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The small attic room at the foot of Montmartre was low-ceilinged and cramped, its walls covered in cobwebs, stains left by previous tenants, and the brownish-yellow smudges from years of tobacco smoke. The narrow wooden bed was covered with cotton-linen sheets, washed to a greyish hue, which appeared even duller in the greyish-white light streaming in through the narrow skylight. The noise from the alley below drifted up unchecked: the wheels of carriages racing past, women’s shouts and curses, the barking of dogs and the meowing of cats, and the splash of water from wooden buckets on the rough cobblestones. Along with it came the smells: the stench of dirty laundry water, the pungent odour of urine left by tramps against the walls in the dead of night, and the faint, damp mustiness of the sheets and the walls themselves, slowly succumbing to mould.
He woke up — at the right time, for if he woke during the night, he only stared at the cobwebs swaying overhead until he lost consciousness once more — and the first thing he would do was to hobble slowly over to the table with the aid of the chair, pick up the nearly spent pencil, and make a mark on the calendar hanging on the wall. A mere ten days; this was the third day, yet to him it felt as though it had been a century.
The war had been raging for less than a year, eight months to be more precise, yet he could scarcely recall how things had been before. At times, he felt as if he was suffering from some sort of delusion: perhaps he was just an ordinary man, a run-of-the-mill soldier conscripted into the army, and that the millennia of memories — which periodically reared their ugly heads at him in his nightmares — were nothing more than hallucinations conjured by the spill of blood and ceaseless shellfire in the trenches.
A foolish dream.
The wound beneath his shirt was still oozing blood and was beginning to be hot to the touch; perhaps it was already infected. There were no signs of healing, nor would there be for a long time to come. His left hand remained numb; since last August, this numbness had been steadily spreading towards his shoulder. At times, he felt as though his entire left chest had lost all sensation, with only his heart stubbornly continuing to beat.
At least they had held onto Paris, this time.
No one came to look for him — neither those responsible for him, nor those for whom he was accountable; neither politicians, nor generals, nor soldiers. That was why he had come to rent this faraway attic: three days ago, he had fallen alongside a row of soldiers beside him, his last memory the German artillery fire exploding like thunder in his ears; when he came round, he found himself seated in the back of a rickety carriage, on his way back to the capital.
The lieutenant accompanying him told him that the war had dragged on for too long and the soldiers were beginning to grumble. The higher-ups were considering whether to grant them short periods of leave on a yearly basis — ranging from three to ten days — and discussions were already underway; perhaps an official policy would be finalised by July. It was supposed that priority would be given to soldiers who had been on the front line since first the war began — soldiers such as himself.
“Of course, sir, your case is rather more unusual…” The lieutenant lowered his voice, his tone tinged with an almost fearful reverence. A hemp cord peeked out from inside his collar. Francis could well imagine that on the end of that cord hung a gilded cross, or a medallion of some saint or other. He curled his lips. “I’ve heard talk...that this is the seventh time you’ve escaped certain death. Sir. There are men who say that you should have been dead, last year, on the Marne. There are some, who swears up and down that they’ve seen you die with their own eyes…Rumours, of course, but such rumours they are...”
The young lieutenant fell silent, his eyes filled with a mad, religious fervour as he searched Francis’s face, perhaps looking for a sign.
Francis turned away from him and closed his eyes. He felt no tiredness. But it was unbearable to look at the desolate countryside through which they were traveling, so vastly and monstrously transformed. Scores of villages stood empty, others razed to the ground, the fields once golden with wheat and green with pasture now tilled by artillery and piled up with a harvest of corpses, unclaimed bodies of indeterminate nationality all rotting together under a sunless sky.
Ten days of planned leave – that was the excuse they gave him. So he would stay for ten days.
Perhaps the captain, or the colonel, or whoever it was on the chain of command had made the decision to send him back, was, like the poor lieutenant, a congenital Catholic accustomed to believing in unfounded notions, as was their wont. Perhaps he had thought that by secreting Francis away, so he could spare France from the ravages of war, destruction, and defeat. Perhaps he simply thought that since Francis could come back to some semblance of life even out of a heap of mangled flesh, so he could carry on as if nothing was the matter once he were returned to Paris, where the fighting had not yet spread.
Perhaps he imagined it to be a species of mercy.
If so, Francis could not blame him. For whatever it was worth, he was not insubordinate. Ten days — once the time was up, he would find himself a carriage and return to the front, whichever front it might be. He knew many of the higher-ups; most generals would recognise him the moment they saw him, because of their position. Whatever he had to do, write letters or beg on his knees, he would find himself a place again — be it on the front-lines, as a grave-digger, a cook, a courier or whatever odd job there was to be had on the front these days, of which there was no short supply.
He could not bear to stay away. Any trench would be preferable to the hideous calm of Paris.
There was no telling if anyone had been detailed to watch him. The carriage dropped him off at his old flat next to Palais Garnier, and almost immediately he had hailed another, asked the coachman to take him to Montmartre, where he rented an attic room on a soldier’s meagre pay. Most such rooms in Monmartre stood empty; the young men who had once occupied them had been sent in waves to the front, where their flesh and blood now rotted slowly beneath the layers of gauze around his chest.
Whenever he inadvertently looked up, his gaze caught the narrow skylight, where the white dome of that brand new structure peered down at him, merciless.
He felt its cold-eyed judgment, its sneering mockery at his misery.
He turned back to the calendar for a moment — the numbers stubbornly refused to change — and then went to lie back down on his narrow cot, to sleep another day away. He had lost his appetite long ago.
The wounds beneath his bandages began to burn, and he idly wondered whether the Germans were shelling somewhere again, or if it was another charge across No Man’s Land; how many young lives were falling into the mud at this very moment, their bodies ripped apart by the hail of bullets and flung across miles of churned earth like so much debris. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, waiting for the pain to subside, but the sensation only grew the more intense, allowing him no rest.
He opened his eyes, and found himself falling once more into the pitiless gaze of the white eye on the hilltop.
It was enough to drive him upright. Struggling to his feet, he grabbed the crutch by the wall and limped out the door.
Half the storefronts lining the streets were shuttered; most of the pedestrians were women, hurrying along with their children in tow. With all the coal-mining regions under occupation, vast tracts of farmland reduced to ruins, wartime rations were constantly being tightened. Come winter, even life in the capital would become a trial.
Francis caught sight of a pair of children’s thin cheeks, and his gaze snagged; they stared up at him with a childish, nameless fear. It was not him that they saw, but their fathers and brothers. Their eyes were fixed at the bloodstained gauze on his cuff, his crutch, and his lame foot. Of course, they could not see his true nature – they saw in him a fellow victim of war, instead of one of its culprits.
This was why he had been reluctant to go out.
“Sir — ”
A clear, young woman’s voice; Francis tried to turn round, but his movements were sluggish. The woman pressed something into his arms, and he reflexively raised his hand to take it: the dry, crisp rustle of newspaper, revealing a slice of golden-brown crust. The faint fragrance of wheat wafted through the air.
He wanted to decline, to tell her that he had no need, that someone else deserved it more, to explain that he was no soldier, but the receding figure gave him no chance. The sound of heels clacking rapidly away on the cobblestones faded around the corner.
Holding the bread loaf under one arm, he continued to make his way slowly along the rugged path towards the hilltop, intending to pass it on to the first person in rags that he came across.
Outside a theatre with its doors shut, a group of harlequin dancers in fur-trimmed coats stood smoking in a cluster, casting wary glances at him as he passed, mingling pity and contempt. They were still in work, but only barely: the theatre was managing to open a few times a month. Everyone was desperate for the war to end, yet hope was growing ever more faint as things dragged on. Perhaps even these girls were realising that, even if a peace treaty were to be signed tomorrow, the pre-war Paris – with its nightly revelries, its halls flowing with wine and song and dance, days of glory and innocence that had seemed as if they would never end – had permanently gone out of their reach.
An era had ended, as abruptly as it had come.
Montmartre was no different. The artists had departed decades ago; dance halls, circuses and theatres had taken their place, and now even these were on the verge of decline and ruin.
All that would remain to haunt him, in time, was the pale, sepulchral structure atop the hill.
Half a century ago, before the blood of soldiers had even cooled in the forests of Sedan, the bishops and their followers had begun howling for him to repent and to atone. The blood of revolutionaries and that of their murderers were spilled alike upon the highland soil, yet the church honoured only the latter as martyrs. As always, his darling Catholics reserved their mercy solely for his tyrants, but never for his poor, for his oppressed.
They blamed France’s calamities upon his decadence, yet made no mention of His Imperial Majesty’s military blunders; they claimed the army’s rout was evidence of divine punishment, yet clung stubbornly to their dreams of monarchist restoration. They would sooner see him back in a gilded cage, than suffer his people to have rights, for which they had fought the whole of last century.
And yet, his Catholics had triumphed. Every attempt to prevent them from building the church upon the hill had ended in failure, and now it stood securely atop Montmartre, where it would remain enthroned for centuries to come, sneering down upon all of Paris. The church they called the Sacré-Cœur had not yet been consecrated, but that was due only to the war. The original date was set for last October, by which time he had already been mired for over two months in this hell.
He had not set foot in that church once in the past forty-five years. He had no intention of letting the faithful who hated him have their way; he would never kneel before the altar they had built to condemn him.
Let him be decried as a faithless fiend, if they want. They wanted his penance — for what was he supposed to repent? Because he had rebelled, when he had had enough of the Bourbons’ decadence and incompetence? Because he had had enough of being toyed with by the nobility, of having his blood drained for their games? Because he refused to remain the caged bird of a decrepit monarchy, because he dared to question the church’s lies, because he fought for the freedom of his people, and gave rights to the oppressed?
If recanting all of that was the price of heaven, let him be cast away in hell, then. If he were destined for ruin — even if he were to fall at the hands of the invading Germans, even if he were besieged, breached, and annihilated by their guns and cannons, even if the name of France were to cease to exist from this day forward — he would not repent. Not for any of it.
Yes, that was it. He stopped beneath the first flight of stairs, their steepness a testament to the church’s desire to humble and to humiliate. The air was thin in his damaged lungs, and he glared with baleful eyes, up at that pallid edifice. That was what he wanted to say; that was the reason he had finally come.
He was going to climb up these stairs built to scorn all who would journey through them, march into that spotless hall, look the rector in the eye, and tell him exactly what he thought of their grand monument. He was going to let the priests know that he would never, ever repent for anything that had happened over the past century.
Let him be condemned, let his name be accursed, let whomever wanted lament that France was become a devilish apostate, the source of all his people’s misfortunes.
He would never repent. He would rather be dead.
He sat for a while at the foot of the steps and chewed the bread slowly, tastelessly, feeding handfuls of scraps to the flock of pigeons circling nearby in beady-eyed patience. Although the church itself had not yet been consecrated and the interior decoration was still unfinished, the nave had been open to the public for twenty-five years. Worshippers on their way to mass passed him on the steps in twos and threes; some of them nodded genially at him, assuming him to be one of their number, whilst all he wanted to do was ask whether they, like their beloved priests, regarded him as a hopeless sinner and the cause of all their miseries.
Eventually, his legs mustered enough strength once more to carry him, limping, up the steep steps. The midday Mass had already ended, and a deacon dressed in white stood guard at the doorway, waiting for the last attendees to leave. Seeing Francis approach, he frowned and raised an arm, as if to block his path.
“Excuse me, Monsieur. Mass has ended, and the church is due to resume work on the interior. I would ask you to come back another — ”
Francis walked by him, raised his head, and gave him a blank, expressionless glance. At this, the deacon turned as pale as a ghost, as though he had seen a spectre, and instinctively took a step back.
“Monsieur – Monseigneur - ”
Francis paid no heed to the rest of his stammered words, but swept past him and turned towards the entrance.
At the door, he paused for a moment. For a fleeting instant, he was lost in reverie —
The purity of the white sunlight that suffused the interior, reflected off immaculate limestone, underneath a soaring, ethereal dome. It recalled to him an afternoon over a thousand years ago, when he had accompanied Clovis on a visit to a small chapel attached to a monastery.
It had been his first time setting foot on holy ground; the first time he knelt before the altar, and contemplated the twisted figure of mercy and forgiveness nailed eternally to his cross. That day, he had allowed the priest to dab him with ash, and sprinkle him with water. He remembered glancing at the pagan king beside him, who only yesterday had been splattered with the blood of enemy tribes, yet now knelt devoutly and humbly at the foot of the altar, his eyes shut, repenting for his past sins. A pagan no longer.
Frankincense burned upon the altar, its blue-grey smoke billowing out and casting a faint, mysterious glow beneath the domed ceiling. It was as though the massacre that had taken place here half a century ago had never happened.
Francis gripped his rough-hewn walking stick tightly in his hand, tightly enough to hurt, and resumed walking.
As the deacon had said, the limestone structure had not yet been embellished with any paint or gold leaf; even the carvings on several of the columns remained unfinished. Yet the radiant Eucharist was already on display at the centre of the lofty altar, a blaze of golden spires, receiving the perpetual adoration of the believers. The rows of stained-glass windows in the central dome gathered the midday light and scattered it in even rows around the pure white columns, bathing everything within sight in a milky luminescence. At the four corners beneath the dome, sculpted angels, their arms full of wreaths and crosses, bowed their heads and surveyed him with a feigned air of compassion.
The pews on either side stood empty; his walking stick made an irregular, jarring clatter on the stone floor. Without glancing to the sides, he walked straight towards that golden heart of the church.
The priest standing beside the Holy Eucharist heard his footsteps and turned round. Francis came to a halt beneath the altar. He recognised the vestments. This was not the rector, but the Archbishop of Paris.
Francis tilted his head, trying to recall the man’s name, but to no avail. No matter.
“Your Grace,” he began, unable to conceal the cold smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “May I ask what the theme of today’s sermon was? Was it repentance for past sins, or mercy for our enemies? Did you implore your listeners to follow the Lord’s example, and open their arms to welcome the knives of those who fear and despise them?”
He gazed at the pristine white wall behind the altar: there, a sketch of the future mosaic had already been outlined in graphite. Even an incurable recreant like himself could easily recognise the figure in the centre, arms outstretched, exposing the fragile heart in the centre.
Louis XVI, held under house arrest by the revolutionary forces, had once prayed to that very heart — well. Look what it had brought him.
The bishop, clad in a resplendent white and gold cope, had on his usual mask of serene hypocrisy. His gaze fell upon the blood-soaked gauze beneath Francis’s thin shirt, then rose to rest upon his face, pausing for a moment.
Perhaps the man had recognised him; perhaps not. It did not matter. He said nothing, waiting only to hear the other’s reply.
“Victory and defeat,” said the eloquent preacher, “are in the Lord’s hands. In the end, the righteous shall doubtless receive His favour.”
Francis felt the smile on his lips grow twisted and sharp. He had heard this line before, in the forests of Sedan.
“Your Grace means to say that the war forty-five years ago was unjust, and that is why France was met with divine retribution,” he said, enunciating each word clearly. “I ask you this: was it not unjust of Prussia to have twice pledged never to lay claim to that imperial throne, only to break those promises in the end? And before that, was it not unjust of Prussia to have categorically rejected France’s proposal for mutual disarmament? And after refusing to grant an audience to the envoy, to spread falsehoods in the newspapers, were those the doings of one who was righteous?”
“The Lord’s judgement is not a matter of the moment,” replied the preacher in a calm, even tone. “The Lord sees all, knows all, and judges all. In all time, and everywhere on Earth.”
“Yes, I understand,” Francis said softly. “Your Grace means to say that France’s crimes had already sown the seeds of his downfall long before that. Then let me ask you again: was the exploitation of the people by the House of Bourbon over the centuries not an injustice? Was the indiscriminate massacre of thirty thousand Communards by the new traitorous government of Thiers not an injustice? You Catholics,” he sneered, casting a scornful glance around the hall, “is it just of you, to have built this monument in honour of the murderous royalists, to venerate their soldiers as martyrs, whilst turning your backs on the revolutionaries they so carelessly trampled underfoot? You, who call yourselves the church of mercy?”
The bishop listened calmly to his accusations, turned slightly, straightened the Host on the altar minutely, and brushed away a speck of soot from the table with his sleeve. He appeared deep in thought, whilst Francis clenched his teeth, bracing his entire weight against his rickety crutch: he would not show weakness in the presence of such a foe.
“I admire your eloquence, Monsieur,” said the bishop, unhurried. “Surely, you are very learned and have a thorough grasp of the finer details of history. You have studied your enemies deeply, and can point out to an exactness their errors, their cruelty and their hypocrisy. In your speech, I hear the understanding of many things. But, for my part, Monsieur, I believe you still lack a vital kind of knowledge.”
“...What is Your Grace trying to say.”
The bishop’s gaze was frank and undaunted when he turned back to him.
“You still lack self-knowledge, which is the truest kind of knowledge that the Lord can impart to us.”
Francis felt his face twisting.
“Oh, you clever priests,” he murmured. “Always so full of sophistry. You talk of morals while ensconced in the safety of your arches of stone, fed upon the givings of those ignorant enough for faith and belief. You take no part in the struggles of ordinary men, but condemn them for those same struggles from your high and mighty pulpits. If you dared come down from these heights, and wade into the mire where I stand - drenched in blood, gnawed by vermin, pierced by the swords of enemies — if you let yourselves also be subject to war, and pestilence, and all that is the lot of ordinary men, you shall not speak of such empty things as self-knowledge then, Your Grace.”
“It is no part of the duty of a servant of God to engage in war, Monsieur,” said the bishop, unperturbed. “Hear me, my dear, lost one: the true struggle of the Lord is not upon the field of battle, but in the hearts of men. Of course, that includes also your own heart. It is for this very reason that we have erected this Basilica of the Sacred Heart: look not upon the sins of your neighbours, but always within. Ask yourself, if you will: is there nothing in your life, of all your doings upon this earth, for which you carry a seed of regret? Is there nothing, no crime, no sin, no word or thought or deed, for which you may one day wish to atone?”
Francis lifted his chin, and regarded the other with unflinching defiance.
“If Your Grace wishes to know,” he said, his high, clear voice echoing beneath the hollow dome, “I shall give you my answer presently. I have not regretted anything I have ever done, in all the time that I have been placed on this earth. Never have I repented, I shall not repent now, and I will not repent in the future. Whatever trumped-up sins you may imagine me guilty of, so long as I still draw breath, you shall never see me kneel beneath your altar of lies and deceit.”
As soon as he finished, he turned on his heels, intending to leave without a backwards glance. If he had to look upon this mausoleum of white stone for another moment, he might vomit up the entirety of his stomach beneath his feet. But behind him, the bishop spoke again.
“If I may, there is a small matter for which I would be glad of your opinion, Monsieur.”
Francis limped to a stop.
“Your Grace may speak as you like.”
“As you can see, Monsieur, the central mosaic behind the altar has just finished drafting. Beneath it, there is a strip of bordering that will be gilded, and, according to tradition, inscribed with a dedication to commemorate the occasion. In your view, what should this inscription read?”
Francis felt his chest tightening, the breaths would not come, as if an iron band were tightening around his ribs. He inhaled twice, deeply, his whole body trembling with the effort. His lungs itched, and a moment later he realised what this sensation was: he wanted to laugh.
The laughter burst from his throat, a pent-up force that felt as if it had been building up for deacdes, yet it was almost immediately cut short by the blood in his windpipe; the salty, metallic taste welling up from his chest drowned out his laughter.
He clapped a hand over his mouth, but a few drops still seeped through his fingers, splattering red stains like paint onto the pristine limestone.
“My dear bishop,” he gasped, speaking with difficulty. “I thought you already had the answer. Did not the phony king who ascended the throne a hundred years ago — the younger brother of that beheaded Bourbon tyrant — already spell out the inscription you sought when he built the Chapel of Expiation? Since you already have the answer, there is no need to seek my approval. I well know that whatever answer I give is of no consequence to you. You may speak on my behalf as you please; I care not what words are inscribed in any holy place, be it this one or any other.”
He continued towards the door, and the preacher made no further attempt to detain him.
He returned to the tiny Montmartre attic and spent the next three days in a haze of nightmares. Early on the fourth day, he awoke with a burning sensation in his throat; he had dreamt of drowning, of murky green waves rolling in with the cannon fire, engulfing the churned-up battlefield, like a prehistoric deluge sweeping away and destroying all. Like the end times foretold in Revelations, except he had long since stopped believing.
Having barely struggled free of the dream, he stumbled to pick up the earthenware jug on the table and made his way downstairs.
On the ground floor, the proprietress of the small tavern — who owned and let out half the rooms in the building — filled his jug without so much as a glance, busy chattering with her regulars about the headlines.
“On the Belgian border, British troops are still holding Neuve-Chapelle… Bah, just a tiny little place — can you guess how many soldiers they lost taking it last month? Over ten thousand! And even so, the Germans nearly retook it the very next day.” The middle-aged woman tapped her finger against the blurred ink on the newspaper. “At this rate, when on earth will this war ever end?”
“I reckon we won’t be having any salted pork next year. What are you planning to sell then, Marguerite?” said an unshaven, rough-looking labourer with a smile.
“I’ll stock up on cabbages and boil it up for you lot. Be grateful you’ll have anything at all — let’s see how you can criticise my cooking then,” said Marguerite, pursing her lips as she filled up the drained glasses with tart, homemade wine.
“I heard,” said another regular slowly, “that the Germans are planning to make a breakthrough in Belgium.”
“I heard they’ve already taken Ypres and are about to launch a massive assault on our northern border,” said someone else.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the unshaven labourer. “The English are holding the line there. To be honest, last year, I didn’t dare believe they would follow through on their promises, but look at them now! They’re turning out even better than our own army!”
“’Our army’,” someone scoffed, “no great feat to outdo them, eh…” But his gaze chanced upon Francis who sat wordlessly in the corner, and he fell silent.
”The so-called English aren’t just themselves,” someone said blithely. “They’ve brought in troops from colonies all over the world to make up the numbers. I’ve heard that quite a few of the battalions over in Belgium are from Canada, and I’m sure there’s plenty of them lads who speak French, too.”
“Trust the two-faced English, and you’re in for a treat,” a drunken figure in the back suddenly raised his head and spoke viciously. His face was a horror of shrapnel wounds, and there was a pair of crutches beside his chair. “Just wait and see, if this goes on any longer… They were already planning to abandon us at the end of last year; if it hadn’t been for the miracle on the Marne… I’ve heard it straight from the top…”
With that, his head fell back onto the table and he passed out once more. A strained silence fell over the pub.
“That was down to our own incompetence,” the bearded man said firmly at last. “England is our only ally in the west. They’ve made promises, and even if just for the sake of Belgium, they wouldn’t withdraw their troops so lightly. I’d much rather trust our neighbours to the north than the Slavs. After all, we’ve been allies for ten years now, haven’t we?”
“But before that…”
“Before the war, people used to say they wouldn’t get involved at all, but look at them now! By now, the English have shed just as much blood as us, but at the end of the day, it’s not even their land they're fighting for, now is it…”
Francis gritted his teeth against the pain and dizziness, rose from the wooden chair, and carefully ascended the narrow staircase once more.
Back in the attic, he paced back and forth like a caged beast across the cramped few square metres of floor, his ears were filled with that infernal name he could not shake off. England, England, England, like the phantom sound of cannons that had haunted him ever since he’d been trapped here, in the stillness of Paris.
Last November, he had left Ypres along with a few of the French battalions, and hadn’t met up once with Arthur since then. In December, after Christmas, he had received a letter.
F,
Occasional exchanges of fire since you left, trench positions mostly unchanged. With Christmas approaching, the Germans’ hearts weren’t in it. A few nights, we heard German carols floating to us over No Man’s Land, to which we’ve returned with our own.
Christmas Day, white flags, temporary ceasefire. Buried the dead, exchanged prisoners, and traded supplies. German tobacco bitter and damp — no match for ours.
No sign of Gilbert. Received his Christmas letter, which included a message and signature from Ludwig.
I remember you once describing to me what young Germany looked like and how old, but that was years ago. Judging by his handwriting, he has grown a little, though not much; most likely still a boy. (Perhaps much like we were, about six centuries ago. Recalling certain scenes from back then, had an urge to laugh. It would have been truly inappropriate, as we were by a graveside, and the chaplain was leading prayer. Had you been here, I may well have laughed; fortunate that you were not.)
Merry Christmas. I do not know whether your trench is any more wretched than ours; I certainly hope so.
If you have any spare tobacco, please enclose with reply.
Yours,
A
p.s.
Regarding your question to me that day, by the Marne – just so you know, my answer remains unchanged.
1914.12.25
He had carefully folded the letter and placed it in the waterproof iron box he always carried with him. He had sent a reply, informing the other that he had no tobacco to spare, that his trench was surely more comfortable than that of the English, and also, at the end, wished him a happy New Year’s.
Since then, there had been no further exchange. The stalemate remained unbroken throughout the winter, leaving him with no suitable excuse to write. Come spring, there were minor skirmishes and shifts in the line, but no news from the other. Even after the British had captured Neuve-Chapelle, Arthur did not send another letter.
Francis had tried himself to write, but the words always refused to come after the greetings. There was a sentence that struggled to take shape on the page whenever he made an attempt, yet he refused to say it to Arthur, of all people. He would not say it when they were face to face, and certainly not in a letter.
By now, the radio silence had continued for nearly half a year.
At midday, the deserted attic was deadly quiet; there were no neighbours to either side, and not a sound could be heard from the alley below. Certain thoughts, which had been circling in his mind for the past few months, vulture-like, were now threatening to break free from the restraints he had kept them behind, and come back to haunt him once more. They concerned the origins of the war, the portioning of blame, and where it had all originated.
They concerned also his own guilt.
Pointless questions, useless to contemplate, this late after the fact. And yet, the thoughts would not leave him alone.
If he hadn’t entered into an alliance with Russia – If he hadn’t sworn, in the immediate aftermath of 70, to reclaim Alsace-Moselle – If he hadn’t been fool enough to fall prey to Gilbert’s designs, fourty-five years ago –
Fourty-four years ago, in Versailles, Prussia had said to him that it had all been in revenge for Otto. A laughable idea: Prussia was no blood-kin of Otto’s, and all the world could see that the only thing Prussia wanted vengeance for was Tilsit, nothing more. It was written plainly enough in the treaty they presented to France: an indemnity equal in value, adjusted for inflation and population, to that which France had made Prussia pay, more than sixty years before. In 05, and 07, he had ground the Prussian’s pride into the dust. No wonder he had spent the next six decades carefully building up strength, as well as weaving a web of alliances and treaties, waiting for the day he could pay France back for the price he had exacted then.
On the eve of that war, Francis had tried to stop Napoleon III. He had tried writing to Gilbert, in a private capacity. All to no avail. In the aftermath, in Versailles, when Prussia had told him sneeringly that it was all for Otto, France had roared back in his face.
What about me, he’d said. At the end of the last century, when I sought to throw off the yoke of the Bourbons, who was it that had amassed their armies at my borders, that had invaded me time and again, trying to force me to take them back as my kings? What did I have to do, to deserve your peace? Must I forever bow down to that damned royal house, must I shut my ears eternally to the cries of my people, my tormented and my poor, for you to have left me alone?
Who was it that had forced me to stand up time and again, when I had still been covered in the blood of revolutionaries, to do battle at my borders, or be overrun? Who was it that had forced me to choose a tyrant, because he had promised to save me from the enemies that encircled me? I did not create him, you did: all of you together. All your failures were of your own making, all your dead and wounded had suffered their fate because of your choices, not mine.
Gilbert’s reply was a punch that sent him and his chair crashing to the floor, whilst Francis responded with a roar of laughter. He had never laughed so unrestrainedly; it felt as though his vocal cords were about to tear and bleed from the force of his hilarity. Then he staggered to his feet, signed the treaty with a single dash, and made his stumbling way back to Paris.
Two months later, he was executed by firing squad alongside the last of the Guarde Nationale by the low wall of the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
He then spent the next thirty years weaving his own web of vengeance, waiting.
But he would not have made a move, if Germany and Austria hadn’t declared war first. He had learnt his lesson, and well. He didn’t fire the first shot; all he did was commit to the treaty he’d signed with the Russians, and defended his own borders. Everything else had been a matter of coincidence: serendipity.
It made sense. The logic followed. It wasn’t even a lie. He couldn’t say why, but when he tried sounding these words out to himself, they always tasted of lies.
These ruminations rolled through his mind like the well-worn tracks of an alleyway, useless and unchanging. He had to stop thinking of it, he had to leave, right now –
He had almost made up his mind and packed up the few belongings he’d brought, taken himself downstairs, and boarded the first carriage he saw – he would pay the driver whatever he asked, if only he’d take him to the front – when a rapid series of knocks came on the door.
He limped to open it, and saw on the other side a young, familiar face: it was the lieutenant who had escorted him back to Paris. The young man was breathless from the climb, with an oilskin package in his hand. Francis stared at him, and an odd, inane thought rose in his mind: he had not gained his freedom, after all. All this while, there had been eyes at his back, even when he had exiled himself this far.
What laughable, futile struggles he put on.
"Sir — " the young man blurted out, pausing as if to choose a different form of address, only to realise he did not know Francis’s military rank, so pushed on. "Sir, an urgent dispatch from the British front in Belgium, with this letter enclosed. For your eyes only, it said."
The waxed paper was mottled with stains; one corner had been so thoroughly discoloured by some unknown substance that it had faded to a ghastly pallor, feeling dry and brittle to the touch. Francis took the letter, and was about to turn and tear into it, when the lieutenant behind him said,
“Sir, the Major asked me to inform you that there are no significant changes at the front — all is well — you need not — ”
Francis paused, turned slowly round, and looked the young man in the eye.
“Tomorrow morning, bring a carriage and wait for me downstairs. If you do not come, I shall find another way.”
The lieutenant swallowed whatever other lies he had been told to feed to Francis, saluted him formally, and marched in an even tread downstairs. Francis closed the door, then tore carefully into the missive with trembling hands.
The moment he saw the letter, he almost couldn’t recognise Arthur’s handwriting. The neat, slanting hand was gone, replaced by an almost frenzied scrawl; large patches of ink that hadn’t been wiped in time lay in blotches upon the page, and the words spilled wildly, all the way over onto the reverse side.
F,
I do not know how to begin.
If I wrote down all as I saw it happen, you may well think me mad. Perhaps I have gone mad, but soon, the reports of the battle will make their rounds in all the battalions of our armies, and you shall judge for yourself how much of what I’ve written is fact, and how much of what is in the reports may be exaggerated, or as the case may be, not.
I wish you’d come and see it all for yourself, so you can tell me that I haven’t lost my mind. But if all this is true, then I can only pray that you would never come. Go elsewhere, go to some other trench, some other battle; there must be places on the front that hasn’t descended to the deepest pits of hell, like here.
I will be blunt: the Germans have decided to employ poison gas.
Fifteen years ago, at the Hague, when we all signed the conventions, Prussia had also been there. I saw him sign it on behalf of Germany, with my own eyes. No matter what he may have done, I’d thought that he at least would keep his promises. I thought then, that Gilbert at least was like us, that he would value fairness and morality, even in war.
A few months ago, at Christmas, I’d been surer than ever of this opinion.
Now, it seems, I could not have been more wrong.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but at the beginning of this month, Matthew’s 1st Divison had come to Ypres. He showed me the letter you wrote him in February, but given that you didn’t write again, I cannot be sure how much news you’re receiving.
On the twenty-second, at five in the afternoon, the wall of green cloud rose from the German trench in the east of Ypres. It was about five metres tall. The wind was in the north-east, and it blew the gas straight towards us. As you know, it was the 45th and 87th Divisions that had been stationed on the front lines.
I know I shouldn’t blame them for breaking in the face of that cloud. Half of them were aged reservists, and the other half conscripts from Algeria. They broke, all the same, and left Matthew’s division squarely in the line of the Germans’ advance. The gap in the defence was some five thousand metres. If the Germans took it all, then all the allied battalions in Ypres would have been surrounded, and annihilated.
The only saving grace was that the Germans had been ill-prepared to capitalise. They stopped after three thousand metres. All night, and well into the morning of the second day, the 1st Canadian Division battled on that gap. In the 10th and 16th battalions, the rate of casualty was seventy percent.
From the twenty-second to the twenty-third, our armies recorded fifteen thousand casualties, of which five thousand were deaths, mostly from chlorine poisoning.
On the twenty-fourth, in St. Julien to the north-east of Ypres, the Germans released a second cloud of gas, aimed straight at Matthew’s division. Several battalions annihilated.
On the twenty-fourth, six thousand deaths from chlorine.
I do not wish to go into the details of these figures. Most were young men who had travelled for the first time across the ocean to serve the Empire; they had been in training for only a few months, and April marked their first time on the battlefield. There was not even time or a way to bury most of them; their bodies still lie exposed in the mud between the trenches.
Fifteen years ago, at the conference of the Hague, I do not know whether if you made a careful study of the materials they provided to us; they described in detail the manner of death caused by chlorine gas. I did not examine them closely at the time. But I think that now, if necessary, I could write a very detailed report, on par with the one I had neglected back then.
It is a unique manner of death. Upon inhaling a sufficiently high concentration of chlorine gas, the lungs fill with fluid, causing a form of drowning on dry land. The breathing sounds of soldiers who have inhaled the gas are indistinguishable from those of sailors drowning on deck. Both experience extreme thirst; the difference is that victims of chlorine gas cannot drink water — just a few sips would lead to instant death.
Chlorine reacts with the mucous membranes, producing an acidic fluid that corrodes the tissue. Soldiers exposed to it experience headaches and excruciating pain in their lungs; moments later, they cough up pale green foam. Their skin turns greenish-black, their tongues protrude, and their eyes become glassy. Then, as the poison gas continues to react within their bodies, their vital functions cease and they suffocate to death. They drown in the open air.
I think that, were he not like the rest of us, Matthew would have died many times over already. On the evening of the twenty-fourth, I rushed into the front line and dragged him out. By then, he had been fighting continuously for three days; to an ordinary person, he would have looked little different from a corpse. I thought he had gone mad, but his words could not have been more lucid; he made it very plain to me that the St. Julien line must not be breached, otherwise the allied forces would have nowhere left to retreat, and Ypres would be lost.
He told me that even if the entire First Division were to be wiped out, he would hold that line to the bitter end. I am ashamed to say that, since taking him over from you, perhaps this is the first time that I have truly come to see him for who he is.
[Illegible]
In the end, maybe all that we are – us, these ancient beings who have persisted for millennia – is nothing but a bunch of shameless sinners and cowards. We drag the youngsters into these senseless conflicts – conflicts that had nothing to do with them in the first place — only to use their flesh and blood to fill in the gaps on our own front lines. Yet if we did not do so, victory in this war would be impossible, and all those who had already died, all that we have sacrificed, would be in vain.
I do not know why I am writing all this to you. Wherever you may be, we face the same threats, the same foe. Since the Germans have cast aside all moral scruples, there is no reason to believe they will not employ the same tactics on other battlefields. Perhaps tomorrow, that green mist will also rise above the trenches where you lie, and all my prayers will have been for nought.
I do not know whether this has always been the true nature of the Germans, or whether it was the war that forced them into it; nor do I know if there is any essential difference between the two.
Last August, when I stood before Parliament and persuaded them that I must surely enter the war, I already foresaw that it would not be a brief one. I thought I was clear-headed enough to face all that would come, yet it is only today that I realise everything that comes after this will be different from what I had initially imagined, and been prepared to accept.
There will be no honour in this war. From this day forward, Europe will never be the same as it had been.
If you would be so good as to spare another letter for Matthew, I shall be by his bedside, to read it to him.
The second page of the letter was stained with large patches of blood, water marks and other unidentifiable stains. Francis’s hands were shaking so violently that he had to turn the page over and over several times before he finally spotted, at the bottom of one side, some blurred pencil writing that had been almost completely smudged by the liquid.
p.s.
Regarding your question to me last September, by the Marne. My answer remains the same.
I do not regret joining the war on your side. I made you a promise. I think, in the future, I shall not be changing my mind, either.
However, if at any moment, it had been possible for me to regret the decisions that I have taken – it should, I think, have been last night, when I watched Matthew struggling for breath on the cot that they placed him in. As I watched him then, for an instant, perhaps, I did begin to feel an inkling of remorse.
Yours,
And,
Henceforth, shall always remain yours,
A
1914.04.25
He didn’t know how he had staggered out the door, clutching the metal box containing the letter; his vision was blurred, he couldn’t see the path ahead, nor did he know where he was going.
Along the way, he bumped into a street vendor’s cart and brushed past a horse-drawn carriage; the driver turned back to shout abuse at him, the curses fading away down the cobbled street. His shoulder slammed heavily against that of a passer-by coming the other way; the man snapped his head up, ready to shout, but fell silent upon seeing his face, shook his head, and turned away.
He had forgotten his walking stick and so staggered on, dragging his injured leg behind him; his mind was so filled with Arthur’s words — the postscript to Arthur’s letter — that he could scarcely feel the pain.
There must be some kind of poison in that letter, he thought frantically; perhaps it was accompanied by the deadly chlorine gas from the trenches — perhaps that was why his tears would not stop, as if a dam had burst.
Someone was approaching him; he turned his head blankly to the side and saw the pale, youthful hand of a young woman holding out a delicate blue wildflower to him.
“Monsieur,” she said, “you are fighting for a noble cause, and the nation will be grateful to you for it.”
He stood there, frozen; the girl smiled at him and reached out to pin the delicate stem of the flower to the button on his lapel. Francis’s fingers clasped the iron box in his arms tightly; he was unwilling to let go, unable to let go. The girl’s smile grew somewhat uneasy; she still held a small bunch of nameless blue flowers in her arms, yet she did not walk away — perhaps because there were no other visibly wounded soldiers nearby. This gave Francis the time he needed to find his words, and say,
“You are mistaken, Mademoiselle. I am no soldier, nor have I ever fought for a noble cause.”
“But…” The girl’s face was full of confusion. “But if that is the case, how came you by your wounds, Monsieur?”
“It is quite simple,” Francis said softly. He finally released one hand, plucked the flower off from his buttonhole, and returned it to its giver. “All I have ever fought for is the wicked cause of an unrepentant sinner, and my wounds are but proofs of those sins. I’m sorry, but I entreat you to gift your bouquet to a true soldier, not to a hypocrite and an apostate, such as I am.”
Without waiting for the girl to reply, he set off once more.
The bells on the hill began to toll; their deep, resonant chimes echoed throughout Paris, penetrating deep into one’s very core through the cobblestones. Perhaps even those on the front line could hear this apocalyptic toll. The sky was leaden grey, and a wind uncharacteristic of early summer was rising, weaving through the streets and alleyways of Montmartre as if to herald a premature storm. Flocks of ash-grey pigeons swept overhead, and the sound of their flapping wings made him stop abruptly at the foot of the steps.
He found himself once more at the foot of the steep stairs. Looking up, he saw the pure white dome, gazing down at him, utterly still.
Gripping the iron banister tightly with both hands, he stepped onto the first step, then the second, then the third. The festering wound beneath his ribs grew deeper, and fresh blood soaked through his shirt, the fabric clinging coldly to his side. His injured leg screamed at him with every step he took, but he paid no heed to any of it. He felt only the iron box in his arms, warmed by his body heat; inside lay the evidence for his crime, and his sentence.
This time, no one would cast him into the prison on the island of the Seine, nor to transport him to the public square where a guillotine waited; he could only make his own way towards his punishment, at the highest court that was ever made by human conscience.
He reached the entrance of the Basilica; the wooden doors stood wide open. Inside, all was empty and still — no worshippers lingered in the pews, and no one stood in the vestibule to bar his way. He wrapped his arms around himself; against his chest lay Arthur’s letter, stained with Arthur’s blood. Guided by instinct, he walked down the central aisle and looked up once more at the gleaming golden Eucharist, and beyond it, upon the high stone wall, at those arms that remained eternally outstretched.
The door behind the high altar swung open silently; a figure emerged from within, came to a halt at the side of the altar, and looked down upon him.
“Your Grace,” he began. “I have strayed for many years, and have long since forgotten all the tenets of the faith. There is one thing I wish to ask.”
“You may speak as you like.”
“Suppose that there were such a person — the most inveterate sinner of all on earth — ” Francis took a deep breath and tightened his arms around himself. The edges of the iron box dug cruelly beneath his ribs. “Who has betrayed everyone that he could betray, abandoned every creed that he has ever sworn himself to, and throughout his entire life has never repented for anything that he has ever done, not even for a single moment. If such an unrepentant sinner were to exist in this world, please — if he were to repent, is even such a person worthy of forgiveness?”
The bishop was silent for a moment, whilst Francis looked up at him, more tears streaming from the corners of his eyes.
He was the Guarde Nationale, executed against a low wall in a cemetery. He was also the line of Versailles soldiers who held the guns. He butchered himself, over and over again, slaughtering his own people in the process. He craved freedom, but he feared annihilation the more – annihilation from his enemies. He couldn’t stand to fight another war.
A century ago, he was the commoner starving and shivering in the backstreets of Paris. He was also the nobles who savoured wine and fruit, smiling at the king in the Palace of Versailles. He had hated the cage that held him, yet endured it all the same, for long and endless centuries, until he could stand it no more and so revolted — because he longed to have rights, yet thirsted even more for victory, at any price.
He did not fire the first shot, yet for ten years he had weaved such a web around the Germans that they had felt, at last, that war was the preferable option. For years, he thought he had forgotten the vow to reclaim Alsace-Moselle, and yet, so many sleepless nights he had spent in the agony of their loss. He had draped the black cloth over the statue of her in the Place de la Concorde, and he had gone to take it off, on the eve of the declaration of war.
He cared not for his own blood, he would shed it, for anything – for freedom and for life, for victory and for vengeance. But now he had taken others down into the mire with him, and it was not only his own blood any longer. The blood of those he loved most were now watering the fields of France along with his, because they loved him, because he had dragged them down into the deepest depths of purgatory, where he had lingered for centuries.
Never did he regret anything, never did he repent. He had recanted his faith more than a century ago, if ever he had it. Always, he had rebelled against others, against himself. Never once had he looked within, never once had he ever admitted to himself, that he, too, was to blame for all that had befallen France.
So long did he run from repentance.
“The Sacred Heart of the Lord is open to those who seek forgiveness and mercy,”said the bishop, lightly. “At all times. None shall He turn aside, for that is the nature of His love.”
Francis staggered where he stood; blood loss made him dizzy. He reached out to the back of a pew, and steadied himself; the priest had stepped forward, seeing him waver, but now paused, looking down at him.
“I would repent,” said Francis, low. “For all that I have done, for all that I have chosen. Tell me, Your Grace, what shall my penance be, and I will do it.”
The Archbishop stared down at him wordlessly. Above their heads, over the dome, a flock of grey-white doves flew silently overhead, casting fleeting shadows.
“I ask you once more,” said the priest. “What shall be the inscription beneath the mosaic, there on the dome. Will you grant me your answer?”
Francis shuddered involuntarily and looked up at the priest, the one who had seen through him, the first time he set foot within these walls. The sharp edge of the iron box pressed into his wound, so tightly he was clutching it to his chest, like a lifeline. The pain lashed at him, urging him to utter the only answer — the words that had long been lodged deep within his heart.
“To the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” said Francis, his trembling voice reverberating beneath the hollow dome. “France fervent, and penitent.”