Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  That was half of the reason why he hated those afternoon teas, the inane chatter. What was wrong with those girls, anyway? Half of them acted as if the war didn't exist, and the other half as if it existed only to inconvenience them!

  She didn't talk about the war—but it wasn't because she was trying to play as if it wasn't going on. It was as if she was avoiding the subject so as not to trouble me.

  It occurred to him that if she was working, working hard somewhere now—well, she wasn't going to be all that sheltered anymore. Maybe he could talk to her, about some of the things you just didn't talk about among men. All right to be bitter, angry, depressed; all right even to admit to being white-knuckle terrified in the night, and ready to do a bunk. All right even to admitting to want to take your faithful old Wembley and stick the barrel in your mouth and—

  But you didn't talk to another man about losing your sense of wonder and beauty. You didn't tell him how your ideals were lying dead beside your comrades. Oh, maybe you could with the rare fellow like one or two of his former Oxford chums, the ones that had written damn good poetry, for instance. Not Steven Stewart, for instance— someone who'd call you "Reg" and talk about how he was going to start an air mail service when it was all over. Not Walter Boyes, either; plain as toast and solid as a rock, but who was reading history, and liked facts, plain and simple. Maybe William Howe—he was sensitive enough, just think about the stuff he pulled up for the regimental band to play, not just marches and bombast but Bach and Handel. But Howe was still at the Front.

  Daniel Heistand— One of the ghosts, the men in the photos probably still on the canvas wall of his quarters, a dead man with his arms around the shoulders of the living. He was someone Reggie could have talked to about this. He hadn't written poetry; he was a musician, and not one of your ukulele players nor your accordion men. He was a violinist, and composed as well as played; Reggie remembered listening to him play during the pauses in the shelling, on the long, long, nights when nobody could sleep, playing some wistful haunting thing, too melancholy to be a lullaby—

  Well, he hadn't lasted six months; a "sixty-minute man"—that was about how much time he'd had in the seat before a Hun in a Fokker shot him down.

  Chris Whitmore? Maybe. Hard to tell. . . . That mania he'd had for photography might have been the stirrings of an artist's nature or just that of a tinkerer. He was supposed to be taking recon photos now, last Reggie'd heard, in the Sudan. No bloody mud in the Sudan.

  Not Geoffrey Cockburn, that was certain. The boy who put his motorcar into the ornamental pond next to the cricket-grounds because he was roaring drunk the night before vivas was not the sort to have a sensitive soul. And no Lyman Evans, either, who'd been pouring the bubbly in the first place.

  Maybe Rene Comeau; he was one of the better-educated French infantrymen attached to the air wing as local guards, and the French— well, they were French. They understood that sort of thing. But Rene was still over there too—unless he was dead.

  Melancholy was certainly on him this afternoon. And he desperately wanted someone to talk to about it.

  Oh, not Allan McBain either, that hard-headed Scots engineer who cursed them all whenever one of "his" runways got a shell-crater or a bomb-crater in it. As if it was their fault!

  Though in a sense it was—if there hadn't been 'planes and pilots there, no one would bother to shell or bomb McBain's runways.

  Vincent Mills . . . Another sensitive ghost out of the past, but this time a ghost that hadn't even made it to the Front. He'd trained with Reggie at the Oxford-based branch of the Flying School—and he'd been one of too-frequent fatalities. They'd found him upside-down in a tree, neck broken, a strange and puzzled look on his face as if he couldn't quite fathom what had gone wrong. His demise had been a shock; he was a good flyer. Perhaps the machine had done him wrong. Reggie still had one of his poems, or at least, it was folded into one of his books of sonnets back at the Front, an articulate yearning for higher skies—

  No, there wasn't anyone here and now. And the girl was. Perhaps it was no bad thing that she wasn't pretty, wasn't his class, was, in fact, poor from all appearances. She didn't look like the sort to read trashy romantic novels and dream of marrying the duke. She looked like the sort who could be sensible. She'd certainly been more sensible than some of those boys who'd flocked around him.

  He nodded to himself, as the golden-green light flooded around him. Maybe that was why he kept coming here. Someone sensitive, and sensible at the same time. Someone he could talk to that wouldn't go carrying tales. Who'd believe a kitchen-girl who told tales about meeting up with Reggie Fenyx in a meadow on odd afternoons to talk, anyway? No one. Without witnesses—and really, no one ever did come here—she'd never be believed.

  So, content with his reasoning, he dozed a little in the sun until his watch told him the pub would be open. Who would ever have thought that a working-man's pub would become his refuge?

  The Brigadier would be arriving in a few days, though. Perhaps then he wouldn't need a refuge as much.

  Reggie came in through the garden entrance; it was just as easy to get to from the stable, and a great deal quieter. He took the entrance beneath the grand marble staircase, rather than the one on the terrace; this passage was generally used more by the staff but as a child he had scampered in and out of all possible entrances. The place was dark, as it should be; his mother and grandfather retired early when there was no entertaining going on, and she hadn't entertained since his father had died. None of the staff was down here now at this time of night, and it felt almost as if he was alone in the huge old house. He walked carefully, his path brightened only by a few gaslights, turned low.

  He remembered how his father had brought in the gas. It hadn't been that long ago, it seemed. And now—

  Electricity. We need to bring in electricity. And the telephone. He shook his head, and made his way up to the first floor. It was easier to get to the family staircase from this part of the house.

  Stone floors below, polished wood above, and all of it too noisy, for all he was walking as quietly as he could. Tonight he was feeling more than a bit tipsy; it had been one of those nights. Something had set off Matt Brennan, and he'd gone down on a chair in the corner and just sat and rocked and wouldn't talk to anyone.

  Shell shock. They all knew the signs of it, and Brennan—well, Brennan had more than a few reasons to suffer from it. It was the first time he'd gone into a fit of it in public though (and Reggie could only be grateful that he himself had managed to keep his own fits behind the closed doors of his rooms).

  Well, they weren't doctors, but the only doctor that Reggie knew that had any success with shellshock was Doctor Maya, and she wasn't there. They had their own rough-and-ready remedy; maybe not the best, but a damn sight better than doing nothing, or telling a fellow he was malingering. They physically hauled him out to the middle table, put a glass in his hand, and poured drink into him until he came out of it—and of course in order to keep him drinking they had to match him drink for drink. They'd all gotten bawling sentimental, even Kevin Eaches, one of Reggie's tenant farmers, who'd wandered in by accident and somehow never made it out again.

  When Brennan was well in hand, Reggie took his leave. It wasn't quite closing time, but this might be one of those nights when Tom locked the doors on a few of the oldest friends, and moved the "cure" into the private part of the building. He wasn't in that select group yet, and he was not inclined to intrude. So out he went, into the spring-scented night.

  It had taken some careful navigating to get the 'bus up to the house without incident. Fortunately, there'd been a moon. Unfortunately, there had been cows. He'd had to stop and shoo them off the road.

  Not the easiest thing to do, when you were staggering a bit. Cows didn't seem to be impressed with a man who wasn't able to stand without weaving back and forth.

  He left the auto in the middle of the round stableyard; the men would park it in the carriage house. He knew that t
onight he was in no condition to try and put her away himself.

  With the hour so late, and the house so dark and still, he assumed that everyone, including all of the staff, had gone to bed. He expected to get quietly up to his rooms without anyone the wiser.

  The last thing he anticipated was to find his mother waiting for him in the settle at the top of the family staircase.

  She had an oil-lamp burning on the table beside her, and was pretending to work on some of that infernal knitting every woman seemed to be doing these days, making stockings for soldiers. He staggered back a pace or two on seeing her. "Ah. Evening, Mater," he said carefully. "I've been out."

  "So I see." She put the knitting down in her lap. She was still dressed for dinner, in a navy-blue gown. Her tone could have frozen the flowers in the vase beside her. "I presume it was the same place you have been going to every night. The working-man's pub. The—

  Broom."

  She acted as if she had never heard the name before. As if she had been completely unaware that there was a working-man's pub. He drew himself up. "Yes, I have. I've been to The Broom. I went last night, I went tonight, and I intend to go tomorrow night. In fact, I will continue to go to The Broom for as long as I am on medical leave."

  Her face crumpled. "Reggie—how could you? Everyone in the village certainly knows—it won't be long before the whole county knows, you're down there every night, consorting with socialists and riff-raff—"

  "Who give me a better and warmer welcome than I have in my own home," Reggie retorted, anger burning out some of the whiskey fumes and clearing his head. "Where I'm not called coward to my face, and told I'm malingering! Why, I'd rather spend four hours in Mad Ross's company than five minutes in your father's!"

  Even as he said the words, he was glad they were out, that it was all out in the open, at last. He didn't need the Brigadier for this. Not to lay the truth plain to his mother. He should have stood on his own two feet a long time ago.

  His mother cried out, and her hands flew to her mouth. Tears started up in his eyes.

  He felt coldly, curiously unmoved.

  "If you want to know why I go there, why don't you watch how your father drives me out of my own home every night?" he asked, angrily. "And you had better get used to my new friends, Mater, because they are my friends, and I have far more in common with them than you could ever understand! We're—" he could find no words to tell her. "We're soldiers" he said at last. "Real soldiers. Not tin-toys like your father, who strutted his way around cowing poor little Hindu heathen until he was old enough to claim a pension, and now wants to lord it over me the same way."

  He stared at her, stared her down, stared at her until she shrank back in her seat and dropped her eyes. He took a deep breath, and walked past her, all the stagger gone from his step. He walked straight to his rooms, feeling full of a cold dignity he hadn't known he possessed.

  And then, once the door was shut, he sat down abruptly on the side of the bed, and blinked.

  "What did I just do?" he asked aloud.

  But of course, there was no one there to answer him.

  13

  April 30, 1917

  Broom, Warwickshirte

  THE ARROWS WAS EMPTY; ALISON was gone. So were Carolyn and Lauralee, and it wasn't off to tea at Longacre again. It was a two-day excursion somewhere that they did not talk about even amongst themselves. But it was going to involve Warrick Locke.

  And it was going to involve the contents of three brass-bound cases that Alison had taken with her.

  Magic. That was Eleanor's guess, anyway. They were going somewhere to work magic, somewhere that was special. There were a lot of special places of power around, or so Sarah said; Stonehenge was only the most obvious. There had been enough blood spilled on English soil to make plenty of spots where Alison and her nasty Earth Elementals would feel right at home. Eleanor only hoped that they hadn't gotten hold of anything personal of Reggie's. With luck, this wouldn't have anything at all to do with Reggie, or this new magic would just break itself on the walls of his unbelief.

  But that meant that at long last, she was going to be able to run down to the meadow at teatime—and hope against hope that Reggie Fenyx was the sort of fellow who kept his word.

  The lot of them were finally packed up and gone by luncheon, a meal that stretched on interminably so far as she was concerned. She had to keep her mouth shut and her eyes cast down meekly the whole time, as the foursome pretended she didn't even exist while she waited on them.

  Finally they packed up the big motorcar and all four of them drove away, with no more clue as to where they were going than Alison's careless, "Keep the house neat and clean, Ellie, and don't expect us back before Saturday."

  When she was utterly certain they were gone, she could scarcely believe her luck. And the first place she went—since, of course, she had not had time or opportunity to snatch more than a bite of bread for luncheon—was the pantry.

  This time she packed a basket with a real tea, recklessly plundering the stores she wasn't supposed to be able to get into for the making of a meal that even Reggie Fenyx would find appealing. Sarah walked in on her in the midst of her preparations.

  "Well, what's all this, then?" she asked, hands on hips, surveying the state of the kitchen. "I thought we might do some work, with Alison gone—"

  "I—" Eleanor found herself flushing. "I was going to take a picnic to Round Meadow."

  Sarah blinked her deceptively mild eyes once or twice, then a slight smile curved her lips. "So that's the way the wind blows. No wonder young Reggie's been there every afternoon."

  "He has?" she gasped. "But—how do you know?"

  "He leaves his auto parked below it," Sarah said dismissively. "It's his meadow, after all, and it's part of the field his aeroplane used to be in, I doubt anyone thinks anything at all about it. I just wondered, why does he always come at teatime?"

  "Because that's when I met him there the first time." She looked around distractedly for something to take with her to drink. "Does wine go with tea?" she asked, rather desperately.

  "No, wine does not, and moreover, you're not used to it, you'll be tipsy in no time," Sarah scolded. "There's the stream running through there; drink water. But go, go now, before he gets tired of waiting and goes off to his cronies at The Broom."

  She caught up the basket, and ran.

  The few people on the street did not seem to notice her as she ran; that was something that seemed to happen a great deal. Unless she was actually in the way, no one in Broom paid the least bit of attention to her no matter what she did. Today that was all to the good.

  Her heart lifted as she saw in the distance that there was an automobile—presumably Reggie's—tucked off the road down near Round Meadow.

  Her feet felt lighter at that moment too, but she was struck with a sudden feeling of shyness, and instead of speeding up, she slowed down to a walk. And then the doubts began.

  After all, why should Reggie care if she turned up? He was probably just down here to enjoy the solitude of his own meadow. She'd be an invader, as she had been the first day. Oh, he'd be polite, but he wouldn't want her there, surely—

  She almost turned back at the stile; almost didn't climb it to get into the wooded end of the field. But she'd come this far—and she had a lovely tea with her. He'd surely appreciate that. And she wouldn't chatter like the girls his mother was inviting for tea.

  I don't have to stay very long, she told herself, as she clambered over the stile. The minute it seems as if he wants to be alone, I can go.

  After all, what did they have in common? She hadn't been to university, she didn't drive a motorcar or fly, she knew nothing about the war except what she read in the papers, and besides, he wouldn't want to talk about that. She was years his junior. She couldn't even talk to him about magic, which was probably the only thing they had in common. He probably was only being polite the last time—

  And what happened last time? A voice like c
ool flame in the back of her mind said, in a reasoned town. You didn't talk about anything. You listened. He did the talking. Just go. See what happens.

  By that point, she was among the trees, with the meadow just beyond her, golden sunlight pouring down before her at the end of the corridor of trees. I might as well go as not, she thought, and tossed her head. He did ask me to come back, and if he didn't mean it, he shouldn't have asked me.

  When she came through the trees, at first she didn't see him. He wasn't sitting on the tree trunk where he had been the last time she had seen him. Then she saw he had spread a blanket out on the new grass, and was lying on his back—she thought he was looking up at the sky, but as she got closer, she saw that he was asleep.

  She sat down carefully, just on the edge of the blanket, to avoid waking him. There were dark circles under his eyes and it seemed to her that he looked more tired and worn than the last time she had seen him. Isn't he getting enough sleep? That seemed strange to her; wasn't that why he was here in the first place, to rest and recover from his injuries? Why shouldn't he be sleeping enough?