The 39 Clues: Cahill Files: Silent Night

by Clifford, Riley

“What will you do that way?” asked Rupert. Marie pulled her shawl over her head.

  “I have come to find my brother,” she said. “Hast du ihm gesehen?” She was very convincing as a German farm girl, but Rupert still shook his head. It wouldn’t work.

  “Fine!” spat the major. “Let’s just everyone do things their own way. And then we’ll see who was right. Yes?”

  “Oui. C’est ci bon.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Rupert. Even he knew that wasn’t a good idea, and he was typically all for getting all of the glory for himself. But the major was not listening.

  “One,” said the major. “Two. Three!”

  Marie slipped off to the right, disappearing seamlessly into the darkness. The major hefted himself up onto the bank and took off at a jog. Rupert’s stomach flopped again. He was alone. He usually did well alone. But he felt, in this moment, vulnerable. There was no one to look to, no one to fall back on. And though he was loath to admit it, even to himself, Rupert had always relied on other people being there to catch him. But now it was just him — and whatever happened to him was his responsibility. He had to do something. He couldn’t stay there in the wet. So he went his own way, creeping up the bank of the river toward the ditch and the grate. Up against the factory wall, the weeds were soggy and high, and the ground was boggy. He tried not to take very deep breaths, and only through his mouth — the smell was something awful.

  The grate itself was rusty and old — he shook at it, and it wobbled back and forth in his hands. If they’d brought bolt cutters or some other sort of tool, they could easily break the old crossbars and slip in.

  But then, goose bumps swept over Rupert’s neck and arms. He could feel them, even through the layers of his uniform and the soggy coat and his scarf. It was a prickle, like someone was watching him from behind, from down by the water.

  Slowly, Rupert looked over his shoulder. And there, in the bit of moonlight that had broken through the clouds, a man in black stood watching him. He was tall, with a long coat, a hat pulled down low over his face, and a walking staff in his hand.

  He couldn’t breathe. The Madrigal. Albert’s Madrigal. Fear seized him, like an icy iron clamp around his throat. He was looking into the face of a Madrigal, into the face of evil, of chaos. It would be the last thing he ever saw.

  Rupert was frozen in place, his hands digging into the rusty grate. Blood roared through him, as if it were trying to complete as many laps around his body as possible before he died. As if his whole being were trying to squeeze in just one more little bit of living before all was over. But at least if he died, he would die a Lucian.

  So he did what a Lucian would do. He lied.

  “You can’t stop us,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Gehe,” said the Madrigal. He swept his arm out toward the river. “Gehe hin und sündige hinfort nicht mehr.”

  Rupert didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t understand what the Madrigal wanted from him.

  The popping of gunfire erupted around the corner, and Rupert didn’t really have time to think about translating German anymore. The Madrigal turned quickly in the direction of the cracking of the guns, and Rupert took that opportunity to make a break for it back toward the river. He ran like he was the one being shot at, and he tried to ignore the great splash upstream.

  At the river’s edge, he saw something bobbing and flailing along with the current — Marie.

  “Aidez-moi!” she was gasping as she came nearer and nearer. Rupert spun around, looking for something to use to help. There, on the grass, was the Madrigal’s walking stick. Rupert was loath to touch it, but he grabbed the stick and looked for Marie again. She was farther toward the French bank than the Belgian, so Rupert took a deep breath and ran full force across the top of the bridge. The company that had been crossing was past; they were headed toward the north side of the building, their guns out.

  The major. Rupert’s stomach went cold. But he couldn’t think about that right now. There was another Cahill, and this one was right in front of him. Back in France, Rupert skidded down the slippery bank toward the river again. He waded out waist-deep into the water.

  “Grab hold!” he fiercely whispered, hoping Marie would see him, would grab for the stick. She did, but she didn’t stop. The river kept sweeping her downstream, toward the north. And if Rupert didn’t catch her, she’d go right past the guards. If the water didn’t drown her, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her. But she held on. Rupert dug his heels into the silt and pulled and pulled until Marie made it close enough to find her feet and the two of them could push each other back up onto shore.

  “Merci, merci,” Marie kept saying, grabbing Rupert by the face and kissing one cheek and then the other, over and over again. “Merci mille fois, mon cousin.”

  “I know, I know, you’re welcome,” said Rupert. “Marie, I get it! You’re welcome!” Rupert wiped his cheeks with a wet sleeve. “Where’s the major? Have you seen him?”

  “Non. When they started shooting I began to run; I fell down the bank into the river. Is the major dead? What do we do? Do we wait for him?”

  “Your face is blue,” said Rupert. “You need to get to a fire and dry clothes. But we need to find the major. And I don’t know which of those things should be done first.”

  Then, from the other side of the river, down by where the ford had been, came a great roar. Marie and Rupert hurried down to see what it was.

  The major was tearing across the stony break in the rush, holding one hand to his other arm and running as fast as his legs could carry him.

  Behind him, a pair of soldiers was chasing him, firing at his back as he ran.

  The major made it to the French bank and threw himself into the woods. Marie pushed toward him, but Rupert held her back.

  “No, they’re coming across the river,” said Rupert, pointing at the German soldiers. “They’re coming to find the major.” And the major was wounded — they’d shot him. Rupert’s mind ticked like an overwound clock. “Marie, you hide. Use your German-soldier voice and tell them to come this way.”

  She nodded and slipped into a thicket, wrapping her arms around herself to keep from shivering. And then Rupert braced himself.

  “Komm!” Marie yelled. “Folge mich!”

  “Good,” Rupert whispered.

  “Now what?” she hissed back. But Rupert shushed her, and waited. He heard the two soldiers coming closer and held very still in the darkness, listening for every snapped twig and every swiped tree.

  Almost. Almost. “Find the major and get back to the barn,” Rupert whispered to Marie. And then he saw the gleam of the gun in the thin moonlight.

  “Anhalten!” one of the soldiers snapped. And Rupert started to run. Trees snagged at him and his boots crunched loudly over the underbrush, but that was the point. He needed to make noise, to be seen just enough to give Marie and the major time to make it back to the barn. Then he’d find his way back to the river himself.

  That was the plan. Except he could hear the soldiers behind him, shouting and stomping, and maybe it was his imagination, but were they closer? He couldn’t tell if they were gaining on him or if he was only afraid that they were. Rupert thought this must be what the fox felt like in the hunt. Except the fox very rarely asked for it.

  Rupert zigzagged through the trees, looping around toward the river again. His throat was dry from the cold and he could hardly breathe anymore — his legs were sore and his lungs burned like they were coated in ice. Ahead, there was a mammoth tree, and Rupert ducked behind it. He would have to hide now. He couldn’t outrun the soldiers.

  He slipped himself into a split in the trunk. It wasn’t large enough for him to fit completely inside, but a good half of his torso could. He curled his hands into the dirt and ducked his chin, hoping that his dark hair and dark overcoat would help him disappear. He tried very hard to quiet his breathing, to still those ragged breaths that he sucked in to fill his ach
ing lungs. He shivered — his clothes were wet, and his teeth were chattering, so he curled his lips in around them to keep them from making noise. They were coming.

  “Ruhig, ruhig . . .” said the one with the lisp. “Komm raus jetzt.”

  “Ist er hier? Ich habe ihn nicht hören.”

  Rupert wished he knew what they were saying. Did they see him? Were they coordinating their attack? Or did they count him as lost?

  They stepped around the tree, and Rupert could see a blond head shining in the moonlight. The one with the lisp took a step forward, and Rupert could feel his overcoat tug. The soldier was stepping on his coat. Rupert stopped breathing; he wished that he could stop his heart, just for a moment, so it would be quiet and not give him away.

  In the distance, a twig snapped and an owl called out.

  “Schnell!” hissed the lisp, and they slipped off quietly toward the east.

  Rupert held his breath for as long as he could, taking little shallow sips of air that only filled the very tips of his lungs. And then, once he couldn’t hear them moving anymore, he let that breath out and sank against the tree. He curled his body in around itself and breathed hard into his knees. He wanted to cry out — he wanted to sob and to throw up again and to scream until his voice was lost. But he just took a moment. He collected his breath. And then, with a shaking body and a light head, he stood up. He followed the sound of the river. And he found his way back to the barn.

  Marie ran out to meet him when he came to the clearing. “I thought you would be dead. Come in, come inside, and quick.” She took Rupert’s hand and practically dragged him into the barn. “I believe the major is dying. It’s quite terrible.”

  “I am not dying,” said the major. He was leaning against a mound of hay, and his face was pale and clammy. His left sleeve was covered in blood, and so was most of the rest of him. It made Rupert’s stomach turn. “It’s nothing but a flesh wound. Don’t hover around me; back off, back off. Marie, I said don’t hover!” He looked up at Rupert. “And what you did, you idiot, was one of the stupidest things that I’ve ever seen a soldier do. Thank you.”

  Rupert didn’t know what to say to that. He felt almost bashful. So instead, he said, “This looks awful.”

  “That’s because you’re green, Davenport. Now man up. Pull yourself together. Get a bit of water on the thing and half the damage will go away,” growled the major. Rupert did as he was told, and Marie paced back and forth.

  “I’m not going to have to, erm, sew this shut, am I?” said Rupert, wrinkling his nose at the thought.

  “I should hope not!” said the major, who tried to shoot to his feet but failed with a groan. “Don’t you dare!” Rupert almost smiled. He couldn’t be so close to dying if he were that afraid of a needle.

  “Did someone say something about sewing?” said Marie, coming over with a threaded needle. Rupert lifted an eyebrow. “One should never leave home without a needle and thread.”

  The major went from pale to green. “No. No!” He threw his good arm in front of his face and turned away. Marie and Rupert laughed, until Marie turned to Rupert.

  “It’s just a flesh wound!” Rupert said in a mock deep voice.

  “I don’t sound like that!” said the major.

  “Absolument you do!”

  The major was trying very hard not to laugh, but the corners of his mouth were twitching uncontrollably and it didn’t take long to break him. They laughed until they were gasping, and until the gravity of the situation settled back down on them.

  And then they were all quiet.

  “So,” said the major. “What happens next?”

  “They saw me as I fell,” said Marie. “And they saw you, Major, because they shot at you.”

  “Yes, Marie. That’s very astute. Davenport?” said the major. “What luck did you have at the river?”

  Rupert started to talk, but his mouth went completely dry. The Madrigal. Should he tell them? What good or ill would that cause?

  “Not much,” said Rupert. “We’d need tools and things to get through. But even so, we can’t go across the river. They’ll be on the lookout for us now.”

  They all fell quiet again. Rupert didn’t want to say anything about the Madrigal. Maybe he should, but if they were going to go a different way, perhaps it wouldn’t matter? Mostly dry and somewhat fed, the group settled down to their hay as the clock struck two.

  “Marie, what does ‘Gehe hin und sündige hinfort nicht mehr’ mean?” Rupert asked.

  “Go,” she said. “Go, and sin no more. Pourquoi?”

  Rupert swallowed the dry lump in his mouth.

  “No reason,” he said.

  In the middle of the night, Rupert awoke in the hay, covered in a clammy, cold sweat. He scrambled to his feet, breathing heavily and spinning around. He was dizzy and dazed and he knew, he knew, that someone had just been there. He could feel the sudden absence, like a shadow hanging in the air. He looked at the hay, but he was rubbish at tracking and so he had no idea if there were any footprints there. The door was still shut and the lantern was still where they had left it, turned down to a low haze in the center of the barn floor. But someone had been there, Rupert could feel it.

  Or maybe he had dreamed it.

  His dream. Black shadows everywhere — over the forest, the trenches, the barn. They had crept up over the horizon and sucked up everything, leaving the entire countryside in darkness. Madrigals.

  It had been a dream. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that they had been here.

  He looked around. Everything seemed normal. Marie was curled in the hay like a cat, and the major was snoring. In the distance, church bells were ringing, and for the life of him, Rupert couldn’t figure out why.

  He stepped outside. The air was cold and crisp; heavy gray clouds laden with snow had moved in while they slept, and the tingle of expectation lingered in the air. Rupert felt it, too, crawling over his skin and making his hair bristle.

  He had, in that moment, never felt more alive, or more aware of the world around him. The cold had stripped everything down to its most basic stuff; he thought he could feel each piece of the air as it blew past his cheeks. The church bells stopped, and there was a loud silence. There was no gunfire, no sound of canons or artillery. Just quiet.

  Rupert wondered if everyone could hear the silence. He imagined that the whole of the battlefield came to a halt, that the ships in the Channel hung in the water, that Mother and Father back in England even paused in their dreaming. It was just for a moment; the church bells began to ring again. Even so, Rupert had felt it.

  It wasn’t about Clues and Lucians anymore. Not wholly, anyway. It wasn’t even about Rupert and Albert. The moment of quiet was gone, but he craved it again. He craved that peace, and he wanted it not just for himself, but for the battlefield and for the ships and for Mother and Father and the rest of them. War, he thought, was not good for a person. And if the Madrigals were going to try and wage war, then the Cahills would have to stop fighting amongst themselves long enough to wage peace. And they’d start by rescuing the Ekat.

  They’d go again tonight. They’d risk their lives again to try and prevent catastrophe.

  It was funny, he thought, this family of his. They were capable of such great, beautiful things. His cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents had built castles and cities, painted and sculpted the most beautiful works in the world, conquered mountains, and delved into the mysteries of the universe.

  But it would be foolish, and a lie, to pretend that they didn’t have blood on their hands — all of them. Their squabbles and ambitions had chipped away at humanity as much as they had added to it, tossing around everyday people between them like the waves and wind toss grains of sand.

  Rupert had always felt that this was the natural order of things. That they who were exceptional should do the important things and everyone else should just sit tight while those with capabilities sorted the heavy lifting. That all of the non-Cahills were j
ust foot soldiers and pawns in a greater game. Now, he thought, that seemed so foolish.

  “You’re up early,” said the major, stepping outside from the barn.

  “You were snoring,” said Rupert, not wanting, yet, to tell anyone about the Madrigals or his nightmare. “It makes it hard to sleep. Do you know why the church bells are ringing? Do you think the war is over?”

  “No,” said the major. “The tide can’t have turned so quickly. And if the Germans had won, we can assume the French wouldn’t be ringing their bells. I don’t know.”

  “Is there coffee left?” asked Rupert.

  “We can check,” said the major, and they started to walk back inside. But the major stopped in his tracks. “It’s December 24. The bells,” he said. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

  At dusk, Rupert, Marie, and Major Thompson left the barn and headed back toward the trenches. They couldn’t cross at the shallows along the river again. When they had gone to check on it, they’d found a dozen men at the bridge, and more lined up along the banks.

  “Alors,” said Marie. “We are doomed.”

  “We’re not doomed,” said Rupert. “We’ve just got to think about things a different way.” Rupert paused. He couldn’t believe he was about to suggest such a mad plan — his hands started to shake at the thought of it. But no matter how frightened he was, it was the Ekat that mattered. “We’ll go up through the trenches and across no-man’s-land. Marie, you’ll help us find the best way into the factory. Once we’re inside and we see what we’re up against, the major will tell us where to go and we’ll search for the Ekat. No matter what, we stick together. We’ll do better that way. We’ll find the Ekat, and we’ll bring him back to safety.”

  It was a practically impossible plan, and their chances of failing were astronomical. So it was perfect for a bunch of Cahills.

  Marie kept Rupert’s extra uniform (and teased him appropriately about the silk linings before admitting that it did make things more comfortable, and warmer), and tucked her braids up under a cap. The major lent them legitimacy as they snuck back toward the trenches. No one would question the two young privates with an officer.