"Am I ready?"
Even as Matthew asks this question, supposedly about the state of his uniform which William is currently checking, he knows that it has come out as more, that his fear is showing.
William's calm answer just confirms it.
"Only you can answer that, sir."
"They're going to chuck everything they've got at us."
"Then we shall have to chuck it back, won't we, sir?" says William in his steady, reasonable voice and Matthew wishes fiercely to possess this man's courage. He is the brave one and always has been.
"Quite right," he says abruptly, getting himself together. He makes sure Mary's lucky charm is in his pocket, along with her photograph and his wedding ring. For all his resolve, he wonders briefly if he will have time to take it out before he dies, because if he is going to die, he would like her face to be the last thing he sees.
It's 4AM. The battle is starting in twenty minutes.
xxx
Mary finishes the buttons of her uniform and adjusts her hair, making sure it is secure enough not to fall into her eyes when she will be driving. Her hands are steady, but she sees in the mirror that her face is pale, her eyes wide and dark with apprehension.
"It will be alright," says Sybil, adjusting her veil next to her. They are both supposed to be at their posts at 4 AM, just before the battle begins.
The first casualties are expected to start flooding in soon after.
Sybil hesitates for a moment.
"Do you know where Matthew is going to be?"
Mary shakes her head sharply.
"No. He's not allowed to tell anyone and you know how seriously he treats it."
"Tom tells me," says Sybil, smiling wryly. "One of his small ways to rebel against the British Army. Anyway, he told me that Matthew's unit is going to head the attack."
She looks with compassion at Mary, who swallows hard to keep her composure. They both know that the first wave of attack is usually the one which suffers the biggest casualties.
"Maybe I will run into Tom then," says Mary. "I am working between the battlefield and the Field Dressing Station today."
"I will be there too," Sybil hugs Mary quickly. "Safe travels, darling. And don't worry too much. He survived so many of those charges, he will be alright this time too."
Mary nods stiffly, telling herself the same thing.
xxx
Matthew strolls down the line in the crowded trenches, watching his men steel themselves for what lies ahead. He tries not to speculate how many of them are going to be dead within minutes.
He wonders if it's going to be him.
Well, there is no point in pondering it now. He needs to be their captain, someone worthy of following into battle. Time for nerves is over.
"Now, there's no point in pretending that this is going to be easy," he says, addressing them all, looking at the faces of those men who went through so much with him over the time. He stops by Lewis, fingering his uniform.
"You've mended it. Well done."
He lifts his voice slightly.
"It's General Ludendorff's last throw of the dice and he'll throw them hard. But remember, it is the last throw. It must be."
He stops again when he reaches Thompson, sitting there in uncharacteristic seriousness.
"How are you, Thompson? Have you shaken that cold?"
"I'm all right, sir, thank you," he says in a gruff voice, making Matthew smile. He brings them in.
"Good man. We're nearly there, chaps. Just hold fast, it won't be long now."
"We're with you, sir!" states Wakefield loyally and Matthew smiles again. He really has the best men he could hope for under his command.
"I know you are, Wakefield. I can't tell you how much lighter it makes the task. Right Sergeant. Let's go."
"Fix bayonets!" roars Stevens.
Matthew looks at his watch and blows his whistle. He pulls himself over the top, with William and the others following.
The Battle of Amiens has started.
xxx
Mary is standing by her ambulance in front of Field Dressing Station when the guns start their deafening barrage.
"We're going to win this one," says her orderly, Smith, with unusual optimism. He seems surprised by it himself, because he quickly amends it. "But it will cost us dearly."
Mary glares at him. The last thing she wants to consider while listening to the cacophony of explosions is the possible cost of this battle. Not knowing that Matthew is there, at the forefront of the attack.
He must be alright. He must.
xxx
Matthew is running through shot and shell, the noise and smoke so disorienting that it's hard to even be sure if he keeps the right direction. He sees a crater and dives for it, finding William and Lewis there already.
"Not much longer," he says thickly, his mouth dry from the running and the smoke. "One more push and then we go back."
"Right, sir. I don't mind saying, I won't be sorry when this one's over," admits William and it is a true testament to how bad this charge is.
"Don't worry. We've been through so much. He won't fail us now," says Matthew as they climb out.
But just then there is the sound of a shell and William, quick as a flash, covers Matthew with his body and throws him backwards.
"Sir!"
They are still falling when the shell explodes.
xxx
Mary's step falters as she's walking towards the driver seat, enough to make her reach for the car for support.
"Are you alright, miss?" asks Smith with a frown, clearly distrustful of female nerves. Mary glares at him again, harder this time. After all that time with her he should know better than to consider her a shrinking violet.
"I'm alright, Smith," she says scathingly. "Just tripped."
She's not going to tell him that suddenly she felt terribly cold.
xxx
A shell explodes nearby with a deafening noise and Matthew opens his eyes.
For a long moment – he cannot tell how long – everything is noise and pain and a heavy weight crushing him and his mouth painfully dry and filled with dust. Slowly, he starts separating different sensations. The noise is made of familiar cacophony of explosions and screams, so the battle must still be ongoing. The pain is in his back and it goes from excruciating to blinding if he makes the slightest movement, so he stops attempting any. The thirst is maddening, but there is nothing he can do about it, trapped as he is – and the thing trapping him is William's unmoving body lying on top of his, heavy enough to make his legs so numb he does not feel them at all. He notices Lewis lying a bit further away, by all appearances dead.
His attempt to raise his arm to check William's pulse ends up shooting such fireworks of pain through his back that he cannot stop himself from screaming. When it finally subsides, leaving him breathing harshly through his dry, cracked lips, he realises dimly that he must be hurt more seriously than he has ever been before.
Maybe he is dying.
The thought does not distress him as much as he has thought it would. He feels strangely numb, detached from reality. He sees a shell flying over the crater in which he and William are lying and wonders idly if another one is going to fall upon them and leave no trace of their bodies to be found.
Would it be easier for Mary and Mother to have a body to bury? Would it make any difference if there was something left to collect from the battlefield?
His hand is close enough to his pocket that he finds courage to try to move it – slowly, ever so slowly. He still swears black and blue at the resulting shooting pain in his back, but in the end he succeeds and manages to curl his fingers around the little toy dog in his pocket.
Mary's lucky charm. As far as he can tell, still without a scratch.
Unlike him.
He gasps, a rush of air hurting his parched throat.
It is as if thinking her name opened some kind of floodgate in his brain and suddenly he minds the possibility of his death very much, all traces of numbness gone. He does not want to die. Oh God, he does not want to die, not now, not when he and Mary have had just three blissful days as man and wife. He tries to find comfort in the fact that they have married; that if he is going to leave her with child she will not be disgraced and the child can be his legitimate heir, but the thought of never knowing this hypothetical baby just causes him more anguish. God, he just so wants to see her, at least one more time. He is not ready to say goodbye. He isn't sure he ever would be, but for God's sake, certainly not after only three days of proper marriage! Fifty years with her would be too short.
He forces himself to slow his frantic breathing before he hyperventilates. If this is the end – and it very well might be – he doesn't want to go like this. He wants his last thoughts to be of Mary, of her smile, her kisses – oh God, her amazing kisses – the way her body melted into his – the way she caressed his cheek when they said goodbye.
The way his heart and brain are overflowing with love for her.
He sees another shell flying low, so low over them, his eyes tracking it progress over the crater, barely passing it by before it explodes.
The earth shakes under him, nearly throwing William off him, and the resulting wave of pain in his back is such that Matthew knows no more.
xxx
It is a bad one, she can see it. At least this time it is the Allies who are attacking, but from the heavy shelling all around them it is clear that the Germans are defending themselves with everything they got.
She parks her ambulance at the edge of the battlefield, waiting for her first batch of wounded to be brought, when she notices a muddy soldier quarrelling with the driver of another one.
"But you have to go there, he cannot wait for stretcher bearers!"
"Are you bloody out of your mind, man? The Huns' shells are falling like fucking raindrops, there's no way we can get any closer. There are thousands of wounded anyway, your chap just needs to wait his turn when it calms down there."
"He doesn't have time!" cries the soldier desperately and, suddenly noticing the second ambulance, turns to Mary in hope of a more sympathetic ear to his pleas. Mary's heart skips a beat when she recognises him as Corporal Wakefield from Matthew's unit; by the way he startles he must have recognised her as well.
"Lady Mary!" he cries, "Please, you must come! The captain is hurt!"
Mary's blood runs cold.
"How badly?" she asks, shocked by how calm, how cold her voice sounds.
"A shell dropped next to him and threw him into a crater, against some debris. It looks bad, milady, we need to get him out of there, please!"
"How far?" she asks, still in this strange, detached voice.
Wakefield winces.
"About three quarters of the way to the German line."
Mary swallows. She never got so far into the battlefield; it is the job for stretcher bearers and light cars, not a heavy and unwieldy ambulance.
"How firm is the ground? Won't we get stuck?"
Smith's eyes get round.
"Miss, you can't consider it!"
She shushes him with an inpatient gesture, looking intently at Wakefield, who bites his lower lip.
"It's pretty dry. A thin layer of mud, but it shouldn't be enough to stall the ambulance. It hasn't been raining much in recent weeks."
"Miss, this is madness! The battle is still ongoing, we can't go there yet! What is he even doing here, instead of charging with his unit?"
"We took our objective already!" protests Wakefield hotly. "My unit overtook our assigned part of the Huns' trench and I was sent to the back to escort POWs, but I handed them over. I did not desert! But now we have to save the captain, we cannot wait for the bloody Huns to understand that they lost and stop shooting, he might not have time!"
"You're fucking mad. Go yourself if they haven't dropped enough shit on your head yet during the charge; we must wait."
"I'm going," says Mary calmly, interrupting Smith's tirade. He gawks at her, stunned.
"Miss, it's impossible! If by some miracle a shell won't get us, the snipers or machine guns will. It's still live action out there!"
"I don't care," says Mary. "The captain he is speaking about is my fiancé. There is nothing you can do to stop me from going to his help."
Smith throws his arms around, cursing stupidity of women and fucking insanity of letting any of them anywhere near a battlefield, emotional, hysterical idiots as they are, with the first ambulance crew looking at him in full commiseration.
"Well, I am not going! If you are insane enough to drive into this shit, you won't be dragging me with you. See if you can load your precious fiancé into the ambulance by yourself, if you even manage to get so far, which I doubt."
"Very well," says Mary coldly, looking at Wakefield's hopeful face. "Corporal, will you come with me to show me the way?"
"Of course, milady!" cries Wakefield, climbing into the passenger seat. "At once!"
Paying no mind to Smith's protests and curses, they are on their way. Mary curses herself while fighting the unwieldy steering wheel and double gear shifts to manoeuvre around shell holes and fallen soldiers littering the ground. The shells keep falling all around them with deafening noise, seemingly rattling their very bones and definitely their vehicle.
"Didn't you say we took over this part of the German line? Then who is still shelling us?!" she growls at Wakefield through gritted teeth.
"We took the first and the second trenches, but they still have artillery and sniper nests further up the hill. Other units are engaging them; we should hopefully be done soon," answers Wakefield shakily, holding for dear life in the jumping car, jostling him mercilessly on uneven ground. "Milady, look out!"
Mary hears the whiz of a shell and doesn't manage much more than turn the steering wheel desperately and push on the gas pedal with all her might before it lands just yards from them. The resulting explosion deafens her for a moment and for terrifying seconds she fears it blinded her as well, until she realises that her eyes are just flooded with blood from a shallow cut on her head caused by resulting shrapnel. She wipes it off impatiently with her sleeve and, after sending a quick look to check if Wakefield remained more or less in one piece, barks at him:
"Which way?"
Wakefield swallows and points with a shaking hand. Mary pushes the gas pedal again, swearing under her breath at the resistance, until the ambulance lurches forward with a groan.
"There!" cries Wakefield, pointing vigorously. "Where a cart sticks out of the mud!"
Mary parks the ambulance and jumps out before the engine stops running. She swallows hard at the sight in front of her.
William and Matthew lie motionless at the bottom of the crater, thrown against the wreck of the cart. They are half buried in mud and debris from the explosion, with another soldier not far from them.
From the top of it, she can discern no sign of life in any of them and she has never been so terrified.
"We are not going to manage to get them out of there by ourselves," she says to Wakefield, wiping impatiently again at the blood seeping down her forehead. "Can we get any help?"
They both look hopelessly at the chaos around them until Wakefield spots another group of German POWs being escorted to the backlines and waves at the soldiers in British uniforms.
"Sergeant Stevens!" he yells. "Here!"
"Corporal?" Sergeant Stevens frowns at him, commanding his men and the escorted Germans to stop. "What are you doing here? And how did you get an ambulance to come so far?"
"The captain is down there! We need to get him out!"
Mary observes as the Sergeant's grim face falls even more, his mouth downturned, when he comes over and curses at the sight. He gives Mary a sceptical look.
"Will you manage to drive this thing with your head like that, lass?"
Mary bristles, wiping the blood off again. Her uniform's sleeve is already dark from it.
"I drove here, didn't I?" she answers impatiently. "Can you and your men get them out?"
Stevens nods and barks commands at his soldiers, leaving half of them in charge of POWs while the rest get to work trying to retrieve Matthew and William as carefully as possible. Mary doesn't think she breathes at all until Matthew is delicately put into the ambulance and she can check his breathing with a trembling hand.
Suddenly the soldier next to her collapses and she feels a searing pain in her left arm.
"Down, down, down! Sniper!" shouts Stevens, throwing her on the ground behind the ambulance.
"Matthew!" she cries out in panic at leaving him practically exposed. Stevens holds her down forcefully.
"You won't be of any use to him if you get shot down, lass," he growls. "They will get the bastard in a moment and then you can get him and yourself the hell outta here."
Mary nods reluctantly, clutching the arm. Stevens looks down at it and swears.
"Wakefield!" he shouts. "Get some bandages out of the ambulance, just keep cover so they don't shoot your bloody head off!"
Wakefield nods and crouches carefully at the back of the ambulance, reaching for medical supplies stored there. Stevens helps Mary remove the sleeve of her coat and inspects the wound.
"You're lucky, lass, through and through, and pretty shallow too. If we wrap it up and you won't get it infected, it shouldn't be too serious."
"Will I be able to wear short sleeves?" asks Mary, feeling strangely detached from the fact that she just got shot. "Or will it be gruesome enough to put people off their meal?"
Stevens gives her an admiring look.
"You'll be pretty enough, lass," he says gruffly. "Maybe put a ribbon or something over the scar."
The shooting mercifully stops soon after Mary's arm is bandaged, and she looks critically at the wounded soldiers around.
"I can fit two or three more in the ambulance," she says. "The rest have to walk or wait."
She leaves Stevens in charge of deciding who gets the ride and hastens to check on Matthew. To her extreme relief, he seems to have survived the sniper without any further injury. He is still unconscious but breathing steadily and she tells herself firmly that she can fall apart after she gets him to the field dressing station, not a moment before.
She checks William as well and frowns. She doesn't know much about treating wounds – although God knows she has seen her share of them by now – but she doesn't like his breathing. It sounds off, somehow.
Minutes later, she is manoeuvring the ambulance backwards, cursing the pain and diminishing strength in her injured arm while fighting with the steering wheel again. Wakefield, assigned again as her guide, looks at her in concern.
"Will you manage, milady? Maybe one of the lads knows how to drive?"
"I will manage, Corporal," snipes Mary through gritted teeth. "You better watch out for any obstacles; it's harder to dig this thing out if it's stuck when fully loaded."
They lurch forward, albeit more slowly than Mary would have wished, considering still ongoing shelling, although it seems to be subsiding a bit. The wounded in the back groan painfully with every hit obstacle and bump and Mary desperately hopes that Matthew isn't one of them. She still doesn't know the extent of his injuries and just prays that he isn't feeling too much pain.
She never will recall most of the way back afterwards, although it will star often enough in her nightmares. She remembers the moans in the back, her throbbing arm and head, the irritating blood obscuring her view periodically, the whiz and shattering noise of artillery shells still falling around them – but how long it lasted or what way she drove she will never be able to say for sure. She remembers reaching the field dressing station and getting out of the driver seat, but as soon as her feet touch the ground, she feels her knees buckling and then she loses consciousness.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
So, we finally got to the end of the war for Matthew and Mary - and it's been quite a journey, hasn't it? The rest of the story will deal with the aftermath. As you see, I decided to go here with canon events, but I hope there will be enough changes, both those which already took place and those I am planning further down the line, to keep you interested. If you are reading The Heiress and/or Time Traveller's War, I can already tell you that Matthew's fate is going to be different there.
I made a Spotify playlist for this story and the song for this chapter, 'I promise you' by Judith Owen, is actually my first inspiration for writing it in the first place. The prologue and this chapter are the first scenes I wrote for it, back in August 2022, when I still thought it was going to be a short story... which I am apparently incapable of writing ;)