The Damned

by Tarn Richardson

  “I don’t like the rhetoric, Inquisitor,” said Isabella, regaining her voice and her composure.

  “You’re not alone. Neither do the accused who’ve had their arms torn out during confession. Neither do the heretics whose bones have been powdered and flesh liquefied whilst repentances have been beaten from them. Neither does the pregnant rape victim whose unborn child has been ripped from her belly and burnt in front of her eyes. How many exorcisms have you attended?”

  Isabella hesitated. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything?”

  “Then you will never have seen the way the demon looks at you. The way it watches you out of the corner of its evil eye.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “Everything. You know why it looks at you like it does?” Isabella shook her head. “Because it knows it’s winning!”

  “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “Look around you, Sister. Look at how we act, the deeds we carry out. Look outside of that window. Look to the horizon. Look at what mankind is doing to itself? Can you not see the devil’s hand in everything we do?”

  “By that I suppose you mean this war? War has always been part of the fabric of our very being. We go to war to ensure good is preserved.”

  “Precisely. Perhaps there is no need any more for the devil for we have taken over his role in bringing darkness to the planet. Perhaps we have become so infected by his wickedness that we are all his vessels now. We are legion.”

  “Say not such things! War is, Tacit. It has always been.”

  Tacit spat dismissively. “War is the devil’s plaything. But if you think war’s an acceptable face of mankind …”

  “I never said that.”

  “… there’s more delicious examples of how far we have fallen as a race that I can share with you.”

  “I do not need to hear.”

  “Yes you do! How many more times do I have to visit the scene of a child rape, unpick the butchery of a senseless street attack? How many more times must I do my Church’s bidding and interrogate suspects so long that their bones break and their organs fail? How many more men, women and children must I kill with these bare hands, in order to ensure frailty and respect for the Church? How many more times must I wash blood from my hands, innocent blood; innocent but for their alternative faiths and beliefs? Last week I came upon a family butchered because they weren’t Catholic.”

  “Alright!” cried Isabella. “Enough!”

  “The mother and daughters had been raped, the father and sons run through with bayonets. All because they weren’t Catholics.”

  Isabella looked out of the window, avoiding Tacit’s gaze.

  “Of course, it’s not just us who are to blame. The protestants and the jews and the muslims and the hindus and the shintos and the sikhs, they all give as good as they get. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. An endless spiral downwards.” Tacit paused and drew breath, shaking his head. He tapped his foot on the floorboards. “An endless spiral down there.”

  “So, you don’t think we’re winning then, Tacit?” asked Isabella, “winning the fight against our foes? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Winning? No. But that’s the point, Sister. We never will. It’s war without end. And that’s why I’ll keep squeezing the life out of our opponents, correcting our superiors’ mistakes, washing the blood from my hands and breaking the unworthy, because it’s the only life I know. There is no other direction to go other than onwards, spiralling ever down, down, down.”

  “And what about you, Tacit?”

  “What about me?”

  “Have you lost your way?

  He shook his head. “No, you and your Vatican lackeys don’t need to worry about me. Because there’s only one way we’re going so it’s impossible to get lost.”

  SIXTY THREE

  1904. NAPLES. ITALY.

  It was a large farm and Tacit was surprised to find the woman worked it alone.

  “My husband died springtime. Typhus,” she said, addressing him on the steps to her farmhouse. She admired the size of him, his broad shoulders and strong back, visible beneath his long black coat. “You don’t look like any Priest I’ve ever seen,” she continued, sweeping a black curl from her face. “Are you sure you’re from the Church?”

  Tacit ignored the question and turned to look out across her fields. “You work all these alone?” he asked, placing a boot on the step above where he was standing.

  “Not alone. I have farm hands.”

  “No children?”

  “We were only married a few months.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied, looking at her. She was dressed in black trousers, patched at the knees, a white cotton smock hanging loose over her body and hips. Her beauty came to her naturally. There was a pragmatism about how she looked, dressing for the fields and for work but not hiding the woman she still was. He’d never seen anything so lovely. He forced his eyes aside. “So, I’ve been told you have a poltergeist?” he asked, looking at his boots. He waited for an answer, which never came. He looked up and found she was smiling at him, her head tilted to one side.

  “You have handsome eyes,” she said, and Tacit could feel his face redden. He coughed nervously and played with the handle of the bag in his hand. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t say such a thing to a Priest.”

  “Probably not,” Tacit replied, but a smile came to his mouth and he tilted his capello hat back on his head.

  He realised he was staring at her captivated, their eyes locked together in an embrace. He shook his head and cleared this throat, stepping back to put some distance between himself and the woman.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling at the lapel of his coat. “I … I suppose you should show me where the activity has been happening.”

  She pushed herself away from the post at the top of the stairs and told Tacit to follow her inside.

  “It’s in the main house?” he called, climbing the three steps onto the porch and dabbing his dry tongue on the roof of his mouth. “I thought it might be in one of the barns.” He looked back one final time to the fields outside and then stepped inside like a man condemned.

  “Yes, it’s the room at the back of the house. I think it used to be the bedroom of my husband’s grandfather. I never go in there. There’s no need. There’s never been any need.”

  “When were you first aware of the activity?” asked Tacit, stepping after her. His eyes fell upon the open doorway to her bedroom and a charge of excitement spun through him. He swallowed and looked straight ahead down the dark passageway he was being led. It turned right and ended promptly at a closed door.

  “It’s always been there,” she said, standing across the corridor from him, a foot away, “noises, bangs and occasionally moans. Sometimes sounds of things being thrown.”

  Tacit could hear the sound of her breathing. He could feel the sweat on his brow. He surreptitiously moved back, as she fiddled in a pocket of her smock and produced a key.

  “We’ve always kept the door locked. Here.” She handed it to him. Tacit noticed how long and graceful her fingers were but that her nails were short and had dirt under them. Hard working hands. Honest hands.

  He looked at the key and then at the door. He felt muddled and confused. He couldn’t understand why he wanted to lean forward and kiss her. The urge terrified and shocked him but he felt charged and alive, as at no time before in his life. Not even when the lights had picked him up in their glare. He looked back at her and smiled.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Are you going in now?” she asked.

  “I am. I’m sorry,” he asked, “I don’t know your name.”

  “Mila,” she replied.

  SIXTY FOUR

  07:03. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15TH, 1914.

  THE FRONT LINE. FAMPOUX. NR. ARRAS. FRANCE.

  A grey dawn was rising over Fampoux and the battlefield to the east, its searching rays like tendrils of light, filling c
racks and doorways with their insipid glow. There was the heavy weight of smoke in the air, the stench of gunpowder and grease. Across the vast plains of No Man’s Land, a pitted and blasted landscape revealed itself. All remarked at how efficient the Germans must have been at disposing of their dead during the night. Barely a body was left in the field.

  Over cigarettes and morning brews, soldiers hunkered down in the trench units and discussed the assault and the night that had followed. Most had a view and that was that the Germans cared more for the dead than the living. Who else would have stripped the battlefield so clean of their fallen?

  But there were others who drew themselves away from the discussions and kept their own counsel. Strange things had been seen and heard last night, although no one was able to explain them. Such was the nature of war. One quickly learnt that it was better to not ask questions and just carry on as one always did, accepting that once in the trenches you were no longer a human being but merely an insignificant piece in the giant puzzle that was the war.

  “Did I dream it?” Private Dawson asked, peering through disbelieving eyes on the empty landscape.

  “Count your casings, Dawson, and then decide,” answered Sergeant Holmes helpfully.

  Henry staggered out of the trench feeling sick with exhaustion and doubt. The village of Fampoux looked as if a giant had recently shaken its very foundations, the buildings appearing even more tumbledown and decrepit than those Henry had left nine hours before. He wandered wearily back through the streets, aware that the air was thick with flies, fat bluebottles, buzzing and circling around his head. He stumbled on newly fallen rubble in the street, his eyes too weary to take care, his body too exhausted to balance itself. He fell against a group of soldiers lined up along the front of a house. He wasn’t sure if they were about to head out to the trenches, or had just returned from them, and neither did he care.

  “Bloody watch where you’re going!” one of them called, pushing Henry back into the road. He stumbled to regain his composure and footing, and shrank away from them, not caring if he’d been shoved by a fellow officer or a lowly infantryman. All he cared about was returning to his bed and sleep. The desire was like a madness.

  The boy with the beautiful teeth appeared, scooting around a corner, almost bundling into the Lieutenant. He spun circles around Henry, bidding him good morning and laughing, before tearing away up the broken up street, as if for him the whole war was a big game. Henry tried to remember when he had felt so carefree and alive as the boy, before he’d undergone his baptism into manhood courtesy of the war. He couldn’t – and stumbled on, back to Sandrine’s home.

  He didn’t see the relief in Sandrine’s face as he collapsed in from the street and staggered over to his desk. “I didn’t expect to see you back,” she sniffed, looking down her nose. “I thought the night would be the death of you.”

  She rested her hands on the end of a broom and looked at him hard, shaking her head disapprovingly. Inside she felt a tangle of joy and thanks at his returning. In the confusion of anxiety after he had left, she had busied herself in making the house more respectable, far more efficiently than Henry’s rather feeble efforts. The windows were open and there was a sense of normality returning to the home.

  “Thank you for the optimism,” muttered Henry, drawing out the diary and taking up his pencil. He yearned for rest but knew he’d rest more easily with his unit diary written up.

  “You’re welcome,” replied Sandrine, brushing absently at the floor, and hiding a smile behind her hair.

  Henry covered a yawn with his hand and scratched away at the open page. Sandrine brushed closer and closer towards him, eventually brushing beneath this feet.

  “Do you want me to move?” asked Henry, a tension coming to his voice.

  “No, no, you are fine,” she replied, turning away and brushing the remaining dirt from the side of the room. From the corner of her eye she watched the arch of his back, the curve of his neck vanishing into the base of his military haircut. “So, did they come?” she asked, at length.

  “Depends who you mean by ‘they’,” replied Henry coolly, his pencil momentarily resting on the paper. He continued scratching his recollections of the night until Sandrine interrupted him with an exhausted cry.

  “The wolves, of course! Who else?”

  Henry turned on her, his anger finally spitting out of him. “Sandrine! Do you take me for a fool?! There were no wolves! Only Germans! As there’s only ever been! Hundreds of them! Yes, they did come. And thank God we were there in our trenches when they did. Because if we weren’t …” He turned back to his diary and brushed the dust from the page. “Thank God we were. If we’d taken your advice, stayed in our homes, locked away, we’d have been wiped out, overrun, Fampoux lost! The unit, lost!”

  “You mock me!”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sandrine, put a sock in it, will you?! I’m not mocking you. I’m just telling you, had we done as you’d told us, like you said, well …” He let his voice trail to silence, his composure slowly returning. He turned back to his book and picked up his pencil, but didn’t write. He stared at the blank yellow stained paper, the lines blurring into and out of focus. Finally he asked, “Tell me. Tell me, please,” turning back to face her, his features grim, drawn. “Tell me you’re not working for them are you? The Germans?”

  At that accusation, it was Sandrine who now flew into a rage. “Them?!” she screamed, throwing her broom at Henry and charging after it. She battered him from his chair with the back of her hand, sending him tumbling and groaning across the room. He slid into the wall where he lay, both stunned and shocked from the force of Sandrine’s outburst. He cowered as her shadow drew across him, shielding his head with his hands, waiting for the blows to rain down on him.

  But nothing followed the initial onslaught. He lay there, his eyes tightly shut, waiting for the sharp rap of her fists, too exhausted to fight back and only offering the most pitiful of defences. But the next thing he knew was Sandrine’s hands on his hair and then around his face, helping him gingerly to his feet, her tone mournful and apologetic. There were tears in her eyes and she enveloped Henry in an embrace.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry, Henry,” and she slowly moved her head around his to face him, her hands on his cheeks which she kissed. She then drew forward and kissed his lips twice and hugged him again. Henry felt the warmth of her pour into him like a tonic. He closed his eyes and his head swooned. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Sometimes … sometimes it is hard.”

  Henry raised his hands to her back and held her tight to him, the confusion of his mind from the blows replaced with a delirium of a quite different kind. He allowed the wonder of the embrace to wash away the weight of hurt and exhaustion he felt. He could smell her skin, feel her warmth. In that moment, he felt he could just fall into her, merge as one, as they were, and stay like that for ever.

  Sandrine felt it too, a connectivity like pieces of a puzzle being dropped to the floor and all of them bouncing perfectly into place. All her life she had searched for this moment to be held like this, a simple uncomplicated embrace of kindness and honesty. She’d found herself falling into countless clasps with lovers, but each time something had felt amiss about the situation, incomplete, insincere, demanding. Now, at last, she knew she had found someone in whose arms she felt she could rest forever.

  Neither of them said anything for a long time, holding onto each other like heavyweights in the final round, crippled by the moment. Finally, it was Sandrine who spoke. “So the Germans,” she said, extracting herself from Henry and wearily gathering up the broom. “They came?” How he wished she hadn’t pulled away.

  “They did,” he said, watching her for a few moments and then picking up the chair which had been knocked from him as he fell.

  “And you won?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “Good. I am pleased.” She smiled and manoeuvred the pile of dirt she had gathered over towards the op
en door.

  Henry stared at her as if he’d taken leave of his senses. In that moment he could have both throttled her and swept her up off her feet and cradled her in his arms. He was more confused than ever, about what Sandrine had said last night and why she had said it. He also knew, in that moment, he was desperately in love.

  Sandrine looked down at the dirt and with two sharp sweeps she sent it as a cloud into the street. “So,” she said, placing the broom against the wall and gathering up a cloth, “did you see anything unusual?” so matter-of-factly that Henry wondered if the strike, the kiss and the embrace had ever happened at all, or if he had simply dreamed it.

  “Unusual?” the Lieutenant replied.

  “What are you writing in your diary?”

  “What happened.”

  “And that is my point. What happened?”

  “Oh, I see!” he replied. “Yes, of course.” He turned back to his book and then paused, looking back at Sandrine with a scowl. “What happened? A crime,” he said, putting down his pencil and rubbing his eyes with his hands. “Another bloody crime in this bloody war.” He picked up the pencil and continued to write. “The Germans, they kept on coming, over and over the horizon.”

  “Just the Germans?” Sandrine asked, pointedly.

  Henry put his eyes onto the wall and sat back from the book. He then turned and looked around. “No, not only Germans,” he said, no longer able to deny what his eyes and ears had witnessed later, when the pitch of night had come into the lands. “There was something. You were right, Sandrine. You could hear them, after the Germans had pulled back. Howling. Terrible howling and crying in the darkness of the night. We didn’t dare send up flares. We didn’t wish to draw them towards us. We could see very little, in the dark, in the wreckage of the battlefield, all those mounds of bodies, lying still or shuddering in their final ghastly moments. But the howls, you could hear the howls. And you could see … well, you could see shadows, great big shadows, the shapes of giant dogs, going amongst the bodies, grabbing and tearing away, or sitting and feeding. You could hear the sound of them, the dreadful crunching, the slap of blood and flesh, as if the soldiers were being eaten beneath our bullets and bombs.”