The Darkest Hand Trilogy Box Set

by Tarn Richardson

  At once Monteria feared the worst, but rather than grapple him to the floor, Varsy fell upon it instead in front of him, gathering the end of his cassock into his hands and kissing it, weeping openly as he did so.

  “What is the meaning of this?” cried the Cardinal Bishop, both bemused and relieved in equal measure, his hand loosening its hold on the cane.

  Varsy looked up, his wide beseeching eyes on the one man he admired above all others, even more now for discovering what he had just heard.

  “Such piety!” he wept, burying his face into the folds of Monteria’s cloak, as if it was a treasured relic.

  “For God’s sake man!” replied Monteria, pulling himself clear of the Bishop and his tears. “Stop talking in riddles! What do you mean?”

  “The banning of all guards, of all soldiers, of all security at the Mass!”

  “What of it?”

  “I have just heard it is what you have stipulated for the Mass. It is inspired! How can there be a Mass for Peace, a true Mass for Peace, if we fill Notre Dame, every doorway, every aisle, every entrance and exit with men armed and prepared for violence? Only peace, and those with peace in their hearts and their minds can possibly bring the vision to fruition.”

  Monteria’s mind slowed and he smiled cautiously, dropping his hand to the young Bishop’s head.

  “Let us cast away all our weapons,” Varsy continued, his eyes very wide. “Let us embrace this opportunity, show the world we can live as one!”

  “Good,” Monteria muttered, his breath slowly recovering, “I am glad you have recognised the significance of such a demand. Yes, there will be no one armed as we sit down to pray in the Cathedral.” He smiled, cautiously at first. “We come together sharing the same hope that by casting our weapons aside, we can find a new and compassionate future for us all.”

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  14:59. THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 1914.

  FAMPOUX. NR. ARRAS. FRANCE.

  “I have no idea who they are or what they want with you,” Henry cried, the moment he reached Sandrine’s house, “but there’s a Priest and a Sister looking for you!”

  As he’d wound his way through the dusty, blasted streets of the village back to Sandrine’s house, he’d caught sight of the Priest and the Sister, emerging from a building, immediately turning and passing into another. They were searching from house to house. It was then that he’d started to run.

  “Who? What?” Sandrine gasped, leaving the table at which she was reading and hurrying over to him.

  “There’s a Priest and a Sister, here, in the village,” Henry faltered, trying to catch his breath. “At least that’s what they said they were, but they look like no clergy I’ve ever seen.”

  “What did they want?” asked Sandrine, immediately drawn to think of the two figures outside of Alessandro’s house and knowing in her heart that they were the same.

  “You. They want to find you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there, when they asked Pewter.”

  “Did he tell them where I was?”

  “No,” said Henry, turning away.

  When Henry turned back to face her, Sandrine could see the pain and guilt in his eyes.

  “Don’t worry for me, Henry,” she soothed. “All my life I have lived as one hunted, always on the run. They will not find me.”

  But Henry twisted his head to the side as if the words somehow pained him. “What is it, Henry?” Sandrine asked. “What is wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” Sandrine’s tone suggested he would be wise not to.

  “It’s not just you that I fear. This war. This wanton merciless war!” He sank his head into his hands, his fingers white against his eye sockets. “My men. Whilst I was sleeping my men, they were instructed to attack the Germans. They were all but wiped out.”

  “Oh Henry, I am so sorry. Who gave the order?”

  Henry didn’t say. He couldn’t. He looked to the window and stared.

  But Sandrine knew. “It was him, wasn’t it?” she spat, walking around him so she could look into his face. “The Major?”

  Henry moved away, trying to avoid her gaze. He raised a hand to the wall to steady himself and hung his head.

  “Henry! What is it?” Sandrine called.

  “The Major. He said that you were …” He twisted his head, as if ashamed, ashamed to question the woman he loved, ashamed to say such things about her. “He said that you might have been lovers.”

  Sandrine laughed cruelly.

  “Lovers?! What’s this?”

  “Exactly that!” he retorted, allowing the anger out of him.

  “Lovers?” she spat back. “Maybe he wished for such a thing, but I did not! I would never let him touch me!” She threw her hands into the air. “Pah!” she exclaimed.

  “You weren’t lovers?”

  “Of course we were never lovers, no!” she replied, crossing her arms and staring down him. “Ah! Henry! What is this? You tell me one moment that you are sad that you lost your men, then you tell me next that you are sad because of idle rumour about the Major and me?”

  Henry hung his head, ashamed. “I am sorry, Sandrine,” he muttered, fighting against his confusion and pain. “I am sorry.”

  She could feel his torment. Sandrine reached forward and drew herself around him. “My dear Henry,” she soothed gently into his ear, her arms sweeping the full length of his broad back. They held onto each other in silence, closing their eyes, shutting out the numbing horror all about them.

  Eventually Henry looked up at her. “You must hide,” he urged.

  “And you must go to your war,” she said, easing herself out from the embrace.

  “Sandrine,” he said urgently, grappling her into his arms. “I love you, damn it! I love you!” And then he kissed her, quite unexpectedly and passionately, holding her to him with no resistance, until she pulled away from him, a look of shock on her face. She stared at him aghast, and instantly he wilted under her fierce glare. Then, without warning she threw herself forward and her mouth was on his, their hands in each other’s hair, across their backs, fingers clawing at their clothes. Their mouths locked together in an embrace not even the strongest of forces could tear apart. They devoured each other and, when they finally separated, both were exhausted and all was forgiven.

  “Go!” wept Sandrine, pushing Henry gently towards the door.

  “Please, Sandrine!” Henry begged, “whatever you do, don’t let them find you.”

  She kissed him again, this time sensually, enjoying every moment of his lips on hers. “I will not let them find me, Henry,” she said, kissing him one final time. “I will come back to you, now go.”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  18:43. THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 1914.

  THE FRONT LINE. FAMPOUX. NR. ARRAS. FRANCE.

  Private Doughty thrust the spade into the dirt of the trench and dug, just as he’d been told to by his superiors. The thin pale sun was finally giving up the struggle to bring light to the world and night was swiftly approaching. A chill had settled on the land and the full moon was already visible, casting a cold light of its own. Not that Private Doughty or Private Wrigley felt the cold, nor did any of the soldiers toiling along the entire length of the front line. The order had been passed down to dig, and as the chill of evening settled, that is what every man did, working with rough, calloused hands, cigarettes balanced from corners of mouths, sleeves rolled up to elbows, cursing and chatting and singing through their work.

  For two days, since they’d arrived at Fampoux, all it seemed that one did was dig, defend or die in lunatic assaults on the enemy line, which achieved nought but kept the blood stations busy.

  Doughty’s back was stiff. He thought back to ‘Badger’ Thomas, his mate from childhood, who had died attacking the German front line earlier in the day. “Join the army, and be stiff,” Badger used to say, “Bored stiff, frozen stiff, scared stiff.”

  For three hours they’
d been at this same portion of earth, Private Doughty and Private Wrigley, digging at a part of the trench at the very far end of the front line. “Just our bloody luck,” Doughty had said, “to get the part of the front with all the stones.”

  He threw the blade of his spade with all his anger and annoyance and was confused when it vanished halfway up the neck of the handle in the earth. He stopped, perplexed, and withdrew the spade, which came out easily, too easily for a spade buried blade and handle deep in trench soil. He kicked forward with a boot into the small hole he’d left and fell forward, his boot vanishing up to his shin in the earth.

  “’Ere, Mick! There’s a hole here!” he called to Private Wrigley behind him, extracting his foot and kicking forward with it again to enlarge it further. Soil tumbled away into darkness below.

  “What’s that, Doug?” Private Wrigley asked, wiping a sleeve across his forehead. “Found a hole? Should bloody think so! You’ve dug it, you daft bastard.”

  “No, there’s a hole,” replied Doughty, peering closer to the blackness and trying to look inside. He reached forward with his spade and shovelled a blade-full of earth to one side, and then another and another, his digging growing quicker and more urgent, as if he’d discovered buried treasure. “Tell you what,” he stammered, getting down on his knees and heaving the dirt aside with his hands, “it’s a bloody tunnel!”

  He sat to one side to allow his mate to have a look.

  “Blimey,” exclaimed Wrigley, stepping nearer, “wonder if it’s one of ours.”

  “Course it’s not one of ours,” Doughty shot back, “we’d have the plan of it on one of our maps if it was one of ours, you daft bugger!” He stuck his head down into the hole and peered into the gloom of it. “It must be one of theirs,” he said, pulling himself out.

  “Who? The Germans?!” Private Wrigley took a step back and crouched behind his spade.

  “Dunno.” Doughty put his head back into the hole. He then retracted it. “Bloody dark in there. Can’t see a flaming thing. ’Ere,” he said, looking up the trench, “pass us that there lantern.”

  “You should go back and tell the Lieutenant,” Wrigley advised, handing him the lantern at arm’s length.

  Doughty lit it, corrected the height of the flame and lowered it into the hole, following with his head and shoulders. “Coo-eee,” he called, his voice muffled by the depths of earth into which he had plunged. He pulled himself out and looked up at his chum, who was now inching forward, hooked by the intrigue of it. “It goes back a long way.”

  “Must be a German tunnel,” Wrigley continued, turning the handle of the spade in his hands. “Do you think it’s a tunnel?”

  “Course it’s a bloody tunnel!”

  “Let’s go back and tell Lieutenant Frost.”

  But Doughty was lowering himself in feet first and vanishing into the darkness, taking up the lantern after him.

  “Where you going, Doug?” Wrigley hissed quietly, as if fearful of being overheard. Private Doughty’s head appeared up out of the hole. “Come on. Let’s go and have a little explore!” he urged, before vanishing back into the darkness.

  “Doug!” Wrigley called under his breath, glancing back down the trench to see if anyone was looking and then back at the hole. “Dougie?” he muttered at the dark yawning mouth in the middle of the trench. Just silence and dark. He called again, inching his way forward, his hands around the shaft of the spade, as if strangling the life out of it. “Doug!” he cried, kneeling down at the dark edge and peering into it. A head suddenly reared up from inside, tumbling the Private backwards, swearing and cursing quietly.

  “It’s ever so murky in here,” Doughty warned, chuckling at his friend scrambling in the dirt of the trench. “Don’t look like no German trench, neither. Can’t see any supports. And it’s wide. Very wide. And tall. Come on in and have a look.” His head vanished again and Wrigley, still cursing and muttering, scrambled after him into the blackness.

  It was only a short drop down to the tunnel floor, maybe four feet. The floor was smooth and felt dry underfoot, although there was a chill and a dampness in the air. There was also a peculiar smell, not dissimilar to rotting vegetables.

  “Cor, that pongs a bit!” said Wrigley, holding his nose, more to illustrate his dislike rather than an attempt to block out the smell.

  “Must be old stores,” suggested Doughty, holding up the lantern and stepping forward with wonder. “See what I mean?” he said, when he’d gone a few steps, the light giving his face a shadowed and demonic appearance in the black of the tunnel. “Don’t look like no Boche tunnel I’ve ever been told about. Nor no Tommy tunnel, neither. No supports. No tool marks.”

  The tunnel ran on for ten or so feet, before turning left into pitch black. They walked to the corner and peered down into the dark.

  “See what I mean?” said Doughty again, reaching up and placing his hand on the roof. “No beams. How’s it stay up?”

  “Maybe we should go back,” suggested Wrigley, looking back to the grey hole down which they had come. “The whole thing might come down on us at any minute.”

  But Doughty ignored him, walking on. “It’s big,” he said, “a big tunnel. Some serious work has gone on here.” He stopped and looked back to Wrigley who was loitering at the corner, peering between the lantern light and the light of the trench behind. “You coming or what?”

  “I think we should go back.”

  Doughty laughed and looked to the tunnel’s depths.

  “What if the whole lot falls down on us?”

  “It’s not going to fall on us!”

  “How’d you know? You an engineer?”

  “No, but it’s stayed up this long, it’ll stay up a bit longer. Come on!” Doughty walked on, his light slowly being swallowed by the utter blackness of the passage.

  Wrigley wavered between going forward and going back, eventually cursing and trotting after his mate.

  “Have you got enough fuel in that lantern?” he asked, placing his hand on the wall and feeling its rough edge as he walked. “Don’t fancy being stuck down here in the dark.”

  “No idea. Mind your head,” warned Doughty, pointing out a dip in the roof of the tunnel. “Cor!” he said, chuckling, “stinks worse than the medical tent back at Fampoux!”

  “Hang on,” replied Wrigley, craning his neck to the right, “the path’s turning around to the side here.”

  “Cor,” whispered Doughty, pushing back his cap and scratching his head. He moved the lantern into his left hand and held it up to shine a little more light into the passageway beyond. “This is a big tunnel. I mean, look. We’re standing up. Most of the tunnels our boys make, you have to crawl down ’em.”

  “Bloody Boche engineering,” replied Wrigley solemnly. “Look,” he said, taking hold of his friend’s arm and looking at him seriously, “I think we should go back.”

  “Let’s just go on a little further, see if this passage goes anywhere. Then we’ll go back and tell the Lieutenant.”

  Reluctantly, Wrigley agreed and side by side they stepped into the gloom, aware of the delicate crunch their boots made on the ground.

  “Should have brought a rifle,” Wrigley whispered into Doughty’s ear, as loudly as he dared. Doughty nodded. “Have you got your knife?”

  “No!”

  “You’re bloody useless! Come on!”

  Ahead of them the passage seemed to be widening and dropping down into a larger tunnel, perhaps a room along the tunnel path. Both of the soldiers stopped, instinctively, when they saw how the corridor widened out, and they now moved forward with a dead, creeping pace, one foot slowly in front of the other. Each of them was aware of the other’s breathing, unsettling wavering breaths, tight and concealed in the cold, silent darkness of the tunnel. They inched forward like snails, stopping every now and then to listen to any sounds from the cavern ahead, turning their heads to catch any noise. But none came.

  Private Doughty giggled and Wrigley stabbed him with a glare.


  “What you playing at?” he hissed, hitting him with the back of his hand and then crouching and looking into the inky blackness ahead.

  “Look at us?” muttered Doughty, in a hushed voice. “Right pair of turkeys. There’s nothing here?” he said, standing taller and holding up the lantern.

  A dark shape moved across the room at the very edge of the lantern light. “What the bugger was that?” hissed Wrigley, his eyes wide.

  Another dark shape loped across the lantern light, followed by a low, animalistic growl.

  Wrigley was stepping backwards, tugging hard at this mate’s arm. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, urging Doughty away. A dark shadow lunged towards them. There was a splattering sound, like that of a heavy object being thrown down into water. Wrigley was aware of the light of the lantern moving, moving up the wall, now across the ceiling, now over in an arch towards the floor. As it flew past, it caught the soldier in its full glare, Doughty’s headless corpse, blood pumping down his uniform from a neatly severed neck, turning and falling, following the lantern down onto the floor of the tunnel.

  Wrigley tried to scream, but nothing escaped from his mouth. He turned and ran, thundering back up the tunnel into the pitch black, charging headlong into the end of the passageway, his hand flapping wildly to find the corridor on the left in the utter dark. His head crunched hard into the dip in the ceiling of the tunnel, stars swarming, a sharp stinging pain on his forehead. The young private crumpled backwards onto the floor, stunned, the black entombing him like a casket. He felt warmth and wetness on his forehead, in his eye socket, on his face. He turned himself onto his hands and knees and scrambled forwards, wherever that was, lost in the pitch black, weeping, finding the wall and scurrying along it like a lost child. From behind him came the crunching of bones and of flesh, the tearing of uniform, a blood-curdling howl. And then feet, many many feet, scrambling after him.

  At the end of the tunnel, Private Wrigley could see a grey tinge, the grey tinge of light from the hole down which they had first slid. The light of the few torches they’d left in the trenches and the glow of the full moon, just ahead, just around the corner. He rose to his feet and leapt forwards. A sharp pain jammed hard into his left leg. He felt something rip into his left thigh and then the pain came, too great for him to think of anything else. He fell forward, mud encasing his torn limb. He cried pitifully but it was almost a mercy when jaws settled and with a crunch bit the top of his head clean off, flecking the dark mud with white.