Land of Hope and Glory (44 page)

‘Get him on that,’ one of the bearers said.

‘No, I can walk.’ Charles winced as he moved.

‘It’ll be easier if you lie down,’ Jack said.

Charles considered this for a moment, sweat beading on his forehead, then nodded. He groaned as he tried to lower himself, finding it difficult with his injured leg. Jack and Saleem helped him down.

‘Jack,’ Saleem hissed, gesturing to the back of Charles’s head without Charles noticing.

Jack looked to where Saleem was pointing. Cold fingers felt up his spine. A piece of shrapnel the size of a fist poked out from the back of Charles’s head. Thickening blood oozed from the wound and Charles’s skull curved inward slightly.

‘Really, I’m all right,’ Charles was saying.

Jack swallowed. ‘Of course.’

‘Follow us,’ one of the bearers said.

‘Aren’t there any other bearers?’ Jack looked around.

‘No.’ The bearer snorted.

Jack glanced up at the battlements. He could see William’s large figure silhouetted in the haze between the flashing guns. He couldn’t let himself lose sight of his friend now.

‘Hurry up,’ the bearer said.

‘How far’s the hospital?’ Jack asked.

‘What?’ the bearer shouted over the roar of the guns.

‘The hospital – how far?’

‘Not far. We have to go now.’

Jack looked up again. William was his last chance of saving Elizabeth. He couldn’t leave now. But there was no one else to carry Charles. The lad would die if they didn’t get him to the hospital soon.

Jack felt dizzy and short of breath. The sound of the battle seemed overwhelming.

Damn it.

He picked up one end of the stretcher, Saleem taking the other. He would get Charles to the hospital and then get back to the wall. Saleem could stay with Charles after that.

But he would have to move quickly. He couldn’t let William slip away from him now.

18

J
ack and Saleem, carrying Charles on the stretcher, followed the bearers down a series of narrow, winding streets. The wounded man on the bearers’ stretcher cried out a few times, while Charles lay on his side, saying nothing, more subdued than before. Jack kept glancing at the large piece of metal protruding from Charles’s head and shivered each time he saw it.

Round shot whined above. Shells exploded in neighbouring streets and blue fireballs wailed overhead. Many houses had been torn apart and tossed across the road. Jack found himself clambering over rubble laced with pots, lanterns, smashed chairs, rugs. He recoiled at one point when he saw he’d stepped on a child’s tunic, but there was no child in sight.

He felt moisture on his face – drizzle. His clothes were already damp. It must have been raining for some time without him noticing. The ground became slick and Saleem slipped and almost fell over a few times.

How far was that damn hospital?

Why was it taking so long?

Why were the bearers going so slowly?

The sound of a man screaming cut through the throb of the guns. Saleem slowed.

‘Keep going,’ Jack muttered.

The screaming continued. They came to the end of the street and stopped. More screaming. Groans. Cries. The voices of the damned.

They were in a small square surrounded on all sides by stone and timber-frame houses. Tarpaulins had been stretched across more than two-thirds of the square to provide shelter, and beneath these writhed a mass of people. Men lay on tables, drenched in blood, some with their legs or arms shot off, some impaled by chunks of metal, some distorted by greasy burns. Surgeons wielded saws, cleavers and iron tongs. The injured struggled and roared as they were operated on, held down by orderlies in grey, splattered aprons. Blood trickled between the cobblestones and flowed out from under the shelter to be washed away by the rain.

Charles raised his head and took in the scene. He looked back at Jack, eyes widening. ‘No. I’m all right. Take me back.’

Jack gripped the stretcher more firmly. ‘We have to get you seen to.’

They carried Charles under the tarpaulin. The rain came down harder, drumming on the canvas and running off the edges. Jack steeled himself as he looked at the carnage. Saleem was so pale his ginger beard seemed to shine against his skin.

‘Get him up on that table.’ A muscular surgeon with a bloody saw strode across to them. His face was locked in a scowl and his hair was dripping with rainwater.

Jack and Saleem lifted Charles on to a red-stained table that smelt damp and salty, the smell of an abattoir.

The surgeon wiped his forehead, leaving behind a trace of blood. He wheezed as he cut away Charles’s left trouser leg. The wound looked worse than Jack had first thought. Most of the thigh was gone, leaving just a mess of tendons and gristle. The surgeon then turned Charles’s head further to the side and examined the chunk of shrapnel at the back. He sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

He looked at Jack and Saleem. ‘Come over here.’

They took a few steps away from the table.

The surgeon pushed his mouth up with his bottom lip, his chin puckering. ‘Nothing I can do for him.’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘You have to.’

The surgeon gave a wheezy sigh. ‘That metal in his head – he’s finished. It’s deep in the brain. Don’t know how he’s still alive.’

Jack glanced around. What he most wanted to see was a Rajthanan doctor. In the army, the Rajthanans would always handle the most serious cases as European surgeons were in reality little more than medical assistants with limited training.

But there were no Rajthanans.

The rain pummelled the tarpaulin. A trickle found its way through a gap between the sheets and fell on his shoulder.

‘I’m sorry.’ The surgeon looked down. ‘You’ll have to move him. Take him somewhere he can rest. Best thing for it.’

‘Is there anything you can give him? For the pain.’ Jack knew the Rajthanan doctors had drugs that could reduce a soldier’s suffering.

‘Afraid not. We’ve got nothing like that here.’

Saleem’s eyes were wide and watery. Jack patted him lightly on the back as they turned to the table.

‘What is it?’ Charles’s eyes looked glazed. They rolled about as though he were drunk.

Jack cleared his throat. ‘We’re just going to take you somewhere – so you can rest.’

‘I’m all right, then?’

Jack shot a look at Saleem, then nodded awkwardly.

Charles’s eyes focused and he searched Jack’s face. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Jack said.

‘Ah . . .’ Charles paused for a long time. ‘That’s it, then.’

‘You need to rest.’ Jack looked across the square. The rain hammered on the cobbles. He couldn’t see anywhere to take Charles.

There were shouts down one of the side streets and men came stumbling through the rain. Some limped, their clothes torn, while others carried wounded soldiers on stretchers. It looked like a large group – perhaps as many as 100 men.

‘You’ll have to move.’ The surgeon nodded towards the approaching troops.

Jack scanned the surroundings again and noticed what looked like a recess in the wall of one of the adjoining streets.

‘Come on,’ he said to Saleem, and they lifted the stretcher off the table.

They jogged across the square, the rain soaking them immediately, and reached the recess, which turned out to be an archway leading to an inner courtyard. They put the stretcher down under the arch, where it was protected from the rain.

Charles lay on his side, breathing unevenly. He hiccuped a couple of times as he tried to move.

‘Take it easy.’ Jack crouched and put his hand on Charles’s shoulder. He prayed silently that it wouldn’t go on for too long, that the lad wouldn’t die too hard.

‘I need to . . . get back,’ Charles said. ‘The harvest . . .’

‘Just rest,’ Jack said.

‘Where are . . . ? What day is it?’

Saleem’s face was red and he wiped his eyes.

Jack tightened his jaw and looked away. He would have to leave now. He’d already been apart from William for too long – any longer and he might not be able to find his friend again at all. He didn’t want to abandon Charles, but he’d done what he could.

He stood up intending to speak to Saleem, then noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. Something had flickered behind the crack between a set of double doors to the side of the archway.

He rushed over and pushed at the doors. They were locked. Something moved again. He crouched and peered through the crack. At first it was too dark to see anything, but then he made out a woman hunched in the corner of a room. Two children huddled beside her. Her eyes shone in the gloom. She looked afraid.

‘Hey,’ he called. ‘We’ve got a wounded man here. Have you got anywhere he can lie down?’

The woman edged back into the shadow with the children so that she was no longer visible.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘We’re soldiers – English Army. We won’t hurt you.’

The woman stayed in hiding.

He sighed. Suddenly it seemed the most important thing in the world to get Charles inside and lying on a bed. The boy didn’t deserve to die in the street.

He banged hard on the doors and the bolt inside rattled. ‘Open up. Please. We need help.’

There was no response.

‘Damn it.’ He kicked the door.

Charles groaned. His eyes were open, but unfocused. ‘Water.’

Jack looked at Saleem. Neither of them had a canteen or a skin. There was rainwater all around them, but nothing to collect it in. How the hell were they going to get Charles something to drink?

The doors scraped open. The woman stood in the entrance, dressed in a green gown and a white bonnet. She was no older than twenty-five and chewed her lip as she looked at Charles.

‘Thank you,’ Jack croaked.

They carried Charles inside, going through a front room and into a dim bedroom. They laid him on the wooden bed, on top of the blankets. The room was cool and musty, and faded tapestries hung across two of the walls – it was a wealthy household.

Charles coughed, his brow feverish.

‘We need water,’ Jack said to the woman, who stood watching from the bedroom door.

She nodded and disappeared. The two children – a boy around five and a girl around eight – came to the doorway and looked in tentatively, the boy with his fingers stuffed in his mouth.

‘Come away.’ The woman bustled them back into the front room when she returned.

She set a pitcher down on a table in a corner of the room, poured a mug of water and brought it to the bedside.

‘Do you want a drink?’ Jack asked Charles.

Charles had a look of intense concentration on his face. He managed to nod.

Jack held Charles’s head up as he sipped. A little of the water ran into Charles’s mouth, but much of it just trickled down his chin and on to his neck.

Jack put the mug on the floor beside the bed. The woman lit a candle and set it on the table, where it radiated a trembling light, but not enough to force away the shadows.

Jack turned to the door. He had to leave now. He’d done as much as he could and the thought of Elizabeth in the cell was stark in his mind.

‘Jack,’ Charles rasped. ‘Saleem.’

Jack turned back, then crouched beside the bed with Saleem.

‘Please.’ Charles was drenched in sweat that shone in the candlelight. ‘Tell my mother . . . and Mary . . .’

‘We’ll get a message to them.’ Jack rested his hand on Charles’s shoulder.

‘I’ll make sure,’ Saleem said. ‘I’ll tell everyone in the village. They’ll know you died fighting.’

Charles managed a small nod. ‘And you’ll fight . . . you’ll keep on fighting . . .’

Saleem glanced at Jack, who felt his stomach turn cold as he nodded his agreement.

‘Yes,’ Saleem said.

‘Ah . . .’ Charles sighed. ‘Good.’ He lay back and shut his eyes. ‘The Grail will come soon.’

Jack listened to the hushed roar of the rain outside the closed window shutters.

‘The guns have stopped,’ Saleem said.

It was true. The bombardment had ended.

‘Is it over?’ Saleem asked. ‘Have we beaten them?’

They heard someone running outside in the street. Jack went to the window and squinted through the slats, but he couldn’t see anything clearly. More people ran past. More shouting.

‘I’m going to take a look,’ he said. ‘Stay here.’

The children had come back to the bedroom door and now gazed at the wounded man. Jack pushed past them, unbolted the door and slipped outside. He stood beneath the arch. The street was wet and shiny and dotted with puddles. A group of five soldiers ran past, splashing through the rain. Then came a pair of stretcher-bearers carrying a wounded man. Jack called out to them, but they didn’t stop.

He stepped out of the archway and peered through the shower. He could still see the edge of the hospital tarpaulin and the figures moving about underneath.

Three soldiers turned the corner and clattered towards him, talking loudly to each other as they jogged along.

‘Hey,’ Jack called. ‘Why have the guns stopped?’

The three halted. One of the men stared at Jack through the rain. ‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve smashed through the wall at the Bishops Gate. Some kind of black magic.’