Chapter 375: The Valley of the Shadow of Death

It snowed on the twenty-seventh. Not heavily, just enough to cover the coal stains and horseshoe prints on the streets.

At King's Cross Railway Station, Richard walked at the front, carrying his father's leather suitcase.

His mother held Isabella's arm, the two sisters whispering to each other with their heads bowed.

Rogers walked at the back, his pace exactly as it had been when he arrived.

Evelyn walked in the middle, her schoolbag just as bulging as it had been on the way here.

She was quiet today. From the moment they boarded the carriage at the manor, she hadn't volunteered a single word.

The cold wind on the platform bit at their collars. Margaret pulled her scarf up a little higher.

Isabella tucked the ends of the scarf in for her.

"Bring a fleece-lined one next time."

"No need," Margaret said, patting her sister's hand. "I'm used to the old one."

The line at the ticket gate stretched all the way past the iron railings.

Gerard had the butler book three second-class tickets in advance.

That was only because Richard had insisted; his grandfather had originally wanted to book first-class.

Richard handed the leather suitcase to his father.

Rogers took it and patted his son on the shoulder.

"This is far enough. You still have things to do back home, right?"

"Yeah."

"Don't work too hard. The family doesn't need you supporting us just yet."

"Got it."

Rogers turned and walked through the ticket gate, his figure vanishing into the crowd.

His mother let go of her sister's arm and covered her son's hands with her own.

Her palms were warm, her fingertips slightly rough.

She didn't tell him to be careful in Yorkshire; she had already said everything she needed to say on Christmas Eve.

"Pass a message to your grandfather for me."

"What should I say?"

"Just tell him..." Margaret thought for a moment, her voice dropping lower. "Just tell him I've had a wonderful time these past few days."

"Okay."

Evelyn stood behind her mother, hands shoved into her coat pockets.

She refused to look at her brother, puffing her cheeks out and staring at the ceiling.

"Evelyn!" her mother called back to her.

"I know."

She fished a Gingerbread Rabbit out of her pocket.

Its hat was terribly crooked, and its left ear was missing a small chunk—probably crushed while stuffed inside her schoolbag.

"Here."

She shoved the Gingerbread Rabbit into Richard's hand.

"This one was the ugliest, so I saved it specifically for you."

Richard looked down at the soldier bunny in his palm with its crooked hat and chipped ear.

The icing had melted a bit, sticking to his fingertips.

"That's fine. Ugly or not, it's all going into my stomach anyway."

"Don't eat it in one bite," Evelyn said, her voice muffled. "Look at it for a bit before you eat it."

"Why?"

"Because it's a limited edition." She rolled her eyes.

"The ugly ones are the real limited editions. Anyone can make a pretty one."

The train whistle blew—two long blasts, one short—and the crowd at the ticket gate surged forward.

Evelyn followed her mother through. After taking a few steps, she turned back and mouthed something to Richard.

He didn't catch it clearly, but he guessed it was probably "remember to eat".

The train pulled out of the platform, the clatter of the carriages rolling over the track switches stretching further and further into the distance.

Richard stood on the platform for a while, until there were only a few grey pigeons left pecking at breadcrumbs in the cracks of the ground.

His aunt walked up from behind him, her scarf wrapped so tightly that only half her face was visible.

"Let's go." She tilted her chin toward the exit. "The carriage is waiting outside."

By the time they returned to Chelsea Road, the daylight was already beginning to fade from the bare branches of the plane trees.

Isabella didn't enter the manor.

"I have to head back to the university. I still have a stack of final exams to grade."

She pulled her scarf tighter, nodded to the driver, and turned back right before leaving.

"Stay safe on your trip to Yorkshire."

The manor was quiet. Baldwin and Vincent had boarded the returning military train in the early hours of the twenty-sixth.

Richard went up to the second floor. The study door was ajar, and Gerard stood by the window.

"Close the door."

Richard pulled the door shut.

Gerard turned around.

"Baldwin sent me a telegram this morning."

"On Christmas, the front lines called a truce."

...

Flanders, the southern sector of the Ypres Salient.

December twenty-fourth, ten o'clock at night.

By this generation, the Ashford family was thoroughly versed in the art of preserving its strength.

The Hunter squad led by Baldwin had spent the entire year camped out three miles behind the trenches, taking on a post as patrol guards for the hidden ones.

The most senior member of the patrol squad was Logan, a Welshman.

The two chilblains on his cheekbones had lingered unhealed since November; they scabbed over only to crack open, and cracked open only to scab over again.

He was on night watch tonight, resting his head on his rucksack.

His steel helmet was wedged beneath his ass. Sitting on the damn thing was far more comfortable than wearing it.

Logan was already used to the artillery fire. Four months was enough time to get used to anything.

But just after ten o'clock, the shelling stopped.

Logan sprang up from his rucksack. The silence was far more terrifying than the shells.

He crouched on the trench's fire step, secured his helmet back on his head, and poked half his face over the parapet.

He could see a span of about three hundred yards.

Slurry, craters, churned clay, and collapsed barbed-wire stakes.

The moonlight was pale as watered-down milk, heavy clouds pressing down from right overhead.

There was no movement at all. Even the rats had stopped squeaking.

Logan's Micro-circulation trembled.

It was very slight, entirely different from what he felt patrolling near weakened points.

That was external pressure squeezing in; this pulse pushed upward from deep underground.

He opened his Spirit Vision, his mind flashing back to the swamps he'd seen as a kid back home in Wales.

When the frozen earth thawed in spring, the marsh gas beneath the mud ponds would surge up, swelling into bubbling pockets on the surface.

The bubbles popped, releasing their stench.

The ground in No Man's Land was doing the exact same thing, except what was surging up wasn't marsh gas.

All across the mud of No Man's Land, dozens of spirits of the dead stood up simultaneously.

Then there were hundreds, the numbers steadily expanding.

Right at that moment, someone in the opposing trench started to sing.

It was in German: Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht... (Silent night, holy night...)

At first it was just one or two voices, torn into fragments by the wind.

Then more and more voices joined in, stretching down the trench in an unbroken chorus.

In the trench segment three bends to Logan's right, a soldier with a Yorkshire accent picked up the tune.

His voice was terribly hoarse, and he was so off-key he practically sang himself out of Flanders, but he was singing the exact same song.

More than a dozen men started singing along with him.

Both trenches sang in their own languages. The melodies tangled in mid-air and, miraculously, harmonized.

Logan remained crouched on the fire step, listening without singing.

His lips were dry and cracked, and his chilblains stung sharply as the wind blew against them.

A few hands reached over the edge of the opposing trench, lifting a small fir tree barely two feet tall. Tin can lids and empty bullet casings hung from its branches as ornaments.

Someone from the other side climbed out first, holding up a pouch of tobacco with both hands.

Men from this side climbed out too.

By the time the sky grew grey with dawn, No Man's Land was packed with living men, shaking hands and exchanging tobacco and rations.

Someone pulled a crumpled family photograph out of his pocket to show the other side, and the other side pulled out theirs in return.

Some men kicked a ball around near the edge of a crater. The ball was made of old socks wrapped in used bandages; it wasn't remotely round, and it swerved wildly when kicked.

Logan watched these living men walk back and forth across No Man's Land. He still hadn't deactivated his Spirit Vision.

The living were shaking hands, while the dead stood right by their feet.

They passed straight through those spirit bodies without so much as a shiver.

The morning sunlight leaked down through the clouds, utterly weak.

Logan climbed out of the trench. He had to go take a look.

The mud was frozen rock-solid, so he didn't slip much as he stepped onto it.

He skirted around two craters and stopped on a flat patch of ground near the center of No Man's Land, slightly favoring his own side.

The scene in his Spirit Vision was far more crowded than what he had seen from the trenches.

Countless wisps of pale grey mist stood densely packed over this churned-up expanse of mud.

By the afternoon, the living men had only grown in number, and so had the dead.

The ether field was in complete chaos. The concentration of ether in the air was so high it practically matched the shallows behind the veil.

Around three in the afternoon, a military chaplain walked over from the trenches.

Clutching a Bible, he stood on a small, flat patch of ground between two craters.

A ring of living men stood around him listening, and so did a ring of the dead.

The chaplain opened his Bible to Psalm 23.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

His voice wasn't loud, fractured into tiny pieces by the wind.

"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters."

Green pastures. The still waters.

Logan looked down at the churned expanse of mud at his feet. This place was entirely too far from green pastures and still waters.

The chaplain read on: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..."

His lips trembled.

"I will fear no evil: for thou art with me."

The moment that verse fell, all of No Man's Land went utterly silent.

The chatter of the living men, the muffled thud of the ball kicked into mud pits, the squelch of boots stepping on churned clay... it all stopped.

Logan's entire body tensed up as that densely packed sea of dead men simultaneously turned their heads.

The chaplain's right hand trembled, the Bible slipping in his grip.

"Thy rod... and thy staff... they comfort me."

"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over."

The dead watched him steadily as he finished the passage.

"And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

The moment the chaplain closed the Bible, his legs gave out, dropping him to one knee in the mud.

The soldiers beside him assumed he had just slipped and hurried over to help him up.

The next day, before dawn even broke, the artillery fire started again.

Gerard finished recounting the frontline report.

"The entire line—from the North Sea coast all the way to the mountains in the south, a front hundreds of miles wide—stopped all at once on Christmas."

"No general gave the order. The soldiers simply stopped on their own."

Richard thought back to the last gathering. Prometheus's prophecy had truly come to pass.