“Yes, yes, of course I do, with my glasses. Before, I—”
“Then you see I am covered in mud,” said Yetzel through snarled lips.
Elmo looked him up and down. “Yes, Captain. Yes, I see that.”
“And how do you suppose I came to be covered in mud?”
“How?”
“Yes.”
“You … fell?”
“I fell? Hmph. Very perceptive, Mr Uffe.”
Axe felt hopeless and increasingly fearful as she watched Yetzel. His anger had ripened into something greater than mere ire. Something more calculated and more dangerous, just like the other time in the township of Mesen, the very day Axe arrived home, over a month ago.
It was the day Yetzel beat a boy of fifteen, just a wisp of a thing who looked hungry and disconsolate. He beat him till he could not get up because the boy was stupid and ignorant and not yet sufficiently scared of all the things in the world that demanded one’s fear. The boy’s transgression was to spit on the ground, as so many young men do to imitate their elders, except the boy had the misfortune to spit at the precise moment Yetzel was walking past. The gob of saliva did not even touch his boot, but Yetzel declared it a calculated act of disrespect.
After he finished beating the boy, Yetzel noticed Axe staring at him. The flogging had filled him with a sense of power and confidence, so he walked across and introduced himself like nothing had happened. Axe had not been rid of him since, and now the same sorry scene was playing out a second time. Axe felt a dreadful déjà vu, for she knew her only role was to observe. He wanted her to see him—see how powerful he was and how weak everybody else was.
“And why did I fall?” Yetzel asked Elmo.
The farmer stood there. His mouth gaped open like he was going to speak. His eyes began to dart around, from Yetzel to Axe and finally to the dirty heap in front of him. He took a step forward and hunched lower.
“Wh … is that my goat? Is that Nora?”
“Ahh, so it is your goat. We’re finally getting somewhere,” said Yetzel.
“She is … is she all right?”
“All right? Your goat is dead, Uffe! I shot her!”
Elmo shuffled forward and dropped to his knees. “Oh God. Nora.”
He began petting the fur stained with blood and mud.
“Little Nora? Oh no, no.”
His voice was soft and broken, filled with sorrow. He looked up.
“Why? Why have you done this? She was a pet. The last from when my Hettie was alive.”
That’s right, thought Axe. I had forgotten. Hettie’s family farmed our land before selling to father. Maybe that is why Elmo is so greedy for what isn’t his.
“Why? I ask you why!” cried Elmo, letting anger tinge his voice, a dangerous thing in such times when a German could slay a Belgian without facing charges.
“I was hoping you would tell me why, Uffe, but it appears you are too stupid. Do you recognize this young lady,” said Yetzel, maintaining a newfound calm.
Elmo nodded.
“This goat was in her vegetable garden, and not for the first time it seems. This goat—your goat, we have established—was eating human food, when we are all subject to shortages. It proceeded to defy me when I ordered it out. It caused me to muddy my uniform,” said Yetzel, his voice rising the whole time in a controlled performance.
“Of course, it is but a goat. It does not know better. It cannot be held to account. And it is already dead. No, it is the owner who must be held to account.”
Yetzel turned. Axe thought she saw some sort of pleasure on his face, some sort of satisfaction in the curl of his lip and glaze of his eyes.
“The stick, please.”
Axe looked at him and then at Elmo, still on his knees. “It is not necessary. He has apologized. He is sorry and it’s enough. The goat is dead, as you say. Please, Yetzel, it is enough.”
“But has he apologized?” said Yetzel, and turned back to Elmo. “Well, have you?”
“You want me to apologize? For you killing Nora when she was not even on her property!” said Elmo. He remained slumped on his knees. He pointed his finger at Axe. “How can my goat eat her vegetables when it is my land? Trespassing on my land! I have proof. Both of you, every last one of you, on my land!”
“Enough. The stick,” said Yetzel.
Axe did not move. Yetzel stormed across and snatched the stick from her hand. He strode back.
Elmo shook as he pushed from his knees to stand upright. “He shall … shall … shall bring to the Lord compensation for the sin committed. Committed! A female from the flock. A lamb or … or … a goat. A goat. A sin offering. So says Leviticus. Leviticus, damn you!”
Yetzel approached Elmo, weighing the stick in his hand, listening to the farmer rave. “Leviticus won’t help you today, Mr Uffe. And you would do well to remember one thing,” said Yetzel, and swung.
Elmo did not try to defend himself as the wood struck his face. The sound was hard and inhuman. The farmer dropped.
“It is not your land, Mr Uffe. It is my land,” yelled Yetzel, and swung.
Axe rushed forward but Yetzel turned. The German’s nostrils flared and his eyes became tiny wedges of focus. He was cold and intent and nothing like the purported gentlemen who came to buy Axe’s eggs. This man was mean and craven, perhaps even a cold-blooded killer. Axe stopped dead in her tracks. There was nothing she could do.
“It will never be your land,” said Yetzel, and swung.
Elmo was prostrate, covering his face.
“It is our land! German land!” said Yetzel, and swung.
“The Kaiser’s land!” he said, and swung.
“Your goat—your naughty, naughty goat—on our land,” he said, and he kept swinging, working up a rhythm, left and right, back and forth.
Axe turned her back on the horrible scene. Tears streamed her face. She knew she could not intervene without risking both their lives, but nor could she watch. Only when the stick snapped did Yetzel finally stop. Axe heard Elmo crying and whimpering. She heard Yetzel panting. Yes, it was hard work delivering such a beating to a defenseless farmer.
“A lesson learned,” Yetzel finally said. Then he bent down and with his right hand grabbed Elmo by his long, scraggly hair, now wet with blood. He lifted Elmo’s head. Elmo’s eyes were barely open.
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand,” whispered Yetzel. He smiled. “Yes, you recognize that, don’t you? See, I know the Bible too, Mr Uffe. We Germans are good, Christian people. An educated people, unlike you. Oh, and if you ever quote the Bible to me again—if you ever so much as look at me with a frown—you will know your God.”
Yetzel let go. Elmo’s head dropped and slapped against the dirt. The German turned and walked away, brushing past Axe on the trail. He did not look back.
When Yetzel had rounded the corner and was out of sight, Axe went to her neighbor. “Elmo, Elmo, my God …”
“Get away!” yelled Elmo, though his voice was small and feeble. “Get away. Leave me and go to the German, you whore. Whore! Fucking whore!”
Axe stepped back. She looked at the man she had thought of as her enemy but who was really no more than a neighbor; a poor farmer she had known all her life who was petty, greedy, scheming and sad—so very sad. And now he was a bloody mess, curled on the ground next to a dead goat that had meant much more than Axe could have known.
She brushed a tear from her cheek and, once again, Axe ran to fetch Godewyn.
16
With his first step, Henry knocked his canvas mining hat off as it brushed the supporting beam overhead.
“Sorry,” he said automatically, apologizing to the air. Luckily there was no lantern attached to the front of his hat, for the tunnel was well lit with a mixture of electric lights and fixed gas lanterns.
Henry crouched lower after that and continued, trailing Private Horton, who had alre
ady been nicknamed Rat Dick. Henry wished at that moment that he was as short as Rat Dick, so short that he could walk fully upright and not bash his head, which he hit another half-dozen times before they reached the gallery after a long walk underground.
The chamber was surprisingly large, enough so that the men could stand without bending their knees. It was well equipped with tools, supplies, boxes they used as chairs and a handful of stretcher beds. Shirtless men were resting; Henry noticed pale streaks across their faces and chests, the clay that marked them like dirty ivory with the same bluish tint often seen on old meat.
“Well, boys, feel like home?” Sergeant Lynch said with a grin. “Miner’s joke. This here is London clay. That’s what you’ll be digging and carting. It’s Ypres clay by rights, but it crops up on the other side of the channel, under London, so that’s what we call it. In fact, same dirt they cut the Tube tunnels through. Slices off like butter. Tough butter, but butter just the same. We can make good progress in this stuff, and do it pretty quiet. The other day one gang got ahead of themselves and came up in Piccadilly. Caught the train home.”
The men laughed. Sergeant Lynch let them rest and acclimatize to their new surroundings. It was not unheard of for fresh sappers to lose their nerve their first time down and demand to go back up top, but none of Henry’s new chums seemed bothered at being underground, and nor was Henry.
As far as he was concerned, the biggest difference to up top was the smell and the heat. The smell was earthy, but not like fresh-turned garden soil; more in the way of a pile of grass clippings and rotting leaves that had been left to grow hot and decompose. Yet it smelled infinitely better than up top where it was men and horses decomposing in the sun and water.
“Hey, Rat Dick,” said Henry, and nudged him.
Rat Dick had accepted his new nickname without quibble, as if he had been through a hundred terrible nicknames in the past and the latest was no worse than any other.
“Smells like a dug grave,” said Henry.
“Easy goes, Henry. You can’t be saying that. It’s bad luck. Knock on wood, doesn’t become ours,” said Rat Dick and gently rapped a knuckle on the wood crate beneath his backside.
“We’re heading down in a moment, boys,” said Sergeant Lynch. “You might like to remove your shirts. Only gets hotter the deeper we go and with less air flow.”
The sergeant and the rest of the men began unbuttoning. Henry did likewise, glad to be rid of his shirt, for it was humid and hot. Beads of sweat gleaned upon a thick blonde fuzz that covered his round shoulders.
“Blimey, you’re hairy, Henry,” said Rat Dick. “You remind me of a chap back home in Farnborough. He was a hairy fellow. Lived in a park. Used to be a whaler. Missing some teeth just like you, too. Said a whale knocked ’em out. Not sure how a whale does that. That’s a clever whale. I think it might’ve given him a bit of a knock to the head, too. We called him Mad Morry. He was an old codger, liked to yell and chase kids in the park. They thought it was a great game. Who can get closest to Mad Morry? He ran slow, but then one day—nobody knows how—he caught one and, well, no, I suppose you don’t remind me of him that much. Yours weren’t knocked out by a whale, too, were they?”
“No. By my friend. Made me climb a rock cliff and then jump a, a, I don’t know. I suppose it was a canyon.”
“A canyon?”
“Yeah, it’s a big gap in the rock.”
“I know what a bloody canyon is, Henry. And you jumped one?”
“Not exactly.”
“Ahh. Thus the gappy smile.”
Henry nodded. He felt no need to go into detail concerning the many ways in which Michel had led him into harm’s way and seemingly conspired to humiliate him.
“So why’s it so hot?” said Henry, seeking to change the subject. “I thought it’d be cold. Cellars are cold and a mine’s just a cellar, isn’t it?”
“You should ask the sarge,” said Rat Dick. “I’d like to know.”
“All right. Hey, sarge; sorry, excuse me, sarge,” said Henry.
“Biggelow. I’m guessing you’ve got another question. Out with it.”
“Why’s it so hot down here? In the ground? I know you said there’s less air, but …”
“It’s because we’re digging our way toward hell, Biggelow. Wasn’t that made clear? Now, listen up. Most sappers are working on defensive mines, rooting out Jerry while Jerry tries to root us out. That’s not what we’re doing. This is the last mine to be completed, and once it is it will be the last mine filled with explosives. Its course takes us right past the first series of German trenches and to their fallback line. If we don’t get them with the initial firing, this should do the job in round two.”
A number of dirty, sweaty men with hunched posture filed into the room from the tunnel. Their faces were expressionless.
“Right, on your feet. Looks like it’s our turn,” said the sergeant.
Henry began his shift running lengths of timber to the freshly excavated reaches of the mine where they were slid and tapped into place as gently as possible. Henry managed to only ring his head on the rafters twice more. A few hours later, he got his chance to dig.
He squatted. There was not enough room to raise his pick for a proper swing, so he attacked the clay wall from about head height, the pick going no further back than his shoulder. The blade dug into clay and Henry levered the hunk free. A little stuck to the pick. He did not clean it off before swinging again.
Henry kept it up till he had a good pile of clay, then swapped pick for shovel and began scooping and heaping it behind, where Rat Dick loaded it on a shallow trolley and it was hauled away by rope.
By the end of his shift, Henry was exhausted and covered in clay. He emerged from the dark of the tunnel into the twilight of a recently set sun. It was as Sergeant Lynch had said. Some days you start in the dark and finish in the dark—just like life.
17
When he got back to the sapper’s camp, hot food was waiting. Henry sat and ate with a big dumb smile on his face.
He had not been sure at first, but he was sure now. He truly had struck it lucky. Being a sapper with the Royal Engineers was about a million times better than being a trench rat in a sodden, rat- and lice-infested dugout with the regulars. He ran through all the pros and cons.
Up top it was frequently cold, which he did not like one bit. In the mine it was balmy. A little too balmy, but that was a mere quibble.
Up top he was constantly being shot at, and his mates and comrades were constantly being shot. In the mine, despite what Sergeant Lynch had said about inter-mine warfare, rare was the German trying to snipe the lid off someone’s head.
Up top it seemed to always be raining, which meant there was always water in the trenches, which meant his feet were forever waterlogged. In the mine the clay was moist but dry, and so were his feet.
Up top, when it was not raining, it was sunny, which wreaked havoc on his pasty skin that was like the skin of an albino mole. A mine, in which there never had been sun and never would be sun, was the perfect haunt for an albino mole.
Up top there was the constant pounding of artillery, which made it near impossible to sleep or rest easy. In the mine he was so far beneath the surface that no artillery shell would ever trouble him. There were other sounds—the slap of iron on clay, of clay on clay and of clay on wood—but they were good sounds.
As for the cons of the mine, Henry could think of just one. Cave-ins.
A mine not a hundred yards from the entrance to Henry’s had seen a cave-in that day. Fifteen men were trapped on the wrong side of a wall of dirt. The sergeant said they would get them out—moving heaven and earth and all that. With only a little imagination, Henry imagined the whole affair as little more than an extended break for those men.
And so if the occasional non-fatal cave-in was the only downside—that was nothing. That was nit-picking when everybody else was digging out great big lice heads from their asses. Henry shoveled food into his mou
th and decided he was as content as he could hope to be while fighting the war. He had fresh hope that he might even survive.
He moved on to a second serving of stew and bread. He figured that once he was properly full—stuffed to the point where he could stomach not a mouthful more—he would see about writing a letter to his dear old mom to tell her the good news.
He would use the same joke the sergeant had used about digging all the way to Piccadilly and catching the train. She’d like that. Henry liked the joke about hell, too, but his mom took those sorts of things quite seriously, so he thought it best to keep it for his private amusement.
He could tell her about Rat Dick, a nice fellow and his new friend. He would have to use his real name, though. He’d have to ask what it was. His surname was Horton, or maybe Morton, maybe Merton, though Corden sounded familiar, too. He could not think whether he had ever heard his first. He would have to ask about both.
What else? He always found it hard to fill his letters. There seemed so much to say when things were happening, but once it came to putting pen to paper he would suddenly find himself bereft of things to say.
Henry supposed he could tell his mom about Michel. That would take up at least a page. Mind, it was the sort of bad news he tried to keep from her. There was enough bad news in the papers and on the radio. She scarce needed to hear it from him, too—stories of men doing stupid things, losing their heads, then losing their heads for real.
Had he, though? Was Michel headless and dead? Was the daft sod—
“Say, Henry. There’s a large Australian chap looking for you,” said Rat Dick, walking ahead of a man who almost doubled his silhouette.
Henry peered around Rat Dick. “Is that … Ernie!”
“G’day, Hen.” Ernie nodded to Rat Dick, “Thanks mate.”
Henry got to his feet and shook Ernie’s hand. “How’d you get in here, Ernie? I thought only sappers was allowed in the sapper’s camp.”
“You do the job I did long enough, Hen, bloke learns a few tricks. I could probably bullshit my way into an audience with General Douggy Haig if I had to. Tell him what a great job he’s doing,” Ernie said, raising his eyebrows. “Wasn’t anything special to get in here.”
Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2) Page 7