A Stranger at Castonbury

by Amanda McCabe

  Catalina spun around from the bandage she was tying off on a wounded arm to see one of the other nurses and the English doctor labouring over another patient. She gave her own soldier one more smile and hurried to help them.

  The hospital tent had been chaos all day. The push to Toulouse was beginning in earnest, with different regiments pouring through and leaving their wounded to be seen to. Most of them moved on after, in a hurry to join with the main forces, but the people who were left had to tend to the sick and arrange for their transportation onwards as the French were in quick pursuit. The rain that had been pouring down steadily only added to the clamour, miring everyone in mud and damp. Gunfire was constantly heard in the distance.

  Catalina had hardly slept or eaten since Jamie left. She had no time to think of such things as she ran from task to task, always hearing those explosions in the distance, rivalling the thunder. The world had shrunk to only that noise, and emergency after emergency.

  But she couldn’t cease worrying about Jamie. Was he well? Was he safe? What dangerous task was he embroiled in? Reports of flooding at the Bidasoa made her even more concerned. She had received no message from him yet.

  All she could do was keep working, keep helping everyone she could.

  ‘Soon,’ she whispered as she rinsed her hands in a basin. Jamie would be back soon.

  As she dried her hands, she glimpsed the sapphire ring glinting on her finger. It was always with her, reminding her of hopes and dreams that felt so very fragile now.

  She pushed away her worries and went to help with the new patient. Once he was seen to, there was another and then another. The day had grown very late by the time she was able to duck out of the hot, stuffy tent for a breath of fresh air.

  The rain had ceased for the moment, though the sound of gunfire seemed even closer. Catalina found a quiet spot by a tree just outside camp where she could be alone just for an instant. She tilted her head back to stare at the dark grey sky and let the cool breeze wash over her.

  She thought about what Jamie had said about his home, about the beauty and peace of it. She feared she would get lost in its grandeur, but she did long for something pretty, something quiet. Someplace where she could walk with Jamie, hand in hand, the two of them in the fresh English spring.

  ‘Mrs Moreno, what a surprise,’ someone said suddenly, shattering her reverie. ‘I so seldom see you alone.’

  Catalina whirled around to see Hugh Webster smiling at her. The man seemed friendly, but somehow she always felt so uncomfortable when he was around her. He was friends with Colonel Chambers and had thus been assigned to help pack up the regiment and follow them on later while most of the men pushed ahead in greater danger. She had been working so hard she had hardly seen him, but here he was, right in front of her, as if he had been watching for her to be alone.

  And he was standing much too close to her.

  ‘We all have many tasks these days, Captain Webster,’ she answered.

  ‘True. Yet you have always seemed to have the time to speak to Hatherton.’

  Catalina was puzzled by the bitter note in the man’s voice. He smiled at her, but his eyes were hard. ‘Lord Hatherton and I are friends.’

  ‘Indeed? I wish you would be my friend, Mrs Moreno—Catalina. I am sure we could benefit each other a great deal.’

  He took a step closer, until his arm brushed hers and she could smell the scent of his body. Catalina stumbled back until she felt the rough bark of the tree.

  ‘Benefit each other?’ she stammered.

  ‘Of course, my dear. You must have seen how I admire you. It can be very lonely here, can it not? Especially for a woman in your...situation.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Catalina managed to say, shocked and starting to be frightened. She spun around to hurry away, but suddenly his hand closed hard on her arm and dragged her back.

  ‘Oh, I think you do know what I mean,’ he said roughly. His arms came around her like a vice and his mouth swooped down on hers, open and hungry.

  Catalina was engulfed in a cold panic. It felt as if prison walls were squeezing in on her, and nausea choked her. Webster’s kiss was nothing like Jamie’s; it didn’t even deserve the same name. She fought against him, but he was too strong and held her fast. One of his hands closed on her breast through her muslin gown and he pinched painfully at her nipple.

  Catalina screamed against his mouth and felt him laugh. That sound infuriated her. She managed to wriggle enough room between them to bring her knee up and slam it between his legs. When he shouted, she bit down on his lip and tasted coppery blood.

  As he fell to the ground, she wrenched away and ran. She heard him scream out behind her. ‘Whore!’ he called. ‘Hatherton’s whore. You’ll be sorry for this.’

  ‘I am his wife!’ Catalina screamed. ‘Not his whore, you dirty cochino.’

  She kept running, still half blind with fear. At first she didn’t know what a sudden booming noise was, she was so disoriented. But as she stumbled and half fell to her knees, she saw a flaring flash of flame arc over the sky and heard cries.

  The camp was being directly shelled.

  As she watched, horrorstruck, more explosions went off around the camp amid shouts and screams. Fires were flaring up. She pushed herself up and ran towards the nearest tent. A shell exploded not far away, making her ears ring, but she kept going. She had to help if she could.

  She glimpsed a figure lying on the ground, horribly still. It was the nurse she had worked with over the patient earlier. Catalina knelt down next to her, but she quickly saw it was too late to help her at all.

  Suddenly a hand grabbed her arm and dragged her to her feet.

  ‘Run, Catalina!’ the man shouted. ‘We must find shelter now.’

  Catalina turned her head and saw it was the English doctor, leading a couple of the more mobile wounded soldiers from the burning camp.

  ‘But the others...’ she gasped.

  ‘Those who could flee have already gone,’ the doctor answered. ‘I fear the chaplain has been killed. The French are close in their pursuit. We must go, now.’

  Catalina ran with him back towards the trees, where they found a hiding place in the shadows, their heads down as the shells flew overhead and they prayed the French armies wouldn’t find them. Once darkness gave them cover, they fled towards the village with the few other survivors.

  Only the next morning, as they stumbled out onto the road to Seville, did she see to her horror that she had lost her precious sapphire ring....

  * * *

  ‘So you are alive.’

  Jamie opened his eyes to find a man standing over him, his features a blur from the light that streamed from the windows behind him. It was the first time he had heard anyone speak in that crisp English accent in days, ever since Sanchez had pulled him out of the river and slung him over the horse to find a hospital. They had ended in this house in a small village.

  At first Jamie had been in such a strange dream state he was able to remember nothing at all. Only snatches of hazy memories, like a summer’s day in the Castonbury gardens and Catalina’s hand in his as they walked down the aisle. Gradually things became clearer, the pain sharper, and he cursed his damnable weakness. He had to finish what he had set out to do and get back to Catalina.

  The man stepped back, and Jamie saw it was Lord Cawley, who had been his contact for secret work in Spain, the man who had sent him the letter requesting his assistance in the matter with the royal family.

  There was surely only one thing he would be doing there.

  Jamie gave a humourless laugh and pushed himself up against the pillows. ‘I hadn’t thought to see you so soon, Cawley.’

  ‘No? Why not? I came at once when Sanchez sent word you were injured. We feared you might have died.’

  ‘And thus you would get no more work out of me?’

  ‘You have been one of our best operatives, Hatherton,’ Cawley said. He pulled up a straight-backed wooden chair and
sat down. His thin, lined face looked even harsher than usual. ‘These are perilous days. After the French are gone, we have to be sure Spain is once again a friendly ally for England. It is of vital importance.’

  ‘And you think King Ferdinand is the answer to that,’ Jamie said drily.

  ‘It is. He is not the finest choice, we admit, but he is the best option for now. Europe must have stability once Napoleon is gone. You are the best choice for such a vital and delicate operation.’

  ‘I fear I can no longer be of help to you,’ Jamie said.

  ‘No?’ Cawley tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair, watching Jamie steadily. ‘That is unfortunate. The timing could not be better for our scheme.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that it is already rumoured you died in the river, tragically swept away. You could go undercover with no one the wiser.’ Cawley gestured around the quiet little white room. ‘No one knows where you are. And sadly your camp was destroyed by the French in the chaos after you departed.’

  Jamie sat up straight, his muscles tense with alarm, his mind buzzing. Surely he had not just heard the man’s words right. ‘The camp was destroyed?’

  ‘Yes. You have not been told? Such a tragedy. So many lives lost, including the wounded and even women.’ Cawley reached inside his coat and withdrew a small scrap of blue-grey muslin. He unwrapped it to reveal a sapphire ring.

  The gold was scratched and dirt was caught in the setting, but Jamie could see it was his mother’s ring. The one he had slipped onto Catalina’s finger. Wrapped in a torn shred of one of her work dresses.

  ‘This was found in the camp ruins,’ Cawley said. ‘Yours, I think. It has your family motto engraved inside.’

  He tossed it across the room and Jamie caught it. Validus Superstes was indeed engraved on the inside. Catalina had vowed she would never take it off after their wedding. If it was here, in Cawley’s possession...

  ‘You gave it to someone?’ Cawley said quietly. ‘I can’t imagine you would have dropped it yourself.’

  ‘A lady named Catalina Moreno,’ Jamie answered, closing his fist around the ring as if that would bring her back to him. Even in that moment he could feel her slipping further and further away.

  Cawley nodded. ‘The Spanish nurse. One of the lost, I fear.’

  Lost. Catalina was lost, lost, lost. Those words echoed hollowly in his head, yet still he could not quite grasp them. She was the most vivid person he had ever known—how could she simply be gone, just like that?

  A sharp pain shot through him, a jolt of purest, hottest grief. Then a cold numbness as if ice was slowly creeping around his heart.

  ‘Perhaps that is for the best,’ Cawley said. ‘Her brother was known to be a liberal, even though he has been long dead. She would only have stood in the way of what is best. And I would hate to see harm come to anyone in your family because you could not do your duty. I am sure you understand what I mean.’

  Harm come to anyone in your family. Of course he knew what the man meant; it was a veiled threat pure and simple. Jamie tightened his hand on the ring until the edges of the stone cut into his flesh. He closed his eyes and let that ice cover him. It had to be better than the burn of grief, of knowing he would never see Catalina again and that he had not been there to save her when she needed him.

  Yes—he had failed Catalina. And his family would be better off without him as well. Had he not run off and left them because he was unsure he could assume the responsibilities of a dukedom? Had he not already failed in his duty? At least he could protect them now by doing this task. And if he was lucky he would not return from it.

  As if he sensed Jamie’s cold fury, Cawley rose from his chair and turned towards the door. ‘Everyone already believes you dead, Hatherton. It makes you the perfect one for this job. And when it’s over you can return to your family, knowing the service you did for your country. Send me word of your decision tomorrow.’

  Then Jamie was alone. He closed his eyes and held on to the ring as if it was the last tether anchoring him to the real world. The last connection to his foolish dreams. Catalina was gone, and Cawley was right—it hardly mattered what happened to him now.

  But first he had to do something for himself.

  Chapter Four

  It looked like the landscape of another world entirely, not a place where he had once lived and worked, fought and loved. It was a place he had never seen before except in nightmares.

  Jamie felt strangely numb, remote from his surroundings as he climbed stiffly down from his horse and studied the scorched patch of earth where the camp once stood. The hot sun beat down from a clear, mercilessly blue sky onto the baked, cracked dust, but Jamie didn’t even feel it. He was vaguely aware of Xavier Sanchez, sitting on his own horse several feet away and watching the scene warily, but Jamie felt like the only living being left for miles around.

  Maybe the only living being left on the planet.

  There were no sounds, no birds singing or wind sweeping through the trees. Once this place had been filled with voices, laughter, the cries of the injured, the barked orders of a military operation. The ghosts of such sounds in his mind made the silence even heavier.

  Jamie tilted back his head to stare up into the sky. He could smell the dusty scent of the air, the faint, acrid remains of fire. The echoes of the violence that had happened here.

  And Catalina had been caught in it. His numbness was shattered by a spasm of pure, raw pain at the thought of what must have happened here. The fear and panic, the sense of being trapped amid fire and ruin with nowhere to run. No one to help her, because he had gone.

  ‘Catalina,’ he whispered, his heart shattered at the thought of her being afraid. Had she thought of him in that moment, just as he had pictured only her face when he was sure he was drowning? Had she called out his name?

  Jamie walked slowly across the blasted, blackened patch of earth, not seeing it how it was now, abandoned and ruined, but how it was that day he first saw Catalina. Her smile, her face like a beautiful, exotic flower, a haven of peace and loveliness in a mad world. She had given him something he had never known before—stillness, a place to belong. She had made him think of things he had never dared to before, like a future, a home. With her, he had imagined even the grand halls of Castonbury could be that home, if she was there.

  And then in only a moment that was all gone.

  He remembered her hurt, pale face when she found out about the nature of his secret work. The doubts that lingered in her eyes when they parted. He had foolishly imagined he would have time to make all that right later, to make everything up to her.

  Jamie reached up and pressed his hand over the ring he wore on a chain around his neck under his shirt, against his heart. Cawley had said this ring, Catalina’s ring, had been found here among the dead. Yet some stubborn hope had clung to Jamie—what if she had somehow miraculously got away?

  Cawley had said a farmer found the ring, and that was what had brought Jamie here. He had discovered the name of the farmer and come back to the camp in the wild, far-fetched notion that he could find this man and make him tell more details of the day when the camp was destroyed. If he knew more, maybe he could find Catalina’s body and put her properly to rest.

  Or he might find her. At night, in his fever dreams when he was ill, he saw just such a thing. Catalina, alive again, smiling at him, holding out her arms to him. Telling him it had all been a terrible mistake.

  But as he looked at the darkened earth, he saw just how wild a hope that was. Surely no one had survived such an onslaught.

  He climbed to the top of a steep slope into which the backside of the camp had been built. It led down to the river on the other side, and to fields beyond. They, too, were deserted, everyone having fled before the advancing armies. But Jamie glimpsed one tiny spot of life, an old woman walking by the river, swathed in shawls even in the hot day. She was checking fishing nets laid out in the river.

  Jamie ma
de his way slowly down the other side of the hill, careful to make sure the woman saw him approach so he would not frighten her. She didn’t run away, but went very still, her eyes dark and wary in her sunken, wrinkled face.

  ‘Señora, I only came to ask a few questions here,’ Jamie said in Spanish.

  The woman slowly nodded, and he asked her about the destruction of the camp. She didn’t know much; she had been staying with her daughter in another village, and had only returned to her home here with her son after the armies had gone.

  ‘What do you seek here, young man?’ she asked. ‘There is nothing left, not for anyone.’

  ‘I want to find out what happened to my wife,’ Jamie answered honestly. ‘She was a nurse at the English camp here. I was told a farmer saw what happened, and found her wedding ring.’

  The woman nodded, her face softening at his stark words. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps my son can help. He was here that day, I am sure he’s the one you’re looking for.’

  She led him over a low, crumbling stone wall and through a blasted field. A man was working there, bent and careworn as he tried to eke out some kind of meal from the ruined ground. Even though the woman said he was her son, he looked as old as she did. But his eyes also turned kind when the woman explained why Jamie was there.

  ‘I did see the camp after the French left,’ he said, leaning on his rake with a haunted look in his eyes. ‘I wanted to see if I could help, but there was nothing left to do but bury the dead.’

  Jamie took out Catalina’s ring and showed it to him. ‘Were you the one who found this?’

  The man nodded, tears in his eyes. ‘I found it in the dust, near a woman’s body. It had been trampled down, half buried.’

  Jamie swallowed hard at the stark words. Catalina’s ring trampled, destroyed. ‘This woman—did she have dark hair? Not very tall?’

  ‘Sí, she looked Spanish, but her skin was pale with freckles on the nose. And she wore a nurse’s apron.’

  Jamie closed his fist around the ring. ‘And you gave this back to the English? That was very generous of you, considering you could have sold it.’