The 39 Clues: Cahill Files: Silent Night (8 page)

In the middle of the night, Rupert awoke in the hay, covered in a clammy, cold sweat. He scrambled to his feet, breathing heavily and spinning around. He was dizzy and dazed and he knew, he
knew
, that someone had just been there. He could feel the sudden absence, like a shadow hanging in the air. He looked at the hay, but he was rubbish at tracking and so he had no idea if there were any footprints there. The door was still shut and the lantern was still where they had left it, turned down to a low haze in the center of the barn floor. But someone
had
been there, Rupert could feel it.

Or maybe he had dreamed it.

His dream. Black shadows everywhere — over the forest, the trenches, the barn. They had crept up over the horizon and sucked up everything, leaving the entire countryside in darkness. Madrigals.

It had been a dream. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that they had been
here
.

He looked around. Everything seemed normal. Marie was curled in the hay like a cat, and the major was snoring. In the distance, church bells were ringing, and for the life of him, Rupert couldn’t figure out why.

He stepped outside. The air was cold and crisp; heavy gray clouds laden with snow had moved in while they slept, and the tingle of expectation lingered in the air. Rupert felt it, too, crawling over his skin and making his hair bristle.

He had, in that moment, never felt more alive, or more aware of the world around him. The cold had stripped everything down to its most basic stuff; he thought he could feel each piece of the air as it blew past his cheeks. The church bells stopped, and there was a loud silence. There was no gunfire, no sound of canons or artillery. Just quiet.

Rupert wondered if everyone could hear the silence. He imagined that the whole of the battlefield came to a halt, that the ships in the Channel hung in the water, that Mother and Father back in England even paused in their dreaming. It was just for a moment; the church bells began to ring again. Even so, Rupert had felt it.

It wasn’t about Clues and Lucians anymore. Not wholly, anyway. It wasn’t even about Rupert and Albert. The moment of quiet was gone, but he craved it again. He craved that peace, and he wanted it not just for himself, but for the battlefield and for the ships and for Mother and Father and the rest of them. War, he thought, was not good for a person. And if the Madrigals were going to try and wage war, then the Cahills would have to stop fighting amongst themselves long enough to wage peace. And they’d start by rescuing the Ekat.

They’d go again tonight. They’d risk their lives again to try and prevent catastrophe.

It was funny, he thought, this family of his. They were capable of such great, beautiful things. His cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents had built castles and cities, painted and sculpted the most beautiful works in the world, conquered mountains, and delved into the mysteries of the universe.

But it would be foolish, and a lie, to pretend that they didn’t have blood on their hands — all of them. Their squabbles and ambitions had chipped away at humanity as much as they had added to it, tossing around everyday people between them like the waves and wind toss grains of sand.

Rupert had always felt that this was the natural order of things. That they who were exceptional should do the important things and everyone else should just sit tight while those with capabilities sorted the heavy lifting. That all of the non-Cahills were just foot soldiers and pawns in a greater game. Now, he thought, that seemed so foolish.

“You’re up early,” said the major, stepping outside from the barn.

“You were snoring,” said Rupert, not wanting, yet, to tell anyone about the Madrigals or his nightmare. “It makes it hard to sleep. Do you know why the church bells are ringing? Do you think the war is over?”

“No,” said the major. “The tide can’t have turned so quickly. And if the Germans had won, we can assume the French wouldn’t be ringing their bells. I don’t know.”

“Is there coffee left?” asked Rupert.

“We can check,” said the major, and they started to walk back inside. But the major stopped in his tracks. “It’s December 24. The bells,” he said. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

At dusk, Rupert, Marie, and Major Thompson left the barn and headed back toward the trenches. They couldn’t cross at the shallows along the river again. When they had gone to check on it, they’d found a dozen men at the bridge, and more lined up along the banks.

“Alors,”
said Marie. “We are doomed.”

“We’re not doomed,” said Rupert. “We’ve just got to think about things a different way.” Rupert paused. He couldn’t believe he was about to suggest such a mad plan — his hands started to shake at the thought of it. But no matter how frightened he was, it was the Ekat that mattered. “We’ll go up through the trenches and across no-man’s-land. Marie, you’ll help us find the best way into the factory. Once we’re inside and we see what we’re up against, the major will tell us where to go and we’ll search for the Ekat. No matter what, we stick together. We’ll do better that way. We’ll find the Ekat, and we’ll bring him back to safety.”

It was a practically impossible plan, and their chances of failing were astronomical. So it was perfect for a bunch of Cahills.

Marie kept Rupert’s extra uniform (and teased him appropriately about the silk linings before admitting that it did make things more comfortable, and warmer), and tucked her braids up under a cap. The major lent them legitimacy as they snuck back toward the trenches. No one would question the two young privates with an officer.

Rupert peeked over the top of the trench — the German line was hardly thirty yards away. If all was quiet, he could hear them talking and yelling to one another.

“There’s a break in their lines there,” said the major, peering across with him and pointing to a gap to the left. “We’ll get through there.”

Rupert opened his mouth — the “gap” wasn’t more than three yards across and blocked with pikes and coils of wire. But he closed it without saying a word. The major knew about these things. Rupert had to trust him.

He jumped back down to the bottom of the trench, and Rupert followed.

“All right,” said the major. “We go on three. Both of you — you keep your heads down, you move quickly. If anyone goes down, the other two have to keep moving. You hear me? You keep moving.”

Rupert nodded, though it felt wrong. Could he just leave Marie or the major to die? A week ago, he would have. No questions asked. He might not have even felt guilty about it.

“Two,” the major was saying. Rupert snapped back to attention. The major watched the moon. As soon as it drifted behind the thick clouds, he called three, and was going up and over the side of the trench. Rupert followed, with Marie right behind.

They moved quickly. They hopped over pits and craters made by mortar shells, and sidestepped the bodies that had died only recently, left in the open air because there was no chance to retrieve them.

“Hold back!” the major hissed. Rupert and Marie froze.

Ahead, small lights were cropping up along the German lines. First one, flickering in the darkness, and then another a little farther on. And then, all at once, there were what looked like hundreds, like tiny stars had come falling to earth and landed along the lines.

“Guns?” said Marie. Rupert shrugged the slightest bit. He was afraid to move, lest they saw him.

But no, they weren’t guns. “Candles,” said Rupert. Dozens of candles, reaching out through the darkness in their own small ways. “What are they doing?” Rupert asked.

It was slow at first — just one lone voice in the dark. But it was deep and beautiful, like good earth. It stood alone, ringing out in the night with the force of dozens of church bells. And then, from the trenches behind Rupert, came a soft tenor, and it drifted out into the night air like falling snow. One sang in German and one in English, but neither cared and both knew what the other said — what the other meant.

Rupert looked around behind him. The English soldiers had lined the lip of their trench with as many candles and lanterns as they could muster up as well. The light didn’t reach far, but Rupert could see the pale, half-smiling faces of dozens of soldiers peering out across the lines. Caught out there in the middle of it, Rupert felt afloat in a sea of fallen stars.

One by one, new voices and new languages joined the singing. The sounds of the English and the German and the French songs mingled together in the air over no-man’s-land like a great net, like threads all twining together. Rupert thought if the stars did fall that night, each one would be caught up before it could reach the ground. They would hang down over the field and shine over them. The light would chase out the darkness of the war.

“Monsieur Major?” whispered Marie. “Are you crying?”

“No!” said the major, and then he snuffled. Marie moved over and took the major’s hand, and then Rupert’s. Together, the three stood quietly and let the night happen around them.

“You don’t shoot!” called out one of the Germans. And then one of the German soldiers pitched something over the side of his trench. The three Cahills flinched; Rupert drew his arms up over his face. But instead of exploding, the mortar bounced along until Rupert saw it wasn’t a mortar at all. It was a ball.

“Wie bitte? Was nennst du es?”
said the German. “
Ah, ja. Danke.
Football!”

A few English heads popped up at that. And then, slowly, with some trepidation, the men began to climb out. The Germans were just as thin and dirty as the English and French soldiers, and they shivered just as much. They looked no different, save for their clothes. Rupert wet his lips and watched with his breath kept inside of him while the first German and Englishman came up to each other.

“You want to pick sides, then?” said the English soldier. And the German nodded. Others were coming out of the trenches with stretchers, come to gather their fallen countrymen and to give them a holy and peaceful burial.

“Come on,” said Marie, nodding toward the break in the German line. She was right. They still had things to do, though Rupert didn’t want to move for anything in the world. But there was a line to cross, a factory to sneak into, an Ekat to rescue, and a world to save. It was a busy Christmas.

They slipped past the soldiers and the lines, and then crept back into the shadows. Marie led them up a road, and ahead they could see the black fingers of the factory again.

“We’ll go to Davenport’s sewer grate,” said the major, and Marie nodded. Rupert’s mouth dried out.

“Wait,” said Rupert. He thought of the Madrigal, lying in wait for them to come. He wanted to use his own idea, but what if it all went wrong? The other two turned and looked at him, puzzled. “Isn’t there another way?”

“Non,”
said Marie. “It was a good idea. And no one saw you.”

“But we’ll need something to break in with,” said Rupert.

“Like these?” said the major, holding up a pair of bolt cutters.

“Where did you get those?”

“I pay attention when you talk,” said the major. “I came prepared.”

Rupert’s stomach twisted cold. The Madrigal had seen him. But could he tell them now, when he had waited so long? What if they thought he was keeping something from them intentionally? What if they thought he was trying to lead them into trouble? That might have been the case once, but it wasn’t anymore.