Brenda Davies

Chapter 1

1812 – Spain

AYLA

The tips of my fingers are numb. Even rubbing them against my woollen shawl until they turn pink doesn’t bring them fully back to life. This is what I get for using my bare hands when the other women, scattered about this field like the clumps of wild radish I am picking, wear gloves. But gloves make me clumsy.

Snow lies a handbreadth deep. Deeper in the drifts. Trampled to slush where our feet have passed, revealing chickweed, wild mustard, and radish. Having waited for these things to grow, we must eat them before the animals do.

Kitty eases her back straight and ambles over. ‘Think we have enough?’

There is never enough of anything here except death. ‘Imagine if it was just us women. No men camped out in the valley below.’

She stares at me whilst I chew on a radish leaf, the taste of pepper in my mouth.

‘No thanks. I like having men about.'

She bends down to tie her bootlaces, the curve of her neck exposed—it's too tempting. My fingers plunge down the back of her dress, and she shrieks.

‘Ayla, that’s bleedin’ cold.’

Giggles bubble up inside me like a cork unstopped until a ball of snow smacks me in the face, taking my breath away. My turn to shriek. We laugh like nothing matters, like the freezing cold is an old friend, like our hollow stomachs are just part of the game.

A scream cuts through the quiet, urgent and shrill, seeming to reach inside and grip my heart with fear.

‘Came from over there.’ Kitty's hand trembles as she points towards the woods, eyes wide.

The woman screams again. Not a howl of rage. Nor a cry for help. No, her scream dies away as if she is beyond saving. A flurry of birds erupts from the forest, cawing in response.

‘That’s Cora,’ Kitty says, sprinting for the trees.

My mouth is so dry I cannot speak. The ravine lies in that direction, steep and rocky. At the bottom, flat rocks and freezing water. A place Cora has no reason to be. Dropping my basket of foraged food, I pick up my skirt and run, joining the women from the camp, following Kitty’s footprints in the snow.

Once we reach the woods, we spread out to search for our friend. We move between the trees, the forest floor a tangle of roots and brambles. I duck a low-hanging bough and breathe in the earthy scent of moss and soil and wet leaves.

‘Cora! Cora!’

Sinking into a drift of snow, I press my back against a tree and release my buried boots. Melting ice drips from its needles, landing with a soft plunk, the scent of pine sharp in the crisp air. A fallen bough, covered in ice crystals, rests near my foot. Maybe she’s tripped on a branch and lies sprawled on the ground?

‘Cora! Cora!’

The urgency in the women's voices tells me otherwise. They move on without me—her name an echo through the woods.

‘Cora! Cora!’

In my haste to catch up, I almost miss it. A knot of weeds, a coil of fair hair. Cora? I crouch low, expecting to run my hands through soft strands. Instead, my fingertips brush against a skein of roots bleached the colour of my pale Irish skin by the weak winter light.

At a noise behind me, I jolt upright. Red-coated soldiers emerge from the trees like apparitions, faces sweaty despite the cold. Men on drilling practice, loaded down with muskets and backpacks, who’ve heard her scream and come running to help. Spread out through the wood, they walk as if stalking an enemy, shoulders hunched, knees bent, heads turning at every sound.

Our jagged line of searchers soon breaks apart. The soldiers, used to keeping up a steady pace, now far ahead of women who are not. All of us make for the ravine.

‘Cora! Cora!’ Our shouts grow louder—our pace quickens.

A man calls out, ‘Here. Over here.’ His arms raised, his jacket blood-red against the darkening sky.

With my eyes on him, I slip on a slick of leaves and fall into a hidden hollow. My body jolts as if I am the one who’s stepped off a cliff into nothing but air and plunged to the bottom. I thump to my knees. By the time I pick myself up, the others have gathered near the ravine, arms about each other, bodies swaying. Soldiers lean over the edge, hands on thighs, shaking their heads.

‘But is it her? Can you be sure she’s dead?’ Kitty asks, her voice trembling.

A soldier takes in our clothes, our faces. ‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ he says. ‘Brown skirt. Plain apron. A thicket has caught her black shawl. She’s face down in the water, so...’ He shrugs.

I tug my once-white apron over my thighs, my skirt muddied at the hem. Standard camp follower uniform. We do not need to be told her hair is the colour of ripe wheat, her skin pale. This is Cora. Besides, no one else is missing.

'She must have jumped,' the men say. 'This was her choice. Now she is free.' The men back away. There is nothing to be done. They leave us. Having seen too much death, they are numb to sorrow.

Free? Yes, Cora will no longer suffer the pain of her husband’s death, but the cost of that freedom—to feel nothing ever again—is surely too great.

Kitty and the others drift away too, but I do not move. Cora once told me she was helpless with grief. Helpless is not hopeless, I’d said. But what do I know? I’ve never loved a person enough to want to die for them. I’ve only ever hated enough to want to kill.

The need to be near her draws me to the edge. Not to look, that will not be my last image of her, but I was her friend. Knowing how she struggled, I should have tried harder to ease her pain. But most of us here have suffered. It is the way of war.

I creep towards the ravine, bent low, shuffling through the wet grass. A lone tree grows a pace away from the edge. The urge to get on my hands and knees and crawl almost wins, but I force myself to take a step. Then another. Now I cling to the tree and rest my head against the trunk, taking deep breaths to slow my beating heart. How did Cora do this when she was afraid of heights like me?

My hands grip bark the colour of old bones, speckles of red smeared below my fingers. My stomach flutters. Traces of blood and... are those scratches dug into the trunk? My fingers slot into the furrows. What if she didn't jump but gripped this tree, her fingernails ripping as someone prised her away, leaving a trail of blood? No, no, those are my memories and my past does not belong here. More likely, an animal raked this trunk with talons caked in blood and dirt.

But here, at the base... more grooves. This time in the shallow soil and leading to the ravine’s edge. Was she tugged, her heels dragging? And nestled in a dip, a pewter button. Was there violence in its loss? Did slender fingers grip it in fear and rip it from a soldier’s coat? Or did the button dangle by a broken thread and drop, the owner unaware of its loss?

Something flutters, catching my eye. A scrap of cloth. Brown. I pluck it from the branch it’s skewered to and hold it next to my skirt. A match. So, maybe she had to drag her unwilling feet to the edge. Her mind urging her to jump, yet her body resisting. How much courage did it take? Or perhaps, how much pain?

But I can’t shake off this idea of violence. Of Cora fighting for her life, clinging to the tree, ripping her skirt as someone seizes her arms and pulls and hauls and hurls her over the edge. But who would do such a thing? And why? Even if Cora was standing beside me now, playing with the gold band on her ring finger, hair tucked behind her ears, I’d never have the courage to ask what happened, for I can guess her reply. ‘Where were you when I needed you?’

Backing away from the edge, watching every step, my heart rate only slows when I finally turn and head for the woods.

‘Ayla.’

Kitty waits for me, frowning, squinting in worry. She wraps her arms around me and my head sinks onto her shoulder. I’ve wept so often over death that I can’t have any tears left, yet here they come. I press my lips to her shoulder to stop their trembling. We cling to each other. No words are needed. We both know our hug is saying, Don’t you ever do this to me, for I couldn’t survive the loss.

‘I–I have a confession,’ Kitty speaks into my hair, her voice muffled.

I pull back to stare at her and try to smile. ‘You do?’

She nods. ‘I knew Cora was coming here—’

I squeeze my eyes shut.

‘Oh, not to jump.’ She sniffs. ‘To pick berries. She’d been waiting for them to ripen. Was going to surprise us with them.’

‘She told you that?’

‘This morning, on her way here. I believed her. Why not? If I’d had even the slightest—’

‘Shh.’ I stroke her hair. ‘You couldn’t have known.’

She sobs, her voice thick with tears. ‘I could have stopped her.’

‘You’re not to blame. This war is to blame.’

‘Yes,’ she says, but the shake of her head tells me she doesn’t believe me.

And knowing Kitty, before she falls asleep, she’ll be thinking of all the ways she could have made this different. If only she’d done this. If only she’d done that. We all have our if onlys.

Using our aprons to mop our tears, we link arms and make ready to return to camp.

My back prickles as if someone is behind us, watching. I want to turn but my body refuses to move, afraid I will find Cora standing there, pointing to the scar on the inside of my arm and the wounds within. The ones no one can see. A reminder of my past.

A reminder that monsters disguised as men do exist.

Chapter 2

TOMMY

If there’s a good way to die—this sure as hell isn’t it.

‘Tommy, are you listening?’

‘Hmm?’ There’s something out there in the darkness, squat and motionless. I train my rifle on the position. Damn, another bloody bush. God, I hate piquet duty in the winter, lying shivering in the snow. If my manhood shrivels any more, it’ll file a complaint with the quartermaster.

‘Tommy.’

‘What?’ Spending my evening in a Spanish meadow is bad enough, but this has turned into hell. How am I supposed to see when there’s only a sliver of moon in the barren sky? And in the distance, nothing but the looming outline of trees and bushes melting into the gloom and animal prints, probably wolves. Not forgetting the hidden French voltigeur. My breath fogs as I breathe on my hands and try to rub life back into them. This is a wretched place to die.

‘I have a plan.’

Billy always has a plan. ‘Come on then. Tell all.’ For the life of me, I don’t see a way out of this.

‘I make a run for it across the field. When I lay eyes on him, I halt. Shoot me square in the back. Kill me, kill him.’

I clamp my jaw shut to hold back a scream. ‘Not funny.’

‘Not joking. If you want to live, you have no choice.’

‘Die it is then.’

Billy tuts. ‘Don’t think. Just shoot.’

He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smile. Oh, hell no, he’s goddamn serious. Anyone else and I’d tell them the plan stinks, won’t work. You can’t kill a man this way and the voltigeur will shoot as soon as he runs... however, this is Billy. The idea of shooting him sucks the air from my lungs, leaving a tight pain in my heart. Sweat gathers across my brow despite the cold. Yes, he’d take a bullet for me as I would for him, but not like this.

‘No. Forget it. Not doing it.’

I drop my head onto the snow to numb my brain and stop myself from thinking of him running into that void all alone, waiting for me to shoot him. There has to be another way, but what? A shiver runs down my back. Sometimes, though you can’t see anything, you can feel someone watching. This is one of those times. I keep my head down. At the sharp crack of a rifle, my shako jerks free of its cords, leaps into the air and drops beside me.

You don’t hear the bullet that kills you, so I can’t be dead.

I push a trembling finger through the ball-sized hole in the middle of my shako. My other hand follows a furrow through my long hair. No blood. The musket ball missed me by a fraction, leaving my head reeling, my brain rattling around in my skull. I’d raise my face skywards to thank the Lord, only I don’t want to get my head shot off.

‘We are all going to die in this goddamn field,’ I mutter to Billy.

He’s no longer there.

Craning my neck whilst trying to keep my head down isn’t easy. There he is, behind me, hunched next to our sergeant. I don’t need to see the blood staining the surrounding ground the same colour as his redcoat or smell the metallic whiff drifting towards me to know our sergeant is dead. His body lies like a spent cartridge, dark matter spilling from his guts, and Billy mumbling over his prone body. The second man we’ve lost from our piquet line tonight. And damn it, I liked him and the way he shouted orders with a tilt of his head as if to say, I don’t mean to yell. It’s just my job.

Somewhere out there amongst the trees and bushes and shadows is a French voltigeur, and he’s picking us off one by one. A musket ball thumps next to my shoulder, dumping a spray of snow over my head. He’s got my position. I roll away, covering my coat in a dusting of icy white crystals. His Charleville musket might not be accurate at the distance he’s shooting, but he more than makes up for it. He’s a crack-bloody shot.

Flints click in the still night.

‘Don’t shoot,’ I whisper to the redcoats behind me. ‘We’ve got a damn voltigeur aiming for the spark from our pans.’ Truth be told, he’s probably aiming for our redcoats too. We must stand out like a target even in the dark like we’re saying, Here we are. Kill us now.

‘If we don’t shoot, what the hell do we do? Will any of us make it back to camp alive?’ Ginger’s voice comes at me from out of the gloom.

‘And why can’t we see the flash from his pan? Where the hell is he hiding?’ he asks.

I don’t have answers. That’s the problem with voltigeurs. Like our own greenjackets, they’re used to hiding, used to skirmishes and picking off the enemy. Even so, how the hell is he invisible? At this rate, he’s going to shoot us one by one like this is some game. He’s probably laughing at us.

‘What if, after the next shot, we all get up and run? By the time he’s reloaded, we could be away from this cursed place.’

Blondie’s voice sounds muffled because he’s hiding behind Ginger.

‘I’ll wager he can reload his musket three times in one minute. He’ll shoot to maim, to bring us down, then take his time killing.’ That’s what I’d do, anyway. ‘Or what if there’s two of them? One reloads whilst the other shoots. That’s how greenjackets work,’ I say in a hoarse whisper.

Nothing but silence follows. We wait. Except... did I hear the crunch or creak of a footstep on snow? I peer into the dark but see nothing.

‘Tommy, what shall we do?’

They’re asking me because I’m the oldest, not because I’m in charge or anything. What do I know? Only that Billy has a stupid don’t think, just shoot plan.

I roll onto my back and watch Billy. He’s in a crouch, ready to run.

‘Next shot,’ he says, ‘before the bastard reloads, I’ll race across the field until I find him. Aim for my back. Shoot me and you’ll shoot him, too.’

He nods like it’s agreed between us, like he makes all the decisions and I follow. And yes, his way might save three men’s lives if my aim is true. If there’s one man out there. If I do it. A lot of ifs.

One thing Billy said is true, though. Do I want to live? Damn right I do. My dream is to survive this war and return home to Lizzy, my love, to a life without bloodshed and death. And it’s simple, really. Aim, pull the trigger. I choke on the sob in my throat, blink away tears. Please, Billy, don’t make me choose.

‘Forget it. Not happening.’

I twist back to my stomach and ready my Baker rifle, staring into the dark beyond. I can’t see the voltigeur, which means he’s lying low, but that makes it harder for him to reload. He needs to stand or he’ll get into a tangled mess of haversack, bayonet, canteen, and cartridge straps, like being rolled in a ball of string. I fancy he’s on his own, which is why there’s a gap between each shot he takes. So, could we run like Blondie suggested? No, because the minute we do, he’ll be on his feet shooting and loading and aiming to maim. If I stay calm, I might see him when he stands to reload. Come on, where the hell are you?

Another crack and this time, Ginger cries. ‘Foot,’ he gasps. ‘He got my bloody foot. Don’t leave me here to die, Tommy, please.’

I would tell Ginger to move before he’s shot again, but Billy’s gone, running like a mad March hare across the field. He changes direction and I have trouble keeping my rifle aimed at his back. Not to shoot him, but so I know where the voltigeur is.

Billy stops dead and... I’m not religious, but there’s something in the way he’s dropped his head and opened his arms out wide with his legs together that makes me think of Jesus on the cross in the many churches they have around here. Don’t think. Just shoot. But I am thinking. Of Lizzy. Of how much I want to survive so I can see her again. Resting on my elbows, my trigger finger shaking, I take aim and shoot Jesus in the back.

Billy falls to his knees and a French swear word screams into the still night, Merde. The scream tails off, ending in an animal whine of despair. Christ, what have I done?

‘Did you get him?’ Blondie asks.

My army training kicks in. Shut down thoughts. Concentrate on survival.

Hoisting the strap of my Baker rifle over my shoulder, I get to my feet. ‘Yes, got him. Blondie, lend a hand with Ginger. We’re out of here.’

Ginger hangs between Blondie and me, dragging his feet, leaving a bloody trail in the snow and wailing the entire time while we race for the camp. But injured and in pain is way better than dead. I’d tell him this if I didn’t need my breath for running.

Billy.

Thinking of him, I miss my step and drop Ginger in the snow. He yells and curses, but his misery is nothing compared to mine.

Billy. My best friend. The man I love like a brother. He’s a part of my beating heart. He’s tied to my soul. And with every pounding step I take, I repeat the same words.

I didn’t kill him.

I didn’t kill him.

For it's impossible to kill a man who’s been dead for three years.