Hawthorn (30 page)

By noon the shadow-cloud blotted out the sun and the Castle of Bouillon was surrounded by a German battalion.

“You have to wonder,” Raven murmured in my ear as we watched the German general, in Prussian blue uniform, high polished boots and spike-topped helmet, approach the first drawbridge, “what German HQ thinks this expedition is about. Why waste time and resources on a tenth-century castle in the middle of the Ardennes forest?”

“Perhaps they think it's a Resistance stronghold they have to squash before rolling on to France. Or perhaps they're not thinking anything at all. Look at the jerky way that general is marching; he looks like an automaton possessed by the
tenebrae
.”

“I think that may be the way they're taught to march in Germany,” Raven replied. “But you're probably right. There's the puppet master right behind him, jerking his strings.”

Although he'd traded his customary Inverness cape and Homburg hat for a Prussian uniform and spike-topped helmet, I would have recognized van Drood anywhere. He was a dark blotch on the landscape, sucking all the light and air out of the day. How he must hate the whole world to bring it to the brink of this terrible war!

“To think it all started because he loved a girl who didn't love him back,” Raven said.

I glanced at him, surprised. I'd never talked to him about how van Drood had loved my mother and been spurned by her. “How did you know that?”

“Your father told me when I brought him back to Ravencliffe last year. He said that your mother cared for van Drood and felt terribly guilty at how he took her rejection.”

“She did? But he was her teacher!”

“He wasn't much older than Rupert Bellows is now, and in case you haven't noticed, your friend Daisy is awfully fond of him.”

I opened my mouth to object, but then I remembered that Helen had said the same thing. “Still, Mr. Bellows won't become a shadow master when Daisy marries Mr. Appleby. And he didn't become one when Miss Sharp fell in love with Miss Corey. And look at Marlin! He's had to listen to Helen calling Nathan's name for weeks now and it hasn't turned him mean. In fact, he's been lovely to Louisa—”

“I suspect that's to do with how
lovely
Louisa is.”

“Judicus van Drood could have found someone else. In fact, he did. Dame Beckwith cared for him, but she wasn't enough for him. Just because you're disappointed in love is no excuse to give up hope and become a monster!”

“No,” Raven agreed, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “But I often think that if you had chosen Nathan over me I wouldn't be a very pleasant person.”

“Good thing that I love you,” I said, leaning my head on his shoulder.

“Good thing,” he agreed, holding me tight.

We stayed arm in arm as we watched Mr. Bellows and Falco stand on the parapet overlooking the drawbridge to listen to the general's demands.

“In the name of Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, emperor of Germany,” the general began, his mouth barely moving beneath his large bushy mustache, “I order you to open your gates and surrender this stronghold. If you do not, reprisal will be swift and merciless.”

“Never!” Mr. Bellows cried, shaking his fist in the air. “You are being led into a war you cannot win by the puppet master van Drood. Go back to Berlin and tell your leaders that millions will die and your country's name will be dishonored by your actions.”

“A fine speech, Rupert,” the general said—only it was van Drood's voice issuing from beneath the drooping mustache. “You always were one for eloquent speeches. I remember one you gave in my class on the Civil War. But you were trying to impress Vionetta Sharp then. Who are you trying to impress now that Vionetta has chosen a woman over you? That little schoolgirl?”

“How does he know about Daisy?” I asked Raven, blushing in sympathy for Mr. Bellows.

“He's in Helen's head, remember? He must know everything she does.”

I watched as Mr. Bellows regained his composure. “I would never behave inappropriately with a student as you did in pressuring Evangeline Hall to marry you—and as you have done by kidnapping Helen van Beek. At least we have her back now.”

“Do you?” the general asked in van Drood's voice. He and van Drood both tilted their heads up in unison and looked over our heads. We all turned at once to see Helen standing on top of the tower, her nightgown fluttering in the breeze like a pennant, balanced on the edge of the parapet.

“Open your gates or I'll make her jump to her death,” van Drood barked, his voice coming out from the general's mouth and his own. I saw Helen take a step closer to the edge and I
snapped my wings out. I launched myself toward the tower but Marlin was ahead of me. He swooped toward Helen. Before he could reach her there was an enormous explosion. The ground shook and a missile flew straight at Marlin.

“No!” I screamed trying to push Marlin out of the way. But I was too late. The mortar shell struck him in the chest and he fell to the flagstones with a sickening thud. Helen was staring down at his broken body with blank eyes. I heard Raven screaming and the general, in his own voice now, barking an order to reload the guns. The first shot in the siege of Bouillon had been fired and the first soldier had fallen.

THE FIRST HOUR
of the battle was a chaotic blur. I grabbed Helen and carried her down to her room. She babbled the whole time about how naughty Nathan had been to lead her up onto the roof when he knew how frightened she was of heights and did I know where he'd gotten to? All in a childish high-pitched chatter that made my skin crawl. When I dumped her on her bed and she started in with olly olly oxen free again I slapped her.

“Nathan's not coming and Marlin's been shot down!” I screamed. “Don't you care?”

She blinked at me like a newborn chick, her hand rising to touch the red hand mark on her face.

“Don't blame her, mademoiselle!” Manon cried, grabbing my arm. “It is my fault. I fell asleep dreaming over my lace and let her slip past me. I will lock the door from now on.”

“Do that!” I said, spinning on my heel. I couldn't look at Helen's blank face a moment longer. I fled the room and dove down the stairs, barely touching the steps with my feet, heading to the great hall, where I heard anxious voices. I found Wren and Raven bending over Marlin's too-still body.

Had I ever seen him not in motion? He was always the one
making a joke, taking a pratfall to make others laugh. I noticed with a pang that he'd taken my advice about tying his hair back—with one of Louisa's pink ribbons.

“Is he—”

“He's alive,” Wren answered, “but barely. The mortar struck his shoulder. It would have killed him straight on, but his ribs were broken and his lungs crushed when he fell.” Marlin coughed and a thin trickle of blood seeped out of his mouth.

Miss Sharp knelt by his side. “We have to open an airway. Someone get my nurse's bag . . . we need boiling water . . .”

I turned to find Daisy carrying a basin of water. Louisa was behind her with a stack of white bandages. “I watched the nurses at the sanatorium,” Louisa said. It was the first sensible thing I'd ever heard her say. I started to tell her so, but the floor suddenly shook and something loud exploded outside in the courtyard. I ran from the great hall into the courtyard, Raven close at my heels, and found Miss Corey leading a troop of Darklings and villagers against a swarm of shadow snakes. How had they gotten over the walls?

As I drew my dagger and lopped off the head of one of the creatures I got my answer. A mortar shell flew over our battlements and landed against the tower wall. It exploded, releasing a swarm of hissing shadow vipers. Beatrice Jager drew an arrow, Dolores lit the fletching for her, and she shot it into the heart of the swarm. They exploded in a hissing mass of flames, extinguishing all but one that Sirena decapitated with the heel of her boot while shooting an arrow at another missile sailing over the wall.

“We have to stop the guns!” I shouted at Raven.

“Yes, but how?” He pulled me down into one of the archery loops and pressed his face to the opening in the wall. “Look at them. Each gun is guarded by twelve men—and I suspect they're all shadow-ridden. They'll see us coming—and I don't know how to destroy one of those guns.”

“We'd have to shove an explosive down its throat,” another voice said. It was Gus, crouching beside us. “I could rig a device. If we could just get close enough . . .”

I looked out the slit at the battlefield. The army was encamped in a ring around the castle on the other side of the Semois. The guns were positioned on the riverbank, squatting like ugly toads. At least they hadn't crossed the river yet. The guns would be too heavy for the bridge and they would be ruined by the water.

“I have an idea,” I said. “But I need a lumignon.”

No sooner had I said the word than a lumignon was on my shoulder sneezing in my ear. “I need you to talk to the undines . . .”

Twenty minutes later Raven, Sirena, Buzz, Gus, Heron, and I launched ourselves from the battlements, each carrying one of Gus's explosive wine bottles. We each headed for one of the guns. I could see the guards around the guns looking at us—then aiming their bayonets at us. Before they could fire, though, a wave erupted from the river, engulfing gun and guards. When it receded the guards were gone. I could hear their screams as the undines dragged them under the water. I focused on the open maw of the gun, trying not to think about the lives being extinguished in the river. Would I ever get used to the idea of
taking lives? I wasn't sure if I was more afraid that I would or that I wouldn't.

As I swooped down toward the gun, I swung my bottle up to light the candle, but that proved impossible to do midflight. I touched down in front of the gun and struck the match against the box Gus had given me, but my fingers fumbled and the match fell to the damp ground with a hiss.

I lit another one, held it to the candle—

—and heard another hiss. This time it came from inside the gun. A black snake was slithering out of the muzzle.

“Clever girl,” it spit in van Drood's voice. “killing eighteen-year-old boys. The one screaming now is named Hans.”

I tossed the bottle into the gun's mouth. “That's on you!” I cried, launching myself into the air. The explosion drowned out the screams of the soldiers—
Hans
—and singed the tips of my feathers. Four other explosions followed—but at the sixth gun Sirena was wrestling with a shadow snake, her wine bottle lying in the mud. I dove toward her, but Raven and Buzz reached her first. Raven sliced the snake in half while Buzz retrieved the bottle and lit the candle. Or tried to. The wick was too wet.

“Leave it!” I shouted. We've gotten five out of six.”

“Not good enough,” Buzz shouted. He pulled the bandana from his neck and stuffed it in the mouth of the bottle. I lit a match from my own box and held it to the cloth, but it didn't light as quickly as a candlewick.

“Give it a second,” Buzz said, sheltering the flame with his hand. “You go.”

Raven was pulling me away and shouting to Buzz to drop
it already. “Right behind you, chief,” Buzz said, grinning as he lobbed the wine bottle into the gun. Raven was already pulling me into the air as Buzz stepped forward, wings flexed, but before he could take off a hand reached up from the mud and grabbed his foot. It was one of the soldiers who had been drowned in the river, so covered in mud we hadn't seen him. Buzz kicked at the soldier's head, which caved in with a sickening squelch, but the soldier's hand still held on to Buzz's foot. I screamed and tried to fly back but Raven held me as more drowned soldiers slithered out of the river toward Buzz.

It was a horrifying sight, but when he saw them, Buzz grinned and stepped backward into the maw of the gun. “Come and get me,” he shouted as the ghost soldiers swarmed over him and the gun exploded.

The explosion knocked me and Raven backward, clear over the battlements and into the tower wall. Raven cushioned our impact with his wings. I heard dozens of bones crack—I wasn't sure it they were Raven's wing bones or mine—then I heard nothing at all. As our friends gathered around us I could see their mouths moving but no sound coming out. The only voice I heard was the lumignon's inside my head.
The shadow soldiers cannot be killed. They come back as ghost soldiers. How do we fight against an army of ghosts?

That night Raven and I flew over the battleground. The soldiers who had drowned in the river stood at their posts around the debris of the guns, their mud-streaked faces blank and bloated.

“The lumignon have a point,” Raven said. “How do we fight a ghost army?”

I shook my head, which made the ringing worse. I could hear again, but everything sounded echoey, as if I were under water. “I don't know,” I said. “Do you feel anything of Buzz here?” I asked.

Raven shook his head. “Darklings don't have souls like humans. It's part of our curse. When we're dead we're just . . . gone.”

I shivered in the clammy night air. “It doesn't seem fair that you help the souls of humans and fairies to their afterworlds.”

“What's fair about any of this?” he asked, waving his arms at the muddy field where Buzz had made his last stand. “Why should Buzz have lost his life here? What was it for? These poor sods just came back and took up their posts—and I can't even help
them
. The shadows have bound up their souls.”

I touched Raven's arm. “At least the guns are gone. Buzz would have been glad of that.”

Raven nodded and took off into the air. I followed him back to the castle, where the Darklings had gathered on the rampart. Gus and Wren held a paper lantern affixed to a wire basket and a candle. While Gus lit the candle, Falco recited a prayer I'd never heard before.

Let our prayers be carried

Where our souls cannot go.

Let our souls be borne on the air

Until we can come home.

When he was done, Wren released the lantern and it floated up into the sky—a pale, glowing shape like a firefly. We watched it until it vanished in the dark and everyone murmured once again, “Until we can come home.” The murmur was louder than before. I turned around and saw that the villagers and my Blythewood friends had joined us—and also the lumignon, the lutins, the Wieven, and Aesinor, whose face shone wet in the moonlight as if she, too, longed for a home she couldn't return to. We were all exiles, I realized, as displaced as the refugees choking the roads of Belgium.

I spent the rest of the night sitting by Helen's bed, listening to her play hide-and-seek with Nathan through the rooms of Blythewood. We were exiled from there, too, I realized. Even if we ever did go back, even if it wasn't destroyed, we could never go back to who we were there . . . except in our dreams.

Toward dawn I fell asleep and joined Helen there. We were sitting in Professor Jager's class listening to him deliver a lecture on the four kinds of magic—air, earth, fire, and water—our first year at Blythewood. To illustrate air magic he had created a bond between Daisy and a pair of scissors. He blew on the scissors and made Daisy's hair puff up. He doused the scissors with water and made Daisy choke. He was just about to apply a match to the scissors—which is when I'd interfered the first time I'd watched this lecture, but as I rose to my feet now Helen stayed me with a touch of her hand.

“No, wait,” she said. “I want to see this.”

I turned to her, appalled, but before I could object I woke up in the chair by Helen's bed, Manon shaking my arm.
“They're asking for you downstairs, mademoiselle.”

I staggered to my feet and stumbled down the stairs, shaking my head to clear the fog from my brain. Why would Helen want to see Daisy hurt in her dream world? Was she really that far gone?

All thought of Helen's dreams were banished from my mind when I came out into the courtyard. My friends were standing at the curtain wall, staring out over the battleground. Huge black shapes, like giant prehistoric monsters, loomed out of the morning mist. “What are they?” I asked.

“The guns,” Raven said in a grim voice. “They've replaced them. Buzz died for nothing.”