The Spy's Reward

by Nita Abrams

  “Mr. Roth,” she said.

  “Ah, the little banker.” He shook his head. “Headquarters nabbed him yesterday.”

  “Where is he, then?” she asked.

  “No idea. They took him off for messenger duty. He’s some sort of foreigner, speaks German.”

  She paid him well anyway, but afterwards she had asked Martha what messenger duty would mean. “Perhaps he has been sent away, like your father,” she said hopefully.

  Martha had not been certain; Mrs. Woodley, when consulted, had murmured vague, reassuring generalities about couriers and dispatches. But Diana, mulling over the likely needs of a multinational army composed of thousands of men, was becoming more and more convinced that Anthony was at the battle. He was not even with his company, who could offer some protection. No, he was galloping around on the field unarmed and unaccompanied—a perfect target. And he was not a very good rider even under ideal conditions. She had tended enough men in the past twenty-four hours who had been crushed by horses to be under no illusions about the possible penalties for poor horsemanship on a battlefield. Ever since the grinning man had arrived all she could think of to do was to pray for night to fall. And as if to torment her—and the thousands of combatants—the sun seemed to be inching across the sky with provocative slowness.

  Diana had no idea who was winning or losing. She could hear the cannon and see the pall of smoke hanging over the fields, but early reports of a catastrophic Allied defeat had proved false, and Mrs. Woodley had advised the girls not to listen to any more rumors. Otherwise they would end up prostrated with hysterics, like Eleanor. Martha’s cousin was currently in bed attempting to roll bandages and bursting into tears every fifteen minutes for no apparent reason. Martha and Diana, meanwhile, were bringing another load of medical supplies from the Woodleys’s rented house to the impromptu hospital in the streets around the Namur Gate. The victims of Friday’s battle were now a distant memory; since the middle of the afternoon, ever-increasing numbers of men were staggering or being carried into the city from today’s action.

  She put down the jars she was carrying and wiped her face with her sleeve. It had been getting hotter and hotter; she did not know how the men could bear it in their wool jackets. “I haven’t any handkerchiefs,” she explained to Martha apologetically. “I used both of them last night for the man with the hole in his elbow.” Then she looked up at the sun. “It is lower, isn’t it?” she asked anxiously.

  “It is,” Martha assured her. “It will set within the hour.”

  “If only it were not June. The days are endless at this time of year.” She picked up the jars again.

  As they came up to the church of St. Jacques, Diana saw that the rows of men waiting for help had now reached the church steps, all the way at the top of the street leading down to the gate. Some of the other women were there, assisting the newcomers, and one of them hurried over to take the heavy jars from Diana.

  Suddenly a murmur ran through the ranks of the wounded men. A voice called out sharply, “Quiet, you lot! Listen for it!”

  Diana had not realized how much noise the men were making until they stopped. The calls for water, the curses, the encouraging speeches, even the groans—all silenced, for one long moment. Then the cheering began, rolling down the street in waves.

  “What is it?” asked Diana, bewildered.

  “The cannon,” Martha said slowly. “They’ve stopped. The cannons have stopped.” She gave a little sob. “It’s over.” Thrusting her bandages into the arms of an older woman she began to run towards the gate, with Diana right behind her. At the end of the street a huge crowd was gathered, some already streaming out towards the site of the battle, eager to see for themselves. Women were shouting, jostling each other, calling out names. Diana realized they were asking for news. There were eighty thousand Allied soldiers, eighty thousand An-thonies whose mothers or sisters or sweethearts were waiting, here or in London or in a village in Yorkshire, for someone to tell them whether the name represented a living man or a dead one.

  When she heard someone call her own name, she thought it was a hallucination. They called again, more urgently. It was more than one someone now, and it was coming from behind her. She turned. Mrs. Woodley was hurrying down the hill. Next to her was Anthony’s uncle. And next to him, picking up her skirts and beginning to run towards her, was her mother, with an expression on her face that told Diana exactly what those women wanted to happen when they called out the name of their missing soldier.

  A miracle, that was what they wanted. It was a bit terrifying to be someone else’s miracle.

  “Are you all right?” asked her mother, gripping her shoulders so hard that they hurt.

  She nodded.

  “And Mr. Roth? Did you find him?”

  “No.” She turned to Meyer, who was standing off to one side, as if afraid of intruding. “He was on messenger duty, and no one has seen him since this morning.”

  “I will find him,” said Meyer. “That seems to be my specialty lately. Finding lost children.”

  He had been searching for hours. It was very dark now; the moon had set. He had a lantern, but he kept it shielded. He did not want to attract attention. The looters were out in force, and he was alone. He moved carefully in little squares, crossing off pieces of an imaginary map, looking at the easiest clues: jackets and weapons. Blue, no. Black facings, no. Sabre, no.

  He had started out on the road. It had still been light then, although just barely; it had taken some time to make sure that Abigail and Diana were safely settled and to persuade them to wait there for his return instead of hovering by the city gate. It was light enough, however, to make him decide that the road was a bad idea. Men were still pouring towards the city; it was nearly impossible to walk against the flow, and if James or Anthony were on this road they would not need his help. He had cut through the woods instead.

  There were more corpses here than he had expected. Most were lone men who must have staggered instinctively into the trees to die, but occasionally he would come across a small cluster in a clearing. He had to go carefully in the dark. It was distasteful to step on corpses; it could be fatal to step on a pike, or onto the trigger of a loaded musket.

  Not all the bodies in the woods were dead either. He had stumbled—literally—onto several wounded men, and had heard many more, thrashing and breathing raggedly in some thicket as he picked his way through the trees. He had gritted his teeth and walked by when they called for help. He would never even have made it through Brussels to find Diana Hart if he had stopped for every man who needed him. On the steps of the church alone there must have been two hundred. So he had a routine: every man in the woods, alive or dead, got the same quick glance. If they were not wearing the right jacket—green, or red with yellow facings—he moved on.

  At the farmhouse just beyond the woods, which had been converted into a hospital, he had been able to work more quickly. The bodies were all laid out neatly in one place for him. He felt like a monster holding his lantern up over one bloodless face after another, but there were others doing the same thing. The men outside were not so neatly arranged, but they were less serious cases; they could answer questions. No one had seen Anthony. No one had seen James. There were several men from the Rifles, however, and they had been able to describe their position on the field fairly accurately, so that was where he had started his search. A shallow pit, they told him, just over the brow of the hill.

  He had spent over two hours in the sandy depression. There were hundreds of bodies, and they were all wearing green jackets. Some of the bodies were piled three and four deep, and he had to lift one corpse to see another. He had stopped looking at faces; there were so many men to examine that he searched only for the telltale epaulette which marked the officers. There were plenty of those, too. He began hauling the bodies he had already checked to one side so that he would not look at them again, an endless round of blood-stained green. The neatly laid-out rows attracted a looter eager t
o save himself some work; Meyer looked up from the pit, startled, as a voice came out of the darkness in French: “Mind if we share? There are plenty.” A lantern bloomed, and Meyer saw a square, unshaven man with a haversack over his shoulder. Looped around his waist were five silver-trimmed sword belts, and in the lapel of his coat he had pinned several pairs of gold spectacles.

  “Where did you get those?” Meyer asked, his eyes locked on the spectacles. He was trying to remember precisely what Anthony’s pince-nez looked like. His nephew had not been wearing it much lately; he used it only for reading and accounts. Perhaps he had not even brought the damn thing with him. But Meyer couldn’t stop looking.

  The man shrugged. “Here and there. Most of them don’t wear them in battle, and they hide them away in strange places like their boots so they won’t get broken, but if you find them alive you can tickle them a bit with a knife and they’ll tell you fast enough where they are.”

  Without even thinking about it Meyer pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the head. Then, his hands shaking, he pulled the spectacles off the man’s coat. Two were proper spectacles, with ear pieces. Two were like Anthony’s. He held them up. They didn’t look familiar, but what did, in this hellish pit full of dead men? Carefully tucking both pairs away, he had gone back to work.

  When he heard footsteps he grabbed his gun again, certain that it was another looter. The voice that emerged out of the darkness spoke English, though.

  “Looking for me?”

  He held up the lantern and saw the haggard, unshaven, and unutterably wonderful face of his son.

  “Yes,” he said. “And for Anthony.”

  “I wouldn’t mind finding him myself,” said James. “He gave me a blistering setdown in front of half of the officers in my regiment. I’ve been thinking of clever responses ever since.” He stared somberly into the pit. “Of course, there are not many witnesses left.”

  Meyer climbed up to the rim of the depression and stood next to his son. Even in the small circle of light from his lantern there were over a dozen bodies.

  “Did you go through all of them?” James asked.

  “Nearly all.”

  “How many are there?”

  That was the problem with training as a spy. Your powers of observation did not shut off, even when you would have strongly preferred them to do so. “I would estimate around three hundred enlisted men and two dozen officers.”

  “There are dozens more of both at the hospital. Most won’t last the day.” James gave a short laugh. “I am a rare species. Nearly extinct.”

  They began walking back towards the farmhouse-hospital. “How did you know I was out there?” asked Meyer.

  “The walking wounded over there told me.” He nodded towards the men clustered around the farmhouse door. “You were very conspicuous, not being covered with mud. You look much more like the rest of us now, of course.”

  “Any notion of how I might find Anthony?”

  “He was one of the messengers.” James gestured helplessly. “He could have been anywhere.”

  Meyer stopped. “Let us consider this logically,” he said. “Anthony was seconded to the messenger corps because he speaks German. That means he would most likely have been sent either to the German legions or to the Prussians. The Prussians arrived late, on the right flank of the French. Where were the Germans?”

  “Back there,” said James, pointing. “With the reserves. And in the woods.”

  “I’ve done the woods. The parts nearest the road, at any rate.”

  “In that case, I’ll try over where the reserves were stationed,” James had proposed. “It’s on my way back to what’s left of my company in any case. You look over by the Prussians.”

  It had seemed like a reasonable plan. Meyer had walked back towards the hillock which had served as Wellington’s command post and had begun working his way methodically across the field with his little squares, angling towards the southeast.

  Waterloo was not a big battlefield. There was perhaps a mile between the ridge where the French had placed their cannon and the ridge where Wellington had stood. When you took the diagonal, as he did, it was a mile and a half. He moved one square at a time: pace off the distance, circle with the lantern, turn over prone bodies. The looters were out in force now; he saw parties hauling away cartloads and heard quarrels and threats in the gradually ebbing darkness around him. It was almost dawn; the most dangerous time, when the robbers became hasty and reckless. He reloaded his pistol, and felt automatically for the knife in his boot every time he bent over.

  He found Anthony just after two looters did. His nephew was curled in a ball on his side, covered with mud. Meyer might have missed him if the looters had not rolled him over, exposing the relatively clean side of his distinctive jacket.

  “That’s my nephew,” he said in French.

  “Bugger off,” said one of the looters in the same language. “We found him first.” He stepped on Anthony’s shoulder to push him flat on his back for easy stripping, and Meyer heard a faint moan.

  He raised his gun. “He’s my nephew,” Meyer repeated. There was a soft click as he cocked the trigger.

  “You can have him after we strip him, then.” The man bent over to pull off Anthony’s boots.

  If he had thought about it at all, he would have let them have their booty. Or offered them some money. But some primitive force rose up in him, as it had in the sandpit. He kicked the man in the ribs, hard, and pulled his big knife out of his waistband, not wanting to shoot unless forced. A pistol, once fired, was useless. The second man lunged at him; Meyer sidestepped and slashed him with the knife. Then the first man was on him again, holding his side with one hand but brandishing a gun of his own in the other. A high kick knocked the gun to the ground, and the man dove after it, swearing, but Meyer kneed him in the neck. His companion was up again; Meyer turned and hit him in the side of the head with the butt of the pistol. The man fell to his knees, then toppled sideways. Meyer glanced over at his other opponent. He, too, was on the ground, motionless.

  Meyer flung himself down by Anthony, running his hands over him to see where he was hurt. He didn’t feel any large, sticky patches on the clothing; that was a good sign. And Anthony was breathing, breathing steadily. Meyer lifted the lantern higher and moved it slowly up his nephew’s body. One arm was lying at an odd angle; it was probably broken. There were no other visible wounds until he eased off Anthony’s shako. On the right side of his face, just at the temple, was a huge bruise. The scalp behind the bruise was split, and the fair hair was caked with blood. He lifted the head, bracing his arm behind his nephew’s shoulders. That produced another moan. He would have to hope Anthony’s neck wasn’t broken.

  The second looter, the one with the gun, was stirring. Meyer looked at him, then walked over and knelt by his side. “You don’t deserve this,” he said, “but I’m offering you the chance to earn some money.”

  The man struggled up onto one elbow, wincing. “How much?”

  Meyer held up a gold coin. “Three of these. Help me lift him. I don’t want to jostle his head much; he may have a broken skull.”

  After a minute the man nodded grudgingly. Clutching his injured ribs, he got to his feet and hauled Meyer up once he had Anthony balanced on his arms.

  Meyer gave him four coins. The man grinned, backed away, picked up his gun from the ground and aimed it at Meyer, almost contemptuously.

  Meyer froze. If he put Anthony down, the man would have an easy shot. If he held on to him, the man might well aim for his nephew. He stooped slowly, as though setting down his burden.

  The man was enjoying himself; he grinned again and raised the gun.

  In one quick movement Meyer let Anthony’s legs slide to the ground as he pulled the knife out of his boot. It hit the looter in the chest just as he pulled the trigger.

  The force of the shot knocked Meyer backwards; he fell clumsily, trying to protect Anthony’s head. Upper arm, he thought. Not fatal. He
felt no pain, but he knew that would change within seconds. Desperately he dragged Anthony over his shoulder and got to his feet, first kneeling, then on one knee, then pushing off with the other foot.

  He started back across the valley. His five seconds of numbness were over; his arm began to throb after the first step. One mile to the other side. Five thousand two hundred eighty steps.

  He began to count.

  27

  “Mother, why aren’t they back yet?”

  Abigail looked up from the sheet she was tearing into strips. She thought Diana’s phrasing was overly optimistic. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and already some civilians had driven out to the battlefield and returned with tales of unimaginable horror: three solid miles of corpses, wounded men stripped and killed by looters, field hospitals with piles of amputated limbs outside the door. It would take a long time to search through an entire valley full of bodies. She was not surprised that Meyer had not returned, and she had the unhappy premonition that when he did return, it would be alone. She had been trying to shield Diana from the more grisly reports, however, so she merely said, “There is always a great deal of confusion after a battle.”

  Diana abandoned the window with a sigh and came back to the table. “May I go and see Mrs. Woodley? Very quickly? Perhaps she has heard something.”

  “She has promised to send a message if she does.” Abigail handed her daughter a sheet of her own to tear up. “Start it with the scissors, otherwise it goes sideways,” she reminded her, before returning to the topic of Mrs. Woodley. “Her son was wounded; I am sure she is very busy.”

  “Christopher was not badly wounded.” Diana gave the sheet a savage rip.

  “Lieutenant Woodley took a ball in the elbow and will be lucky not to lose the arm,” Abigail corrected.

  “I know. I am sorry.” She sighed. “I waited all day Saturday, while we were driving here from Ostend, because they told us when we docked that there had been a battle the day before, but they didn’t really know what had happened. And then I waited all day yesterday, and the cannon didn’t stop firing for one minute the whole day, and after what happened at the first battle I thought about people getting their heads taken off every time I heard one, and then I waited all last night, and I even tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t. I don’t know how Mrs. Woodley can bear it, being a soldier’s wife.”