Chapter 42: Our Torments May Become Our Elements

CHÂTEAU COUTHOVE AND POPERINGHE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM

April 1918

Freddie came back to himself by painful degrees. He was in a dark place that smelled like old fabric. It wasn’t the hotel. It was colder, harsher somehow, the insulation of wine and music and lost memory gone. He was back. In that moment, he didn’t want to be. He yearned after vanished oblivion. Where was Laura? He’d come back for Laura. And for—

Winter.

He’s going to die,someone had said.

The thought roused him. Coward, Faland had called him. Maybe Freddie was. But he was a coward with a purpose, and he’d been long enough a soldier to see how purpose strengthened even the weakest men. He forced himself to open his eyes and sit up and exist, for the first time in months, in a place that was neither shielded nor confined by Faland’s overwhelming presence.

The room was dim, bare, and prosaic, but there was no smell of dust or decay. Just something mildly astringent. He was lying on a bed, with a trunk at its foot, a folding table beside him. A man was sitting next to him, a man with big, bony wrists. Brilliant dark eyes softened a hard jaw, a hawklike nose. Freddie remembered him, vaguely. He’d called his sister Laura. Freddie raised himself on one elbow. “Who are you?”

“I’m a surgeon. Name of Jones,” came the measured reply.

“Can you tell me what is happening?”

The dark eyes regarded him levelly. “If you’ll do the same. Damned if I know, really.”

Freddie tried to organize his mind. He remembered the hotel. A beautiful woman with golden hair. He’d seen her head bent near Faland’s—where? In the hotel? Somewhere else? A dark place. Both of them wrapped in music. No—in noise. The wide blue eyes. What had she seen in the mirror? What had Faland told her? Then? And later? Where was Winter? Where was Laura? Freddie said, sharply, “Tell me first; where’s my sister?”

Jones’s dark eyes measured him. “In Poperinghe. With her friend Mrs. Shaw. Who was behaving very peculiarly.”

Freddie caught Jones’s wrist, his mind ticking over faster, like a watch newly wound. “She’s the woman with the yellow hair, isn’t she? We need to go to them. Something’s wrong. He’s not done with us. We need to go.”

Jones shook him off. “You’re ill, you’ve had an ordeal, and you’re still in considerable danger. Which, frankly, I’m not sure I would care about, except that I care very much for your sister. So for her sake, I am going to keep you—”

This time Freddie’s fingers closed with desperation on Jones’s forearm. “Let me explain. And you decide. But I don’t think there’s much time. You see, I’ve seen that woman, Mrs. Shaw, before.”

The black eyes grew sharper still. “Talk then, Iven.”

---

· · ·There was no regret in Pim’s face. Only endless unassuaged anger. “I’m sorry, Laura,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to see. But I thought you wouldn’t mind. You hate him too. For Brandhoek, for what happened on the Ridge…”

“Wouldn’t mind?”she whispered. “Pim, he wasn’t—they’re going to arrest all of us. What in God’s name possessed you—” She looked from Pim’s still face to Young’s. “Tell me what happened, Pim.”

“Jimmy ran away,” said Pim. Her eyes pleaded for understanding, for benediction. “After Passchendaele. After the horrible battle on the Ridge. Jimmy survived, but then he ran. They caught him. At Le Havre. He was trying to get on a ship. Trying to get back to m— Anyway, they caught him. Took him back for his court-martial. He was convicted. Sent to—the firing squad. At dawn. In Poperinghe, behind the mairie. Faland—Faland showed me where. The courtyard, the post. The cell they kept him in. The night of the riot, he showed me. He told me. He knows so many things, Faland.”

“I’m so sorry, Pim,” Laura said. Icy sweat poured down her ribs. She groped for the right words. “But what did Gage have to do with it?”

“Gage—he was out walking—that morning, when they were leading Jimmy to…” Pim spoke as though she could not get enough air. “Gage saw him. Pure chance. He stopped him. Asked—what he’d done. They said what he had done. And Gage told Jimmy—” Pim’s voice wavered. “That Jimmy had erred and he was dying for it. So that other men wouldn’t. So in dying—the way he was, he was serving the cause of the war after all. He couldn’t even get free by dying.” Her voice broke at last. “And Gage was the last person on earth that Jimmy ever spoke to, at all. The last voice.”

“And he told you all this?” said Laura, realizing. “Gage told you in London, didn’t he? When he called you into the library?”

“Yes,” said Pim. “I think he thought I’d somehow be relieved that Jimmy hadn’t died in vain.” Her voice dripped with bitterness. “I think he meant well.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Laura.

“I didn’t have words. It was such poison. I hated him. Oh, Laura, I’ve never hated anyone before. Not like that. I’ve hated him ever since. The hating was eating me up. He could have saved him, I’m sure of it. Sent him back to me. That night in Faland’s hotel, when I looked in his mirror, I thought I’d see Jimmy. Of course that’s what I wanted most. My boy. But it wasn’t that. Instead, I saw myself killing Gage, and stamping on his bones.” Pim’s thin shoulders heaved. “How dare he take my son.”

Laura shuddered. Laura had fought her monster, and Pim had found herself one. It was so much easier to hate a man than a system: vast, inhuman, bloodstained.

Pim continued, “And so—well, there was Young, and I knew he liked me. That gave me the idea. He offered to teach me to ride, and I asked him to teach me to shoot as well, like it was a great joke.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “But it wasn’t.”

When Young spoke, it was the last thing either of them expected. His eyes were wet. “I’ll say the German shot my uncle,” he said. He looked at Winter. “If you’ll say the same.”

“I will,” said Winter, without hesitation.

Young took a step nearer Pim. His eyes were blind with devotion, while Pim’s had been empty with rage. Christ, was anyone sane? “He was—I mean—I’m sorry. I don’t think that killing”—his voice cracked—“killing him gave you anything back. But I can get you away from here.”

“No!” cried Pim. “No—no!” She drew herself up stiff. “I’ll tell the truth. Do you think I want anyone to die for me? I knew what I was doing. I wanted to do it.” She turned with determination to the door.

“No, wait, Pim—” Laura began, but Pim had already slid open the bolt and flung the door wide. Laura expected a mass of angry aides, and military police, to be standing there. But there was only Faland, leaning against the opposite wall.

“Took you long enough,” he said. He looked at the general, lying in a heap on the floor. And he laughed.

“Penelope?” Young echoed, staring with astonishment at the fair-haired stranger, the empty corridor. “Who is this?”

Pim lifted her chin, faced Faland squarely. “You didn’t think I would.”

“On the contrary, I knew you would,” he said. “I don’t underestimate people, as a rule. With occasional exceptions.” He shot Laura a glance. “And now? Going to own up to it? Confess, and die along with the spy here?”

“Do I have a choice?” said Pim.

“Oh, yes,” said Faland. “That boy there wants to rescue you.”

Their eyes locked. “And you?” whispered Pim.

“I want to ruin you,” said Faland. “Which shall it be?” Noise echoed in the corridor, shouting, footsteps coming closer.

Laura said, “Pim, for God’s sake, he had Freddie. Freddie was a—a husk when I saw him. Don’t—whatever you’re thinking. Don’t.”

Pim was still looking at Faland. “If I go with you,” she said, “will you get them away?”

Faland said equably, “I suppose I could. I’ll even take a leaf out of Iven’s book.”

Laura didn’t know what he meant, but it soon became clear. Faland knelt beside the dead man, rifled his pockets. Pulled out a book of matches. With deft fingers, he got some priming out of the gun. Struck a match. It caught with surprising speed. Smoke billowed through the room. Laura’s eyes stung.

There was no time to find a handcuff key. Laura had to set her jaw and dislocate Winter’s thumb so he could pull his hand free. He submitted to this without a sound. Then they went up an empty staircase, coughing. The silence in the building was eerie. She didn’t see Faland anymore. She didn’t see Pim. She felt hollow with shocked betrayal as they emerged into a spring night that roared with moving cars and moving men, shook her head as though she’d crawled out of a dream.

Where was Pim? Young was turning in a wild circle as though he too searched. There. She was standing facing Faland. Neither moved. Young would come to his senses and give the alarm in a minute. Laura, still supporting Winter, crossed the space between them, her feet awkward in the dust. “Pim, come on, come away. We’ll go back to Halifax. We’ll—”

Pim turned her head a little. But Laura’s voice died in her throat. Winter’s hand tightened on her arm. She’d had years of schooling in the hardest, coldest reality—and she recognized the look on Pim’s face. It was the look a wounded man got sometimes, a man who was not mortally wounded, perhaps, but who had simply had enough. Who meant to leave the world behind.

“Pim, he’s not—” But she met Pim’s eyes. Stopped again. Felt Winter quiver, as he fought to stay upright.

Pim said to Faland, “You’ll help them get out. All the way out. To safety. To the ordinary world.”

Faland’s gaze was fixed as though in fascination on Pim’s face, as though he could read the unsteady play of emotion there like sheet-music. He said, “And you will tell me everything. Every night. What you love. What you hate. And why you’re afraid. Until you remember nothing at all.”

“Yes.”

“Pim, don’t,” whispered Laura.

Faland smiled a little. “Enjoy the pieces of your brother, Iven. Or rather, enjoy watching him enjoy them. Do you think any part of dear Freddie is yours anymore? It isn’t. It’s his. And a little bit mine.”

Laura swallowed around a great, furious knot in her throat, but Pim merely turned and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and said, “It’s for the best, Laura.”

Laura was silent. Because she’d seen Pim at last, through the gauze of her bright, sweet nature. And what moved under the skin was wounded, and ruthless, and certainly a little mad. She realized that she was crying, and saw that Pim was too.

Faland had his violin. His eyes were still on Pim. “How’s this, then, sweet?” he said. “I finished it.” He put bow to string.

It wasn’t so much music as a mad scream, of rage and grief and insane determination, jagged and wretchedly beautiful. Laura heard Pim’s voice in the howl of it. The roar of the crowd echoed the sound of the music, the churning rhythm of war all around them. Laura stood there for a moment caught between Faland’s poisonous refuge and the world’s dangers. She could have turned to him then. Faland probably knew it. Winter was silent, but she could feel him shake beside her. Any moment, the alarm would come and then—

And then Jones was there. “What in hell, Iven?” he said.