Deal with the Devil

by J. Gunnar Grey

His murmured reassurances were going unheeded. Thompson clung to him and trembled.

  Unfortunately, now the immediate danger was over, his adrenaline receded with the bombers and the pain returned, worse than ever. He had forgotten everything except survival during the explosions and had used his arm without thought. The renewal was agony, and Thompson’s leg-lock squeezed his ribcage where the still-embedded shrapnel clawed at him. To top it all a new ache, a dull and ugly one, was just getting started across his shoulders and the back of his neck. His knees and arms shook.

  It wouldn’t be impressive to faint with the kid in his arms. “Do you want to get down and find your mom?”

  Thompson tightened his grip. “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to put you down.”

  A pause. “Okay.”

  Faust lowered him to the ground and wished he could collapse rather than kneel beside him. A little hand touched his left one. They clung together.

  Although the air was cool, a droplet of sweat fell into his eye. He glanced down. His uniform was plastered with dust. He could feel grime on his face and a chill dampness beneath his arms and around his collar. Hot and cold, just as he’d described for Norris. Faust crouched beside Thompson, clamped his right arm against his side, and wiped his forehead and eyes with his left sleeve.

  Tanyon appeared from the gloom. “Where did you get off to?”

  “Right here.” His voice shook in tempo with the rest of him.

  Mrs. Oldfield paused at the edge of the shadows, her eyes enormous in a face which seemed white even in the darkness. She scurried forward, grabbed his and Thompson’s joined hands, and separated them. “Thank you.” Her voice shook, too. But she pulled her son away and stepped between them.

  He glanced aside. Although he understood, it stung. They flee from me, that sometime did me seek — Wyatt knew all about being unappreciated.

  But Thompson took one step beside his mother and stopped. “I have to go now.”

  Even with the pain, it was worth it. He looked into the grave blue eyes and couldn’t repress a smile. “I know.”

  And after that Thompson didn’t seem to know what to say, either. “Bye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  He followed his mother into the shadows of the shelter.

  “Can you walk?” Tanyon asked.

  He wiped his face again and rose. Everything still hurt. But at least his knees no longer shook. “I think so.”

  “Come on, then.”

  They walked side by side down the center of the long room, without consultation seeking the dimmest path where the light from the small bulbs couldn’t reach. People sat on packing cases, on folding chairs, on the floor, reading, knitting, huddling. All of them, even the children, cast furtive anxious glances toward the currently-quiet ceiling. Several spotted him. He saw more than one tilt his head toward a neighbor and whisper, then more eyes slid his way. Without speaking, he and Tanyon walked faster. If worse came to worst and the citizenry took the law into their own hands, Tanyon wouldn’t be able to protect him even if he wanted to.

  “Did we find Norris?”

  Tanyon huffed. “I’ll deal with Norris.”

  But no one stopped them. They crossed the long room in silence, toward a glow halfway down. He began to pant again and the naked cement walls threatened to spin. In this condition, he couldn’t protect himself.

  The glow proved to be brilliant fluorescent lighting. White dividers blocked off a small relief station beneath the strips, a camp kitchen opposite. Beyond stretched rows of bunk beds, vanishing into an ever-deeper gloom.

  All four medics bustled behind the dividers. Faust spied Flora sitting on the examining table, Mrs. Oldfield beside her, and wondered where Thompson was.

  “Stick around, sergeant,” the surgeon called. “He’s next.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They withdrew to the shelter of the kitchen, putting it between them and the roomful of refugees. Faust smelled soup and his stomach growled.

  “People seem to be settling in for the long haul.”

  Tanyon glanced at him, then resumed his cautious full-circle scrutiny. “Saturday’s raid lasted all night.”

  “All night? Are you serious?”

  Another glance.

  “I didn’t think we had that many bombers, that’s all.”

  “They come in waves about thirty minutes apart. Just as people are catching their breath from the first round, here they come again.”

  It made sense. “So they’re landing, rearming, and taking back off.”

  “Don’t you know your own bomber tactics?”

  Faust scowled. “Why should I? I drive tanks.”

  The next glance was openly sardonic.

  “What do you know about your fighter tactics?”

  Tanyon huffed. “They come out of the sun.”

  “Not at night.”

  Mrs. Oldfield emerged from the relief station, hand in hand with Flora. Her still-wary glance swept over them, standing in the shadows. She averted her eyes. For a moment he thought she would brush past in silence and even though he understood that, too, it still stung. Then Flora paused, forcing her mother to stop beside her.

  Only then did Mrs. Oldfield speak. “Thank you again.” Her glance, quick as a bullet, included both of them.

  Tanyon nodded.

  “You’re welcome.” Faust glanced down at Flora. He’d always liked kids and these two were great. “You, too.”

  “Are you hurt?” Flora asked. “You keep holding your arm.”

  “It’s not bad. You’re not coughing any more.”

  She shook her head. “Cough syrup.”

  The surgeon appeared behind her. “Come on in.”

  “Gotta go,” he said to Flora.

  She nodded. “See you.”

  Cavanaugh helped him off with his tunic, shirt, and undervest, then Faust climbed onto the examining table. The surgeon popped two x-ray films onto a light box and flipped it on, brightening the enclosed area even further.

  “Are those my ribs?”

  “And your shrapnel. Two pieces.”

  Dr. Harris peered over the surgeon’s shoulder at the films. “Deep?”

  “Not too bad.” He glanced at the grey-haired nurse. “Set up for day surgery under morphine.”

  She nodded and turned to the cartons they’d lugged downstairs, set on a counter nearby. She and Cavanaugh dug out scalpels, needles, catgut, ointments, and bandages, setting them onto a rolling table covered with a white cloth.

  Dr. Harris and the surgeon circled behind him on the examining table. Faust peered over his shoulder as well as he could, more curious than apprehensive.

  “Can you move this elbow forward at all?” the surgeon asked.

  He dragged his right arm across his chest with his left. The torn flesh at the back of his arm tore further. He suppressed a hiss.

  “That’s good. Just hold your arms so and lie on your left side. Cavanaugh, give him a hand. Nurse, administer one-eighth grain of morphine. Dr. Harris, will you assist?”

  One-eighth grain wasn’t enough. It shoved the pain into a defensive posture but didn’t defeat it. Faust, on his side on the examining table, felt the scalpel’s first slice and tried to stay still.

  “I know,” the surgeon said. “Sorry. We must restrict painkillers.”

  “Along with everything else.” His voice shook again. He cleared his throat and tried humor. “Cigarettes at a pack per month — that’s inhuman.”

  “Three for prisoners,” Dr. Harris said.

  “A pack for three months? I won’t survive.”

  “No, three packs per month.” Dr. Harris gave him a curious look. “Who told you otherwise?”

  Stoner, of course. He clenched his teeth. It was all the proof he needed. He’d been had and he was the biggest fool on the planet.

  Cavanaugh lit a fag and stuck it between Faust’s lips. With the first puff, there was a painful tug at his side, then the surgeon dropped something into a small g
lass bowl on the instrument table. It was red and gooey, but sharp metallic edges shone in the bright overhead lights.

  “Part of an airplane skin,” the surgeon said, “in case you’re interested.”

  He spoke around the cigarette. “Not the sort of souvenir I’d like to keep close to my heart.”

  Another painful tug and a second, smaller piece joined the first.

  “It feels better already.”

  “I’m sure it does,” Dr. Harris said. “The pressure’s out of the wounds. Any sign of infection?”

  “A little inflammation, but not bad. Let’s wash it out, pack it with sulfa, and stitch him up, then we’ll look more closely at your arm.”

  Those stitches had to be entirely removed and resewn. He felt that, too.

  “You’ve got to quit using this arm,” the surgeon said.

  “What exactly happened back there?”

  “I didn’t tell you?” Dr. Harris said. “There’s a six-inch long slice across the back of your arm, right through the muscles. I stitched it up, but you keep loosening the stitches or ripping them out. Each time you do, it gets bigger.”

  “We’ll give you a sling. It’ll remind you not to use the arm.”

  After Cavanaugh had wrapped the last bandage and rebuttoned his shirt for him, the surgeon made him swallow a sleeping pill.

  “Sir,” Tanyon said, “if the all-clear sounds, I’ll have to wake him and return him to Margeaux Hall.”

  “Not tonight,” the surgeon said. “Tonight, he stays here and sleeps. Take these first bunks here so we can check on him every few hours. And the soup smells ready.”

  This wasn’t so bad. Faust drank thick vegetable soup, sitting on the ground in his shirt sleeves, boots off, beside the first row of bunks. He should have known the English were too practical to panic. Lynch mobs only happened in bad Western novels, the sort Hitler read.

  The painkiller was wearing off but the sleeping pill was starting to work; the pain was advancing but his mind was retreating. He stretched his feet, his legs, his back, rolled his head, and his body responded better than it had all day. And finally he could breathe; the deep burning in his ribs was gone. Even when Tanyon made him take the top bunk and he had to clamber up as best he could, it didn’t spoil his elation.

  Because it proved, even with only one usable arm, he could still climb.

  Chapter Eighteen

  midnight

  the Patchbourne hospital air raid shelter

  At some point in the night, Faust drowsed up through foggy layers of sleep. Again he heard a steady droning overhead. It was close enough to wake him but not, he decided, close enough to alarm.

  There was someone in the narrow bunk with him. He smiled in his doze. Perhaps sleeping space was rationed, too, with bunks so prized in the shelter, Tanyon or Norris had been forced to share with their prisoner.

  But the hair tickling his chin was fine and downy, and it was hair that had tickled his chin before. He opened his eyes as Thompson rolled over in his arms, wide eyes reflecting the dimmed lights of the first aid station.

  “They’re back,” Thompson whispered.

  “Yeah. But they’re not close.”

  A distant rumble joined the droning. Either anti-aircraft fire or bombs exploding. Hopefully their aim was better this time around.

  “They can’t aim, can they?”

  “No.”

  “They’re bad all around.”

  “Yes.”

  He was drowsing again when Thompson asked, “Are you German?”

  He opened his eyes. Again he met a wide childish stare, this time aimed at him.

  “Yeah.”

  Thompson blinked for a minute. “Are you bad, too?”

  He started to laugh, then paused. Was he? It wasn’t a thought he cared to entertain in the still, close hours of the night, especially in a discussion with a small child. Faustus, begin thine incantations And try if devils will obey thy hest, Seeing thou has prayed and sacrificed to them. Marlowe was enough to scare anyone.

  Finally he said, “I don’t think so. Do you?”

  Thompson looked him over for a long serious moment.

  “No.” He rolled back over.

  Within a minute they both slept.

  Chapter Nineteen

  morning, Tuesday, 27 August 1940

  in transit from Patchbourne hospital

  Tanyon’s problems began first thing in the morning.

  “I told you to go back to the Hall,” he said to Peckham outside the hospital.

  “This is what I get for trying to be helpful.” Peckham was a beefy kid slightly shorter than Norris and a lot thicker through the shoulders, with a bruiser’s face and challenging eyes, as if he enjoyed a good rough game of rugby. He stood outside the hospital and gave Tanyon a long-suffering look. “I rang Mrs. Alcock and asked if there was anything she needed at the market while we were here. Saving petrol for the war effort, right? And I was getting cabbages when — ” He waved one disgusted hand at the lorry, buried beneath the wall of the hospital.

  Tanyon swore, long-windedly and with great imagination.

  “That’ll teach you to buy cabbages,” Faust said. “Ugh.” He’d had too much peasant’s food as a kid at the orphanage. If the menu was heading that direction, he was heading elsewhere.

  “Don’t start,” Tanyon said to him. “Peckham, you stay here and salvage the lorry.”

  “Sergeant, half the wall’s in the cab. What if I can’t dig it out?”

  “Don’t come back. Norris, we’ll take the train.” He turned to Faust. “I am not in a good mood — ”

  “This I can see for myself.”

  “ — so don’t try anything cute.”

  Tanyon had reason for concern, Faust conceded, meeting the level warning stare without flinching. Granted, he still hurt in multiple places, including a bruised ache across the nape of his neck and the tops of his shoulders where part of the ceiling had fallen on him during the air raid.

  But the deep burning pain among his ribs was gone and at last he could breathe deeply. He’d had a good night’s sleep and two rolls for breakfast, his head was finally clear, his body was responsive beneath the aches and pains, and the sun echoed his enthusiasm in a clear blue sky. Best of all, Norris couldn’t find his rifle and Peckham’s was buried in the cab of the lorry.

  It was going to be a beautiful day.

  The train was a local, of course, a crawling beast which took forever to cross the twelve miles between Patchbourne and Patchley Abbey. It didn’t offer first-class compartments, so they sat in the coach seats with all the other travelers, windows wide to the morning air, and Faust had a perfect view of the countryside. It was as good as a topographic map and he noted the farmhouses and roads along the way. When he noticed Tanyon watching, jaw square and eyebrows lowering, he smiled back.

  He still didn’t know how many young soldiers were in Stoner’s employ, but among the ones he’d met, Peckham seemed the sharpest. But something had convinced Stoner and Tanyon to select Pym for the lance corporal’s stripe instead. He’d have to study all these kids a little better. If, of course, he stuck around.

  At the Patchley Abbey station, Tanyon and Faust waited outside while Norris used the new dial phone inside. When he returned, he shook his head.

  “Sorry, sergeant, the car’s down. Sloane’s working on it.”

  Tanyon swore again. His vocabulary had real depth, and Faust didn’t bother to hide his grin.

  “How long?” Tanyon asked when he finally started repeating words.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “You didn’t tell me to.”

  “Training in initiative will always tell,” Faust said. At least he could figure out why Norris hadn’t gotten the stripe.

  “You’re cruising, mate.”

  “It’s a lovely day for a walk.”

  Tanyon didn’t even glance at him. “Norris, pop over to the bakery and ask Mr. Oldfield if we can borrow his
car.”

  “Why can’t I stay here with him? I can’t drive, in any case.”

  The sergeant scoffed. “How are you going to guard a prisoner without a weapon?”

  “His cutting wit is enough to frighten me,” Faust said.

  “That’s two,” Tanyon said, his face reddening. “Move it, Norris. You’re on report as it is.”

  While waiting, Faust shrugged out of the sling and tucked it into his pocket.

  “Dr. Harris won’t like that,” Tanyon said.

  “It’s cutting into my neck,” he lied. He already knew this was going to be his day and he wanted no encumbrances. “I’ll put it back on when we get to the Hall. Unless you tell him he’ll never know.”

  Norris returned in a spluttering Austin which seemed to be held together only by patches of rust, driven by a young man with a pale face, black hair, and tension lines about his mouth. For the third time, Tanyon entertained Faust, this time sotto voce and only until the young man stepped from behind the wheel.

  “Mr. Oldfield’s out making deliveries,” Norris said, “so I stopped by the vicarage.”

  So Tanyon had enough respect for the cloth to shut up when a member thereof put in a personal appearance, despite the more blasphemous word choices he’d already displayed.

  “Good morning, Mr. Ashleigh,” Tanyon said. “How are you now?”

  “Definitely better.” The vicar leaned on a stout blackthorn stick, favoring his left foot. He didn’t glance at Faust.

  “I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”

  “Whatever I can do for the war effort, sergeant, you know that.”

  “How did he injure his foot?” Faust asked when they were well on the road. It was only a matter of time; the Austin’s engine sounded on its last gasp, missing more often than not.

  Tanyon drove, squinting in the brilliant sunshine. Norris, wearing the sergeant’s web belt and holstered Webley, sat behind him, Faust in the rear passenger’s seat with the driving mirror angled his way. The road ahead wound like a dusty invitation between two dry stone walls, chicken runs on one side, measured rows of some low-growing vegetable on the other, the countryside extending over several rises to a forest which broke its southward march only for the little lane. If it was the same forest he’d followed south the night of his capture, then they were close to Margeaux Hall and he was running out of time. But he couldn’t believe his gut feeling wouldn’t play out.