Chapter One

       Central Portugal—31 October 1810

      High up in the deserted village of Telemos in the mountains north of Punhete, Josephine Mallington was desperately trying to staunch the young rifleman’s bleeding when the French began their charge. She stayed where she was, kneeling by the soldier on the dusty stone floor of the old monastery in which her father and his men had taken refuge. The French hail of bullets through the holes where windows had once stood continued as the French dragoon troopers began to surge forwards in a great mass, the sound of their pas de charge loud even above the roar of gunpowder.

      ‘En avant! En avant! Vive la République!’ She heard their cries.

      All around was the acrid stench of gunpowder and of fresh spilt blood. Stones that had for three hundred years sheltered monks and priests and holy Mass now witnessed carnage. Most of her father’s men were dead, Sarah and Mary too. The remaining men began to run.

      The rifleman’s hand within hers jerked and then went limp. Josie looked down and saw that life had left him, and, for all the surrounding chaos, the horror of it so shocked her that for a moment she could not shift her stare from his lifeless eyes.

      ‘Josie! For God’s sake, get over here, girl!’

      Her father’s voice shook her from the daze, and she heard the thudding of the French axes as they struck again and again against the thick heavy wood of the monastery’s front door. She uncurled her fingers from those of the dead soldier and, slipping the shawl from her shoulders, she draped it to cover his face.

      ‘Papa?’ Her eyes roved over the bloody ruins.

      Bodies lay