The Misbegotten (48 page)

‘It is as I said – see how he begins to build the story that he was out of his mind, and can’t remember doing it? That’s what he’s hiding behind, and how he’ll end up forgiving himself.’

‘No. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive himself. He’s no longer sure he saw a note to Alice. The one he said he found in the lovers’ tree. He says it might . . . have been a nightmare.’

‘I knew it! I
knew
it.’ Starling’s throat was aching tight; she thought she might scream, or laugh.

‘What of the man Bridget saw her talking to?’

‘What of him? We will never know who he was. And anyway, it was innocent. It was nothing.’

‘Why should Alice argue with a man in the street?’

‘It matters not! He is almost ready to confess to you! I am certain of it. You must press him more. When will you come again?’ She grasped Rachel’s hand to force her concentration, her words tumbling eagerly, shaking with excitement.

‘And what then?’

‘When he confesses? Then I will . . .’ Starling trailed off. There was such a sudden, ringing emptiness in her head that she noticed the damp, gritty smell of stone all around; she noticed the chill in the air making her nose run, and the stinging under her thumbnails from peeling oranges that morning. She had no idea how to answer Rachel Weekes’s question.

‘Have you tried asking him?’

‘What?’ Starling whispered, distracted.

‘The things you want to know . . . have you tried asking him at any time, in all the twelve years since you both lost her?’

‘Yes, of course I have! I asked, over and over, in the beginning. But he was only ever silent about it – about her. About everything!’

‘Fresh back from the war, he would have been? Full of misery and guilt and the horror of it . . . And I wonder how kindly you asked him, Starling. And were they questions, or accusations?’ Rachel Weekes made the reprimand so gentle that Starling barely noticed the sting. ‘Have you asked him since, or have you only sought to keep him as mired in despair as you could?’

‘He deserves no kindnesses from me. Or anyone.’

‘Are you sure?’ Starling thought on it a while. She knew the answer; she had always known the answer. He deserved no kindnesses – and hadn’t this pale facsimile of Alice near enough confirmed his guilt, just now? And yet Starling stayed silent, and was silent for so long that the time to reply came and went. Mrs Weekes took her hand and squeezed it in parting, and as she walked away Starling was left with the ghost of her warmth on her fingers.

Since you both lost her.
Rachel Weekes’s words flew around in her head like snowflakes, settling on her with a freezing touch, time and again.
No.
I
lost her.
He
took her.
Starling went up to Jonathan’s rooms with cheese and grapes for his lunch, without even being asked, and found herself standing in front of him. He was in his chair by the window, where she most often found him of late; his back turned to the dark, cluttered contents of his rooms so that he could watch the world instead, with light on his face and his eyes far away. A trail of footprints led the way to him, flecks of grass and damp autumn leaves that had come in on his boots from the common. When he looked up at her his face was calm, and he almost smiled to see her. Starling clenched her fists and this fledgling smile vanished. He seemed to tense himself, ready for whatever she would throw at him.
Have you tried asking him?
So many questions sprang into her mind, and each one gave her a feeling of pressure behind her eyes. She blinked furiously at it.
Why did you kill her? How did you kill her? Where did you hide her afterwards? How can you bear to draw breath? Why should I not kill you too?

‘Why . . .’ she began, her voice so constricted she had to try again. She was confounded by everything she might ask. Jonathan gripped the arms of his chair as if he might leap up and flee, but his eyes were clear.
He is sober. When did I last look into his eyes, and see them sober?
‘What . . . What did you do, on the way to Corunna, that shamed you so? What did you do, that made you hate yourself so?’

Jonathan stared at her in silence. If he deduced that she had read his letter, he gave no sign of it.

‘You have told me often that I will burn in hell,’ he said, eventually. Starling held her breath. ‘But I have seen it already. I have seen hell, and it is not hot. It is cold. As cold as dead flesh.’

‘What do you mean?’ Starling whispered.

‘You have never asked me about the war before.’

‘I . . . you did not want to talk to me.’

‘I did not want to talk to anybody. Not until Mrs Weekes made me.’

‘She . . .’ Starling swallowed; could not tell what she felt. ‘She said I should ask you the things I want to know.’

‘And this is what you want to know? Then you shall hear it,’ said Jonathan. Suddenly, the look on his face made Starling want to stop him, made her want to not hear it, but it was too late. He took a deep breath; began implacably.

‘Before the retreat came the advance, of course; in the autumn of 1808. We advanced into Spain divided, with no maps, poor supply lines and only some ill-informed Portuguese scouts to guide us. It was folly, before it even began.’ He paused, shook his head. ‘But orders had come from London, and had to be obeyed. The army was to be divided into three parts to travel more covertly; those three parts were to take three different routes, and reunite at Salamanca.’ The man in high command, Sir John Moore, was overheard to mutter of the recklessness of it. The sky and ground were still dry, and a dense pall of dust hung above the army, but Jonathan felt a deep foreboding. He realised that it would be a miracle if all eventually reached Salamanca before the winter, and without starving to death. Huge, black moths beat their silent wings in his mind.

He rode Suleiman to a high ridge and sat for a while with Captain Sutton at his side, watching the long columns of men and wagons and horses as they moved out. Most of the men were cheerful, pleased to be on the move. He heard snatches of song and laughter; the roll and beat of the marching drums; the high-pitched whistling of piccolo flutes – sweet sounds above a background din of squawking chickens, lowing oxen and rumbling, creaking wooden wheels. The women – wives who’d drawn lots in London to be allowed to follow their men; prostitutes, washerwomen, gin sellers and mysterious hangers-on – had been told to stay in Portugal. They’d been warned of the hardships ahead – the columns were travelling light; there would be no wagons to carry them, they would have to follow on foot, and there wouldn’t be enough food. Still many of them followed, as stubborn and single-minded as the pack mules many of them were leading. Jonathan watched them pass by behind the men, skirts already filthy to the knee, and he feared for them.

‘Why do they come? Why didn’t they listen?’ he said to Captain Sutton, and the captain gave a shrug.

‘They travelled all these many miles to be with their men. What have they in Portugal to stay for? It is an alien land, and if they stay not with the army, then there is no point at all in their being here.’

‘We will never manage to keep all fed.’

‘We must hope to find food as we go. Fear not, Major; I am sure we will bring them through it.’

But the captain didn’t sound sure; he sounded full of the same doubt that Jonathan felt. When the weather broke and the rain started, the air itself turned grey and the ground was soon a quagmire. The mud was a hindrance to those at the very front of the lines. To those behind, when many hooves and feet had churned it already, it was a sucking, debilitating nightmare. Jonathan checked Suleiman’s feet every evening, cleaned and dried them out as best he could; but he could still smell the rankness of thrush taking hold, and feel the heat and swelling of mud fever in the animal’s heels. It was the same for the men – they were not dry from one day or week to the next. It was impossible to keep tents or kit, skin or boots clean; the mud got everywhere. They stopped singing; the pipers stopped piping. Their feet bloated, blistered, cracked. In startlingly quick time, the chickens were all slain and eaten. There was no food to be found in the barren landscape, and what farms and villages they passed had most often been gutted and laid waste by the retreating French. All their enemies had left them were horrors and corpses. At the end of each day’s march, as Jonathan tried to care for Suleiman’s feet, he whispered to his horse of the warm stables awaiting them in Salamanca; the sweet meadow hay that would be piled high in his manger; the oats he would have in his nosebag, fresh and tasty instead of mouldy from the constant damp. Suleiman shivered and heaved a sigh as he listened to this, as if he didn’t believe it, and Jonathan’s own stomach rumbled as he spoke.

Moore’s section of the army, with Jonathan, Captain Sutton and their company within it, was the first to reach Salamanca, in late November 1808. They were weak, exhausted, underfed. They were rife with dysentery, sickness and lice, and they were told to be ready to move again at once, because a French force ten times their number was at Valladolid, a mere four or five marches away. French numbers in Spain swelled all the time; Napoleon himself had arrived to lead in the centre and south – the emperor was quite determined that Spain would remain a part of his empire. When Jonathan heard this news he felt a cold fist of fear in the pit of his stomach. He was ashamed of his reaction and tried to hide it as he passed on the alert to his company, though he saw it mirrored in some of their faces. Others showed excitement at the prospect of a fight; some were clearly furious, though Jonathan could not guess at what; some showed nothing but weary acceptance. A drawn-out, hollow expression, which made their eyes look dead.

‘It will be a relief, will it not – to fight at last instead of marching?’ said Captain Sutton carefully, as he and Jonathan shared a flask of wine in the captain’s billet later on. Naked candle flames juddered and flapped in the draughty room, sending shadows careening up the walls. Jonathan looked Sutton in the eye and knew that the captain saw his fear. He knew, but did not despise him for it. Still Jonathan flushed with shame as he raised his cup.

‘A relief, indeed,’ he said, then drained the drink down. Wherever a wine cellar had been discovered in the city, it had been raided. Huge barrels had been rolled out into the streets and drained, and sat empty with a few collapsed, insensible men around each one. More than one man had drunk himself to death already. And still the cold rain fell.

‘Without fear there can be no valour,’ said Captain Sutton, softly. He was older than Jonathan by fifteen years, and had seen battles and wars before this one. He was a good man, and kind; he helped his inexperienced senior officer wherever he could, and Jonathan was grateful, even though this care made him feel like a child swimming out of its depth.

In the middle of December they quit Salamanca again. Sir John Moore had resisted for as long as possible, hoping for the other army contingents to reach the city; hoping for the arrival of Spanish allies to reinforce them. None came. But then word came that the French had moved south; that they thought Salamanca deserted, and had no idea of the British force in occupation there. There was a chance to strike an unanticipated blow; a chance to divert the French from harrying the beleaguered Spanish in the south, and Moore took it. He marched them north-west, towards Saldana, where a famous commander called Soult, dubbed the Duke of Damnation by the men, was in command of a large French force. After a stationary month, one of few comforts and scant food, the men were almost happy to march again, especially if there would be a battle at the end of it – the waiting wore them down; they wanted to fight. Jonathan thought of the violence and death they had seen so far, and couldn’t understand their eagerness. But he kept this to himself, close-guarded; just like he kept his doubts and all his misgivings about his chosen career to himself.

‘It will soon be time to give the enemy a taste of our mettle, men – and our steel!’ he bellowed to his company, and they gave him a resounding cheer as they marched. The words were bitter in his mouth, and sounded hollow in his ears. Behind the saddle, Suleiman’s ribs arched out, plainly visible beneath his too-thin coat. When the wind blew the horse shivered, but did not baulk. Jonathan felt the shudder pass up through his own body, as though he and his horse were one being.
Lend me your courage, brave friend.

Jonathan wrote to Alice constantly, and managed to resist telling her of the fear he felt, and his disgust at the bloodlust of his compatriots. He managed not to describe the way they all seemed to be growing less and less human as the weeks wore on. They grew more bestial, more brutish and cruel – even in their most basic characteristics: they were hairier, ragged, and they stank. The war was shaping them to its own ends. He wrote none of that, and instead wrote of the longing to return to her which occupied his every waking moment, and haunted his dreams as well. Then their surreptitious march was cut short – they encountered a company of around seven hundred French cavalry, and engaged them in a short and brutal fight which finished when the French were all slain. Thus Soult was alerted to their march on Saldana, and their whereabouts.

Word was sent south; the main French force halted, turned, came back for them. When Jonathan was passed the dispatch with this news, he felt his guts turn watery and his legs soften with panic. He bit it down and awaited orders, but they had no other choice than to flee. Within days they might be surrounded by so many thousands of French that any battle would be a massacre. There was no choice but to retreat, back to the coast in the west. On Christmas Eve 1808, the British turned towards the mountains. The officers had to herd their reluctant men – the troops wanted to stay and fight the Duke of Damnation, or Napoleon himself – to fight
anybody
, rather than climb a mountain range in wintertime, with no supplies. They knew that the mountains would be every bit as deadly as any such battle might be.

Jonathan was sure he could feel the French behind them. He sensed them like a huge black cloud, or like a wave about to break over their heads. He had the constant unnerving feeling of being watched, crept up on. He gave short shrift to his disobedient men, although he stopped short of having them flogged. Men under other officers were not as fortunate. Some took a hundred lashes for a muttered complaint; two hundred for straying away from the columns; three hundred for cozening mutiny. They were left with their backs in tatters, unlikely to live, and loving their commanders no more than before.
Run!
Jonathan wanted to scream at them.
What is the matter with you? Run, while you can!
The words stayed trapped in his mouth, straining to get out, as the rain turned to snow and the wind grew teeth and claws. His men took the obvious conflict within him as a sign that he hated the order to retreat as much as they did. It made them love him more, and if he’d had any laughter left he would have laughed at this irony.