The Captain's Forbidden Miss

by Margaret McPhee

  ‘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. ‘She handled 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.

  Chapter Two

  Josie sat perched on one of the dusty wooden crates, hugging her arms around her body, trying to keep out the worst of the damp chill. Wherever she looked, it seemed that she saw not the darkness of the cellar in which the French soldiers had locked her, but her father’s face so pale and still in death, the blood seeping from his mouth to stain his lips and dribble down his chin. Even when she squeezed her eyes shut, she could not dislodge that image. All around in the dulled silence she heard again the crack and bang of rifles and muskets and the cries of dying men. She stoppered her hands to her ears, trying to block out the terrible sounds, but it did not make any difference, no matter how hard she pressed.

  That morning she had been part of a section of twenty-five men and three women. She had collected the water from the spring behind the monastery and boiled it up to make her father’s tea, taking the place of his batman for that short time as was her habit. They had laughed and drunk the brew and eaten the porridge oats that were so warming against the cold.

  She remembered just those few hours ago in the afternoon when her father had told her of the column of Frenchmen marching through these hills and how he would have to go in closer to discover what they were about. Papa and a handful of men had gone, leaving Josie and the others in the old monastery, cooking up a stew of rabbit for the evening meal. But the small party’s return had been panicked and hurried, retreating from the pursuit of the French, scrambling to send their captain and first lieutenant with news to General Lord Wellington. And then Josie’s world had exploded. Papa would not la
ugh again. He was gone. They were all gone. All except Josie.

  Even though she had seen their broken bodies and heard her father’s last drawn breath, she could not really believe that it was so. It was like some horrific nightmare from which she would awaken. None of it seemed real. Yet Josie knew that it was, and the knowledge curdled a sourness in her stomach. And still the images flashed before her eyes, like illustrations of Dante’s Inferno, and still the racket roared in her ears, and her throat tightened and her stomach revolted, and she stumbled through the blackness to the corner of the cellar and bent over to be as sick as a dog. Only when her stomach had been thoroughly emptied did she experience some respite from the torture.

  She wiped her mouth on her handkerchief and steadied herself against the wall. Taking a deep breath, she felt her way back to the wooden box on which she had been seated.

  It seemed that she sat there an eternity in the chilled darkness before the footfalls sounded: booted soles coming down the same stairs over which the French soldiers had dragged her. One set only, heading towards the cellar. Josie braced herself, stifling the fear that crept through her belly, and waited for what was to come. There was the scrape of metal as the key was turned in the lock, and the door was thrown open.

  The light of the lantern dazzled her. She turned her face away, squinting her eyes. Then the lantern moved to the side; as her eyes began to adjust to the light, Josie found herself looking at the French captain whom her father had called Dammartin.

  ‘Mademoiselle Mallington,’ he said, and crossed the threshold into the cellar. His lantern illuminated the dark, dismal prison as he came to stand before her.

  He seemed much bigger than she remembered. The dust and dirt had been brushed from the green of his jacket, and its red collar and cuffs stood bright and proud. The jacket’s single, central line of brass buttons gleamed within the flickering light. His white breeches met knee-high, black leather boots and, unlike the last time they had met, he was not wearing the brass helmet of the dragoons. Beneath the light of the lantern his hair was shorn short and looked as dark as his mood. She could see that the stare in his eyes was stony and the line of his mouth was hard and arrogant. In that, at least, her memory served her well.