EIGHT

‘Rhinehardt?’ Nurse Danvers checked the notebook she carried, close-scribbled with hundreds of names dashed off in a hurry between cleaning, bandaging and the endless ancillary chores of making beds and ironing sheets. Lydia was burningly aware that she herself should be in the fluoroscope tent at that moment, sorting through films of the men waiting for surgery, instead of snooping around the prisoners’ compound …

‘A fair-haired man.’ Lydia repeated the description Dermott had given her. ‘Broken nose and shrapnel wounds in the face.’

Across the small tent where the wounded prisoners had been kept under guard last night, Matron called, ‘Danvers—’

Danvers peered at her notes, turned the book sideways, pale brows crumpling together.

‘Danvers—’

‘Just coming, M’am! Oh, aye, he’s been taken on to Calais. A whole lot of them went this afternoon.’

BOTHER! ‘Thank you!’ As Lydia hurried from the prisoners’ tent – jammed with men last night, nearly vacant now save for a handful of the worst cases down at the far end – she cursed herself for not waking earlier. Yet she was aware she needed the sleep, and by what Dermott had said of this man Rhinehardt’s wounds, she doubted whether the man she sought would have been able to talk to her much earlier. A dozen finger-sized fragments of shell-casing and wood from the trench re-enforcements had been taken out of his face, throat and chest last night. That morning, Dermott had said, he’d still have been under morphia.

To her left, by the road that led westward to Calais, a line of soldiers caught her eye, rifles ready, and before them, men in gray-green uniforms, seated on the ground. A big wagon, drawn by two exhausted-looking farm horses, was being loaded under guard.

This afternoon, she said … but these things always take forever …

Lydia caught up her skirts and nearly ran. ‘Excuse me, Sergeant Waller, but is there any chance I might speak to one of the prisoners? There are some details about his injury I didn’t get last night before he was operated on …’

‘Well …’ The sergeant frowned. A friendly soul, he had several times traded encomia with Lydia about the perfections of their respective children. ‘We’re not supposed to, M’am. But if it’s in the way of medical information …’

Sure enough, Captain Rhinehardt lay on a stretcher, waiting for a place on the next wagon or (Lydia did a hasty calculation) probably the next but one …

Now if I can just remember enough German …

‘Bitte …’ she said hesitantly, and the young man turned his head, blinking up at her with his one undamaged eye.

‘Gnädige Frau Doktor …’ His voice sounded like dry mud being scraped off tin.

‘Do you speak English?’ If he’s visited England …

He was haggard with pain and still sleepy from the morphia, but answered her in that language. ‘Please forgive me for not rising, Madame …’

‘Good Heavens, Captain, it’s I who should be asking your forgiveness, for troubling you at such a time.’ She knelt at his side. ‘My assistant, Mr Dermott, said you were seeking your cousin, who had been … taken away from the other prisoners. Things were so confused for the last few days we’re still not certain what happened, but I will try to trace him. Was his name Rhinehardt also?’

An infinitesimal nod. ‘Oberleutnant Gleb Rhinehardt.’

‘And he was also wounded?’

‘Not so badly as I, Madame. How do you say it? Walking wounded. A bullet had broken his arm.’

Lydia flinched. Flanders soil, manured for croplands for centuries, was incredibly virulent in cuts. Even the smallest wounds went septic within hours.

‘And men were being taken away from the main group of the wounded?’ A glance along the line of the prisoners showed her at once that over a dozen of them were on their feet and able to help their comrades.

‘So they were, Madame. A French officer – a surgeon – with two British soldiers, and a nurse, or a nursing sister – dressed as you are, in light blue with a white apron. Gleb was sitting with me – he could have escaped, fled when the remainder of our unit did, but he was captured when he saw that I could not walk. I heard our officer calling to him to do so and he would not let go of my hand. At the dressing station he asked the sergeant in charge of guarding us, could he fetch me some water, and the sergeant permitted him to do so; there was a water butt nearby. Gleb walked over to it with his cup and this French officer saw him and pointed to him, the two soldiers stopped him and took him away with five others, in a big ambulance-wagon. A long chassis Sunbeam, I think it was. Gleb was a motor mechanic in Dresden, Madame. There was no vehicle in our lines that he did not point out to me and tell me about, inch by inch.’

Something that might have been a smile twitched one corner of his mouth at the memory of his friend, then quickly faded.

‘I saw Gleb trying to talk the soldiers into letting him come back to me but they put all six of those men into the ambulance truck. He got one of the regular guards to bring his cup to me with the water. I asked this man, where had they been taken, and he said he didn’t know. No one I have spoken to knows anything about it. But one of the other prisoners here told me the same thing: that this French surgeon and his nurse took away ten men, only lightly wounded, from the dressing station where he, and they, had been held before coming here. The French surgeon looked at him – the man who told me this, a sergeant in the Uhlans – but said he was too badly injured and would not do.’

Lydia frowned. This didn’t sound like anything Don Simon had told her, but of course considering the other vampires abroad along no man’s land, there was no way of telling. However, if this young man had been able to identify the make of an ambulance …

‘What time of day was this?’

Rhinehardt shook his head. ‘The assault started just after sunrise. I was hit before we reached the English lines, and I was unconscious when Gleb found me. I know it was daylight when we were at the English dressing station – an hour, two hours, before dusk began to fall, perhaps? It is hard to judge, Madame …’

‘Of course,’ said Lydia quickly. Not vampires, anyway. Unless they’ve got the living working for them – like poor Captain Palfrey – but why on earth would they want the walking wounded? ‘Thank you,’ she added. ‘I’ll do everything I can to see if I can locate your friend …’

‘Danke,’ he whispered, and closed his eye.

‘Is there anything I can get for you? Do you need more morphia? Or cigarettes?’

‘Danke, Madame, but I am well for the moment.’

Lydia started to rise, then knelt again and asked, ‘One more thing, if I may ask, sir. How did you know the French officer was a surgeon?’

The young captain blinked up at her, his brow tightening as if the pain were returning, and his voice was a little slurred with weariness. ‘He was here,’ he said. ‘I saw him pass through the tent last night, before I was taken to surgery. I was afraid … He and his nurse were both there. I was afraid they had come to search for others.’

‘Was it Nurse Smith?’ asked Lydia. ‘Short and young, with black hair and a heart-shaped face, a …’ What was the German word for a widow’s peak? She sketched a downward-pointing arrowhead from her hairline, hoping he understood, and he nodded.

‘Yes, this was her,’ he murmured. ‘The one who loved the Irishman.’ His eye slipped closed again, and after a moment, he said, ‘If it would not be a trouble to you, Frau Doktor, yes, I think I would like some morphia, if I am to go in the ambulance.’

Lydia stopped at the ward tent, and made arrangements with Matron for a syrette of morphine to be sent to Rhinehardt, on her way to the fluoroscope room. Subsequent inquiry however, that night in the mess tent and at intervals the following day, yielded nothing out of the ordinary about Colonel Lemoine. As far as anyone knew, Captain Calvert told her, Lemoine was with the Second French Army somewhere near Nesle. He’d only happened to be at Haut-le-Bois down the line when word came of the German attack. Further queries over bully beef and stale biscuits the following evening elicited only the information that no Nurse Smith was assigned to the nearest clearing station south of Haut-le-Bois, at Orchies-le-Petit, at least as far as Captain Calvert knew.

Before bed that night Lydia took a jar of Aunt Lavinnia’s marmalade to the stores hut, and ascertained that Storeman Pratt had never heard of her there, either – and due to his wide-flung network of graft and trade, Pratt knew pretty much everyone on the Front.

‘Tell you what, though, Mrs A—’ The rangy, curiously angular-looking storeman unscrewed the jar lid, and without breaking the bleached white wax of the seal inhaled the faint scent of oranges and sugar with the half-shut eyes of a connoisseur – ‘I’ll hold onto this ’ere jar, and ask about a bit, y’know? Tiny Clinkers, what looks after the motors at Headquarters, got a list of just about every woman on the Front, how old they are and if they’re pretty and will they or won’t they, if you’ll excuse my French, M’am. Pretty, you say?’

‘I think so. Black hair, widow’s peak, short, retroussé nose. What my nephews call a pocket Venus. I heard that young Irishman with the freckles call her Tuathla …’

‘That’s just one of them Irish fairy-tale names.’ Pratt shook his head at the entire heritage of Celtic civilization. ‘Readin’ too much Yeats an’ seein’ leprechauns, an’ handloom weavin’ their own skirts. Last couple years, every coal-’eaver’s daughter in Holborn been changing ’er name from Nancy and Mary to Eibhlhin and Nuala. I’ve never heard of a nurse looks like that in this part of the Front, much less one that’d be at Headquarters t’other night when the balloon went up. Home-made, this is—’ He gestured with the jar – ‘There’s men at Headquarters – them as don’t have relatives that could afford to stock up on sugar before the war – would trade me any amount of petrol and cigarettes for this, and I’ll see you get the worth of it, M’am.’

‘Thank you.’ Lydia put as much warmth as she could into her voice, though she wanted to stamp her foot at him. The petrol and cigarettes were of course being stolen from motor pools that were to take the wounded to hospital, and the slender rations of comfort that were supposedly being sent to the men. But her mother, and the fearsome Nanna who had reigned over the nursery in her childhood, had drilled her in the art of sounding friendly no matter what she thought or actually felt, and this training served her in good stead now. As she was turning to leave a thought came to her, and she turned back. ‘And does Corporal Clinkers have a list of all motorcars on this portion of the Front?’

‘Lor’ bless you, M’am, we all of us got those. What might you be interested in?’

She had the impression that if she’d pulled thirty pounds from her pocket he’d have sold her Commander-in-Chief Sir John French’s personal vehicle.

‘A long-chassis Sunbeam lorry ambulance. Can you find who has them, and where?’

‘Nuthin’ simpler, M’am. Just gi’ me ’arf a day.’

The warmth in her voice was genuine when she said again, ‘Thank you.’ Technically she supposed that getting information from – and fraternizing willingly with – Storeman Pratt was probably less dreadful than getting information from vampires … Unless you counted Pratt as a vampire himself.

‘Am I on this Corporal Clinkers’ list?’

‘Oh, absolutely, Mrs A.’ Pratt saluted her. ‘Right up there with Matron and seventy-eight percent of the nuns at Calais. Under ‘D’, for Don’t Waste Your Time On It, Boy-O.’ He screwed the jar shut, and stashed it under the counter. ‘And if you should ’appen to be sent any other little thing you might want to spare – or if there’s anythin’ you’ll be wantin’ in the way of sweets or smokes or silk stockin’s …’

‘You are a disgrace.’ Lydia did her best to sound severe but couldn’t keep from laughing, and his own grin widened.

‘I do me best, M’am.’

‘No luck, Mistress?’

Without a sound, Don Simon Ysidro had materialized at her side.

The night was now pitch-dark, the tent-canvas once again dimly aglow with lanterns, though owing to a failed delivery (or perhaps, Lydia speculated darkly, theft by Storeman Pratt and his spiritual kin) there were fewer of these than there had been five nights ago. Someone had tried to rig barriers of twine and fragments of bandage, to mark the new shell-holes, and the trees blown out of the ground by the German bombardment now lay strewn about the camp, half sawn-up to fuel the extra furnace that was being constructed (In the bearers’ abundant spare time!) for the amputated limbs. The air was gritty with smoke, and reeked of spoiling meat.

The smell of someone’s cigarette, momentary in the darkness. In one of the tents, someone with a beautiful Welsh tenor was singing ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, against a thready harmonica and a soft chorus of bass.

Jamie …

She pushed the thought of her husband aside.

Miranda …

‘You heard all that?’ She nodded back in the direction of the stores hut.

‘I know you have been seeking word of this woman we saw in the trenches, as I have been, among those who hunt the night. So far as I have learned, these revenants do not wander at large in the German lines. Nor yet have any seen any such thing in the wasted lands between the lines, nor wandering in the abandoned trenches on either side.’

‘They might have.’ Lydia removed her spectacles, and polished them with her handkerchief. Her head ached, from an afternoon of concentration in both the x-ray room and the surgical tent. ‘If a man had taken a head wound, and was wandering about in confusion; or a wounded man in no man’s land trying to make his way back to the lines …’

‘We are cowards at heart,’ said Don Simon. ‘Seldom do we actually venture into no man’s land. Aside from the issue of shelling, too many men on both sides use cocaine to stay awake at their posts, and there is greater chance that we will be seen and shot at. If any saw such a man, either in the wasteland or in a bombed-out trench, we – my kindred and I – would take him, for such men seldom reach safety in any case. None that I know of have said to me – nor to any to whom I have spoken – “I saw a man whom I thought merely wounded, and when I went to take him, found he was such a creature instead.” Personally,’ he added, tilting his head in a gesture curiously mantis-like, ‘I find this very odd.’

‘That means there aren’t a great many of the Others about—’

‘Yet.’

‘Yet.’ Lydia resumed her spectacles and frowned. ‘How are they created, Don Simon? I mean, the ones Jamie told me about, in Prague …’

‘I know not, Mistress. Nor does the Master of Prague … Who is, I think, vexed and distressed at the news that one such creature has unquestionably appeared here. With all of no man’s land a labyrinth of old trenches and buried dugouts and sapper’s tunnels, ’twere too easy for these Others to move about. They can cover themselves from the awareness of the Undead, and find us where we sleep, in the crypts and cellars of ruined churches and manors, devouring us in our coffins. And if, like the revenants of Prague and Peking, those breeding here can control rats, the situation is more dangerous still.’

Lydia flinched in disgust. In the mines northwest of Peking she had seen men swarmed by rats, when they’d attempted to invade the yao-kuei hive there.

‘As I once told James – and as it is also written in the Book of the Kindred of Darkness – the Others first appeared in Prague just after the Great Plague, five and a half centuries ago. But whether it is a virus that transforms their flesh – or if such virus is a mutation, as de Vries calls such changes, of the virus that transforms the flesh of a man into that of a vampire – if that be a virus – I know no more than do the messenger dogs in their kennels.’

‘Has any vampire ever … ever killed one? A revenant, I mean. And not just trying to get away from it.’

‘Never that I have heard of. Would you drink the blood of such a thing, knowing that to mix its blood with your own might pass its condition along to yourself? How much less would one try to drink its life, the energies of its death? The mere thought appalls.’ He put his hand beneath her elbow, and helped her across rough and squishy debris around a shell-crater. It had rained that day, and cloud still veiled the moon.

‘But you drink the blood of syphilitics, and consumptives, and drug-takers,’ pointed out Lydia, a little diffidently. ‘The blood and … and the life …’ She glanced across at him, wondering at the same time why on earth she felt she needed to be tactful: He’s certainly aware of what he is …

‘’Tis not the same.’

Lydia stumbled on a flooded wagon-rut, and became aware that they were leaving the tents and huts behind them. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To meet Antonio and Basilio once more. They have seen this ambulance-truck with the walking wounded, and know now where it went.’

Antonio Pentangeli and Basilio Occhipinti were, as before, in a dugout in what had been a German reserve trench before the English had retaken Pont-Sainte-Félicité, playing picquet – an antique card-game much favored among the older vampires – at a broken-down table to the music of a gramophone with a cracked horn. A couple of candles burned on shelves – Lydia saw the lights flare up as she and Don Simon came around the last corner of the revetment – and, of all things, a small pot of tea sat keeping warm on the makeshift stove: ‘’Tis a cold night, bella donna.’ Antonio poured some out for her into a teacup that had to have been looted from the village. ‘You seek a long-chassis Sunbeam ambulance with a French officer, who visits the dressing stations in search of the walking wounded?’ He brought up a chair for her, cushioned with a folded blanket.

He was dressed, Lydia observed, in an officer’s uniform as before; the beautiful Basilio was costumed as a driver, with the armband of the Red Cross. She tried not to think of Uncle Richard’s footmen – Charles and William – bleeding in some shell-hole watching the approach of their ambulance-wagon with hope.

‘Have you seen him?’

‘Twice. Most recently the night before last, when all the German prisoners were brought from their attack. But again before that, three weeks ago, just after the fighting at Neuve Chapelle. This same officer, with the brow of Saturn and the little black mustache—’

‘Colonel Lemoine,’ said Lydia at once. ‘That’s what the German prisoners said, too.’

‘I know not.’ Antonio shook his head. ‘But he had papers which he showed to the guards. He selected from among the prisoners, men not badly hurt. I am not, you understand, much concerned about such men, nor do I understand how prisoners are dealt with in this war. In my day the captains simply ransomed them back to one another, if they were gentlemen, or killed them if they were very angry, or hadn’t enough food, or if the prisoners were Protestants.’ He shrugged. ‘And I thought perhaps this was an ordinary thing.’

‘It may be.’ Lydia propped her spectacles, and sipped the tea. Basilio offered her sugar in a Limoges dish, and, of all things, fresh milk. ‘But I’ve never heard of such procedure. There are several very queer things happening hereabouts: between the revenant we saw, and this nurse whose name isn’t Smith offering deals to the Undead … and people disappearing whom everyone is too busy and too tired to look for. You told me once—’ she looked back at Don Simon, who had resumed his seat, hands folded, on a sort of earthen bench that had once been a bunk, his yellow eyes narrowed – ‘that the Undead feed primarily on the poor: on people whom no one will trace and no one cares about. Like that song in The Mikado, about, “They’ll none of them be missed”. And that sounds like a description of those poor prisoners. As if someone wants the living – in reasonably good shape – rather than the dying.’

‘Doing in fact with human beings,’ remarked Don Simon, ‘what the despicable Storeman Pratt does with petrol and cigarettes and morphia, I daresay. As war is waged now, things get mixed up and lost and mislaid all the time, and nobody thinks a thing of it. Where is this Lemoine posted, know you, lady?’

‘Nesle, Captain Calvert says. But he’s often in the camp at Haut-le-Bois.’

‘I think a journey thence might profit us all. I shall arrange for the proper papers to be made out to release you from your duties for a time, and the good Captain Palfrey will call for you in the morning.’