Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  The chaplain closed the book with a muffled thud that sounded like a handful of wet earth tossed on a grave mound. He stood quietly a moment. The Christ pictured on the colored panes of the chapel windows quivered as the wind rattled the glass. The fire in the hearth crackled. Then,

  “There have been times for each of us when it’s seemed as if this war will never end; when it feels as if we’ve spent our whole lives fighting it. It’s hard to remember what life was like before the war, and hard to imagine what life will be like after it. But it was only six months ago we were clinging to a strip of beach in Normandy, and now we’re here. The war won’t end tomorrow, or next week, but that end is in sight.

  “It won’t be a simple matter of packing up and going home. We – every one of us – will have two tasks to deal with when the shooting stops. One: we’re going to have to help these people rebuild. That’s the easier of the two. Clear away the wreckage, pour cement, and start laying bricks. We know the privations these people have suffered; I like to think most of us would be happy to help them get back on their feet.

  “The other job comes after we go home, and that job is going to be a lot harder. That’s what do we do with what we’re going to take home in here – ” he tapped his head “ – and in here,” and he laid a spread hand across his chest. “How do we rebuild that?”

  It struck me, then, with an almost painful poignancy, that the good vicar was not indulging in a rhetorical construct. He’s asking, too! He’s asking! I suppose that’s what comes from delivering the Last Rites too many times over the torn bodies of the young.

  I turned away. I told myself I was looking for Harry, but, in retrospect, I think, perhaps, I didn’t care to watch the man at the pulpit grasp for answers. I had been ready to mock a pat religious bromide, but it had not come. I was lost enough on my own; I had little need to share the chaplain’s own pained misplacement.

  I turned and almost bumped into Peter Ricks, loitering in the shadows of the hall.

  “Peter!”

  He averted my eyes, pretending to look curiously past me. “Just wanted to see who was going to show up.”

  Having used the same lie to myself, I nodded, allowing it to stand. “Not going to indulge in even one little prayer?” I teased.

  His face grew quickly cold. “I’ve prayed.” He held his gleaming hook before my face. “It didn’t work.”

  None the less, he still lingered about in the corridor as I left.

  I made my way down to the dining hall, beckoned even at a distance by a warming, appetizing scent. Even closer I heard the voices – buoyant, punctuated by an occasional small laugh – of Harry and la comtesse.

  “Eddie!” he said catching sight of me. “Get on over here and have some breakfast!”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound jealous which, I shamefully admit, I was (to some small degree).

  “Get over here!” he said and patted the chair at his other side. He called to the kitchen and soon a plate piled high with American “pancakes” was laid on before me, along with a serving platter of grilled Spam and rehydrated mashed potatoes.

  I took a bite of the pancakes. I was familiar with them from my travels in America, but this was quite a different concoction than I’d remembered. The inducing aroma had been misleading. Unlike the pancakes I’d remembered, these had been made with a bow toward battlefield necessity. Made from flour and powdered eggs they had a – shall I say “hearty” – consistency guaranteed to exhaust the jaws without ever pleasing the palate. “Not exactly crepes suzette, eh, Madame?”

  “But filling,” she smiled, still chewing the same mouthful she’d been chewing when I’d appeared.

  “Eventually filling,” Harry amplified, “providing you can get one down. And then they become permanently filling. I think I’ll be digesting these things into next year.”

  “Harry, I’ve just come from the chapel and I was surprised not to see you there.”

  Harry turned his attention to his plate with a shrug. “I’m Russian Orthodox.”

  “Didn’t Ryan say it was to be a non–denominational service?”

  A flash of irritation from him, asking that I let it alone.

  La comtesse sensed the discomfort of the moment. “The monsieur was telling to me the stories of his home. It sounds to me very lovely! Ah, the people he tells to me!”

  Returning to his earlier bonhomie, Harry wagged a warning finger: “It sounds like more fun at a distance, Ma’am, but I’m sure anybody there’d take castle living over a walk–up.”

  “Perhaps,” she replied, “but someday I would like to see these people.”

  “You’d be more than welcome, Ma’am,” Harry said. “We’ll make room for you on the couch.”

  She looked about the empty dining hall. “Maintenant, I may have the castle, but only you have the ‘couch.’ To whom goes the advantage?”

  “You’ve got a point, Ma’am, you’ve got a point. And, frankly, I think we’ve even got less stairs to deal with!”

  “Ah, bon!” That lovely little laugh of hers. It was the first time I remembered seeing her without the weight of dark days on her countenance.

  Harry turned back to me. “The lady tells me you were up late doing homework. She is impressed by your diligence. As I am.” A mock bow of the head. “Did anything come from all that diligent homework?”

  La comtesse pushed back from the table and rose. We stood with her. “You have the business to discuss. I should leave you to it, eh? Later, monsieurs.” As she left, that coquette’s smile, again, her way of telling me she’d seen that bit of green in me early on…and not thought too badly of it.

  Harry hadn’t missed the exchange of looks, but before his smirk could turn into some not–so–clever barb I held up a hand to warn him off.

  “I was just going to say – ”

  “I have a fair idea of what you were just going to say, mate,” I shushed him but my reddening face only amused him the more.

  “So, I was asking. You find anything last night?”

  I shook my head. “I keep thinking it’s there, Harry. I know I must be going right past it, but it’s there.”

  “What’s there?”

  I shrugged helplessly.

  He nodded in sympathy. “I’ve been getting the same feeling myself. Something’s not right somewhere. I don’t know. We’ve had to move so fast, get through so much material…This is not the way to do things.”

  “Last night, did you go to Dominick? And?”

  “He wants to fight it out.”

  “Odd, don’t you think? I mean at the onset he seemed, oh, I suppose I’d say prosaic.”

  “If that means he looked ready to just let Courie roll over him, yeah.”

  “But now he thinks he can win?”

  Harry grinned sanguinely. “Seeing Joyce up there really did something to him. Now, I think he’s less concerned about an acquittal than in trying to hurt Whit Joyce. And he sees an acquittal as a way to do that.”

  “Harry, I was wondering if you could arrange something for me? A proper transcript of the trail won’t be prepared for days, correct? Perhaps weeks? That very studious lad who keeps the record; would it be possible for him to sit with me and read back the stenographic tape of the trial?”

  Harry seemed not to immediately understand. “You want this guy to sit with you – ”

  “If I could read the tape myself I would.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to spend your nights, Eddie.” A glance toward the archway through which la comtesse had exited. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  “Can you arrange it?”

  “It’s supposed to be a public record. I guess I can set it up. That steno kid isn’t going to be too happy about how he’s going to be spending his nights. I’d consider flowers and candy if I were you.”

  “Aye, you’re a funny thing, you are, Harry. Quite the wit.”

  “You really think there’s something to find
there?”

  “As I told you yesterday: I don’t know. But I don’t know where else to look.”

  *

  When la comtesse came by my quarters later that afternoon with an invitation, I thought Sergeant Barham wouldn’t mind a recess of a few hours.

  She harnessed her one horse to a tatty dog cart that had been rotting in a corner of the stable, moving about the traces like a skilled farrier. She threw a few things in the back, a quilt across our laps, and with a shake of the reins and cluck of her tongue we were off. We followed the road from the front gate off into the woods, then turned off. There was no path, at least none marked, but she expertly threaded the cart through the trees until we came to a clearing; ground just open enough for a snug little carriage house.

  Like the chateau, it had seen more prosperous times. Some of the slate shingles had slipped free, panes of glass were missing in the windows, and the underbrush had been allowed to draw near in a close tangle about the base of the stone walls. She took the basket of food and the quilt and I followed her inside.

  It was just a few, small bare rooms, the wood floor littered with dried leaves, birds fluttering about the exposed rafters. She stood for a long moment in the front room.

  “Is this where you come on your rides?”

  “Non. I have not been here in some time.” Her shoulders shifted beneath her shawl, then she turned, smiled weakly at me and spread the quilt upon the floor.

  “This must have been very nice in its time,” I said poking about the fireplace. “Should I get some wood for a fire?”

  I found the remains of a woodpile outside against the rear wall, brought the few surviving rotting logs inside and managed a small, sputtering blaze after some effort. By then she’d laid on a nice picnic setting on the quilt: plates, cutlery, piping coffee poured from a thermos. With my dicky leg, joining her on the blanket was not a comfortable option. I saved one of the fire logs – a squat bit of trunk – and dragged it over to the blanket as a stool.

  I asked her about the carriage house.

  “This was where we would come to pretend to be like other people,” she said handing me a plate of beefy ooze she’d cadged from the American mess lads. “The, um, thought was that here, we would not be le comte et la comtesse. Like other people; tres ordinaire. Like the people your friend speak with me about this morning. But it was a game. Pretend. We would return after a ride and the dinner would be on the table, fresh bedclothes.”

  “Hardly ordinary, Madame.”

  Sadly: “Oui. Hardly. I don’t think it was possible for Yves. From when he was born il etais un Comte d’Audran, comprenez? He knew no other way. I tell you before, he was good to us. But always something he could not give …” She tapped at her chest. “Sometime all I want is…is simple. Well…” She finished with a sigh.

  “C’est la vie.”

  She smiled. “Is that all your French?”

  “Aye. But I do it well, eh?”

  “Eh, bien. The German commander, this was where he would stay. He would spend much the time alone. I think he did not like to be here.”

  “Then he should never have left home.”

  “Ah, oui. But if every one stay home, we would not be introduced.”

  “And that would be a sad thing?” She responded with a demure shrug. “Did you two ever have lunch here together? You and Herr Oberst or whatever he was?”

  “He only has in his mind his wife,” she said with sympathy. “He drank. Very sad.”

  “My condolences to him, then.”

  We ate for a few moments, pondering the ingredient of the substance on our plates.

  Then, “When this is over, you leave?” she asked.

  “The trial? My boss at home is a rather demanding duck. He’ll expect I go do something else to earn my pay packet.”

  “You will leave?” Wanting no quips.

  “Aye.”

  “And when the war ends…another war for you?”

  “I think I’ve had my fill, thank you.”

  “It would be nice to see you, I think…without all this. Est–il possible? Pensez–vous?”

  “I think I should like that.”

  “I wonder how you are…when there is no business? What is left? You have never lived without it, oui?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that until you mentioned it,” now troubled by the thought.

  She noted my furrowed countenance and apologized.

  “No need, Madame. I’m wee curious myself. And mayhaps somewhat – …”

  “Afraid. Naturallment. Je suis aussi. Apres le guerre…”

  We stayed until there was no more wood to scrounge for the fire. I talked of Scotland – at least as much as I’d remembered from boyhood days – and she talked of Belgium before the war, her son, her daughter. By late afternoon, the sun was already dying and we picked up our accoutrements, tossed them back in the dogcart, and started back for the chateau.

  “J’ai un question.”

  “Please.”

  “It is personal.”

  “It is fine. Ask. Demandez.”

  “You have a sadness, oui? Pourquoi? Was it from when you were hurt? Ou quand votre fille departez?”

  I agreed with her diagnosis, a bit taken aback that it could be so simply put: a sadness. I had never taken the time to give it much analysis. It was enough to suffer it; understanding it wouldn’t’ve leavened the weight any. But, she had posed the question, and I considered it, tried to chart where and when the downward trajectory had begun.

  “It’s an odd thing, Madame. It’s never the things you’d think, eh? Not the big things, the momentous tragedies. It’s never one thing, you see? No epiphanies. That’s for the dramatists. On my job, you’re a bit like a soldier, eh? No time to…to feel. Get the job done, eh? Shrug it off, mate, and press on! But each…thing costs a little bit. It’s never one thing; it’s just that last thing.”

  Between her loose grasp of English and my vague philosophizing, I could see I’d left her at a loss.

  “I knew a policeman,” I said, trying another route, “an inspector he was, with the Yard; Scotland Yard. You know Scotland Yard? Chap started as a local constable, worked his way up, been a policeman thirty–odd years all told. Whatever you could think of, he’d seen: murders – some quite bizarre – sex crimes, terrifically horrible accidents. Yet in all that time I knew him, if you’d met him, you’d say, ‘My, there’s a decent sort, eh?’ Played rugger with his youngsters on the weekend, brought little treats home for the wife at night, tended a little flower garden back of his house. He’d actually won some prize or award or some damned thing for his roses. One day, he went out to tend his flowers, found the neighbor’s dog digging them up, brought his spade down on the poor animal’s head and proceeded to bludgeon it to death. the neighbor hears the poor creature yelping, came running out: ‘Ere, mate, what’re you on about? Leave off, eh?’ And before he even sees all of what’s afoot, the inspector turns round and coshes the neighbor. Killed him, aye, one stroke cleaved the poor bloke’s noggin neatly in twain as they say.

  “Then it’s later, and all the inspector’s mates come round to the interrogation to find out what set him off. Seemed right enough on the job that day, they all said. They asked him and he couldn’t say. Hadn’t a clue. He saw the dog digging up his prized roses; simple as that.

  “I think it was just one thing too many. Just one silly, pathetic little tragedy too many. There you are in your home and you say, ‘Fine, I’ll deal with any horror the world can throw at me as long as I’m left this little corner.’ Then the dog comes in and mucks up the corner.

  “So, in answer to your question, Madame, aye, it was the leg, and it was her leaving, and it was a hundred million other things that made me feel the way I’d spent my life was just…” A sigh, a dismissive wave of the hand: nothing, a waste.

  “I think maybe you punish yourself too much.”

  “Eh? Punish myself? For what?”

  “Le monde est tres grand, n
’est pas? Why should you punish yourself because you cannot move it very much?”

  The chateau hove into view and as the horse trotted toward the front gate I wished we were still back at the carriage house discussing more pleasant days.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Covenant

  “ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS?” Harry’s voice registered more than just doubt; it was the skepticism of someone well used to the idea that good news rarely comes without caveats.

  I turned to Staff Sergeant Barham, red–eyed and benumbed from our all–night session of his reading – and re–reading and re–re–reading – the court record. “Once more, Sergeant. And with feeling.”

  He showed no appreciation at all for the touch of wit as he once again droned his way through the passage in question.

  Harry cut him short. “I don’t mean that.” He gestured to the notes in my hand; the notes from the Wiltz interviews. “I mean that!”

  “Mean what?” Sisto was sitting on his bed, impatiently awaiting enlightenment.

  I’m afraid we were remiss in attending to the lieutenant, and continued on oblivious to his call: “We can always ask him, Harry. He’s still sitting over in the east wing with the other witnesses.”

  “Ask who what?” Sisto pressed.

  Ricks had joined Harry and I, looking over the Wiltz notes. He grinned and shook his head. “‘Go scratch’; that’s what was nagging at you?”

  “Epiphanies don’t always arrive in a radiant nimbus accompanied by a choir of angels.”

  “Obviously.” He shook his head, again, muttering, “‘Go scratch’.”