The Captain and the Cavalry Trooper

by Catherine Curzon

  Putting all his energy into his fist, Jack gripped Edmund Marsh’s balls so tightly that he was fairly sure one of them had shot back up into his abdomen.

  “Like it, do you?” The veins stood out on Jack’s neck as he gripped tighter and gave a quick, sharp twist. “That what you want is it, you disgusting old pervert? Have to offer bribes, don’t you, because you’re too repulsive to come near unless you pay!”

  Marsh’s eyes grew so wide that they looked ready to bulge out of his skull. His free hand clamped down atop their linked fingers, trying to claw himself free, but Jack wasn’t about to be so easily dislodged. Sweat beaded on Marsh’s forehead and he gave a strangled shriek, his face growing as deep red as the grass where Queenie had died.

  “You’re a bully! And you lay down with a bully!” Jack twisted again. “And if I ever hear that you’ve been after any of the other boys in that stable yard”—Jack found a reserve of strength and gripped even tighter—“I will come after you.” He twisted once more. “And I will pull your balls off and serve them to you on a silver fucking platter!”

  The expletive took not only Marsh by surprise but Jack too. It seemed as if Marsh’s feet had lifted clean off the ground, and Jack pivoted on his toes and shoved the red-faced boozing officer and his stack-heeled boots off the bank of the stream and into the cold, fresh water.

  There was a resounding splash and a yelp—Marsh helplessly beating his hands against the water.

  “Oh, laddie—m’ boy! I can’t swim!”

  Jack grimaced, tensing his fist as he watched the entitled buffoon wash downstream toward the chateau. Where, unfortunately, he would be easily fished out by the NCOs.

  “What a shame, sir. What a terrible, bloody shame.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  And the days rolled on.

  Summer became autumn and the sun-dappled evenings grew darker as the Western Front crept closer to the chateau, inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard. It was as though all who lived there in the shelter of that fairytale castle could sense what lay just beyond the next horizon, because the chatter grew lighter than ever, the determination to stay chipper outweighing the inevitable truth that all had to face. This was a lottery. Some would go, some would stay and some would never see home again.

  Yet Jack and his captain still clung fast to each other as the nights drew in. The day was work for both, with the general at the chateau more than ever and Thorne’s desk no longer a place where they might snatch a few minutes of passion. Now it held maps and telegrams, papers and battle plans so sensitive that no man was permitted access, no matter how much Captain Thorne adored him. Yet still they had that rococo bedroom where they made love deep into the darkest nights, where Jack would shelter in his lover’s arms, the piano shawl about his shoulders, his kisses keeping Thorne from the worries that clouded his handsome face all too often nowadays. Still they had the summerhouse or the woods and still, as autumn deepened, Captain Thorne took his evening swim and there on the bank would be Jack, his paper and pencil at the ready should inspiration strike.

  This evening though, there had been no swim, and instead they walked along the bank of the stream hand in hand, strolling as though it were a particularly bucolic stretch of the Thames. Thorne was all good humor and still trying to summon the words that might make Jack’s ode to Apollo complete, yet his lover knew him well enough to know that something was amiss.

  “It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?” Jack breathed in the soft scent of the oncoming night. He wanted a comforting thought to cling to. “Almost as if we were back in England.”

  “How I wish we were.” Thorne’s smile was rueful and he squeezed Jack’s hand. “How lucky you are, to know that your farm is still waiting to welcome you home.”

  “And you as—”

  Jack froze to the spot. There, in the stream…the water billowed with blood. It was red, so red, sanguine and bright. Onwards it rolled toward them, rubies in the flood.

  He heaved for breath, shuddering, even as he realized that all he had seen was a fall of red autumn leaves as they cascaded through the water.

  “Hold me, Robert—I’m afraid.”

  “You have nothing to fear.” Thorne drew him into his arms, kissing Jack’s forehead. “I swore I’d keep you safe, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. And you will be safe as well, won’t you?” But even as Jack spoke, he read the look in Thorne’s dark eyes.

  “You’re going home, darling. Pa doesn’t have much influence, but— You’re a young man, a farmer. You should never have been sent out here in the first place.” He managed a smile, but Jack could see the struggle between relief and utter despair. “Three days from now, you’ll be safely on your way.”

  “Back to Shropshire? Back to the farm? But…no…I can’t just go. I can’t leave you. I can’t!”

  “We need every man we can get. HQ’s closing down.” Thorne took a deep breath, his voice firm. “The rest of us are moving up.”

  “The chateau—? But…everyone?” Jack couldn’t bear to form his question, because he knew what the answer would be. “Including…you?”

  “A few chaps will stay behind with you to tidy the place up before joining us. I’ve managed to get your Welsh chum on that but—” Thorne nodded. “We leave at first light.”

  “But you’re staying too, aren’t you?” Jack was cold, as cold as if he had fallen into the stream with the blood-red leaves. “You are, you are! Please say you are! Please say you’re not going!”

  “Buck up, Trooper Woodvine.” Thorne mustered a little of the captain he was, his gaze fixed on Jack’s eyes. “It’s not my first trip to the trenches, and young Pritchard will be here to keep you company.”

  He pressed his palm to Jack’s shoulder, resting it there softly. “I need you to be strong, to be the chap who nearly tore Captain Marsh’s balls clean off. Can you do that?”

  It had been funny when Jack had first told Thorne about the furious, red-faced man drifting helplessly downriver. But it wasn’t now. It was just another incident of violence in an unending stream of pain and blood.

  But what choice did Jack have?

  “Yes…yes, all right. I’ll be strong. I promise you. I’ll write to you from the farm. I’ll write to you every day. You’ll get so annoyed with all my letters, you’ll laugh! And I’ll be waiting for you, at the farm. I’ll stand at the top of the lane every day and I’ll wait for you to come.”

  “Jack, please— I’m sorry we never found the ending to your poem.” Thorne shook his head and reached into his pocket. From it he withdrew a folded piece of paper, which he pressed into Jack’s palm. “I want you to take this, and then— Whatever promises were made— Go home, find someone. Love and be loved.”

  Find someone. So this was the end? All through those nights he had spent at Thorne’s side, their bodies becoming as one, divided only by the morning light. He had thought that only death could tear them apart. But he had been wrong.

  With a rage he hardly dared acknowledge, he saw that he had been dismissed. Thorne may as well have raised his hand rigid in a sharp, unfeeling salute.

  Dismissed. He had promised Thorne his love, unchanging and constant, eternal and abiding. He was a fool to have ever given this man his heart, to have believed his loving words, only to be thrown aside.

  Angry tears fell heavily on the paper. Jack knew it was a drawing, but he couldn’t bear to look at it.

  “Is it that easy for you? Is it? Just give me a bloody drawing and send me off? You love me, you told me—again and again, you did! And now—you’re just sending me away. Like a parlormaid you grew tired of because she kept breaking your posh vases. Just a wave of the honorable captain’s wrist and I’m gone!”

  “Your poem”—Thorne pressed his hand to his breast pocket—“has been kept next to my heart since the day you gave it to me. It always will be.”

  “You’re a liar—you’ll only hurl it into a ditch, just as you have my heart!”

  Jack wadded the d
rawing into his fist.

  “Did you ever even love me at all? Was I just a convenient distraction for a bored officer? Because I love you—and maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I can stop as easily as you.”

  “A wave of my honorable damned wrist has sent you home—” He blinked quickly and withdrew his hand from Jack’s shoulder. “I’m about to tell a gang of decent young lads that they should be honored to lay down their lives for a few feet of mud and a war that was never ours to start with, so perhaps you’re right, maybe you shouldn’t love a man who can do that.”

  Jack started to turn away. He looked back for a moment, his anger blown out like a sudden storm, feeling somehow older than he had been only minutes before.

  “I would have died for you. I would have gone into battle at your side and laid down my life for you.” He shoved the ball of paper into his pocket. “And I would have been proud.”

  “And I would rather face hell itself than ask you to spend a second at the Western Front.” Thorne heaved in a deep, hoarse breath. “So I’m sending you home.”

  “I saw it in your palm—I knew we’d be severed. You said you make your own fate, but…I have to go, I can’t bear to look at you anymore.”

  Jack tried to hide the love in his heart as he looked back for what might be the last time in this world at his captain. Lone in the field, just as Jack had once written. He wanted to hate him, but he couldn’t.

  “Goodbye, Captain Thorne… And good luck.”

  “Goodbye, Trooper Woodvine. My very best wishes go with you, and Apollo’s too.”

  Jack couldn’t speak—if he had opened his mouth he would have cried, would have run back and embraced Robert Thorne and told him that he loved him and that he hadn’t meant what he’d said in anger.

  But he couldn’t.

  The severing had come.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  That night, Jack wasn’t the only person to lie awake, restless. He heard the other grooms sigh and turn in their beds, the occasional grunt and expletive rending the stuffy air. At each sound from one of the grooms, Jack felt guilt afresh. That he was going home, and some of them never would. And that it was the love of his captain that had saved him.

  Thorne loved him. How stupid Jack had been, to shout at him, to screw up the drawing, to part—maybe forever—under such a cloud. When he’d headed back to quarters, he had tried to flatten out the paper. He had seen then that it was the drawing of Jack and Apollo in the paddock. But because he was surrounded by the other grooms, Jack had forced himself not to cry.

  Alone in the long night, Jack got half-dressed, just as he had on the night of the storm, when he had gone down to the stable. It had been a lifetime ago. There was one goodbye that he still had to make, and that was to Apollo.

  The horse was resting, neat under the blanket that Jack had covered him with earlier. Apollo whinnied in greeting and Jack put his arms around the stallion’s strong neck.

  “Evening, soldier.” Jack pressed his lips to the horse’s mane. “Now, you be a good boy at the front, eh? Don’t kick anyone, don’t get your coat muddy, and whatever you do—” Jack swallowed down his tears. “Whatever you do, look after your dad. There’s good pasture in Shropshire, my lad, and it’s yours for the taking if you bring him home safely to me. Is that understood, soldier?”

  A rumble in Apollo’s throat told Jack that his orders had been received. The horse lowered its mighty head and butted against Jack’s gently, snorting his goodbye.

  And for a time they rested, face to face, Jack and Apollo, the fiercest horse in the company, the stallion that no groom had ever tamed until Trooper Woodvine came to the castle.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Each soldier stood to attention at the foot of his bed. The walls were bare now of magazine cuttings—no more ladies of the stage displaying their legs, no more postcards from home. It was Captain Marsh who came bellowing into the quarters. Even showering the grooms with spittle as he shouted, it was plain to Jack that the man was terrified.

  If Thorne came too, then Jack would apologize. Somehow. Would try to make it better, even though Jack had made it all the worse. Jack waited as Marsh screamed his orders, but still Thorne didn’t come.

  The soldiers who were off to the front filed out of the attic, kitbags on their backs, caps not always on straight. They shook hands with the few who had been given a short reprieve. The attic steps creaked under their footsteps for the last time, leaving Trooper Woodvine, Trooper Pritchard and the other almost-lucky few alone.

  Bryn patted Jack’s shoulder.

  “Better start getting tidied up then.”

  “I’ll…give it a going-over up here, if you chaps want to go down. See if there’s anything left in the bathrooms.”

  There was a strange selection of items—loose bristles from shaving brushes stuck to the sinks, ends of soap, a snapped comb, a well-chewed toothbrush abandoned on a windowsill.

  The noises from outside grew louder—horses’ hooves in the stable yard, the shouts of officers. Jack heard the unmistakable bark of Captain Thorne and his heart leaped. Perhaps he would come back to the attic, just once more, then Jack could say goodbye and hold him, even for a moment, and tell him that he hadn’t meant what he’d said.

  Bryn knocked on the bathroom door.

  “They’re ready for the off, I thought you’d like to know. We can get a good view at the window at the end.”

  The attic overlooked the driveway as it followed up from the ancient stone archway. Jack and Bryn, side by side, watched the field of khaki below. Orders to march, orders to load up. Thorne was about to pull his whip from his boot at the infraction of some soldier—instead, he placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave him a careful smile.

  For a moment, Thorne turned his head. He looked up at the attic, the windows that were still grimy no matter how hard they had been scrubbed.

  He can’t see me watching him. He can’t.

  Jack placed his palm against the cold glass, as if it were a caress. He mouthed the words.

  I love you.

  Then the khaki was gone, the horses, the staff cars, the wagons, the boxes.

  The soldiers had gone to the front.

  Later that day, Jack and Bryn were sweeping the yard. Bryn had spent the day singing to himself. Snatches of hymns, lines from folk songs, sometimes in English and sometimes in Welsh. Sometimes with the original lyrics and sometimes with his own, usually involving feats of swearing that were quite remarkable for a chapel choirmaster.

  He began to sing a song that Jack had heard at Mrs. Byatt’s knee. Jack joined in. To block his crowding thoughts, he kept his mind on home, and on the farm and on his father and Mrs. Byatt’s splendid pies. He had been spared by his captain.

  Nor father nor mother shall make me false prove,

  I’ll ‘list for a soldier and follow my love.

  Jack stopped singing, his heart leaping in his chest even as Bryn carried on, the song of a girl who disguised herself to go into battle to find her sweetheart.

  In a few days’ time he’d be on a ship crossing the Channel. He’d be put on a train. He’d cross over two hundred miles of England, then he would be home. While Thorne and Bryn and Trooper Burney and every other one of them would be in a trench. Or in a makeshift grave.

  Jack’s life was no more important than anyone else’s.

  Follow my love.

  Then and there, Trooper Woodvine decided—he would go to the front.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Two days passed.

  Two days in the trench.

  Two days beneath the bombardment, the guns falling silent as the long night drew on, the last night that many would ever see.

  Thorne was no novice to this, of course. He had been here before, or somewhere very like it, and he had survived each time. He had done his stint, had his time behind the lines, come back to the front and so the cycle went on. This time was different, though. Here, deep beneath the earth, picking through mud, lo
dging with rats, sharing the air with gunpowder, it already felt as though the world had come to an end.

  By the light of a low trench lantern he stood before a tiny hand mirror and ran a tortoiseshell comb through his pomaded hair. With a tut, Thorne plucked out a silver strand and discarded it, smiling at his own ridiculous vanity, at the man who would comb his hair as he prepared to meet his maker. His smile faded as quickly as it had appeared when he thought of Bryn and his friends, the men who would arrive here at nine only to be told that the order had come in from the powers that be.

  We go over the top at eleven hundred hours.

  Over the top.

  Over the top and into the guns, to the barrage that would cut them apart, would scythe through them before they had a chance to draw breath, and he would be at the head of the column, leading out his brave boys. Thorne swallowed and plucked his cigarette up from the ashtray. He put it between his lips and turned away from the mirror.

  Captain Robert Brereton Thorne, youngest son of Lord Brereton, cavalry officer, was not a man who admitted defeat easily, and he might just as easily be back here tomorrow. God willing, he might be farther up the line in a new trench, one where a man just like him currently stood smoking a cigarette and thinking of all the things he should have said, a man who happened to have been born in Germany rather than England. Or he might be dead in no man’s land, hanging like a scarecrow on the barbed wire, caught in the makeshift gibbet as a warning to those who followed.

  But Jack was safe, and if sending him home to the farm, to a life, meant that Robert Thorne was hated then so be it. Better to have the man you love curse your name than die at your side.

  He pressed his hand to the poem in his pocket and closed his eyes, tears welling again at the thought of Jack, the warmth of him in his arms. From the gramophone his mother’s voice sang of the raggle-taggle gypsy and on the bed lay the letter received from his father that morning. Lord Brereton had worked the miracle that had saved Jack Forrester Woodvine but despite his best efforts there was to be no like miracle for Apollo. The white stallion who had grown from a little gray foal with hurt and anger in his eyes, who had overcome his birth lameness, would be with his pa to the end, whatever the end might be.