Yours Is the Night Page 28

  The star shell, in the thick of my sleep, did its work. Shot straight up into that beloved darkness, that peace, that dreamless place where all I had was reality and the girl in my arms. And as it did, it illuminated all the hidden places. The sounds I had long buried. The sights I could not unsee. All of it, kept here in a living museum that only opened at night, only in my sleep, only for me.

  I saw Chester. The child soldier from Saint-Mihiel. The kid’s young face, so like a younger brother. His zeal for battle, his innocence crushed. Did he live, still? I did not know. And why did it trouble me? Why his face out of all the thousands? Because, I knew—he was them. Me, eight years before. He was all of us, just a boy in a war too dark for him in a world too big, trying to do his part. Please be alive.

  In waltzed Celia, flying down that midnight path of racetrack, me raking over her footsteps. And now she was off—closer to the frontlines than me, making footsteps I could not and would not undo, completely out of my reach. Please be alive.

  The window of Maplehurst, Mr. MacMannus watching us leave, the only time I’d seen a hint of uncertainty in his posture. He walked away.

  The comic strip from the Herald I’d had pinned to my wall in our home in the barn, typeface worn, bottom corner crinkled, nothing comic about the way the young Jasper Truett was depicted riding in that volunteer cavalry so long ago, alongside Theodore Roosevelt. He came alive from the page. Aging into the very real and fierce Captain Jasper Truett standing in the flesh as the fire, smoke, the muck, the blood of the battlefield played backdrop. He walked toward me.

  “You’ll be alright!” he was saying, but I couldn’t hear his voice. Only see his grime-streaked face, his mouth moving, desperation in his eyes as he shouted those words. Desperation even beyond that of the battlefield, desperation that lived so deep, it was as much a part of him as the air he breathed. It seemed to pulsate as he said those words again and again—“You’ll be alright!”

  Engulfing me, now, were trenches. Deeper, and deeper, everyone out of my reach. I saw her—the Angel of Argonne, walking the graves with bare feet, laying wreaths. Singing music too pure for such a place. Too good for me. And I saw her look down upon me, that face smudged and kind. I saw her smile, could feel it land on me way down there, soft as a feather, warm as a kiss.

  And then her face—it broke from the smile. Crumpled into deep anguish as she bent over herself, grasping her stomach. I saw her lips move, but could not hear her. Not above the gunfire. It is time, Matthew.

  No. I writhed in the stifling heat of this place, clawing at the ground to get up, climb to her. No.

  Mira. I spoke her name and could not hear it. Mira. I watched her leave and could not follow. Mira . . .

  All went mute. Black. Me, alone, in that trench. No Celia. No Chester. No George, Henry, Captain Truett . . . and no Mira.

  I could not get to them. Could not protect them. The Flame—that old sense of burning justice—twisted and writhed in me with nowhere to go. Wrangling, strangling. I would give anything—everything—to help these ones who lived in my heart closer than its own pulse.

  But I could not.

  I had nothing. I was nothing. I could offer them nothing, and there on the battlefield, there in the aftermath, there in the moment a child would come into the world and Mira would be alone no longer—I was absent.

  Oh, God. It was prayer, and grief, and defeat. Oh, God.

  I was five years old again. Crouching beneath my mother’s window as she cried out. Helpless to do a single thing. Losing her. Trying to hear her, as she spoke my name, sounding so far away. Matthew . . . Matthew . . .

  “Matthew.”

  A sweet voice—real. I woke in a sweat. Jolting up, shoulders heaving. Black all around. Was it real? I jerked, trying to see the trench walls.

  And then I felt it. Gentlest touch, there in my writhing. And the song. The one I had loved before I had even seen its source. The one that had entered into my own inferno before she even laid eyes on me.

  She ran her hand down my forearm, lacing her fingers into mine. Her song continued, haunting notes in clearest tone, dropping comfort in lilting time all around me.

  My breathing slowed to the song’s gentle movements. The shaking in my hand lessened but did not stop. It was cradled there in her hand, with fingers stroking so gently I forgot the always-there ache of them.

  I bent my head. Ashamed, relieved, all of it at once. I had slept. And she had seen the reason I do not sleep.

  She bent her head until it touched mine, her song falling silent.

  We sat that way a long time, the sound of crickets coming from the broken window, heedless of the shells in my dreams and the shells hundreds of miles away. Miles I had crossed with this woman.

  I should say something. Explain it for her, this horror she had witnessed. Here, the first and perhaps only night we would spend as husband and wife. It was not a honeymoon, not the night of lovers wed at last.

  It was—in some ways—more. And yet so far, far from what she deserved.

  Dumbly, I could think of only one question, my voice ragged from the nightmares. “What does it say?” I said. “Your song.”

  She ran her thumb over my palm. Part of me didn’t want to know what it said. Words were just words, and none could ever be put to what those notes meant for me.

  “It is what my mother used to sing to me,” she said. “I . . . remember little of her. But the song, it has always kept.”

  “I wish I could give her back to you, for this.” I winced at how direct my words were, bookended by two unchangeable things. Her mother gone, her baby soon to come.

  But Mira, as was her way, heard my heart in it and held my hand closer.

  “What . . . do the words mean?” I asked. “Did she write them?”

  Mira pulled her head back and shook it, her long hair brushing the backs of my hands. “He shall neither slumber nor sleep,” she said, her eyes wide and steady upon mine.

  I swallowed.

  She went on. “The day is yours, the night also is yours. You have prepared the light and the sun.”

  They were vaguely familiar, these words, though the way they pounded at my chest to be let in, you’d think they had been searching for me through the same dark trenches I’d just emerged from in the dreamworld.

  “They speak of sorrow, and they speak of hope,” she said. “They speak of the God who does not slumber nor sleep. Like another, who I know.” She traced my jaw, her touch tearing into the fortress I’d hidden these things behind for so long.

  “They are from the scriptures. David’s Psalms. They speak of you, Matthew.”

  My hand rose up, covering hers, keeping it there against me. I shook my head. “That doesn’t describe me, sadly.”

  She laughed, a gift. “I mean—my English fails— they speak to you, Matthew. That the night is not to be feared. For the God who fashioned it did so with care. Knowing these days you would not sleep. Promising to draw near in the very midst of that night. When you do not slumber, neither does He. You are not the only one holding the world together in your wakefulness, Matthew.”

  It was my turn to laugh.

  “But He is.”

  And now she was the one being direct. Her words cutting, making their mark. Searing away the illusion that my wakefulness did any good in all the world.

  “The only one,” she added, for emphasis.

  The words, they hurt. Tipping over a row of backward dominoes in my memory. Mira. Celia. Chester. Mother. That all my toiling, all my concern, anything I did—perhaps it was well and good, but any notion that I could create their safety was sheer illusion.

  That terrified me. Shot me down to the core with cold realization.

  “I can’t leave you, Mira.” I said it, knowing the dawn was imminent. That the day would come, and when it did, I would fear it more than this night. For I would leave my wife, and this child, in a strange city without a friend in the world—and doom myself to a very likely future of not being able
to care for them.

  The air seemed thin, suddenly. Who would care for them?

  “We do not have a choice,” she said.

  “I can’t. I won’t. I won’t leave you. I won’t do to you what’s already been done to you.”

  Gracious though she was, those words hurt her. I wished them back immediately.

  She pulled back, tucking her hands into the rumpled folds of her skirt.

  “I’m sorry, Mira. I didn’t mean—”

  She met my gaze with sorrow in her eyes. Eyes so wide they looked like they had taken in this whole war. And perhaps—in many ways—she had.

  “No, you are right,” she said. “I will tell you a truth, Matthew Petticrew, that you can fix to the armor of your heart. That lullaby—it is as much for me as for you. As much for this child, as for every one of those boys and men in the trenches. I am facing a night. At times, it has been cold and dark. Unbearably so. And at times . . . it has been more beautiful than anything I could have dreamed of.” She squeezed my hand.

  The sky grew grey outside, letting first veils of light in. I saw her by the first light of day, an heiress in a peasant’s dress, right in her own castle. She spoke on.

  “In that forest, terrible things happened. But in that forest—because of those things—wonderful things happened, too.” She lifted my hand to her stomach. The intimacy of it tore through me. The last time I had touched her so, she had been unconscious. It had been an accident. And the little one had announced his—or her—presence to me by sending me a kick I would never forget.

  “The God who does not slumber—the same God I questioned, and railed against, and sobbed to, and ran from, after He seemed not to see me or care—He brought me you, Matthew Petticrew. And it is because He brought me you that He has reminded me He can do anything in all this world. He can see me through what is next. And you, too. He can bring this child into the world. And—I pray—He can bring us together once again. He crossed you over oceans and years and brought you to my door in the middle of an isolated wood. If He has done that, then I can believe He can do anything.”

  The light was dawning in earnest, now, slipping over the windowsill and creeping up behind her. Crowning her and cloaking her, as if to prove all that she said was true.

  It was too good. And the goodness was too terrible against the backdrop of this moment in time.

  “That is—if you wish to be brought back together,” she said, her brow furrowing so endearingly I could not help but lean in and kiss it. Inhaling her. Hands upon her shoulders, willing this moment to last forever.

  When I drew back, her eyes were shining with such joy.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Mira,” I smiled. “You hardly know me. You may well regret the moment you agreed, in the middle of a river, to marry the crazy American.”

  “Hardly know you,” she breathed. “You speak with many girls in haylofts, and carry them from snipers, and keep watch over them in ruined churches, and marry them at rivers, and tell them of your horse Gulliver, and introduce them to your sister?”

  “You’re a wonder, Mira.” I laughed again. “And you’re right. I’ve never done a single one of those things before I met you.” And never will again. Not with anyone else. There would never be another. She had entered my life with that song and in every moment since, she had voided every alternate possibility of any other something that might ever happen in this life.

  “This . . .” I said, letting my thumb stroke the sleep-rumpled dress over her gently rounded stomach, letting my gaze fix immovably upon her face. “Is all that could ever be, for me. There is only you. Only this. Always.”

  The coming light spun a spell about us as we lingered together. She shivered. What was I thinking? She should have a roaring fire in every hearth in this house. And something . . . even if it was such a small thing . . . from me.

  From my pocket, I pulled out what had become of Chester’s shell casing. The large metal cylinder had been left behind in Fontaine d’Argonne, all but the small bit I’d carried and carved throughout our journey. A smooth rectangle, sitting humbly in the palm of my hand. I thought of the many nights along the journey I’d twisted a nail, over and over, into its metal surface. Engraving but not piercing. Dot by dot, until the image unfurled.

  A tree in the forest. The Sentinel tree, the one that had stood curving and aged, watching over Mira where I’d first found her. Etched in metal that had fallen from the sky in a war that had launched me into her world.

  Unfolding her fingers now, I wrapped them about the small brass offering.

  She sat up, with expectant delight on her face. She held it, and the morning sun set a sheen on the dull metal. She traced the image of the tree with her fingertips. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. The spell of the morning light deepened as her presence soaked in the meaning of it.

  “It’s . . . from a shell,” I admitted sheepishly.

  She tilted her head, cradling it with care. As if she meant to heal the whole broken world in doing so. “Something so beautiful, from something so . . .” She let the sentence trail off.

  I gulped. She deserved diamonds and sapphires, not metal from destruction.

  “It is . . . the tree at home,” she said. “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Matthew,” she said. “You did this, by your own hands?”

  I dipped my chin. “It should be more. But—I hope it will protect something you hold dear.”

  She studied me. I reached to where her apron was folded neatly on a wobbly chair, matchbox perched atop, and retrieved her letter. Her only remaining possession from the forest, save the apron and clothes on her back. “The matches . . . they are hope,” she’d told me. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

  I slid her matchbox into its new home, the brass cuff encompassing it like the cover of a small book. She had lost so much. . . . this was the battleground I longed to stand upon. To fight for hope. For her.

  “Mira,” I said. “I wish I could promise I’ll come home. I wish I could find your father, promise to bring him home. I wish—I wish you didn’t have to do what’s coming alone.” I slid the matches back out and held one up. “But I can promise I’ll fight for this.” It was she, now, who reached out and rested her hand on my jaw. Her touch so gentle and true. “I’ll fight for light.” I swallowed, my throat aching and thick. “For hope.”

  She bent her head until our foreheads touched. “I know you will, Matthew Petticrew,” she said. “It is who you are.”

  My chest pounded, ready to crack open wide. How long we stayed there, I didn’t know. Time . . . we were outside of it. Until somewhere in the house, a plucky and horrifically off-tune piano melody began to play.

  “Seems we aren’t the only ones awake,” I said. I held her still, not ready to leave this moment. But the piano grew louder, the two-man chorus more boisterous.

  We retraced our path from the night before, this time gilded in light. At the bottom of the stairs, we followed the growing sound through two oaken doors standing wide, welcoming us.

  It was a ballroom, I guessed. Or once had been. The vast open floor where George was running in stockinged feet, gliding across as if on skates over ice. Henry plinked away at the tune, and when they saw us, they stopped. Rushed to greet us, taking a serious stance facing one another to create an avenue in between them.

  “What’s this?” I asked warily.

  They bowed, and George cleared his throat. “Whereas the heiress has come home to reclaim her throne,” he said, then waited.

  And waited. And scowled at Henry, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

  Henry tilted his head in reluctant acquiescence. “And whereas she is to be lady of the house from here on out . . .”

  “We have brought her home to her!” George pointed a finger in the air, punctuating his declaration. “Come, if you please.”

  He led the way to the far end of the ballroom, where a wooden platform took up a fraction of the room. Dark, tattered
curtains hung akilter, made of what looked like once fine fabric. A vestige of times when it shrouded an orchestra or troupe of actors, I imagined.

  “My lady,” George said dramatically, bowing once again. “May we present to you . . . your home.” With measured ceremony, he pulled back one curtain, and Henry the other.

  The room fell silent as Mira stepped up into what can only be described as a miracle. It was as if they’d tromped right back into the heart of the Argonne, each of them hefted up an end of her forest chalet, and tromped back across France to plant it for her here, in the middle of this grand empty tomb of a home.

  To the left, a bed, just where the one in the forest had been. A rickety table, planted in the space that would have been a kitchen, the window looking out into an overgrown garden of some kind—so much green, we could pretend we were indeed far from the city, if we fixed our eyes only through that ancient glass.

  In the corner, just where the crammed bookshelf had stood in the Argonne, was a stack of splintered milk crates, with four books spread out to occupy as much of it as could be. In the same place where George and I had boiled water for her potato “soup” stood a dented copper pot, perched on a stand over what looked to be a fire ring beneath it.

  “Probably best if you don’t actually light that,” Henry said, looking bashful about what was presumably his contribution. “But if you do . . .” He pulled something from his pocket and stepped forward quickly, placing it in her hands and retreating before he could take it back.

  A potato. With garden soil clinging to it still. She held it as if she had the crown jewels in her palm. “Where did you find this?” she said in hushed reverence.

  How I loved that she could utter hushed reverence over a dirty potato.

  “Out behind the manor,” Henry said, standing a bit taller. “There’s the remnants of a potager garden out there. Potatoes, onions, radishes, carrots—all gone wild and scattered with no rhyme or reason, but they can at least provide something more than our measly old potato for your soups.”