There was still a danger of patrols. However, here the road ran below the level of the moorland, so he was unlikely to be noticed at a distance. If a motor vehicle should come along, he’d have to lie flat in the remains of the ditch, but he would hear its engine well in advance.
For the first time, the possibility of freedom seemed real. He was out of Sherston, beyond its immediate grasp. Yet Forrester could not feel very jubilant. The pre-dawn chill was bitter and draining, and the discomfort of his foot was forcing him to an increasingly uncomfortable limp. He’d have given anything for his despised crutches, or else a fallen branch to serve as a walking stick, but the only trees were a few skinny, wind-warped birches, which clung jealously to their boughs. Nor was his escape exactly accomplished. Sunrise couldn’t be far off, and if the alarm hadn’t already been raised by the racket he’d made crossing the wall, he dared not assume that Abhaya would implicate herself by covering for his absence.
After a while, other forebodings intruded. Away from Sherston, the stubborn complacency he’d known there had disappeared entirely, and deprived of its influence, his nerves were worse than ever they’d been. He had no idea where he was; the landscape suggested northern England or conceivably Scotland, but he couldn’t say more than that. Whatever the case, he had no reason besides the addled memories of his arrival to think that any habitation lay within reach. It might be miles, or tens of miles, to the next dwelling, and even the steady hobble he’d been managing was becoming a strain. Should he by chance find someone, he had no cause to expect aid. He was in uniform, mired in filth, and not much imagination would be needed to identify him as a runaway from Sherston, or worse, as a deserter.
Under the moonlight, he could see that the house sat on the peak of a hillside which formed one flank of a deep valley. In the depths, he discerned the silvery glints of a river running and occasional lights of buildings hovering like fireflies. But all of that was far away. It would take him half a night or more to attain those distant gleams, and he might have less than an hour before dawn.
What choices did that leave? He could lie low through the day. There were patches of fern that would hide him, and further outcroppings of rock. Maybe he’d come upon a cave to shelter in. Yet every passing hour made his position more tenuous. If Forbes was determined to have him recovered, he’d soon have men watching the highways and railway stations. Forrester hadn’t the strength to resist a sustained manhunt. He couldn’t spend days on the run. Even now he was at his limits. His thigh was stiffening with cold and overuse, his foot was a wedge of solid pain, and a mushy sensation in that boot led him to believe that he was treading with each step in his own blood. If he hid, he might be able to patch himself up temporarily, but whether, without sustenance, he’d have the stamina for another night of exertion was another question.
Then, as the decision was beginning to seem irreconcilable, it was made for him. Exiting a curve between high banks, Forrester was greeted by a gated track leading away on his right, and beyond, the silhouettes of what he took to be a farm. He would seek rest, since his body would accept nothing else. Perhaps he would find food or at least water. Perhaps he might approach the farmer for help.
Drawing closer, Forrester saw that there were three buildings: one, square and steep-roofed, that must be the farmhouse, a second large enough that it could only be a barn, and a small outhouse some way from both. There were no lights on in the farmhouse. He wouldn’t arouse much goodwill by waking those inside; better to clean himself up and concoct a story that wouldn’t raise suspicions. So Forrester headed instead toward the barn.
The structure was ramshackle and weather-beaten, its doors partly open to the elements. Within, most of the space had been given over to baled hay, stacked in places almost to the rafters. But inside the door and to the left, tools rested on a rack, and draping from a hook beside them, Forrester spotted an item that made his heart quicken: a long jacket of heavy cloth. He took the jacket, wrapped it about himself, lurched to a low ridge in the mountain of hay, and dropped down there.
The jacket was musty with some animal odour, likely sheep, but in that moment, Forrester wouldn’t have traded it for the finest trench coat. He lay back. Despite the moonlight slanting between the open doors, it was significantly darker inside the barn than out. The smell of hay was stronger even than the redolence of the coat. It reminded Forrester of autumn days as a child, of harvest season.
He closed his eyes—just for an instant, it seemed.
When he opened them, a man stood framed by the entrance and by daylight, staring down at him.
Chapter Fourteen
“ W ho are you?”
The words were bluntly phrased, the accent broad. Yorkshire perhaps, Forrester thought, but knowing where he was seemed suddenly the least of his concerns. Sleep hung over him like a shroud, his mind was working slowly, and he could think of no intelligible lie. “My name’s Rafael Forrester,” he said. “Lieutenant Rafael Forrester. I’m sorry about the jacket.”
The man, surely the farm-owner, was wearing coarse worsted trousers and a tweed coat over a scuffed jumper faded to anonymous grey. His face was heavily bearded, and the beard was equally grizzled. He looked Forrester up and down, as though he hadn’t noticed the theft until then. “That’s my jacket,” he announced, with disgust.
“I was cold,” Forrester explained. “You see—“
“You’re from the house,” the farmer interrupted. It wasn’t phrased as a question. “Sherston. You’ve come from up there.”
“Yes. But look here—“
“You don’t sound German. ”
The comment took Forrester wholly by surprise. “German?” he asked stupidly.
“Mind, I suppose they’d teach you,” the farmer opined, with an air of having figured out a problem. “So’s you can mix in, if need be.”
“Look here,” Forrester repeated. He was finally starting to make sense of what the man was saying. “You think I’m a prisoner or—what? A spy? I can assure you—“
“You won’t be assuring me of nothing,” the farmer told him. There was heat in his voice, as if the very act of listening to such talk might place him in jeopardy. “You stay put. Don’t try and run. You won’t get far.” Then he turned and hurried out.
Forrester stumbled to his feet, flinching at the complaint of cooled muscles. What had the man left for? A gun, presumably, or to bring support. Either way, the farmer had been determined in his misconception. There’d be no negotiating with him.
There was a second, smaller exit at the rear of the barn, and Forrester staggered to it. The gate let onto a strip of cobbled yard, and beyond that was a low dry-stone wall, past which the moorland resumed. He hauled himself over, landed roughly, and somehow kept going. There were no landmarks to be seen, and no cover. He wasn’t even certain of his bearing; he might be circling the farm for all he knew. At any moment he expected a shout, or perhaps a back full of buckshot.
The shout came, “Hey!”—and sounded close. Forrester tensed, convinced the barked exclamation would be succeeded by the roar of a shotgun, or at best the thrash of feet through the dense heather. There was neither. He slid into a shallow gully and changed course, heading right. Chunks of stone lay underfoot, and often he came near to tripping. The sky had seemed light when he’d opened his eyes, but now that they’d grown accustomed, he could tell that the hour was barely past sunrise. If he could gain some distance, he would be hard to follow.
By the time his breath gave out, Forrester had concluded that the farmer wasn’t so much as trying. There’d been no noises of pursuit at all. As he paused, though, and as his panting subsided, he made out voices, far off. One might well be the farmer’s, and there was another man also, and a woman, who spoke loudest of the three. Forrester couldn’t make out the details of their discussion, except to gather that an argument was taking place.
No doubt they were debating what to do. Either they’d have to send a message to Sherston by foot or else forget t
he matter altogether. While he ought not to rely on that latter outcome, nevertheless it seemed the most credible: poor farming folk would not be eager to waste their time travelling up the hill just to relay news that cast them in so unfavourable a light.
At any rate, Forrester couldn’t wait where he was. He recalled that he was wearing the farmer’s sheep-scented jacket, thought of leaving it, and decided that losing a coat was fit punishment for assuming a fellow a spy without letting him speak up for himself. Forrester scurried on along the channel, taking more care now, nervous of twisting an ankle. He couldn’t see where the gully led, but at least it ran away from the farm.
After ten minutes, he dared to clamber to higher ground. There on the horizon was the farmhouse, stark against a drab early morning sky, and he cursed himself for falling asleep and so wasting the opportunity to seek food and fresh water. His stomach was rumbling and his throat parched. He was back where he’d begun, or even worse off; he still had to get through the day, and it was likelier than ever that they’d be hunting for him, and that they’d have a fair idea of where to look.
He could no longer see the river, but establishing its course was straightforward enough from the steady decline of the land. Since the route toward the farmhouse and therefore the road was cut off to him, his options were narrowed to three: he could start downhill, which would be easiest but most obvious, he could carry on the way he was going, in the hope perhaps of chancing upon some other outlying homestead, or he could turn uphill, toward Sherston.
They wouldn’t have anticipated that last. There was one advantage. Too, the probability of him finding a hiding place amid the rocky ground that ringed the hilltop was good. Forrester saw now that he wouldn’t be reaching a village before he was overtaken, and that even if he should, he could expect to be received with hostility. Clearly word had been put out that Sherston was being used as a military prison of some sort.
Did that explain the patrols he’d spied, Forrester wondered? Would they have really gone to such efforts to maintain a pretence? Or was it the other way around, that the prison story excused the presence of guards who might otherwise have provoked questions? Whatever the case, it was becoming apparent that escape was more perilous than he could have imagined. He couldn’t bank on help being forthcoming; more probably, he’d be attacked as an enemy agent as he’d just so nearly been.
He would head uphill, he resolved. If he found somewhere safe to rest for a portion of the day and set out after sunset, he’d have the whole night in which to travel. Even at his debilitated pace, he might cover ten miles, and the farther he went, the harder it would be for them to track him down. He was bound to come across fresh water sooner or later, and he could survive a day without food if he had to, though right then the very prospect made him lightheaded.
But he’d have to rest. He simply couldn’t carry on. His foot was bleeding, and he was afraid he might have torn the wound in his leg open too, when he’d slid into the gully. Looking for a suitable spot, he saw a huddle of skeletal birches not far off with bracken growing profusely in their fragile shade.
Stopping here was a gamble. If the farmer should decide to pursue him, there were few places he might have gone. It was also scarcely a choice; he could stop now or imminently he’d collapse. So, Forrester hobbled to the thicket. And sure enough, by the time he reached its edge, he doubted he could have taken another step. Merely forcing a path through the high bracken was almost more than he could manage.
He sat for a while, back to a tree, eyes closed. When he felt stronger, he took two of the tablets Abhaya had left him, battling to swallow them down with a bone-dry throat, and then manoeuvred to a point where he was confident the foliage would camouflage him. There he slouched, not sleeping and not quite conscious either, staring at nothing through half-shut eyes.
He couldn’t have said how much time had passed before he heard the shout.
Its begetter was distant, of that he was sure. The wind had dropped since the night and the air was deathly still. The noise had been so faint, in fact, that he could easily have convinced himself it was a product of his imagination. Only when another murmurous cry answered did he become certain.
One raised voice might have meant anything. But his instincts insisted, perhaps irrationally, that two could have just one explanation. They were searching for him.
Squinting, he could detect the sun through the foliage overhead, and that it was crawling toward its apex. Noon was fast approaching. His disappearance must have been discovered long ago. After that, there would have been maybe an hour spent in checking the house and grounds and arranging search parties. Tracing his progress to where he’d clumsily hidden the ladders wouldn’t have been difficult, and from there he’d left a trail a blind man could follow. Given that context, he had made a truly dreadful mistake in letting the farmer see him.
All the same, he mustn’t surrender to panic. Out here, with the wind so low, voices might travel for miles, and he remained confident that they wouldn’t expect him to double back.
Pondering whether he should inspect his foot before he set out, Forrester decided against it. A steady, sickening pulsation unmasked even by the pain medicine told him he wouldn’t like what he found. One thing, however, couldn’t wait: he’d not have a better chance to acquire a walking stick.
Luck was on his side. Amid the foliage were a few broken branches, and one was the ideal length. The bough was sturdy too, with nary a trace of rot. Once he’d levered himself up, Forrester realised immediately that he’d been right to delay. He could barely have kept to his feet without its support.
The going became fractionally easier as he warmed to the work. He settled into a pace that was as close to hurrying as his body would tolerate. Within five minutes, there came more back-and-forth hollering, and though it was impossible to say positively, he concluded that the shouts were nearer than they’d been. Forrester cursed the barren moors. With the thicket behind him, there was no cover in sight. At least the folds of the land meant that no one could spot him from any significant range, and if they should, the farmer’s borrowed jacket and the stick might provide some modicum of disguise.
Yet within an hour, he’d conceded that he would have to discard the coat. What had started as an overcast day had turned abruptly hot, and even had he not been soaked in sweat, the garment’s sheer weight was proving burdensome. With regret, he stopped where a trickle of stream had reduced the peaty earth to marsh, dug a shallow hole, and buried the coat there. He’d regret its loss as soon as evening came, but he could see no other solution.
Then, as he was standing, Forrester froze. Ahead, too small to put a face to but evidently in uniform, a figure was approaching. Forrester ducked down, though there was little enough to hide him. His only slight good fortune was that the stunted watercourse had cut an indent in the land, and that the heather grew higher at its sides. It was possible, just possible, that lying flat would suffice to conceal him.
He tried to remember the figure’s direction, to calculate the odds of their walking right over him. But he’d caught the briefest of glimpses. If he could have run, he might have hazarded it. Anything would have been better than lying there defenceless. He’d never been a hunting man, and now he knew it was a practice he couldn’t condone. He understood perfectly how the fox must feel as the hounds descended, and the sensation was every bit as bad as huddling in a dugout, tensed in readiness for the shell that would tear you limb from limb.
Then it struck Forrester that a sound he’d taken for muted birdsong was coming closer, and that its origin was human rather than avian: the approaching figure was whistling. Forrester recognised the tune as “The Sunshine of Your Smile.” He had always hated the maudlin ditty, and as the warbling drew nearer and increasingly piercing, he hated it all the more. The man whistled in a tremulous falsetto, and apparently was familiar with just that one song. Upon reaching a conclusion, he began again.
Pressed to the ground, fighting not to gag at
the muck against his lips, Forrester endeavoured once more to calculate the unseen figure’s angle of approach. He could hear the man’s feet sloshing through the heather. If he passed close, there was no way he’d fail to see Forrester—and yet he was already close. His whistling had risen to a fever pitch. His footsteps through the knotted undergrowth were like the roar of waves. Perhaps the man had seen him, and the steady trudging, the endlessly repeating tune, were a sham. He might not know Forrester was in no shape to flee. Maybe he really believed he was pursuing a German spy. In any event, he had the sense to get near. He’d wait until he was practically on top of Forrester, and only then make his move—
Except that the steps were no longer gaining on him. Forrester struggled to judge with one ear to the ground, but they seemed to be maintaining their distance, or even fading. The interminable whistling was drifting aside. The soldier was going by; he must have crossed farther down the slope. From below, the incline would have hidden Forrester more than the scanty dip he’d nestled in.
He hung on for another minute. Once “The Sunshine of Your Smile” had reverted to the isolated notes of birdsong, he clambered to his feet and peered around. To his left, he could see the whistler’s receding back. The man was swinging his arms like a cheerful schoolboy, as though the whole exercise were an expedition put on for his amusement. If he’d been led to believe he was tracking an escaped German, he took the responsibility lightly indeed. There was little threat of his looking round or retracing his steps, and Forrester saw no one in the other directions.
He had to move. If they were searching according to a pattern, it was plausible to suppose that this sector would be deemed clear, and perhaps the ones above him also. He’d been fortunate in encountering so lackadaisical a scout. He might not be so lucky again.
To End All Wars Page 17