by Diane Gaston
When they finally warmed their hands on the tin mugs of tea, Vernon glanced to their sleeping mate and back to them. “I need to tell you. I broke my word about keeping silent about Badajoz. I was forced to tell General Tranville.”
Gabe straightened. “Tranville!”
Vernon held up his hand. “It was not something I wished to do, but I had little choice. I showed him the drawings I made of the incident. Tranville threatened my family; the only way I could silence him was by threatening to expose Edwin. You are safe,” he assured them. “I did not show enough to identify you, not even your uniforms.”
“Did you show the woman’s face? Or her son’s?” Gabe asked, his chest tightening.
Vernon shook his head.
Relieved, Gabe rubbed his face. “Damned Tranville. I hope some Frenchman puts a ball through his head.”
“Watch your tongue, Gabe,” Landon cautioned, gesturing to their sleeping roommate.
Vernon rose. “I had better deliver my message.”
Gabe shook his hand.
Before he walked out he turned to Gabe. “What of the woman, Captain? Do you think she found a safe place for herself and her son?”
“She did,” Gabe answered. “In fact, she lives in Brussels. I saw her there.”
Landon sat up straight. “You did not tell me that.”
Gabe shrugged. There was no more he wanted to say.
“And the boy?” Vernon asked.
Gabe looked from one to the other. “In the army.” Let them think he had joined a Belgian regiment.
After Vernon left, Landon turned to Gabe. “How did you come to know the woman was in Brussels?”
“I encountered her by chance.” Which was almost the truth, if you didn’t add that he deliberately pursued her all the way to her shop.
“I thought she was French,” Landon said.
“She came to Belgium to live with a relative, she said.” He did not wish to talk about her. “I do not know a great deal more.”
Except everything she’d shared as they lay in each other’s arms after making love. Except how her smile seemed to make colours brighter. How the warmth of her skin made him feel as if he’d come home at last.
Landon dropped the subject and soon left to find Picton. For the rest of the night Gabe tried to ignore the water dripping from the ceiling and the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls. Mostly he tried not to think of Emmaline, how comforting it felt to sleep next to her, how wrenching it felt to lose her.
He needed sleep before facing cannonade, charging cavalry and thousands of soldiers marching towards them to the sound of the Pas de Charge.
The next day the rain dwindled to a light drizzle, but did not cease until mid-morning when the sun was finally visible again. Everyone prepared for what they knew would be the main battle.
Gabe conferred with his lieutenants and saw to the readiness of his company, ensuring they had dry powder and plenty of ammunition. His uniform was damp from the incessant rain, but those of his men were soaked through. As the sun heated the air, clouds of vapor rose from their coats and from the ground, lending an eerie cast to the scene.
The two armies faced each other across a gently sloping valley at a right angle to the Brussels road. One farm, La Haye Sainte, fortified by the King’s German Legion, was on one side of the valley. Hougoumont, another farm, occupied by the Coldstream Guards, was on the other. Gabe’s Royal Scots, along with other regiments of British, Dutch, German and Belgian troops, were strung the length between the farms with the forest of Soignes to their backs. Wellington ordered these troops to remain on the back slope of the ridge, so for most of them the battle was heard and not seen. Gabe witnessed a bit more from horseback. He watched the first attack on Hougoumont a little before noon, the first action of the day. Two hours later it was the Royal Scots’ turn. The formidable French column advanced into the valley. The ground trembled under their feet. Their drums pounded in the Allies’ ears as they marched up the hill.
The Royal Scots and the other regiments were ready. Hidden behind the crest, Gabe held his men back until Picton gave the order. All at once the British rose up in front of the French column and fired. Front ranks, standing shoulder to shoulder, fired on order, then dropped down to reload. Those behind them moved forwards and fired. Front ranks advanced again. Volley after non-stop volley poured into the French columns. Countless Frenchmen fell, only to be trampled on by the hoards of their comrades marching behind them.
Gabe rode along the line of his men, urging them to stand and keep firing, but, as devastating as their muskets were, there were simply too many enemy soldiers coming at them. In seconds they would be overpowered.
All was not lost. The British cavalry came in the nick of time, charging down the hill, routing the French infantry. Gabe cheered the French infantry’s frantic retreat. He watched the cavalry cut a swathe through the fleeing men, slaughtering them as if scything grain.
The sight brought relief, but no pleasure, and soon turned to horror. The British cavalry were cut off by French cuirassiers. The tables were turned, and now it was the British on the run and the French cavalry on the slaughter.
Was Emmaline’s Claude among them? Gabe wondered. Was he quenching his thirst for vengeance, or had he already fallen? Claude was too young and new to battle to hone the instinct for survival that became second nature to veteran soldiers, an instinct that had served Gabe well.
By four o’clock, fighting continued around Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte and Gabe prepared for another attack of infantry. Again the men were pulled back to the far side of the ridge. Gabe rode to the crest of the hill to see for himself what they would face next. Again the ground trembled, but this time with the pounding of horses’ hooves. Like a huge, unstoppable wave thousands of French cavalry, line after line of them, charged directly towards them.
Wellington gave the order to form square, a battlefield formation where men stood three deep, a line presenting bayonets, a line to fire, a line to reload. Cavalry horses would not charge into the bayonets and the muskets could fire at will. The interior of the square sheltered the wounded, the artillerymen and the officers, whose job it was to make sure the men stood fast, kept shooting and closed any gap.
“Fire at the horses,” Gabe shouted to his men. Without his horse, a cavalryman was helpless.
Gabe wound up in the same square as Landon, who, thank God, was unscathed. Gabe might have got his wish about General Tranville. He’d been seen falling from his horse during that first infantry charge and no one had seen him since. His son Edwin, coward that he was, had disappeared at the beginning of the battle. Gabe presumed he was hiding somewhere that cannon fire and musket balls could not reach.
“Fire at the horses,” Gabe yelled again. “Stand fast.”
Gabe’s square held and, as far as he could tell, the other British squares held as well, even though the French charged again and again. Between charges Landon rode off to render assistance to Hougoumont, which was now on fire. Gabe stayed with his company, their numbers dwindling with each attack, the square becoming smaller and smaller.
The ground around them was littered with dead and dying horses and men, their screams melding with the boom of cannon and crack of musket fire. The air filled with smoke and it was difficult to see much further than ten to twelve feet.
Between cavalry attacks, Gabe worried that the French would train their artillery on the squares, or that more columns of infantry would join the charge. Neither happened. Just more cavalry. As the latest onslaught neared, a gap formed on one side of the square. Gabe rode to it. “Close the gap,” he ordered.
A cuirassier on a dark bay horse rode directly for the opening, but Gabe’s men fired on him as they closed ranks again. The rider jerked like a rag doll as several balls hit him. The horse was such a beauty, Gabe was glad his men had missed it. Its rider tumbled from the saddle as the horse ran on. The man rolled towards the square, landing abou
t four feet from Gabe. His helmet came off and bounced into the body of a French comrade.
Facing Gabe was the youthful countenance of Claude Mableau. The boy struggled to rise. One of his men aimed his musket at him.
“Do not fire,” Gabe cried, dismounting. “He’s no threat.” He ran out of the square and grabbed Claude by the collar, dragging him inside to where the other wounded lay.
“A Frenchie, Captain?” one of the man asked.
“Spare him,” Gabe ordered, not caring if the man thought him soft on the French. “He’s just a boy.”
Emmaline’s boy.
Chapter Six
She’d heard the guns all day, the booming of cannon fire, like the thunder of the two previous days without the rain.
Everyone said this was the big battle, not the one two days before when the cannons were also heard. It seemed to Emmaline that plenty of wounded men came into Brussels after that one. If this were the big battle, it could only get worse.
Tante Voletta had insisted they close the shop and pack up all the lace to hide in the attic.
“Those English will use our lace for bandages, I am sure of it,” her aunt had said. “They are gauche.”
For two days they packed away lace. It helped make the time pass, but now that the task was done, nothing was left to distract her. Emmaline’s heart seized with fear at each battle sound. Did that cannon ball strike Claude? Was he anywhere near it? Would he come back to her? Or had he died already, in that first battle? Had he been placed at the front of the charge so the musket balls would hit him first?
He was a soldier’s son, she forced herself to remember. Perhaps he was born with a soldier’s sense of self-preservation. Besides, she would know if he died. She was certain she would feel his life leave his body as profoundly as she felt when she gave birth to him.
Tante Voletta sent her out to purchase stores of food. Many of the English had fled to Antwerp, but still what shops were open had few supplies. Perhaps other shopkeepers had hidden their stock, as well.
The streets remained busy with wagons carrying supplies, people fleeing or wounded arriving. Rumours were everywhere. On one corner it was believed that Napoleon was at the city gates; on another corner the Allies had him in retreat. Either way the rumours went made Emmaline feel sick inside. There could be no possible victory for her in this battle.
A wagon of wounded British soldiers came into view. Emmaline ran alongside it. “What news of the battle?” she asked them.
“Bloody hard going,” one of the soldiers answered, which told her nothing.
Their red coats reminded her of Gabriel. Perhaps they knew how he fared. “Are you Royal Scots?”
“No, ma’am,” he answered.
The wagon rolled on.
Emmaline put her fingers on her chest, feeling for the beautiful ring she wore on a chain around her neck, hidden under her clothing. Somehow she did not believe a mere war could kill Gabriel Deane. He was too clever, too strong and too good a man to be lost to battle. She only wished they could have parted with loving words, not the harsh ones that had escaped her lips when she refused his proposal.
She closed her eyes and could still see the wounded look on his face. Why had he not understood? It was impossible for her to marry Gabriel, a British soldier, when her son so vehemently hated him. Gabriel should have known that.
The sound of a hundred hooves thundered in her ears. She dropped her basket as an entire regiment of Hanoverian cavalry galloped past her. Emmaline froze, expecting to see Napoleon himself on the heels of these German horsemen.
No one came.
She bent down to retrieve her basket and was seized with a sharp anxiety, like shafts piercing her skin. No more shops—she just wanted to go home, to wait in solitude for some final word of who was winning and who was losing, who was alive and who had died. Whether Claude would return to her.
The towers of St Michael’s Cathedral loomed above her. She glanced up at them and whispered a prayer that God would deliver Claude back to her.
She added a prayer for Gabriel. Not for him to return, but for him to live.
She crossed herself and hurried to the lace shop, walking around the back and entering the yard through the gate. After opening the rear door of the shop, she climbed the stairs to her aunt’s rooms.
“This is all you could purchase?” Her aunt took the basket from Emmaline’s hands and peered inside it.
She wrapped her arms around her still-shaking chest. “There was not much to buy.”
A cannon boomed and they both turned towards the sound.
“I am weary of that!” her aunt exclaimed. She examined each item in the basket. “Did you hear any news of the battle?”
Emmaline shook her head. “No one knows the outcome.”
“Pfft!” Tante Voletta waved a hand. “Napoleon will win.”
Emmaline kept silent. She did not want the French to win. Claude would never leave the army if that happened. “Do you need my company? Because I would rather go to my own rooms.”
“Go,” her aunt said. “But come to me when you learn of the victory.”
Emmaline, however, did not go out in search of news.
She spent the evening on her sofa, hugging her knees and repeating her prayers. She lay down and pressed her hand against the ring under her dress. As she felt its circle in her fingers, she watched the flame of a single candle. The cannonade stopped and as darkness fell she could hear the rumble of wagons passing through the streets. Her candle grew shorter and shorter and soon her eyes grew heavy. She fought to stay awake. How could she sleep while the fate of her son was in question?
The sounds in the street were rhythmic and lulling. Her eyes closed.
And flew open again.
A loud rapping at the door startled her awake. She sat up, heart pounding.
“Emmaline,” she heard a man’s voice. “Open the door.”
Gabriel!
She flew to the door and pulled it open.
He was a mere shadow in the dark yard, but as he stepped inside, she could see he carried something over his shoulder.
Her eyes widened.
“I’ve brought your son.”
“Claude!” Her hands clasped over her mouth. Was he dead? “Claude!”
“He’s wounded.” Without another word he carried him upstairs.
She grabbed the candle and followed. Claude’s head lolled back and forth with each step Gabriel made.
Gabriel opened the door to Claude’s room and placed him on the bed. Immediately he began to undress him.
Emmaline lit more candles, her hands trembling. “Where is he hurt?”
“His head.” He ripped away Claude’s bloody shirt. “His neck. And leg.”
She stood by the bed, finally able to touch her son. She helped pull off his trousers, stained with his blood. He’d been shot in the thigh, but a quick examination showed that the musket ball had passed through. On his neck, right above his collarbone, was another wound. She placed a finger near the spot.
Claude flinched and moaned—signs of life, at least.
“Water.” Gabriel’s voice sounded forced. “Need to wash. See the wounds better.”
She sprang to her feet. “I’ll fetch some.”
She returned with a stack of towels, a pitcher of water, a basin and cup. As she placed them on the bedside table, Gabriel swayed and looked as if he might collapse to the floor.
She hurried to him, helping him regain his balance. “Are you injured, Gabriel?”
He shook his head. “Tired.”
“Sit in the chair.” She eased him over to a wooden chair near the bed and ran to pour him a cup of the water.
He drank it greedily, but gestured for her to return to Claude.
Emmaline washed away blood and mud and bits of grass and cloth from her son’s skin and from his hair. Beneath his matted hair was a long gash. A musket ball had scraped him, but had not
penetrated. His thigh had a huge hole in it from which blood still oozed. His chest was riddled with round red spots, turning to bruises.
“His chest plate stopped some of the musket balls,” Gabriel said. The cuirassiers wore steel chest plates, like the armour of medieval times.
The most worrisome wound was the one on his neck. The musket ball needed to come out.
She turned to Gabriel. “He needs a surgeon.”
He rubbed his face. “Won’t find one. There are thousands who need a surgeon. Most worse off.” His gaze met hers. “Too many.” A haunted expression came over his face.