by April White
Ringo tore what was left of Archer’s shirt away and wiped the blood away from the two bullet wounds. The one at his shoulder wiped away fairly clean, but the hole under the edge of his scapula bubbled blood.
Archer’s gasping quieted a little. “My lung’s torn, and the tissue’s trying to close, but there’s still a bullet in me. I won’t heal until it’s out.
“Then we ‘ave to get it out.”
Oh God. I quickly unsheathed one of my daggers and wiped it down as much as possible with the edge of my shirt. The germs didn’t really matter because they couldn’t kill him, but the tenets of modern hygiene don’t just disappear in the face of reason. I offered it to Ringo, handle first, but he shook his head. “Too big.”
Crap. I wasn’t in the habit of carrying scalpels with me. I patted my pockets as if I was doing a key check, and realized I had Sanda’s little knife tucked into my back pocket. I pulled that out and flicked it open for Ringo. He studied it for a second, then nodded and took it from me.
“Sit in front of ‘im and ‘old ‘im upright. Keep ‘is eyes on ye so ‘e doesn’t move.”
“When did you learn to do surgery?” I asked Ringo, when what I really wanted to say was, why couldn’t Connor or Mr. Shaw have been here?
“Saira,” he said to me in a voice that brooked no argument, “do as I say.”
Rachel moved into the spot I vacated when I crawled around to the front of Archer. He gave me a sort of weak half-smile with a raised eyebrow that said when did he get so bossy? as loudly as if Archer had spoken the words. I loved him for that.
“I think I need to straddle your lap to keep you upright. Is that okay?” I whispered to him.
“I think pain might just keep me preoccupied enough to manage it without embarrassing myself.” His pulse was thready, and I could see it stuttering in his neck. I climbed onto him and wrapped my legs around either side, then used my arms under his to help support his body. In any other situation it would have been a very intimate pose, but all I could concentrate on at the moment was feeling Archer breathe and not letting him move.
“Right, now, ‘old very still.” Ringo moved in very close to Archer’s back, and I could feel the heat from the candle against my arm as I remembered something.
“Wait! Rachel, check Archer’s coat. He sometimes carries an extra torch on him for me.”
I could feel Archer smile against my neck. “Anything for you,” he whispered. My heart hammered in my chest. He sounded weaker and a little delirious. “Quickly,” I breathed.
She rummaged around in his bloody coat then held up a small Maglite. I grinned and held my hand out for it so I could twist it on. “Nicked it from my bag, did you?” I asked Archer.
“Seemed sensible.”
When I handed the Maglite back to Rachel, she was clearly fascinated by the size and modernity of the torch, but she held it rock steady as close to Archer’s back as she could get it without impeding Ringo’s knife hand.
“Right. Archer, I’m goin’ to ‘ave to cut ye a bit more so I can dig the bullet out. ‘Ang on to yer wife and don’t move.”
He rested his forehead against mine, and our gazes locked. The word ‘wife’ had made him smile, but the smile became grim determination as Ringo opened the hole in Archer’s back. His breathing faltered and his eyes closed against the pain.
“Stay with me, Archer. Don’t shut me out,” I whispered fiercely.
His eyes opened and found mine again, but he didn’t speak. Ringo was focused on the bullet in Archer’s back, and Rachel’s whole world was holding the light for him. Archer was clenching his teeth and trying not to twist away from the pain, while I used every ounce of muscle control to keep him completely still.
Something in Ringo’s face shifted. “Ah, got it.” The sound of something metal pinging against the wood floor released all the tension in the moment. “I don’t have a needle to stitch it— but it seems to be closin’ on its own now.” Ringo sounded exhausted, but I didn’t break my eye contact with Archer to look at him.
Archer looked as tired as Ringo sounded, but the pulse in his neck was beating strongly again, and his breathing had calmed. “You okay?” I asked him in a whisper.
He nodded, finally allowing his eyes to close. “Thank you.” He took a couple of deep breaths, then sat up straight without my help and looked at Ringo.
“Thank you, my friend.”
There was a smear of blood on Ringo’s cheek where he’d wiped his face, and he was trying to clean the blood smears off his hands with Archer’s ruined shirt. “Ye’re welcome.”
“Ringo, be careful with the blood,” I said, concerned that even rubbing his skin could cause an abrasion that would let the virus in.
I looked behind Archer to where Rachel was still holding the torch aimed at Archer’s back. She stared at it, and I imagined that the wound would have closed itself by now. I climbed off Archer’s lap, though his hand twitched as if to keep me there, and knelt beside Rachel. She seemed a little dazed when she looked at me, and I gently took the flashlight from her hand. “Do you have water?” I asked quietly.
She nodded and brought Ringo a bowl of water and a cloth. She wet the cloth and handed it to him, and then returned her gaze to Archer’s back. “He will heal?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“He has already.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
Just then, shouting rose up from the village square, and I immediately twisted the Maglite off. Rachel doused the candle and shoved the bowl of water under a table. It took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the moonlight, and when the voices came closer, Rachel whispered to us. “Come.”
I kicked the bloody scraps of fabric under the table, and Ringo helped Archer to his feet. He wasn’t steady, and the hard breathing came back, but resting in the middle of the floor wasn’t an option with SS soldiers outside.
Rachel waited for us at a wardrobe in the back of the barn that I now realized housed the garage in front and Rachel’s living space in the back. But instead of opening the wardrobe like a door, she pulled it straight down to reveal a Murphy bed. As clever as the design was, and as much as Archer needed to rest, I didn’t think a bed was in any of our futures. But then she slid the headboard panel open, climbed up on the bed, and jumped down to the other side of the wall.
“She wins,” Ringo said under his breath. I smiled because I knew he was talking about his collection of hidden room designs. I went next, and Ringo supported Archer as he climbed onto the bed, and came through to the other side. Rachel had Ringo grab a rope at the end of the bed and toss it to her. Then, when he had climbed through, too, they hauled the bed back into its upright position, and Rachel cut the rope so no one would find it if they pulled down the bed. Then she carefully slid the headboard closed, and the space went completely dark.
This cupboard behind the bed was only about three feet deep, and it was the length of the wall in the bedroom. Whoever had built the false wall had left enough space for two people to lie down, or four people to sit with our backs to the outer wall. I helped Archer to the ground and then sat next to him so he could use my lap as a pillow. He laid on his uninjured shoulder and faced away from me, and my hand trailed through his hair, absently stroking it off his face. Ringo sat on the other side of me, and Rachel crouched down next to him with her ear to the false wall.
I clutched Ringo’s hand. “Thank you.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, just held my hand lightly. Then he squeezed it and let go. “Were ye still in the church when the shootin’ started?”
My voice caught in my throat. “Yes,” I whispered.
“It’s where they took Marianne and Marcel, yeah?”
“They were alive when we left. Bas had them.” Guilt punched me in the gut.
“It’s where Archer got shot?”
I nodded and then realized he couldn’t see me in the pitch black. “Yes.” I had to swallow hard to keep the tears down where they stayed
invisible.
“Just like ‘is vision?”
“Mostly. Except for Marianne and Marcel. And Tom.”
“Tom was there?” Ringo said in surprise.
“Yeah.” I didn’t elaborate. I couldn’t. We had come here to find him and take him home, but when the shooting started, I’d left him without a backward glance.
Ringo was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke again, the bitterness surprised me. “They might ‘ave been alright if I ‘adn’t gone for them.”
Rachel’s whisper surprised me. “No, they took everyone from the farms. They would have found your friends with or without you.” I could feel her tense suddenly. “Sssshhh! They’re in the garage,” she whispered.
Rachel, Ringo, and I went utterly still as if our lives depended on our silence. Archer’s breathing had gone quiet, and I knew he was out to give his body a chance to repair itself. My hand rested lightly on his hair, and one small part of me felt peace that he was here, safe, on my lap.
Something crashed to the floor in the main room of the barn, then shuffling and footsteps in the bedroom. Another crash, this time closer, and then the Murphy bed was opened.
Not even my heart beat as a tiny seam of light shone through the false wall. One of the soldiers told the others it was all clear in the room, and then he pushed the bed back into place.
My heart gave a giant thump and then settled back into an elevated and amplified rhythm I was sure could be heard in the main room.
There was more yelling in German as soldiers herded people into the room and told them to lie down on the floor. No one was talking back anymore, and the silence from the Frenchmen was more frightening than the anger and yelling had been in the village square.
After about ten more minutes of shuffling and orders to lie still, the main room was silent.
I thought the SS soldiers had made the French lie down so they could get out without reprisals. I thought the soldiers had gone, and I began to relax.
Until the shooting started.
Whatever breath had been in my body got tangled up in the horror of what was happening on the other side of the wall. My heart slammed in my chest, knocking the air out of it, and every scream of every person in the barn felt like a gut punch.
Ringo grabbed my hand and gripped it, hard, and I could hear Rachel sobbing silently into his shoulder. When the sobs began to wrack her, he let go of me and wrapped both arms around her to try to quiet her. Archer didn’t move from my lap, and my fingers wove through his hair in a pattern I could repeat without thinking – so I could stop thinking. Anything to stop thinking.
I began a mental chant of every medicinal plant I knew, with all their properties and purposes. And then moved on to medicinal recipes for burns and cuts, vomiting, and fever. Since I was there anyway, I started making up my own recipes for lotions and creams, lip balm and shampoo, and even something I thought would work pretty well on a rash.
The whole time I wove my fingers through Archer’s hair in the same pattern every time.
Eventually, the shooting stopped. And then Rachel’s silent sobs turned into the barest gasp and sniffle. And then the footsteps faded away, and finally the noise of jeeps began to disappear. And all that was left was the sound of four hearts still beating, and four people still breathing.
I carefully pulled the Maglite out of my pocket and covered the business end with the palm of my hand before I clicked it on. The dull orange of the light shining into my skin was even too bright, and I winced away from the tiny sliver of light. Rachel covered her face with her hands, but Ringo looked right at me with dull and empty eyes.
“Yer not goin’ out there,” he whispered.
I shook my head. “No. None of us are.”
“What if—” he began.
“No. The only thing we can do is get out alive. If we do that, we can tell the story. If we die, the truth dies with us.”
Ringo looked at Rachel, then at Archer. “Do ye need somethin’ to draw with?”
I pulled the bit of chalk rock I’d saved from the church out of my pocket and reached up above my head to the wall behind me. I closed my eyes and began to draw from memory.
“Move in close,” I whispered. I clutched Archer with my free hand, and Ringo snaked one arm behind my back. He put the other one around Rachel and brought her to his chest.
The humming began with the second spiral, and my mind began to drift to places of safety. I thought of Archer’s secret lair at St. Bridgid’s, and his hideaway behind the library at Bletchley Park. I thought of my room at Elian Manor, and of the Edwards’ cottage kitchen where they used to live. But ultimately, the choice was all about finishing this so we could go home, and I chose the one place in London I hoped we would find safe haven no matter what.
And then we Clocked out of France.
Tom – Oradour-sur-Glane – June 10, 1944
The fire still smoldered among the bits of wood around the stone church, and the smell of charred flesh hung in the air with an oily stench.
Bodies were everywhere.
They were a blanket covering the ground. Their clothes were a tapestry of blues and browns that threaded through blackened ash. A little girl’s skirt was yellow. A boy’s shirt was green. And through it all wove ribbons of red blood that connected the people of this village to each other after death, even if there had been no connection in life.
Saira was gone. She’d half-carried her wounded and bleeding Sucker to the side wing of the church during the chaos, and when the shooting finally stopped so the soldiers could flee the burning church, they had disappeared. All that remained of Saira’s presence was a chalk-drawn spiral in the corner. I stepped toward it, and then I saw the priest emerging from behind the altar.
His eyes didn’t go wide in the way a person’s might when confronted by a man in a German uniform covered in blood. They narrowed. It intrigued me. He probably wasn’t the only one hiding in whatever crypt he’d come from, but I had no interest in seeing more dead.
So I shook my head at him, put my finger to my lips, and waved him back to his hiding place. He hesitated just long enough that I thought he might be assessing whether or not he could take me. He was tall, older than me but not more than a decade, and he looked fit. To him, I must have seemed scrawny and weak, despite the uniform and the rifle I had to wear so the regular SS didn’t start things they couldn’t finish with me.
The priest’s gaze was direct and unflinching, and I met it with my own. The horror of the other room was still imprinted on my eyes, and looking at him meant I didn’t have to watch Karl vomit in a corner, or admit that I noticed the three SS soldiers who had returned to pick over bodies for something to steal.
After a long moment – too long for someone who wanted to stay alive – the priest reached out a hand and made the sign of the cross at me. The bastard blessed me, right before he turned and went back down the steps. The back of his priest’s robe was covered in blood, so much blood I wondered at the wounds that must be underneath it. Suddenly, I wanted to go after him. I wanted to demand to know why he thought a blessing could ever matter to a murderer. I wasn’t just going to hell, I was in hell. How dare he imagine he had the power to absolve me.
I was shaking with rage when I strode to the spiral on the wall – Saira’s unintended gift to me. Had she followed me to France? Was she looking for me? Was her presence in this place and time an accident, or was it fate that she drew a spiral here for me to use?
Whatever had brought Saira, Archer, and Ringo to this war, they had given me the means to finish my own. France and Germany could duke this out without me, because now I had a way to Clock to London and do what I came to this war to do. I would find Walters on my own. I would find him, and I would kill him.
Churches
I took us to the attic of the rectory where Bishop Cleary lived – or rather, would live in another seventy years, more or less. It had been Archer’s and my weapons training ground and was almost as empty now as i
t would be then. It was a calculated risk. Whoever the current Guy’s Chapel minister was, he most likely lived alone, and Archer could probably talk our way out of anything using his Bletchley Park connections and basic charm. Except Archer was still out cold and would probably stay that way until nightfall tomorrow.
When I’d made sure the attic was empty and safe, I came back to where I’d left Archer, Ringo, and Rachel. Ringo was checking Archer’s wound, and Rachel looked a little shocky. I helped her to her feet, then shook her hand.
“I’m Saira. This is Ringo,” I indicated my friend, “and Archer.”
She looked me straight in the eyes without any fear, and I admired her for it. “You are the friends of Father Sebastien. I recognized him,” she gestured toward Ringo, “in the village square and wanted to help. I am Rachel,” she said in accented English.
“Thank ye for that, by the way,” Ringo said.
Rachel nodded once. “You brought meat to the children,” she said, as if that explained everything. She added, “We are not in Oradour-sur-Glane anymore.” It wasn’t a question.
“We’re in England. At the Guy’s Chapel rectory,” I added for Ringo’s benefit. He looked around once, then nodded and went back to tending Archer’s back and shoulder. Ringo had pulled a canteen of water out of his satchel and was wiping the last of the blood off Archer’s skin.
Rachel’s eyes had widened and she took a step back from me. “How—?” Then she shook her head. “No, I will just have faith and leave it alone.”
“I can take you home when we’re done here—”
She took another step back, but I wasn’t sure that it was me she was retreating from. “I never want to see what they’ve done, or the faces of my friends and my father’s friends. I am finished there.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. Thank you for hiding us.”
She shrugged, seeming to accept her new circumstances, and began to wander around the room. “You are here for a reason, I think.” She rubbed a clean spot in the dusty window and looked outside.
