A Raven's Heart

by K. C. Bateman

  He shook his head. “Three days we were at it. Back and forth, advance and retreat. The French had double the guns we had, but they got stuck in the mud. Old Boney would try with the cavalry and we’d push ’em back. We lost over half our men.” Mullaney’s face held the haunted look of a man recalling countless horrors. “Just when we thought it was all over, that we were done for, the Prussians under Blücher came round the right of the enemy’s line. That was when we knew we had ’em.”

  Heloise found herself leaning forward in the saddle, straining to hear the story.

  “The Imperial Guard came at us and we went in with our bayonets. It was a mud bath. You could hardly see for the smoke, hardly hear for the screams and the crack of the shot. A Frenchie came at me and made a thrust at my groin with his bayonet. I parried, and cut him down through the head with my sabre. Then a lancer had a go. I threw off the lance to my right and cut him up through the chin.” He demonstrated the move with an imaginary sword, so lost in his memories he seemed unaware of how unsuitable such gruesome detail was for a lady’s ears.

  “When the Imperial Guard broke ranks the whole French army turned tail and ran.” Mullaney looked a little dazed. “There was such an odd silence when the firing suddenly stopped.”

  He shook himself out of his reverie and turned to Heloise. “Didn’t realize I’d been wounded till it was all over.” He lifted his shirt to reveal a hideous slash to his side. The puckered skin ran in an angry welt from his hip to his ribs and Heloise winced in sympathy. It made her own scar look like the tiniest of scratches. She shuddered and glanced over at Private Canning. His eyes were wide in his pale face. He looked like he was about to vomit.

  Mullaney turned to him. “They say it was a great victory.” He snorted. “But Wellington understood; he said there’s nothing worse than a victory, saving a defeat.” He patted Canning’s shoulder. “Don’t go wishing yourself into battle, son. There’s no glory in bloodshed.”

  Heloise decided it was time to lighten the mood. “And what did you do before you joined the army, Sergeant Mullaney?”

  “Me? I’m an emperor of the pugilistic arts. A lad of the fancy.”

  “A boxer,” Canning translated. “A prizefighter.”

  Ah. That explained the broken nose.

  “I went nine rounds against Gentleman Jackson, once, at Tom Belcher’s place in Holborn.” Mullaney’s chest puffed out proudly. “He gave me a right blinker that time, but I still beat him.” He chuckled at the memory. “That’s how I ended up in the army. Jackson became a recruiting sergeant. The sneaky blighter convinced me to sign up one evening after I’d had a few too many pints.”

  They came to a fork in the road and Mullaney turned his horse to the right. “Nearly there, miss. The caves are just along here.”

  Heloise let out a relieved sigh. If she could see the caves and get back before Raven, he’d be none the wiser. And if he happened to get back first, well, there was still nothing he could do about it, was there? What was the worst he could do? Send her home? He was going to do that, anyway.

  Chapter 22

  Raven returned to the palacio in a foul mood.

  He’d ventured into parts of the city few civilized people dared to go, to find someone to deliver a message to his gypsy ally Alejandro.

  He’d worked with the guerilla band many times during the war, haranguing the French supply routes across the Pyrenees, and using their incredible knowledge of the terrain to ambush scouts and intercept messages. The Rom comprised a vast network of horse traders, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, innkeepers, fences, all bound by ties of blood or marriage. Alejandro himself was married to the niece of the parish priest. If anyone could help track down Kit, it was the gypsies, and Raven was seething with a restless irritation. All this inactivity was wearing on his nerves. He needed action, something to slake the rising need to punish whoever had his friend. He could feel the need for violence within him, like a dark cloud, knew he was reaching the limits of his control.

  Whenever he felt like this at home he took his aggression out on one of his colleagues—usually Heloise’s brothers, if they were around. They’d spar or fence or box until his anger was tamped down to a dull roar. If they weren’t available, he did the next best thing and went to a high-class brothel and bedded some enthusiastic harlot until he was too exhausted to stand.

  Unfortunately, neither of those diverting outlets was available to him right now. So his frustration and his lust were just simmering away, feeding off each other. Heloise distracted him, aroused him, and infuriated him by turns, and he needed his wits about him if he was going to find Kit. But sending her home wasn’t an option; she wouldn’t be safe until the threat to her was dealt with.

  He dismounted in the stables and sought out Scovell in his study.

  “Where’s Miss Hampden?”

  Scovell glanced up, absently chewing the end of his pencil. “Hmm? Oh. She’s out.”

  A cold prickle of premonition trickled down his spine. “What do you mean, out? Where is she?” His heart began thudding in dread. “Don’t say she’s left the palacio.”

  “Well, yes. She expressed a desire to visit the caves at Altamira. She’s with Canning and Mullaney. Expect she’ll be back soon.”

  Raven took a deep breath and counted to ten.

  He was going to wring her neck.

  Someone should have spanked her backside for disobedience a long time ago. Unfortunately, imagining that scenario gave him an instant erection, which infuriated him even more.

  The stable boy seemed quite surprised when Raven stormed back into the stables, swung up onto his horse, and kicked the stallion’s sides.

  If anything happened to her…He couldn’t finish the thought. Heloise Hampden might be the most irritating woman alive, and certainly not the woman for him, but the idea of a world without her in it, somewhere, making his life a misery, was inconceivable.

  He should have told her the truth, but he hadn’t wanted to scare her any more than he already had. The French agent in his garden had talked before he’d died. The little bastard had wriggled like a worm on a hook.

  “Who killed Edward Lamb?” Raven had hissed.

  “Let me go, m’sieur. It wasn’t me! I swear. It was the Butcher. Lavalle.”

  Raven stilled at hearing that name and the worm smiled, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth. “You know of him. And you know this: If I fail, they will simply send him, in my place.” He gave a grotesque, triumphant smile. “They will keep sending men until she’s dead.”

  Raven grasped his head and broke his neck.

  The relief that engulfed him when he caught sight of Canning and Mullaney sitting on a rock at the cave entrance, playing dice, only fueled his fury.

  The two soldiers leaped to attention and saluted.

  “Where is she?” he growled, dismounting and tying his horse to a tree.

  “Inside the cave, sir. Been in there a good hour already. She has a lantern, sir.”

  Raven nodded. “Wait here. I’ll get her.”

  The first few meters of the cave were sunlit, but after that it tapered into darkness. Names had been scratched into the stone: Aberdeen 1803 and H. P. Pope 1799. Raven understood the need to make a mark for future generations to see. Something permanent, indelible, that would echo through the ages long after you were gone. The Ancient Greeks believed you never truly died if people still remembered you and spoke your name. If that was right, then Hector and Achilles had surely gained their longed-for immortality.

  As he ventured deeper, the sunless chill wrapped around him and his chest tightened with a pervasive sense of dread. The dark, dank cave reminded him of the bone-deep cold of his cell and he closed his eyes, unwillingly transported back to his own imprisonment. His palms went clammy and his heart started to thump against his ribs.

  There had been writing on his cell walls, too; short parallel lines he’d initially mistaken for the claw marks of an animal, until he noticed they were in orderly batches of five. A
previous inmate had been counting the days he’d been held. So many lines. The walls had been covered in them. Had the poor bastard been trying to impose some sort of order on the madness? Or maybe he’d been praying for madness to take him.

  Raven had sometimes wished he could go mad. That would be a freedom of sorts, wouldn’t it?

  At least his mind had been free to wander, to go wherever he willed. It had gone to her, Heloise. His candle in the darkness, a symbol of everything that was worth fighting for. If he was the shadow, then she was the light.

  He’d pried a nail free from his water bucket and used it to scratch her name into the stone. Heloise Caroline Hampden. As if doing so could somehow summon her presence. It seemed to work. He hadn’t felt so alone.

  Raven clenched his fists as the memories kept coming, unbidden. He hadn’t just written her name. He’d written the name he wanted her to have: Heloise de l’Isle. Lady Ravenwood. Like some damned giddy, lovesick sixteen-year-old girl practicing her signature.

  He’d drawn the Hampden coat of arms and the Ravenwood crest, too, side by side, and then he’d combined them into a new imaginary crest, an amalgamation of their sigils.

  Raven shook himself out of his reverie. He’d killed his guard with the same nail he’d used to write her name. Stabbed him in the neck with it to escape.

  He’d been nineteen, so young to be a killer, but he hardened his heart. He felt no guilt. It had been kill or be killed. Except he had no excuse for all the killings that had come after that one. It had been the start of a downward spiral. His thirst for revenge was never slaked, because every death diminished him, stained his soul a little blacker, instead of bringing him peace. And he’d embraced it, sinking deeper every day.

  He could see no sign of her light up ahead. Bloody woman.

  He edged forward carefully, hands out in front to shield his face, feet feeling their way along the uneven dirt floor. Then his eyes got used to the dark and he became aware of a faint glow around a bend in the tunnel. He followed it through a series of small chambers until he finally found her, lantern propped on a rock, inspecting the walls.

  He experienced a queer light-headedness at seeing her alive and well. In the flickering light of the lantern she looked like a Renaissance goddess, some Old Testament heroine picked out in chiaroscuro by a master. The glow caressed the straight line of her nose and laved her cheeks, lush lips, and stubborn chin.

  She traced her fingers over the curves of rock and he imagined her shaping his body in the same reverent way.

  Anger rose up again. As usual the fool woman was completely heedless of potential danger. What if there had been a wild animal hiding in here? Or a rock fall? She didn’t even have a weapon. Had she learned nothing?

  “For a woman who speaks five languages, you seem to have a remarkably difficult time understanding basic commands. I thought I made myself perfectly clear.”

  She jumped at the sound of his voice and spun round with a gasp, but recovered her composure quickly enough. “Someone once told me it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

  He ground his teeth until his jaw hurt. Impertinent little baggage, quoting his own words back at him.

  “And as you can see, I’ve come to no harm,” she said.

  He forced himself to stay across the cave from her, when what he really wanted to do was go over there and shake some sense into her. “This is all one big adventure to you, isn’t it? But there’s danger everywhere, Heloise. We might as well still be at war, for all the safety there is in this country right now.”

  She gave an infuriating, dismissive shrug. “I feel perfectly safe now that the invincible Lord Ravenwood is here.”

  He clenched his fists and released them. “You shouldn’t have come. No one is invincible. Not even me.”

  “Goodness, are you admitting to limitations?” she mocked. “I think I need to sit down.”

  Infernal woman. Raven scowled at her but she’d already turned away to study the walls again. She placed her hand over a painted handprint and matched up her fingers and thumb over the top. Whoever had made it had small hands, almost the same size as hers. He wondered if they’d ever been tempted to strangle somebody for disobedience.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Just think, someone did exactly this, possibly thousands of years ago. They put their hand here and blew pigment over it to leave a negative image.” She craned her head back and studied the ceiling. “Isn’t this incredible? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Raven looked upward. A huge herd of bull-like animals stampeded across the curved expanse, each drawn in earth tones of black charcoal, iron red mud, and yellow ochre. The side walls, too, teemed with animals; horses and goats, a large doe, and something that looked like a wild boar.

  The natural contours of the cave walls had been used to give the animals a three-dimensional effect, enhanced by the flickering light of the lantern. The unsteady light made them look as if they were moving.

  “This is a sort of code, too,” Heloise said. “A story without words.” She pointed. “The artists had a lot of respect for these animals. Look, they’re all different. Each has its own personality.”

  Raven settled back on a rock and folded his arms across his chest. “They drew what was important to them. What they loved.”

  Heloise beamed at him. “Yes! Exactly.”

  “That’s what I did,” Raven admitted.

  Chapter 23

  Heloise stilled at his unexpected admission. “What do you mean?”

  “When I was kidnapped. I drew on the walls, too.”

  Her face immediately clouded with guilt and compassion. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. Does being in here remind you of being imprisoned? Do you want to leave?”

  He shook his head, inwardly amazed that he’d even brought the subject up. “No. It’s all right.”

  “Were you kept in darkness like this?”

  “For eight weeks.”

  He heard her swift intake of breath. “How did you survive?”

  “I embraced death,” he said simply. “I remembered something I must have read at school, by a Spartan called Tyrtaeus. He said ‘learn to love death’s ink-black shadow as much as you love the light of dawn.’ ” He tilted his head back and stared out into the darkness. “He meant don’t fear death, embrace it.” His lips curled in self-mockery. “But that’s easier said than done. The will to survive persists, no matter how hopeless the situation.”

  Heloise made no sound, so he continued. “Death was always there, a specter looming every second of the day. One day I saw my captors making nooses out of rope. I thought they were going to hang me.”

  She gave a choked gasp but he didn’t look at her.

  “I was terrified until I realized it was just halters to tie up their horses.” He bent, picked up a stone, and began tossing it from one hand to the other. “They held a mock execution once. No last requests or anything like that. They just said time was up. They tied my hands and blindfolded me and led me outside. They made me kneel. They put a pistol to my head—I heard the click as the hammer was drawn back. I honestly thought I was about to die.”

  He glanced over at Heloise. Her eyes were wide, her fingers covering her mouth as if to protect herself from his words.

  “I braced myself. Swore that if I died I’d come back and haunt those murderous bastards. But then the hammer was uncocked and they all started to laugh. ‘Later,’ one of them said. And then they left. I just sagged there, on my knees in the dirt, and retched, although there was nothing in my stomach to throw up. After God knows how long, one of them came and pulled me up and returned me to my cell.”

  “Oh God,” she whispered.

  He kept his voice matter-of-fact, his tone even. “I considered killing myself as a way to escape. But that would have been the coward’s way out.”

  He stopped, surprised to hear those words tumbling from his lips. He’d never told anyone that, not even her brothers. H
e didn’t want her pity, her sympathy. But he owed her something for the way he’d made her face her own demons back at the river. The least he could do was offer his own most shaming experience in exchange.

  “I never told you what happened when I was kidnapped.” He leaned one shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms, staying at the very edge of the glow of light, half in shadow. “I was nineteen, just down from University, staying in our London townhouse. One evening I got blind drunk and decided to stagger home.” His voice was rich with cynicism. “Being young and stupid, I was supremely confident that my elevated position in society meant nothing and nobody could harm me. I was an easy mark.”

  He gave an empty laugh. “A London underworld kingpin thought the same thing. He figured my doting grandfather would pay handsomely for the return of his sole heir.”

  A bitter smile twisted his mouth. “Ah, but there was the irony: He clearly hadn’t done his research on my skinflint grandfather.” He kept his tone dry and amused, as if he were recounting an entertaining anecdote at a card party instead of the story of his youthful suffering and humiliation.

  “You see, kidnapping only works if the threatened party actually values the person taken hostage. If not, they sign the prisoner’s death warrant, because their life is literally worthless to the kidnappers. They become an expense they don’t need. It’s a simple monetary transaction.”

  His expression darkened. “They miscalculated badly with my grandfather. His pride was offended by their audacity. He flatly refused to be blackmailed. He pretended to negotiate to stall for time while he hired Bow Street Runners and private investigators to find me. But he took too long.

  “I should thank him, really. It taught me a valuable life lesson. No one was going to rescue me. If I wanted to get out of there, I had to do it myself.” His eyes bored into hers. “I vowed then that I would never again be at the mercy of another human being. When I got back I confronted my grandfather in his study. We argued. The old bastard collapsed of an apoplexy as a result. He went back to his London townhouse and I’ve barely spoken to him since.”