The Burning Shore

by Wilbur Smith

  Sky and cloud and patches of earth, interspersed with bright-coloured Albatroses with flickering, chattering guns, spun through Michael’s field of vision in dizzying array. He felt another blow, this time in his leg, just below the fork of his crotch. He looked down and saw that a burst had come up through the floor, and a bullet, misshapen and deformed, had ripped through his thigh. Blood pumped from it in bright arterial jets. He had seen a Zulu gunbearer, savaged by a wounded buffalo, bleed this way from a ruptured femoral artery; he had died in three minutes.

  Streams of machine-gun fire were still coming in at him from every angle, and he could not defend himself for his aircraft was out of control, flicking through the turns of the spin, throwing her nose up viciously, and then dropping it again in that savage rhythm.

  Michael fought her, thrusting on opposite rudder to try to break the pattern of her rotation, and at the exertion the blood pumped more strongly from his torn thigh and he felt the first giddy weakness in his head. He dropped one hand from the joystick and thrust his thumb into his groin, seeking the pressure point, and the great pulsing red spurts shrivelled as he found it.

  Again he coaxed the maimed aircraft, stick forward to stop that high-nose attitude, and a burst of throttle to power her out of the spin. She responded reluctantly, and he tried not to think about the machine-gun fire that tore at him from every side.

  The clouds and earth stopped revolving about him, as her tight turns slowed and she dropped straight. Then with one hand only he pulled her nose up and felt the overstress-ing of her wings and the suck of gravity in his belly, but at last the world tilted before his eyes as she came back on to an even keel.

  He glanced in the mirror and saw that the blue Albatros had found him again and was pressing in close on his tailplane for the coup de grâce.

  Before that dreadful rattling chatter of the Spandau could begin again, Michael felt the cold damp rush across his face as grey streamers of cloud blew over the open cockpit, and then the light was blotted out and he was into a dim, blind world, a quiet, muted world where the Spandaus could no longer desecrate the silences of the sky. They could not find him in the clouds.

  Automatically his eyes fastened on the tiny glycerine-filled glass tubes set on the dashboard in front of him, and with small controlled adjustments he aligned the bubbles in the tubes within their markers so that the SE5a was flying straight and level through the cloud. The he turned her gently on to a compass heading for Mort Homme.

  He wanted to be sick – that was his first reaction from terror and the stress of combat. He swallowed and panted to control it, and then he felt the weakness come at him again. It was as though a bat was trapped in his skull. The dark soft wings beat behind his eyes and his vision faded in patches.

  He blinked away the darkness and looked down. His thumb was still thrust into his own groin, but he had never seen so much blood. His hand was coated, his fingers sticky with it. The sleeve of his jacket was soaked to the elbow. Blood had turned his breeches into a sodden mass and it had run down into his boots. There were pools of blood on the floor of the cockpit, already congealing into lumps like blackcurrant jam, and snakes of it slithering back and forth with each movement of the machine.

  He let go of the stick for a moment, leaned forward against his shoulder straps and groped behind his back. He found the other bullet wound, three inches to the side of his spine and just above the girdle of his pelvis. There was no exit wound. It was still in there and he was bleeding internally, he was certain of it. There was a swollen, stretched feeling in his belly as his stomach cavity filled with blood.

  The machine dropped a wing, and he snatched for the joystick to level her, but it took him many seconds to make the simple adjustment. His fingers prickled with pins and needles, and he felt very cold. His reactions were slowing down, so that each movement, no matter how small, was becoming an effort.

  However, there was no pain, just a numbness that spread down from the small of his back to his knees. He removed his thumb to test the wound in his thigh, and immediately there was a full spray of bright blood from it like a flamingo’s feather, and hastily he stopped it again and concentrated on his flying instruments.

  How long to reach Mort Homme? He tried to work it out, but his brain was slow and muzzy. Nine minutes from Cantin, he reckoned, how long had he been flying? He did not know, and he rolled his wrist so that he could see his watch. He found he had to count the divisions on the dial like a child.

  ‘Don’t want to come out of the cloud too soon, they’ll be waiting for me,’ he thought heavily, and the dial of his wristwatch multiplied before his eyes.

  ‘Double vision,’ he realized.

  Quickly he looked ahead, and the silver clouds billowed around him, and he had the sensation of falling. He almost lurched at the stick to counteract it, but his training restrained him and he checked the bubbles in his artificial horizon – they were still aligned. His senses were tricking him.

  ‘Centaine,’ he said suddenly, ‘what time is it? I’m going to be late for the wedding.’ He felt panic surface through the swamp of his weakness, and the wings of darkness beat more frantically behind his eyes.

  ‘I promised her. I swore an oath!’ He checked his watch.

  ‘Six minutes past four – that’s impossible,’ he thought wildly. ‘Bloody watch is wrong.’ He was losing track of reality.

  The SE5a burst out of the cloud into one of the holes in the layer.

  Michael flung up his hand to protect his eyes from the brilliance of the light, and then looked around him.

  He was on the correct heading for the airfield, he recognized the road and railway line and the star-shaped field between them. ‘Another six minutes’ flying,’ he calculated. The sight of the earth had orientated him again. He took a grip on the real world and looked upwards. He saw them there, circling like vultures above the lion kill, waiting for him to emerge from the cloud. They had spotted him, he saw them turn towards him on their rainbow-coloured wings – but he plunged into the cloud on the far side of the opening, and the cold wet billows enfolded him, hid him from their cruel eyes.

  ‘I’ve got to keep my promise,’ he mumbled. The loss of contact with the earth confused him. He felt the waves of vertigo wash over him again. He let the SE5a sink slowly down through the layer of cloud, and once again came out into the light. There was all the familiar countryside below him, the ridges and the battle lines far behind him, the woods and the village and the church spire ahead, so peaceful and idyllic.

  ‘Centaine, I’m coming home,’ he thought, and a terrible weariness fell over him, its great weight seemed to smother him and crush him down in the cockpit.

  He rolled his head and he saw the château. Its pink roof was a beacon, drawing him irresistibly, the nose of his aircraft turned towards it seemingly without his bidding.

  ‘Centaine,’ he whispered. ‘I’m coming – wait for me, I’m coming.’ And the darkness drew in upon him, so that it seemed that he was receding into a long tunnel.

  There was a roaring in his ears, like the sound of surf heard in a seashell, and he concentrated with all his remaining strength, staring down the ever-narrowing tunnel through the darkness, looking for her face, and listening over the sea sounds in his ears for her voice.

  ‘Centaine, where are you? Oh God, where are you, my love?’

  Centaine stood before the heavy mirror in its walnut and gilt frame, and she looked at her reflection with dark and serious eyes.

  ‘Tomorrow I will be Madame Michel Courtney,’ she said solemnly, ‘never again Centaine de Thiry. Isn’t that a formidable thought, Anna?’ She touched her own temples. ‘Do you think I will feel different? Surely such a momentous event must alter me – I can never be the same person after that!’

  ‘Wake up, child,’ Anna prodded her. ‘There is still so much to do. This is no time for dreaming.’ She lifted the bulky skirt and dropped it over Centaine’s head, then, standing behind her, she fastened the waistband
.

  ‘I wonder if Mama is watching, Anna. I wonder if she knows I am wearing her dress, and if she is happy for me?’

  Anna grunted as she went down on her knees to check the hem. Centaine smoothed the delicate old lace over her hips and listened to the muffled sound of men’s laughter from the grand salon on the floor below.

  ‘I am so happy that the general could come. Isn’t he a handsome man, Anna, just like Michel? Those eyes – did you notice them?’

  Again Anna grunted, but with more emphasis; for a moment her hands faltered as she thought about the general.

  ‘Now, that is a real man,’ she had told herself, as she watched Sean Courtney step down from the Rolls and come up the front staircase of the château.

  ‘He looks so grand in his uniform and medals,’ Centaine went on. ‘When Michel is older, I will insist that he grows a beard like that. So much presence—’

  There was another burst of laughter from below. ‘He and Papa like each other, don’t you think, Anna? Listen to them!’

  ‘I hope they leave some cognac for the other guests,’ Anna grumped, and hoisted herself to her feet, then paused with one hand on the small of her back as a thought struck her.

  ‘We should have laid out the blue Dresden service rather than the Sèvres. It would have looked better with the pink roses.’

  ‘You should have thought of that yesterday,’ Centaine cut in quickly. ‘I’m not going to go over all that again.’

  The two of them had worked all the previous day and most of the night to reopen the grand salon which had been closed ever since the servants left. The draperies had been floury with dust, and the high ceilings so laced with cobwebs that the scenes from mythology that decorated them were almost obscured.

  They had finished the cleaning red-eyed and sneezing before beginning on the silver, which had been all tarnished and spotted. Then each piece of the red and gold Sèvres dinner service had to be washed and hand-dried. The comte, protesting volubly – ‘A veteran of Sedan and the army of the Third Empire forced to labour like a common varlet’ – had been dragooned in to assist.

  Finally it had all been done. The salon once again splendid, the floor of intricately fitted and patterned wooden blocks glossy with wax, the nymphs and goddesses and fauns dancing and cavorting and chasing each other across the domed ceiling, the silver aglitter and the first of Anna’s cherished roses from the greenhouse glowing like great gems in the candlelight.

  ‘We should have made a few more pies,’ Anna worried. ‘Those soldiers have appetites like horses.’

  ‘They are not soldiers, they are airmen,’ Centaine corrected her, ‘and we have enough to feed the entire Allied army, not merely a single squadron—’ Centaine broke off. ‘Listen, Anna!’

  Anna waddled to the window and looked out. ‘It is them!’ she declared. ‘So early!’ The drab brown truck came puttering up the long gravel drive, looking prim and old-maidish on its high narrow wheels, the back crowded with all the off-duty officers from the squadron, the adjutant at the wheel with his pipe clamped in his jaws and a fixed and terrified expression on his face as he steered the vehicle on an uneven course from one verge of the wide driveway to the other, loudly encouraged by his passengers.

  ‘Have you locked the pantry?’ Anna demanded anxiously. ‘If that tribe find the food before we are ready to serve—’

  Anna had enlisted her cronies from the village, those who had not fled the war, and the pantry was an Aladdin’s cave of cold pies and pâtés and the wonderful local terrines, of hams and apple tarts, of pigs’ trotters with truffles in aspic, and a dozen other delights.

  ‘It’s not the food they have come for so early in the day.’ Centaine joined her at the window. ‘Papa has the keys to the cellar. They will be well taken care of.’

  Her father was already halfway down the marble staircase to greet them, and the adjutant braked with such abruptness that two of his pilots landed in the front seat with him in a tangle of legs and arms.

  ‘I say,’ he cried in obvious relief at being once again at a standstill, ‘you must be the jolly old count, what? We are the advance guard, how do you say it in French, le d’avant garde, don’t you know?’

  ‘Ah, to be sure!’ The comte seized his hand. ‘Our brave allies. You are welcome! Welcome! May I offer you a small glass of something?’

  ‘You see, Anna,’ Centaine smiled as she turned back from the window, ‘there is no need to worry. They understand each other. Your food will be safe from them, for a while at least.’

  She picked up the wedding veil from the bed and arranged it loosely over her head, and studied herself in the mirror.

  ‘This must be the happiest day of my life,’ she whispered. ‘Nothing must happen to spoil it.’

  ‘Nothing will, my child,’ Anna came up behind her and arranged the filmy lace of the veil upon her shoulders. ‘You will be the loveliest bride, what a pity that none of the gentry will be here to see you.’

  ‘Enough, Anna,’ Centaine told her gently. ‘No regrets. Everything is perfect. I would not have it any other way.’

  She cocked her head slightly. ‘Anna!’ Her expression became animated.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you hear?’ Centaine spun away from the mirror. ‘It’s him. It’s Michel. He is coming back to me.’

  She ran to the window, and unable to contain herself, she hopped up and down, dancing like a little girl at the window of a toy shop.

  ‘Listen! He is coming this way!’ She could recognize the distinctive beat of the engine that she had so often listened for.

  ‘I don’t see him.’ Anna was behind her, screwing up her eyes, looking upwards in the ragged clouds.

  ‘He must be very low,’ Centaine began. ‘Yes! Yes! There he is, just above the forest.’

  ‘I see him. Is he going to the airfield in the orchard?’

  ‘No, not with this wind. I think he’s coming this way.’

  ‘Is it him? Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure – can’t you see the colour? Mon petit jaune!’

  Others had heard it also. There were voices below the window, and a dozen of the wedding guests trooped out through the french doors of the salon on to the terrace. They were led by Sean Courtney in the full dress uniform of a British general, and the comte even more resplendent in the blue and gold of a colonel of the infantry of Napoleon III. They all carried their glasses and their voices were raised in mounting spirits and cheerful camaraderie.

  ‘That’s Michael all right,’ someone called. ‘I’ll bet he’s going to give us a low-level beat-up. Take the roof off the château, you’ll see!’

  ‘It should be a victory roll, considering what he’s got in store.’

  Centaine found herself laughing with them, and she clapped her hands as she watched the yellow machine approaching – then her hands froze an instant before they came together.

  ‘Anna,’ she said, ‘there is something wrong.’

  The aircraft was close enough now for them to see how irregularly it was flying – one wing dropped and the machine yawed and dipped towards the tree-tops, then pulled up sharply, and its wings wobbled, and then it dropped on the opposite side.

  ‘What’s he up to?’ The timbre of the voices from the terrace changed.

  ‘By God, he’s in trouble – I think—’

  The SE5a began a meandering, purposeless turn to starboard, and they could see the side of the damaged fuselage and the torn wing surfaces as it banked. It looked like the carcass of a fish that had been attacked by a pack of sharks.

  ‘He’s been badly shot up!’ one of the pilots yelled.

  ‘Yes, he’s hard hit.’

  The SE5a turned back too steeply, the nose dropped and almost hit the trees.

  ‘He’s going to try for a forced landing!’ Some of the pilots jumped over the wall of the terrace and ran out on to the lawns, frantically signalling to the crippled aircraft.

  ‘This way, Michael!’
/>   ‘Keep the nose up, man!’

  ‘Too slow!’ screamed anther. ‘You’ll stall her in! Open the throttle. Give her the gun!’

  They shouted their futile advice, and the aircraft settled heavily towards the open lawns.

  ‘Michel,’ Centaine breathed, twisting the lace between her fingers and not even feeling it tear, ‘come to me, Michel.’

  There was one last row of trees, ancient copper beech, with the new leaf buds on their gnarled branches just beginning to pop open. They guarded the bottom of the lawns furthest from the château.

  The yellow SE5a dropped behind them, the beat of her engine faltering.

  ‘Get her up, Michael!’

  ‘Pull her up! Damn it!’

  They were shouting to him, and Centaine added her own entreaty.

  ‘Please, Michel, fly over the trees. Come to me, my darling.’

  The Viper engine roared again at full power, and they saw the machine rocket up like a great yellow pheasant rising from cover.

  ‘He’s going to make it.’

  The nose was too high, they all saw it, she seemed to hover above the stark, leafless branches, and they reached up like the claws of a monster – then the yellow nose dropped.

  ‘He’s over!’ one of the pilots exulted, but one of the landing-wheels caught on a heavy curved branch, and the SE5a somersaulted in mid-air, then fell out of the sky.

  It hit the soft earth at the edge of the lawn, landing on its nose, the spinning propeller exploding in a blur of white splinters, and then with the wooden frames of the fuselage crackling, the entire machine collapsed, crushed like a butterfly, its bright yellow wings folding around the crumpled body – and Centaine saw Michael.