Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

Rutledge responded silently, “The first James was your king as well as ours. Or have you forgotten?”

Hamish, considering the matter, replied, “We didna’ care o’ermuch for him.”

The Guy was closer now, dancing a jig on the pole, and Elizabeth was laughing like a girl. “Oh, Ian, look, he’s wearing those masquerade clothes I found in the attics and donated to the committee. Wouldn’t Richard have been delighted- ”

On the far side of the crowd, someone had lit the fire, and the flames began to fly through the dry brush, reaching for the harder wood. Applause greeted them. In the garish light, the Guy took on a realistic life of its own, the straw-stuffed limbs jerking in time with the booted feet of its minders as it was paraded before an appreciative audience. Shouts of approval and the word “Traitor!” mingled with laughing cries of “Into the flames with him!” and “God Save King James and Parliament.” The shrill, giggling voices of children taunted the Guy, a counterpoint to parents warning their offspring not to venture too close to the fire: “Mind now!” or “Stand clear, do!”

And in the light of the flames, lit just as garishly as the Guy, was a face that Rutledge’s gaze passed over-and returned to -and recognized But from where?

He went cold with a sense of shock he couldn’t explain. A knowledge that was there, buried deep in the brain, concealed by layers of denial and blank horror. And yet rising to the surface with the full force of his being was a single realization -He didn’t want to know the answer There was danger in searching for the answer He stood motionless, his body rigid, his arm stiffening in Elizabeth’s grip. But she was entranced by the spectacle, and unaware. He was physically caught up in his surroundings, the voices of people on every side of him, the heavy smell of smoke as the wind blew it his way, the warmth of Elizabeth’s hands on him, the coolness of the night air, the rough feel of the wool coat across his shoulders, the shadowed brick facades looming above him-and at the same time, emotionally, he was firmly locked in a private hell that mirrored the flames rising into the black sky above. As the seconds passed, it seemed for a fraction of an instant that the eyes of his enemy sought and found his before moving on. The odd light lent them a ferocity that stunned him.

As if acknowledging a connection between them, a connection built on-what?

And how did he know this was an enemy?

“Gentle God,” Rutledge whispered under his breath-and then the face vanished, a will-o’-the-wisp in the November night, a figment of murky imagination lost in the smoke. Suddenly he doubted his own senses.

He had seen it- Dear God, surely he had seen it!

Or-had it been no more than a fleeting memory from the last days of the war-a moment’s aberration, a flash of something best buried in the dim reaches of his mind, best unresurrected?

In this past week uneasy memories had surfaced and disappeared with disconcerting irregularity, as if the approaching anniversary of the Armistice had jarred them into life again. Rutledge was not the only soldier who was experiencing this phenomenon-he’d heard two constables who had survived the trenches warily questioning each other about lapses in concentration. And several men in a pub dancing uneasily around who was sleeping well and who wasn’t. There had been the officer sitting on a bench by the Embankment, staring at the river water with such obsessive fascination that Rutledge had stopped and spoken to him. The man had traveled a long way back to the present, and looked up at Rutledge as though wanting to ask, “Were you there?” And saying instead, “The water’s bitter cold and gray today, isn’t it?” It was almost a confession that drowning had been on his mind.

As if uncertain, all of them, whether or not they were going mad, and grateful to discover they were not alone in their fears. As if that made it more tolerable, not being alone…

Just this need had sent him down to Kent.

He found himself searching among the villagers gathered in a ring around the fire’s blazing gold and red light, but the face he sought was no longer there. Not now.

Not ever?

Hamish, alarmed and accusing in the back of his mind, was exclaiming, “It canna’ be. Ye’ve gone o’wer the edge, man!”

Badly shaken, Rutledge had lost sight of the perambulating Guy, making a lap on the far side of the bonfire. Now the grotesque effigy was coming round once more, a final circuit while the lengths of harder wood smoked and began to burn hot enough to consume the fire’s prey.

Over by the bronze statue of a mounted Cavalier that stood at the point of the square where the main road curved away from the High Street, there was hilarity as a police sergeant gathered older boys around him and gave his orders. The bronze Cavalier’s back was turned on the antics of his descendants, his face haughty and withdrawn under the brim of his plumed hat, the aristocratic arch of his nose and the smooth sweep of his cheekbones highlighted by the fire’s blaze.

As the first Roman candles went streaming noisily skyward from the cluster of children, Rutledge flinched. At the Front, flares had been used to test the wind The crack! and the rat-a-tat-tat of the smaller charges sent his heart rate soaring. He felt exposed, caught out in the open, as the sounds of war surrounded him again. His immediate inclination was to shout orders to his men, to bend into the run that would carry him across No Man’s Land Elizabeth, suddenly aware, looked up at the tension in his face and cried, “Oh-I didn’t think-are you all right? It’s only the children-”

Rutledge nodded, unable to trust his voice.

Just then the Guy went sailing into the heart of the blaze, like a living creature struggling to escape as the heat rushed toward him. The onlookers were ecstatic, roaring at the top of their lungs as the straw-stuffed figure jerked and twisted as if in torment. The candles streamed wildly above the tongues of flame, and the noise was deafening.

Rutledge was still scouring the faces illuminated by the flames. A policeman was trained to observe, to remember the shape of a nose, the width of a mouth, the way the eyes were set, and the height of the forehead.

He couldn’t have been wrong, there had to be someone who bore a faint resemblance to the man he’d seen. Something had triggered that memory, something had reached somewhere deep in his past and dredged it up.

But there were only strangers here, appearing and disappearing in the smoke like wraiths, none of them familiar, all of them solidly alive, villagers with every right to be here enjoying the night.

In God’s name, it had surely been a ghost…

He knew about ghosts People were milling around him now, slapping each other on the back, celebrating, calling out to friends, pressing him toward the fire, into the heart of the crowd. Mind-numbing to a man who was claustrophobic. Someone who knew Elizabeth came past and thrust a glass of long-hoarded champagne into their hands, shouting something Rutledge couldn’t decipher in the din. He drank the champagne quickly, to steady himself. What was happening to him? Why had a perfectly normal evening gone so badly wrong?

Hamish said, “It’s November-”

As if that explained everything.

And in a terrible way it did. Last November Rutledge had been in the trenches of France, he and his men abandoned by hope, and bitter, too tired to relish the successes of the Americans or to believe the whispers of a peace.

The doctors had warned him there would be flashbacks, that he would from time to time find himself reliving what was best forgotten. “Sometimes as vividly as life,” Dr. Fleming had cautioned him. “And far from unnatural.”