Tacit and Isabella stumbled from the Cathedral’s residences in the hope of finding some swift method of transport. They were greeted with a rare prize, a taxi, a Renault Freres motor car, stood empty in the square, rattling and cranking on its robust frame and hard wheels, engine still hot from its previous journey. Amiens was the closest city to Arras with a station on a direct line to the capital. Speed was not of the essence, it was a necessity.
“Amiens,” called Isabella, climbing under the canopy and into the back of the vehicle.
“Amiens?!” the driver called, sounding relieved. “Just came from there. Will be a pleasure to get back there too,” he added, indicating the screams and the thundering of shells encroaching on the city’s outlying lands.
“Fortune favours the brave, Tacit,” the Sister chirped from the back, as the Inquisitor stepped on the footplate and into the front seat of the car, the vehicle buckling under his weight.
“And I favour a passenger a little more on the smaller size, begging your pardon, Father,” mumbled the driver, cranking his gears and inching the vehicle forward.
“How long to Amiens?” asked Tacit, leaning forward in his compact seat to relieve the pressure on his wounds.
“An hour,” replied the driver of the car. “But with you on board, more likely two,” he grumbled, looking over at his vast size and shaking his head. “My springs,” he mumbled to himself. “My poor springs.”
Isabella leant forward to the ear of the driver. “Do you know when the last train to Paris is tonight?”
“From Amiens? Six o’clock.”
“What time is it now?”
“Nearly five,” replied the driver, checking his wrist watch
“We’re not going to make it,” Tacit grunted, clenching his fists into balls.
“Can this car not go any quicker?” she asked.
“Yes. You can lose your oversized passenger and you can get out and push.” He pushed his foot firmer down on the accelerator pedal and the tone of the engine yelled a little higher.
“Keep your foot there, driver,” Tacit advised, feeling in his pockets for something to sooth his aching body. “If your car goes up in smoke, the Church will buy you a new one.”
“If the car goes up in smoke and me with it, at least I’m in good company,” the driver added, with a shrug. “Don’t forget to give me my last rites, Sister.”
“Why the Sister?” asked Tacit, uncorking the bottle and preparing to take a sip. “Why not me?”
“Because if the engine goes, we’re both sitting on top of it.”
Tacit drank long from the bottle. It was nearly half empty by the time he took it from his lips. He shut his eyes and felt the whistle of the wind on his face, felt the surge of alcohol fire his body and prickle within his mind. He raised the bottle to his lips and then paused, turning and proffering it to the Sister.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she replied, snatching it from him and setting the lip of the bottle to her mouth. She drank deeply. She grimaced and set the bottle in her lap, staring out at the other traffic on the road, some going out of Arras, most going into the ravaged city; lorries laden with men, soldiers marching weary beneath packs, long lines of horses, panic-stricken civilians, a vortex of humanity, running, walking, riding, but all caught up and confused in the machinations of the war. Some lucky ones, like Tacit and Isabella, had found escape courtesy of other motor cars. They drove slowly through crowds, hooting their way through the slow moving throng of exhausted people, until they were out into the open lands of Picardian France and could take the metalled roads at a pace.
Isabella raised the bottle to her lips again and drank, toasting the city farewell.
As the driver turned the car at the front of the station, Tacit and Isabella were already leaping from it, long before it had shuddered to a halt. “If there’s a train leaving for Paris at six o’clock …” cried Tacit, charging behind Isabella sprinting ahead of him.
“That gives us three minutes to board it!” Isabella called back, checking the clock tower in the square at front of the station. “What platform?”
Tacit grunted back.
“I said, what platform?”
“Who do you think I am?” he growled in reply, “a station hand?”
They raced over the forecourt and into the brisk cool shadows of the station entrance hall, skidding to a halt before the black departures board.
“Paris … Paris … Paris …” Isabella called to herself, scouring the lists as quickly as her eyes and brain could work. She cursed her stupidity at sharing Tacit’s bottle. “Paris!” she exclaimed, grabbing his arm. “Platform thirteen!” They both looked to the clock tower.
“Gonna be close!” Tacit warned, as they thundered down the station towards the platform at the far end of the building.
“Typical!” roared the Inquisitor, weaving in and out of the meandering crowd. “It’s always the platform at the far end of the station when you’re in a rush!”
There was a goods train standing at platform two, steam pouring from every facet of its vast black engine. The air about it and the platform hung heavy with the caustic bite of coal fire and oil, the engine’s sooty belch engulfing the assembled throng; nervous soldiers, cheering and singing civilians, flustered station hands hurrying this way and that with baggage carts creaking under luggage.
The doors of the train wagons were open. From them had leapt reservists, still dressed in their civilian clothes, waving and laughing, smacking each other on the back and ambling out from the platform in the direction all the other newly arrived men appeared to be heading. The atmosphere had been charged and urgent. Long after they had gone, and with them their songs and the laughter and the spirit of belief, lines of silent bleeding men were carried or assisted onto the train in their place.
By the time Tacit and Isabella jumped over the closing barrier and heaved themselves up the black pigiron steps into the train, it had changed from being a transport of hope and proud defiance to being a train carrying the decimated reality of those dreams. The vast black train cranked and heaved itself forward, and slowly, like a beast battling against chains, it slipped from the station and into the closing light of early evening.
They found a compartment to themselves. Much of the train consisted of wagons into which the injured had been laid. Few healthy soldiers or officers who could sit in compartments were going west.
“How long to Paris?” growled Tacit, dropping cautiously into the seat.
“Four hours,” replied Isabella. “Back still paining you?” she asked, watching him wince as he sat.
“Some.” He felt deep in the left hand side of his coat and then in the right.
“You want me to look?” she asked.
“No,” he replied, sitting back and uncorking the new bottle he had retrieved from somewhere in the folds of his long jacket.
Isabella shook her head but she was smiling. “How many of those do you have in there?”
“Usually enough,” he replied, as he glugged three times and wiped his mouth, exhaling gratefully. “But never enough when you really need them.” He offered the bottle but Isaballa shook her still spinning head.
The train trundled west through the creeping darkness with an extraordinary lack of urgency.
“You’ve not brought your case,” noted Isabella.
Tacit shook his head and closed his eyes, the bottle gripped firmly in his crotch. He teased the folds of his jacket apart to reveal the silver revolver strapped to his thigh. “It’s all I need now,” he replied, blowing with exhaustion and relief silently out through his lips.
“Are you going to kill him? Poré, I mean?”
“Depends,” replied Tacit, his eyes closed.
“On what?”
“If he tries to kill me. And …” He ran a hand across his head, placing his capello on the seat next to him.
“And?” Isabella asked, but the silence told her she’d never know the answer. “Well,” she said, sitting back. “It’s been an interesting few days, Tacit.” She reflected on events as her reflection stared back at her from the train window.
But the Inquisitor was already fast asleep.