Water Song (11 page)

"You would love me if I wanted you to," he came back at her angrily. "Don't you think I learned to make love potions? There are more methods than the one Pliny the old Roman knew. There are hundreds of different kinds, and my mam taught them all to me."

Emma looked at him, stunned. She didn't believe him--yet she'd seen firsthand how his potion had healed Kid.

Could he really make her love him if she didn't want to? Did she believe he had that power?

Suddenly, she was unsure. "You wouldn't do that," she said uncertainly.

"No," he agreed, his anger seeming to drain away. He turned back to the window, once again staring out into the rain. "I wouldn't."

Claudine came in to collect the plates. Emma was in the bathroom washing up, preparing to go to the market. Kid lay asleep on the bed. "Do you have it ready?" she asked Jack, speaking French.

"One second," he replied in French, checking back and forth between the numbers he'd written on his pad and the open copy of
Oliver Twist
on his lap. "How do you spell the name of the chlorine gas they use now? Is it with a
k
or a
c
?"

She didn't know, so he spelled chlorine as best he could on his pad before looking on the printed pages for the corresponding numbers he required. When translated, his sentence would read:
They are replacing the kloreen gas with a much worse one called mustard gas. They are also trying to make a gas that will eat through the rubber on the gas masks.
Emma had heard two guards discussing this one day when she happened to be 
standing just on the other side of the door. She'd told Jack, and now Claudine would carry this information to her friend the butcher, who would pass it on from there.

The bathroom door began to open as Jack hastily thrust the coded paper at Claudine. "You look nice, sug," he told Emma as she entered the room dressed to go to the market.

"Thanks," she grunted.

"Is your friend the colonel expecting you to bring him back some big Allied secret today?"

She sighed miserably. "I don't know what to tell him! If I hear anything useful to him I'm certainly not going to reveal it. It's not easy to keep coming up with useless facts."

"Tell him George the Fifth and Czar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm are all first cousins," he suggested lightly. This fact always astounded him, that the leaders of England, Russia, and Germany were all grandchildren of England's Queen Victoria. "Tell Colonel Schiller that the royal brats have all kissed and made up, so everyone gets to go home."

She smiled wanly. "If it were only that simple," she said. "I really need something to tell him, though."

"Kid told me he heard in the trenches that Turkey is talking about joining Germany and Austria," he suggested. He figured that if Kid had heard it, the Germans knew it too, but it might sound convincing to the colonel.

She considered this and nodded. "Thanks. That 
might work. I'll say I overheard two shoppers talking about it."

"Good luck," he said as she left with Claudine, "and see if you can bring back some good cheese."

"You two aren't really married, are you?" Kid asked. He was awake and looking out at Jack from beneath the covers. "I heard that colonel say you were."

"It's only a cover story," Jack replied from across the room. "Emma figured that if they didn't know I was a Brit soldier, they would be nicer to me. Since I talk American, she hoped they might believe it, and they did."

He smiled at the memory of that day as he walked toward Kid. "You should have seen her givin' it to them, all high and mighty British, tellin' them this was her place and she'd go where she pleased. You'd have thought she was the queen herself. You've got to admit that it was quick thinkin' on her part, the whole husband story. It saved my bacon, that much's certain."

"But you two love each other a lot, don't you?" Kid said. "I can see it."

"Naw, she don't love me," Jack disagreed brusquely. "Listen, Kid, I've been wantin' to tell you: I'm sorry I lost track of you that day during the gas attack."

"It's okay," Kid replied. "Everybody was running in all directions, and nobody could see a thing. Wasn't it bad luck, both of us being there and not even with our own battalion."

"Rotten luck," Jack agreed.

"Fifteen thousand soldiers were gassed, British and French troops both. Two thousand soldiers were killed by the Germans that day," Kid told him. "Some soldiers just coughed themselves to death right where they stood."

"Then I suppose we were a little lucky, after all," Jack suggested. "At least we're alive and in one piece."

"I guess so," Kid agreed. "And, do you know what? The Germans didn't even gain that much ground from the attack. They didn't really understand what they'd done, so they didn't rush in to grab the land."

"It's a crazy war," Jack commented.

"But you and Emma might have never met if it wasn't for the war," Kid pointed out. "So maybe some good came out of it, after all."

"I told you, she don't love me," Jack insisted.

"I don't know," Kid replied. "I think you're wrong."

Emma noticed that Kid's vivid blue eyes brightened every day as he grew stronger. "I knew right away you and Jack weren't married. He certainly would have told me if he had a wife as pretty as you," he said one day as she helped feed him the chicken broth Claudine had brought in.

"Thanks, Kid. What's your real name, by the way?"

"You don't want to know. It's too horrible."

"What is it?"

Kid wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Wendell," he whispered. "I hate it."

"I think it has character," Emma complimented him.

"At school they used to call me Wendy to just to make me mad. Call me Kid. Everybody calls me that. I like it much better, although I don't know if it'll still be a good name when I'm an old duffer." He laughed roughly. "If I'm so lucky as to get to be an old bloke."

"Why did you enlist so young, Kid?" she asked.

"The lure of steady meals and a love of adventure," he replied, smiling.

It sounded to her as though he'd been asked this many times before and this was his practiced reply. "Fair enough," she said. "You were in the gas attack?"

"Oh, it was awful," he told her. "If Jack hadn't given me his big handkerchief to put over my face, it would have been even worse. He could have used it himself, but he gave it to me. That's the sort he is. I heard him calling to me through that horrible cloud, but we couldn't find each other again."

"Are the gas attacks still going on?" she asked.

"Yes, but we've got gas masks now, and that's a help."

"Does the enemy know you've got them?"

"I 'spose so. They've got them too."

"Do you mean we're also using poison gas now?" It horrified her to think that the Allies would stoop to using something so inhumane.

"We must be using it. I've seen the enemy troops wearing the masks in battle."

"It's all too awful," she said with a shudder.

"It's not the adventure I thought it would be, that's for certain. Far from it," Kid agreed. "I've seen things that will give me the frights for the rest of my days, though I may not have too many of those, the way things are going."

"Don't say that," she chided him gently. "This will be over soon and we can all go home. We just 
have to hang on until then."

He laughed darkly at that. "Yeah, well, hanging on will be the trick of it, won't it?"

"Where do you suppose Jack is?" Emma wondered. "I can't imagine how he simply disappears as he does."

"He's got magic," Kid stated as if it was a well-known fact. "In the trenches he'd be there, and then be gone, then be back again with a deck of cards or something to eat. He said his mum was a sort of magic maker back in his home and that he was heir apparent, the magic prince, or some such thing."

"He's told me as much," Emma said. "But do you believe it?"

"It's the only explanation that makes sense," Kid replied. "Who knows what goes on over in America?"

"I don't believe all Americans are as peculiar as Jack is," Emma stated firmly.

Kid grinned, amused at her lofty manner. "Even though you're not really married, you two are sweet for each other, aren't you?"

"Why would you say that?" Emma cried, alarmed by his words.

"I can tell by the way you are together," he said. "I have four older sisters. When one of them got all snappish and bossy with a fella, the way you are with Jack, it always meant she had a special liking for him. And, of course, anyone can see the way Jack looks at you."

"I snap at him because I find him incredibly annoying," Emma insisted.

"So you may think, but I only know what I've seen. First comes the bickering and snapping and then romance follows. I've never experienced it myself, of course. To me it's all still very mysterious."

"What's mysterious?" Jack asked as he stepped into the room from the bathroom, soaked and rubbing his head with a towel.

"Where have you been?" Emma demanded.

He held up her bulging net bag. "Got lots of good supplies. This rain brings out the bugs, and the ground gets so soaked that the worms have to come to the surface for air. It's easy pickin's when it rains this hard."

"Bugs? Worms? What are you doing?" Emma asked.

"I need this stuff," he said, tossing the bag into a drawer of the dresser and taking out a dry pair of Emma's father's pants and a shirt.

"How are you getting out?" Emma asked, standing to make her point.

"Magic. Now you see me, now you don't!"

"Stop saying that and tell me the truth!"

"Here's a truth: I wish your father were a smaller man," he said, holding the clothing up unhappily. "I don't feel I look my best in his things. They're too baggy on me."

"Yes, well, I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate having bats, worms, and bugs in his clothing drawer."

"You know what they say," Jack said glibly as he headed into the bathroom with the dry clothing. "'War is hell.'"

Emma spun toward the door as Colonel Schiller threw it open with an unceremonious bang. "Frau Sprat, have you talent for cutting hair?" he demanded. "The soldier who usually cuts the men's hair is ill, and they are growing unkempt in appearance."

"Um ... not really," she said. She'd never cut anyone's hair in her life.

"Your husband, perhaps?"

"Jack, you don't know how to cut hair, do you?" she called into the bathroom, switching to English.

Jack poked his head out from the bathroom door, an eager expression on his face. "Did you say hair?" he asked enthusiastically. "My granddad owned a barbershop in New Orleans. Tell him I can cut hair like an ace."

"You are well enough to do this?" Colonel Schiller inquired uncertainly. Emma had almost forgotten he could speak English.

"Yeah, you right, I am. Nearly right as rain," Jack assured him confidently. "Speaking of rain, this is some weather we're havin', huh?"

Colonel Schiller was not interested in exchanging pleasantries about the weather. He beckoned to a soldier standing guard outside the door. "Take Herr Sprat to the barbering station and get him what he needs," he told him. With a quick wink at Emma, Jack followed the soldier out of the room.

"I guess he really likes cutting hair," Kid observed with some bewilderment.