“Indeed,” Peter answered.“It was somewhat of a quick betrothal.But I have known her for quite some time.”
“Ah, an English lass she be then.”
Peter coughed and changed the topic of conversation in desperation...and curiosity.“San Sebastián.How did you...”Survive?“And the others, did they...”How many more had he lost?
“Once I saw the city start to smoke up, I hid away.I knew there would be a great punishing for burning those many homes to the ground, and I was not about to catch myself in all that business.”
Peter nodded his head, tapping on his chin.After the French had retreated and surrendered, a number of soldiers had entered the town to sack and pillage...and do much more terrible things than that alone.
“Mighty mad, the men were,” Price continued.“Half-starved from months of siege on so little rations.I wager they thought it their right to go find themselves some food and ale.”
“And they found—and took—a great deal more than that,” Peter said, his voice low and pained.Holy relics from the local chapel.Precious and personal family heirlooms.Not to mention their cruel and merciless taking of the precious innocence of so many women, some of them much too young.
“Aye,” Charley agreed, his darting gaze downcast and sorrowful.
“I didn’t receive orders to recall you and the other men.How was it that you ended up here in London?”
Charley shifted on his feet, rubbing a hand across his neck as he chuckled.“See, I heard tellyouwould be here, Cap’n, and ain’t nobody been able to hear from you since the city fell.I jus’ had to see ya to know you survived and all.”
“My soul is a little worse for the wear, but I survived all right,” Peter said, lifting the corner of his mouth to try to bring humor to his words, which felt all too heavy and all too true.
“An awful lot, that sacking was.”
“More horrible than I can say.And it would seem that our leaders are insistent that it didn’t occur at all, even though there are many of us who know otherwise.”
“Oh, Cap’n, Wellington done had made himself some statements that were mighty clear about that.Published in theRoyal Gazette, they were.”
Peter stared hard at Charley.“Truly?I haven’t heard anything official made outside of army tent doors, so to speak.”
“’Tis true.There are an awful lot of Spaniards speakin’ out about it, seems.I did find me a copy, Cap’n, though itweren’t no easy task.Here, now.Take a look for yerself.”
Charley handed Peter a wrinkled copy of London’sThe Times, dated October 30, 1813.Just as the soldier had said, the name Wellington jumped out at him from the page.Peter scanned it quickly.The quotation from Wellington implied that the town was not, in fact, sacked; instead, it was merely robbed of wine and other articles.According to him, the destruction of the town had nothing to do with the British troops.
“Makes me sick, it does.And here I was, thinking Wellington was the savior of the country.”
“He has been, in many respects,” Peter replied.“But in this one, he is doing his troops and the Spanish a great disservice.Particularly when you consider that he was not even in San Sebastián when it all occurred.”
“No doubt he heard it all from Graham.”
“It’s an outrage to see.Even more frustrating is the matter that now our troops are moving into France, while Spanish troops are being sent back to their home country, after we have left it in pieces.”
“T’was a devastation.But that is the lot of the soldier, isn’t it, Cap’n?Seein’ such atrocities and then movin’ on to fight the next battle?There ain’t nothing we can do to fight it, not when that is our lot.Can’t sell me commission like some ranker, pardon me language.This is the only way I can pay for any sort of living at all.An’ then I hear about me friends, abandoned after the war, no money or support, an’ I know this is me lot.”Charley’s shoulders were slumped, his face devoid of emotion.He had an air of hopelessness about him, which tugged at Peter’s heart in a way it never had before.
Was this how all his men had felt?Trapped in their roles?Destined to kill and pillage and act as if it were their duty, their right?What a sorry existence indeed.And Peter himself had been fighting such a tempest of emotions on the inside each time he received a letter from home, so much so that he had stilled his emotions on the outside.He had become too disciplined, too practiced, too unfeeling—until Ana had changed him entirely, cracking his heart wide open to realize the true horror of San Sebastián and the rest of what they had been living in during the ongoing war with the French.
* * *
Darkness shrouded the library as Peter sat across from Captain Davies, waiting for an explanation.The man sipped deeply from his lemonade, as if he hoped it were something a great deal stronger.Peter didn’t blame the man.Theirs was a disastrous plight.
It was difficult to ascertain one solid reasoning as to why the British soldiers had razed San Sebastián—and other towns—so violently, so completely.Perhaps it was the admittance of such actions by the customary laws of war at the time.Perhaps it was the breakdown of trust in command, particularly with months of failed attempts to break through the French’s defenses.Perhaps it was the innate wretchedness and greed brought on by delayed payments and poverty that drove them into the homes to loot and search for valuables but turned them to the helpless inhabitants housed there.Perhaps they thought it was their right, having sacrificed a great deal to fight for Spain’s freedom, turning their looting into a sort of unholy tithe.Perhaps it was the desperation that so many of the lower soldiers felt, knowing that they were trapped in their positions, that no sort of future awaited them at home, that they would be chained into their uniforms until they died, or deserted, which was even worse than death.
Ultimately, Peter believed that there was some sort of vast transformation that occurred in the sackers, somewhere between the beginning of the war and the moment France’s white flag was raised.Their minds were truly altered, overrun with a blur of vengeance, relief, euphoria, and even excitement.So long they had become numb to death—so long they had created terms and codes for their victims instead of names—that they not only lost their humanity, butthey lost their ability to see humanity in those around them.Even in those fragile, innocent women and children whose lives they destroyed.It was almost mythic in scale and horror.There was no other way to explain the way disciplined soldiers became demons.And drink made them devilish, even more than war had.In Peter’s eyes, they could no longer be considered men, no longer possessed even a shred of humanity to have enacted the atrocities he had witnessed.The atrocities Ana had suffered.
Peter had never felt any such transformation.For so many years, he had found comfort and escape in the discipline of the army.Now the veil had been unceremoniously ripped from his eyes; he saw just the same selfishness here that he had seen in his own home, and he could not allow it to continue.He wanted to remember the lives, the names of their unintended victims.Starting with Ana María.And Major Bailon.
But it was increasingly difficult to come to terms with it all when other leaders, even his friend Captain Davies, saw the actions as unpreventable.And Davies had paid him an unsolicited call at Heathridge Hall to tell him as much.
“Our men were starving, on the brink of death themselves.They would have sooner left the army than continue on for another day without some relief from their lot,” Captain Davies protested, shamefaced as he did so.He paced back and forth in the dark wooden library, vacated by Matthew for their privacy.
