by Garth Nix
Black Jack slumped in his chair. “Dang it,” he muttered.
But Conason only looked at the gambler. Whose eyes opened wide. With outrage. “My dear woman,” Stanton snapped. “Are you calling me a cheat?”
“I am. Show me your sleeves.”
Stanton unbuttoned his shirtsleeves, ranting about the lack of faith in the world and how he’d make sure that he was compensated for this slight. There were no cards there. “You lose,” Stanton said calmly.
Missy gaped. “But … but I saw you do it. I felt you do it!”
Gil started to laugh. Conason hoped that he was laughing with them.
Stanton turned the middle card over. “There she is, the Queen of Hearts. And you, madam, as I said, have lost. Now, I and my companions will, as agreed, be taking our leave of you and this so-called fine establishment. Be happy that’s all we’re doing, as opposed to demanding recompense for your insult to my character.” He gathered the cards, put them back in the pack, and put them in his pocket.
Conason and Black Jack both rose, nodded to Missy, who was still gaping, and, with Stanton, headed for the door that was there again. Conason looked back over his shoulder as they crossed the threshold. Gil nodded to him. “Be seeing you, Marshall, sometime in the future.”
They were back on the boardwalk and then, they were just there, in the middle of nowhere, with their horses. Gil’s place and everything around it was gone, as if it had never been.
“Gotta say, that was a hell of a thing,” Black Jack said. “How’d you do it? And how’d you know he’d do it?”
Conason chuckled. “I had some information I didn’t share. The way Stanton here robbed three municipalities was by rigging a three-card monte game in just this fashion, then threatening to call the authorities regarding the outrage of them accusing him of cheating. He was working with a partner who pretended to be law. The towns panicked and paid up. Wasn’t until they checked with the Marshall’s office that they discovered the lawman wasn’t carrying a real badge and calling a man a cheat wasn’t a new law passed by Congress.”
“What happened to your partner?” Black Jack asked Stanton as they all mounted up.
“Took his part of our take and headed for California to dig for gold. It’s why I was looking to meet up with you.”
“I’m willing to ride with you,” Black Jack said.
“Thank you. Now, however, I would like to ask the Marshall to ride with us, too.”
“Why’s that?” Black Jack asked, sounding suspicious.
Stanton pulled Conason’s deck out of his pocket and gave it back. “Because this is a deck made up of only Queens of Hearts.”
Black Jack stared at Conason. “I thought you were a good and decent lawman!”
“And I thought you were a killer who’d try to leave me dead in that bar. Nice to know we’re all still able to be surprised, isn’t it?”
Stanton chuckled. “I believe, gentlemen, that the best years of our lives lie ahead. In what direction shall we head?”
Black Jack shrugged. “I’ll leave that to the Marshall.”
“Oh, call me James,” Conason said. “Men who are riding together should use their given names. And I say we go north. I think the west might not treat us well for a while.”
Make Me Immortal
With a Kiss
Jacey Bedford
Amelia Pentney-Knowles stared at the blood under her fingernails, so tired she could barely recognize what it was, and certainly didn’t remember to whom it belonged. Some young man whose life had been cut short or changed forever, she supposed. There were too many of them. Their faces blurred, their names were always Tommy or Fred or Walter, with the occasional Hugo or Bertram from the officer-ranks. The officers cried out for their mothers or their sweethearts just as loudly as the privates and the corporals and bled just as much as the boys under their command.
Rivers of blood.
Oceans of it.
Never neatly on the inside where it was supposed to be.
Always dripping on the floor or spurting up the walls or soaking through bandages. When it was congealing in a chest wound, you knew that it was already too late, but you tried anyway.
The British bombardment of the German trenches had begun on 24th June. Chateau de Couin was a main dressing station. Nurses at the forward dressing stations got the raw wounds, but they never saw the results of their patching and bandaging. Those at Couin had to try and turn emergency first aid into a permanent solution; repair broken bodies and help the boys to live as close to a normal life as they could. Some returned to the front, others were shipped to hospitals back home. Some—too many—went to their graves.
Today’s wounded had been unlucky enough to be in the wrong place when the German guns barked back at British lines, leaving bodies mangled and torn. Many were beyond the skill of any surgeon, but others might survive if gangrene or infection didn’t set in.
As a volunteer Amelia wasn’t supposed to change dressings, let alone help with surgical procedures, but distinctions melted away in the mud, and those with the stomach and the nerve for it learned on the job. She’d started by cleaning floors, changing sheets, and swilling out bedpans, but that had been two years ago. The work was exhausting, unending, and often disgusting, but she’d ceased to be squeamish about men’s bodies and the damage done to them.
“Miss Knowles, have you finished?”
“Almost, sister.”
She scrubbed her nails one more time and dried her hands.
“Get some sleep.” Sister Sweeney’s voice softened. “You did well today, but I want you back on duty at six a.m. sharp.”
“Yes, sister.”
Sleep. Yes, she needed sleep, but right now she’d kill for a stiff gin. It wasn’t allowed, of course, and the bottle she’d smuggled back into her quarters after the wonderful three-day pass to Paris had vanished. She couldn’t openly accuse anyone of taking what she wasn’t supposed to have, but she had her suspicions. She shrugged off the thoughts of Ida Langley swigging her gin. Ida had lost two brothers to this war already. If the gin comforted her, perhaps it didn’t matter.
Amelia was so tired that she staggered into the corridor wall with her shoulder and bounced off it again on her way to the staircase. Her quarters were in the attic, a tiny room shared with Ida and two other VADs.
She looked at the steps. They went in both directions.
Instead of heading up, her feet took her down to the front door of the once-grand chateau. She stood on the broad top step breathing in the June air, feeling the tiredness lift with each breath. The sweet scent of the climbing rose around the doorway fought with the acrid smell of gunpowder blowing in on the breeze. Birdsong was subsumed into the constant bang and boom of the artillery just a few miles away.
“Our boys are giving ‘em a pasting, miss, make no mistake.” Private Henry Grimshaw appeared behind her, struck a match on the door jamb and lit a Woodbine, inhaling deeply, holding the smoke in his lungs, and then exhaling with a satisfied sigh.
She moved sideways and turned to him.
“Pardon my rudeness, miss, would you like one? My mum sent them in a care package with some of her fruitcake. I never cared for her cake, if I’m honest, but these smokes are just the thing.”
“No thanks, Henry, I never got into the habit. But you enjoy them while you can. When are you re-joining your regiment?”
“Next week. Doc says he’d have sent me back today, but there’s a big push towards the Somme tomorrow. Said I’d be better off waiting a few days until it’s all over.”
“He’s probably right. Dysentery’s not to be taken lightly. You could have died, and you’re still weak.”
“I couldn’t have died with you looking after me, miss. Saved me, you did.”
She smiled. “I think it was teamwork.”
“If you say so, miss.”
She let a few seconds pass, still yearning for the sharp taste of gin, or maybe cognac. Something to numb her senses after a
day wallowing in blood and shit.
“You’re the sort of man who might be in the know. Where can a young woman get a drink? Purely medicinal, you understand.”
Henry Grimshaw raised both eyebrows, then slowly tapped his index finger to the side of his nose twice.
“There might be somewhere I’ve heard of, miss, though it wasn’t me what told you.”
“I understand.”
“Round the side of the house, there’s an overgrown path through the shrubbery. Follow it right to the end and you’ll see a potting shed. It doesn’t look like much, but knock on the door and wait a moment and … well … you’ll see.”
She nodded her thanks and stepped down to the gravel driveway, rutted by the wheels of ambulances. She followed Grimshaw’s directions around the house to the shrubbery. The light was beginning to fade now. Long shadows had given way to that magical hour between sunset and darkness. There was the path—more than overgrown. She pushed her way between rampant rhododendron and azalea, wondering if she’d taken a wrong turn.
Just as she was about to retrace her steps, she spotted an old shed. Grimshaw was right, it didn’t look like much. In fact, she felt quite stupid knocking at the door. Of course, it was deserted. Who would be waiting inside an old potting shed?
Before she could turn away, the door creaked open. A waft of warm, beer-laden air hit her in the face like a drunkard’s belch, and the echo of a chorus floated up from the depths beyond a stone stair.
She blinked twice and craned her neck to look inside. A flickering lantern hung above her head and there was a warm glow at the bottom. Thinking herself a fool, she stepped inside and the door swung closed behind her. The chorus grew with each downward step.
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag
And smile, smile, smile …
A jaunty song for grim times.
At the bottom of the steps, around a corner, was a vaulted cellar. The potting shed must have been built on the remains of a building long since demolished; perhaps the old house which had preceded the chateau. She could almost imagine she was in some medieval building. The whole place glowed with the soft light of candles and lamps and there were maybe thirty or forty men sitting at tables or leaning against the bar. They seemed to be an odd assortment of ranks. Captains drank with corporals and, from the badges on their caps and their uniforms, they were all from different regiments. Some she didn’t even recognize.
A trestle stood at the far end of the room. She’d never been in a pub alone before. She giggled at the thought and then cleared her throat, realizing it sounded more like hysteria than jocularity. She could strip a wounded man and give him a bottle to piss in, but she’d never ordered her own drink at a bar. Did she even have any money? It wasn’t normally the sort of thing she carried on the ward.
“Welcome.” The woman behind the bar waved her over. “Gil’s busy right now, talking to some of the young men, but I can help you.” She wore a blouse that might have been stitched from a sack. The apron that topped it was none too clean, but her smile made up for that.
Amelia snatched off her uniform cap, releasing her fair curls, cut short for convenience. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think… I shouldn’t be here.”
“If the door opened for you, then you’re exactly where you should be. What’ll you have?”
“I don’t have any money.”
“That doesn’t matter. What you do every day pays your way here.”
Suddenly emboldened, Amelia said, “I could murder a gin and tonic.”
“I have something better than that—a cocktail.”
This hardly looked like the kind of establishment that served cocktails, but the barmaid winked at her. “How about a French 75?”
“A what? No, it’s all right. I heard you the first time. I just didn’t expect it.”
She’d drunk a French 75 with him at the New York bar in Paris, and for one night had forgotten the stench of ruptured guts in favor of gin mixed with Champagne, lemon juice, and sugar. He’d told her that it got its name because it kicked like a French 75mm field gun. It had gone straight to her head, of course, or maybe that was the second one.
She’d found herself sharing confidences with the young lieutenant. Kisses followed confidences, and then a walk along the banks of the Seine, holding hands in the warm spring evening.
He’d smuggled her into his hotel room. They’d stood beside the bed looking at each other. She knew all about men’s bodies, but not in this context, and she suddenly found herself feeling awkward.
“Don’t be afraid,” he’d said, and he’d pulled her into his arms, laid her gently on the bed and held her close. They’d talked all night long and never removed even one stitch of clothing, but it felt like the most intimate encounter she’d ever had.
She took the French 75 from the barmaid and sipped it, thinking of one stolen night with Alastair Gaunt.
A tall man rose from a table in the center of the room, slapped one of the corporals heartily on the shoulder, and stepped behind the bar. He had fierce black curls and a remarkable plaited beard. He frowned at her drink. “I would have offered you beer. We have the finest beer in all of history.”
He had a slight accent, but she couldn’t identify it.
“That’s a big claim.”
“Only if it can’t be upheld. I’m Gil.”
“Amelia.” She offered her hand and he took it.
“Why are you here, Amelia?”
“I needed a drink and Henry—Private Grimshaw—told me—”
“I mean why are you really here? What do you want most in the world?”
Such a direct question. She meant to dissemble, but Gil’s gray-green gaze locked with her own and the truth slipped out around the French 75.
“I want to be able to help the poor boys who come into our field hospital. I would make them all immortal if I could.”
“Ah, sweet Amelia, so selfless. I do like that in a woman. Your intentions are good, but immortality is not always a benefit. Believe me, I know.”
She shrugged. “It’s impossible anyway.”
He simply smiled.
* * *
A brief silence fell as, against all odds, the barrage of artillery stopped. Alastair Gaunt halted his pacing and looked up, ears ringing. A bird chirped.
Then a single desultory bark from a field gun, and the whump as one of Jerry’s whizzbangs landed in another trench, kicked it all off again.
Alastair flinched.
He should be used to it by now. The British guns and howitzers had been pounding Jerry’s lines for a week, softening them up for the offensive. Each boom and bang ate into Alastair’s calm and reminded him that by seven-thirty tomorrow morning he’d be leading his men over the top.
Unless there’s been another change of plan.
The offensive had been postponed once due to bad weather. He didn’t see how a few more inches of rain mattered. The trench was already a quagmire. No Man’s Land looked like Hell, if Hell were mud, craters, and barbed wire.
He thought it might be.
Maybe the extra two days of shelling would make a difference. Jerry would be crushed, his wire defenses flattened, and tomorrow’s surge into No Man’s Land, towards the town of Serre, would be a walk in the park.
Or not.
He pressed his lips together.
Lieutenants: too low down the chain of command to be told anything useful; too far above the enlisted men to be included in the rumors. Cannon fodder of a higher class leading cannon fodder of a lower class. As if class mattered now. They were all expendable.
Alastair’s hands trembled. He clenched them. Did everyone feel like this on the eve of battle? Surrounded by thousands of men, he felt utterly alone.
He wasn’t made for war. He should never have volunteered, but most of his friends had been joining the new Pals regiment. Victor Ratcliffe, who had already accepted a commission in the Prince of Wales’ Own, had looked down that long, straight nose of his and sai
d, “My dear chap, you’ll be the only young man left in Leeds if you don’t join up.”
So he had.
He didn’t regret it immediately.
The few months of training in Colsterdale Camp had been—dare he think it?—fun, but it had been games for boys. The Leeds Pals had eventually shipped out to Egypt to protect the Suez Canal from the Johnny Turk, but aside from a few skirmishes, the threat had never developed. After three months of sun and sand they’d been ordered back to Port Said, and the Asconia had brought them to France. The Somme would be the first offensive—first proper offensive—they’d faced.
Their real test.
His real test.
His feet slowed of their own accord and he leaned against a pile of sandbags, thinking of Paris and Amelia. He’d only known her for a night, not even a night of unbridled passion, though God only knew how much he’d wanted to tear off her clothes and plunge himself into her until he forgot all his fears, but she was quite tipsy and not that sort of girl, so they’d talked instead, lying close together in the darkness. He’d confessed his fears to her—that he wouldn’t be able to lead his men into battle—and she’d understood. It wasn’t cowardice, she’d said. Sometimes she was afraid to get out of bed in the morning, put on a clean uniform and a sunny smile, and face the wounded men in her care. What if she let them die when she could have saved them? She’d made doubts and fears seem normal. Just his luck to meet his perfect woman on the very last day of his leave.
He’d told her of his boyhood in Yorkshire and how he’d joined the Leeds Pals on the same day as the Bennett boys—boys he’d grown up with and who were now obliged to call him sir. Even though their easy friendship had withered, their father had cornered him the day before they all shipped out to Egypt. “Look after my boys,” he’d said, and Alastair had promised that he would.
A promise he hadn’t been able to keep.
Freddie Bennett had died in a skirmish on the banks of the Suez Canal. Alastair had sent the inevitable letter home. A brave soldier, he’d written. Died in the service of his country. He didn’t write about the attack from behind, the blade in the darkness, the slit throat, and Freddie Bennett gurgling out his life on Egypt’s unforgiving sands.
