There was no answer. Then, a shot dislodged some bricks.
Taking the camouflage netting, Winthrop wrapped Albert Ball's skull carefully. It made a bundle about the size of a football. He owed it to the vampire to carry his head as far as possible.
With his bundle under his arm, Winthrop launched himself at the side of the crater and scrambled upwards. Shots dug into the dirt yards either side of him. Then, a
'A palpable hit,' Mellors shouted.
He gained the lip of the crater and threw himself over it, rolling downwards and lying flat in the blighted plain. Examining his side, he found that the troglodyte chieftain's shot had punched through his loose Sidcot without touching his body.
'You'll have to do better,' he shouted back in farewell.
Even more than in the crater, Winthrop kept his head down. Now he was exposed to snipers from both lines. Anything that moved in No Man's Land was in season. A bombardment had started. The British were hammering the Germans, which was fortunate. Shells whizzed across well above Winthrop's head and landed near the Boche trenches. That should keep German riflemen concentrated on other things.
He felt a stick in his hands, wind in his face, the thrill of a spin. For a moment, he saw the blue of a summer sky, tracer bullets flaring. He smelled burning castor oil, pouring out of the engine of a Sop with Camel. Shaking Ball's memories from his mind, Winthrop got to his feet. After an experimental crouch, he stood gingerly.
Nobody shot at him. There was a strange peace. He was tiny and insignificant in this continental killing field. Nobody would notice him.
He walked away from the shell-crater and the troglodytes. By day, the paths between the barbed wire and the rubble-pits were easier. He darted from cover to cover, tacking towards the lines.
For the first time since the Richthofen creature had swooped at the Harry Tate, Winthrop felt it possible that he might survive the next few minutes. He might live a long life, if not a happy one. But he had business to take care of yet. First, he had to tell Beauregard about the bat
He was running, tasting the powdery breeze. It was easy to imagine leaving the ground, and being swept up into the clouds, there to joust with the dark knights of the sky.
He saw a wall of mottled sandbags, topped with swirls of barbed wire. He was moments away from the trenches.
He thought of the score that he must live to even.
Hurdling the wire with a new-found agility, he sailed over the lip of the trench and crashed down. He bent as he landed, coming down on his feet like a cat, and stood up straight.
'Blimey,' said a startled Tommy.
Winthrop handed over his bundle to the soldier, telling the warm man to take good care of it.
'Now, if you would be so good as to guide me to a field telephone, I have a report which must be made.'
The infantryman looked down at the bundle, which was trailing loose. A bony face was disclosed.
'Blimey,' the Tommy reiterated. 'Blimey.'
Part Three: Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man
27
The Red Battle Flier
Richthofen kept him waiting well into the afternoon.
There was no reason for the delay. It was simply the habit of
The Baron's private quarters were not quite spartan but hardly seemed the lair of a great warrior. There was an orderly desk where Richthofen sat to write terse, accurate, tedious reports of aerial exploits. In the last few days, Poe had examined numberless dreary documents. He understood why the Baron was not to be entrusted with the writing of his own memoirs.
Without permission to sit, he paced the room. On the mantel was a row of shining cups. Poe was drawn to the bright things. Each trophy bore a tiny plate, engraved with a formulaic notation: a number, the details of an Allied aeroplane, another number, a date.
There were about sixty of them. That was incorrect. Richthofen's score stood at nearly eighty.
'A silver shortage. The manufacturer made a special case for some months, but there was a tightening of regulations.'
Richthofen had come into the room without Poe hearing him, no mean achievement. He stood in completely human shape, calm and compact. Poe would never have discerned godlike potential in this ordinary soldier but could not forget what he had seen in the tower. Inside the Baron nestled the leather angel of the skies, the perfected vampire form.
'The tradesman offered pewter as a substitute but I took the opportunity to discontinue commemorating my kills with gaudy things. I know in myself my worth. Trophies have come to seem vulgar.'
Poe touched a cup. His fingers stung.
'Real silver?'
'I should give up these baubles for scrap. I'd rather have silver bullets in my guns than silver cups in my den.'
Few vampires cared to have silver around them. It showed daring. If Poe were to grip one of these trophies firmly, his hand would shrivel.
Richthofen stood beside him and regarded the cups. Each marked one or more dead. Goring, the recording officer, impressed upon Poe the arcana of the 'score'. Strictly, only victories over aircraft counted, not the number of dead or downed. A flier could claim a victory by sending a vanquished pilot to a prisoner-of-war camp. Few of Richthofen's cups bore a zero. His victories were kills. Oswald Boelcke, who formulated the tactics of aerial combat, liked to aim for the enemy's engine and let the pilot live. Richthofen always went for the throat. For him, a bloodless victory was no victory at all. Only a kill counted.
'They do not blur and become one. I remember each. I have made reports.'
Boelcke was truly dead, though not in combat: his aeroplane had crashed in mid-air into one of his fellows' machines.
The Baron sat at his desk, at attention even in repose, and indicated a chair. Poe folded himself into it. He was conscious of his shabbiness beside the correctness of the flier. Richthofen's uniform was pressed to perfection, knife-edge creases and drum- tight jacket ready for inspection. Poe's trousers were almost out at the knees. The buttons of his old waistcoat were mismatched.
'So, it begins, Herr Poe. Your book.'
Richthofen waved an indifferent hand. He had the short nails and stub fingers of a cowboy, not the languid extremities of an aristocratic idler.
'I do not care much for writing. Or for writers. A cousin of mine has formed an unsuitable attachment with an English writer of repulsive reputation. A Mr Lawrence. Have you heard of him?'
Poe had not.
'By all accounts, he is a horrid fellow, dirty from coal mines and animal habits.'
Where to begin? Perhaps it was time to borrow from that queer Jew, Freud. 'Tell me of your childhood, Baron.'
Richthofen began a recitation, 'I was born on the second of May, 1892. My father was stationed in Breslau with his cavalry regiment. Our family seat is an estate at Schweidnitz. I was named Manfred Albrecht in honour of
