The 39 Clues: Cahill Files: Silent Night (5 page)

Rupert was confused. He looked at the major’s hand suspiciously, but took it and slowly got to his feet. His legs felt like jelly and his throat was dry. He couldn’t go on. He knew he couldn’t. Rupert leaned against a tree, his hands pressed against his chest. His heart. He could still feel his heart beating. He was amazed — he didn’t understand how he could still be alive.

“Are you done? I said, let’s get going,” said the major. “We’ve got a ways to walk.”

The woods were dark and cold, and Rupert felt very lost.

“Where are we going?” Rupert asked. “Where are you taking us?”

“To the meeting place,” said the major.

“Where is that? You have to tell me these things or I’ll leave.”

“Fine,” said the major. “Have fun getting back to the trenches. And then telling them where you’ve been.”

Rupert gritted his teeth and continued on. He didn’t like when the major was right. Rupert tried to think ahead, but there was little appealing about camping outside in a forest in the middle of December. But at least, Rupert thought, there would be no puddles six inches deep, or rats running over you while you tried to sleep. At least, he hoped not.

“There, ahead,” said the major. Ahead of them, about the length of two football pitches away, was a flickering light. Rupert’s stomach went cold — colder, that is.

“That could be anyone,” said Rupert.

“It’s not,” said the major. “It’s where we’re going.”

Rupert wasn’t sure. It could be the Janus, but it could also be some Germans hiding out. Or angry Frenchmen with pitchforks. A person couldn’t just walk up to a lantern in the middle of the war and be sure who it shined for.

Rupert looked over his shoulder. The woods were dark — the only light was from the moon, and even that was muted by the clouds. He could run for it. He could, at the count of three, take off into the woods, and the major would never find him. He could make his way to a village and pay someone to take him back to England and then forget about all of this.

Or he could freeze overnight and be found on the side of the road in a week, half eaten by wild dogs.

But then Albert would be right — they would all be right about him.

Rupert rubbed one of the brass buttons on his coat between his fingers. It was sharp and cold. Better, he thought, to die a Lucian than as a no one on the side of a nowhere road.

The building with the lantern was an old, abandoned barn. Rupert couldn’t see much in the bad light, but it was a rather sad place. He wasn’t sure it even had a roof anymore. When they were within a few yards, the major bent to find a stone or heavy stick amongst the underbrush. And then he threw it at the barn, where it struck the side with a clatter.

The lantern vanished from the window, pulled inside by an invisible hand. The sudden loss of light was hard on Rupert’s eyes; he couldn’t see hardly anything.

“Wer ist da?”
came a gruff, deep voice from inside.
“Qui est là? Répondez-moi! Vite! Schnell!”

Rupert recoiled. Straight to the Germans. Major Thompson had taken them straight to the Germans.

“Ta famille, ma cousine,”
Major Thompson called back.
“Tes cousins.
Now let us in; it’s freezing out here.”

The door swung open, and the lantern light spilled out. It was held, not by a massive German general or a French farmer with a pitchfork, but by a country girl who still wore her hair in braids. She didn’t look much older than Rupert.

“It is not much better in here,” she said in a thick French accent. And then she stood aside to let the two Englishmen in, narrowing her eyes at them as they passed. Clearly, this Janus girl didn’t trust them any more than Rupert trusted the other two. He imagined the only reason that Major Thompson was so at ease was because he could crush the two of them with one hand.

The girl set the lantern in the center of the barn in a space clear of hay; it cast wide shadows all around. The barn was, indeed, missing great swaths of its roof, and the rest of it was filled with old hay and moldy weeds.

“You are late,” said the Janus, folding her arms across her chest. “I thought you must have had fear and decided that you would not come.”

The major snorted. “Hardly. And if that were the case, I think it would be the other way around.”

“Excusez-moi, cochon Tomas?”

“What did you just say to me?”

“What’s your name?” Rupert blurted over the noise. If they killed each other, he’d never find his way out of this forest, and then he would be a dead no one on the side of a nowhere road.

The girl pursed her lips and slid her eyes back and forth between Rupert and the major, as if she was trying to decide if she really wanted to tell them. “Marie,” she said.

“I’m Special Officer Davenport, son of Lord Winthrop Alfred Davenport, the Earl of Southington,” he responded. In a world of Cahills, it was best to make one’s station perfectly clear. “This is Major Thompson.”

“Enchantée,”
said Marie, but Rupert wasn’t sure she meant it.

“This is where we are staying?” asked Rupert.

“
Oui
— yes,” said Marie.

“Aren’t you a local — isn’t that why you’re allowed to come along with us? Why aren’t we at your house, where there is a fire and beds? You do have a fire, don’t you?” said Rupert.

Marie snorted. “You think I would let a Lucian and a Tomas in my house? You think I would let you follow me to my home? But I am not stupid, Monsieur Davenport.”

“Special Officer,” Rupert corrected her. But Marie did not give him the satisfaction of a snarl, or an apology.

That night, Rupert did the unthinkable. He went to sleep in a pile of wet, moldy hay. Of course, conditions in the trenches weren’t much better. But at least, if you snuck to the back of the lines, you could usually find a free cot and a blanket. What he wouldn’t give for a four-poster bed, a down comforter, and a valet to bring him a cup of cocoa before turning the light down.

It was a restless night. Major Thompson snored and Marie lay so still that Rupert thought she might be dead. And throughout the night, Rupert jolted awake, his heart pounding, certain that someone was moments from bursting into the barn or burning it down.

He stared up at the half-worn-away roof. Of all the ways Rupert had imagined this adventure going — all of which had ended in the same way, with Father giving him the approving nod he gave Albert, with Mother telling him that he’d done a good job — Rupert never, ever imagined that he would find himself hiding in a derelict barn, about to take on a secret search-and-rescue mission with a Tomas and a Janus. He wondered what Albert would do in his situation. Would Albert sneak out on his own, steal the major’s plan, and rescue the Ekat before the others woke up in the morning? The major thought that he was Albert — so what did he expect him to do and what special skills did he have to offer? The only thing Rupert knew Albert was good at was being a smarmy pig.

But thinking things like that about Albert didn’t give Rupert the same sort of satisfaction they had before. He pulled his coat tighter around himself and pulled his knees up closer to his chest. If blaming Albert for things that went wrong wasn’t going to make him feel better, then he didn’t know what to do.

In the morning, Rupert’s coat was frozen into stiff pleats and a film of muddy ice had crusted around his boots, so thick that he couldn’t get to his laces. The others were awake. Marie had opened the top of the lantern and was heating a small thermos of water over the little flame.

“Your major is outside doing leaps and nonsense,” said Marie, her nose turned upward. Rupert stood and stretched, and went to the window where the lantern had been last night. Major Thompson was out in the small open space in front of the barn doing calisthenics.

“He’s not my major any more than he’s yours,” said Rupert, coming back to the lantern. “What have you got there?”

“Café,”
said Marie.

Rupert reached into his rucksack and pulled out a half-squashed paper packet of soda crackers. “Would you care to share breakfast?” he said. She wouldn’t give him any coffee if he didn’t share something with her, he knew. And Rupert would have given his left arm for any kind of warmth.

Marie considered this for a moment.
“Oui,”
she said. And then, “Do you think that we should save
un petit peu
for
le
major?”

Rupert thought about that for a moment. “What do you think he’d do if we didn’t?”

“Eat us for his breakfast?” said Marie.

Rupert almost laughed.
Almost
. Except it was too close to being an actual, possible truth that he didn’t think it quite prudent. But still, they saved him a few of the crackers and a sip of coffee.

“Why are you here?” Rupert asked as they ate. “I mean — helping to get the Ekat back?”

“Do you want to know why
I
am here, or why it is not some big and strong Janus man with the muscles and things?” said Marie.

“Both,” said Rupert.

Marie pursed her lips for a moment. “It is no good to have a war in your home. My brother fights; my
papa
has taken sick. It is not good here. France is ruined. And when I heard that they had taken this Dr. Woolsey, and that he was to make weapons for the Germans — I could not let that happen.”

“But what can you do to stop it?” said Rupert. “I mean — you’re a Janus. What are you going to do?”

Marie narrowed her eyes. “You are rude. And I will like to see you try to get across
la
Lys without my help. I will like to see you speak German and French and English, please.”

“All right, fine,” said Rupert.

“Do you know what it is like,” said Marie, “to see your family so broken? My brother is off at the war — I may never see him again. But I think he would be glad I do this. Even though he hates the Tomas and the Lucian. He thinks that you are what make war.”

“I have a brother, too,” said Rupert, taking a sip of the coffee. “He’s off fighting, too. Like me, I guess.”

“Do you worry for him?” she asked.

“It’s complicated,” said Rupert. Before, he hadn’t, really. Everyone had made the war seem so innocuous — like no one would actually ever be hurt or die from it. Now, suddenly, he did find himself wondering where Albert was along the line. Was he cold and wet, too? Did he think of Rupert, and where he had gone? “I didn’t before. But I do now. I want him to make it home as much as I want me to make it home, I guess. He’s my brother.”

After their rationed breakfast, Major Thompson gathered them all together for a strategy session.

The Ekat scientist was being held just across the Lys River — which was also just on the other side of the German trenches — in a factory. Major Thompson’s sources told him that it was heavily guarded by soldiers.

“Well, that much would be obvious,” said Marie. “Do you think that they would just leave him on a leash in the middle of a field?”

Major Thompson scowled. “That’s enough out of you for now.”

They would go to the river today, Major Thompson said, to survey the area. And then, that night, they would make their move.

“If I may, Major,” said Rupert, “don’t you think we should wait for a break in the weather? It looks like snow, and the last thing we’d want to do is leave a trail to where we are camped.”

Rupert certainly wasn’t scared — a Lucian would never back away from a challenge — and certainly not in front of a Janus or a Tomas. Something like that would equate to generations of shame upon the forefathers — or something else like out of a Greek tragedy. Rupert refused to be a part of that. Still, he would feel a little more at ease if he knew he weren’t going into enemy territory that very night.

“I just don’t see who put you in charge of this operation,” Rupert continued. “This isn’t a military mission; your rank doesn’t mean anything here. As the future head of the Lucian branch, I strongly feel that I should be put into the leadership position.”

“I object,” said Marie. “This is my land, and my country. I should say what we do.”

“And I say out of the three of us, I’m the only one with any battlefield experience. So let’s have the two of you stop your whining and let’s get ready,” said the major.