* * * * *
Nicholas expected to revel in the world outside the monastery, the company of fighting men, the thunder of hooves, the acrid odor of black powder, the clash of steel. Instead, he was appalled. Falling back into the exhilarating familiarity of battle was easy enough but he soon discovered the ways of the little war were hard and cruel. Atrocity met with atrocity, acts of venality and brutality a common occurrence on both sides. Nicholas had no quarrel with attacks on French columns or outposts. But he had no taste for revenge against collaborators or raids on Spanish citizens whose only sin was the possession of too much gold.
“This is how you fight?” he roared at Carlos late one night. “Hanging a man by his balls because he gave a French colonel houseroom!” Nicholas broke off as a fit of coughing racked his body.
“The man was enfrancesado, a lover of the little Emperor,” Carlos retorted. “He was lining his pockets with French gold, betraying Spanish secrets to curry favor with his new masters.” The young Spaniard spat into the flames of the campfire. “He was a pig.”
“Of course!” Nicholas mocked, overcome by sudden revelation. “I forgot. This is the land of the Inquisition. You’re all a bunch of bloody butchers.”
“They began it!”
“I don’t give a damn who began it, I don’t have to be part of it.” Nicholas rose and stomped off toward their makeshift hut, his stiff-backed indignation marred by another bout of coughing. Hell and damnation. His sense of honor, his soldier’s love of order and discipline, the reaffirmation of the human soul he found in the monastery—all were equally offended by these miserable lords of misrule. No, dammit, he was merely sick, tired and not as strong as he had thought. War was a hellish business. Whether it was fought in columns, in lines, or from behind rocks and trees, in the end a man was just as dead from bullet, cannon, or sword as he was from hanging on an olive tree or spread-eagled on a cruciform.
What day was it anyway? Nicholas wondered. Christmas was gone, the New Year… He removed a worn piece of paper from his leather saddlebag and carefully unfolded it, marking off another day on his makeshift calendar. Ten days since Twelfth Night. January 16, 1810. The anniversary of the battle of La Coruña. Paper rustled as Nicholas’ hands shook.
“I am sorry, English,” Carlos apologized as he entered the hut, carefully pulling the oxhide flap of the door closed behind him. “You are right. It is not your war. It is not your home, your soil you are defending. We should not expect you to understand.”
Nicholas returned the apology, holding out his hand.
“You are burning with fever!” Carlos exclaimed as he grasped Nicholas’ hand. “Into bed. Pronto! Tomorrow I will take you home—to the house of my father. The winter closes in and there will be little fighting. If you are to see another spring, I think you must leave this place for a while.”
Nicholas protested but without conviction. The next morning two lowly peasants, riding mules, set out for the warmth of the coastal plain. It was hoped no one would notice one of the peasants was so long-limbed that makeshift rope stirrups had been devised to keep his feet from dragging on the ground.
* * * * *
The family home of the Vila Santiagos lay nestled among rolling hills not far from a river which rushed toward the sea. As Nicholas and Carlos paused on a high hill above the sprawling hacienda, the dull blue of the Atlantic shone in the distance. Herds of long-horned cows dotted the sheltered valleys below. Between the cows and the sea stretched a vast rolling stubble of wheat fields.
“We will wait until nightfall,” Carlos said. “All looks quiet but one cannot be sure.”
As beautiful and welcome a sight as the hacienda was, Nicholas’ thoughts flew beyond the horizon. To a world of sanity protected from continental madness by that same broad moat of blue which now blocked his pathway home. England might send her troops to war but her women were not being raped by foreign troops, nor her men tortured and hanged on the village green.
It must be his illness, Nicholas mused. He had been a soldier all his adult life. Never before had he been overwhelmed by such a poignant desire for the quiet peace and prosperity of his homeland. A pack of nonsense! When he got rid of this damned cough, he’d be himself again. Old Nick, ready to take on the world.
The Vila Santiago might not be The Willows but Nicholas had to admit it enveloped him with every comfort of home. He had forgotten the comfort of goose feathers—their enticing softness inside mattress, pillows and quilts. Sheets of the finest linen. A large fireplace crackling with heat. Green velvet bed hangings and matching window draperies, fought off what little cold remained. And then the ministering angels appeared. An entire coterie, from plump maids to severe housekeeper, to his miraculous angelic violet, young Violante Modestia who hovered over him, fed him and read to him. Smiled at him. A winsome virginal smile full of innocent promise.
Violante. Seventeen and just out of the convent. Shy, beautiful, raised for the sole purpose of making a good marriage. An English officer was not what Carlos’ father, Don Raimondo, had envisioned for his only daughter. But a wealthy Englishman who owned a manor house was not to be despised, particularly when he was fighting for Spain and a close friend of his son. Nor was Nicholas displeased by his attraction to the daughter of the house of the family Vila Santiago. How could he possibly ignore the lure of a lovely, delicate young girl whose sole purpose in life was to please the man her family chose for her? Particularly when Violante made no secret of the fact she found him equally attractive. By mid-February, when Nicholas was once again able to face the rigors of the mountains, an understanding of courtship had been established. Expectations of a future betrothal were an accepted fact.
The day before Nicholas and Carlos returned to the mountains, Don Raimondo presented them with two fighting stallions. Moorish bred, they were fleet of foot and trained to battle.
“Ah, Papa,” Carlos said with a grin, “the French will fight ten times as hard to capture such magnificent beasts.”
“If our own men don’t slit our throats to get them first,” Nicholas murmured, not entirely sure he was joking.
When Nicholas and Carlos returned to camp, there were envious glances, a few ribald remarks about the privileges of being a Son of a Somebody but no overt hostility. As the leader of the guerrilleros, Pablo Garcia, admired the stallions, Nicholas seized the moment to plead for a favor. He would ride on all attacks against the French. He would not, however, participate in reprisal raids or tortures.
Garcia was far from a fool. The English major was a skilled fighter, an expert in battle tactics. In truth, he was too valuable to risk on reprisal raids. Wellington—stupid inglès—did nothing but retreat. The English major never retreated. So be it. If he did not wish to cut off the cojones of traitors, he would not insist. How could such a lily-white inglès be expected to understand the bloodier aspects of the code of vengeance?
Pablo Garcia’s assessment of the war in Spain was not far wrong. There were times when it seemed as if only the guerrilleros were carrying on the fight against the French. Ciudad Rodrigo fell to the French in July. The fortress city of Almeida was forced to surrender after its powder magazine blew up, taking a good part of the city with it. In the south of Spain only Cadiz remained in Spanish hands. It was rumored massive numbers of Portuguese had been put to work on a construction project north of Lisbon but Nicholas dismissed any possible military significance. Lisbon, the sole British stronghold, was indefensible against the French. If they wished to retake the city, they would. Countless times Nicholas had dreamed of making the journey south, of finding his regiment. But the great port city on the Tagus was nearly as far to the south as the French border was to the east. And for every foot of the way he would stand out like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Yet the rumors were too strong to be ignored. Something was happening near Lisbon and he would dearly love to know what.
About one rumor, however, he had no doubt. French troops in Spain now numbered three hundred thousand. An
d were growing daily.
* * * * *
“Why? Why must you do it?” Nicholas demanded a week later. “It’s butchery. Fire is barbaric and, beyond that, there’s talk of drawing and quartering…”
“It was Ricardo’s wife!” Carlos retorted, voice shaking with emotion. “They raped her, all of them. Then made her watch while they spitted her children on their swords. Then and only then, did they kill her. And you wish to know why? Madre de dios but you are cold, inglès!”
“Damn it, boy,” said Nicholas with deliberate insult, “this is not a courier’s column or a bunch of lumbering supply wagons. It’s an entire garrison—well-fortified, well-armed and trained to fight. They tortured Ricardo’s wife because someone informed them she was a guerrillero’s wife. Probably someone who was hurt in the last round of reprisals. Though why the French would commit this particular bit of depravity on the family of a man of no name and no power seems very odd indeed. I can’t help but wonder if this whole business isn’t a well-baited trap.”
After a scornful glare for such twisted reasoning, Carlos turned his back, bending to scoop up his powder and ammunition. He slung his musket over his back, checked the knife in his boot, the sword at his side. He bristled with a chaotic combination of youthful indignation and strong emotion. “Then it is fortunate you do not come with us,” the young hidalgo flung back over his shoulder before stalking out of the hut.
Behind him, Nicholas swore softly as the chink of hooves sounded on the rocky soil. For several minutes he sat perfectly still, looking away from the hut’s sole lantern into the dark shadows of a rocky crevice. With a small sigh he reached for his weapons. He was still buckling on his sword belt as he entered the corral. Grimly, Nicholas saddled the stallion he had named Zeus and set off down the mountain. He was less than a quarter hour behind the others.
He heard the attack before he saw it. In their customary swashbuckling style the guerrilleros had come down on the fortified building housing the garrison in a whirlwind of thundering hooves and whooping shouts. Each man carried several bundles of faggots and sun-dried grass gleaned from the lower slopes behind their camp. Nicholas paused on a rise above the garrison. The first part of the plan was going well. The sticks and grass had been tossed over the outer wall into the courtyard, the entire mass set alight by firebrands which followed the tinder-dry sticks. Glowing flames and smoke blacker than the night rose up, silhouetting the attackers against the white of the stucco wall.
The French garrison should have been waking to dense smoke, the disabling fear of fire and the primeval terror of battle cries in the night. They should have been disoriented, stumbling to find their weapons, their way out…
Instead, musket fire raked the perfectly outlined targets. One fusillade. Two. A trap. A perfectly executed trap. With a sharp curse, Nicholas plunged down the hill, fighting his way through the chaos of dead men, dead horses, fire and smoke, searching for Carlos. He swore again, prayed, wheeled his horse as Frenchmen concealed in trenches outside the walls obeyed a command to fire at will. Guerrilleros fell, horses screamed in pain. Hard-riding French cavalry came thundering out of an olive grove a hundred yards away.
Still no sign of Carlos. Nicholas whirled and slashed at a blue-clad French officer, kicked out at a soldier grabbing at his stirrup. Zeus reared in a flurry of flying hooves to fend off soldiers to the front. As the hooves hit the ground, Nicholas turned his horse, sword slashing left and right, hacking a way out of the mass of French troopers and cavalry. There was no hope of finding Carlos, of salvaging the attack. There was almost no hope of saving himself. Brother Miguel and Brother Bonifacio had wasted their time. This was his night to die. But his sword kept swinging. Zeus maintained his partnership with his rider, slashing with his hooves, front and back.
“Andale!” a harsh voice called close by. “Ahora, Major!” Nicholas turned toward the sound of Pablo Garcia’s voice and together they fought their way toward the perimeter. The darkness beyond the betraying flames swallowed them up. Their attackers fell away, turning back to finish off the easier targets still illuminated by the dying fire. The whole action had not lasted above twenty minutes.
For the remainder of the night Nicholas sat by the central campfire waiting for Carlos to come back. With each straggling set of hoofbeats, his head came up, then slumped forward as the bloodied and battered guerrillero proved to be someone else. The French trap had been well laid. Of the forty-seven men who set out to attack the garrison, only twenty-two returned.
Carlos was not among them.
In the first pale light before dawn Nicholas resaddled Zeus and set off down the mountain. From the shelter of a rocky outcrop he watched as the French heaved bodies into an oxcart, transporting them a short distance to an olive grove where they carefully hanged each guerrillero—the living and the dead—to the gnarled branches of the olive trees. As the sun rose higher, the warm rays illuminated the slowly swinging bodies, sending shadows dancing over the ground in a mad fandango of grief. Nicholas counted each dangling corpse. Twenty-five in all. There were no survivors.
He returned to camp only long enough to pack and make his farewells. The ride to the Hacienda Vila Santiago was a blur. Only deeply ingrained training and the instinct for survival saved him from French patrols in his mad daylight dash. Once there, there was no respite, no time for proper mourning. In less than twenty-four hours a message came from Pablo Garcia. Reprisals had already begun against the families of the dead guerrilleros. Against their villages as well. The body of Don Carlos Guillermo Vila Santiago had been recognized. The only safety lay in flight.
* * * * *
October 1810, London
“That was less than five weeks ago,” Nicholas concluded quietly. “We made our way to Vigo, where we hoped to find a fisherman willing to make the long journey down the coast to Lisbon. But, by what the good Brother Bonifacio would undoubtedly call a miracle, there was an American ship in port, come in for repairs after a storm in the Atlantic. He drove a hard bargain, the Yankee captain but he was true to his word. The Americans may be friends with the French but it’s English they speak. The bastard sailed into Plymouth as if it were his home port. Put us ashore in a longboat, though not without adding, with heavy sarcasm, that we might give thought to returning a few American sailors in exchange. I don’t mind saying I hope it doesn’t come to war with the Americans a second time. I grew rather fond of them.”
Nicholas fell silent. What more could he say? He had been careful to avoid nearly all mention of Violante. After all, he was not an insensitive beast. Julia’s ears were scarce the proper resting place for details about his little Spanish flower. Nor about the dreams. This certainly was not the time to mention his dreams. Even fleeting thought of them sent heat coursing through his veins. No, let the tale end. It was enough.
She should hate him, Julia thought. She was betrayed, her foolish dreams of love in ruins. Her fortunes reduced from lady of the manor to nearly penniless discarded bride. And yet…she longed to reach out, offer comfort. Nicholas had truly fallen into a devil of a fix.
Julia gazed into the glowing fire, absorbing the warmth, assuaging the chill of Nicholas’ tale. This room was like a cocoon. Peaceful. Quiet. Civilized. They were warm and comfortable and well fed while Nicholas talked of torture, terror and death. Of friendship lost in the cruelest way, with no hope of mending harsh words born of fear, as well as anger. In some strange twist of fate Nicholas was bound in bonds of honor by a double chain of friendship and death. Bound to two women who could not have been more opposite, each held fast by a Gordian knot which could not be untied.
So she would have to cut the cord. Raised in a world of men, Tarleton’s wife, Colonel Litchfield’s daughter, understood that she was honor bound to let her husband go. Violante was Nicholas’ own choice. Julia was not.
She had taken one look at Violante and known the Spanish child was everything Nicholas Tarleton desired in a woman. Petite, fragile, of surpassing beauty. As were a
ll the women she had seen on the major’s arm in the past. Well, there had been the Portuguese condessa of course—no one could have called her anything but voluptuous. Nicholas Tarleton never dangled after virgins. Never, that is, until…
No matter what her own hurts, there was only one thing to do. Julia slid from her chair and knelt before Nicholas, placing gentle fingers on his forearm. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “so very, very sorry.” An honest truth. She was sorry. For Nicholas. And for herself.
By not so much as a flicker of an eyelid did Nicholas acknowledge he had heard her. He was a statue, fixed in place, gazing into the glowing coals of the fire.
So, even her sympathy was unwanted. Julia rose to her feet and poured two generous dollops of brandy. She thrust a glass into the major’s hand before turning abruptly away. She did not sit down. If she spent one more moment in that miserable chair, Julia thought, she would explode. Why, dammit, why? What unkind fate had created this impossible coil? It was senseless. Irremediable. She had given Nicholas his freedom and he had not accepted it. Nick the Honorable. Nick the Noble. Damn him to hell and back.
Julia continued her restless pacing, while Nicholas stared sightlessly into the fire, his back resolutely turned against his wife’s silent anguish.
With Daniel’s return, the major came suddenly to life. Rising to his feet, he noted the single portmanteau Daniel was carrying. A vision of Violante sobbing over the mountain of clothing she had just been told she must leave behind sprang unbidden into his mind. Of course the poor child had not had the harsh training of years of following the drum which had honed Julia into the woman she was.
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