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‘Where to start?’ Julia forced herself to concentrate. If she let herself be swallowed up in the sheer horror of this, she would stumble around in this charnel house until she collapsed exhausted. ‘Captain Grey said they were on the left flank.’ George turned the horse onto a lane, and they both looked out to their right where the ground sloped down in muddy confusion to a slight valley and then up the other side to a low ridge where men could be seen dragging guns away.
‘Miss Tresilian!’ A figure in a filthy, tattered uniform was limping towards them. Once that jacket had been scarlet and gold. Julia struggled to recall where she had seen the officer before, then remembered: with Hal after Lady Conynham’s party.
‘Mr…Bredon? Rick?’ She recalled the eager smile, the enthusiasm for battle. Now he looked as though he had walked through Hades. ‘Are you injured?’ She scrabbled in the basket at her feet and found a water flask and the brandy. ‘Here.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ He took a long draft of the water then a gulp of the spirits and grinned, his teeth white in his dirty face. ‘God, that’s better. What are you doing here? It isn’t fit for a lady.’
‘Looking for Major Carlow. Have you seen him?’
‘Yes.’ The smile faded and he stood looking up at her, his face bleak.
‘He is dead?’ Somehow the question came out quite steadily, even though there was a lump in her throat and she had gone quite cold. ‘No.’ Oh, thank God. ‘At least, he wasn’t when we found him last night. We took him back to a hovel in Mont St Jean. Took three of us just to get him away from that damned horse of his. We took him and the trooper he was all tangled up with. The horse followed, trying to bite us, the bu—wretched creature. There was no medical help, not there then. We chalked his name up. But frankly, ma’am, I don’t think he will have made it through the night. I’m damned sorry.’
‘I looked, I didn’t see…his name.’ Her breathing was all over the place. Julia found she could hardly articulate now.
‘Not the cottages on the road—they were all full. Go behind, on the right. Just a hovel, really.’ He pointed. ‘Ma’am.’ He caught the bridle and held the horse. ‘You’ve got to be prepared. If he’s alive now, I don’t think he’ll last much longer; and it isn’t pretty.’
‘No,’ Julia said, swallowing the tears. ‘I don’t expect it is. Thank you, Rick. I hope you get home safe, soon.’
Hal wondered, with some impatience, how much longer it was going to take to die. He had not realized that there could be this much pain. His body was not doing the decent thing and giving up, that was for sure. He couldn’t even manage to faint, which would have helped.
He turned his head on the lumpy straw they had dumped him on and found that he was staring into the open eyes of Trooper Harris. Oh well, perhaps the man would finish the job he had started before that shell landed right on top of them.
‘Why?’ he croaked.
The other man grinned, a ghastly rictus of pain and black humour. ‘Money was good.’
‘That damn Gypsy, Hebden.’ Hal’s eyes wanted to close but now he fought to stay conscious.
‘Nah.’ Harris must be in a worse state than he was from that shell. Hal wondered if he had taken the full blast, ironically sheltering his intended victim. The man was grey under the blood, his lips white. ‘Don’t know any Gypsy. This was a gent. Hundred guineas: fifty then, fifty when he got the news you were dead. All for sticking a knife in your ribs and wrapping you up in some damn rope.’ He gave a grunt of amusement that made him gasp. His eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness.
‘Wake up, damn you!’ Hal swore
at him until one muddy-brown eye dragged open. ‘What do you mean, a gent?’
‘A real one, sounded like you, but older. I think. Supercilious bastard. Not that I saw him, just that one glimpse of his eyes when the light caught them. Eyes like death…’ His voice trailed off into a rattling cough.
Hal lay watching the dead man, his mind sluggishly trying to make some sense of what he had said. Not Hebden-Beshaley—the half-Gypsy gem dealer was just two years Hal’s senior. And even when he was speaking with care, there was still that lilt to his voice, unlike Hal’s upper-class drawl. But the rope—that must be another damned silken rope, Hebden’s calling card, the reference to the rope that peers were hanged with.
Got to get up. Got to warn Marcus. He tried to move something, anything—and the pain hit him like a hammer blow, leaving him gagging, the sweat soaking his body. Had he lost a leg? An arm? He tried to raise his head to look, but couldn’t. He heard a horse give a sudden, sharp neigh: Max? No, he must be dead. The place he was in was growing dark now, and he sensed the darkness was within him, not the room.
Goodbye, Julia. So this is it then. This is dying…
‘Hal! Hal, open your eyes! Hal, darling, please!’
And this is Heaven. That was fast, he thought hazily. Didn’t think I’d deserve Heaven. And what’s Julia doing here? Or perhaps all angels sound like Julia. But something was wrong.
‘Why the hell is it still hurting?’ he asked querulously.
‘Because you are wounded. Lie still.’
As opposed to what? he wondered. Saddling up for a review? ‘No option,’ he managed. ‘Can’t move.’
‘Can you open your eyes?’
It was Julia, he realized, dragging the lids apart and trying to focus on the intent face looking down into his. ‘No!’
‘Don’t be silly, you’ve got them open.’ She was crying, he realized. Smiling and crying.
