“Have you any idea how many soldiers there are out here? How many units? How many battalions? If we have to find a needle in a haystack, then at least we need a clue where to look.”
So I waited outside while Jack went into an estaminet for more information.
He came back very quickly.
“This is it?” I asked.
“No, but we’re getting there,” he said. “The Thirty-third were here, and with them, the Nineteenth Brigade. Your brother’s battalion is in the Nineteenth.”
“But where have they gone?”
“A place called Daours. It’s back down on the Somme, near where it meets the Ancre.”
“Can you be sure they were here?”
“Oh, yes,” Jack said. “They remember them well here. The locals were forced to give their houses as billets for the soldiers. They don’t like that. They have every reason to remember them.”
We were getting closer to Tom, but not close enough.
“When were they here?” I asked.
“They left on Tuesday, three days ago.”
“Then we have to hurry,” I said.
“No,” said Jack. “It’s getting late. We’re tired. We’ll find a bed here and go on in the morning.”
“No!” I said.
“Alexandra—”
“No,” I said again. “We have to go on. I’m not tired. It’s not that late. And it’s much safer for us to travel in the dark, anyway. You know I’m right.”
And for once, Jack had to agree.
So we moved on, to Daours.
10
We rode into the night.
It seemed the whole world had shrunk to just us. The two of us: Jack and me. Or maybe the three of us: Jack, me and the motorbike. Maybe I am tired, maybe I am going a little crazy, I thought as we trundled on the bike through the darkness. But without the bike I would be as lost as without Jack.
The bike’s headlight shone dimly in front of us, and Jack was afraid of that, to show a light in the dark, but there was little we could do. It shone ahead of us, just enough to see the way as mile after mile of narrow mud-laden track went by under the wheels, while I listened to the sound of the engine rise and fall as it plowed through the varying ground.
I was sore, sore from holding Jack; my arms felt like lead around his waist. Sore from holding the bike between my legs, sore from sitting on the tiny metal plate.
It was very late by the time we reached Daours, and we repeated the whole performance. While Jack asked around in the village in his excellent French, I lolled on the motorbike, and ignored anyone who came my way.
The news was bad.
“They were here,” Jack said, “till Wednesday afternoon. Then they marched on to Buire.”
“How far is that?” I asked.
“About another ten miles,” Jack said.
I got ready to argue with him, but I didn’t have to.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll find him, I know it.”
“You mean, you’ve seen it?” I asked, but Jack shook his head.
“No,” he said, turning away. “No. I just think.”
I wanted to lie down and die. Every bit of me was tired, we had finished our food long ago, and I was ready to give up, but I couldn’t. Tom was driving me on.
We got back onto the bike again, and slowly crawled out of Daours toward Buire. The night deepened around us, and through it I saw flashes of light ahead of us.
“Lightning?” I shouted to Jack over his shoulder, but he shook his head, and I understood.
Guns. Big guns were firing ahead of us, though not a sound could be heard over the noise of our engine.
We rode on and I gripped Jack grimly, and in the night and the haze in my head, I saw ravens sweeping through the darkness on either side of the bike. I shook my head to clear the vision, but they wouldn’t leave, and I don’t know if they were real or not. I shut my eyes and tried to think only of Tom, but whenever I managed to bring him to mind, he was replaced by Edgar, laughing at me, waving a fistful of black feathers in my face.
We reached Buire in the dead of night.
Jack cut the engine and we looked at the sorry little village. A church was its most noble feature; otherwise, it was a mess of small terraced houses and the odd grander one.
Finally I was in the thick of people. Despite the late hour, the village was astir with hordes of soldiers, and more amazing to my eye, horses. Lines of cavalry wound their way around either end of the village, the horses plodding slowly and wearily in some places, proud and fine in others. I stared as a line of Indians made their way past us on horseback, their pointed beards and turbaned heads an almost unbelievable sight.
No one took the slightest notice of us. Everyone was busy doing something, going somewhere or just being too tired to wonder at a dispatch rider and his passenger in the middle of the night.
Once more Jack made some enquiries, and once more the news was tantalizing.
“They were here this morning,” he said. “They left before noon for Meaulte.”
“How far?” was all I could manage to say.
“I’ve never been there,” Jack said. “It’s about six miles. The road’s easy enough to follow, but I’ve no idea how long it will take.”
I couldn’t believe we were so close to Tom, that we had traveled in a day what it had taken him four days to march. I said so to Jack.
“They stopped for a day or two here. Another day and we’d have met them.”
“So . . . ?” I asked.
“So they’ll be in Meaulte now. They’ll be there tomorrow. It’s six miles. We can take the chance to rest here.”
I began to protest, but Jack stopped me.
“I can’t go on. Alexandra. Please trust me. They’ll still be in Meaulte tomorrow morning. We can leave at dawn and then we’ll find Tom. But we need to get some rest first.”
I was ashamed of myself, but in truth, a part of me was happy to agree with Jack, a part of me that was tired beyond belief and exhausted in mind as well as body.
There were large numbers of soldiers in tents in an old orchard on the edge of the village. We kept away from them, but found a small hayloft nearby. There was just enough room for the two of us.
As I went to sleep I heard the sound of guns. The atmosphere seemed to change around us, seemed to tense, as the low boom and rumble of the barrage reached us from the front line.
But Jack noticed none of this, and was already snoring by my side.
9
With night came the raven dream.
The dream of Tom, the dream of the bullet, and once more I watched, paralyzed, as with infinite slowness, and in precise detail, I saw the gun fire. There was a bright flash, followed by a loud bang. The bullet hurtled toward Tom, ravens’ feathers whirling around him as if caught in a tornado.
The bullet left a curious trail of cordite behind it, a thin smoke that became unnaturally thick, and began to block my vision. I was blinded by it, until just as the bullet hit Tom, I lost sight of him altogether.
When I woke this morning, the world was shrouded in mist.
8
The mist was thick. So thick I could barely see twenty paces ahead.
I woke first, and shook Jack by the shoulder. I have no idea how early it was, but already there were sounds of the encampment stirring and I wanted to be away. I thought of Cassandra, and of the end of her journey. Her story ended in a pool of her own blood on the steps of the palace in Argos. I knew my ending would be very different from hers, and almost as if I had been bereaved, I knew that she was no longer with me.
The mist, at least, seemed a friend, and hid our progress as we climbed down from the hayloft and wheeled the bike out of the village without starting it. There was no point in adding to our problems.
We weren’t alone as we left the village. An almost constant stream of wounded and prisoners approached from the opposite direction, and Jack decided we may as well start the motorcycle again. It looked strang
er pushing it than riding it. And the less time anyone had to look at me, the better.
Once or twice I would fancy that someone was looking at me too closely, but no one said anything. Everyone was too busy to worry much about a strange boy on the back of a dispatch rider’s motorbike. I suppose the truth is that no one actually looked at me. They just saw another boy in a uniform.
At last we came to Meaulte.
The mist was still heavy, but we could see that Meaulte was another drab town. It had a dejected air about it as we rode through. A utilitarian, slightly sordid sort of a place, with only its church to be proud of.
And it was there that I thought it was all over.
Jack could find out nothing. Although the place is only a mile or two behind the front, there were still lots of locals in the village. They resented the presence of the war in their world, and the presence of the army.
“Up until a fortnight ago, the front line was just ahead,” Jack said. “The big push has moved it farther east. These people are still scared.”
I couldn’t blame them, but I was desperate to find Tom.
“You said they’d be here,” I said, angrily, though I knew I’d have been lost without him. I would have got nowhere.
And now, as it is, I seem to have got nowhere anyway.
I am just sitting, waiting, on the edge of death.
7
Jack continued to ask around, and finally found an answer, but not the one I’d been hoping for.
He came back from a queue of men at a delousing machine standing at one end of the village. I could tell immediately that it was bad. He didn’t have to say anything.
“They’ve gone,” I said. “They’ve gone, haven’t they?”
He nodded, a brief, small gesture, but one that dealt me a massive blow.
“Yes. Before dawn. No one knows where, except that they were headed for the front. Left most of their kit behind. They’re heading for it, all right. Could be anywhere.”
“But where?” I cried.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. No one seems to know.”
“What do we do?” I cried. I couldn’t admit we were defeated. It couldn’t happen.
“Someone must know something” was all I could say.
“It’s chaos, Alexandra. Nothing’s clear. There’s fighting everywhere. There’s been a big mauling in a place called Mametz Wood. I was talking to the lads over there, they’re some of the survivors. We’ve got control of it now, and the fighting’s moved on to some villages beyond. Bazentin, Delville Wood, High Wood. They could be anywhere.”
Something struck me, and I don’t know why I bothered to say it, but if I hadn’t, then it might all have ended then and there.
“That’s strange,” I said. “Why does it have an English name?”
“What?” Jack said.
“High Wood. Why does it have an English name?”
“That’s just what the army calls it. The French call it Raven Wood.”
Raven Wood.
I went cold.
Jack saw; I must have gone as white as death itself.
“What is it?” he said. He grabbed my arm, thinking I was going to faint.
“That’s it,” I said. I trembled. “That’s where he’s going. High Wood.”
Now I know what the raven means, now at last I can answer that question from my dreams.
I know what the raven means. It means death.
It means High Wood.
It’s where Tom is going to die.
6
I am waiting now, on the edge of a place called Death Valley. That’s not its real name, just one given to it by the soldiers. Some of them call it Happy Valley instead, which is supposed to be a joke, but how anyone can laugh here I do not know. Yet they do. I’ve seen them.
Jack knew I was right. He trusts my vision as I believe in his.
As soon as I saw the connection with the raven, it was obvious, and so we made our way here. I was feeling utterly desolate. We were surrounded by men on all sides, streams of troops marching to the front, or staggering back in ragged lines. Once Tom’s battalion has gone up to the front itself, I will be unable to reach him. My only hope is that I can get him away before that happens.
We left Meaulte and rode on clogging mud tracks through the remains of other villages, one of which had only its church tower left standing. I don’t know what they were all called, but a place called Fricourt was no more than a vast pile of rubble, with buildings that looked as if they had just collapsed and died.
Farther on, small copses of trees lay around us, some intact, some just fields of broken stumps. Jack explained that the front line ran through the area until the big push began a fortnight ago. There’s been lots of fighting here, and I cannot describe the things I have seen that prove that fact.
Dead men lie at the side of the road.
Jack rode on, and though I stared, they were soon behind us.
Suddenly there was a strange whistling hum in the air, and seconds later we were at the edge of a storm. It was not a storm of nature, but one of machinery and artillery.
Explosions ripped the ground ahead of us, and Jack frantically pulled off the road.
“Five-nines!” he shouted. “Get in that ditch and keep your head down!”
He didn’t have to tell me. We flung ourselves from the bike and cowered on the ground until the barrage stopped.
It didn’t last long.
“Are you all right?” Jack asked me as he got to his feet.
I couldn’t answer; I was too stunned to speak.
I nodded. We moved on.
Then the bike gave out.
We had been struggling through oceans of mud. The chalky land around us is covered by a thick clay, which had been churned into a gray-brown paste that binds and sticks.
The faithful Triumph had worked its way deep into this mud at the bottom of a hollow, and no matter how much Jack tried, we could not shift it.
We got off, and tried to push it free, Jack revving it all the while, but I only managed to lose my footing and fall facedown in the mud.
Some Scots were passing. They laughed at me, but I didn’t care. No one could recognize me now, I thought, and two of them came over and lifted the bike free with Jack’s help, but we had only made our way a little farther when it ran out of petrol.
I was too tired even to cry now, and we stood staring at the useless bike, lying on its side like a dead animal in the mud.
With a strangely unnatural speed, the mist began to clear, the sun burning it off in a matter of minutes, and we could see it was going to be a hot day after all.
We saw we were surrounded by the dead. Bodies lay here and there, uncared for, unburied, almost unnoticed. I tried not to look at them, but couldn’t help staring at the huge corpses of horses that lay among the human dead.
The old front line was ground covered with debris, with old and new shell holes, rifles, clothing and all sorts of other equipment strewn around and abandoned. I found it hard to take in. Even the word desolation comes nowhere near describing what I saw. It was a twisted and broken world, made by men.
More wounded came by. Going forward, streams of soldiers were marching, and more Indian cavalry trotted past on horseback.
Then, standing, staring in despair at the bike, I looked up at the file of men passing us, and I saw Tom.
Jack saw me start, and before I could call out, clapped a hand over my mouth.
The movement was enough to catch Tom’s eye.
I barely recognized him, and as he stared back at me, as he stared straight through me, I realized that he didn’t recognize me at all.
Jack stepped back.
“Tom,” I said, mouthing the word at him.
Then he knew me, and a look of terror and wonder spread across his face. I saw what he saw. A thin, gangly boy, covered in mud, with rough shorn hair. And who looked a little bit like his sister.
He came over to us, glancin
g nervously back at the line of men he should have been marching with, and at Jack, and at me.
As he came closer I could see he finally believed it was me.
“What?”
That was all he said, and I could not speak.
“Why?” he said. “Why are you here?”
He glanced again at his battalion, but no one seemed to be bothered that he had fallen out. In fact, it seemed they had reached their destination, for just ahead in a low curve of land, we could see the start of a huge encampment of men, guns, equipment and horses. Battalions of men were camped around on all sides.
“Why, Sasha? How did you get here?”
He glanced at Jack, then back to me.
“I’ve come to take you back,” I said at last.
“You’ve . . . what?” Tom said, perplexed, his face dark.
“I’ve seen what’s going to happen to you,” I said. “Tom, you must believe me, I’ve seen what’s going to happen. You’re going to be killed if you don’t come away. You’re going to High Wood, aren’t you?”
“How do you know that?” he asked, scowling.
“Tom, you have to believe me. You have to, no one else does, but it’s true. You’re going to be killed.”
“Oh, God,” he said. “Why can’t you understand?”
He reached out to me.
“Go away, Sasha,” he said. “Go home. Get this stupid man who’s brought you here to take you home again. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you, because it’s not true, and even if I did, I wouldn’t leave. I can’t. I belong with these men. I can’t run away because my sister tells me to, and if I did, I’d be shot anyway!”
He stopped; then he turned and looked at his battalion, which was nearly out of sight at the head of the valley.
“I must go,” he said, sadly. “Go home and be safe.”
The Foreshadowing Page 16
