They huddled together in the cave for warmth, filthy and wretched in the foul dank gloom. September had brought a chill to the day’s end and a dampness in the air. They’d allowed themselves a meagre fire, but didn’t risk stoking it too high for fear that the smoke might reveal their location to a passing soldier. Of a night they need not fear but during the tormentingly long hours of daylight, they knew they were vulnerable.
Throughout the years they had sought refuge in the darkness, these pale and sallow figures, deep below where their prey walked, cast out by civilisation, terrorised by flames, fearful mobs and ignorance. For years, too numerous to count, they had eked out a meagre existence, entombed within a prison born of a curse and their enemies’ fear. They were the damned, the once great now fallen, the ones cursed to walk the pitiable line between darkness and light, always longing, yearning for life, longing for salvation, craving for a final meal to satiate their hunger and thirst for a last time.
A longing always conducted at the mercy of the moon.
“Can you hear them?” asked Angulsac, referring to the sound of the soldiers digging nearby.
It was not his birth name, the name his mother had given him when he was pink and small and perfect. Too long ago it was that that name had been used, too long ago for its recollection, those days now beyond reach, like an itch unable to be scratched. It had slipped from time and mind just as the moon each morning countless times behind the horizon. Now he’d taken the name decreed by the clan, Angulsac, ‘Waning of the Moon’ in the tongue of the true wolves.
“I hear them,” replied Baldrac wearily, shivering in the gloom despite the layers of cloth bound about him.
During daylight, Baldrac preferred to sleep but at this time his hunger gnawed at him like the incessant cold, a cruel and constant reminder of what he was, what hateful thing he had become and also what he desired beyond anything else in order to help find respite from the pain. Only by being the monster he so despised could the monster rest, embrace the troubled and hateful portion of death that was sleep.
“From the west,” Baldrac croaked, trying to clear his parched throat. “The British.”
“They are coming,” Angulsac said.
“The Germans, they have abandoned the village,” Baldrac spoke quietly into his rags, as if to himself. Beneath his layers of cloth and threadbare fabric, he was naked, stinking and scarred by an endless lifetime of dirt and filth. Once he wore clothes of finery. Now rags were his clothes, the same as many of the clan chose to use. There was little point in fitting oneself in the attire of those who walked above in the sun. With the coming of the moon, their transformation would be sudden, their clothing ripped asunder when the curse was unleashed in flesh and fur and rage.
“I wonder if they will listen to the villagers?” a white haired woman, who went by the clan name of Calath, asked, shuffling a little closer to the fire to urge some warmth into her gnarled fingers. She was drawn and emaciated, half starved. Once, many years ago, she was beautiful, with the ear of kings and a host of lovers. But she was too beautiful for the liking of some and was cast down with a curse upon all of her house. Now no lover would be drawn to her fetidness, not even those she shared the underground hovel with.
“They are men,” Baldrac spat, drawing the rags a little higher around him. “Foolish men. It is not in their nature to listen, to understand. Once they learn of us …” He let his words trail off with a shake of his head.
“We were men once,” a shivering figure called from the back of the cave, shrouded in shadows.
“I wish them no ill,” Calath continued.
Angulsac laughed bitterly. “I wish them no ill either, but neither did I the Germans, or the French, or any who have trodden upon our paths. The moon is a cruel master.”
Baldrac coughed hard in his tight, rasping chest. “Men are foolish,” he said, spitting the ball of phlegm he’d brought up from his leathery lungs. “They will scoff when they are told of us. Nothing will change, not even when the moon climbs and we venture out amongst them.”
“Perhaps our princess will convince them?” Calath asked, summoning a little hope within her voice.
“She was unable to convince the Germans. What makes you think she will be able to convince the British?” Baldrac drew his feet inside the folds of cloth and nestled himself into a ball inside the mass of rags.
“She will have completed her task by now,” said Angulsac, staring into the measly flames of the fire.
“Perhaps she will come to us?” Calath replied, urgently. “With news?”
“News?!” Baldrac barked back, suddenly enraged. “It is not news I wish for! It is food! Food to sustain me through the night so I need not hunt for it!” He trembled and shook as he spoke, caught in his anger. “Ah! The torment! When will it end?!” he cried out, his voice echoing throughout the cavern network.
“Easy, Baldrac,” urged Angulsac, his eyes heavy on the fire. “If she comes, then it will be with news and perhaps a little food.”
“A little food is not enough though!” the wretched man spat back. “There is never enough food! For a whole month, since the war has come to these lands, we have been without our sustenance brought to us and have had to search it out like the vermin that we are!” He spat in the dirt and threw himself into a ball by the side of the cavern.
Out of the reach of torchlight, more figures could be seen stirring, a lamentable band of creatures, pallid and filthy. The raised voices had awoken them. They retched and cursed, coughing up their misery and the stinking foul residue of last night’s hunger frenzy, knowing soon that the madness would return again, once the moon climbed in the sky.
Angulsac drew his rags about him. “I know we need food, but also with news then perhaps our journey’s end will be a little closer. Until then, let us try and rest.”
“Rest!” cackled a voice from a dark corner of the cavern. “How can we rest when we know the moon is climbing? What good is rest when soon we know we will be beyond all hope of rest?”
“If she doesn’t come, I trust the Germans have given the British good warning,” Baldrac growled, laying himself down against the hard rock floor for sleep that he knew would not come. “Because my hunger is terrible and already I feel my rage match it.”
The soft crumbling cascade of soil and the noise of slipping shoes on damp mud drew their attention from the smouldering fire and their infected, troubled dreams. Angulsac was the first to face the intruder, low on his haunches in an instant, taut like a coiled spring in the middle of the dark and stinking cavern.
A pair of shoes and then long legs appeared at the hole of the extended passageway leading down to the cavern. Moments later, Sandrine dropped gently down the wall to the passageway floor.
“Sandrine!” Calath called, summoning up a residue of joy from the depths of her forsaken spirit.
Baldrac and another male levered themselves weakly onto their elbows, whilst Angulsac rose and strode forward naked to embrace Sandrine, his rags flung aside in readiness to spring unhampered at the appearance of the unknown intruder.
She was a joy to behold, an accepted and welcomed face from the outside, an injection of life and colour into their barren and desperate world.
They scampered forward from the fire and the dark corners of the cavern to peer on her and see what she had brought for them. She threw a sack onto the floor before her.
“I am sorry,” she called, as the pack gathered around the sack and its contents. “I have not had time to gather much for you.”
“Is this all there is?” cried a hairy flat faced man, looking up from the scant contents spilled out across the floor. It was being ripped apart urgently into bloody sticky pieces by the rampant crowd. “A few cats and a long dead dog?”
“I am sorry, Galath,” Sandrine called back, almost overwhelmed with sorrow. “I had not the time to –”
“Is this what we are reduced to now? Scrapping for cats and dead creatures. Are we truly dogs?”
But Angulsac came forward and embraced her earnestly.
“Silence, Galath,” he cried and then put his deep dark eyes onto Sandrine. “Sandrine,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it. “Thank you.”
“I would have brought more but …”
Angulsac raised his hand to silence her.
“I know. And your offering is kind. It will sustain some and hopefully reduce others’ hunger – and their savagery a little.”
Sandrine was always touched by how they tried to distance themselves and their vulgar feasting from her as they ate. She’d seen them eat a thousand times, had watched the animalistic passion with which they gorged themselves on the flesh of whatever Sandrine was able to bring. It had never revolted her in terms of a spectacle. What did repulse her was that they were forced to live like this, like animals, underground, feeding on the detritus and filth cast away from the butcher’s block, unable to step beneath the sun and fend for themselves.
They gorged themselves the best they could on the bloodied offerings within the basket, stuffing food into their mouths quicker than they could swallow it; flesh, blood and fur guzzled as if it were the finest of French cuisine. Calath looked up, feasting greedily, her eyes now burning brightly.
“Calath,” Sandrine called to her in greeting, her eyes moist, her hands locked in prayer to her lips. How it pained Sandrine to see her reduced to such carnality.
What had been brought by Sandrine in the bag lasted mere moments before it had been consumed, bones, skin, fur and flesh of the few dead creatures gathered from the streets of Fampoux or caught on her journey to their lair. Those who had not already done so now slunk away from the empty stained remains of the bag, like hyenas cheated from a kill.
Not a single drop of their meagre meal was wasted. They sucked fingers and wiped mouths with backs of hands, which they then licked like starving cats.
“The British,” someone called from the mass of bodies, “they have come then?”
“Yes. They are in Fampoux.”
“And they let you through to the village?” Baldrac asked, his face a vivid crimson from the food he had taken. Bloodied strands hung from the sides of his mouth and fingers which he began to clean meticulously.
Sandrine sat on a rock and rested her head on a hand. “I came via the tunnels. They were making preparations for defence when I left the village to come to you. They were looking elsewhere. I was able to gather up what I could and step out to you without any bother. We will see how they treat me and these errands once they have settled for a little while in the town.”
“You weren’t followed, were you?” Baldrac asked. He always asked that question, once his hunger had abated a little.
“I was not,” replied Sandrine. “I do hope that the British will be kinder visitors in our town than the Germans.” She sank her head into her hands and rubbed her eyes, exhausted. “I have hope,” she said, looking over at them.
“They are men,” spat Angulac grimly. “We do not hold out much hope.”
“You were a man once, Angulsac,” Sandrine replied.
“I was,” he replied, chewing the end off a length of bone and sucking at the marrow within. “And look at me now,” he said sadly. “It was too long ago now. I forget.”
“I don’t,” Sandrine replied swiftly. “You may yet be a man again.”
Angulsac laughed thinly. “I admire your optimism, my dear. But I know our curse is as firmly laid as the chalk rock about us.” He crunched at the end of the bone, crushing the fragments within his mouth. He turned them about his tongue before swallowing. “We are beyond saving. All I hope is that we might be granted the final word in this most bitter of tales.”
“I would not turn back,” Baldrac called, shaking his head and scratching at his skull with his gnarled withered fingers.
“You would not?”
“Not if the turning back equalled the pain of the original turning. Such torment. My bones still recoil from the pain,” he said, and to illustrate the bitterness of his memory he massaged his shoulder.
Calath sneered. “I too remember when they cast me down, so much so that I can remember nothing before that moment, only their wretched words, the bile and hatred uttered by them, the red heat of their curse, a brand for all of eternity.” She shuddered and wept pathetically.
“At least they have stopped cursing,” said Sandrine, attempting to bring a little light to the conversation.
“Yes, recognised their folly finally,” spat Baldrac. “Now, instead they hunt us, like vermin. Exterminating us like rats, to ensure our silence.”
Angulsac smiled darkly. “Too late for that.”
“Come, tell us, how was Arras?”
“Fine.”
“Did you …”
“I did. It has been done.”
“All according to plan?”
Sandrine hesitated.
“Come, what is it Sandrine?”
“It’s nothing. I am just a little tired. The deed has been done. We must now wait, and pray.”
“Pray?” spat Angulsac. “Ha! You forget. We all stopped praying many years ago!”
“You are so good to us, princess,” Calath said, shuffling forward to the feet of Sandrine, nourished a little by the taste of blood. “Your father would be proud.”
The mention of her father brought a wrench to Sandrine’s heart. She never knew her father, not properly, not as other families. For so much of her life, Sandrine had been alone, cared for by distant cousins and strangers in her childhood, finding her own way in Fampoux during her adolescence. Her pain was made all the greater knowing that he had been there, just half a mile from the outskirts of the village, inaccessible but for the most restrictive of visits. And those hateful visits, which could only be short during daylight hours, brought their own demons and resentment. Sandrine always felt she was growing up in the shadow of neglect and a father she could see but could never reach. As her mother had proved, there could be no chance of a normal relationship between the father and his offspring.
The isolation had brought a self-sufficiency and a spirit to Sandrine, but it had also tormented her so much so that she wondered whether she would ever be able to love, or be loved, with truth and sincerity. At times she’d felt the almost unbearable weight of neglect and loneliness, so great she wondered how she could go on. But now, buried within that rancid cave, surrounded by those desperate souls, she felt more wretched and alone than ever.
“You look sad, little one,” Calath called, a concern clenched about her words.
Sandrine forced a smile and buried her misery deep inside of her, as she always did eventually. With everything she had in her world above – compared to these lamentable creatures, doomed to remain in the filth and darkness – she refused to reveal her hidden sorrow to them. But inside her emotions churned. She felt stunted, like a seedling starved of light. She knew her heart was like that of a flower waiting to reveal itself and its true beauty, but having had so little love with which to cultivate it, the bud was firmly closed.
“I mourn for you, Calath,” Sandrine replied, reaching out and drawing her to sit beside her on the rock she had found.
“You are kind, Sandrine.”
“Kindness does not come into it, Calath. You are family. I just hope what my father and I have done is enough.”