Read Chapter 12: The History Man

The morning mist was still clinging to the ridge when Harrow found Major General Sir George Murray’s bivouac. It was barely past six, and the camp was stirring with the reluctant energy of men who knew what the day would bring. Murray, Wellington’s quartermaster-general and the finest military historian of the age, sat on a camp stool outside his tent, a cup of coffee in hand, poring over a map spread across his knees.

Harrow approached with the confidence of a man who had died more times than he could count. It gave him a certain freedom. What was a reprimand, compared to a bayonet in the gut? What was a court-martial, compared to the quiet horror of watching the same sun rise over the same field for the thirtieth time?

“Sir George,” Harrow said, snapping a salute.

Murray looked up. He was a sharp-faced man with intelligent eyes that missed little. He studied Harrow for a moment, taking in the captain’s uniform, the mud on his boots, the pallor beneath his skin. “Do I know you?”

“Captain James Harrow, sir. Late of the 52nd. I’m a military historian, of sorts. I’ve come to ask you about a murder.”

Murray’s coffee cup stopped halfway to his lips. He set it down slowly. “A murder?”

“A man who died within the next seven hours,” Harrow said, keeping his voice low, careful not to be overheard by the soldiers moving around them. “Not on the battlefield. Before the battle. Someone will be killed, and I believe his death has been covered up or overlooked. I need to know if you’ve heard anything. Any discipline issues, any disappeared men, any… unusual deaths.”

Murray’s face hardened. He folded his map with deliberate care and rose to his feet. He was taller than Harrow expected, and the effect was imposing. “Let me understand you, Captain. You are telling me, in the hour before the most important engagement of this war, that you have foreknowledge of a murder that has not yet occurred?”

“It will occur,” Harrow said. “It must. And if I can find the victim before it happens, I may be able to prevent the death entirely.”

“Prevent it?” Murray’s tone was ice. “Either you are a deserter with a guilty conscience, or you have taken a blow to the head that has addled your wits. I know every officer under Wellington’s command, Captain. There are no murderers among them, and there are no victims, because there is no murder. The only deaths that will occur today will be at the hands of the French.”

“I understand how it sounds, sir. But I’ve seen—” Harrow stopped himself. He couldn’t explain the loop. Not to a man like Murray, whose entire world was built on logic and recorded fact.

“You’ve seen what?” Murray pressed. “Speak plainly.”

“I’ve seen too much,” Harrow said. “I know things about this campaign that no one in this camp knows. Not even Wellington. I know the Prussian lines have been arranged to support our left. I know Grouchy has been ordered to hold the Prussian flank at Wavre. I know that the final assault will come at the center, just before dusk, and that it will fail because of a ditch that no one has fully scouted.”

Murray went very still. His eyes narrowed. “That is intelligence that only a handful of men possess.”

“I’m not a spy,” Harrow said quickly. “I’m not here to compromise the campaign. I’m here to stop a murder.”

“Whose murder?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Murray shook his head. “You’re mad. You’re either a madman or a French plant, and I don’t have time to determine which. Return to your post, Captain. Whatever your delusion is, I’ll hear no more of it.”

He turned to his tent, and that’s when Harrow saw it.

At the entrance, waiting with quiet patience, stood Murray’s aide-de-camp. A young lieutenant, no more than twenty-five, with sandy hair and a sharp nose. The man’s hands were clasped behind his back, and attached to his wrist by a leather strap was a pocket watch.

A silver pocket watch.

With a crack running across its face.

Harrow’s breath caught in his throat. He had seen that watch twice now—once dangling from the dying hand of the rifle officer who had shot him, and once as Elena pressed it into his palm before the blast that killed her. He still had her watch in his coat pocket. He could feel the weight of it, the cracked silver body warm against his ribs.

“That watch,” Harrow said, his voice coming out rougher than he intended. “Where did your aide get it?”

Murray followed his gaze and frowned. “Fenwick? It’s his own. Inherited from his father, I believe. Why?”

“May I see it?”

Murray’s eyes flickered with suspicion. “You are asking a great many questions, Captain, for a man who claims to be a historian. You’re not the first officer today to take an interest in Fenwick’s possessions.”

Harrow’s pulse quickened. “Someone else asked?”

“I’ve no time for this.” Murray waved a hand dismissively. “Return to your regiment, or I will have you confined.”

But Harrow didn’t move. He was already calculating. The lieutenant—Fenwick—was standing barely two paces away, his attention elsewhere. The watch hung loosely from its strap. If Harrow could get close enough, one quick tug—

He moved before he could second-guess himself.

Three steps forward, his hand outstretched. Fenwick looked up, startled, and Harrow snatched the watch from his wrist. The strap snapped. The silver case was cold in his palm.

“What the devil—” Fenwick began.

Harrow turned and ran.

He didn’t have a plan. He never had a plan. But he had the watch, and the watch was the key, and he could feel the weight of Elena’s watch pressing against his chest like a second heartbeat.

Behind him, Murray’s voice rose in fury. “Arrest that man! Arrest Captain Harrow!”

Soldiers converged from all directions. Harrow dodged past a cart full of ammunition, ducked under a horse’s bridle, nearly collided with a sergeant carrying a crate of musket balls. He heard the pounding of boots behind him, the shouts closing in, and he knew he couldn’t outrun a whole camp. He veered left, toward the quartermaster’s tents, hoping to lose himself in the maze of canvas and rope.

He didn’t make it.

A musket butt caught him across the side of the head. The world exploded into white light, and then blackness, and when he came to, he was lying on a dirt floor in a small, dark space that smelled of damp straw and old piss.

A holding cell.

He sat up slowly, wincing at the throbbing pain in his skull. His hands were bound behind his back with coarse rope, and his coat had been removed. But the watch was still there—he could feel its weight through his shirt. They hadn’t searched him thoroughly enough.

The cell was a converted horse stall, separated from the rest of the stable by wooden bars. Through the gaps, he could see a small table where a single candle flickered, casting long shadows. A file folder lay open on the table, its papers ruffling in the draft.

Harrow shuffled over to the bars, straining to read what was on the page. It was a dispatch log, dated today. Names and numbers, regimental strengths, supply counts. But at the bottom of the page, scrawled in a hand that was hasty and dark, he saw a single word.

Valmont.

Harrow’s blood went cold.

He strained to read more. The words were cramped, almost illegible, but he could make out fragments: transfer complete… the spy will be in place before the first hour… Goddard remains unaware…

Goddard. The man who had executed Valmont at dawn. The man whose aide had tried to poison him. The man who had looked at the map with more interest than an honest soldier should.

But if Goddard was unaware, then the letter was not from Goddard. It was about Goddard.

The traitor was the one who had passed Valmont’s identity to the French. The traitor was the one whose handwriting now sat in a folder on a table in the quartermaster’s office, planning the transfer of a spy who would be in place before the battle began.

Harrow tried to stand, to reach through the bars and grab the folder. His fingers were inches away when the first shell struck.

The ground shook. A blast of heat and sound tore through the stable, and Harrow was thrown against the wall. Wood splintered. Fire bloomed in the rafters. He tasted blood and smoke.

The second shell hit his cell directly.

The world was a roar of red and black, and then nothing at all.

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The morning mist was still clinging to the ridge when Harrow woke.

He was lying on a camp stool, a cracked silver pocket watch cold in his hand. The same six. The same hour. The same ridge overlooking the field of Waterloo.

But now he had a name, and a letter, and the dawning certainty that the murderer he was looking for was not a murderer at all.

Valmont was alive. And he was already here.