The Silver Hand

by Terry Deary

  The boy swallowed hard and walked slowly from the airfield towards the army hospital. The thin officer called, ‘Boy!’

  Marius turned. ‘Well done,’ the man grinned.

  Chapter Three

  ‘The life given us, by nature is short’

  27 March 1918: Bray

  Smoke hung grey over Bray like a shroud over a coffin. The British had given up and run west towards Amiens the evening before. They choked the roads with gun-carriages and men, with ambulances and lorries full of weapons, tools and barbed wire, food supplies and tanks.

  They couldn’t carry everything to safety. They burned their mounds of horse food before they left the town so the weary German horses couldn’t eat it when they arrived. Anything that could be useful to the enemy was wrecked. Even the straw in the hospital beds at the Fletchers’ barn was scattered over the floor.

  The last trains pulled out of Bray station heading for safety in Amiens and gangs of British and French took iron bars to wreck the signals and the points.

  The German army crept into the smoky town next morning, afraid of a trap, but they found it empty of enemy soldiers.

  When they were sure it was clear they roared in with their motor-lorries and carts. Their drums rumbled and growled. The French people who’d stayed in Bray watched them silently. The British had been their allies. The Germans were their invaders – for the second time in four years.

  A shambling band played a marching tune that the Bray folk knew was called ‘The Glory of Germany’. It had been written in 1871 after the Germans defeated them in the last war between the two nations. It grated on the French ears and stabbed at the French hearts.

  A German colonel with medal ribbons climbed on to the steps of the Town Hall and spoke to the people, who gathered round like sullen, sulking children. He spoke in good, clear French. ‘We do not wish to harm anyone in Bray. Our war is against your soldiers and the British.’

  ‘And the Americans,’ a greengrocer muttered. ‘Wait till they get here.’

  If the colonel heard him he gave no sign but went on. ‘We need every spare room that you have to shelter our soldiers. Your houses will be inspected and you will take as many men as you can fit in.’ He paused and looked around with a small smile as if to say ‘sorry’. ‘We do not want to harm you but if anyone tries to hurt or obstruct us then they will be taken out and shot. Do I make myself clear?’

  No one answered. He gave a tiny shrug and strode away towards the school. The Bray people shuffled off to suffer their visitors.

  At the school door Master DuPont stood while the cat wrapped itself around his legs, weaving in and out but never taking its amber eyes off the German colonel coming up the path.

  ‘Good day, Colonel,’ the teacher said. ‘I hope you have come to tell me I can open the school again. There are still a few children left in Bray.’

  ‘I have come to take over your school for my offices,’ the German officer said.

  Master DuPont gave a small smile then let it slide away as secretly as it had come. ‘Then allow me to help you.’

  ‘Sensible man,’ the colonel said.

  ‘The British left yesterday...’

  ‘They ran away,’ the colonel sneered.

  Master DuPont bowed his head. ‘As you say, sir. But they left the school in a terrible mess. Perhaps I can let you have my cleaner to help you keep the place tidy. She is called Madame Fletcher.’

  ‘Fletcher? An English name?’

  ‘Indeed. Her husband was English. Now she has a small farm on the edge of town. Should I go and ask her to clean for you?’

  ‘Yes. Hurry.’

  Master DuPont walked quickly away with that secret smile – the smile of a spy – still on his face. He hadn’t thought it would be so easy to get a White Lady into the German headquarters. The cat looked at the German officer’s dusty boots and hissed.

  A German sergeant arrived at Colette Fletcher’s farm before the teacher. He explained in stumbling French that the house would be filled with soldiers who would sleep on mattresses in the farmhouse attic and cellar.

  ‘Not the barn?’ Colette Fletcher asked.

  ‘We need that for a hospital,’ the sergeant told her. He looked over his shoulder to where a thin man in spectacles walked up the lane with a boy hurrying beside him. ‘Here is Doctor Weger now.’

  Aimee watched the boy. She was surprised. Were the Germans so short of men they had to call on boys that young to fight? His boots were worn and his uniform shabby. He looked so twig-thin he would snap in a strong wind.

  For a moment she almost felt sorry for the boy. Then she shook her head and muttered, ‘He’s German, so I hate him.’

  As Mrs Fletcher took the doctor across the yard to inspect the barn the boy looked shyly across at Aimee. ‘Ich bin Marius,’ he said.

  Aimee shrugged. ‘Don’t speak German,’ she said sourly. ‘Only French, and English... and Latin.’

  The boy’s eyes lit up in his small face. He spoke in Latin. ‘I loved Latin at school. I can speak to you in Latin.’

  Aimee pinched her mouth tight and hissed through her teeth, ‘Why would I want to speak to you?’ then closed the farmhouse door.

  April 1918: Bray

  The days passed in a blur of danger and weariness. Aimee’s mother sent her on trips with broomstick messages to villages in the west. The German guards took little notice of a girl and never stopped her.

  Mrs Fletcher groaned one evening as she sat with her daughter in the kitchen, sipping wine by the light of a smoky oil lamp. ‘We can count the soldiers and guns and tell the British how strong the Germans are in these parts. But I could tell them so much more if I only spoke German. There are all sorts of messages lying around the old school when I’m cleaning. I just don’t know which ones are important. It would be sad if I stole a cook’s order for bacon, only to get caught and shot.’

  ‘Don’t talk about getting shot,’ Aimee whispered. They both spoke softly though there was no one to listen and the sound of lorries rumbling up the lane to the hospital barn went on most of the night.

  Mrs Fletcher looked up as another rolled past. ‘They move the wounded back to Germany by night. They don’t want the German people to see how many of their men have been broken.’

  ‘But the Germans are winning,’ Aimee argued. ‘They will be halfway to the Atlantic by now.’

  ‘No, they were stopped a week ago before they even got to Amiens,’ Mrs Fletcher said. ‘Their army moved forward too quickly. The food and the fuel, the aeroplanes and the guns, just couldn’t keep up.’

  She paused as they heard a sound somewhere between a whistle and a scream. There was a flash of light followed by a boom. A shell exploded near the railhead as the British tried to destroy the enemy trains. ‘In 1914 – the last time the Germans were here – the British aimed at the railhead but managed to drop shells on the town. Let’s hope they are more careful this time.’

  One lorry went past with a clanking sound as its wheels crushed the stones in the lane to powder. ‘Hear that?’ said Aimee’s mother. ‘Some German lorries are without tyres because they don’t have enough rubber. They are running out of everything.’

  The lorries rumbled on through the night. Aimee tried to sleep but the soldiers who were staying in the attic and cellar of the farmhouse scraped and clumped their boots on stairs and floors, shouted and cursed one another as they returned for a rest. Aimee was pleased she didn’t understand their swearing.

  The next morning it was drizzling with rain and the fields were turning muddy.

  Master DuPont arrived with news. ‘A British shell missed the railhead and destroyed a cottage. Old Madame Leclerc was killed. The German soldiers cleared the rubble but they’ll leave the burial to our priest, Father Gaston.’

  Aimee headed through the woods towards the river to find some acorns for the next message. Each acorn in the broomstick stood for a German tank. They had very few tanks – and they were snail-slow and broke down often
– but the British wanted to know what their soldiers would face.

  There was a soft chopping coming from further down the path towards the River Somme. Aimee walked softly down the damp path to spy on the enemy. A soldier in a uniform the colour of wood-smoke was cutting into a willow tree and peeling off the bark. He placed the strips carefully into a rotting leather bucket. As he turned the soldier looked up. It was the boy who’d been helping the German doctor. What did he call himself? Marius, was it?

  The soldier gave a shy smile. ‘Why are you killing that tree?’ Aimee spat at him. He looked confused. She repeated it in Latin and the cloud cleared from the boy’s face.

  ‘I am making a drug to cure our sick men. They have flu. The sickness is killing more of our men than British guns.’

  ‘The war will end quicker then,’ the girl replied coldly.

  Marius shrugged. ‘It cannot go on much longer. Back in Germany the people are starving – that’s why I joined the army. The British battleships are stopping our food ships from getting through. I left home so there was one less mouth for my mother to feed.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘Missing after the battle at Verdun,’ the boy said quietly. ‘We hope he’s a prisoner.’

  ‘You’re saying you left home to eat, not to kill?’ she asked. It explained why he was so pale and thin.

  ‘I left to help with the sick. I can’t even fire a gun. I haven’t been trained.’

  ‘If you’re all so hungry why don’t you just go home and leave us in peace?’ Aimee asked more gently.

  ‘A lot of our soldiers are deserting because they know we are losing. I took this uniform from a soldier who’d run away from the fighting. The men are tired and hungry and this sickness is the last dagger in our hearts.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t King Wilhelm give up?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘He isn’t hungry. He doesn’t see the people that rebel on the streets of our cities back home. He doesn’t see the sick men that I see.’ The boy turned his wide eyes on Aimee. ‘I know we Germans are your enemy. But we are just ordinary people – like you. We fight because that’s what we have to do to live.’

  Aimee narrowed her eyes. She saw a chance to spy for the White Lady. Her voice softened as if she felt sorry for the boy. ‘Show me these sick men, Marius. Maybe I could help.’

  ‘You would?’

  Aimee nodded slowly. ‘As you say, these are ordinary men – like my father. If I help to care for German husbands and fathers maybe a young German will care for my father if he’s ever wounded or captured.’

  They finished filling the bucket with the willow bark and turned back through the cool wood, walking through jagged stumps of trees where stray shells had snapped them.

  ‘Do we have a truce?’ Marius asked.

  The girl thought for a moment. ‘We can make peace for a little while.’

  The boy muttered something in German. ‘What was that?’ Aimee asked.

  ‘There is an English writer called William Shakespeare. We love to study him in German schools.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘He said something about peace. He called it the silver hand of peace.’

  Aimee shuddered and almost stumbled. The Silver Hand she knew would not bring peace to her if he ever returned.

  April 1918: Bray

  The first thing Aimee noticed as she entered her barn was the smell of sickness. Men lay in crowded rows, some talking to their neighbours, some moaning or breathing with grating breaths, some silent as the rain clouds outside.

  Doctor Weger was moving between the mattresses on the floor giving medicine to some men and water to others. He gave a nod to Marius as the boy walked in, then looked at Aimee. ‘The farm girl. Can I help you?’ he asked in bad French.

  Marius explained. ‘She has come to help us.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘We have so few nurses that any help is welcome. Tell me, girl, have you ever had the flu?’

  Aimee replied, ‘Yes. At Christmas. I was sick for a week.’

  ‘That is good. You will not catch it again, I think. You are well fed with your farm eggs and bread and milk. These soldiers are half starved. That makes them fall like corn when the Grim Reaper strikes.’

  Marius hurried off with his bucket of willow bark to make more medicine. ‘I hope Marius will not catch it. I need him,’ the doctor said.

  ‘It’s just as well the British don’t know how weak these men are,’ Aimee said.

  Doctor Weger sighed. ‘If they did they would walk into Bray and take the town back with hardly a shot.’

  The girl struggled to hide her smile. ‘The British will know before the day is out,’ she murmured.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said, “how can I help you out?”’ Marius helped her say it in German.

  ‘It’s a disgusting job but the toilet buckets need to be emptied into the trench at the back of the barn. Then some of the wounded men need their bandages changed. The ones who are strong enough will be sent back to Germany tonight. There’s so much to do.’ The doctor sighed.

  Aimee worked for an hour then helped serve the men with tinned stew the British had left behind. ‘It is worth falling sick to get this food,’ Marius said as he helped spoon the rich gravy into bowls and carried them to the men who were well enough to eat. ‘Most of us have not seen food like this for months. A few months ago we went through what we called the Turnip Winter because it seemed that was all we had to eat. We drank coffee made from acorns, the soldiers smoked tobacco made from beech-tree leaves, bakers stuffed our bread with sawdust, and butchers made sausages from horseflesh or rabbits. That’s why I left home.’

  Aimee said, ‘Your soldiers get all the best food?’

  ‘Yes.’ Marius groaned as he stirred his stew. ‘They eat quite well, but not as well as the French and the British. It hurts us to know our enemy eats like this every day. They even have jam for their bread.’

  As the walking wounded helped clear away the meal, Aimee asked if she could run across to see her mother. Colette Fletcher was cleaning the stables when her daughter ran in with news of the German weakness.

  ‘Shall I take a message to Cerisy so the White Lady spy there can pass it on to the British?’ Aimee asked. ‘We daren’t use the radio in the barn.’

  ‘No need. We have a new messenger in Bray. He walks there every day. He says he needs the exercise for his old legs now the school has been closed.’

  ‘Master DuPont? Part of the White Lady spy web?’ Aimee laughed. The thought of the old teacher being a secret agent was funny.

  ‘He fought in the last war against the Germans back in 1871 and has been part of the White Lady since it was set up in this war. Now he’s not busy at the school, he will be thrilled to carry messages. Get back to the barn. Find out more. Question the sick.’

  ‘They’re German. I can’t talk to them.’

  Colette slapped the side of her head. ‘Of course. What was I thinking? But get what you can from the boy and the doctor.’

  Aimee ran off as if there were springs in her boots. She was helping her country to win the war.

  April 1918: Amiens

  The message reached Amiens a day later. Captain Ellis took it to General Bruce. ‘We could walk into Bray and take the town back with hardly a shot, they say?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘When the time comes we may do just that. If we can make a surprise attack then that’s what we’ll do. But it’s best if we can take Bray with no shells falling on the town and killing the local people still there. I hear we had an accident when we retreated.’ The captain gave a silent nod.

  They were in the general’s office in Amiens. It had once been the grand house of the mayor. Now its fine windows were criss-crossed with blast tape and the shining floors scuffed with a hundred army boots.

  The general walked from behind his desk and crossed to the door. He stood with his back to it. He looked across at Captain Ellis and wi
nked. ‘Who is our spy in Bray?’ he asked in a clear voice.

  The captain replied carefully, ‘If the Germans ever found out they’d execute him.’

  ‘True. But you can tell me.’

  Captain Ellis took a deep breath and answered in a loud voice, ‘The German spy in Bray is a German officer. He wants to see an end to the war so he is passing messages to us. He takes them to the airfield and one of their pilots drops a message into our garden here.’

  On the other side of the door a man with hawk eyes listened then hurried away on tiptoe. His left hand was silver.

  Captain Ellis listened to the fading footsteps. ‘Do you think our friend Grimm heard that?’ he asked softly.

  ‘I’m sure he did. He will pass on the message through his own spy network and the Germans will chase their own tails looking for traitors in their army and air force. Our White Lady spies will be safe.’

  Captain Ellis spoke softly. ‘We can’t let him go on spying on us for much longer, sir. He may be sending real secrets along with the gobbledygook we are giving him.’

  General Bruce spread his hands. ‘We know he’s a traitor. But he’s useful. We can feed the enemy nonsense. When the time is right – when he stops being useful – we’ll arrest him and execute him. But we need evidence.’

  ‘The girl Aimee heard him pass on the formula for the DM gas, sir,’ Captain Ellis reminded him.

  ‘The false formula we invented to catch the spy will confuse the German chemists for a few weeks.’ General Bruce chuckled. ‘But we just have the girl’s word that Sergeant Grimm gave it down the phone.’

  ‘I believe her,’ Ellis said. ‘And I think he gave himself away when he tried to throw her out of the balloon.’

  ‘If he did,’ the general said.

  ‘I believe her,’ the captain repeated stubbornly.

  ‘I do too. But a girl’s word is not enough to execute a man. Give him enough rope to hang himself. Let’s wait till the time is right and we will silence the silver tongue of the traitor with the silver hand.’