Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2)

by Avan Judd Stallard

  He loves me.

  And for no better reason than availability. She was the only young woman fool enough to stay in the district.

  And he was pathetic and despicable and disgusting. He had never been loved—that had to be it. Now he was an officer and a hero and an important man, and all he needed to make it complete was a woman to love and to love him back.

  If he loves me anywhere near as much as I hate him …

  But that love would not save her, not unless she could contrive the right lie. A lie that appealed to his sense of duty, and his warped sense of fairness, and his desire to be respected and venerated. Most of all, it had to be a lie that let him believe that, one day, she might come to love him back.

  What lie can do all that?

  Just keep him talking.

  He would lead her to it and she would feed it right back to him.

  “You are right, Yetzel. I cannot lie to you. You have been so good to me, and I cannot lie to you.”

  He stopped shaking his head. He nodded now. “Then tell me, Axelle, who is he? Who is he really?”

  So they beat some of the truth out of him, but not all of it. They don’t know he’s a Frenchman, a soldier. Or maybe Yetzel does know, and it’s a test …

  “He never told me. I just know that he needed help. It’s true about his jaw. It was broken. He never uttered a word and … I don’t know what possessed me, but …”

  “Is he your lover?”

  “What? No. No.”

  “And Sven? The real one, the little one from Rotterdam, do you love him?”

  “Once, but … but he left me. No, that’s not true. I left him. I came back here and hoped he would follow, but he did not. Who could blame him? I fear … I fear he must have moved on by now. I fear it is over.”

  Yetzel lurched forward. He grabbed Axe by the arms.

  “But do you love him?” he said, and shook her, not out of violence, but out of a perverted eagerness. “Tell me—tell me you don’t love him!”

  “No, Yetzel. I don’t love these men.”

  “Then I can help you! If you don’t love these men, I can make them disappear. Nobody need ever know. They become casualties of war. Is that what you want?” he said, and nodded.

  “What do you mean … how could you …” and Axe tried to understand what he was saying, but it made no sense. He was crazy, talking madness.

  Yetzel let go of Axe and drew his pistol. His eyes darted, while his face filled with hard resolve. “Where is he?”

  Axe stared back at him, shocked and confused.

  “Damn it, Axelle! I’m trying to help you. Where is he?”

  “Where is who?” said Axe. None of it made sense.

  “The—” and he stopped short, for Yetzel heard a sound behind. He spun around and raised his Luger, but he was too late. The rusted blade of Daan Lancelin’s hatchet hit him beneath the eye socket. It sliced through flesh and bone to lodge firmly in his face.

  Yetzel dropped and screamed. He thrashed on the ground. Axe looked at him in disbelief. The German’s face was awash with blood. He tried to stand, but fell, so began dragging his body. There was no way he could see, but the instinct to survive drove him on. He tried to crawl away.

  Axe looked up at Elmo in disbelief. “What have you done?” she whispered.

  Elmo looked at Yetzel and then at Axe.

  “He killed Nora. Shouldn’t have done that,” said Elmo.

  Axe looked at him in horror and shook her head and opened her mouth, but there was nothing to say now.

  “She was Hettie’s. He shouldn’t have done that,” said Elmo.

  Pop!

  A shot rang out. Somehow Yetzel had held onto his pistol, and though he could not see to aim he raised it up and fired at the sound of Elmo’s voice. Elmo did not hesitate. He walked toward Yetzel.

  Pop! Pop!

  Elmo kept walking, impervious to the bullets.

  Pop!

  He slapped the pistol from Yetzel’s hand. He took another step forward and put his boot on Yetzel’s throat. He gripped the handle of the hatchet with both hands and yanked. The rusted steel squeaked as it pulled free from Yetzel’s face.

  Elmo raised the hatchet above his head. He held the pose and glanced behind.

  “Maybe you don’t want to see this,” he said, and waited for Axe to turn away before he swung.

  46

  By the time Ken arrived at the farm, his hands filled with biscuit and cake, the car and Yetzel’s body were gone. All that remained was a dark mark on the ground. Axe had watched Elmo drag Yetzel’s corpse in the same rough way that Yetzel had dragged Elmo’s goat weeks before. It was a horrifying equivalence. A man treated no different to a beast of burden.

  And yet necessary.

  Ken now bounded toward Axe—Ken who had seen and done so much and yet retained an unexpected purity. He was not innocent, or naïve. He was …

  Guileless. Except for a necessary lie about his age, he was exactly as he said and appeared, and he took the world to be the same. The rare man—in truth just a boy in a man’s world—who could be taken at face value and who took the world at face value. This day, his world had been conversation and honest labor, and he was pleased. He did not need to know. It was best he did not.

  Axe received Ken with warmth and they went inside. She let herself be lost in the easy chatter that always surrounded Ken. And so Axe did not ask herself what Elmo had been doing there. Why he had been lurking on her property in the late afternoon, a hatchet to hand. For the time being, she would accept his presence and his act as a grisly and awful providence.

  When Ken asked where Michel was, Axe explained what she knew, which was not much. She did not pretend that all would be fine. The fact was, he could already be dead or captured.

  “No, he will come. He is always hungry and will come for my food. Besides, he has much to learn from Ken. His tai chi is not even beginner!” said Ken.

  His confidence was pure aspiration, and yet it made Axe feel better.

  They ate biscuits and cake and talked about the mixed blessings of Ken’s past and the vast landscape of the life he saw so clearly in his future. By talking, Axe did not have to ponder what Yetzel meant about finding Michel.

  How could he know about our lie if Michel is still free?

  It was easier not to ask than not to answer.

  Axe slept early and slept deep. When she woke, it was to Monster, hopping on her hindlegs, scratching the claws on her solitary front paw against the big barn doors. She wanted out.

  It was pitch black. Axe lit a candle. It was early enough that Ken had not yet risen, which he always did before dawn. Monster squeezed her body out and ran into the gloom that was no darkness to her.

  “Hello, girl,” said a voice in the night.

  Axe shrieked in fright.

  “It’s all right. Just me,” said the voice.

  “Michel?”

  “Yes.”

  Axe pushed the door wider. A shape emerged. Axe went to Michel.

  “My God, are you all right?”

  Michel stopped and rested an arm on her shoulder. He was short of breath.

  “A little tired. It was a long walk.”

  Axe leaned close. “Your face. Your nose is bleeding.”

  Michel touched his hand to his upper lip then looked at the blood on his fingers. “Thought it had stopped. From hours ago. A few Germans. Fools were asleep.”

  Axe helped Michel inside and sat him down.

  “Water?” said Michel.

  “Of course,” said Axe.

  Ken stirred from his austere bed of hay on dirt. “Is that him?” he called.

  “Yes,” said Axe.

  Ken ran out.

  “Huh! I told you! I told Axe, Michel. I told her you will come back soon. Well … well …” and it seemed like Ken for once did not know what to say. “Then I hunt! Yes. I get us breakfast. Don’t worry, Michel. Rest. I get food!”

  “It’s all right, Ken. You don’t have to
do that,” said Michel.

  “It is easy. Ken is a master of kyudo! Don’t you remember?”

  “I remember, Ken. I’m smart,” said Michel. He smiled and winked.

  Ken stood in front of Michel. His broad smile disappeared and his face became serious. He bowed down so that his head was lower than Michel’s. It was the first time he had done such a thing since arriving on the farm. He straightened.

  “Now I get you a magnificent, imperial … noble breakfast!”

  “All right, Ken. You do that. Thank you.”

  Ken collected his bow and walked into the night. Axe brought Michel a jug of water and a cup. Michel drank, then poured another cup and drank. He stood and walked toward the ladder that led to the loft.

  “Michel?” said Axe.

  He did not turn. “Have to sleep. Need to be strong for tomorrow,” he said, his words slurred from exhaustion.

  “What do you mean? Why do you need to be strong? What’s happening, Michel? What happened in Roeselare? Are we in danger? Did Yetzel have you? Did you escape?” said Axe, her voice rising.

  Michel staggered forward. “They didn’t catch me. Don’t worry. No danger. I can explain tomorrow. Have to sleep,” he called.

  “Michel!”

  He began climbing. “Tomorrow. Long story. Tomorrow.”

  Michel reached the loft. He dropped onto his mattress. It was mere seconds before he fell asleep.

  Axe paced the dirt floor of the barn. She would let him rest. But all the questions she had been avoiding now flooded into her mind. She went outside and waited in the dark for the new day, and whatever answers it might bring.

  47

  Michel lay on his back, blinking rapidly—blinking away the insistence of day, blinking away one thought for another.

  There was so much at stake. So much that could go wrong. So many ways the wrong people could get hurt. And the best way for nobody to get hurt—nobody besides Kranz and himself—was if they knew nothing.

  He had intended to tell Axe everything. He desperately wanted to—wanted the catharsis of expressing his hate for Kranz, expressing his desire to punish him and then kill him, the catharsis of finally telling someone the whole truth.

  It was a truth he had not even told his old friend, Henry, the man who had been with him through so much of it. But Henry had not been there when Kranz beat him—beat him with the ease of a grand master fighting a schoolboy.

  Still, Kranz had made mistakes. He let Michel see his face, and out of sheer arrogance had told him his name. The biggest mistake was letting him live, for Michel was coming for him.

  He would tell Axe nothing. It was safest that way. She would be upset, perhaps she would even feel betrayed, but there was no avoiding it. Besides, she had Ken now. He would help her. Protect her if anything happened.

  A ray of light crept to his eye. Michel tilted his head, but did not move.

  He would find him. It would not be hard with Orbart’s directions to Kranz’s compound in the woods. East of Mesen, the road to Houthem, after a stream, a wide gravel road through a wood. Two hundred acres of fields, forest and warehouses.

  He would find him and take care of what needed to be done. Then he would make his way back to the Allied front, or die trying. He belonged there. He was a soldier. This? A sojourn. An indulgence. It was over now.

  Michel got up and stretched his aching body. He climbed down the ladder. He was conscious of the stiffness and soreness in his knee.

  Axe, Ken and Monster were all waiting for him. Ken had bagged a pigeon and a duck in the early morning. He had painstakingly deboned the pigeon and then used the bones and offal to create a stock in which he slow-cooked the duck. He fried up the little pieces of pigeon meat in a little sheep fat. Being an excellent cook was just one of his seemingly endless array of talents.

  Michel ate like a starving man, fast and in big gulps. He paused long enough to ask if Ken and Axe had eaten, and they said they had. He did not believe them, but he kept eating, taking his second serving and attacking it so that his mouth remained full and his attention focused. He finished and licked his plate. Before Axe or Ken could ask him anything, he stood and said, “I have to see Godewyn.”

  “About that man? About Kranz?” said Axe.

  Michel looked at her intensely. So Godewyn had told her what he knew.

  “Yes.”

  And that was the truth. He would see Godewyn, find out what else he knew, then he would go.

  “Why, Michel? Who is this man to you? How do you know him? Yesterday, why did you go crazy like that? Damn it, tell me something! I don’t understand what’s happening!”

  Michel walked to where Axe stood and put his hand on her shoulder. He leaned close and held her eyes with his. “I have to go now, Axe. I have to speak to Godewyn. Then I will explain everything. I’m sorry.”

  Axe’s bust rose and fell with her breath like an ocean seeking shore. She looked at Michel with a burning intensity.

  “Then go, do what you have to. I will be here. But not for long. I have decided to return to Rotterdam. I asked Ken to come with me.”

  “Jesus … I forgot … forgot all about the court case. I’m sorry. What happened?” said Michel.

  “As you say—when you return. We will talk of all these things, and more, when you return …”

  The way she looked at him. The meaning behind her words. She knew what was in his heart. Knew that it might be the last time she would ever see him.

  “Axe—”

  Ken’s face came into view over Axe’s shoulder, his grin wide. Michel looked up and stepped back.

  “We all go from the war,” said Ken. “In Rotterdam they speak Dutch. I speak some Dutch. Don’t worry, Michel, I will teach you. You are smart. You learn quick. Quicker than tai chi!”

  “That sounds good, Ken,” said Michel.

  “I plan to leave tonight. Ken and I leave tonight, no matter what,” said Axe.

  Michel nodded his head. “Good. Good. Well, I’m just popping over to Godewyn’s. You look after Axe for me while I’m gone, Ken. Not that she needs looking after.”

  “Ok. But you should come back soon?”

  “Back soon,” said Michel.

  And though that bitch, Florence, still had a grip on him, still whispered lies in his ear and tried to spin him around and send him back into the embrace that she promised was waiting, there was something even more powerful driving him now. Michel continued down the road and past the mark on the ground that was the stain of Yetzel. He did not look back.

  48

  The sweat on Henry’s brow and back was three-quarters hard work, one-quarter fear.

  He understood now how Ernie had felt in the trucks, tasked with chauffeuring ungodly amounts of explosives hither and thither, knowing the whole caboodle could go up at any moment. At least outside you had a chance of being blown clear. In the tunnels there was nowhere for a blast to dissipate. It would flatten anybody and anything in the mine, whether they were five feet away or five hundred, and then it would bring the roof down on their heads for good measure.

  Henry’s disposition had been sour since the cave-in and flood. He was none too impressed when the head engineers inspected the mine and declared it safe—or safe enough. It was unstable, but the mine formed a critical part of their plans. The date of detonation, to be synchronized with dozens of other detonations beneath the German frontlines, was too near for them to start a new mine.

  So Henry and his fellow sappers were sent in to dig out umpteen tons of mud and seal off the section with the cave-in. One of the men said they saw daylight before it was sealed off. That sounded like wishful thinking to Henry. Like a man in a desert who sees water—a man in a mine who sees light.

  They tunneled around, bypassing the cave-in. Worked double shifts to get it done. Now they were loading the explosives, stacking crate after crate of ammonal in the final cavern. Though Henry did not know what ammonal was, he had no doubt it would turn him into red mist if he so much as look
ed at it cross-eyed.

  He had never been one to overthink things. He had never wasted a second on pointless whys and what-fors when it came to the war. There was his life before, when he did not care what the Germans were doing across the seas, and then his life after, when he had only cared about staying alive and scrounging a hot meal.

  But after the cave-in, Henry started to think. He knew he was there to fight Germans and represent Britain, but he did not know why the war started or why it was still going three years later. Ignorant—that is what his old friend Michel liked to call him. He was gone now, but the barb finally stuck.

  Henry discreetly asked a question here and there, nothing to cause a fuss. The other sappers, some of whom had been digging tunnels under the same stretch of ground for over a year, said things that made less sense every time he heard them.

  Things about the Germans being cruel and vicious, the Hun and all, you know what they’re like, the sadistic pricks. Yeah, sure I do, Henry always said, but he didn’t, not really. He’d never met a real German, one he had a chance to get to know.

  Others said it was for king and country. Henry already knew that. But he did not know what his king and country had against Jerry, or what Jerry had against them.

  Some who were political and savvy spoke about the Germans trying to overtake Britain as the greatest power in the world. They were hardly about to let that happen. That satisfied him for a while.

  But not being ignorant was a sort of curse. It only led to more questions, no matter how many answers one found. Henry eventually found himself wondering why they shouldn’t let Germany overtake them. To a fella who just wanted to enjoy a regular pint at the Shabby Corset in humble Chatham, what difference did it make who ruled the waves?

  In the end, the only thing everyone said that made sense was that they stuck it out for their mates. You depended on them, and they depended on you. For that reason alone, Henry supposed every man would keep going, however long it took.

  Rat Dick was up ahead. He and Henry had become an inseparable pair. Their bond was not the sort forged from deep conversation or meeting of minds or shared interest. It was forged from pressure and presence, and was all the stronger for it. Henry was there and Rat Dick was there—there together, going through it together, sticking it out together.