The Silver Hand

by Terry Deary

  ‘Don’t worry about us,’ Aimee said sweetly as she lit the small tin stove. ‘We caught a rat and ate it. All except the tail. It should get us through till Christmas.’

  ‘When we get to Hirson my gardener should have this summer’s crop of vegetables stored safely in the pantry and meat in the ice house. If you work hard for me you’ll eat well.’

  ‘Oh thank you.’ Aimee sighed. ‘We are like Hansel and Gretel, lost and alone. And you are the owner of the gingerbread house, come to our rescue.’

  ‘I am,’ Madame Clare said... forgetting that the gingerbread house was owned by a witch.

  The rain was heavy that day and Marius climbed down to help Daisy pull the cart through the stretches of road that had been churned and turned into a sticky pond. Lorries skidded past and turned the boy into a walking statue of clay. They travelled just a kilometre by noon; it was a midday that was as dark as midnight.

  Madame Clare made sure her treasure box was locked then disappeared into a roadside tavern for lunch, carrying the bag that she took everywhere. She was there a long time. Aimee took Daisy out of the shafts to give her some food and let her nibble grass in a field.

  At last Madame Clare appeared, looking restless and excited. ‘There is no point in struggling on today,’ she said. ‘The army is held up at Saint Quentin and the roads are blocked with lorries that have slid into ditches. Pull the cart into the field with Daisy and we’ll stay here till the weather clears.’

  ‘There’s a drovers’ road just over the hill,’ Aimee said. ‘We need to keep moving.’

  Madame Clare’s face turned red under her pale make-up. ‘We stay here. That is an order. Don’t disobey me, child. We stay here.’

  Aimee bit her lip to stop her angry reply. ‘Yes, Madame,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll wait in the tavern. You stay here.’

  As she turned to go something fell from her bag. It was a piece of folded paper.

  Aimee was so cross she said nothing as it floated down into the mud. ‘Serve her right if it’s precious,’ she muttered. Then she stepped out of the shelter of the cart’s canvas roof and picked up the sheet. She unfolded it and her face turned grey as the clouds.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Marius asked.

  ‘It’s a small printed poster,’ Aimee explained. ‘A sort of Wanted poster. It says General Bruce’s daughter has been abducted by a German spy... It describes me, and it describes you.’

  ‘You are not the daughter of General Bruce.’

  ‘No. It’s just a story to make people think we’re worth reporting. And that we are worth a thousand francs reward.’

  ‘There is a price on our heads... like outlaws?’

  Aimee nodded. ‘And it gives a number to call. It asks anyone who sees us to call the church at Cléry and report to Father Gaulle.’

  Marius thought about it. ‘Silver Hand is on the road behind us. Whenever he has the chance he’ll call Father Gaulle and ask if there’ve been any reports.’

  Aimee nodded. ‘And look at the roof of the tavern. See? By the corner? There? That wire?’

  ‘A telephone line,’ Marius said. ‘Madame Clare has betrayed us.’

  ‘Sold us for a thousand francs,’ the girl agreed.

  ‘That’s why she was in the tavern so long.’

  ‘And that’s why she wants us to stay here. She wants us to wait till Sergeant Grimm comes and captures us.’

  ‘We have to leave. Get your backpack,’ Aimee said briskly. ‘We’ll head up to the drovers’ road. He’ll never track us there.’

  Marius hurried to the tail of the cart. He climbed down and looked back down the road when he heard the roar of an engine. A hawk-eyed soldier in a rain cape was leaning out of the hatch of a Whippet tank, giving orders to the crew of drivers and gunners inside. The soldier looked up and saw Marius a moment later.

  ‘I think it’s too late, Aimee. Silver Hand’s already here and he’s seen us. We’re dead meat.’

  Aimee gripped Marius by the shoulders and shook him. ‘We can go across the fields,’ she shouted over the noise of the rain beating on the canvas. ‘He didn’t catch us before when you were almost too weak to walk.’ She began to drag him to the field gate where Daisy stood with streams of water dripping off her drooping ears.

  ‘But in this mud we’ll be lucky to do five kilometres an hour. I looked at that report on the Whippet tank. I didn’t understand much but I did see some figures. I am sure they said a Whippet can go at eight kilometres an hour... and it doesn’t need a rest. We can’t run at eight kilometres an hour.’

  Aimee grinned in spite of the danger. ‘No, but Daisy can. Hurry.’

  Inside the Whippet tank the air was hot and thick with exhaust fumes. The crew were in their vests to cope with the heat. The engine noise was painfully loud and the men wore leather helmets with their earflaps pulled down. There was a gunner at one side and two gearsmen at the back. They had to change the speed of the tank tracks to make it turn. The driver sat at the front and tried to see his way through the driving rain.

  Sergeant Grimm dropped into the spare gunner’s seat and shouted over the din, ‘Head left into that field. I can see the runaways.’

  The driver gave the order to the gearsmen and the tank slowly turned. The wooden gate was closed. The tank turned it into splinters and churned through the mud into the field.

  Silver Hand looked out through the gun port and saw his prey climbing on to a donkey. He pushed back the catch on the machine gun.

  ‘You’re not going to shoot the girl, are you?’ the driver shouted.

  ‘I’m going to bring down the donkey then kill the boy,’ Grimm replied. He looked along the barrel of the machine gun and pulled the trigger a moment after the front of the tank dipped into a fold in the field. The bullets sprayed the earth and sent up clods of damp grass.

  When the nose rose up again the tank was facing uphill but Marius had steered Daisy to the right, towards a small woodland. It had a few broken trees but gave a thicker cover than most of the war-torn woods in the area and the tank couldn’t follow them in there. The donkey had heard the gunfire and broken into a canter for the first time in her life. The trees were close now.

  ‘Right, right, right, turn right,’ Grimm screamed and the driver passed on the order to the gearsmen. But by the time the runaways were back in his sights they were vanishing into the trees. Silver Hand pulled the trigger. A tree crashed down and made a barrier that even a tank couldn’t cross. ‘Turn left – go around the wood and we’ll catch them coming out of the other side,’ Grimm ordered.

  The Whippet tank turned and began to run around the outside of the wood.

  In the wood Marius slowed the donkey to a walk. ‘Hurry,’ Aimee urged him.

  The boy slid to the ground and handed the reins to her. ‘We might get a head start on Grimm when we’re out of the wood but we could still be in range of that machine gun. We have to stop the tank.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t you say a Whippet crew had to have lots of air vents so they could breathe in all the heat?’ Marius asked as his fingers were busy with the buckles on his backpack.

  ‘Yes. That’s why they can be stopped with a gas attack.’

  Marius nodded and pulled out a grenade. ‘That’s just what I have here.’

  ‘But as soon as you get near they’ll shoot you,’ Aimee argued.

  ‘Only if I stand in front of the thing. And if they kill me at least it’ll give you time to get away. Good luck.’

  Before Aimee could argue any more, Marius was running along the path through the trees. When he reached the edge of the wood he saw it opened out on to the rough moorland beyond. The tank was just coming around the outside of the wood. He threw himself behind the thickest trunk he could see.

  The tank reached the place where it crossed the path. Silver Hand pushed up the hatch to see if the runaways were on the road ahead or still in the wood. While he was at the hatch Marius knew he couldn’t be fi
ring the machine gun. The boy sprinted towards the tank. When he was two seconds away he pulled the pin. In another second he had rolled the grenade under the tank. He had two seconds to turn and get clear.

  Sergeant Grimm was screaming something in English. Probably a curse, Marius thought as he dived under the cover of a fallen log. There was a soft bang. Then just the steady thudding of the tank engine as the machine stood in the rain. Then shouts of panic from the men inside as a yellow gas cloud wrapped around the machine.

  There were whirring gears and hot exhaust pipes with no guards on. The half-blind men had to leave the steel mantrap slowly and carefully or risk losing a hand in the gears or skin on the scalding pipes.

  The two hatches flew open. Five men, weeping and coughing, fell on to the ground. They splashed their hands in the long wet grass to rub water into their swollen and red-lidded eyes. Some simply buried their faces in the grass and lay there coughing. Only Silver Hand rose to his feet and turned his sightless eyes to the sky. He shouted in German, ‘You will die slowly for this, boy. But first you will watch your little friend die even more slowly.’

  ‘Gott mit uns,’ Marius called back before he turned and ran from the tentacles of gas that were slithering over the ground to choke him.

  Madame Clare looked shocked. She stood by her cart and watched Marius and Aimee walk down the hill towards her, leading Daisy.

  Marius began to fasten the donkey into her harness while Aimee gave the woman her sweetest smile. ‘You must be surprised to see us,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you had stolen the animal and run off,’ the woman said in a choking voice.

  ‘No, you thought we’d been captured by the British army. You were waiting for your reward. You tried to sell us, Madame Clare.’

  The woman’s face suddenly turned sly and soft. ‘I thought I was returning you to your dear father who is missing you so much and...’

  ‘... and the thousand francs was not important? Don’t lie, Madame.’ Aimee stood nose to nose with the woman and spoke quietly. ‘Marius here is a crack German fighter. He used Daisy here to lure the British into the wood on the hill and he killed them one by one. Now he is going to kill the woman who betrayed us.’

  ‘No,’ the woman moaned. ‘I have money. I will pay you.’

  Aimee gave a sad, understanding smile. ‘Marius took some grenades from the British dead. Marius, show Madame Clare the grenades.’

  The boy opened his pack and showed her the two gas grenades.

  Aimee went on. ‘They are powerful enough to blow open your treasure chest. We can take all of your treasure any time we want. But we are not thieves, Madame Clare. All we want is to be paid fairly for our help. At the next town you will stop and buy us some new clothes. Our boots are as thin as paper and winter will soon be here. We want warm coats and stockings and hats and oilskin coats. Is that not fair?’

  The woman’s mouth set in a hard line. ‘It’s fair.’

  ‘Then let’s go.’

  Daisy was harnessed and fresh in spite of her race up the hill. As they’d walked back down from the wood to Attilly, Aimee told Marius she had never been this far on the drovers’ road and didn’t know the way east. Anyway, when Silver Hand and the tank crew recovered their sight they would set out down that moorland road looking for then. The best plan was to keep travelling with Madame Clare on the main roads. It would be crowded and blocked from time to time. But they’d have food and shelter and look like a family, not a pair of runaways.

  The wagons set off from Attilly towards Saint Quentin. News spread like a spilled oil-lamp fire that Saint Quentin was being taken by the Australians. To the south the Americans had joined the war and were driving the Germans back.

  It was gloomy news for Marius. Aimee said, ‘If it means an end to the war by Christmas then it’s good.’ The boy just nodded.

  29 September 1918: Attilly

  Father Benedict shook Sergeant Grimm warmly by the hand. ‘You have done well,’ he said.

  Silver Hand rubbed his eyes, still sore from Marius’s gas grenade from two days before. ‘I think the game is up, Benedict, my friend. We need to get across to the German side even if we don’t have the Whippet tank plans. At least we can tell them a gas shell can knock the tanks out.’

  They sat in the bar room of the tavern at Attilly. The landlord came to collect the empty plates from their mutton stew. Benedict looked up at him. ‘Did you see that woman with the two runaway kids?’

  The red-faced, sweating landlord glared. ‘I had the posters up but I never went outside. I didn’t know she had those kids with her when she asked for a room.’

  Benedict smiled like one of the angels in Cléry church he’d left behind. ‘Of course you didn’t. How could you? No one is blaming you, good sir.’

  The man gathered the empty plates and gave a silent nod. ‘But what can you tell me about the woman?’ Father Gaulle asked.

  The landlord shrugged. ‘A snob. She had a sharp tongue. Spoke to me like a servant. Wanted the sheets on the bed changed because she said they weren’t clean enough. They’d only been washed a week before. She said that at her home she had fresh sheets every day. I feel sorry for her servants.’

  ‘And did she say where her home was?’ Silver Hand asked.

  ‘Her house in Peronne had been wrecked by shells so she was going to her summer home as soon as the Germans were cleared out of the area.’

  ‘And her summer home is where?’ Father Gaulle asked.

  ‘Hirson, she said. About fifty kilometres to the east of here. She set off two days ago.’

  ‘Did she buy a new donkey?’ Grimm asked sharply.

  ‘No, she had the same old donkey she called Daisy.’

  The sergeant’s eyes widened. ‘Then the runaways must have brought it back. Maybe they are still travelling with her.’

  ‘To Hirson at least,’ Benedict said softly. He took a bundle of francs out of his pocket and placed them on the table.

  ‘That’s too much, Father,’ the landlord said.

  Benedict grinned. ‘It is worth every sou.’

  He hurried Silver Hand to the door. ‘You’re right, we need to get to Germany. But on the way we can go through Hirson.’

  ‘They have two days’ start,’ the sergeant reminded the priest.

  ‘So we need to move quickly.’

  Silver Hand frowned. ‘On these crowded roads? Even if we had a lorry we wouldn’t catch them.’

  ‘No, but a horse could. We can go cross-country to Hirson, find where this woman lives and be there waiting for them. I will go to the local church in Attilly and ask to borrow horses. I’ll say it is God’s work. Gott mit uns, my comrade. Gott mit uns.’

  October 1918: the road from Saint Quentin

  The October winds were spiteful but among the ruined streets of Saint Quentin they found a shop with the clothes they needed.

  Madame Clare spent the days that passed in her sulk. Whenever she argued about opening her chest to pay for good food or clothing then Aimee tapped Marius’s backpack with the grenade inside.

  At the town of Benoite, Aimee found an army base and sent a message back to her mother. This time she waited long enough for a reply. ‘Captain Ellis’s men went to arrest Father Gaulle in Cléry but he had vanished. They think he is going to join Grimm and flee to Germany on the same roads you are travelling. They are still a danger. You are being watched over, so I know you are safe at the moment. But your watcher has lost sight of Grimm. When you get to Hirson look for the priest, Father Raoul. He is a true member of the White Lady and will help your friend cross to the German lines. Love Maman.’

  Aimee remembered the man with the walking cane and the black cloak. From time to time she looked back and thought she saw his shadow in the shadows.

  ‘Fifty kilometres to Hirson and Madame Clare’s home,’ Aimee said to Marius after she had looked at the army maps. ‘The enemy are still falling back. It could take us a month to get there. But when we do, there’s someone ther
e to see you safely home,’ she promised.

  ‘Home,’ Marius murmured.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Friendship is tested when bad luck strikes’

  6 November 1918: Hirson

  The British army moved forward steadily. The Germans were sick and war-weary. Some troops stood and fought. Some threw down their weapons and decided their war was over. All they wanted was the silver hand of peace.

  As the British moved forward the two German spies followed. The sight of Sergeant Grimm’s uniform and Father Gaulle’s priestly clothes meant no one stopped them in the fog and fury of war. At last, on 6th November, the German forces were driven out of Hirson and Sergeant Grimm and Father Gaulle rode into the town.

  The town had not been damaged. The German retreat had passed through quickly. Grimm and Gaulle went to the town’s best tavern and found rooms before British officers could take them all.

  The wind was icy now and the two men huddled around a log fire in the bar room. ‘I asked in the grocer shop and learned this Madame Clare lives in a large house in the woods a mile north of the town,’ Silver Hand said. ‘The house is still empty, except for a gardener and his wife. The grocer says the gardener has had an order from Madame Clare. She’ll be home tomorrow with two new servants.’

  ‘We can guess who the servants are. Tomorrow they will breathe their last,’ the priest said.

  ‘The girl and the boy have seen us both. They’ve run away from us before and they’ll do it again as soon as they see us.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to stalk them like you would a tiger. Hide in the trees and shoot them before they see you. I have a feeling their luck is about to run out,’ Father Gaulle said.

  ‘You aren’t going to help me?’ Grimm asked.

  ‘I’ll be with you, as ever, my friend. In at the kill, as the British say,’ he said coldly.