Death’s Deputy

Millie looked at the battered old desk with interest.

“What about its provenance?” She asked.

M. Buoderaux ran a hand along the scratched and worn top. “The joinery is contemporary with the period. The timber is clearly very old and has been in the Château for at least the last eighty or ninety years.”

“Before that?”

The man shrugged. “Before that, La Grande Guerre.”

Millie nodded, dark hair falling across her face as she studied again, the battered piece. It fascinated her, but she couldn’t be sure why. There was nothing significant about it; a late nineteenth century writing desk that had clearly suffered some abuse at some point in its life.

“I’ll take it,” she said.

***

“Bring it in here, Sar’nt.”

Sergeant Bates grunted as he hefted the desk into the cramped dugout. “Here, Sir?” He asked as he dropped it into a corner.

“Fine, Bates,” Captain Frobisher replied. “It’ll do.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, Sir, but why do you want that here?” Bates cast an eye over the dank conditions in the dugout and back to the desk, a late nineteenth century piece with ornate legs and three drawers down one side.

“I need somewhere to write,” Frobisher responded. “There may be a war on, but I need to write. I’ll need to fix up some light, too.”

“What will you write?”

“This,” Frobisher gestured at his surroundings, damp, dark, muddy and rat-infested. “This, Bates, and all that we endure here. One day, someone will read it.”

“If we ain’t all blown to kingdom come first,” came the dour reply. And, as if on cue, the bombardment commenced, shaking the earth beneath them and dust fell from the roof, causing them to cough and splutter. Bates lifted an eye heavenward, as if in confirmation of his dire prediction.

***

“Well, what do you think?” Millie asked. Matt’s pause spoke more than any reply. She pouted and pushed the desk into a corner, beneath the window overlooking the unkempt garden. The garden they were planning to tame – when they had finished taming the ageing French plumbing and wiring; that was. The house was rural in the Picardy tradition, much of it was a crumbling ruin and wildlife had taken over several of the outbuildings. A barn owl had taken up residence and they were reluctant to evict it. This Christmas, their first together in their new home in France, was going to be cold. The new wood burner in the kitchen created a small haven of warmth in the drafty old house and they spent their evenings snuggled before it as they rested after the day spent working on the house.

“Why that old desk?” He asked one evening as December closed its frosty fingers on the French countryside.

“Dunno, really. Something just drew me to it and I thought it would be just the thing for the study.”

“Study…. Huh!”

“Ok, well, it will be a study and one day I will write my opus on it.”

“Yeah, right…” He grinned easily. One day, one day…

***

Silence.

The bombardment ceased.

Frobisher’s ears still rang from the incessant pounding of the shells. Dragging himself into the dugout, he slumped into the chair and leaned on the desk. Opening an old notebook, he scribbled down his thoughts. Gradually, as he wrote, a diary of the events of 1916 unfolded. Events that led him here, to the mud of Picardy. Mud that was rapidly freezing as December’s grip took hold.

“Christmas tomorrow,” Bates’ voice brought him out of his reverie. The sergeant was hugging a mug of tea, talking to himself as much as Frobisher.

“Yes,” Frobisher replied. “Season of goodwill, eh?”

“Tell that to the effing Hun.”

***

“Have you got a knife?” Millie asked.

“Why?”

“The drawers are locked and I don’t have a key.”

Matt grumbled into the room as Millie was doing battle with the top drawer of the desk. “You’ll ruin it,” he said.

“But I want to see if there’s anything inside.”

“Let me,” he replied. Going out and returning a few moments later he prised open a large paperclip. “Lock picking a speciality.” He worked at the lock for a minute or two and then a satisfying “click” announced that the lock was now undone. Easing the drawer open, Millie peered inside.

A journal. Old, tired, yellowing as the acidic paper gradually deconstructed.

“Someone’s diary,” she said, picking it up and taking it to the window so that she could read the faded words from a hundred years previously.

“Oh, my… Look at this.”

Matt joined her at the window and read the lines over her shoulder. “Well,” He said, “There’s a little bit of history there. Look, a drawing of this place.”

The pencil drawn image was finely drawn and had been taken from the back of the building, down in the garden somewhere. He looked across the unkempt grass that sorely needed tending. “Down, there”, he said.

Millie leafed through the pages. “He was staying here, recovering from a wound. It was used as a hospital,” she said.

“Who?”

“Charlie Frobisher. You know, he would have been about our age then. Thrown into the carnage of the trenches. “This,” she said, brandishing the notebook, “is living history.”

***

Millie woke. Matt slept soundly next to her. The chiming of the grandfather clock downstairs told of midnight. Christmas morning enveloped northern France in a ghostly shroud. Unable to sleep, she pulled on a dressing gown and crept downstairs. She busied herself making a coffee before wandering into the study. She opened the drawer of the desk and pulled out the notebook. A century-old conflict rippled through the pages.

As well as descriptions of the conflict and the deprivations of life at the front, Frobisher talked of a woman back home. He had been injured and sent back to the hospital. The wound wasn’t enough to qualify for a Blighty, so he had convalesced in France for a few weeks. The place he described and drew so expertly was the old château they were now renovating. He made the most of the extensive grounds and he spent time here walking, making the most of the peace – relative peace, as he could still hear the shells pounding the front a few miles away.

Millie put the journal down and sat back for a moment, lost in thoughts of a war fought near here, long ago. They are all dead now; the last of the old soldiers died a few years earlier, so no one was alive who lived through the mud, blood and earth shattering shellfire.

Curious as to what the other drawers contained, she picked at the lock of the second drawer, but she lacked Matt’s skill. It was then that she looked up. The garden was bathed in moonlight. Yet, oddly, something was different. Furrowing her brow, she looked again. Had Matt been doing some tidying, she wondered. Then she saw him. A figure standing in the shadow of the cedar tree. She switched off the light so as to get a better look. She could see a shadowy figure. He seemed to be wearing a great-coat and peaked cap. Against the darkness of the sky, there was a speck of red from a burning cigarette.

Pulling her dressing gown close she went outside. The eastern sky flashed and thunder rent the air, but not thunder; artillery. He was still there, smoking in the half-light of the moon. “Millie,” he said. She started. “How…?”

He turned, “You’ve been reading my journal.”

As he spoke, there was more rumbling like thunder. She turned to the sound. “Bombardment,” he said. “Probably a push tomorrow.”

“What?”

“A push.”

She turned to look back at the house. There were lights on where it should have been in darkness – apart from the study. Frowning, she started to walk back. “Why not?” He said. “Getting parky out here.” They walked back towards the house in silence and it seemed to Millie that the house looked different. Soldiers in uniform lounged about the grounds, nurses scurried about them, chivvying and chiding.

This is the hospital, she thought. This is 1914.

“Sixteen,” Frobisher said, as if reading her mind. He looked about, as if expecting something. “Where is Matthew?” He asked.

“Still asleep,” she replied, arching an eyebrow quizzically.

“Oh, I know much more than you can imagine – including what you are thinking,” Frobisher glanced at his watch. “He’s late.”

“Late?”

“Mmm, we have to go in and we can’t until he comes out. I do appreciate timeliness. It’s important.”

***

Matt awoke with a start. Reaching out, he realised that Millie was not in the bed. Pulling on a robe, He wandered downstairs. “Millie?”

He padded into the drawing-room, flicking on the light switch. The desk sat by the window and he looked past it to the frosted lawn outside. He could make out two figures in the moonlight. “Ah, there you are.”

Walking outside, he called out, “Millie, you’ll catch your death…”

Frobisher smiled. “Ah, here he is.” He lifted a languid hand in response.

“It’s freezing out here,” Matthew scolded. “Who are you?”

“Charlie Frobisher, Captain, Northants Regiment,” Frobisher tipped his cap. The night fell silent as the gunfire ceased. Just as Matthew was about to respond, the strains of male voices drifted across the still night air.

“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Alles schläft; einsam wacht,”

“Oh, my God, how wonderful,” Millie breathed. “In German, too…”

“Mmm,” Frobisher said. “Prisoners of war. They were doing that in fourteen. Not bad, though, even so. The Hun’s not such a bad chap – although you never heard me say that. Bad form an’ all.”

“Look, isn’t it time we went in?” Matthew asked irritably.

“Indeed, we are late already,” Frobisher responded easily. “This way.” Striding ahead, he led them towards the light inside the house. As they approached, it seemed as if the light become more intense, they could see figures moving about beyond the doors, soldiers, nurses and the sound of singing…

“Nur das traute hochheilige Paar. Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar, Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh! Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!”

***

Harry Rueda pulled open the door of the house. “As you can see,” he said, “the chateau is in good overall condition, but ideal for some renovation – modernising, if you like, and plenty of calms, you English appreciate the calms,” he smiled to his clients as they followed him into the house. He led them around, showing them the empty rooms, effortlessly fielding questions and suggesting modernisation ideas with the easy guile of the professional salesman, until they came to the drawing-room where a writing desk stood by the large window that looked out upon the lawn. “Oh,” he said, surprised. “Everything should have been removed.”

“What happened to the previous owners?” the woman asked.

“Ah, sad, that, Madame, they were killed in a road accident. Just a year ago, now. I am sorry, but their effects were supposed to have all been removed. I will see to it, immediately.” Looking out across the lawn, he saw a figure. “Excuse me,” he said, frowning. “I will be back shortly.”

Stepping out through the door, he crossed the lawn, the hoar-frost crunching under his feet. “Excuse me,” he said to the stranger waiting, hands in the pockets of his greatcoat, “but this is private property. Who are you, what are you doing here?”

“Charlie Frobisher, Captain, Northants regiment,” the man said. “You, sir, are early.”

“Early?”

“You aren’t due until tomorrow.”

***

“That was close,” Frobisher muttered. The dugout was now exposed to the sky. Darkness had fallen and with it, the bombardment had ceased. No Man’s Land was an eerie wilderness with drifting smoke, mud, blood and bodies and soundless, nothing, no guns, no voices, no birds, nothing, emptiness; a void. And yet, there stood a shadowy figure. Frobisher pulled himself to his feet and stumbled out to the stranger.

“Excuse me…”

“Yes?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. And you are on time. I do like people to be on time. Good timekeeping is essential, I think, don’t you?”

Frobisher looked at the man, but there was a vagueness, a shadowy entity, that he could not quite grasp. Every time his eyes focussed, the figure drifted into shadow again – there and not there, everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“I have a job for you.”

“Er,” Frobisher gestured back towards the trench he had just vacated.

“No, not anymore,”

“No…” Frobisher reached absently into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. Pulling one out, he tapped it on the packet before placing it in his mouth.

“Oh, do you mind?”

Frobisher arched his eyebrows and held out the pack. A bony hand reached across and took a tube from the pack. Frobisher went through the ritual of striking a match and lifting it via a cupped hand to the cigarette. “I suppose you want a light?”

“Please,” Death leaned forwards, lit his cigarette and drew deeply. “I don’t get to do this very often,” he said, blowing a plume of smoke into the dark air.

Then it started…

“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Alles schläft; einsam wacht,”

“Bloody Hun.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I find it rather mournful. Suits my sense of melancholy. They’re not bad, are they? Now, about this job.”

“Job?”

“Yes. I could do with some assistance. I find myself rather busy of late. Understandable, you realise?”

Frobisher looked at the carnage around him. The bodies and parts of bodies in a grotesque montage amongst the mud of No Man’s Land. “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“Mmm, the money’s not good.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. Well, there isn’t any money. And the hours aren’t too special.”

“In what way?”

“All times of day and night. Drop of a hat, mostly. Never mind that I might have other plans, people expect you just to pop up exactly when they want you – not so much as a by or leave.”

“Are there any upsides?”

“You get to meet all kinds of people.”

***

“So,” Frobisher said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. About this time, then?”

Harry stepped back, confused. “I…”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Oh, yes, and a Happy New Year.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Frobisher smiled. You are getting a little previous there, old son.”