The Lost Love of a Soldier (21 page)

A call rang from the left. Paul’s Lieutenant Colonel raised his sword, calling Paul’s square to break and move about.

Something was afoot.

Paul lifted his own sword high, calling his men to break from the square and move. Then he saw the risk. The French Imperial Guard made a last charge up the hill, seeking to break the Allied forces once and for all.

Paul ran ahead of his men, calling them on, his sword raised. The pole bearer ran beside, holding up their colours, and the flag flew out on the breeze. “Halt and kneel!” Paul bid his front row when they were in close range. “Present All!” Three layers of men at varying heights all raised their rifles a moment before the French fell into the same position. There was a sudden vicious volley of bullets.

A force ripped through Paul’s stomach; a solid mass, tearing through his flesh and pushing him backward off his feet, slamming him down onto the muddy ground as the air about him filled with the bitter smell of powder and blood. There was no pain, only shock. Cold, disbelieving, shock.

My God!

“Captain! Captain!”

One of his men was beside him, and Paul saw him for a moment before the world went black. “Captain!”

There was a foul smell in the air. Death. His death. The smell of a gut wound.

Ellen…

He had no feeling in his arms or legs, though his heart beat even in the darkness, but his blood and energy drained away.
I am going to die.

“Tell my wife…” He forced the words from his dry lips into the emptiness beyond him, and felt a man’s hand touch his face. Then… the last image in his head was Ellen, her face, as around him shots still screamed above his ahead, and swords and bayonets clashed.

Life ebbed, creeping away into nothing.

Nothing.

“Captain!
Captain!
”

~

Ellen moved from man to man, and each time she knelt down beside another she prayed it would not be Paul. They were all so bloody and mud stained she could not tell until she was close.
Oh! This was hell on earth
. So many men. So many wounded, and for every man here, they were saying there was a dozen left on the field.

Inside her, two phantom hands clasped hard, not allowing her to breathe, tying her stomach in a knot, and the hands would not release until she saw Paul.

Please God, you are safe and well. Please, God!

“May I fetch you water?” She knelt beside another man. He’d lost a leg; the lower half had been torn off by cannon fire and the rags he lay on and his clothes were covered in blood. The doctor had stopped the bleeding already. He’d tied a tight tourniquet around the man’s thigh.

This man must have the rest of that limb severed too, yet he might die from infection in a day or two.

Nausea twisted through the knots in Ellen’s stomach.

She would hold Paul so tightly when he came back, and love him even more.

Inside the invisible hands gripped harder about her stomach and her lungs.

The man’s skin was starkly pale beneath the stains of gunpowder, mud and blood, and his eyes white from blood loss. A look of panic hovered in his gaze, but he nodded. She smiled, trying to ease his fear, though she was terrified herself. She rose to fetch a cup of water. When she returned she held it to his lips for a moment and let it trickle into his mouth. He sighed and lay back, closing his eyes.

She stood. A surgeon waved her over. “I need bandages. Have we more bandages?”

The women had been ripping up sheets for hours and she rushed now to fetch some of the strips that were left; there were not many.

Paul’s image constantly held in her head. Her heart prayed for his safety. It was a continuous cry to God.
Keep him safe. Keep him safe, and bring him back to me.

She handed the bandages to the surgeon and watched him wrap them about a wound he’d just removed a bullet from. Then behind her, another man was brought into the room, shouting out in agony. The doctor looked at her. “Carry on, here.”

“Tie a tourniquet,”
Paul had said months ago, when she had mourned a single highwayman. She had not imagined this when he’d said it.

Paul.

Chapter Seventeen

Finally when it was dark, the sound of cannons in the distance ceased but the wounded still flooded into the city.

Everyone helping in the house in which she worked stopped and looked at one another as the world fell silent apart from the groans of the men in the room. Her heart skipped a beat.
Was it over? Had the Allied forces won? Was Paul alive?

But she had no time for such thoughts – there were men here who needed help.

Three hours later, word reached the city that the Allied forces had won, and a cry rang out in the streets, even from the wounded.

Ellen’s heart filled with warmth and hope.

Four hours later troops began marching back into the city, bringing still more wounded.

Numerous times she rushed to the window to see if it was the 52nd as men were cheered and applauded.

But by midday, when she had gone for a day and half without sleep, there had been no sign of Paul’s regiment.

She’d asked some of the returning soldiers, but the numbers of men fighting were so many and no one she’d asked had seen or knew the fate of the 52nd Oxfordshire Regiment of Foot.

“Mrs Harding, go and rest.” Ellen turned to face Mrs Beard. She was the wife of a colonel from another regiment. It was her house that had become a makeshift hospital in the last four and twenty hours, like a dozen more along the street.

Now Ellen wished she had socialised more during their time in Brussels. Not at the parties but among the officers’ wives.

She had judged all the women by those who’d fled, but now she’d discovered another society. These women were also resolutely waiting for their men, while fighting to save those who had served beside them.

“You have done enough now, and you will only be able to do more if you sleep.”

Ellen looked at the woman. There were no beds left in the house and there was no space to rest. If she was to sleep she would have to go back to the room she shared with Paul –
perhaps he would be there, waiting for her
. She’d not even thought of that. “Yes. I will return when I can.” Without another word she turned away to fetch her pelisse, leaving Mrs Beard to help the wounded man she’d brought a chamber pot to.

Ellen’s heart pounded hard as she hurried through the streets full of men in filthy, bloody uniforms, and prayed with all her strength. But as she entered the room she shared with Paul, she faced an empty space. Desolation hit her. He was not here.

Too tired to stand now she’d thought of sleep, Ellen washed her hands and face. She did not lie on the bed, instead she took up her vigil at the window once more, her feet on the chair as she clutched her knees and rested her head against the back, watching the entrance to the street.

She woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door below the window, her body jolting awake. She stood hurriedly. But it could not be Paul. Paul would not have knocked.

She heard the maid’s voice below, and a man’s deeper pitch. Outside she saw a horse and two men in the uniform of the 52nd. In an instant she was running from the room, but from the top of the stairs she could only see Paul’s Lieutenant Colonel below. The man looked weary, and even though she’d never liked him, compassion burned in her chest as she walked downstairs. “What is it?” He looked up at her. “Where is my husband? Where is Paul?”

She saw the answer in his eyes, but even so he stepped forward and his lips moved. “Captain Harding died on the field.”

No!
The word was pain in her chest and a roar in head.
No!
She would not believe. She could not…

“No.” The word left her mouth on a whisper as darkness crowded in on top of her, stealing her vision.

When Ellen woke she was lying on her bed. The Lieutenant Colonel sat beside her, while the two men dressed in the uniform of Paul’s regiment stood across the room with the maid from the lodging house. The room stank of burning feathers. The Lieutenant Colonel held her hand and rubbed the back of it with his other. “Madam…” he said quietly.

Ellen’s heart raced as the memory of what he’d said downstairs rushed back and tears filled her eyes.
How can I live without Paul? How?

“You have no relatives. Am I right?”

Ellen nodded. Paul had always insisted they did not speak of her father.

“Have you money?”

She shook her head. Paul’s superior officer must know his wages had remained unpaid for weeks.

“Do you have anywhere to go then?”

Emptiness and loneliness opened a void inside her. There was not even grief – just a space that had been Paul’s and now refused to believe he’d gone.

“I think you must come with me then, Mrs Harding.”

Ellen looked at him, unable to think. But then her mind filled with the images of the wounded she’d seen over the last few hours. “How did Paul die?”

The Lieutenant Colonel let go of her hand and straightened. “At the end of the battle the 52nd broke the last surge by the French. But in four minutes of gunfire I lost one hundred and fifty men. Captain Harding was shot. His death was quick. He would not have felt much pain.”

The tears which had been trapped within overflowed in rivers. She needed to hold Paul - his strength and warmth, to smell the scent of his cologne. But he was not here. He would never be here now.

“Paul said I am to seek Captain Montgomery’s help.”

“Captain Montgomery also passed away.”

Cold horror chilled Ellen’s chest. So many men dead, and –
Paul.
He was alive in her head, saying goodbye to her, kissing her.
How could he never come back?
His face hovered in her mind’s eye, youthful and smiling, alive and elemental…

Tears traced pathways of sensation down her cheeks like his fingertips running over her skin.

“Let me take you to my home. Where is your woman? She should pack your things.”

“She left” Ellen whispered.

“Then come with me. I shall find you another. But for now…” He looked up at the maid in the room. “Pack Mrs Harding’s things. I will take her with me, and send for them later.”

Ellen noticed then, he smelt clean. His uniform was fresh; he’d bathed and changed since the battle – washed away any blood.

She shivered.

“Come, Mrs Harding. Let me take you under my protection.” He stood and held out a hand.

Ellen rose, but it was in the guise of a ghost. It was not her who moved. She walked downstairs before him as though she was in a dream – no, a nightmare.

She was leaving the place she and Paul had lived for weeks – the only place which might still feel like home, even though he could never come back to it. She was deserting him. In the street, she looked back, longing to refuse to leave, but if she did not go with his Lieutenant Colonel, what would she do?

The Lieutenant Colonel’s hands gripped her waist suddenly, and he lifted her up onto his saddle. He had touched her before when they’d waltzed, but now the pressure invaded her senses through the thin layers of her gown and petticoats, uncomfortably bracing her flesh. It was not Paul’s touch. She longed for Paul’s touch.

The Lieutenant Colonel led the horse through the streets at a walk, as Ellen gripped onto the pommel, her knuckles white, tears flowing down her cheeks.

When they reached the house which she and Paul had visited several times, he lifted her down, his gaze boring into her asking questions he did not speak. When he did not release her waist, she stepped away. Her emotions in turmoil, she turned her back on him, looking at the door.

“Forgive me,” he said before stepping about her to lead the way into the house, but he held back at the last moment, encouraging her to enter first. Then he said to the man who stood in a black long-tailed coat at the door, “Send for a maid to escort Mrs Harding to a room. She is to stay.”

He led her to the drawing room where she’d waited with Paul a few times before being called in to dinner. Ellen’s heart pounded at the memories. She did not believe he was gone. The Lieutenant Colonel spoke, but she did not hear what he said as he moved to pour a drink; she could think of nothing but Paul now.

When the maid finally came, after what seemed like an hour but was probably only minutes, Ellen went willingly, following her upstairs to a room at the rear of the house. There was a sunny sitting room dressed in pink and a separate bedchamber beyond it.

“May I fetch you anything ma’am?”

Ellen turned and looked at the maid, not really seeing her. “No. You may go.” Nothing could bring Paul back. There was nothing to help.

When the maid had gone, Ellen walked into the bedchamber, climbed on to the bed, crawled into the middle, curled into a ball, and wept, with her knees hugged tightly to her chest as her heart broke.

~

Sitting up in the bed, Ellen looked out of the window. She’d remained in this room for a day and a night, pain biting in to her heart as she watched the sky change beyond the window, but now the sun had risen again. She should get up, and return to help those who were alive and wounded. That was what Paul would wish of her. She rose from the bed, still clothed. She had neither eaten nor undressed since arriving here.

There was a sharp wrap of a knock on the door of the sitting room. Ellen hurried from the bedchamber into the room beyond it. “You may come.” It was not a servant, the knock had not come from the servants’ door.

When the door opened, it was the Lieutenant Colonel. He stepped into the room. Instinctively Ellen took a step back.

He lifted his hand, and spoke in a gentle voice. “Mrs Harding, I have come to see how you are. The maid said you have not eaten. I am worried over your health–”

“I am well.” She did not say that she had been sick again this morning, it was only because she had not eaten yet. “But I shall return to care for the wounded today, there is a house, Mrs Beard has taken the wounded in, and I… I was helping, I shall return there today…”