Excerpt: Waterloo Angel

Waterloo Angel

By

Michaela Gates

Prologue – Belgium, June 17, 1815

The Earl of Ravenwood slowed his horse to a stop and surveyed the results of bloodshed all around him. Located only a half mile from where the battle still raged, the makeshift hospital surrounded by scores of wounded men was a spectacle that could have been envisioned by Dante. Haze of smoke from the battle lingered in the summer air. The choking smell of blood and death lay over the locale overwhelming all other senses. Disorder reigned as scores of wounded men were brought and left to wait for treatment. Lord Brendan thought soberly many were more likely to die either from their injuries or the work of the surgeons. Everywhere he looked Lord Brendan saw the results of the grim reaper at work. The grisly harvest of men young and old sacrificed on the altar of the gods of war, now maimed and dying. Some he knew were veterans who had fought against Bonaparte for a dozen years. Others had come to this battle thinking only of the glory of finally defeating him. Never had the earl seen a picture of such horror – the antithesis of all that is beautiful and good.
A flash of white out of the corner of his right eye caused him to look in that direction. His breath caught in his throat at the incongruous sight of a woman in the center of the mass of dying and wounded men. She looked exhausted and had obviously been working round the clock with the surgeons. Her dark dress was covered by an apron which had been probably been white at one point but was now completely drenched with blood. The flash of white that had caught his eyes was a cap which covered most of her hair, protecting it from the smoke and dust.
While he watched, she leaned against the fence behind her with her head down and took some deep breaths. She raised her head up to the sky as if looking for some sunshine and at that moment a shaft of light broke through the clouds illuminating her face and the hair that had escaped the cap. He fancied that her face suddenly took on the appearance of an angel, a weary angel. Lord Brendan thought for a mad moment that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen although he couldn’t have described her features or even told what color her eyes or her hair were.
She lowered her head again. Just as a little of the tension flowed out of her body, a young soldier in a filthy uniform with his arm in a sling came up to her. Lord Brendan couldn’t hear what he said but he thought the boy spoke the angel’s name. She looked up and recognizing the young private smiled at him. The boy hung his head for a moment and then looked directly at the woman and said something. Her face became still and even though it was streaked with blood and dirt, Lord Brendan could see her sudden pallor. She didn’t sway but for a moment her shoulders sagged.
Suddenly instead of young and beautiful, she looked middle aged and plain. The young man fell on his knees in front of her and began to sob while holding on to her skirt as if he was begging for forgiveness. The angel looked down at the top of his head. Her face softened and her shoulders straightened a little as she reached down and gently cupped her hands on each side of the boy’s head and looked into his eyes. She spoked softly to him. Then she pulled him closer to her skirts comforting him as if he were a child which of course he was in a way. Eventually his sobs stopped and shamefacedly he got up and bowed to take his leave of the woman and left apparently going back to his post.
The woman watched him go for a bare handful of moments. A look of anguish came over her face which she quickly stifled. With her hands clasped to her breast she closed her eyes. A single tear slid down her dirty face. She brushed it away and deliberately stood up straighter and walked back into the surgical tent.
Lord Brendan let out the breath he had been holding and remembered his own errand. Regretfully putting the vision of the woman out of his mind he forced himself to focus on his own quest here in purgatory. He nudged the gelding forward heading toward an area that one of his brother’s fellow officers had last seen Lord Andrew. Slowly the Earl rode on to looking for his brother’s body in the charnel house called Waterloo.