ran my fingers through my scorched hair. Men stepped aside as I passed. I could hear them speaking softly behind me. Like the lieutenant, I now wore the halo of prestige. From then on, I would be known as the one who had been singed by death’s wing. Still, I would have appreciated it had he left me with a scar, no matter how tiny.
As we emerged from a wooded area, Peakes silently mustered the men into a single line. Before us lay the entrance to the entrenchments, like a grave dug deep into the earth. There, only the most alive of the living could enter, the bravest of the brave. I rolled a die between my fingers, breathed on it and urged myself forward.
The scene was one of confusion. The footpath itself was strewn with logs and rusting metal plates; the walls were half-collapsed. Dead-ends and bypasses that circled around to their starting point punctuated its twisting course. The lieutenant lifted his nose and sniffed, like a dog seeking a trail.
“Can you smell it, Dulac?”
“What?”
“The fragrance of iron. Follow your nose.”
Before long we reached the support lines where the gunners were busy setting up their trench mortars, then a squad of sappers laying duck board. Beyond the entrance to a communications trench we came upon a five-point junction of radiating trenches. Peakes took me aside.
“I can go no farther. There is so much metal around that it has upset my compass.”
“With your permission, lieutenant … ”
I cast a die onto the floor of the trench. It came up three. I pointed out the third branch to Peakes. He allowed me to take the lead.
“Go ahead. It’s your throw.”
We made our way forward, consulting the die when in doubt. Finally, an hour later, we reached the front lines. We had successfully completed the trial of the labyrinth: an excellent beginning.
The front looked nothing like the great battlefield I had imagined. At most, it was the point of friction between two adversaries of equal strength who, in the course of their unrelenting struggle, had so trampled the earth that it had finally swallowed them up. Over the months, the first fissures had lengthened, and now the embroidery of interconnecting trenches stretched for mile upon mile without interruption. It was said that a man could travel through them from the Swiss border to the North Sea without ever raising his head above ground level.
Between the two fires lay no-man’s-land—the “Devil’s half-acre” into which men would venture from time to time to grapple in close combat. For the moment, the war zone was calm. The River Lys, which runs nearby, had overflowed its banks and flooded the land, making contact impossible. But shots continued to ring out from both sides. We’d been issued strict orders to keep our heads down day and night—apparently the German snipers could see even in the dark.
I first beheld the panorama through the lens of a periscope. Crouched in the observation dugout, I scanned the horizon for the pointed helmets, the machine guns, the trench mortars. Not a sign of the enemy was to be seen. But I knew he was there, burrowed deep beneath the surface, crawling through the entrails of the earth. And with each of his movements, I could hear the tinkle of the Rhinegold he’d brought with him.
Meanwhile, all Peakes could see was iron.
“Look at those coils of barbed wire, will you, those piles of shell casings, those lattice-work barriers … It’s like a park of iron.”
A curious description. A park, indeed! More like a forsaken landscape strewn with broken bayonets. The only pool to be seen was a shell crater surrounded by four chevaux-de-frise brimming with filthy water. I could not decide whether a corpse propped nonchalantly against a heap of bullet-riddled mess kits might properly be called a statue.
“All these heaps of metal—don’t they strike you as a tremendous waste of hardware?”
“It is the price of victory, Dulac. The price of victory. Never forget Wellington’s words: ‘On the battlefield, one needs a ton of iron to kill one man.’ Clearly, it would take more than that to kill you.”
VIII
THE SUN WAS SETTING. Peakes and I had taken up position in a slit trench that extended up to the main earthworks. An hour passed. Nothing happened.
Impatiently, I tossed back my ration of rum.
“How much longer are we to moulder here?”
“Just wait. Soon the nocturnal illuminations will begin.”
And so they did. Suddenly the black veil of the sky was torn by a star-light that spiraled upward until it seemed to touch the cloud ceiling. Then, slowly, it fell back to earth, dangling from a parachute dusted with magnesium that reflected its white glare across no-man’s-land. It looked for all the world like a lost traveller seeking his path in the middle of nowhere. Seizing on those few moments of brightness, our machine-gunners opened up on the enemy lines, firing through old blankets to conceal the flame, the bullets touching off sparks as they ricocheted through the barbed wire. Flashes of light appeared intermittently on the horizon, as though day were about to break, then thought better of it. The barrage had begun. Two rockets burst directly above us, their sparks falling in a girandole of glittering green sequins. I asked the lieutenant what the fireworks signified.
“Our men are signalling the artillery that their shells are falling short, and that we’re in danger of taking a hit. The eighteen-pounders must be re-aimed. Now’s the time to move.”
He heaved himself out of the trench, and I prepared to follow him.
“No. You stay here and wait for me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve an errand to run.”
Without leaving me time to protest, he moved off, crawling beneath the barbed wire. Opposite us, the enemy had begun to fire its trench mortars. Fascinated, I watched as a monstrous worm emerged from a roiling puff of fiery powder. Its feeble whine grew louder, becoming an ear-splitting whistle. Curious: the worm seemed not to be moving at all. Suddenly, I heard Peakes cry out.
“Run, Dulac! The shell is heading right for you!”
Even before the shell exploded, a blast of burning air struck me full in the face and I felt myself thrown from the trench. The explosion rang out, so loud it absorbed its own noise. My ears roared. My bones cracked. Around me, shrapnel drummed down like hailstones on a tin roof.
Someone attempted to drag me feet-first toward the trench. I resisted.
“Let go! I can get there myself.”
“You’re not wounded?”
Incredulous, Peakes repeated the question. I touched myself once. Then again.
“I’m still in one piece. Not even a scratch.”
“There’s nothing left of the trench. You should have been turned into mince-meat.”
“Call it beginner’s luck.”
The barrage had begun to slacken. We found two adjoining foxholes where we could spend the night.
“What about your errand, lieutenant?”
He showed me his canteen.
“A half-pint of water from the Lys. Apparently this water has the ability to dye thread the colour of fire. I promised Miss Nell I would bring her some.”
The sun had not yet risen, but the birds had already perched atop the coils of barbed wire, and were beginning to chirp. The smell of breakfast wafted down the communication trench. For today, at least, the festivities were over.
IX
CÆSTRE STANDS AT A CROSSROADS, long the source of its strategic importance. Under the Roman Empire, if one is to believe Peakes, it was a fortress—a castrum, hence its name. Later, it was the site of the largest of the Templars’ Flemish commanderies. But now that