Soldier On

by Erica Nyden

  His voice cracked. “Someone gagged me and ripped off my shirt. Chest first, I was thrown on top of a table and tied to it. Wirth was there, ranting about liars and how they deserved to be punished. He bragged about ways he’d punished his own men for lying and said as his prisoner, I could expect far worse. Then his hands were on me, stretching the skin on my back so far in places I almost cried out. I tried speaking. He laughed at my muffled drivel, so I stopped. Sulfur filled the air, and because of the chill, I felt the heat instantly. He was about to perform an experiment, he said, to see the difference between cutting skin with a cool blade versus cutting with heated metal.”

  He sniffed. “I’m sorry, is there no liquor up here?”

  She returned as quickly as possible with the bottle of whisky from the library. She filled glasses for each of them.

  “Thank you.” He threw his head back, draining the glass. His eyes watered. “He said he loved art, like the führer, and complained that not enough people appreciated it. On my back, he would make a masterpiece to rival all others and as a favor, he’d photograph it so I could see it. Would you say my back looks like art?” His lips became a quivering, derisive curve.

  Over the months, her eyes had memorized every mark on his back, from the time when they’d still gushed red to their sealed disfigurement. Her hands knew them, too, tracing each hardened line as lovingly as she kissed his mouth. But imagining their formation made her queasy. She lifted her glass and swallowed everything in it.

  “Before every cut, he announced which blade he’d use, hot or cold. I didn’t bother to reply, not a grunt or a groan. Apparently my shaking and convulsing satisfied him. He liked the reactions my body gave and told me he was glad for once not to hear my voice.” He unsteadily poured more amber fluid into his empty glass. “For days, he did this to my back and legs, creating new wounds most times. Other times, he’d reopen old ones. More than once, he extinguished lit cigarettes on my back. After many tries, he determined they expired quicker with more pressure.”

  Olivia wiped her wet face, careful not to exhale the sorrow choking the back of her throat. He mustn’t hear her grief. For his sake, she must be brave.

  “That day in the glasshouse, months ago, when you helped me find those old cigarettes—do you remember? The goddamned smoke was revolting. I thought I would be sick. I fought it as hard as I could. I didn’t want you to know how ill it made me. How did I do?”

  So much had changed since then that it was hard to remember the details. “You were a decent actor on some days. Other days, I saw right through you.”

  She took her glass and refilled it, not caring if they both got drunk tonight. It was two thirty in the morning, and though her brain remained sharp as a tack, her body tingled in that warm way a glass of whisky delivered. Beneath the unflattering light next to the toilet, she held the hand of the man she loved. The floor on which they sat felt as merciful as a giant block of ice.

  There was nowhere else she’d rather be.

  “Five days before I killed the bastard, I was back in the lab for what I thought would be another cutting session. This time, they undressed me completely. Instead of being tied to a table, my arms and legs were spread and trussed to a wall, my face smashed against it. Wirth and I were alone, or that’s what he said.” William emptied the remaining whisky down his throat. “It doesn’t bloody well matter, anyway.”

  The words flew faster and faster. “He’d become bored with cuts and burns, but I could tell he wasn’t ready to kill me yet, though I knew it would be soon. He beat me again, with what I couldn’t tell you. When he was tired of that, he prodded me with something else, maybe a poker from a fireplace. Then, before I knew it, he—”

  For weeks, she’d listened without response, a silent pillar of strength until disgust sent her scurrying to her room, where she found release by screaming into her pillow. She’d fall still then, silently weeping for every terrified hour he’d spent in that horrid place. And though each session had been a stepping-stone to this darkest moment, its truth was impossibly heavy. She was reaching for another drink when William’s labored breath reminded her to quit thinking of herself.

  “He tore me apart in the worst way imaginable.” William’s words poured out of his mouth like hot tar. “There’s no more to tell you except that my soul died that day. Oh, Christ—”

  He pitched over the porcelain bowl, spilling her whisky and almost knocking over the decanter. Abysmal groans rose from deep within his belly.

  She rested one hand on his scarred back. The other caressed his neck with the damp flannel as her own tears joined the brown liquid on the floor.

  A heady vapor of rose and verbena settled around the pair in the tub. Replenished by clean teeth and a warm bath, William finally stopped shaking. He drew strength from Olivia, who sat between his legs, encircled in his arms. The tiled room echoed with the occasional slosh of water and sporadic sob.

  “Talk to me,” she whispered, turning her cheek to his opened mouth.

  From what he could tell, she’d neither judged him nor indicated she thought him weak. She was nothing like his father. He drew a long shuddering breath. He could continue.

  “It happened more than once,” he whispered against her cheek. “Each time, I became less of a man, less of a human. In my cell, I picked at any lesion I could reach, hoping for infection and death.”

  With his cheek resting on her shoulder, he locked his arms more tightly around her. “He knew he’d tortured the fight out of me. I was compliant; by then, I deserved the abuse. Bound hands and blindfold were no longer necessary. When I was brought to the lab, I stripped without objection. No doubt he considered me a willing submissive.”

  William’s heart rate spiked, and he sat taller. “But that last day, when he chained my right ankle, something awoke in me. Maybe it was the flash of the silver pommel at his waist. I’d never seen him without his dagger, and it’d caught my eye more than once. Seeing it this time resurrected enough of me to recall my training in close-quarters combat. Killing this man should’ve come to me as naturally as saluting a superior officer.” He could count the number of men he’d killed directly on both hands. Taking a life had never given him pleasure—until that day. “My rage had been smothered by self-loathing, but at that moment it consumed me, and I welcomed it like an old friend.

  “When he reached for my second ankle, I stomped his hand with my foot. I found enough strength to unsheathe his dagger, and before he grasped what was happening, I cut his throat.” Wirth’s confusion had turned to anger in seconds, but it was already too late. “In my state, he should’ve been able to overpower me, but he had no reason to expect it. He had no idea what he was dealing with. Perhaps if he’d done his research in the first place, he might’ve known.”

  He ran a hand through his wet hair, raining drops onto his eyelashes. “The building was a maze of dark passageways and locked doors, but when I left it appeared to be empty. I heard nothing except my own hammering feet. I assume the place had been evacuated—and Wirth, in his disgrace and madness, had stayed behind.

  “I made it outside and ran far from the camp, away from the sounds of battle. I remember sand, bloody sand, everywhere. After that, I don’t remember anything else except waking on the hospital ship, where all I saw was black.”

  He’d shared his name, rank, and that he’d been a Nazi prisoner. Nothing else. “In Plymouth, army superiors threw questions at me, but I wouldn’t talk. Anyone with the impudence to keep badgering me bore the brunt of my bitterness, no matter who they were. They summoned kind Dr. Butler from Cornwall, and he made sure I was sent home, declaring my mental state ‘extremely delicate.’ The man’s known me my entire life. What a shock he must have had when first he saw me. He drove me to Keldor himself.” William’s voice dropped. “And on the way, he told me my father was dead.”

  It was the only thing he remembered from the drive—that and the endless fear that the doctor would ask questions. No more questions.
r />   “I was almost relieved at the news. I could never tell him what had happened to me. He would’ve considered me a coward for allowing Wirth to abuse me in such a way. He would never have forgiven me for such weakness.”

  “Do you still believe that?” she asked. “After what you’ve told me of how you were tortured and brainwashed? And what of your brave escape?”

  “I can’t say. That will take time to sort out.”

  “Do you forgive you?”

  “Sorry?” he barked, though he didn’t mean to.

  “What about you? Have you forgiven yourself for what happened?”

  Her question overwhelmed him. “I don’t know, Olivia. I don’t know.”

  Chapter 22

  William emerged from the coastal path with Mrs. Pollard at his side. Rain had moved in, and both were in need of a cup of tea. She’d been a sport getting him outside whilst Olivia trained WVS recruits at Dr. Butler’s surgery. Jasper jaunted ten strides ahead, Mrs. Pollard said, looking back occasionally to check if they were still coming.

  Olivia’s upcoming journey to Plymouth topped the afternoon’s conversation. Olivia’s mum would be there to move her recently widowed great Aunt Hilda to London. Her cousin Katie, newly posted as a Wren in Plymouth, would be there too. William shared Olivia’s enthusiasm at getting to see family again after so many months.

  Apparently Polly was happy about it, too. “What do you think Dr. and Mrs. Talbot would say if they knew their daughter slept in her employer’s bed night after night? I know you intend to marry the girl and you be waiting on your mother’s ring so you can propose ‘properly,’ but God doesn’t care a tithing about a ring. He does care about people living in sin, like, as do I. Nurse Talbot’s parents do as well, I’m sure.”

  William swept his white cane and kept walking. This wasn’t the first time God had been disappointed with him, and it wouldn’t be the last. In the end, all would be made right. As soon as the ring arrived, he would phone Dr. Talbot for his blessing, and then he’d ask Olivia to be his wife the way he’d intended: at Steren Cove, on one knee and as close to sunset as he could manage. He hoped Mrs. Pollard hadn’t complained to Olivia as well. Knowing Olivia, Polly’s disapproving expression alone would be enough to make her uncomfortable.

  So engrossed was he in his private thoughts that he never noticed the quiet whir in the distance, mingling naturally with the shuffling of branches and the calls of local birds, until it drew close, buzzing toward them like an angry hornet. He didn’t need sight to know its source: a German Luftwaffe warplane, careening toward them so fast that the ground trembled.

  In his mind’s eye, his men scattered below the shadows of sharp cliffs and into the cold sea, unable to find cover. Their shouts rang in his ears; their haunted faces, open-mouthed and pale, bobbed in the water. The warplane whizzed closer. What came next would be much louder than the rumble of thunder.

  He broke free of his reverie. He had to get them out of here.

  Propellers whined, and bullets struck the ground with dogged force. If he could get them back under the trees, they might survive. They couldn’t be far from the tree line. He grabbed Mrs. Pollard and dragged her toward the shrouded footpath. Her indecipherable questions added to his dark chaos. He ignored them.

  “We’ve got to run, Polly. Toward the trees, now!”

  He dropped the white cane; he moved faster without it. Hitting a tree head-on would be nothing compared to suffering a strike from above. Bullets tore into the turf around them. Clumps of grass and dirt pelted his exposed skin, stinging it.

  “William!” Polly shrieked.

  He’d lost his hold on her. She clutched at his side in a flurry as she went down. He fell beside her, but only for a moment.

  Above the plane’s dwindling drone and Jasper’s frantic barks, her voice rang loud and clear. “The bugger’s leaving, William. Please—I can’t run anymore.”

  “He’ll be back—and yes, you can. Now get up, Polly. That’s an order!”

  He stood and tugged, almost too forcefully. He teetered. The buzzing grew louder. As predicted, their adversary was making a turn back for another go.

  “We’re going to die out here!”

  “No, we aren’t.”

  William regained his balance and led them, he hoped, toward the trees. Bullets hissed, tracing their every step. He pictured his meadow pocked with divots like a battlefield awaiting to embrace two more bodies. He coughed and struggled to open his eyes, which were coated with soil and burning badly.

  His pace slowed amidst the tangle of brush catching at his ankles. With his free hand, he patted the air for tree trunks. Finding one, he reached for more, tugging Polly the entire time. Once they were deep enough in the bramble, he dropped, pulling her flat beside him.

  “Get on your belly and as far under the brush as you can.”

  She let out a muffled scream and lurched forward.

  “Lie still!”

  “But Jasper! He’s frightened. He doesn’t know what to do. I think he’s run away!”

  “That means he’s alive.”

  The pair lay flat and silent through a third onslaught. William’s grip on Mrs. Pollard’s wrist was fierce, as were the thorns snagging their clothing and skin.

  Finally, the menacing sound faded south.

  He loosened his grip. “Are you all right, Polly?”

  “I—I think so.”

  Every muscle pulsed with adrenaline, and he fought the urge to stand and run it out. His eyes, mostly cleared of dirt, blinked open to a blurry stone fortress looming over the shredded green-and-brown vista. The round figure of Mrs. Pollard, her hair in fuzzy disarray, materialized before him.

  “Mr. William, what is it?” she asked, kneeling beside him. “Are you hurt? Were you hit?” She smoothed his hair back from his face.

  “No, Polly.” His eyes met hers. “I can see.”

  Captain Dinham had already phoned by the time the bedraggled pair returned. James, highly agitated, hurried William to the receiving room, where Annie stood by the waiting telephone. James had been stoking the fire in the sitting room when the gunfire had drawn him to the window. He couldn’t spot the plane, yet the scrim-covered panes had rattled as though they’d shatter. He’d grabbed Annie, and together they’d run to the wine cellar.

  James’s shaky voice rose as he asked after their well-being. Were they hurt? Would the villain return? Mrs. Pollard, patting his shoulder with her cleaner hand, led James and Annie away so William could deal with the captain.

  With no time to appreciate his fuzzy yet regained vision, William listened to the captain’s update. The south coast of Cornwall was in an uproar. Falmouth had been machine-gunned yet again, and numerous witnesses had seen a single plane separate from the group and head northeast, skirting the southern coast. The plane had taken shots at Portloe and Gorran Haven before reaching Mevagissey.

  William thanked Dinham for the call and rang off. He and Polly had survived. What-ifs were unnecessary.

  His heart pounded, but not out of fear. Ignoring the waves of blurriness and the translucent, asymmetrical shapes swimming everywhere he looked, he let exhilaration at seeing the well-known objects of his family home crowd out his unease. Like a familial embrace, the wing-backed chairs and stout hearth calmed him. He lifted his hands, still callused and etched with deep, telling lines. Through caked mud and smears of red, he recognized his boyhood scars. The last time he’d seen them, they’d been covered in blood.

  After finding Jasper near the shed, spooked but safe, William retired to his bedroom, thinking only of Olivia’s arrival home. This would be her celebration, too. The prospect of seeing her—every inch of her—for the first time was so thrilling that he turned down luncheon.

  Outside his bedroom window, the rain fell in sheets. Impatience shifted him up and down on his toes. When the hell would she get here?

  “William! Mrs. Pollard?”

  Finally.

  Urgent footfalls came up the stairs. Her c
ool arms embraced him from behind; her face dampened his linen shirt. “Darling, are you all right?”

  Unable to wait any longer, he turned and folded her in his arms. “I’m fine. We’re all fine, even Jasper.”

  She pressed her face into his neck. “Oh, thank God.”

  She tried lifting her wet head, but he held it still, smothering it in kisses. Her disorderly halo of glorious golden strands did rather match that of spent grass. But it glinted, too, like a wheat field in autumn.

  He laughed.

  “What?” she asked, trying futilely to raise her head.

  “I was right about your hair. It is golden. In fact, I’d say you’re more of a blonde than a brunette.”

  She forced her head up. Her deep-set brown eyes searched his—and for the first time, he searched back. A surge of desire tethered him to her as he appraised the widening almonds and sharpening circles of black and brown at their center. Cherubic cheeks, remnants of a healthy childhood that had yet to be completely shed, reddened above full lips.

  How incredibly lovely she was.

  Her hand went to her mouth, as though he’d crowned her May Queen.

  “It came back,” he whispered. “The plane, its noise, its proximity—I couldn’t let the bastard take us, and I didn’t.”

  “Oh, William! That’s wonderful, darling!”

  Her arms went round his neck. Then she abruptly dropped back from her tiptoes, her clutch gone slack.

  “What is it?”

  “I—I look like a drowned rat!” Her muffled words morphed into a hysterical giggle. “And, and you’ve never seen me before.”

  She buried her face in his neck.

  “Olivia, let me see you.”

  “No.”

  “My love, I’ve glimpsed your pretty face for less than thirty seconds. Please.”

  “No.”

  Gently, he pushed her back and coaxed her face upward. Her eyelashes clung together like the ends of a wet paintbrush, and the dimples on either side of her mouth magnified her nervous smile. He smoothed his thumb along the line of her jaw and over her pink lips, the same way he had before he could see them.