Thomas and the Society of Sentinels 12/15)
Chapter Twelve
“Probably best to put him on one of yours, your lordship, since you told me not to look for one for him,” Clint said, with a faint hint of reproach, as they rode through the park.
“I’m sure that’s fine,” Gerald said, shuffling the reins into one hand so he could give his nervous mount a pat on the neck. He was riding Bugle, the most spirited of “his” horses, and the one Clint usually rode. Clint had decided to bring the colt-now named Robin-along on a leading-rein, so he was riding a steady little mare called Gypsy. “I thought Gypsy might be a good choice.” Gerald rode her often; she’d been the quickest to get used to his one-legged way of riding, and was still the best about standing still for the rather complicated process of getting him into the saddle.
“Hm. What’re his hands like?”
Gerald imagined Thomas’s hands-or Barrow’s-smoothing the back of a jacket, and shivered involuntarily. Bugle danced to one side. “I beg your pardon?” Gerald asked, once he’d gotten the horse back under control.
“Do you think he’ll be heavy on the reins? Gypsy doesn’t like that much.”
“Ah,” Gerald said. “I’m not sure.” He was certainly very light with his hands when he was valeting, but that might not translate. And Gerald put a substantial amount of effort into not thinking about how Thomas’s skill with his hands might transfer into other areas. He had to, in order to avoid embarrassing physical reactions while dressing. Firmly diverting himself from that training of thought, he said of his third horse, “Baz is rather tall, though.”
“What difference does that make?”
“It might be intimidating, for his first time.”
In the end they agreed on Gypsy for Thomas’s first ride, with the proviso that if Clint thought he was too heavy on the reins, he’d put him on a leading rein or use Baz for the next time.
It took Thomas a bit longer to fulfill his part of the bargain, but two days later, as Barrow was dressing Gerald for dinner, he said that he’d found suitable boots and was working on altering the other things.
“Good,” Gerald said. “Well, I’d been thinking it’s probably best if Clint helps us for your first lesson, if that’s all right.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“When should I ask him to expect us?” Neither Thomas nor Barrow answered. “Saturday, perhaps?” That was two days; Gerald didn’t know if that was enough time for him to make the alterations or not.
“That should be all right, my lord.”
“If it’s fine, of course. My usual riding-time in the afternoon is probably best, since Clint’s in the habit of making himself available then.”
“Yes, my lord.”
They were a full complement for dinner-Mama had been complaining that they hadn’t all turned out at once in a while. “You seem very cheerful,” Georgie observed as Gerald took her in.
“Thomas has agreed to ride with me on Saturday,” Gerald answered.
Simon, seating himself on the other side of the table, snickered.
“Don’t you start,” Gerald warned him. As far as he could tell, Simon had left Thomas entirely alone during their estrangement, but it would be just like him to try to disrupt things now.
“I’m certain he won’t,” Papa said, which turned out to be his only contribution to the dinner conversation that evening.
Barrow made no further allusion to their engagement, or to riding in general, during any of the times they met, until he appeared in the dressing room Saturday afternoon in his new riding things-whipcord breeches, a hound’s-tooth waistcoat, and tweed jacket. His boots gleamed like new-he must have spent some time polishing them, unless he’d got the boot-boy to do it-but were just a bit short. Well, it was more important that they fit in the foot than in the leg. “Ah,” Gerald said. “You look very nice.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Thomas said, a bit stiffly.
Barrow helped him into his riding things, Gerald took up his crutches, and they started for the stables. “We couldn’t have asked for a better day for it,” Gerald observed. The sun was shining, and the breeze slight-gusts tended to startle horses.
“Yes, my lord,” Thomas said.
Clint had Gypsy and Baz saddled for them, and led the way-and the horses-to one of the back paddocks. It wasn’t the one where Gerald had first met the half-wild horse, but it was near.
“Hold these,” Clint said, handing Gypsy’s reins to Thomas. Thomas stood, looking as if he did not quite know what to do with them, as Clint went round to tighten the saddle girth. After collecting them again, Clint said, “I think we’d best get you aboard first-seeing how his lordship does it won’t help you much, anyway.”
Clint’s first explanation of how to get on the horse was so tortured Gerald couldn’t follow it, and he knew what he was talking about. The second try wasn’t much better. Finally Thomas said, “Why don’t you show me?”
Clint agreed to that, first swinging easily into Gypsy’s saddle, then, at Thomas’s request, getting back off and doing it again more slowly. The second time, he also demonstrated how to hold the reins and the Correct Position Of The Leg, which as far as Gerald could tell was considered a sacrament in Clint’s personal religion.
Then he hopped back off and it was Thomas’s turn to try. There was one moment as he stood, facing the horse’s near side and looking at the saddle, which was nearly at his eye level, that Gerald thought he might back out. But finally he shoved his foot in the stirrup and hauled himself aboard, looking somewhat surprised to have successfully ended up on top of the horse.
“There you are, now,” Clint said-Gerald was unsure if he was talking to Thomas or the horse. He took Thomas’s foot out of the stirrup and adjusted the length. When he put Thomas’s foot back in the stirrup, he moved the leg into the Correct Position-or as close as he could get it, in any case. He did the same on the other side, then said, “Stand in your stirrups…sink your weight into your heels.”
Then it was time for Gerald to get on Baz. In order to do it, he had to climb a mounting block on his crutches, then hand them over to Clint and stand there on his one leg, balancing himself against the horse, while Clint took them over to lean against the fence. Then Clint came back and steadied him as he swung his stump over the saddle and got on. It was a rather precarious process-if the horse opted not to stand obediently during any part of it, he’d fall on his face, or worse. Fortunately, Baz stayed still this time.
The stirrup was already adjusted correctly for Gerald, but Clint fussed over him a bit anyway, before finally suggesting he start the horse walking around the perimeter of the paddock. Gerald did so, and heard Clint saying to Thomas, “Just give ‘er a little nudge with your foot there, and she’ll follow on after his lordship and Baz.” A pause, and then, “A little more of a nudge than that.”
Gerald had his back to them-and he’d learned rather quickly a one-legged man was wise to keep himself straight in the saddle-but he heard Gypsy’s hoofbeats start up, just a little out of rhythm with Baz’s. He also heard her tail swish, and Thomas’s rapid heartbeat. Then a change in Gypsy’s stride as she kicked out.
“What’s it doing?” Thomas asked, his voice tight with anxiety.
“Loosen up on your reins a bit. Like that. She can tell you’re nervous.”
“Her, too?” Thomas murmured, too low for anyone but a Sentinel to have heard him.
Clint only had to tell him about the reins once more, and he seemed pleased with Thomas’s progress regarding Correct Position Of The Leg, but he did tell him rather frequently to stop sitting so stiffly and move with the horse. Fortunately, Thomas seemed to take it well. From what Gerald could see, when they happened to be on opposite sides of the paddock, he looked to be doing quite well.
Once Baz had warmed up his legs, Gerald picked up a trot-he didn’t trot much when they rode out, since the bouncing gait was tricky to ride with only one leg, but since they were in the paddock, it was a good time to practice.
“Do I have to do that?” he heard Thomas ask Clint.
“Not right away,” Clint answered.
Later, when Gerald took Baz into a canter-faster, but in fact a bit easier to ride than the trot-Thomas said, “I’m not doing that.”
But by the time they finished, Clint pronounced Thomas ready to ride out, next time, if they were careful and if Clint went along in case of any unexpected excitement. “Is that all right with you, Thomas?” Gerald asked, accepting his crutches back from Thomas.
Thomas nodded gamely. “All right. Tuesday?”
#
Sunday morning, Thomas ached in muscles he hadn’t realized he owned. Riding a horse, as it turned out, was substantially more work than riding in a car or a wagon. To his surprise, though, he’d rather enjoyed it, once he’d worked out that the horse was rather unlikely to start rearing and bucking for no reason, and that as long as it didn’t, the chances of falling off were slim.
Thinking that William would have been thrilled to have a similar opportunity didn’t diminish his enjoyment, either. He knew he ought to have given up on that old rivalry-particularly given William was dead-but it still pleased Thomas, in a mild and unworthy sort of way, to feel that he’d gotten one-up on him.
He could have done without having two sets of riding clothes to take care of afterwards, but he decided that was an inconvenience he could live with. He did have some opinions on how the process of getting his lordship into the saddle could be improved, and when they went out again on Tuesday, he insisted that his lordship get on first, so that Thomas could handle his crutches and Clint could stay with the horse.
Tuesday was a somewhat drizzly day, but that didn’t seem to be enough to stop his lordship from enjoying the ride. They went along a little path through the park, ending out in a large field. Both Clint and the horse he was riding seemed to perk up at the sight of it.
“Yes, go ahead,” his lordship said, and Clint touched his cap and dug in his heels. Thomas noticed now that there were some obstacles set up in the field. Clint aimed the horse at one of them, and it leaped over. “You don’t have to do that, either,” his lordship said.
“Good,” Thomas said. “Do you do that?”
“I used to,” his lordship said. “Not since losing my leg, though. Clint keeps reminding me that plenty of ladies hunt sidesaddle, so I should be able to manage, but I haven’t quite felt ready to try it yet.”
It was something, Thomas thought, that his lordship could admit as easily as that that there was something he was afraid to try.
His lordship went on to tell a story about a pony he’d had, “When we were about twelve,” who had refused to jump hedges. “Anything with rails, he’d sail right over, but show him a hedge and he’d balk, run out, whatever he could do other than go over it. It meant we couldn’t take him hunting, so we tried everything we could think of to get him over it. Letting him take his time sniffing around the hedge, taking him up to it slowly, running him up at it at the fastest gallop we could get out of him. That time I went over the hedge, but the pony didn’t. Euan-” He hesitated. “thought I’d broken my neck.”
Daringly, Thomas said, “You can talk about him, if you like, my lord.” He’d worked out that “we” in any story about his lordship’s childhood meant him and Euan, but his lordship rarely mentioned him by name. He wasn’t sure if his lordship didn’t want to talk about him, or if he thought Thomas didn’t want to hear about it. “I mean, it doesn’t bother me. If you want to.”
His lordship looked over at him. “Thank you, Thomas. There, ah, there isn’t much to say about my life before the war that doesn’t have him in it.”
Still, Thomas was a bit relieved that his lordship just told a few more childhood stories, without obviously editing Euan out of them, and didn’t launch into a flood of confidences.
As they returned to his lordship’s room after the ride, his lordship said, “Bit chilly today. Would you like a drink, before I-” He hesitated. “Send for my valet?”
“All right,” Thomas agreed, amused. “Probably shouldn’t keep that valet of yours waiting too long, though. I understand he’s very particular.”
“Oh, rather,” his lordship said, sitting on the sofa.
Thomas went for the decanter and glasses-there were two, so his lordship must have planned this. He found he didn’t mind. He sat on the sofa-not right next to his lordship, but still, he felt this was rather a momentous step. His lordship poured and handed him a glass. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” Thomas echoed. It was rather nice to be drinking the good liquor again.
“Shall we ride again in a few days? Not Thursday; I’m engaged that afternoon.”
For the Armistice Day service, Thomas knew. “All right.” He’d been thinking about the service. He didn’t want to go, but the more he heard about it in the servants’ hall, the more he thought his lordship might…well. Might need him. And not as a valet. “Friday?”
“That sounds fine,” his lordship said. He took another sip from his glass. “I’ve been enjoying…getting to know you.”
“So have I, my lord,” Thomas said, honestly.
“Good.” He looked into the depths of his glass. “I hope I haven’t been…pressuring you. I’ve been trying to do better about that.”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “I mean, no, you haven’t been, my lord. I know we need to…talk more. It’s just not easy for me.”
“I gathered,” his lordship said. “I thought that…well, I’m not entirely sure what I thought. The Guides I’m used to are very comfortable talking with us about…various private matters. I think I may have imagined that if I could get you to do so just once, everything would fall into place. Silly of me, really.”
“Well,” Thomas said. “I don’t know why, all those times you asked me what you could do to make me more comfortable, I never thought to say you could make a start by not asking quite so often.” It seemed rather obvious now. “But I’ve got that sorted, now.”
“Good,” his lordship said.
Suddenly uncomfortable, Thomas drained his glass and stood. “Perhaps we’ll talk some more on Friday, my lord. In the meantime, I expect you’ll be wanting your valet to get you out of those wet things.”
His lordship accepted the switch gracefully, sudden as it was. He even, once they’d gone into the dressing room, responded to Thomas’s, “How was your ride, my lord?” precisely as if Thomas hadn’t actually been there.
Thursay morning-Armistice Day-it was pouring with rain. “What will they do about the ceremony?” Mrs. Hope wondered out loud.
“Have it in the church, I expect,” Mr. Clement said.
“But the memorial is outdoors. They can’t dedicate it from indoors,” the housekeeper fretted.
“I expect the vicar and her ladyship will think of something.”
Thomas had made up his mind the night before that he wasn’t going to go. His lordship had already said he didn’t have to-and it wasn’t as though he was going alone; the entire family and most of the household were going, right down to the kitchen girl, who’d lost her father and a brother. His lordship wouldn’t lack for people to comfort him-people who had known Euan, as well.
He kept his resolve up, even as he dressed his lordship for the day, in one of his black town suits. “I suppose that’s appropriate, isn’t it? I feel as though I’m going to a funeral.”
“Yes, my lord. Perfectly appropriate.” He tucked an extra handkerchief into the jacket pocket, in case it was needed.
The family gathered to start for the village at a quarter-past ten. At half-past, those of the staff who hadn’t gone with them began getting into their coats and hats. Thomas sat at the servants’ hall table, reading in the newspaper about the “unknown soldier” being buried with full military honours at Westminster Abbey that day. They’d dug up bodies from the makeshift cemeteries near several battlefields, including the Somme, and chosen one at random for the honours.
Thomas wondered if it might be someone he’d met. He supposed that was rather the point-no one knew who it was, so it might as well be your son, your brother. The transport officer you’d fucked up against the wall of a deserted dugout one quiet night. Anyone.
The newspaper talked about how the Unknown Soldier was a hero, representing all the heroes-but for all the ones who’d picked him out knew, he could have been a deserter, an idler, some species of coward.
Hell, if enough of the uniform had rotted off, he could even be a Hun. You were supposed to sort them out, on burial detail, but sometimes it got too dark to see before you’d finished. Or sometimes you just didn’t bother-like a private Thomas had known once who had stood up, suddenly, amid the rest of them who were crouched over, both to see better and to keep from catching the eye of any lingering snipers, and shouted, “God doesn’t care!”
Thomas wasn’t sure whether he’d meant God didn’t care which bodies were German and which British, or something more general. Either way, he was probably right. He’d been killed the next day, and God didn’t care about that, either.
At a quarter to eleven, Thomas snatched up his coat and hat and started for the village, making it to the church just as the final, haunting notes of “Last Post” were played.
#
“And now,” the vicar droned, “let us all observe two minutes’ silence, so that, in the words of his majesty, ‘in perfect stillness the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the Glorious Dead.’”
Nothing was ever fully silent to a Sentinel, of course. Even after everyone had bowed their heads and had decided what they were going to do with the pew bulletins, there were still heartbeats, breathing. Some ragged. Behind him, Gerald heard someone sob. He didn’t know who-not even if it was a man or a woman. Beside him, Georgie was soundlessly mouthing the words of the Lord’s Prayer, as she’d done as a child to keep from crying while her nurse cleaned a skinned knee or removed a splinter.
Gerald closed his eyes and remembered. The shelling had been heavy all day. They’d huddled in the dugout, dirt shaking down from the ceiling into the tea. “Gives it that authentic trench flavor,” Euan had said. “One day, when we’re far from here, we’ll be having tea and you’ll say, ‘Put a pinch of farmyard dirt in mine; I want to remember the old days.’”
A sob escaped him, just as the trumpet played the Rouse. Simon gave Gerald a look over his shoulder. Gerald’s first thought was that it was a rebuke for the unmanly display, but it hadn’t quite seemed like that.
Perhaps even Simon could have a bit of sympathy, on Armistice Day.
The vicar stood up again to give a homily that was so anodyne it allowed Gerald a chance to pull himself together-it was heavy on themes of remembrance and sacrifice, but so vague it could have been about anything.
After a hymn, a man who was running for MP got up next, to talk about British Pluck and the need to Maintain Vigilance against the German threat. Gerald quietly resolved to vote for the other fellow, whoever he was.
The next speech, given by a retired curate who Gerald remembered had congratulated him heartily for signing up, was more of the same patriotic bluster. He knew there’d been speeches like it made from pulpits across Britain while the war was still on-he’d read enough of them in the newspapers-but here, and now, it seemed obscene. How did the others not see that it dishonoured the “glorious dead” to bring into this, the only funeral many of them would ever have, another hollow recital of the lies they’d died for?
He’d have stormed out, if he hadn’t been trapped between Georgie and Mama.
Another hymn came next, which gave him time to cool his temper-he didn’t pay much attention to it, except to note that it was a familiar one, one of the ones they often sang at funerals. He mouthed the words without thinking about them.
As the last notes of the song died away, two village children, a boy and a girl, stepped forward. In their high, clear voices they recited, “If I should die, think only this of me….”
Gerald knew the poem. It was a lovely thing, if one could view it in the abstract. He tried to steel himself against the line he knew was coming. “In that rich earth, a richer dust concealed.” Euan was that-a dust that had once breathed, and now no longer did.
Brooke, he knew, had written the poem before seeing the Front-had, in fact, died before reaching the Front. He had never seen anyone buried alive. There had been, when he’d written it, no “corner of a foreign field” that was both the dying-place and the resting place of the person he had loved best in the world.
Gerald wondered, sometimes, if in his last moments alive, the poet had regretted writing it. He wept then, making no effort to hide his tears. He could tell, from the ragged breathing and the sniffling and the whisper of handkerchiefs behind him, that he was not the only one.
The vicar took the pulpit again, after the poem had finished. “After the reading of the 23rd Psalm, we will remove, solemnly-” He said the last with a meaningful look at the boys’ choir-“To the churchyard for the dedication of the War Memorial by Lord and Lady Yernemuth.” Clearing his throat, he opened his Bible-unnecessarily, surely; any vicar worth his salt must have that one memorized-and began, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want….”
#
Thomas slipped out of the church as soon as the vicar had finished saying, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” One advantage of having arrived so late that he had no choice but to stand in the back was that it was quite easy to get out before the family, up in the front pew, had even managed to stand up. He’d decided that, even if he was here as a Guide, he’d draw on his experience as a footman and remain unseen unless needed.
The War Memorial was in the churchyard, shrouded in canvas. Thomas found a spot in the lee of a monument to the 4th Earl of Yernemuth where he thought he’d stand a good chance of being unobserved-if the parishioners-mourners-whatever they were, formed up where he thought they would, he’d be behind them again.
His lordship looked pale, coming out of the church-pale but red-eyed. He was holding himself stiffly, like a man in pain. Her ladyship said something to him; he shook his head. He stood out of the way of the solemnly-removing crowd and, once it had formed up, lingered at the back of it.
The rest of the family was front-and-center. Thomas had wondered why none of them had had speaking parts in the earlier ceremony; now he found that the answer was that they were all involved in this part-all except for his lordship, apparently. Her ladyship started off, “Every family in the village has been touched by this war. Has fought, or lost, or sacrificed.” She went on to talk about the contributions of the villagers-how many men had joined up, how many socks the women’s auxiliary had knitted, like that. “I know,” she said in closing, “that I am among the most fortunate of mothers. Both of my sons have come home to me, alive if not whole. Know that every day, when I look upon my two living sons, I think of those of you were not so blessed.”
His lordship stiffened at that, and started to turn-Thomas didn’t know why, but he’d have sworn he was on the point of leaving right then. But he about-faced with a visible effort and listened as Simon got up to talk about his war service.
That was the part where Thomas would have turned tail, if he was going to. As far as he was concerned, anyone who’d been general staff might as well not have gone at all. Of course, he’d have been happy to have a position out of the line himself-anyone would. But to go bragging about it was just poor taste.
Lady Georgiana’s part was to talk about the selection of the monument, and the family’s contribution of it, managing to make the latter sound a bit less self-aggrandizing than Thomas would have thought possible. “Few of our war dead have been brought home to rest here in the churchyard,” she said. “Many have graves their families will never be able to visit. Some-” Her voice broke. “Some have no known grave at all. It is our hope and intention that this memorial shall serve as a place of remembrance for them, and will be of some comfort to those who loved them.” She paused for a long time, seemingly trying to gain control of herself. “My father, Lord Yernemuth, will read the names of the honoured dead, that they may each be remembered. Lady Yernemuth will lay a wreath, which contains one flower for each of these names.”
She stepped back, and Lord Yernemuth stepped forward. Thomas had wondered what he was going to do; it was difficult to imagine him giving a speech. He began reading the names, pronouncing each one slowly.
The order seemed to be random, but it must have made some sense to his lordship. Thomas could tell, by how stiff he was, that he knew when his father was getting close to the name that meant most to him.
“Euan Alain Morgan.”
His lordship did turn, then, and fled as fast as his crutch and wooden leg could carry him.
Which wasn’t particularly fast, of course. Thomas soon caught up with him, leaning against the lych-gate, his head bowed. “My lord?”
“Oh-Thomas,” he said, then corrected himself, “Barrow.”
Thomas shook his head; he didn’t mind much about that, just now. “Are you….” He’d been about to ask if his lordship was all right, but that wasn’t the right question. “What can I do?”
“Is it all right,” his lordship asked, his voice a little distant and strange, “for an earl’s heir to have a drink with his valet on Armistice Day?”
“I’m not sure about that, my lord,” Thomas said. “But I daresay two old soldiers can get right bloody pissed together, if that’ll do.”
“Even better.”
#
Gerald suspected that in as soon as the ceremony ended the pub would become very crowded, but they were the first ones there. Even the publican was absent-probably at the ceremony himself. He’d had a son, once.
“The parlour bar, I think,” Gerald said. Someone from the family ought to make an appearance in the public bar, stand a round to all the soldiers who’d survived their service, perhaps, but let Papa or Simon do that.
They had their choice of seats, and Thomas-or should he say, Corporal Barrow-steered them toward a place by the fire. It had died down a bit-probably been allowed to, since the publican would have known there’d be no one here-but flared up again when Thomas tossed some more wood on it. “Here,” Gerald said, taking out a banknote which he knew would more than cover anything the pub had on offer. “Why don’t you see if you can find us a bottle of something, and I’ll apologize to the barman later.”
Thomas came back with a half-empty bottle of some reasonable blended whiskey and two glasses. Sitting down, he poured a generous measure into each. “The Glorious Dead,” Gerald said ironically, raising his and downing it in one swallow as Thomas did the same. “And their mothers,” he added, thinking of another poem.
Thomas refilled their glasses. “I don’t think I ever saw anyone die gloriously, did you?”
“No,” Gerald said. “Stupidly, yes. Pointlessly, yes.”
“Crying for their mums,” Thomas suggested.
“Or thinking about when they could get a roll-up and a pair of dry socks.”
“I once saw a man who was shot with his trousers down round his ankles. It was funny because he was German. Always wondered what they put in the letter, for something like that.”
“That he died gallantly in the course of his duties,” Gerald said. “’s how soldiers always die, in letters to their mothers.”
“Hm,” Thomas said. He rotated the glass in his fingers, then raised it. “The inglorious dead.”
They drank to the inglorious dead, then drank the next one more slowly.
“Euan’s one of those ‘with no known grave,’” Gerald said suddenly. “They told me later they had a hard enough time getting the wounded out, let alone the dead. We’d been holding little bulge in the line-I’m told there was some debate in the general staff as to whether it constituted a salient or not. The company that’d been there before us was very successful in the last big push-managed to push the line forward a few hundred yards. It was a nasty, damp piece of low ground of no strategic value whatsoever, but of course we had to keep it-otherwise the gallant heroes who’d died taking it would have made their noble sacrifice in vain.”
“Course,” Thomas said.
“The Germans hadn’t been trying too hard to take it back-winter was coming on, and they likely didn’t want to spend it there any more than we did. But I suppose their general staff decided they had to get it back, to avenge the gallant heroes who’d died trying to stop us taking it in the first place. So they’d been shelling us for about a day and a half, and we knew they’d be coming over sooner or later. Then it started raining, and a bit later, the shelling stopped.”
“Imagine that,” Thomas said.
“Yes. Naturally, the general staff thought it likely that they’d stopped shelling because they were, even then, making a daring assault under cover of darkness.”
“Instead of, say, because the guns got fouled in the wet.”
“Of course. German guns never get fouled in the wet.”
“Nor do ours,” Thomas said. “If it looks like they have, they’re just malingering, like all those blokes who say they’ve got shell shock.”
Gerald supposed he’d know a bit about that, having been in the medical corps. The army had learned to accept that Sentinels could be affected by the stress of combat, but they’d never seemed quite sure that anyone else could be. “At any rate,” he said, picking up the thread of his story, “They sent me forward to the listening post-you know, one of those little bits of trench that sticks out into no-man’s land.”
He wasn’t sure if they’d had those in sectors where there weren’t any Sentinels, but Thomas nodded understanding.
“So we stood out there for a couple of hours getting rained on and keeping an eye out for any Germans coming visiting. It was a moonless night, heavy cloud cover-black as the inside of a bag, in short-so there wasn’t much to see. The only attack they could’ve launched would have had to be made up entirely of Sentinels. And if the Germans had been stupid enough to do that, we might’ve been home by Christmas 1914 like they said. I said that when we came back in and I made my report, but the Major said I had to go back out and keep watching. We put it off a while-getting tea, checking on the men, that sort of thing. I always wondered, if I’d been out at my post, if I’d have noticed they were getting ready to start shelling again. I don’t know; I might have heard something. As it was, we were on our way back out when the shelling started up again.”
“Rotten luck,” Thomas said.
Gerald nodded. “Of course, we could have been hit wherever we were. We just happened to be hit there. A high explosive shell, more or less right on top of us. I don’t remember much about it-I was knocked out and blown clear.” He remembered it better when he dreamed. “I remember coming to in the middle of absolute chaos, and trying to find Euan. Digging through the mud with my bare hands.” Euan had already been dead by then-his neck broken, among other injuries-but Gerald had known where he was, somehow. “I’d just found him-found his body-when a couple of the men found me, and hauled me back to the dressing station. They had to sedate me to keep me from going back out again after him. I didn’t even notice about my leg until I woke up in the Casualty Clearing Station a few days later.” He shook his head. “A couple of the survivors from my unit caught up with me there and brought me Euan’s identity discs. They’d had to retreat-‘due to extensive damage to the defensive fortifications’-and left the bodies behind.”
“Happened a lot,” Thomas noted.
Gerald nodded. “Funny thing was, one of the first casualties-one of the first corpses-I saw was a German Guide. Consolidating a captured trench, we were. I remember being green enough to be sorry we’d missed the excitement of capturing it. We found him in one of their dugouts, and I recognized the insignia. I’d never thought about it before, that there were Guides in the trench opposite.” The realization had rattled him out of his lingering thoughts of patriotic glory. He’d spent most of his time on night watch, in that assignment, looking out at no-man’s land and shooting anything that moved. He’d never been able to shake the knowledge that any time he fired, he could-for all he knew-be murdering a Guide.
“What difference does that make?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know,” Gerald admitted. He could have answered it at the time-that Guides were too fragile and too precious to be wasted in that way. But were they, really, any more so than anyone else? All human beings were fragile, in the face of shells or machine gun fire, and all of them were precious, to someone at least. “But it felt as though it did.”
They moved on, with the third drink, to less fraught subjects: the times when military stupidity had been humorous instead of fatal, the rumors and superstitions that had run rampant, and the colorful characters attached to their respective units.
“We had a bloke who insisted the rats were good eating. Never saw him actually eat one, but he talked about it a lot,” Thomas said.
“Oh, every outfit had one of those,” Gerald said. “I heard there was a chap a ways down the line who read about how they were using terriers to run wire out into no-man’s land, and trained a rat to do it.”
“I heard there was an officer a ways down the line who went out of his head and thought all the rats were German spies. Every man in his company had to make a report every time he saw one.”
“How’d they ever have time to do anything else?” Gerald wondered.
“No idea,” Thomas said. “I thought if it really happened, he was probably putting it on to get sent home for a rest. But who knows? I doubt there was anybody there who wasn’t a bit mad.”
“Oh, certainly. You had to be. Remember how when you moved into a new trench, there’d be bodies cluttering up the place, and you’d just step over them, like they weren’t even there?”
“And how the company comedians would put them in humorous poses,” Thomas said with a nod. “Do that anywhere else, and you’d go straight to the nuthatch.”
They talked some more about the things you got used to-being cold and wet, eating things that only barely qualified as food, sleeping in stretches of an hour or two here and there, never a full night through.
“Remember how you’d sit around and moan about the food and the wet,” Thomas said, when they were near the end of the bottle. “And how your leave’d been delayed, but never about how you might snuff it any second.”
“Yes,” Gerald said. “You couldn’t think about that-even if someone you knew was killed, you’d just shrug your shoulders and rearrange the duty roster. If you thought about how you could be next, you’d be paralyzed.”
Thomas nodded. “One time-one time I was trying to get a stretcher case down to the aid post. The bloke on the other end of the stretcher forgot to stoop. It was one of those places, you know, where the sandbags were too low; if you stood up straight the snipers could see the top of your head.”
“Yes, yes,” Gerald said. “After you’d been holding a trench for a few days, you’d stoop when you got to those parts; you didn’t even have to think about it.”
“Right. Only this bloke’d been there for a while. But it was dark, and there was heavy shelling. All of the sudden he dropped his end of the stretcher. I turned around to curse him out, and he was falling over. A hole right there in the middle of his forehead.” Thomas leaned across the table and poked Gerald between the eyes with his fingertip.
“Christ,” Gerald said, shaken. He really could have been killed, before Gerald had even known him. Somehow-perhaps because of how drunk he was getting-the thought struck him as profoundly sad.
“That was the closest I’d ever been, when somebody was killed. I knew I could die, before then-I knew it even before I joined up. ‘swhy I joined the medical corps.”
He eyed Gerald, as if trying to gauge his reaction to this eminently sensible motivation. “Eminently sensible,” Gerald said, rather pleased that he managed to pronounce it correctly on the first try.
“Didn’t exactly work out like I planned it,” Thomas said. “Thought I’d be able to sit out the war in a nice, safe hospital. Makin’ beds and folding bandages.”
“I wish you had,” Gerald said.
“So do I. Even though that wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, either.” Thomas held up his gloved hand. “I ought to tell you how this really happened,” he said, picked up his glass, and drained it. “But I’m not drunk enough yet.”
Gerald picked up the bottle and held it upside down. Empty. “I vote we solemnly remove ourselves home. The liquor’s better. And if I get any more legless, I won’t be able to walk.” He chuckled at his own joke…and found he had a little trouble stopping.
#
“So,” his lordship said, picking up Thomas’s left hand and waggling it around. “How did this happen?”
During the long stumble back to the house, Thomas had managed to clear his head a little. Someone-Thomas thought perhaps Georgiana-had sent one of the footmen up with some sandwiches, and he’d managed to eat one, and persuade his lordship to do the same. During the ensuing moment of peak sobriety, Thomas had thought twice about his impulsive decision to tell his lordship the truth about his wound.
Then he’d thought thrice about it, and had realized that his lordship really did have to know. It was Thomas’s second-biggest secret, after the one about how he liked men. If he knew-well, it would either be all right or it wouldn’t.
Thomas was nearly almost sure that it would be all right. He’d embarked on a plan to drink steadily until he either was ready to talk about it, or passed out.
It had been some time ago, that he’d made that decision. His lordship had worked his way through the stages of drunkenness: hilarity, weepiness, and poetry. Now he was flopped over on the sofa with his head in Thomas’s lap-something Thomas was aware, through the haze of alcohol, that he’d normally have objected to, but at the moment, he couldn’t remember why.
“This?” Thomas asked, taking off his glove and tossing it aside. “It’s funny. No one ever asks. It was right after that other bloke was shot. In the forehead. Was talkin’ to Matthew Crawley, that’s his lordship’s heir. Lord Grantham’s heir,” he corrected himself. Not his lordship’s; that would be rather odd, since they were the same age and Mr. Matthew wasn’t a Sentinel. “’e’d just turned up somehow. With replacements, or something. Was supposed to be a front-line officer, but it seemed like he was back in Yorkshire every other week for one reason or another.” O’Brien had written him about that, before he’d been home to see it for himself. “Anyway. He told me about how they were taking war patients at the village hospital.”
His lordship was moving his thumb in circles over the hole in Thomas’s hand. It was…distracting, and a good thing he was a drunk as he was, given where his lordship had his head.
“I’d just seen that bloke shot,” Thomas went on. Had he already said that? Probably. “So I was having a cuppa, to try and settle my nerves. When Mr. Crawley turned up. He said he’d just been home, and I asked if he thought I could get moved back off the line. Maybe to the Downton hospital. Since they were taking war patients. ‘e said I’d have to get myself sent back to England first.”
“Easier said than done,” his lordship observed.
“You’re telling me. I’d been trying to get sent home ever since I got there. ‘swhy I was talking to him in the first place. I thought he might do something about it. So since he wasn’t going to help, after he left I went out of the dugout, lit a cigarette, and held my wind-proof lighter up over the side till I got myself shot.” It was the first time he’d ever told anyone. He hadn’t even told O’Brien, though she’d guessed there was something fishy about the way he’d gotten his wound. “Then I sat there and bled into my handkerchief until somebody found me, and I pretended I didn’t know how it happened.” A lot of men didn’t remember exactly how they’d got their wounds-traumatic amnesia, one of the doctors had said it was called. So he’d figured if anyone asked, he could just keep saying he didn’t remember. But no one had asked.
His lordship didn’t say anything for a long time, just kept circling his thumb over the crater in Thomas’s palm. “You could have lost the hand.”
“I know. I knew. Didn’t care, if it got me home alive.” That wasn’t quite true-he hadn’t thought about the possibility of losing his hand entirely until he’d been sitting there, bleeding and waiting to be discovered. But he hadn’t regretted it.
“Suppose not.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Thomas asked. “That I’m a-coward?” He didn’t think he was, not really. But he knew that was what he was supposed to think. That he wasn’t as good as those who’d got their wounds honestly.
“No,” his lordship said. “No. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
Oh, right. Because Guides weren’t supposed to be at the Front “by themselves.” He’d nearly forgotten about that. “None of us should have been.”
“No,” his lordship said. “No, you’re right.” He raised Thomas’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. “None of us should have been.”
#
Gerald woke the next morning-or some time when it was light out, anyway-to Clement bringing him a glass of sodium bicarb and a cup of tea. Drinking them in that order, he vaguely remembered stumbling over to bed, supported by a Thomas who was no steadier on his feet than Gerald was, when they had realized that it was no longer Armistice Day, and they had been drinking for nearly twelve hours straight, with only occasional breaks for solid sustenance. He hadn’t been able to remember which of his legs was the real one. Everything after that was a blank. “Where’s Thomas?” He must have managed to sort out which leg was which; Gerald’s prosthesis had been removed.
Clement pointed over in the direction of the sofa. Hitching himself up a little more against the headboard, Gerald was able to see a blanket-covered, black-haired lump. “I’m going over there next,” Clement said.
“See if you can find my crutches, after that.” He was going to need to get up, sometime soon, at least long enough to pay a visit to the toilet. Normally he kept them by the bed, for just that reason, but at the moment they were nowhere in sight.
Thomas, when shaken lightly by Clement, burrowed more deeply into the blanket. Then he sat up abruptly-and regretted it, judging by the ensuing moan. “Oh, Christ,” he said reverently.
“Indeed,” Clement said.
Thomas looked up at him, went slightly paler, and screwed his eyes shut. He opened them a moment later, clearly hoping to see something different, and, when he did not, said, “Oh, Christ,” again.
“Drink this,” Clement advised, handing him another glass of bicarb.
Thomas drank it. As Clement swapped it for a cup of tea, Thomas said, “Is he up yet?”
Correctly parsing the rather vague question, Clement said, “Awake, yes. In no better condition than you are, Mr. Barrow.”
“Oh, Christ,” Thomas said again.
“I’m fairly sure that’s Thomas,” Gerald ventured. Barrow would doubtless be very surprised to wake up on Gerald’s sofa, since he hadn’t been present for any of the drinking that led up to it.
“Yes,” Thomas said. The suggestion seemed to bring him out of his paralysis. “Mr. Barrow is not at home to callers today, Mr. Clement,” he said, over-enunciating slightly and blinking owlishly. “He’s gone…somewhere else.”
“I see,” Clement said, though Gerald suspected that he didn’t, since he’d never explained how Barrow went missing when Thomas came visiting.
“He went off somewhere to be solemn and dignified. Right before we started drinking,” Gerald added.
“And he may have taken my trousers with him,” Thomas added.
“That’s one way you can tell,” Gerald told Clement. “A valet like Barrow would never misplace his trousers. I’m not sure they even come off. They might be in-built, like doll knickers.” He might still be a little drunk, he realized.
He could see Clement decide that he wasn’t even going to try to understand. “In that case, your lordship, I will look for your crutches and Thomas’s trousers.”
He managed to find both; by the time Gerald came back from the lavatory, Thomas was out from under his blanket and more-or-less decently clothed, in trousers and a rather rumpled, untucked shirt. Gerald himself was wearing pyjama trousers and his undershirt, so it appeared that Thomas had done a slightly better job of dressing him for bed than he had for himself, even without Barrow’s assistance.
Gerald propped his crutches up against the side of the bed and threw himself gratefully back into it. Thomas staggered off on a similar errand, returning a few moments later looking sheepish. He’d tucked in his shirt and smoothed his hair, but still looked far from his usual pressed-and-polished self. “Will you be dressing, my lord?”
“No,” Gerald said. “Not for a while, at any rate.” He wasn’t suffering as badly as he might have been. After the first few drinks at the pub, he’d imbibed only enough to maintain a constant level of inebriation. He was bone-tired and thirsty, but no worse than that. Still, he didn’t have to get up, and, that being the case, he wasn’t going to. “You can go back to bed. Or back to the sofa. I can’t imagine you feel much more like moving about than I do.” That seemed a tactful way of making clear that he didn’t expect anything in the way of actual work out of him today.
“No, my lord,” Thomas admitted, and went back to the sofa. He sat gingerly on it for a moment, then curled up on his side, the way he had been before.
Satisfied that his Guide was all right, Gerald dozed.
They passed the day companionably, in much the same way. Periodically, one or the other of them would get up to wash, shave, or make some other gesture toward the idea of starting the day, then return to their respective couches to recover from the effort. Clement came in from time to time, bringing tea and toast, and later soup and other suitable foods for men feeling a bit delicate, along with the household’s well-wishes. “Her ladyship,” Clement said on one occasion, “particularly hopes that tomorrow will find you entirely recovered.”
“You can tell her we’ve stopped drinking,” Gerald assured him. Once he’d fully sobered up, he began feeling a bit queasy, and thought he wouldn’t want to touch the stuff for at least a week.
“Very good, your lordship,” Clement said.
By late afternoon, Gerald had progressed as far as dressing, more or less, in his oldest, softest trousers and his smoking jacket, though he left his prosthetic leg off-Thomas had located it, but putting it on seemed a bit too much to manage. In the evening, they made their way to the tea-table for soft-boiled eggs and yet more toast; it reminded Gerald of nursery suppers.
“I hope I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have, yesterday, my lord,” Thomas said as they ate.
“Not that I recall,” Gerald answered. He wondered if Thomas was hinting about his confession of how he’d been wounded. Gerald had already resolved not to bring it up again unless Thomas did. He was just glad that Thomas had gotten himself out alive, no matter how he’d done it. “Did I?”
“Not that I can recall, my lord,” Thomas said.
After Clement had cleared away the supper things, they made their way over to the sofa. The cushions had been straightened, and Thomas’s blanket tidied away to wherever it had come from in the first place, some time when Gerald hadn’t been looking. On impulse, Gerald held out his arm. After a moment’s hesitation, Thomas settled in under it, tucked up against his side.
“I suppose Barrow will be back tomorrow,” Gerald said, with a hint of a question in his tone.
Thomas looked away. “I expect we’ll still be seeing a bit of him, my lord.” He turned back to Gerald, ducking his head. “But I thought I might sleep down here from time to time. When he’s not around. If that’s all right.”
“It is,” Gerald said. “I’d like that.”
#
When Mr. Clement had first caught him, passed out drunk on his lordship’s sofa, Thomas had been nearly paralyzed with horror. It took an embarrassingly long time for him to realize that he was not going to be lectured for having disgraced himself, or chivvied into resuming his duties. It was certainly not the first time Thomas had gotten himself drunk, but he couldn’t remember any other occasion when he’d been given as long as he wanted to recover from it. Usually, he had to get up at the usual time and carry on as if there was nothing the matter.
It was a bit of a revelation, having a lazy day in bed-well, on the sofa-complete with people waiting on him. And it had been nice, being able to continue the closeness, the informality, of the day before.
Still, it was also a bit of a relief to retire to his own room and to come down the next morning and-as his lordship would have it-be Barrow again.
During “Barrow’s” brief absence, the entire house had been swept up into preparations for Conclave. Reminded that he still hadn’t been to pick up his livery, Thomas went to Thompson’s tailor shop on Saturday mid-morning, and was relieved to find it open.
The house livery was, at least, inoffensive-black trousers, a very dark blue tailcoat, and a blue-and-silver striped waistcoat. The buttons had the house crest stamped on them, but they were not solid gold. It was a personal Guide’s livery: Thomas had figured out that the collars on their coats were a bit different from the footmen’s, and their ties were blue with silver stripes, while the footmen’s were silver with blue stripes.
Thompson was displeased at having had to work from the London tailor’s measurements, and even less pleased at Thomas’s having left the fitting so late, but it turned out that only the most minor of alterations were required; he could pick the thing up on Monday.
Most of the family, it turned out, were leaving on Monday, so Thomas supposed Thompson’s irritation was justified. But his lordship had decided to delay their own journey until Wednesday. They’d arrive in time for the dinner that Lady Yerenemuth was having that evening, and for the Hunt and the ball on Thursday, followed by Conclave proper on Friday. Then they’d come home on Saturday, while the rest of the family stayed through to Monday morning. Three days seemed like more than enough of it to Thomas, so he was glad that his lordship felt the same way.
Mr. Clement had a great many instructions for him before they left, given that Thomas would be the highest-ranking member of staff on the premises from Monday through Wednesday. It would have been a more impressive honor if not for the fact that for the rest of the week, the third housemaid would be in charge. She, a kitchen girl, and the knives-and-boots boy were to look after the house and his lordship in everyone else’s absence. Even Sophia and Dennis, and her Guide and his nurse, were going.
The whole household was in a flurry over the trip, the staff as well as the family. It seemed that, while Conclave meant a great deal of extra work for everyone, it was also a bit of excitement, a change in routine that they looked forward to. Too, nearly everyone had friends or relations working for other branches of the House, who they could count on seeing during the week. There were opportunities to make new acquaintances as well-more than one former housemaid, Thomas learned, had met her future husband at a Conclave. There was a continuous bustle of activity and excitement up until the moment when the last of the family cars left the drive, at half-past noon on Monday.
The house was strangely quiet after everyone had left. Even in his lordship’s room, where no one else would have been anyway, there seemed to be an invading sense of emptiness. He mentioned it to his lordship, as he was arranging the things from the supper tray on the table.
“You notice that, too?” his lordship said. “Yes-the house is very…full, normally. I’ve never been in it when it was this quiet.”
After serving, Thomas sat down across from him. Faced with the alternative of eating with the housemaid, kitchen girl, and boot boy, he’d decided that this would be a good time to start dining with his lordship again.
His lordship seemed to be making an effort not to make too big a matter out of it; he kept the conversation light, mostly talking about Conclaves past.
The next day they rode. Outside staff didn’t go to Conclave-apart from drivers-so there was no reason for his lordship not to have his usual afternoon ride. The stable staff appeared to be taking advantage of the slack period to do some heavy cleaning, and Clint seemed glad enough to escape from that. Thomas went along, and was rather surprised to find that he was a bit…blasé, about the whole thing. Not that he had been precisely frightened before, he hastened to tell himself. But now he knew how to get on the horse and more-or-less what to do when he got there. He’d also learned enough about horses and their equipment to follow at least part of what Clint talked about-and his lordship had confessed, earlier, that he sometimes got a bit lost when Clint wandered into the finer points himself, so that was all right. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever understand what Clint and his lordship found so enthralling about riding, but he could accompany them without making a complete ass of himself.
It was a feeling he’d do well to remember at Conclave, Thomas realized. He may never be quite as excited about it as the others were, but by the time it came around again next year, he would know what to expect from it. In time, it might come to seem as old hat as going down to London for the Season.
After he got through this first one, that is.
Link to Chapter Thirteen
“Probably best to put him on one of yours, your lordship, since you told me not to look for one for him,” Clint said, with a faint hint of reproach, as they rode through the park.
“I’m sure that’s fine,” Gerald said, shuffling the reins into one hand so he could give his nervous mount a pat on the neck. He was riding Bugle, the most spirited of “his” horses, and the one Clint usually rode. Clint had decided to bring the colt-now named Robin-along on a leading-rein, so he was riding a steady little mare called Gypsy. “I thought Gypsy might be a good choice.” Gerald rode her often; she’d been the quickest to get used to his one-legged way of riding, and was still the best about standing still for the rather complicated process of getting him into the saddle.
“Hm. What’re his hands like?”
Gerald imagined Thomas’s hands-or Barrow’s-smoothing the back of a jacket, and shivered involuntarily. Bugle danced to one side. “I beg your pardon?” Gerald asked, once he’d gotten the horse back under control.
“Do you think he’ll be heavy on the reins? Gypsy doesn’t like that much.”
“Ah,” Gerald said. “I’m not sure.” He was certainly very light with his hands when he was valeting, but that might not translate. And Gerald put a substantial amount of effort into not thinking about how Thomas’s skill with his hands might transfer into other areas. He had to, in order to avoid embarrassing physical reactions while dressing. Firmly diverting himself from that training of thought, he said of his third horse, “Baz is rather tall, though.”
“What difference does that make?”
“It might be intimidating, for his first time.”
In the end they agreed on Gypsy for Thomas’s first ride, with the proviso that if Clint thought he was too heavy on the reins, he’d put him on a leading rein or use Baz for the next time.
It took Thomas a bit longer to fulfill his part of the bargain, but two days later, as Barrow was dressing Gerald for dinner, he said that he’d found suitable boots and was working on altering the other things.
“Good,” Gerald said. “Well, I’d been thinking it’s probably best if Clint helps us for your first lesson, if that’s all right.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“When should I ask him to expect us?” Neither Thomas nor Barrow answered. “Saturday, perhaps?” That was two days; Gerald didn’t know if that was enough time for him to make the alterations or not.
“That should be all right, my lord.”
“If it’s fine, of course. My usual riding-time in the afternoon is probably best, since Clint’s in the habit of making himself available then.”
“Yes, my lord.”
They were a full complement for dinner-Mama had been complaining that they hadn’t all turned out at once in a while. “You seem very cheerful,” Georgie observed as Gerald took her in.
“Thomas has agreed to ride with me on Saturday,” Gerald answered.
Simon, seating himself on the other side of the table, snickered.
“Don’t you start,” Gerald warned him. As far as he could tell, Simon had left Thomas entirely alone during their estrangement, but it would be just like him to try to disrupt things now.
“I’m certain he won’t,” Papa said, which turned out to be his only contribution to the dinner conversation that evening.
Barrow made no further allusion to their engagement, or to riding in general, during any of the times they met, until he appeared in the dressing room Saturday afternoon in his new riding things-whipcord breeches, a hound’s-tooth waistcoat, and tweed jacket. His boots gleamed like new-he must have spent some time polishing them, unless he’d got the boot-boy to do it-but were just a bit short. Well, it was more important that they fit in the foot than in the leg. “Ah,” Gerald said. “You look very nice.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Thomas said, a bit stiffly.
Barrow helped him into his riding things, Gerald took up his crutches, and they started for the stables. “We couldn’t have asked for a better day for it,” Gerald observed. The sun was shining, and the breeze slight-gusts tended to startle horses.
“Yes, my lord,” Thomas said.
Clint had Gypsy and Baz saddled for them, and led the way-and the horses-to one of the back paddocks. It wasn’t the one where Gerald had first met the half-wild horse, but it was near.
“Hold these,” Clint said, handing Gypsy’s reins to Thomas. Thomas stood, looking as if he did not quite know what to do with them, as Clint went round to tighten the saddle girth. After collecting them again, Clint said, “I think we’d best get you aboard first-seeing how his lordship does it won’t help you much, anyway.”
Clint’s first explanation of how to get on the horse was so tortured Gerald couldn’t follow it, and he knew what he was talking about. The second try wasn’t much better. Finally Thomas said, “Why don’t you show me?”
Clint agreed to that, first swinging easily into Gypsy’s saddle, then, at Thomas’s request, getting back off and doing it again more slowly. The second time, he also demonstrated how to hold the reins and the Correct Position Of The Leg, which as far as Gerald could tell was considered a sacrament in Clint’s personal religion.
Then he hopped back off and it was Thomas’s turn to try. There was one moment as he stood, facing the horse’s near side and looking at the saddle, which was nearly at his eye level, that Gerald thought he might back out. But finally he shoved his foot in the stirrup and hauled himself aboard, looking somewhat surprised to have successfully ended up on top of the horse.
“There you are, now,” Clint said-Gerald was unsure if he was talking to Thomas or the horse. He took Thomas’s foot out of the stirrup and adjusted the length. When he put Thomas’s foot back in the stirrup, he moved the leg into the Correct Position-or as close as he could get it, in any case. He did the same on the other side, then said, “Stand in your stirrups…sink your weight into your heels.”
Then it was time for Gerald to get on Baz. In order to do it, he had to climb a mounting block on his crutches, then hand them over to Clint and stand there on his one leg, balancing himself against the horse, while Clint took them over to lean against the fence. Then Clint came back and steadied him as he swung his stump over the saddle and got on. It was a rather precarious process-if the horse opted not to stand obediently during any part of it, he’d fall on his face, or worse. Fortunately, Baz stayed still this time.
The stirrup was already adjusted correctly for Gerald, but Clint fussed over him a bit anyway, before finally suggesting he start the horse walking around the perimeter of the paddock. Gerald did so, and heard Clint saying to Thomas, “Just give ‘er a little nudge with your foot there, and she’ll follow on after his lordship and Baz.” A pause, and then, “A little more of a nudge than that.”
Gerald had his back to them-and he’d learned rather quickly a one-legged man was wise to keep himself straight in the saddle-but he heard Gypsy’s hoofbeats start up, just a little out of rhythm with Baz’s. He also heard her tail swish, and Thomas’s rapid heartbeat. Then a change in Gypsy’s stride as she kicked out.
“What’s it doing?” Thomas asked, his voice tight with anxiety.
“Loosen up on your reins a bit. Like that. She can tell you’re nervous.”
“Her, too?” Thomas murmured, too low for anyone but a Sentinel to have heard him.
Clint only had to tell him about the reins once more, and he seemed pleased with Thomas’s progress regarding Correct Position Of The Leg, but he did tell him rather frequently to stop sitting so stiffly and move with the horse. Fortunately, Thomas seemed to take it well. From what Gerald could see, when they happened to be on opposite sides of the paddock, he looked to be doing quite well.
Once Baz had warmed up his legs, Gerald picked up a trot-he didn’t trot much when they rode out, since the bouncing gait was tricky to ride with only one leg, but since they were in the paddock, it was a good time to practice.
“Do I have to do that?” he heard Thomas ask Clint.
“Not right away,” Clint answered.
Later, when Gerald took Baz into a canter-faster, but in fact a bit easier to ride than the trot-Thomas said, “I’m not doing that.”
But by the time they finished, Clint pronounced Thomas ready to ride out, next time, if they were careful and if Clint went along in case of any unexpected excitement. “Is that all right with you, Thomas?” Gerald asked, accepting his crutches back from Thomas.
Thomas nodded gamely. “All right. Tuesday?”
#
Sunday morning, Thomas ached in muscles he hadn’t realized he owned. Riding a horse, as it turned out, was substantially more work than riding in a car or a wagon. To his surprise, though, he’d rather enjoyed it, once he’d worked out that the horse was rather unlikely to start rearing and bucking for no reason, and that as long as it didn’t, the chances of falling off were slim.
Thinking that William would have been thrilled to have a similar opportunity didn’t diminish his enjoyment, either. He knew he ought to have given up on that old rivalry-particularly given William was dead-but it still pleased Thomas, in a mild and unworthy sort of way, to feel that he’d gotten one-up on him.
He could have done without having two sets of riding clothes to take care of afterwards, but he decided that was an inconvenience he could live with. He did have some opinions on how the process of getting his lordship into the saddle could be improved, and when they went out again on Tuesday, he insisted that his lordship get on first, so that Thomas could handle his crutches and Clint could stay with the horse.
Tuesday was a somewhat drizzly day, but that didn’t seem to be enough to stop his lordship from enjoying the ride. They went along a little path through the park, ending out in a large field. Both Clint and the horse he was riding seemed to perk up at the sight of it.
“Yes, go ahead,” his lordship said, and Clint touched his cap and dug in his heels. Thomas noticed now that there were some obstacles set up in the field. Clint aimed the horse at one of them, and it leaped over. “You don’t have to do that, either,” his lordship said.
“Good,” Thomas said. “Do you do that?”
“I used to,” his lordship said. “Not since losing my leg, though. Clint keeps reminding me that plenty of ladies hunt sidesaddle, so I should be able to manage, but I haven’t quite felt ready to try it yet.”
It was something, Thomas thought, that his lordship could admit as easily as that that there was something he was afraid to try.
His lordship went on to tell a story about a pony he’d had, “When we were about twelve,” who had refused to jump hedges. “Anything with rails, he’d sail right over, but show him a hedge and he’d balk, run out, whatever he could do other than go over it. It meant we couldn’t take him hunting, so we tried everything we could think of to get him over it. Letting him take his time sniffing around the hedge, taking him up to it slowly, running him up at it at the fastest gallop we could get out of him. That time I went over the hedge, but the pony didn’t. Euan-” He hesitated. “thought I’d broken my neck.”
Daringly, Thomas said, “You can talk about him, if you like, my lord.” He’d worked out that “we” in any story about his lordship’s childhood meant him and Euan, but his lordship rarely mentioned him by name. He wasn’t sure if his lordship didn’t want to talk about him, or if he thought Thomas didn’t want to hear about it. “I mean, it doesn’t bother me. If you want to.”
His lordship looked over at him. “Thank you, Thomas. There, ah, there isn’t much to say about my life before the war that doesn’t have him in it.”
Still, Thomas was a bit relieved that his lordship just told a few more childhood stories, without obviously editing Euan out of them, and didn’t launch into a flood of confidences.
As they returned to his lordship’s room after the ride, his lordship said, “Bit chilly today. Would you like a drink, before I-” He hesitated. “Send for my valet?”
“All right,” Thomas agreed, amused. “Probably shouldn’t keep that valet of yours waiting too long, though. I understand he’s very particular.”
“Oh, rather,” his lordship said, sitting on the sofa.
Thomas went for the decanter and glasses-there were two, so his lordship must have planned this. He found he didn’t mind. He sat on the sofa-not right next to his lordship, but still, he felt this was rather a momentous step. His lordship poured and handed him a glass. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” Thomas echoed. It was rather nice to be drinking the good liquor again.
“Shall we ride again in a few days? Not Thursday; I’m engaged that afternoon.”
For the Armistice Day service, Thomas knew. “All right.” He’d been thinking about the service. He didn’t want to go, but the more he heard about it in the servants’ hall, the more he thought his lordship might…well. Might need him. And not as a valet. “Friday?”
“That sounds fine,” his lordship said. He took another sip from his glass. “I’ve been enjoying…getting to know you.”
“So have I, my lord,” Thomas said, honestly.
“Good.” He looked into the depths of his glass. “I hope I haven’t been…pressuring you. I’ve been trying to do better about that.”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “I mean, no, you haven’t been, my lord. I know we need to…talk more. It’s just not easy for me.”
“I gathered,” his lordship said. “I thought that…well, I’m not entirely sure what I thought. The Guides I’m used to are very comfortable talking with us about…various private matters. I think I may have imagined that if I could get you to do so just once, everything would fall into place. Silly of me, really.”
“Well,” Thomas said. “I don’t know why, all those times you asked me what you could do to make me more comfortable, I never thought to say you could make a start by not asking quite so often.” It seemed rather obvious now. “But I’ve got that sorted, now.”
“Good,” his lordship said.
Suddenly uncomfortable, Thomas drained his glass and stood. “Perhaps we’ll talk some more on Friday, my lord. In the meantime, I expect you’ll be wanting your valet to get you out of those wet things.”
His lordship accepted the switch gracefully, sudden as it was. He even, once they’d gone into the dressing room, responded to Thomas’s, “How was your ride, my lord?” precisely as if Thomas hadn’t actually been there.
Thursay morning-Armistice Day-it was pouring with rain. “What will they do about the ceremony?” Mrs. Hope wondered out loud.
“Have it in the church, I expect,” Mr. Clement said.
“But the memorial is outdoors. They can’t dedicate it from indoors,” the housekeeper fretted.
“I expect the vicar and her ladyship will think of something.”
Thomas had made up his mind the night before that he wasn’t going to go. His lordship had already said he didn’t have to-and it wasn’t as though he was going alone; the entire family and most of the household were going, right down to the kitchen girl, who’d lost her father and a brother. His lordship wouldn’t lack for people to comfort him-people who had known Euan, as well.
He kept his resolve up, even as he dressed his lordship for the day, in one of his black town suits. “I suppose that’s appropriate, isn’t it? I feel as though I’m going to a funeral.”
“Yes, my lord. Perfectly appropriate.” He tucked an extra handkerchief into the jacket pocket, in case it was needed.
The family gathered to start for the village at a quarter-past ten. At half-past, those of the staff who hadn’t gone with them began getting into their coats and hats. Thomas sat at the servants’ hall table, reading in the newspaper about the “unknown soldier” being buried with full military honours at Westminster Abbey that day. They’d dug up bodies from the makeshift cemeteries near several battlefields, including the Somme, and chosen one at random for the honours.
Thomas wondered if it might be someone he’d met. He supposed that was rather the point-no one knew who it was, so it might as well be your son, your brother. The transport officer you’d fucked up against the wall of a deserted dugout one quiet night. Anyone.
The newspaper talked about how the Unknown Soldier was a hero, representing all the heroes-but for all the ones who’d picked him out knew, he could have been a deserter, an idler, some species of coward.
Hell, if enough of the uniform had rotted off, he could even be a Hun. You were supposed to sort them out, on burial detail, but sometimes it got too dark to see before you’d finished. Or sometimes you just didn’t bother-like a private Thomas had known once who had stood up, suddenly, amid the rest of them who were crouched over, both to see better and to keep from catching the eye of any lingering snipers, and shouted, “God doesn’t care!”
Thomas wasn’t sure whether he’d meant God didn’t care which bodies were German and which British, or something more general. Either way, he was probably right. He’d been killed the next day, and God didn’t care about that, either.
At a quarter to eleven, Thomas snatched up his coat and hat and started for the village, making it to the church just as the final, haunting notes of “Last Post” were played.
#
“And now,” the vicar droned, “let us all observe two minutes’ silence, so that, in the words of his majesty, ‘in perfect stillness the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the Glorious Dead.’”
Nothing was ever fully silent to a Sentinel, of course. Even after everyone had bowed their heads and had decided what they were going to do with the pew bulletins, there were still heartbeats, breathing. Some ragged. Behind him, Gerald heard someone sob. He didn’t know who-not even if it was a man or a woman. Beside him, Georgie was soundlessly mouthing the words of the Lord’s Prayer, as she’d done as a child to keep from crying while her nurse cleaned a skinned knee or removed a splinter.
Gerald closed his eyes and remembered. The shelling had been heavy all day. They’d huddled in the dugout, dirt shaking down from the ceiling into the tea. “Gives it that authentic trench flavor,” Euan had said. “One day, when we’re far from here, we’ll be having tea and you’ll say, ‘Put a pinch of farmyard dirt in mine; I want to remember the old days.’”
A sob escaped him, just as the trumpet played the Rouse. Simon gave Gerald a look over his shoulder. Gerald’s first thought was that it was a rebuke for the unmanly display, but it hadn’t quite seemed like that.
Perhaps even Simon could have a bit of sympathy, on Armistice Day.
The vicar stood up again to give a homily that was so anodyne it allowed Gerald a chance to pull himself together-it was heavy on themes of remembrance and sacrifice, but so vague it could have been about anything.
After a hymn, a man who was running for MP got up next, to talk about British Pluck and the need to Maintain Vigilance against the German threat. Gerald quietly resolved to vote for the other fellow, whoever he was.
The next speech, given by a retired curate who Gerald remembered had congratulated him heartily for signing up, was more of the same patriotic bluster. He knew there’d been speeches like it made from pulpits across Britain while the war was still on-he’d read enough of them in the newspapers-but here, and now, it seemed obscene. How did the others not see that it dishonoured the “glorious dead” to bring into this, the only funeral many of them would ever have, another hollow recital of the lies they’d died for?
He’d have stormed out, if he hadn’t been trapped between Georgie and Mama.
Another hymn came next, which gave him time to cool his temper-he didn’t pay much attention to it, except to note that it was a familiar one, one of the ones they often sang at funerals. He mouthed the words without thinking about them.
As the last notes of the song died away, two village children, a boy and a girl, stepped forward. In their high, clear voices they recited, “If I should die, think only this of me….”
Gerald knew the poem. It was a lovely thing, if one could view it in the abstract. He tried to steel himself against the line he knew was coming. “In that rich earth, a richer dust concealed.” Euan was that-a dust that had once breathed, and now no longer did.
Brooke, he knew, had written the poem before seeing the Front-had, in fact, died before reaching the Front. He had never seen anyone buried alive. There had been, when he’d written it, no “corner of a foreign field” that was both the dying-place and the resting place of the person he had loved best in the world.
Gerald wondered, sometimes, if in his last moments alive, the poet had regretted writing it. He wept then, making no effort to hide his tears. He could tell, from the ragged breathing and the sniffling and the whisper of handkerchiefs behind him, that he was not the only one.
The vicar took the pulpit again, after the poem had finished. “After the reading of the 23rd Psalm, we will remove, solemnly-” He said the last with a meaningful look at the boys’ choir-“To the churchyard for the dedication of the War Memorial by Lord and Lady Yernemuth.” Clearing his throat, he opened his Bible-unnecessarily, surely; any vicar worth his salt must have that one memorized-and began, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want….”
#
Thomas slipped out of the church as soon as the vicar had finished saying, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” One advantage of having arrived so late that he had no choice but to stand in the back was that it was quite easy to get out before the family, up in the front pew, had even managed to stand up. He’d decided that, even if he was here as a Guide, he’d draw on his experience as a footman and remain unseen unless needed.
The War Memorial was in the churchyard, shrouded in canvas. Thomas found a spot in the lee of a monument to the 4th Earl of Yernemuth where he thought he’d stand a good chance of being unobserved-if the parishioners-mourners-whatever they were, formed up where he thought they would, he’d be behind them again.
His lordship looked pale, coming out of the church-pale but red-eyed. He was holding himself stiffly, like a man in pain. Her ladyship said something to him; he shook his head. He stood out of the way of the solemnly-removing crowd and, once it had formed up, lingered at the back of it.
The rest of the family was front-and-center. Thomas had wondered why none of them had had speaking parts in the earlier ceremony; now he found that the answer was that they were all involved in this part-all except for his lordship, apparently. Her ladyship started off, “Every family in the village has been touched by this war. Has fought, or lost, or sacrificed.” She went on to talk about the contributions of the villagers-how many men had joined up, how many socks the women’s auxiliary had knitted, like that. “I know,” she said in closing, “that I am among the most fortunate of mothers. Both of my sons have come home to me, alive if not whole. Know that every day, when I look upon my two living sons, I think of those of you were not so blessed.”
His lordship stiffened at that, and started to turn-Thomas didn’t know why, but he’d have sworn he was on the point of leaving right then. But he about-faced with a visible effort and listened as Simon got up to talk about his war service.
That was the part where Thomas would have turned tail, if he was going to. As far as he was concerned, anyone who’d been general staff might as well not have gone at all. Of course, he’d have been happy to have a position out of the line himself-anyone would. But to go bragging about it was just poor taste.
Lady Georgiana’s part was to talk about the selection of the monument, and the family’s contribution of it, managing to make the latter sound a bit less self-aggrandizing than Thomas would have thought possible. “Few of our war dead have been brought home to rest here in the churchyard,” she said. “Many have graves their families will never be able to visit. Some-” Her voice broke. “Some have no known grave at all. It is our hope and intention that this memorial shall serve as a place of remembrance for them, and will be of some comfort to those who loved them.” She paused for a long time, seemingly trying to gain control of herself. “My father, Lord Yernemuth, will read the names of the honoured dead, that they may each be remembered. Lady Yernemuth will lay a wreath, which contains one flower for each of these names.”
She stepped back, and Lord Yernemuth stepped forward. Thomas had wondered what he was going to do; it was difficult to imagine him giving a speech. He began reading the names, pronouncing each one slowly.
The order seemed to be random, but it must have made some sense to his lordship. Thomas could tell, by how stiff he was, that he knew when his father was getting close to the name that meant most to him.
“Euan Alain Morgan.”
His lordship did turn, then, and fled as fast as his crutch and wooden leg could carry him.
Which wasn’t particularly fast, of course. Thomas soon caught up with him, leaning against the lych-gate, his head bowed. “My lord?”
“Oh-Thomas,” he said, then corrected himself, “Barrow.”
Thomas shook his head; he didn’t mind much about that, just now. “Are you….” He’d been about to ask if his lordship was all right, but that wasn’t the right question. “What can I do?”
“Is it all right,” his lordship asked, his voice a little distant and strange, “for an earl’s heir to have a drink with his valet on Armistice Day?”
“I’m not sure about that, my lord,” Thomas said. “But I daresay two old soldiers can get right bloody pissed together, if that’ll do.”
“Even better.”
#
Gerald suspected that in as soon as the ceremony ended the pub would become very crowded, but they were the first ones there. Even the publican was absent-probably at the ceremony himself. He’d had a son, once.
“The parlour bar, I think,” Gerald said. Someone from the family ought to make an appearance in the public bar, stand a round to all the soldiers who’d survived their service, perhaps, but let Papa or Simon do that.
They had their choice of seats, and Thomas-or should he say, Corporal Barrow-steered them toward a place by the fire. It had died down a bit-probably been allowed to, since the publican would have known there’d be no one here-but flared up again when Thomas tossed some more wood on it. “Here,” Gerald said, taking out a banknote which he knew would more than cover anything the pub had on offer. “Why don’t you see if you can find us a bottle of something, and I’ll apologize to the barman later.”
Thomas came back with a half-empty bottle of some reasonable blended whiskey and two glasses. Sitting down, he poured a generous measure into each. “The Glorious Dead,” Gerald said ironically, raising his and downing it in one swallow as Thomas did the same. “And their mothers,” he added, thinking of another poem.
Thomas refilled their glasses. “I don’t think I ever saw anyone die gloriously, did you?”
“No,” Gerald said. “Stupidly, yes. Pointlessly, yes.”
“Crying for their mums,” Thomas suggested.
“Or thinking about when they could get a roll-up and a pair of dry socks.”
“I once saw a man who was shot with his trousers down round his ankles. It was funny because he was German. Always wondered what they put in the letter, for something like that.”
“That he died gallantly in the course of his duties,” Gerald said. “’s how soldiers always die, in letters to their mothers.”
“Hm,” Thomas said. He rotated the glass in his fingers, then raised it. “The inglorious dead.”
They drank to the inglorious dead, then drank the next one more slowly.
“Euan’s one of those ‘with no known grave,’” Gerald said suddenly. “They told me later they had a hard enough time getting the wounded out, let alone the dead. We’d been holding little bulge in the line-I’m told there was some debate in the general staff as to whether it constituted a salient or not. The company that’d been there before us was very successful in the last big push-managed to push the line forward a few hundred yards. It was a nasty, damp piece of low ground of no strategic value whatsoever, but of course we had to keep it-otherwise the gallant heroes who’d died taking it would have made their noble sacrifice in vain.”
“Course,” Thomas said.
“The Germans hadn’t been trying too hard to take it back-winter was coming on, and they likely didn’t want to spend it there any more than we did. But I suppose their general staff decided they had to get it back, to avenge the gallant heroes who’d died trying to stop us taking it in the first place. So they’d been shelling us for about a day and a half, and we knew they’d be coming over sooner or later. Then it started raining, and a bit later, the shelling stopped.”
“Imagine that,” Thomas said.
“Yes. Naturally, the general staff thought it likely that they’d stopped shelling because they were, even then, making a daring assault under cover of darkness.”
“Instead of, say, because the guns got fouled in the wet.”
“Of course. German guns never get fouled in the wet.”
“Nor do ours,” Thomas said. “If it looks like they have, they’re just malingering, like all those blokes who say they’ve got shell shock.”
Gerald supposed he’d know a bit about that, having been in the medical corps. The army had learned to accept that Sentinels could be affected by the stress of combat, but they’d never seemed quite sure that anyone else could be. “At any rate,” he said, picking up the thread of his story, “They sent me forward to the listening post-you know, one of those little bits of trench that sticks out into no-man’s land.”
He wasn’t sure if they’d had those in sectors where there weren’t any Sentinels, but Thomas nodded understanding.
“So we stood out there for a couple of hours getting rained on and keeping an eye out for any Germans coming visiting. It was a moonless night, heavy cloud cover-black as the inside of a bag, in short-so there wasn’t much to see. The only attack they could’ve launched would have had to be made up entirely of Sentinels. And if the Germans had been stupid enough to do that, we might’ve been home by Christmas 1914 like they said. I said that when we came back in and I made my report, but the Major said I had to go back out and keep watching. We put it off a while-getting tea, checking on the men, that sort of thing. I always wondered, if I’d been out at my post, if I’d have noticed they were getting ready to start shelling again. I don’t know; I might have heard something. As it was, we were on our way back out when the shelling started up again.”
“Rotten luck,” Thomas said.
Gerald nodded. “Of course, we could have been hit wherever we were. We just happened to be hit there. A high explosive shell, more or less right on top of us. I don’t remember much about it-I was knocked out and blown clear.” He remembered it better when he dreamed. “I remember coming to in the middle of absolute chaos, and trying to find Euan. Digging through the mud with my bare hands.” Euan had already been dead by then-his neck broken, among other injuries-but Gerald had known where he was, somehow. “I’d just found him-found his body-when a couple of the men found me, and hauled me back to the dressing station. They had to sedate me to keep me from going back out again after him. I didn’t even notice about my leg until I woke up in the Casualty Clearing Station a few days later.” He shook his head. “A couple of the survivors from my unit caught up with me there and brought me Euan’s identity discs. They’d had to retreat-‘due to extensive damage to the defensive fortifications’-and left the bodies behind.”
“Happened a lot,” Thomas noted.
Gerald nodded. “Funny thing was, one of the first casualties-one of the first corpses-I saw was a German Guide. Consolidating a captured trench, we were. I remember being green enough to be sorry we’d missed the excitement of capturing it. We found him in one of their dugouts, and I recognized the insignia. I’d never thought about it before, that there were Guides in the trench opposite.” The realization had rattled him out of his lingering thoughts of patriotic glory. He’d spent most of his time on night watch, in that assignment, looking out at no-man’s land and shooting anything that moved. He’d never been able to shake the knowledge that any time he fired, he could-for all he knew-be murdering a Guide.
“What difference does that make?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know,” Gerald admitted. He could have answered it at the time-that Guides were too fragile and too precious to be wasted in that way. But were they, really, any more so than anyone else? All human beings were fragile, in the face of shells or machine gun fire, and all of them were precious, to someone at least. “But it felt as though it did.”
They moved on, with the third drink, to less fraught subjects: the times when military stupidity had been humorous instead of fatal, the rumors and superstitions that had run rampant, and the colorful characters attached to their respective units.
“We had a bloke who insisted the rats were good eating. Never saw him actually eat one, but he talked about it a lot,” Thomas said.
“Oh, every outfit had one of those,” Gerald said. “I heard there was a chap a ways down the line who read about how they were using terriers to run wire out into no-man’s land, and trained a rat to do it.”
“I heard there was an officer a ways down the line who went out of his head and thought all the rats were German spies. Every man in his company had to make a report every time he saw one.”
“How’d they ever have time to do anything else?” Gerald wondered.
“No idea,” Thomas said. “I thought if it really happened, he was probably putting it on to get sent home for a rest. But who knows? I doubt there was anybody there who wasn’t a bit mad.”
“Oh, certainly. You had to be. Remember how when you moved into a new trench, there’d be bodies cluttering up the place, and you’d just step over them, like they weren’t even there?”
“And how the company comedians would put them in humorous poses,” Thomas said with a nod. “Do that anywhere else, and you’d go straight to the nuthatch.”
They talked some more about the things you got used to-being cold and wet, eating things that only barely qualified as food, sleeping in stretches of an hour or two here and there, never a full night through.
“Remember how you’d sit around and moan about the food and the wet,” Thomas said, when they were near the end of the bottle. “And how your leave’d been delayed, but never about how you might snuff it any second.”
“Yes,” Gerald said. “You couldn’t think about that-even if someone you knew was killed, you’d just shrug your shoulders and rearrange the duty roster. If you thought about how you could be next, you’d be paralyzed.”
Thomas nodded. “One time-one time I was trying to get a stretcher case down to the aid post. The bloke on the other end of the stretcher forgot to stoop. It was one of those places, you know, where the sandbags were too low; if you stood up straight the snipers could see the top of your head.”
“Yes, yes,” Gerald said. “After you’d been holding a trench for a few days, you’d stoop when you got to those parts; you didn’t even have to think about it.”
“Right. Only this bloke’d been there for a while. But it was dark, and there was heavy shelling. All of the sudden he dropped his end of the stretcher. I turned around to curse him out, and he was falling over. A hole right there in the middle of his forehead.” Thomas leaned across the table and poked Gerald between the eyes with his fingertip.
“Christ,” Gerald said, shaken. He really could have been killed, before Gerald had even known him. Somehow-perhaps because of how drunk he was getting-the thought struck him as profoundly sad.
“That was the closest I’d ever been, when somebody was killed. I knew I could die, before then-I knew it even before I joined up. ‘swhy I joined the medical corps.”
He eyed Gerald, as if trying to gauge his reaction to this eminently sensible motivation. “Eminently sensible,” Gerald said, rather pleased that he managed to pronounce it correctly on the first try.
“Didn’t exactly work out like I planned it,” Thomas said. “Thought I’d be able to sit out the war in a nice, safe hospital. Makin’ beds and folding bandages.”
“I wish you had,” Gerald said.
“So do I. Even though that wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, either.” Thomas held up his gloved hand. “I ought to tell you how this really happened,” he said, picked up his glass, and drained it. “But I’m not drunk enough yet.”
Gerald picked up the bottle and held it upside down. Empty. “I vote we solemnly remove ourselves home. The liquor’s better. And if I get any more legless, I won’t be able to walk.” He chuckled at his own joke…and found he had a little trouble stopping.
#
“So,” his lordship said, picking up Thomas’s left hand and waggling it around. “How did this happen?”
During the long stumble back to the house, Thomas had managed to clear his head a little. Someone-Thomas thought perhaps Georgiana-had sent one of the footmen up with some sandwiches, and he’d managed to eat one, and persuade his lordship to do the same. During the ensuing moment of peak sobriety, Thomas had thought twice about his impulsive decision to tell his lordship the truth about his wound.
Then he’d thought thrice about it, and had realized that his lordship really did have to know. It was Thomas’s second-biggest secret, after the one about how he liked men. If he knew-well, it would either be all right or it wouldn’t.
Thomas was nearly almost sure that it would be all right. He’d embarked on a plan to drink steadily until he either was ready to talk about it, or passed out.
It had been some time ago, that he’d made that decision. His lordship had worked his way through the stages of drunkenness: hilarity, weepiness, and poetry. Now he was flopped over on the sofa with his head in Thomas’s lap-something Thomas was aware, through the haze of alcohol, that he’d normally have objected to, but at the moment, he couldn’t remember why.
“This?” Thomas asked, taking off his glove and tossing it aside. “It’s funny. No one ever asks. It was right after that other bloke was shot. In the forehead. Was talkin’ to Matthew Crawley, that’s his lordship’s heir. Lord Grantham’s heir,” he corrected himself. Not his lordship’s; that would be rather odd, since they were the same age and Mr. Matthew wasn’t a Sentinel. “’e’d just turned up somehow. With replacements, or something. Was supposed to be a front-line officer, but it seemed like he was back in Yorkshire every other week for one reason or another.” O’Brien had written him about that, before he’d been home to see it for himself. “Anyway. He told me about how they were taking war patients at the village hospital.”
His lordship was moving his thumb in circles over the hole in Thomas’s hand. It was…distracting, and a good thing he was a drunk as he was, given where his lordship had his head.
“I’d just seen that bloke shot,” Thomas went on. Had he already said that? Probably. “So I was having a cuppa, to try and settle my nerves. When Mr. Crawley turned up. He said he’d just been home, and I asked if he thought I could get moved back off the line. Maybe to the Downton hospital. Since they were taking war patients. ‘e said I’d have to get myself sent back to England first.”
“Easier said than done,” his lordship observed.
“You’re telling me. I’d been trying to get sent home ever since I got there. ‘swhy I was talking to him in the first place. I thought he might do something about it. So since he wasn’t going to help, after he left I went out of the dugout, lit a cigarette, and held my wind-proof lighter up over the side till I got myself shot.” It was the first time he’d ever told anyone. He hadn’t even told O’Brien, though she’d guessed there was something fishy about the way he’d gotten his wound. “Then I sat there and bled into my handkerchief until somebody found me, and I pretended I didn’t know how it happened.” A lot of men didn’t remember exactly how they’d got their wounds-traumatic amnesia, one of the doctors had said it was called. So he’d figured if anyone asked, he could just keep saying he didn’t remember. But no one had asked.
His lordship didn’t say anything for a long time, just kept circling his thumb over the crater in Thomas’s palm. “You could have lost the hand.”
“I know. I knew. Didn’t care, if it got me home alive.” That wasn’t quite true-he hadn’t thought about the possibility of losing his hand entirely until he’d been sitting there, bleeding and waiting to be discovered. But he hadn’t regretted it.
“Suppose not.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Thomas asked. “That I’m a-coward?” He didn’t think he was, not really. But he knew that was what he was supposed to think. That he wasn’t as good as those who’d got their wounds honestly.
“No,” his lordship said. “No. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
Oh, right. Because Guides weren’t supposed to be at the Front “by themselves.” He’d nearly forgotten about that. “None of us should have been.”
“No,” his lordship said. “No, you’re right.” He raised Thomas’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. “None of us should have been.”
#
Gerald woke the next morning-or some time when it was light out, anyway-to Clement bringing him a glass of sodium bicarb and a cup of tea. Drinking them in that order, he vaguely remembered stumbling over to bed, supported by a Thomas who was no steadier on his feet than Gerald was, when they had realized that it was no longer Armistice Day, and they had been drinking for nearly twelve hours straight, with only occasional breaks for solid sustenance. He hadn’t been able to remember which of his legs was the real one. Everything after that was a blank. “Where’s Thomas?” He must have managed to sort out which leg was which; Gerald’s prosthesis had been removed.
Clement pointed over in the direction of the sofa. Hitching himself up a little more against the headboard, Gerald was able to see a blanket-covered, black-haired lump. “I’m going over there next,” Clement said.
“See if you can find my crutches, after that.” He was going to need to get up, sometime soon, at least long enough to pay a visit to the toilet. Normally he kept them by the bed, for just that reason, but at the moment they were nowhere in sight.
Thomas, when shaken lightly by Clement, burrowed more deeply into the blanket. Then he sat up abruptly-and regretted it, judging by the ensuing moan. “Oh, Christ,” he said reverently.
“Indeed,” Clement said.
Thomas looked up at him, went slightly paler, and screwed his eyes shut. He opened them a moment later, clearly hoping to see something different, and, when he did not, said, “Oh, Christ,” again.
“Drink this,” Clement advised, handing him another glass of bicarb.
Thomas drank it. As Clement swapped it for a cup of tea, Thomas said, “Is he up yet?”
Correctly parsing the rather vague question, Clement said, “Awake, yes. In no better condition than you are, Mr. Barrow.”
“Oh, Christ,” Thomas said again.
“I’m fairly sure that’s Thomas,” Gerald ventured. Barrow would doubtless be very surprised to wake up on Gerald’s sofa, since he hadn’t been present for any of the drinking that led up to it.
“Yes,” Thomas said. The suggestion seemed to bring him out of his paralysis. “Mr. Barrow is not at home to callers today, Mr. Clement,” he said, over-enunciating slightly and blinking owlishly. “He’s gone…somewhere else.”
“I see,” Clement said, though Gerald suspected that he didn’t, since he’d never explained how Barrow went missing when Thomas came visiting.
“He went off somewhere to be solemn and dignified. Right before we started drinking,” Gerald added.
“And he may have taken my trousers with him,” Thomas added.
“That’s one way you can tell,” Gerald told Clement. “A valet like Barrow would never misplace his trousers. I’m not sure they even come off. They might be in-built, like doll knickers.” He might still be a little drunk, he realized.
He could see Clement decide that he wasn’t even going to try to understand. “In that case, your lordship, I will look for your crutches and Thomas’s trousers.”
He managed to find both; by the time Gerald came back from the lavatory, Thomas was out from under his blanket and more-or-less decently clothed, in trousers and a rather rumpled, untucked shirt. Gerald himself was wearing pyjama trousers and his undershirt, so it appeared that Thomas had done a slightly better job of dressing him for bed than he had for himself, even without Barrow’s assistance.
Gerald propped his crutches up against the side of the bed and threw himself gratefully back into it. Thomas staggered off on a similar errand, returning a few moments later looking sheepish. He’d tucked in his shirt and smoothed his hair, but still looked far from his usual pressed-and-polished self. “Will you be dressing, my lord?”
“No,” Gerald said. “Not for a while, at any rate.” He wasn’t suffering as badly as he might have been. After the first few drinks at the pub, he’d imbibed only enough to maintain a constant level of inebriation. He was bone-tired and thirsty, but no worse than that. Still, he didn’t have to get up, and, that being the case, he wasn’t going to. “You can go back to bed. Or back to the sofa. I can’t imagine you feel much more like moving about than I do.” That seemed a tactful way of making clear that he didn’t expect anything in the way of actual work out of him today.
“No, my lord,” Thomas admitted, and went back to the sofa. He sat gingerly on it for a moment, then curled up on his side, the way he had been before.
Satisfied that his Guide was all right, Gerald dozed.
They passed the day companionably, in much the same way. Periodically, one or the other of them would get up to wash, shave, or make some other gesture toward the idea of starting the day, then return to their respective couches to recover from the effort. Clement came in from time to time, bringing tea and toast, and later soup and other suitable foods for men feeling a bit delicate, along with the household’s well-wishes. “Her ladyship,” Clement said on one occasion, “particularly hopes that tomorrow will find you entirely recovered.”
“You can tell her we’ve stopped drinking,” Gerald assured him. Once he’d fully sobered up, he began feeling a bit queasy, and thought he wouldn’t want to touch the stuff for at least a week.
“Very good, your lordship,” Clement said.
By late afternoon, Gerald had progressed as far as dressing, more or less, in his oldest, softest trousers and his smoking jacket, though he left his prosthetic leg off-Thomas had located it, but putting it on seemed a bit too much to manage. In the evening, they made their way to the tea-table for soft-boiled eggs and yet more toast; it reminded Gerald of nursery suppers.
“I hope I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have, yesterday, my lord,” Thomas said as they ate.
“Not that I recall,” Gerald answered. He wondered if Thomas was hinting about his confession of how he’d been wounded. Gerald had already resolved not to bring it up again unless Thomas did. He was just glad that Thomas had gotten himself out alive, no matter how he’d done it. “Did I?”
“Not that I can recall, my lord,” Thomas said.
After Clement had cleared away the supper things, they made their way over to the sofa. The cushions had been straightened, and Thomas’s blanket tidied away to wherever it had come from in the first place, some time when Gerald hadn’t been looking. On impulse, Gerald held out his arm. After a moment’s hesitation, Thomas settled in under it, tucked up against his side.
“I suppose Barrow will be back tomorrow,” Gerald said, with a hint of a question in his tone.
Thomas looked away. “I expect we’ll still be seeing a bit of him, my lord.” He turned back to Gerald, ducking his head. “But I thought I might sleep down here from time to time. When he’s not around. If that’s all right.”
“It is,” Gerald said. “I’d like that.”
#
When Mr. Clement had first caught him, passed out drunk on his lordship’s sofa, Thomas had been nearly paralyzed with horror. It took an embarrassingly long time for him to realize that he was not going to be lectured for having disgraced himself, or chivvied into resuming his duties. It was certainly not the first time Thomas had gotten himself drunk, but he couldn’t remember any other occasion when he’d been given as long as he wanted to recover from it. Usually, he had to get up at the usual time and carry on as if there was nothing the matter.
It was a bit of a revelation, having a lazy day in bed-well, on the sofa-complete with people waiting on him. And it had been nice, being able to continue the closeness, the informality, of the day before.
Still, it was also a bit of a relief to retire to his own room and to come down the next morning and-as his lordship would have it-be Barrow again.
During “Barrow’s” brief absence, the entire house had been swept up into preparations for Conclave. Reminded that he still hadn’t been to pick up his livery, Thomas went to Thompson’s tailor shop on Saturday mid-morning, and was relieved to find it open.
The house livery was, at least, inoffensive-black trousers, a very dark blue tailcoat, and a blue-and-silver striped waistcoat. The buttons had the house crest stamped on them, but they were not solid gold. It was a personal Guide’s livery: Thomas had figured out that the collars on their coats were a bit different from the footmen’s, and their ties were blue with silver stripes, while the footmen’s were silver with blue stripes.
Thompson was displeased at having had to work from the London tailor’s measurements, and even less pleased at Thomas’s having left the fitting so late, but it turned out that only the most minor of alterations were required; he could pick the thing up on Monday.
Most of the family, it turned out, were leaving on Monday, so Thomas supposed Thompson’s irritation was justified. But his lordship had decided to delay their own journey until Wednesday. They’d arrive in time for the dinner that Lady Yerenemuth was having that evening, and for the Hunt and the ball on Thursday, followed by Conclave proper on Friday. Then they’d come home on Saturday, while the rest of the family stayed through to Monday morning. Three days seemed like more than enough of it to Thomas, so he was glad that his lordship felt the same way.
Mr. Clement had a great many instructions for him before they left, given that Thomas would be the highest-ranking member of staff on the premises from Monday through Wednesday. It would have been a more impressive honor if not for the fact that for the rest of the week, the third housemaid would be in charge. She, a kitchen girl, and the knives-and-boots boy were to look after the house and his lordship in everyone else’s absence. Even Sophia and Dennis, and her Guide and his nurse, were going.
The whole household was in a flurry over the trip, the staff as well as the family. It seemed that, while Conclave meant a great deal of extra work for everyone, it was also a bit of excitement, a change in routine that they looked forward to. Too, nearly everyone had friends or relations working for other branches of the House, who they could count on seeing during the week. There were opportunities to make new acquaintances as well-more than one former housemaid, Thomas learned, had met her future husband at a Conclave. There was a continuous bustle of activity and excitement up until the moment when the last of the family cars left the drive, at half-past noon on Monday.
The house was strangely quiet after everyone had left. Even in his lordship’s room, where no one else would have been anyway, there seemed to be an invading sense of emptiness. He mentioned it to his lordship, as he was arranging the things from the supper tray on the table.
“You notice that, too?” his lordship said. “Yes-the house is very…full, normally. I’ve never been in it when it was this quiet.”
After serving, Thomas sat down across from him. Faced with the alternative of eating with the housemaid, kitchen girl, and boot boy, he’d decided that this would be a good time to start dining with his lordship again.
His lordship seemed to be making an effort not to make too big a matter out of it; he kept the conversation light, mostly talking about Conclaves past.
The next day they rode. Outside staff didn’t go to Conclave-apart from drivers-so there was no reason for his lordship not to have his usual afternoon ride. The stable staff appeared to be taking advantage of the slack period to do some heavy cleaning, and Clint seemed glad enough to escape from that. Thomas went along, and was rather surprised to find that he was a bit…blasé, about the whole thing. Not that he had been precisely frightened before, he hastened to tell himself. But now he knew how to get on the horse and more-or-less what to do when he got there. He’d also learned enough about horses and their equipment to follow at least part of what Clint talked about-and his lordship had confessed, earlier, that he sometimes got a bit lost when Clint wandered into the finer points himself, so that was all right. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever understand what Clint and his lordship found so enthralling about riding, but he could accompany them without making a complete ass of himself.
It was a feeling he’d do well to remember at Conclave, Thomas realized. He may never be quite as excited about it as the others were, but by the time it came around again next year, he would know what to expect from it. In time, it might come to seem as old hat as going down to London for the Season.
After he got through this first one, that is.
Link to Chapter Thirteen