The '44 Vintage

RAPE YOU! So you're here to stick your hayonet in his guts and your butt plate in his teeth and your boot in his balls, and I want to hear you yell with joy when you do it—AND DON'T YOU DARE BE

SORRY FOR HIM OR I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO BE SORRY ABOUT!)

'But why didn't you get out while you could, then?' Audley had asked. 'Why did you wait for the Gestapo to come for you?'

'You heard what the man said,' Sergeant Winston had answered for the German. 'Because he hadn't done anything—he'd counted his horses, like a good little boy—'

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Not true, Butler thought. Or not the whole truth.

The whole truth was that when the utterly unbelievable happened ordinary blokes didn't believe it, not until it was too late. The only thing they could think of doing was nothing at all—they just stood around like bullocks waiting their turn outside the municipal slaughterhouse.

He'd stood in the mist that way, back on the riverbed, even after he'd heard the major sentence him to death —heard him with his own ears. Because if it had been Sergeant Purvis who had come out of the mist behind him, and not Corporal Jones, whom he already hated and distrusted in his heart... if it had been Sergeant Purvis, not Corporal Jones—then he would have been one of the bullocks.

There came a time when all he wanted to do was to stop and lie down. But while he was deciding how many steps he would take before he would do that—fifty, or a hundred, or five hundred?—the effort involved in making the decision became greater than the effort required in not making it.

And then the nightmare became a dream.

He was inside E. Wilmot Buxton's blue and gold Story of the Crusades, marching between the general and his father, because that way they couldn't argue with each other about whether Winston Churchill had really ordered the troops to fire on the miners during the General Strike—

The exhausted remnant of the crusading host, now much reduced, took the road to the Holy City, the end of all their endeavours— He was half aware that the Chateau Le Chais d'Auray was not the Holy City, and that it was certainly not the end of all their endeavours. But for the time being it would do, it would do.

There was a scrunch of boots on gravel in the shadows thrown by the trees in the moonlight on the road.

'Psst!' Winston hissed from the next row of vines. 'Here, lieutenant!'

Audley tiptoed out of the shadow across the pale line of the road and threw himself down on the earth beside them.

'Anybody at home?'

Audley breathed out. 'There isn't a sound, and not a light either— I've been right round the house and the buildings. Not a sound . . . but they're there.'

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

'How d'you know?'

Audley picked up a handful of the dry earth and squeezed it out. 'Not a weed to be seen. Another month, then they'll be harvesting these grapes.' He reached out towards a bunch of grapes on the vine near him.

'I wonder what the vintage of '44 will be like. ... It would be nice if it was a really great one, to remember us by, wouldn't it!'

'Shit! The hell with the grapes! How d'you know they're there?'

The subaltern's face was white in the moonlight. 'Because the grapes are here, Sergeant. As they've been for a thousand years, since they learnt the art of pruning—you know that, Sergeant? They learnt the art of pruning here. The donkeys of the Abbey of Marmoutier got into the vines, and ate them. And when the vines grew again the ones they'd eaten gave the finest grapes—that's the one miracle of St Martin of Tours that they remember here. So you can drink a full pitcher of Loire wine and not hurt yourself, that's what they say—'

Not true, thought Butler.

Or perhaps it was true. If he hadn't drunk a full pitcher, and been sick as a dog— maybe that was another miracle of St. Martin of Tours—

'So what do we do?' grated the American. 'Drink a pitcher of Loire wine, and not hurt ourselves?'

'That would be nice. But no . . .' Audley peered around him. 'Corporal Butler, are you there?'

'Sir!' said Butler. He had known one fraction of a second before Audley had spoken that the subaltern would say 'Corporal Butler,' because that was what he would have said.

Because not being a bullock was what life was all about, even right outside the slaughterhouse. And especially right outside the towers of the Holy City.

Obedience was duty. But duty was free will—the soldier's free will, which was the last and best free will of all. The general had tried to teach him that, but he'd never understood until now what the general had meant. But now he knew.

'Sir.'

Audley looked into the shadow where he lay. 'We'll go in and find out. You'll cover me.' He turned to the sergeant's patch of shadow. 'You wait with Hauptmann Grafenberg. If there's trouble, then you're on your own. Just get to blazes out of here—'

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

'Hell, no—'

'Hell, yes! This is our show. So if it's a balls-up then it's our balls-up.' Audley's voice softened. 'Don't worry, Sergeant. My thumbs tell me we're okay. If my thumbs are wrong, there'll be nothing you can do about it. But then somebody's got to survive, otherwise we've done all this for nothing, don't you see?'

Done all what? Butler asked himself. He really didn't know any more what it was they were doing. They were chasing the major, of course. But what he was doing, and what they would do if they ever caught up with him, that