‘Papa?’ she whispered.
His eyes still stared unseeing at the Frenchman.
‘Papa!’ The realisation of what had just happened cracked her voice. She pressed her cheek to his, wrapped her arms around his bloodstained body, and the sob that tore from her was to those that had heard a thousand cries and screams of pain and death still terrible to hear. Outside the room men that had both perpetrated and suffered injury for the past hour stood silent with respect.
When at last she let her father’s body go and moved her face from his, it was Dammartin’s fingers that swept a shutting of the Lieutenant Colonel’s eyes, and Dammartin’s hand that took hers to raise her to her feet. She barely heard the order that he snapped to his men, or noticed the parting of the sea of men to let her through. Neither did she notice Captain Dammartin’s grim expression as he led her from the room.
* * *
The French camped that night in the same deserted village in which they had fought, the men sleeping within the shells of the buildings, their campfires peppering light across the darkness of the rocky landscape. The smell of cooking lingered in the air even though the meagre stew had long since been devoured.
Pierre Dammartin, Captain of the 8th Dragoons in Napoleon’s Army of Portugal, had wanted the English Lieutenant Colonel taken alive. The only reason that he had tempered his assault against the riflemen hiding in the empty monastery was because he had heard that it was Mallington who commanded them. He wanted Mallington alive because he wanted the pleasure of personally dispatching the Lieutenant Colonel to his maker.
For a year and a half Dammartin had wanted to meet Mallington across a battlefield. He had dreamt of looking into Mallington’s eyes while he told him who he was. He wanted to ask the Englishman the question he had been asking himself for the past eighteen months. Barely an hour ago it had seemed that his prayers had been answered and Mallington delivered into his hands in the most unlikely of places.
Mallington had not been easily beaten despite the difference in numbers, one section of a British company against one hundred and twenty mounted men backed by a whole battalion of infantry. Indeed, Mallington’s men had fought to the death rather than let themselves be taken, refusing Dammartin’s offers that they surrender. The fight had lasted longer than Dammartin could have anticipated. And even at its conclusion, when Dammartin had walked into that blood-splattered room in the monastery, he had not been satisfied. True, Dammartin had looked into Mallington’s face and revealed his identity. But Mallington’s reaction had not been what he expected, and there had been no time for questions. The moment for which the Captain had so longed had left him unexpectedly disgruntled. Especially because of Mallington’s daughter.
He stood by the window in the dilapidated cottage that was situated at the foot of the road that led up to the monastery. A few men still drifted around the place. He could hear the soft murmur of their voices and see their dark shapes by the light of the fires. Soon they would be bedding down for the night, just as the thousands of men in the canonments around Santarém not so far away to the south would be doing. Above, the sky was a spread of deep, dark, inky blue studded with the brilliance of diamond stars. And he knew that the temperature was dropping and that the cold would be biting. Tomorrow General Foy would lead them across the mountains towards Ciudad Rodrigo and they would leave behind the ruined monastery at Telemos and the dead riflemen and Mallington. He heard Lamont move behind him.
‘Your coffee, Pierre.’
He accepted the tin mug from his sergeant’s hands. ‘Thank you.’ The brown liquid was bitter, but warming. ‘Has Major La Roque sent for me yet?’
‘No.’ Lamont smiled, revealing his crooked teeth. ‘He is too busy with his dinner and his drink.’
‘He is making me wait until morning then,’ said Dammartin, ‘to haul me over the coals.’
Lamont shrugged his shoulders. He was a small, wiry man with eyes so dark as to appear black. His skin was lined and weatherbeaten, his hair a dark, grizzled grey. Lamont knew how to handle a musket better than any man in Dammartin’s company. Despite the fact he had grown up the son of a fishmonger and Dammartin the son of a distinguished military major, the two had become close friends.
‘The riflemen refused the option of surrender. They were like demons. Never before have I seen the British fight until there is not a man left alive. It was no easy task to overcome them. The Major must know that.’
Dammartin met his gaze, knowing that his sergeant understood very well that the fight had been unnecessarily prolonged by Dammartin’s refusal to storm the monastery until the last. ‘The Major will only be concerned with the delay this has cost us. General Foy will not be pleased. One day of marching and we do not even make it past Abrantes.’
Lamont sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘The cost was worth it. You wanted the English Lieutenant Colonel alive so that you might watch him die.’
Dammartin said nothing.
‘You have waited a long time to kill him, and now he is dead.’
‘But not by my hand.’
‘Does it make any difference? He is dead just the same.’
‘I wanted to look into his eyes while I killed him. I wanted to watch his reaction when I told him who I was, to see that he understood, to feel his fear.’
‘And today that is what you did. This Mallington looked upon you with his dying breath. It is done, Captain. Your father is avenged.’
The line of Dammartin’s mouth was hard. He said nothing. It was true that Dammartin had looked into Mallington’s face and revealed his identity. But thereafter nothing had been as the French Captain anticipated, and he was left feeling cheated.
Lamont fetched his own battered tin mug and sat down on his pack by the fire he had lit on the hearth. Steam rose in wisps from the steaming-hot coffee. Lamont wrapped his hands around the mug, seemingly impervious to the scald of the heat, and gazed into the flames. ‘Perhaps my ears deceived me, Captain, but I thought the Englishman said the girl was his daughter.’
‘He did.’
‘Sacré bleu!’ cursed the Sergeant. ‘It shows the nature of this Lieutenant Colonel Mallington. Only a crazy Englishman would bring his daughter with him to war.’ The Sergeant drilled a forefinger against the side of his head. ‘Crazy.’
‘So it would seem,’ said Dammartin, remembering the image of the girl standing alone and seemingly unafraid before the men of the 8th Dragoons to defend her father.
‘She is so young, so fragile looking. It does not seem possible that she could have survived this hell of a country.’
‘So fragile that her bullets are lodged in half our men,’ said Dammartin sourly.
‘That is the truth,’ Lamont said soberly, and took a gulp of his coffee.
Dammartin retrieved a small, silver hip flask from his pocket and loosened the cap. ‘Brandy? To keep the damp from your bones tonight.’
Lamont gave a grin and nodded, holding the still-steaming tin mug up.
Dammartin poured a liberal dousing of the amber liquid into the proffered mug before doing likewise with his own. ‘Why should Mallington have sacrificed his men over a deserted village in the middle of nowhere? It makes no sense. Wellington’s forces are all down at the lines of Torres Vedras and Lisbon. What was Mallington even doing up here?’
The sergeant shrugged. ‘A scouting party? They were riflemen after all.’
‘Perhaps—’ Dammartin sipped his coffee ‘—Mademoiselle Mallington may be able to shed some light on her father’s actions.’