Page 70 of Yielding to Love

Christ! He looked about. It was the shield. Knife in his back, gutshot by his jumpy friend, the boy was still alive. Alive with two mortal wounds. It might take all day and night for him to die, but die he would. Alone in the mud, in pain, crying for his mother.

Crispin walked over, flipped the boy onto his stomach, and pulled the knife from his back. Shutting his ears to the sound of whimpering, he slit the frog’s throat.

He wiped the knife, put it back in its sheath, and returned to the horse.

Nothing. He felt nothing. He had one job to do. One. He mounted and spurred the nag on.

*

My Dear Jasper, No doubt you’ve heard rumors that a great and terrible battle took place near Waterloo. By the Grace of God, I am alive and unharmed. One might say I missed most of the fight. Someone had to carry dispatches between ourselves and the Prussians, and I imagine you are glad to hear it was me.

Crispin lowered his quill, disgusted with his own tone. The bloodbath was nothing to be made light of. If Blücher had not been so determined to bring his army to Wellington’s aid, the outcome would have been different. Standing by the fireplace in the dining room of the Roi d’Espagne Hotel, using the mantle for a desk, he tried again.

One day perhaps I will speak of the unspeakable. I have never seen, and hope never again to see, such horrors. Suffice to say, whatever you may hear, it was a thousand times worse. At times I thought it could only end with our mutual annihilation.

Major Percy came up from behind and tapped his shoulder. “If you want your letter going with me, give it here.” Wellington had awarded Percy the task of carrying his report on the battle, as well as the two captured Napoleonic Eagles, home to Bathurst, Liverpool, and the Prince Regent. The honor might have gone to Crispin. Of all Wellington’s aides-de-camp, they were the only two still alive and standing. Crispin was glad Percy had gotten the assignment. He wanted nothing more than a bed.

“One moment.” How to convey the unconveyable? He finished with: Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for, thou are not so. Jasper, Donne was wrong. Death IS mighty and dreadful. And too many brave men have discovered that this day. —Major Crispin Taverston

*

For two days, Crispin helped bury the dead and succor the wounded. It was necessary to ignore the inconvenient part of himself that felt things, or he would never have stopped weeping. So many of his fellows were gone. And the list continued to grow.

There were still corpses littering the battlefield, some in piles two or three deep, as well as dying men who had not yet been tended to—men who would never be tended to—but Wellington gathered the tattered remnant of his army to move on to Paris. Blücher and the Prussians had given chase immediately upon Napoleon’s defeat, but as far as anyone knew, the emperor had not yet been captured.

Crispin was not the only one who hoped it would be Blücher’s men who found Boney. Blücher, furious and merciless, would see him summarily executed. Wellington would not. The only honorable soldier left in this polluted world, Wellington would follow the rules. Once Napoleon surrendered, he would be treated with the respect accorded to any worthy foe. Never mind that the man could not be trusted to keep his word. They could be back at this again in another year.

It was a foregone conclusion that the duke would be given command of the occupying army once they entered Paris. After they crossed the French border, the officers sat down in an auberge to sup with their commander. Crispin pushed food around on his plate, pretending to eat. Later, he intended to retire to his chamber and eat the onions and carrots he had bought from one of the peasants Wellington had given his men strict orders not to harass.

“Taverston,” Wellington barked, “Colonel Grant has asked that I relinquish you again to his command.”

Crispin laid down his knife. God, it never ended. “To do what, Your Grace?”

Wellington waved dismissively. “You will have to ask him.”