“No, but I do. I found some. It’s a little dry. But it is still good, after you have had nothing for so long.”
“Found? Where on earth did you find some cake?’
“This is my village. Some secrets will stay secret. You write up your silly book of lies. I will fix you some tea and cake.”
“You sound like my wife.”
“You have a wife?”
“No, but you are talking like one!”
Sandrine felt relief rush into her. She came to the door and folded her hands, looking at Henry, who had turned back to the diary.
“The Major,” she said.
“Major Pewter?” Henry replied, scribbling away.
“What do you know of him? Do you like him?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I like him. But he is my commanding officer. I don’t suppose you’re meant to like them too much.”
“Yes, he’s an ignorant man.”
“Yes, I think he probably is. You worked that out from your meeting with him, did you?”
“Something like that.”
“I suspect he sees this whole war as a jolly old jaunt. Would probably do him good to have a little taste of the front-line trench, once in a while.”
Sandrine laughed and said, “Henry, it is not so bad for you. After all, you have a roof over your head!”
Henry turned, his arm across the back of the chair. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said, smiling wearily.
“And a wife making you tea and cake!”
SIXTY-FIVE
1905. NAPLES. ITALY.
She was standing in a field with her back to the track, pulling sugar beets from the long lines of piled earth, when she heard the crank of the horse’s cart. She turned and strained her eyes to see the figure in the cab, her hand across her forehead. In an instant she knew it was him.
“You’re back?” she called, and at once Tacit felt awkward and foolish for having returned to the farm and to her. She saw his uncertainty and smirked. “I wasn’t aware of any more hauntings.”
“I was just passing through,” Tacit replied, drawing the horse to a halt. He tried to keep his voice flat, matter of fact, but inside his heart yearned for Mila. She appeared more beautiful than when they had last met. “Just on my way to Salerno.” A moment hadn’t passed when Tacit had not thought about her. His conscience raced and spun at what he was doing, at his daring and foolishness in returning. He took hold of the guilt building in his head and throttled the life out of it with the resentment he felt at how his friends had been slain in the line of duty.
She smiled and swung the beet over her shoulder, holding onto its stalks like a hunter with a kill. “It’s good to see you again, Poldek,” she said. “It’s been …”
“A while,” Tacit said. “I’m sorry,” he said, gathering the reins, “I shouldn’t have come.”
“No. I’m glad you did,” Mila replied, and she flashed a smile at him. “Please.” She stepped back from the cart as a sign for Tacit to climb down. “Come into the house. I was just breaking for the morning. It’s been a hot day. Would you like a drink?”
Tacit could feel his heart beat hard within him. His mouth was dry, his hands clammy. He felt sickened and ashamed at the recklessness of his coming. He thought of his training, his masters, the Inquisition, the witch, his soul, and he climbed from the cart and led the horse to the stable alongside the house.
The night sky above the farm was like glitter dust. They’d eaten a good earthy supper of rabbit stew and a peach tart, which had made Tacit’s eyes water with pleasure. Over the meal and a bottle of red Mila had gathered from the cellar of the house, they’d talked long into the night. The air was still and hot. Crickets chirped endlessly. The peace of it all was complete. Tacit felt unburdened by their talk. Much of the time they had laughed, their conversation at times tantalising and risqué, at other times open and poignant, the talk of their dreams, of the Church, of Mila’s loss, of Tacit’s service. Finally she yawned and apologised.
“I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing a hand across her face.
“No, don’t apologise,” replied Tacit, reaching across the table with his hand. He placed it within touching distance, unable to move it any closer to her. “I should be the one apologising. I’m keeping you up. You’ve had a long day.”
“And a longer one tomorrow. But thank you for your help, Poldek,” she smiled, referring to his assistance gathering beets in the afternoon, stripped to his waist save only for his vest, the hot sun on his back, the sweat drenching his broad chest and shoulders. He’d enjoyed the toil of it. “You work hard, for a Priest,” she added, and reached forward to touch his hand with hers.
Tacit laughed quietly and lowered his eyes to their hands.
“Why are you sad?” she asked suddenly.
“I’m sorry?”
The question stung Tacit like a thorn, tearing him from his moment and back to the present.
“Why are you sad, Poldek?” Mila asked again. She leaned forward, her hand now on his forearm. “There is a sadness, in your eyes.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Tacit replied, trying to laugh. “There’s …”
“It is not our place to be sad within this world. I know a troubled soul when I see one.” She moved her hand back down his arm onto his hand. It felt warm and soft, as she cupped his knuckles and fingers gently.
Not for the first time their gazes locked. Tacit could feel the soft rubbing of her thumb against his hand, could smell the loveliness of her skin. He was trapped by the urge to reach across and kiss her, to take her into his arms. But a shadow drew itself across him and he shivered, his eyes filling with tears.
He turned his eyes down to his lap.
“Don’t live with sadness, Poldek. It is not your Lord’s bidding to be sad all your life.”
She squeezed his hand a final time and stepped silently from the porch into the house.
He lingered at the entrance to her bedroom, the door wide open like an invitation to enter. He could see her shape in the bed, the white cotton of the sheets caught by the silver moonlight streaming through the open window. He pushed the door open a little more, and it groaned on its hinges. Tacit hesitated, as if the noise was somehow a warning against him entering. A passion coursed within him. He could hear his own breath, could see the light sheen of Mila’s skin, the dark spray of her hair across the pillow.
He placed a hand to his chest. It touched the cross hanging there and closed around the cool of the metal. He caught hold of himself and stepped backward into the passageway.
Mila turned quietly over beneath the sheets and stared up at the crescent moon climbing high into the brilliant night sky.
SIXTY-SIX
09:51. THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 1914. PARIS. FRANCE.
Cardinal Monteria had only recently returned from his visit to Notre Dame when he heard Silas enter his office. He hadn’t bothered to look up as his servant stepped up to the desk at which he wrote, the first task of the day’s administration to be done. A lifetime of recognising the different footsteps and their business told him who he needed to acknowledge and who he could answer with the opening of a palm. The letter was pressed into the Cardinal’s outstretched hand and its messenger slunk away from sight. Monteria opened it absently, his eyes still on the speech in front of him, silently mouthing the words he was going to speak in two days’ time.
He finished the paragraph he was reciting and turned his eyes to the open letter. At once his jaw slackened and his eyes burned into the paper. He raced across the words several times over, back and forth, each time recounting fewer and fewer of the details. Something clutched at his throat, snatching the breath from out of him. He crushed the letter into a ball in his palm and reached out for his walking stick where it usually stood, knocking it to the floor. He hissed angrily, and reached down over the arm of the chair to gather it into his shaking hands.
“Silas!” he called, pushing back his chair and gathering himself to his feet. �
�Silas! Where are you?!” he asked of the young man, not caring if his irritability got the better of him.
“Is everything okay, Cardinal?” called the young acolyte, hurrying back to the Cardinal’s chamber as fast as he was able.
“Have you heard news of Cardinal Poré in Arras?” Monteria asked, clacking past the young man with his cane and then realising there was nowhere else which needed his attendance more urgently than where he currently was. He stopped and stared at the young man. “Has he left for Paris yet?”
“I believe he was going to leave in the next day or so,” Silas replied anxiously.
“Get news to him. At once! Tell him he’s to leave immediately. Without delay.”
“Yes. Of course. We will wire him. Is anything the matter?”
“No, it’s like anything,” the venerable Cardinal replied, regaining a little of his composure. “With every action there is a reaction,” he said, and he looked back to the window with the rain pouring down outside. “As we in the Catholic Church always do, we simply need to ensure we act faster and with more conviction than our enemies.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
10:14. THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 1914. ARRAS. FRANCE.
The lateness of the hour at which they left Arras had done little to improve Tacit’s mood. With his battered brown suitcase in one hand, the pockets of his black coat laden down and bulging, they filed along the road out of the city, quickly realising that it would be impossible to hail a taxi for passage to the front. There was no choice other than to walk the four miles to Fampoux. Any motorised vehicles they had seen had been commandeered for army use, carrying fat Generals up and down the Rue D’Arras and to ‘important briefings’.
Hot, thirsty and hungry when they finally arrived at the outskirts of the village, they were little enthused to see an endless stream of soldiers and vehicles going into and out of the front, the line of military being the only feature visible. The entire landscape, for as far as Tacit and Isabella could see to the north and the south, had been battered into blackened charred featurelessness.
“You think Sandrine Prideux came back this way?” Isabella asked, doubtfully.
Tacit scratched his chin and sneered. “If she did, you have to ask what on earth for?”
As they’d left the city, a mournful bell had tolled somewhere in its depths, a haunting farewell for their departure. It sounded tuneless and despairing, as if the bell itself had been broken. It fell silent prematurely, midway through its peal. Every church they subsequently passed on the eastern road to Fampoux never once announced the hour. A strong, cold north-easterly swept over the sunken road, making the leaves on the few remaining trees rustle and fall like a shower upon the two lonely figures.
At many times they passed great formations of soldiers, singing and sharply dressed, going east, bloodied, blackened and shambling units coming west. An occasional lorry load of men, jolting and tilting over ruts and holes in the road, would shudder noisily past. A company of men was stretched out on a patch of grass, all of them motionless and silent. Isabella thought the area a makeshift morgue until one of the men tossed noisily in his sleep and turned over.
Always they were accompanied by traffic of one sort or another going towards or away from the front line. The road resembled a huge long traffic jam of soldiers, vehicles, refugees, supply lorries, cattle, cavalry and horse-drawn ambulances filled with the wounded. Incongruous in the churn and the industrialised hell of the scene, suddenly a well-dressed woman in a fur coat appeared in the distance and passed them, her head held at a lofty angle, no shoes on her feet. And all the time, the noise of artillery hung in the background.
It took longer than four hours, once the traffic and the crowds and the sentry points had been traversed, to reach the outskirts of Fampoux. And they were still not at the village. Beyond where Tacit and Isabella now stood, the road had been ground up by the great network of trenches, consumed back into the vast churned earth from which it had been dug many centuries before. Back then it had been a track along which horses and carts had ridden from Arras to the east and back again. Now it was a metalled road broken up and lost in the myriad of support trenches, dug-outs, officer posts, ammunition stores, latrines, feeding stations, hospitals and the harsh front line.
Great groups of soldiers were gathered in ragtag tired bands near mud-stained field tents, chatting and smoking, congregating around tea urns or spread out on the earth under the very last of the heat from the sun that year. Officers marched in tight, conspicuous groups, their sparkling belts and boots as sharp as their clipped English accents. A proud troop of horses trotted by, their coats shimmering in the late French sun, riders saddled on them like proud birds atop pristine nests.
The great trenches had been hand-carved into the earth, a rambling, chaotic interconnecting mesh of corridors and pathways winding their way spasmodically but always gradually away towards the east. Teams of diggers were at work all across the vista, thrusting their spades into the sides of the trenches to widen and enhance, others forcing the first blades into new trenches. Wherever one looked, toil and sweat was the scene. With the drudgery came a muttering too, a jumble of accents talking of home, of Wigan and Hull, a debate about the industrial might of Liverpool or Newcastle, a sparring of words regarding the beauty of the Lancashire Dales versus that of Cornish moors.
In the distance, over the rise in the land, they could see the broken tops of houses and leaning chimney stacks of Fampoux.
They passed lines of soldiers, heavily dressed, too heavily dressed for the weather, marching under sharp barked orders from Sergeants, perched high up on man-made mounds along the route, so they could look down as they shouted at the passing units. Artillery sets were being heaved by teams of sweat-drenched horses and men, horses pulling at tethers, men groaning and cursing beneath the weight and the cloying soil. They passed a group of men, stripped to the waist, washing themselves with water taken from open drums. They cheered and called when they caught sight of Isabella.
“Alright, Sister?” one of them called, “any chance of a blessing?” to much laughter and cheer. Tacit’s cold stare quickly silenced any further hilarity.
They passed a field hospital. An officer and a number of juniors hung around outside it, puffing leisurely on cigarettes, whilst blood-splattered doctors filed in and out of the tent openings, pursued by nurses carrying metal containers and trays of bloodied and defaced utensils. A constant stream of soldiers on stretchers carried by weary looking stretcher bearers came out of the trenches. Tacit looked at the wounded as they passed, their bodies pulverised by the shrapnel, flayed and torn.
He looked towards the eastern horizon and watched it with heavy eyes.
The pair of them were regarded sceptically by the gathered ranks as they assembled to enter the labyrinth of the soldiers’ endeavours. But no one stopped to question them as they turned into the high-walled trenches, most thinking them to be a Priest and a nurse heading to the front line to bless and tend to the wounded. The smell, the musty bite of charcoal mixed with the sweet aroma of hot metal, hung like a shroud across the devastated landscape, thick and clinging, so much so that the sun could barely penetrate and light the ground before them.
All around them, field hospitals consisting of flimsy makeshift and hastily constructed tents spewed an endless stream of nurses and bloodied stretcher-borne soldiers and sucked nurses and bloodied and burnt soldiers in. It was like an endless conveyor belt of grief and mutilation.
Like entering a plane of hell.
Tacit and Isabella drew their clothes tight around them and stepped inside.
SIXTY-EIGHT
1906. TOULOUSE INQUISITIONAL PRISON. TOULOUSE. FRANCE.
The heavy clank of an iron gate opening was followed by heavy feet descending damp stone steps. There were cries and a pleading coming up from the darkness below, the staircase leading down lit by flickering torches on the wall. The stench of defecation and decay was everywhere. Water fell from high places and splash
ed with a maddening persistence. The darkness had an enveloping chill about it, felt by all save those dressed in furs.
The tall lithe figure of an Inquisitor, clad in black loose-fitting clothing, marked with symbols of the Catholic faith, was waiting for Tacit at the bottom of the circling stone steps, a cruel leer on his face. He said something Tacit couldn’t hear and the jailer next to him laughed, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth.
“You look nervous, Tacit,” the black-clad Inquisitor called up. “This is your first visit to Toulouse prison, isn’t it? Well you are welcome here of course.” It was not said as a greeting. It was meant as a threat, a wicked tease to someone visiting an underworld few had ever witnessed and, of those, few ever wished to return to afterwards.
The Inquisitor turned and banged hard on the large wooden door behind them. A rustle of keys and turning of a heavy lock sounded moments later and the vast door was pulled open, a gaggle of filthy leering men with great rings of keys on belts, whips in hand, peered out, smiling and laughing.
“Glad you could make it, Tacit,” the Inquisitor mocked, putting an arm around him. “I’ve heard great things about you from the field. Building quite a reputation, from the sounds of things. But you’ve only done part of the job.” He thrust a finger into Tacit’s shoulder and looked hard into his eyes. His face cracked with a smile and he smoothed the part of the coat that he had just prodded. “This is the best bit, the bit where we separate the men from the boys, where we dispense justice to those who really deserve it. You’ve never been down here, have you?”
Tacit shook his head and tried to mask his abhorrence. “Oh, you’ve been missing out,” Inquisitor Salamanca continued, turning and stepping through the door. “We used to carry out sentences in the Vatican, in the main Inquisitional Chamber, but some of the Cardinals … well, they didn’t have the appetite for it. So …” He looked across the passageway at Tacit. “It was decided to move to these salubrious surroundings. And do you know what? I think they were right. Down here we can work unmolested, untethered by the reticent hand of those who would see us adopt a more conciliatory approach towards our enemies.”
The Darkest Hand Trilogy Box Set Page 27
