There was a misting rain this morning, cold and wet on the face, as we walked several streets over in search of a cab to take us to the station. I had thought of everything, and I was rather pleased as we stepped into the train at Victoria Station, on our way to Rochester.
I had even fashioned a bandage for Peregrine’s head, so that he wouldn’t be required to speak, and I’d told him he was my brother, going home from hospital to complete his recovery. He had looked in the mirror and said, “It’s more believable than the bandage I contrived.”
“Well, of course, what did you expect?” I demanded.
We left the train at Rochester, walking up the hill to the old heart of the city. The squat, powerful Romanesque cathedral and the keep of the castle across from it were floating in disembodied splendor above the fog that had swept up from the Medway’s estuary. I needed transportation to my final destination, the home of a woman my parents had known for some years. The best place to find a driver was at an hotel. The long winding High Street was still nearly empty, though it was close on nine o’clock in the morning, but the shops had opened, and a chimney sweep walked by, whistling.
We were just by a butcher’s shop when I saw coming toward me an officer I knew, now a captain in my father’s old regiment.
I clutched Peregrine’s arm and steered him into the shop. “Wait here,” I said, in a low voice. “Whatever you do, don’t come out.”
To the astonished butcher, I said, “We’re eloping-can my fiancé wait in a back room? Someone who knows my parents is coming up the street!”
The butcher, a burly man with thick graying hair, nodded, and beckoned to Peregrine as I stepped out of the shop and walked on.
Captain Raynor recognized me, waved, and we met in front of a milliner’s, well beyond the butcher’s shop.
“Bess? Is that you?”
“Of course. What on earth are you doing in Rochester?” I asked. “I thought you were the terror of the Hun?”
“I could ask you the same. Your father isn’t here with you, by any chance. I thought I saw you with an officer.”
“Someone who was my patient on Britannic. He walked a little way with me, catching up on news. But tell me, how is Margaret?”
He grinned from ear to ear. “We’ve a son! I was here for the birth-nasty shoulder wound, and they sent me home. I never thought I’d ever be glad of German marksmanship. His name is William, and he’s beautiful.”
“I’m so happy for you.” I embraced him lightly. “That’s for Margaret. Tell her she’s wonderful.”
His eyes were bright with pride. “So she is. She could ask for the moon tomorrow, and I’d do my best to reach it for her.”
“How long is your leave?”
The brightness faded. “Ten days, and I’m off again. I don’t know how I can bear to go. I never hated the Germans until William came. And now I’m not very happy with the French either. And what about you?” he asked, quickly changing the subject. “I heard what happened. Are you all right? Are you returning to duty? The Colonel must have been beside himself.”
“I survived with nothing more than a broken arm,” I said. “And I expect my orders will be here next week.”
“I’m sure this break from blood and death has been good for you. But I must say you still look a little tired.”
If only he knew!
“The arm was slow to heal.”
“Don’t tell me. They worked on this shoulder of mine until I wished it had been blown off. But see, I can almost reach above my head.” And he demonstrated how far he’d come.
I made congratulatory noises, all the while praying that he’d be spared and come home safe to William and Margaret.
He asked after my father and Simon, and sent his dearest love to the Colonel’s Lady, and then we parted. He embraced me warmly, saying, “Keep safe, Bess. I’ll do the same, trust in that.”
And he was gone. I walked on as far as a small bookshop, stopping there to look in the window while surreptitiously watching Captain Raynor turn a corner and disappear.
Weak with relief, I hurried back the way I’d come, and opened the door to the butcher shop, still smiling at our close call.
The butcher was nowhere to be seen, nor was Peregrine.
But at the sound of the bell above the door tinkling its warning, the butcher appeared from the back, his ruddy face nearly as white as his shirt.
“You’d better come,” he said, and gestured toward the back.
I had no idea what was wrong, but I almost ran through the shop to follow him.
In the room behind the shop where the butcher worked, out of sight, there was a long wooden table, a block for a top, and beside it an assortment of knives and other tools.
Peregrine was on the far side of the table-rigid with shock, his face a mask of horror.
“I don’t know what’s wrong-I was cleaning a brace of geese-what happened to him in the war, then?”
I had nearly forgot that Peregrine was in uniform.
“I-a head wound-” I managed to say, and then my training asserted itself, and I put my hand on the butcher’s arm. “Could you leave us, please? For a little while? I’m a nurse…”
The butcher all but fled the workroom. I looked at the blood on the worktable, the entrails of the geese lying in an ugly heap. That hint of rusty iron that was the smell of blood caught in my throat.
I went around the table without speaking. I was afraid to touch Peregrine, and the shared knowledge of war that had helped me deal with Ted Booker was no use to me here.
“Peregrine?” I spoke softly. “It’s Bess Crawford. What’s wrong?”
He started back as I spoke. “No, I won’t put my hands there-you can’t force-”
I looked from his staring eyes to the bloody entrails, and my heart turned over.
I hadn’t been there when Mrs. Graham found Lily Mercer. But I was seeing the scene now as Peregrine must have seen it.
“Peregrine-” I reached out for his arm, to turn him away, but he flung his arm out at me, knocking me halfway across the room, where I ended up next to a large basket of live chickens, their startled cackling adding to the nightmarish scene. This wasn’t a slim, dazed, and frightened fourteen-year-old. He was a fully grown man, and I was winded from the blow.
He was screaming, “No, don’t touch me! I won’t, I tell you, I won’t-!”
I had helped Ted Booker by taking part in his nightmare. I tried it now.
“But this is what you did, Peregrine. Do you hear me?” I said in a voice as near to that of Mrs. Graham as I could make it.
“I didn’t touch her. I only wanted my knife-”
“You can’t have it. The police must take it. Look at what you did. Put your hands in her body, Peregrine, and touch what you have done! Your father would despise you, if he’d lived to see this. Here, hold out your hands, and I’ll show you how it feels to be ripped apart-”
He screamed and went on screaming, and then began beating at the front of his uniform, as if frantically trying to rub something off, his eyes wide with horror and revulsion. And he kept on beating at his chest before turning with such loathing in his face that I nearly fell back again into the basket of chickens.
“I hate you,” he said, no longer screaming, his voice cold and hard and young. “I have always hated you-”
He broke off, as if he’d been slapped, his head jerking.
And then to my astonishment, he began crying, silent tears of anguish rolling down his cheeks, and with a bravado I hadn’t thought possible, he reached out and buried his hands in the bloody mass.
“There,” he said. “I’m my father’s son, which is more than my brothers can say.”
I hurried to him, caught his hands, and with a cloth that hung from a hook by the table, I cleaned them as best I could. Then I made him dip them in a bucket of water standing beside a sheep’s carcass. I was crying myself now, tears of pity for a child who hadn’t been able to defend himself, tormented beyond bearing.
He seemed to shudder, and after a moment he said, “Bess?” As if he couldn’t see me there beside him. It was the first time he’d used my given name.