The Foreshadowing (28 page)

“Cardonette,” he said, quite quietly, but I could see he was excited underneath. “They marched from here to Cardonette. Four days ago.”

“Four days?” I cried.

“Not so loud,” Jack hissed. “They’re hundreds of men on foot. We’re on a bike. We can catch them up.”

11

Cardonette turned out to be back the way we had come; in fact, we had passed within a mile of it earlier. But we weren’t to know that.

It was evening by the time we got there, and with night falling I felt less conspicuous. We risked riding right into the heart of the village, passing by a tented village of soldiers in the fields as we did so. I craned my neck and strained my eyes trying to see if I could recognize anything that might lead us to Tom, but Jack told me to keep still.

“Have you any idea how many soldiers there are out here? How many units? How many battalions? If we have to find a needle in a haystack, then at least we need a clue where to look.”

So I waited outside while Jack went into an estaminet for more information.

He came back very quickly.

“This is it?” I asked.

“No, but we’re getting there,” he said. “The Thirty-third were here, and with them, the Nineteenth Brigade. Your brother’s battalion is in the Nineteenth.”

“But where have they gone?”

“A place called Daours. It’s back down on the Somme, near where it meets the Ancre.”

“Can you be sure they were here?”

“Oh, yes,” Jack said. “They remember them well here. The locals were forced to give their houses as billets for the soldiers. They don’t like that. They have every reason to remember them.”

We were getting closer to Tom, but not close enough.

“When were they here?” I asked.

“They left on Tuesday, three days ago.”

“Then we have to hurry,” I said.

“No,” said Jack. “It’s getting late. We’re tired. We’ll find a bed here and go on in the morning.”

“No!” I said.

“Alexandra—”

“No,” I said again. “We have to go on. I’m not tired. It’s not that late. And it’s much safer for us to travel in the dark, anyway. You know I’m right.”

And for once, Jack had to agree.

So we moved on, to Daours.

10

We rode into the night.

It seemed the whole world had shrunk to just us. The two of us: Jack and me. Or maybe the three of us: Jack, me and the motorbike. Maybe I am tired, maybe I am going a little crazy, I thought as we trundled on the bike through the darkness. But without the bike I would be as lost as without Jack.

The bike’s headlight shone dimly in front of us, and Jack was afraid of that, to show a light in the dark, but there was little we could do. It shone ahead of us, just enough to see the way as mile after mile of narrow mud-laden track went by under the wheels, while I listened to the sound of the engine rise and fall as it plowed through the varying ground.

I was sore, sore from holding Jack; my arms felt like lead around his waist. Sore from holding the bike between my legs, sore from sitting on the tiny metal plate.

It was very late by the time we reached Daours, and we repeated the whole performance. While Jack asked around in the village in his excellent French, I lolled on the motorbike, and ignored anyone who came my way.

The news was bad.

“They were here,” Jack said, “till Wednesday afternoon. Then they marched on to Buire.”

“How far is that?” I asked.

“About another ten miles,” Jack said.

I got ready to argue with him, but I didn’t have to.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll find him, I know it.”

“You mean, you’ve seen it?” I asked, but Jack shook his head.

“No,” he said, turning away. “No. I just think.”

I wanted to lie down and die. Every bit of me was tired, we had finished our food long ago, and I was ready to give up, but I couldn’t. Tom was driving me on.

We got back onto the bike again, and slowly crawled out of Daours toward Buire. The night deepened around us, and through it I saw flashes of light ahead of us.

“Lightning?” I shouted to Jack over his shoulder, but he shook his head, and I understood.

Guns. Big guns were firing ahead of us, though not a sound could be heard over the noise of our engine.

We rode on and I gripped Jack grimly, and in the night and the haze in my head, I saw ravens sweeping through the darkness on either side of the bike. I shook my head to clear the vision, but they wouldn’t leave, and I don’t know if they were real or not. I shut my eyes and tried to think only of Tom, but whenever I managed to bring him to mind, he was replaced by Edgar, laughing at me, waving a fistful of black feathers in my face.

We reached Buire in the dead of night.

Jack cut the engine and we looked at the sorry little village. A church was its most noble feature; otherwise, it was a mess of small terraced houses and the odd grander one.

Finally I was in the thick of people. Despite the late hour, the village was astir with hordes of soldiers, and more amazing to my eye, horses. Lines of cavalry wound their way around either end of the village, the horses plodding slowly and wearily in some places, proud and fine in others. I stared as a line of Indians made their way past us on horseback, their pointed beards and turbaned heads an almost unbelievable sight.

No one took the slightest notice of us. Everyone was busy doing something, going somewhere or just being too tired to wonder at a dispatch rider and his passenger in the middle of the night.

Once more Jack made some enquiries, and once more the news was tantalizing.

“They were here this morning,” he said. “They left before noon for Meaulte.”

“How far?” was all I could manage to say.

“I’ve never been there,” Jack said. “It’s about six miles. The road’s easy enough to follow, but I’ve no idea how long it will take.”

I couldn’t believe we were so close to Tom, that we had traveled in a day what it had taken him four days to march. I said so to Jack.

“They stopped for a day or two here. Another day and we’d have met them.”

“So . . . ?” I asked.

“So they’ll be in Meaulte now. They’ll be there tomorrow. It’s six miles. We can take the chance to rest here.”

I began to protest, but Jack stopped me.

“I can’t go on. Alexandra. Please trust me. They’ll still be in Meaulte tomorrow morning. We can leave at dawn and then we’ll find Tom. But we need to get some rest first.”

I was ashamed of myself, but in truth, a part of me was happy to agree with Jack, a part of me that was tired beyond belief and exhausted in mind as well as body.

There were large numbers of soldiers in tents in an old orchard on the edge of the village. We kept away from them, but found a small hayloft nearby. There was just enough room for the two of us.

As I went to sleep I heard the sound of guns. The atmosphere seemed to change around us, seemed to tense, as the low boom and rumble of the barrage reached us from the front line.

But Jack noticed none of this, and was already snoring by my side.

9

With night came the raven dream.

The dream of Tom, the dream of the bullet, and once more I watched, paralyzed, as with infinite slowness, and in precise detail, I saw the gun fire. There was a bright flash, followed by a loud bang. The bullet hurtled toward Tom, ravens’ feathers whirling around him as if caught in a tornado.

The bullet left a curious trail of cordite behind it, a thin smoke that became unnaturally thick, and began to block my vision. I was blinded by it, until just as the bullet hit Tom, I lost sight of him altogether.

When I woke this morning, the world was shrouded in mist.

8

The mist was thick. So thick I could barely see twenty paces ahead.

I woke first, and shook Jack by the shoulder. I have no idea how early it was, but already there were sounds of the encampment stirring and I wanted to be away. I thought of Cassandra, and of the end of her journey. Her story ended in a pool of her own blood on the steps of the palace in Argos. I knew my ending would be very different from hers, and almost as if I had been bereaved, I knew that she was no longer with me.

The mist, at least, seemed a friend, and hid our progress as we climbed down from the hayloft and wheeled the bike out of the village without starting it. There was no point in adding to our problems.

We weren’t alone as we left the village. An almost constant stream of wounded and prisoners approached from the opposite direction, and Jack decided we may as well start the motorcycle again. It looked stranger pushing it than riding it. And the less time anyone had to look at me, the better.

Once or twice I would fancy that someone was looking at me too closely, but no one said anything. Everyone was too busy to worry much about a strange boy on the back of a dispatch rider’s motorbike. I suppose the truth is that no one actually looked at me. They just saw another boy in a uniform.

At last we came to Meaulte.

The mist was still heavy, but we could see that Meaulte was another drab town. It had a dejected air about it as we rode through. A utilitarian, slightly sordid sort of a place, with only its church to be proud of.

And it was there that I thought it was all over.

Jack could find out nothing. Although the place is only a mile or two behind the front, there were still lots of locals in the village. They resented the presence of the war in their world, and the presence of the army.