The Lost Love of a Soldier (20 page)

Paul knew the ground. It was the point the Generals had considered the best place to fight. There was a ridge and another wood, the Forest of Soignes, where men could hide if needs be. It was more defendable and every officer had been made accustomed to the terrain in the months they’d spent about the city.

Paul sat up and rubbed his face, urging himself to wake, as the men around him stretched and yawned, rising slowly. “Eat and drink,” he whispered. They looked at him. There was only limited water and dry biscuits in their provisions, but they must do.

It seemed this second day they marched for hours. But it was not so many. Within a day they had re-camped and positioned themselves on the Duke of Wellington’s chosen ground to take the enemy. The losses of the day before had not been as bad as Paul feared, only a couple of thousand, some of the wounded had been moved by cart back beyond the lines, but many were bandaged and ready to fight again.

Chapter Sixteen

If people had been in panic yesterday as cannons had echoed over the city, the 17th of June felt like the eye of a terrible storm. The city was quiet and unmoving. Those who were the sort to run had gone, and those who’d chosen to stay remained in their homes, waiting to hear more guns or news. No word or sound came.

Ellen was sick first thing in the morning, probably because she had not eaten anything the day before. Her stomach felt too much like a whirlpool as anxiety swirled inside her. She tried to sew but her fingers shook too much to thread a needle. She tried to read but her mind would not concentrate on a single word. When it reached two past midday, she went for a walk outside, alone, which as a genteelly bred woman she should not do, but with Jennifer gone she had no choice.

The streets, which yesterday had been full of people, were entirely empty. She walked for an hour and saw no one.

When she returned to their rooms, she moved a chair beside the window, and sat upon it with her knees lifted to her chest and gripped in her arms, as she’d sat in her room as a child, if she’d been scalded. Then, with her chin resting on her knees, she watched the street, silent and praying, her heart beating out the time.

“Where are you, Paul?”

“Where?”

“Are you alive?”

She remained where she was as she watched dusk finally fall, and still there had only been the odd servant passing through the street.

As darkness claimed the city, falling like a shroud, Ellen’s eyes closed.

When Ellen woke the next morning, she was sick once again, and her stomach ached with cramps of hunger as she vomited bile.

Paul would be angry with her if he knew how poorly she’d been taking care of herself. She should eat.

Paul would be angry with her for not leaving Brussels when she’d had the chance, if he was captured and not dead. But surely if the French had already won, they would be in the city now.

Ellen moved to pull the rope which would call down to the kitchen, and waited uncertain who, if anyone, might come, now that Jennifer had gone.

After a few minutes there was a knock on the door, and Ellen opened it to see a maid in a grey dress and white mobcap. “Madam.” She dipped into a curtsy.

“Is there any food in the kitchens? My maid has left…” Paul at least was not in debt for their rooms. The proprietor had no reason to refuse.

“There is bread and cheese, ma’am.”

“Anything,” Ellen answered as her stomach tightened with pain.

When the woman returned, Ellen accepted the food, and asked if anyone in the house had heard news of the battle. The maid said they had not, but she held a hundred opinions upon the French and proceeded to share them as Ellen sat down to eat. She did not turn the maid away; after Jennifer’s constant silence Ellen was relieved to listen to another woman’s voice as she broke her fast and drank sweetened, weak, milky tea.

But at half past eleven their conversation was interrupted by the sound of cannon fire. Ellen stood and turned looking towards the window. Another distant boom could be heard. Ellen looked back at the maid for an instant. She had paled to almost white. Pulled from the room by the sound, Ellen hurried downstairs and out onto the street.

Yes. It was cannon fire. Closer than the other day.
Volley after volley sounded over the city.

Ellen looked back at the maid who’d followed, as others came out onto the streets.

What did it mean? Was Paul alive?

~

The first of the cannons rang out at twenty-five minutes past eleven in the morning on the 18th of June. But this time Paul’s regiment were more prepared. They had their orders for the battle, the best position to defend, and a day’s rest.

But when one hour past midday came, the cannons were still pounding, and Paul’s men were on the ground where they’d spent the hours since the cannon fire began; hiding behind the ridge, lying on damp bracken as rain seeped through the cloth of their uniforms. He was cold, but not because the day was cold. It was fear. Anxiety. Expectancy. A need to simply fight, pumped through his blood.

In the hours he’d lain here, he’d thought a hundred times of Ellen in Brussels, hearing the sound of the cannons and thinking of him.

He’d survived one battle; he only had to survive one more. Today, they all believed – would bring success or failure.

All the men about him lay still and silent, listening, waiting.

There were encounters taking place, he could hear rifles, horses, swords and battle cries, men exerting their strength to stay alive, but the battle was not close enough for Paul and his men to be called in to fight.

Aware of every beat of his heart, and every breath he took, Paul listened to the sounds as he waited, including the warning cries of rooks nesting in the trees above him.

At two o’clock finally there was movement close to them. A few hundred yards away there was a cry for Picton’s regiment, to “Rise up!” The sound of several hundred men rising followed, and the movement of swords and rifles.

Paul remained on the ground, with his men, watching Picton’s men move forward, pacing towards the brow of the hill. Beyond it shouts of “Vive l’Emperuer” rang out.

“Charge! Hurrah!” Picton yelled out suddenly, calling his men over the top. The men ran.

Paul’s heart pumped hard, waiting for his moment, certain it would come soon, as he looked right and left for the Lieutenant Colonel. His commander was holding back behind the ranks for orders.

They could hear the fighting increasing in intensity beyond the ridge, screams, shouts and rifle fire as the cannons still boomed.

Damn. Damn
. He burned to be able to look through earth and see what was happening, but he’d been a soldier long enough to know how crucial it was to await orders from the men who had the oversight of the whole battle. He and his men simply needed to hold their nerve.

Wait. Wait.

Hollers of another charge came from beyond the ridge of the hill, and amid them more cries of “Vive l’Emperuer.”

Paul looked back at his Lieutenant Colonel who looked to the right for some signal. Then he turned sharply, looking at Paul first, and lifted his hand without a word, before looking on to others and bidding them rise with the same signal.

“Up.” Paul said in a low voice which swept along the row in a quiet wave of sound, and then the Lieutenant Colonel made a hand gesture encouraging them forward.

“March,” Paul ordered as quiet as before, taking a step himself that the men followed a step after, and so, silently, they paced forward, as the cries of the French became louder.

From the sounds, they were running up the hill, believing they were about to claim it.

Lieutenant Colonel Hillier came past Paul, riding at a canter but leaning low in his saddle, and he called them to halt and lift their rifles with another gesture.

“Present.” Paul said more firmly. A couple of hundred rifles were lifted to press against shoulders along the line of the 52nd.

Wait. Wait.
They could hear the French army coming closer, a mass of sound beyond the brow of the hill…

His heart pulsed.

“Fire!” The cry rang out from half a dozen commanders along the line, as the French rushed over the top, in reams. The volley of shots scythed down men, as a look of horror flooded their eyes. They’d not known the British soldiers had lain hidden over the hill.

“Fire!” Another volley took down more men.

“Forward!” The Lieutenant Colonel shouted over the sounds of battle, and so they began to pace, winning ground a step at a time.

Now they were in the fray and over the hill Paul could see the thousands of dead and dying spread over the fields below.

The French were pushed back, but then they returned with a cavalry assault, forcing Paul to order his men into a square behind the Allied cannons. The cannons kept booming between assaults. When the French attacked, the gunners hid amongst Paul’s men as the Highlanders had the day before, but each time the French pulled back for another charge, the Allied gunners ran out to load and fire a round at the French.

Then suddenly from behind, a regiment of British cavalry swept through, mounted on huge grey horses, forcing the French back again. Their charge persisted as Paul watched, chasing the French to the far side of the field.

There, they struck down the gunners who fired the French cannon.

The British lines cheered as the French were called back to the edge of the field to regroup. But it left the British cavalry trapped.

They were killed.

An eerie silence fell on the fields they fought over as Paul glanced back to check his men.

None of the Allied lines were called forward; instead, orders reached Paul to say that Wellington was taking the opportunity to break the soldiers from their squares. As Paul and his men rested and drank water from canteens, messages were passed along the line, checking casualties and positions.

When the battle began again, Paul was on the hill, and like the whole Allied army, back in a square. Though this time, from within, the Lieutenant Colonel shouted orders to move them forward.

All the squares crept forward, pushing the French back and the fight down the hill as the French cavalry continually assaulted them and was repeatedly repelled. Neither side was conceding.

A new wave of French soldiers suddenly poured onto the field at nearly five o’clock and weary but determined, Paul, like the whole of the Allied forces on the hill was ordered to make his men form a line, four deep, as the French charged again. Volleys echoed on the air.

The fight could not go on much longer; they could not fight forever.

~

It was at about four that Ellen first heard of wounded soldiers arriving in the city. She’d seen people in the street and gone to find out the news. Returning to her rooms she’d slipped on her pelisse and hurried out towards the gate leading onto the Nemur road.

There were cartloads of men with limbs missing and open, bandaged and bleeding wounds.

Dear God.
Her gaze scanned the men who’d been left lying on the street or were being carried into houses, her heart pounding as she looked for Paul. She did not see him. But as she glanced over the men, she was drawn forwards. She remembered the young soldier she’d waved to from her window. So many were younger than her.

Before she even knew it, she knelt beside a young man, asking what he needed.

“If you wish to help, I have a dozen things you might do…” Ellen turned as a woman spoke. “There’s water, and bandages, and we are looking for people to hold men who require treatment. Will you come?”

Ellen rose, and turned. “Of course, but let me bring water to this man first.” Like so she was swept into the mayhem of war. It was beyond anything she might have imagined as hundreds of men were brought back into the city, and as she worked, she constantly looked for Paul in each new cartful, and then, at about seven in the evening, the first men began arriving on foot, hobbling, exhausted and bleeding.

Her heart beat out a steady rhythm, the pace of the drum the men had marched to as they’d left, a beat or two away from panic as she waited and helped. Her breathing was held at bay only by the need to do something for these men who’d survived, but were in agony.

“Madam!” A doctor shouted across the drawing room they’d taken over. There were two dozen men lying on the floor. At the same moment the man who had gripped her hand, released his hold, his fingers slipping away. She looked down. His eyes had turned white.

Her heart missing a beat, sickness threatened, and she pressed a hand over his bloody coat. She did not even know if that blood was his, another’s, or the blood of a Frenchman, but there was no sense of his heart beating, and no feeling of movement in his lungs.

“Madam!”

She stood not knowing what to do, and moved to the doctor’s side. “I think the man I was with may be dying.”

He looked over but when he looked back at her there was no hope in his eyes. “There is nothing I can do. I must deal with those who have more chance of survival. This man needs his arm taken off, and I need someone to hold his shoulder while I cut. Will you do it?”

A soldier who had a bloodied bandage over one eye but in all other ways seemed well, was already kneeling holding the man’s legs down, their patient looked up at them with wild terrified eyes. But the bone in his forearm was protruding from an open wound, shattered and in splinters.

Ellen’s stomach turned again, but she bit her lip and nodded. She would do anything to help these men – in the hope that someone would do the same for Paul if he was wounded, somewhere, needing help.

~

At seven the last sunlight painted the clouds above Paul orange. The battle could go either way. For hours he’d fought amongst others, by attack and counter attack; neither side had gained an advantage.

Napoleon’s force made another push to break through the centre of the Allied lines, trying to cut Paul and his regiment off on the left. The fight continued as daylight turned to dusk, and then edged towards night, and once again Paul was on the defensive, in a square, watching as a British troop charged past to push the French back down the hill.