The meal itself was a palate-pleasing blending of haute cuisine and Southern country cooking—terrapin soup, broiled fillets of shad, capon Provençal, a profusion of garden vegetables, a hot apple pudding topped with melted cheese and sprinkled with crushed walnuts, all accompanied by the best that the extensive wine cellar had to offer and capped at last with steaming coffee and an 1854 cognac, pale, smooth and very powerful.
Martine had grimaced in self-deprecation upon the serving of the capon, remarking, “This wretched war, gentlemen, please to accept my sincere apologies, but although almost all of the food is raised here, upon the farm, one still feels guilty to serve meat too often.” Then, smiling, she added, “But never to fear, tomorrow night there will be a roast of veal.”
Milo did not meet the Stiles children until the following morning. Almost four, Per was a grave, formal, quiet little boy, who sat and handled the reins of his Welsh pony with as much ease and authority as did his father and mother sit and control their thoroughbreds. Gabrielle was a tiny, chubby near-duplicate of her mother. Riding in a trap driven by the children’s nurse, she bounced and chattered gaily, smiling and laughing throatily.
Earlier, in the stableyard, Osterreich, forking a frisky red-bay filly, had watched Milo mount and quickly take control of a mettlesome dark-mahogany-hued gelding. Kneeing his mount over, the doctor had spoken in a low voice in Russian—a tongue not thus far used in this multilingual household, but which he knew they both knew.
“Milo, old friend, now I know that I was right about you, years ago. I was right, and that old soldier Patrick O’Shea was right, also. Lieutenant Jarvis’ vaunted intuition may well be accurate to the extent that even I am certain that you are not really an American. At least, if you truly are, you did not learn your horsemanship in America or in England, even.
“The way that you just mounted, the way that you sit your beast, the way that you hold the reins, these are all classic European military ways, Milo. I, too, was taught just so, in the Imperial Hussars, before the Great War, and I helped to teach them as a Fahnrich of cavalry.”
The doctor smiled and patted Milo’s bridle arm reassuringly. “This is no accusation, my old friend and comrade. I, of all people, know that you simply do not, cannot remember anything of more than five years ago … not on a conscious level. But your body and your unconscious, they remember, you see.”
After that early morning, Milo was convinced that the doctor might well be right about him. He had ridden a few times in the recent past, for exercise—on rented horses in Chicago with Irunn Thorsdottar, now and again with Jethro on post and off—but those had always been on bridle trails. The morning at Jethro’s farm was crosscountry on spirited, well-bred horses kept in the peak of condition by experienced handlers who had no other function and were never lacking for anything necessary to the well-being of their charges.
Jethro and Martine on their big Irish hunters led a fast, hell-for-leather pace across meadows, through little rills, over fences and hedges, ditches and the occasional mossy bole of a fallen tree. Through it all, for the length of that morning hell-ride, Milo’s body reacted without his conscious urgings or instructions, making of him and his mount one single smoothly operating device for a safe,, easy-looking transit of the rough, dangerous, but exhilarating course.
Nonetheless, the sudden, strenuous, rarely practiced spate of exercise left Milo disinclined to ride out that afternoon with Jethro, James Lewis and Sam Osterreich to look over the working parts of the farm. He found the library and, with a book and a bottle of sherry, whiled away the best part of the first two hours after luncheon. Then he was joined by Martine.
When she had selected and filled for herself a slender goblet of the straw-colored wine, she drew up a chair to face him and seated herself.
“Milo Moray,” she said, using her British English on this occasion, “since first I set my eyes upon you yesterday, getting from out the automobile, I knew that we two have been … or, perhaps, will be … very close persons, soulmates, possibly even lovers. Do you, too, feel this … this unseen bond between us, Milo Moray?”
What Milo felt just then was a cold chill along the whole length of his spine, a prickling of his nape hairs and a rush of adrenaline similar to that he had felt when he had, once on bivouac, found a timber rattler coiled between his blankets.
Slowly closing the book, he said gravely, “Mrs. Stiles, your husband is my best friend, and I—”
Tilting her head back, she trilled a silvery peal of laughter, but then she looked him in the eye and stated, “Milo Moray, you misunderstood. Perhaps I said the improper words. English is not, after all, my native language.
“No, I very much love and respect my fine husband. I have loved him for the most of my remembered life and wanted to be nothing else than that which now I am—his wife and the mother of his children. Never would I even to consider betraying him or dishonoring my marriage vows with another man … not even with you.
“But still, I feel this strong feeling that we have been or we will someday be of a much and personal closeness. I cannot shake away this feeling, and I but wondered if you, too, had had this experience when you met me.”
“No,” said Milo simply. “No, I have had no such feelings, Mrs. Stiles. If this disappoints you, I am sorry. I but tell you the truth.”
“No, no, I feel no disappointment, Milo Moray. Why should I feel such? If anything, I feel great joy that you have here proved to me just how good a friend to my husband you truly are. He chose well, I think, when he chose you as his—what is the word? buddy?—he chose well, indeed. You are a gentleman of the old mode, and you always will be most welcome in this house.
“But I want your solemn vow, Milo Moray. I want your firm promise that you will care for our Jethro, do all that the good God allows to keep him safe in the dangers that lie ahead. Will you so vow?” There could be, this time around, no mistaking her meaning or her deadly seriousness.
Milo was puzzled. “Mrs. Stiles, Jethro is in more real danger driving through the city of Washington than he could face down South, doing staff work in a training unit. Of course, I will do anything I can to protect him from whatever, but I’m based in Baltimore, over eight hundred miles away from his post. No two ways about it, I’d like to be back with him in the old unit, but the Army seems to feel I’m of more use to them up at Holabird.”
“Our Jethro, gallant soul that he is, still abrim with a senseless guilt for something long ago that was not really his fault, has persuaded certain persons to give him a combat command, a battalion of infantry. He soon will leave for his new posting. Can you not find a way to join him again, there, Milo Moray?”
VIII
“Jesus H. Christ on a frigging GI crutch, Moray,” stormed Major Barstow in clear consternation. “Have you lost your mind? Not only is a linguist like you of immense value here to Uncle Sam, but you’re in the safest, cushiest billet you’ll find this side of the damned Pentagon complex. Man, with your talents and your cooperation, I can keep you here for as long as the war lasts. What is it you’re after? Rank? I can bump you up to master, within a week, no sweat. You want a commission, hell, man, I can get you that, too, a direct one. Just give me a little time and you’ll have it all.
“But, please, for the love of God, don’t hit me first thing on a Monday morning again with such a line of lunatic nonsense like you wanting an immediate transfer to an outfit that I know damned good and well will likely be in that meat grinder they’re running in Italy inside six months!”