The Moonlight Mistress

by Victoria Janssen

  “And tigers and elephants and troops of baboons, as well, to hear him tell it.”

  No one sang on this night march. The column spread into a moving line, Enfields constantly at the ready, waiting for word from their cavalry scouts. Gabriel couldn’t watch for the enemy as much as he would have liked; he was too busy scanning his own men, trying to gauge their endurance and alertness in the darkness while incongruous music, a series of minuets he’d never liked, twinkled through his mind like the stars above. He tried to think of other things—Jemima, the women he’d known in Berlin, even Ashby, but nerves prevented him from reverie.

  His only distraction was a growing desire for a cup of coffee, and occasionally reporting to Wilks when the captain rode down the column on Hammerhead. The horse looked in better fettle than Gabriel felt. Besides the drag of his wet uniform, his socks were soaked with sweat and beginning to rub his feet raw. The horses he and the other lieutenants had been promised were still on the other side of the channel.

  Just when he thought he might crumple to the side of the road, Daglish appeared and hooked his arm through Gabriel’s. “I’ll teach you a song,” he said.

  Gabriel groaned. “And someone will shoot us when they hear us singing.” He wasn’t sure he could take listening to Daglish sing right now. It affected him too strongly. Though they marched amid hundreds of other men, the darkness and quiet lent a strange intimacy to their conversation.

  “You can carry a tune, so at least I won’t die in agony,” Daglish quipped. “Here, listen.”

  “Quietly,” Gabriel insisted.

  Daglish leaned close to Gabriel’s ear as they walked, his breath stirring the fine hairs at the back of Gabriel’s neck, his mouth close enough to nearly brush his skin. Gabriel shuddered inwardly with the unexpected sensuality of it, then Daglish sang, softly,

  ‘Twas on the good ship Venus,

  By Christ you should have seen us:

  the figurehead

  was a whore in bed,

  And the mast a throbbing penis.

  The words grew more obscene immediately after that.

  Gabriel choked and stopped. “What the hell kind of song is that?”

  Daglish stopped, too, and chortled. “Sea shanty, very historical. It gets filthier. You can share it with your tune-murdering platoon tomorrow.”

  Gabriel was overcome with a sudden urge to press his lips to Daglish’s smiling mouth. Shaken, he looked away and started walking again. Daglish caught him up and proceeded to teach him the rest of the song. The captain of that lugger, he was a dirty bugger…Gabriel tried not to think of the implications of the words, and managed it by concentrating on memorization, though one verse shook him out of his distance:

  Each sailor lad’s a brother to each and every other

  We take great pains at our daisy chains

  Whilst writing home to mother.

  He’d never been to public school, but he’d certainly heard the rumors of what went on among the boys there.

  Had Daglish—was he trying to say—no. Of course not. Another thought chilled him: did Daglish suspect?

  No, that wasn’t right, either. Not after how friendly Daglish had been. Not when he held Gabriel’s arm so snugly.

  The men would definitely appreciate the song.

  At daybreak, they approached a village, deserted except for a growling stray dog and a distrustful boar rooting in someone’s flower garden. Gabriel saw no people or other animals. The weird, unexpected silence made the hair stand straight up on the back of Gabriel’s neck, and his stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a bucket of ice. The houses and gardens offered too many hiding places. The men spoke in weary murmurs. Gabriel could see most of them were near collapsing under the weight of their heavy packs.

  Perhaps they might have stopped and dug in hours ago, except they’d received no orders to do so. They’d received no orders at all. It was clear that messages had gone awry in the lines of communication. Gabriel wondered if the reason had been interference from the enemy, or simple disorganization.

  Hailey brought word from Captain Wilks that their company was to fan out and search for the enemy, should any be waiting in ambush, then form up to protect the bridge that lay just beyond. This was marginally better than marching down the single street, waiting to be shot by stray Germans. The rest of the battalion would proceed, and their company would wait here to cover any necessary retirement.

  Gabriel’s platoon clustered around their heap of packs, munching whatever scraps of rations they had left. Southey was sharing out a tin of acid drops, Lyton passing around cigarettes. Pittfield, he noted, was already checking ammunition. Gabriel captured them with his eyes and relayed their instructions. “At the bridge, I want you to pair up, take whatever cover you can find and be ready for rapid fire as soon as the enemy’s in sight. There might be no enemy, not for some time, so find a way to stay alert as long as you can. If your attention starts to wander—I know that’s not supposed to happen, but it will—switch out with your partner. Oh, and be careful not to shoot any of your mates. We’re the ones in khaki.”

  As he’d hoped, his last statement got a laugh. “Any questions?” he asked.

  There were no questions, only a few ribald comments directed at the shooting skills of their comrades. Gabriel took a deep breath and unholstered his pistol, checking it swiftly and keeping it in his hand. He glanced down the street and saw Daglish listening intently to Hailey’s message. When Hailey ran off to find Smith, Daglish unbuttoned his holster, much more slowly than Gabriel had, withdrew his pistol and stared at it for long seconds as if he’d forgotten its purpose.

  Had he frozen? Gabriel took a step toward him, then stopped when he saw Ashby loping over. Ashby clapped Daglish’s shoulder, then held on to it while he spoke urgently to him. Ashby always knew what to say. Gabriel sighed and returned to his men. He’d long ago given up being envious of Asbhy’s innate charisma; instead, he was glad Daglish had benefited. They could, he reminded himself, talk later. He needed something to which he could look forward.

  Sergeant Pittfield, who’d transferred in from an Indian regiment along with Captain Wilks, had more field experience than the rest of the platoon combined. Gabriel set him on point, with the rest of the platoon fanned out behind, then casually took up his own position between Woods and Evans, to keep an eye on them. He wasn’t worried about their nerve, exactly; it was only that they were the youngest of the entire company, not even twenty, either of them. He didn’t relish the idea of writing letters of condolence to their mothers, particularly Mrs. Woods, who’d visited them in barracks on more than one occasion, bearing fresh-baked sugar biscuits.

  He’d spent a good hour talking to the both of them on the ship, warning them against visiting the prostitutes who always flocked to an army on the move. It wouldn’t have done any good to appeal to their better natures, so he’d stuck with the tried-and-true method of explaining how easy it was to contract gonorrhea or, worse, syphilis, with its inevitable horrible results, from sores on the cock to naked screaming and throwing excrement in a madhouse. He’d learned it was best to be graphic, and the boys had been properly impressed, but also reveled in the horrific details. When he’d explained that venereal diseases could cause penis rot or permanent impotence, they’d immediately sobered, and Woods had tentatively offered the information that something of the sort must have happened to the major, as his wife was known to entertain the colonel quite frequently. Gabriel wished he’d been able to let the rumor stand.

  Hot as it was, he was perishing for want of a cup of coffee, both to wake him up and to soothe his nerves. The empty village was worse than the open fields, perhaps because it was clear that all was not business as normal. Gabriel’s hand sweated on his pistol’s grip. The first house was the largest on the street, built of brick with a fine wooden door and a knocker. No Germans lurked among the trellised roses, or in the garden shed, or in the shelter that looked and smelled as if it had housed goats.

 
; Woods said, “Sir? Is it true the German lancers’ll bugger their prisoners?”

  Gabriel gently closed the door of the goat shelter. “Who told you that? Bloody Lincoln?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Evans said, “He also said the kaiser has a harem that’s all boys, and he likes the young ones best, like us—”

  “Lincoln was having you on,” Gabriel said shortly. “Let’s check the house now.”

  Both of the house’s doors were shut tight, but not locked. Gabriel and Woods and Evans entered at the front door, Gabriel’s pulse pounding like a drum, his boot heels even louder on the polished wooden floors. The house was deserted, the red brocade curtains drawn, though it bore signs of being abandoned in haste, a scattered pile of papers here and a fallen knickknack there. The air felt stale and close, as if it had been vacant for decades. He startled when Evans said, “Sir? Are we allowed to provision here?”

  The inhabitants had fled, so there was no asking them for permission. It was also true that there’d been quite a bit of freely given hospitality on the long march. And his men were not only hungry, but working far too hard to go without food. He nodded. “After we search, we’ll see what we can find.”

  He mounted the stairs, leading the two boys, and investigated a workroom for sewing, a dusty parlor and a messy bedroom. The large bed bore distinctive stains on its sheets, and the smell of sex and sweat lingered like a memory in the air. Woods lifted the bedskirts with his rifle barrel, then poked the coverlet that lay in a heap on the floor. Evans peered into the wardrobe and behind the curtains, Enfield at the ready. Nothing but dust.

  Gabriel scooped up a discarded doll with an impassive porcelain face and laid it gently on the unmade trundle bed. Its human hair brushed disconcertingly against his bare wrist, and he yanked his hand away, feeling as if he’d touched a corpse. If he’d married Jemima, he might have had a child with a doll—what would he have done, forced to flee his home, with his family in tow? He tried to think of the real family that lived here, but could only focus on the empty bed. He and Jemima had been together in her bedroom, more than once. They’d never fucked, not quite, but near enough, and just the memory of her silky skin beneath his tongue, her fingers in his hair, the scent of her arousal, made him ache.

  He was glad to go outside again. Evans reminded him about provisions, but a quick search of the house’s kitchen and pantry turned up little beyond a tin of biscuits.

  The rest of their house-to-house search was also uneventful, though Evans found a coop of chickens who’d been left to fend for themselves, and tossed them a bucket of feed. Gabriel suspected the chickens would go into a pot today, if the company lingered long enough to cook. Woods nearly shot a scarred marmalade tomcat, who yowled disdainfully before vanishing into the woodpile from whence it had come.

  Gabriel met Daglish at the end of the street, which led straight to a bridge over Mons Canal. Willows shaded the bridge; red and purple wildflowers tumbled down the grassy banks and spilled onto rocks that looked perfect as seats for fishermen. A few rowboats were tied up at a dock on the far side, and on this bank, someone had abandoned a cartful of furniture, turned and stained chair legs protruding from its sides like broken bones.

  Daglish removed his cap and wiped sweaty dark curls off his brow. He appeared to have recovered from his earlier distraction. He pointed to the cart. “Could that be cover, you think? For a marksman or two. Cawley and Lyton.”

  “Let Wilks know. I’d be happier if the rest of us could dig in a little,” Gabriel said, rubbing his gritty eyes and stiff forehead. “Those trees won’t be worth tuppence once bullets start flying.”

  “If the supply wagons ever catch up, we’ll have picks and shovels,” Daglish said wistfully. “Oh, well, I guess a rousing song or two will resign them to the entrenching tools.”

  By the time Gabriel had gathered his men, Captain Wilks himself was outsinging the men in his favorite tune, “Riding Down from Bangor”: Maiden seen all blushes, for then and there appeared, a tiny little earring in that horrid student’s beard. It was more difficult for the men to sing as they dug lying flat on their backs to avoid exposure, but they made a valiant effort for the hour it took to dig down a foot or so, just enough to protect them from rifle fire.

  Gabriel glanced longingly at the muddy canal water—it would feel amazingly good on his swollen feet—and instead sent three men off to scavenge for food and for any shovels they could find that were larger than their entrenching tools. Ashby wandered over, cap in one hand, scrubbing his cropped red hair with the other. “It’s bloody hot,” he said.

  “At least our uniforms are drying.”

  “Speak for yourself. My drawers have been trying to circumcise me for the last five miles. You think I’d be able to marry your sister, then?”

  Gabriel choked on a laugh and punched Ashby’s arm. “Idiot,” he said. “What did Wilks say to you just now?”

  “Last word he had from staff was that the French can’t close the gap between our flank and theirs.”

  “Oh.”

  “There seem to be more Germans than anyone thought,” Ashby said, his voice unusually flat. “So the longer we can hold out here, and all those other companies spreading out up the road, the better. We’re trying to hold a salient, though how we’re to manage that with roads blocked all up and down the line, I don’t know. Maybe the Germans won’t be able to move, either. I think it’s just prettying up what’s going to be a strategic readjustment.”

  “Retreat, you mean,” Gabriel said.

  Ashby grinned. “We’re not beaten. This is only the beginning.” He touched the wolf badge on his cap, as if for luck. His face eased. “I showed Hailey how to make a smokeless fire, and he’s brewing us some coffee.”

  “I think I heard a siren’s song,” Gabriel said, though actually his mind had given him the trumpet solo from Handel’s Messiah. “If we had milk, I think I would die of pleasure.”

  “And you call me easy,” Ashby said, grinning. “Hailey found a sow eating her way through a garden. It’s too bad no one left a cow behind, instead.”

  “I’ll settle for the coffee. Where in the world did you come by it?”

  “Daglish had a packet hidden away—he begged it from the major’s aide sometime before we split off, bless his big innocent eyes. He insisted I share it with you. I think you owe him a kiss, at least.”

  “Very funny,” Gabriel said, glancing around to make sure no one had heard.

  A long, hot afternoon ensued, made worse because the sunshine and pastoral setting sang of naps to Gabriel’s fogged mind. The coffee, gulped scalding from a metal cup, had given him energy for directing perhaps an hour of trench digging before his mind again sank into lethargy and a sawing Baroque bass line he could not even identify. By that time, Skuce had found two shovels; Gabriel took one and joined in the digging.

  Their shallow earthworks, augmented by mattresses and horsehair sofas dragged from the village houses, were complete enough for shelter by the hottest part of the afternoon. Pittfield and the ever-resourceful Southey had scavenged empty wine bottles and petrol. With the aid of those items and some scraps of cloth, they set the rowboats on fire by dint of tossing their homemade explosives across the canal. The columns of rising smoke made Gabriel uneasy, but as Captain Wilks pointed out, there was only one road. The Germans would come this way no matter what lay in their path. Better to have removed one more method of getting across the canal, since they hadn’t explosives to blow the bridge. Wilks then sent Mason and Southey into the nearby Christian church’s small spire, to keep watch and to sharpshoot if necessary.

  Wilks had the rest of them count off, and Gabriel was relieved when a coin toss gave his group first rest period, though ironically for him, they were to sleep in the church, large, nearby and defensible. Daglish wandered over as Gabriel directed the men to gather their kit. After a quick, nervous glance at the ground, Daglish handed him a suspiciously large sack, saying, “Looks like you’ll get to u
se this before I do.”

  Gabriel peeked inside at a feather pillow, covered in an embroidered slip. He was surprised enough to laugh. “I’ll make good use of it, no fear,” he said. The inside of the church was dim and cool, and once the men had settled, quiet. Doing his best to ignore the graphically carved crucifix hanging above the altar, he lay down on a wooden bench and tucked the pillow beneath his head. He fell asleep before his head made contact.

  Gabriel bolted upright, cold and alert. He’d heard a shot. He slid silently to the floor, crouching beside his discarded gear while he slipped out his pistol. Soft rustlings let him know he needn’t wake the men. Another shot came, not too close, then another, then a crackling chorus like fierce iron-throated birds. Gabriel glanced across the aisle at Smith, who held his pistol in one hand and was rubbing his face with the other. A single round window, high above, sent down a shaft of orange light, a hot circle in the middle of the foyer. Gabriel guessed it must be sunset, or close to it. Once he’d caught Smith’s eye, he gestured to the front door, then toward the other exit they’d found near the confessionals.

  Smith took the front with a decisive point, so Gabriel gathered his boys as quietly as he could and led them down the aisle, up a step, and through a narrow door into a room crowded with candlesticks, books, priestly vestments and miscellaneous serving dishes. Pittfield braced his shoulder against the heavy wooden door, then eased it open. The shooting crescendoed, percussive raps ricocheting from bricks and stones and rooftops. Gabriel led the men into the churchyard; there were some bent trees, and though most of the headstones had sunk some distance into the earth, they also provided some cover. The cover would be more effective as the light failed. If necessary, they could retreat into the church and hold it.

  Gabriel slid from tree to tree until he reached the low wall bordering the cemetery. He stepped over, then wriggled to the road on his belly. The terrain dropped toward the canal just in front of him, and he could see. Smoke scummed the air. He smelled acrid burnt powder. Gray-uniformed men crowded the width of the bridge, firing as they advanced, struggling to climb past fallen comrades who blocked their way to the bank. He tried to count, to estimate their numbers, but kept losing track at the middle of the bridge. He couldn’t see how far the crowd of Germans stretched on the other bank. Two companies? Three? A cluster of willows on the opposite bank blocked his view. Where were Ashby and Daglish? Were they safe? He sighed in relief when he spotted Daglish’s stocky torso on the right flank. He looked to be under adequate cover, training a pair of binoculars at the opposite bank.