‘It is the quickest way to get here in numbers.’
‘I know of three people who also need to get here. How would I be able to find out if they’re on the train?’
‘They won’t be. All available trains are bringing troops this way. No room for visitors.’
‘These aren’t visitors. They’re essential.’
Saltin considered this. ‘You are suggesting that these people are part of your mission here?’
‘They’re joining us for the next phase.’
Saltin held up a hand. ‘Do not tell me. With this, the less I know, the better.’ He paced about the office for a moment, frowning. ‘The telegraph lines are still open. I can find out from the stationmaster in Lutetia.’
‘I’d appreciate it, Saltin.’ Aubrey rose. ‘And what about you? What are your plans?’
Saltin shrugged. His smile was small and weary, and even his moustache looked the worse for wear. ‘Divodorum will resist and I must do my part to help.’
‘But you’ll be ready to fall back when the time comes.’
‘If we need to. If we can.’ Major Saltin straightened his jacket, then frowned at the grease still on the back of one hand. ‘I have found that it’s difficult to know when the time comes. I am sure that many a soldier’s last thoughts have been, “I wish I’d left yesterday.”’
Nineteen
Cycling back to their base, Aubrey realised what had changed dramatically in Divodorum.
‘No children, George,’ he called as they swooped along the nearly deserted Haussman Street.
‘What?’ George angled around a dog that was standing in the middle of the road and looking mournful.
‘Families have fled. Women and children, at least.’
The city had the feeling of a place with no heart, a place waiting to be put out of its misery. The artillery bombardment in the hills sounded like giant footsteps in the distance, impossible to ignore.
Aubrey cycled on, grimly.
The factory was deserted when they arrived. For a moment, Aubrey stopped dead, looking around the emptiness, unwilling to think the worst, but finding it was presenting itself insistently, like a least favourite uncle at a family reunion.
George flapped a slip of mauve paper at him. ‘They’ve gone to the woods above the station. They want us to join them for lunch.’
Relief was one of the best feelings of all, Aubrey concluded. ‘Shouldn’t we be rationing our food?’
‘If we eat our way through the stores I’ve put down, that’ll mean we’ve been trapped here for a year. Which would suggest we’d have problems other than food to worry about.’
They found Caroline and Sophie on the grassy knoll overlooking the station, the place Aubrey had first surveyed Divodorum. A blanket was spread out and the two girls were chatting innocently enough, if one overlooked the field glasses sitting on top of the picnic hamper.
George picked them up. ‘Hard to explain these, what, if a suspicious Gallian police officer happens by?’
‘George, George,’ Sophie said. She rummaged in a knapsack and found a slim book. She opened it to show colour plates. ‘We are bird watchers, no? I am looking for a warbler. And a crake. And – how do you say this one? – a mallard?’
‘Well, I’m convinced,’ Aubrey said. ‘But what about your fallback, just in case someone else isn’t? Your story behind the story? You don’t want to be mistaken for Holmlanders.’
‘We’ve been sent by the Central Railway Company,’ Caroline said. She slipped off her royal blue jacket to reveal a high-necked white blouse underneath. ‘The firm is interested in passenger and freight possibilities in this area after the war, but wants to remain secret because of rumours that a rival company is in the area, sniffing along the same lines.’
Aubrey sat on the blanket and plucked a blade of grass. ‘Nicely done.’
While passing platters of cold chicken and salad around, they shared Saltin’s news. Sophie had never met the airman, but had heard of him. ‘He was a hero after you rescued him, George.’
‘Well, I say,’ George took a pickled onion from a jar, ‘Aubrey was there too. Quite helpful, he was.’
Aubrey let this pass, with a smile. ‘If the remote sensers aren’t aboard this train, we’ll need to decide what to do next. Communication, first, I’d say. Caroline?’
‘We can, tonight, but we must be careful. I have the impression that they’re out there.’
‘The Holmlanders? Of course they are.’
‘Listening, I mean, trying to intercept any communications.’ ‘You can tell that?’
‘It’s a feeling I get when I’m wearing the headphones.’ She looked into the distance, in the direction of the battle front. ‘It’s like the hollowness of the ether gets bigger, if that makes any sense. I can feel that someone is out there, waiting.’
Aubrey raised an eyebrow. He sometimes had that feeling, when he became aware that Dr Tremaine was in the vicinity, but that was due to the magical connection the rogue sorcerer and he shared ever since their first magical encounter.
He was grateful he wasn’t alone. Without George and Caroline, the unease about their circumstances would be oppressive. He could imagine a solo operator actually being glad of capture, relieved at not having to live under such uncertainty any more.
‘We’ll make the communication short,’ Aubrey suggested. A sudden, almost frantic increase in the artillery bombardment made him look to the northeast. The sound hadn’t been drawing any closer for some hours, but he couldn’t decide what that meant. Was it a stalemate? A Gallian success resulting in a Holmland withdrawal? He rubbed his hands together with frustration.
He went to canvass these possibilities with his friends when he noticed Sophie’s expression. While George busied himself with making another sandwich and Caroline searched in the hamper, Sophie had frozen, her face very pale, and she, too, was staring to the north-east at a redoubled barrage of artillery.
Her concern was apparent, but to Aubrey’s mind it was more than simply being worried about an imminent invasion. And while he didn’t doubt that she was fond of George, did it explain her willingness to remain in such a dangerous place?
‘You have another reason for being here,’ he suddenly said to her.
She turned, eyes wide. ‘What do you mean?’
‘In Divodorum. You have another reason for being here.’ As he said it, a number of pieces fell into place. ‘If your role with The Sentinel were so important, you would have been in contact with its office, or the editor. I’m sure he’d be interested in a story from one of his journalists on the front line.’
Sophie’s face fell. ‘We have been so busy.’
George patted her on the shoulder and gave her his handkerchief. He frowned at Aubrey. ‘I say, old man, aren’t you being a bit harsh?’
‘No, George,’ came a tiny voice from the other side of the handkerchief. ‘He is right. I should have told you.’ She caught her breath and looked up. ‘It’s my brother, Théo. He has enlisted, and I must see him.’
The tale she told them was complicated yet familiar and Aubrey finally understood what his grandmother had hinted at. Family troubles. Sophie’s brother was two years older than she was, but sounded years younger from the way he behaved. For some months he had been growing more and more hostile to his parents, arguing that his father had been treated poorly by his business partners because of some innate – and unspecified – weakness. Finally, he’d stormed out vowing to enlist, against his father’s wishes, and to fight for what was rightfully theirs.
‘Rightfully ours,’ Sophie said wistfully. She twisted George’s handkerchief in her hands. ‘That’s how he said it.’
‘It’s worrisome,’ Aubrey ventured. ‘Whenever I hear “rightfully” I hear entitlement and pride.’
‘He did not always use language like that,’ Sophie said. ‘Not before he met ... her.’
Sophie’s unhappiness invested that single word with something approaching contempt. Unsurprisin
g, Aubrey thought – not without an ironic sense of his own situation – a sudden change in a young man after meeting a young woman.
‘Where did he meet her?’ George said, filling in the awkward silence as they each contemplated young men and young women.
‘Yvette was a fellow music student, at the Conservatorium. She asked him to a political meeting and he was never the same again.’
‘What sort of political meeting?’ Caroline asked.
‘Théo was never very clear about that. I thought it sounded like anarchists, then he began talking as if it were a workers’ party. Rabble rousers, is that what you call them? Much talk and little action.’
‘We know the type,’ Aubrey said. They’d had encounters with groups like that in Albion. With unease, he remembered how they’d been infiltrated by Holmland security and had nearly pulled off a plot to kill the King. This had been the affair that had introduced Aubrey to the world of espionage and secret plots – and the machinations of Dr Mordecai Tremaine, who was the puppet master behind the Army of New Albion. He had manoeuvred these deluded fools and convinced them that exploding a bomb during the King’s Birthday Parade was more than a good idea, it was a patriotic idea. Aubrey had managed to disrupt this plot, as well as rescue his father from Dr Tremaine’s clutches.
‘Lots of hot air.’ George patted her hand. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘It became very serious. He abandoned all his old friends, he ignored us, and he went off with these new people. Mother and Father are heartbroken.’ She paused, and swallowed hard. ‘I ... At first, my father was sure that he had been beguiled.’
‘He suspected magic was involved?’
‘He thought so, but then dismissed it. Father had some magic, a long time ago. He still reads about it, in journals, in between his work for the government.’
Aubrey had heard enough already to have his curiosity – both professional and personal – leaping into action. He remembered his grandmother’s correspondence with Sophie’s father. ‘Your father works for the government?’
‘Two years ago he was asked to assist, in finance, by those who could see war was very close. He has been very busy.’
‘So I imagine. And he believes that Théo has had a spell cast on him? It sounds unlikely.’
Sophie’s upper lip quivered. ‘But he changed, so much, he was not our Théo. What else could explain such a thing? How could he do anything so foolish?’
Aubrey didn’t have to look far to find an example of a young man doing foolish things, even without the help of a mirror. He kept mute and George took up. ‘So you’ve come looking for him?’
‘To talk,’ Sophie said. ‘I must talk to him. He sent me a few letters. He is here, but not so easy to see.’
‘Why not?’ George said, indignation making his shoulders swell ominously. ‘The camp commandant can’t very well refuse him a visit from his own sister.’
‘It is not that.’ Sophie looked to the north-east again at the sound of shelling.
‘He’s out there,’ Caroline guessed. ‘You can’t see him until he gets back.’
No-one said the ‘if’ word but it hung in the air, an unwelcome visitor.
Sophie bit her lip and looked away. ‘No. It is even worse than that.’
‘Worse?’ George said. ‘What’s worse than being hunkered down in an artillery battle?’
‘Théo did not enlist in the Gallian army.’ Sophie used the handkerchief again. ‘Just before war was declared, he went over the border to Stalsfrieden. He joined the Holmland army.’
Aubrey nearly looked around to see who had thrown a bucket of cold water over him, then he realised it was simply the shock of Sophie’s announcement. Her brother was a Holmland soldier? Fighting against his own countrymen?
A train whistle sounded. Aubrey leaped to his feet and seized the field glasses.
‘Aubrey,’ Caroline said fiercely. ‘Stop that.’
‘Stop what? Stop continuing with our mission?’
‘The train can wait. Sophie needs our help.’
I didn’t hear her ask for help. ‘What can we do?’
‘Anything we can,’ George said.
‘Now, Sophie, I’m sure we can help you find him. Then you can talk some sense into him,’ Caroline said.
Aubrey hesitated, then threw caution to the winds. ‘So we’re going wander about, not just in wartime but in an actual battle, find her brother and then change his mind for him? Make him see the error of his ways? In the middle of the Holmland army? And then bring him home again, through said battlelines?’
George looked at Sophie. ‘Do you know exactly where Théo is?’
She shrugged. ‘His letters he sent, before war was declared, said he was part of a detachment in Stalsfrieden.’
‘Stalsfrieden? Doing what, exactly?’ Aubrey asked.
‘Guarding. So boring, he said, even though the factory was important.’
‘Don’t look like that, Aubrey,’ George said. ‘Stalsfrieden must have plenty of important factories.’
Aubrey agreed, but he had to press. ‘Sophie, did Théo say anything else about the factory?’
She frowned and put a finger to her lips. ‘He said it was a strange place, and he wrote about something he thought was funny. In the middle of the factory grounds were big animals.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Aubrey said.
‘Jungle animals. Made of concrete.’
It must be, Aubrey thought. ‘Anything else?’
‘No. But he wasn’t the only one who thought the animals funny. He said that the owner, Baron von Grolman, laughed whenever he walked past them.’
The train whistle sounded, closer.
Aubrey looked at George, who shrugged. Caroline looked thoughtful.
‘So your brother is stationed at Baron von Grolman’s factory in Stalsfrieden?’ Aubrey sighed. ‘All right. Let’s see what we can do.’
The train whistle sounded again, shrill and echoing from the hills, as the locomotive chuffed and laboured along the tracks. Aubrey swung up the field glasses to see the train coming off the curve to the south and working hard on the approaches to the railway bridge. The ironwork crossed the Mosa, a latticework against the grey and lowering sky, holding the bridge high above the broad expanse of the river. Artillery boomed in a thumping counterpoint to the steam engine. A coal barge slipped underneath the bridge on its way downstream.
Aubrey’s gaze lingered on the bridge. It was an example of fine engineering, three long arches. It looked both solid and graceful, with two magnificently curved iron trusses supporting the spans. Three massive piers in local stone stood in the river, impervious to flood.
Aubrey focused more closely on the central pier. On closer inspection, it was actually an amalgamation of a number of octagonal iron columns and stone blocks. He was impressed by its sturdiness, and the way the materials were interlocked, but he frowned when he spied a number of ominous shapes near water level. They were strikingly out of place, looking makeshift against the elegant construction of the pier, made of wood and metal in various proportions. With growing apprehension, Aubrey counted half a dozen of them surrounding the pier, linked by wire, and he was sure more would be found on the other side.
He ran through a dozen possibilities in his mind, and none of them were good. Before he knew it he was sprinting toward the river and the bridge beyond, unsure of what he was going to do, but knowing that he didn’t want to see the train crossing the bridge until the nature of the menacing boxes was determined.
He ran, waving his arms and calling out as he burst through the vegetation on the river bank. The train was on the approaches and steaming mightily since its destination was in sight. Aubrey hallooed, jumped up and down, forgetting all concern for appearances. If it were a mistake, he was sure he could explain his way out of trouble. If it weren’t...
The train was nearly across when, impossibly, the bridge abruptly rose in the middle.
The noise reached him first, then the bla
st spun him around and slapped him with a giant hand – a stunning, ear-punishing roar. He was thrown backward into the dense arms of a yellow-flowering broom. He rolled to his feet in time to meet his friends coming down the bank. The trees were still shaking, leaves shredding about them in a storm. Aubrey could feel the earth trembling.
‘The bridge!’ Aubrey shouted over the ringing in his ears, trying to make his friends understand what had happened. ‘They’ve blown up the train!’
Sirens, church bells, cries of distress and the barking of dogs added to the cacophony. Within minutes, most of the remaining population of Divodorum was rushing toward what had once been the bridge over the Mosa River. Many of them poured out of the station, where hundreds had been waiting.
Appalled and sickened, Aubrey, George, Caroline and Sophie abandoned their picnic gear. They slid and scrambled their way through the woods to the outskirts of the station, where they had a clearer view of the disaster.
The railway tracks stretched from the station a few hundred yards to what had once been a sturdy and muchused bridge. Now, it was a twisted wreck. None of the piers were standing. The approaches were intact but they led to an awful, gaping nothingness.
The acrid smell of high explosives was heavy in the air, which was a haze of smoke, dust and a fine mist of water. He couldn’t help wondering how much had been used. Clearly, it had been attached to the central pier and equally clearly – because of the timing – the aim had been not just to bring down the bridge, but to take the train and its passengers down too.
A few small craft were coming down the river toward where the bridge had been – dinghies, rowing boats, a half-laden barge – but standing next to the bridge abutment Aubrey could see no sign of the train. Stunned into dizziness, he held onto the dressed stone with both hands to stop himself pitching into the river, which was churning with the violence imposed on it, so much steel, concrete, stone and iron plunging into the water.
So many lives.
Moment of Truth Page 19
