Authors: A Dream Defiant
“At long last, in the tent. I already fed them bread and a little of the stew.” Luisa’s Fernando was a fortnight older than Rose’s Jake. The women’s friendship had begun almost four years ago in comforting each other through the pains of pregnancy and had grown as they shared the work and pleasures of motherhood. When the boys were infants they had worked out a system of taking turns to forage, plunder or market while the other watched over the children, and they had stuck to it ever since, with the mother who stayed behind taking an equal share as the one who’d gone out. But never before had the haul been this big.
“There, you see. You took care of
los niños
, and I took care of us
.
Next summer we will go to Paris and raid the emperor’s palace, and you may pay me back then.”
Rose laughed at the absurdity of it—only perhaps it wasn’t impossible after a victory like today, with the emperor’s brother fleeing back toward France like a dog with his tail tucked between his legs. “That’s a whole year away. Perhaps we’ll get there sooner.”
Luisa grinned. “If we hurry across the mountains before winter. But, here, get your bag and take your half.”
Rose nodded, though she tasted the stew again first—ah, perfect now. She must have under-seasoned it before, when the sharp smell of gunpowder had still been heavy in the air. She gave it a careful stir, then turned toward the little tent she shared with her husband and son.
“I would not let it burn,” Luisa assured her.
She waved away her friend’s offer of help with the dismissive air it deserved. Luisa was kind and generous, she could coax a fire out of the wettest wood in the world, and the sweetness of her singing had soothed Jake to sleep during the teething days and nights when nothing else could. But she would never make a cook.
Rose crawled into the tiny tent, moving carefully to avoid waking the two little boys. She paused for a fond glance at the sleeping pair. Jake slept curled in a tight ball, his tow-blond curls tousled, one hand clutching the tattered blue blanket he insisted upon sleeping with even on the hottest nights. Fernando, taller and sturdier, lay sprawled on his stomach, one arm flung out affectionately over his friend’s shoulders. Sons of the regiment, born following the drum.
She wondered sometimes if they would make it back to England, if she’d ever live in Aspwell Heath again. She missed it every day, the bright green of the hills cradling her valley, the Sunday gossip with Sam’s sister Jenny in the churchyard after services. Sam swore he’d take her back someday. He liked to talk of buying the Red Lion together once the war ended, so she could be a famous cook, feeding the multitudes that came through on the Great North Road.
Yet Rose couldn’t picture him ever saving enough money to make such a thing possible. Her share of Luisa’s coins plus whatever he brought back from his own plundering might give them funds enough if they could magically be in Bedfordshire tomorrow, but Sam couldn’t
keep
money. He gambled, he drank—but she knew she shouldn’t complain, since he was such a
cheerful
drunk. Drunk or sober, he’d never laid a violent hand on her, which was more than many women could say of their men. Yet it was maddening all the same how quickly he drank and diced away any bit of plunder or packet of long-delayed pay that came his way.
She cast aside the disloyal thought, and the equally unwifely one that she could simply not tell him how much Luisa had given her. It would be almost impossible to hide. Sam wasn’t given to rummaging through her things, but they had so little space and so few furnishings that if she stopped opening some bag or box, it would soon become obvious. She sighed as she took out her leather satchel—itself a fine bit of plunder, obtained after Ciudad Rodrigo and sturdier than anything the army issued.
It was just as well they’d never be able to afford the Red Lion. It wasn’t as though travelers hastily swallowing their food while their horses were changed would savor her best efforts properly. Let them keep gobbling down old Meg Paxton’s tasteless, over-cooked roasts. Why wish for the impossible? Rose was here, she had a kind husband, a son she adored, and good friends like Luisa, her husband Jemmy and Elijah. She made them the best dinners she could manage from their rations, and Colonel Dryhurst and some of the other officers hired her to cook for them when they gave fine dinners. Her life before Sam had been far worse.
When she crawled back out into the fading twilight, Luisa was standing by the stewpot, her satchel of plunder still open at her feet, cautiously stirring. “Don’t you need more fire than this?”
Rose knew she didn’t, but out of habit she inspected the bed of embers. “No. It’s cooked. I’m keeping it warm till Sam and the others get back. I saw them just after the fighting stopped, and he promised he’d bring me something grand.”
“Yes, I saw him with Elijah, not long ago. And there
are
grand things—paintings! Silk gowns! I would’ve stayed longer if I could have carried more.”
“But silks would only be soiled here, and what good would a painting do us?”
“I know, so I took coins. Here.”
They sat on the ground and began dividing the coins between them. As they reached the bottom, Luisa handed her a cloth-wrapped package. “Just for you. It’s some kind of cheese, I think.”
Rose unwrapped the cheese enough to smell its sharp, tangy aroma. One of the local sheep’s milk cheeses. It would taste well on toasted bread, or she could mix part of it into a sauce, especially if she could find some milk. It would certainly help her improve upon the beef and Indian corn they’d lately received with their rations. “Thank you,” she said.
“I got this, too. There was only one, so we could sell it and each take half of what we get.”
Rose blinked and turned to Luisa, who was holding up a rosary of orange-red coral beads and a silver cross, strung together on silver links. It was no challenge to read the longing in her friend’s eyes. She wanted to wear the pretty thing, and why shouldn’t she? “No, you keep it. We have more than enough without selling it, and I wouldn’t have any use for it. We don’t pray that way, you know.”
“Infidel,” Luisa said cheerfully. “Here, help me put it on, then.”
Squinting in the dim remnants of the sunset light, Rose complied. Luisa preened for a moment, stroking the beads, and then kissed the cross and tucked the rosary beneath the high neck of her plain brown dress. Rose nodded approval. Even within the relative safety of the regiment, where she and Luisa enjoyed official status as soldier’s wives and not mere camp followers, it wasn’t safe to put such a thing on open display. Especially not now, with the soldiers drunk on plunder and liquor alike.
“I hope our men come back soon,” Rose said. “It’s almost dark.”
“I’m sure they will,” Luisa replied. “Look.” She pointed into the growing darkness. “There’s Elijah now.”
Rose followed her friend’s gaze. Yes, that was Elijah Cameron, even aside from his dark skin, impossible to miss because he was by far the tallest man in the regiment, taller by a hand’s span than even any of the officers. He led a score or so of men, smaller and paler, but she couldn’t find Sam among them. She frowned with growing unease. Sam always stuck close by Elijah, especially in battle.
Most of the group scattered toward their tents. But Elijah and three others kept coming straight toward Rose and Luisa. One was Luisa’s own Jemmy Whelan. The other two carried a body between them.
Abandoning her stewpot, Rose rushed to meet them.
It was Sam, slung limply between Adam Lewis and Ned Pritchard. He was dead, he had to be dead, or they would have carried him with greater care. In the flickering light from a nearby fire she saw the huge bloodstain across his chest and belly, darker than his red coat and marring his white crossbelts.
She swayed, and a strong hand caught her under the elbow. “Rose.”
She turned away from Sam’s stricken body, tilting her head back until she could meet Elijah’s eyes. “What? How?” she asked. “I
saw
him. After the battle, I
saw
him.” How had he got himself killed with the battle over?
“I’m sorry, Rose. It was madness out there. Some of the Frogs stayed behind to loot, and one of them picked a fight with Sam.”
They’d been fighting over some choice piece of plunder, in other words. Rose took a deep breath to steady herself. At least it had been a Frenchman. It would’ve been harder to bear if Sam had been killed by one of his own countrymen. She shook her head, unable to speak.
“We’ll take him to where they’re burying the dead from today,” Elijah continued, “but I thought you’d want to see him first.”
She collected herself. “Yes. Thank you. Here, bring him by my tent.” She led the way, and Lewis and Pritchard set Sam’s body down within the little circle of light cast by her slowly burning fire. The stench of blood and death warred with the rich scent of the beef stew she’d meant as a celebration feast for a living husband. Her mouth watered with nausea and her gorge rose. She swallowed hard, her hand pressed to her mouth.
Luisa squeezed her shoulders, and the others clustered around them, offering silent sympathy. “Should I wake Jake?” Luisa asked.
When Rose had been only a little older than Jake, she’d been the one to find her grandmother lying dead in her bed. Hers had been a far more peaceful passing, and still it had given Rose nightmares for months. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t need to see this.”
She shrugged away from Luisa’s embrace and sank to her knees beside Sam. For the last time, she smoothed back his soft brown hair and bent to kiss his forehead. Not his lips—she wanted to remember them warm and living, as they’d been when he’d kissed her goodbye before marching out that morning.
A hot tear slid down her cheek, quickly followed by another and another. Then she couldn’t hold back any longer, and her sobs came. The salty taste of her tears mixed with the heavy, metallic smell of Sam’s blood. Luisa knelt beside her and squeezed her hand, weeping too. After a moment, another hand rested on her shoulder, heavy but gentle.
It was Elijah, holding a bundle of Sam’s gear. “I’m sure you’ll want these things, but was he carrying anything else, that you know of?”
She shook her head and took one last look at Sam through tear-blurred eyes. “No,” she said. “You can take him away now.”
Elijah murmured to Lewis and Pritchard, and they took up the body again. Rose got unsteadily to her feet. If she couldn’t see Sam buried, she must watch him out of sight.
Just before he followed after them, Elijah bent to whisper in her ear. “I was with him at the last,” he said. “I’ll come back and tell you all about it, when there’s less of a crowd.”
Rose nodded, though she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear the details of Sam’s death. Still, if he’d left any kind of dying message for her, she wanted to know. And she could bear Elijah’s company better than anyone else’s. He had a way of bringing comfort with him.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” Luisa asked.
“Not tonight, I think,” she said. “I’ll need to explain to Jake, as best I can, once he wakes up, and I think it’ll go easier if it’s just the two of us.” Luisa was a dear friend, closer than any Rose had ever had other than her sister-in-law, Jenny, back home, but she was a talker, and just then Rose hungered for quiet more than anything else.
Luisa nodded. “If you change your mind, I’m right here. I’ll get Fernando.” She ducked into Rose’s tent and emerged a few moments later, bent under the weight of her heavy, sleeping son. Her husband held out his arms for the boy, and she passed him over and gave Rose another hug.
“Take the stew,” Rose heard herself say. It wouldn’t do to waste food, even now.
“What about you?”
She put her hand to her throat and swallowed. Blood and death. Beef and garlic mixed with the red wine Colonel Dryhurst had given her as part of her pay last time she cooked for one of his dinner parties.
A
treat for you and Sam to share
, he’d said with a kindly wink. “I—I can’t.”
“I understand,” Luisa said. “But you must eat tomorrow. No starving.”
Rose shook her head and blinked back tears. She wasn’t one to go into a decline. Tomorrow she’d need all her strength and wits about her to decide what she must do. Surely for tonight she could only be a new widow.
Chapter Two
Elijah intended to go straight to Rose’s tent after he entrusted Sam’s body to the burial detail, but distraction in the form of Lieutenant Farlow intervened.
“Corporal Cameron,” the young officer called from the entry to his tent. “Just the man I hoped to see.”
Elijah made himself smile. Ordinarily he was happy to help Farlow—to be the subject of non-patronizing respect from an officer, however junior, truly was gratifying. But now the necklace still hidden beneath his coat seemed to burn into his skin with a far greater discomfort than its bulk alone could account for. The sooner he was free of it, the better. “Good evening, sir,” he said. “How can I help you?”
Farlow opened his tent flap wider and waved him in. “It’s these dashed accounts again. The colonel wants the Registry of Deceased Soldiers brought up to date as promptly as may be, but I don’t trust my own figures.
You
know.”
Elijah did. If one judged Farlow by his speech and manner, he seemed a clever and likely young gentleman indeed—alert, quick-witted and well-informed about everything from the state of the army to debates in Parliament to the latest doings of the London stage. But those gifts deserted him when he was presented with a book or a pen. He
could
read and work sums, but he was slow and halting about it, prone to misspell words and scramble numbers. It was a mystery to Elijah how such a thing could be, for a man who’d had every advantage of education from infancy up, but he supposed it was something like Pritchard, who struggled to keep step on the march, or Elijah’s own sister, Miriam, who could not carry a tune. He knew Farlow had been sent into the army because his family despaired of placing him in any other genteel profession.
“I suppose they must have imagined me doing nothing but riding about on a horse waving a sword,” he’d confessed ruefully when he admitted his struggles to Elijah not long after joining the regiment as an ensign. Colonel Dryhurst had invited him to dinner, showing his usual careful civility to a young officer. Elijah had been called into that same meal to settle a bet with an officer from another regiment about the mental capacities of the Negro. He hated such performances. It had been one thing when he was a boy, but as a grown man and an NCO, to be called into the colonel’s tent to recite poetry and demonstrate mental arithmetic was humiliating. Yet it would be churlish to refuse his colonel, the patron of his family who’d employed his parents from the day they escaped from slavery in Virginia, and who’d spoken for Elijah when at fifteen he’d pleaded to enlist as a true soldier and not only a drummer, and to stay with the Forty-Third instead of joining one of the West Indian regiments of black soldiers led by white officers.
So he’d performed as requested, and a few days later Farlow had drawn him aside. Could he read, write and work sums on paper as well as he could in his head?
Yes
,
sir
, Elijah had answered, unable to imagine separating the abilities. He’d been taught by his father, a literate man, who’d learned as a boy from his own father. Elijah’s grandfather had been white—and the owner of his grandmother. He hadn’t loved his slave-born son enough to grant him his freedom, but he’d given him the softer life of a house slave, trained to serve his master with his mind as well as his body.
Elijah hadn’t told Farlow all that, not at the beginning. But Farlow, after swearing him to secrecy, had explained his strange problem with writing and sums and offered him occasional work as his clerk, whenever his duties called upon him to keep the company’s or regiment’s books.
Elijah had accepted. He’d liked the young officer and pitied him for his predicament, and he was never averse to an honest chance to earn a little money when the army was so often behind on giving him his pay. A few of their peers in both the officer and enlisted ranks had remarked on so junior an officer hiring a clerk, but as far as either could tell no one suspected the real reason behind it. After all, why should anyone guess that so clever a man as Farlow struggled to write or work sums? They’d even developed a friendship of a sort, as much as they could across the ranks that separated them, and Elijah enjoyed the odd afternoon spent with pen in hand, working over the regimental accounts. He’d never wanted to become the clerk or gentleman’s private secretary his father had intended him to be, but he had a knack for arithmetic that his everyday life gave him few chances to use.
Tonight, however, he wanted to go to Rose. Still, he sat down at Farlow’s little table, adjusted the candles so he could see his work, and began reviewing Farlow’s notes. Despite their many errors, he knew the regiment well enough to make quick work of entering the names of the fallen into the registry of the dead.
“I’ll add Sam Merrifield, sir,” he said as he reached the end of the list.
“Really? When? I thought I had everyone.”
Elijah blew out a rueful breath. “After the battle, during the looting.”
“Too bad. I liked him, from what little I knew of him. He seemed a good sort.”
“He was.”
“His wife is the English girl, the pretty one who cooks, isn’t she?”
More like the beauty whose cooking would have done honor to any aristocratic general’s table. “Yes, sir.”
“What will become of her now?”
Elijah shrugged and tried to look as little concerned by the matter as possible. “The usual, I suppose. If she wants to marry, she’ll have her pick of the men.”
“But what if she doesn’t?”
“She might go home, if she can afford the ship’s fare.”
Farlow grinned. “After today, there ought to be plenty to be had, if it’s a matter of taking up a collection.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Did you do well, in the looting?”
Elijah shifted uncomfortably in the face of such a bald question.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell the colonel.”
He allowed himself a small smile. “I have sufficient unto my needs. And yourself, sir?”
“Not as much as some—Colonel Dryhurst kept me too close till it was almost over, drat his righteous soul. But I’ve a fine mantilla to send my sister.” He shook out the black lace, which he’d draped over his camp chair, and Elijah made suitable sounds of admiration.
After a moment, he finished enumerating the back pay that had been due to the dead soldiers, capped the bottle of ink and wiped the quill clean. “If that’s all for this evening, sir,” he said, “since I was with Sam Merrifield at the end, I promised Rose I’d tell her of it.”
“Of course.” Farlow reached in his trunk for a purse, fished out a coin and gave it to Elijah, who took it gravely, though it was a pittance compared to the French silver weighing down his haversack. “Have you any thoughts of courting the fair Rose yourself, or would you prefer a bride of a tawnier hue?”
Rose Merrifield,
his
wife? At the mere suggestion of it, all the longing he’d ever felt for her but carefully tamped down because she was already married flared to life. He could run
his
hands through her tumbling chestnut curls and all down the lush, strong curves of her body. He’d have her to talk to every night, all that clever, practical good sense with the hidden passion and poetry that came out when she talked of food. And to eat her cooking for every dinner—
He shook his head, firmly. “If I know her at all, sir, she won’t be in the market for another bridegroom, of any hue whatsoever.”
* * *
Once Luisa and Jemmy left her alone, after making her promise that she would come to them if she needed anything at all, Rose set the stewpot aside where they couldn’t miss seeing it—holding her breath so she didn’t have to smell it—carefully doused her fire and at last slipped into the blessed privacy of the canvas walls of her tent.
Even temporary solitude was not to be. Despite having slept through his friend’s removal, Jake stirred and sat up at her entrance.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
He rubbed his eyes in the semi-darkness. “Where’s Papa? You said he’d be back tonight.”
If only he’d slept till morning. Maybe by then she would’ve worked out how to tell him. She sat on the pallet of blankets she’d prepared to share with her husband and opened her arms to her son. “Come here, dear heart.”
Still clutching his blanket, he crossed the short space between them on his sturdy legs and collapsed into her lap. She wrapped the blanket all around him, keeping hold of a corner herself, as if it could soothe both of them.
“Where’s Papa?” he repeated.
“You know there was a battle today,” she began.
His head bobbed in a nod, his soft hair rustling beneath her chin. “Yes. It was noisy, and I smelled the smoke.”
She swallowed. “In battles, some men die. Today, one of them was Papa.”
Jake hunched closer to her. “He’s dead?”
“Yes, dear heart. I’m sorry.”
Jake pondered for a moment. “Then he won’t come back. Dead means you don’t come back. Like Captain Powell.”
“Yes, like that.” Today’s had been the first pitched battle of the year. Rose reckoned Jake too young to remember last year’s clashes. But Captain Powell had died of a fever just two months ago, and his loss had made an impression—the captain, who’d had sons and daughters of his own at home, had made pets of all the regiment’s children.
“Oh. Is Papa in heaven, too?”
“Yes,” Rose said firmly.
She’d expected Jake to cry, but he only sighed. “I wish he was here,” he said.
Rose cuddled him tighter, comforting herself as well as him. “So do I.”
They sat silently. A few more tears slid down Rose’s cheeks. Despite her grief, thoughts of tomorrow still crept in. She had to keep her son safe. He was a quiet, sensitive boy, not as loud and high-spirited as most his age. She knew she’d have offers to marry again, but would any come from men who’d understand Jake and love him like their own son?
She could always go back to England. The money Luisa had brought her should be enough to pay for their passage and even keep them for some time. But it wouldn’t last forever, and what little family she and Sam had still living couldn’t afford to feed another pair of mouths. The Merrifields had been kind enough to take her in the last time she’d been alone and desperate, but she couldn’t allow herself to become a burden to them.
What kind of work could she get with a small child in her care? She supposed women in her situation farmed their children out to some family who agreed to look after them for a fee...but how could she trust such people, especially those she could afford on a maid or cook’s wages, to give Jake the care and affection he needed?
No, marrying again was safer, no matter how much she longed to go home, and no matter how odd and wrong it seemed to go from Sam to another man with no time to mourn in between. She must simply choose wisely.
Eventually Jake fell asleep again, and she laid him on his pallet. She knew she’d have to repeat her explanations of Sam’s death—young children had a habit of believing anything unpleasant might disappear overnight—and she didn’t look forward to introducing a new stepfather to him. He wouldn’t understand, not at all...or because he was so young and trusting, would he simply accept that it must be so? But Sam’s family wouldn’t, and she dreaded having to write them and tell them that not only was their son and brother dead, but that she’d already married another. None of them had ever traveled more than a few miles from Aspwell Heath. They couldn’t be expected to understand the ways of the army.
She sighed. She would do her best to explain, and hope they’d manage to forgive her by the time the war was over.
Georgie Yonge would be the first to propose, she reckoned. He admired her—no, that was too polite a word for it. He
lusted
after her, and hadn’t much troubled to hide it, either. She hated the way he looked at her, and if she married him, it would mean the end of her friendship with Elijah, for Yonge was one of the outspoken handful of men who hated him.
Colonel Dryhurst’s pet nigger
, Yonge called him,
who ought to be serving an officer or beating a drum instead of giving white men orders.
Never mind that Elijah was the best NCO in the company, who ought to be a sergeant by now if ability alone counted for anything.
She didn’t want to lose the pleasure of his company at her fireside over dinner, and the fun of seeing her good food and a little wine transform him from a careful, correct soldier to a born storyteller with a dry, wicked wit and an irresistible smile. So there was nothing to consider there—she would tell Yonge no.
Who else would ask? Matt Roberts was a good man, though the notion of him touching her made her shiver in distaste. Surely she could overcome that. It wasn’t his fault, after all, that he looked a little like John Bassett from Aspwell Park, or that his eyes were the same shade of hazel.
Still, he wasn’t her first choice. Who would be, if she could have her pick of the company? Sam had often asked her that on the eve of battle. They’d lie in each other’s arms in these very same blankets, now so empty without him. “If I fall,” he’d say lightly, as if it was a fitting matter to jest about, “who will you choose for your next?”
She’d always refused to name anyone, and this time he hadn’t asked. But now that it had come to pass, how would she answer?
She remembered a conversation with Luisa last year, when the latter had been outspoken in her praise of Lieutenant Farlow’s blond good looks. Rose had protested that she was married. Luisa had smiled knowingly and asked if marriage had blinded Rose’s eyes. She’d laughed and said no, and that she supposed Farlow indeed was the handsomest of the officers, but that she didn’t usually think of them that way.
“What about the men, then?” unrepentant Luisa had asked.
Rose should’ve said Sam, or that it would be even worse for her as a married woman to look at men she might have a chance to have, were she free. But somehow what she’d said, without a moment’s thought, was “Elijah Cameron.”
Luisa had blinked at her in amazement, and Rose had defended her choice. Hadn’t her friend noticed Elijah’s smile, and the way it lit his face and invited you to share in the joke? And unlike many tall, long-limbed men she’d known, he was all grace and no awkwardness. It was a pleasure to watch him walk across the camp, or to toss little Jake and Fernando high in the air and then catch them in his big, sure hands.