The Grim Place
O0O0O0O
Things looked grim the next morning; when Bill joined the men on the beach all they could talk about was the sickening massacre at Le Paradis in the Pas-de-Calais. A few French citizens had spread the word, and all who heard it were horrified. What was more, any hope once held by those trapped on the Dunkirk beach that surrender to the Germans would not be the end of them was dashed. If that was what happened to men who surrendered . . . no thank you, they all agreed. Better to stand up and take aim than to be lined up against a barn wall.
The Germans now had them completely bottled in, flanking them with devastating efficiency. The Channel had never looked so cruelly welcoming, the glittering, sun-washed waves concealing a network of mines beneath. Word was that the Allies who were trapped outside their little prison would be taken before two days were up, and at that point the artillery fire that had driven them back to the northern beach would begin in earnest.
"Why they haven't sent the tanks in by now I'll never guess," one of the English soldiers said hollowly, puffing frantically on a shoddy, hand-wrapped cigarette. "Unless they want to wait until we're all hemmed in here and make a clean sweep of the lot of us . . . that could be it, I suppose."
It could be and quite possibly was; Bill saw the ugly, perfect logic of what the fellow said —he couldn't for the life of him remember the boy's name. Charters? Chalmers? Something like that— but he tried not to focus on it. This, he told himself, was not cowardly to do; after all, there was already too much ugliness all around to accuse himself of wanting to hide from it. One couldn't hide from it. It wasn't possible.
The nearby harbour was clogged with the downed ships, the German planes having bombed them to cut off the possibility of an escape. All around them nobody said it, but in every face, English, French, Dutch and otherwise, one could see the helpless, woeful wondering: how much longer could it last? Although the section of the beach where he and his company were penned in was enjoying a shaky respite from the shelling, it seemed to hardly matter, if one was expecting that at any day he might go to sleep with the ground shaking all around him, and simply not wake up.
Of course, Bill thought, as he settled in that night, there were lots worse things that could happen to a fellow than to never wake up . . .
O0O0O0O
"What can be done?"
It was the rudest entry into the dream-world that Bill had ever received. All around him was cold and pitch-blackness, and he felt singularly alone. The voice that spoke was harsh, and edged with a ragged despair that Bill recognised almost at once, for it so closely mirrored his own.
"Very little, I am afraid, your Majesty." The one who replied was calmer than the first, but his voice was somehow the worse to hear. While the first speaker was still desperate, still willing to believe that fighting hard enough would solve all, the second had already given himself up to whatever defeat awaited them. "Our numbers are divided along the ridge here," a slight rustle of paper, "and the Island forces have got this section hemmed in so neatly, it's dreadful impressive."
"And you mean to tell me that we have no means at our disposal to reach them?"
"Quite so, Sire."
"I see."
When he first began to hear this exchange, Bill had been standing in the dark and cold. As the conversation went on, however, the area began to lighten ever so slightly, as if dawn was approaching but not quite ready to burst into full sunrise. In the lightening of the place, Bill could make out first shapes, then shadows, then silhouettes and now, finally, faces and furniture. A guttering lamp stood on a low table, illuminating a much-marked map, and over the map stood two men whose faces were drawn with the same type of fatigue that had become second nature to Bill over the past weeks.
One of the men was a heavy, bearded fellow with battered armour and a dented helmet. The other, younger and visibly wearied, his clothes hanging off a frame that had not received proper nourishment in at least a fortnight, was his son. Peter stared at the map before him with such desperate hunger that Bill feared he would soon clutch and tear it in one final effort to shake from it the answer he wanted to see.
"There must be a way," he breathed, his eyes —sunk terribly into the sleepless hollows of his head— searching the lines of the parchment before him. "I cannot conceive that there would not be some means of . . . there must be a way."
"Your Majesty . . ." the man who stood beside Bill's son looked at Peter with the sort of gentle sympathy that all older men reserve for those who have not seen as much of the world as they. "With your Majesty's pardon . . . there is none. I understand what must have prompted you to believe that this war could be won; I understand, too, that you went into this with better intentions than those who convinced you to ally yourself with them. But this venture has been doomed from the beginning, Sire, and while I would never presume to lecture you, the friend and ally of my own sovereign, on choices made in the past, I charge you now to look at this, here," slapping one broad, callused palm down on the table and the map it bore, "and understand that it is over. More than that, I fear, it should never have begun."
The words, Bill saw, came as a cruel blow to his son, but not in the way that a shock would do. The news was clearly that which Peter had known in his heart of hearts for some time now, and it was only at the plain speaking of the battle-hardened counsellor that he was finally forced to acknowledge the reality. With a terrible, sick look on his face, the younger man sank slowly onto the couch behind him.
"Then . . . they are doomed."
"They, and the land they were sent to pillage. It will be generations before the destruction they have wrought is ever put to rights."
"And . . . I have been a party to it." Peter, shaking, put his face in his hands, and missed what Bill saw; the look of tender sympathy that softened the hard lines of the older man's face.
"You, Sire, were a party with a heart for the good, which is more than can be said for the King who rallied you to his side."
"That is no excuse; a poor one, at very best."
"And yet I do not say it to excuse you, your Majesty; I say it only to make plain to you that I do not fault your youth, nor do I scorn your will to give aid. The matter was put to you falsely, shown in such a light that your love for all people was played upon most cruelly, and drew you into folly. Men have been lost who should not have been, and a sickening many more will join their number before all is over and done . . . but no more than need be, if you will consent to heed my advice, and begin the retreat."
Bill ached, at that moment, to join the bearded man; he longed to rush to his son's side, to put his hands on Peter's shoulders and draw him up, strengthen him, encourage and reassure him that whatever had happened to bring about the disaster that had become so plain to him would pass; that this terrible thing was not real, was in fact nothing more than the stuff of nightmares. But his feet stayed rooted to the ground, and he did not move. It was Peter, of his own accord, who raised his head, and even through his anguish, remorse and bone-deep fatigue, looked every inch a King.
"Give the order," he breathed, and Bill saw that even when his son was grown, his voice still cracked when he was fighting tears. "Go now and give the order. We will break camp at dawn; I command a retreat."
And he returned his face to his hands as the man bowed low and left the tent, dropping the flap in place behind him. At the close of the flap the tent fell again into darkness; had Bill not been looking right at Peter as the shadows swathed them both, he would have missed seeing his son's shoulders begin to shake.
O0O0O0O
The darkness lightened in the same way it had before, with the sunless glow of coming dawn. This time the figure Bill saw was not that of his son, but that of his daughter. Susan, her hair hanging loose, sat at a low window and looked out over one of the prettiest cities Bill had ever seen. It called to mind the exotic images in the books he had read as a child, all of Mr Haggard's thrilling adventure stories and those other much-treasured books that had lined the shelves of his childhood. A wall wrapped around the perimeter of this city and torches blazed in the parapets, casting a romantic glow over the whole structure, but one look at Susan's face was enough to betray the fact that she was not as enchanted by the sight before her as was her father. Indeed, he thought, she looked quite terrified.
A noise behind him caused Susan to spin around with a small cry, and Bill whirled to follow her gaze to the door. There was a pause, and then a soft creak as the door swing inward and an anxious face appeared. The woman was young, comely and a stranger to him, but she seemed no stranger to his daughter; on entering, she immediately dropped a deep curtsey and stood straight, twisting her fingers and biting her lip.
"Forgive me, your Majesty," she said breathlessly, "but I couldn't sleep, and I heard a noise in your chambers, so I thought—"
"Peace, Serra," Susan smiled, though her earlier apprehension was still plain as she held out a hand to the other woman in a sort of calming gesture. "If you wish to join me, I would welcome the companionship. These past few days have been very unsettling."
"Oh, yes," Serra crossed the room in a rush to drop into a graceful puddle of cotton and muslin skirts at Susan's feet, "yes, that's exactly it . . . I hardly know what to do, and— oh, forgive me," quickly, at seeing an echo of her own pain appear on Susan's face, "I shouldn't say such things, not when your position is— is—"
"So much more precarious than your own," Susan finished, and looked out over the city. "You need not blush to say it, my dear, it's perfectly true. Only I need remain. The Prince would not care if I sent a thousand ladies away home, if it meant that he would win the prize he sought. You and Elia are safe; our entire party is quite safe, in fact, and I daresay you all may return home the moment I give my consent to wed. Only a fool would imagine it could be otherwise."
"Oh . . ." Serra fumbled with this statement, and Bill saw that Susan was watching the young lady at her feet with the same sort of gentle sympathy she displayed to anybody trying to keep up with her. Serra, it seemed, was not burdened with an excess of reasoning skills, but her loyalty to his daughter was made evident by the next words she spoke.
"You— you want us to leave you? Oh, but your Majesty, I could never! We could never! "
Susan's smile grew positively radiant and she patted the shoulder of the distressed girl. "You are too faithful to me," she declaimed, "and I should think myself a fortunate woman the day I am called worthy of your fealty. You and Elia both will not be forced onto the ship, of course, but look around you, Serra," with a small quiver of revulsion and fear in her voice, "and tell me if this is the sort of land you would call your home. Surely you cannot wish to remain."
Serra looked around the room —from her position on the floor she could not quite see over the sill of the window through which Susan, seated on a low couch, was able to look— and nibbled her lip a moment before looking back to Bill's daughter.
"It's not the nicest sort of place, your Majesty, certainly, but . . . but I think Elia would say as I do, that we're to stay with you, no matter where you go. You're our Queen, you see," with all the candour of a girl half her years, "and you mean a great deal to us."
"Surely not more than the chance to see home again," Susan said softly, and the look on her face, though Bill could not know it, was the very expression that was so often on his when he thought of his wife and children. "Surely I cannot mean more to you than that."
Serra did not contradict Susan, but she sat up very straight, and her bottom lip jutted out in a stubborn sort of way.
"We won't leave you," she promised fiercely. "Not I nor Elia, not the lords and knights, not his little Highness or even the King himself. You must know that, your Majesty; we'll none of us be going home without you."
And if Bill were to guess by the look of sweet relief that broke across his daughter's face, he would have said that they were exactly the words Susan needed to hear. The darkness closed in softly around her smile.
O0O0O0O
"You're mad." Edmund was Edmund even when he could not be seen; there was no way Bill could have mistaken the flat incredulity of his son's voice. The man who replied, however, was a stranger, and as the darkness rolled back, Bill found himself straining to see him. "Magnus, you cannot be serious; the enterprise you propose is sheer—"
"The next word you speak, O King," a heavy, rich voice interrupted in a deceptive drawl, "had best be chosen with care. You are a guest in my home, are you not?"
There was a pause, and when Edmund next spoke, the flatness of his voice remained but was tempered with something more like caution.
"In my concern," he said, "I forgot myself. I am, as you say, your guest. I am also, I hope, your Excellency's friend."
"I count you one of the few." The room was light enough now for Bill to see that the man to whom Edmund spoke matched him in height, but far outstripped him in width of chest and shoulders. Unlike his son, who was clothed neatly in some light, summer variation of the odd garments all his children wore in these dreams, the man Edmund had called Magnus was bare-chested, bearded and swarthy, and looked as if he would be quite at home in the strange, exotic city in which Bill had seen his daughter.
"Then hear me out as a friend, please, Magnus, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I thought you'd gone into this without me at least making the effort to offer counsel."
The answering grunt sounded vaguely affirmative to Bill, and must have done to Edmund, too, because the young man went on, choosing his words with care.
"Your attacks on the eastern borders may have sustained you thus far, but the size of the onslaught you propose to make is complete folly. Your best hopes lie in keeping on as you were, with the smaller, more orchestrated efforts. It was a style of fighting unfamiliar to your oppressors, and that factor alone is what has daunted them so. The minute you present yourself in open attack you are again at a disadvantage; they will sweep over your army like locusts, and descend on the land. Is that what you would see happen to your people? To your wife, and family?"
There was no great movement on the part of Magnus, but something sharp in his eyes seemed to catch Edmund's attention, because at once the younger man turned pale, and fell silent. There was a long, dreadful pause before Magnus spoke, each word chosen with a dull, deadly care.
"Your words may be wise, but their wisdom is in danger of being lost in the shadow of your tactic of speech. Do not mention my wife again. Do not either speak of the people who trust me to lead them as you attempt to sway me to your point, else I will be forced to reckon with you in a way that would grieve me deeply."
Edmund was quick to comply. His remaining arguments were quiet, well-worded and excellently reasoned, but Bill could see that any good this might have bought his son had already been overshadowed by his imprudent appeal to sentimentality. Whatever the virtues of the warrior who called Edmund his friend, it seemed that sentimentalism was not among them. At the conclusion of Edmund's arguments, Magnus nodded once, and thanked him.
"Well-reasoned and, for the greatest part, wisely-spoken. But I will not change my mind. Now, Edmund," with a gentler sort of gravity, "why not remove yourself and get some rest? You could do with some food, perhaps, and drink, and the company of your sister; I am afraid," with a quick, peremptory gesture at two guards who moved to open the door, "that I have other matters to attend to."
The door banged shut behind him, and darkness washed over Edmund's look of despair.
O0O0O0O
"I don't know. I just— I really do not know." The voice was that of a frightened woman. Darkness dropped away like a falling curtain, and in the dim light of a chamber at night time, Bill saw a tall, slender form garbed in heavy nightwear. She was in profile, and the moon beyond the window was full, but even so he would not have known her if she hadn't turned her head, her fair curls silvering under the moonlight.
Lucy. His little Lucy, a grown lady. He didn't think he would ever get used to that.
She was worried; he had heard it in her voice, and he could see it now in her posture. Her small hands knotted and unknotted as she addressed a shadowed figure. "Oh, how I wish the High King had not left things so solely to my own discretion. Truly, I feel such a fool when it comes to . . ." She broke off, and shook her head. "What is it you think of the proposal made by the warlord? Have our friends any chance?"
"It is not my place to say, my Queen," the figure murmured, and Lucy flipped her hand irritably at him. The gesture was one of Maura's, used only when she was at her most impatient.
"Neither is it your place to come to the bedchamber of the guest of your lord and master, a Queen of the country that is even now his only hope against the advancing army, and yet here you stand! Fergus, if you will not give me a straight answer, I will drag it from you! What is it that you think of the plan your master has contrived?"
"Truly, my Queen," the unlucky Fergus said, his misery apparent though his face was not, "I think it ill-advised and doomed to failure."
"Very good," Lucy said briskly, "now we know where we stand. I will rouse my brother, and we will have it out with Magnus. He will not like what we have to say, but he will listen. I will see to that."
"Very good, your Majesty," the man mumbled, and bowed low. Then he vanished, and Bill could not make out how he did it; the dark form simply slipped backward, and was gone.
Lucy, left to her own self, paused just a moment where she stood. Lit by the cool light of the moon, her hair tousled with sleep, Bill could hardly believe it was she; she was so completely a grown woman, it startled and frightened him to see. But her eyes were the same, ingenuous as ever, and the dainty chin, so firm and stubborn, was inescapably her mother's when Maura was at her most defiant. She clenched it now, frowning a moment, and whispered "Aslan, dear Aslan, if you can possibly hear me now . . . help me know how to do this." She shut her eyes, and shook her head. "Because Edmund is going to shout."
It was possible that Edmund did; Bill found he would not have doubted anything, now. But he never got the chance to hear it, because the same curtain that had dropped from his vision to reveal the scene was drawn up once more, and, muffled in the velvet darkness as he was, he could have sworn he heard that same purr he had heard several dreams ago, shifting slowly into a soft, deep chuckle. Then it softened, and faded, and again, there was sleep . . .
When he woke, the evacuation had begun.
O0O0O0O
A.N.: Quite lengthy author's notes here; none of them are crucial, but hopefully some of them are interesting!
Firstly, I feel the need to apologise to all readers (most particularly the historians among you) for the way I have summed the Battle of France and its horrors. Trapped on the beach at Dunkirk as he is, Bill is poised to bear witness to one of the earliest turning points in the history of the Second World War: the rescue and evacuation of over three hundred thousand soldiers. However, because he doesn't yet know it himself, it's difficult for me to properly convey just how significant this really was in contributing to the subsequent Allied victory.
I also don't know if, even with the help of those French citizens aware of it, word of the Le Paradis massacre could really have reached Dunkirk within twenty-four hours, but for purposes of dramatic effect I chose to believe that it could.
Finally, for any and all who may not have caught it yet, many of the little glimpses that Bill is getting are scenes from my other Narnia work. Some of them have been written just for this story, but several of them are actually fore-echoes (except, of course, in the case of Susan's time in Tashbaan, which refers to a fic I've already written) of things I am working on now and/or planning to write in the future. More than anything this story is giving me a little downtime in between "big" pieces, and helping me get some perspective on what's to come. I hope some of it looks at least a little intriguing!
Up next: The Lost Place.