Ghost Talkers

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Ben hunkered down in front of her, frowning. “You’re certain about that.”

  “That I find him unpleasant?” She raised an eyebrow. “No … no, I know what you meant. Yes. He had dyed his hair brown, and he said he was going by Sgt. Meadows. He told me not to tell anyone, including you, that I’d seen him there.”

  “That’s … that’s not right.” He stroked his mustache in thought, looking past Ginger toward the trenches. “Will you be all right waiting here for Merrow if I go look for Axtell?”

  “Of course.” She reached out, as if she could take his hand, and caught herself. “What is bothering you?”

  “I am not certain, to be honest. I can’t tell if it’s something I’ve forgotten or something that I have yet to put together, but—” He shook his head, grimacing. “Something seems … off. Will you be all right? Truly?”

  “Yes.” She glanced at the hospital. “I’ll see if can find a copy of The Story of an African Farm.”

  “You like it that much?”

  Ginger stared at him, not quite certain if he was joking. “Well … I thought I might try to translate that book code. From the message we just got?”

  He froze, confusion binding his limbs in place. “Ah. Right.” He swallowed and tried to shrug off the braids of murky silver confusion and orange frustration. “Carry on, then.”

  “I will.” Ginger smiled at him, knowing her aura must be blue-black with dismay. Did he not remember that they had taken a message from the listening trench, or had he forgotten which book was associated with it? For that matter, she had no way of knowing if Axtell was really supposed to be in Berlin, or if Ben had mixed up another set of memories. “Are you certain that you can go and come back?”

  He stood and gave her a wry grin. “I’m more confident in my ability to return to you than I am in my ability to do anything else.” With a wink, he stretched up and soared away, leaving the air dismally warmer with his absence.

  Ginger stood and faced the field hospital. It had been a manor at some point, and the nurses who were not working were housed in the servant quarters. She would start there. The Story of an African Farm was popular enough, and such a slender volume, that one of them might have brought it along with her books. It was worth a try.

  * * *

  Ginger rubbed her forehead, trying to ease the pain behind her right eye. It did nothing to make the words on the page any more sensible. One of the chauffeuses had brought a copy of The Story of an African Farm with her and had been delighted to find someone who appreciated it as much as she did. The theme of the rights of women had been part of what had inspired her to join up to drive ambulances. Ginger had lost a good twenty minutes chatting about the book with the girl before she managed to escape with it to sit at a garden table in the sun.

  At the moment, she was desperately hoping that the book was a different edition than the one that she and Ben had used. If it was the same edition, that meant she had missed a number somewhere, because the message made almost no sense.

  THE WATCH THE LADY HAD BEEN TURNED

  BRING ME AND MADE ANY OTHER LOVE TOUCHED IT ON YOU

  YOU MAY WORK OF DEATH’S FINGER POINTING DOWNWARD

  AS MUCH AS WITH AN ADROIT MOVEMENT HE

  SO A BEGGAR FEELS WHO AM ONLY WHEN A PIECE OF

  HE CAME CLOSE NOW.

  It must be that she missed a number and made the entire sequence go off, because the first line made a sort of sense.… The lady had been turned seemed as though it had to be about the mediums. Did it mean that a medium had turned traitor? But the rest … Ginger groaned and dropped her head to the table. She’d gone over the numbers twice and couldn’t find one that she’d dropped. She needed to rest her eyes for a minute.

  When Ben got back, she would make him help her figure out where she had gone wrong. Or maybe the message would make sense to him. Or he would agree that she was working from the wrong edition. She would just rest her eyes.

  Only for a moment.

  * * *

  Ginger is sitting in a box seat at the Met, only it is not the Met but Ben’s box at The Queen’s Hall in London. She is in London, not New York. She doesn’t know how she could have mistaken the two. The symphony is wonderful, even if the seats are too close to the tympani. Still, she loves the New World Symphony by Dvořák, and the percussion is a substantial reason why. The music always makes her nostalgically homesick for New York.

  Ben leans over and hands her a handkerchief.

  She smiles and takes it, wiping her eyes in the dark. He always knows. She lowers the muffler he handed her and admires the work that Mrs. Richardson did on it. Mrs. Richardson … Ginger begins to weep anew.

  Ben pulls her close to him. “Oh, beloved. I am so very sorry.”

  “I shouldn’t have brought her.” Which is odd, because Mrs. Richardson would love this symphony. Only no … no, that isn’t right.

  Ginger inhaled and straightened. “Is this a lucid dream?”

  “Yes, but I’m keeping an eye on your breathing this time. And no kissing.” Ben kissed her forehead. “At least not on the lips.”

  “Mrs. Richardson is dead.”

  “I know.” Ben brushed her hair back from her face, and his fingers were warm. “I can’t express my regret deeply enough.”

  “Forgive me—I’m still orienting to being awake—or asleep, but alert. Lucid. I’m adjusting to being lucid, though I’m not terribly lucid, am I?”

  “I suspect this is why it is useless for spying.”

  “At least you seem more coherent here.” She frowned. “Actually, I’m surprised you can dream as a ghost.”

  “I’m not. I just entered yours.” Ben pulled her a little closer and rested his head against hers.

  “Ah. And I suppose my brain is filling in the gaps in your behaviour. So you could, in fact, be wildly erratic.”

  He gave a crooked grin, dimples winking at her. “That was what my mother always complained about.”

  “She always told me you were a well-behaved child.”

  “Well, she wanted you to marry me. She wasn’t about to tell you what I was really like.” Ben traced a circle on the inside of Ginger’s wrist and sent warm shivers into her centre. “But you knew I was a scoundrel by the time you said ‘yes.’”

  “Humph. I thought that was my corrupting American influence.”

  “Which I loved very much.” Ben cleared his throat. “But there are some things we should talk about, and I am a little more coherent here. I found Axtell. You’re right: he dyed his hair.”

  “Did you think I couldn’t tell the difference between blond and brown?”

  “No, no. But I thought it might be a wig. Which is damned odd.”

  “Why? I thought disguises were part and parcel of the intelligence department.”

  “Yes, but Axtell has been on assignment in Berlin because he can pass—better than I can—as a German. I can’t see why Davies would have him dye his hair, which will make his previous aliases useless.” He scrubbed his face. “I feel like I am missing something.”

  “If Axtell didn’t go to Berlin … would he have been near camp 463?” She twined her fingers through Ben’s and settled back against the sofa.

  “Maybe.… He’s not as highly placed as I think our leak is, but…” He ran his thumb in circles around the base of her neck. “Don’t forget to keep breathing.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Ben kissed her on the forehead again, pulled her closer, and recited:

  “Now that we’ve done our best and worst, and parted,

  I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.

  (O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)

  I’ll think of Love in books, Love without end;

  Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;

  And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;

  And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;

  And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;

  And
evening hush, broken by homing wings;

  And Song’s nobility, and Wisdom holy,

  That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,

  Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,

  One after one, like tasting a sweet food.

  I have need to busy my heart with quietude.”

  Ginger shivered again as he finished reciting. “That is lovely. What is it?”

  “Rupert Brooke—goddamn it.” Ben squeezed his eyes shut, face twisting into a mask of pain. “I hate this.”

  “What?”

  “The gaps in my mind. The cipher—it’s not The Story of an African Farm. It’s Rupert Brooke’s poems.”

  Ginger sat up with a gasp, shocked into wakefulness. Across the garden table from her, Merrow jumped, nearly dropping the novel. She had no idea when he had arrived. His face was pale, and cleaned of dirt. It seemed odd to see him without his niece’s scarf tucked about his neck. His uniform—

  He wore “hospital blues” and had a piece of paper with the letter E, for England, pinned to his uniform. At Ginger’s side, Ben sucked in a breath of dismay.

  Setting the book down, Merrow ducked his head and rattled the paper, which represented the order to ship him home. “They say—they say this is a Blighty one. At least for a while.”

  “What did they say about your hearing?”

  He lifted his head and squinted at her. “Try again?”

  Ginger touched her ear. “Your hearing?”

  “Right ear is a lost cause. I might—might get some back in the left.” He tugged his ear lobe. “I expected—I expected deafness to be quiet, but it sounds like—like bells underwater.”

  Ginger reached across the table and took Merrow’s hand. She squeezed it in lieu of the words of sympathy he couldn’t hear her say. As awful as it was to have him hurt, she was glad of it. He would go home and be safe. If she had insisted on coming alone, then Mrs. Richardson would still be alive and Merrow would have his hearing. And yet …

  Ben shook his head. “Maybe you should have me exorcised, so no one else…” He trailed off. Merrow was staring at him. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” Merrow blinked rapidly and turned his head to look in the general direction of Ben’s ghost. “Yes, sir, I can. H-how?”

  “Psychic vibrations.” Ginger swallowed as he turned to look back at her. “You can hear me too, can’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But—but I couldn’t earlier.” His aura took on the lavender-rose of cautious hope.

  Ginger released his hand. “But not now, am I right?”

  The rosy glow crashed into a deep grey violet and Ginger grabbed Merrow’s hand again. “It’s because my soul is a little outside my body to talk to Ben. So you are feeling that connection and able to hear just as you would in a circle. Your hearing is damaged, but your soul isn’t.”

  Ben said, “After the war, I’m not sure any of us can claim to have undamaged souls.”

  “True enough, sir.” Merrow rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at the E again. Then he touched the page with the numbers that Ginger was struggling with. “I could stay. And help. I thought I wouldn’t be much use with no hearing—but I could help.”

  Ginger looked at Ben, and almost pulled her hand away so they could speak privately, but it seemed cruel to cut that slender cord of understanding from Merrow. Even without words, Ben understood her question. Was it immoral for her to want to keep Merrow with her? On the one hand, he would be safe back in England. But on the other, when they were finished with this task … Ginger did not want to be alone when Ben left.

  “I think…” Ben cocked his head and considered. “I think that all we need to do is decode that page. You remember how book ciphers work, don’t you, Merrow?’

  “Yes, sir.” His aura lit with eagerness.

  “Good.” Ginger sighed. Decoding could not lead him to any harm, so long as they stayed away from guns. “Then we need to find a copy of Rupert Brooke’s poems.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  25 JULY 1916

  Ginger walked back out of the nurses’ quarters with her face still stiff from smiling at the ambulance driver who had loaned her The Story of an African Farm. She had the best collection of books at the hospital, but, alas, only fiction. Ben floated along at her side. “Chatty young lady.”

  “Indeed.” Under other circumstances, Ginger might even have enjoyed the conversation. “I do like her taste in fiction, though I wish she had a taste for poetry.”

  “Let’s hope Merrow had better … ah.” Ben gestured ahead to where Merrow awaited them at the garden table with empty hands. “I suspect not.”

  Merrow was chewing his lower lip and frowning at a scratch in the table’s surface. He did not look up until Ginger’s shadow fell across the table. He offered a weak wave.

  Ginger held out her hand, and Merrow sighed before taking it. His hands were rough with raw spots from where he’d been digging. She sat next to him on the bench. “No luck, I take it?”

  “No.” His shoulders hunched, and he shrugged a little. “There was one fellow who had his war poems, but Capt. Harford had said he used the collected works for the code.”

  “So back to Le Havre?” Ginger rubbed her brow with her free hand. She should have asked the nurses for an aspirin.

  Merrow shifted in his chair. “Would it—would it save time if we went to Amiens? There’s a bookstore—across from the bakery where we used to do live drops.”

  Breaking into a grin, Ben brightened. “Well done, Merrow. Excellent plan.”

  * * *

  The young chauffeuse with the book collection gave them a ride back to Amiens along with two other nursing sisters who were going in for a bit of shopping. Ginger avoided mentioning that they were going to a bookstore, because otherwise the chauffeuse likely would have followed them.

  Stepping into M. Pouliot et Fils bookstore in Amiens was like stepping back to a time before the war. Tall shelves filled the room. Books in rich leather and fabrics in every jewelled tone stood in orderly ranks. The very air smelled of contentment. Ginger stopped in the doorway and inhaled the heady aroma of leather and paper and ink. No chaos amid the gilt letters, only order and peace.

  The soldiers who perused the shelves spoilt the illusion, but all of them had a more relaxed set to their shoulders than any she had seen recently. One French captain sat in a deep leather armchair, engrossed in a thick leather book. A British lance corporal had settled on the floor at the base of the shelves with his head bent over a slim volume of verses.

  A mousy little woman in an elegant walking suit and shopkeeper’s apron turned from a quiet conversation with a Frenchman and smiled at Ginger. She was neither M. Pouliot nor his son, but she seemed clearly proprietary, with a pair of pince-nez perched upon the end of her long nose. Only her hair, white wisps of which had escaped her bun, stood in a disorderly contrast to her shop.

  “Good afternoon, sir and madam. And how may I help you today?” She laid a hand upon a stack of lavender clothbound books. “I have novels, which will transport you away from your labors here. Or should you like some philosophy?”

  It was strangely tempting to let her recommend a book, some innocuous treat that would let Ginger escape and pretend the war was not happening. But flanked as she was by Ben and Merrow, pretending would be impossible, even if she had time. “Thank you, madame. I was hoping you had a copy of Rupert Brooke’s collected works.”

  The little woman’s face split in a beaming smile. “I do. I do, indeed. Very popular it is among the servicemen. And ladies, of course. I have it bound in leather and cloth. Which do you prefer?”

  Ben drifted forward. “Ask if you can look at it. The edition is more important than the binding.”

  Ginger put her hand on Merrow’s arm so he could hear her. “The book is for my companion. I have been extolling its virtues to him. Would it be possible to look at a copy to see if it is really to his taste?”

  “But of course!” The
bookseller beckoned them forward. “Here. I have a chair in which you can sit, monsieur. Rest yourself, and I shall fetch it for you.” She bustled back into the shop and disappeared down another row of shelves.

  “This would be easier if we could simply buy the book and find a private place.” Her satchel with her funds had been buried when the dugout—Ginger had to turn from Ben and hold her breath. Oh—Mrs. Richardson. Smoothing her apron, Ginger put a smile on her face and turned back, but Ben’s aura was the pale green of sea mist with sympathy. So much for hiding her distress.

  Merrow at least pretended not to notice her reddened eyes. In a low voice, he said, “This is—is as private a place as we’re like to find. Tucked back in a corner like this?”

  Ben nodded in agreement and passed through a bookshelf, reappearing a moment later farther down the aisle. “There’s no one in the aisle, and the other side is a wall.”

  “Well, you gentlemen are certainly more experienced in this sort of thing than I am.”

  Merrow took his cap off and twisted it in his hands. His hair stood up above the fresh white bandages wrapped around his head. “Still … someone should keep watch, because Capt. Harford—the other one. He’s still stationed in Amiens.”

  Ben grimaced. “I can keep a lookout on the street. I can’t stop them, but it would at least give advance warning. Will you be all right decoding on your own?”

  Ginger nodded and murmured, “I should be, though my last effort was less than satisfactory.”

  “Entirely my fault. I told you the wrong book.”

  Merrow cleared his throat. A ruddy gold of nervous apprehension filled his aura. “Maybe I should be the one to … study the book? I can’t hear. So. Being a lookout? But I could do this. The captain—he showed me how. Before.”

  He had a good, though unfortunate, point. Ginger glanced at Ben, who drooped with guilt. “Thank you, Merrow. Having two of us on the lookout is perhaps more useful. If you don’t mind.…”