The Moonlight Mistress (10 page)

Captain Wilks, tall and ruddy and looking perfectly rested, joined them. He asked Ashby, “Shall we stick it out, or advance?”

Ashby, whose weather sense was nearly infallible, sniffed the air and said, “I’d say pack up. We’ve carved some nice canals of our own, unfortunately, and it’s going to rain for a bit longer.”

Wilks grinned, barely visible under the dense brush of his mustache. “Hoped you’d say that. Got no taste for drowning in a hole. Meyer, roust out the men, will you? Smith, see what you can round up in the way of provisions.”

In the dead of night, as their regiment advanced toward Mons, the rain slowed and stopped. They were forced to a halt by other soldiers passing through the edges of their line of march, obscured by trees, fog and darkness, trudging silently as ghosts. Gabriel hurried up the column and found Ashby again; he had better night vision. “Who are they?” he asked quietly.

“French.”

“Advancing, do you think?” It didn’t seem likely, given what Gabriel knew of the situation.

“I don’t think so,” Ashby said. “They smell of gunpowder.”

Gabriel took a deep breath, trying to slow the nervous action of his heart. “You have my letter?”

Ashby snorted. “You’re not going to die, Gabriel. I won’t let you.”

“Noel. Do you have it?”

“Yes. Do you have mine?”

“Of course!”

“Good, now that’s done. No more of that.” Ashby clapped him on the back, then squeezed his shoulder, his hand big and rough and comforting.

For a long moment, Gabriel let himself enjoy it. In the guise of removing Ashby’s hand, Gabriel squeezed it in return. He said, “I’m a bloody cellist. What am I doing about to march into battle?”

“Just keep your wits about you,” Ashby said. “That’s what Wilky always says, and he managed to survive half a dozen skirmishes in India.”

“And tigers and elephants and troops of baboons, as well, to hear him tell it.”

No one sang on this night march. The column spread into a moving line, Enfields constantly at the ready, waiting for word from their cavalry scouts. Gabriel couldn’t watch for the enemy as much as he would have liked; he was too busy scanning his own men, trying to gauge their endurance and alertness in the darkness while incongruous music, a series of minuets he’d never liked, twinkled through his mind like the stars above. He tried to think of other things—Jemima, the women he’d known in Berlin, even Ashby, but nerves prevented him from reverie.

His only distraction was a growing desire for a cup of coffee, and occasionally reporting to Wilks when the captain rode down the column on Hammerhead. The horse looked in better fettle than Gabriel felt. Besides the drag of his wet uniform, his socks were soaked with sweat and beginning to rub his feet raw. The horses he and the other lieutenants had been promised were still on the other side of the channel.

Just when he thought he might crumple to the side of the road, Daglish appeared and hooked his arm through Gabriel’s. “I’ll teach you a song,” he said.

Gabriel groaned. “And someone will shoot us when they hear us singing.” He wasn’t sure he could take listening to Daglish sing right now. It affected him too strongly. Though they marched amid hundreds of other men, the darkness and quiet lent a strange intimacy to their conversation.

“You can carry a tune, so at least I won’t die in agony,” Daglish quipped. “Here, listen.”

“Quietly,” Gabriel insisted.

Daglish leaned close to Gabriel’s ear as they walked, his breath stirring the fine hairs at the back of Gabriel’s neck, his mouth close enough to nearly brush his skin. Gabriel shuddered inwardly with the unexpected sensuality of it, then Daglish sang, softly,

The words grew more obscene immediately after that.

Gabriel choked and stopped. “What the hell kind of song is that?”

Daglish stopped, too, and chortled. “Sea shanty, very historical. It gets filthier. You can share it with your tune-murdering platoon tomorrow.”

Gabriel was overcome with a sudden urge to press his lips to Daglish’s smiling mouth. Shaken, he looked away and started walking again. Daglish caught him up and proceeded to teach him the rest of the song.
The captain of that lugger, he was a dirty bugger
…Gabriel tried not to think of the implications of the words, and managed it by concentrating on memorization, though one verse shook him out of his distance:

He’d never been to public school, but he’d certainly heard the rumors of what went on among the boys there.

Had Daglish—was he trying to say—no. Of course not. Another thought chilled him: did Daglish suspect?

No, that wasn’t right, either. Not after how friendly Daglish had been. Not when he held Gabriel’s arm so snugly.

The men would definitely appreciate the song.

At daybreak, they approached a village, deserted except for a growling stray dog and a distrustful boar rooting in someone’s flower garden. Gabriel saw no people or other animals. The weird, unexpected silence made the hair stand straight up on the back of Gabriel’s neck, and his stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a bucket of ice. The houses and gardens offered too many hiding places. The men spoke in weary murmurs. Gabriel could see most of them were near collapsing under the weight of their heavy packs.

Perhaps they might have stopped and dug in hours ago, except they’d received no orders to do so. They’d received no orders at all. It was clear that messages had gone awry in the lines of communication. Gabriel wondered if the reason had been interference from the enemy, or simple disorganization.

Hailey brought word from Captain Wilks that their company was to fan out and search for the enemy, should any be waiting in ambush, then form up to protect the bridge that lay just beyond. This was marginally better than marching down the single street, waiting to be shot by stray Germans. The rest of the battalion would proceed, and their company would wait here to cover any necessary retirement.

Gabriel’s platoon clustered around their heap of packs, munching whatever scraps of rations they had left. Southey was sharing out a tin of acid drops, Lyton passing around cig
arettes. Pittfield, he noted, was already checking ammunition. Gabriel captured them with his eyes and relayed their instructions. “At the bridge, I want you to pair up, take whatever cover you can find and be ready for rapid fire as soon as the enemy’s in sight. There might be no enemy, not for some time, so find a way to stay alert as long as you can. If your attention starts to wander—I know that’s not supposed to happen, but it will—switch out with your partner. Oh, and be careful not to shoot any of your mates. We’re the ones in khaki.”

As he’d hoped, his last statement got a laugh. “Any questions?” he asked.

There were no questions, only a few ribald comments directed at the shooting skills of their comrades. Gabriel took a deep breath and unholstered his pistol, checking it swiftly and keeping it in his hand. He glanced down the street and saw Daglish listening intently to Hailey’s message. When Hailey ran off to find Smith, Daglish unbuttoned his holster, much more slowly than Gabriel had, withdrew his pistol and stared at it for long seconds as if he’d forgotten its purpose.

Had he frozen? Gabriel took a step toward him, then stopped when he saw Ashby loping over. Ashby clapped Daglish’s shoulder, then held on to it while he spoke urgently to him. Ashby always knew what to say. Gabriel sighed and returned to his men. He’d long ago given up being envious of Asbhy’s innate charisma; instead, he was glad Daglish had benefited. They could, he reminded himself, talk later. He needed something to which he could look forward.

Sergeant Pittfield, who’d transferred in from an Indian regiment along with Captain Wilks, had more field experience than the rest of the platoon combined. Gabriel set him on point, with the rest of the platoon fanned out behind,
then casually took up his own position between Woods and Evans, to keep an eye on them. He wasn’t worried about their nerve, exactly; it was only that they were the youngest of the entire company, not even twenty, either of them. He didn’t relish the idea of writing letters of condolence to their mothers, particularly Mrs. Woods, who’d visited them in barracks on more than one occasion, bearing fresh-baked sugar biscuits.

He’d spent a good hour talking to the both of them on the ship, warning them against visiting the prostitutes who always flocked to an army on the move. It wouldn’t have done any good to appeal to their better natures, so he’d stuck with the tried-and-true method of explaining how easy it was to contract gonorrhea or, worse, syphilis, with its inevitable horrible results, from sores on the cock to naked screaming and throwing excrement in a madhouse. He’d learned it was best to be graphic, and the boys had been properly impressed, but also reveled in the horrific details. When he’d explained that venereal diseases could cause penis rot or permanent impotence, they’d immediately sobered, and Woods had tentatively offered the information that something of the sort must have happened to the major, as his wife was known to entertain the colonel quite frequently. Gabriel wished he’d been able to let the rumor stand.

Hot as it was, he was perishing for want of a cup of coffee, both to wake him up and to soothe his nerves. The empty village was worse than the open fields, perhaps because it was clear that all was not business as normal. Gabriel’s hand sweated on his pistol’s grip. The first house was the largest on the street, built of brick with a fine wooden door and a knocker. No Germans lurked among the trellised roses, or in
the garden shed, or in the shelter that looked and smelled as if it had housed goats.

Woods said, “Sir? Is it true the German lancers’ll bugger their prisoners?”

Gabriel gently closed the door of the goat shelter. “Who told you that? Bloody Lincoln?”

“Yes, sir.”

Evans said, “He also said the kaiser has a harem that’s all boys, and he likes the young ones best, like us—”

“Lincoln was having you on,” Gabriel said shortly. “Let’s check the house now.”

Both of the house’s doors were shut tight, but not locked. Gabriel and Woods and Evans entered at the front door, Gabriel’s pulse pounding like a drum, his boot heels even louder on the polished wooden floors. The house was deserted, the red brocade curtains drawn, though it bore signs of being abandoned in haste, a scattered pile of papers here and a fallen knickknack there. The air felt stale and close, as if it had been vacant for decades. He startled when Evans said, “Sir? Are we allowed to provision here?”

The inhabitants had fled, so there was no asking them for permission. It was also true that there’d been quite a bit of freely given hospitality on the long march. And his men were not only hungry, but working far too hard to go without food. He nodded. “After we search, we’ll see what we can find.”

He mounted the stairs, leading the two boys, and investigated a workroom for sewing, a dusty parlor and a messy bedroom. The large bed bore distinctive stains on its sheets, and the smell of sex and sweat lingered like a memory in the air. Woods lifted the bedskirts with his rifle barrel, then poked
the coverlet that lay in a heap on the floor. Evans peered into the wardrobe and behind the curtains, Enfield at the ready. Nothing but dust.

Gabriel scooped up a discarded doll with an impassive porcelain face and laid it gently on the unmade trundle bed. Its human hair brushed disconcertingly against his bare wrist, and he yanked his hand away, feeling as if he’d touched a corpse. If he’d married Jemima, he might have had a child with a doll—what would he have done, forced to flee his home, with his family in tow? He tried to think of the real family that lived here, but could only focus on the empty bed. He and Jemima had been together in her bedroom, more than once. They’d never fucked, not quite, but near enough, and just the memory of her silky skin beneath his tongue, her fingers in his hair, the scent of her arousal, made him ache.

He was glad to go outside again. Evans reminded him about provisions, but a quick search of the house’s kitchen and pantry turned up little beyond a tin of biscuits.

The rest of their house-to-house search was also uneventful, though Evans found a coop of chickens who’d been left to fend for themselves, and tossed them a bucket of feed. Gabriel suspected the chickens would go into a pot today, if the company lingered long enough to cook. Woods nearly shot a scarred marmalade tomcat, who yowled disdainfully before vanishing into the woodpile from whence it had come.

Gabriel met Daglish at the end of the street, which led straight to a bridge over Mons Canal. Willows shaded the bridge; red and purple wildflowers tumbled down the grassy banks and spilled onto rocks that looked perfect as seats for
fishermen. A few rowboats were tied up at a dock on the far side, and on this bank, someone had abandoned a cartful of furniture, turned and stained chair legs protruding from its sides like broken bones.

Daglish removed his cap and wiped sweaty dark curls off his brow. He appeared to have recovered from his earlier distraction. He pointed to the cart. “Could that be cover, you think? For a marksman or two. Cawley and Lyton.”

“Let Wilks know. I’d be happier if the rest of us could dig in a little,” Gabriel said, rubbing his gritty eyes and stiff forehead. “Those trees won’t be worth tuppence once bullets start flying.”

“If the supply wagons ever catch up, we’ll have picks and shovels,” Daglish said wistfully. “Oh, well, I guess a rousing song or two will resign them to the entrenching tools.”

By the time Gabriel had gathered his men, Captain Wilks himself was outsinging the men in his favorite tune, “Riding Down from Bangor”:
Maiden seen all blushes, for then and there appeared, a tiny little earring in that horrid student’s beard
. It was more difficult for the men to sing as they dug lying flat on their backs to avoid exposure, but they made a valiant effort for the hour it took to dig down a foot or so, just enough to protect them from rifle fire.