Vermillion (The Hundred Days Series Book 1)

by Baird Wells

  Her eyes and nose ran together. Kate smeared it with her sleeve, trying vainly to stem her tide of tears. Hands came around her from somewhere, gentle and weathered. She wished they would not touch her; she never wanted to feel again. They guided her, and she was vaguely aware through swollen eyes and a sick hurricane of thought, of going up.

  “No. No, no.” Kate kept repeating it, but not to them. She did not even care that they were near her. She renounced the soldiers' news, the courier's news. It was not true, not as long as she refused to believe.

  The man beside her did not know that, misinterpreting her protests. He squeezed her arm more firmly, patting the small of her back. “Yes, we must. Napoleon comes. We must go.”

  She did not care what he said, or what it meant. She moved through a dark cloud, hung over his arm in near collapse. They reached a bed, or a cot. It came up under her and a blanket draped over her, failing to bring comfort or warmth. Kate hugged herself beneath it, fighting to breathe through the leaden ache over her heart, to get hold of herself. Tried and failed, until exhaustion brought merciful numbness.

  * * *

  Matthew pressed fingertips to his temple, checking again to convince himself the ball had only grazed his flesh. Of course it had. His back slamming the ground, the terror of Bremen's hooves stomping at his head, they had saturated him with doubt that he could be so lucky. Luckier than the milky-eyed infantryman that had stared back unseeing beside him, bright blood forming on his lips and crusting black along his chin. Giving thanks at drawing another breath, he scrambled up to make himself visible before some hapless cavalryman ruined his good fortune.

  He immediately regretted prodding his head. Sweat and the salt-peter residue of black powder burned the ragged wound all the way to his ear.

  Smoke hung in shades out past the ridge, the white-gray of muskets swirling into the charcoal columns sent up by Plancenoit. The village was being fought over by the last people on earth who still wanted it while it sat deserted and burning to the ground. For most of the day he had cursed the acrid fog. Sun could not burn it off, there was no wind to blow it out, and the damp ground seemed to hug the residue desperately close. His men were obscured half the time, and his enemy most of the time. More than once he had begun to ride forward, ready to take charge of a regiment in disarray only to discover mid-gallop that their commander had not fallen – the company simply could not see one another any better than he could see them.

  That was hours ago. Now he squinted hard at the hedged-in snake of the sunken Ohain road, suddenly grateful for the smoke's filter. His head throbbed with every volley, every bark of the nine-pounders. Any more light from above would have provoked the stabbing behind his left eye until he could no longer pry it open.

  He was stripped to his shirt-sleeves. It occurred to him as dirt kicked up by a French shell spattered his throat with grit. Come nightfall he would regret the loss of his great coat, thrown into the fray in haste, but his cravat had gone to serve a higher purpose, tying off McKinnon's shattered left arm and hopefully keeping his aide alive on the grueling trip to the rear. His absence cost Matthew dearly. The two men taking McKinnon's place lacked his bravery and efficiency. They had also been missing for over an hour. Matthew had received no dispatches except what Maitland or Wellington's own men brought him. He was now convinced the two aides were likely both dead.

  It was no wild stretch of the imagination. Heaps of bodies created gruesome breastworks crisscrossing the valley. Death, the great equalizer, had piled French and Allies together in mounds like unwilling brothers. No action had occurred that afternoon that did not drop two or three hundred men in minutes. They lay were they fell, not caring who fell beside them.

  Generals Pack and Picton, their soldiers four ranks deep were, hard pressed by the statistic, chasing their enemy through the thick mud of the Ohain road's deep trench with depleted numbers.

  A moment later something happened along the sunken road. It must have been a difference in attitude rather than position. Nothing obvious had changed, but a cry went up over the din, distinctly French in timbre. Their enthusiasm prickled the hair on his neck. A shout. No, a cheer, he amended. A French formation rushed the lane. It barreled determined through impossibly tangled growth on both sides, trapping Major-General Pack's regiment in its jaws.

  This time Matthew snapped open his glass. He raked it up and down Pack's line, pinned now by the depth of the embankment on both sides. The French, redoubling, pushed them back with the detached persistence of ocean waves. Picton's men rallied behind, sweeping to reinforce their brothers. Matthew raised a fist, heart pounding, proud of the initiative and Picton's clever planning.

  French blue-coats formed a giant maw, swallowing up Pack's men and Picton's, hungry greed eating up ground despite the teeth of piercing British bayonets.

  Picton was undaunted. The Welshman's hat circled in the air, his hands conducting wildly. Though Matthew couldn't hear the lieutenant-general, he had been witness to enough of the man's time on the field to imagine his salty oaths across the gap.

  His men thrust and stomped, making grim strides over the bodies of their fallen brothers. A volley's loud report covered the field. Picton flailed on his horse, grabbing at his head. He slid from the saddle beneath the churning waves of red and blue.

  He did not get up.

  Matthew held breath deep inside burning lungs, not daring to blink. Dressed in civilian clothes, maybe Picton had not been immediately recognized by the advancing line. Plenty of officers had left the Richmond’s' in such haste that they had not bothered changing. Matthew's hopes were dashed when no men bore him up and no French troops drug him captive behind their ranks.

  His heart fell two ribs. Resigned, he exhaled. Picton on the field was worth the command of four other officers. His loss was a sound blow, staggering in light of their current disadvantage. Humbled, bordering on desperate, Matthew drug out his pencil and a scrap of paper from his dwindling supply inside his last remaining saddle bag and scribbled out the grim news for Wellington.

  He split the air with a piercing whistle, waving over the first cavalryman who looked his way. “Do you spy that Elm, at the road's corner?” Wellington had set himself up beneath the tree on their arrival that morning. He might not be there now, but someone would know where to find him, or at least what to do with his news.

  “Sir.” The man snapped a quick salute.

  Matthew waved the folded paper. “Ride this for the command post like the life of this army depends upon its arrival.”

  Grunting, the soldier was off, ducking and weaving down the slope. There was no time to follow his trail, to know if he reached his goal. Matthew spurred Bremen, galloping closer to the ridge. His attention was fixed on Picton's men, now taken in hand by Pack. They had covered more ground along the road than he would have guessed possible. They had lost their commander, had been abused by the French, trapped inside the glorified mud pit, but still their blades struck out and legs pushed them forward. They could not hold Marshall D'Erlon's men much longer, but from the bottom of the heap they were stopping him right now.

  Movement caught his eye at the crest of the ridge to his left. “God and saints be praised,” he muttered, the words feeling more like an oath and less like a prayer.

  Major Burrell's heavy cavalry came into view, and Ty raised an arm to signal they were ready. The French, hemmed in now along the Ohain, would never know what was coming. Matthew clapped his hands together. It was mid-afternoon, and they were winning.

  He raised an arm and pumped it twice in response. There was a hesitation, and for a split second the cavalry drew backwards, a bow string pulling taut. Matthew grinned in spite of himself. That was the mark of a devastating charge, and Major Burrell's signature. Mounts reared, their hooves bit traction into the spongy earth, and they poured over the lip of the embankment, a biblical flow.

  Ty had calculated the angle perfectly. His lads swept the cuirassiers over the edge and into the road's muck,
stirred deeper by their own advance a few minutes earlier. His cavalry's advance was so definitive that the French could not even flee left toward the Allies and save a little ground. Through his glass, Matthew watched D'Erlon physically struggle with the information. His hands flailed while his confused men churned on themselves, fighting the instinct to pursue their enemy while trapped in the lane. Coming to terms with their reverse of fortune, the French all along the sunken road turned right, toward their own lines, broke ranks in confusion and retreated.

  Matthew jabbed a fist in the air, wheeling Bremen and shouting out a cheer for the cavalry.

  They had reached the very pitch of battle now. Around him men moaned or roared at their enemy with cries of self-preservation. Wounded horses from an ammunition wagon screamed while the wood from their burning cart popped and hissed. Four-hundred heavy guns were a metronome, timing the fracas with their percussions. The earth shook one last time and then it was quiet.

  The French battery, insatiable all afternoon, fell silent.

  He wondered if the last shell had been too close, if his hearing had finally given out, until a drum-beat vibrated the ground from behind the hills, magnifying into the ruthless thunder of a thousand hoof beats.

  The lines appeared through the heavy smoke, over hills bordering a half-burned and hotly contested farmstead. They gleamed like sun on the water, casting a chill over him and every man around him. The polished breastplates of Marshal Ney's cuirassiers formed an impenetrable wall, knights from an age past, their towering red plumes giving the impression of a predatory bird diving to strike.

  They were Napoleon's oldest and most seasoned veterans, men who had seen enough over a decade to make the slaughter before them perfectly routine. There had been a time when he would have been intimidated, but Matthew knew the cuirassier's secret: to shock their opponents’ minds with their appearance, sapping the enemy's courage. He would show them just how much bravery his men possessed.

  Spurring Bremen, he wheeled along the rear of his line to reach Ty. The major was barking orders down to his cavalry, now reforming after their brilliant rout.

  Matthew held up three fingers, yelling over the noise with enough force to make his temple pound. “Three hundred yards!”

  Ty's gaze snapped to the field, making impossibly rapid calculations. “That's only half our effective range!” Matthew understood the hesitation. Their artillery could reach nearly seven hundred yards, but not well. He was asking Ty to allow the French incredibly close. It would put the men at risk, but guaranteed heavier casualties for the enemy. The guns hit more often inside their effective range, and could still catch a retreat and cut it down over a few hundred yards.

  Matthew raised his fingers higher. “The infantry will hold. Let them come! Three hundred yards, understood?”

  He didn't wait for Ty's salute, trusting that as long as the major breathed, he would follow the order. Riding back down the line, he shook his saber overhead, gaining the attention of every remaining officer. “Form up! Squares now and hold fast. We're in for it, lads!”

  “Prepare to receive... cavalry!” The order went up along the line, and Matthew knew it filled every soldier with dread. Grim-faced men knelt in the front ranks bracing blades for the impending charge while behind them comrades shouldered muskets.

  Passing his home regiment, Matthew raised his saber again, arm trembling at the thundering behind his ribs. “Havercake lads, who leads the way?”

  “The thirty-third does!”

  Matthew thrust his saber higher, raising in the saddle. “For the Duke of Wellington!”

  A ferocious cry rose from the 33rd, loud enough that their prodigal son Wellington must have heard his old regiment clear up at the command post.

  As if in answer to their battle-roar, Major Burrell's six-gun battery shuddered its report, smoking the ridge. Their shot was true, in spite of the ground. The whole first rank of cuirassiers, almost to a man, fell like silver dominoes.

  Subsequent attacks by the French bore little fruit. He did not envy their position, fighting up the ridge against Allies above. The advance served its purpose, though, giving the French battery lordship over more and more of the field. Where the French infantry fell short, their guns found satisfaction. Artillery tore through his lines, cutting swaths he could not afford again and again while his men swatted at the cuirassiers buzzing around their feet.

  He ground teeth into his cheek until his tongue tasted blood. The battle had taken a sudden turn for the worse. It was not just the loss of so many of his men, or the thin spots it had created in his ranks. Something was wrong. There was a waver in the men that he knew too well. Matthew saw it when he skimmed the lines just beyond the ridge, though it was too late to stop the inevitable.

  “Hold, hold!” The center left began to soften, and Matthew's stomach twisted, predicting what would come next. His Cumberland Hussars wavered, seeing the scores of men being eaten up around them. Matthew's infantry was fully committed in the thick of it; there was no one to send, to bolster the flagging regiment. They pulled back, turned, and marched for the rear with all the dignity of a three-wheeled post coach. He held out a faint hope that it was by design. It was possible they had been given a sudden order to do so. Wellington was famous, even notorious for making changes mid-stream if it brought the army gains, but almost never without some communication.

  That hope was dashed when Colonel Seymour, Uxbridge's aide-de-camp, bore down on him like a devil on horseback.

  “Dispatches?” Matthew demanded, one eye on the unfolding disaster.

  “No, sir.” Seymour's eyes darted around them, widening. He must have grasped the absence of Matthew's own aides, and that General Webb had been out of communication. How much had transpired of which he was unaware, Matthew wondered.

  Seymour caught his breath, priming for quick summarization. “Uxbridge charged me to stem the retreating Hussars, but their commander, Von Hacke, will not hear it. He says his men are too skittish to be invested and will take their own horses and quit the field.”

  Bastards. He skimmed the ridge where their fading backs were just disappearing and strangled his reins. Von Hacke's men were volunteers, and their horses did in fact belong to them. There was nothing to keep them now that the fight had turned desperate. Matthew scrubbed a hand over his face, staring at the fray. How had the tables turned so quickly? “Sod it all,” he muttered, almost forgetting Seymour was beside him. “Look at that goddamned hole.” The Hussar retreat had left a gap in his center-left, inviting Napoleon inside. The invitation, if the renewed push of French infantry up the center was any indication, had been accepted.

  He poked a finger at the Hussars for Seymour's benefit. “Tell Uxbridge to prevail upon Von Hacke. Put pressure on either his dignity or his neck.”

  Seymour's hand flew up, and he looked impossibly tired. “I have sir. I've reasoned with second in command as well. And we continue to do so. Dawson has gone up to beg him into a fallback position, but I know he will not hear it. We must subtract his regiment.”

  'Subtract' was a polite term which meant 'do without and hope we're not buggered in the process'. So far, Matthew reckoned, they were only having success with one half of the expression. “Get word to whatever body Maitland has hidden behind that hill.” He pointed to the far end of the ridge. “Order them to lie still as the dead, till they can smell French sweat. Then I want them to volley their arses off.”

  “Yes, sir. Good, sir.” Seymour raised his hand in salute and was gone. Matthew wondered if he should have sent any other instructions back. Given his missing aides, he might have missed his last chance.

  His hope began to ash, watching the chaos igniting along his left. Men on both sides of the gap bore the brunt of Von Hacke's abandoned position, pressed hard by the enemy and faltering. The infantry strained once, then twice, a creaking dam. It broke with a sharp cry, and Ney's cavalry poured through in an unstemmable tide.

  He galloped between the companies, barkin
g for them to form up, fall back. “Get those bloody muskets loaded,” he shouted. “Center-left, center-right!” He waved them back to patch the hole.

  They were not lost. Matthew smacked the words away, refusing to acknowledge defeat. Lines broke, were shored up, and re-positioned all the time. They were, however, well beyond desperate. The men were exhausted, sun-scorched, parched. Their bodies were beginning to flag in advance of their morale. He needed fresh soldiers, reinforcements.

  Where were the Prussians? Blucher had promised a rendezvous at a predawn meeting with Wellington. More than twelve hours had passed with no sign of his approach, not so much as a dust cloud on the horizon.

  Bremen shuffled right to avoid a rifle blast, then reared violently at the storm of rocks and soil that exploded in their faces from well positioned artillery. Wheeling him away, Matthew galloped left and right, weaving in anticipation of the next shell. A musket shot tore his saddle bag free, spinning Bremen like a cyclone. For the first time, panic beaded sweat on his neck, running over his wound in a stinging rivulet he hardly noticed.

  Sundown. Sundown or Blucher, nothing else would save them.

  * * *

  Frigid salt-spray dotted her lips and face as she leaned over the rail, staring into a horizon that had swallowed the last sight of land hours ago. Kate closed her eyes, reaching out with her heart and trying to feel. They shared a bond now, and she was certain she would know if Matthew were alive or dead, but the lines of fate were a tangle. She could only feel the jostle of scales that had not yet tipped their balance.

  Canvas snapped overhead, sails caught and thrown by a temperamental wind that grew in force as the sun came to rest on the horizon. Only a few of its rays escaped the bank of slate clouds chasing them, the same dark sky that had seemed to chase her for days. It grew harder and harder not to feel they were a harbinger.