Vip!

  Cheevers slumped down in front of me, kneeling silently. He had a small hole in the middle of his forehead. He fell to one side, and I could see that the back of his skull had been shattered like an egg. Blood and brains glistened in the moonlight.

  Just like that, he was gone.

  I crossed his arms over his chest and tried to close his eyelids, but they wouldn't stay shut. His eyes were dull, his face emotionless. It took everything I had not to vomit, to find the will to get on with my job.

  I crawled through the mud another twenty yards, then lifted my head above the edge of the wadi, praying that a bullet wouldn't find me. The Hun machine gun was now firing, and the Dorsets returned fire. The Huns had their backs to me, but I didn't have a clear shot, so I crawled across the ground, now in danger of taking a bullet from my own troops. Covered in mud, I dragged myself over the sharp rocks, getting close enough to hear the Hun commander growling orders. Either they expected reinforcements, or they were fools for having launched the attack with so few men.

  I crawled to the top of the gulley and saw three Huns below me. I fired. A dark spot appeared in the back of one man, and he fell over. I shot again and another collapsed. The third, a stocky hulk of an officer, turned, and I got him in the throat. He slumped over the ammunition boxes, his life gurgling out of him.

  There! I thought. That's for Hector! For Cheevers! For Buke!

  I dropped into the gulley and turned. A German, no older than I was, cowered near some brush. He showed me his empty hands.

  “Don't move!” I shouted.

  He was shaking. “Eesh capeetuleeruh.”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  Rifle fire hit the lip of the gulley, spraying dirt over us. I reached in my pocket, fastened my mother's handkerchief to the top of my gun, and waved it in the air. A bullet shot through the cloth. I held it higher, keeping my hands below the line of fire.

  The shooting stopped.

  I turned to see that the German was reaching into his belt.

  “Don't!” I yelled, but the German mumbled, “Eesh haba shocolahdah.” He looked at me, earnestly. “Shocolahda,” he repeated softly; then something metallic flashed in his hand.

  I fired. A red rose formed on his chest. He staggered back, his helmet tumbling to the ground. Without it he looked younger, so young that I doubted he had ever shaved.

  The silver thing had fallen to the sandy earth. It was a piece of chocolate, wrapped in foil. He had been offering me candy, for heaven's sake.

  Somehow the boy was still upright, gawking at his chest. There was so much blood gushing out of a hole near his heart.

  “Ess toot meervay.” His hand clutched the wound and he collapsed. “Mutuh.”

  I felt as though I were floating over us both, looking down, watching him and watching me.

  “Mutuh. Mutuh.”

  He was going to die. All he wanted to do was share a piece of chocolate, and now he would die.

  He shivered, his face pale. He reached for me in a daze, as if greeting an old friend. “Ess toot meer vay.”

  “You'll live.” I tore the ragged handkerchief from my gun and held it against the wound and felt his heart beating.

  “Mutuh,” he whispered.

  “Mother,” I echoed. “You want your mother.”

  “Mutuh.”

  I held him up against me and began to weep for the terrible thing I'd done. Like Hector in his last moments, this boy was calling for his mother. “She's here, my friend. She's with you now. Can you hear her?” I hummed a lullaby my mother used to sing.

  “Hushaby, bairnie, my bonnie wee laddie,

  When ye're a man ye shall follow your daddie.”

  The boy's face dripped with tears. I'd forgotten how to sing; my voice was husky, my throat dry. His eyes glazed over. The bullet was working its evil, threatening to take him from this world. And then I felt a presence, as though my mother were with me as I sang, her lilting tone in my ears, the lyrics transforming me. Us.

  “Lullaby, lullaby, bonnie wee dearie,

  Sleep! Come and close the e'en, heavy and weary.”

  This boy could have grown up on a farm, been issued a gun, and sent down here to the Holy Land. “Got. Mutuh.” He had probably prayed a thousand times, and now God wouldn't lift a finger to save him. “You won't die,” I promised.

  My right shoulder felt broken, but somehow I carried him to the top of the ridge. Several yeomanry approached with their rifles pointed at me. I stumbled down the embankment.

  “Bloody good job!” a trooper shouted. “You'll get the VC for this.” I staggered on. The Victoria Cross. That wasn't what I wanted. I was looking for a different cross. Someone had to live. I lugged the boy past the first line of yeomanry. Several troopers spoke to me, one getting in my way, so I pushed by him, cradling the German. He seemed to be growing lighter.

  The medical carts were next to a tent. I pushed through the flaps and laid the boy on the only empty cot. There were wounded men on the others.

  “Fix him,” I said to an orderly.

  “Are you mad! You carried a Hun in here?” I blinked. Perhaps I was mad. I had no idea what I looked like anymore; my head was dirty, bleeding from cuts.

  “Save him.” My voice was still hoarse.

  “He's dead. Look at him. He's dead, mate.”

  “Heal him,” I said, pulling out my knife. “Do it now.”

  Someone touched my shoulder and I whirled to face Dr. Purves. “Stand down, Trooper Bathe,” he said softly. My muscles tightened for a moment; then I dropped the knife. He gently pushed me aside and leaned over the German. “He's still breathing.” I couldn't see any sign of life, but then the boy let out the softest wheeze.

  “You better lie down, too, trooper,” Purves said.

  “No. I must go. My horse, Cheevers, I …”

  “You've been wounded.”

  “It's not my blood.”

  But then, as though his words had somehow given me permission, I felt the pain shooting through my lower chest and right shoulder. I looked down. There were two holes in my uniform.

  “Someone has to live,” I whispered. My knees gave out and everything went black.

  Later, I came to, lying on my back, Dr. Purves's face floating above me. He looked angelic. “Sleep, Trooper Bathe. You've done enough. You'll be happy to know we found some Turk anaesthetic.”

  The orderly lowered a white cotton cloth over my face.

  “Breathe,” Purves said, “slow and easy, son.”

  I saw the glint of a scalpel.

  “No, no,” I whispered, “the German first.”

  But the orderly pressed the cotton tight against my nose and I soon felt nothing at all.

  BOOK THREE

  There's a long, long trail a-winding

  Into the land of my dreams,

  Where the nightingales are singing,

  And a white moon beams…

  “The Long, Long Trail,”

  lyrics by Stoddard King

  1

  Mom.” Her face, in a shadow, was almost within reach. “Mom. Mom.” She opened her arms and drew me to her, stroking my hair, her hands so soft.

  “There, there,” she whispered. It was so wonderful to hear her voice and to be held against her. And then, too soon, I began to drift away from her.

  I awoke on a cot, sweating. It had been a dream. Nothing more. And now I ached. Every muscle and ligament hurt, and my spine seemed twisted in a knot.

  Slowly I turned my head and saw that I was in a large room lit by a dim electric chandelier. Cots were lined up against the wall; wounded and sick soldiers hacked and moaned.

  I remembered jumbled images of traveling into Damascus in a wagon, but little else. Ten days could have passed since then. Or ten years.

  My wounds still stung, felt fresh and itchy. I struggled to pull back the sheet, my arms stiff. Bloodstained dressing was wrapped around my right shoulder and lower chest. Every pore on my body dripped sweat. I shivered even though I knew the room was hot.

  More images came into my memory. I'd shot someone. A German? A Turk? More than one man.

  Hours passed without my seeing a doctor or nurse anywhere. Some hospital. A man screamed down the hall, but I couldn't lift my head to see what was bothering him.

  Then a nurse appeared beside me, as if out of nowhere. Her gray hair was tied back, and she had bags under her eyes.

  “So you're awake again.”

  “Again?” Even speaking hurt.

  “Yes. Several hours ago you were awake for a spell. How do you feel?”

  “I'm shaking. Was the operation a … a success?”

  “You asked me that last time,” she said, smiling. “Yes. You may have some stiffness in your shoulder for a while. Luckily, that bullet passed right through and nothing important was damaged. The other bullet was embedded in a rib. Your regimental doctor got it out.”

  She held a cup to my lips and I sipped. The water was the most delicious I'd ever tasted.

  “Oh, and you have malaria,” she added, as if she were talking about a slight sniffle.

  “Malaria?”

  “Yes, that's why you're sweating. You'll pull through; we've put enough quinine in you to cure a horse.”

  A horse. Buke. The memory came back so suddenly, I almost wept.

  “Are you all right, Trooper?” the nurse asked. “Do you feel like you're going to be sick?”

  I shook my head. “How long have I been here?”

  “Four days.”

  I nodded. “May I have more water, please?”

  She put the cup to my lips again and I drank.

  It was two weeks before I was able to walk on my own. My ribs and chest still ached, and the damage to my left shoulder made it impossible to lift anything.

  Several patients suffered horrible deaths, first coughing lightly, then harder and harder. Within a couple of hours, they began to hack up blood until they drowned in their own froth. I sat helplessly as the nurses worked on them. An influenza was sweeping over soldiers and civilians alike. It seemed the Four Horsemen had been loosed upon the world.

  Every night I waited for the pestilence to strike me. I deserved it. I had killed. I would never forget the way the holes had appeared in those men after I pulled my trigger. I deserved to grow sick and die.

  Instead, I grew stronger.

  At the end of the third week Dr. Purves came to my bedside. “Trooper Bathe, I'm sorry if I left a few scars on you. How is the movement in your arm?”

  “It's stiff. Very stiff.”

  “There's been some nerve damage. Funny thing, bodies aren't meant to have holes in them.”

  “I couldn't agree more,” I told him.

  “You know, you saved a lot of lives by taking out that machine gun. You did a good thing.”

  “It had to be done, that's all.” I'd killed three Germans and shot a fourth. Was it a fair trade for the deaths that had hurt me so deeply? “What about that boy I brought back?”

  Purves shrugged. “He survived my operation, but I didn't

  see him after that. I don't know where he was sent to convalesce.

  He'd survived. I had thought I would feel happy at such news, but instead, I just felt dull.

  “You take good care of yourself, now,” Dr. Purves said. “You've done Lincolnshire proud.”

  “I'm sure they'll write songs about me,” I said.

  Purves narrowed his eyes, surprised by my answer. “They should, son.”

  I spent as much time as possible in the courtyard, sitting in a wicker chair under a palm tree, dressed in my bathrobe and loose blue pajamas. The sun warmed the malaria chill, and at least I could see part of the sky. Yeomanry officers played croquet several feet away, pipes jutting out of their mouths.

  Another week passed. Every morning when the sun rose a muezzin crouched in a nearby mosque and called the faithful to prayer. His song was mystical and beautiful and as old as time. Dogs barked and roosters crowed in answer.

  I learned from the nurse that the Turks were being pursued farther north and that whole regiments had been knocked out by malaria and influenza. It was all happening far, far away from this pleasant little courtyard.

  “Daydreaming, are you, colonial?”

  I looked up. “Blackburn!” He was dressed in a new uniform, his buttons shiny, but he had dark bags under his eyes. There was a stripe on his shoulder. “So good to see you, Blackburn—or should I say, Lance Corporal?”

  He shrugged. “Anyone left standing has a chevron now. It took quite the effort to find you, Bathe. Heard you deserve a VC.”

  “I don't.”

  He looked a little surprised at how adamant I was. “Well, apparently you were mentioned in dispatches. They'll hear about that back in your hometown. The brass are chintzy with their medals as the end of the war nears.” He wiped under his left eye. “I was sorry to hear about Cheevers.”

  “Yes. It was horrible to see him die. His time was up, I guess.”

  “He was a cheeky bastard, but he had a good heart. He'll be missed.”

  “Yes, he likely will,” I agreed.

  A moment or two passed, but I was too tired to feel awkward. Blackburn cleared his throat. “You're looking well. How long before you're out?”

  “I go back to England on Monday.”

  “It'll be a shame to lose you.”

  “Can't fight if you can't aim a gun,” I said, then recalled how he'd fallen off his horse sick with malaria. “You seem loads healthier than last time I saw you.”

  “It took a long time, but I eventually got better. Missed all the action, though; I joined our regiment just as everyone else was struck down with malaria. They had to call a halt to the advance after Aleppo.” He paused. “The Turks signed an armistice that goes into effect today. Had you heard that?”

  “No.” They just signed a paper and the fighting stopped? Was it that easy? “What happens now?”

  “Now?”

  “To Palestine. To all those places we rode through.”

  “It'll all have to be put in good order.”

  “Good order?” He sounded like Uncle Nix.

  “Yes, it needs to be organized. Arabs! Jews! The French! They'll all want some part of it, too, I suppose. Who knows what the heads have promised them; a promise during a war isn't worth much.”

  They could have it all. It wasn't an Eden. No heaven on earth here. Just date palms and desert.

  “We've finally made the big push against the Germans in France. No more trench warfare; it's a war of movement again.”

  “It's about time.” More men were dying over there, waiting for papers to be signed.

  “I was happy to ride beside you, Edward. When my job is done here I want to travel. I'd like to look you up in Canada.”

  “Of course. You're always welcome at my home, Blackburn,” I said, and I truly meant it. “Always.”

  2

  I returned to England on the Nevisian, a bucket of a ship crowded with wounded soldiers, nurses, and a few civilians. I spent my time in the open air quietly staring out at the sea. We stopped at Gibraltar, but I remained on board.

  As we approached Portugal, the sun came out and the clouds vanished. Most everyone, even some of the sailors, basked in the heat. A few nurses held parasols over the weaker patients.

  There was a sudden cheer at one end of the deck, and I wondered if someone had seen a whale. Soon dozens of people were on the deck, hooting and clapping and letting out hurrahs. One soldier, who couldn't have been all that sick, dipped a nurse and kissed her hard.

  A one-armed infantryman came up to me, grinning ear to ear. “Germany has surrendered!” he roared as he patted me on the back with his good hand, sending sparks of pain through my wounds. “How about that! The war is over.”

  “That's great news,” I said, gritting my teeth against the pain.

  He began charging around the deck, shouting, “The war is over!” like a town crier. Several men threw their hats into the air, where they were caught by the wind and tossed onto the ocean.

  We'd won. With the arrival of the Americans and the failure of Germany's big push, it had been inevitable. Finally all those deaths had been avenged; maybe the pilot who had dropped the bomb on Emily was dead now. I should have been dancing, but I didn't have the will. He'd just been doing his duty. All of us had.

  By the time we arrived in England we'd been hit by sleet and snow. I watched it gather on the deck, not quite believing it was real.

  I was officially discharged from the yeomanry at Gnmsby barracks. Several of the draft troopers watched me with nervous curiosity and a little awe. They knew I'd been over there with their brothers, uncles, or pals. I'd seen war.

  “Thank you for your service,” the regimental sergeant major said as I signed my papers.

  I couldn't bring myself to say You're welcome. I walked into Gnmsby, found a clothing store near City Hall, and dressed in civilian clothes for the first time since signing up. I packed my badges and my uniform neatly in my kit bag and walked out onto the street.

  It was odd not to feel the uniform chafing me. I kept looking at my shoulders, feeling naked without my regimental insignia. The only lice I scratched at were imaginary

  I briefly thought of visiting Uncle Nix, but in my heart I didn't want to see him. I had no idea what we would have to talk about now. He'd be happy that all the calculations he'd made with other officers had paid off.

  I booked passage on the next civilian boat from Liverpool to Canada, then spent a full day finding Emily's home in Cleethorpes. It was a cottage on the outskirts of the town, surrounded by a stone fence and crowded by a small barn. That was where she had milked the cow.

  It took me several minutes before I mustered enough courage to walk up to the door. Finally, heart beating hard, my guts queasy, I knocked.

  Her mother answered. “Hello?” she said. She was so much like Emily my knees began to quake. “May I help you?

  “I—I was a friend of Emily's,” I muttered.

  Her face grew sad. “What's your name?”