The Furies (31 page)

‘No. It was only because of the war.'

‘So you weren't angry with us for not wanting to kill McCarthy?'

Anya sighed. ‘I was angry at how police oppress women, but inside my heart, I know you are a doctor and cannot kill.'

‘Is that why you decided to become a sworn virgin…I think you call it
Virginesh
?'

‘You know of this tradition?'

‘Luka tried to explain it to me, but I'm not sure I fully understand.'

‘It is a tradition in the Balkans. A woman must swear a vow of chastity, and then is allowed to live and dress as a man, to carry a gun, to do all the things that men do.'

‘But why would you choose to become a man?'

‘For many reasons,' Anya replied. ‘After Bogdan's death there were no sons in my family, and a family considers itself cursed without male heirs. Also I want to fight in the war, but I cannot join the Serbian army as I was born in Bosnia. So I decided to join a Cheta. But the Chetniks do not take women, so…' She shrugged. ‘And also…I am happy as a man.'

Elspeth raised an eyebrow. ‘You're happy to live your life as a man?'

Anya smiled. ‘Yes, I am very happy. Before – when I was young – I did not feel like a girl. I wanted to play like a boy, to run, to fight, to climb trees, to do everything like a boy. For me now, being a man is good. From now on, my life will be as a man.'

Anya had always been an enigma, Elspeth thought: her look and dress sense, her hatred of McCarthy, her love for Grace. But with her explanation as to why she had become a sworn virgin, she finally made sense. Elspeth sat forward and clasped her knees to her chest. ‘When you disappeared without telling anyone,' she said, ‘Vera was most worried. She thought you might try to harm McCarthy, or maybe even us…'

‘Harm
you
?' Anya shook her head. ‘No, I would never harm you, Ellie.'

‘Then we heard you'd gone back to Paris and taken a train for Marseille.'

‘Yes. And from Marseille I took a boat to Salonika.' A grin spread across her face as she leant forwards so her eyes were level with Elspeth's. She hugged her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth with amusement. ‘You thought I was a fanatic, and that I might hurt you? And then you go to Serbia,' – she began to laugh – ‘where I have gone!' She pressed her face into her knees and snorted, trying to stifle her laughter as the other Chetniks stared at her. Then she lifted her head again. ‘Shh, must keep quiet,' she whispered.

‘Well, you were acting strangely,' Elspeth whispered back, feeling a mixture of stupidity and annoyance. ‘What else were we supposed to think?'

‘I would never harm you, Ellie. You are my sisters, you and Vera and Sylvia…' Anya hesitated and sighed. ‘I would like very much to see Vera again.'

‘Well, she and Sylvie should be in Krusevac by now. If we go there, you can see them both.'

Anya grimaced. ‘I don't know, Ellie. This attack is too much: the Germans in the north, the Bulgars in the east and south…' She shook her head. ‘My Cheta will travel south to the Kosovan plain, where we make last stand. Probably we die. If we be lucky, maybe we live…'

‘Oh you'll live, Anya,' Elspeth said cheerfully.

Anya gave a sad smile that told Elspeth she didn't believe this, but then her face brightened. ‘Maybe. But first we go to Krusevac – is on way to Kosovo – and I will see Vera again.' She shook her head and turned her face away. ‘Vera in Krusevac,' she said quietly to herself as if she could not believe the news. Then she blinked several times, and Elspeth was fairly certain she could see moisture in Anya' eyes.

***

Anya was called away to do her guard duty and Elspeth lay down and wrapped herself in straw, closing her eyes and immediately falling into the deep, dreamless slumber of the exhausted. When she was shaken awake by one of the Chetniks the next morning, it seemed as if she had only been asleep for a few minutes. But from the light coming through the slats of the barn she could see that dawn had already broken, and so she put her boots back on and went over to the wounded Chetnik. As she had feared, his condition had deteriorated overnight; his forehead was hot to the touch, his eyes glazed, his leg more swollen than the previous evening. When she gently pressed the skin of his calf, a trickle of malodorous grey pus oozed through the scarf bandage: it did not look good.

She went outside the barn and saw it had turned cold, a freezing rain falling from the sky. Luka and Marco had already spoken to the farmer who owned the barn, and a small four-wheeled canvas-covered wagon, pulled by two yoked oxen, was standing outside the door. The wounded soldier was carefully lifted into the back of the wagon, and Marco asked Elspeth to sit alongside the youth so she could attend to him during the journey. Then, with one of the Chetniks leading the oxen and the others walking alongside them, their small convoy set off.

They made reasonable progress that morning, the wind whipping the rain into the wagon sides, causing the canvas to snap and flutter as they trundled along a muddy dirt track. Elspeth was glad to shelter inside the wagon and did her best to care for the youth, but he steadily deteriorated, becoming more restless and confused, finally slipping a coma.

The small track broadened into a wider road that ran alongside a fast-flowing river; Anya told Elspeth that they were now in the Sumadija Valley, which would lead them all the way to Krusevac. They were passing close to the town of Cuprija – more than half-way to Krusevac, Anya said – when the road left the riverside and climbed higher up the side of the valley. The muddy track dipped and rose, but by the afternoon they managed to find a level place to stop and rest the oxen while Luka, Marco and the others watched Elspeth remove the scarf from the boy's leg. The purple discolouration on his calf had spread to his thigh, and Elspeth could smell the distinctive odour of necrotic tissue. Underneath her fingertips she felt the crackle of tiny pockets of gas and knew the youth had fulminating gas gangrene; even if she had the instruments to amputate the leg, he would not survive. Marco looked particularly upset as Anya translated Elspeth's opinion and he nodded, then squeezed Elspeth's wrist, giving her a look that told her she should keep trying.

They started up again, the road climbing even higher on the valley side as it followed the river upstream. The rain became heavier and Elspeth saw the slope of the valley rising above her head, with rivulets of water streaming down from the rain-sodden ground, trees tilted at outlandish angles from earlier landslips. Fifty yards below her, the river was a churning cauldron, but as they followed the road upstream she suddenly saw a solid wall of water and realised it was a waterfall, a rainbow arcing majestically in the spray mist suspended over the rocks beneath.

Standing out colourfully against the drab, muddy-grey surroundings it was the first inspiring thing she had seen for days, and it immediately lifted her spirits, giving her hope that everything would work out for the best. As they drew level with the waterfall, across the far side of the river, in the distance beyond, she saw a small stone cottage with wisps of smoke spiralling from the chimney. Looking like a goat- or sheep-herder's dwelling, it reminded her so strongly of Scotland that for a moment she felt a twinge of homesickness as she recalled similar cottages from her village on the Isle of Skye.

The oxen continued to pull the wagon up the valley and now their small convoy encountered increasing numbers of refugees. Most of the civilians were on foot, all looking cold and wet and depressed, but a few luckier ones were riding in wagons, their bedraggled oxen pulling carts overloaded with bundles of clothes and furniture. Elspeth peered through the canvas opening at the front of her wagon, and over the heads of the oxen and the Chetnik leading them, she saw the long column of refugees stretch ahead of her, dipping into the hollows on the road, then reappearing on the crests, like some prehistoric reptile slithering across the hills.

It was raining hard now, and the procession of wagons had to stop and skirt landslides on the road caused by rainwater gushing off the hills above. A short while before dusk the wounded soldier became even less responsive, his breathing an intermittent gasping, his pulse thready and irregular. Elspeth knew he was near to death, and as his face and hands were icy cold she took off her coat and cape and wrapped him in them: it was the least she could do, to keep him warm for his final moments.

The convoy was forced to stop as they came upon another narrow point on the road, caused by a further landslip, and dusk was falling as Elspeth watched the refugees ahead of her filter around the obstruction. She looked up at the slope of the valley rising above the wagon and saw rainwater gushing down onto the road, the only noise the thundering of the river below and the young soldier's stertorous gasps. Then the noise of his breathing fell away, and when she reached for the young soldier's pulse she could no longer find one.

The dead Chetnik's eyes were half open, and as Elspeth leant forward to close them she felt the wagon shudder, then heard a sudden loud rushing noise and several cries of alarm. Looking through the canvas opening, she saw a wall of earth and trees sliding downhill towards her, and a split second later the wagon shook as a wave of mud slammed into its side. Wood splintered as the yoke snapped and she saw the oxen scramble free of their wooden harness. Then she was knocked off her feet as the landslide pushed the wagon off the road and onto the slope below, and a moment later started to trundle downhill towards the river. She had only just managed to struggle to her feet when, like a boat being launched down a slipway, the wagon splashed into the river in a plume of spray, and Elspeth was thrown face forward into the water that had flooded over the floor of the wagon, the icy cold of it making her catch her breath.

Scrambling to her feet again she realised to her relief that although she was shin-deep in water, the wagon was still afloat. But it was already drifting quickly downstream, the broken yoke dragging behind like a floating anchor. She managed to get to the canvas opening, and looking back she saw Anya and Marco sprinting frantically downhill and then along the riverbank as they tried to keep pace with her. However, the current was strong, and the wagon accelerated so quickly that within a few seconds they were lost from sight.

Something touched her shin: she looked down and saw the body of the dead Chetnik – still entangled in her coat and cape – bobbing in the water by her knees, and realised that the wagon had not sunk any lower: it was floating like a raft. So she tried to stay calm, tried to think, tried to work out what she should do. She would have to leave the wagon soon – she had not forgotten the waterfall they had passed earlier – but the current was strong and she knew that if she were to jump into the river and try to swim to safety she would be swept away.

But then she realised that as well as drifting downstream, the wagon was also drifting towards the far riverbank. And after another minute – and knowing she was now very near to the waterfall – there was a sudden judder, and the wagon slowed as its wheels scraped the riverbed. Thank goodness; shallow water, she thought, as she stepped out and felt the riverbed below her feet, gasping as cold water reached up to her thighs. The current was still strong, but, holding her arms out for balance, she managed to push against the weight of water and wade ashore.

She paused for a moment on the bank, shaking the water from her skirt and watching as the current caught hold of the wagon again, dragging it downstream. Dusk had almost fallen and with it the temperature: she began to shiver violently as she stood in the semi-darkness, her sodden skirt clinging to her legs. She looked back across the river; it was too far to swim back safely, so she would have to find shelter on this side for the night. A sudden crashing sound echoed towards her and she knew that the wagon must have gone over the waterfall onto the rocks below.

And then she remembered the cottage she had seen earlier, when they had drawn level with the waterfall on the way up the valley.

She scrambled up the bank onto dry land and hurried downstream as quickly as she could. Her boots squelched with every step and her wet skirt clung to her legs, but she dared not stop as there was so very little daylight left. Coming across a dirt track running parallel to the river, she decided to follow this downstream, then rounded a curve in the road and, with relief, saw the cottage come into view. A light was shining through the window and smoke was spiralling from the chimney.

A dog began to bark; the door to the cottage opened and an old man and young boy suddenly appeared. The boy was holding a shaggy-haired dog on a leash, which was barking and straining towards her, while the old man – grey beard and hair – had an ancient shotgun in his arms. Elspeth, hugging her arms to her chest, could barely speak for the chattering of her teeth, but managed to say the words she had heard from so many wounded Serbian soldiers when they arrived at her hospital.

‘
Po…mozi…m-m-mi
.'

The old man listened to her plea for help and lowered his gun while the young boy shouted at the dog, which promptly stopped barking and sat back on its haunches. Looking carefully at Elspeth for a moment, the old man held a hand out to her and motioned for her to come forward; she was shivering too much to do or say anything but follow him as he led her inside.

It was a small, single-storey stone dwelling, little more than one room: a fire in the hearth on the wall in front of her with a cooking pot suspended from a metal bar. It took her several minutes to stop shaking and recover her composure as she stood in front of the fire, feeling the blissful heat of the flames. Eventually she was able to speak, and, using a mixture of her limited Serbian and hand signs to explain her situation to the pair, she eventually managed to establish that the old man was called Stefan, and the boy – his grandson – was called Milo and was eight years old. After a while, the old man produced a blanket, which he held between himself and Elspeth, and she was grateful for the modesty this provided as she removed her sodden boots and skirt and then wrapped herself in several goatskins that Milo pushed underneath the blanket. Sitting on the floor by the fire, wrapped in the animal skins, she watched as Milo put a ladle into the pot over the fire and handed her a small bowl of goat stew. The warmth of the stew – the first hot food she had eaten for two days – was like a tonic, and she felt the heat return to her fingers and toes. As she ate, the boy watched, smiling shyly as he sat beside her on a straw mattress, stroking the dog, which lay at his feet.