The Soldier's Dark Secret

He gave a little nod. ‘I knew in my gut that something wasn’t quite right. That was why I insisted on being allowed to accompany Carruthers. I wasn’t part of the attack, but I went into the village immediately afterwards.’ He faced her determinedly. ‘Women and children, Celeste. Spanish women and children, whose men fought on the same side as us. But there were no men. Not a sign of the French. Not a trace that they’d been there. We will never know if they were forced to co-operate, to keep silent, or whether we were entirely mistaken. They were dumb with fear, the few that had survived the onslaught. Carruthers’s men had attacked the village with all the firepower at their disposal. It took them a while to realise their fire wasn’t being returned.’

Goose bumps rose on Celeste’s skin. She could see it in her mind’s eye. The village. The women. The children. The dead.

‘It’s what I dream,’ Jack continued. ‘It’s so vivid. My boots crunching on the track. The sun burning the back of my neck. I lost my hat. There was a chicken. It ran right in front of me. I nearly tripped over it. I could hear Carruthers shouting orders, I could hear his men sifting through the carnage, but it was as if I was walking alone through a montage. So quiet. So still. There really is such a thing as deathly silence.’

He was still looking at her, but his eyes were blank. It filled her with horror, and a pity that was gut-wrenching, the more so because she knew she could do nothing to help him.

‘After a battle, what you smell is smoke and gunpowder. There was a pall of it so thick on the battlefield of Waterloo, that you could hardly see a yard in front of you. In the village, I know it must have been the same, but I remember it as clear blue skies. The smell—the smell—’ Jack broke off, dropping his head on to his hands, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. ‘I was ravenous, I hadn’t eaten properly for days. There was a stew cooking on a fire. Peasant stuff. Broth. Herbes de Provence. It made my mouth water. And then I—then I—that’s when I became aware of the smell of the blood and the—the charred flesh. That’s when I was sick. And that’s when—when—when I—that’s when I saw her.’

Jack’s shoulders shook again. He dropped his head on to his hands again and scrubbed viciously at his eyes. Celeste could hear him taking huge, ragged breaths, counting them in a low, muttering, monotonous tone. She wanted to hold him, comfort him, but he was rigid with his own efforts to regain self-control. She felt helpless again, and more desperate than ever to help him. She scrabbled in her mind, through the morass of horror that he’d told her, trying to think of something, anything that would help, but her brain was frozen with the shock of it, unable to conceive of what it must have been like for Jack—what it must still be like.

She tugged his hands away from his face. ‘I can’t imagine,’ she said pathetically, ‘I can’t even begin to imagine.’

‘I don’t want you to. I wouldn’t wish what is in my head on anyone.’

‘The smell. The venison, that broth, that was what happened at dinner that night at Trestain Manor?’

‘Yes.’ Jack gave a ragged sigh.

‘But there is more, is there not?’ Celeste forced herself to ask. ‘You said that Colonel Carruthers did not know the worst.’

‘He doesn’t.’ Jack began to shake again. ‘I’ve never spoken of it. I don’t know if I— No, I can. I can. I can do it.’ His knuckles gleamed white. A pulse beat in his throat. ‘There was a girl,’ he said. ‘A young girl. I don’t know, twenty, no more. She was standing over me—when I was being sick— I don’t know, I didn’t hear her, but when I looked up, she was there. Dear God.’ Sweat beaded his brow. He mopped it with the sheet. ‘She had a pistol in one hand. She was pointing it straight at my head. There was a bundle in her other. Clutched to her chest. A bundle. I thought—I thought it was rags. I don’t know what I thought. I was— It was— I was— It was her eyes. Blank and empty. Staring at me. Through me. I was sure she was going to shoot me. I had no doubt she was going to shoot me. She had that look—of having absolutely nothing left to lose. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I felt this—this strange calm. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anything except, this is it. This is it. And I waited.’ Jack turned to her, his eyes wet with tears. ‘I waited. And she turned the pistol to her own head, and she pulled the trigger. And it happened so slowly, so very, very slowly, and I did nothing, until I heard the crack, and I saw her crumple, and the bundle of rags fell, and it was her dead child.’ Jack dropped his head on to his hands. ‘Dead. Both of them, And it should have been me. It should have been me.’