Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) (27 page)

“Not your kind of fight this. Sir,” said the sergeant, looking him over with a flicker of pity.
 

Alistair felt it like a spray of sparks. Snuffing his temper, he laid an impatient hand on the hilt of his saber. “No, but I’m not a dunce. Probably goes something like this—move forward and kill any French that get in the way until I’m shot. Right?”
 

The sergeant blinked under the barrage of sharp words, but gave a reluctant smile.
 

 
“I may not know how to drill your men, but I can run with them up a hill,” Alistair said.
 

“You could come with us until we join the 6
th
, at least,” said the sergeant.
 

“Thank you,” Alistair said, tense with the effort of damping both fear and anger. “If you’re certain you’d rather not manage it yourself?”
 

“No, sir,” admitted the sergeant.
 

“Well, then.”
 

The sergeant gave a nod, blew sharply on his whistle, then gave a bellow that buzzed in Alistair’s ears. He glanced up at the fortress, smoke drifting over the crumbling walls, the rocky slope below littered with mangled men and broken stones.
 

“Ready.” He drew his saber, his arm hairs rising at the familiar hiss. The shining blade winked at him. Counting in unison with the sergeant, they reached three—the critical beat where you plunged in, and prayed your men would follow.
Don’t think. Just go.

Alistair vaulted over the trench, pounding up the slope, his boots skidding on the loose wash of soil and stone. A man beside him fell, but Alistair couldn’t tell if it was bad footing or a French shot. The sergeant was a steady runner, swearing at the men and waving his musket with no shortage of breath. Nimble fellows outstripped them both, weaving past the dead, the ruins of some failed trench work and the masonry heaved wide by the blast.
 

They called a slope like this a glacis, and it felt as slippery as ice. Alistair struggled on, bent forward, grasping at handholds, each footfall sending stones tumbling below. Another fifty yards. Twenty. He was shouting—God only knew what—raising his saber like he was charging across the field, thrown off by how slowly his target came nearer. He was used to flying over the ground, sweeping over hills, crashing into column and artillery, not scrambling along, fighting for every foot.
 

They jostled into the tail of the 6th, close enough to the wall to be peppered by muskets and rifles from the wall and the fortress inside, but too far to blood the French. Thrust against the jacket of the man in front of him, Alistair peered over the man’s shoulder, then staggered as the fellow fell back against his chest. Before the man finished screaming, he choked, his hands grabbing at his chest, then flying up to fumble at his mouth. Bloody foam flecked the corners. Cursing, Alistair pushed the fellow to his left, to avoid sticking him with his sword. There was no room to move in this press.
 

“Wait here. Someone will help you,” Alistair lied, lowering him to the ground. Blood spilled down the man’s chin; at least death wouldn’t take long. Behind and to his left, Alistair heard the sergeant; ahead he could see the French falling back to the fortress, behind the inner walls. Brandishing his saber, he shouted the advance, breaking into a run. It felt better running, though his pace was nothing to that of a horse. When he was moving he could feel detached and thrilled; not so when he was pressed up against dying men. Light danced along his beautiful sword as it played in the air, thrusting, sweeping, cutting through bone and sinew with a tug that would haunt him later, echoing through his arms before he could sleep.
 

“Sir!”
 

It was the sergeant, hollering from a small redoubt built against the wall. There were no more Frogs in killing distance, so Alistair jogged over.
 

“Here’s Colonel Whyte of the 6th. You can bring word back to headquarters. We’ve taken the outer wall.”
 

Whyte was scribbling on a scrap of paper with a pencil.
 

“Of course,” Alistair said, feeling both relieved and foolish. “What would you like me to say?” He pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead, realizing that somewhere along the way he’d lost his hat.
 

“I’m not sure what we’re to do next since we’ve no ladders, no men to climb them, and no way to bring up our pitiful number of guns, but advise them we will hold this position until they decide.”
 

“Nighttime trench work, probably,” the sergeant scowled. “More mining.”
 

Whyte shrugged, but beneath the dirt his face was drawn. Alistair took the paper and slid it into the breast of his coat.
 

“You’ll want to make your way back through the communication trenches,” the sergeant reminded him.
 

“And stick to bitters until I learn to hold my liquor,” Alistair said, annoyed at the sergeant’s cosseting and his own relief at escaping.
 

“Just trying to help,” the sergeant said. “That was a nice climb we had. Wouldn’t mind doing it again some other day.”
 

“I prefer the flat and the speed of a horse, but it would be an honor.” Alistair offered his hand, pleased the ghoulish looking sergeant didn’t hesitate to take it in a crushing grip.
 

The fire from the fortress was picking up now that the French were regrouping, so Alistair hastened back through the breach and down the slope. Enough shot whizzed by to give him bad dreams for days to come. Going back was worse, he decided, making his lonely way past the squadrons who were climbing, facing the sting of French fire.
 

He delivered two other orders, both far less hazardous. When night fell, the guns belching only intermittently, he joined Brown, the staff officer he’d met earlier, to share out the evening’s ration of beef and biscuit.
 

“We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” Brown said, summing up the day’s action with a shrug—the outer wall breached and taken, but at high cost. “You on your way back to Madrid?”
 

“First thing in the morning,” Alistair said.

Before they turned in, he was visited by Whyte, who’d come to give Alistair his compliments and restore his missing hat.
 

“A little trampled, but you can get your man to fix that. Don’t know what he’ll do about the holes, though.” A musket ball had torn right through, leaving two neat punctures, front and back.
 

Alistair laughed his thanks, vowing to keep the hat as his lucky piece. But once he found his billet—clearing out the gear of a man who was now sleeping underground—Alistair swept it from his head and took a closer look, fingers trembling.

He washed and undressed down to his shirt, but he couldn’t settle. After his nights outside on the ground, it was a sad waste of a bed. Finally he gave up trying to sleep, rising and throwing his greatcoat over his shoulders. The floor boards were rough and covered with layer of grit that stuck to the soles of his feet. Griggs, who liked to spoil him even in the most primitive lodgings, probably had a pair of slippers wedged somewhere in his bags, but that didn’t help him now. His feet were already dirty and they weren’t cold enough to make it worth soiling his one relatively clean pair of socks.
 

Alistair settled into the wobbly chair, his knees and elbows falling sideways like a lax-limbed marionette’s. He was done dancing for one day, thank God. There was a lamp on the table—a good one even—that when lit emitted a steady glow, beating back the shadows to the corners of the room, allowing Alistair to stare again at the empty circles torn out of his hat. For a long time he turned it round in his hands, tracing the tiny voids with his fingers; empty spaces that could have engulfed him so easily. He tended to think of death fairly often, but seldom with a relic like this in his hands. It gave him pause, even more than the bullet they’d dug out of his shoulder. That trinket he’d presented to Griggs.
 

Well, he’d gotten away again. Impossible to say if the next one would find him. There were other possibilities too: dysentery, cannon shot, the wrong ship on a sea voyage. If he was lucky he’d find a more prosaic end: heart seizure, old age or influenza. Death might be tomorrow or a long way off. Impossible to say. The only certainty was now.
 

Alistair rummaged for his pen. He already had a half written letter to Anna, detailing the journey to Burgos—a sketch of the mountains, a scathing assessment of his shooting after missing that rabbit, a humorous misunderstanding with a baker from one of the villages. Instead of adding to it, he laid out a clean sheet. He started writing, his hand flying across the paper, returning after the briefest plunge in the ink bottle, when he usually liked to pause and try out different words.
 

Dearest Anna,
 

I’m a shocking liar. Selfish too. I can’t stand the thought of you and Mr. Worthy, whoever he might be. When I engaged myself to you, it was because I wished it were true. I wanted you for my own but a partial loan seemed like the best I could get.
 

Will you marry me? I’ve nothing to recommend me, save that I look well in a uniform and on a horse, but I’m mad enough in love that I’m certain we could find a way. Not maybe a life of wealth and triumphs, but for me anyways, one of happiness.
 

I want you and I want Henry and I want to spend my days collecting your smiles. Would you mind terribly?
 

Say yes.
 

He stopped, then shook his head and laughed softly. He scrawled a post script.
 

I was commanding you to say ‘yes, my love, I’ll marry you,’ not ‘yes, you clod, I mind.’ I might be a lot of things, but I am seldom a clod. Is that enough to make you throw your lot in with mine? I hope so.
 

Yours,
 

Burning and fervent and possibly half-cracked, but all for love of you,
 

Alistair

Before caution—or reason—could take hold of him, he folded up the letter and sealed it. No point reading it over. He wanted it just as it was, nothing but honest, unguarded sentiments. He was tired of hints and unexpressed hopes and reasonable excuses. Leaving the letter on the table, he returned to bed. This time, sleep took him quick.
 

Anna held her breath, waiting for Lady Fairchild to leave her room. She was hiding behind the door, avoiding a summons to the drawing room to flirt with Mr. Phillips. Twice yesterday she’d lost the thread of his gentle conversation, wondering what it would be like to kiss that saggy cheek. She liked the twinkle in his eyes, but if she married him she’d be kissing that fatherly face for at least a decade. Besides, Mr. Phillips might be an estimable man, and kindly too, but she would rather spend the afternoon spoiling her gown with Henry.
 

Once Lady Fairchild’s footsteps retreated downstairs, Anna emerged from her hiding place, tiptoeing down the backstairs and into Lord Fairchild’s study. Halfway to the long window, she saw him, concealed in an armchair, watching her in amusement, his book forgotten. She smiled guiltily, but he raised a finger to his lips, motioning her with a tilt of his head to proceed out through the long window. Outside, Anna squinted, surveying the garden, unable to spot her son.

“He’s gone into the shrubbery again,” Lucy explained, looking up from her conversation with Betty, one of the maids. They were sitting on a low wall dividing the paved walkway at the back of the house from the square of enclosed lawn. They had sewing in their hands, but seemed more interested in a pamphlet lying open on the stonework between them. It was about syphilis, including diagrams and a lengthy discussion of probable causes, so Anna had recommended hiding it from Lady Fairchild.
 

“I’m going to play with him,” Anna said.
 

“Of course. I’m here if you need me,” Lucy said.
 

Anna was determined to need no one today, especially Lucy Plunkett, and walked toward the patches of Henry’s white shirt showing behind the lace of blackthorn branches stretching across the back garden wall. The grass was long and damp, wetting her feet above the edges of her slippers. In spite of the gooseflesh spreading up her arms, she left the shawl Lady Fairchild had lent her folded over a branch. Better to be a little chilly than to trail that long silk fringe through the hedges.
 

She stepped softly, the leaves too damp to break under her feet. Henry was burrowed deep behind the branches, murmuring to himself.
 

“My horse. You can’t have that one. And my dog too.” Intent on the row of twigs and pebbles he’d arranged in the dirt beneath the blackthorn, he didn’t see Anna until she stepped in front of him, holding her skirts close and pushing aside a thick branch with careful fingertips. Before he could speak, Anna let the branches close behind her, screening them from Lucy and Betty’s view. She crouched down beside Henry, tucking her hands on top of her knees.
 

Deciding she was no threat, Henry dropped his voice and moved a pebble half an inch. “You go there. Don’t touch that one.”
 

He spoke in a child’s whisper, but the admonitions he gave his pets of stick and stone were sharp as the thorns around them. Anna watched him with a breaking heart, wondering if he’d learned that tone from her. She’d like to think it was Frederick, but she couldn’t be sure. The way his brows drew close, colliding in a sharp line above his nose, was all too familiar.
 

The dirt would do no good to her skirts, but her legs would get sore if she remained crouching, so she lowered her knees to the ground after a quick swipe to clear it of sharp bits and sloes. There’d been no frost yet, but the berries were dark blue and plump and some had fallen to the ground. She picked up one and rolled it between her fingers, then stopped, realizing Henry was doing the same.