.’

‘Non!’ the woman cried again and she lunged towards him.

Edwin stumbled and the boy squirmed out of his grasp. The woman sliced into Edwin’s cheek with the knife, cutting a long gash from ear to mouth.

Edwin wailed and dropped to his knees, pressing his hand against his bleeding face. ‘I’ll kill you for that!’

The woman shook her head and lifted her arms to sink the knife deep into Edwin’s exposed back.

She was suddenly grabbed from behind by another British officer.

‘Oh, no, you don’t, señora.’ He disarmed her with ease.

A second officer joined him. They were a captain and a lieutenant wearing the uniforms of the Royal Scots, a regiment Tranville had once commanded.

Edwin pointed to the woman. ‘She tried to kill me!’ He made an effort to stand, but swayed and collapsed in a heap on the cobblestones, passed out from drink and pain.

The captain held on to the woman. ‘You’ll have to come with us, señora.’

‘Captain—’ the lieutenant protested.

Jack sheathed his sword and showed himself. ‘Wait.’

Both men whirled around, and the lieutenant aimed his pistol at Jack’s chest.

Jack held up both hands. ‘I am Ensign Vernon of the East Essex. He was trying to kill the boy and rape the woman. I saw it. He and two others. The others ran.’

‘What boy?’ the captain asked.

A figure sprang from the shadows. The lieutenant turned the pistol on him.

Jack put his hand on the lieutenant’s arm. ‘Do not shoot. It is the boy.’

The captain held the woman’s arm while he walked over to Edwin, rolling him on to his back with his foot. He looked up at the lieutenant. ‘Good God, Landon, do you see who this is?’

‘General Tranville’s son,’ Jack answered.

‘You jest. What the devil is he doing here?’ the lieutenant asked.

Jack pointed to Edwin. ‘He tried to choke the boy and she defended him with the knife.’

Blood still oozed from Edwin’s cheek, but he remained unconscious.

‘He is drunk,’ Jack added.

The boy ran to the body of the French soldier. ‘Papa!’

‘Non, non, non, Claude,’ the woman cried, pulling away from the captain.

‘Deuce, they are French.’ The captain knelt down next to the body and placed his fingers on the man’s throat. ‘He’s dead.’

The woman said, ‘Mon mari.’ Her husband.

The captain rose and strode back to Edwin. He swung his leg as if to kick him, but stopped himself. Edwin rolled over again and curled into a ball, whimpering.

The boy tugged at his father’s coat. ‘Papa! Papa! Réveillez!’

‘Il est mort, Claude.’ The woman gently coaxed the boy away.

The captain looked at Jack. ‘Did Tranville kill him?’

Jack shook his head. ‘I did not see.’

‘Deuce. What will happen to her now?’ The captain gazed back at the woman.

Shouts sounded nearby, and the captain straightened. ‘We must get them out of here.’ He gestured to the lieutenant. ‘Landon, take Tranville back to camp. Ensign, I’ll need your help.’

Lieutenant Landon looked aghast. ‘You do not intend to turn her in?’

‘Of course not,’ said the captain sharply. ‘I’m going to find her a safe place to stay. Maybe a church. Or somewhere.’ He glared at both his lieutenant and at Jack. ‘We say nothing of this. Agreed?’

‘He ought to hang for this,’ the lieutenant protested.

‘He’s the general’s son,’ the captain shot back. ‘If we report his crime, the general will have our necks, not his son’s.’ He tilted his head towards the woman. ‘He may even come after her and the boy.’ The captain looked down at Edwin, now quiet. ‘This bastard is so drunk he may not even know what he did.’

‘Drink is no excuse.’ After several seconds, the lieutenant nodded his head. ‘Very well. We say nothing.’

The captain turned to Jack. ‘Do I have your word, Ensign?’

‘You do, sir.’ Jack did not much relish either father or son knowing he’d been here.

Glass shattered nearby and the roof of a burning building collapsed, sending sparks high into the air.

‘We must hurry,’ the captain said, although he paused to extend his hand to Jack. ‘I am Captain Deane. That is Lieutenant Landon.’

Jack shook his hand. ‘Sir.’

Captain Deane turned to the woman and her son. ‘Is there a church nearby?’ His hand flew to his forehead. ‘Deuce. What is the French word?’ He tapped his brow.

‘Église?’

‘Non, no église, capitaine,’ the woman replied. ‘My…my maison—my house. Come.’ ‘You speak English, madame?’

‘Oui, un peu—a little.’

The lieutenant threw Edwin over his shoulder.

‘Take care,’ the captain said to him.

The lieutenant gave a curt nod, glanced around and trudged off in the same direction they had come.

The captain turned to Jack. ‘I want you to come with me.’ He looked over at the Frenchman’s body. ‘We will have to leave him here.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come.’ The woman, with a despairing last glance towards her husband, put her arm around her son’s shoulder and gestured for them to follow her.

They made their way through the alley to a doorway facing a narrow street not far from where they had been.

‘My house,’ she whispered.

The door was ajar. The captain signalled them to stay while he entered. A few moments later he returned. ‘No one is here.’

Jack stepped inside. The place had been ransacked. Furniture was shattered, dishes broken, papers scattered everywhere. The house consisted only of a front room, a kitchen and a bedroom. He kicked debris aside to make room for them to walk. Captain Deane pulled what remained of a bed’s mattress into the front room, clearing a space for it in the corner. The woman came from the kitchen with cups of water for them. The boy stayed at her side, looking numb.

Jack drank thirstily.

‘Can you keep watch?’ the captain asked after drinking his fill. ‘I’ll sleep for an hour or so, then relieve you.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Jack replied. He might as well stand watch. He certainly could not sleep. Indeed, he wondered if he would ever sleep again.

They barricaded the door with some of the broken furniture, and Jack salvaged a chair whose seat and legs were still intact. He placed it at the window and sat.

The captain gestured for the woman and her son to sleep on the mattress. He sat on the floor, his back leaning against the wall.

Outside the sounds of carnage continued, but no one approached. Jack stared out on to a street that looked deceptively innocent and peaceful.

Perhaps by morning the carnage would be over, and Jack would be able to return to his camp. Perhaps his major and the others in their patrol would still be alive. Perhaps someone, before this war was over, would put a sword through Edwin Tranville’s heart for his part in this horror.

Jack reloaded his pistol and kept it at the ready. In the stillness, images flooded into his mind, over and over, flashing like torture, forcing him to relive the horror of this day.

His fingers itched to make the images stop, to capture them, imprison them, store them away so they would leave him alone.

The sky lightened as dawn arrived, but Jack still heard the drunken shouts, the musket shots, the screams. They were real. Even though it was day, the plundering continued.

Captain Deane woke and walked over to Jack, standing for a moment to listen.

‘By God, they are still at it.’ The captain rubbed his face. ‘Get some sleep, Ensign. We’ll wait. Maybe things will quieten down soon.’

Jack gave the captain his seat. He glanced at the corner of the room where the woman and boy lay. The boy was curled up in a ball and looked very young and vulnerable. The woman was awake.

Jack surveyed the room and started picking up the sheets of paper scattered about the floor. He examined them. Some sides were blank.

‘Do you need these?’ he asked the woman, holding up a fist full of paper.

‘Non.’ She turned away.

Some of the sheets appeared to contain correspondence, perhaps from loved ones at home. Jack felt mildly guilty for taking them, but his notebook was stored safely in his kit back at his regiment’s encampment and he’d not realised how badly he would need paper.

He found a wide piece of board and carried it to a spot of light from another window. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he placed the board on his lap and fished in his pockets for his wooden graphite pencil. Jack placed one of the sheets of paper on the board, and heaved a heavy breath.

He started to draw.

The images trapped in his brain flowed from his fingers to the tip of his pencil on to the paper. He could not get them out fast enough. He filled one, two, three sheets and still he was not done. He needed to draw them all.

Only then, after he’d captured every image, would he be free of them. Only then could he dare to rest. Only then could he sleep.