by Terry Deary
She sat by his side for hours. She used a damp cloth to cool his brow and fed him some of his own willow-bark drink to ease the fever.
As the sun set and it grew dark in the hayloft his eyes opened and he smiled up at Aimee. ‘The doctor?’ he asked.
‘Gone back to Germany. You can follow when you’re strong enough.’
Marius nodded and began to say something when Aimee heard footsteps in the barn below. Then a voice said, ‘Set up the radio here.’
She knew the voice. She knew the owner had a silver hand. Aimee placed a finger to the boy’s lips and listened as Sergeant Grimm tuned the radio with whistles and whines. She peered over the open trapdoor to the loft.
‘Now get out,’ the sergeant said to the man who had set up the radio. When the soldier had gone Grimm said, ‘Hello? Benedict? Come in, Benedict.’
‘I am here, friend,’ a voice crackled from the speaker.
‘Speak in German, Benedict,’ the traitor said. ‘Last time we spoke in English that girl was listening. This is her farm. She may be around.’
Then Grimm began to speak quickly and Aimee couldn’t understand a word. She heard a wheezing from the boy in the straw. He was trying hard to hold his breath – his pale eyes bulged. At last he could hold it no longer and he coughed.
The stream of words from below stopped.
The two children in the hayloft heard army boots slowly climb the ladder to their hiding place. First a silver hand appeared in the opening. Then the head of Sergeant Grimm, and then a pistol, pointing at them.
‘What have we here?’ he asked.
24 August 1918: Bray
‘This is Robert... the farm hand.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘The Germans used this place as a hospital and left the sickness behind. Robert came into the barn and he caught their flu. I’m nursing him,’ Aimee told the man with the silver hand.
Sergeant Grimm shuddered. ‘We’ll have to swill it out with disinfectant before we take it over for the Canadians,’ he said.
‘You’re too late to save yourself,’ Aimee said. ‘You were down in the barn for long enough to catch it. I’ve seen men dead in three days.’
The sergeant’s eyes seemed to glow in the gloom and they were the colour of poison. ‘You make a habit of putting your snotty French nose into my calls, don’t you?’
Aimee glared back at him. ‘You are a traitor,’ she said fiercely. ‘And you tried to throw me out of a balloon to silence me.’
He shrugged. ‘But you can’t prove any treason. You can’t prove I was going to throw you out of the basket. And you don’t know what I was saying to my friend just now because we spoke in German.’
Aimee nodded. ‘I don’t understand German,’ she agreed. That could save her life.
But Marius had fallen back on to his bed as he felt weak and the fever returned. ‘You’re not dead, girl,’ Silver Hand told her. ‘The disease can’t be that bad.’
‘The people who’ve had flu before – a mild sickness – don’t get the deadly flu. I’m safe.’ She looked at him with a little joy. ‘You’re not.’
He began to climb back down the ladder. Marius groaned and cried, ‘Mutter. Ich möchte meine mutter.’
The sound of boots on the ladder stopped. They slowly began to climb upwards again. ‘German,’ Silver Hand said. ‘He’s German.’
‘So? He’s harmless,’ Aimee said. ‘He’s a boy. He’s sick.’
‘He could have understood what I said to Benedict,’ the sergeant hissed.
‘He’s too ill.’
‘Better safe than sorry,’ the traitor said. ‘I’m just going to fetch my rifle.’
This time the boots moved quickly. Aimee hurried over to the boy and shook him. ‘Come on, Marius, you have to get out of here.’
Marius groaned and raised himself on an elbow. He rolled on to his hands and knees and began to crawl to the hatch. With Aimee’s help he sat on the edge of the steps. She squeezed past him and guided his feet down one at a time. He swayed and almost passed out, then carried on. He stumbled on the last step and fell to the floor, panting and with sweat running into his eyes. Aimee pulled him to his feet, placed his arm round her shoulder and helped him to the door of the barn. The daylight hurt his eyes. It also showed two men walking towards them.
Sergeant Grimm had no rifle. The officer with him had a pistol on his belt. It was Captain Ellis. Silver Hand was jabbering and pointing. ‘There they are, sir. The spies. Give me your pistol, sir, and I’ll shoot them now.’
Captain Ellis looked at him with some disgust. ‘We don’t shoot enemy soldiers in cold blood, Sergeant.’
‘Ah no, sir, but he isn’t an enemy soldier. He isn’t in uniform. He’s dressed like a French peasant to fool us – to spy on us, sir. Army rules, sir. Any enemy soldier caught out of uniform has to be shot.’ Silver Hand added in a low voice with menace, ‘And you can’t break army rules, can you, sir?’
The captain looked unhappy. ‘I can’t. But he must be executed in the proper manner. By firing squad. At dawn.’
‘I can arrange that, sir,’ Grimm said eagerly.
‘No, I’ll do it. It’s an officer’s job. You have the boy held in the barn and get someone to stand guard.’
‘Yes, sir. And what about the girl, sir?’
‘What about her?’
‘She is guilty of giving shelter to an enemy spy. She has to be shot too, sir.’
The captain was impatient. ‘Sergeant, we would need a trial to prove that she helped him. We are in a battle zone. We have more important things to do than set up a trial. The girl lives. The boy will be shot at dawn. The girl is French. We don’t shoot our allies.’
Grimm looked disappointed. ‘Yes, sir.’ He took Marius from Aimee’s shoulder and bundled him back into the barn before pulling the wide door shut.
‘Now, Sergeant, get back to the old school building. General Bruce needs your help in setting up an office again.’
‘I could stand guard here, sir,’ Silver Hand said with a soft whine in his voice. ‘Give me your pistol and I’d shoot him if he tried to escape.’
‘I gave you a direct order, Sergeant,’ Captain Ellis said with rising anger. ‘Report to General Bruce. If you disobey or question that order you will be tied to the post and shot alongside the boy. Do I make myself clear?’
The man’s mouth was tight as a tortoise’s. He gave Aimee a look of hatred, turned on his heel and marched down the farm path towards the town where smoke from the smouldering buildings still turned the air thick and the sun dim.
‘Are you really going to shoot Marius?’ Aimee asked. ‘He may be able to tell you what that traitor was saying on the radio just now.’
Captain Ellis looked serious. ‘It’s difficult. Grimm is right. The law says the boy must be shot. But...’
‘But?’
‘Look after him. Feed him and get his strength back. I’ll send a guard,’ Captain Ellis said briskly. ‘I’ll arrange a firing squad.’
‘You can’t,’ Aimee cried.
The captain’s face softened. ‘Maybe they’ll miss, eh, Aimee? Maybe they’ll miss.’
Chapter Four
‘While there’s life, there’s hope’
25 August 1918: Bray
‘I’d like to volunteer for the firing squad, sir,’ Sergeant Grimm had said.
‘You want us to shoot you?’ General Bruce had replied with a surprised gasp.
Silver Hand sucked in his cheeks to control his temper. ‘No, sir. I would like to shoot the German spy.’
‘You haven’t fired a rifle since you lost your hand. And anyway the Canadians are in the Bray sector. It’s their job.’
‘They won’t like it, sir,’ said the man with the silver hand. ‘Men don’t like executing an unarmed man – even an enemy. You could trust me to do the job.’
General Bruce’s face turned a little red. ‘Grimm, I have said no and that’s an end to it.’
Grimm swallowed h
ard, muttered, ‘Sorry, sir,’ and scuttled from the room.
He had gone straight to the army stores and borrowed a pair of binoculars. Now he stood on the edge of the wood above the Fletcher farm and watched. He had to be sure.
There were twelve men in the firing squad. Riflemen from the Canadian army. They dragged their feet as they marched up the lane to the barn. No one wanted this job.
They formed a line, facing the side wall of the barn. Twelve rifles stood on the ground in front of them. There was a post driven into the ground at the side of the barn with a chair in front of it.
Aimee and her mother stood in the kitchen door of the farmhouse and looked out, grim-faced and grey. Captain Ellis led Marius from the barn. The boy struggled to walk and looked so sick it seemed as if death would be a welcome friend. He had a white patch pinned over his heart. The target. He fell weakly on to the chair and the captain tied a rope round him so he was fastened to the post.
Then he placed a black cloth round the German boy’s eyes. Captain Ellis turned and spoke to the stern-faced soldiers. ‘This man is a spy. The secrets he passed to the Germans could have got you all killed. So don’t feel guilty about shooting him. Don’t feel pity for him. He’s seen the priest and confessed all his sins.’
‘He’s no more than a boy,’ a Canadian murmured.
Captain Ellis pretended he didn’t hear the surly soldier. ‘You know how this works. I have loaded two of the rifles with live bullets and ten have blanks. You will never know who fired the shots that killed him. Aim at the square of paper on his chest. Now pick up your rifles.’
The men obeyed, slow and half-hearted. They pulled the bolt back so it was ready to fire. ‘Take aim,’ Captain Ellis said.
The men raised their rifles to their shoulders and squinted down the barrel.
‘And fire.’
Twelve rifles crackled out their charge. Marius’s chin fell on to his chest and he sat as still as the barn itself.
‘Take your rifles. Right turn... and dismiss.’
The Canadians hurried away, ashamed faces hanging towards the ground. The watching man in the woods saw Captain Ellis step over to the slumped boy, draw his pistol and fire it in the direction of the boy’s head. Then he waved at the farmhouse kitchen and an old man stepped out. The schoolteacher. Captain Ellis and Master DuPont walked to the barn, brought a coffin outside and laid it on the ground.
They unfastened the German boy and lowered him into the coffin. Silver Hand watched as the girl and the woman from the farm hurried across the yard to help carry the coffin into the barn.
The men came out and began digging in the rich soil of the farm field. Sergeant Grimm didn’t leave his secret hiding place for an hour till the diggers had finished and they had lowered the coffin into the ground.
As the coffin was covered he gave a cruel smile and headed back to the general’s office.
In the barn, Marius lay wearily on his bed of straw. ‘Thank you, Aimee,’ he said.
The girl smiled warmly. ‘It was Captain Ellis who set it up and made sure all the bullets were blank. If Sergeant Grimm thinks you’re dead then he’ll not try to hunt you down and kill you. You’re safe.’
‘But you’re not,’ he said.
‘No, but Maman has an idea about that. She’ll explain when she’s made us some dinner. Are you strong enough to walk over to the farmhouse?’
‘For your mother’s mutton stew I’d run there,’ Marius laughed.
25 August 1918: The school, Bray
General Bruce closed the door after checking there was no one close enough to listen. The school roof had been damaged when the Canadians took the town and the ceilings had cracked and plaster dusted the floors. Still the army had moved back in.
‘So, Captain Ellis, the German boy is safe?’
‘He is, sir. He’s been very useful. He was pretty sick when Sergeant Grimm called that Benedict but he heard enough to be able to give us priceless secrets.’
‘Such as?’
‘The main thing this Benedict said is that the Germans are calling our 8th August attacks their Black Day. And they are blaming it on our tanks. They are losing heart for the fight.’
General Bruce gave a tight smile. ‘Yes, I watched the tanks in action at Amiens. They just rolled towards the German machine guns and ploughed through them. Wonderful to see. Lots of enemy soldiers just throw away their guns and give up as soon as they see one of our tanks coming.’
‘The Germans would give anything to know how to stop our tanks next time. Anything. If Sergeant Grimm can pass on plans of the Mark Five tanks or the Whippet tanks – and show the weak spots – then they will pay Silver Hand and Benedict ten thousand marks each,’ Captain Ellis said quietly.
General Bruce nodded. ‘Do we have any plans?’
‘Yes, they’re in the safe.’
‘And any notes about weak spots?’
Captain Ellis was almost whispering. ‘Yes, we have those too. The men are saying it gets very hot inside the tank. They have to leave hatches open to get enough air. If the Germans use gas shells on the tank drivers the gas will get in and the crew will choke.’
The general shrugged. ‘They can put on their gas masks can’t they?’
‘A tank crew work as a team – they need to work together with the commander to decide which direction to go, the driver to change the speeds, the gearbox men to turn left or right, the gunners to take aim and fire. They are stuck inside a metal box alongside a roaring engine. They have to shout to work together. If they put on gas masks they can’t talk. Gas shells will make them almost useless as fighting machines.’
General Bruce nodded. ‘I see. The Germans mustn’t find that out. Maybe it’s time to arrest Sergeant Grimm.’
‘We still don’t have any proof he’s a traitor. And remember he’s a bit of a war hero with that silver hand of his.’
The general gave a sharp laugh. ‘The German boy heard him speaking to Benedict in German. That’s proof enough.’
‘Yes, sir, but the German boy is supposed to be dead. We faked an execution. We broke army rules. Even a general could be in deep trouble for that... General.’
The officer rubbed a troubled hand over his moustache. ‘So what do we do? We can’t let Grimm get away with it... and go on stealing more secrets.’
‘No, sir, but the important person in all this is really Benedict.’
‘And we have no idea who he is?’ General Bruce asked.
‘No, sir. We just know he is somewhere near the front line, close to the enemy. He can pass messages across to them. We need to stop him.’
‘But we don’t know who he is.’
‘That’s why we still need Sergeant Grimm. He can take us to him. Let’s give Grimm plans for the Whippet tank and see where he leads us.’
‘And the weakness? We can’t tell the Germans that gas will stop the tanks. It may just get through.’
‘No, sir, we’ll invent something. The Germans use flame-throwers...’
‘Evil weapons.’
‘Yes, sir. Let’s say the tanks will explode if the enemy uses flame-throwers.’
‘And will they?’
Captain Ellis almost smiled. ‘No, sir. And any enemy trooper with a flame-thrower would have to get closer than ten yards to spray a tank. He’d be shot before he got within fifty yards.’
General Bruce looked troubled. ‘So we need to feed Silver Hand with more fake secrets – tank drawings he can’t read down the phone – and watch him run with them. You’re sure he’ll lead us to Benedict?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The general lowered his voice. ‘And the German boy – the one we failed to shoot? He could cause us a lot of trouble.’
‘Send him back to Germany, sir.’
The general sat up straight at his desk. ‘Arrange it, Captain Ellis. Arrange it.’
‘Send a German soldier back to Germany? It may be tricky.’
The general sighed. He took a printed sheet of cream paper
from his desk. ‘This is a free pass, signed by me. No one may stop or question the person carrying this. He could walk into Buckingham Palace with it.’
Captain Ellis took the paper, folded it and tucked it into his jacket. He stepped back and saluted smartly. ‘Young Marius is as good as in Berlin right now, sir.’
But of course he wasn’t...
26 August 1918: The Fletcher farmhouse, Bray
The smell of the smoke from burned Bray still hung in the air. Canadian soldiers repaired some buildings to make garages for their lorries and tanks. They sounded more cheerful now they were moving forward. Their songs hung in the bitter air...
‘The general gets the turkey, the colonel has his duck;
The officers have poultry, they always were in luck;
The sergeants have bread and cheese and mop up all they can,
But all the poor old private gets is bread and Tinker’s Jam.’
Captain Ellis carried two backpacks, one on each shoulder, and walked into the farmhouse kitchen.
Colette and Aimee Fletcher sat at the table with Marius Furst. ‘I’ve brought some supplies to help you on the road,’ the captain said. ‘And inside the front pocket of this backpack there’s a letter from the general – with it no one will stop you or question you. But the German army is running fast to the east. You’ll have to leave soon if you’re going to catch them.’
Marius gave a weak smile. ‘He isn’t strong enough to go yet,’ Aimee said quietly. ‘And he doesn’t know the way.’
Captain Ellis spread his hands wide. ‘What else can I do? I am helping an enemy soldier to escape after we faked a firing squad. General Bruce knows about it but we could all be in trouble if some German-haters back home ever found out.’
‘Can’t you give him a lift in a lorry?’
‘Aimee, I am in charge of spy-catching. I can’t whistle for a Canadian army truck to be a taxi for him. No, he’ll have to head east alone. The Germans are at Peronne now. If he gets there in two days he can cross no man’s land at night and be safe with his friends by morning.’