GUERNSEY - outside Nightwatch windmill, just beyond the cellar doors - "Ox, it's clean-through," Allen Dale dared to bicker with his commanding officer about the severity of the Lady Marion's wound.
"Don't try and diminish it."
"Well, this - us, out here, curfew still in force, dawn coming on sooner than later - this is no time to argue."
"Do not tell me when it is the time to argue."
"We've both of us seen worse in combat, Sir." He tried to make the most of his use of the deferential title. "Ellie's here to look out for her, and we've got to be going. 'Got me an early call with the Kommandant. He don't take it too kindly when the man he gave a boat to get himself to work on time...doesn't."
"No one's said you need be late for work."
"I'm not being funny, right?" Allen protested. "She's breathing. Bleeding's stopped. A sight better off than Royston when we first got here and pulled him from the sea. Than you when you got that," he waved his hand as if illustrating, "thing in your...place, before Carter broke out," he referenced Robin's wounding prior to Marion's kidnapping.
Unconvinced, Robin shook his head. "I'm staying. Soon as can be, you bring her John, we'll have him check her out."
"Yeah, well, hard to do that when I'm not leavin' you here."
"And I'm not leaving her."
"Well, I do not think there can be much wrong with her the way she was ordering you about in there over how to handle Tyr..."
Clearly having stopped listening to Allen further, Robin seemed to strike upon an idea. "Then we will bring her with us."
Up went a single Dale eyebrow. "Because a boat out on the open water is a good idea for a gunshot victim?"
"You said yourself we've seen worse in combat."
Allen pursed his lips, flat-lining them together. "Don't recall much jostling wounded men about solely on a whim, but I've said my piece, I'll not go without you." He gave a sort of sigh that was more of an inconvenienced huff. "We'll find a way to bring her, if that's what you want."
SARK - Rufford's tenement - It proved to be pressing the boundaries of belief, the period of time Roger Stoker had had to maintain his feigned state of unconsciousness. Thankfully, the woman of the house had left three of the smaller children to spy on him, busying herself elsewhere in the home. Had he not been so alive with adrenaline at finally being on Sark, he did not doubt he would have dropped off to sleep, there upon their horsehair divan. He let himself listen to the speech cadences of the children left to mind him, at least two of them of an age old enough that they should have been evacuated prior to occupation. The youngest, he would guess, born since that time, though only just. He wondered about their absent father (it seemed more than apparent that the woman of the house was also, in this case, the 'man'). All thoughts of course returning to the question of what she had decided to do with him.
Fortunately they did not attempt a search of his person, for though they would have found little, it would have been more than enough to 'out' him as off-island, and bound somewhere on a mission.
When he heard the door he had priorly been carried through being opened and a pair of large boots with considerable weight behind them, he knew he could wait no longer. He meant to face whatever had come eyes open and fists at the ready.
"Wot's this, Abby," he heard a broad voice ask in another part of the house. "Your young man's 'ere's come-a callin', sayin' you've a nighttime visitor in new-soled boots."
Stoker did not lay still long enough to hear the widow Rufford set in to her usual speech about not wanting to know what was going on, only to remove herself (and her children) from the immediate vicinity and the danger of it. He swung those boots that had yet to see a particularly hard day's work (or march) onto the floor and followed the man's voice, chasing after it with his own.
"You worthless sea dog," he shouted through the house, not using names lest they be unknown here. "You rubbish excuse for a - " but he got no further. Royston had found him, and the only thing that silenced the clomp of the explosives expert's large boots against Abby Rufford's plank floors was when he came to a halt and grabbed Stoker up into thick, seaman's arms, even all this time ashore more used to coiling down ropes, nearly slapping the wind out of both of them.
"God save you, Stoke," Royston declared. "We thought you give up the war for a tidy patch in the country."
"Never," declared Stoker, on what breath he could marshal. "Not as long as my men are still in the thick of it." He caught the long un-seen eyes of his friend. "Never."
Rolling her eyes at the last moments of this robust meeting, which she had arrived to observe, Abby Rufford moved to the kitchen to scare up something hot, knowing it would be some minutes yet before her house was free of these two (and again relatively safe), and knowing that men - whether they met in joy or mourning - were happier with drinks, or vittles, in their hands.
Among fields - Marion knew they had begun walking as speedily as she could endure as a threesome, her propped up between Robin and Allen as though they were her living crutches. But at some point (she could not quite recall it), the two had, of necessity, swept her up into their linked arms, in something of a chair-carry. How ridiculous they would look if caught, her being borne about in the arms of two men across fields and the occasional animal pen as though they were twin Sir Walter Raleighs, and she were Queen, and it beneath her for her feet to touch the ground.
"Drink all of it," Allen had demanded of her, just before letting her disembark his launch onto Sarkese soil, and unlike Robin (whose back had momentarily been turned, his hands at the task of tying off the boat), the man masquerading as merely the Kommandant's driver had been sure to tilt the bottle in question (at her lips, but tentatively so) down her throat when she had not been expecting it, suspecting (rightly) that she was of a mind to take only the smallest amount of the liquor, as she preferred sense rather than the insensibility so much ingested in such a short time might bring.
It was little wonder, then, that she had been unable to maintain her footing and had to be carried, rushed through occasional, mist-rising-with-the-near-dawn woods, Robin and Allen unable to pay any mind to small streams, their trouser legs no doubt wet to the knees with their rapid crossings of them.
At some point it began to lightly rain - nothing too soaking, unless, like them, you were indefinitely caught out in it. She had lost all orientation of place or time - though if she concentrated she could discern that there was still, perhaps, forty or so minutes until full-dawn.
They came to what she could discern, even in the rain, was La Coupee, and managed, against the elements, to cross on its narrow strip of rustic roadway. After that she must have lost consciousness, because she remembered nothing until a far fuller darkness than that they had been in enveloped their trio, and the smell of something like the cold stone of a cave and the earthiness of a burrow met her nose, and both men shouted far more loudly than they would ever have dared out in the open for their fellow John.
But even in the darkness she could tell the man that took her useless weight from them - allowing them to break the chair-carry - was not the large Scotsman, though his strength proved more than sufficient to the task.
Moments before he carried her (with Robin and Allen following) into the lighted portion of what was the Little Sark mine - as reclaimed by Unit 1192 - she lost consciousness yet again.
Thomas Carter walked with a suspicious ease (at least to Robin's eye), despite holding the unconscious bulk of a wounded Marion in his arms. He brought her to one of the several improvised 'bunks' here, most frequently used by Johnston and Royston, and occasionally by Wills and Robin. He chose for her the one from which he had, himself, just risen. Knowing the other men were not expected to bed there that night, he had assembled all the bed clothing (rugs, two tapestries, more than several old sacks originally filled with seed) at a single berth, in an attempt to cull what warmth and comfort he could from them.
As gently as possible he laid her down upon them, casting his eye about for what might stand-in as a coverlet.
"Look, she's been shot," Allen spoke up, knowing better than to wait for Robin to share freely in front of the RAF pilot, their relationship business-like, but still strained.
Politely, Carter declined to comment that Lady Marion's wounding was more than obvious from the blood staining her blouse.
"We give her summat to put her out," Allen added, himself having had no further negative run-ins with (nor hard feelings against) the man who had once bloodthirstily attacked him. "It's a clean-through, but we're getting John out to look her over."
Carter nodded. Certainly that seemed sensible, even if transporting her such a great distance from Guernsey, and at such a level of risk, did not.
"I'm off, then," Allen added, cheerily, as the other two men continued to refrain from speech.
Carter looked to Robin, who had not stirred from the place where he had stopped, looking down at Marion. He showed no sign of any intent to leave.
"I'll stop in at La Salle's and tell John he's sent for, then?" Allen, just as he was turning to go, prompted Robin.
"There is a business there that must be dealt with," Carter said, his tone unemotional, but resolved. He spoke to Robin's back.
"And it is of a pressing nature?" Robin asked to air in front of him, not turning.
"It is business that would concern an effective commanding officer," Carter countered, and was rewarded by Robin's turning sharply toward him.
As he turned, he caught Allen's eye. Carter's unusual presence here (and not at the farmhouse) should have been an immediate indication of some trouble.
"I will be back instantly," Robin informed them both, with a declaration he could not possibly keep. He swallowed back what he wanted to say next to the flyer, something a bit more threatening in its nature.
And with a tin cup of water for each, and a kiss for Marion from Robin, Robin and Allen set themselves again to rushing - this time back over La Coupee and toward La Salle's.
It was only a little while later she opened her eyes to see Thomas Carter seated (on a crate crudely labeled 'boom'), leaning forward and watching her, their surroundings looking nothing like any she had ever seen before.
"The bad news," he said, from where his elbows perched upon his knees, the fingers of both his hands interlaced about a tin cup, "is you've been shot."
This, she remembered.
"The good news," he went on, "is that it wasnﾒt by me." And he smiled.
And she smiled, managing a sigh as a full-on laugh would have rattled her bones to the point of pain. And she thought, quite possibly, she was going to be alright.
"You're not thinkin' much like yourself, Boss," Allen ventured during one of the periodic moments in their running when they had to slow briefly to catch their breath and find another wind.
Robin's answer, available without the need for deeper thought, showed he had been musing on this very problem most of the night. "It is the first time in my life that I must attempt to fully be the man I am become, and the lover I have only ever, to-date, been in spurts."
"Ah," said Allen, as if he understood. "So you must balance the mission with the woman."
"Aye. Though the woman, though Marion feels - is, is become, as important as the mission."
"Yeah, well, don't let's slight the mission - nor its faithful practitioners," Allen warned, himself having no such self-image problems or romantic schisms at present.
"How long have you known Vaiser's daughter, now, would you say?"
"A while. Why'd'ye you ask?"
Robin shrugged, reaching down to take a hand and bring water from a shallow, narrow-running rivulet of stream up to his mouth. The rain had gone, and dawn had begun to pinken around them. "Tonight she looked at you as though she had never seen you before." He recalled something from the past. "I thought you had said she was twitterpated on Tyr. Hardly gave him more than a passing glance."
"Ach," Allen shrugged off questions of Eleri Vaiser's inconsistent attention span. "We two'd had us a spat earlier. Like as not she was takin' my measure for some voodoo pin-doll she's planning to sew up."
Before they could need to stop again, they were to the edge of La Salle's barnyard, well within sight of the house.
GUERNSEY - Mr. Thornton's Cottage, earlier that night - The body of Mr. Thornton had been easy enough to find - still within his cottage, him not daring to stir outside of it, even in the wake of his own execution when the German curfew was yet in effect.
He was facedown by the half-glowing embers of the small fire laid in the fireplace. Facedown as though he had fallen forward, off bended knees. His body carried its mortal wound at the base of his skull. The area immediately about him was stained and pooling with blood and other equally unpleasant fluids.
"Couldn't even look at him while you shot 'im, then?" the Kommandant's driver asked.
"What did he say to you?" the other man - the one who claimed knowledge of Avia asked him, almost reverently, over the body.
Tyr knew both men expected him to discover deep remorse for what he had done, here within the wake of his miscalculation. But he also knew that he would not - that he could not. One crofter's life on these islands meant nothing. That was something the Germans (once, his people) had landed with the knowledge of. And that was something the British (among whom he would never truly belong) simply failed to get their heads around.
It was a rare person acting alone that could ever make a dent in the fabric of the world - der Fuehrer, of course, that mad from-nobody-and-nothing that had his native country in a stranglehold against which some chafed and others found pleasure, nourishing them on evil and perversity. This Nightwatchwoman - perhaps. Perhaps she might make a difference, of a sort. And the Whichman. He would play his part, not living to see what effect it would have, only knowing it was his part to play.
"I believe he said a prayer," Tyr responded dryly, recalling the final moments of the man lying in the blood on the floor. "He did not beg, nor offer to give up anyone or anything in an effort to spare his life. He remained...quite dignified throughout."
"Well ain't that a blessin'," Mr. Allen sneered out, heavy with sarcasm. "Pointless slaughter with a side of dignity."
"Grab his legs," the other directed.
"What shall I call you, then?" Tyr asked the second, unknown-to-him man as he moved to do as bidden.
Oxley exchanged a look with Dale.
"I should think 'my lord' will do quite nicely," the man replied, his tone only just modulating away from grim.
At this Tyr found himself on the verge of being charmed, wondering if the man who was styled as a commoner knew that, as rank of nobility goes, a Count trumps a mere English lord any day of the week (assuming the lord carried no other titles), and would never address anyone lower than himself as 'my' as though he were somehow in a servile position to them. But, let the simple Islander have his joke. 'My lord' it would be. 'Your Eminence' if he demanded it.
It proved a hard go, especially for Tyr, significantly handicapped for the activity, and finding his usual Guides - that essence that often gave him any vigor to which he could lay claim, the Spirits - had fallen silent.
Of a certain, Robin and Allen were not ignorant of the trebled effort it took Tyr to simply keep up with one of them, but they had no concept of the constant pain the man was under, the grinding turmoil with each movement, the jolts and shocks that ran through his hands, that often, with such physical activity, settled in the side of his face making him feel as though some cross between a wildfire and a hailstorm had broken out there, and tormented him often beyond powers of speech.
Pain, of course, was his constant companion, varying in degrees depending on the time of day, and level of inactivity, even, the barometer. By the time the grave was complete, and the body interned within it, his costume uniform was mud-caked, one of his prosthetics had broken to the point it became unstrapped from what remained of his hands, and the sweat of his brow had set his thick application of flesh-toned makeup to melting away from his real skin (and its disfiguring scars) like candle wax.
Though he did not say it aloud, Robin mused to himself that anyone encountering Joss Tyr in the woods that night would be less likely to accost him about breaking curfew and far more likely to run, madly, in the opposite direction. Possibly, screaming.
"Let 'im go," Allen suggested. "He don't much look as though he's the wherewithal to make it back to his bed."
"It should be alright," Robin replied. "The man's supposed to be beyond indisposed after his show anyway. On the very brink of the spirit world. ...More so than usually."
Robin surveyed his very peculiar prisoner. "Very well, then, go. As for your dove, Avia, she has been re-christened 'Jill' and is in the best hands possible." In the dark he winced at the unkind (but unintentional) metaphor. "She was found after being nearly killed by the falcon ReichKaptain Lamburg hunts got to her. Her message never made it to its intended recipient." Here he paused. "But I think she will stay apart from you a little longer. For I need assurance that you will not betray this evening to anyone, and right now holding on to her seems the best method of ensuring that. But do not fret yourself. We will meet again."
Tyr had listened hungrily as Oxley told the story of his missing dove. "Thank you, my lord," he replied, with a courtly (rather than stagey) flourish, sensing that now was not the time to go about pressing his luck, and he melted back into the woods, until neither Robin nor Allen could anymore distinguish him from man or tree.
Once Tyr was gone, Allen looked down at the disturbed earth between he and Oxley. "Do you want to say something?" he asked, imagining it was what Marion would desire, and knowing from experience that Robin (as any good commander) had various sections from The Book of Common Prayer memorized for just such moments.
"Yes," Robin replied.
"Well go on, then," Allen encouraged, "On a bit of a tight schedule, here."
"I just...want to say that...a man keeps his powder dry, keeps it safe. Only takes it out in moments of direst need - when it might save his life. We have not been able to safeguard you here. I have not been able. I have had to ask something more, something risky of you, instead. And...I am not unaware of the difficulty in your particular mission here." As they had been digging, Robin had found himself musing on the mixed-up identities of Joss Tyr, and finding worrisome comparisons to the daily show of happy-go-lucky collaboration Allen was forced to put on. "Of what it must mean for you to be able to closet away so many of your true feelings and instincts while you must daily serve the enemy in order to serve the unit's purpose."
Staring at Ox while he spoke so uncharacteristically, Allen made a sound of casual dismissal to cover what he felt was the moment's intense awkwardness.
Still, Robin went on. "I'm not one to try and shrink a man's head or anythin' - you know that - but know that I trust you, and that I support the decisions you're forced to make on the spot. And that you, Allen Dale, you are my friend." Robin reached across the grave and clasped hands with Dale, taking his other hand to slap him hard on the shoulder as if to seal a deal, or commend him for a job well done.
"Now see," Allen spoke before he thought (a rare luxury for him where Robin was concerned in his high-stakes double life), "you've gone and sounded just like Mitch." Quickly he tried to cover up his use of the name, "that is, with far less stuttering or stalling. And I can't make out a single tear wellin' up in your eye..."
Each man gave a gruff sort of laugh to the joke at Mitch's expense - so like old times, and then in the moment immediately following, suddenly burst into an unnecessary flurry of activity finding their spades to return to the proper shed, and continued on all a-bustle with the need to get back to the windmill without delay, the spell of truth and shared honesty broken.
...TBC...
Author's Note: Today (November 1st) marks the one year anniversary of the beginning of the 'Don't' series. (Remember all those reviews saying - after Apple Tree concluded - that you wished it could go on forever?) So party, re-read, invite a friend to join us, post some feedback, raise a glass of Nehi Peach, eat an entire tube of Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls by yourself, put on your favorite war-era record and cut a rug. Whatever means celebration to you.
For those of you that have reviewed the last two chapters, thank you. I will be replying, as well as to any non-fic related e-mails.