“Paper?”
“Yes, paper.”
“Ah, papier?” the postmaster nodded, gathering him a roll. “Ficelle?” he then asked. Henry hesitated. “Ficelle?” the smart looking elderly gentleman asked again. “String?”
“Oh, string, yes, please,” said Henry, taking both and stealing over to the side of the shop to wrap the diary in the privacy of a corner. No sooner had he crept away than the door to the post office flew open and two British officers staggered in, laughing and cursing at the buffeting they’d received from the elements. They stood in the middle of the office, brushing themselves down and chortling, tall, slick haired moustached men, a Major and Lieutenant Colonel.
“Blasted weather!” one called, flapping his cap into his hand.
“One feels that summer is well and truly over now, Nicholas,” the Major called, approaching the desk. Henry’s eyes were on the pair of them and then the postmaster. His gaze was drawn by Henry’s and he looked at him hard before looking back at the Major.
“Now then my good man, do you speak English?”
“Oui,” said the man, looking across at Henry and then back at the officer. “A little.”
“Good stuff. Look here, I’m expecting a package from home. Not coming in via usual circles. Don’t want it go by army post. I was wondering if I could have the parcel sent here and then I come and pick it up from you?”
“Parcel? Sent here?” replied the man, torn between looking at the officer and glancing with suspicion at the British man in civilian dress in the corner of the room.
“Yes, that’s right. Get it sent here. That way I might get a chance of getting it before Christmas, what?” The officer chortled and the distracted postmaster feigned the same. His distraction caught the officer’s eye and he peered over at Henry, clasping the bound and addressed book in his hands. “Everything alright, chum?” he asked him.
Henry could feel the blood drain from him, his head go light. It felt like his entire world was turning in on itself. His heart felt like a battered anvil in his chest. He nodded and avoided any eye contact, retreating a little into the corner in the pretence of finishing addressing the parcel.
“What have we got here then?” the Major asked, stepping forward and tugging the package around so he could read to whom it was addressed.
“No, non,” muttered Henry, but he knew the game was up and didn’t resist further. They’d take him to the red caps. From there he’d be sent for court martial. He thought of Sandrine, awaking to find him gone. How long would she wait till she realised he would not be coming back?
“For the British HQ, Arras, eh?” muttered the Major.
Henry nodded and swallowed hard.
“Well why don’t you let me take that?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “We’re heading back there now. Save you the price of a stamp.”
Dumbfounded, Henry let the parcel be plucked from his grasp, the Major sticking it inside his jacket pocket. He swivelled around and leaned across the office counter, producing a pad from an inside pocket.
“So, what’s the address here?” he asked.
The postmaster told him, and the officer wrote it down, telling the man his name.
“So, when the package arrives, you will hold it for me? Here?”
The postmaster nodded and looked back at Henry, his eyes like slits.
“Good-oh!” the Major announced, wrenching the door open. “Ready?” he called to the Lieutenant Colonel, and together the officers fought their way back out into the street and the torrential wind and rain.
A smile lightened the face of the postmaster.
“Go on then,” he muttered, nodding to the door. “On y va.”
He was drenched to the bone and shivering when he reached the stairs of Alessandro’s house. He could hear the rain fall on the roof and the street just outside the terraced row of buildings, swelling the puddle at the front into a flood. Henry stopped and closed his eyes, his hand on the banister of the stairs, his ears alert to the sounds of the city. And it seemed to him that he could hear each individual raindrop of the torrential downpour, and the splash of a resident running through the puddles, and the cry from an officer turning his soldiers in the storm. If he listened very hard he could make out the booms and the rumble from the front, the rusted tight deadlock of the units and the battalions and the divisions facing each other, starting up their hate-filled offensives once again.
And then it struck him – in the middle of that tempest from God and the warring forces – the majesty, the beauty and the miracle that was life. The realisation hit him like a thunderbolt, so strong and so dramatically that it drenched his eyes with tears and took away his breath. How everything in life was finite and balanced so precariously.
He climbed the stairs slowly, reverently, and gathered Sandrine into his arms on their makeshift bed. He kissed her back to consciousness.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s go and live.”
ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR
NOVEMBER, 1914. TOULOUSE INQUISITIONAL PRISON.
TOULOUSE. FRANCE.
They’d dragged Tacit to the cell and chained him where he’d been thrown. There’d been no need to drag him. He would have gone with them willingly. Where else was he to go? Where else had he to go? He knew what was to befall him. It didn’t scare him. Nothing scared him any more. Not now.
He felt blessed, truly blessed, even in that loathsome place, amongst the rot and the stench, in between the beatings.
But nothing could touch him now. He felt complete. After all, there were those who went their entire lives never having known love, true love, never having felt its touch upon them or their lives. And yet Tacit had felt it, and he had felt it three times.
A Holy presence.
Tacit closed his eyes and remembered the lightly scented smell of his mother, the haven he always found within her embrace. Suddenly he heard the laugh of Mila in his ears, the spirit of her voice, filling him and enriching him. And then he felt the touch of Isabella’s fingers on his face, the delicate warmth of her fingertips, spreading across his skin like ripples on a pond.
He felt the emotion of love swell around him, like an energy manifested within the prison cell. He then opened his eyes and he laughed, and then he roared with unrestrained joy. There were lights again! Lights all around him! Warming him with their wonder and whispering softly in his ear.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks must go to my father, John, and my brother-in-law, Maurice East, who accompanied me on an inspirational and moving visit to France and Belgium in 2012 on the trail of my great uncles who fought and died in the Great War. That trip acted as the catalyst for this novel. Estelle, of the Terres de Memoire, and Jacques, of the Flanders Battle Field Tour Belgium, were compelling and eloquent guides.
Thanks to my parents, John and Janet Richardson, who I think secretly knew those comics I read as a kid would be put to good use one day, and my grandfather Fred Clarkson and his wife Denise. Thanks to my sister, Vicky, and niece, Georgia, my parents-in-law, Tony and Brigid Maddocks and sister-in-law, Katie, for all their support.
Huge thanks goes to Ben Clark at LAW for believing in me and my writing. Knowing you have someone of his wisdom and vision on your side gives you the confidence to write with freedom and purpose.
Thanks also goes to Clare Christian, Heather Boisseau, Julia Pidduck, Patrick Knowles and Joey Everett, and everyone at RedDoor for letting Poldek Tacit into their beautiful home, despite the state of his boots.
I must also thank my proof readers who gave me the belief and determination to keep going; Joanna Pitkin-Parsons, Rob Swan, Paul Malone and Maurice East.
In a world away from novels, trenches and werewolves, there are people who help keep me sane on a daily basis. Thank you Jamie Gilman and James Fry for doing exactly that, and thank you Jon Phillips for providing the soundtrack to my writing sessions. And, finally, Mrs Jones, who read me The Hobbit when I was eight and opened my eyes and imagination. Long gone, but not forgotten.<
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NOTES
A huge number of books, articles and websites have provided me with the information required to write a compelling and factual account of the early months of the Great War. Too numerous to list all of them, I would like to give particular credit to the following books: The Great War, by Peter Hart; Valour in the Trenches, by N S Nash; Raiding on the Western Front, by Anthony Saunders; Trench Talk, by Peter Doyle and Julian Walker; The Beauty and the Sorrow, by Peter Englund; The Soldier’s War, by Richard Van Emden; 1914-1918, by David Stevenson; Last Post, by Max Arthur.
The National Archives at Kew and their beautifully kept war diaries have proved invaluable to better understanding movements and morale of troops at the start of the war.
The two battles featured within the book are based on real events. The German attack was taken from the accounts of Corporal Charlie Parke, 2nd Gordon Highlanders, regarding the first German assault he faced. The British attack was taken from the accounts of Major George Walker, 59th Field Coy, RE.
ALSO BY TARN RICHARDSON
Turn the page for an exclusive extract from THE FALLEN
THE FALLEN
ONE
TUESDAY, 13 JULY 1915. NOW.
ROME. ITALY.
The Inquisitor knew he was going to die. He had known from the moment they found him. Those who pursued him, he knew how thorough they were. How they could never give up. After all, he had been taught by them. He was one of them. They had shared the same faith. Now those who pursued him were dark imitations of their once proud selves, from the corruption of their minds to the hard looks they wore.
The Darkest Hand. Its reach had grown long.
Inquisitor Cincenzo knew they would catch him and they would kill him, after which they would remove every memory of him, every scrap of evidence about him from the face of the earth.
Root and branch. That had always been the Inquisition’s way. They never left anything to chance. And since the Darkest Hand had infiltrated that most devout and secret of organisations within the Catholic Church, Cincenzo knew they had grown strong enough to stop at nothing to ensure that their plans went unchallenged.
He’d thrown himself from the top-floor window of the safe house two heartbeats after they had smashed their way in, catching the lower edge of the apartment terrace beneath in a shower of glass and dropping the remaining ten feet to the street below. There had been more of them waiting for him there, just as he’d expected.
He caught the Inquisitor closest to him in the throat, the man going down choking, his palms tight to his ruptured larynx. A cloaked figure flashed to his right and promptly buckled as Cincenzo delivered an almighty kick between his legs. A punch was thrown from behind and Cincenzo parried it, tearing at his assailant’s eyes, raking his face. The point of a staff was hurled out of nowhere and the Inquisitor caught it and thrust it back, battering the attacker in the mouth, breaking teeth. Moments later, a grenade was in his own hand and the alley rocked with light and smoke, blinding eyes and shattering senses, disorienting all caught within its blast.
In the melée of confusion and noise, Cincenzo seized the opportunity and fled, his head down, his arms pumping, sprinting hard into the city, running with every ounce of strength he possessed. He spun out of the swirl of smoke in the alleyway into the red-grey lamp-lit streets of Rome, his Inquisitor’s robe rippling in his slipstream. And as he ran, he thought about the events that had led him to become who he was, an enemy, to be murdered by those he once called allies, with whom he had worked and prayed and killed.
It had begun with the rumours months ago, the private murmurings in the inquisitional hall at the end of assignments, the talk of a darkness growing at the heart of the Vatican. At first Cincenzo ignored his fears, knowing it would be wrong to question. It was simply his duty to do as he was instructed and turn his eyes from things which troubled or concerned him. He was young and naive, only recently promoted to full inquisitional status. He put his doubts down to the rigours of the job, the horrors that he witnessed on a daily basis. The suspicions he now carried with him at all times, the questions without answers, the doubts without resolution, he buried as deep within him as he buried his blades in the bodies of this enemies.
Cincenzo had known that to talk to other Inquisitors of his growing unease would have brought down unwelcome questions from those who ruled the Inquisition. They never took kindly to the news that one of their own was having concerns. Concerns, questions, they were meant to have been crushed out of you by your master during your training years, not carried forward into adulthood when you became an Inquisitor.
But for the man now pursued through the night-time streets of Rome, the questions which troubled him, the rumours which confronted him, had never been explained as an acolyte. So instead he did what he knew would bring him damnation anyway. He went looking for answers.
Cincenzo had never expected to find them, or at least not answers that would satisfy him. But he had found something during his digging, and what he’d found had terrified him more than any of the doubts that had occupied his troubled mind.
He careered through the streets of the capital, sweeping into wide courtyards full of people and laughter, plunging into narrow empty alleyways which smelled of rot and stale water, going where his instincts led him, just running, never looking back, sweat stinging his eyes, the warm spiced Roman dusk air filling his nose, clawing at his lungs. His legs felt leaden and dead, but still he ran, never stopping, never resting, still fighting as he’d always been taught to do. A war without end.
He had to get word to them, to tell them what he had learned, to warn those few who, like him, had also sensed the darkness and banded together in secret to face it. To warn them that history was repeating itself, only this time their attempt could not fail.
That the Darkest Hand had already secured a death grip upon the world.
The young Inquisitor threw himself into the long Via dei Pettinari and, for the first time since he had taken flight, hesitated, drawing to a retching coughing halt, cursing and wondering if he should turn round and take another route. Behind him he heard the closing rap of feet on the cobbled streets and the decision was made for him. He flung himself on, the tread of his boots biting hard on the flagstones, his eyes firm on the way ahead.
Thirty paces in and he dared to hope. It seemed that no one lay in wait for him within that narrow way, the only sound he could hear beside his own snatched breathing being that of his pursuers’ boots pounding behind him. Cincenzo could detect the tightness of breath in their throats, the coarse mutter of exhaustion on their tongues. And, for a moment, he knew he was outrunning them, they were failing, foundering, falling behind with every stride.
Belief stirred like prayer within him and a new strength returned. Doorways and shop fronts flashed by as he hurled himself out of the narrow street and into Lungotevere dei Tebaldi beyond, not stopping for an instant as he powered across it to Ponte Sisto bridge. His feet barely touching the grey cobbles as he ran, he flew up the bridge, then drew to a sudden stop.
A man, long presumed dead, stood at the apex of the bridge waiting for him. The hooded figure smiled and dropped his hand to the holster on his thigh, revealing the black enamelled grip of a revolver hanging there.
Behind Cincenzo, the shadowy figures charged from the grimy dark of Via dei Pettinari and formed a ragged line along the bridge, barring any chance of escape. The only way on was now through the man with the revolver, and the exhausted Inquisitor knew there would be little chance of managing that.
“So,” the man at the top of the bridge spoke, withdrawing the revolver casually and shaking his head. His accent suggested he was Italian, but any joy and light within the language had long been crushed out of it. He clicked his tongue against his teeth and took a step forward. “You really have caused no end of trouble. What is the first rule of the Inquisition?”
The question was asked as a mocking jest and Cincenzo hesitated, looking back at the line of his bre
thren slowly closing in on him and then once more to the hooded man with the revolver. “Never question the faith,” he replied, as one who had been instructed all his life.
The man nodded. “Never question the faith. And yet, what have you done at every turn?” He took another step closer. “I’ll tell you what you have done. You’ve been … troublesome.”
“You’re not part of the faith!” Cincenzo spat back, edging slowly to the side of the bridge and considering a drop into the dark waters below. “I know what you are! I know everything.”
The hooded man shook his head, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Everything, do you?”
And Cincenzo chuckled, a joyless final laugh. “I know what you’re planning. What was done before. How it failed. What you hope to achieve this time.”
Cincenzo looked down into the flowing Tiber below. A thirty-foot drop. The fall wouldn’t kill him. The difficulty would be dropping over the side before he was shot. “You will not succeed,” he told the hooded man, with something approaching victory in his tone. “You may be legion, but our numbers are growing too. Your presence is black, but behold, there is a dawn coming, and with it all evidence of your existence will be expunged.” He peered back at the bridge’s edge, surreptitiously creeping ever closer.
“And you talk too much,” the man growled. He lifted the revolver and fired. The side of the Inquisitor’s head tore open and he was thrown backwards, somersaulting over the edge of the stone bridge into the river below with a tumultuous splash. The man peered into the waters below. “And who ever said it failed the first time?”
On the path beside the river below, two figures in an embrace looked up through the murk of dusk in shock.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tarn Richardson was brought up a fan of Tolkien, in a remote house, rumoured to be haunted, near Taunton, Somerset. He has worked as a copywriter, written murder mystery dinner party games and worked in digital media for nearly twenty years. He is the author of The Darkest Hand series, comprised of The Damned, The Fallen, The Risen, and free eBook prequel The Hunted. He lives near Salisbury with this wife and two sons.
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