Marriage Made in Rebellion

by Sophia James

  ‘San Sebastian is on fire.’

  Shocked, Alejandra could only nod, for tall billows of smoke crested a hill, the black height of it denoting great damage. They could hear no gunshots or sounds of fighting, though, as they crouched down on the top of the hillock and waited, the early-morning sun on their backs and a thousand questions unanswered. Below there was the movement of people along the streets and the carts of an uninterrupted trade.

  ‘It is over, the battle. I think it’s the vanquishers who have started the fire.’

  ‘The English, then? They have won it?’

  ‘If they had not, we would see them still outside the fortified southern walls or across the estuary of the river. It is Rey who is the general in charge of the French here and they have used the ancient fortifications well for defence by all accounts. But Wellington has over nine thousand men from Oswald’s Fifth Division and a good number of Portuguese troops to boot and Rey has only just on three thousand. So San Sebastian was always going to fall if Soult didn’t have the means to defend it, which he hasn’t for word has it they are a lot further east in the foothills of the Pyrenees.’

  Such words told Alejandra that Lucien Howard was still involved in the military somehow. She stayed silent whilst he removed a small looking glass from his bag and pieced it together before aiming it towards the city walls.

  Finally he stood. ‘Come. We will go down and make ourselves known for I am fairly sure it is the English who are in charge.’

  * * *

  The town was reeling with drunken riotous mobs of British soldiers, the brandy and wine flowing freely in the streets.

  Lucien made certain that Alejandra stayed close behind him, glad she was dressed in her lad’s clothes. Down nearly every alleyway and small lane there was evidence of violence, men with their throats cut and the screams of young women heard. Rape had a certain sound to it unlike the silence of murder.

  When a half-clothed girl ran into him as she tried to escape a trio of drunken English louts, Lucien held her arm so that she did not fall.

  ‘Help me.’ The words were only mouthed as though sound had been taken from her in shock. Pushing her behind him, he confronted those who stood now watching.

  ‘She’s our Spanish whore. Give ’er back and get yer own, guv. There’s plenty of ’em here.’

  Drawing his pistol, Lucien pointed it straight at the heart of the biggest man.

  ‘You’ll have to take her from me first.’ All these soldiers understood was aggression and his anger had surfaced in a red-raw fury.

  When the same man came forward with a knife, Lucien simply shot him above the knee, in a fleshy part of the leg, a small injury that would not permanently disable him, but would certainly hurt. Then he lifted his gun to another behind, threatening to do the same again.

  ‘Good shooting.’ Alejandra’s voice was close.

  The piercing screams of the girl between them almost drowned out the barrage of swear words directed at him by the departing English soldiers, yet as chaos consumed them Lucien was more and more aware of the calm surrounding Alejandra. She did not flinch or pull back. No, she stayed right behind him, resolution to aid him well on show, even weaponless.

  No doubts. No misgivings. She had taken the Spanish girl by the hand and was trying to give her comfort, settling her with quiet words of strength.

  ‘They are gone now and they won’t be back.’

  She could not say more for at that moment an older man came from a house a few yards away, tears streaming from his eyes.

  ‘I thought you were dead. I thought that you had been taken away.’

  ‘Papa.’ The girl rushed into his arms. ‘This man saved me. He shot the drunken soldier and frightened the rest.’

  ‘Then I thank you, sir. My daughter is all I have left and without her...’

  More shouting further away had them turning and the pair disappeared into their house, the heavy door closing behind them. Lucien hoped such a protection would be enough, but he doubted it. He had never seen such lawlessness and lack of organised control in all his years in the army. He turned to Alejandra, her green eyes watchful and the fury all about them still.

  ‘We’ll need to find Wellington and his aides, for he will know me, but this is a dangerous place, Alejandra, so stay close.’ Reaching into his bag, he brought out a knife he knew she would recognise, wicked sharp, the heft smoothed from years of use.

  ‘Take it and don’t hold back if you need to use it.’

  * * *

  The look and the feel of the weapon in her fingers was familiar. For so long she had carried a knife. Until Madrid when death had reduced her to not caring whether she lived or died and so such protection was immaterial.

  For a moment, though, some small thing came back, some stronger sense of herself, a knowledge of who she had been once. Before. It was the knife she had given him at the hacienda in the very first days of his arrival there.

  ‘If anyone attacks you, kill them. There are no rules here save anarchy and it is a choice between your life or theirs. An eye for an eye and a tooth...’

  ‘I no longer believe in any of that.’

  ‘God. Jesus. Heaven. Hell?’

  ‘Hell, perhaps, but none of the other.’ The feeling in her throat thickened as she said it. Once, religion had been her backbone and her strength. Now it was lost to her, through both choice and circumstance. ‘Look about you, Capitán, and tell me, is there a God here, in this?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘Maybe in the lesson of it for next time, I think.’

  She glanced away because in his simple philosophy she saw the truth of who she had become and also of who he was.

  She wanted to ask him then what his life had been like across the past four years, but she did not. Safer that way, she thought, holding on to her distance like a shield as she positioned the knife in her fist.

  The wholeness she had felt with him all those years ago was creeping in again. Unexpected and wonderful. The fears and struggle of life seemed to melt away in his company and all she felt were the possibilities. Swallowing down the hope of it, she followed him into the town proper.

  * * *

  ‘It’s a damned mess, is what it is.’ Ian MacMillan, an aide of Wellington’s, had taken them into the house used by the officers on the far side of San Sebastian. ‘Our casualties were high in the first onslaught from the beach because although the town wall was breached there was a second inner coupure that meant those sent in were trapped in a no man’s land. Many died there and the anger has lingered. This is the result.’

  ‘The wine and brandy has something to do with it, too, I am guessing.’ They’d seen casks on the street upturned and abandoned so that the liquid was running in the gutters, the colour of blood.

  The other man nodded. ‘Indeed, the place was full of booze and the men have run amok, pillaging, burning and killing. Some of the officers tried to stop them, but they were either ignored or threatened. Sanity is long gone.’

  ‘And it will be this way until the alcohol runs out.’ Lucien stated this quietly as he looked out the window across a plaza filled with violence. ‘Where are the French now?’

  ‘General Rey and his men have retreated to the hill of Urgull, a small garrison on the mound above the beach. The Marquess of Wellington is expecting them to ask for terms as they are surrounded, and as I think he has not the heart, after this, to beat them down further, he will agree.’

  ‘It’s been a long campaign, then?’

  ‘As long as yours was, sir, under Moore. We heard about the difficulties in that one.’

  ‘At least you have had your victories.’ His humour was measured as the sounds of those outside filtered into the room.

  Captain Howard was not dressed as a soldier, but anyone looking at him could tell he had been one. It was inherent in the way he stood and spoke and in the questions he asked. He was not bent down by life or death or even by what had happened here. He had saved a young girl today from
being raped and shot a soldier in the knee and yet he had made no mention of this to anyone.

  Honourable and good. That was who he was and the anger that had built a tight knot about Alejandra’s heart began to loosen.

  ‘Would you and your lad like a bed here tonight? It might be safer than taking your chances out there at least.’

  It was getting late and a storm looked to be brewing to the north. Lucien caught her eye in question and she nodded.

  * * *

  Four hours later they were finally alone, the dinner an early one and quickly taken.

  Two beds stood against each wall and although the room was small it was cool, a band of windows along one side open to the night and two storeys up.

  With the candles burning and a bottle of wine on the table between them this place was the most luxurious and private accommodation they had had since leaving Madrid, but it made Alejandra feel nervous. With her anger slipped a notch she could no longer latch on to fury as a way to keep Lucien Howard at a distance. Yet he had not in one word or touch signalled he wanted more than the relationship that prevailed.

  Cordial. Wary. Polite.

  Taking off her hat, she fanned her fingers through her hair and spread the heavy heat of it out before tying it up with leather.

  ‘Will you dye it again?’

  This was the first truly personal question he had asked her.

  ‘My hair?’

  He nodded and sat down on the opposite bed watching her. ‘Do you prefer it that way?’

  ‘The blonde I used to have was worse.’

  At that he laughed.

  ‘Maria insisted on the red because her daughter had been one. She had bottles of the stuff left after Anna passed and I suppose I was her substitute.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Giving birth. It is a dangerous thing to do and sometimes a mother can perish, or a...’

  Stopping herself by sheer dint of will, she felt the tremble of loss run over her heart. A child could die, too. So very easily. Her child. Their child. Left in a nameless grave in a cemetery she might never be back to visit.

  And yet here...here the disasters of life were unfolding about her, too, and Lucien had kept her safe, untouched, whole. The fright of the young girl had shocked her, the relief of her father amidst screams and shouts of other victims in all the corners of the town underlying the terror.

  Death visited unannounced and with little warning. One moment here and the next one gone. Like Ross. Like her father. Like Maria and Tomeu and Adan and Manolo and her mother. It took no account of honour or fairness. It just was.

  Five days ago she had cheated it in the dank and cold prison cell on the outskirts of Madrid and tonight she lay above the chaos and looting in San Sebastian, yet cocooned in safety.

  Lucien Howard was sitting with his back against the wall, having removed his boots and jacket. His knife was laid down next to him, in the soft leather in which he sheathed it. ‘The battle for the freedom of Spain is nearly won.’

  ‘At a great cost to the town of San Sebastian,’ she replied, watching him frown.

  ‘“Only the dead have seen the end of war”,’ he quoted. ‘Plato said that more than two thousand years ago and it still holds true today.’

  ‘The philosopher?’ She had heard of him but had read none of his treatises. ‘You are a learned man, Capitán, yet you are not a soldier any more? You no longer march with your army?’

  ‘No. One needs heart to fight well.’

  ‘And yours is lost? Your heart?’

  He met her gaze at that and for a moment through the final slash of light before the darkness fell she saw what war had cost him. It was written on his face in sadness and loss. As it probably was, just as distinctly, on hers.

  Turning away, she pulled back the sheet and kicked off her own boots even as she fashioned a pillow from her jacket. She was glad for the night-time and the privacy it afforded as she lay down.

  ‘What will happen next, do you think? With the English forces?’

  ‘It is most likely that Wellesley will chase General Soult across the Pyrenees and back into France and Joseph Bonaparte will be sent home from Madrid as the support for Napoleon crumbles. Another year should do it and then there will be nothing left of the little Emperor’s pretensions.’

  ‘Just dead people,’ she said quietly, ‘and sadness.’

  * * *

  He wished he could have gone outside and walked, but he did not want to leave Alejandra here alone and so he lay back in his bed by the window and watched the clouds instead, scooting across the moon and running just ahead of a storm.

  What the hell was he to do with her now? He could not simply hand her over to the British army’s safekeeping with the confusion here and the French less than a mile from where they lay. Her disguise was at best tenuous and he had the suspicion the aide to Wellington who had shown them to their room had already understood the lad who accompanied him was indeed a lassie.

  Lifting a glass from the table, he drank some of the wine, a fine and full-bodied red with a strong hint of something he could not quite define.

  Like Alejandra, he smiled and looked over to where she lay.

  He had watched her sleep in the hills after A Coruña and she still slumbered in the same way, curled up on her side with one hand under her head. The bandage on her foot was dirty where she had kicked off the sheets to allow a freedom and he vowed to find a medic on the morrow to get it checked.

  She had not complained. Not once. She had hobbled on the foot for miles and shaken her head when he had asked her if it was painful. Her lip looked better today, too, and the bruises on her face were harder to see.

  He could not imagine one other woman of his acquaintance making so little fuss about injuries and wounds. There was an old square of mirror in the room they were in propped up against a shelf by the door. He had not seen her glance in it even once.

  Outside the sounds of the night were receding into silence. He wondered what Wellington must think of such pointless aggression, how he squared off his triumphs with such defeats. He was glad he was out of it now. Once, he had not been.

  Once, after A Coruña and Alejandra, all he could think of was going back into battle and losing his life for a cause that was worth it.

  He closed his eyes and rested his head against the rough boards that lined the room, her soft sleeping breath coming to him across the space between them.

  He couldn’t leave her here. At least of that he was sure. If Wellington could not offer her a safe haven, he would take her to England with him. He smiled at the thought, imagining what the tight-laced English society doyens might make of Alejandra Fernandez y Santo Domingo and she of them.

  He was certain Amethyst Wylde would like her and Adelaide Hughes. His sister, Christine, would also enjoy the company of a woman who did not simper or flirt or pretend.

  His mother, of course, would take some convincing given her loathing of anyone Spanish, but that was a worry for another day.

  He laughed to himself, thinking that he had planned out a future for her that she herself had taken no part in. Indeed, she looked as if she would be off in a flash if he did not watch her, gone into the ether and another life that he would have no notion of. Yet with her time in Madrid finished and her safety in A Coruña and the northern coast uncertain she was running out of locations to make a home from.

  ‘You are still awake?’ She had stretched out and, in the dark, her lurid hair looked less red. ‘It’s very late, I think.’

  ‘I like the night. It’s the quietest time of the day.’

  Without the need to directly look at each other talking was easier.

  ‘I saw a story of you once in an English paper about a girl you were to marry.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I didn’t marry her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I could not give her what she needed.’

  Now she sat herself u
p, her rolled jacket tucked in behind her, and was trying to peer at him through the gloom. ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Love. Honesty. Even the truth was beyond my capability. I took the blame of it all, of course, and I think in the end she did not suffer overmuch. Her parents took her off on an extended tour of the Continent virtually straight away and when she returned a good year later it was on the arm of an Italian count who had much in the way of wealth and devotion.’

  Alejandra was amazed that he might have told her such a personal thing. She was also unreasonably angry. For him. ‘Was your heart broken even a little?’

  He laughed at that and shook his head. ‘I was relieved. A lifetime is a long while to spend with someone...’

  ‘Who could not love you in the same way you loved them back?’ She finished the thought for him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just that.’

  The moments of quiet stretched out, but now it held a lot less restraint and much more warmth, their lines of communication more fluid and real.

  ‘What happened to my signet ring? I left it with the old lady at the brothel and asked her to give it to you.’

  This question was unexpected. ‘I sold it. Señor Morales was pressing me for the loan repayments and it was valuable.’

  ‘Mateo Morales? The man you thought was me that night in Segovia Street?’

  ‘He is a moneylender and he was going to call in the loans unless I...’ She stopped and wished she had not said anything, but he carried on anyway.

  ‘Unless you slept with him?’

  ‘I would have, if you had not come. Do not think that I wouldn’t have. I am not the innocent I was before, Capitán.’

  His smile surprised her. ‘You shot your husband, Alejandra. You knew how to use a knife as you traipsed across the killing fields of war as the daughter of the guerrilla leader El Vengador. What part of that implies innocence?’

  ‘I was not a prostitute then.’ Her voice was low.

  ‘And you are not one now.’

  ‘I loved God and Jesus. I believed. I had faith and now I don’t. I threw my rosary into the river.’ This she said in the hushed tone of the truly dreadful, the worst possible confession she might make.