The Passing Bells (23 page)

The minute hand jumped. In the silence, after the toast had been echoed around the room, they could hear the soft whirring of the clock's gears. The port was passed along. Glasses were refilled.

“Odd,” Galesby said. “Incredible, really, if one stops to think about it. Just last week I was making plans to go to Lanersbach and stretch my legs with some good alpine rock climbing.”

Fenton puffed a lazy plume of smoke. “Well, you can always go to Wales.”

Fenton and Lieutenant Ashcroft had to inspect the guard at Buckingham Palace at midnight, and so the guests left at eleven-thirty. The parting in the austere treeless courtyard of St. James's had been gravely formal.

“Shall we share a taxi?” Galesby said as they walked into Cleveland Row.

Charles took a deep breath of the clean night air. “No, thanks. Can't speak for the others, but I could do with a walk.”

The barrister hesitated. “Jolly good idea. I think I'll join you. Heading down to Whitehall, I suppose.”

“We might as well be among the first to know,” Charles said.

They all walked in silence to the Mall. St. James's Park was shadowed and gloomy across the wide tree-lined road. A night heron glided across the still surface of the lake.

“Yes,” Galesby said, almost to himself, “quite odd. One would have thought that intelligent men could have settled issues across a conference table.”

“That would be contrary to fate,” Roger said, his tone strangely fervid. “War is a form of rebirth. A rite as old as time. I was talking to Rupert this morning on the telephone, and I've never heard him so enthusiastic, so revitalized. To go shining to war in defense of little Belgium has all the nobility and purity of Arthurian quests, Rupert said. I think it's more Grecian myself. A sailing for Ilium.”

“I don't know about that,” the barrister said, tossing his half-smoked cigar into the gutter. “All I know for sure is that everything is going to bloody well change.”

“That might be a blessing,” Charles said quietly.

They stopped at the end of the Mall. The Duke of York's statue loomed up against the sky, and the lights in Admiralty House twinkled through the trees at the edge of the park. Big Ben tolled the hour: twelve hollow iron peals. They could hear distant cheering and then the sound of a rushing crowd, hundreds of feet ringing on the pavements. Shadows raced past the pools of light cast by the windows of the Foreign Office. Other shadows streamed across the wide expanse of Horse Guards Parade. The streams converged, split apart, some moving rapidly along Birdcage Walk, others coming into the Mall. Men, mostly young, running with a wild exuberance.

“War!” they were yelling. “It's war!”

Martin and Galesby stepped back to keep from being bowled over by the frantic rush toward Buckingham Palace, which was now blazing with lights. Roger grabbed Charles excitedly by the arm.

“Come on, Charles! Come on!”

And then the crowd swallowed them. They were one with it, borne along.

A middle-aged man, red-faced and puffing, ran out of the shadows of Waterloo Place.

“Is it war?” he shouted. “Is it war?”

“Yes, you damn fool,” Galesby said. “It is.”

B
OOK
T
WO

On marching men, on

To the gates of death with song.

Sow your gladness for earth's reaping,

So you may be glad, though sleeping.

Strew your gladness on earth's bed.

So be merry, so be dead.

—C
HARLES
H
AMILTON
S
ORLEY
(1895–1915)

8

Major-General Sir Julian Wood-Lacy, VC, CVO, stood beside his staff car on a low hill in the shadow of a derelict windmill. The road to Maubeuge lay below, the poplars lining it standing motionless in the heat, their leaves white with dust. The army had been moving up the road from Le Cateau since dawn and had ground the surface to a chalky powder. The general's division was coming along, the first battalion of the Lancashire Regiment almost abreast of him now, the Royal West Kent behind them, followed by three batteries of field artillery. The rest of the division was far down the road, a crawling line of khaki barely discernible through the dust. Two squadrons of the 19th Hussars, the troopers dismounted to spare the horses, moved across the skyline of a distant hill. By God, the general thought, rendered dumb from emotion that choked him, what a wonder!

The division had been on the move for three days, dawn to dusk, across the rolling plains of northern France. Three days of grueling route march from the port of Boulogne under a pitiless August sun, and now here they were at last, a mere ten miles from the Belgian frontier. The general removed his cap from his balding head and waved it vigorously. The colonel of the Lancs, riding in front of his leading company on a sorrel horse, waved back, then turned to shout something at the men striding along behind him.

The infantry, by Harry! The general replaced his cap and stiffened, as though about to salute his king. God, how he loved the infantry. And there they were, the battalions of his division, marching at ease, rifles slung, dust streaked, uniforms black with sweat, whistling, some playing mouth organs or Jew's harps, but every man jack of them keeping in step and in an unwavering column of fours. The general was sixty-one years old and had been an infantryman since his seventeenth year, when he had joined the old 24th Foot as a subaltern. God! How many roads had he marched along in Zululand, Egypt, the Sudan, India? Uncounted miles. He could remember the hardships of those stony ways, the poor food and the stinking roadside water, the ranks dropping like flies that terrible September on the road from Jalalabad. All that was changed. Now, behind every company in each battalion came the horse-drawn transport wagons loaded with supplies, an ambulance wagon, and the field cookers, comforting plumes of smoke drifting from the stovepipes.

The passing men looked toward the low hill and burst into a shout: “Are we downhearted? NO-O-O!” The sound of the company's voices rocketed up to the general like a burst of cannon fire. And then the men broke into song, the music hall ditty that the British Expeditionary Force had taken as its own: “It's a long way to Tipperary . . . It's a long way to go. . . .”

Succeeding units kept the verses going, rank after rank—the Wiltshires and the Royal Irish, the Highland Light Infantry and the Middlesex Regiment—sweated, sunburned faces turning toward the hill where “Old Woody” stood saluting them, yes, by God, until the last of his nineteen thousand men had passed by, or at least come into view.

“Goodbye, Piccadilly, farewell, Leicester Square . . . It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right there.”

The château at Longueville shone silvery white under the moon, a fairyland castle with conical towers and pointed spires. It was the temporary headquarters of the 3rd Division, II Corps of the BEF, and the cobblestoned courtyard was crowded with staff cars, tethered horses, and the motorcycles and bicycles of dispatch riders and battalion runners. Captain Fenton Wood-Lacy rode his tired horse under the graceful wrought-iron arch that spanned the stone columns of the gateway, showing his identity papers to the sergeant of the guard, and then dismounted and led his mount to the horse lines, where a cheerful farrier corporal offered to wipe the beast down and give him a good feed. Fenton handed him some cigarettes for his trouble and then walked stiffly toward the terraced stone steps of the château.

The entrance hall was a place of bedlam. Signalers were struggling to set up their telephone equipment in one corner, and staff officers hurried up and down a baroque marble staircase while clusters of company and battalion commanders stood about in glowering impatience. Fenton felt conspicuous among so many majors, colonels, and brigadiers—even more so when Colonel Archibald Blythe, General Wood-Lacy's ADC, spotted him and cut through the crowd of expostulating brass with a deaf ear.

“Ah, Captain,” the colonel said, pumping Fenton's hand, “glad you received the message. The general's most anxious to talk to you. Come along upstairs.”

Fenton ignored the glares of his superiors as the elderly colonel, who looked more like a professor of Greek than a soldier, led him up the winding staircase to the second floor and ushered him into a large room.

“How about a whiskey?”

Fenton made a futile dab at his dust-streaked khakis. “I'd like that
and
a clothes brush.”

“Good Lord, no,” the colonel said. “Dusty uniforms and dirty boots are strictly
de rigueur
in this division. I believe your uncle would court-martial any officer who showed up in clean kit.” He gave Fenton a pat on the arm. “Damn good to see you again, lad. Just stroll about and I'll send for a bottle and some Vichy. His nibs'll be along in time.”

“How is the old boy?”

“Happy as a lark in spring. He was planning his retirement two months ago, and now he's leading a full-strength division against Fritz. Rather makes one ponder.”

Fenton walked slowly around the room, a gallery filled with paintings of bucolic subjects and objets d'art. The château of a cultured man. A soldier brought whiskey, Vichy water, and glasses, and Fenton made himself a stiff drink and sat down on an impossibly delicate Louis XIV chair to enjoy it. He was several degrees past weariness, having been in the saddle since dawn. Having been foot-slogging for the same amount of time, the men of his company were even wearier, but at least they were asleep by now in and around the haystacks of Neuf-Mesnils.

He had just finished the drink and was contemplating having another when the general came striding into the room. His uniform, Fenton noted, was suitably dust ridden. He jumped to his feet, shifted the empty glass from right to left hand, and made a proper, if hasty, salute.

“At ease, boy . . . at ease.” Sir Julian faced his nephew and smiled broadly. “By thunder, but you're a sight to behold. Dirty as a collier. Glad to see the Guards doing honest soldiering for a change.”

“Well, sir, it's good to be out of a red coat, I'll say that.”

“Yes, by God, I bet it is.” He clapped Fenton on the shoulders with both hands. “Damn, but it's nice to see you, boy. How's young Roger?”

“Hurrying to enlist, last I saw of him.”

The general tugged at his bristly walrus mustache. “Jolly good for him, but this flap'll be over by the time he gets his uniforms tailored. Our Teutonic friends bit off a bit more than they can chew. They'll be scurrying back across the Rhine before the leaves fall.”

“Do you think so, sir?”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice a notch. “I
know
so. They've been taking fearful losses at Liège, and they'll be taking worse if they try to storm the forts at Namur. Those Belgians are fighting like terriers. By God, I hope we get a crack at 'em, but I'm afraid they'll pull in their horns and rush back to cover their center. The Frogs have been on the attack since this morning . . . toward Morhange and Sarrebourg. They should be deep into Lorraine by this time tomorrow, and Fritz will be in bloody hot water. Never did think much of this tactic of theirs, thinning the center and throwing all their power on their right wing. Bloody damn silly, if you ask me. The Frog First and Second armies will cut through Fritz's belly like hot knives through wax. How about another whiskey?”

“Only if you'll join me, sir.”

“Sorry, lad. Can't take the time. Got a devil's amount of work to do.” He folded his arms and rocked slowly back and forth on his heels. “I shall be brief, Fenton, and to the point. I've just arranged your transfer to my staff.”

Fenton glanced away from his uncle's bright, piercing eyes. “That smacks a bit of nepotism, wouldn't you say?”

“Smacks? Why, good Lord, it positively reeks of it. But let lesser tongues wag if they will. My senior staff are all for it. We move north into Belgium tomorrow, the entire army. I suppose you can visualize what that means . . . ninety thousand men on the move and hardly one decent map among all of 'em. Your brigade is supposed to stay in close contact with my right flank. That might be a bit tricky because of the roads and the terrain. I need a trustworthy liaison officer—someone who won't rub the Guards' brigadier the wrong way, if you get my drift.”

“I do, yes, sir.”

“You're just the chap for the job. Blythe will give you a map showing our intended position by the evening of the twenty-second and indicating where the Guards Brigade should be at that time. Your job is to make bloody sure they're in that position. If they're not, then I must know exactly where they are so I don't leave my flank dangling in the blue. The signalers aren't laying wire except along the line of march. I can pick up the telephone and ring through to Calais or even Paris, but I can't bloody well speak to anyone five miles to my right or left. I hope you don't resent my turning you into a messenger boy.”