Swastika Night

by Katharine Burdekin

  “Yes, Joseph. I shan’t forget it.”

  Fred ran after Alfred and presently caught him up.

  “What did he want?” Alfred asked.

  “He was telling me he loved you and was grateful to you.”

  “He’s a nice old man, Joseph is.”

  “Do you trust him, Father?”

  “As far as he can see me,” said Alfred laughing. “That’s a long way, but not right round the world.”

  “I believe you could trust him.”

  “You can’t really trust any man who is religious. If your interests conflict with the religion the man breaks his word and betrays you and thinks he’s right to do it. But Joseph’s a good man all the same.”

  Fred was silent and thoughtful and he said nothing more about Joseph.

  Presently Alfred said, “That language they’ve lost nearly all of must be Latin, the Romans’ language. Von Hess says it was dead long before Hitler except as a written language and in the Christian Church. They must have some of the old Church bits which have come down from mouth to mouth. Then that’s interesting that he knows about the priests and the religious wars. Fred, we must get back to von Hess again in a day or two. I’m sure we’ll get more out of it the second time through. And Hermann’ll be so pleased to be on guard again, poor old lad.”

  “I hope he’ll never have to do anything except sleep,” said Fred. “Father——” he began, but he changed his mind, and kept his own counsel.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FIVE Nazis in the charge of a corporal were returning to Bulfort from a job on the telephone wires a little way down the Amesbury-Exeter road, about two miles west of Stonehenge. They had worked till it was nearly dark, and then had piled into the small lorry that carried their kit and tools, to drive back to Bulfort. The lorry would not start, and on investigation was found to have a broken connection in the feed pipe. It was tiresome and difficult to manage a makeshift in the dark by the light of torches, so the corporal ordered the party to march home. None of them minded the walk, it was a mere trifle to tough young German soldiers, but they did mind the course of this particular evening stroll. They must go right past Stonehenge, in the dark, on their feet. However, they strode along singing, until they got near the stones. Then they fell silent. The corporal did not urge them to start again; he would not have admitted it aloud for gold or torture, but he too felt that there was no reason for making a loud German noise outside that peculiar English place. Marching quietly past Stonehenge was not against any army order that he had ever heard. So they marched quietly, and had nearly reached the angle of the rough stone wall which enclosed the place when a terrible loud high screaming, just behind the wall, only a few yards from the nearest man, made everyone jump and shiver and earnestly desire to hurry on. But their discipline was fairly good. They only quickened their pace just a little. The screaming went on, and with it a sort of chuckling leering sound, like a very inhuman laugh.

  “Ach, Hitler !” burst out one of the men. “It’s the ghosts! The ghosts of Stonehenge!”

  “Halt!” said the corporal. “You fools, it’s only a hare! There’s someone there killing it.”

  He was over the wall in a second and, in the light of the moon just rising, the party saw something jump up and rush away, with the corporal after it, towards the stones. The lust of catching and seizing was so strong on the corporal that he would probably have followed it right into the circle, but he didn’t need to, he was a noted runner, and he caught it before it got there, took something away from it, and dragged it back to his party of Nazis. They flashed torches on it to see it better. It was a Christian lad, obviously half-witted. The noise he had allowed the hare to make as he took it out of its snare, when he must have heard the feet of the soldiers on the road just by him, proved that. The hare, which he had finally killed the second before the corporal sprang at him over the wall, hung limp and peaceful, its troubles done, in the corporal’s hand. The lad was dressed in nothing but a filthy woollen shirt and breeches, though it was a sharp spring night of east wind. The cross on the breast of his shirt was plain enough, though. The corporal gripped him tightly and he rolled his eyes in terror.

  “We’ll have the hare, scum,” he said. “Fall out, men, get round him. We’ll teach him something about poaching our hares. You know all the hares belong to Germany, don’t you, scum?”

  “Nein verstehen,” gasped the poor lubber. “Ich sprech Deutsch nicht!”

  “No, I should say not. German wouldn’t come well out of that mouth,” and he gave it a light flick. “Do you understand English then? The hares belong to us. All the hares, all the rabbits, all the everything.”

  The men roared with laughter at the poor half-wit’s terrified expression. They were relieved from fright, but they were angry, a little angry, with the Christian boy for causing it. If their discipline had failed they might have killed him, but as it was they just gave him light stinging little taps on his face and ears, pushing him from one to another across the circle. It was only horse-play and teasing, and they would soon have got tired of it and marched on, but the poor lout got more and more frightened. His mouth hung open and dribbled, his eyes shone wildly in the increasing moonlight.

  “Mein Herren ! Mein Herren!” he screamed. “Oh, nicht, oh, nicht. Oh, let me go! Oh, let me go. I’ll show you where the ghosts are, Mein Herren! And the guns—the lovely guns to shoot hares with, but I daren’t take them. I’m afraid of the ghosts.”

  “What!” cried the corporal. “Leave him alone. Now, you, what do you mean about ghosts and guns ? How many guns?”

  The idiot began to count on his fingers. “Five, six, seven, ten, sixty, a thousand!”

  “He’s not all there. He’s making it up to get away.”

  “He’s too half-witted to make a tale up, I think,” said the corporal. “I think we’d better look into it. Though if it is anything it’s probably only some old truck that was never cleared away. Where are these ghosts and guns, Kerl? Over there? In Stonehenge?”

  “Nein, nein, Herren. This way, over there. Now let me go !”

  “Not on your life. You come too and show us the ghosts and guns. And if we don’t find any you’re for it. Bring him along, Karl.”

  The Christian boy led them to the chalky face of the dug-out lump. His wits were more astray than usual, but he had a vague idea that if he could induce the Germans to enter the tunnel the ghosts would eat them up. Then he could run away very fast in case the ghosts came right out and ate him up too, though he knew a man with a cross on his breast was far more ghost-proof than an unbeliever. Still he thought the ghosts might be a little angry with him for sending a party of infidels into their shrine, as angry as they would have been if he’d taken the guns, which to his uncritical eye were sound and useful property. So when he had all the Germans round the entrance to the tunnel and was explaining that they must go in there, and all were leaning forward to look he wriggled furiously and broke his jailor’s grasp. The man made a clutch at him but got nothing but a piece of shirt which tore like cobweb. The boy was off, half-naked, running at a pace none of them except the corporal could emulate in their thick boots and heavy clothes and equipment.

  “Oh, never mind him,” said the corporal, when he saw what had happened. “This is a tunnel all right. It goes round the corner. Give me your torch, Karl. Has any other man got a torch?”

  “I have, but it doesn’t always work.”

  “Then forward into the earth, single file,” ordered the corporal, laughing. “We’ll find these ghosts and guns or stick in the runway.”

  Inside the dug-out Alfred and Fred were so utterly absorbed that they heard nothing, no murmur of voices. Perhaps the bitter east wind was snatching them up and carrying them away. They heard nothing until the scraping sound of the first man coming along the tunnel on his belly and feet and elbows struck on Fred’s sharp ear.

  “There’s someone coming, Father.”

  Alfred woke Hermann, who was as usual asle
ep on the pile of sacks, with one kick.

  “Someone coming, Hermann, Be quiet. Fred, take the book—here, put the photograph in—go out the back way and put the stone over.” Alfred blew out the candles.

  Fred breathed in his ear. “Can’t you come too?”

  “No. We’ll never all get down there before they see us. Go, Fred, quick.”

  “Make them think you and Hermann are here because you wouldn’t like to be with him where anyone might find you,” whispered Fred very rapidly, but quite unflustered.

  He was gone. Alfred listened to scraping sounds in the front of the dug-out, but he could hear nothing of Fred’s exit. He stood with his back to the hole in the corner of the dug-out to wait what happened next. There was no time to pull the door over the inner room. There was no time to do anything. He could just hear Hermann’s breathing. Perhaps the ghosts would stop whoever it was at the entrance. A light flashed on and someone said, “Ach, Hitler ! ” Then someone else said, “Ach, Himmler!” and there was a sound of confusion. Alfred for all his anxiety and tension could not help wanting to laugh. He imagined Germans, not knowing what was there, pressing on in the tunnel, and Germans knowing what was there, wanting to get back. And it was true that even the corporal, for a second or two, very much wanted to retreat before those grim skeletons. Then, being a brave man, he pushed one of them, and it fell down on the concrete floor with a bony clatter.

  “Come on, you fools!” he roared, his voice echoing queerly in the hollow place. “They’re only old corpses. And, by Hitler, someone’s been putting them here like this.”

  “All up, Hermann,” Alfred breathed, gripping Hermann’s arm. “That fellow’s not afraid. Fred said you couldn’t trust to it.”

  Hermann’s arm swelled inside Alfred’s hand. The muscles felt like living things, things with a fierce uncontrolled life of their own. Alfred thought, “Now Hermann will go mad. But I mustn’t.”

  The corporal strode round the machine-gun party and flashed his torch on Alfred and Hermann, who were standing together at the back of the dug-out.

  “Ach,” he said, “there’s something here besides those bones!”

  Hermann went into action. He seized a large flint from the pile of chalk and flints and hurled it with perfect aim and tremendous force at the torch. There was darkness and hubbub. Hermann was fighting, there was no doubt about that, for there were grunts and groans and gasps. Skeletons crashed about, the snapping of their dry bones making a staccato macabre accompaniment to the more homely and human noises. Alfred did nothing. If he went into the fight Hermann would be confused. As it was he could hit, kick, bite and gouge anything that was not himself, and know that he was doing well for his side. There was a constant stream of oaths from someone who seemed to be enough outside the fight to have some breath. Then, after what seemed an eternity of confusion, a light flashed on. The corporal was standing quietly out of the fight with his revolver drawn, unwounded except for a bad cut on his right hand. Hermann was still on his feet, streaming with blood. The corporal shot him, twice. Hermann collapsed, like a great red tower, and lay so still that Alfred wondered at it. The next minute he had to laugh at poor King Nosmo, who had fallen over the machine gun in the attitude of one who is very sick indeed. His shattered head had in the fight become still more shattered, his head was just an open bowl, and yet he looked like a person overcome with sickness. Hermann was dead; he looked dead, and yet King Nosmo, who had been dead no one knew how long, looked just sick.

  “It’s their positions,” thought Alfred. “A man ought to lie down when he’s dead.”

  Hermann had downed two of his enemies. One lay quite still but breathed stertorously. The other was sitting against the wall of the dug-out, dazed. Two were on their feet, both bleeding copiously, and the only uninjured Germans were the man who had been struggling with the obstinate torch, and the corporal, who had only been cut by the flint. He had waited coolly for the light when he could safely use his weapon. The smoke from the revolver cleared away and the stunning reverberations died down, leaving every man with a sensation of deafness. There was dead silence except for the panting of the Germans. The corporal kept Alfred covered with his revolver, but he took no notice. He was looking at Hermann, and thinking of him and von Hess. “With his heart’s blood.” Poor brave, stupid, sentimental Nazi. But that last wild fight must have been a tremendous relief to him after his tragically peaceful short life. For a few minutes he must have been completely happy.

  “It’s the Red!” someone said at last, in a tone of surprise.

  “I knew that,” said the corporal. “You there, who are you?”

  “Alfred, aerodrome ground mechanic. I’ve got some candles here, corporal. Shall I light them?”

  “Yes. Keep the torch on him, Adalbert. I have you covered, Alfred. Don’t do anything funny.”

  Alfred, followed by the torch beams, lighted the candles. All was well. There wasn’t a trace of the presence of a third man. Two stools, the little rough table and the long pile of sacks. Fred had got a splendid start. When Alfred had lit the candles the corporal moved up to look. He took in the arrangements at a glance.

  “Anything under those sacks?” he asked.

  “They’re just to lie on,” Alfred said.

  “Search them, Karl,” the corporal ordered the uninjured Nazi. The sacks were scattered and nothing was found but one minute cigarette butt and a couple of match-ends.

  “A boy told us there were some guns here.”

  “So there are,” Alfred said. “There’s that machine gun in the entrance, and those men by the wall there have rifles.”

  “That’s old stuff.”

  “Very old,” agreed Alfred.

  “Where does that chalk come from?” the corporal asked, looking at the big pile.

  “From the other tunnel. There’s the hole.”

  “Does it go right out?”

  “Yes, but you can’t go that way. It’s got a stone over the end.”

  “Karl, take the torch and go down the tunnel till you come to the stone. Feel about well. You other two poke this chalk about a bit with your daggers.”

  “Karl won’t be able to turn round,” Alfred said.

  “Don’t be funny, Alfred. It’ll be best for you not to speak unless I speak to you perhaps.”

  No guns were found hidden in the chalk, and presently Karl came painfully back out of the tunnel hind end first.

  “Nothing there, corporal, except the big stone. You can’t move it from this end.”

  “You and the Red always used the front entrance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who made the back tunnel and this false wall here and put the skeletons in position?”

  “Someone who hadn’t much else to do, I should think.”

  “You found the place like this?”

  “It’s always been like this since Hermann and I have been using it.”

  “Who told you about it?”

  “A Christian,” said Alfred, guessing at his betrayer.

  “And you came here with this Red because you thought some decent Englishman or Nazi might catch you above ground?”

  Alfred looked ashamed.

  “I knew him a great while ago, when he was doing his military training. He wasn’t a Red then.”

  “You’ve got filthy tastes, Alfred. Filthy even for an Englishman. But that’s nothing to do with us. Karl, bring those candles down here and we’ll see to these men.”

  The corporal put his revolver in its holster, and the whole party moved down to the entrance of the dug-out with the candles to see how badly injured were the victims of Hermann’s berserker rage. All the Germans were quieting down after the nervous excitement of the fright by Stonehenge, and the stimulation of the struggle in the dark with such an adequate foe. There is little doubt that the affair would from then have passed off peacefully had not the six old soldiers at stand easy by the wall chosen this moment of all their years of duty to fall down. One, touched perhaps in t
he fight, slipped and fell against his comrade, he against the next, and with the added weight of their rifles—which were bound to their right hands—they made a loud and ghastly Quakers’ wedding. The sight and sound of these frightful, half-dressed skeletons moving and falling about in the dim light, without any human agency empowering them, was too much for the most highly strung and nervous among the Germans. He jumped and screamed. The other men laughed at him, a roar of laughter, with more than a touch of hysteria in it, and he, to relieve his feelings of shame and fury, kicked savagely at Hermann’s dead face which lay conveniently close to his heavy boot. Alfred lost control completely for the first time since his boyhood, and taking his hand from his pocket he dealt the Nazi a smashing blow on the mouth. After that as far as he could make out the dug-out collapsed on him.

  He came to himself on a bed, in great pain. There seemed to be no part of him that did not hurt, but the worst pain was in his chest when he breathed. He thought each breath must kill him with its agony, and yet he went on breathing. Once he tried to stop, but couldn’t, and only made the next breath a more fiery hell than those that had gone before. After what seemed a year when he could do nothing at all but suffer, the pain got a little better or he became more used to it. He found he was thinking. He was in hospital and therefore must be in a bad way. He remembered everything. He must see Fred. He must call someone and ask if he would be allowed to see Fred. He tried to make a sound. Some blood came up in his mouth, and the sound was not very loud. But a Nazi orderly with a handsome wooden face like an old rough carving presently was bending over him. Alfred had one eye out of bandages, which could still see, though mistily.

  “Am I going to die?” Alfred whispered, articulating each word with incredible effort.