The True Soldier: Jack Lark 6

by Paul Fraser Collard

  Jack paused at the doorway. He had caught a whiff of her perfume as she passed him. The delicate fragrance spoke of decadence and sophistication, neither of which made him comfortable. He glanced at the servant left outside, but the man was staring directly ahead. Still he lingered, uncertain as to the etiquette of whether to close the door or leave it open.

  ‘Mr Lark?’ Elizabeth was watching him. ‘Are you sure you are feeling quite well?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Jack decided to pull the door almost closed. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I would like to know why you lied to me.’

  Jack was startled. He had not known what to expect from Elizabeth’s visit, but the blunt question still foxed him. ‘What do you mean?’

  The smile had left her face. ‘I asked you about my brother’s passing. You made up a tale. I could see it in your eyes.’

  Jack was not sure what to say. He was also not sure where to stand. He took a pace closer to the bed, then thought better of it and instead took up a station near the window. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I think you do, Mr Lark. You strike me as a man who knows exactly what you are doing.’

  Jack could not help a short bark of laughter. ‘If only you knew.’

  ‘So tell me what happened.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘No.’ Elizabeth’s words came out bound in iron. ‘I suspect you think the truth is not for my ears. I am, after all, a poor brainless woman who could not possibly begin to understand the complex events of battle.’

  ‘No. That’s not true.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  Jack paused and took a deep breath. ‘Your brother died at the end of a bloody, awful battle. It might not have happened quite as I told you, but I made sure he didn’t suffer. It was quick enough.’

  Elizabeth was searching his face with her gaze, her eyes flitting from side to side. ‘My brother . . .’ Her voice failed, and she swallowed with difficulty before trying again. ‘My brother is dead.’ She forced the words out. ‘Yet I find it hard to comprehend that he is truly gone. I expect him still to return.’ She shook her head. ‘I expect that makes me something of a fool.’

  ‘You’re not a fool, Miss Kearney. I don’t think anyone would say that.’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘You should call me Elizabeth. We should not be formal.’

  ‘Then you can call me Jack.’ He tried to sound gallant. The attempt fell flat as he saw the sadness in Elizabeth’s eyes.

  ‘So will you tell me what happened, Jack? Sparing no detail?’

  Jack looked at the floor. ‘No.’

  Elizabeth studied him for several long moments, then got to her feet. ‘My father has asked if you would join him in his study when you are ready.’

  ‘Very well.’ Jack forced his voice to sound level and calm. ‘I shall be down shortly.’

  Elizabeth nodded at the answer, her lips pursed. She said nothing more as she left the room, closing the door softly behind her as she went.

  Jack listened to her footsteps as she walked away. Only when all was quiet did he let out a breath he had not been aware he was holding.

  Jack sat in the comfortable surroundings of Kearney’s study. It felt strange to be wearing his dead friend’s clothes. They were baggy and fitted him badly, his former companion’s build, even in the years before he had joined the Legion, considerably more bulky than his own leaner frame.

  It was hard to imagine the hard-fighting legionnaire sergeant calling this place home. Once Jack had asked him outright what he was doing so far from Boston. He could still remember the amused expression on the other man’s face. Kearney had found his true home in the ranks of the French army, one that stood no comparison to the comfortable life he would surely have led in this fine Boston town house.

  Sergeant Kearney had been one of the best non-commissioned officers Jack had ever come across. Calm and capable in encampment, yet brutal and uncompromising on the battlefield, he had exemplified all that was good about the hard-bitten Legion. It left Jack wondering at the events that had seen him forsake America for a life in the service of a foreign power.

  Time passed slowly as Jack waited for his host to appear. He did not mind the wait. The study was warm and comfortable. A fire was burning in one corner, staving off the chill of the damp spring evening. The walls were covered with dark-wood bookcases stuffed full of leather-covered books in warm red and green tones. A fine desk occupied much of the room, its leather blotter covered with sheets of paper.

  Only when he gave them a closer look did he realise that these were the letters he had come so far to deliver. Clearly Kearney had wasted no time in reading their contents. It would be an easy thing to approach the desk and take up the sheets of paper that he had carried for so long, yet Jack felt no urge to read them. He had a feeling he would discover soon enough what they contained.

  The warmth of the room was making him feel sleepy, so he got to his feet and walked to the tall window that overlooked the square to the front of the house. It was lit by tall, elegant gas lamps, and in their light he could just about make out the blossom on the many trees that filled the periphery of the square. It felt decadent to look out and study his surroundings. He was warm and comfortable, in good, clean clothes. Outside would be chill, the air still damp from the rain. He stared into the dark and wondered how long it would be before he would be forced to spend his nights out in the elements.

  ‘I am sorry for keeping you waiting.’

  Jack turned as soon as he heard his host speak. He wondered how long the older man had been there. How long he had been watched.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Kearney asked as he settled in the chair behind his desk.

  ‘Hungry,’ Jack replied honestly.

  Kearney smiled at the answer. ‘Hunger is easily remedied. But I would like to talk to you for a while before you eat. Would you mind?’

  ‘No, sir, not at all.’ It felt natural to Jack to address Kearney respectfully.

  ‘That is good of you.’ Kearney lifted a hand and gestured to a chair opposite his own. ‘Please do sit.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jack was closer to the letters now, but he did not try to read them, focusing his attention instead on Kearney’s face.

  ‘I must thank you for what you said to Elizabeth. It was a kindness.’

  ‘For telling her the truth?’

  ‘Please, Mr Lark, I think we both know that whatever that was, it was most certainly not the truth.’

  Jack tried to read Kearney’s expression. He failed. He was not good at understanding other people, unless they were trying to kill him. He was also clearly not as good a liar as he had believed, with neither Kearney nor his daughter taking his tale of Thomas’s death at face value. ‘I think it’s what your son would’ve wanted,’ he said, mounting what he hoped would prove to be a more resolute defence than the one he had presented when questioned by Elizabeth.

  ‘I think you are very much alike.’ Kearney smiled at Jack’s answer. ‘You remind me of him, Mr Lark.’

  ‘Jack. You can call me Jack.’

  ‘Thank you, I would like that.’ Kearney steepled his fingers and looked at Jack over them. ‘I am glad you came to me, Jack, truly. You have done this family a great service.’

  ‘I wanted to do it. Besides, I’d nothing else to do. Bringing you the letters, well, it gave me a purpose.’ Jack spoke deliberately. It felt good not to lie.

  ‘A purpose?’

  ‘Something to do. Something good. Something useful.’ He struggled to find the right words. ‘After Solferino, I had nothing.’ He offered a half-smile. ‘Except your son’s letters.’

  ‘Yet it took you two years to bring them to me.’

  ‘It’s a long way. And I was delayed.’ Jack could not help a hint of a smile creepin
g onto his face. The affair with the Frenchwoman might have finished badly, and cost him dearly, but he did not regret it.

  Kearney nodded. He appeared to be able to read Jack with ease. ‘You said my son handed you the letters. At the end.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Of all the things you have said, that is the one thing that has stuck with me.’ Kearney leaned forward in his chair. ‘At the end, he thought of us, of me.’ He sat back. ‘That means a great deal. After all that happened, I was not totally lost to him.’

  ‘Why did he leave?’

  Kearney did not reply immediately. Instead he lowered his steepled hands and fiddled with the letters strewn across his blotter. Then he sighed. ‘There was a girl.’

  ‘A girl!’ Jack could not help the exclamation. The sergeant had not seemed the type to be distracted by anything, least of all a woman.

  ‘I did not approve of the match.’ Kearney stopped his fiddling and looked directly at Jack. ‘She was Irish, from the North End.’ He paused, then ploughed ahead. ‘She was not from the best stock. I forbade Thomas to see her.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He chose her over me. I cut him off for it. No more money. No home. No contact. I pretended he was dead to me.’ The words made Kearney shudder. He lowered his gaze. ‘Only now do I see what a fool I was.’

  Jack wondered at the sanity of families like the Kearneys. They had every advantage life could give them, yet still they contrived to find ways to make themselves utterly miserable. ‘What happened to the girl?’

  ‘She died,’ Kearney looked away, ‘in childbirth. The place they were living was not good. It was not clean. I only found that out much later, from someone who chose to interfere. By then, Thomas had already boarded a ship for Europe. I did not know where he was, or what he was doing. Until I got that letter from the French authorities.’

  Jack said nothing as Kearney made his confession.

  ‘Did he despise me very much?’

  Jack heard the pain in the older man’s words. His friend had not spoken of family, but then Jack had not known him for long. He did know that as the sergeant lay bleeding and dying, his last thought had been the letters. He had never sent them, but he had written them.

  ‘I would know the truth.’ Kearney was watching him closely. ‘I am sorry to have forced your hand earlier, but Elizabeth needed to hear that Thomas died easily. The thought of his suffering has tormented her.’ He paused to make sure he had Jack’s attention. ‘Now I want the truth.’

  ‘I told you. He was shot. He died quickly.’ Jack repeated the same hackneyed lines he had used earlier. ‘He did not suffer.’

  Kearney absorbed the words. His expression did not alter. ‘I want the truth,’ he repeated.

  ‘The truth? The truth is that your son is dead.’ Jack did not bite at the lure as he had before. ‘Is that not enough?’

  ‘No. Not for me.’ Kearney’s stare was intense. ‘I know it should be, and I thank you for being prepared to spare me the details. If you do decide to tell me what really happened, then I shall not share it. Elizabeth will never find out, nor Robert. But I would know.’ The final words were delivered in little more than a hiss.

  Jack did not shy away from the intensity in the other man’s gaze. ‘I’ll tell you, if that’s what you want. But all of it. I’ll not hold anything back.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘So be it. I’ve told you much of it already. We were running for our lives. The Legion was broken by then; just scattered penny packets of men trying to stay alive. Their cavalry came for us as we ran. We lost a lot of men.’ Jack spoke in an even tone. ‘Your son and I were together. We both knew they had us, but we kept running,’ he shrugged, ‘as anyone would do, I suppose. Then we spotted this ditch, if you can call it that. It wasn’t much more than a muddy puddle really, but it was enough. It saved us, just before two of the bastards would have cut us down.’

  He was watching Kearney closely. He registered no change of emotion in the other man’s eyes. ‘We were in that bloody ditch and they were going to kill us as easily as knifing eels in a barrel. Then Thomas . . .’ Jack paused and offered a tight-lipped smile as he used the name for the first time, ‘Thomas shot one of them down. The other rider charged us. He hit Thomas before either of us could do a damned thing about it.’ He paused and lifted a hand to the side of his neck. ‘He cut him here.’

  For the first time, Kearney’s expression changed, the slightest tic moving one eye. Yet when he spoke, his voice was calm. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He fell. He was bleeding badly and struggling to breathe.’

  ‘But he was still alive?’

  ‘Yes, he was then.’

  ‘What happened to the Austrian?’

  ‘I chased him down.’

  ‘How could you do that? He was mounted. You were on foot.’

  ‘His poor horse was knackered. It was bloody slow. I killed it with my bayonet. Then I pulled the bastard out of the saddle and wrung his neck. When that was done, and it took a fair while, I went back to your son.’

  ‘He was still alive?’

  ‘Just.’

  ‘How long did it take?’

  ‘Not long.’ Jack held Kearney’s gaze, daring the other man to look away. ‘The poor bastard was choking on blood, drowning in it. I could see it was hurting him. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t; the blood was filling his throat, what was left of it. That was when he gave me the letters.’

  He held his breath for the span of a single heartbeat before he pressed on. He had said he would tell the whole story. He would not hold back, no matter that he would be damning himself in the process.

  ‘I put them away. I didn’t think about delivering them then; that came later. I just sat with him, listening to him dying. He didn’t cry out, even though that wound would’ve been agony. I wanted him to die. I just wanted it to be over. But he was strong and we both knew it would take a long time. That was when he asked me.’

  All emotion had drained from Jack’s voice, so the words were coming out cold and flat. ‘I knew what he wanted me to do.’ He felt a moment’s anger at having to release his demons, demons that brought with them the stink of blood and the reek of powder smoke. ‘He was dying and it was fucking agony.’ He paused, a moment’s hesitation before he gave Kearney the sordid truth. ‘So I did what he asked. I took his knife and I sank it into his heart.’ The words came out as hard as iron. ‘You want the truth? Well, here it is. I killed your son. His blood is on my hands.’

  He fell silent. He had not let his eyes move from Kearney as he spoke. He had not lost control, even when confessing to the killing. His emotions were mastered, the memories secure in their cages.

  Kearney did not react for some time. It was as if he were carved from granite. Eventually he spoke softly. ‘Thank you.’

  Jack ran a hand over his close-cropped hair, moving it back and forth in several short, sharp gestures. ‘You don’t have to thank me.’ For the first time a trace of bitterness crept into his words. ‘I’ll leave immediately.’ He made to rise.

  ‘Stay where you are.’ Kearney stopped him before he could stand. ‘You don’t have to leave.’

  ‘I killed your son, yet you would let me stay as a guest in your house?’

  ‘You did what he asked of you. That was a kindness, a great kindness. I can see what it cost you.’ Kearney looked at Jack and smiled. ‘I am in your debt. I do not think I can ever repay you for all you have done.’

  Jack could not speak. He had expected to be damned for his actions. He had not expected to be thanked.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Then don’t. I often find that saying nothing is better than speaking for the sake of it. There remains just one question that you haven’t answered.’

  ‘Which is?’
<
br />   ‘What are we to do with you now?’

  ‘Nothing. I have always shifted for myself. I can do so again.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘I’m told America is a big country. I’ll find someplace to go.’

  Kearney eased himself back in his chair. ‘When I first asked you if you had served in the Legion, you told me you had not. Yet you were fighting alongside my son. How can that be?’

  ‘I was there in an unofficial capacity.’

  ‘That is an enigmatic answer.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘So you were not a legionnaire?’

  ‘No, not for real.’

  ‘But you have served?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Before. I was in the British army. I was a redcoat.’

  ‘A goddam lobster!’

  ‘Yes. I fought in the Crimea, then in India and Persia.’

  ‘So you have experience of war?’

  ‘I’ve been around, yes.’

  ‘Then I know what I can offer you.’ Kearney’s lips twitched. ‘I can offer you employment.’

  ‘What do you know of our politics here, Jack?’

  Jack noticed the way Kearney eased himself back in his chair and appeared keen to talk of something new. He supposed it was preferable to dwelling on the tale of a son’s death.

  ‘A little,’ he answered with honesty. ‘I read of your troubles in the London papers before I left.’

  ‘Troubles? Is that what London thinks this is?’ Kearney appeared affronted. ‘That seems rather a small word to describe the strife of a country that is falling apart at the seams. Troubles indeed. But at least you do know that we are a country divided?’

  ‘I know you stand at the brink of civil war. North against South, isn’t that what you are calling it?’

  ‘You have it. You said we are at the brink of war. Well, I fear that is in the past. Fort Sumter has fallen and the first shots have been fired. It took the rebels thirty hours of pounding to force us to drop our flag. Thirty hours!’ Kearney slammed his open hand down onto his desk to emphasise the point. ‘It is a sad day when men born under this flag find it in their hearts to fire upon it.’