A Small Patch of Sky

Chapter 35 of "A Sword for Wellington", Book Three of The Môrdreigiau Chronicles

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The story began in A Grail for Eidothea and continued with A River Trembles. Now the Chosen Court seeks another Arthurian treasure. New here? Save this post and have a binge read. You deserve it.

They all attend the Duchess of Richmond’s ball (even though they are not on the list of invitees). Napoleon’s advance upon the city is announced during it and the men scatter to take up their positions for the battle.

Gwenddydd is not used to waiting for a battle to be over. She and Eidothea look for news from the front and help prepare bandages for the wounded. It’s too late for them to leave the city. As the wounded are brought into the city, Gwenddydd, Ondine and Eidothea help attend to them. Ondine used her healing powers. Gwenddydd rolled over a dead soldier, worried that she would find her Hugh.

The deceased soldier was not Hugh. Gwenddydd rose and moved onto the next figure. This one breathed.

“Think of anything but Hugh injured, but him dead,” she muttered to herself, kneeling once more.

The gore-covered soldier groaned and tried to smile. She blinked back incipient tears and tended to his wounds. What she would give to be on the battle line, fighting beside her Hugh! If only her education in this time had included learning how to use modern weaponry. She bound the wound tight, murmuring soothing words to the fevered patient. Her skirt had long since become a dull dark red. The hem of her skirt clogged with mud.

Thunder rumbled overhead. She wondered how she had once mistaken cannon-fire for that cracking sound. The skies grew black with the approaching tempest.

“Bloody hell,” cursed a soldier at her feet, grimacing. “I never expected to drown this far inland.” Unable to move, rain would fill his nose and throat.

“Here, let’s move you.” She dragged him from the curb and propped him against the leg of a park bench. Able-bodied men ferried the wounded to the hospitals on stretchers. Many had been taken into the houses and the streets began to empty of all but the hobbling mobile and the dead.

The rain started, a downpour. Gwenddydd continued to tend to the remaining wounded left in the open. Her skirts and bodice clung to her skin.

Beside her, Miss Pendyr drooped. “I’m all in,” she confessed.

Gwenddydd wiped her brow with the side of her upper arm. “Let’s find Ondine and then return to the hotel to eat. I cannot rest, I must return here.”

“Why?” Miss Pendyr asked. “Oh, there she is.” Ondine straightened from her couch beside a prone form and waited for them to approach.

“Hugh.” Gwenddydd could say no more.

Miss Pendyr clutched at her sleeve. “You think he is among these men?”

She lifted her chin. “Even if he’s not, these men are somebody’s sons, husbands, brothers or lovers. Like Hugh. We owe it to their womenfolk.”

The three of them walked back to the hotel, Ondine sagging against Miss Pendyr.

“There are still no horses to be had,” Mr. Pendyr reported while they ate a light meal. “They have all been taken by the military or those who have already fled.”

“I cannot walk all the way to Ghent,” Lady Meredith protested, poking at her soup with a spoon.

“We will stay.” Gwenddydd forced confidence in her voice. “If any Frenchman tries anything with us, I will gut him.”

“Give me a knife and I will do the same,” Miss Pendyr vowed.

Gwenddydd grinned, glad to see Miss Pendyr’s spirit revive, the strain tight across her cheeks. “That’s the spirit. I am going to see what more can be done. Are you coming?”

Miss Pendyr’s face paled a little. “What can we do in the evening? Everyone will be resting.”

Ondine made a rude noise of disbelief.

Not the surgeons, Gwenddydd wanted to tell Miss Pendyr. Not the men who couldn’t sleep. “Then stay.”

“No. I—I will join you.”

Despite her brave mien, Miss Pendyr didn’t last much longer. Once within the tents and commandeered buildings, the miasma of blood and other bodily fluids overpowered her.

“How can you stand it?” Miss Pendyr held a handkerchief to her nose.

Her face unfettered by linen, Gwenddydd wrinkled her nose. “You should try spending a long winter in a small enclosed space. This is nothing.”

Ondine murmured to Miss Pendyr. “This is worse than the battle of Môr Hafren.”

Miss Pendyr shuddered. “Stay with Miss Jones, if you can stand it. I will go collect more bandages and help make more of them.”

Gwenddydd ignored the stench of blood. Her mind flipped into that world where blood didn’t matter. She focused on helping, on doing her duty. She clung to the notion, a piece of driftwood floating on a vast sea of agonised faces.

Morning came. The sun climbing, she paused between tents to stretch her aching back. The rumbling of cannon stopped. Was the battle over? She looked south, wishing for news of the battlefield, wishing she knew if Hugh had survived. A phantom pain deep in her gut gnawed at her and she pressed a hand over it, holding it in.

A whiff of warm chicken caught her nostrils. Her stomach gurgled, demanding. She followed her nose and found a soup kitchen set up for the doctors.

“You are still here?” one asked, clutching a steaming mug between two hands. Blood encrusted his fingernails and stained the elbows of his rolled up sleeves. His face hung grey as the steam over his mug.

“Of course.” She blew into her mug, salivating at the rich broth.

“The English civilians are leaving.”

“I know. We are not.”

“You do not think Wellington is beaten?”

She took a mouthful of soup and pondered his question. So many wounded had come in. Could the army be so depleted and still win? She didn’t know any more and said so. “The French are not here yet.”

“The roads are almost impassable thanks to that storm last night. We won’t see as many wounded today.” He eyed her hands. “Those gloves are not doing much for you any more.”

She looked down at her hands. The seams had split along three of the fingers and the blood had hardened the soft kid into stiff leather. “They will do.”

The doctor studied her and she bore it, conserving her energy. “Nothing much fazes you, does it.”

“No.”

“Then you can come help me in the surgery tent.” He finished the last dregs in his mug. “I will be removing limbs.”

She nodded and took another mouthful of soup. She peered out of the tent, looking for Ondine, but did not see her.

The hours blurred. Gwenddydd stopped long enough to eat and snatch a brief nap. She always checked on the newly arrived wounded. Very few officers lay amongst them. She learned from one of the surgeons that the officers had been taken to the houses of friends and relatives. As she hadn’t heard from Lady Meredith, she assumed Hugh hadn’t been brought in.

She could not sit and wait for him anyway. She had to keep busy.

In the evening, a ragged cheer rose above the ceaseless moaning of the wounded. Wellington had won.

Smiling, Gwenddydd joined the soldiers’ women in feeding and soothing the men. She knelt by a young man lying on a bloody straw pallet, who still leaked blood no matter what they did. She glanced around for Ondine but did not see her.

Surprised that he’d lasted this long, she murmured the good news to him. Her heart threatened to break as the boy tried to smile, his lips cracking. She soothed them with a wet rag, dribbling moisture between his lips.

He swallowed hard and stared beyond her, his eyes round. She took his hand, certain he’d begun the voyage to the underworld. “My lord!” he croaked.

She twisted to follow the direction of his gaze.

Wellington stood at attention in the narrow aisle. His clean white breeches and neat white neckcloth indicated he had returned from the battle long since, with time to change.

His piercing, hooded gaze drew her to her feet. “Your Grace.” She dipped a brief curtsey.

He examined her. She grew aware of her bloodied, sweat-stained gown. “Were you at the front?”

“No, sir.”

“You look it.” He moved towards her, paused and took her hand. “Is there a place we might speak in private?”

She racked her brains, pushing a matted curl behind her ear. She remembered a small courtyard near the kitchens. “Yes.” She led the way, the duke following, dispensing dry cheer to the men conscious enough to recognise him.

She stepped out into a tiny courtyard, plunging into almost complete darkness. The only light came from the windows looking into the small square and a small patch of sky, growing brighter with the approaching dawn. Water dripped from overhanging branches, dew already falling.

She faced Wellington, finding him a tall, dark shadow. “I have heard the news, your Grace. Congratulations.”

“Your sword could have done better,” the duke snapped. “The casualties...”

She dared to lay a hand on his forearm. “I know.”

They stood in silence for a long time until the duke cleared his throat. “I came for a reason, Miss Jones.”

She peered at him, trying to make out the lines of his face in the dim light. A chill of foreboding settled in her bones. “Tell me.”

He drew her closer to the lit windows, bringing his face into clear view. His light blue eyes swelled, the whites of them red. His pale face had lost all colour. She sucked in her breath, to find him so altered, despite having won the battle.

“I lost a lot of my family,” he said, referring to the aides he kept about him. “I would go to Lady Meredith Rathven myself but I thought you would take the news better and break it more gently than I ever could.”

“Oh, Lady.” The words whipped from her hoarse throat. “He’s dead.”

“They haven’t recovered his body. He got caught up in that mad cavalry charge. Someone saw him fall. We lost a great many men.”

Blinking back tears, she stared at the duke. “He might still be alive. He could be out there.” She spun from him.

He caught her arm. “If he’s managed to survive the storm and the battle today, then yes, he may still live. I have yet to receive the final accounting, but by God, don’t hold foolish hopes, girl. Devenish is gone.”

Gone. Dead. The Lady hadn’t protected him after all. She closed her eyes, wanting to will away this new horror.

He hadn’t been spared. Lady Meredith’s prophecy had come true. Hugh. Dead.

She drew in a shuddering breath and a sob escaped her pursed lips.

“My dear girl, I am sorry.” After a tentative pat one her shoulder, the duke embraced her.

She leant against the duke, taking solace from his strength, from his own grief because he offered it. He stroked her hair, holding her head against his shoulder.

“Hush now,” the duke croaked.

Dead.

No more. She had nothing left to live for: her mission complete, her duty done, her lover dead and her homeland destroyed. She gained little comfort that the Normans who followed had done the same to the Saeson.

The duke mourned too. She remembered hearing that the Duke of Brunswick had been brought in, of colonels slaughtered. She knew how many men she had treated and lost.

She shivered and dared to lift her arms and hold him too. The moment of communing grief turned to awkwardness. Wellington released her and stepped back. “It’s not over yet,” he said. “We will catch Napoleon before he reaches Paris. I must go.”

“Of course.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her blood-roughened gloves.

“Go home, Miss Jones.” The Duke of Wellington retreated to the door. “Thank your people for their gift. It was a very near run thing. I would hate to think how the battle have gone without it.” His teeth flashed in a wry smile. “Or the Prussians.”

She listened to him pass the wounded, the clack of his boot heels fading into isolated cheers. When even that sound faded, the last of her strength went with it.

Sinking to the chilled, wet flagstones, she stared after the departed duke, tears falling unheeded down her cheeks.

When she saw no more, she crumpled upon the uneven stones and sobbed. She shook with the horror of Hugh’s death. It eclipsed all else. She didn’t even feel the cold seep through her damp clothing and into her bones.

Nothing could bring Hugh back.

Nothing.

Her fists thudded against the unforgiving stone. She cried until there were no more tears to give him, her ribs heaving in dry shudders.

She lay there, the occasional hiccuping sob escaping, until even that act became too much. The tiny courtyard fell silent.

Numbed by tears, she let the stones take her, feeling herself become a part of their rough, implacable hardness, burying the grief, locking it away in her granite heart.

Her cold, dead heart.

She blinked back a fresh wash of tears. She hadn’t wanted love. Oh, but he was gone, gone.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the blue sky, screened by leafy branches.

Lost. Alone.

She closed her eyes, willing herself to think. They hadn’t found Hugh. He might still be out there, or at a farmhouse or inn nearby—but surely they would have checked there as well? Where could he be?

Gwenddydd staggered to her feet, feeling like an old woman. She would find him. If not alive, then there had to be a body.

There had to be.

She re-entered the makeshift hospital, untying the apron she had been given and tossing it to the ground.

An arm caught her and she stopped, waiting, staring at the bloodied mud. The surgeon spoke. “Miss Jones? I am sorry. Can I find someone to take you back to your residence?”

Glancing away, she shook her head. She didn’t need anybody. His hand left her arm and she resumed her slow walking pace.

She walked through the streets back to the hotel, looking neither left nor right. She had a new goal now, and she would carry it out.

The lamps in the hotel lobby blazed, blinding her, and the boisterous festivities ceased. She crossed to the concierge. Her skirts dragged, heavier than her leaden feet.

“Miss Jones?” The concierge came around his desk and approached her. “Do you need a doctor, Miss Jones?”

She opened her mouth and croaked. She tried to cough and clear it. “Water,” she gasped.

The concierge hastened to fetch it.

She sipped the cool liquid, feeling her throat clear. “I want you to give Lady Meredith a message,” she said, in a deliberate, measured voice. She didn’t want to get this wrong. “Tell her...tell her that I am going to look for Hugh.”

“For me?”

“For Hugh,” she repeated without a sign of impatience. “Sir Hugh, her nephew.”

The concierge frowned. “Perhaps you should go up and tell her yourself? Rest perhaps?”

“No.” She backed away. “No,” she repeated.

Quickening her grieving pace, she escaped the hotel. If she wanted to find Hugh alive, she didn’t have much time.

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