Susanna Kearsley - The Winter Sea

Sophia had gone silent, looking down at her linked fingers while she thought. She asked him quietly, ‘Was he at Malplaquet?’

‘He was.’ She felt his eyes upon her face. ‘But no man who did fight at Malplaquet came out the same as he went in, and David McClelland was changed by that day more than most men.’

She gave a small nod. She had heard many tales of that battle these past months, and many accounts had been printed and widely discussed in the drawing rooms here, so she knew it had been an unthinkably bloody and brutal encounter beyond even what the most hardened old soldier could bring to his mind. While she might bear resentment that David McClelland had fought on the opposite side, against Moray, she knew any man who had lived through that day was deserving of sympathy.

Colonel Graeme carried on, ‘He was too badly wounded in the battle to continue with his regiment, and after that he came to serve King Jamie, and has served him with a loyalty that none would dare to question.’

She was mindful of the earlier betrayals that had touched both him and Moray. ‘You are certain that he does deserve your trust?’

‘Aye, lass. As certain as my life.’ He was still watching her. ‘I’d like for ye to meet him. Will ye come with me?’

‘What, now?’ She glanced instinctively toward the open doorway to the entry hall. ‘It would not be so wise for me to leave the house when everyone believes I have a headache.’

With a crinkle at the corners of his eyes he said, ‘Ye’ve done things in the past that were not wise, and have survived them. Come, ’twill be two hours yet till your good hosts are home from kirk, and ye can tell the servants that ye have a mind to go out walking with your uncle, which is no more than the truth.’ She knew that look, the one that dared her to accept his challenge, knowing that she would. ‘My mother always said a walk in open air was the best way to cure the headache. Tell them that.’

‘All right. I will.’ Her chin went up with something of her old defiance, and he gave a nod.

‘Good lass.’

Outside, she drew the loose hood of her cloak up so it all but hid her face, though there was no one in the High Street to observe them. There was nothing but the quiet of a Sunday afternoon with everybody gone to kirk, including, most likely, the widow McClelland. She asked, ‘Does David McClelland have no other kin in Kirkcudbright?’

‘No, not anymore. Nor in Ireland, for all his kin there have died off.’

‘He’s alone, then.’ She knew what that felt like. She thought to herself that it must have been hard coming back to this place after being so wounded in war, to be ill and surrounded by strangers.

The colonel was reading her thoughts. ‘You’re much alike, the two of ye. ’Twill do ye good to meet.’ They’d reached the turning of the High Street where the old stone mercat cross stood lonely in the empty marketplace.

Sophia said, ‘Perhaps he will not wish to have a visitor.’

Colonel Graeme felt more sure that he would welcome the diversion. ‘He is not a man to lie so long abed. It fouls his temper. And as fascinating as I am myself, I do suspect he’s borne enough of my own company these past weeks.’

She smiled at that, and then fell into sober thought once more. ‘Is he recovered of his wounds?’

The colonel shrugged. ‘He has a limp that he will carry all his life, for he did nearly lose his leg. And he was shot below his heart, which left his lungs so weakened that the illness we encountered on the ship did strike him badly. But in all, he was most fortunate. So many in those woods of Malplaquet did not survive.’ And then he too fell silent.

They did not have far to walk before they reached the house—a stone-built, square-walled building huddled close against its neighbors, with its windows standing open to the warming air of spring.

‘He may be sleeping,’ warned the colonel as they entered, so Sophia kept behind him as he knocked upon the door to the front room. There was a brief word of reply, which she could barely hear, and then the colonel swung the door full open, motioning that she should step inside.

The room was dim, the curtains only partly drawn as though the daylight was not wanted here.

The man they’d come to see was up and standing at the window with his back to them, so that Sophia only saw his squared stance and his shoulders and the brown hair fastened back above the collar of his shirt. He wore no coat, just breeks and boots, and in the fine white shirt he stood there still and pale and like a ghost, the only thing of light in that dull room.

He spoke again, not looking round, his voice grown hoarser from the illness. ‘Did ye see her? Was she well?’

‘She will be now,’ the colonel gently said, and stepping back retreated to the entry hall and closed the door behind him.

Sophia could not move from where she stood. Could not believe it.

Then he turned, a ghost no longer, but a breathing man. A living man, whose shadowed eyes grew brighter in the grip of hard emotion as he left the window and in two strides crossed to fold her in his arms, his touch as careful as it had been on their wedding night, as fierce as it had been at their last parting.

Still she could not move or speak, not even when he took her face in both his hands and brushed away her tears and drew a ragged breath himself, and in a voice she had not thought to hear again he said, ‘I told ye I’d come back to ye.’

And then his mouth came down on hers and for a long time after that there were no words at all.

THE VILLAGE OF MALPLAQUET stood at the border of Flanders and France, with deep woods to the north and the south. On September 11th, the morning of battle, the French had been firmly dug into those woods and were waiting for first light, and for the attack of the massed Allied forces—the English and Germans and Dutch fighting now with the great Duke of Marlborough.

Dawn had come, and brought a dense mist rolling from the fields into the wood to make grey phantoms of the men who crouched there, waiting, weary from a lack of rations and a night of little sleep. The Allied armies used that mist to hide their movements; when it cleared they started firing, and a short while after that they gave the signal and began the fight in earnest, throwing everything they had against the wood.

It seemed to Moray there were four of them for every one of his own men. The air hung thick with smoke and screams and cannon-fire, the edges of the wood were set ablaze by the artillery, and men on both sides fell beneath the fury of the guns and flashing swords.

He fell himself at midday. The cut across his leg came first, and brought him to his knees so that he scarcely felt the pistol shot that tore him near his heart and knocked him down to lie in leaves and mud among the dying and the dead. He could not move. The pain within his chest was so consuming he could only breathe by concentrating, and although he willed his arms to find the strength to lift him, drag him, anything, they would not answer.

He could hear the sounds of struggle moving past him, leaving him behind—the clash of men and steel, the raw-voiced yells and rush of feet and sound of branches splintering, and further off the thunder on the ground that shook the forest as the cavalry advance of countless horses and their saber-wielding riders started down upon the battlefield beyond.

And some time after that there came a silence that to Moray was more horrible than any sound of war, because it was not truly silence. In the dimness of the shattered wood, where smoke yet rolled across the trampled undergrowth and mingled with the smells of fire and blood, he heard the moans and anguished praying of the fallen. Some men prayed for life and some for death, in languages as varied as their uniforms—the Dutch and Germans and the Scots and French and English tangled side by side, for all men looked alike when they were dying.