Vermillion (The Hundred Days Series Book 1)

by Baird Wells

Slipping a thumb and finger beneath her shawl and into her neckline, she found Matthew's ribbon and pinched it, wondering again if sailing from Antwerp had been the right decision. Not that it had been her choice, really, but if she had put up more of a fight, the captain might have relented.

  It had been simpler on the docks, when going to London with Adelaide had felt like being shut up in a gilded cage. She would be a curiosity, liked or disliked equally for who and what she was. For the first time in years, home had suggested itself as a sanctuary.

  A handsome young sailor who strongly resembled Private Miller passed her, thumbing a chivalrous salute and smiling. He glanced at the inky clouds starting to simmer overhead, then cocked his head toward the berth. “Best get below, miss. This storm's a banshee and Cap'n says things are sure to get rough.”

  * * *

  It was impossible that things could get worse.

  They needed a unified strategy. That much was clear as he rode back up the lines, observing islands of men fight vainly for survival with no plan of aiding their brothers. He needed a strategy, and he needed the Field Marshal. Wellington was shielded somewhere in a square of infantry, one of countless along the field, cut off from communication. Not that it mattered, Matthew thought. All but one of the general's aides were missing, and Maitland currently represented fifty-percent of the remaining command staff, himself being the other.

  French cuirassiers, having mowed a swath through the Allied center-left, rode hard for the ridge. Little remained to oppose their onslaught, and they were bound to gain the top in minutes. Once they held even a fraction of the high ground, they could hold the gate for their fellows. Pouring in from the east and west, they would route his men with hardly a bounce to their saddles.

  They rode hard, demon horses climbing the eroding embankment with supernatural grace. Matthew watched for opportunity, but he did not bother calling out orders. He had no one left to stop them. He'd poured men like pitch to plug the hole left by Von Hacke's desertion. The stone had been wrung for blood and found dry. He could only watch and shape what little clay was left.

  The first line of cuirassiers mounted the slope. Matthew held his breath, bracing, waiting for the plateau's ground to be devoured under their hooves. He waited, but the charge did not come. The horses reared and screamed, throwing a few riders.

  He scraped blood and grass from the lens of his glass, wiping with the tail of his shirt and snapping it open. The cuirassier’s mounts tumbled back before he heard the report, before Maitland's forgotten fifteen-hundred men sprang up with the roar of hell's legion and fired arm’s length into the faces of their attackers.

  He punched the air, whooping. “You clever bastards!” Seymour had assured him that Maitland had no ace tucked away behind the lip of the hillock, that it was spread only with the mangled corpses unlucky enough to be found by well-launched French shells. They must have lain there, Maitland's men, among their dead and dying brothers, waiting for their moment to make so much of so little. Thanks to them, Matthew dared a small amount of hope.

  He trotted closer, frustrated by the limited view through his glass. For the first time in an hour, they had an exploitable turn of events. Matthew needed to see, hear, and even smell every detail in order to make the most of it. Maitland's bayonets skewered the French heavy cavalry, wave after wave. The pounding took its toll on General Michel's horse. It lost heart, bucking him up and then down into the fray. Matthew observed him pierced no fewer than five times.

  His Frenchmen unraveled.

  “Bravo!” Pure joy surged through him, bringing Matthew up out of his saddle. A ball pierced the felt of his hat with a pop, claiming it and tossing it out onto the field. He whooped, undaunted, and leaned low over Bremen's neck. If they had not killed him yet, they had damn well lost their chance, he decided. “Press them! Press forward!” he whispered, squinting at every push and pull of the two sides. His own infantry moved as if heeding his command, spilling down the slope over the enemy with volcanic force.

  Commotion on the right, along the eastern road, pulled his attention away. A mass of troops came on mechanically, a war machine of purpose and not men. It was made up of indistinct formations, obscured in the smoke and fading light.

  French reinforcements from Papelotte. His newly minted resolve crumbled. Whatever advantage Maitland's infantry had gained them, it could never hold up to the addition of several thousand French.

  The body gained momentum as it fanned out onto the field, churning faster, but as they came into view their commander's uniform was anything but blue and red. Black and gold. The coat, tailored long for a regal frame he recognized even in silhouette.

  Von Bulow.

  He was Blucher's left arm, ferocious and tactically brilliant. Even better, his corps had not taken part in the fighting two days earlier. They would be well-rested and well-supplied, the best reinforcements for which Matthew could hope. Bulow swallowed ground with little interference, bringing his Prussians at ramming speed hard against the French flank.

  Matthew shook his head in disbelief. If he had been confused in the midst of his despair, the French appeared doubly so, caught unawares by Bulow at the height of their success. If Napoleon had been informed how close Bulow truly was, he had disregarded the intelligence. Arrogance, Matthew thought. Uncharacteristic and advantageous.

  Rallied by the sight of reinforcements, Maitland's miracles forgot order, bearing down on their harassers. They advanced with such fury that Matthew signaled his artillery to stop before his own men were hit. Red coats washed over blue until there were no distinguishable lines. The field was almost absent musket fire, and even bayonets were forgotten on the slope. His men fought hand to hand, dragging panicked Frenchmen down by fists and knees, kneeling on throats. They quite literally choked the life from opponents who had, an hour before, given no quarter and spared no prisoners.

  In the blink of an eye, they were winning. Tenuously, he admitted, but chaos was burning through the French lines exponentially. For the first time all day, Matthew saw them truly struggle, disorganized and swirling back on themselves under Bulow's assault. Anything was possible; Maitland's hidden forces had reminded him of it. But in that moment, they had all the cohesion of sand, and Matthew dared to wager the French could not pull themselves back together.

  He wheeled Bremen, raising up as much as he dared for a look at his main body. The Imperial Guard, Napoleon's trusted veteran eagles, hammered his center with everything they had. They must know better than anyone that if they could not break the rib cage of the Allies and keep the Prussians east, they were lost.

  Bulow had grasped that, too. Matthew knew it for certain when the Prussian rounded his men, driving a first repulse at the French lines. Matthew felt they had gone from midnight despair to brilliant hope in a quarter hour, and just as the sun was falling below the horizon. If they could end this now, there would be no battle tomorrow.

  “God save the king,” he murmured, crossing himself, unable to imagine a more appropriate gesture. His heels bit Bremen's flanks, spurring him to the front. They had reached the beginning of the end, and Matthew was determined to see it through himself.

  Two galloping passes in front of his light infantry got their spirits high, voices shouting at a fever pitch. He galloped back to the center, wheeling Bremen, and raised his saber. “Up lads, and at 'em!”

  He turned and faced the field, lowering the point of his blade to the horizon, belting a cry he'd learned from his Highlanders in Portugal. “Sons of the hounds, come and take flesh!”

  The clamor of Hades jarred his back, cries and whoops, clanking bayonets and fists beating their musket stocks. Matthew launched from the ridge with the din of his legion close behind. For a moment, he understood the Scots' meaning, hungry for anything which crossed his path, blood lust piqued by the scent of weakness in his enemy. The field went red and he was built only for slaughter. The feeling might unsettle him later, when the battle-fever broke and he could ponder never havin
g been so hungry for death. But for now, it was fueled by his saber, eager to slash out eyes and slip between ribs.

  His men broke behind him like waves, spilling past and into one half of the Old Guard as Bulow pummeled the other with dispassionate Teutonic precision. Matthew took pleasure at jarring teeth, a burn in his shoulders at every stab and stroke, every shriek-inducing slice of his blade. The French lines bent like a horseshoe under his men, trembling along their arc, crushed by Allied jaws.

  A piercing order rose above the French lines, shrill and desperate. It was drowned to his ears in the belch of heavy guns, but the enemy slackened, looking to each other instead of their combatants at an impossible order. It came again, urgent and carried by more voices. This time he did not mistake the command and his mouth fell open, in as much disbelief as the Frenchman.

  “Le Guard, recule! Recule!” Guard, retreat!

  Clearly the bullet which had struck him earlier had done some lasting damage. He was hallucinating. That was the only explanation for the impossible thing happening around him. The phrase had never been spoken by the emperor's elite, not in any battle over twenty years. Matthew was shocked that they even knew the words.

  The heads of thousands of French soldiers snapped to the Old Guard's line in time to see it break, fold on itself, and drain from the field with all the order of a whirlpool. Word was shouted again and again, moving down the French lines, breaking formations with the drive of a fist. The news accomplished more damage than a gun battery or a whole regiment of fresh reinforcements.

  'Le Guard, recule!' They were the most demoralizing three words known to Le Grand Armee.

  Wellington appeared to the north at last. Matthew had no idea if he had seen the miraculous turn of events, but clearly he had heard it. Relief softened the haggard lines around the Field Marshal's eyes as he raised a hand in Matthew's direction. Relief, and something else Matthew could only identify because he felt it, too. It was the gratitude of a man who knew he should, for all intents and purposes, be dead.

  Matthew jabbed twice into the sky with his sword, indicating they had broken the center. The Field Marshal nodded, shouting something which Matthew was too far away to hear. It didn't matter. Wellington's hat swept the air in three wide circles, the universal signal for a general advance. Tens of thousands of Allied soldiers melded together, surging forward in the closest thing possible to order. Pride swelled in him from gut to throat at the sight, sating the beast which had carried him across the field.

  “Keep at them, lads,” Matthew called out. “Get ahead!” His men flowed with him over the field ahead of the retreat, forming up at his instruction and cutting off the road where the Imperials aimed to make their flight. They were a furious, red wall of opposition six ranks deep, muskets shouldered, bayonets darkened with clotted blood, held at the ready with some appetite left.

  The Guard bore down on his troops, shakos and bearskins flying into the air with a rough eagerness to lighten their burden, tripping over themselves. They stumbled in earnest when Matthew held up his blade, indicating he would not open fire if they halted.

  The moment their boots stopped pounding, the Frenchmen doubled over, hands braced on trembling knees and gasping for every breath.

  “Je offre cession et trimestre!” He offered surrender and quarter, but the Guard's commander spit, raking him with a hot glare.

  “The Guard dies. It does not surrender.”

  “Your men do not seem to be in agreement on the matter.” He jerked his chin to some soldiers hunched behind the officer who were already dropping muskets and raising shaking hands. It was not enough. If he was going to prevent more fighting, Matthew knew he would have to cut French morale off at its knees. He swept a hand around them. “Where is the shame in yielding? You have fought bravely, yet your emperor has already quit the field and left you here. He has yielded before you have!”

  The commander's weathered jowls stiffened up. He raised his sword and gave the order to make ready. Matthew steeled himself, bracing for a stubborn last attack.

  There was a noise from the French ranks, but not of muskets being cocked. It was the unnatural sound of a gun stock being stomped into two splintered pieces. Flushing purple, the officer spun around swearing, berating his men in stuttering French, finishing his tirade with a very English word: Traitor.

  A bear of a grenadier over the French commander's shoulder did make ready, but not at Matthew or his men. He took aim at his superior's head. “Speak of us so again, and I'll shoot you between the eyes were you stand,” he growled.

  Matthew kept his gaze mostly out beyond the Frenchmen, having no desire to add to their humiliation. They had fought hard and had sacrificed as much as his own men. They would surrender, one way or another, but it would be easier for everyone if they came to that decision without his interference.

  “Cowards!” the commander sputtered. “Stand your ground and fight!”

  A lanky, bloody-faced soldier swept his hand around them. “Fight for who? We have no emperor.” He launched his musket forward, and it clattered to a stop almost at Bremen's hoof. A hundred more struck the ground directly after.

  Matthew exhaled. It was the second most gratifying sound of the whole day. He extended a hand, and the French officer, with hatred in his eyes enough to murder, filled it with his sword.

  It was over.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Matthew trotted beside Wellington into the lamp-lit clearing, warmed by the glow against an evening chill seeping into the sweat permeating his uniform. The yard hugged a little farmstead called La Belle Alliance. That morning, it had belonged to the emperor Napoleon. Now, at ten in the evening, on June the eighteenth, there was no emperor of France. Napoleon was once again a fugitive and, soon enough, would be a prisoner. His head swam at the realization. He had lived it once before, of course, when Napoleon had been exiled the first time. Now, in his heart, Matthew believed it was final.

  Wellington slowed Copenhagen and bumped Matthew with an elbow while pointing across the yard. “Here comes the old fox now.”

  Blucher trotted up the lane a moment later on his magnificent black gelding, looking as powerful and calculating at seventy as he must have been at half that. His regal sweep of snowy hair and bird-wing mustache gave him the look of a grandfather. There was a marked kindness to the creases around his eyes, but it was not hard to imagine them deepening into a predatory, hawkish squint. The old Prussian tossed back his black cape, extending an arm to Wellington. Matthew held his breath as their hands met, never as sure of tasting history, of seeing something which would undoubtedly be in books for centuries to come. Wellington took the proffered hand, and Matthew felt the shift. They had crossed from one era, a time in which he had lived most of his life and all of his military career, to another. One beyond the choking grip of Bonaparte's never-ending conquest. For a moment, his throat tightened, and he was overcome. They had moved into the future.

  Blucher took his hand and pumped it furiously, smiling and nodding, unashamed to press a sleeve at the corners of his eyes. “You acquitted yourself well, boy. Think what a tactician you will be when you get to my age.” His halting English was endearing, adding to his teasing. “Pity you've left yourself no one to fight!”

  Matthew laughed in reply, shifting in his saddle. “That's very kind, sir.” The praise made him uncomfortable, particularly from a man who had accomplished whole lifetimes of victories.

  Wellington, who knew him better than anyone aside from Ty, spotted it and intervened. “Go in, General Webb. Your room should be prepared. We will speak, once the Marshall and I have settled our own matters.”

  He was more than thrilled to comply. “Yes, sir. Thank you.” Saluting them, Matthew urged Bremen up the lane to the dooryard, dreading what would follow. He had been in the saddle for fifteen hours, and his hips throbbed, thighs having passed beyond numbness long ago. He swung a leg over, feeling the creak of his joints, and hung as far off Bremen's back as he could manage before dr
opping to the ground. It sodding hurt. His knees buckled and he nearly tasted gravel before recovering his balance. He grimaced. Bad as it was now, come morning it would be worse.

  Inside he met with a plump Dutch lady, a housekeeper of sorts, who broke the bad news that his room was upstairs. He immediately asked for two sheets of paper, one to write a letter and one to make a list of all the things he required, because he would not be coming back down the stairs unless ordered. Halfway up, his courage and muscles began to falter, and Matthew doubted he would gain his room at all.

  Slipping into the closet-small but tidy chamber, he turned a protesting key in its lock to guarantee privacy. There was a bed no wider than his cot, a spindle-backed chair and card table doubling as a desk. He passed them over, falling prostrate beside the bed and burying his face in its gray wool blanket. Numbness, a necessity at times like these, had done its part since his meeting Wellington at the command post an hour earlier. He was thawing now. At first all he could feel, all he let himself feel, was gratitude. A robust gratefulness at just being alive, tinged at the edges with guilt that he had been chosen over so many. That thought was the final straw. The control he had fought to maintain all afternoon crumbled to dust.

  He clutched fistfuls of blanket, chest heaving while he pressed his face hard into the mattress, soaking the rough wool. Victory could not taste sweet with a butcher's bill that had nearly bankrupted them.

  His feelings boiled over for long minutes. The faces of his dead, his own brushes with the Reaper, guilt and joy and relief. Even agitation, trying to adjust to how different things would be now without the constant threat of Napoleon at his back.

  He was nearly recovered when the name slipped unbidden into his thoughts: Kate.

  He lost himself all over again, arms aching to press her close, soul aching to be soothed by her words.

  Get a hold of yourself, he chastised. She was likely mad with worry by now. If he could not see her, at least he could reassure her and his mother. If he moved fast enough there was a chance of slipping news to the courier along with Wellington's letter to the Prince Regent announcing their victory.