Harvest of War

by Hilary Green

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I liked Tom – even if he was technically your fiancé.’ He sighed deeply. ‘This terrible flu! After all the thousands that have died in the war it seems as though the flu will kill thousands more. It makes you wonder if God has decided to purge the world, like another Noah’s flood.’

  ‘I don’t believe God has anything to do with it,’ Leo said firmly. ‘Why would he purge the best and bravest? It’s our own weakness and folly that’s to blame.’

  ‘For the war, perhaps. But for the flu?’

  ‘Perhaps if we hadn’t been stupid enough to go to war we would have had more strength, and more resources to fight the flu.’ She shook her head and sighed in her turn. ‘Anyway, here we are and it’s up to us, the survivors, to see that we don’t make the same mistakes again.’

  He looked into her eyes. ‘Us, the survivors. Yes. Now that Tom and Ralph are gone, are you completely alone in the world?’

  ‘I was, until I found you and Alexandra.’

  ‘And now? Are you still prepared to give up your adventurous life to settle down as the wife of a country gentleman?’

  ‘Is that what you still intend to be?’

  ‘If I am allowed to. Serbia is going to be very different. Different people are in charge. Who knows what may happen. But that is what I hope for.’

  ‘And it’s all I dream of, too.’

  He kissed her, properly, on the lips, for the first time since they were reunited and she felt the hard knot of pain and loss at the core of her being begin to loosen.

  The door opened and small feet pattered across the room. A voice demanded: ‘Up, Papa! Up!’

  Sasha reached down and lifted the child on to his knee. She clung round his neck and, with her free hand, tried to remove Leo’s from his shoulder.

  ‘My papa! Mine!’

  ‘I know, darling,’ Leo said. ‘But I love him, too. I love you both. I never meant to leave you but it wasn’t my fault. And I’ll never leave you again. I promise.’

  ‘Your mama has had a long journey and she’s been ill, so she needs us to look after her just like Grandmama and I look after you,’ Sasha said gently. ‘Will you help us?’

  The child regarded Leo with solemn, unblinking eyes for a moment. Then she nodded and Sasha carefully lifted her on to Leo’s lap. For the first time Leo cradled her to her breast and felt the warm, silken skin of her face against her neck. Sasha reached across and slipped the chain of the locket over her head. She pressed the clasp and it opened to display a twist of black hair.

  ‘You told me when you gave it to me that one day I should take out your hair and replace it with a lock of my firstborn child’s.’

  ‘It didn’t seem possible, then, that it might be our child.’

  Very gently, she ran her hand over the baby’s head. A few delicate hairs came away in her fingers. She opened the compartment in the locket and carefully wound the dark hair and the auburn together and replaced them in the locket. She raised her eyes to Sasha’s.

  ‘Survivors,’ she said. ‘You once said that if we could be together we could face the whole world. Now there are three of us and we can build a new world, better than the old one.’