Vermillion (The Hundred Days Series Book 1) (43 page)

She passed by the captain, mute,
choked with mounting despair. Kate pulled her eyes away, fixing them to the
ground and ignoring his calls behind her, studying the gravel until she was far
down the wharf.
He was a false prophet
, she asserted. A doomsdayer,
willing to believe the worst. She was not going anywhere until she was certain
of Matthew's fate or until someone drug her from the city. They would have to
unwrap her from the pilings first.

Up ahead, at the berth for one of
the last civilian ships still at anchor, there was a commotion between one of
the ship's officers and a group of six or seven soldiers. Their voices erupted
from conversational to argumentative, fingers jabbing wildly at the vessel.
Kate froze, eyes darting for a place to hide, fearing that Napoleon's first
troops were claiming the city. Then she heard the crewman shout back and
realized he was speaking German. In the gray murk of stormy late afternoon, she
had mistaken green coats for blue.

They must know something more than
the courier, Kate thought, a seed of hope taking root. She gathered her skirts
and ran. Four sailors lumbering down the gangplank in response to the
belligerent soldiers had her questioning her haste a moment later. When the
officer on deck produced a pistol and waved it at the men, she dug her heels
into the gravel, skidding to a stop. He pointed it from man to man, lashing
them in halting Dutch. “You god-damn deserters! Not a foot on my ship. You stay
and die like the dogs that you are.”

Insults lobbed from the Hussars, and
one had the guts to shake his rifle overhead, but they all lost their nerve
when a scrappy sailor on the deck overhead cocked his musket.

The soldiers were not behaving like
victors, and the captain certainly did not believe them worthy of praise.
Things
were falling apart
. For the first time, real fear caused her heart to drum.

The Hussars shook fists and
protested over their shoulders, but they moved off. Their unwilling retreat
jostled her as though she was invisible until she grabbed the last man's coat.
Kate regretted it immediately, flinching when he spun around and his fist
nearly kissed her cheek.

“Calm, calm! I mean no harm!” She
threw her hands up to placate him, and he raked her up and down with suspicion,
jerking the end of his brushy mustache. “Information...Nachrichten?” Kate hoped
she was saying it correctly.

He huffed a laugh, shrugging a broad
shoulder to pull her hand free, and strutted past.

She grabbed again and missed.
“Please, anything! Webb...did you see General Webb?”

He didn't stop, but a younger
soldier at the front of the pack snapped around, throwing up a hand. “Webb, ja!
General Webb!”

She elbowed between the burly
soldiers, not the least bit afraid now of any retaliation, until she reached
the lanky, soot covered boy. “Is he all right, is he alive?”

His baby face scrunched up,
concentrating to translate her question. Then his sad blue eyes turned down.
“Defeat.”

It was a blow to the gut. Her lungs
ached and for a long moment she could not catch a breath.
Defeated
. It
did not mean that Matthew was dead. He could have retreated, or been captured.
Kate clung to shreds of hope. “The general...General Webb? What happened?”

“Er fiel,” bit out the man next to
him, already pulling the younger soldier away.

“He fell, ja.” The boy put fingers
to his temples, splaying them out in a gruesome arc.
“Boom!”

Time stopped, feeling stopped. Only
the hateful band of Hussars moved, shouting and elbowing their way down the
pier.

He was wrong. The soldier had no
idea what he was saying. In fact, he was probably just saying it to be
contrary, upset at being denied passage on the ship. She breathed through her
nose, again and again, paralyzed. Her gut twisted, lurched, and if there had
been anything in her stomach it would have heaved up on the spot.

When she could move it was
primitive, barely managing a graceless fall with her back against the cold,
damp stone of a piling. Sobs gripped her without warning, wringing out her rib
cage with unsympathetic violence. Her head would split open if her heart did
not tear first.

It was a lie
. The soldier was
confused. Weren't they deserters? That's what the captain said. But the courier
had said it, too. And why had the Hussars deserted? Because the situation was
too dire, too hopeless to press on. The lines
were
broken, and Matthew
would never turn from the fight.

Her eyes and nose ran together. Kate
smeared it with her sleeve, trying vainly to stem her tide of tears. Hands came
around her from somewhere, gentle and weathered. She wished they would not
touch her; she never wanted to feel again. They guided her, and she was vaguely
aware through swollen eyes and a sick hurricane of thought, of going up.

“No. No, no.” Kate kept repeating
it, but not to them. She did not even care that they were near her. She
renounced the soldiers' news, the courier's news. It was not true, not as long
as she refused to believe.

The man beside her did not know
that, misinterpreting her protests. He squeezed her arm more firmly, patting
the small of her back. “Yes, we must. Napoleon comes. We must go.”

She did not care what he said, or
what it meant. She moved through a dark cloud, hung over his arm in near
collapse. They reached a bed, or a cot. It came up under her and a blanket
draped over her, failing to bring comfort or warmth. Kate hugged herself
beneath it, fighting to breathe through the leaden ache over her heart, to get
hold of herself. Tried and failed, until exhaustion brought merciful numbness.

*          *          *

Matthew pressed fingertips to his
temple, checking again to convince himself the ball had only grazed his flesh.
Of course it had. His back slamming the ground, the terror of Bremen's hooves
stomping at his head, they had saturated him with doubt that he could be so
lucky. Luckier than the milky-eyed infantryman that had stared back unseeing
beside him, bright blood forming on his lips and crusting black along his chin.
Giving thanks at drawing another breath, he scrambled up to make himself
visible before some hapless cavalryman ruined his good fortune.

He immediately regretted prodding
his head. Sweat and the salt-peter residue of black powder burned the ragged
wound all the way to his ear.

Smoke hung in shades out past the
ridge, the white-gray of muskets swirling into the charcoal columns sent up by
Plancenoit. The village was being fought over by the last people on earth who
still wanted it while it sat deserted and burning to the ground. For most of
the day he had cursed the acrid fog. Sun could not burn it off, there was no
wind to blow it out, and the damp ground seemed to hug the residue desperately
close. His men were obscured half the time, and his enemy
most
of the
time. More than once he had begun to ride forward, ready to take charge of a
regiment in disarray only to discover mid-gallop that their commander had not
fallen – the company simply could not see one another any better than he could
see them.

That was hours ago. Now he squinted
hard at the hedged-in snake of the sunken Ohain road, suddenly grateful for the
smoke's filter. His head throbbed with every volley, every bark of the
nine-pounders. Any more light from above would have provoked the stabbing
behind his left eye until he could no longer pry it open.

He was stripped to his
shirt-sleeves. It occurred to him as dirt kicked up by a French shell spattered
his throat with grit. Come nightfall he would regret the loss of his great coat,
thrown into the fray in haste, but his cravat had gone to serve a higher
purpose, tying off McKinnon's shattered left arm and hopefully keeping his aide
alive on the grueling trip to the rear. His absence cost Matthew dearly. The
two men taking McKinnon's place lacked his bravery and efficiency. They had
also been missing for over an hour. Matthew had received no dispatches except
what Maitland or Wellington's own men brought him. He was now convinced the two
aides were likely both dead.

It was no wild stretch of the
imagination. Heaps of bodies created gruesome breastworks crisscrossing the
valley. Death, the great equalizer, had piled French and Allies together in
mounds like unwilling brothers. No action had occurred that afternoon that did
not drop two or three hundred men in minutes. They lay were they fell, not
caring who fell beside them.

Generals Pack and Picton, their
soldiers four ranks deep were, hard pressed by the statistic, chasing their
enemy through the thick mud of the Ohain road's deep trench with depleted
numbers.

A moment later something happened
along the sunken road. It must have been a difference in attitude rather than
position. Nothing obvious had changed, but a cry went up over the din,
distinctly French in timbre. Their enthusiasm prickled the hair on his neck. A
shout.
No, a cheer
, he amended. A
French
formation
rushed
the lane. It barreled determined through impossibly tangled growth on both
sides, trapping Major-General Pack's regiment in its jaws.

This time Matthew snapped open his
glass. He raked it up and down Pack's line, pinned now by the depth of the
embankment on both sides. The French, redoubling, pushed them back with the
detached persistence of ocean waves. Picton's men rallied behind, sweeping to
reinforce their brothers.    Matthew raised a fist, heart pounding, proud of
the initiative and Picton's clever planning.

French blue-coats formed a giant
maw, swallowing up Pack's men and Picton's, hungry greed eating up ground
despite the teeth of piercing British bayonets.

Picton was undaunted. The Welshman's
hat circled in the air, his hands conducting wildly. Though Matthew couldn't
hear the lieutenant-general, he had been witness to enough of the man's time on
the field to imagine his salty oaths across the gap.

His men thrust and stomped, making
grim strides over the bodies of their fallen brothers. A volley's loud report
covered the field. Picton flailed on his horse, grabbing at his head. He slid
from the saddle beneath the churning waves of red and blue.

He did not get up.

Matthew held breath deep inside
burning lungs, not daring to blink. Dressed in civilian clothes, maybe Picton
had not been immediately recognized by the advancing line. Plenty of officers
had left the Richmond’s' in such haste that they had not bothered changing.
Matthew's hopes were dashed when no men bore him up and no French troops drug
him captive behind their ranks.

His heart fell two ribs. Resigned,
he exhaled. Picton on the field was worth the command of four other officers.
His loss was a sound blow, staggering in light of their current disadvantage.
Humbled, bordering on desperate, Matthew drug out his pencil and a scrap of
paper from his dwindling supply inside his last remaining saddle bag and
scribbled out the grim news for Wellington.

He split the air with a piercing
whistle, waving over the first cavalryman who looked his way. “Do you spy that
Elm, at the road's corner?” Wellington had set himself up beneath the tree on
their arrival that morning. He might not be there now, but someone would know
where to find him, or at least what to do with his news.

“Sir.” The man snapped a quick
salute.

Matthew waved the folded paper.
“Ride this for the command post like the life of this army depends upon its
arrival.”

Grunting, the soldier was off,
ducking and weaving down the slope. There was no time to follow his trail, to
know if he reached his goal. Matthew spurred Bremen, galloping closer to the
ridge. His attention was fixed on Picton's men, now taken in hand by Pack. They
had covered more ground along the road than he would have guessed possible.
They had lost their commander, had been abused by the French, trapped inside
the glorified mud pit, but still their blades struck out and legs pushed them
forward. They could not hold Marshall D'Erlon's men much longer, but from the
bottom of the heap they were stopping him right now.

Movement caught his eye at the crest
of the ridge to his left. “God and saints be praised,” he muttered, the words
feeling more like an oath and less like a prayer.

Major Burrell's heavy cavalry came
into view, and Ty raised an arm to signal they were ready. The French, hemmed
in now along the Ohain, would never know what was coming. Matthew clapped his
hands together.
It was mid-afternoon, and they were winning
.

He raised an arm and pumped it twice
in response. There was a hesitation, and for a split second the cavalry drew
backwards, a bow string pulling taut. Matthew grinned in spite of himself.
That
was the mark of a devastating charge, and Major Burrell's signature. Mounts
reared, their hooves bit traction into the spongy earth, and they poured over
the lip of the embankment, a biblical flow.

Ty had calculated the angle
perfectly. His lads swept the cuirassiers over the edge and into the road's
muck, stirred deeper by their own advance a few minutes earlier. His cavalry's
advance was so definitive that the French could not even flee left toward the
Allies and save a little ground. Through his glass, Matthew watched D'Erlon
physically struggle with the information. His hands flailed while his confused
men churned on themselves, fighting the instinct to pursue their enemy while
trapped in the lane. Coming to terms with their reverse of fortune, the French
all along the sunken road turned right, toward their own lines, broke ranks in
confusion and retreated.

Matthew jabbed a fist in the air,
wheeling Bremen and shouting out a cheer for the cavalry.

They had reached the very pitch of
battle now. Around him men moaned or roared at their enemy with cries of
self-preservation. Wounded horses from an ammunition wagon screamed while the
wood from their burning cart popped and hissed. Four-hundred heavy guns were a
metronome, timing the fracas with their percussions. The earth shook one last
time and then it was quiet.