Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Because no one wants the truth to be printed in the papers," Sarah said cruelly. "If they did, it'd be like Roosha all over again. Or so them fellows in the government think."

  "How many?" Eleanor asked, feeling numb.

  "How many what?" Sarah responded.

  "I didn't see any men—" she began. Sarah nodded. "Most of them—well; we think they're still alive, though some haven't been heard from in a fair while," she said, sadly. "But then again, it's one thing to come home on leave when you live in London or you've ready in your pocket. 'Tis quite another when all your pay comes home, and you haven't the money for a train ticket when they give you leave." She sighed. "I don't know but what you'll not recognize the names— Matt Brennan lost a leg. Ross Ashley you know lost his hand and Alan Vocksmith his eye. Michael Kabon—that's the butcher that came in after you were bespelled, finding we hadn't one—he's all scarred up outside and in from gas. Jack Samburs lost an arm, Eric Whitcomb his wits. Then the ones as won't be home at all—" She took a deep breath. "They're on the monument that got put up at the Church. Bruce Gulken, Thomas Golding, John McGregor, Daniel Heistand, Jock Williamson, William Williamson, Daniel Linden, Harry Brown the baker, and Sean Newton. Sean's the latest; his mum just heard last week."

  Each name fell like a stone into the silence. So—it was Pamela Brown at the bakery now, not her husband. Eleanor really hadn't known most of them, but Willie Williamson had been one year older and one of the boys who had hero-worshipped Reggie Fenyx, and Sean Newton had used to ask her to dance at village fetes. Daniel Heistand had been another of Reggie's devoted followers, and had always frowned at her so fiercely when she was the one who got to pull the wheel-chocks away. . . .

  Not coming home. Or maimed so badly no one would put them back out again. Horrible. Horrible. What was that, a third of the men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five in this village? Sean— Sean had been his widowed mother's only child. She shook her head; it hurt, even to think about. "It's never going to end, is it?" she asked, faintly. "It's just going to go on and on and on until there are no men left in England—"

  Sarah only sighed, and closed her eyes, her shoulders hunched as if she found the weight of it all too much to bear. "I don't pretend to see the future," she replied, sadly. "But the present is nasty enough to worry about. Even Mad Ross come home all grim and quiet. No more riding about, hardly ever makes a speech, unless it's in the pub and he's had some courage in him. The ones as came home, well, they don't talk to their wives and they don't talk to their sweethearts, they just sit in pub and stare at wall. Shellshocked, they call it. I call it that they've seen too much to bear and stay entirely sane. They don't talk about tomorrows, either, and a man what won't plan for tomorrow is a man who believes he won't see it. That's what you feel on the village; that's what come home from the war with the ones that did come home. Nobody thinks about tomorrow if they can help it. Nobody. Church and chapel, they're both alike. Stopped praying for victory, they have; now they just pray for it to be over and have no faith it ever will. I s'pose it's easier to whinge about not having beef and the cost of butter than it is to have hope."

  Eleanor shuddered. "What is going on over there?" she whispered. "What is it?"

  "I don't know," Sarah said, staring deeply into the fire on her hearth, as if searching there for answers. "But I'll tell you this much. Whatever it is, it eats a man's soul. They talk to each other, them as came home, but never to the rest of us."

  She had thought to walk about the village; now she couldn't bear the idea. "I'm going to see if I can get as far as the aeroplane field at Longacre," she said, standing up. "I'll do it now, while the spell's still fresh."

  Sarah just nodded. "Mind the wind," was all she said. "You can borrow that shawl by the door, if you'd like."

  Eleanor hadn't thought to bring a shawl when they left the kitchen, and for a moment, she looked at the plain, shabby garment with the disfavor the old Eleanor might have—

  Oh, who and what am I to be so picky? she asked herself. "Thank you, Sarah, if it's no inconvenience—"

  "I won't be going out before you're back," Sarah said with certainty. Eleanor paused with one hand on the door.

  "Sarah—what is it you do?" she asked, bewildered. "For a living?" She couldn't bear it if Sarah was teetering on the edge of poverty.

  Sarah laughed. "What, no one ever told you? I'm the district nurse and licensed midwife! Never a doctor between here and Stratford almost, especially now, so I do for all of those that need simple tending." She nodded at Eleanor's silent "oh" of understanding. "It's what my sort does now. Hide in plain sight. People call me 'witch,' they're joking— and I've license to cure as much of their ills as I'm able. I do well enough. Better than some—most of my patients are farm folk, and barter is better for them than money, so I get some of that butter and beef no one else can find. And it's a help to have enough of the magic that I have a good sense of when I'll be needed, and often as not, where. So shoo—off with you, find out how far you can go. Nobody'll call me out until after dark, when you had best be back in your kitchen."

  "Thank you," Eleanor told her, then wrapped the heavy shawl around herself, pulling it up over her head, and went back out onto the street. It smelled pleasantly of lavender, and was softer than it looked. No one gave her a second look; she had the feeling this was part of the magic her stepmother had put on her. People wouldn't look at her, probably, unless they actually bumped into her.

  Well, that was one thing working like a slavey all these years had done for her—a walk she would have quailed at four years ago was nothing. She set off up the road, heading for Longacre, to see how far she could get before she was stopped.

  The village was tiny; five minutes, and she was off cobbles and onto hard-packed earth, rutted by farm carts and marked by hooves, passing between farm fields she had known all her life. Hedgerows showed a lack of tending that would have been shocking three years ago. It was too early for planting, but the meadows were full of cattle and sheep, the only creatures that looked to be prospering at prewar levels. As she passed the Gulkens' dairy-farm—Theresa's now, alone— she heard Louis Blue's shrill whistle, and saw the cattle raise their heads and begin to amble in the direction of the milking-barn. So Louis, probably around about sixty now, was old enough to escape conscription; though she didn't know Theresa except as the supplier of butter and milk, she still felt an absent sort of relief. Hard enough to find yourself a widow, but how could one woman keep up a busy dairy farm by herself? Louis, however, she knew from her rambles about as a child; always with a kitten in his pocket, for cats and dairy farms went together like clotted cream and jam. He could never bear to drown the kittens, and was always looking for homes for them. The thought of him going off to the horror that this war must be was an obscenity, he, who couldn't bear to kill a kitten. At least he'd been spared that.

  Beyond the dairy-farm was the Scroggins' orchard, and again, with relief, she saw another bit of normality. Brian Scroggins was out, checking the apple trees, with his wife Tracy in the next row, and Brianna and Zach picking up every twig of fallen applewood they could carry. Everyone liked a bit of applewood on their fire, and applewood-smoked bacon and ham were a treat; no wasting in Brian Scroggins' orchard. But he couldn't be fifty. How had he escaped being called up? Oh— as Brian plodded like a donkey along the row of trees, head down, she remembered. He was so short-sighted as to be almost blind; Tracy did anything that required reading and writing. Just as well. If anyone dared to call up the maker of the best scrumpy in the county, she didn't doubt there'd be an uprising. . . .

  She trudged along the road, pulling the shawl out of the grip of the wind. The lovely weather a few days ago had been a lie, it had. There might even be snow tonight. Or if rain, it would be ice-edged.

  Across from the Scroggins was the farm of Joanne and Michael Van, and here it was painfully clear that all was not as normal. There was no sign of Michael, who surely must be in France now, and all of the fi
gures picking stones in the field were female. One was probably Joanne, but no Broom native had red hair of the sort that flamed under one of the scarves, nor the midnight-black bob of another of the girls. Were these Land Girls, young women who volunteered to work on farms and take the place of the absent farmers? If so, they were Eleanor's first sight of the breed, and for all the complaints of how they were lazy or vamps out to tease the country boys, they seemed to know their job well enough, and they were sensibly clothed in heavy coats, boots, and long, warm skirts.

  Finally, the last farm before the fields belonging to Longacre began, was the Samburs' sheep farm. And as she trudged up the road, she saw Sarah hurrying after a male figure with one sleeve pinned up to his chest, supporting himself with a stick, following two sheepdogs with more determination than steadiness. But she didn't call after him, did Sarah, nor did she take over the direction of the sheepdogs. She seemed more like one of the dogs herself, waiting to see what her husband wanted, then doing it, without a word, just as silent, just as faithful. You do for yourself, she seemed to say, until you can't do no more. I know you have to.

  It made tears spring into Eleanor's eyes, and she had to turn away and hide her face in the shawl. The last thing she wanted to do was let either of them catch this sign of her pity. They likely got more than enough of it as it was.

  But neither of them looked in her direction as she hurried past, the cold, raw wind plastering her skirts to her legs. All of his attention was on the dogs and the sheep, and all of hers was on him.

  Eleanor passed their farmhouse, and more of their fields, dotted with sheep, who raised their heads and looked at her with their foolish faces when she passed.

  And then—the hedgerows became fences, marking the beginning of the fields of Longacre.

  She paused for a moment at the side of the road; these were grazing fields too, but for horses, not cattle or sheep, the hunters of Longacre Park. The grass was thick and rank here, for the horses were gone, gone to the war, to pull gun-carriages, not leap fences in the hunt. Only off in the distance were three old, gray-nosed fellows, too old to be of use across the Channel.

  She had gotten this far. Could she possibly get so far as the field where Reggie had kept his aeroplane?

  She trudged on, past the horse field, past one of the woods kept stocked with pheasant for the shooting season. Was there still a shooting season? Did anyone come out to hunt, or were they all hunting men now in the trenches? And then, the second field; she climbed over the stile and down into it. The grass was up to her knees, but this was it; this was Reggie's field.

  She could walk here, just.

  Trembling a little, and feeling the pull start, she paused beside the old shed, empty and falling to pieces, where the aeroplane had lived. No sign of it now, beyond a discarded and broken propeller, some bits and bobs of wing-struts and a half-rotten roll of canvas inside. She lingered as long as she could, but the pull homewards became more insistent with each passing minute, and when she pulled out the rosemary sprig, it was clearly beginning to wither.

  But she turned her back on the place and headed back in the growing gloom with no real sense of disappointment. She had gotten this far—and this place held nothing but melancholy, as sad and abandoned as the places in the village where the men used to gather and socialize.

  Enough despair for one day. Time to go back to Sarah, and try to scrape up enough hope to carry on her own fight.

  8

  April 3, 1917

  Broom, Warwickshire

  "NOW WE MUST PLAY THESE cards slowly and carefully, girls," Alison said, as the three of them sat over a light luncheon of potted-shrimp sandwiches and teacakes. The girls had taken up smoking while in London, and were indulging in malicious enjoyment as they ruined their leftovers with ash and stubs. So much for the stepsister grazing on what was left. Oat-bread and bean soup was more than good enough for her.

  Alison reflected for a moment on the quiet occupant of the kitchen. That wretched girl Eleanor didn't seem any the worse for having been left on her own for longer than usual, and in fact, the absence seemed to have made her more subdued. This was a pleasant development. More than that, it now seemed more likely that Alison would find a way to render her into a helpless object without having to resort to any of Locke's complicated schemes.

  While she had initially been in favor of the idea, Alison dislike complication intensely. The simpler the plan, the better, for the less there was that was likely to go wrong. She didn't like the idea of bringing in a stranger, who certainly would be a criminal, and thus, unreliable. Criminals often thought they would be clever and turn on the one who had hired them.

  The more she thought about it, the more she began to believe that in dealing with the girl Eleanor, it was probably better not to bring Locke or any of his friends into it at all. After all, she was an Earth Master. There ought to be some way for an Earth Master to damage someone's mind irreparably. And much as she would enjoy Eleanor's pain, there were other ways to extract the same pleasure.

  She took a reflective sip of her tea, and returned her attention to the subject at hand.

  "By now, the first letter will have been received up at Longacre Park," she continued, "But we must not give an appearance of being too eager to make this connection. The opposite, in fact; the last thing we wish is to make it seem as if we are pursuing the Fenyx family. Remember, I allegedly married far below me, and I might find that fact uncomfortable. In fact, we must appear to be—"

  "Diffident?" suggested Carolyn. "Shamefaced?" was Lauralee's choice.

  "Diffident," Alison replied decidedly, which made Carolyn smirk and Lauralee pout a trifle. "These days there is nothing shameful about repairing a great line's fortunes by marrying into trade. The only shame comes about when one tries to push in before one is invited, or to use one's name and connections as a kind of commodity." She pursed her lips; frowning only made the brow wrinkle. "You see, Lauralee, we must appear to be modest above all. We must appear to be reticent about taking advantage of this tentative connection. You two should look hopeful and eager but say nothing until we are actually established and accepting invitations. And when the invitations arrive, you must be—"

  "Retiring and modest," Carolyn supplied, with a glance at Lauralee. "No flirtations. Friendly wallflowers, so to speak."

  "Exactly right." Alison bestowed a smile of favor on her elder-born. "You must appear to be grateful without fawning, and without any hint that you intend to take advantage of the new situation."

  "New situation?" Lauralee laughed, and flicked her cigarette ash into the remains of her buttered toast. "Any parties we're invited to will be rather thin on male company! Unless you want us to cozy up to grandfathers and schoolboys."

  Alison stared at her in astonishment. " 'Cozy up!' Where did you get that expression? You've been going to too many American cinema shows, young lady—"

  "Well—" Lauralee flushed, and looked at her in defiance Alison quelled the defiance with another look.

  "No 'well' about it." Alison sketched a sign in the air, and Lauralee squealed in pained surprise as her mother administered a mild correction. "Let that be a lesson to you: no slang, no impudence. You will maintain impeccable manners from this point on. No, you will not be courting old men or schoolboys. You will be comforting Reginald Fenyx, who is returning to Longacre in extremely fragile condition on medical leave. You will be compassionate, understanding, and willing to listen to or do anything he asks, which likely won't be much. You will become indispensible to him. And I don't care which of you does it, either, so long as one of you gets him to the point where he cannot do without you, at which point we will ensure he asks for your hand. I will be assisting considerably, of course," she added. "Let's just say he'll be plagued by things he would rather not see, and the only time he will be free of them will be in your presence."

  Lauralee understood immediately; Carolyn took a moment or two of thought, and the hint, from her older sister, of "he's
shellshocked."

  It was Alison's considered opinion at that point, that regardless of Carolyn's superior looks and predilection for flirtation, Lauralee was probably going to win this particular contest. "That will be up to the two of you," she said serenly. "I will supply the structure."

  "Which is all any good daughter could ask, Mama," said Carolyn sweetly. Lauralee leveled a withering glance at her, but said nothing. Alison was pleased. With a contest of rivalry set up between the two, things should proceed apace, as soon as Reggie made his appearance back home.

  "Now, I have something important that I must tend to," she said, and got to her feet. "A small matter on behalf of the Lodge and the Department combined. I will take the auto, and I should be back by dark. Has that odd butcher sent anything of my order? Or the tavern?"

  Carolyn shook her head. "Just notes that there is no meat to be had today, so no roast and no ham."

  "Have the girl do something with potted pheasant then," Alison said, absently. "Get it out of the pantry for her."

  "Certainly, Mama." Carolyn always enjoyed the opportunity to humiliate Eleanor, even when it meant having to set foot in the kitchen.