III

by Robert W. Chambers

It was four in the morning when he stepped out of the Prison of the Condemned alongside the Secretary of the American Legation. A small crowd had gathered around the American Minister’s carriage, which was parked in front of the prison. The horses stamped and pawed at the icy street, while the coachman huddled on the box, wrapped in furs. Southwark helped the Secretary into the carriage and shook hands with Trent, thanking him for coming.

“Did you see how that scoundrel stared?” he remarked. “Your testimony hit him harder than a kick, but at least it saved him for now—and kept things from getting more complicated.”

The Secretary sighed. “We’ve done our part. Now it’s up to them to prove he’s a spy, and we can wash our hands of him. Get in, Captain! Come on, Trent!”

“I need to speak with Captain Southwark for a moment. I won’t keep him,” Trent said quickly, lowering his voice. “Southwark, I need your help. You know the story from that scoundrel. The child is at his place. Get it, and take it to my apartment. If he’s shot, I’ll take care of it.”

“I understand,” the Captain replied gravely.

“Will you do this right away?”

“Right away,” he confirmed.

Their hands clasped warmly, and then Captain Southwark climbed into the carriage, motioning for Trent to follow. But Trent shook his head and said, “Goodbye!” as the carriage rolled away.

He watched it until it disappeared at the end of the street, then started toward his own neighborhood. After a few steps, he hesitated, stopped, and finally turned in the opposite direction. Something—perhaps the memory of the prisoner he had just confronted—made him feel nauseated. He craved solitude and quiet to gather his thoughts. The events of the evening had shaken him deeply, but he resolved to walk it off, to forget, to bury everything, and then return to Sylvia. He set off briskly, and for a while, the bitter thoughts seemed to fade.

But when he finally paused, breathless, beneath the Arc de Triomphe, the weight of bitterness and despair returned with a jolt. The image of the prisoner, his face twisted in a horrific grimace of fear, loomed in the shadows of his mind.

Heart heavy, he wandered back and forth under the grand Arc, trying to distract himself by gazing at the sculpted cornices, reading the names of the heroes and battles engraved there. But the ashen face of Hartman haunted him, grinning with terror—or was it triumph? The thought jolted him like a knife at his throat. After a furious walk around the square, he returned to sit and wrestle with his misery.

The air was cold, but his cheeks burned with a mix of anger and shame. Shame? Why? Was it because he had married a girl who had unexpectedly become a mother? Did he love her? Was this miserable bohemian life truly his purpose? He turned inward, examining the secrets of his heart, uncovering a dark tale—the story of his past. He covered his face in shame as his heart beat out a grim narrative of the future: shame and disgrace.

Finally roused from the numbness that had begun to dull his bitter thoughts, he lifted his head and looked around. A sudden fog had settled in the streets, choking the arches of the Arc. He decided to go home. A deep fear of being alone gripped him. But he was not alone. The fog was filled with phantoms. They moved around him in the mist, drifting through the arches in long lines, vanishing, only to be replaced by others who rose up, swept past, and disappeared. He was surrounded, pressed by the crowd of shadows that brushed against him, pulling him along through the fog.

Down a dim avenue, through foggy lanes and alleys, they moved together, and if they spoke, their voices were muffled like the mist that enveloped them. Eventually, they came to a towering bank of masonry and earth, marked by a massive iron-barred gate. They glided forward, shoulder to shoulder, until all movement came to a halt. A sudden breeze stirred the fog, making it waver and swirl. Objects became clearer. A pale light crept above the horizon, touching the edges of the cloudy sky and igniting dull sparks from a thousand bayonets. Bayonets—they were everywhere, cutting through the fog or flowing beneath it like rivers of steel. High on the wall of masonry, a great gun loomed, surrounded by shadowy figures. Below, a wide torrent of bayonets surged through the iron-barred gate and into the shadowy plain.

As the light increased, faces became clearer among the marching masses, and he recognized one.

“You, Philippe!”

The figure turned its head.

“Is there room for me?” Trent shouted, but the soldier only waved a vague goodbye and disappeared into the crowd. Soon, the cavalry began to move past, squadron after squadron, spilling into the darkness. Following them were cannons, an ambulance, and then the endless lines of glinting bayonets.

Next to him, a cuirassier sat on his steaming horse, while in front of him, a group of mounted officers included a general, his astrakhan-collared dolman pulled up around his pale face.

Nearby, some women were crying, one of them desperately trying to shove a loaf of black bread into a soldier’s haversack. The soldier attempted to help her, but the sack was tightly fastened, and his rifle was in the way. Trent took the rifle from him, and the woman quickly unbuttoned the sack, forcing the bread inside, now soaked with her tears. The rifle felt surprisingly light in his hands. He tested the sharpness of the bayonet, and suddenly, a fierce longing surged within him.

“Hey! You again, old man?” a street kid shouted, clinging to the barred gate.

Trent looked up to see the rat-killer laughing at him. Once the soldier reclaimed his rifle and dashed off to catch up with his battalion, Trent pushed into the crowd around the gateway.

“Are you leaving?” he asked a marine sitting in the gutter, bandaging his foot.

“Yes,” the marine replied.

Then a girl—a mere child—grabbed his hand and led him into the café facing the gate. The room was packed with soldiers; some sat silently on the floor, while others groaned on the leather-covered benches. The air felt thick and sour.

“Choose!” the girl said with a small gesture of pity. “They can’t go!”

Amidst a pile of clothing on the floor, he found a capote and a képi.

She helped him buckle his knapsack, cartridge box, and belt, showing him how to load the chassepot rifle while balancing it on her knees.

When he thanked her, she sprang to her feet.

“You’re a foreigner!”

“American,” he replied, moving toward the door, but the child blocked his path.

“I’m Bretonne. My father is up there with the marine cannons. He’ll shoot you if you’re a spy.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he bent down and kissed the child. “Pray for France, little one,” he murmured, and she repeated with a faint smile, “For France and you, kind sir.”

He dashed across the street and through the gateway. Once outside, he joined the line and pushed his way along the road. A corporal passed by, glanced at him, then called over an officer. “You belong to the 60th,” the corporal grumbled, eyeing the number on his képi.

“We don’t need Franc-tireurs,” the officer added, noticing his black trousers.

“I want to volunteer in place of a comrade,” Trent said, but the officer merely shrugged and moved on.

No one paid him much attention; a few glanced at his trousers. The road was thick with slush, torn up by wheels and hooves. A soldier ahead of him twisted his foot in a frozen rut and groaned as he dragged himself to the embankment. The plains on either side were gray with melting snow. Here and there, behind broken hedgerows, wagons flew white flags with red crosses. Sometimes the driver was a priest in a worn hat and gown, other times a crippled soldier. Once, they passed a wagon driven by a Sister of Charity. Silent, empty houses with gaping cracks in their walls lined the road, every window blank. Further along, within the danger zone, nothing human remained except for the occasional pile of frozen bricks or a charred cellar buried in snow.

For a while, Trent had been irritated by the man behind him, who kept stepping on his heels. Finally convinced it was intentional, he turned to confront him and found himself face to face with a fellow student from the Beaux Arts. Trent blinked in surprise.

“I thought you were in the hospital!” he exclaimed.

The other shook his head, pointing to his bandaged jaw.

“I see, you can’t talk. Can I help you?”

The wounded man rummaged through his haversack and pulled out a crust of black bread.

“He can’t eat it; his jaw is broken, and he wants you to chew it for him,” said the soldier next to Trent.

Taking the crust, Trent ground it in his teeth, piece by piece, and passed it back to the starving man.

From time to time, mounted orderlies raced to the front, splashing through the mud. It was a cold, silent march through drenched meadows shrouded in fog. Across the ditch, along the railroad embankment, another column moved in parallel. Trent watched it—a dark mass that shifted between clarity and obscurity, sometimes disappearing entirely in a puff of mist. For half an hour, he lost sight of it, but when it reappeared, he noticed a thin line break away from the side, swelling in the middle as it swung rapidly to the west. At the same moment, a series of sharp cracks erupted in the fog ahead. Other lines began to peel off from the column, veering east and west, and the crackling intensified into a steady barrage.

A battery thundered past at full gallop, and he and his comrades stepped back to clear the way. It moved into position just to the right of his battalion, and as the first shot from a rifled cannon boomed through the mist, the fortifications responded with a deafening roar. An officer galloped by, shouting something Trent couldn’t quite catch, but he saw the ranks in front of him suddenly break away and vanish into the twilight. More officers rode up, standing beside him, peering into the fog.

In the distance, the crackling had turned into a continuous roar. The waiting felt dreary. Trent chewed on some bread for the man behind him, who struggled to swallow it. After a moment, the man shook his head, gesturing for Trent to eat the rest himself. A corporal offered him a sip of brandy, which he took, but when he turned to return the flask, he found the corporal lying on the ground. Alarmed, he glanced at the soldier next to him, who shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but then something struck him, and he tumbled into the ditch below.

At that moment, one of the officer’s horses reared up, backing into the battalion and kicking out with its heels. One man was knocked down; another was struck in the chest and sent flying through the ranks. The officer dug his spurs into the horse, forcing it back to the front, where it stood trembling. The cannon fire seemed to grow closer. A staff officer, riding slowly along the battalion, suddenly slumped in his saddle, gripping the horse’s mane. One of his boots dangled, stained and dripping, from the stirrup.

Then, out of the mist, men came running. The roads, fields, and ditches filled with them, many collapsing as they went. For a brief moment, Trent thought he saw horsemen moving like shadows in the fog beyond, and a man behind him swore loudly, claiming he too had seen them and that they were Uhlans. But the battalion remained still, and the mist settled back over the meadows.

The colonel sat heavily on his horse, his round head buried in the fur collar of his coat, his thick legs sticking straight out in the stirrups.

The buglers gathered around him, their instruments ready, while behind him, a staff officer in a pale blue jacket smoked a cigarette and chatted with a captain of hussars. From the road ahead came the sound of furious galloping, and an orderly reined up beside the colonel, who waved him off without turning his head. Then, on the left, a confused murmur rose, culminating in a shout. A hussar sped by like the wind, followed by another and another, and soon squadrons whirled past them into the thick mist.

At that moment, the colonel straightened in his saddle, the bugles blared, and the entire battalion scrambled down the embankment, over the ditch, and into the soggy meadow. Almost immediately, Trent lost his cap. Something had snatched it from his head—he thought it was a tree branch. Many of his comrades slipped and fell into the mud and ice, and he assumed they had just lost their footing. One man tumbled right in front of him, and he stopped to help him up, but the man screamed when Trent touched him, and an officer shouted, “Forward! Forward!” so he ran on again.

It was a long, grueling jog through the mist, and he often had to adjust his rifle. When they finally collapsed, panting behind the railroad embankment, he looked around. He felt an overwhelming need for action, for a desperate physical struggle, for the thrill of killing and crushing. He was seized by a desire to throw himself into the fray, to fight fiercely and without restraint. He longed to fire his weapon, to use the sharp bayonet on his chassepot. This wasn’t what he had expected. He wanted to exhaust himself, to struggle until he could no longer lift his arm. Then he intended to go home.

He heard someone say that half the battalion had fallen during the charge, and he saw another soldier examining a corpse under the embankment. The body, still warm, wore a strange uniform, and even when he noticed the spiked helmet lying a few inches away, he didn’t fully grasp what had happened.

The colonel remained on his horse a few feet to the left, his eyes glinting beneath his crimson képi. Trent heard him respond to an officer, “I can hold it, but another charge, and I won’t have enough men left to sound a bugle.”

“Were the Prussians here?” Trent asked a soldier who was sitting nearby, wiping the blood that trickled down from his hair.

“Yes. The hussars cleared them out. We got caught in their crossfire.”

“We’re supporting a battery on the embankment,” another soldier added.

Then the battalion crawled over the embankment and moved along the twisted rails of the dismantled railroad track. Trent rolled up his trousers and tucked them into his woolen socks, but they stopped again, and some of the men sat down on the broken tracks. Trent scanned the area for his wounded friend from the Beaux Arts. He spotted him standing in place, looking very pale. The cannon fire was deafening now. For a brief moment, the mist lifted, revealing the first battalion motionless on the tracks ahead, regiments flanking them on either side. But as the fog settled back in, the drums began to beat, and the bugles sounded from far left. A restless energy surged through the troops; the colonel raised his arm, the drums rolled, and the battalion moved off into the fog. They were close to the front now, firing as they advanced. Ambulances galloped along the base of the embankment, and the hussars flitted by like ghosts. They had finally reached the front, surrounded by chaos and movement, while cries, groans, and the sound of gunfire echoed from the fog nearby. Shells exploded all around them, showering them with icy slush. Trent felt a surge of fear. The unknown, crackling and blazing in the darkness, filled him with dread. The shock of the cannon fire made him feel nauseous. He could even see the fog light up with a dull orange glow as the ground shook beneath him. It was close, he was sure of it, as the colonel shouted “Forward!” and the first battalion rushed into the fray. He felt its presence, trembling but pushing onward. A terrifying blast ahead sent a jolt of panic through him. Somewhere in the fog, men were cheering, and he saw the colonel’s horse, bloodied and frantic, thrashing in the smoke.

Another explosion hit him square in the face, nearly stunning him, and he stumbled. All the men to his right had fallen. His head spun; the fog and smoke clouded his mind. He reached out for support and grabbed something solid. It was the wheel of a gun carriage, and then a man emerged from behind it, swinging a rammer at his head. But the man stumbled back, shrieking, a bayonet lodged in his neck, and Trent realized he had killed. Instinctively, he bent to pick up his rifle, but the bayonet was still embedded in the man, who lay there, thrashing with bloodied hands against the ground. It made him sick, and he leaned against the cannon. Men were fighting all around him now, the air thick with smoke and sweat. Someone grabbed him from behind, while another man lunged at him from the front, but others quickly intervened, striking blows. The relentless click of bayonets drove him into a frenzy, and he seized the rammer, swinging it wildly until it shattered in his hands.

A man wrapped his arm around Trent's neck and brought him to the ground, but he fought back, choking the man and pushing himself up onto his knees. He saw a comrade grab the cannon and then collapse across it, his skull crushed; he watched the colonel tumble from his saddle into the mud. Then everything went black.

When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying on the embankment among the twisted rails. All around him were men shouting, cursing, and fleeing into the fog. He staggered to his feet and followed them. At one point, he paused to help a comrade with a bandaged jaw, who couldn’t speak but clung to his arm for a moment before collapsing dead in the freezing mud. He helped another man who groaned, “Trent, it’s me—Philippe,” until a sudden volley of gunfire relieved him of his burden.

An icy wind swept down from the heights, tearing through the fog. For a brief moment, the sun peeked through the bare trees of Vincennes, casting an ominous glow before sinking like a bloodstain into the smoke of the battery, lower and lower, into the blood-soaked plain.