by Julie Rowe
“If you don’t leave now, you won’t get another chance.”
Duty warred with desire. She needed to warn her father of the German plans to use their new weapon against British troops. But she needed to know Michael was safe and well too. Her hesitation may have only lasted a few seconds, but that didn’t lessen the pain it caused when she made her decision.
Duty won.
“Swear to me you’ll do what you can for them and keep them safe.”
“I swear it on my life.”
She gave him a sharp nod. If she didn’t leave now, she wouldn’t leave at all. “Where’s the boat?”
The blacksmith led her up the stairs and outside to the dock. A small boat was moored there, large enough for five or six people, with plank seats. The old man who’d answered the boathouse door stocked a coal-fired motor.
The blacksmith helped her step into it. “Don’t stop unless you have to.”
“Thank you, and please—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep them safe.”
She nodded, anxiety closing her throat.
“If you go with the current, you’re more likely to get through without being stopped.”
She nodded, but didn’t want to leave, no matter how urgent her errand. She’d never forgive herself for choosing to leave Michael and Bert behind.
Damn duty to hell.
* * *
“Come on, sir. Wake up.”
At first, the words meant little. Then someone shook him and pain shot from his head through his body.
“Enough.” He tried to make his hands push the offending fellow yelling in his ear away. “Stop.”
“Are you with me, sir?”
“With you where?” Michael opened his eyes, but the room was unfamiliar. He turned his head, wincing at the pain the movement caused and realised he was in some kind of dark room. The man next to him was dressed as a labourer with a bandage encircling his head and only one arm.
“Who...” Memory came flooding back as soon as he said the word. “Bert.”
“Do you remember where we are?”
“A boathouse?”
“Well, I guess he didn’t knock all of your brains loose.”
“I take it we’re not in any immediate danger?”
“Don’t know about that. German troops are heading this way. Our host, the one who knocked you out, just spirited your, ah, wife away, supposedly on a boat. Right now it’s you and me. But who knows when he’ll be back.”
The door opened and the blacksmith came in with a lamp in his hands.
“Speak of the devil,” Bert said.
“You’ll need to stay quiet in here for several hours. The Germans are searching every building.”
“No need. We’ll just be on our way,” Michael said with energy he didn’t feel. “Which direction did my wife go in?” He stood, but had to fight to stay upright.
“You can’t catch up to her now. She’s gone in a boat and we’ve no more to spare. The Germans are also too close.”
Michael rubbed the back of his head. “What did you hit me with?”
“My fist.”
He pressed one hand to the back of his head. “Lord save anyone who comes upon you when you’ve got a weapon in your hands. Like a shovel.”
The blacksmith grinned. “If you don’t make any noise, the Germans probably won’t find you in here. So stay quiet.”
“She’s not safe alone, you know,” Michael told him.
“She’s got nothing to fear from Belgians.” The man set a jug down on the floor and handed Michael a loaf of bread. “I must go.” He left the room.
Michael glanced at Bert. “I thought you passed out.”
“I faked it. That blacksmith is somewhat frightening when he’s angry. I thought if I played dead it might distract him, but it didn’t work the way I’d hoped.” He grinned. “She said you were her British spy.”
“If you so much as breathe a word—”
“You’ll kill me. Slowly. Yes, yes, can we move on from that one?”
For a moment, Michael allowed the dangerous part of him to stare back at the other British soldier, but Bert didn’t flinch.
“You’ll do.”
The sound of arguing voices filtered through the wall. It quickly became shouting. The crack of a shot echoed and something large crashed to the floor.
Michael stood, grabbed his rifle and headed for door.
“What are you doing?”
“Something stupid most likely.” He paused, listening carefully.
“Give me your pistol.”
Michael glanced back.
Bert stood a few feet away. He shrugged. “In for a penny...”
Michael pulled the pistol from its holster and handed it butt-first to the other man. “Ready?”
Bert nodded. Michael slowly opened the door. It swung inward. In front of him, a thin piece of wood covered the doorway. No, not covering it, hiding it.
The shouting continued, but sounded several feet away. He readied his rifle, put his shoulder against the wood panel and shoved. It popped out cleanly with very little noise. He grabbed it before it could fall and set it against the wall as the shouting escalated.
With the rifle braced against his shoulder, Michael walked slowly and carefully towards the noise, Bert following behind and to the right.
They were in a room with a stove and water pump, possibly a kitchen. There was a wall between them and the commotion.
He slid around the wall. Two German soldiers had weapons pointed at the blacksmith, a woman and a young man. An older man lay on the floor, unmoving, blood pooling around him.
“Halt. Lower your rifles,” Michael ordered in German.
The two soldiers in front of him froze, then began turning.
Bert cocked his pistol.
The Germans stopped, hesitating, before both bent at the knees and dropped their weapons on the floor.
Michael made eye contact with their blacksmith and nodded.
The blacksmith got up, snagged both rifles. “I’ll get some rope.” He hurried out of the room.
The woman and young man stared at the Germans then at Michael and Bert.
“Go,” Michael ordered.
They scurried out, leaving the two Germans and the dead man the only other occupants.
“What are your orders?” Michael asked.
Neither answered.
He nudged the back of one’s head with the muzzle of his rifle. “Orders.”
“Search for an escaped British soldier.”
“How many are searching?”
“Our subsection in this area.”
“Subsection?” Bert asked. It was probably the one German word he didn’t understand.
“Nine-man unit.”
“There are seven more?”
A nod.
“Check the perimeter,” Michael commanded.
“Yes, sir,” Bert replied.
Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Bert move away. His footsteps were soft, almost soundless. One of the two soldiers in front of him shifted his weight.
If he were them, he’d be looking for an opportunity to overpower his captor. “Kneel.”
After a moment’s hesitation, both men went to their knees.
“Hands behind your heads.”
They complied.
“Cross your ankles.”
After a tense second they did that too.
He moved so he could see the door and keep both men in the line of fire. The scuff of a shoe and movement in the doorway gave him a second’s warning before Bert re-entered, breathing heavy.
“Sir, you’re needed outside.” He angled his head in the direction of the dock.
“Standard orders for these two, Lieutenant.”
Bert raised a brow but didn’t comment on his conferred rank. “If they give me any trouble, kill them. Easy enough to remember, sir.”
Michael walked cautiously out the front door towards the dock and the larger of the two boa
ts. This one had a cabin. Lamplight flickered from under the door. He reached it and rapped twice on the gangway.
The door opened and the blacksmith stepped back to let him in. Six bodies lay on the floor, all of them in German army uniforms. Blood pooled around them. Some had blood on their backs, others not.
Several other men, fishermen from the looks of their clothing, stood near the far wall, all carrying knives or tools of some sort.
“I didn’t hear any shots.”
“We didn’t want to bring anyone else around to investigate. We used what was handy.” The edge of the knife in the blacksmith’s hand glinted with something wet.
“We’re missing one.”
“One what?”
“German. There’s two in the boathouse and six out here. Their unit had nine men.” He glanced at the other Belgians. “Did you see anyone else?”
They shifted their feet and looked at each other.
“No,” one said. The others all shook their heads.
“Damn.” All it would take was one to rouse a number these men could not defend against. “Bury the bodies where they won’t be discovered.”
“There’s a cemetery close by,” the blacksmith said, exchanging his knife for a shovel. “No one will notice one or two extra graves. Since the Germans came, we’ve been burying more dead every week.”
“Good. You come with me. We’re going to try to find our missing German.”
The blacksmith opened the door and stepped out with Michael right behind him.
“Halt!” The voice was harsh, angry and anxious.
The blacksmith stopped and put his hands in the air.
“Murdering swine!” The click of a pistol being cocked echoed oddly loud.
Michael didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. He wasn’t going to lose a man as brave and resourceful as this blacksmith to a single German private stupid enough to challenge two men alone.
He launched himself forward, knocking the blacksmith down, and brought his rifle up to fire. But the crack that split the night air wasn’t from his weapon. It was from the Germans.
Michael stumbled and fell to his knees. He tried to rise, to disarm the other man, but all the strength seemed to have left his legs. His arms, too, dropped to his sides and his rifle clattered as it hit the ground.
His chest hurt.
He looked down. A circle of blood bloomed on his uniform, growing larger and larger before his eyes like red wine spilled on a table.
He’d been shot?
A bellow jerked his attention to the blacksmith whose life he’d saved. The man knocked the pistol out of the German’s hands with his shovel, nearly decapitating the soldier with a sharp jab of the blade to his neck.
“Going to need another grave at this rate,” Michael said, but it only came out as a whisper. Damn, he couldn’t even talk properly.
The blacksmith dropped his bloody weapon and grabbed Michael before he could fall into the dirt. “How bad is it?”
“How should I know?” Again, his voice lacked all conviction. “I’m not a doctor.”
“Your wife is a nurse.”
“Yes, my wife.” Thank God he still believed that piece of fiction. “My friend, if you think marrying a woman gives a man any clue as to what she’s thinking, you’re very wrong. I guarantee I won’t hear the end of this for a long time.”
The blacksmith hoisted him up into his arms and the pain knocked the breath out of him. Another moment of its excruciating fire and the world went dark.
Chapter Eleven
Jude couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave Michael unconscious, possibly concussed and certainly at the mercy of anyone who happened along. Anyone.
She put her hand on the old man’s shoulder. “We have to go back.”
“We can’t. The Germans will catch you.”
“There’s something more important than me back there.” Two brave men, one of whom she was in love with. “Turn around.”
Grumbling, the old man turned the boat around.
Halfway back, she heard a shot. The old man added more coal to the fire. Then she heard another shot and started shovelling coal herself. It seemed to take three times as long to get back as it did to go the distance they had, but finally they arrived at the dock. Dusk had transformed the world into shades of grey, making it impossible to determine what was living and what was dead.
“Who goes?” a man called out.
“The nurse. I left here a short while ago.”
A man materialised out of the gloom. “They need you at the house.”
She climbed onto the dock and ran towards the boathouse, but she tripped on something and nearly fell.
A body. In a German uniform.
“Michael?” Horror kept her frozen for only a moment, then she turned him over to see his face. Maybe it wasn’t too late.
But the dead man wasn’t Michael.
“That one’s dead, ma’am,” someone said behind her.
She turned to find several men standing about, all fishermen or boatmen from the look of them.
“The live one’s in the boathouse.”
“Live one?”
“Yes, the bloke in the German uniform who isn’t German.”
She stared at them for a moment, relief making her dizzy. Michael wasn’t dead.
She ran to the boathouse, forcing open the door when it didn’t give way immediately. “Michael?”
“Your husband’s been shot.”
She turned towards the bearer of this news. The blacksmith.
“This way,” he said, motioning with one hand for her to follow.
She discovered Michael, pale and sweating, lying on a table, the dead body of another man a few feet away.
A circle of blood saturated the cloth covering his upper chest left of centre. She attempted to unbutton his coat, but her fingers couldn’t seem to grip them properly.
The blacksmith nudged her out of the way, gripped the two sides of the uniform and tore it open.
She peeled the shirt away from the wound carefully, but pressed it back down on it when the bleeding started again. “I need bandages, hot water and alcohol. Quickly, please.”
The blacksmith didn’t move from her side, but someone hurried off.
“What happened?” she asked. “Is this the only wound?”
“Yes, just the one,” he replied. “We were surprised by a soldier. The bastard was about to shoot me, but your man pushed me out of the way. Took the bullet meant for me.”
“Stupid,” she muttered. Where were those bandages?
“Yes, ma’am. That’s what he said you’d say.”
The running feet returned, attached to a young man who held more cloth than a mummy would require.
“Tear me a strip off that.”
The blacksmith grabbed what looked to be a shirt, tore some off and handed it to her. She wadded it up, pulled the bits of Michael’s shirt away and replaced it with the fresh bandage. “You.” She pointed at the bandage carrier. “Hold this down like I’m doing now.”
His eyes grew wide, but he didn’t protest or back away. He took her place next to Michael.
“Hot water?”
“Should be ready soon.” The blacksmith’s looked a little pale. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I have to see where the blood is coming from. He’s not bleeding as badly as he could be.” She dug around in her bag and found the bundle she was looking for. It wasn’t large, the size of her palm, composed of a silky strip of cloth wound around a pouch containing several needles, a scalpel and tweezers.
“Ma’am.” A woman’s voice. “The water is hot.”
“Can you bring some in a large bowl?”
The bowl arrived a minute later. Jude washed her hands with a sliver of soap and asked for a small bowl and some alcohol, any kind, which she poured into the small bowl. She added her surgical tools to the alcohol and brought it to the table where Michael was laid out like a corpse to be prepared for burial.
Next, she needed thread to sew the wound closed. She took the length of silk and with the tweezers dripping wine picked a thread apart from the fabric. She stripped it off, threaded one of the needles with it, then placed the needle thread and tweezers back into the alcohol.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” she said to the young man holding down the bandage. “You’re going to take the bandage away, but stay close in case we need to stop the bleeding again.” She looked around for the blacksmith. “What’s your name?”
“Roeland.”
“Roeland, can you stand ready to hold him down if he regains consciousness?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Take the bandage away.”
The young man lifted it and Jude examined the wound. Blood welled up, but not enough to make her want to put it back on.
The wound itself wasn’t large. A hole at the edge of a rib, the bullet still lodged in it. She grabbed the tweezers, steadied her hand and was about to pluck it out when she noticed it vibrating ever so slightly. There was a rhythm to it, a one-two beat that had her backing away. She nodded at her helper and he put the bandage back on the wound.
“What’s wrong?” Roeland asked.
“The bullet is pulsing in time with his heartbeat.”
“What does that mean?”
“It could mean nothing or it could indicate that it’s lodged in the wall of an artery.”
“That’s bad?”
“If it’s in the artery and we take it out, he could bleed to death. The bullet could be the only thing saving him from that now.”
“What do we do?”
“He needs a surgeon.”
Roeland lifted both hands. “Where are we going to find one?”
“We aren’t. There’s no surgeon we could take him to.”
No one said anything, leaving her to make the decision alone.
How many surgeries had she attended, watched and assisted? Hundreds? She’d seen every procedure multiple times, held retractors and even sewn up incisions on her own. How much different could an artery be?
Most likely a great deal.
“He can’t travel. If an artery has been punctured, any jostling and the bullet could move or tear open the wound.” She looked at her meagre supply of instruments, bandages and help. The two men stared at her with empty eyes and downturned mouths. They’d already decided Michael was dead.