Timepiece (30 page)

“Le g
é
n
é
ral Bülow?”
he said over and over, to everyone he encountered. “J’ai un message de le duc de Wellington.”
I have a message from the Duke of Wellington.
Bizarre in one sense to be asking for his ally in the language of his enemy, but it would not strike a false note. Wellington did not speak German any more than William did, and since few of the German officers spoke English, business was customarily conducted in French.

“
Un autre
messager?
” a staff officer responded in surprise.

Another messenger.
William’s gut clenched. Wellington had of course been sending messages to Blücher and his subordinates all afternoon. That was the point. That was what would enable William’s alteration of history to slip in unnoticed. But apparently he was hard upon the heels of a legitimate courier, and oh hell, attracting suspicion would undo—

But the staff officer only jerked his head. “This way,” he said, and led William toward Bülow—a man of sixty, handsome despite his narrow face and long nose. 

“Oui?” Bülow snapped.

“De Wellington,” William said, handing Bülow the message he had forged the night before and doing his best to sway. “
Un officier français
a été capturé
,
et a donné
des informations sur
leurs tactiques
pour cette bataille.
”
From Wellington. A French officer was captured, and gave information about their tactics for this battle.

Bülow unfolded the paper, and his eyes widened as he read it. Assuming Maxwell’s recollection of history was accurate, the note contained enough information about the dispersal of the French troops to enable the Prussians to efficiently finish their business at Placenoit and press forward to bring their badly needed reinforcements to the British line. It might not hasten them by more than half an hour, but half an hour could be enough. Sand in the gears, William thought. Bülow dismissed him, and William started the careful and nerve-wracking journey back to the British lines, hoping Maxwell’s half of the plan would go as smoothly.

It took William quite some time to make it to safety without drawing attention, but at last he found himself once more on the road that led away from the ridgeline. He need only hike back through the forest to find himself at the village of Waterloo and the barn he had slept in the night before. He decided to pause at Mont St. Jean, for a glimpse of or possibly even a word with Elizabeth.

He crested the hill and stopped. The road before him, the road from the ridge to the infirmary, was crawling with the injured and the dying. They dragged themselves along with their arm over a companion’s shoulders. They lay limp in blankets carried between six men. They walked alone until they fell, and then they lay in crumpled heaps of scarlet on the roadside.

His limp and usually numb arm gave one of those ghostly twists of pain that had been a common feature of his early convalescence but had not haunted him for nearly six months. The thought occurred to him, in a rather distant way, that it was too great a risk for him to walk alongside these men—that he had better return to the barn by a more discreet route...But even as he considered this fact, his feet took a step into the road as if not subject to his will.

That man there will lose his leg,
whispered a voice in his mind, automatically categorizing what he saw in light of expert knowledge, though he would have much preferred to do otherwise.
That one has a belly wound—he’s dead even if he hasn’t stopped moving yet. Dear God, how did the one over there get so mangled? Not a cannon ball, or he’d be smashed to pulp—is that what it looks like when the enemy fires bags of horseshoe nails that break apart on impact?
He had heard veterans speak of that particular weapon, but he had never seen it or its horrible effect himself.
That man there might have nothing worse than a broken leg—how did he get that, did a horse perhaps fall—

“Will?”

He was turning, responding to the bone-deep familiarity of the voice before he had consciously placed it and well before he had time to think that perhaps answering to his name would not serve the purposes of discretion. His brother-in-law Christopher Palmer lay curled on the side of the road, staring up at him out of glazed, incurious eyes.

The skin of Palmer’s face shone sickly white, a stark contrast to the muddy red wool below it. A bandage around his left thigh was soaked through with blood, the same scarlet as his coat. Beside him on the roadside lay a tree branch of length and breadth sufficient to be used as a walking stick. William could read the whole story from those few signs. The wound. The necessity of getting it tended. The refusal to allow anyone else to leave their duties to accompany him. The boast that he could manage perfectly well with a staff to support his weight. The slow stumbling progress toward the infirmary while all the time his beating heart pumped hot red blood onto the road, until the stick slipped from his nerveless fingers and he fell.

Palmer’s brows furrowed. “Why’re you...here? You’re not...here, are you?” He squinted at William’s coat. “Not our...regiment...”

William knew that cross-eyed look. He had been on its other side, remembered fighting to make his eyes focus and his tongue untwist while darkness lapped at him. Chris Palmer would be seeing nothing clearly at the moment. William could easily decline acquaintance—“No, sir, you must have mistaken me for someone else”—and Palmer would neither argue with him nor find it an unreasonable fever-dream once he recovered. He might not even remember it once he recovered.

If he recovered. William looked at the soaked bandage and the blood oozing around it.

William knew it was errant madness for him to stay here any longer. At any moment, someone else from his old regiment might happen by, might hail him as Palmer had and cause him and Maxwell no end of trouble. The closer he got to the infirmary, the greater was the risk of such a meeting—he should never have taken this route in the first place—and the longer he lingered with Palmer, the greater the chance of Palmer becoming convinced of William’s reality and drawing attention to William’s presence. William imagined being waylaid and forced to explain himself; he imagined Maxwell and Elizabeth searching for him rather than determining which other gears might appropriately respond to sand; he imagined failure, the looming future, all those lives, the child Meg with her jaw eaten away and her skin glowing green, Katarina falling under a hail of construct bullets.

“Will?” Palmer said again, with even less conviction this time.

I can’t carry him,
William thought wildly.
I can’t even brace him, not with my right arm. Surely someone else will come along and help him.

Surely.
The word seemed to echo in his mind.

“You’re not here...are you, Will?” Palmer murmured.

William crouched down to eye level. “No, Chris,” he said, pitching his voice low so that no one passing would have their attention caught by this ridiculous performance. “I’m not here. I’m home safe in England, because I lost my arm. You’re thinking of me, is all. You’re hurt enough to dream while you’re awake.” Which was, in William’s assessment, a true statement. William vaguely remembered a parade of ghosts and delusions from his fevered time in bed after the bullets were dug from his arm, and he did think Palmer was as badly injured.

“Oh.” Palmer’s eyes slid away from his. “Help me, then?”

“I can’t help you, Chris. I’m not here.”
At least, I can’t help you directly. I can’t carry you, I can’t even brace you—but you won’t expect that of a dream, and I might be able to get you on your feet even so.
“You have to get up yourself. Your staff is right there. Pick it up, put your weight on it, and get up.”

“Tried,” Palmer said. “Can’t.”

“Yes, you can, and you must. You know you must. I’m not here, Chris; where do you think these words are coming from?” William pushed on before he could spend more time contemplating that thought. “You know you must get up. You know you must get home.” He was no kind of actor, but he didn’t need to be. He knew what would drive Christopher Palmer to his feet. “Your wife needs you. Your son will need you. My sister is with child, you remember that, don’t you? Chris, you have to pick up the staff now and you have to get your right leg under you, or the only thing your son will know of you is a portrait and a medal. Chris, the staff, now.”

He didn’t have to say it the last time. Palmer’s hand was already closing over the wood. “Yes,” William encouraged. “Now your right foot, flat on the ground. Good. And up.” Palmer staggered drunkenly, but managed not to fall.

“Take a step,” William ordered, and Palmer obeyed him. “Take another.” He thought a couple of heads might have turned nearby, but the sling immobilizing his arm made it plain why he was not offering more direct aid to his companion. Palmer fixed his eyes on the white farmhouse ahead and took one jerky step at a time. William walked beside him, talking the whole way, reminding him of Caroline, reminding him of the child, reminding him to take a step every time his attention wandered. Behind them the cannons volleyed and thundered, and ahead of them the dying screamed.

John Freemantle felt every burst from the cannon as a jolt through his breastbone. At least the blasts no longer tore through his eardrums; his ears had been ringing for hours now, muting the roar into something almost manageable. His horse, a big bay possessed of considerably more battlefield experience than its rider, bore the noise stolidly, with no more sign of discomfort than the occasional twitching of an ear.

The Duke, Freemantle thought, looked similarly unperturbed, despite the steady worsening of their fortunes over the course of the afternoon. An entire Belgian brigade had fled in panic, the British cavalry had destroyed itself in a useless charge on the French line, and the Prussian reinforcements were hours overdue, but no one would have guessed it from Wellington’s face.

“My lord!”

Wellington turned toward the cry, and his aides followed suit. Freemantle thought he recognized the reedy voice, despite the chaos and noise all around them, and an instant later was certain he recognized the slender form. James Warren, the most junior member of the Duke’s staff, drove his distinctive roan mount toward Wellington with all the speed he could manage through the mud.

“My lord!” Warren nearly fell from his saddle as he saluted. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pouch and handed it over. “From General Blücher! He comes, my lord!”

Wellington paused in the act of unfolding the paper, one eyebrow raised.

The boy’s face turned crimson. “I don’t meant I—I would not have read it if—” He cleared his throat. “This was found on the dead body of a Prussian courier by a sergeant from the Coldstream Guards, my lord. The sergeant recognized its importance and showed it to me, wondering if it ought to be delivered to Your Grace. I agreed it ought, and brought it at once.”

“Ah.” Wellington looked back down at the paper.  

In the pauses between the thunder of the artillery, Freemantle could just distinguish a sound like popping corn. Skirmishers, he thought. He looked about, but could not spot them through the cloud of gunpowder. Skirmishers were a nuisance, using their muskets to distract their enemy rather than to inflict graver damage. Freemantle resolved not to be distracted, and turned back to the Duke.

Wellington was re-reading the note, his brows drawn together. “The Coldstream Guards?” he said.