A Rose for Major Flint. Louise Allen
Gideon Latymor was dead, cut down at Quatre Bras. He’d avoided thinking about Gideon and he wasn’t going to start now. He had more immediate matters than one dead half-brother on his hands. Literally.
He tried again. ‘What’s your name?’ The woman in his arms made no response. ‘Votre nom? Wat is je naam? Wie ist dein Name?’ Nothing. ‘My name is Flint. Adam Flint.’ Silence. A rose petal fluttered down from her hair, brushed his knuckles in the ghost of a kiss and fell to the mud. ‘Very well, then, I’ll call you...Rose.’
They rode on at walking pace, limited not so much by the two soldiers on foot but the decrepit horse pulling the cart. Lord only knew where Hawkins had stolen it from, some peasant’s stewpot probably, but horses were as rare as hens’ teeth after that carnage and they knew from bitter experience that trying to get Old Nick between the shafts would result in more casualties than they had already. The stallion was trained to fight and to kill and it regarded being a carthorse as grounds for murder.
It was like a traffic jam in Piccadilly, Flint thought with unaccustomed whimsy. If, that is, one imagined Piccadilly knee-deep in mud and water-filled ruts, and the other traffic consisting of groups of exhausted troops, rough carts jolting along full of men biting back cries of pain and staff officers, their elegant uniforms filthy and torn, directing carts here, men there. And all along the margins of the road soldiers were lying where they’d dropped, dead or dying amongst the fallen horses, their bodies swelling, already turning black in the wet heat. The stench was an almost solid thing, clogging nostrils and throats.
They got to a particularly boggy patch and Flint kicked his feet out of the stirrups so the two artillerymen on foot could grip the leathers and swing themselves through the mud. Old Nick was used to this, the standard way of getting unhorsed men off the field in a hurry, and ignored the extra weight.
* * *
Waterloo village, when they finally got that far, was jammed. Hawkins forced the cart on through the road between high banks and Flint saw the parish priest on the steps of the church, his head in his hands, as more and more bodies were piled up at his feet. On the other side of the street men were chalking names on doorposts where senior officers had been carried in. Ponsonby, he read. Damn, another good officer wounded. He hoped he was going to make it.
‘Rose?’ They cleared the village and struggled on. Her back, beneath his arm, was still rigid, her face still buried in the frogging of his uniform. He wouldn’t want to get that close to himself, he thought with a sour smile. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d washed, he must stink of sweat, black powder, wet wool and blood. A cautious sniff confirmed it and brought a hint of her own scent. Hot, terrified, wet woman. Mud. The faintest hint of herbs and lemon.
Puzzled, he lowered his head until he was almost nuzzling the tangled brown hair. She had rinsed it in rosemary and lemon juice. It seemed such a harmless, feminine thing to have done just before plunging into hell. He imagined her humming to herself as she brewed the rinse, washing her hair over a bucket somewhere in the lines of tents, pouring the decoction over her hair and combing it through. Her man would have been cleaning his weapon, polishing his harness perhaps, his preparations all directed at killing while hers took no account of battles at all.
‘What you going to do with her, sir?’ Flint jerked out of the daydream. Peters, hanging on to his stirrup leather, looked up at him, bright blue eyes bloodshot in his dirt-smeared face.
‘God knows. She needs women to look after her, but these peasants have too much on their hands to leave her with them.’ Flint tried to think. His side ached like the devil, the bangs and bruises and minor wounds were coming to life, his guts were empty, his thighs were getting pins and needles, and the men depended on him to get them back to Brussels more or less alive. He could do that, or fight another battle if he had to, but safely disposing of unwanted women, now that was another kettle of fish.
He shifted the girl into a more comfortable position, for him at least. ‘There’s a nunnery a couple of miles ahead. That’ll be the place.’ Problem solved. Cheered by the prospect of getting the stray off his hands, he said, ‘We’re almost at the nunnery, Rose. You’ll be better there, the sisters will look after you.’ She made no movement. Was she deaf as well?
‘Jimmy’s gone, Major,’ Potts called from the back of the cart.
Hell. Scurvy little sneak thief. And damned good artilleryman. This had been a very expensive battle. They would leave him at the convent, the nuns would bury him and he’d end up as close to heaven as any of the Rogues were likely to get.
‘Rest stop at the nunnery,’ he called and grinned, despite everything, at the chorus of coarse jokes that provoked.
* * *
‘Here...Rose...nuns...get down...safe...’ The Devil was talking to her, but the words jumbled in her head, half-drowned by the never-ending scream.
She tried to listen, to understand. Finally she managed to raise her head and focus. One of the tattered, bloody scarecrows was walking towards a high wall with a great gate in it. A bell clanged, jumbling the words in her head even more, and then a flock of great black crows flew out of the gate, flapping, waving hands, not wings. One of them came close, reached for her with long, pale claws.
‘Pauvre...monsieur...pauvre petit...’
She huddled closer into the Devil’s grip. He would stop them pecking her. They had one of the dead men now, bloody and limp as they carried him through the great gate. Like Gerald, only this one had all of his face. Perhaps they were going to eat him, peck at his eyes... Her fingers locked into the strap across the Devil’s back. No...no... The words stayed closed in with the scream.
She felt the Devil shrug. The black crows chattered and flapped, then they rode on, her and the Devil on the great black hell horse. He said something, low, in his deep voice. It rumbled in his chest, against her ear, and this time she understood the words. ‘What am I going to do with you, Rose?’
Who is Rose? It wasn’t her, she knew that. Her name was...was... It had gone. He had told her his name. Adam. That could not be right, the Devil was not called Adam. Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan. Those were the Devil’s names.
Why wasn’t he hot? He should be burning hot, instead he was warm. And hard. He’d said he was made of stone... Flint, that was it. That was why he was hard, his thighs under her were rock that moved with the hell horse. His chest was solid, like holding on to an oak tree. His eyes were the blue of flames deep in the heart of a log fire, and he smelled of blood and smoke and sulphur.
Dare she sleep? It had been so long since she had slept. There had been a ball... Memory shifted, blurred, focused for a moment. The night before she had been too excited to sleep. Then the night of the ball she had lain awake with Gerald in her arms, stroking his hair, trying to give him some comfort for his fears. How long had it been since then? Two battles, a rainstorm... Why was I at a ball? Who was Gerald?
Could she sleep with all the noise in her head? She clung tighter to the Devil. He would keep her safe. It made no sense, but then nothing did any more. Nothing ever would again and all because she had sinned.
‘Oh, my Gawd, look at you!’ Maggie Moss stood in the doorway, apron covered in flour, hair straggling out of its bun, elbows akimbo. ‘That’s a fine sight for a respectable Brussels boarding-house keeper to find on her doorstep of an evening.’ The tears poured down her cheeks.
‘We’ve been in a bit of a scrap, Maggie,’ Flint said, knowing better than to notice the tears. Something in his chest loosened at the sight and sound of her. Maggie meant warm practicality, a sanctuary of normality after a voyage into chaos. ‘Is there room? Twelve of us. Sergeant Hawkins, nine of the men and me. And Rose here.’
‘Of course there’s room, I made sure there would be, and never mind what those commissariat officers wanted when they came round. This house is for Randall’s Rogues and no one else, I said.