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Authors: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

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BOOK: Tempting Fate
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Poor Hildegard is in a terrible way. Both her brothers are dead, one shot for failing to respond to commands. According to the letter she had from a physician serving on the Front, August was suddenly seized with cowardice, sat in a niche of the trench, refused to speak to anyone and screamed when he heard gunfire. Luckily the father is dead, though Hildegard’s mother is appalled by the disgrace. She has said that she will not have August buried in the family vault, but Hildegard thinks that she is being too hard on him. August, as you remember, was only nineteen, and Hildegard believes that he was not sufficiently prepared for the rigors of battle. The rest of the family refuse to discuss it (and you can hardly blame them), and so Hildegard has been telling me about it for days on end. She said that the English have decided that such cowardice is a disease and not a despicable lack of courage and dedication. It is clear that attitudes of this sort have weakened the entire British nation and Empire. How could an army exist, I ask you, if all a soldier need say in order not to fight is that he has contracted a disease that immobilizes him? I can’t help but sympathize with Hildegard, but at the same time I wish she would not go on about it so.

You recall I mentioned the new club I had been asked to join? (Well, it is not a club precisely, but more of a brotherhood, and no, I promise you, my too-careful sister, they are not freemasons.) I have attended two meetings, and if I am accepted by the senior members of the group, then they will welcome me into their numbers with all the privileges that they bestow. I’m not supposed to disclose the nature of the organization, but I know that the men I have met through it are all of the highest moral and patriotic tone. All of them are afraid of what this war will mean for Deutschland because of the traitors among us who have led us from certain victory to the likelihood of defeat. It is their purpose to find the way to assure Deutschland’s proper place in the world. Already there are officers and men of high position who are active in this organization. It is more than a simple matter of false trust—there are those in this country whose very existence saps the spiritual strength of this nation, like loathsome parasites. Through this Bruderschaft and those other organizations which are sponsored by it, the evil will be identified and rooted out.

Well, that’s for the future. At the moment, it is a true joy to think of seeing you again and I am looking forward to living at Wolkighügel. I will do what I can to help you ease your burdens, but it might not be possible for me to be always at your beck and call.

Should you hear any reliable news from München, send Otto to me with word of it. I’m sure you can spare him for a day or so, and at the moment, time is of the essence. Don’t trust the phone lines or the telegraph, for anyone might have access to your information. Besides, the phone lines here are few, and the doddering old fool who takes the telegraphs is a worse gossip than the village priest. Barring events in München, I anticipate arriving at Wolkighügel in three weeks. I will be needed here until then, but with a little expeditious work on my part, I doubt I’ll be delayed longer than that. I’ll get you word in plenty of time as to when you are to expect me. If you still have the Daimler, have Otto meet me at the train station so that I won’t have to arrange with the carter to get my luggage up to the schloss. I will bring my goods in stages, of course, but in such uncertain times, I don’t want to leave four or five trunks of books and clothes on the station platform, for I might not see them again. Otto will understand, without doubt.

My regards to you and your husband, my dear sister, and my gratitude to you for this invitation.

Fondly,

Maxl

5

A thin, watery sun submerged in high clouds made the small cluster of houses at Chambrecy look insubstantial; James Emmerson Tree, riding uncomfortably with six other men in a ten-year-old Fiat, expected the little village to disappear as they approached. They had left Meaux at four-thirty that morning, and it was close on noon. James had a cramp in one leg and the other had gone to sleep. For the first hour or so he and the other men—three of them journalists like himself, the other two medical personnel—had traded stories and boasts, but that had palled and for the last two hours all had been silent.

The driver pulled the Fiat up at the gates to a small country château, very much the worse for wear. Part of the roof had been demolished by artillery fire and most of the windows were gone. “This is your destination, m’sieurs,” the driver said, breaking the silence. Now that the motor was off, the sounds of the countryside rushed in: birds, livestock, the rustles of leaves and grasses. This was offset by the occasional sound of gunfire and the presence of soldiers.

An unshaven, gray-faced Sergeant looked at the new arrivals. “Your documents,” he said in a gravelly bass.

Each of the men proffered his credentials. Rather than the usual cursory glance that these had been accorded in the past, the Sergeant examined them with care. Finally he grunted. “You may go in. You will wait in the first room on your left after you enter the château. You are not to go elsewhere. If you do, you will be imprisoned. You are in a war zone, and we cannot allow anything to jeopardize our men.” He had said this many times before and now rattled the warning without inflection or thought, his hard, stricken eyes fixed on the middle distance. When he was finished, he pulled the gate open and stood aside for the six men. The driver bobbed his head once and climbed back into his Fiat as he asked the Sergeant if there were anywhere he could get petrol, adding hastily that he had a requisition permit.

James went with the rest, looking about him with less curiosity than he would have shown a month ago; then he had been with Horne’s troops at Bethune, fifteen miles south of the Lys, where the Huns had launched their second offensive. That artillery-tattered April sky! He had talked to one of the dispatch riders from Plumer and had been hideously awed by what he heard. He had not been able to rid himself of the sight of shattered men lying in filth-ridden trenches. The sounds of their suffering were louder in his ears now than the noise of the guns had been. And the smell, so vile, so richly rotten … He forced himself to stare at the broken château ahead of him.

A private opened the door for the six men and indicated the room on their left. “You understand that the officers cannot spare a great deal of time for you.”

“We appreciate this much,” said the exquisitely-mannered Gregory Roper from London. He began to unbutton his long canvas driving coat. “Gentlemen…?”

They followed him into the room on the left. It had been quite a pretty salon at one time, but four years of war had changed that. The fine rosewood furniture was broken and scarred, the Aubusson carpet was threadbare and so dirty that it was almost impossible to make out its floral pattern. Four chairs, two of them spilling out horsehair from rents in the upholstery, were placed near the hearth, and a sagging chaise longue had been shoved against the wall under the broken oriel windows. Douglas from New York took one of the better chairs; he had removed his hat, revealing a grimy, exhausted face. “Christ! What they don’t ask you to do.”

The medicos stood near the door, deliberately apart from the journalists, as if they feared contamination. Thomas McClaren, the younger of the two, was shy of these impressive men; Henri Montnoir was contemptuous of them, thinking them vultures feeding on the devastation.

The fourth journalist, a taciturn man of the old, scrappy school of inflammatory reportage, dropped onto the chaise. He was coughing still, and no longer apologized.

“One of you should have a look at old Whitstowe,” Gregory Roper suggested to the medicos. “He really does not look well.”

“Neither do the men in battle,” snapped Montnoir. He made no move to approach the journalist.

“I don’t want them fussing over me,” Vaughn Whitstowe said at once, losing the last of his words in another bout of coughing.

James studied the man, wondering why someone in his fifties should undertake so arduous an assignment. It was harrowing enough for young men, like himself, but for Whitstowe it was crushing. He went across the room to the chaise. “Can I get you anything?”

Whitstowe turned his red-rimmed eyes on James. “No; thanks, lad. Unless you have some cognac on you.”

Feeling angry for no very clear reason, James shook his head.

“I’m tired, that’s all. Got a bit of a chill. It’ll go off.” He attempted an uncaring gesture, but broke it.

“Let him be,” Harry Douglas said from his chair. “My ankles must be the size of cantaloupes. We should have come on the train.”

“The train is being used solely for troops and supplies to Paris,” Roper reminded him gently.

“There’s always room for reporters,” Douglas insisted. “Then we could have stretched out. Henry Ford be damned, automobiles are the very devil to ride in, except for the enclosed tourers. But those Fiats! A man spends a couple hours in one of those things, he isn’t fit for anything.” He rubbed at his calves through his dusty trouser legs.

“General Gallieni used taxis to get his men to the Front in 1914,” James said, recalling the night when an exhausted French Corporal told him the story of the Taxis of the Marne.

“Did they tip the drivers?” Douglas asked sarcastically.

James was about to rebuke Douglas; he was acutely embarrassed by the other American’s callousness, but Roper intervened. “Considering the hour, I think we might all benefit from a meal. Shall I see if there is anyone about who can tend to that?”

All six men were as hungry as they were tired, and the diversion was quite successful. Montnoir pointed out that it was entirely possible that all the food would be held for the fighting men and not for opportunistic newspapermen.

As Roper was about to step into the hall there came a sound from somewhere within the château, a deep, gurgling howl, mindlessly loud. The six men exchanged uneasy glances.

“It might be an amputation,” McClaren ventured after the sound had died away. “They say there isn’t enough morphine—”

“There isn’t enough of anything,” Montnoir cut in.

“There was no mention of a field hospital here,” McClaren said to himself. “We were told that … But in war things change so fast…” He touched the medical bag he carried as if seeking confidence from it.

A second, longer, deeper scream echoed through the château.

“Sometimes soldiers go mad,” McClaren said before the sound died away. “They’re at the Front too long.”

Roper was frowning. “I trust there is an explanation for it,” he said doubtfully.

James said nothing; he was remembering the agony he had seen three weeks before. Then he had been in a trench and had seen a putrescent arm and hand protruding from the earthen wall. When he had stopped, appalled, the Corporal with him explained that the men who died in the winter had occasionally been lost in the mud, and that parts of such bodies were sometimes recovered. No cloth was left on the decayed limb—it was impossible to know what army he had been with. One of the men in the trench, seeing the hand, had decided it belonged to his missing brother and had tried to dig the corpse out of the trench wall with his bare hands. The cries of that man were as heartrending, as mad, as the ones that rang through this château.

“They’ve probably got one of the Huns down there,” Douglas said laconically. “Paying him back a bit.” He began to whistle through his teeth, and James was startled to realize it was “You Made Me Love You,” which had been popular three or four years before. It angered him that Harry Douglas should be whistling a silly, sentimental song while a man shrieked in pain.

The door to the room opened to admit three officers, two French and one British. All three men looked exhausted.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said the British Captain as he regarded each of them in turn. “Which of you are the journalists?”

There was a ragged, identifying chorus and the Captain continued, “If the two medicos will go with the Lieutenant…”—he waited until McClaren and Montnoir had left the room—“then, gentlemen, we will do our best to spare you a little time. You’ve come a long way, we appreciate that.”

Vaughn Whitstowe began to cough again, but managed to stifle it well enough. “Beg pardon, Captain.”

The Captain nodded. “Wars always spread sickness, gentlemen, and this one is no exception. Have one of the nurses give you a draft for that if it hangs on.” He shifted his stance. “I want to introduce Major Phillippe Timbres and Captain Reynard Dos. These men will do their best to answer your questions as far as is practicable, given our current situation—”

The cry this time was shuddering and ended breathlessly.

“—our current situation,” the Captain went on with deliberate calm, “and our need for security. When you have finished your reports, you will bring them to me for review.”

“What about us?” Harry Douglas asked in his brashest tone. “You’re not in a position to give orders to any civilian, let alone an American.”

“My dear sir,” the Captain said blandly, “there are American soldiers—doughboys, if you will—in the trenches along with British and French men. If you wish to endanger their lives as well as the freedom of Europe, then, by all means, act as you see fit.”

Douglas got out of the chair. “You’re trying to bluff me, Captain, and I don’t like that. We’ve got freedom of the press where I come from.”

“Douglas, for God’s sake…” James said urgently.

“You’re letting them bully you, kid, if you take this kind of guff from them.” He folded his arms and glared at the British Captain. “You’re trying to use us. That’s why you let us come out here—so that we could tell the kind of story you want us to. Am I right?”

“Of course you are,” the Captain said quietly. “It may surprise you that I don’t wish you to lie. But there are sensitive areas that could mean a great deal—”

“Sensitive areas,” Douglas repeated. “That’s censorship, Captain.”

“Would you rather be sent back to Paris with no story at all?” The Captain accepted Douglas’ challenge sadly.

BOOK: Tempting Fate
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