Perhaps the tension was to blame for how Ginette, Eva, and I acted just before the vigil proper started.
Eva began it. Since Ginette had appeared, Eva’s conduct had been more restrained. At first, such was the impression that Ginette made on her, she clearly believed that she couldn’t compete with Ginette in any way, and that if she and Ginette were rivals for my affections she’d better quietly withdraw and pretend as successfully as she could that she’d never cared about me at all.
She was reasonably successful in that. I saw very little of her in those few days, which was a very significant change from the period just before. But soon Eva rallied, seeing that Ginette and I didn’t behave like lovers. Perhaps there was nothing between us after all, she thought hopefully.
That night she practically ran into me in one of the dark passages, and though it might easily have been an accident I was pretty certain it wasn’t. Anyway, having run into my arms she showed no desperate hurry to get out of them, and I didn’t have the strength of will not to kiss her.
“Don,” she whispered. “Don …”
Women are more creatures of instinct than men. Here was Eva, not outstandingly clever and quite inexperienced, but all she had to do to make herself very attractive indeed was just follow her natural impulses. The way she said my name, for example — she got more into that than she could have said in a dozen sentences, including a few things that Eva probably could never bring herself to put into words.
And I — well, perhaps I was about to be killed. Perhaps Eva was about to be killed. Perhaps Saxham was going to go down beneath the force of the Knifers. I crushed Eva in my arms, and our passion would have carried us away there and then if we hadn’t been interrupted.
It was George who came along the passage, and one somehow couldn’t make love before George. We both felt that, and shot apart as if we’d been in the polite, pre-pagget days and Eva’s husband had just interrupted us.
“Nearly time to get out in our places,” I said. “You’ll have to change that dress, Eva. Something dark, and dark stockings — remember?”
She sobbed suddenly, unexpectedly, and ran along the corridor. George’s eyes followed her, blankly, as they followed anything that moved.
Why had she cried? Had I spoken harshly or unnaturally? It was as if she’d lost her last chance with me, and it wasn’t so. I had always been aware that though there were many things I liked about Ginette, neither I nor anyone else would ever be happy with Ginette. She wasn’t made for happiness, still less for a man to be happy with her. Since she had come to Saxham, we had fought a little less than we had on the way from France to Cambridge, but that was only because there was less to fight about, and because we had had other things on our minds.
Even assuming Ginette would finally marry me — and it was by no means my goal in life to get Ginette to marry me, though I had gone the length of asking her twice — I was anything but sure that I would rather marry Ginette than Eva. Instead of winning me away from Eva, Ginette, since she appeared, had made me realize the advantages of being married to a girl who was lovely, shy, even-tempered, admiring, obedient, and all the other things that Ginette was not.
I was glad enough that Ginette was in the Saxham party. There was a lot to be said for Ginette being a member of the Saxham party and me being married to Eva. I didn’t have to defend Saxham with Eva, make plans with her, work with her, rely on her. If I married her, Eva need be no more to me than wife, companion, and lover. Having Ginette as a colleague and Eva as a wife made a lot of sense.
Nevertheless, when I met Ginette almost immediately afterward, I hesitated, half inclined to say something to her but with no idea what.
“Isn’t it time you were out looking after things?” she asked tartly.
I shrugged. “Mil can look after that,” I said.
“Mil — always Mil,” Ginette sneered. “Will anything, or anyone, ever measure up to her?”
The funny thing was, she hardly ever quarreled with Mil — only with me about Mil. But perhaps she would have quarreled with me about anything.
“She’s competent,” I said, unruffled.
“And, of course, I’m not?”
“The fact that Mil’s something doesn’t automatically mean you’re not,” I said, refusing to lose my temper.
“That’s no answer.”
“No, you won’t be satisfied until you get an answer you don’t like. You never are.”
She shrugged. “Yet the other day you asked me to marry you.”
“And you said no.”
“Does that finish it?”
The way she said it was as near to an invitation as I’d ever get from Ginette. But she made her invitations at the wrong time. “It generally does when people know their own minds,” I retorted. “Now, if it had been someone else, I might have asked her again, to make sure she meant what she said. But since it was you, I knew — ”
“You can annoy me more than any man I ever met.”
“Yet I’m a fairly placid fellow. Is there a moral?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, I know I’m no angel.”
“You do?” I asked, astonished.
She groped for words, an unusual occupation for her. “Don,” she said at last, “are you going to … are you going to — ”
“Hit you?” I asked. “No, certainly not. I very seldom lose my temper.”
“And you very often make me lose mine,” she said in a strangled tone. “Let me tell you, once and for all — don’t ask me to marry you, for the answer will always be no.”
“All right,” I said agreeably. “So long as we’ve got that clear.”
She took a step forward to restrain me as I moved away from her. But when I stopped, she stopped too.
I turned away and meant it. In popular romances two people could fight and fight and fight, and then get married and live happily ever after. Outside of romances, however, when two people fought as Ginette and I always did, they were never going to stop.
On the way to my room I hesitated. Since Clare had left us, Mil had moved into Eva’s room. Mil would certainly at this moment be outside supervising arrangements. And Eva, when I last saw her, had still had to change. Orders for everybody were dark clothes, blackened hands and face. On a dark night such as the present one was going to be, this precaution might make all the difference between success and failure — blackened, we’d be invisible at any distance of more than a few feet; as we were, a tiny gleam in the darkness, a pale blur, might betray us to the raiders just too soon.
I opened the door of the bedroom and went inside, without knocking. Eva turned, and must have seen in my face what she’d been looking for for so long. She ran to me. There had been tears in her eyes when she turned, but they failed to impede the flood of happiness that spread across her face.
“I’ve loved you from the day you came, Don,” she whispered.
Could this be Eva — the shy, priggish, naïve Eva? There was nothing shy or priggish about her now. Her arms, her whole body reinforced her words of love. I couldn’t leave her, not this time.
So when we should have been out preparing for the Knifers’ attack, which meant life or death to us, Eva and I were making love. It was crazy, but entirely human.
• • •
It was just after midnight when the attack was made. Five yards from me Ginette leaned against the outer wall, as I was doing, yet in the hours we’d been there we hadn’t spoken a word. Five yards farther along was Edith, who hadn’t spoken either.
Eva was somewhere on the other side of the house. I couldn’t help thinking a lot about Eva as the hours passed slowly, but I hadn’t seen her since I left her bedroom.
Though Jake had presumably made his reconnaissance, if the Knifers’ raid was still on, no one had seen him, and the dogs had given no alarm. That was just as well; if we had seen him, it was the more likely that he’d have seen us, and while that didn’t matter unduly if Jake was to be trusted, there might, as he had warned us, have been others with him, others who would report what they saw.
There was little chance of our having been seen, no matter how many Knifer scouts had been out. We had got into position as quietly as possible soon after dusk, so that only if a spy had been very close then could our positions be known. Since then we had made no move; even a suspicious scout, waiting for the slightest sound or movement, would have been reassured by the silence, hour after hour.
Every now and then we saw Mil, Tom, or Bert on their rounds. They spoke to each other occasionally but never to one of us. We weren’t going to spoil our chances by taking any unnecessary risks.
The dogs had tried to nuzzle against us earlier, but we had made it clear to them that they were supposed to pretend we weren’t there. They caught on surprisingly easily and quickly.
I could see Ginette, but nobody else, and even at that distance I might not have noticed Ginette at a glance if I didn’t know she was there. Her face was stained with burnt cork, and she wore dark slacks and a black sweater. The only weakness in her camouflage was the occasional flash of her teeth. I could hardly have made everybody stain his or her teeth, I reflected. Still, if practicable it would have been worth while. It was quite a noticeable weakness in our concealment — and probably nearly everyone else, too, kept opening his mouth, failing to realize that white teeth shone like a beacon to eyes used to the gloom.
Anyway, it was too late to do anything about that.
I couldn’t help wondering over and over again as the hours passed if there was going to be an attack at all. I desperately hoped there was. Because there was certainly going to be one now or later, and we should probably never be better prepared for it than we were now.
I needn’t have worried. There was going to be an attack all right.
It was well arranged, too. I heard and saw nothing until a mere rustle, a tiny sound but very close at hand, warned me that another living creature was no further from me than Ginette was. I glanced at her to make sure she hadn’t moved. She had heard the sound too, and from the fact that she turned to me and I turned to her, it seemed likely that whoever or whatever had made the sound was between us, on the other side of the wall.
We waited, and as the seconds passed I had time to pray that the paggets had not chosen that night, of all nights, for a nocturnal attack on Saxham. We hadn’t made plans for dealing with pagget intervention, because there were none we could make. But the paggets had quite enough sense to realize that their two most dangerous enemies in the district, the Knifers and ourselves, were most obligingly fighting each other. They wouldn’t interfere.
There was another faint sound. Someone was coming over the wall. I put my revolver away and got out my clasp knife, holding it so that the blade didn’t collect what light there was. It wasn’t time for guns yet. We had to take all possible advantage of surprise before throwing it away.
A leg appeared over the wall, then a dark figure. Ginette and I did nothing. Then a man was between us. If he’d moved away from the wall we’d have let him go, hoping to get as many of the Knifers within the wall as possible before springing the trap.
But he turned, and a second later would have seen one of us. I leapt upward and slashed at his throat. He fell between Ginette and me, silently. Ginette half stopped his fall so that there would be no sound.
Still there was no alarm. As I thought that, there was a little gasp a few yards away, then silence. That must mean that whatever had happened had been in our favor, for any Knifer finding the place better defended than he’d been told it was would surely shout a warning now.
The dogs had made no sound. Mil and the other two guards were keeping them close to them, reassuring them if they heard anything.
There was a long, incredible pause. Something must be happening. Surely the Knifers had not merely sent three or four men against us? Where were the others?
At last we heard another faint sound. Someone else was following the man we had silenced. But there was something about the way he came that made me hesitate. It was meant to have that effect — as soon as he was over the man dropped beside me and whispered: “It’s me — Jake.”
He knew how to whisper in the dark, of course. He put his lips to my ear and merely breathed. Even Ginette wouldn’t hear a word he said.
“I saw earlier where you were stationed,” he said. “Six men have been sent in to silence your three guards and the dogs. I told Grimblo the truth about them. I think your people have caught the other five — there would have been an outcry otherwise. When the guards and the dogs were silenced, the signal was to be a light shaded from the house, pointed toward Greetham. Shall I give it?”
“Will your people really believe all our dogs have been killed without a sound?”
“They’d hardly expect it. But since there hasn’t been a sound, they’ll believe it.”
“How many more are coming?”
“Forty.”
“All men?”
“Twenty-eight men, twelve women.”
I had given the strictest orders that no attacker should be spared because she was a woman. I wasn’t certain my order would be obeyed. Steve or Bert or Jack, say, finding a young girl in his grasp, would be liable to hesitate, giving her a chance to give the alarm. I had done my best to prevent that.
“You can give the signal,” I whispered, “after we’ve got the dogs locked up. It’ll be safe to do that now.”
I found Mil and told her to get the dogs inside, that now the Knifers would believe Saxham was undefended. We’d be better off without the dogs.
“And you’re supposed to be killed,” I whispered. “When you’ve got the dogs out of the way, wait till you hear fighting and then come out and help.”
We waited until we saw all the dogs being taken silently to the house by Mil, Tom, and Bert. The delay didn’t matter; the six scouts who had been sent in might have taken a long time to do their job efficiently, carefully, and quietly.
Then Jake produced a small electric torch, one of the few left in operation, and, carefully shielding it with his hands and his body, he directed a feeble gleam in the direction of Greetham. The battery was almost spent.
Jake and I returned to my post. It was about thirty seconds later that a third figure came over the wall at the same place. The attackers were less careful now, believing that they were storming an unguarded stronghold. The man who came over the wall beside me was less concerned about extreme silence than about extreme speed, for now the obvious plan was to overcome all resistance before anyone at the house was roused. And he believed that there were no guards left in the grounds.
I grabbed the attacker by the throat, again keeping my knife reversed until the last moment in case its gleam should be visible in the darkness, possibly for some considerable distance. Though I got my man by the throat and stifled any outcry he might have made, two things made me hesitate for a valuable second or two. One was the appearance of another dark figure coming over right on top of Ginette. The other was the fact that the man in my grasp wasn’t a man, after all.
It was ironic that after giving such orders about women I couldn’t at first carry them out myself. It was instinctive, I suppose. Here I had a girl in my arms — I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel that she was slim, lithe, young. And so recently I had had Eva in my arms and had been so tenderly passionate toward her.
No more excuses. I let the girl in my grasp wriggle almost free for a second and release the beginnings of a scream. The knife came up then and she fell, silent, but the damage had been done.
Almost at once the night was torn asunder by cries, shots, screams. Ginette had silenced her man, far more coolly and effectively than I’d done. There were flashes from the guns, and concealment was abandoned by both sides.
I shot somebody else … but I’m not going to detail all the raiders we shot, knifed, or strangled. It was war, and we had to do it — but I don’t have to give all the grim details.
I had time to realize with some relief that though I’d been responsible for the first alarm being given, it would only have been a fraction of a second before it came from somewhere else.
The way the Knifers fought removed any scruples we had left. We heard a scream and knew it was Mona who had screamed. Something about it told us that there was mortal agony behind it. And we understood at last something which is always very difficult for civilized people to understand — that we were fighting people who were wholeheartedly trying to kill us, and that if we didn’t kill them first, they’d certainly succeed.
Then there was a far worse scream which we also recognized. Nobody but George could scream like that. It was worse than Mona, somehow — Mona had been young, intelligent, healthy, pretty, but Mona had been able to understand what was going on and had met her fate with her eyes open. George hadn’t been able to understand anything very much, yet he was just as cruelly hurt, judging by the two screams.
The Knifers had thrown away a big advantage by attacking at night. They couldn’t use their throwing knives. And we had taken all the steps we could to ensure that they couldn’t do much damage with them at close quarters. Every third man or woman all the way round had a gun and could shoot.
Jake kept close beside me, knowing that if he and I were separated he stood an excellent chance of being killed by one side or the other. He saved my life once — at least, he killed someone who would have had a good chance of killing me.
The safeguard we had arranged against killing our own people was simply giving our first names whenever there might be any doubt. This was never necessary, as it turned out. The Knifers hadn’t blackened their hands and faces as we had done, and thus we knew at a glance, even in the darkness, whether friend or foe faced us.
It was chaos, nevertheless. Apart from the occasional flashes, there was no light throughout the whole engagement. Consequently none of us on either side could ever be aware of what was going on except in the immediate vicinity. I think the Knifers kept up the attack longer than they should have done in the belief that in some quarters they must be doing well. We, though we had many advantages and had had them since the beginning of the struggle, couldn’t withdraw. Withdrawal to the house was surrender. We had to fight as long as the Knifers remained.
When it came to action, our arguments about clemency had been unnecessary and impractical. Any attempt in that confusion to take prisoners, or merely to stun instead of killing, would have been sheer lunacy, and this was obvious as soon as the battle proper was joined.
I blundered past Mil and felt a wave of relief that she was all right. We were losing people too — Mona and George, probably, and heaven knew how many who had made no sound. I had stumbled over the body of Jack, the ex-bus driver. He was quite dead.
In the middle of the battle I had the callous yet perfectly reasonable thought that it didn’t matter much how many we lost, since we could replace all our losses in the morning — from Cottesmore, Grantham, Melton Mowbray, anywhere we liked.
“Eva!” I exclaimed suddenly, but she was gone. She had blundered past me in a flash, but I could still see her in my mind’s eye — all black, black stockings, black trunks, black blouse, a black beret over her dark hair. She was running away again, making for the house. I refused to think about that.
I saw Ginette trip a man and drop on his back. Then for long seconds Jake and I could find no Knifers at all, though all about us there were noises which told us the raiders hadn’t fled yet.
We started going round systematically, rallying the Saxham forces. I saw Dave, Mil, Bert, Florence, Beth. I also saw George, Edith, Jack, Will, Tom, Joe — dead. Mona wasn’t dead, and perhaps that was unfortunate. She was groaning horribly and writhing in the last extremities of agony. It would be a mercy if some Knifer came on her and finished her, but we couldn’t do it. Neither could we do anything to help her, while the battle went on.
It didn’t go on much longer. The sounds of fighting faded out.
We were free at last to count the cost. I sent three of the women and two men to get Mona up to the house and see what could be done for her.
• • •
We had killed twenty-seven of the forty-six men and women who had been sent against us. We had lost eleven dead. Ten more were injured, but of these only three were seriously injured — Mona, Steve, whose right arm was almost severed, and Ben, one of the Tontine men, whose leg was so badly slashed that it would have to come off when we could find someone with the slightest experience of surgery to do the job.
Mona had been stabbed in the back and in the abdomen, and either of her wounds could be fatal. We could do little or nothing for her. It was just a question of waiting until she died, and the sooner she did so the better for everybody, particularly herself. The deaths didn’t sap our morale as much as the agony of Mona. We could bear the thought of dying in another such engagement better than we could bear the thought of being left as Mona had been left, to die in agony protracted because none of us had the courage to end it for her.
It was only after we had counted the dead that we found Eva wasn’t in either group, the dead or the living. We searched the house, but eventually we realized that Eva had run away or had been captured. It was also possible that she had been driven outside the grounds and had been killed by paggets or Knifers there.
Anyway, she was gone, and my feelings were almost as mixed and tortured as they had been when I found Gloria dead. There was less than one chance in five that Eva, whatever had happened to her, would ever return to Saxham alive.