Читать книгу A Regency Captain's Prize - Margaret McPhee - Страница 8
ОглавлениеCentral Portugal—31 October 1810
High up in the deserted village of Telemos in the mountains north of Punhete, Josephine Mallington was desperately trying to staunch the young rifleman’s bleeding when the French began their charge. She stayed where she was, kneeling by the soldier on the dusty stone floor of the old monastery in which her father and his men had taken refuge. The French hail of bullets through the holes where windows had once stood continued as the French dragoon troopers began to surge forwards in a great mass, the sound of their pas de charge loud even above the roar of gunpowder.
‘En avant! En avant! Vive la République!’ She heard their cries.
All around was the acrid stench of gunpowder and of fresh spilt blood. Stones that had for three hundred years sheltered monks and priests and holy Mass now witnessed carnage. Most of her father’s men were dead, Sarah and Mary too. The remaining men began to run.
The rifleman’s hand within hers jerked and then went limp. Josie looked down and saw that life had left him, and, for all the surrounding chaos, the horror of it so shocked her that for a moment she could not shift her stare from his lifeless eyes.
‘Josie! For God’s sake, get over here, girl!’
Her father’s voice shook her from the daze, and she heard the thudding of the French axes as they struck again and again against the thick heavy wood of the monastery’s front door. She uncurled her fingers from those of the dead soldier and, slipping the shawl from her shoulders, she draped it to cover his face.
‘Papa?’ Her eyes roved over the bloody ruins.
Bodies lay dead and dying throughout the hall. Men that Josie had known in life lay still and grotesque in death—her father’s men—the men of the Fifth Battalion of the British 60th Regiment of Foot. Josie had seen death before, more death than any young woman should see, but never death like this.
‘Stay low and move quickly, Josie. And hurry—we do not have much time.’
On her hands and knees she crawled to where her father and a small group of his men crouched. Dirt and blood smeared their faces and showed as dark patches against the deep green of their jackets and the blue of their trousers.
She felt her father’s arms around her, pulling her into the huddle of men.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I am fine,’ she said, even though ‘fine’ was hardly the word to describe how she was feeling.
He nodded and set her from him. She heard her father speak again, but this time his words were not for her. ‘The door will not hold them much longer. We must make for the uppermost floor. Follow me.’
She did as her father instructed, responding to the strength and authority in his voice as much as any of his men would have done, pausing only to collect the rifle, cartridges and powder horn from a dead rifleman, and taking care to keep her eyes averted from the gaping wound in his chest. Clutching the rifle and ammunition to her, she fled with the men, following her father out of the hall, past the door through which the French axes had almost hacked, and up the wide stone staircase.
They ran up two flights of stairs and into a room at the front of the building. Miraculously the key was still in the lock of the door. As it turned beneath her father’s hand, she heard the resounding thud of the front door being thrown open and knew that the French were in. They heard the sound of many French feet below running into the great hall and then the booted footfalls began to climb the stairs that would lead them to the room that housed the few remaining riflemen.
There was little to mark Lieutenant Colonel Mallington from his riflemen save his bearing and the innate authority that he emanated. His jacket was of the same dark green, with black frogging, scarlet facings and silver buttons, but on his shoulder was a silver thread wing and around his waist was the red sash of rank. His riding boots were easily unnoticed and his fur-trimmed pelisse lay abandoned somewhere in the great hall below.
Within their hiding place, Josie listened while her father spoke to his men. ‘We need to draw this out as long as we possibly can, to give our messengers the best chance of reaching General Lord Wellington with the news.’ Lieutenant Colonel Mallington’s face was strong and fearless. He looked each one of his men in the eye.
Josie saw the respect on the riflemen’s faces.
Her father continued, ‘The French force are marching through these hills on a secret mission. General Foy, who leads the column of French infantry and its cavalry detachment, is taking a message from General Massena to Napoleon Bonaparte himself. He will travel first to Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain and then to Paris.’
The men stood quiet and listened to what their lieutenant colonel was saying.
‘Massena is requesting reinforcements.’
‘And General Lord Wellington knows nothing of it,’ added Sergeant Braun. ‘And if Massena gets his reinforcements…’
‘That is why it is imperative that Wellington is forewarned of this,’ said Lieutenant Colonel Mallington. ‘It is only half an hour since our men left with the message. If Foy and his army realise that we have despatched messengers, then they will go after them. We must ensure that does not happen. We must buy Captain Hartmann and Lieutenant Meyer enough time to get clear of these hills.’
The men nodded, thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, determined in their conviction.
‘And that is why we will not surrender this day,’ the Lieutenant Colonel said, ‘but fight to the death. Our sacrifice will ensure that Wellington will not be taken unawares by a reinforced French army, thus saving the lives of many of our men. Our six lives for our messengers.’ He paused and looked solemnly at his men. ‘Our six lives to save many.’
Within the room was silence, and beyond rang the clatter of French boots.
‘Six men to win a war,’ he finished.
‘Six men and one sharpshooting woman,’ said Josie, meeting her father’s gaze and indicating her rifle.
And then one by one the men began cheer. ‘For victory!’ they shouted.
‘For the King and for freedom!’ boomed Lieutenant Colonel Mallington.
A raucous hurrah sounded in response.
‘No man shall come through that door alive,’ said Sergeant Braun.
Another cheer. And one by one the men positioned themselves at either side of the door and readied their weapons.
‘Josie.’ Her father’s voice had quietened and softened in tone.
She came to him, stood beside him, knowing that this was it, knowing that there were no more escapes to be had. For all the men’s bravado, Josie was well aware what her father’s order would cost them all.
A single touch of his fingers against her cheek. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.
She kissed his hand. ‘There is nothing to forgive.’
‘I never should have brought you back here.’
‘I wanted to come,’ she said, ‘you know how I hated it in England. I’ve been happy here.’
‘Josie, I wish—’
But Lieutenant Colonel Mallington’s words were cut short. There was no more time to talk. A French voice sounded from beyond the door, demanding surrender.
Lieutenant Colonel Mallington drew Josie a grim smile. ‘We will not surrender!’ he bellowed in English.
Twice more the French voice asked that they yield, and twice more Lieutenant Colonel Mallington refused.
‘Then you have sealed your fate,’ said the highly accented voice in English.
Josie cut the paper of a cartridge with the gunflint to release the bullet, poured the gunpowder into the rifle’s barrel and rammed the bullet home before priming the lock. Her father gestured her to crouch closest to the corner furthest from the door. He signed for the men to hunker down and aim their weapons.
The French unleashed their musket fire, their bullets thudding into the thick wooden door.
Wait, instructed the Lieutenant Colonel’s hand signal.
For Josie that was the hardest time, crouched there in the small room, her finger poised by the trigger, her heart racing somewhere near the base of her throat, knowing that they were all going to die, and disbelieving it all the same. Never had the minutes stretched so long. Her mouth was so dry she could not swallow, and still her father would not let them fire. He wanted one last stand, one last blaze of glory that would hold the Frenchmen at bay until the very last moment. And still the bullets kept on coming, and still the six men and Josie waited, until at last the door began to weaken and great chunks of wood fell from it, exposing holes through which Josie could see the mass of men crammed into the corridor outside, their uniforms so similar in colour to that of her father and his men that she could have imagined they were British riflemen just the same.
‘Now!’ came the order.
And what remained of their section of the Fifth Battalion of the 60th Foot let loose their shots.
Josie could never be sure how long the mêlée lasted. It might have been seconds; it seemed like hours. Her arms and shoulders ached from firing and reloading the rifle, yet still she kept going. It was an impossible cause, and one by one the riflemen went down fighting, until there was only Sergeant Braun, Josie and her father. Then Lieutenant Colonel Mallington gave a grunt, clutched a hand to his chest, and through his fingers Josie could see the stain of spreading blood. He staggered backwards until he slumped against the wall, the blade of his sword clattering uselessly to the floor. As Lieutenant Colonel Mallington’s strength failed, he slithered down the wall to land half-sitting, half-lying at its base.
‘Papa!’ In two steps she had reached him and was pressing the sword back into his hand where he lay.
His breathing was laboured and the blood was spreading across his coat.
Sergeant Braun heard her cry, and positioned himself in front of the Lieutenant Colonel and his daughter, firing shot after shot, and reloading his rifle so fast as to make Josie’s paltry efforts seem laughable, and all the while roaring his defiance at the French force that had not yet crossed the threshold where the skeleton of the door still balanced. It seemed that he stood there an eternity, that one man holding back the full force of the French 8th Dragoons, until at last his body jerked with the impact of one bullet and then another and another, and he crumpled to the ground to lie in a crimson pool.
There was no more musket fire.
Josie moved to stand defensively in front of her father, aiming her rifle through the gun smoke, her breathing ragged and loud in the sudden silence.
The holed and splintered wood that had been the door fell inwards suddenly, landing with a crash upon the floor of the barren room that housed the bodies of the riflemen. There was silence as the smoke cleared to show Josie exactly what she faced.
The French had not moved. They still stood clustered outside around the doorway, in their green coats so reminiscent of the 60th’s. Even the facings on their coats were of a similar red coloration; the difference lay in their white breeches and black riding boots, their brass buttons and single white crossbelts and most of all in the brass helmets with black horsehair crests that they wore upon their heads. Even across the distance she could see their faces beneath those helmets—lean and hard and ruthless—and she saw the disbelief that flitted across them when they realised whom it was that they faced.
She heard the command, ‘Ne tirez pas!’ and knew that they would hold their fire. And then the man who had issued that command stepped through the doorway into the room.
He was dressed in a similar green jacket to that of his men, but with the white epaulettes upon his shoulders and a leopardskin band around his helmet that was given only to officers. He looked too young to wear the small, silver grenades in the carmine turnbacks in the tail of his jacket. He was tall and well muscled. Beneath the polish of his helmet his hair was short and dark, and down the length of his left cheek he carried a scar. In his hand was a beautifully weighted sabre, from the hilt of which hung a long, golden tassel.
When he spoke his voice was hard and flinty and highly accented. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Mallington.’
Josie heard her father’s gasp of shock and she raised the rifle higher, aiming it at the Frenchman.
‘Dammartin?’ She could hear the incredulity in her father’s voice.
‘You recognise me from my father, Major Jean Dammartin, perhaps. I understand that you knew him. I am Captain Pierre Dammartin and I have waited a long time to meet you, Lieutenant Colonel Mallington,’ said the Frenchman.
‘Good Lord!’ said her father. ‘You are his very image.’
The Frenchman’s smile was cold and hard. He made no move, just stood there, seemingly relishing the moment.
‘Josie,’ her father called with urgency.
Josie kept the rifle trained on the French Captain, but she glanced down at her father. He was pale and weak with lines of pain etched around his eyes.
‘Papa?’
‘Let him approach. I must speak with him.’
Her gaze swung back to the Frenchman, whose eyes were dark and stony. They watched one another across the small distance.
‘Josie,’ her father said again. ‘Do as I say.’
She was loathed to let the enemy any closer to her father, but she knew that she had little choice. Perhaps her father had a trick up his sleeve, a small pistol or a knife with which to turn the situation to their advantage. If they could but capture the French Captain and bargain for just a little more time….
Josie stepped to the side, leaving the approach to her father free, yet never taking her eyes from the Frenchman’s face.
The French Captain’s sabre sat easily in his hand as if it were an old friend with which he was so comfortable that he ceased to notice it. He advanced forwards to stand before the Lieutenant Colonel, taking the place that Josie had just vacated, waiting with a closed expression for what the older man would say.
And all the while Josie kept the rifle trained upon the Frenchman’s heart, and the French soldiers kept their muskets trained upon her.
‘Captain Dammartin.’ Her father beckoned him closer.
The Frenchman did not move.
Lieutenant Colonel Mallington managed to smile at the young man’s resistance. ‘You are of the same mould as your father. He was a most worthy opponent.’
‘Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel.’ Dammartin’s mouth was grim. ‘A compliment indeed.’
The Lieutenant Colonel’s eyes slid to Josie. ‘She is my daughter, all that I have left in this world.’ Then his gaze was back fixed on Dammartin. ‘I do not need to ask that you treat her honourably. I already know that, as Jean Dammartin’s son, you will do nothing other.’ He coughed and blood flecked red and fresh upon his lips.
Dammartin’s eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Do you indeed, Lieutenant Colonel?’ He slowly extended his sword arm until the edge of the blade was only inches from the Lieutenant Colonel’s face. ‘You are very certain for a man in your position.’
The French dragoons in the background 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. And he knew that the temperature was dropping and that the cold would be biting. Tomorrow General Foy would lead them across the mountains towards Ciudad Rodrigo and they would leave behind the ruined monastery at Telemos and the dead riflemen and Mallington. He heard Lamont move behind him.
‘Your coffee, Pierre.’
He accepted the tin mug from his sergeant’s hands. ‘Thank you.’ The brown liquid was bitter, but warming. ‘Has Major La Roque sent for me yet?’
‘No.’ Lamont smiled, revealing his crooked teeth. ‘He is too busy with his dinner and his drink.’
‘He is making me wait until morning then,’ said Dammartin, ‘to haul me over the coals.’
Lamont shrugged his shoulders. He was a small, wiry man with eyes so dark as to appear black. His skin was lined and weatherbeaten, his hair a dark, grizzled grey. Lamont knew how to handle a musket better than any man in Dammartin’s company. Despite the fact he had grown up the son of a fishmonger and Dammartin the son of a distinguished military major, the two had become close friends.
‘The riflemen refused the option of surrender. They were like demons. Never before have I seen the British fight until there is not a man left alive. It was no easy task to overcome them. The Major must know that.’
Dammartin met his gaze, knowing that his sergeant understood very well that the fight had been unnecessarily prolonged by Dammartin’s refusal to storm the monastery until the last. ‘The Major will only be concerned with the delay this has cost us. General Foy will not be pleased. One day of marching and we do not even make it past Abrantes.’
Lamont sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘The cost was worth it. You wanted the English Lieutenant Colonel alive so that you might watch him die.’
Dammartin said nothing.
‘You have waited a long time to kill him, and now he is dead.’
‘But not by my hand.’
‘Does it make any difference? He is dead just the same.’
‘I wanted to look into his eyes while I killed him. I wanted to watch his reaction when I told him who I was, to see that he understood, to feel his fear.’
‘And today that is what you did. This Mallington looked upon you with his dying breath. It is done, Captain. Your father is avenged.’
The line of Dammartin’s mouth was hard. He said nothing. It was true that Dammartin had looked into Mallington’s face and revealed his identity. But thereafter nothing had been as the French Captain anticipated, and he was left feeling cheated.
Lamont fetched his own battered tin mug and sat down on his pack by the fire he had lit on the hearth. Steam rose in wisps from the steaming-hot coffee. Lamont wrapped his hands around the mug, seemingly impervious to the scald of the heat, and gazed into the flames. ‘Perhaps my ears deceived me, Captain, but I thought the Englishman said the girl was his daughter.’
‘He did.’
‘Sacré bleu!’ cursed the Sergeant. ‘It shows the nature of this Lieutenant Colonel Mallington. Only a crazy Englishman would bring his daughter with him to war.’ The Sergeant drilled a forefinger against the side of his head. ‘Crazy.’
‘So it would seem,’ said Dammartin, remembering the image of the girl standing alone and seemingly unafraid before the men of the 8th Dragoons to defend her father.
‘She is so young, so fragile looking. It does not seem possible that she could have survived this hell of a country.’
‘So fragile that her bullets are lodged in half our men,’ said Dammartin sourly.
‘That is the truth,’ Lamont said soberly, and took a gulp of his coffee.
Dammartin retrieved a small, silver hip flask from his pocket and loosened the cap. ‘Brandy? To keep the damp from your bones tonight.’
Lamont gave a grin and nodded, holding the still-steaming tin mug up.
Dammartin poured a liberal dousing of the amber liquid into the proffered mug before doing likewise with his own. ‘Why should Mallington have sacrificed his men over a deserted village in the middle of nowhere? It makes no sense. Wellington’s forces are all down at the lines of Torres Vedras and Lisbon. What was Mallington even doing up here?’
The sergeant shrugged. ‘A scouting party? They were riflemen after all.’
‘Perhaps—’ Dammartin sipped his coffee ‘—Mademoiselle Mallington may be able to shed some light on her father’s actions.’
Lamont glanced up quickly at the young captain. ‘You mean to interrogate her?’
‘She is the only one still alive. Who else can tell us?’ Dammartin’s expression was unyielding.
‘The English Lieutenant Colonel gave her into your care,’ protested Lamont. ‘She’s only a girl.’
Dammartin glared unconvinced.
‘She’s the daughter of a gentleman, and today she watched her father die.’
‘She is the daughter of a scoundrel, and an English scoundrel at that,’ Dammartin corrected. ‘Shehandled that rifle as good as any man and she is not to be trusted. Where is Mademoiselle Mallington now?’
‘Locked in the cellar below.’
Dammartin drained his mug and set it down. ‘Then it would seem that I have work to do this evening.’
Lamont stopped nursing his coffee to look at Dammartin. ‘I pray, my friend and captain, that you are certain as to what you are about to do.’
‘Never more so,’ said Dammartin, and walked from the room.
