Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [1]
Joseph stepped between them, risking being caught by both, the worst part of which would be that then a charge would be unavoidable. “Stop it!” he ordered briskly. “Take the boots off, Nunn!”
“Thank you, Chaplain,” Plugger responded with a smile of satisfaction.
Tucky stood unmoving, his face set, ignoring the blood. “They ain’t his boots oither!” he said sullenly, his eyes meeting Joseph’s.
A man appeared around the dogleg corner. No stretch of the trench was more than ten or twelve yards long, to prevent shellfire taking out a whole platoon of men—or a German raiding party making it through the wire. They were steep-sided, shored up against mud slides, and barely wide enough for two men to pass each other. The man coming was tall and lean with wide shoulders, and he walked with a certain elegance, even on the sloping duckboards. His face was dark, long-nosed, and there was a wry humor in it.
“Early for tea, aren’t you?” he asked, his eyes going from one to another.
Tucky and Plugger reluctantly stood to attention. “Yes, Major Wetherall,” they said almost in unison.
Sam Wetherall glanced down at Plugger’s stockinged feet, his eyebrows raised. “Thinking of creeping up on the cook, are you? Or making a quick recce over the top first?”
“Soon as Oi get moi boots back from that thievin’ sod, Oi’ll put ’em on again,” Plugger replied, gesturing toward Tucky.
“I’d wash them first if I were you,” Sam advised with a smile.
“Oi will,” Plugger agreed. “Oi don’t want to catch nothin’!”
“I meant your feet,” Sam corrected him.
Tucky Nunn roared with laughter, in spite of the bruise darkening on his jaw where Plugger had caught him.
“Whose boots are they?” Joseph asked, smiling as well.
“Moine!” both men said together.
“Whose boots are they?” Joseph repeated.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Oi saw ’em first,” Plugger answered.
“You didn’t take them,” Tucky pointed out. “If you ’ad, you’d ’ave them now, wouldn’t you!”
“Come on, Solomon.” Sam looked at Joseph, his mouth pulled into an ironic twist.
“Right,” Joseph said decisively. “Left boot, Nunn. Right boot, Arnold.”
There was considerable grumbling, but Tucky took off the right boot and passed it over, reaching for one of the worn boots where Plugger had been sitting.
“Shouldn’t have had them off now anyway,” Sam said disapprovingly. “You know better than that. What if Fritz’d made a sudden attack?”
Plugger’s eyebrows shot up, his blue eyes wide open. “At half past three in the afternoon? It’s teatoime in a minute. They may be soddin’ Germans, but they’re not uncivilized. They still got to eat an’ sleep, same as us.”
“You stick your head up above the parapet, and you’ll find he’s nowhere near asleep, I promise you,” Sam warned.
Tucky was about to reply when there was a shouting about twenty yards along the line, and a moment later a young soldier lurched around the corner, his face white. He stared at Sam.
“One of your sappers has taken half his hand off!” he said, his voice high-pitched and jerky.
“Where is he, Charlie?” Joseph said quickly. “We’ll get him to the first-aid post.”
Sam was rigid. “Who is it?” He started forward, pushing ahead of both of them, ignoring the rats scattering in both directions.
Charlie Gee swiveled and went on his heels. Joseph stopped to duck into the connecting trench leading back to the second line, and pick out a first-aid pack in case they needed more than the field dressing the wounded man should be carrying himself.
When he caught up with them Sam was bent over, one arm around a man sitting on the duckboards. The sapper was rocking back and forth, clutching the stump of his hand to his chest, scarlet blood streaming from it.
Joseph had lost count of how many wounded and dead he had seen, but each man’s horror was new, and real, and it looked as if in this case the man might have lost a good deal of his right hand.
Sam was ashen, his jaw