The Burning Shore (15 page)

With another lift of relief she opened the door to her cell, crept in and then closed it behind her. She turned to face the bed, and then froze with surprise as a match flared and was touched to a lantern wick, and the room bloomed with yellow light.

Anna, who had just lit the lantern, was sitting on her bed, with a shawl around her shoulders and a lace nightcap on her head. Her red face was stony and forbidding.

Anna! Centaine whispered. I can explain, you haven’t told Papa? Then the chair by the window creaked and she turned to find her father sitting in it and staring at her with his single malevolent eye.

She had never seen such an expression upon his face.

Anna spoke first. My little baby creeping out at night to go whoring after soldiers. He is not a soldier, Centaine protested.

He is an airman.

Harlotry, said the comte. A daughter of the house of de Thiry behaving like a common harlot. Papa, I am to be Michel’s wife. We are as good as married to each other. Not until Saturday night, you are not. The comte rose to his feet. There was a dark smudge of sleeplessness under his one eye and his thick mane of hair stood on end.

Until Saturday, his voice rose to an angry bellow, you are confined to this room, child. You will remain here until one hour before the ceremony begins.”But, Papa, I have to go to the hill- Anna, take the key. I place you in charge of her. She is not to leave the house. Centaine stood in the centre of the room looking around her, as though for escape, but Anna rose and took her wrist in a powerful calloused hand and Centaine’s shoulders slumped as she was led to the bed.

The pilots of the squadron were scattered in dark groups of threes and fours amongst the trees at the edge of the orchard, talking softly and smoking the last cigarettes before take-off, when Michael came clumping down the duckboards, still buttoning his greatcoat and pulling on his flying gauntlets. He had missed the preflight briefing.

Andrew nodded a greeting as he joined them, making no mention of Michael’s late arrival or of the example to the new pilots, and Michael did not apologize. They were both acutely aware of the dereliction of his duty, and Andrew unscrewed his silver flask and drank without offering it to Michael; the rebuke was deliberate.

Take-off in five minutes, Andrew studied the sky, and it looks like a good day to die. It was his term for good flying weather, but today it jarred on Michael.

I’m getting married on Saturday, he said, as though the ideas were linked, and Andrew stopped with the flask halfway back to his lips and stared at him.

The little French girl up at the chateau? he asked, and Michael nodded.

Centaine, Centaine de Thiry You crafty old dog! Andrew began to grin, his disapproval forgotten.

So that is what you’ve been up to.

Well, you have my blessing, my boy. He made a benedictory gesture with the flask. J drink to your long life and joy together. He passed the flask to Michael, but Michael paused before drinking.

I’d be honoured if you would agree to act as my best man. Don’t worry, my boy, I will be flying at your wingtip as you go into action, I give you my oath on it. He punched Michael’s arm and they grinned happily at each other and then marched side by side to the green and yellow machines standing at the head of the squadron line-up.

one after another the Wolseley Viper engines crackled and snarled and blue exhaust smoke misted the trees of the orchard. Then the SESas bumped and rocked over the uneven ground for the massed take-off.

Today, because it was a full squadron sweep, Michael would not be flying as Andrew’s wingman, but as leader of B flight. He had five other machines in his flight, and two of his pilots were new chums and would need protecting and shepherding. Hank Johnson was leadingC flight and he waved across as Michael taxied past him, and then gunned his machine into his slot behind him.

As soon as they were airborne, Michael signalled to his flight to close the formation into a tight ! and he followed Andrew, conforming to his slight left-hand turn that would carry them past the hillock beyond the chateau.

He lifted the goggles on to his forehead and slipped his scarf down off his nose and mouth so that Centaine would be able to see his face, and flying one-handed he prepared to make their private rendezvous signal to her as he passed. There was the knoll, he started smiling in anticipation, then the smile faded.

He could not see Nuage, the white stallion. He leaned far out of the cockpit, and ahead of him Andrew was doing the same, screwing his head around as he searched for the girl and the white horse.

They roared past and she was not there. The hillock was deserted. Michael peered back over his shoulder as it receded, making doubly sure. He felt the dull weight in his belly, the cold and heavy stone of forboding. She wasn’t there, their talisman had forsaken them.

He lifted the scarf over his mouth and covered his eyes with the goggles, as the three flights of aircraft bore upwards, climbing for the vital advantage of height, aiming to cross the ridges at 12,000 feet before levelling out into the patrol pattern.

His mind kept going back to Centaine. Why wasn’t she there? Was something wrong?

He found it hard to concentrate on the sky around him, She has taken our luck. She knows what it means to us and she has let us down. He shook his head. I mustn’t think about it, watch the sky! Don’t think about anything but the sky and the enemy. The light was strengthening, and the air was clear and icy cold. The land beneath them was patched with the geometrical patterns of fields and studded with the villages and towns of northern France, but directly ahead was that dung-brown strip of torn and savaged earth that marked the lines, and above it the scattered blobs of morning cloud, dull as bruises on one side and brilliant gold on the side struck by the rising sun.

To the west lay the wide basin of the Somme river where the beast of war crouched ready to spring, and in the east the sun hurled great burning lances of fire through the sky, so that when Michael looked away, his vision was starred with the memory of its brilliance.

Never look at the sun, he reminded himself testily.

Because of his distraction, he was making the mistakes of a novice.

They crossed the ridges, looking down on the patterns of opposing trenches, like worm castings on a putting green.

Don’t fix! Michael warned himself again. Never stare at any object. He resumed the veteran fighter pilot’s scan, the quick flitting search that covered the sky about him, sweeping back and forth, and down and over.

Despite all his efforts to prevent it, the thought of Centaine and her absence from the knoll crept insidiously back into his mind again, so that suddenly he realized that he had been staring at one whale-shaped cloud for five or six seconds. He was fixing again. God, man, pull yourself together! he snarled aloud.

Andrew, in the leading flight, was signalling, and Michael swivelled to pick out his sighting.

it was a flight of three aircraft, four miles south-west of their position, and 2,000 feet below them.

Friendlies. He recognized them as De Havilland twoseaters. Why hadn’t he seen them first? He had the best eyes in the squadron.

Concentrate. He scanned the line of woods south of Douai, the German-held town just east of Lens, and he picked out the freshly dug gun emplacements at the edge of the trees.

About six new batteries, he estimated, and made a note for his flight log without interrupting the pattern of his scan again.

They reached the western limit of their designated patrol area, and each flight turned in succession. They started back down the line, but with the sun directly into their eyes now, and that line of dirty grey-blue cloud on their left hand.

Cold front building, Michael thought, and then suddenly he was thinking of Centaine again, as though she had slipped in through the back door of his mind.

Why wasn’t she there? She could be sick. Out at night in the rain and cold, pneumonia is a killer. The idea shocked him. He imagined her wasting away, drowning in her own fluids.

A red Very pistol flare arched across the nose of his machine, and he started guiltily. Andrew had fired theEnemy in Sight signal while he was dreaming.

Michael searched frantically. Ah! with relief. There it is! Below and to the left.

It was a German two-seater, a solitary artillery spotted, just east of the ridges, bustling down in the direction of Arras, a slow and outdated type, easy prey for the swift and deadly SE5as. Andrew was signalling again, looking back-at Michael, the green scarf aflutter, and that devilmay-care grin on his lips.

I am attacking! Give me top cover Both Michael and Hank acknowledged the hand signals and stayed on high as Andrew banked away into a shallow diving interception, with the other five aircraft of his flight streaming down behind in attacking line astern.

What a grand sight! Michael watched them go. Thrilling to the chase, that wild charge down the sky, cavalry of the heavens in full flight, swiftly overhauling their slow and cumbersome prey.

Michael led the rest of the squadron into a series of slow shallow S-turns, holding them in position to cover the attack, and he was leaning from the cockpit waiting for the kill when abruptly he felt a slide of unease, that cold weight of premonition in his guts again, the instinct of impending disaster, and he swept the sky above and around him.

It was clear and peacefully empty, then his gaze switched towards the blinding glare of the sun and he held up his hand to cover it, and with one eye only looked past his fingers, and there they were.

They were boiling out of the cloud line like a swarm of gaudy glittering poisonous insects. It was the classic ambush. The decoy sent in low and slow to draw the enemy, and then the swift and deadly onslaught from out of the sun and the clouds.

Oh, sweet Mother of God, Michael breathed, as he snatched the Very pistol out of its holster beside his seat.

How many? It was impossible to count that vicious host. Sixty, perhaps more, three full Jagdstaffels of Alba tros DIIIs in their rainbow colours dropping falcon-swift upon Andrew’s puny flight of SESas.

Michael fired the red Very flare to warn his pilots and then winged over into a dive, aiming to intercept the enemy squadron before it could reach Andrew. Swiftly he estimated the triangle of speeds and distances and realized that they were too late, four or five seconds too late to save Andrew’s flight.

Those four or five seconds which he had squandered in dreaming and fruitlessly watching the attack on the German decoy plane, those crucial seconds in which he had neglected his duty, weighed on him like leaden bars as he pushed the throttle of the SE5a to its stop. The engine whined, that peculiar wailing protest of overdriven machinery as the tip of the spinning propeller accelerated through the speed of sound, and he could feel the wings flexing and bending under the strain as the speed and pressure built up in that suicidal dive. Andrew! he shouted. Look behind you, man! and his as lost in the howl of wind and the scream of the voice w overdriven engine.

All Andrew’s attention was fixed on his quarry, for the German decoy pilot had seen them and was also diving away towards the earth, drawing the SESas after him and transforming the hunters into unwitting prey.

The massed German Jagdstaffel held their diving attack, though they must have been fully aware of Michael’s desperate attempt to head them off. They would know as well as Michael did that his attempt was futile, that he had left it too late. The Albatroses would be able to make an attacking run over Andrew’s flight, and with complete surprise aiding them must destroy most of the SE5as in that single stroke before turning back to face Michael’s avenging counter-stroke.

Michael felt the adrenalin surge burning in his blood like the clean bright flame of a spirit lamp. Time seemed to slow down into those eternal micro-seconds of combat, so that he floated sedately downwards, and the horde of enemy aircraft appeared to hang suspended on their multicoloured wings, as though they were set like gems in the heavens.

The colours and patterns of the Albatroses were fantastic, with scarlet and black the dominant colours, but some were chequered like bar1equins, and others had the silhouettes of bat wings or birds outlined on their wings and fuselage.

At last he could see the faces of the German airmen, turning towards him and then back towards their primary quarry.

Andrew! Andrew! Michael lamented in agony as each second made it clearer just how late he would be to prevent the ambush succeeding.

His fingers numb with cold and dread, Michael reloaded the Very pistol and fired another flare forward over his own nose, trying to attract Andrew’s attention, but the red ball of flame fell away towards the earth, fizzling and spinning a pathetic thread of smoke, while half a mile further on Andrew lined up on the hapless German spotter plane, and Michael heard the tut-tut-tuttering of his Vickers as he attacked from astern.

In the same instant the wave of Albatroses broke over Andrew’s flight, from above.

Michael saw two of the SE5as mortally struck in the first seconds, and spin away with smoke and pieces of fuselage flying from them; the rest of them scattered widely, each with two or three Albatroses racing after them, almost jostling each other for a chance to take the killing line.

Only Andrew survived. His response to the first crackle of the Spandau machine-gun was instantaneous. He kicked the big green machine into that flat skidding turn that he and Michael had practised so often. He went tearing back straight into the heart of the pack, forcing the Albatroses to swerve wildly away from his head-on charge, firing furiously into their faces, emerging from behind them seemingly unscathed.

Good on you! Michael rejoiced aloud, and then he saw the rest of Andrew’s flight shot out of the sky, burning and twisting downwards, and his guilt turned to anger.

The German machines, having wrought quick destruction, were wheeling now to face the charge of Michael’s and Hank’s flights. They came together and the entire pattern of aircraft disintegrated into a milling cloud, turning like dust and debris in a whirlwind.