Women of Courage (67 page)

Karl-Otto strode into the library and flung the boy down on a sofa. His mother immediately broke free from Adolf and stood protectively over him. Charles forced himself out of his chair and took three paces towards them before he was restrained by Franz.

Werner listened to their story, appalled. It had to be true; the woman’s dress was covered in blood. This place is looking like a battlefield casualty station, he thought.

Charles was staring at Deborah, his face white with disbelief, horror and — could it be admiration? ‘You killed him?’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I had to. He wouldn’t give me the keys.’

‘The keys?’ It made no sense to Charles. But it didn’t matter. Tom was here, safe. That must be Simon’s blood on Deborah’s dress, not her own. She seemed to him like some avenging angel out of the Old Testament. A witch. A saviour.
My wife
.

With an effort he turned to Werner. The man was standing quite still, watching the two of them. He looks as shocked as I am, Charles thought. He decided to press his advantage.

‘You must realise your wretched scheme is finished now,’ he said as coolly as he could. ‘There’s your guide and chief torturer dead already, before you even leave the house. That second shot must have woken half the county. I suggest you surrender your weapons to me, now, before anyone else is hurt.’

He stepped away from Franz, and held out his hand for Werner’s gun.

Werner hesitated for a second. He’s right, he thought. How can I carry on like this? It’s like trying to pick up quicksilver with a fork — the harder I try the more things run away. He became aware that his men were looking to him for orders, anxiously.

But if I surrender now we’re all lost. We’ll hang, probably, or spend years cramped in some filthy prison. And this arrogant sod will have beaten me again.

He wrenched his lips into a grim smile, and said: ‘On the contrary, I see my plan has worked, Colonel Cavendish. The arrival of your son has cured your weakness and given you new energy. I have no need of a guide, I know the way to Craigavon quite well. Now, we will spend the next hour sprucing up your uniform and providing some food for your son, while Franz brings the car round to the front door. As for your wife . . .’

He stared at the haggard, bloodstained figure on the sofa, her face streaked by tears, her arms wrapped protectively around the fair-haired boy in the grey blankets, whose big eyes stared at him in horror. Werner’s heart almost failed him.

‘…. she had better clean herself up as well. She is an affront to humanity.’

Deborah wrapped her arms tighter round the boy, almost squeezing the breath out of him. ‘I am not leaving my son,’ she said. ‘You can do what you like to me, but you shan’t touch him.’

The cold blue eyes facing her blazed with an icy determination that made her stomach freeze within her. ‘I shall do what I like, Mrs Cavendish,’ Werner said. ‘To you or anyone else who gets in my way. I suggest you remember that, for whatever short time you may have left upon this earth.’

If only I had kept the bayonet, Deborah thought. But I couldn’t do that again, it was too foul. And anyway, there are four of them. I wish I knew where Sarah was. But she’s all alone, she can’t help now. If only I wasn’t so tired. I never knew fear made you tired but it’s true. But I have to fight back. Not for myself or Charles but for Tom.

Her gaze did not shift from Werner’s eyes. In a grey, bleak voice she said: ‘That’s what young Simon said, only a few minutes ago. There is still a God in heaven, Mr von Weichsaker. If you lay a finger on my son, what happened to Simon Fletcher will happen to you, as well.’

The lane was longer than Sarah had ever believed possible. It seemed to her that she had been running for hours and her body wasn’t working any more. She had stopped several times for breath, and twice she had sat down in the mud in the middle of the lane. Once she was down, there was a strong temptation to sleep. But each time she dragged herself to her feet and stumbled wearily on.

It seemed to her that the lane twisted and turned more than she had remembered. Perhaps that was only the dark, or perhaps she herself was weaving hazily from one side of the lane to the other. She knew she was doing it a little, but she had no idea exactly how much. It didn’t matter anyway, the main thing was that she was going on. It doesn’t matter how slowly I’m going, she thought defiantly, even a snail would get there in the end so long as it kept going in the right direction.

In the right direction.

The horrible thought struck her as she tottered around another bend and saw nothing in front of her but a further stretch of dark road between trees, with the puddles on the surface reflecting the lightening grey of the sky above. She sat down abruptly on the line of tussocky grass which ran down the centre of the lane, and dropped her head between her knees, while her legs trembled and the breath rasped painfully into her lungs.

What if I’m going the wrong way?

If I turned the wrong way when I first came into the lane all this effort will be taking me further away from the village, not nearer. I couldn’t have done that, could I?

She knew she could. She had lived too long in a city and she had never had a good sense of direction. She had often got lost in the country, even around Glenfee. She remembered playful arguments about it with Jonathan on their honeymoon. It had been a joke, all those years ago, but not now.

If I can’t be trusted to find my way in the daytime, how can I be sure I’ve got it right in the dark, in a rainstorm, when my body’s broken because of prison and my mind’s all hazy because we killed that man?

She dragged herself to her feet and took a few steps further down the lane. But it was so hard, and what was the point if she might be going the wrong way? She stood still, irresolute, wondering what to do. Rain still dripped down the back of her neck, and she shivered with cold. She noticed the grey hurrying clouds above were getting lighter, and realised she could see the track ahead more clearly than before. There were still dark trees on either side, but she could see a strip of grass running down the centre of the lane, puddles in the ruts on either side, a farm gate some fifty yards ahead. Dawn must be on its way.

Perhaps if she got to the gate she would be able to look out across the fields and catch sight of the village or the house. Then she would be able to work out where she was from that. But she would have to hurry. Dawn was around six o’clock, she thought and Deborah had told her that Charles’s car was expected to leave for Craigavon soon after seven. Even when she got to the village it would still take time to round up the men to stop them.

But when daylight came, she might meet someone — a farm labourer, perhaps — who could help her.

With the dawn the wind had got up. Vast gusts of it blustered through the trees, setting them swaying and creaking beside her like the sea. As she lurched towards the farm gate an unusually large gust howled through a gap in the trees, caught her sodden skirts, and sent her staggering sideways into the ditch. I can’t stand much more of this, she thought, my body just won’t take it.

As she stumbled to her feet again a car came round the corner behind her, its headlights glistening through the driving rain. This is it, she thought. Someone who can help me at last!

She tottered out into the middle of the lane, waving her arms frantically. The car would have to stop; she was on the grassy patch in the middle of the lane and there was no way round. The driver saw her and applied the brakes, the back wheels sliding sideways through the mud. It stopped about ten yards away from her.

Sarah sobbed with relief. There were two men in the car, wearing leather driving helmets and goggles that covered their faces. One of them lifted a gauntleted hand, opened the door, and got out. His companion got out the other side.

She started to walk towards the car, then paused. There was something odd, something familiar about the car, she thought. What was it?

Fear crawled like worms in her stomach. That car — it was Charles’s Lancia — the one the Germans were going to take to Craigavon! And one of the men — the one climbing out of the passenger seat — was holding a shotgun in his hand.

Shortly after dawn the rain stopped. But the grey clouds still scudded eastwards over the grounds, chased by a loud, boisterous wind that bent and tossed the tall trees near the road, and churned the waters of the lough into miles of white horses and short, choppy grey waves.

The wind rattled the windows of Glenfee Lodge, and piercing draughts hissed and scurried through the rooms. Werner stood with arms folded at the end of the library, scowling as he stared out into the cheerless light of day.

It was nearly seven o’clock. He would have to decide in the next few minutes whether to go ahead with his mission or abort it. They would have to leave on time — with a gale from the west like this the journey east to Craigavon could easily take longer than expected, to say nothing of the risk of the engine stopping if it began to rain again, or of the car sliding off the road in the wet. He had sent Karl-Otto and Franz in search of the chauffeur and the car. They would bring it round to the front door any minute now.

Certainly enough had gone wrong already for him to justify aborting the mission. Charles wounded, Simon dead, several of the servants and that other woman, his wife’s sister, apparently vanished — he had been able to trace neither the butler nor the housekeeper so far this morning — and the boy’s mother was completely intractable. No one could blame him if he estimated the risks were too great at this point to continue, and withdrew with his three subordinates still unharmed.

But failure will not further my career, Werner thought. There will be no medal. No presentation from the Kaiser. Charles Cavendish will live to laugh, and mock me again.

But if we go ahead, what can I do with the boy’s mother? She had not let go of Tom once since she had come into the house, and Werner’s men had been reluctant to prise them apart. Werner had been about to order them to do it once, when they had brought her a clean dress, but she had marched upstairs with the boy’s hand gripped tightly in her own, and he had seen a look in his men’s eyes which had made him change his mind and order them to follow her and stand guard outside the door instead.

They were brave men, but sentimental. They would kill Carson or Cavendish without a thought, but a mother and a child was a different matter. I ought to shoot her myself, he thought. After all she’s a murderess, she killed Fletcher. But if I do I may have a rebellion on my hands, just when I need maximum obedience and devotion to duty.

In the next few minutes I shall have to decide. If we go ahead we can’t take her with us, and I daren’t leave her behind.

He glanced over his shoulder at the far end of the library, where Charles, Deborah and Tom sat together round a small fire which Franz had lit. Like the ideal happy family, Werner thought bitterly. Guarded by Franz, watching them quietly with a cigarette in his mouth and a cocked rifle resting on a chair in front of him.

Charles had not thought it was possible to feel such pain. Not the pain from the bullet that had grazed his skull. That was an ache, merely. Ferocious, but bearable. He had born many worse wounds in his time. In battle, in skirmishes on the North West Frontier, even in falls from polo ponies. They had all been wounds he had born with honour.

The pain that hurt him was in his whole body, behind his eyes and in every muscle of his face and especially, deep in his chest. It was unbearable. It felt as though his face were melting into tears that ran down inside his skin so that every tube and sinus and pore was suffused and bloated with ugliness. It felt as though a red-hot wire brush was scraping the lining of his lungs. It felt as though he was standing alone in the middle of a regimental square of sand, watched by all the soldiers he had ever commanded and by his parents and grandparents and family to the twelfth generation, while his badges of rank were stripped from him and his ceremonial sword was broken and flung in the mud at the feet of his son.

The name of the pain was shame.

His son sat opposite him, his dark eyes haunted by fear, clutched in the arms of Deborah whose eyes were hot and dark with anger. Charles was ashamed to look at either of them.

I wanted my son to see me as a hero, he thought, but I do not deserve to have a son at all. None of this would have happened to him if it had not been for me. I was so blinded by lust for Simon’s beauty that I saw nothing of the monster within. Even now I am grieved for his death!

I am not even a competent soldier. Only Deborah — Deborah! — has managed to fight back. Even now, Charles could scarcely believe it.

Awkwardly, only briefly glancing up from the fire, he asked: ‘Did you mean to kill him?’

‘Does it matter?’

She was not looking at him; all her attention seemed divided between Tom, at her side, and Werner, brooding by the window near the door.

‘No, not really. Only . . .’ he drew a deep breath, through the pain of shame in his lungs and his face. ‘. . . I suppose I should say that you were perfectly right to do it.’

She glanced at him briefly, and tears started in her eyes. ‘There was no time to think of what would happen. Of course we would have avoided it if we could. There was . . . so much blood, Charles.’ She shuddered and glanced at Tom, then lifted her head determinedly to stare warily at Werner. ‘And there will be more, if these devils have their way.’

He nodded, and forced himself to look at Tom. ‘Don’t worry, old son. Chin up. We’ll beat ‘em yet.’

Tom forced a brief, pale smile which wrenched his heart. Do the old lies still work for him, then? Surely even Tom is old enough to recognise disgrace when he sees it.

But apparently not. It seemed that Tom trusted him, even now. Of course Tom had no idea what hold Simon had had over his father, or why Werner had chosen him of all the officers in the UVF to blackmail. Not yet. He still thought his father could do something to save him. With honour.

Abruptly, Charles stood up. Franz cocked his rifle warningly but Charles ignored him. He strode unsteadily across the room towards the door until Franz barred his way physically, holding the rifle across his chest.