by Charles Todd
A deserter? It was entirely possible, but how had he avoided being seen by the ever-vigilant Trelawney?
Or a murderer who had already dispensed with my driver, and was intent on dealing next with me?
We’d been so very careful. Perhaps too careful, lulling ourselves with our own certainty that we could protect ourselves.
If Trelawney was dead or badly injured, I’d have to make my shot count. But I dared not open my eyes yet. I could tell by the sound of breathing that he wasn’t near enough. I couldn’t be sure which direction to fire. There were stalls on either side of where I had slept, and tracking sound was nearly impossible.
I lay there, keeping my own rate of breathing as close to steady as possible.
Another sound, a timber creaking under an unwary foot.
My throat was dry. I was still reluctant to risk a look. And I could feel my heart rate quickening as the moment of decision came.
He’d stopped. Waiting? Making certain I was asleep?
I remembered my valise, tucked into the straw close to my right foot.
Was that what he was after, whoever was here in the barn with me?
And just as I remembered it, I felt the straw stir, as if someone had reached for my case.
I said, opening my eyes, “I’m armed, and I won’t hesitate to shoot. Stay where you are-”
I broke off.
In the distant glare of the burning tank, a monstrous figure loomed before me, one side of his face lit by the flames, the other sinister and dark. The one eye I could see appeared to be so pale that it seemed not to exist in reality, only in my racing imagination.
I froze.
And I lay there accepting the fact that the small-caliber pistol in my pocket could never stop my murderer. He could kill me as he must have already killed Trelawney, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WE STARED AT each other, neither moving for an instant.
I thought, I must shoot him anyway. While I can. It won’t stop him, but it will mark him. It might even do enough damage that he’ll eventually die of the wound.
My finger tightened on the trigger, slowly, as Simon had always taught me, a steady pressure that wouldn’t spoil my aim.
And then the man in front of me spoke.
There was the rich Welsh lilt to his voice as he said, “I’m bad wounded. Do you have anything in that valise will help?”
I thought at first it was a trick, but when my eyes swept down his frame, I saw the darkish patch at his hip. Blood, and not fresh.
It dawned on me that I might have shot this man out of fear, and I felt cold with the realization that I’d have had his death on my hands.
“What’s your name, rank, and regiment?” I demanded.
“No, I won’t tell you that. I’m not going back into the line. I’ve got this far, and with any luck at all, I’ll make it back to England before I die.”
He wouldn’t budge from that. I thought, If he sees the pistol, he’ll know what it can do. And if he’s a deserter, he could still be a danger to me.
And so I kept my hand in my pocket.
“What have you done with my driver?”
“The Cornishman with a tongue on him like a hair shirt? He’s bound and sitting by the motorcar. That’s my ticket home, that motorcar. I won’t be stopped. Not now. I won’t do you a harm, Sister, but I’ve rope enough for you as well.”
“They won’t let you aboard any ship in a torn, filthy uniform and without proper papers. They’ll take you up and sort you out later.”
“I’ll find another uniform. The dead won’t care,” he said, an edge of desperation in his voice.
And I understood then why Major Carson had had to die. His officer’s uniform was someone’s ticket home. But for what reason? Simple desertion or something far worse?
He started for me. I ordered him to stop, then waited until he was near enough before I fired.
My aim was excellent, despite the awkwardness of firing through my apron pocket with only the flickering light of the flames, now dying down, to help me.
He threw himself to one side as the shot went whizzing past his ear, and the face he showed me when he’d raised his head up out of the hay would have made me laugh, it was so ludicrous. He smothered an oath.
“Sisters don’t go armed,” he said in an aggrieved tone of voice.
“I did warn you,” I told him sharply.
“You damn-you nearly took my ear off!”
“The next shot will be between your eyes. I was taught by an expert marksman, and I won’t miss.” I let that sink in, then I added in the no-nonsense voice of Matron, “Now sit down over there. No, too close. On that bucket over there, if you please.”
He turned over the bucket and winced in pain as he lowered himself onto it. “Not for long, please, Sister, I can’t handle it,” he pleaded.
“Then speak up. Name, rank, regiment. And don’t lie to me, I will know it, believe me.”
He gave his name as Jones, private, Welsh Sappers.
“You’re too large to dig tunnels under the German lines,” I retorted. “Try again.”
He grimaced. “You’ll only send me back to be shot. I’d rather you do it now and be done with it.”
“Tell me why you deserted.”
“There’s no one to do the farming if I’m gone.”
I had been watching him throughout. And I was nearly certain he wasn’t the man who had tried to run me down in the motorcar. His eyebrows were dark, yes, but although he was indeed a big man, he wasn’t large enough to be Ross Morton’s son. Still, he was tall enough and strong enough to have throttled me with one arm around my throat, but so were dozens of soldiers in the British Army.
I rose from the hay rather awkwardly, my hand still in my pocket. “We’ll find my driver now. If you’ve harmed him, you’re a dead man yourself. If he’s all right, I’ll dress that wound.”
He got up nearly as awkwardly as I had, his face twisted in pain until he was on his feet.
I marched him before me out to where the motorcar had been left. And there, by the wing, sat Trelawney, bound, his head on his chest.
I thought for an awful moment that he was dead, his face was so battered. He’d put up a fierce battle in my defense. I turned on the Welshman. His own face showed the marks Trelawney had left there.
“Untie him,” I ordered, and my prisoner had to kneel to accomplish that. His face was white as he rose, and for a moment I thought he’d faint. I felt no sympathy.
I was beginning to wonder if I’d found Hugh Morton after all. Or someone very like him, a deserter too hurt to fend for himself and too inexperienced to find a way back to England. It was naïve to think a dead officer’s uniform and a motorcar would see him safe. And a killer would have taken his chances, charged me in the expectation of throwing off my aim, and been done with it. Certainly if this man had had six brothers, like Hugh Morton, even the former champion pugilist of the British Army would be no match for such rough-and-tumble training. What interested me was why Trelawney hadn’t shot him outright, if he’d had the opportunity.
No longer held erect by the rope, my driver slid down to lie on the ground, and I felt for his pulse. It was regular, but it was impossible to tell whether he was pale or his color was normal. I looked in the motorcar, found his revolver, and turned it on my captive in place of my own little weapon.
“Back into the barn,” I ordered the Welshman. “Find a clean patch of hay and lie down. That wound needs attention, and while you don’t deserve it, I’ll see to it.”
He argued with me until I had to threaten once more to shoot him.
It was not a pretty sight, that wound. He had been shot in the hip, creasing the bone, tearing up the flesh around it, and possibly doing internal damage. The one encouraging fact was that the bullet had passed through, although it must have left God alone knew how many fragments of cloth and bone and skin behind. He must have the constitution of an ox, to have surviv
ed this long, much less battled Trelawney. But he had seen salvation in that motorcar, and it had given him the strength he needed.
I got what I required from the boot where I’d kept a scant supply and proceeded to clean the wound, sprinkle it with disinfectant powder, and then bind it up. Halfway through, I saw that my prisoner had fainted. Kneeling there beside him, I could only think he’d been sent back for urgent care and had slipped away in the dark before reaching the aid station.
While he was unconscious, I had no compunction about going through his pockets, but I found nothing of importance-a few cigarettes, a lighter, a crumpled photograph of a girl, a packet of sweets, and, oddly enough, a St. Christopher medal. I wondered if she had given that to him. Next I looked at the inside of his tunic and saw what I was after. Someone had sewn his name behind his breast pocket. The same girl? His mother?
At that moment, I heard Trelawney bellowing my name.
“I’m all right,” I answered. “In here.”
He came charging through the barn door, stopping short at the sight of his attacker lying at my feet.
“Good God, Sister. Have you killed him?” he exclaimed, his gaze rising to my face.
“I just cleaned that wound. The question is, what ought we to do with him?”
“Tie him to something and leave him for the patrols to find.” He put his hand to his head, gingerly touching what must have been a painful lump. “I’d searched the premises, Sister, there was no one here. I’d have sworn to that. The motorcar was secured as well. And I’m a light sleeper, mind you. I heard him creeping up and went after him. I’m ashamed to say he got the better of me.”
And that would rankle with Trelawney for the rest of his life.
“I expect he saw us coming and went away. It was the motorcar he wanted. I don’t believe he intended to kill either of us.” I didn’t add that Trelawney would have been dead, if he had.
“That’s not what my head is telling me,” Trelawney said tersely.
My patient groaned, coughed a little, and opened his eyes, rearing up as he saw Trelawney’s enraged face. It cost him dearly, and while he was sitting there with a cold sweat breaking out from the effort, I said, “That’s enough, Hugh Morton. Or I’ll have your father take you out behind the woodshed.”
He wiped his face with one hand and said plaintively, “You looked inside my tunic.”
“Yes, of course I did. You’re a large man, but no match for your father, wounded or well.”
“You never met my Da,” he said, angry now. “Besides, I take after my mother’s side of the family.”
“Oh, haven’t I? I’ve been to Peace and Plenty, and I’ve spoken to your father. What’s more, I saw your brother David’s face in an upstairs window.”
“You have never.” But I thought he believed me.
“Did you kill Major Carson? I want a straight answer.”
His surprise was genuine. “I’ve been hunting him. Are you telling me the Hun killed him?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s a cold bas-man, is Carson. He could have helped Will. He’d promised he would, but Will died in my arms, and when I spoke to the Major afterward, he said it would have to wait, there was something he had to attend to first. I ask you, what’s more urgent than looking after a widowed sister and her boy?” He was properly incensed.
“Something? What something did he have to attend to first?” A letter home to his solicitor, or his wife?
“He didn’t say. But he wasn’t there next morning, and the Lieutenant told us he’d been sent for at HQ.”
The summons that had taken Carson to his death?
“What did you intend to do, if you caught up with him?”
“Knock some sense into him. Officer or not. Will deserved better. There’s no shame in being an actor. He was good to Sabrina.”
“What to do with you, Hugh Morton,” I said with a sigh. “If I leave you here, you’ll be shot for desertion. I can take you to the nearest aid station and tell them I’d found you wounded and out of your mind with fever. The wonder is that you aren’t.”
“I want to go home,” he said, weariness and despair in his eyes. The first light of dawn was touching the horizon, and I could see how very pale his eyes were. But they were blue, not gray. Very definitely blue. “I’ve no will to fight anyone now. William and Ross are dead. There’s David with only one leg, and Llewellyn not right in his head. There’s only me and the twins left, and I’ve had no news of them for weeks, now. We’ve done our bit, this family has, and my Da needs help on the farm.”
I remembered the fallow fields, untended because there was only one man to work them and he could only do so much. How many times had this same predicament happened across the length and breadth of England? Women had been sent out to help till fallow land, to turn Commons and Greens and even estate parks into cropland. But no one had come to Peace and Plenty to remedy the lack of labor.
I was my father’s daughter, and this was a deserter. In wartime. I looked at Trelawney for support.
His face was hard. A soldier all his life, he had no sympathy for a farmer in Wales or anywhere else. Take the oath to serve the King, and you were his as long as you were required. Nothing else mattered.
In the distance the shelling had recommenced, this time the German guns. Range finding, they were laying down a blanket of fire in the hope of taking out ours.
Trelawney, casting a worried glance over his shoulder, said, “We ought to be going. This farm has been hit before.”
He was right. I said to Hugh Morton, “You’ll come with us for now. Into the front of the motorcar. I’ll be just behind you, and I don’t need to remind you that I’m armed.”
“I’ll stay here. Take my chances.”
“You’re lucky a patrol hasn’t found you before this. And if that hip isn’t seen to by a doctor, David won’t be the only Morton son with only one leg.”
He refused. And as I listened to the shells dropping closer and closer, I said, “I’ll shoot you myself. You won’t be going home either way.”
Hugh Morton studied my face. What he read there must have been determination, although he couldn’t know I was bluffing.
“I won’t give my parole,” he said. “You can’t force me to do that.”
“And I won’t promise not to shoot to kill when you run. Quickly, now!”
But it was too late. A shell threw up black earth not fifty feet from the side wall of the farm. Between us Trelawney and I dragged Morton to the motorcar. His wound, after my probing and cleaning, had left his leg too weak to hold him up, and it must have hurt ferociously. He kept swearing under his breath in Welsh, for I didn’t understand a word, but I heard Sister once, as he blamed me for crippling him, however temporarily. Even if he’d tried to run, he wouldn’t have got twenty paces.
Just then the next shell splintered the barn, sending shards of wood and debris all over us. Chickens flew out of the milking shed, squawking in terror, and even an owl, blind in the morning light, went swooping up from somewhere, trying to escape.
We’d just shoved Hugh Morton into the motorcar. Trelawney shielded me as best he could, then all but lifted me into the rear seat before dashing around to get behind the wheel. Thank God, he’d already turned the crank, and he spun the wheel, racing for a break in the farm wall, but it was already in flames, the shed next to it burning like a torch.
He began to turn away, looking for another exit, but there was no place left, fire spreading so rapidly we were all but encircled by smoke. It seared the lungs and made all of us choke and cough.
“Hang on,” Trelawney shouted, and pointed the bonnet directly toward the shed, so engulfed that the opening in the wall was invisible. He had searched the farmyard carefully, and even without being able to see the break, he would know how to judge it.
But I felt myself tense, and Hugh Morton yelled at Trelawney, telling him he was going to miss the opening. For he too would know this farmyard well.
; Braced for hitting the wall at speed, I kept my eyes on Trelawney. He would be the first to know if he was wrong. Behind us another shell burst, showering earth and wall and fragments of farm equipment over us, rattling against the motorcar.
I could only think what a target we would have been in the night, Trelawney and I, if the shelling had begun while we were asleep.
Metal shrieked like banshees as the near wing brushed stone wall, and then we were through, still blind, when suddenly dawn broke ahead of us, and the sun breached the horizon in a bloodred ball.
I lifted a hand to shield my eyes, Trelawney swore, and Morton was clutching the dash with white-knuckled hands.
Angling away from the line of shells, we saw what they were searching for, massed troops making their way forward into the line. I shuddered, thinking of the wounded who would be streaming back to the nearest aid station. I reached out and touched Trelawney’s shoulder.
“We’re needed there,” I shouted over the din, but Morton caught his sleeve.
“For the love of God, no,” he pleaded.
“Your father believes you’re missing. That’s cruel.”
He was digging deep into his trouser pocket and pulled out a set of identity disks, dangling them where I could see them. “Here’s proof I’m Tommy Morris, and I’m not right in my head.”
He fell into a posture of vapid uncertainty, his mouth down at one corner, his eyes squinting and sometimes rolling as if he couldn’t control them.
“I saw a man once who looked like this. They took him away. Bad influence on the rest of us,” he said as he relaxed his face muscles.
And his brother was an actor. Hugh had enough of that talent to master his condition. I’d have believed it myself.
“Then why are you hiding in the ruins? Why haven’t you tried your trick on someone in an aid station?”
“The truth, Sister, is that I’ve lived in the cellar of that farmhouse for weeks now. Someone caught me foraging and took a shot at me. I didn’t know the password, see? That’s the wound you dressed. I wasn’t wounded in the line, I simply disappeared in the dark, taking another man back to the aid station. He died before I could get him there, his blood all over my hands. And I thought, ‘Here’s Providence providing.’ So I took my chance. I couldn’t outrun another patrol, not with this hip. But the motorcar was Providence all over again. I blessed my luck, and I’d have had it too.”
