Only now did Thorne allow his tears to fall. Tears for the love he had destroyed, for the gypsy who had won his heart, for the horse who stood even now brave and firm in his stable, blanketed against the cutting winds. If Apollo Thorne fell tomorrow, he would fall a hero, safe in the eternal care of the man who had raised him.
Thorne dabbed at his eyes with his handkerchief, cursing the tears, cursing the reports of ships being lost at sea, cursing the fact that he might never even know if Jack had made it safely across that treacherous water. He cursed love, cursed the memory of Jack’s chestnut hair against his shoulder, his soft, full lips against his skin, and more than any of it, he cursed himself for not being as strong as he wished he could be. He couldn’t afford any hint of this tomorrow, no suggestion of fear for the lads and, most of important of all, no suggestion of fear for Apollo. As far as his boy was concerned, this was nothing more worrying than a gallop across the summer pastures at home in England.
That was enough to pull Thorne up sharp. He dried his tears, smoked the cigarette down and wound the gramophone once more. Then, standing there beneath the same lamp that had lit the stable where he’d slept in Jack’s arms, he closed his eyes and listened to their song play.
Somewhere along the trenches he could hear someone take up the melody, plaintive and tuneful, then another voice joined and another until a ghostly choir rose up into the silent, smoky night, singing of the gypsy and his lover, forever roaming, forever in each other’s arms. And silent among the singing, his eyes closed and his hands clasped tight behind his back, Captain Robert Thorne waited for dawn to come.
“What’s all this fucking racket?”
“Marsh.” Thorne opened his eyes and blinked in the dim light. “It’s my old ma, Edmund, so watch your language in front of her.”
Marsh slurred in his drunkenness. “Oh…yesh, Antonia What’s-her-face, the one with the splendid legs. And”—he extended a hand in the vague direction of the gramophone—“and a spectacular pair of…lungs.”
Thorne sighed, unable even to work up the energy to be offended by this sad character anymore. What a woman Mrs. Marsh must be. She was either very patient, very stupid or very often absent.
“I’m just about to turn in,” Thorne lied, the image of Jack snuggled beneath the sumptuous covers at the chateau jarring him. Or Jack slumbering in the summerhouse, his head pillowed on Thorne’s chest, their hands linked. “What can I do for you on this fine evening?”
Marsh propped himself up against the makeshift wall.
“You don’t want this any more than I do, eh, Thorne. This—this going over the top business.”
“No man here would ask for it, but each must do his bit, eh?” He sounded like his father, Thorne realized, or like his father used to sound. His letters didn’t have quite that tone anymore, not now his own boy was one of the lads.
Captain Edmund Marsh pulled his service revolver from its holster, weighing it on his palm. Its metal was dull gray in the lantern light.
“Do a fellow a favor, eh, and I’ll do one for you. Have a drink, old boy, and you’ll barely feel a thing.”
For a moment, more than a moment, Thorne looked at Marsh, not entirely sure he understood. Only when he had stared at the revolver and turned the words over in his head did he say, “Don’t be a fool, man.”
“A fool? I’m offering you a Blighty One, you abject halfwit! A ticket home! Shoot me in the toe and I’ll shoot you in yours, and the two of us hold hands in the ambulance all the way to Boulogne.”
“I’ll pretend that you didn’t just say that, Marsh, for the sake of the men out there.”
“They’ve done it too!” Marsh’s face turned redder, drool gathering at the side of his wet mouth. “They bloody well have. When I was last out here, three of the little sods did it in the space of a week, and they all went home to their mummies. It’s not my fault if it hasn’t occurred to that bovine lot out there—maybe they want to die in the morning? But I don’t.”
Thorne crossed the dugout in three paces and seized Marsh by his lapels, thundering him back into the earthen wall.
“What the bloody—” And Edmund Marsh, pathetic, desperate, terrified, was the focus of all the sadness and fear that Robert Thorne now carried on his shoulders. The gentle man who had cradled Jack was gone and in his place was the furious captain, the soldier whose withering bark could stop a man in his tracks at forty paces.
“Nobody wants to die, Marsh, but every one of those lads has more courage in his little toe that you do in your bloody body. Give yourself a bullet, Edmund, and remember their faces when you look in your mirror each morning. You’re a damned coward, man!”
Marsh was choking on his own spittle, his eyes bulging.
“But cowards get to live.”
“I don’t even care enough to pity you.” Thorne released him and stepped back. “You’re pathetic.”
“I am? I’m not the one who’ll die a virgin.”
Marsh, his eyes crossing from drink, raised his foot and put it on a stool. The revolver slipped in his clammy hands as he tried to grip the handle. A muscle tightened in Thorne’s jaw at the sound of Marsh releasing the safety catch.
The drunk officer looked up at Thorne, and a thin, weedy song about dear old Blighty slid from his lips.
The dugout rocked as a shell landed nearby, the lantern swung above their heads and shouts came from outside. The report of a service revolver rang out and Captain Edmund Marsh collapsed screaming to the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It wasn’t yet light as they lined up in the stable yard. The last few lads from the company HQ at Chateau de Desgravier, kitbags primed, yawned in the cold autumn air. There was a hint of ice on the breeze.
Bryn’s voice was low. “You’re a bloody idiot, you are.”
“Possibly—but at least I’m not a coward.”
“You didn’t believe all that tosh, did you? ‘Greater love hath no man’ and all that. It was never meant to be about all this—it was never meant to be about war. You can still go home, Jack. Go on!”
“Keep it down at the back there!”
The NCO, who proudly bore the nickname ‘Walrus’ on account of his enormous mustache, bellowed across the yard. He stamped his feet from the cold, examining a letter under torchlight. Then he turned the torch onto the sparse rabble before him.
He counted their heads, nodding with each number. He counted three times. He yawned, looked at his watch, counted again.
“Is one of you lads playing silly buggers? I’ve got one more in this stable yard than there is on my list!”
Bryn’s voice was low and urgent. “Piss off out of here, Woodvine!”
Walrus had his back to them, pacing back and forth. Jack caught Bryn’s glance and shook his head, his finger to his lips.
“For the love of God…” Bryn fell back into line, pinching his nose as if he was trying not to cry.
“Right, chaps!” Walrus bellowed, “Time we were off! The charabanc’s arrived!”
Bleary-eyed, they climbed on board. Walrus sat at the front, unable to hear the grooms who had spotted the cuckoo in the nest.
“Thought you was going home, Woodvine? Why the hell are you going to Wipers?”
The cuckoo met their curious stares, holding his gaze steady. Jack was here because he always did the right thing.
“Because you’re my mates, and I’m coming with you.”
The charabanc bounced along the chateau’s driveway, resounding with the soldiers’ cheers.
As it drove past the gatehouse, the enchantment broke, and the fairytale castle was lost to them all forever.
Chapter Twenty-Six
With the dawn came the barrage, wave after wave of artillery slamming into the earth as though God himself were hurling down his wrath upon them.
Through it all, however, Robert Thorne was serene. He listened to their song time and again and, when he went to where Apollo waited, whistled the melody to his only remaining friend
on this godforsaken earth.
By now his beautiful Jack would be on his way to the coast and by lunchtime he would be safe on British soil. He could ask for nothing more than that.
Once again before his mirror, Thorne shaved his jaw and pomaded his hair, combing it just so amid the shaking earth. He could do nothing about the sleepless rings around his eyes or the pallor of his skin, let alone the way the grime settled into the faint lines around his eyes, highlighting the years he had seemingly gained in the last seventy-two hours.
The last shave, the last comb of the hair, the last listen to the song…
The severed line in his palm had told a tale—he had just been too bullish to hear it.
He wondered about Edmund Marsh, whose Blighty had gone awry and taken half his kneecap with it, leaving the man writhing in agony here in the dugout where Thorne now straightened his tie and checked his kit once more.
Let him die out here, die with a gun in his hand and Jack’s name on his lips, Apollo’s reins firm in his hand. They would die together if they would die at all and when the end came, both would go without fear, in the sure knowledge that, in a fairytale castle, they had been blessed.
Because, once upon a time, the snippy captain and his bad-tempered steed had known the kindness of Jack Woodvine.
Thorne held his hand to his heart, to the poem that sprang to his lips now as easily as a breath. He checked his watch, set his cap on his head and whispered, “Go safe, my gypsy. I love you.”
A sharp knock at the door announced a soldier, tin hat dented, oilskin over his shoulders to defend him from the thin, persistent rain. This was no place for embroidered shawls on the bare skin of a lover.
“Captain Thorne, sir—the charabanc’s arrived with the last of the lads from company HQ.”
“Good man.” Thorne gave him the shadow of a smile. The lads from the castle, the lads bound for no man’s land. “I’ll be along in a minute or so.”
The soldier lingered a moment.
“One of them has a message, Captain, that he particularly wanted to give you. In person, sir.”
Thorne pinched the bridge of his nose and was about to tell the NCO that there was no time for such things, that officers weren’t at the beck and call of troopers. Then he thought of Jack, that this was someone’s son, one of the chaps from the stables, that the message might be from his gypsy—
Has he forgiven me for shattering his heart?
Don’t be absurd.
“Very well.” He nodded. “Send him in.”
There was a shout farther along the trench, a bark of, “Slow down, Trooper! No running!”
Boots clattered along the duckboards, the hurrying trooper not dissuaded. Closer and closer the footsteps came, and the soldier in the doorway stood aside.
For Trooper Jack Woodvine.
Framed by the rough wood of the doorway, his cap at an angle on his chestnut hair, mud already spattered on his smiling face, his sea-green eyes glowing with the only ember of hope that Thorne had seen since leaving the chateau.
“Captain Thorne, sir!”
He executed a perfect salute and stood to attention before his officer.
Was he dead already? Had the bombardment brought the dugout down and given him this last hope in hell, this last moment between this world and the next, forever trapped with the ghost of what might have been? Was heaven a trench containing the vision of Jack Woodvine?
“What—” Thorne saluted, his mouth dry. Then he looked to the NCO and told him, “Dismissed!”
Jack closed the door. They were alone now.
His eyes gleamed softly, like glass washed smooth by the ocean. He cast a glance at the gramophone—it was still playing their song. He rushed at Thorne to embrace him, to reach up to his mouth to kiss him.
“Please forgive me for what I said, my dear darling—I didn’t mean it. I love you, Robert, and I know you love me. I can’t live without my heart—and you have it, there, in your hand!”
“What in the name of God—” Thorne stepped back, staring at him. “I sent you home! I cashed in every favor I— My father—”
“But…but I had to see you again.” Jack tried to approach but, as Thorne took another step away from him, the trooper came no farther. The light was dying in his eyes. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it, that you thought I didn’t love you. I’ve driven myself mad, my words repeat and repeat in my mind—I had to tell you that I love you. That I never stopped loving you and I never will!”
“Then you’re a fool.” Thorne knitted his gloved hands behind his back, just to stop himself from reaching for Jack and drawing him into his arms. If he allowed himself to do that, he knew, he would never dare to let go.
Jack being safe was all that had kept him standing firm in hell and now… Now it all meant nothing, now they would all die here anyway and that love, that great blossoming love, would bleed into the mud of no man’s land.
“You were right with what you said, I’m a rich brat. How many troopers do you think I’ve declared undying love to? How many do you think I send home when they get too attached?” He set his jaw, hating himself with every false, cruel word. “You were just a nice way to pass a boring summer.”
Jack recoiled as if he had been slapped. He bunched his fists and kept them at his sides, his body heaving as sobs tried to shudder through him. When the tears began to fall, they washed tracks through the patina of mud on his face.
“Don’t say that! Because it isn’t true! You loved me—you did! You still do, because I can see it in your eyes! I know you—better than anyone else on earth.”
The gramophone had stopped playing, the needle bumping through static. Jack pressed a fist up to his mouth, but it didn’t quite suffocate the cry in his throat. The dugout was filled with his hopeless whimper.
“Why should you wish to wound me so, Robert?”
“I’m your captain, soldier. Anything else was a silly game. How was I to know you were stupid enough to believe in it?”
And he would die, he knew. If there was a God, He would reach down from the heavens and throw Robert Thorne against the wire, leaving him there to bleed.
And I deserve it.
“You’re going straight from here to the ship, Trooper, and from there back to England.” He drew in a sharp breath. “And think yourself bloody lucky that you’re not in serious trouble.”
“You’re a bloody liar! You were listening to our song—I could hear it all the way down the trench, and I ran to it as though you had called to me!”
Jack strode to the gramophone and kicked it over. The brittle record flew free and smashed to useless pieces on the floor.
“Soldier!” Thorne bellowed to the NCO who had brought Jack to the dugout. He seized Jack roughly by one arm and hissed, “I don’t fall in love, Woodvine.”
“I bloody well wish I never had!”
Jack’s free hand shot out and slapped Thorne across his perfect, square jaw.
The NCO shoved open the door.
“Do you want me to fetch the military police, sir?” Grabbing the young man from Captain Thorne, he bellowed, “What’s all this, Trooper?”
“Trooper Woodvine has papers to sail for home, he’s discharged.” Thorne looked at a spot over Jack’s head, no trace of a flinch at the sound of distant artillery. “See that the MPs get him safely out to sea, however much he complains.”
Jack had to be almost carried. He hung against the NCO like a puppet with cut strings. He blinked at Thorne, then squeezed his eyes tight shut.
They sprang open again at the sound of a voice shouting along the trench.
“It’s Apollo!” Bryn yelled. “He’s kicked down the stable door and he’s out in no man’s land!”
“Wha—” Thorne could hardly process this new horror, his feet suddenly rooted to the spot.
Before anyone could stop him, Jack had wriggled free of the NCO and leaped onto the nearest ladder. He glanced from one side to the other, and as Thorne lunged for Jack’s
legs, the trooper was over the top.
No whistle had been blown.
Over the racket of the continued bombardment, the distressed whinnies and thundering hooves of Apollo could be heard. Thorne could hear Jack’s voice too, but the sounds were becoming more distant as each second passed.
“Sir?”
Bryn, his hand resting on the rung of the ladder as if he was about to follow his friend, stared at Captain Thorne. There was steel in his tawny eyes as he was waited for an order.
“I didn’t mean it,” was all Thorne could say, his voice weak. Then he pulled Bryn clear of the ladder and threw himself up and over the top. He dropped down onto one knee, looking out into the wasteland for his lover and that snow-white steed, but there was only thick smoke, slowly clearing.
“Hey, handsome boy! Hey!”
Jack’s voice, his fingers clicking. And Apollo—a whinny, the sound of hooves thumping against the soil, as if he had reared up and returned to four feet.
“That’s it…come along… Let’s get you back to your stable, nice and safe—that’s it, there, I’ve got your bridle now. Aren’t you good, my handsome fellow? Home safe in time for elevenses—that’s it, that’s—”
A huge explosion ripped the air. Jack never finished his sentence. Apollo uttered a high-pitched whinny and shrapnel thudded across the mud.
“Jack!” Thorne gave a cry of pain as hot shrapnel seared into his calf, embedding itself in his boot and the flesh beneath it. “Jack!”
A low moan of pain sighed on the smoky air, and a cough, as of someone struggling to breathe, their lungs giving up.
The Captain and the Cavalry Trooper Page 20