Timepiece
Authors: Heather Albano
Timepiece
by
Heather Albano
Copyright © 2011 by Heather Albano
Many, many, many thanks to:
My dad, for endorsing the crazy option.
My mom, who is the reason I read history books for fun.
My sister, for her detailed and thoughtful comments on the rough draft.
The other rough draft readers—Becky, Kara, Sarah, Angela, Joseph, Jason S, Jason W, Eileen, Carol, Kevin, Zack, and Julie.
Monica, for her editorial kung fu, and Grady, for his help with e-publishing technicalities.
Anise, for letting me have Mac’s pocket watch in the first place.
And Richard—for reading drafts, suggesting plot twists, explaining rail guns, designing the constructs, helping with the e-pub conversion, drawing the cover art, listening to me talk out the problems, cheering me on through the doldrums, and believing I could make it all work even when I didn’t. I love you too.
Table of Contents
Waterloo, Belgium, June 18, 1815
John Freemantle felt every burst from the cannon as a jolt through his breastbone. At least the blasts no longer tore through his eardrums; his ears had been ringing for hours now, muting the roar into something almost manageable. His horse, a big bay possessed of considerably more battlefield experience than its rider, bore the noise stolidly, with no more sign of discomfort than the occasional twitching of an ear.
The British and their Belgian allies had been under heavy fire for most of the afternoon. In Freemantle’s opinion, “heavy fire” made it sound more civilized than it really was. The term did not adequately convey the experience of facing down cannonade while enormous iron balls ripped through the ranks, leaving bloody pieces of men wherever they struck. The senior officers seemed unfazed by the carnage, but John Freemantle was only twenty-five and had not long served as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington, and it was all he could do to feign calm.
The pounding crashed to a halt, and Freemantle would have stumbled if he had not been mounted. The battlefield was not quiet, not by any means, but the relative silence was as abrupt as being doused by cold water.
“Prepare to receive cavalry!”
came the shout, and Freemantle, wrenching his nerves back under control, looked about for the Duke. His Grace was for once near at hand, and moreover actually headed toward the position of relative safety his rank demanded he assume. Freemantle spurred to his side, and the square slammed closed around them, infantrymen three ranks thick. The outermost rank knelt with bayonets at the ready, and that was the real reason for the superb effectiveness of the infantry square formation against a cavalry charge. Horses could not be made to leap into bayonets.
A bugle call pierced Freemantle’s ringing ears, and then the square was surrounded by the thunderous rush of men on horseback. Freemantle experienced it only as a movement of air and a shuddering of the ground. He could see nothing but the scarlet-coated backs of the men guarding him.
The wave crashed against the infantry squares. The ground shook under Freemantle’s feet.
And the charge broke, as it had broken eleven times before. The men within the square, Wellington and his aides-de-camp, were as safe as it was possible to be on the battlefield of Waterloo. For a long time afterward, the only sounds outside the square were of swords clashing and men screaming. Then the French cavalry retreated for the twelfth time, and the artillery resumed.
Wellington swatted aside the broad red infantry backs at once, ignoring the entreaties of the aides who wished he would not so expose his person to danger. No one could possibly replace him, as his subordinates pointed out again and again, but the Duke paid no more attention on this occasion than he had on any other. He was invariably to be found riding along the lines, demonstrating to the men his calmness and composure, giving terse orders and the rare word of encouragement. Wellington was not a demonstrative man, and had not the gift of inspiring his troops with words—but he was right there with them, in the thick of the fight, and his men respected his courage as they did his skill. Sometimes, Freemantle reflected, that respect went farther toward encouraging battle-weary soldiers than warm words would have done. He did appreciate why Wellington so publically scorned attempts to keep him safe.
He judged the men to be in need of Wellington’s encouragement at the present moment. The British force had never been strong to begin with—“my infamous army,” Wellington had once said bitterly in Freemantle’s hearing—and after the day’s pounding by Napoleon’s troops, they were in a sorry state indeed. Between injuries, deaths, and desertion, the line along the ridge was stretched nearly to breaking. An entire Belgian brigade had fled in panic, the British cavalry had destroyed itself in a useless charge on the French line, and General Blücher’s Prussian reinforcements, promised the night before and sorely needed, were still nowhere to be seen.
Freemantle followed the Duke back onto the open field as other aides emerged from their own infantry squares. Wellington’s staff re-gathered itself around him, eyeing the battlefield and shaking their heads.
“If the Prussians do not come, there is no way we can hold until nightfall,” Canning muttered, and Freemantle gave his fellow aide-de-camp a startled glance. No one had dared say it quite so bluntly before now.
“They will come soon.” General Muffling spoke unhappily. He somehow managed to appear at Wellington’s side, like a drooping-mustached Greek chorus, whenever anyone raised the question of the missing reinforcements. Muffling was Blücher’s liaison to Wellington, and he had been predicting the imminent appearance of said reinforcements since first light, over and over in almost exactly the same phrasing, while the sun rose high and men died under fire and the hopes of their comrades dwindled. “General Blücher attacks the Emperor’s flank down in the village, but once that skirmish is won, then...then, surely...”
He trailed off. No one nearby gave him any aid in completing his sentence.
“Well, gentlemen,” the Duke said, as though offering commentary upon an inconvenient rain shower, “they are hammering us hard, but we will see—”
He got no further. Something caught his attention—his aides turned to follow his gaze—and a British officer on a black horse came tearing down the ridgeline, mud spraying from each striking hoof. He waved as he rode, screaming something over the sound of cannonade, words no one could possibly hear. The Duke raised a hand in acknowledgment.
The black charger skidded to a halt, and the rider nearly fell from the saddle as he saluted. Freemantle recognized him, though his face was drawn and splattered with mud: a staff officer named Kennedy.
“My lord,” he gasped. “La Haye Sainte—the farm—fallen. Overrun. The French pursued our men—engaged Von Ompteda’s battalion—destroyed it. The whole battalion, my lord. Gap in the center of the line.”
Wellington did not hesitate. “I shall order the Brunswick troops to the spot. Go and get all the German troops you can, and all the guns you can find.” Kennedy saluted and wheeled his horse, and the Duke swung to his aides. “Canning, my compliments to Colonel von Butlar, and the Brunswick Corps is to advance to the center immediately. I shall join them there. Gordon, my compliments to Major Norcott, and I wish a small detachment of the 95
th
to go into the forest and retrieve those Belgians who retreated so precipitously a short time ago, as their presence is desired to reinforce the center. Freemantle!” Freemantle barely had the chance to touch his heels to his horse’s side before Wellington was galloping away from him.
Gunsmoke hung thick over the crossroads that had once been defended by Van Ompteda’s battalion, and Freemantle winced to see the pitiful stratagems being employed to fill the gap in the line. As Wellington rode up, officers from all over the ridge made for him, and their reports were identical to a man. The center had suffered the heaviest of Napoleon’s heavy fire since early that day, and so many of their men were now dead or injured that—even with the Brunswick troops supporting them—they would be unable to hold their positions in the event of another French attack. And the French would attack; it was only a matter of time.
“The Prussians
must
come,” someone muttered. “If they do not—”
“I am not saying
I
mean to retreat,” another officer said, speaking the word aloud for the first time, “but the line may break, and we must decide what to do if it does...”
Wellington ignored that, turning to greet yet another officer stumbling toward him. “How do you get on, Halket?”
“My lord, we are dreadfully cut up,” the man said simply. “Can you not relieve us for a little while?”
Wellington paused one beat. “I fear, sir, I have no one to send.”
“Surely,” Muffling said weakly, “surely it cannot be much longer before General Blücher... ”
“But until that time,” Wellington said, “it is impossible.”
There was silence among his officers. Even the noise of the artillery seemed to be faltering. Freemantle strained his ears—everyone was straining their ears—trying to discern if there were drumbeats mixed in with the musket fire. Was the French infantry preparing to march?
“Very well, my lord,” General Halket said. “Then we will stand until the last man falls.” He turned to gaze where everyone was gazing, at the crossroads hidden from sight by swirling dust and smoke, from which a column of French troops would doubtless shortly appear.
“Damn me,” Wellington said softly. Freemantle gaped at him, for that was more emotion than anyone had ever seen the “Iron Duke” betray, on the battlefield or off it. Wellington stared into the smoke, heedless of Freemantle’s eyes, lips moving slightly as though working out a complicated sum in his head. He reached the solution, examined it for a moment with distaste, then nodded once. When he turned to Freemantle, any trace of uncertainty had vanished from his face. “My compliments to General Burnley, Lieutenant Colonel. Tell him if you please that I am in desperate want of troops not yet battle-weary, who can join the fight upon the left so that I may move some of my men to plug the gaps in the center. It would seem the Prussians are delayed, and therefore—” He paused only for a fraction of a second. It would scarcely have been noticeable to anyone who knew him less well than did an aide-de-camp. “—therefore the General is ordered to bring up his special battalion.”
“Yes, sir!” Freemantle snapped a salute, clapped his heels to his horse’s side, and clung tight.
The animal shot away from the ridgeline, up the Louvain road and toward the Forest of Soignes, and Freemantle did everything possible to encourage its speed, making good use of good road while he had it. To enter the forest, he must turn off the road, and then he must slow the horse to a saner pace. Maddening, but if the animal broke a leg on the uneven ground, the rider would be lost, and thus also the message, the battle, the war, the kingdom—
The forest closed over his head like a shroud. The ground still shook from the artillery a couple miles off, but it was a dull, meaningless sound under these thick green branches. He might have entered an entirely different world.
The special battalion was encamped a good way in—an inconvenient distance at the present moment, but it would have been worse to have them nearer by. They could not be trusted to restrain themselves with a battle clashing before them, and would turn on their allies if lacking other prey. The Duke had made it plain that he did not intend to use them unless he had absolutely no other choice, and that in the meantime they were to be kept sufficiently far away that the rest of his army would not be hampered in the execution of its duty. It was particularly important to keep them from frightening the cavalry and thereby reducing its effectiveness. Horses did not like the members of the special battalion.
Few of Wellington’s generals or aides-de-camp liked them either. Wellington himself liked them least of all, considering them to be the most infamous part of the infamous army with which he had been provided. His Grace would have far rather relied on the Prussians, Freemantle thought, and wished the Prussians had come in time.
The bay stumbled and Freemantle lurched forward, narrowly avoiding being thrown headfirst over its neck. The horse snorted and plunged, but regained its balance before it fell to its knees. “Easy,” Freemantle said, “easy, whoa—” The horse stopped its forward stagger and stood, quietly enough but trembling.
Freemantle swung out of the saddle, heart pounding. No rabbit holes met his swiftly searching eyes—thank God for that at least—but what had caused the stumble?
He ran a hand first down one foreleg and then the other, listening with all his might to the wood that surrounded him, trying to hear anything nearer than the distant rumble of canon. Were there enemy here? Had someone hit his mount with a missile meant for him? He could find no sign of actual injury to the bay.