The Moonlight Mistress (9 page)

“Sir,” Hailey said. He ate the sandwich standing up, saving a bit of the crust, which he tore into small bits, flinging them over
the railing for the swooping, screaming gulls. When he dusted off his hands, he noticed Crispin watching him. “Sir?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Crispin pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the railing. He wished he didn’t feel jealous of the obvious affection between the captain and his batman. It had just been so long since he’d trusted anyone as much as that.

“All right, sir?”

The boy could be a mother hen. Crispin tried to smile. “Of course.” He paused. “If you’re still hungry, I have another sandwich. I couldn’t stomach it. The sea, you know.”

“Better eat it anyway, sir.”

“Never miss a chance to eat, right?” He dug the packet out of his tunic pocket, then dug farther and offered Hailey a handful of nut-milk choc. “Maybe you could hand this around. And some for you, of course. No need to say it came from me. My sister gave it to me before I left.”

“Of course, sir.” Hailey smiled back at him, a surprisingly sweet smile. “If you need any mending done, you come to me.”

“I will,” Crispin said, feeling a bit better at the genuine offer. “Thank you.” He glanced at Meyer, felt himself flush and focused on unwrapping his sandwich. “That’s kind of you.”

“My duty, sir.”

“Not really,” he said, “but I appreciate it all the same.”

“I’ll be on my way then, got some things to take care of for the captain,” Hailey said.

Crispin mentally shook himself and joined a group of the men lounging on the deck, some of them smoking in tense silence, some talking with nervous energy, some alternating both activities. Corporal Joyce pored over a first-aid text. Meyer was still scribbling and humming over by the railing; Ashby loitered near a group playing cards, and Smith slept on,
oblivious to the noise. Eventually, Hailey returned, smelling of horse, having presumably been to check on Hammerhead, Wilks’s ugly chestnut gelding. Crispin was surprised when Hailey sat beside him, pulling out a sock to darn; they sat together in silence, listening to the men talk.

Evans said, “My girl and I are getting married as soon as I get home.” He unbuttoned his tunic collar to display an impossibly delicate gold ring on a chain. “If I get killed, someone send this back to her, will you?”

“Do we inherit the girl?” Lincoln chaffed. “Cover your tender ears, Hailey.”

Hailey looked up. “You got a girl, Lincoln?”

Lincoln leered. “Anytime I want.”

“What about what they want?”

General laughter erupted.

Mason said, “I’ve got my eye on a nice plump French girl.”

“Which one?”

“Any one that’ll have me!” More laughter.

“Make sure she can cook, lad,” said Lyton, scrubbing at his gray mustache. “My wife can make roast turnips taste like the food of heaven.”

Cawley countered, “My sister’s bread is so light it could float away, but she couldn’t keep a husband.”

“He’s the fool, then,” said Lyton. “Hearth and home, lad, hearth and home.”

“Who wants a home when your wife’s screeching at you all the day long?”

“I like screeching,” Lincoln said, raising a significant eyebrow.

Southey sneered. “For Christ’s sake, man, give it a rest. Your mum wouldn’t like to hear that spilling out of her baby boy’s mouth.”

“Not here, is she? War’s no place for a woman.”

“We’ll be sure and get a nice husky fellow to mop your manly brow in hospital, then. Me, I’ll settle for a pretty young thing with soft hands.”

Woods said, “You’d let a lady nurse you? She’d see—you know—”

More laughter. Hailey turned to Crispin. “You got a sister, you said?” he asked quietly.

Surprised, Crispin answered, “Yes. Always set me right when I needed it. You?”

“Yes,” Hailey admitted. “Doesn’t like me much.”

Crispin said, “Lucilla’s so much older, it’s like…she’s my friend.”

“Not Agnes. She’s stuck home caring for Mum while I—” Hailey didn’t finish.

Crispin said, not really asking, “You’re caring for them, too, aren’t you? I mean, with your pay?”

“That’s why I joined up,” Hailey admitted. “Mum’s often ill, and Dad left us—”

“I’m sorry.” And he was truly sorry.

“Oh, it was years back,” Hailey said. “I took a factory job, then I apprenticed at tailoring.”

Crispin had never heard Hailey say so much, all at one time, so he wasn’t surprised when the boy handed him the last of the nut-milk choc and retreated from the conversation. They sat together in companionable silence. When Southey came over a little later to tell Hailey the captain was looking for him, Crispin patted him on the shoulder once and then turned again to look out to sea, trying to reconcile himself to living in close company, but always alone.

TO MEMORIALIZE HIS BROKEN ENGAGEMENT TO the gorgeous and well-off Miss Jemima Ruthven, Gabriel Meyer began a viola concerto on the British Expeditionary Force’s voyage from Southampton to Le Havre. Having expected to brood upon his dismissal from an arrangement of nearly a year’s standing, one that would have benefited both her family and his, he was disconcerted by how quickly his melodies drove out thoughts of her and her glorious legs.

Perhaps Ashby had been right. He
knew
Ashby had been right about Jemima, but he had decided to at least give her a chance. People married all the time with less in common that they’d had. At least they’d been physically attracted to one another. Perhaps he ought to have tried harder to understand her sometimes rigid opinions on social issues. But the regiment still would have been mustered, and Jemima still would have handed back his grandmother’s ring.

He was relieved she’d done it. He tried not to think he might be relieved because he didn’t really want to be married
at all. It wasn’t true. He liked women. He liked sex with them. After this war ended, he would meet another woman, nicer than Jemima, and they would marry, and he would give his mother grandchildren.

He worked at the concerto’s
largo
while on the train that carried them toward the potential line of battle at Maubeuge, scribbling notes with a pencil in a hardbound staff notebook propped on his knee, striving to hear music in his head rather than snoring. He might have ridden in the first-class car with the other officers, where he was sure the food would be better than biscuits and Bully Beef, but his major had nothing but contempt for Jews and for Gabriel in particular. So rather than combine a grand case of nervous jitters at the thought of being killed with constant animosity, he’d chosen to stay here with his men. He thought they might take comfort in his presence, anyway. His platoon included the youngest men in the company; only fitting, as he was—at twenty-six—the eldest of the lieutenants, and likely to remain so, given his religion.

He’d never expected to command anyone other than his bandsmen. Sergeant Pittfield had been a great help, but he’d been sure his lack of combat experience would diminish him in the eyes of his company. So far, they’d shown remarkable respect toward him, more than he’d received since his enlistment. He suspected Ashby’s hand, passing some of his charismatic glow in Gabriel’s direction, or at the very least reassuring the boys that Gabriel could be trusted. Or perhaps they had no choice other than to trust their officer. They came to him often enough, with the smallest of problems. The youngest lieutenant of their company, Daglish, often came to him, as well; like him, Daglish had taught music, but at a girls’ school. He suspected Daglish was homesick.

“Sir,” said Private Evans, his tall and gawky form rocking slightly with the motion of the train. “Sir, this is a cattle car. It smells like cows.”

“So it does,” Gabriel said. He grinned up at the boy. “Be glad the cows aren’t riding with us.”

“Yes, sir,” Evans said, and retreated to the cluster of men at the car’s opposite end. The murmur of their voices resumed. Sergeant Pittfield continued to snore. Gabriel pondered the difficulty of fingering a particular passage on the viola as opposed to on his cello. He wasn’t yet familiar enough with the viola to feel it in his memory. He left the passage as it was. Likely no one would ever play the piece, anyway.

The train stopped briefly for a sanitary break and he met up with Ashby, who slipped him a fat packet of roast-beef sandwiches, two boiled eggs and a bottle of wine. “Your rations,” he explained.

Gabriel studied the bottle’s label, which bore hand-painted floral designs in gold ink. “You stole this from Major Harvey, didn’t you?”

Ashby grinned. “Captain Wilks provided a distraction, and I took advantage of it. Harvey was complaining his port was agitated on the crossing. I simply spared him additional discomfort. And he can’t blame you, you’re riding with the men.”

“He’ll find a way,” Gabriel said, and sighed. He didn’t normally deal with the major directly, so perhaps things would improve later, when he found someone else upon whom to express his displeasure. “All’s well?”

“We’ve had some pretty mademoiselles trading kisses for badges. A couple of them tried to pluck Daglish’s buttons at the last stop. I didn’t hear what he said to them, but their
faces were a picture! Watch none of your boys get left behind, accidentally-a-purpose.”

“Watch
you
don’t get left behind,” he said. “I seem to recall you can be counted on to take advantage of free kisses, yourself.”

Ashby wiggled his eyebrows. “Ah, but you know I won’t stay behind with them. They all lack that certain something.”

“That’s never stopped you before. Hold on to your badge.” Like the rest of his family, Ashby had always been free with his physical affection, though with Ashby, it went a bit further than that. Gabriel had a disconcerting mental flash of an afternoon, a decade past, they’d spent together in a gazebo on the Ashby lands, their last summer together before Gabriel went abroad to stay with his uncle and attend conservatory. Their kisses had been practiced by then, and once they’d finished their first urgent coupling, they’d teased each other for hours, kissing, caressing and talking about girls, in particular strategies for meeting girls they could marry, a subject on which Ashby obsessed, as he was the last male of his line, and never allowed to forget it. Gabriel had never told Ashby that he’d been perfectly happy at the time without thinking of girls at all.

Sometimes he thought Ashby suspected what he’d felt, but neither of them ever brought it up. Perhaps he’d grown out of the feelings he’d had for his friend. He liked women, after all. He’d been with three different women, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been attracted to Jemima, even if he’d lusted more for her body than for her mind.

He and Ashby had been two against the world once, the only two families in the district who didn’t belong to the Church of England, and Ashby with that other difference, as well, the secret Gabriel had kept for him since they’d been children. He’d thought, back then, that Ashby’s future chances
at marriage were more limited even than his own, but he’d failed to account for his friend growing into even more charm than he’d possessed as a boy. Ashby never lacked for sex, and surely he would find the right woman someday.

Ashby lifted a heavily callused finger and reverently touched the lacquered
wolf courant
adorning his field service cap. “No fear I’ll be led astray. The Germans will have to carve this off my corpse,” he said, and waved cheerfully as he loped back up the line to the first-class carriages.

Gabriel wasn’t devout, but he said a prayer anyway, hoping Ashby hadn’t been tempting fate. Tucking the wine beneath his arm and the boiled eggs in his pockets, he carried the sandwiches and returned to his platoon. Sergeant Pittfield had awakened at last, and was leading the men in a singsong:

Gabriel guiltily glanced down at his sandwiches as the train’s whistle blew again. He was hungry, but he ought to share; he had a feeling rations were going to be somewhat irregular until they arrived at their destination. He stopped at the boxcar’s door, juggling his packages. Woods stuck his head out. “Sir! Grab on, sir!”

“Essentials first,” Gabriel said, tossing up the sandwiches,
then handed up the bottle of wine. Woods hauled him up into the car just as the steam whistle blew a third time and the train jolted into ponderous movement.

“Here’s your rations, sir,” Woods said, giving him his sandwiches.

“There’s plenty to share,” he said. “Ashby seems to think I need fattening up.”

“Oh, no, sir. Skuce trotted up to the engine and got us a dixie of hot water so we’ve even got proper tea. Look, we’ve given you that corner over there, so you can have a kip after.”

The corner in question was now clearly officers’ country, in that it boasted a folded tarp for a seat and another, rolled up, for a pillow. Clearly, he was not allowed to fraternize with his subordinates. Gabriel hoped to God he wouldn’t spend the entire war in glorified isolation. At least in England, he’d had the constant supervision of the boy trumpeters. He found himself missing their mischief, though he was glad they hadn’t been allowed to accompany the regiment and wouldn’t be in danger.

As the train picked up momentum, Skuce leaned halfway out the door and shouted. Gabriel cast a glance around the car, the head count as automatic as breathing. No one was missing. Some other platoon’s soldier, then. Evans joined Skuce, then Pittfield, as well, laughing and encouraging. “Help him in,” Gabriel called. “We can’t leave anyone behind.”

“Jump!” yelled Evans. “Be quick about it!”

Gabriel stepped away from the surge of movement around the doorway as the runner hurtled inside, sending his rescuers careening into their fellows, just as the train picked up speed. The newcomer stood and brushed himself off. “Thanks,” he said, a cheerful grin on his round face. His dark curls had fallen
onto his forehead; he pulled his field service cap from a pocket and slapped it on. “Meyer,” he said.

It was Lieutenant Daglish. He was lucky he’d ended up with Gabriel and not a more rigid officer. “Found yourself a
mademoiselle
back there?” Gabriel asked.

Daglish looked puzzled, then flushed. “Looking for you, actually. I brought you some sandwiches.”

Gabriel held up the package Ashby had given him.

“Oh,” Daglish said, looking at the floor. “I was worried you might not—”

It had been a foolish act, but kindly meant. “We’ll need them sooner or later,” Gabriel said. “Come on, sit over here with me. Now if only we had some coffee!”

He and Daglish talked easily, wandering from subject to subject in a way that reminded him a bit of his conversations with Ashby. By the end of the train journey, Gabriel had decided Daglish would make a good friend. Daglish understood music; he’d collected folk songs all over Britain, taught theory and directed the choirs at the girls’ school where he’d worked before being called up from the army reserves, and sung in the choir himself at King’s. Gabriel had never been able to avoid the extensive repertoire of the Anglican church, and eventually had arrived at an appreciation that his family found inexplicable.

After Gabriel requested, and the men begged, Daglish sang snatches of his favorites, Joseph Barnby and Charles Villiers Stanford and even the Roman Catholic composer Edward Elgar, in a tenor voice that rended the heart with its clarity. Daglish must have been the most cherubic boy soprano ever to grace a church, all the more so because he sang without self-consciousness, but Daglish assured him that no, his singing
voice as a child had been unremarkable, and it was lucky he’d grown into a tenor, as every choir he’d ever sung in was short of them. One might expect such a voice to emanate from an androgynous pale wisp of a creature, not a man as sturdy and muscular as Daglish, though the more he thought about it, the more Daglish and his voice fit together. Daglish seemed to take joy in singing, be lost in a rich physical pleasure that reminded Gabriel, inappropriately, of moments of sexual transcendence.

Deliberately, he set to opening the bottle of wine, which put an end to the singing.

Gabriel never learned the name of the town where they disembarked to a small but enthusiastic crowd of cheering French. He clapped Daglish on the shoulder and sent him back to his platoon, then assessed his own men. He’d just instructed them to fill their canteens at a decorative fountain when Hailey, the captain’s batman, ran up, looking scrawnier than usual in a field uniform that was slightly too large. Hailey saluted quickly and announced, “Fourth Dragoons’ve met the enemy already. We’re to hold the line.”

This entailed reaching the line. Mustering the men into fours, checking over their Enfield rifles and webbing equipment, and marching them to their destination, mostly uphill and over slippery cobblestones, took the rest of the afternoon and half the following night. Gabriel was glad his men had water, as there was no time to stop for more than a bite or two of iron rations. The British had been intended to protect the French army’s left flank as the Germans advanced through Belgium to breach the French border. However, if they did not arrive in time, that exposed left flank would provide an easy entrance point to the country, and allow the Germans to trap the French in pincers.

The men were by turns grimly professional and youthfully exuberant. As the miles wound away beneath their boots, Gabriel heard music from down the column. Daglish’s platoon was singing, not very well,
Mary Mack’s mother’s makin’ Mary Mack marry me
, gradually growing faster, stumbling over words, laughing and starting again. Gabriel found himself smiling when he heard Daglish’s clear voice riding the waves of semituneful rumbling, and gave Pittfield a meaningful glance. “We can do better than that, can’t we?” The hours passed more quickly once a friendly competition began, the song only fading as the long still twilight grayed the fields of corn and beets and fragrant clover.

After midnight, Hailey ran back again, carrying more orders. “We’re to bivvy here and dig in, then head out to Mons Canal in the morning.”

Digging shallow trenches for protection took another hour, then Gabriel and his platoon collapsed where they could and plunged instantly into sleep, only to be roused two hours later by the roar of a wild thunderstorm. Weary, dirty, unshaven and now soaked to the skin, Gabriel found the other officers. Daglish’s draggled curls were plastered to his forehead, his cheeks rosy with chill. Smith’s pale moon face was even paler than normal; he looked as if he’d been dragged out of the Thames. Ashby was in the same soggy state as the rest of them, but still managed to look insouciant, even with water dripping off the end of his long nose. Gabriel took off his rain-spattered spectacles and tried to wipe them on his uniform tunic. When he put them back on, all he could see was a grayish smear. He sighed and took them off.