She finally made her way over to the survivors, not daring to hope, and saw Monroe holding Jack.
“Is this the boy?” he asked hopefully, as the dazed infant was held out to her.
Vevina seized him with a cry of joy. Thank God!” Vevina gasped, hugging the child to her, and then the remainder of the women agreed to look after the orphans.
“Come see me later, I’ll give you money and clothes,” Vevina promised, as the young ADC led her away, insisting, “Come now, I told Wellington I’d bring you straight away, and that was hours ago.”
The other horse had wandered off or been taken, so Monroe helped her up into the saddle, then handed up the baby, and mounted up behind. They rode the rest of the way back to Headquarters in numb silence.
Vevina caught some movement from an upper window as she descended from the horse into the arms of ADC Monroe. She shook herself as she realized she had to see Wellington.
She raked her fingers through her hair, and tried to removed the caked mud, dust and blood, but with little success. She thought wistfully of her last bath at Bayonne weeks before, and knew that with the way she felt now, even a year in a tub couldn’t wash away the dirt and filth she had come into contact with.
She saw Stewart coming down the stairs, but Mitchell came in then and hugged her and the baby to him in relief.
“Thank God he’s safe,” he cried.
Vevina whispered, “Somers. He tried to save the women and children.”
Mitchell held onto Vevina as she began to shake.
Monroe cleared his throat nervously as Stewart noisily stomped back up the stairs.
“Wellington is waiting, miss, and the baby needs food, and so on. I’ll take it to the kitchens, and then up to your quarters,” the young ADC said kindly.
Mitchell finally released her, and she reluctantly parted with the baby. “Maybe I should come with you, give you a hand.”
Mitchell kissed her again, and said, “Go on, now, Viv, and call me whenever you need me.”
Vevina watched the baby as Monroe disappeared with it down the stairs, and then wearily climbed to Wellington’s office, clutching the banister for support.
Chapter Thirty-three
Wellington rose as Vevina entered the room. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Stewart standing to attention, but he made no move towards her, nay, never even looked at her.
“Lady Vevina, I must say, though I risk embarrassing you, that seldom have I ever seen anyone look the way you do. My dear girl, please sit down, and take a glass of port and some food.”
Wellington’s eyes bored into her, and especially seemed to focus on her gently rounded stomach. Vevina looked down numbly at the caked blood, and other unspeakable items which clung to her breeches and shirt, and she could see Stewart shift uneasily, though he remained at attention.
Vevina did as she was bade, and sank gratefully down onto the hard wooden chair that sat squarely in front of his chart table.
“Now, Lady Vevina, I want you to tell us exactly what happened to you from the moment I last saw you, until now.”
Vevina, bone-tired, tried to gather her thoughts, and summon up enough sense to provide Wellington with a concise account of her activities.
But she looked over at Stewart, and shifted uncomfortably. “Perhaps the major has other duties,” she suggested cautiously, dreading him hearing the whole truth about his brother.
“Major Fitzgerald will remain where he is, in case I should need him to provide further details.” Wellington looked calm enough, but Vevina sensed an anger and hostility in both men, particularly Stewart, that she couldn’t quite explain.
Vevina sighed. This was her one chance to tell the whole truth, and after the carnage she had witnessed in the past three days, suddenly none of it seemed to matter any more.
Vevina took a deep breath and nodded. “Very well then, sir, when I rode back to Major Stewart Fitzgerald’s camp after seeing you at Guarda, my companion Private Mitchell could not continue on to Major Samuel Fitzgerald’s camp because his horse lost a shoe, so I went in his place. I thought it would be a simple matter of passing your message to an ADC and leaving, but unfortunately his secretary Francis Baines caught me eavesdropping outside the tent.
“Samuel had been talking to his henchman, Francis’ step-brother Grimes, about arrangements he had made to meet the French at the south portal of Cuidad Roderigo at ten o’clock on the night Samuel would launch his attack. Samuel heard your message, which had told him not to act until you returned from your spurious mission to Portugal.”
Vevina paused as ADC Monroe entered the room with a basin of water, soap and some towels, while Jeanne followed on behind with some food on a tray.
Vevina looked at Wellington for permission, and then silently washed her hands several times.
Monroe and Jeanne both gave her a reassuring smile and retired, and Vevina bit into a chicken leg distractedly as she picked up the thread of her story.
“As soon as Samuel heard you were meant to be going to Lisbon, he decided to attack. His troops were unprepared, ill led, badly organized. It would have been a massacre, and Samuel was planning to use the attack as a cover for his own disappearance into France.”
“As soon as I had delivered the message, he asked Grimes and Sergeant Hawkes, who had been suborned by Samuel to murder Wilfred and I, and steal Stewart’s code book, to kill me. Samuel said that one dead Spanish partisan, as he first believed me to be, would not be missed, and he could claim, if ever held accountable for the disaster at Cuidad Roderigo, that the message never reached him. Samuel said in the tent, in front of Francis Baines, who will support my statement, that you would be so far away, my Lord, that by the time you found out about Cuidad Roderigo, all would be lost.”
Wellington’s eyes glittered. Stewart cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“So you say Hawkes stole the code book?”
She swallowed a mouthful of the chicken, and nodded. “Yes, my Lord, he had read about Samuel’s reward for our capture and death in the papers. We had been safe up until that point, because I had disguised myself as a young man.
"But once I put on women’s dress again, Hawkes knew my true identity, and went to Samuel with his story. Hawkes had always hated Will anyway, so at first I thought his behaviour was just a continuation of his enmity. Fortunately, Stewart rescued me, protected me from Hawkes,” Vevina explained patiently, and watched as Stewart’s eyes locked with Wellington’s briefly.
“Go on with your story then, Lady Vevina, about Cuidad Roderigo.”
“Well, sir, I knew if the siege was broken, there would have been a full scale invasion of the entire peninsula by the French, with only Major Stewart Fitzgerald’s South Warwickshire regiment remaining.
“When Grimes and Hawkes were taking me out of the tent, Samuel discovered who I was. He instructed Hawkes to make sure Will was dead, so no one would contest the ownership of our Irish estates. He told them to rape me, kill me, and bring my clothes back as proof,” Vevina said flatly, reliving the horror of those terrible moments.
Stewart shifted uncomfortably at this and would have spoken, had not Wellington lifted a hand to command silence.
“It must have been a terrible experience. How on earth did you ever escape?” he inquired gently.
“I manage to kill Grimes, but I was badly wounded by his bayonet, which sliced deeply into my arm, and I was beaten by Hawkes. My friend Martha had given me a knife to secrete in my boot, and I killed Hawkes with it.
“Then Francis Baines came along. Samuel had sent him to make sure Grimes and Hawkes did the job properly, but really he intended to rescue me. He remembered me from Ireland, and knew I was innocent of all charges brought against me.
"Francis said Samuel himself had killed his father Thomas Baines to ensure no one knew of the papers in his possession. These papers proved that Samuel had been the traitor dealing with the French all along, during the Emmet rebellion nearly nine years ago, and now as wel
l.”
Stewart let out a gasp, and visibly swayed.
Wellington stared at him briefly, before saying, “Major, you may be seated. Lady Vevina, please continue. What did you do next?”
“I waited for Francis to return with some clothes, and then we ripped off and stained with blood the ones I had been wearing to convince Samuel I was really dead. As Francis was patching up my wounded arm, we heard horses, and I could smell French cavalry. I knew this was an added danger to Samuel’s men, who would be so busy attacking the walls of the town that they would be caught from behind with a cavalry charge from the plain.”
“Very true, my compliments, Madame, for your foresight in this matter,” Wellington said, and poured her another glass of wine, which she gulped thirstily.
Then she leaned back in the chair for a moment to close her heavy–lidded eyes, but Wellington demanded, “After you saw the French cavalry, what did you do?”
Vevina frowned at his urgent tone, and opened her eyes. “Francis got my horse, and I rode through the countryside back to Stewart’s camp. But surely you must know all this.”
“I need to hear it from your own lips, Lady Vevina, so please bear with me. Your evidence in this case will be crucial here, for I must establish certain facts before I can acquit you and your brother of the charges the Crown brought against your family last year,” Wellington urged.
Again Vevina saw the two men exchange looks, and Stewart still remained broodingly silent, and avoided her gaze.
“Very well, my Lord, but I’m very tired, so please forgive me if I seem rude, and don’t expect me to be entirely lucid about all this,” Vevina pointed out as she stifled yet another yawn.
“I understand completely. Now tell me, when you saw Major Stewart Fitzgerald again, did you tell him anything about what you had overheard in the tent?”
“No, my Lord,” Vevina said, hanging her head.
“Why not?” Wellington demanded almost fiercely.
“I judged it to be irrelevant. There was a great deal of animosity between the brothers, and I was afraid Stewart might try to go to the south portal himself to challenge Samuel, when he was desperately needed on the battlefield of Cuidad Roderigo,” Vevina explained, daring to look directly at Stewart for the first time.
His face remained impassive, but his eyes again avoided hers.
“But that was specifically against his orders, Lady Vevina. Neither Major Samuel nor Major Stewart Fitzgerald were meant to engage the enemy at that time,” Wellington maintained. “You carried the orders back yourself, you have just admitted it! Therefore all three of you are guilty of disobedience, if not worse!”
Vevina could see she was in a corner, and tried to justify Stewart’s behavior. “But your spoken order to me was that Stewart would have to do anything he could to prevent the French breaking through in the North, was it not?”
Wellington gave a curt nod.
She leaned forward in her chair with her elbows on her knees to support herself. “Then please, my Lord, consider our position. The Lincolnshires were put into a deliberate trap by a known traitor. How could we have acted otherwise? If we had tried to stop Samuel then, we might never have found out what his plans were. Hundreds of men would have died.
"Samuel was not a career soldier like yourself or his brother, my Lord. He spent a huge sum buying his commission so he could betray his country. He had no intention of fighting, and hardly knew one end of a rifle from the other. By Stewart taking advantage of Samuel’s absence, he saved the Lincolnshires.”
“They should not have been fighting,” Wellington insisted.
“Sir, the twenty men the Major took with him to Cuidad Roderigo were prepared to stop the cavalry charge, and assist Samuel’s men going into the breach. The action had already started by the time they ever got there.
“Once the attack started, Stewart merely appeared on the battlefield wearing an eye patch with the strap pulled down low over his jaw to cover up the scar that distinguishes him from Samuel, and led the men properly.”
Wellington nodded. “I am satisfied that there he acted in the best interests of the men and the Crown. But what about your part in all this? You took ten men with you on a skirmishing party, did you not?”
She admitted, “Yes, I did. The men were comrades of mine from the ranks. You told me to spy for you. True, we were going behind Stewart’s back, but the chance to see what was happening at the south portal was too good to let slip."
"That is true, I did."
"Some of the men pretended to be French officers meant to escort Samuel to the meeting, but they were really delaying him long enough so I could keep the mysterious appointment,” Vevina explained, desperately trying to stay awake.
She stood up and poured herself more wine, and rubbed her aching back as she gazed out of the window at the blood red sunset.
“What happened at the south portal?”
“It turned out that the Frenchman was an old acquaintance of my father’s from many years before when he was an emigre with his parents and sisters. Captain Vincent Olivier had just become commander of the garrison at Cuidad Roderigo, due to the death of their major from gangrene that morning.
“The Major’s dying word had been an insistence that he meet the person coming to the gate at ten. I persuaded Captain Olivier that the English were going to win the battle anyway, and he might as well avoid the risk of untold bloodshed. Captain Olivier was horrified that Samuel had betrayed his own men, and so agreed to help me.
“I might also say he and his father are not supporters of Napoleon, merely career soldiers, but with a strong sense of honour and decency. Captain Olivier gave me secret information about the fortifications, which I passed on to Mitchell to tell Stewart, and then we forced ourselves into the portal, and began our fight.”
“What else did Captain Olivier do for you?” Wellington demanded.
“He promised to meet with Samuel and find out what the secret plan was. When Samuel arrived, he was carrying papers with the Emperor Napoleon’s seal on them.”
Vevina lost the thread of her narrative as Stewart gasped, and dropped his wine glass, his eyes wide as he stared at her fixedly.
Vevina gazed at him and then at Wellington, who nodded for her to continue.
“I had been suspicious all along, but once Captain Olivier told me of his interview with Samuel, there was no mistaking the fact that in exchange for the rich Chateau Gerald in Grenoble, Samuel was trading three safe landing places for a French invasion of Ireland, which was to be used as a back door for an invasion of England."
"Good God," Stewart exclaimed, unable to contain himself any longer. "Are you sure?"
She nodded. "That was the whole reason for the plot against my family. Those were my estates he was planning to use. I couldn’t afford to let him succeed, nor could Britain.
"Also, of course, Samuel was not really entitled to the land in France. All the time he had been laying plots and stratagems, he had assumed Stewart was dead and out of the way. Stewart is the eldest, so all of the Fitzgerald estates, including the ones in France, belong to him as the Duke of Clancar.”
“The question of rights shall be discussed later. Right now, I want to hear what you did at Cuidad Roderigo.”
“We broke into the portal, penetrated the cannon bays, and spiked the guns, sir,” Vevina said simply.
“And most of your men were killed,” Wellington accused.
“Yes, sir, most of the men with me were killed, but we save many lives. The men all charging into the breach were being killed by snipers, mines, and those two huge hidden cannon. Samuel had been leading his men to certain death. We would never have won the battle if they had not been put out of action.”
“So you led these men into the heart of the enemy defences, with no thought of their safety?”
Vevina heard the accusation in his tone, and her ears began to ring with anger and disbelief. “I beg your pardon, my Lord, but can you not see, Samuel’s enti
re regiment would have been blown to pieces going through the breach. Would you rather I had walked my men back around the walls to die in the breach?” Vevina nearly shouted in exasperation. “Yes, I know it was against the rules, but my rule has always been to save a life, not take it. We saved French lives as well as English by not prolonging the siege.
She sprang to her feet in the face of his cold impassivity. “In the name of humanity, my Lord, would you rather we had let Samuel run away, off to France to lead Napoleon’s invasion force, or take advantage of the confusion of the battle already in progress, and turn it from defeat to victory?” Vevina practically shouted, as she paced up and down in front of the desk angrily.
Scars Upon Her Heart (The Scars of The Heart Series) Page 29