LITMIR.BIZ

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sort of hope was long since past and had been for a while now. He could not even find the words to ask for forgiveness or penance. He had killed men, good and bad, in the name of king and country, but once one saw the whites of an enemy’s eyes, the old troths and promises held less sway than they once had.

      A man was a man whatever language he spoke and more often than not a family would be waiting at home for their return. As his was. That thought sent a shaft of pain through the greater ache, but, resolving not to die with tears in his eyes, Lucien willed it away.

      It was late, that much he did know, the sun deep on the horizon and only a little left of the day. He could see the lights of resin torches further away along the lines of the olive trees and the aloe hedges, searching for those who still lived. He could not summon the strength to call out as he lay there, a rough stone wall to one side and an old garden of sorts on the other.

      Lucien imagined he could smell orange blossoms and wild flowers, but that was surely wrong. He wondered about the warmth that he felt as the peace of a contrition he long since should have made came unexpectedly.

      ‘Forgive me, Jesus, for I have sinned.’ Not so hard now in the final moments of his life. He smiled. No, not so hard at all.

      * * *

      The English soldier was covered in the blood of his horse, the residual warmth left in the large animal’s pelt saving him, allowing him life in the frigid cold dark dawn of a Galician January winter.

      But not for long; his blond hair was pinked in a puddle of blood beneath his head and a wound at his neck wept more. The daybreak was sending its first light across the sky and as far as the eye could see there were bodies. English and French, she thought, entwined in death like friends. Only the generals could have imagined that such a sacrifice was worth it, the prime of each country gone before they had ever had the chance to live. She cursed out loud against the futility of war and removed the gold signet ring from the soldier’s finger to give to her father.

      When his eyes flicked open the pale in them was startling in the early-morning light, almost see-through.

      ‘Not...dead...yet?’ There was disappointment and resignation in the broken question phrased in Spanish.

      ‘What hurts?’

      He smiled. ‘What...does...not?’

      The wide planes of his cheeks were bruised and his lip was badly cut, but even with the marks of war drawn from one end of him to the other he was beautiful; too beautiful to just die here unheralded and forgotten. Anger fortified resolve and she slashed at the gorse to one side of him, using the cleared ground to stand upon.

      With space she pried a broken stake from a fence under his mount’s neck and managed to lift it up enough, twisting the carcass so that it fell away from him, swirls of mud staining the air.

      He groaned, the noise one makes involuntarily when great pain breaks through a consciousness that cannot quite contain it.

      ‘Scream away, Ingles, if you will,’ she told him. ‘I most certainly would. Your friends have been evacuated by way of the sea and the French are in charge of the township itself, so nobody at all should hear you.’

      My God, how tired she was of iron wills and masculine stoicism. Death was a for ever thing and if men taking their last breaths in a land far from their own could not weep for the sacrifice, then who else should?

      Not her. Not her father. Not the officers safe with their horses on the transports home across a wild and stormy Biscay Bay. Other steeds roamed the streets of A Coruña, looking for succour, their more numerous and unluckier counterparts dead beneath the cliffs overhanging the beach, throats cut in clumsy acts of kindness.

      Better dead than at the mercy of the enemy. Once she might have even believed that truism. Now she failed to trust in anything or anyone. The fury within alarmed her at times, but mostly she did not think on it. Adan and Bartolomeu had joined her now, their canvas stretcher pulled in.

      ‘You want us to take him back?’

      She nodded. ‘Careful how you lift him.’

      As Tomeu crouched down he scratched at a muddied epaulette. ‘He’s a capitán.’ The tinged gold was undeniable and her heart sank. Her father had begun to be uncertain of a Spanish triumph and was distancing himself from the politics of the region. An officer would be less welcome than a simple soldier to Enrique. More complex. Harder to explain.

      ‘Then we need to make sure he recovers to fight again for our cause.’

      For some reason the man before her was beginning to mean something. A portent to victory or a prophecy of failure? She could not tell. All she did know was that the damaged fingers of his left hand had curled into her own, seeking comfort, and that despite all intentions to do otherwise she held them close, trying to bring warmth to his freezing skin.

      He groaned again when they rolled him on to the canvas and she got the first glimpse of the wounds on his upper back, the fabric of his shirt shredded into slivers and the flesh hanging off him between it.

      More than one sword had been used, she thought, and there had been a good deal of hatred in the action. The blood loss was making him shake, so she shrugged off her woollen poncho and laid it across him, tucking it in beneath his chin.

      Tomeu looked up with a frown. ‘Why bother? He will die anyway.’ The hard words of truth that she did not want, though there was anger in his tone, too. ‘They come and they go. In the end it’s all the same. Death eats them up.’

      ‘Padre Nuestro que estás en los cielos...’ She recited the Lord’s Prayer beneath her breath and draped the ornate rosary across him in protection as they started for home.

      * * *

      The same lad on the fields was beside him again, sitting asleep on a chair, a hat pulled down over his face. Lucien shook his head against the chills that were consuming him and wondered where the hell he was. Not on the battlefields, not on the transports home, either, and this certainly was not hell given the crisp cotton sheets and warm woollen blanket.

      Tipping his head, he tried to listen to the cadence of someone speaking far away outside. Spanish. He was certain of it. The heavy beams and whitewashed walls told him this house was also somewhere in the Iberian Peninsula and that whoever owned it was more than wealthy.

      His eyes flicked back to the lad. Young. Thin. A working boy. Lucien could not quite understand what he would be doing here. Why was he not labouring somewhere or helping with one of the many things that would need attention on a large and busy hacienda? What master would allow him simply to sit in a sickroom whiling away the hours?

      His glance caught the skin of an ankle above a weathered and scuffed boot, though at that very moment deep green eyes opened, a look of interest within them.

      ‘You are awake?’

      A dialect of León, but with an inflection that he didn’t recognise.

      ‘Where am I?’ He answered in the same way and saw surprise on the lad’s brow.

      ‘Safe.’ Uttered after a few seconds of thought.

      ‘How long...here?’

      ‘Three days. You were found on the battlefield above A Coruña the morning after the English had departed by way of the sea.’

      ‘And the French?’

      ‘Most assuredly are enjoying the spoils of war. Soult has come into the town with his army under Napoleon’s orders, I suppose. There are many of them.’

      ‘God.’

      At that the lad crossed himself, the small movement caught by the candlelight a direct result of his profanity.

      ‘Who are you?’ This question was almost whispered.

      ‘Captain Howard of the Eighteenth Light Dragoons. Do you have any news of the English general Sir John Moore?’

      ‘They buried him at

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