Tarleton's Wife (21 page)

“Oh dear,” Julia mocked, much struck by this vision, “and just when they should have been killing the fatted calf.”

“Precisely.”

Unaccountably, her lips twitched. “Poor Nicholas.”

The major ventured to refill his wife’s brandy glass. “May I tell you about the last two years?” he inquired as he placed it in her hand.

“Yes, of course.” Five minutes in his presence and she was lost. As she had known she would be. “I should very much like to know what happened.”

* * * * *

March 1809, Northern Spain

It surely wasn’t England, Nicholas thought. Even the Spartans would have considered his cell stark.

He had opened his eyes to rough-cut walls of stone with a solitary ray of sunlight warming the room from a window set high up on a narrow wall. He was lying on a bed of rough wood, covered by sheets of unbleached muslin and a coarsely woven brown blanket. The thin pallet under his back had never known the luxury of a goose feather. A small wooden table along the opposite wall held a hand-carved bowl, a candle, a small wooden cross and a book which appeared to be a bible. On the wall opposite the high window was a heavy door. Latticework set into an opening, some eight inches square, allowed the room to be visible from the hallway. There was a complete absence of sound. No voices, no footsteps, no sign of life.

A prison? Nicholas wondered.

Too clean. Too quiet.

The sound of a bell shattered the quiet. A rich mellow sound that picked up overtones as it reverberated through his cell. For cell it was. Not prison but a monastery.

Gingerly, Nicholas raised himself on one elbow to get a better look at this strange new world. What he was doing here he could not yet imagine. A bell tinkled close at hand. A tiny, high-pitched tinkle compared to the booming bell sounding the call to prayer outside. Startled, Nicholas flopped back against his thin pallet, his body frozen in rigid stillness.

The tinkling sound was here beside him in this empty room. And damned unnatural. Experimentally, he wiggled his right hand. Nothing. His left. Still nothing. When he tried his right foot there was no response beyond a sharp twinge in his stomach muscles. But with the tentative wiggling of his left foot came a faint jingle. He waved his foot in an arc and the bell jangled mightily. Now how in the bloody hell…

Nicholas mouthed a versatile stream of basic Anglo-Saxon. There were stories whispered about such devices. He’d heard morticians tied a bell to the toe of the dead as they lay in their coffins to prevent untimely interments. Hell and damnation, but he’d surely show them. His cell might resemble a sarcophagus, but he wasn’t ready to be laid out just yet, no matter that he felt more dead than alive.

A rustling in the corridor. Eyes peering through the latticework. The door was flung open. A monk, ignoring the calm, deliberate tread encouraged by his order, charged into the room so quickly his cowl slipped off his head to fall unheeded down his back. His hair showed the salt and pepper of late middle years. A broad smile split his round homely face. His eyes shone with the joy of a man whose prayers have been answered by a miracle.

“
Señor, señor, gracias a dios
! You are alive!” He clasped Nicholas’ hands in his. “I am Brother Bonifacio,” he announced. “Do you recognize me? I have been caring for you for more than a month now. Since Brother Miguel was called to Vigo—an outbreak of the smallpox, you understand. He said he had done all he could for you and you were in God’s hands. And mine,” he added with modest sincerity. “It is a miracle,
señor
, truly a miracle.”

Since this speech was made in rapid Spanish, it was necessary for the monk to repeat it at a slower pace before Nicholas understood his words, if not their meaning. “Brother Miguel?” he inquired blankly.

“Ah,
si, señor
. Brother Miguel brought you to us. He said only that he had been caring for you and must now go on to Vigo.” Brother Bonifacio ducked his head, fingering the cross he wore on a long chain around his neck. “You must understand,
señor
,” the monk murmured anxiously, “our country is occupied by the French. Brother Miguel thought it best not to say how you had been injured or where and we did not ask. If anyone asks questions, we know nothing.”

“I understand,” said Nicholas quickly, “and I am grateful. Infinitely so.” He frowned, conjuring nothing but meaningless disjointed fragments from the recesses of his mind. “Would you, by any chance, know how long I was with Brother Miguel?”

“No,
señor
but…” The monk hesitated a moment before his innate honesty triumphed over caution. “Two months ago there was a great battle not far from here in La Coruña. Your injuries were severe. It is possible they were made by cannon fire.”

“And most certainly I am not Spanish,” said Nicholas wryly.

“That is so,
señor
.” The monk smiled.

Suddenly exhausted, Nicholas lay back on his pallet but his eyes remained fixed on the rotund figure of the Spanish monk. “Brother Bonifacio, how do I thank someone for saving my life? I fear my Spanish is not expert enough to find the right words.”

“No thanks are necessary,
hijo mio
. It is my calling. In truth, it was God’s work, not mine.” Brother Bonifacio rose and, as he spoke, removed the bell mechanism attached to Nicholas’ left foot. “I shall return with some food,
señor
. You have shrunk to skin and bones.”

Food. Nicholas closed his eyes. Yes, he was eager for food. But far more eager to remember what had happened…why he was still in Spain.

They had survived the mountains, marched into La Coruña. And, yes, he had commandeered the home of a Spanish merchant with a well-stocked larder and the officers of Colonel Litchfield’s regiment had fallen on the food with indecent haste and enjoyment.

When?

The day before yesterday.

Nicholas groaned. Two months. Two months gone from his life. And no recollection of the battle at all. He had been a soldier too long to be truly surprised. The moment of severe wounds was frequently shrouded in the mists of memory. But the entire battle? He struggled against his sluggish mind, searching back…into nothing. Into…

The screams of the dying horses. He had been grateful his rank allowed him to skip the executions. Each regiment had been required to send a detail to the beach to carry out the awful order. When he had asked for volunteers, no man stepped forward. In the end the sergeants had drawn straws to determine which company would have to go. After that…he had sat in a
taverna
in a narrow alley off the main square and drunk sour red wine, trying to shut out the horror. He vaguely recalled wending his way, somewhat unsteadily, back to the merchant’s house. The French were expected to attack the next morning. Or was it the day after?
Bloody, bloody hell!
His head hurt like the very devil.

With gratitude for respite from his struggle to remember, Nicholas welcomed Brother Bonifacio’s return. He was a model patient as he allowed the monk to feed him soup, spoonful by delicious spoonful.

* * * * *

In the next few days Nicholas relived his memories of that last day in La Coruña over and over again. He sat in the
taverna
, drinking to the distant accompaniment of a fusillade of bullets on the beach. He left the tavern, stepping out into the early darkness of January. There were shouts. Roistering soldiers. A scream or two, more laughter than terror. The indescribable odor of fifteen thousand unwashed bodies, the tang of tension. Fear. Would Soult attack? Would the missing ships arrive in time? Any man who said he didn’t give a damn was a liar.

He had found his way back to the merchant’s house, spoken briefly with the colonel and with Julia, who was grieving for her Astarte. He’d climbed another flight of stairs to his room and…after that—nothing. All else was gone and no amount of agonized searching through the blankness of his mind was going to bring it back. After a week of racking headaches, stabbing pains in his chest and stomach, of nausea and humiliating weakness, Nicholas gave in to Brother Bonifacio’s pleas and stopped trying to force himself to remember.

“There is one thing you might be able to tell me,” Nicholas said to the monk one evening after he managed to consume his soup without aid. “Did Brother Miguel say how he happened to be caring for me?”

The monk’s round face lit with pleasure. Here was some small thing he could tell the Englishman. “A man and a woman,
señor
. They sought him out and gave him money—a great deal of money. He kept some for his work with the poor and gave a fine donation to the monastery.” Brother Bonifacio beamed with pride. “That is why we have been able to make soup with meat in it, so that you would grow strong. And we have purchased more pigs and chickens, so that all will benefit. By next week, God willing, you will be able to try some boiled chicken.”

Nicholas knew he should be responding to the kindly monk’s enthusiasm but the puzzle that haunted him was too great to be ignored.
A man and a woman
. Daniel and Julia. Daniel because it was his job to care for his major—and he would have had the money belt since he always entrusted it to Daniel during a battle. For even if he were only slightly wounded, the battlefield scavengers were voracious and would have stripped him of everything he owned.

The woman had to be Julia. With her foolishness about intruding into field hospitals, she would have been there when he was brought in. Stubborn, unnatural chit. If she wanted to see a naked man, he’d be glad to…

Ruthlessly, Nicholas broke off that train of thought. The good Lord only knew from what dark corner of his mind such an idea had surfaced. Too independent by half was Julia Litchfield. And, besides, he knew her so well such thoughts were close to incestuous.

A few pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. He had been wounded…so badly that he could not be moved. Daniel and Julia had summoned a monk to care for him, paid enough to ensure continuing care and the silence of those who gave it.

Unfair. These were good men. Holy men. And the Spanish were allies…

“What about the French?” the major asked abruptly. The good brother had said something…but Nicholas could not remember what. “Do they occupy the countryside?”

Brother Bonifacio shrugged his chubby shoulders. “We have been fortunate,
señor
. The countryside is large. The French have little interest in a monastery that does not make wine. They leave us in peace.”

“And the course of the war?”

The monk looked as if he might cry. “We hear so little,
hijo mio
. It is said there is still resistance in some cities to the south but here in the north,” he shrugged, ”there are rumors of men banding together in the mountains to continue the fight. But if our armies could not defeat the French, what good are a few men with muskets hiding behind rocks and trees?”

Nicholas was not unkind enough to say so but after the execrable example set by the Spanish troops, a spontaneous uprising by dedicated civilians could scarcely fail to surpass the efforts of the Spanish army. If the uprising continued, by the time he was a man again the patriots might be in need of the services of an experienced field officer.

* * * * *

The warm Iberian sun bathed the long straight rows of young bean plants and the soft wavy fronds of carrots with a golden haze which caused them to spring from the ground almost as fast as the myriad weeds which threatened to annihilate them. Nicholas knelt between the rows, the coarse brown wool of his cassock pasted to his back, charcoal rivulets of sweat and black hair dye zebra-striping his face and running off his chin. He was remarkably unconcerned by what a passing French soldier might think of finding a hulking monk with striped hair and face. The soldier would be too busy laughing to arrest him.

Nicholas shuffled forward on his knees. His whole body itched from wool, sun and God only knew how many bugs which found him more interesting than the vegetables. He swore. Softly. And yanked a weed from the earth with such force that the young carrot next to it popped from the ground, exposing a fragile two-inch cone of orange. Nicholas swore with greater fervor, stuck one large finger into the soft disturbed earth and plunked the tiny carrot into the hole, patting the earth around it. He hadn’t the slightest idea if it would continue to grow or wither and die.

As
he
surely would, by God, if he spent many more days as a farmer. He had survived thirty years without being able to tell a vegetable from a weed and it was damn well not a skill he considered essential to his future well-being as an officer in His Majesty’s Army.

So where would he be without the good brothers and the root cellars full of vegetables which had seen them through the winter? And what the hell else was he able to do? A month ago his uncertain feet had barely managed the walk to the fields next to the monastery. Now his stance was sure, his skin tanned, his body beginning to respond to most of the commands he gave it. But if he were called upon to lift a sword instead of a hoe? Ludicrous. He was weak and useless. And utterly, absolutely, damnably bored.

The next carrot he uprooted by accident he rubbed clean against his robe and popped it into his mouth, crunching it with relish. The fern-like top he discarded into the welter of bean leaves. After all, a man was entitled to some compensation for his work.