Marriage Made in Rebellion Page 2

  A Bible sat on a small wooden table next to his bed under an ornate golden cross and beside a bronze statue of Jesus with his crown of thorns.

  Catholic and devout.

  Lucien felt akin to the battered Christ, as his neck ached and sharp pains raked up his back. The sword wounds from the French as he had tried to ride in behind the ranks of General Hope. He was hot now, the pins and needles of fever in his hands, and his front tooth ached badly, but he was too tired to bring his arm up enough to touch the damage. He wished the thin girl would come back to give him some more water and sit near him, but only the silence held court.

  * * *

  She returned in the morning, before the silver dawn had changed to day, and this time she brought others.

  The man beside her was nearing fifty, Lucien imagined, a big man wearing the flaring scarlet-and-light-blue jacket of an Estramaduran hussar. Two younger men accompanied him.

  ‘I am Señor Enrique Fernandez y Castro, otherwise known as El Vengador, Capitán. It seems you have heard of me?’

  Lucien sized up the hard dark eyes and the generous moustache of the guerrilla leader. A man of consequence in these parts and feared because of it. He looked nothing at all like his daughter.

  ‘If the English soldiers do not return, there will be little hope for the Spanish cause, Capitán.’ High Castilian. There was no undercurrent of any lesser dialect in his speech but the pure and arrogant notes of aristocracy.

  Lucien was honest in his own appraisal of the situation. ‘Well, the Spanish generals have done themselves no favour, señor, and it’s lucky the French are in such disorder. If Napoleon himself had taken the trouble to be in the Iberian Peninsula, instead of leaving it to his brother, I doubt anything would be left.’

  The older man swore. ‘Spain has no use for men who usurp a crown and the royal Bourbons are powerless to fight back. It is only the likes of the partisans that will throw the French from España, for the army, too, is useless in its fractured purpose.’

  Privately Lucien agreed, but he did not say so. The juntas were splintered and largely ineffective. John Moore and the British expeditionary force had found that out the hard way, the promise of a Spanish force of men never eventuating, but sliding away into quarrel.

  The girl was listening intently, her eyes wary beneath the rim of the same cap she had worn each time he had seen her. Today the jacket was different, though. Something stolen from an English foot soldier, he guessed, the scarlet suiting her tone of skin. He flipped his glance from her as quickly as it settled. She had given him her warnings already and he owed her that much.

  The older man moved back, the glint of metal in his leather belt. ‘Soult and Ney are trampling over the north as we speak, but the south is still free.’

  ‘Because the British expeditionary forces dragged any opposition up here with them as they came.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ the other man agreed, dark eyes thoughtful. ‘How is it you know our language so well?’

  ‘I was in Dominica for a number of years before coming to Madeira.’

  ‘The dialects would be different.’ The room was still, waiting, a sense of menace and distrust covering politeness.

  For the first time in days Lucien smiled. ‘Every tutor I had said I was gifted in hearing the cadence of words and I have been in Spain for a while.’

  ‘Why were you found behind the English lines? The Eighteenth Dragoons were miles away. Why were you not there with them?’

  ‘I was scouting the ocean for the British transports under the direction of General Moore. They were late coming into the harbour and he was worried.’

  ‘A spy, then.’

  ‘I myself prefer the title of intelligence officer.’

  ‘Semantics.’ The older man laughed, though, and the tension lessened.

  When Lucien chanced a look at the girl he saw she watched him with a frown across her brow. Today there was a bruise on her left cheek that was darkening into purple. It had not been there yesterday.

  Undercurrents.

  The older man was not pleased by Lucien’s presence in the house and the Catalan escopeta in his cartouche belt was close. One wrong word could decide Lucien’s fate. He stayed silent whilst he tried to weigh up his options and he listened as the other man spoke.

  ‘Every man and woman in Spain is armed with a flask of poison, a garrotting cord or a knife. Napoleon is not the liberator here and his troops will not triumph. The Treaty of Tilsit was his star as its zenith, but now the power and the glory have begun to fade. C’est le commencement de la fin, Capitán, and the French know it.’

  ‘Something Talleyrand said, I think? Hopefully prophetic.’ Lucien had heard rumours that the crafty French bishop was seeking to negotiate a secure peace behind his emperor’s back so as to perpetuate and solidify the gains made during the French revolution.

  El Vengador stepped forward. ‘You are well informed. But our channels of intelligence are healthy, too, and one must watch what one utters to a stranger, would you not agree, Capitán? Best to hold your secrets close.’

  And your enemies closer? A warning masked beneath the cloth of politics? Simple. Intimidating. Lucien resisted any urge to once again glance at his rescuer in the corner.

  He nodded without candour and was relieved as the other man moved back.

  ‘You will be sent by boat to England. Tomeu will take you. But I would ask something of you before you leave us. Your rank will allow you access to the higher echelons of the English military and we need to know the intentions of the British parliament’s actions against the French here in Spain. Someone will contact you wearing this.’ He brought a ruby brooch out of his pocket to show him, the gem substantial and the gold catching the light. ‘Any information you can gather would be helpful. Sometimes it is the very smallest of facts that can make a difference.’

  And with that he was gone, leaving his daughter behind as the others departed with him.

  ‘He trusts you.’ Her words came quietly. ‘He would not have let this meeting run on for as long as it has if he did not.’

  ‘He knows I know about...?’ One hand gestured towards her.

  ‘That I am a girl? Indeed. Did you not hear his warning?’

  ‘Then why did he leave you here? Now?’

  At that she laughed. ‘You cannot guess, Capitán?’ Her green eyes glittered with the look of one who knew her worth. To the cause. To her father. To the machinations of a guerrilla movement whose very lifeblood depended on good information and loyal carriers.

  ‘Hell. It is you he will send?’

  ‘A woman can move in many circles that a man cannot.’ There was challenge in her words as she lifted her chin and the swollen mark on her cheek was easier to see.

  ‘Who hit you?’

  ‘In a place of war, emotions can run high.’

  For the first time in his company she blushed and he caught her left hand. The softness of her skin wound around his warmth.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nearly twenty-three.’

  ‘Old enough to know the dangers of subterfuge, then? Old enough to realise that men might not all be...kind?’

  ‘You warn me of the masculine appetite?’

  ‘That is one way of putting it, I suppose.’

  ‘This is Spain, Capitán, and I am hardly a green girl.’

  ‘You are married?’

  She did not answer.

  ‘You were married, but he is dead.’

  Horror marked her face. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  With care he extended her palm and pointed to her third finger. ‘The skin is paler where you once wore a ring. Just here.’

  * * *

  She felt the lump at the back of her throat hitch up into fear. She felt other things, too, things she had no mandate to as she wrenched away from his touch and went to stand by the window, the blood that throbbed at her temples making her feel slightly sick.

  ‘How are you called? By your friend
s?’

  ‘Lucien.’

  ‘My mother named me Anna-Maria, but my father never took to it. He changed it when I was five and I became Alejandra, the defender of mankind. He did not have another child, you see.’

  ‘So the boy he had always wanted was lost to him and you would have to do?’

  She was shocked by his insight. ‘You can see such a truth in my father’s face just by looking at him?’

  The pale eyes narrowed as he shook his head. ‘He allows you to dress as a boy and roam the dangerous killing fields of armies. He will have trained you, no doubt, in marksmanship and in the using of a knife, but you are small and thin and this is a perilous time and place for any woman.’

  ‘What if I told you that such patronage works to my advantage, Capitán? What if I said you think like all the others and dismiss the mouse against the lion?’

  His glance went to her cheek.

  ‘I broke his wrist.’ When he smiled the wound on his lip stretched and blood blossomed.

  ‘Why did he hurt you?’

  ‘He felt the English should be left to rot in the arms of the enemy because of the way they betrayed us by departing in such an unseemly haste.’

  ‘A harsh sentiment.’

  ‘My father believes it, too, but then every war comes with a cost that you of all people should know of. The doctor said your back will be marked for good.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that I will survive?’

  ‘You thought you wouldn’t?’

  ‘Without you I am certain of it.’

  ‘There is still time to die, Capitán. The sea trip won’t be comfortable and inflammation and fever are always possibilities with such deep lacerations.’

  ‘Your bedside manner is lacking, señorita. One usually offers more hope when tending a helpless patient.’

  ‘You do not seem vulnerable in any way to me, Capitán Howard.’

  ‘With my back cut to ribbons...?’

  ‘Even with that. And you have been hurt before. Madeira or Dominica were dangerous places, then?’

  ‘Hardly. Our regiment was left to flounder and rot in the Indies because no politician ever thought to abandon the rich islands.’

  ‘For who in power should be brave enough to risk money for justice?’

  He laughed. ‘Who indeed?’

  Alejandra turned away from his smile. He surely must know how beautiful he was, even with his ruined lip and swollen eye. He should have been weeping with the pain from the wounds at his neck and back and yet here he lay, scanning the room and its every occupant for clues and for the answers to questions she could see in his pale blue eyes. What would a man like this be like when he was well?

  As unbeatable and dangerous as her father.

  The answer almost had her turning away, but she made herself stand still.

  ‘My father believes that the war here in the Peninsula will drag on for enough years to kill many more good men. He says it is Spain that will determine the outcome of the emperor’s greed and this is the reason he has fashioned himself into the man he has become. El Vengador. The Avenger. He no longer believes in the precise and polite assignations of armies. He is certain that triumph lies in darker things; things like the collation of gathered information and night-time raids.’

  ‘And you believe this, too? It is why you would come to England wearing your ruby brooch?’

  ‘Once upon a time I was another person, Capitán. Then the French murdered my mother and I joined my father’s cause. Revenge is what shapes us all here now and you would be wise to keep that in mind.’

  ‘When did she die?’

  ‘Nearly two years ago, but it seems like a lifetime. My father adored her to the exclusion of all else.’

  ‘Even you?’

  Again that flash of anger, buried quickly.

  He turned away, the ache of his own loss in his thoughts. Were his group of army guides safe or had they been left behind in the scramble for transports?

  He had climbed the lighthouse called the Tower of Hercules a dozen times or more to watch for the squadron to appear across the grey and cold Atlantic Ocean. But the transports and their escorts had not come until the eleventh hour, all his intelligence suggesting that French general Soult was advancing and that the main body of their army was not far behind.

  He thought of John and Philippe and Hans and Giuseppe and all the others in his ragtag bag of deserters and ne’er-do-wells; a group chosen for their skill in languages and for their intuition. He had trained them and honed them well, every small shred of intelligence placed into the fabric of a whole, to be deciphered and collated and acted upon.

  Communication was the lifeblood of an army and it had been his job to see that each message was delivered and every order and report was followed up. Sometimes there was more. An intercepted cache from the French, a dispatch that had fallen into hands it should not have or a personal letter of inestimable value.

  His band of guides was an exotic mix of nationalities only vaguely associated with the English army and he was afraid of what might happen to them if they had been left behind.

  ‘Were there many dead on the field where you found me?’

  ‘There were. French and English alike. But there would have been more if the boats had not come into the harbour. The inhabitants of A Coruña sheltered the British well as they scampered in ragged bands to the safety of the sea.’

  Then that was that. Every man would have to take their chance at life or death because he could do nothing for any of them and his own future, as it was, was hanging in the balance.

  He could feel the heat in him and the tightness, the sensation of nothingness across his shoulders and back worrying. His left hand was cursed again with a ferocious case of pins and needles and his stomach felt...hollow.

  He smiled and the girl opposite frowned, seeing through him perhaps, understanding the pretence of it.

  He hadn’t been hungry, any slight thought of food making him want to throw up. He had been drinking, though, small sips of water that wet his mouth and burnt the sores he could feel stretched over his lips.

  A sorry sight, probably. He only wished he could be sick and then, at least, the gall of loss might be dislodged. Or not.

  ‘You have family?’

  A different question, almost feminine.

  ‘My mother and four siblings. There were eight of us before my father and youngest brother were drowned.’

  ‘A big number, then. Sometimes I wish...’ She stopped at that and Lucien could see a muscle under her jaw grinding from the echo of words.

  Nothing personal. Nothing particular. It was how this aftermath of war and captivity worked, for anything could be used against anyone in the easy pickings of torture. His own voluntary admissions of family worked in another way, a shared communion, a bond of humanness. Encourage dialogue with a captor and foster friendship. The enemy was much less likely to kill you then.

  Fortunes turned on an instant and any thinking man or woman in this corner of a volatile Spain would know that. Battles were won and then lost and won again. It was only time that counted and with three hundred thousand fighting men of France poised at your borders and under the control of Napoleon Bonaparte himself there was no doubt of the outcome.

  Unless England and its forces returned and soon, Spain would go the way of nearly every other free land in Europe.

  His head ached at the thought.

  * * *

  The girl came back to read to him the next afternoon and the one after that, her voice rising and falling over the words of the first part of Miguel de Cervantes’s tale Don Quixote.

  Lucien had perused this work a number of times and he thought she had, too, for there were moments when she looked up and read from memory.

  He liked listening to her voice and he liked watching her, the exploits of the eccentric and hapless Knight of La Mancha bringing deep dimples to both of her cheeks. She used her free hand a lot, too, he saw, in exclamation and in emphas
is, and when the edge of her jacket dipped he saw a number of white scars drawn across the dark blue of her blood line at her wrist.

  As she finished the book she snapped the covers together and leant back against the wide leather chair, watching him. ‘The pen is the language of the soul, would you not agree, Capitán?’

  He could not help but nod. ‘Cervantes, as a soldier, was seized for five years. All good fodder for his captive’s tale, I suppose.’

  ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘Perhaps that is where he first conjured up the madness of his hero. The uncertainty of captivity forces questions and makes one re-evaluate priorities.’

  ‘Is it thus with you?’

  ‘Indeed. A prisoner always wonders whether today is the day he holds no further use alive to those who keep him bound.’

  ‘You are not a prisoner. You are here because you are sick. Too sick to move.’

  ‘My door is locked, Alejandra. From the outside.’

  That disconcerted her, a frown appearing on her brow as she glanced away. ‘Things are not always as they seem,’ she returned and stood. ‘My father isn’t a man who would kill you for no reason at all.’

  ‘Is expedience enough of a reason? Or plain simple frustration? He wants me gone. I am a nuisance he wishes he did not have.’ Lifting his hand, he watched it shake. Violently.

  ‘Then get better, damn you.’ Her words were threaded with the force of anger. ‘If you can walk to the door, you can get to the porch. And if you can manage that, then you can go further and further again. Then you can leave.’

  In answer he reached for the Bible by his bed and handed it to her. ‘Like this man did?’

  Puzzled, she opened the book to the page indicated by the plaited golden thread of a bookmark.

  Help me. I forgive you.

  Written shakily in charcoal, the dust of it blurred in time and use and mirrored on the opposite page. When her eyes went to the lines etched in the whitewash beneath the window on the opposite wall Lucien knew exactly what the marks represented.

  ‘He was a prisoner in this room, too?’

  She crossed herself, her face frozen in pain and shock and deathly white.