In a Field of Blue

by Liviero, Gemma

  I was touched by her words.

  “Take this with you,” she said, handing me Edgar’s diary. “Maybe there is a clue there. So many of the lines I have gone over in my head, but I’ve come up with nothing so far. The marriage certificate is in the back of the book for you to verify if you get the chance, but I will hold on to the will. I believe it appears legitimate, but whether the boy is Edgar’s still has to be proven. Whether the Mariette who was here is the same as the one on the certificate or an imposter is also in question. Regardless, Samuel will be taken care of. Of that you can be assured, since I know it is a question you have been burning to ask.”

  I smiled gratefully.

  She closed her eyes, and I thought that was my cue to go.

  “Rudy,” she said, and sat up. “There is something I need to give you.”

  She opened her side drawer and pulled out a sprig of rosemary with a white ribbon.

  “If the trip should give you a different truth, and should you come upon the last known place where Edgar fought, please place this there. I’ve had the vicar bless it, and hopefully it will give Edgar eternal rest.”

  “I will, Mother. I will do that for you.”

  “And this is also for you.” She passed me an envelope.

  I opened it, and inside was sixty pounds worth of banknotes.

  “Mother, that is a lot of money. Where did you get it?”

  “I sold some things when I was last in Manchester. Some silverware and several pieces of jewelry. I wish I’d taken the lot, now that most of it is gone anyway.”

  “Mother, you should not give me so much—”

  “Nonsense! I was planning to use the money to put aside for Samuel’s education, before all the terrible business of Mariette’s disappearance, but I am not sure in any case it will be enough. I think for whatever you are planning, you will need the money, and I will send you more if need be.” She paused. “I have to tell you, Rudy, I would be overjoyed to learn for certain that the boy is Edgar’s son. If not, I do not think that our finances can stretch to the education our generations have been afforded. But I believe there is a solution somewhere that will suit him and one where he will not want for the necessities of life.”

  “Yes, Mother.” She had made it clear. She was fond of the boy, but she still had reservations about Mariette and Samuel, regardless of her feelings. Economy for family would be applied differently than for those who weren’t. Pragmatic she would always be, though ultimately I believed her heart would also guide her choices.

  I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek before seeking out Samuel.

  “Where are you going?” Samuel asked in the kitchen, looking at my hat and the soft leather travel bag I was carrying.

  “I’m going to see the town where your mother and you lived.”

  “Will she be there?”

  “I’m hoping.”

  “Will you bring her back?”

  It was a question I had asked myself.

  “If she is able.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Of course, though I am not sure when exactly.”

  He looked about to cry.

  I crouched down to hug him, and he threw his small arms around my neck. I knew he continued to feel the loss of his mother terribly, and for another person to leave him, albeit temporarily, his losses continued.

  “Don’t be sad,” I said. “We’ll have many more riding times ahead when I return.”

  I pulled him away to wipe his eyes. I had questioned him about his home earlier, as had Peggy, but we were unable to glean much, other than a brief description of the house, of fishing, of men that came sometimes to visit in the night, and of several dogs there that were his friends. These descriptions were at times confusing and seemingly overembellished.

  I tapped him on the head and told him to look after Bert and Missy before he ran off to find them. Peggy held me tightly as if I were going to war or leaving for good, before Bert whisked me away.

  At the station, Bert shook my hand firmly with both of his, like I’d seen him do with Edgar. It was as if I were following in my brother’s footsteps, though there was a major point of difference. I was certain I would return.

  “You’re a fine young man, Rudy.” Bert rarely called me just by my name, and I suddenly realized how very human we all were, how in many ways, despite class, we were much the same deep down. All just yearning to be known and at the very least remembered. Bert temporarily taking the hat of a proud father was testament to the barriers that had broken down between our stations.

  I slept for most of the train journey from London to Dover, where I then caught the paddle steamer to Calais. After converting some banknotes to the local currency and spending the night at a hotel, I rose early to travel again by train, following the path where some of the fiercest battles were fought. In passing, I keenly viewed Bailleul from the window, the town showing signs of devastation, with a number of buildings still razed to the ground, but contrasted by a sense of hope from the people I spied and the emergence of new construction.

  All along the journey there was evidence of war: shell craters overgrown with weeds and wildflowers; barren, abandoned crop fields; and the remnants of houses. One village so badly shelled only a ghostly footprint left to show for it. I passed no orchards, nor could I see remains of any from the train as I passed through to my final destination. The X on the map to the right of the town gave me little to work from.

  In Armentières, the ravages of war were evident, too. I had learned from the ticket master that many people had returned quickly here after war, eager to rebuild their lives. On his recommendation, I found a newly renovated hotel. The woman behind the counter, pleasant enough but with limited English, explained the layout of the town and the service times for breakfast and dinner. I showed her the photograph of Edgar and the others, and she called her husband from a room where music was playing. The couple examined the images of Edgar and Mariette and shook their heads. They had also not heard of anyone named Edgar or Fabien nor an orchard owner by the name of Lavier.

  I offered to carry my own bag, and the woman guided me to my room and pointed out the shared bathroom down the hall, which I had to myself, since I was the only guest.

  My plan was to set out early the following morning, but with several hours of daylight ahead of me, I thought to walk around the town to explore and perhaps find someone to guide me the next day. I showed the proprietor, who served behind the bar, a picture of Edgar, and he shook his head and recommended I check the cemetery. The response was rather abrupt but not unusual. I had not found an overly welcoming face here, but one could hardly expect it as the country recovered from loss.

  I decided to rest for a moment with a glass of ale and noticed a man watching me from another table. He raised his drink to me affably before coming to sit with me. He was small with dark hair and a long mustache, and he was somewhat overdressed in a black velvet jacket, too large for his bony frame, and a satin collared shirt beneath.

  I told him I was looking for my brother, and he commiserated and said that he had lost several family members also.

  “It is so unfair what war does,” he said in broken English.

  He introduced himself as Lester and told me briefly about the progress the towns had made. He said that he was injured in service and that now he helped his brother making business deliveries. Perhaps it was the beer, but I felt at ease and happy to have his company, especially because he was someone who lived here when the dust of battles had finally settled.

  Lester said he could perhaps take me the next day to the places that Edgar might have stayed. He said he knew people in the area who had tracked down the last steps of their loved ones successfully. He also knew of several Englishmen who lived in a house nearby, who had been here during the war. He would take me to them first. He invited me to meet him at the edge of the town, where he would bring his trap the next day. The old orchard that I mentioned he knew of also.

&nb
sp; I noticed throughout our conversation that the barman had been watching us carefully.

  “I would be wary of those,” volunteered the owner after Lester had left. He had overheard my conversation with the man, and any mistrust he had of me had broken down.

  “Those?” I queried.

  “He’s not from around these parts, but he talks as if he is,” he said in English.

  The barman spoke briefly about some other relatives of foreign soldiers who had been through to pay their respects, and he hoped that I would find something to bring me peace. He had heard of orchards in the region, but since he had only come into the business after the war, he could not tell me much about the people here. From where I told him it was situated, he said it was unlikely it still existed.

  I woke early at daybreak and shaved the two days of growth that had appeared patchy and unruly around my jawline. I then ordered a small food pack with bread and cheese and a flask of water for the journey ahead and proceeded to the edge of the town to meet Lester. The discussion and transaction had been so quick, and he had left before I had time to carefully consider it. I should have taken this as a sign, but in a foreign country, I was at the mercy of everyone and anyone.

  Lester was not waiting at the meeting point, and I watched as the sun rose higher and time ticked by. People were on the move, and delivery carts swayed through the town. I looked at the map to the X and estimated roughly where I might find the orchard and farmstead that Roger spoke of. I waited in total an hour and a half before something told me that he wasn’t coming. I tied a handkerchief around my neck to keep the sun off my pale skin and set off by foot.

  The long, narrow road was bare, surrounded by pastures with grazing animals, scattered farmhouses, and wheat fields. I estimated it was an hour’s walk northwest, the orchard halfway between the two towns, and hoped that I would reach it before the clouds opened up ahead of me.

  I imagined Edgar here in the fields that were still churned and clumped with detritus now overgrown with tufts of grass and weeds. His diary showed some of his suffering through his poems and observations, and I wished that he had written more about the people here also. His letters became less frequent, wordy, and personal over the course of the war, and were mostly about the rations and the weather. I imagine he would not have wanted to tell Mother about the way he was feeling, about any injury and the terrible conditions.

  Someone traveling by trap stopped to ask if I was lost. I inquired of the orchard, which he knew about. He pointed the way. He said most of the house was still standing but the owners had long since left. He could not tell me anything else about the previous owners since he had come to Bailleul to rebuild at the end of the war, after his northern village was wiped off the map.

  The rain had just begun to fall, and I sprinted the last part of the journey. In the middle of a field was a small house and behind it the remains of a shed and those of a smaller building also. There was an arbor leading toward a field, and I could see where rows of fruit trees had once stood, some still growing wild. On foot the evidence of shelling was even clearer by the many grass-covered dips that made the ground uneven, including one larger crater that Mariette had spoken of.

  The front door of the little house was swinging on one hinge, and I pulled it back gingerly to step inside. The house was mostly gutted of its contents except for the bones of a spring bed, an armchair that was leaking its stuffing, and a thick-legged table in the center that appeared to be kneeling with two of its legs removed. There were also signs of previous water damage and a cover of dust. I knew immediately that Mariette had not come directly from here, that she had long since gone. There was no trace to determine who lived here, no lingering smells of domesticity, just an earthy scent of dying grasses outside that blew in through several cracked windows. I walked to the small woodstove and peered inside at ashes that had turned cold and hard. The low house was small and square in structure, with a main living area at the front and two bedrooms and a bathing and laundry room situated at the rear. Across several windows hung curtains that were faded and torn, and there was nothing to suggest the owners might return.

  A small navy-colored ribbon now layered in cobwebs and dust was swept to one corner. Above the bed in one of the rooms, I could see something scratched into the wall and leaned close to examine an H enclosed in a love heart, and I traced my finger around the grooved shape, feeling Mariette there and imagining it had once been under her touch. But it could have been anyone, and I brushed away the notion as childish nonsense, something desperate. Perhaps I was.

  Opening the cellar door in the floor also opened up several years of stench that had been trapped. Stepping down the narrow stair and under the barest of light that filtered in through the doorway, I could make out empty barrels and crates but little else, and still no link to who lived here.

  I left the house, feeling frustrated that I had reached a dead end, though I was still determined to find someone who knew of Jerome in the town of Bailleul, another hour from where I was. Someone had to have known them. I would not give up, I told my brother on the wind, knowing that Edgar would have done the same if our situations were reversed. Though I suspect he would have done this sooner.

  I walked back out into the open and a waning midday sun. It struggled now to burst between clouds, and a spike in the air told me of the cooler night to come. Halfway toward the town, I saw tall ruins atop a hill, jagged against the bleak sky that loomed up behind them. Once I had passed the ruins, I heard someone calling and turned to look for the source along the road. They called again before I saw that there was someone waving to me from alongside the broken building.

  I stepped cautiously upward in the caller’s direction before recognizing the suited stranger from the tavern the night before. He had no cart. I was suddenly wary and walked no closer.

  “Sorry, monsieur, I was so late, but in the meantime I made some inquiries about the family you spoke of,” said Lester. “I told you about the Englishmen I knew, and one of them knew your brother and knew the family well.”

  I didn’t feel right about this information, but I could not of course discount anything. There was something shifty about his manner, and I kept my distance.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around me to see if he was alone.

  “I was waiting for you and away from the road and out of the elements. If you wish, I can take you back and you can speak to the men directly.”

  “Can you give me the address of these men?”

  The man frowned and squinted as if he didn’t like what I had just asked. He did not like to be tested, and my instinct told me to turn and walk the ten yards back to the road.

  “No, no!” he said. “They will not speak to you without me.”

  I realized immediately that this was completely wrong, that he was an opportunist, and I took a step back as he took a step forward. In my peripheral vision I saw someone else come around the side of the wall. The man, similar in appearance to the other, held a knife.

  “You had better come with us,” said the original scoundrel.

  I turned then and commenced to run but felt someone close behind me before my world went black.

  CHAPTER 16

  I heard the sounds of a motorcar from afar. Something tapped my face, and liquid trickled into my nose and mouth. I opened my eyes to an overcast sky and took several seconds to realize that it was heavy raindrops that had woken me, the back of my head in a chalky brown puddle of water. The men, it appeared, had dragged me behind the ruins.

  I tried to raise my head, but a sharp pain forced me gently back down again. I turned on my side, fluttered my eyes, and then eased myself upright. I blinked away the rain and the fogginess in my head and inspected the area around me. The contents of my bag, some food, and my identity card were scattered across the soaked ground, and inside my jacket my wallet was gone. They had not even bothered to pull me under the partial cover of a broken shed that sat behind the wall.

>   I reached for my things, shoved them in the carry bag, then dragged myself out of the rain and under the shelter, muddied and sodden and hidden from any passersby.

  It was hard to estimate how long I had lost consciousness, but noting the purple-gray haze that was growing darker around me, I guessed it would soon be nightfall. I forced myself to stand somewhat shakily, the head injury still clouding my sense of judgment, and I proceeded toward the road in the direction of Armentières.

  I do not know how long I’d walked, possibly not far, when someone in a motorcar stopped beside me and asked if I was all right. I told him briefly what had happened. He got out then, seeing that I was slightly disoriented, and helped me into the passenger seat before regaining his seat and heading back toward my hotel.

  “You English, you are so gullible!” He did not say this unkindly. I heard only pity in the words, and declined his offer following to take me directly to a doctor. All I could think about was the soft mattress in my hotel room that should melt away the day.

  I thanked the stranger after he dropped me in front of the hotel. With unsteady steps, a feeling of dizziness and nausea, and an aching shoulder as a result of the fall, I pushed open the door with some difficulty.

  Cedric and Simone, the hotel owners, hurried toward me and found I was also bleeding from the wound at the back of my skull. They appeared shocked and flustered and led me to a chair in the restaurant. Simone rushed to bring me a damp cloth for my head and a drink of water.

  They were very sympathetic with what I had been through and recommended I speak with the police. With my head throbbing the way it did, talking was the last thing I wished to do right then. It could wait until morning. If I had not thought to leave most of my money under the mattress in my room, my quest may well have ended that day. I felt both poorly and disappointed by my complacency toward my safety, so desperate I was for any information.