The Silver Hand

by Terry Deary

  Motor-lorries and horse wagons of weapons were heading east to supply the men fighting the enemy who were driving forward. The precious heavy guns and tanks were being sent west to Amiens to save them from being captured. As before, when the two convoys met in Bray, they became tangled in the tiny, twisting lanes.

  Angry drivers swore and struggled with sweating horses. Weary wounded men stumbled along at the edge of the ditches. Some had their eyes bandaged and rested a hand on the shoulder of the man in front.

  ‘They’ve been blinded by German gas attacks,’ Colette Fletcher explained. Aimee gave a small gasp and her mother said quickly, ‘Most of them will see again, once the wet bandages are taken off.’

  As they reached the corner of their lane a sergeant stood and sent the wounded up to their farm. The day before Captain Ellis had said, ‘We need to use your barn as a hospital.’

  Colette Fletcher had agreed at once. ‘We won’t be needing it for hay for a couple of months.’

  The walking wounded were followed by ambulances carrying the men too sick to march. The crunching of the wheels on the rutted lane was echoed by the moans of the men inside the red-crossed wagons.

  When they reached the school the cat had gone. There was as much turmoil in the old building as in the rest of the village. School desks were out in the schoolyard and heavy cabinets and office desks were being moved in. ‘Waste of time,’ a tired soldier grumbled. ‘The enemy will be here in a couple of days and we’ll have to move out again.’

  ‘We’ve been sent to help with the cleaning,’ Colette Fletcher said. That was the story they’d agreed with Captain Ellis.

  ‘Report to Silver Hand,’ the soldier told them.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sergeant Grimm. He has a metal hand. He’s in charge of General Bruce’s office.’

  Mother and daughter entered the building and found the man easily. He was standing in the middle of the school hall bawling orders at soldiers who were scurrying around like beetles. ‘Start with the classroom in the corner,’ he snapped. ‘That will be General Bruce’s office.’ Colette’s eyes were fixed on his gleaming left hand of solid metal.

  Sergeant Grimm raised his chin. ‘I see you’re wondering about my hand? Don’t be afraid to ask. It’s a war wound. I went into no man’s land and saved my commander. He was shot in the leg and trapped in a shell-hole. The enemy tried to bring me down with two machine guns but I crawled on my belly with the bullets bouncing off my helmet. I saved his life.’

  ‘And the hand was hit?’ Colette Fletcher asked.

  ‘Yes. I’d just got him back to the safety of our trenches – I was using my body to shield him – and one last bullet shattered my hand. As it happened the commander was from a rich family and wanted to reward me. He said I should have a new hand made of solid silver. If I ever fell on hard times, after the war, I could snap off a finger and sell it.’

  ‘You’re a hero,’ Colette said. ‘Did they give you a medal?’

  ‘They offered me one but I told them no. I was only doing what any true British soldier would do. I was proud to serve my country. I don’t need a medal.’

  He turned on his heel and screamed at a small soldier struggling with a desk. ‘Put your back into it, you miserable midget.’

  Colette and Aimee slipped into the classroom and began work. ‘Go into the wall cupboard and pack the schoolbooks in a box,’ Colette said. ‘I’ll start polishing the desk for the general.’

  Aimee nodded and entered the cool, dark cupboard in the wall. The shelves were stacked with worn and dusty books. She saw her favourite, Cicero, and began reading as she heard the door to the classroom swing open.

  ‘Sergeant Grimm,’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Yes, General.’

  ‘I need a word in private.’

  ‘Yes, General.’ Sergeant Grimm coughed. ‘Excuse me, cleaner. Can you leave the room for a couple of minutes? Sorry to disturb your work.’

  ‘Excellent work, by the way, Madame,’ the general added.

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll start on the school hall,’ Colette Fletcher said in a humble voice. She was playing a good game of being a spy. And she knew her daughter was quietly working in the cupboard. Listening. Whatever Colette missed, Aimee would hear. She remembered Captain Ellis’s words in her home the day before: ‘There is a spy in General Bruce’s office. We have to find him.’

  Aimee put the book down quietly and pressed herself into the shadows as near to the door as she could without being seen.

  General Bruce rustled some papers. ‘Before we do anything, Sergeant Grimm, I need you to make sure the secret papers you put in the safe back in Amiens are locked away here. Do we have a safe in this office yet?’

  ‘Yes, sir, on the floor under the desk.’

  ‘Good. Make sure they stay inside and always post a guard outside the door. They have a secret that can win us the war... so long as the enemy never gets to know about it.’

  ‘You can trust me, sir.’

  ‘Good work, Sergeant, now carry on...’ the general said. Aimee heard the office door open then close as he left the room. Aimee wondered if she should step out of the cupboard now. But she heard a small bell ring and a click as Sergeant Grimm picked up the general’s telephone and began to speak.

  Aimee held her breath and strained her ears.

  Chapter Two

  ‘A traitor does not look like a traitor’

  22 March 1918: Bray

  ‘Hello, operator?’ Sergeant Grimm said softly. ‘Can you put me through to Sector Eight in Cléry?’

  There was a long pause while the call was connected and the soldier appeared to be shuffling papers as he waited. Aimee didn’t risk looking out. The air in the cupboard was filled with dust from the old books and she wanted to sniff but didn’t dare.

  ‘Hello?’ Grimm said finally. ‘Benedict? Yes, sorry I’ve been out of touch. It has been difficult to get to a phone. Do you have a pencil? This will have to be very quick.’ The sergeant began to speak in a low voice as rapid as the jabber of a machine gun. ‘This is a secret they’ll pay us a fortune for. The British have a new sort of gas... No, our German friends can’t keep it out with gas masks. It is sent over in shells and makes a smoke cloud. Gas masks are useless.’

  Sergeant Grimm listened. Then he went on. ‘It gives the soldiers pains in the mouth, nose, eyes and throat, and pains in the chest. They struggle to breathe then they start throwing up. That’s right. They can’t fight on like that. But it’s not like the gases we use now. It wears off and it doesn’t kill the enemy. The British can take prisoners but don’t have to waste time treating them in hospitals.’

  He listened again. ‘If our German friends get the formula for this secret gas before the British start to use it then they may be able to make new gas masks that can keep it out... or even make the gas themselves and use it against the Brits. They will give us our weight in gold for this. So, are you ready?’

  There was a rustling of papers again and Aimee knew she had discovered the traitor. She also knew that Sergeant Grimm might kill to keep his treason secret. If she walked into the room she could save the British and French so much trouble. And she also might die. Grimm was speaking quickly again. ‘They call it diphenylamine chlorarsine. I’ll spell it for you then give you the formula for how to make it.’

  Sergeant Grimm gave his partner the details. Then he explained how it would be used. ‘The men in the trenches will put canisters of this DM gas on the edge of their own trenches. They’ll light a fuse and the wind will carry the cloud across no man’s land. When the Germans are coughing and vomiting the British will attack. They’ll give their own men special gas masks so they don’t suffer.’

  Aimee knew she should have stopped him. She couldn’t decide... until the dust decided for her. She sneezed. The man with the silver hand muttered something in German and put down the telephone. Aimee made herself busy with packing the books into a box. Sergeant Grimm’s shadow turned the dark room in
to a tomb. He filled the dusty air with the scent of tobacco and sweat. She looked up at him and gave a warm smile. ‘Bonjour, Monsieur,’ she said.

  ‘Do you speak English, girl?’ the man asked and the fingers on his good hand rippled like a pianist’s. Aimee shivered.

  ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  Grimm smiled and said, ‘That’s good. If you spoke English I’d have to kill you.’ The words were spoken in a soft and friendly voice.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  He waved his silver hand at the door. Aimee pointed at the books and made a mime of packing them. The man shook his head and pointed at the door from the cupboard. She shrugged and walked past him into the office and towards the door into the hall. Silver Hand spoke soft as a butterfly’s wing. ‘You dropped some paper,’ he said in English.

  Aimee almost stopped and turned to look for it. She remembered she wasn’t supposed to understand English and carried on. But that half stop was enough. Silver Hand knew. And Aimee knew he meant what he said. To keep his deadly secret safe he would have to kill her. And kill her soon.

  23 March 1918: Peronne

  The doctor with the spectacles and the worried face was called Weger. Marius soon learned that the doctor’s miserable appearance hid a sharp mind that loved to joke. The boy followed him through the hospital tents, weary as a fox at the end of a hunt. Doctor Weger never seemed to get tired. At night they moved, always west, chasing the setting sun.

  ‘I sleep as we travel,’ the doctor said.

  Marius just nodded wearily and dozed. He woke to find the army had moved forward ten kilometres in the last day. ‘We are driving them to the sea,’ a wounded soldier with a torn shoulder said. ‘I saw the British running away from us. Running. The war will be over in a week.’

  But by the end of the day the soldier was grumbling about his hunger. ‘The supply wagons can’t keep up with us,’ Doctor Weger told him. ‘The British are running too fast.’

  The wounded soldier spat on the ground. ‘The generals don’t care about our bellies.’

  The doctor pushed his spectacles back on to his nose. ‘And the medicines we need can’t keep up with us either,’ he told the soldier. ‘We have so many fever cases. More men are falling sick with flu than from bullets.’

  ‘I have a cure for the fever,’ Marius said quietly. ‘My grandmother taught me.’

  The doctor looked at him. ‘Witchcraft was it? Eye of newt and toe of frog stuff?’

  ‘No, she made it from the bark of a willow tree.’

  The doctor nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Willow tree bark. Our German chemists have been making it for twenty years now. They call it Aspirin. We don’t have any.’

  ‘But we’re near the River Somme,’ Marius said. ‘I’ve seen willow trees on the banks. I can make willow tea from the bark.’

  Again Doctor Weger nodded. ‘The men in the fever tent are dying. We have nothing to lose, young man. I’ll send a couple of fit men to help you collect the bark. But hurry. We’ll be moving on again tonight.’

  And so Marius’s new life began. Each day he gathered the willow bark and stewed it to make his fever cure. Some men were cured and some were as ill as ever. But Marius had moved on ever westwards before he saw them killed or cured.

  The soldiers who came to the hospital tents were exhausted now. They weren’t singing songs about driving the British back any longer. They were complaining of tiredness and hunger and always that fever, which was striking down their friends. Every night they moved west. Every night they moved less than the night before.

  As the sun rose on Tuesday 26th March Doctor Weger took Marius with him through the woods so they could be closer to the fighting than the boy had ever been. They stood at the edge of the trees, high on a ridge above the River Somme, and looked down on the war below.

  The air was filled with sounds like whistles or screams. Fountains of earth leaped towards the sky as shells exploded overhead like inky-black flowers. The ground shook and between the explosions there was the droning of aeroplanes battling across the morning sky. White clouds of steam hurried across the valley. Great oak trees lay shattered where the armies had battled through.

  The doctor raised an arm and pointed to the plain below them. ‘That’s Bray, the railhead for the British. If we capture that we can stay a while and set up a proper hospital.’

  ‘We aren’t going to follow our army to the sea? Watch them drive the British to their ships?’ Marius asked.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘No. We’ll have to stop soon. We’re like a steam engine and our fires are burning low. Bray will be a good place to rest.’

  26 March 1918: Bray

  Aimee had spent four days and nights in fear. When Sergeant Grimm the traitor followed her from the classroom into the school hall he laid his cold silver hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be afraid, little girl. So long as you keep your mouth shut you will come to no harm.’

  She stared up into his dark hawk eyes that were as hot as his hand was cold. ‘Of course,’ he went on quietly, ‘if you tell anyone what you just heard then I will know. And children have accidents in days of war. Crushed by a tank. Trampled by a horse. Blown apart by a hand grenade that someone carelessly dropped. We don’t want that happening to you, do we?’

  Before Aimee could answer, the door from the corridor opened and Captain Ellis strode in. He spoke in French. ‘Ah, Aimee, your mother’s looking for you. She has a broomstick she wants you to deliver.’

  Aimee nodded and fled from under the icy silver hand. She spent three days running to villages nearby, delivering broomsticks and beans for the White Lady. When the Germans arrived then the spies would be ready to start sending messages to their British friends.

  British soldiers marched past her, heading west, torn and bandaged from their fighting. Now their songs were gloomier.

  ‘Take me back to dear old Blighty!

  Put me on the train for London town!

  Take me over there,

  Drop me anywhere,

  Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester, well, I don’t care!’

  Aimee’s father had told her ‘Blighty’ was the soldiers’ name for Britain. Their singing was sweet but their eyes were dead in their grey faces, their boots dusty, and their feet dragged. They’d had enough of war. They just wanted to go home. To anywhere.

  Every time Aimee returned to Bray from the villages the thunder of the guns seemed closer. The streets were more crowded with the fleeing British. Their barn was full of wounded men and the sky was forever clouded with sooty smoke from the trains at the railhead, taking men away and bringing in new bullets and bombs to fight the battle. A battle they knew was lost.

  When she went to meet her mother in the school the man with the silver hand seemed to be watching her from every shadow. A small smile played on his thin, cruel lips. The lips seemed to say, ‘We have a secret. Keep it secret.’

  On Tuesday 26th March a huge lorry pulled into the drive of Mrs Fletcher’s farm. It carried a folded package as dull as lead. Other lorries brought cables and machines and Aimee watched as a motor pump blew into the package and turned it into a great grey balloon, the shape of a cigar and as large as the barn.

  Men hurried to fasten cables to it as a breeze caught the balloon and lifted it a little. ‘I’ve never seen one close up,’ Colette told her daughter. ‘I guess they are going to fly into the air to look down on the enemy... see how close they are and what they’re doing.’

  ‘We are,’ Captain Ellis said. He’d been standing behind them watching the forty soldiers prepare for the flight. ‘And I’m the one who gets the lucky job of going up with the camera.’

  ‘I thought the aeroplanes took pictures?’ Mrs Fletcher said.

  Captain Ellis shrugged. ‘They do... but the Germans have aircraft too and they try to shoot ours down. It’s dangerous. They have a new airfield beside the Somme. Their best fighter pilots are all there. They are blowing us out of the
sky.’

  Aimee laughed. ‘But the balloon’s dangerous too. The enemy can shoot down balloons.’

  The captain shook his head. ‘Not if we haul it down as soon as we have the photos. I’ve never known the Germans shoot down a single balloon.’ He led the way to a larger wicker basket that hung below the whale-belly balloon. He lifted the girl into the basket. ‘There are two ropes under the gas bag – pull this one and you float down slowly. But pull this one with the red ribbon round it and you drop very quickly. Far too quickly for an enemy fighter to catch you in the air. Red for danger.’

  ‘Would you like to go up with the captain, Aimee?’ her mother asked. ‘See what it’s like to fly?’

  Aimee’s eyes sparkled. ‘More than anything,’ she beamed.

  The young soldier climbed into the basket and began to give orders to the ground crew to let them float upwards. As the last rope was ready for untying there came a cry: ‘Stop! Captain Ellis.’

  Aimee looked over the edge of the basket and saw Sergeant Grimm waving a sheet of paper in his good hand. He panted as if he’d run from the school. ‘Sorry, sir, General Bruce needs you in the office. It’s urgent.’

  Captain Ellis frowned. ‘So is this flight. We need the photos as soon as possible so we can see where to fire our guns.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ the sergeant said. ‘I can do that. Done it a dozen times.’

  And, before Aimee could find the words to escape, Captain Ellis had jumped out and Silver Hand was in the basket beside her. This time his grin was as wide as the Somme. ‘Hello, my little friend. I’m going to enjoy this trip.’ He turned to the men on the ground. ‘Cast off,’ he ordered and Aimee felt the balloon leap upwards with a jerk that sent her stomach into her mouth.

  The spring sunshine was hidden by the great grey monster over their heads and the breeze felt cold. Or maybe it was Aimee’s fear. Soon they were higher than the tops of the spindly trees and sending startled birds squawking away. The people below were shrinking and she saw her mother wave happily. Colette Fletcher didn’t know. Aimee had been too afraid of the threat from the man with the silver hand to say anything. And now it was too late.