Chapter 16
Peter had endured another long day of meetings only to see that the army was getting nowhere with the issue of San Sebastián.
Nothing could be more frustrating than that.
The sun was already setting outside the tall, stone building, and the paned windows no longer provided sufficient light to the room, signaling to Peter that it was high time he left.
He shrugged on his knapsack and set out through the door, his legs marching in quick, learned steps.
He would have made a fine pace to his conveyance to return to Heathridge Hall if he hadn’t collided with a shrouded figure standing just beyond the corner of the building.
“I apologize, my good sir,” Peter said.
“Apology accepted, Cap’n, and I don’t mind at all being called sir.”
London was a crowded place. It was not a difficult thing to run into someone. But that voice. Peter stepped back, blinking rapidly as if it would somehow help him to recognize the man in front of him more quickly.
Price. One of the men of his company. He was a young one, barely eighteen, and had been recruited off the streets of London, like so many other foot soldiers.
But what was he doing back here? And why was his presence sending Peter positively reeling?
While in his role as Captain Ashmore, Peter was not one to get overly emotional, at least not about anyone other than Ana.
And he certainly never showed any level of sentimentality to his men.
Loyalty, yes. Consistency, yes. But not emotional softness.
And yet for some strange reason, his chest tightened upon seeing Price, and he suddenly found himself breathing much more quickly than he had been a moment previous.
He very nearly embraced the man, only to be snapped back into reality by Price’s stoic salute.
Even in a worn, faded brown shirt and thick work pants, the young man looked a soldier.
“Price! I can’t say that I understand how you’ve come to be here, but I am more relieved to see you than I can say.”
“Charley, Cap’n, call me Charley. We ain’t riding to battle, so I do prefer to be called Charley.”
“Very well, then, Charley.”
“And I am mighty pleased meeself to be seeing you, Cap’n.”
Peter had more questions than he had words for. It was the first time he had seen any of his men following the sack. “Come, I have a conveyance waiting just down this alley. I wish to speak with you in confidence.”
“A conveyance, eh? Cap’n, I never pinned you as one of them high-brow gentlefolk.”
“I wouldn’t call myself gentle, and I certainly doubt my wife would call me high-browed.”
“You went and got yerself a wife now, did you? I’ll be. The men won’t believe it when I tell ’em.”
Peter felt his neck grow hot as he walked up to the conveyance and motioned that Charley join him inside.
Price—like most, if not all, of Peter’s men—would have been well familiar with Ana, then known as Miss Bailon.
Many of them had noted Peter’s strange awkwardness around her graceful communication and stunning beauty and had frequently made him the brunt of their jokes.
If Charley ever saw Ana, particularly in her current condition, a great many secrets would be revealed, putting them both in danger.
“Indeed,” Peter answered. “It was somewhat of a quick betrothal. But I have known her for quite some time.”
“Ah, an English lass she be then.”
Peter coughed and changed the topic of conversation in desperation . . . and curiosity. “San Sebastián. How did you . . .” Survive? “And the others, did they . . .” How many more had he lost?
“Once I saw the city start to smoke up, I hid away. I knew there would be a great punishing for burning those many homes to the ground, and I was not about to catch myself in all that business.”
Peter nodded his head, tapping on his chin. After the French had retreated and surrendered, a number of soldiers had entered the town to sack and pillage . . . and do much more terrible things than that alone.
“Mighty mad, the men were,” Price continued. “Half-starved from months of siege on so little rations. I wager they thought it their right to go find themselves some food and ale.”
“And they found—and took—a great deal more than that,” Peter said, his voice low and pained. Holy relics from the local chapel. Precious and personal family heirlooms. Not to mention their cruel and merciless taking of the precious innocence of so many women, some of them much too young.
“Aye,” Charley agreed, his darting gaze downcast and sorrowful.
“I didn’t receive orders to recall you and the other men. How was it that you ended up here in London?”
Charley shifted on his feet, rubbing a hand across his neck as he chuckled. “See, I heard tell you would be here, Cap’n, and ain’t nobody been able to hear from you since the city fell. I jus’ had to see ya to know you survived and all.”
“My soul is a little worse for the wear, but I survived all right,” Peter said, lifting the corner of his mouth to try to bring humor to his words, which felt all too heavy and all too true.
“An awful lot, that sacking was.”
“More horrible than I can say. And it would seem that our leaders are insistent that it didn’t occur at all, even though there are many of us who know otherwise.”
“Oh, Cap’n, Wellington done had made himself some statements that were mighty clear about that. Published in the Royal Gazette, they were.”
Peter stared hard at Charley. “Truly? I haven’t heard anything official made outside of army tent doors, so to speak.”
“’Tis true. There are an awful lot of Spaniards speakin’ out about it, seems. I did find me a copy, Cap’n, though it weren’t no easy task. Here, now. Take a look for yerself.”
Charley handed Peter a wrinkled copy of London’s The Times, dated October 30, 1813.
Just as the soldier had said, the name Wellington jumped out at him from the page.
Peter scanned it quickly. The quotation from Wellington implied that the town was not, in fact, sacked; instead, it was merely robbed of wine and other articles.
According to him, the destruction of the town had nothing to do with the British troops.
“Makes me sick, it does. And here I was, thinking Wellington was the savior of the country.”
“He has been, in many respects,” Peter replied. “But in this one, he is doing his troops and the Spanish a great disservice. Particularly when you consider that he was not even in San Sebastián when it all occurred.”
“No doubt he heard it all from Graham.”
“It’s an outrage to see. Even more frustrating is the matter that now our troops are moving into France, while Spanish troops are being sent back to their home country, after we have left it in pieces.”
“T’was a devastation. But that is the lot of the soldier, isn’t it, Cap’n?
Seein’ such atrocities and then movin’ on to fight the next battle?
There ain’t nothing we can do to fight it, not when that is our lot.
Can’t sell me commission like some ranker, pardon me language.
This is the only way I can pay for any sort of living at all.
An’ then I hear about me friends, abandoned after the war, no money or support, an’ I know this is me lot.
” Charley’s shoulders were slumped, his face devoid of emotion.
He had an air of hopelessness about him, which tugged at Peter’s heart in a way it never had before.
Was this how all his men had felt? Trapped in their roles?
Destined to kill and pillage and act as if it were their duty, their right?
What a sorry existence indeed. And Peter himself had been fighting such a tempest of emotions on the inside each time he received a letter from home, so much so that he had stilled his emotions on the outside.
He had become too disciplined, too practiced, too unfeeling—until Ana had changed him entirely, cracking his heart wide open to realize the true horror of San Sebastián and the rest of what they had been living in during the ongoing war with the French.
* * *
Darkness shrouded the library as Peter sat across from Captain Davies, waiting for an explanation. The man sipped deeply from his lemonade, as if he hoped it were something a great deal stronger. Peter didn’t blame the man. Theirs was a disastrous plight.
It was difficult to ascertain one solid reasoning as to why the British soldiers had razed San Sebastián—and other towns—so violently, so completely.
Perhaps it was the admittance of such actions by the customary laws of war at the time.
Perhaps it was the breakdown of trust in command, particularly with months of failed attempts to break through the French’s defenses.
Perhaps it was the innate wretchedness and greed brought on by delayed payments and poverty that drove them into the homes to loot and search for valuables but turned them to the helpless inhabitants housed there.
Perhaps they thought it was their right, having sacrificed a great deal to fight for Spain’s freedom, turning their looting into a sort of unholy tithe.
Perhaps it was the desperation that so many of the lower soldiers felt, knowing that they were trapped in their positions, that no sort of future awaited them at home, that they would be chained into their uniforms until they died, or deserted, which was even worse than death.