The Damned

by Tarn Richardson

  “Alessandro!” she called, skipping forward.

  “Sandrine!” Alessandro cheered, wiping his bloodied hands on his towel as he saw her approach. He gave them a final rub on the front of his apron and leaned forward to greet her with kisses. “How is it that you look even more beautiful with your clothes on than with them off?”

  “Alessandro, I always feel more beautiful when I see you,” she teased, and kissed him again, this time on the forehead.

  Alessandro’s name suggested a heritage more exotic than the truth. He had been born in Arras twenty six years ago to Henri and Margot Dequois. Henri was so certain that he was directly descended from Roman emperors that he gave his first son a Roman sounding name. You could tell in an instant by Alessandro’s pallid complexion that his roots were firmly buried in the benign rolling hills of north east France rather than the rich heat and romance of southern Italy.

  Alessandro’s fame as a butcher had originated courtesy of his father, from whom he inherited the business when arthritis forced Henri to sit out his days on the veranda of his modest townhouse. Alessandro’s prowess in butchery, and his eye for recognising the best farmers, quickly took the business from being simply admired to being city renowned. All the best cooks used Alessandro’s produce, all those wishing to impress dining guests chose from his choice wares. At least they did, before the war came. Now, he sold what he could to whoever was left in the city.

  “Why are you not with your lover?” he asked, his eyes glinting.

  Sandrine blew loudly through her lips.

  “He was a fool!” she replied. “And a terrible lover!” she lied.

  Alessandro roared and slapped his thigh.

  Sandrine laughed too. “I hope the British are better fighters than they are lovers.”

  “Ah, so he was British?! Well, I am not surprised to hear he could not make love. What do the British know of making love? They are too busy burning their beef and building their railways.” Sandrine laughed and Alessandro laughed with her. He watched the way her breasts moved beneath her dress and longed desperately to reach out and pull her to him, the sensation almost overwhelming. He thought of her in the arms of her lover last night in an attempt to subdue his passion. Their laughter slowly fell away. “So what are you doing now?”

  “Now? I was going to find out if there was any truth in the news of Fampoux. What have you heard? Tell me what you know!”

  “Only rumour,” replied Alessandro. “Some say it was taken last night after a terrible battle. Others,” he turned his head to one side and scratched behind his ear, “they say the Germans still hold it.”

  “There is a lot of movement,” Sandrine said hopefully, looking around the square, “of soldiers going east.”

  The butcher nodded. “There is. Now, do you want some of my finest produce?” he asked, as if the talk of battles unsettled him. “I’m afraid I don’t have much. This war, it is taking its unfair share. They take it, Sandrine, the authorities they take it and they boil it and put it into tins! My finest cuts! For the soldiers! To think of it. My award winning liver, boiled and pushed into little metal pots.”

  “I was wondering if I could stay with you tonight.”

  The question came quickly and unexpectedly. It struck Alessandro like a stunning blow. He stood stock still, his face frozen like a mask.

  “You can always say no,” Sandrine said, but her hands were clasped expectantly tight to her chest.

  “No,” Alessandro said. Sandrine at once blanched and Alessandro heard a noise come out of her. “No,” he said again, stutteringly, his face brightening with each word he was able to get out. “I mean, no, please, yes, that would be …” His spirit flashed with elation and desire. “I would love you to stay but …” He laughed thinly and shrugged, racked with uncertainty. “But … why?” He was standing with his hands held awkwardly by his side, his fingers twitching like the tails of irritated cats. He crossed his arms. They slipped together but instantly slipped apart and he found himself an uncomfortable and inelegant pose against the counter of meat, where he rested his clumsy body. Of course, he knew he was being used, as he’d been used before, but as he gazed at her loveliness, faced with her heart and beauty, he knew without a moment’s doubt that he didn’t care.

  Sandrine giggled and rose, her clasped hands raised to her face, framing her delicate features.

  “Why? Well, I say why not?”

  She smiled and Alessandro felt he could fall long and deep into her wide and beseeching eyes.

  “Why not indeed!” he chuckled breathlessly, and then he shrugged and the pair of them both laughed. He could feel a force between them, an enchantment pulling their bodies together. He allowed himself to be drawn towards her, but stopped short of draping his arms around her, despite so longing to do so. “So, you know where …”

  “Alessandro, I know where you live, my darling,” answered Sandrine, leaning forward the remainder of the short distance between them and kissing him briefly on the lips. “I will see you at …”

  “Five?”

  “Five is perfect,” she said, catching sight of a contingent of Catholic Priests stepping purposefully across the square towards them. She reached forward and kissed Alessandro again. “Till later,” she called, and then vanished into the hubbub of the market.

  SEVENTEEN

  1892. THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.

  The figure that entered the hall that morning during prayers looked like no Cardinal or Bishop the boys had ever seen before. He was clad in black, matt finished and with tanned leather about his wrists, elbows and knees. There was darkness in his features and a weight in the way he carried himself. He wore boots rather than shoes and they cracked hard on the tiled floor as he walked, as if studded on their soles. The light seemed to dim as he passed by a window or candle, as if his very presence sucked the joy from the room.

  The boys muttered quietly amongst themselves, snatching glances over shoulders and above text books, transfixed by the tall and daunting figure of the man.

  He walked the aisles of desks, his head turning from side to side like a pendulum, from the backs of boys hunched over their desk on the left of the aisle to the right and then back again, his pace unchecked, his glare unwavering. When he had walked the full length of every aisle, he returned back to the door of the chamber and fell into quiet conversation with the Father standing there so that none of the acolytes, despite their best endeavours, could hear.

  “So, that is Tacit?” the man murmured under his breath to Father Adansoni alongside, indicating the boy in the middle of the classroom. He spoke in Latin, his language sounding exotic and mysterious. Tacit caught the man’s cold eyes on him and shivered, pretending to look away and focus on his studies.

  “It is,” Adansoni replied. “But he is not to go with you.”

  “So you have said. But I have heard great things about him from many quarters. We need good new blood. Our battles are endless, our enemies merciless. We lose men every day in our eternal struggle with the Darkness. From what I have heard, he would be perfect for our ranks.”

  “But you would not be perfect for him.”

  “I don’t understand,” the black clad man hissed.

  Adansoni lowered his gaze onto the boy and watched him with the love of a father. “He has experienced too many terrible things in his early years. He is not suitable. He never will be. Pick from the others for your army.”

  “But he’s the quickest and the strongest, from the reports I have read.”

  “You are correct. He is the strongest. But it is what lies inside, which is so fragile. Despite the years, despite his achievements I do not think he should go. There is nothing which convinces me he is ready, or that he will ever be ready for the role you wish of him.”

  The black clad man turned from the room to stride into the dark of the corridor beyond. “Tell me,” he growled loudly, so that his words could be heard by all studying in the chamber behind him, “what use is ability when all th
e use you put it to is to read prayers and extinguish candles?”

  EIGHTEEN

  07:03. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13TH, 1914.

  THE FRONT LINE. ARRAS. FRANCE.

  It was the sound of a car motor which drew Henry out of his bunker. The heavy crank of an engine seemed foreign when, during those rare moments of respite from the enemies’ attentions, the heavy stomp of boots, the whinny of horses or barked orders from Sergeants were the usual sounds to disrupt the quiet.

  Henry trudged down from the trench complex and peered onto what was left of the Rue D’Arras, the main road out of the city, which had been eaten up into the churn of a great network of trenches. Everything, for as far as the eye could see, to the north and south, had been consumed by support trenches, dugouts, officer posts, ammunition stores, latrines, feeding stations and hospitals. The front line – all that stood between Germany and the French coastline.

  A four seater motorcar shuddered to a halt in the middle of the quickly disappearing road. It rattled itself to silence and out of it climbed a sandy haired officer, his belt drawn tight, exposing his middle aged spread, his pallid hungover complexion all the more sickly looking under the glaring sun. He stepped briskly and theatrically away from the vehicle, like an arriving dignitary, donning his cap to hide his liver spotted scalp from the light.

  On seeing him, Henry swore quietly under his breath and marched out of the mishmash of tunnels to meet him.

  “Major Pewter!” he called, trying to sound pleased to see his commanding officer.

  “Lieutenant!” Pewter snapped back. “What the devil is going on here?” he demanded, whipping a glove from his hand and giving the impression he was about to strike the junior officer with it.

  “What’s what, sir?” asked Henry, a dread clutching at his throat.

  “What’s this I hear about you disobeying orders?”

  “Disobeying orders, sir?”

  “You heard me. Moving forward, when you were told to defend our position?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Never mind about that. Why the blazes aren’t you further up the field?”

  “Up the field, sir?”

  “I heard you were at Fampoux?” Pewter scowled, pulling off his second glove. “Why are you piddling around here?”

  The direction and ferocity of the questioning muddled Henry’s thinking. He flinched and rubbed his forehead. “We’re waiting for patrols, sir,” he replied hesitantly, and then stood to attention to give a more assured performance.

  “Patrols?” retorted Pewter, spitting the words contemptuously. “I heard on good authority that you’d taken the German front line. Why aren’t you in the blasted thing?” Henry wavered and the Major strode past him, diving into the confusion of the trenches. Immediately, Henry hurried after him.

  “Complications, sir!” he called.

  The Major stopped and put his cold eye onto Henry. He was tired and he was hungover. He’d been humiliated back in Arras by that woman. No one ever turned down his advances. From what he’d been told after his early morning enquiries, she’d gone home with the Lieutenant Colonel. The dislike he already felt towards his debonair senior officer had been further deepened by envy of this latest sexual conquest. He had a good mind to write home to the Lieutenant Colonel’s wife and spill the beans, no matter how bad the form. The man was a fool. They all were fools, especially the senior officers under whom he had to serve. They tested his patience at the best of times, the senior officers. He was certainly not in the mood to be disappointed by one of the junior ones.

  “I don’t give a damn about complications, Lieutenant. Either you’ve taken the trench or you’ve not taken the trench. This is war, Lieutenant. It’s black or white. Live or die. Win or lose. There is no third option.” He turned and marched onwards into the labyrinth of the trench complex. “Pray to God, Frost, that the trench is not lost.”

  “There was no counter-attack by the Germans,” Henry added quickly, as a means to reassure the Major, hurrying after him, like a servant keen to accommodate a master. “It’s been quiet, all night. There’s been nothing. Nothing at all. No noise. No movement. Nothing. There’s nothing for as far as we’ve been able to glimpse.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’, Lieutenant?” Pewter hissed, marching with purpose and speed. He recalled to himself the words of his previous commanding officer in South Africa: “March with purpose. Fuck with purpose. And when you kill, kill with purpose.”

  “Exactly that, sir. Nothing. There’s nothing there. It seems the enemy have been obliterated.”

  The Major’s ears pricked up at the word ‘obliterated’. He liked obliteration, especially when it involved the enemy. There’d been far too little obliteration, at least as far as the enemy was concerned, for his liking. A breakthrough in his area might yield results, not least in possible promotion for him. But Pewter knew he had to be realistic. Face facts. This was war. The enemy didn’t just vanish.

  “Obliterated is a bold word, Lieutenant. Clarify.”

  Henry, as briskly as he could, explained what they found, or more to the point hadn’t found, in the trench.

  “And you say there was no barrage? The scene you describe would explain the devastation you found.”

  “There was no barrage, sir,” Henry insisted, “not from us.” He shivered to think of what might have taken place in those dark tall trenches. He thought it wise not to mention what the German Corporal had muttered, as he’d fallen into Henry’s arms.

  Pewter chortled and swept back what was left of his thinning hair with his hand. His pulse raced. He liked what he was hearing, mystery or not, as to the enemy’s disappearance. His main concern now was getting into the trench. That was the key objective, the only objective. Why on earth Frost hadn’t got his men into the trench and entrenched them there, the Major didn’t know. But, so too, he recognised that Frost’s decision to pull back might have played well into his own hands. Whilst British units to the north and French to the south were battling tooth and nail to take tiny portions of ground from the Germans, Pewter might now be the officer giving the final order to secure an entire trench and village. All that and without even firing a round! It was known military policy to raid a trench and then pull back. Frost’s decision to have done exactly that might have proved delightfully fortuitous for the Major.

  “We need to get into that trench, Lieutenant,” Pewter announced, “and then hold it!” he warned, indicating with a finger.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You say you have patrols coming back?”

  “Imminently, sir, yes. They were sent out at first –”

  “Good. Hopefully their news will be promising. If it proves to be, we’ll move the entire contingent of troops forward, perhaps even into Fampoux itself. Intelligence maps show the Hun trench network feeds directly from the village. If they’ve left the trenches, they might have left the village.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s our impression, sir.”

  The Major slapped a glove into his hand and gave a short cheer.

  “By jove, Lieutenant,” he chuckled, “I think I might be making some progress in this war at last!”

  They swept around a bend in the trench, dug wider to provide temporary accommodation for the injured brought back from the front line. It was here, in this chamber of chalk and mud, that they would be assessed and granted a break from the killing or be sent back for immediate service. Along one wall, the six Germans taken from their trench the previous night sat on a long bench, silent and numbed, covered under blankets, vacant stares onto the grey brown of the earth or the steam trails rising from their mugs of soup.

  Immediately Pewter froze and glared, the veins in his temple pulsing. “By all that is holy in the world, who are these people?” he hissed, catching sight of their soft pillbox hats and German uniforms beneath the blankets.

  “These soldiers … these prisoners,” Henry corrected, swallowing and pursing his lips, “they’re the only survivors that we’v
e so far been able to find from the trench. Thought they might –”

  “Yes, but what are you doing with them? That’s what I want to know?”

  “We thought they might be able to provide useful information,” Henry lied.

  “And why, in heaven’s name, are you feeding them?” the Major demanded, kicking a mug of soup from one of the soldier’s fingers and wrenching the blanket away from him. The soldier yelped and hung on to it, as if it was his only possession in the world. Pewter lunged forward and struck him hard in the face with the back of his hand, bloodying the prisoner’s nose. The prisoner cowered pathetically, guarding his face, his head down, a childlike whimpering coming out of him, whilst the others sprang to their feet, howling and gathering themselves into a tight group. They drew their arms firmly around them, as if protecting themselves from another blow.

  “There’s no contingency for taking prisoners, Frost.”

  “But sir,” Henry replied, looking at the Major and then back to the pathetic huddle of figures, “we couldn’t leave them where we found them?”

  “No, precisely,” Pewter agreed, taking out his revolver and levelling it at them.

  Without pause, Pewter pulled the trigger. The first round shattered the silence, sending the revolver vaulting back into the Major’s hand. The German with the bloodied nose collapsed backwards, his head snapping to the side, showering blood over the wall and on the prisoners behind him. His face had been blown clean open, become a flaccid wrap of skin like a sagging door to his skull.

  Pewter fired again. Another prisoner, one making an infernal racket of moans and wails, dropped to the floor, half of his head blown clean off. Henry knew he was pleading for the Major to stop, but he couldn’t make himself heard above the thunderous clap of the Major’s pistol.