Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  I’m not offended. Although I no longer wait, but seek, he’s right as far as my past is concerned: once an adventurer, a voyager, a courtier, a soldier, my life boiled down to that one thing only.

  From outside there comes music, a guitar accompanying a single voice, a tune so sweet and haunting, I must see who provides it. Getting up and peering from the window, there’s a band of soldiers sheltering at the edge of the woods below, close to the well. For a moment, the notion takes me that my master could be amongst them, for he would seek out music such as this on a battlefield. The singer stands in the glow of a bonfire, his face still and concentrated, carolling a lament of love or loss, and his comrades sit around arm in arm. There is no familiar face. Sporco stands by my side and when I notice our tails swaying in concert with the melody, I feel consoled. A new chapter has begun without my noticing it. The travails of our journey have brought us close. I have a friend now. I can teach him, and he I. This scruff who has made me see the world anew. We will search the realms together. And when we find my master—with Sporco by my side, it is surely possible—all the better: for we shall be three.

  We curl up to sleep, my heart slowing to the beat of his, to the comforting odour of corn, the fire crackling, the sails creaking against the wind and the calm, assured rumble of cogs and wheels turning through the night.

  In the morning, we have a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield from the front of the mill on top of our private bank. Surveying it in the crisp June light, the rain of yesterday seems like a distant reverie, the distant tolling of church bells chasing the last of it away. The smudgy vale has alchemized into a velvet of sweeping hills, of silver pools, dark woods and patchworked fields in evergreen, emerald and aubergine. The massed battalions look tranquil, untroubled, as they assemble into neat squares and columns, every detail of kit and uniform thrilling under the sun: tunics of scarlet faced with cream and imperial blue, white breeches, golden buttons. And the little noises that fill the air—clinking armour, sheaving steel, hammers on horseshoes, squeaking leather—are reassuring and soft, like the hubbub before a dance, the tittle-tattle of guests arriving, the thrips and pops of the orchestra tuning up. The phalanx of mounted officers close by, chatting amiably and peering through their telescopes at their counterparts on the other side, could easily be ball-goers and I wonder if the fantasy will come true after all: that these two armies will meet in no man’s land, not to fight but to reel in the sunshine. The sight gives me confidence somehow, and strengthens my sense of purpose. I will find him: if not today, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, the next.

  ‘So you wait for me here,’ I say to Sporco. ‘You guard our home, whilst I search.’ I do for Sporco what my master often did for me at battles, give him a pretend responsibility to keep him safe, whilst I go alone. He assents with an upward tilt of his snout and turns to go back inside. ‘And, Sporco—’ he halts and looks round ‘—don’t leave this windmill. There’ll be a great noise, terrible sounds, louder than thunder, but you stay, understand? You stay in this place. Until I return, understand?’ I mean to frighten him. ‘Go on.’

  Even when he’s ensconced inside, I linger, fretting about leaving him alone. I observe him through a crack. He stands, chest broad, tail up and proud with his mission, and once more I remember the puppy abandoned on the pontoon, and my fear for him is crushing. ‘Just stay,’ I say to myself. ‘Just stay.’

  Going back into the heart of the army, fleet-footed now I am alone, gunners everywhere are trying to heave cannons into place. The rain may have stopped, but the ground is thick mud and the cannon wheels, even with horses pulling, have no purchase and keep tipping the guns to one side. I know from past experience any battle is unlikely to begin until the ground has hardened, so I have time on my side.

  At last, I find a group of hospital tents and, tail up, as it used to be in my war days, I go from one to the next. Red-eyed doctors are preparing tables and sorting instruments, gorgets, finger-saws, little guillotines and mouth gags. My master would usually be amongst them, calm and steady. And if his compatriots were frightened—for there is just as much dread in these hacking tents as on any front line—he’d offer a smile or thoughtful remark. I carry on, weaving through the British lines that seem to go on for miles, regiment after regiment after regiment. Every little while I look round at the windmill in the distance, its sails perfectly still, and I find myself imagining the fine times that Sporco and I might have together, even if we don’t find my master. He still has five or six years. I could make them happy ones. A pack is a home after all.

  An hour or so passes, burning heat evaporates the pools of rainwater, and though the ground begins to solidify, it’s still not firm enough for the cannon. Occasionally, waves of chanting erupt on one side or the other, pumped-up cavalrymen hold their helmets high with the tips of their swords, whilst battalions, sorted into giant rectangles and squares, shimmer restlessly. And still, over and over, I look to the windmill.

  When I notice gunners finally readying their cannon, I resolve to make my way back to it. Halfway to the ridge, a peculiar silence falls across the vale, as if the air had been sucked out of it. I hurry on, but pause when I hear a faraway bark. A tiny golden-brown shape flits over the hill between the lines of troops: Sporco.

  ‘Stop, Sporco! Stay!’ In the corner of my eye, I see a fuse being lit, a scratch of sparks and a flare of brilliant phosphorous. A blur of soldiers hurry past, levelling muskets, mouths shouting and I don’t know if he’s seen me.

  The boom is so loud and shrieking it shakes the valley. A scorching backdraft boils the air out of shape. Sporco has frozen, clinging on to the ground as if the world were turning over.

  16

  THE WELL

  Waterloo, June 1815

  Another boom comes, then a third, a fourth, and cannons rear up backwards, and my hearing goes with a pop. A soldier next to me, ginger-haired, vomits through his fingers. Suddenly everyone ducks, as a shape tears through the air. The earth explodes, folding into rucks.

  ‘Sporco!’ I can’t hear myself.

  An arm, shot from the body of the ginger boy, somersaults the air, spitting blood into my eye before I’m lapped in black smoke. I stumble on, seizing for breath. A glimpse of Sporco and he’s gone. With a snap my hearing comes back to the roar and whistle of mortar, the hammer of muskets, horses neighing, drums beating, men screaming, pipes, bugles, the endless tat-tat-tat of shot hitting metal. A soldier slips in the charge and is trampled by the rest, chest pummelled into red mud. A cavalryman is struck, his head shudders, and pink mist goes up with chunks of brain and bone. He hangs dead from his saddle, half-headed, as his horse, mad with fear, whinnies and races in circles.

  Troops line up, aim, fire, retreat, reload, line up again. A lance is driven through the neck of a white mare; it lurches mid-air and falls sideways, hooves up, snapping the pike and burying its rider under its flank. As he fights to free himself, a skirmisher bayonets his chest. I catch his eyes—a slowed-down surprise—before he’s shot in the head.

  I spot Sporco, in the midst of a marching regiment, bumped and jostled from boot to boot, not knowing where to turn. ‘Here!’ I dive in to fetch him but he keeps being kicked forward, shrieking as his paws are trodden on, and his ears do a frantic dance. All the while comes the hissing of bullets, the tapping of shot on metal and mists of blood as flesh is struck. I get to him and hold steady against his side, barking loudly for the soldiers to steer clear until finally the flank has passed and we retreat, taking cover behind a tipped-over cannon. He keeps trying to tell me something but I can’t hear.

  ‘Him, him, him,’ he seems to be saying.

  ‘I told you to wait! Why didn’t you wait?’

  His face caves in and he trembles all over. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. I was looking out for you through the window, hoping you’d be back soon, and that’s when—’ There’s a scream and an infantryman runs by on fire. A body lands on
the wheel of our cannon, legs bent back, stomach ripped open, crinkled white entrails and shiny-jewel organs slipping out. Sporco burrows under my stomach. ‘I’m frightened, frightened.’

  I peer over our barricade and my stomach turns. The whole valley is eaten up with battle. I can’t see where it begins or ends: columns march, mortars rain down, knives of sunshine split through black clouds, corpses burn. A battalion stalks through a field of blood-splattered rye. The walled farm from last night is choked with soldiers. A howitzer hits its roof, cracks through the slates and flames lick out.

  ‘We have to get back behind the ridge, to the windmill. Just stay close to me.’ We jump from behind our shelter and shoulder up the hill as a line of drummer boys marches the other way, tartan-clad, chests out, thrump, thrump, thrump. Cresting the peak, I realize in the confusion, we’ve drifted too far and the mill is behind us, still some distance away. Between it and us, an ocean of red-coated regiments have sorted into defensive squares, each one made up of hundreds of soldiers, on their knees round the edges, with bayonets out, and in rows behind, all with their musket up, ready to fire.

  The earth rumbles beneath our paws, cracks open in the ground and there comes a new cyclone of noise. Glancing back, the valley seems to be folding over itself in a band of blue, as the enemy cavalry charges, whipping up billows of dust, with hooves catching the sunlight like showers of flying coins.

  ‘Make for the first square!’ I cry, pushing Sporco on to it, hoping we’ll be safer inside it, than exposed in the empty space around. Just in time, we plunge through the crouching soldiers at the front into the heart of the square, as a command goes up and the men discharge as one, to a skull-shattering din. We burrow deeper, choking on smoke, as bodies drop at random, to the reek of burnt hair and hot metal. Sporco keeps turning on the spot, spine arched and his face a picture of horror. Near the back of the square, there’s some space to move and a suite of officers are monitoring the attack, blackened brows furrowed with concentration. A sergeant is shouting; I can’t hear what he says, only see his spittled mouth open and close.

  We push further on, bursting from the rear of the first square, over shrub land, and spinning into the next. And on we go, from one scorching throng to the next, from light to dark to light again—until finally we get away from the worst of the fighting, to the edge of the wood that curves round towards the mill.

  ‘There!’ Sporco cries, halting suddenly. ‘Him.’

  I see it, the silhouette against the sky, the only motionless figure on the battlefield, his insolent face crowned with that diabolical wig: Vilder. Then he’s lost in the vale of chaos.

  ‘This way, quickly!’ I cry, diving into the wood.

  A bullet crackles through the air. There’s a thud, Sporco falters and falls. He picks himself up, but drops again. Blood decants from a dark hole in his rump. ‘Are you hurt?’ Idiotic question. I look around for Vilder, in case he’s coming for us, but he’s vanished. Sporco stands unsteadily, shambles forward, lopsided, eyes blinking, and falls. I dig my head under his body, lift him over my shoulders and drive into the wood, away from the din of battle until we get to the other side, close to the windmill, where the soldiers made a fire last night near the well.

  I lay him down carefully, appalled with myself for dragging him here, for not leaving him in Brussels, or Padua, or Venice, or anywhere but here. He could be asleep on Claudina’s bed, legs tucked together, in a room scented with French talc and chamomile. I lick the blood from the wound, but no sooner have I cleaned it, it seeps out again. His flesh is too mangled to see if the bullet’s lodged inside or gone straight through him. He doesn’t make a sound, just stares at me, a wavering light in his eye. ‘You’ll be all right,’ I tell him, even as my insides flip. ‘We’ll fix you.’ Where is my master, I rage inside, now when I need him more than ever?

  ‘Something happened a long time ago,’ Sporco says weakly. ‘And I always recall it.’

  ‘Recall what?’ I press my paw against the wound and it heats beneath it.

  ‘When I was a puppy, I was tied to a pontoon and my mistress left me.’

  ‘You remember that?’ I can’t hide the shake in my voice. ‘You remember when you were young?’ In the depth of his eyes, I can see he does.

  ‘Is it getting dark?’

  ‘A little,’ I reassure him. I take a blanket that the soldiers have left behind and push the material against his wound. It stains red immediately. Little films of blood are bubbling in the corner of his mouth.

  Sporco’s sounds are slow and steady. ‘When I was left by my mistress, I didn’t know what to do. The way she left—with her suitcase packed, sailing away with her lover—told me she wasn’t coming back, but I waited anyway.’ He closes his eyes and his chin trembles. ‘Then I heard someone come on to the pontoon. It was her, I thought, she’s come back for me after all. She hadn’t. A dog had come instead, with a black back and a brown stomach, twice my size. Kind. He sat with me all night, even as I turned my back on him, not wanting his help, wanting only my mistress.’ His eyes grow cloudier. ‘It’s cold, terribly cold.’ I put the blanket over his body, tucking it in at the sides. ‘Some weeks later, that same dog found me and tried to help again, and I pretended not to know him, snapped him away.’

  ‘You remember all this?’

  ‘I was angry you see, I wanted her to return.’ Sporco fixes me in his glare as he lays out his secret. ‘But she didn’t. And that dog became my friend. My best friend. And that is why I would follow that dog throughout the realms, to any place on earth. Into a furnace I would follow him. The only one that came to help me that day I was left tied to a post by my mistress.’ He holds out his paw and the root of his tail twitches where he wants to wag. I try to nod, but something is smashing inside me, ripping to the surface. I go to kiss him, but his eyes have turned to glass. I lick him and his head rocks to one side. I bark, but he doesn’t wake.

  ‘Sporco, Sporco.’ I lash my tongue over his face, paw at his eyelids, but his pupils have frozen still. I snatch the blanket off him, ease his body on its side, but it lollops over, legs stiff, spilt blood in a slick beneath him.

  I lie down and stare at his inert face, the face that laughed, that wanted to play, that wanted a mate, that never had a mate, that said I was his best friend. I paw the blond tufts over his eyes, neatening them. I lick the bubbles of blood from the corner of his mouth. The afternoon passes, the muffled scream of battle rising and falling. How dismissive I was to him, how boastful and self-important. Who am I to say how he should have behaved? I try to wake him, nonsensically, but he’s stiffening now.

  To fight the pain I dig a hole to bury him, taking my revenge on the ground, frantically pulling up the earth between roots until I’ve made a space that’s roomy enough for him. But I can’t bear to put him in it and cover him with soil. Not yet. A putrid breeze rolls from the battlefield, licking past us, up the slope to the windmill, making its sails creak and begin to turn again. And the rain returns too, the dismal autumnal drizzle that has stolen into summer. I neaten the blanket over his body, as humans do, and huddle closer as he chills.

  In the evening, there comes a punch of hooves and shapes configure from the gloom: a man leading a coal-black carthorse and a wagon of dead animals. He, a furrier, stocky and shoulderless, sees me and halts, before taking the measure of Sporco. He means to pick him up and throw him in his cart.

  ‘Be gone.’ I growl. He pulls a knife from his belt and makes a move for my friend. ‘Be gone!’ I snap, vicious enough for him to waver and then drive on past us.

  I shoulder Sporco’s body into the hole, prodding and teasing until he’s laid out faultlessly on his side, his legs together in neat pairs, just as he used to lie when he was content and full of food. I fill the grave with the excess of soil, pushing it in with my nose, covering his fur and leaving the head until last. ‘Goodbye, my friend.’ I take a moment staring at his face, trying to r
emember him as if he’s asleep, not dead. I kiss the end of his nose, nuzzle his forehead and fill the last of the grave. The pack. A single grey eye stares back at me. I steady myself with deep breaths and cover it with soil.

  In the silence that follows a clear thought occurs to me: Let me die tonight. Let tomorrow not be another day. I turn and stare at the wellhead, at the bucket tipped on the ground and the coil of rope connecting the two.

  I get up and look down into the hollow. It’s so dark I cannot tell if it is yards deep or miles. I push a rock over the side and after a pause a splash echoes back. There is room enough. Of the hangings I have seen, those with a long stretch of rope have been so quick to appear almost painless, a fall, a jerk, a twitch and then unconsciousness.

  With my teeth I try to undo the knot round the handle of the bucket, but it’s too tight. No matter, let it come with me. I loop the rope round my neck, once, twice, several times, until it’s tight, making sure the slack is not so long that I’ll hit the bottom. I climb on to the edge. I just have to fall forward and my weight will do the rest. One step is all.

  I remember the time at the beginning of my life, in Elsinore—before we discovered the body on the shore—my master had wanted to go out and pick oysters and I hid from him. He smiled, finding me under the hall table. ‘Where will life lead us if we hide behind tables...?’

  I tip forward and fall. With sickening speed I go, into the dark, into the blur of tunnelled rock, the bucket coming after, striking my head on its way down, before the rope snaps tight about my neck.

  ‘No!’ comes a cry from above.

  The effect—the rushing sensation in my head as my body turns numb—is instantaneous, but seems elongated, as if normal time had slowed.

  ‘No,’ comes the call again and I notice, though everything is hazy, a human head framed in the round opening. I’m so dizzy as to be almost content, were it not for the rope slicing my neck.