“Canadian?” said the second soldier to Laura.
“Yes,” said Mary.
Christ, now he was making agreeable small talk, barely hindered by his cough. “I should like to go to Canada one day. If Flanders gets any wetter, they’ll have to call in the Canadian fishing fleet to bring up men, instead of lorries. Here, miss. You look like you could use this.” He handed Laura a flask.
Well, that was more like it. Laura took it, drank. Unwatered rum. She coughed, eyes stinging, and the spirit burned as it went down, but it lit a small fire in her stomach, quieted the chills. “If you’ve a cigarette,” said Laura, “I’ll light candles to your memory after you catch a bullet, sir.”
“Laura!” gasped Pim. But the man was already laughing; he pulled an army-issue cigarette out of his pocket and lit it for her. The smoke calmed her a little. She’d been wrestling involuntary panic as the noise of the Front crept closer.
Mary said, “Done with the pleasantries? Good. It’s wretchedly cold. May we go on or not?”
The men looked disappointed, but Mary had fixed them with a steely look. “Be careful on the road,” the first man said finally, stepping back. “There’s old Fritz’s aeroplanes, there’s the ghosts, there’s the madmen, and then there’s the fiddler.”
Pim said, “Fiddler?”
“Well,” said the soldier, “they say he roams the back area, and if he catches you,wham.Alive or dead you’ll always—”
“Iam going to be a ghost if I stay here much longer,” interrupted Laura, just as Mary said, “Can we get on or not?”
“I suppose,” said the soldier reluctantly. “Watch out,” he addedto Fouquet, man-to-man. “They’ve been flying sorties toward the coast.”
Fouquet just grunted and went back to the front of the lorry. The engine snarled to life and changed gears.
Behind them the soldiers were calling “Good luck, Mrs. Borden! Let the little lady watch for officers; they love nurses!”
Pim blushed, but Mary replied, unruffled, “Until you’re peeling off their dressings.”
Twinned barks of laughter chased the lorry out onto the road. Laura looked toward the receding checkpoint and was startled by a trick of the shadows, and perhaps of her rising fever. It looked, in the uncertain light, as though a great gate arced across the road, barring the way back.
BETWEEN PASSCHENDAELE RIDGE AND YPRES, FLANDERS, BELGIUM
November 1917
“Kill me. Oh, Christ, willsomeone kill me?”
Freddie turned to look, and Winter walked into him.
There was water everywhere. Some of the water was on fire. Freddie was about to put the voice down as a product of his disordered brain, when something moved amid the sickly red-black shimmer.It’s him,he thought, cold.It’s him, it’s him.Winter swore and his voice pulled Freddie back to reality. It was a living man, not a dead one, floundering in the not-quite-liquid earth. Freddie’s flailing mind offered words:People, mud-bespent, in that lagoon. All of them naked…Freddie told his mind to shove it. The man might as well have been dead. He was going to drown in the mud.
“Kill me, will you?” he gasped, reaching a sticky arm.
They couldn’t, unless Winter was a dab hand at throwing pocket knives.
“Please,” said the man, thrashing. He sank a little more. Theyhadto get him out, Freddie thought. He couldn’t leave someone else behind. Floating…
“Winter—” he said. He knew it was foolishness. They didn’t have rope, they didn’t haveanything,and surely this man’s comrades had already tried…
But Winter didn’t say no. He was looking at, of all things, a dead mule. The flesh was gone around the muzzle and the eyes were pecked out. It still wore its harness. “We can try,” Winter said, as though Freddie had asked a whole question, as though he knew why Freddie couldn’t leave this man drowning. He knelt stiffly by the mule. Freddie, puzzled, dropped beside him. The shells still fell, screaming like the damned. But Winter ignored the shellfire. He began undoing the girth, flinching a little as he put pressure on his bad arm. “Get the harness.”
“I—all right,” Freddie whispered, fumbling at the buckles. Inaudibly he whispered, “Thank you.”
“Can’t just pull him out,” Winter said, as he worked. “Wants an angle to—end the suction.” He lifted his good hand briefly to illustrate.
“How?” Freddie said.
In answer, Winter called to the stricken man. Even Freddie could hardly distinguish Winter’s accent, in the all-pervading roar. Winter said, “Listen to me. You must—be calm. You must move carefully.”
“All—all right,” said the man.
