Emeralds & Ashes

by Leila Rasheed

  Sebastian didn’t have time to thank him. There was a chattering noise and the blackness exploded with fire. Sebastian dived and pulled Joe with him. They ended up in a shell hole, Sebastian shivering, Joe shuddering and on the brink of tears, while the gun swept around them. They heard cries, screams.

  “Is that us? Is that us screaming? Or is that them?” Joe was shaking.

  Sebastian was sweating with fear too, but he made himself move and look over the lip of the crater. He could see the machine gun, not fifty yards away, tearing the night to shreds. It didn’t seem guarded.

  “If we can sneak behind it, we’ve got a chance,” he said, sliding back into the mud.

  “Got to be bloody joking!”

  Sebastian grabbed him and pulled him close. “Listen, if we don’t shut that gun down, we’re dead men. As soon as dawn comes we’ll be sitting ducks. I don’t think he knows we’re here. Now is the best chance we’ve got.”

  Joe nodded silently. Sebastian let him go, relieved—the real terror had been thinking of being stuck here in the shell hole, in the dark, unable to help himself, powerless, with Joe gibbering with fear next to him. If the boy could be made to act, to do something, he’d live. If he froze in fear, he’d die.

  “I’ll take out the machine gunner. You deal with anything else.” He pushed a grenade into Joe’s hand. “Got it?”

  Joe nodded dumbly. Sebastian didn’t look into his eyes, afraid that if he saw fear there he would panic himself. There was no time for fear.

  They scrambled out of the shell hole on their bellies and wormed through the mud toward the emplacement. They made it twenty yards before there was a blast of light and Sebastian shut his eyes and tried to play dead. But the signal flare had gone up beyond them, and when he squinted he saw a sight he would never forget—men collapsing to their knees, like ninepins, like hay when the reaper slashes the stalks. All lit in a way he hadn’t seen since the darkness and vivid fire of the Caravaggio paintings that hung on the staircase at Somerton. How strange that he should be thinking of Somerton now, he thought, numbed, but the image was gone as fast as a bullet, and survival was back. Now, he thought, while the German was busy scything through the rest of the platoon. He scrambled across the destroyed earth to the wall of sandbags, slid around it and into the trench. There were Germans in the trench, but they were firing the other way, toward the main platoon, and he was able to step up behind the machine gunner. His pistol was in his hand, and this was the moment he had tried not to think about. Could he do this? Could he shoot a man in cold blood? Or should he simply wait to be shot first? This was his chance to allow the war to take him. To give his life and go down in a bloody moment of insanity.

  He was looking over the gunner’s shoulder, and in that second he saw Corporal Morrison, in the last of the flare’s light, fall to the ground riddled with bullets. The last thing he saw was the blank astonishment on the man’s face, the grizzled gray stubble on his chin. Those eyes. The look in them would haunt him forever.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Charlotte stepped off the train, shivering. Portia followed her. Number 34 General Hospital was supposed to be around here somewhere. But she couldn’t see anything that looked like a hospital. Just dirt roads, stray cats, gray skies, and soldiers here and there. The wooden huts seemed like a kind of cancer that had overrun the skin of the country. And underneath everything was the shudder of the guns. The only refreshing thing was the smell of the sea that came over, across the railway and the dunes.

  “I suppose this must be Étaples,” said Portia, looking around her.

  They had traveled together, across the Channel and through Boulogne, down the railway to Étaples. Étaples was the key base for the forces allied against Germany, a huge complex of huts all thrown up in just a few months. Every soldier who went to the front went through here. The crossing had been rough, and Charlotte could see her own exhaustion mirrored in Portia’s eyes. When they had first set sail from Dover there had been blue skies, seagulls dipping and swerving overhead, and soldiers singing and whistling to keep their spirits up. As she looked down at the white wake of water, she had felt nervous but excited also—she was finally going abroad, finally going to be in the thick of it. Forty-eight hours later, that optimism seemed a long way away. She ached in every muscle and wanted nothing more than a hot bath in scented water, and then bed, to sleep forever. But that was not what was in front of her.

  “I can’t see anything that looks like a hospital,” she said. “Only those huts over there.”

  “Do you think anyone will come and meet us?”

  “I should think not.” Charlotte tried to sound more cheerful than she felt. “Let’s walk; it will keep us warm at least.”

  Portia picked up her case with a small sigh. Charlotte did the same, but as she stepped down from the platform, she saw a horse and cart approaching. On the flapping tarpaulin sides was painted the distinctive red cross.

  She put out a hand to alert Portia and they waited until the cart reached them.

  The woman who stepped down from the cart looked about fifty. A sister’s badge was pinned to her cape. “You must be Nurse Templeton and Nurse Claythorpe. We are glad to see you,” she said.

  Charlotte murmured a polite reply. She expected to be asked to step into the cart, but instead the sister walked a little way away and gestured to them to follow her. Charlotte and Portia did so, and Charlotte was surprised to see the sister speak a few words of French to the stationmaster. A moment later they were in his office, and with a very Gallic bow he left them.

  Charlotte looked around, noting the spartan surroundings. Everything here seemed washed of color, she thought, just as a man’s face was colorless when he was afraid.

  “I shall get to the point, since there is little time. I want to ask you if you will do something rather unconventional for us,” Sister said.

  Charlotte raised her eyebrows. She was fairly sure that Sister did not have in mind any of the unconventional things she had already accomplished.

  “Of course, Sister, we will do anything we can to help.” Portia spoke for both of them. “That is why we are here.”

  “The thing is…” The sister hesitated. “You are not needed here, that is, not as much as you are needed elsewhere.”

  “You wish us to transfer?” Charlotte said in surprise. This was a normal occurrence, and she wondered why the sister was making such a meal of it.

  “Yes, but not to one of the other general hospitals. We are short of staff at Hidoux Farm Casualty Clearing Station. It is not usual to send VADs so close to the front line of fighting, and it is not ideal. But would you be willing to go? Now?”

  Charlotte did not know what to say.

  She knew that CCSs could at times come under direct fire. She knew that the conditions there were likely to be more chaotic, worse than here in the relative safety of Étaples. She felt as if things were moving too fast for her. But this was war.

  “Speaking for myself, Sister,” said Portia after a moment, “I am ready to go.”

  Charlotte found both of them looking at her. She could not refuse. She could not look like a coward, not now. “I will go too,” she said.

  “Thank you, Nurse Templeton. I appreciate it greatly.” Sister’s tired face blossomed with a smile. She was not so old, Charlotte realized. Simply exhausted.

  But she could feel panic rising inside her. She’d thought she could cope. But that was back in England, when she could go home whenever she liked. This was different. There was a channel full of German submarines to cross if she wanted to escape; more than that, there was her pride. She couldn’t bear to fail now; it would be too humiliating. Her mother would be proved right: She was no more fitted for nursing than a butterfly for baking bread. She should know her place and her limits. But just a few months’ nursing in London had shown her a new life, a new future in which she could be needed and useful. And she would not give that up without a fight. Like all the men who arrived here, s
he had gone too far to turn back.

  Sebastian opened his eyes. The ground trembled with distant artillery fire, but the silence—the comparative silence—was almost deafening.

  He sat up with difficulty. He ached everywhere and was covered with bruises from the day before. As he got up to wash, it all came back to him: Morrison’s eyes, the shock in them as he died. Crawling about in the blood and the dirt, the body of the machine gunner on top of him. Finally, he’d gotten out and found Joe, wounded in the leg. There were German fighters coming in from above, strafing the trench. It was clear they couldn’t hold it. He’d gotten Joe back through no-man’s-land to the shelter of a shell hole, then to their own trench. There had been wounded men, screaming men, shattered men. And then—

  He stopped, aghast at his own insanity, as the memory of yesterday swept over him.

  “I’m going back for Morrison,” he’d told the lieutenant. Shells exploded, pulverizing the ground beyond the safety of the trench.

  “Are you bloody mad?”

  “I’m not leaving him out there.” He’d looked around at their shocked faces. “You know as well as I that if we don’t get his body back now, he won’t be there tomorrow. He’ll have sunk into one of those hellish mud holes, or the rats will have had him, or the shells. I’m going back.”

  “I’ll come with you.” That was Joe.

  “No.” He’d told Joe that firmly, with the authority he remembered from his other life—a life of giving orders to servants. “You’re to stay here. I won’t risk anyone else’s life. But Morrison deserves better than a mud grave.”

  He’d gone out there. Wriggling on his stomach, forcing down the part of him that screamed he should turn back, that he was risking his life for a dead man, that he was tempting fate, that he wanted to live, goddamn it. The beams of light swept across the churned earth: he saw limbs, bodies, ragged scraps of metal and flesh and wood and leather all tossed together as if God had shaken the world in a cocktail tumbler.

  Morrison lay in a half-flooded shell hole. He was stiff with rigor mortis. Sebastian waited for the searchlights to pass, then ran. Like a rabbit, he thought, remembering hunting at Somerton. He’d never go on a shoot again, not if they begged him.

  How he got the body back was a mystery to him. One movement at a time, dodging search beams. It took hours. Finally he was back in the trench. He sat, too exhausted to move.

  “Going back for a bloody dead man.” That was Jim Kelly. He sounded almost angry.

  “Shut up, Jim. You’d want someone to do it for you.” That was Joe.

  That was all he remembered. Now here he was in his dugout, and some bastard was shouting his name outside. No lie-ins in the army.

  He came out, blinked in the sunshine. “What is it?”

  He didn’t recognize the smart, slick-haired young officer who stood there like a vision from another world.

  “Rupert Moore? You’re to go back to HQ, see the colonel.”

  Sebastian nodded, blankly. It was probably something he’d done wrong. There had to be something. The whole thing was a farce, and farces had to end eventually.

  He dressed and joined the staff officer in his motorcar. He was too tired to talk or even think as they bumped along the rain-washed, pitted road. His uniform was stiff with mud and blood. His head thumped and he wished he had a drink of water. Across the ruined earth, pools of still water lay, and from them the wrecks of gun carriages protruded, along with the torn stumps of trees and here and there a bloated corpse, as if such a thing were quite normal. Sebastian sat in silence, glad that the wind noise prevented speech. Slowly, his mind put itself back together. He began to feel uneasy. If this summons was because they had found out who he was…what he was…He swallowed down a sudden desire to vomit.

  On the horizon, the shape of a château revealed itself.

  He had seen houses like this on holidays in the French countryside—long, long before this had happened. He had dined in them, drunk champagne from their cellars, listened to stories told in accented English, and fallen in love with the elegant, easy luxury they surrounded themselves with. As they neared it, he saw the windows were blown out. Then he saw that much of the roof was gone too. It was as shattered as everything else here.

  “Any idea what this is about, sir?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

  The driver shrugged. “Ask them when you get in.” He motioned him out and Sebastian obeyed. He had a heavy sense of fate; there was no running away from this one.

  The reasons he might be here cycled through his mind. If it came out that he’d used a false name, if it came out about who he was, what he’d done…His feet crunched on broken glass as he crossed the elegant hall of the château. There were shattered mirrors and empty frames, and a shell seemed to have gone through one wall and out of the other.

  He entered the colonel’s office and stood to attention. This might be the last time I do this, if I’m found out, he thought, and found the thought somehow demoralizing.

  The colonel looked up with a wintery smile. “Ah, Private Moore, isn’t it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sebastian warily.

  “Jolly good. Jolly good. I hear you had quite an adventure last night.”

  “I suppose you could call it that, sir.” Sebastian kept his tone light, wondering where this was leading.

  “I have a report from Private Brown, but would you like to tell me in your own words what happened?”

  Sebastian recounted the night’s events, aware that a staff lieutenant was typing along with his words. He itched to see what was being taken down. What had Joe said?

  “Excellent. Excellent. Well, that was a brave action, and you’ll be glad to know the machine-gun emplacement was retained and the sortie was a great success. And Morrison’s family will be more grateful than words can say. To have his body to bury will mean the world to them.”

  Sebastian nodded heavily. The memory of Morrison collapsing to the ground flashed into his mind again, and he closed his eyes, feeling an almost physical pain.

  “I am therefore promoting you to acting corporal, with every expectation that the role be confirmed and made permanent following the war.”

  Sebastian jerked his head up, astonished. “I—I’m very grateful, sir” was all he could find to say.

  “No need. My pleasure.” The colonel smiled his chilly smile again. “Dismissed. And have a good rest before rejoining your platoon.”

  He saluted. Sebastian responded. It was the strangest thing, he thought. This colonel—this perfect English officer and gentleman—would drop his hand in disgust if he knew who he was saluting. But here he wasn’t Sebastian Templeton, the debauched and disgraced. He was Rupert Moore, the good soldier.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, and turned away at the colonel’s nod.

  Sebastian walked away, past the broken windows, open to the bare countryside, still trying to process what had happened. They weren’t onto him. They weren’t after him. They’d promoted him, of all things. He was surprised to find himself feeling a surge of pride—actually smiling.

  He hadn’t signed up to be good at this. He’d signed up to get killed. But here he was, alive, and others were alive because of him. He laughed and shook his head wonderingly. He’d scrabbled in the mud of no-man’s-land and come up clutching a precious jewel—life.

  He stopped on the terrace of the château and looked out, trying to imagine this landscape back to how it once had been: peaceful, the tall trees lining the avenue, the fresh smell of grass. But it was impossible to bring it to mind.

  Don’t get too complacent, he thought. It was well enough to have helped others and found a reason to stay alive—for now. But this was just the beginning. There was still plenty of time for him to get killed—or to get found out.

  London

  Ada and Ravi walked together, so close that, she thought, they might have held hands. No one would notice. No one would care. Everyone had other things to think about. They were all hurryin
g, heads down, in their uniforms or to their overloaded jobs, struggling to get butter and sugar for their families, or glancing nervously skyward for zeppelins.

  “And so Somerville is to be requisitioned without a doubt?” Ravi asked. They had been talking in low, familiar tones. Ada realized she had come to think of these streets as theirs, this crowd as theirs. They could be alone here, lost, invisible in the East End, down by the docks.

  “Despite all our objections, yes. We’re to move to Oriel College, and no doubt the male students will make our lives as unbearable as they can. They resent us.”

  “Do you ever think that it might not be worth it? All this…and you won’t even be allowed to have a degree or to practice, at the end of it.”

  “If I don’t take what education I can, I won’t be able to show how well we women deserve degrees and to work as men’s equals.”

  “It might even be easier in India, you know. Mrs. Sorabji has set a fine example for female lawyers, and I am sure I could introduce you.”

  Ada was silent.

  “I want to ask you something.” His voice was strained, and she saw his hands were clenched in his coat pockets.

  “Anything.”

  “You love, me don’t you?”

  “Need you ask?” She stopped, startled at the question, and turned to him.

  “You do?” He searched her face with his eyes.

  “Yes. I do.” She tried not to feel a little, a very little, as if she had been forced into saying it.

  “Then”—he glanced down toward the glittering Thames, and up toward St. Paul’s—“will you marry me, Ada? Now? As soon as possible?”

  Ada was silent. She didn’t know why she wasn’t able to speak, why it felt as if someone were clutching her throat. It was sheer joy, she knew it was—joy that they should finally be together.

  “Of course I will,” she said finally, her voice trembling.

  The flash of fierce happiness on Ravi’s face resolved all her doubts. She was laughing, exhilarated, as he swept her into his arms and kissed her. She did not care that the world was staring, she would not even have cared—as she pressed herself against him, answering his kisses with equal passion—if the countess were to walk past at this very minute.