‘Why…’ she began, her voice so constricted she had to try again. She was confounded by everything she might ask. Jonathan gripped the arms of his chair as if he might leap up and flee, but his eyes were clear. He is sober. When did I last look into his eyes, and see them sober? ‘What… What did you do, on the way to Corunna, that shamed you so? What did you do, that made you hate yourself so?’
Jonathan stared at her in silence. If he deduced that she had read his letter, he gave no sign of it.
‘You have told me often that I will burn in hell,’ he said, eventually. Starling held her breath. ‘But I have seen it already. I have seen hell, and it is not hot. It is cold. As cold as dead flesh.’
‘What do you mean?’ Starling whispered.
‘You have never asked me about the war before.’
‘I… you did not want to talk to me.’
‘I did not want to talk to anybody. Not until Mrs Weekes made me.’
‘She…’ Starling swallowed; could not tell what she felt. ‘She said I should ask you the things I want to know.’
‘And this is what you want to know? Then you shall hear it,’ said Jonathan. Suddenly, the look on his face made Starling want to stop him, made her want to not hear it, but it was too late. He took a deep breath; began implacably.
‘Before the retreat came the advance, of course; in the autumn of 1808. We advanced into Spain divided, with no maps, poor supply lines and only some ill-informed Portuguese scouts to guide us. It was folly, before it even began.’ He paused, shook his head. ‘But orders had come from London, and had to be obeyed. The army was to be divided into three parts to travel more covertly; those three parts were to take three different routes, and reunite at Salamanca.’ The man in high command, Sir John Moore, was overheard to mutter of the recklessness of it. The sky and ground were still dry, and a dense pall of dust hung above the army, but Jonathan felt a deep foreboding. He realised that it would be a miracle if all eventually reached Salamanca before the winter, and without starving to death. Huge, black moths beat their silent wings in his mind.
He rode Suleiman to a high ridge and sat for a while with Captain Sutton at his side, watching the long columns of men and wagons and horses as they moved out. Most of the men were cheerful, pleased to be on the move. He heard snatches of song and laughter; the roll and beat of the marching drums; the high-pitched whistling of piccolo flutes – sweet sounds above a background din of squawking chickens, lowing oxen and rumbling, creaking wooden wheels. The women – wives who’d drawn lots in London to be allowed to follow their men; prostitutes, washerwomen, gin sellers and mysterious hangers-on – had been told to stay in Portugal. They’d been warned of the hardships ahead – the columns were travelling light; there would be no wagons to carry them, they would have to follow on foot, and there wouldn’t be enough food. Still many of them followed, as stubborn and single-minded as the pack mules many of them were leading. Jonathan watched them pass by behind the men, skirts already filthy to the knee, and he feared for them.
‘Why do they come? Why didn’t they listen?’ he said to Captain Sutton, and the captain gave a shrug.
‘They travelled all these many miles to be with their men. What have they in Portugal to stay for? It is an alien land, and if they stay not with the army, then there is no point at all in their being here.’
‘We will never manage to keep all fed.’
‘We must hope to find food as we go. Fear not, Major; I am sure we will bring them through it.’
But the captain didn’t sound sure; he sounded full of the same doubt that Jonathan felt. When the weather broke and the rain started, the air itself turned grey and the ground was soon a quagmire. The mud was a hindrance to those at the very front of the lines. To those behind, when many hooves and feet had churned it already, it was a sucking, debilitating nightmare. Jonathan checked Suleiman’s feet every evening, cleaned and dried them out as best he could; but he could still smell the rankness of thrush taking hold, and feel the heat and swelling of mud fever in the animal’s heels. It was the same for the men – they were not dry from one day or week to the next. It was impossible to keep tents or kit, skin or boots clean; the mud got everywhere. They stopped singing; the pipers stopped piping. Their feet bloated, blistered, cracked. In startlingly quick time, the chickens were all slain and eaten. There was no food to be found in the barren landscape, and what farms and villages they passed had most often been gutted and laid waste by the retreating French. All their enemies had left them were horrors and corpses. At the end of each day’s march, as Jonathan tried to care for Suleiman’s feet, he whispered to his horse of the warm stables awaiting them in Salamanca; the sweet meadow hay that would be piled high in his manger; the oats he would have in his nosebag, fresh and tasty instead of mouldy from the constant damp. Suleiman shivered and heaved a sigh as he listened to this, as if he didn’t believe it, and Jonathan’s own stomach rumbled as he spoke.
Moore’s section of the army, with Jonathan, Captain Sutton and their company within it, was the first to reach Salamanca, in late November 1808. They were weak, exhausted, underfed. They were rife with dysentery, sickness and lice, and they were told to be ready to move again at once, because a French force ten times their number was at Valladolid, a mere four or five marches away. French numbers in Spain swelled all the time; Napoleon himself had arrived to lead in the centre and south – the emperor was quite determined that Spain would remain a part of his empire. When Jonathan heard this news he felt a cold fist of fear in the pit of his stomach. He was ashamed of his reaction and tried to hide it as he passed on the alert to his company, though he saw it mirrored in some of their faces. Others showed excitement at the prospect of a fight; some were clearly furious, though Jonathan could not guess at what; some showed nothing but weary acceptance. A drawn-out, hollow expression, which made their eyes look dead.
‘It will be a relief, will it not – to fight at last instead of marching?’ said Captain Sutton carefully, as he and Jonathan shared a flask of wine in the captain’s billet later on. Naked candle flames juddered and flapped in the draughty room, sending shadows careening up the walls. Jonathan looked Sutton in the eye and knew that the captain saw his fear. He knew, but did not despise him for it. Still Jonathan flushed with shame as he raised his cup.
‘A relief, indeed,’ he said, then drained the drink down. Wherever a wine cellar had been discovered in the city, it had been raided. Huge barrels had been rolled out into the streets and drained, and sat empty with a few collapsed, insensible men around each one. More than one man had drunk himself to death already. And still the cold rain fell.
‘Without fear there can be no valour,’ said Captain Sutton, softly. He was older than Jonathan by fifteen years, and had seen battles and wars before this one. He was a good man, and kind; he helped his inexperienced senior officer wherever he could, and Jonathan was grateful, even though this care made him feel like a child swimming out of its depth.
In the middle of December they quit Salamanca again. Sir John Moore had resisted for as long as possible, hoping for the other army contingents to reach the city; hoping for the arrival of Spanish allies to reinforce them. None came. But then word came that the French had moved south; that they thought Salamanca deserted, and had no idea of the British force in occupation there. There was a chance to strike an unanticipated blow; a chance to divert the French from harrying the beleaguered Spanish in the south, and Moore took it. He marched them north-west, towards Saldana, where a famous commander called Soult, dubbed the Duke of Damnation by the men, was in command of a large French force. After a stationary month, one of few comforts and scant food, the men were almost happy to march again, especially if there would be a battle at the end of it – the waiting wore them down; they wanted to fight. Jonathan thought of the violence and death they had seen so far, and couldn’t understand their eagerness. But he kept this to himself, close-guarded; just like he kept his doubts and all his misgivings about his chosen career to himself.