Daughters of War (17 page)

‘It’s all right,’ she said in Turkish. ‘You’re quite safe here. No one is going to harm you. Lie still and I will fetch some bandages to dress your wound. What is your name?’

‘Kemal,’ he mumbled.

‘Don’t be afraid, Kemal. I will be back in a moment.’ She nodded to the stretcher bearer. ‘It’s all right. You can leave him to me.’

The man subsided and she turned away to go back into the tent. As she did so, she heard hoof beats and glanced round to see a company of Serbian cavalry headed by an officer on a magnificent grey horse cantering into the camp. She went into the tent, collected a tray with the necessary equipment and returned to find the Turk staggering to his feet. The cavalry company had halted a short distance away and the officer was leaning down from his saddle to consult a Bulgarian sergeant. Leo’s first thought was that the Turk was attempting to run away. Then he raised his arm and something metallic caught the light, and she saw that he had pulled a pistol from the waistband of his baggy trousers and was aiming it at the officer. She was too far away to reach him before he could pull the trigger, so she acted instinctively.

‘Kemal!’ she shouted in Turkish. ‘Look out!’

It was enough to distract him for the crucial second. He swung round, looking for the expected assailant, and before he could recover himself Leo’s shoulder hit him in the midriff with all the weight of her body behind it. He collapsed onto the ground with her on top of him. Leo had grown up skirmishing with the local children in the dust of whatever archaeological dig her father had been engaged in and she had learned early to give as good as she got. For a breathless moment they struggled, the Turk trying to throw her off and she trying to seize hold of the arm that held the gun. Then a booted foot was placed on the man’s wrist, a pistol was pointed at his head and a strong hand gripped Leo’s arm and helped her to rise. A young Serbian lieutenant was grinning down at her.

‘Well done, lad! It looks as if you’ve just saved the colonel’s life. You can leave this bastard to me now. The colonel wants to speak to you.’

Leo looked round in a panic to where the officer still sat on his horse. Should she explain, tell him who she really was? The lieutenant gave her a friendly shove. ‘Go on. He won’t eat you.’

She stumbled over to stand by the flank of the grey horse and found herself looking up into the searching dark eyes of Colonel Aleksander Malkovic. For a moment neither of them spoke as Leo cudgelled her brain for words of explanation and excuse. Then he smiled and said, ‘Well, boy, it seems I owe you my life. What is your name?’

He had not recognized her. Relief flooded through her. She cleared her throat. The damp weather and the exhaustion of the previous days had roughened her voice and given it a convincing hoarseness. ‘Leo, sir. Leo Brown.’

His smile widened. ‘Leo? A young lion cub indeed! But you are not Serbian, or Bulgarian. What are you, German?’

‘No, sir. English.’

‘English! What is an English boy doing here in the middle of all this?’ Before Leo could reply he went on, ‘This is not the time to talk. You acted very bravely just now and you should be rewarded. Come to my tent before dinner. We will talk then.’

He clicked to his horse and trotted away, followed by the rest of his company. Behind her Leo heard the report of a pistol. She swung round in time to see the lieutenant holstering his weapon. The Turk lay lifeless at his feet.

‘There was no need for that,’ Leo protested angrily.

The man laughed. ‘Don’t be so soft! He tried to shoot the colonel. What did he expect – a medal? Anyway, why wasn’t he searched before he was left here?’ He stooped and took the pistol from the dead man’s hand and held it out to Leo. ‘Here, you deserve this – trophy of war.’

Leo’s first instinct was to refuse, remembering her father’s pistol which she kept in her knapsack, but then it occurred to her that any young man would accept the gift with enthusiasm. She took it and muttered her thanks and the lieutenant ran to his horse, vaulted into the saddle and cantered off after his superior officer.

Leo spent the day in a misery of indecision. Should she simply ignore the summons and hope Malkovic would forget about her? But suppose he sent for her? What excuse could she give? Would it be better to make a clean breast of things and try to pass it off as a joke? She imagined herself saying, ‘Don’t you recognize me? We met at the hotel in Salonika.’ But she remembered what Dragitch had said that evening. ‘Sasha Malkovic is notorious for his attitude to women at the front. He regards them all as no better than camp followers.’ If she revealed herself now, he would be furious with her for deceiving him. He would certainly order her back to Lozengrad. He might even have her arrested and put on a ship back to London. Did he have the authority to do that? Perhaps not, but it was too much to risk. All these questions plagued her as she went about her work but deep down she knew that it did not matter what answer she came to. Nothing would prevent her from seeing Sasha Malkovic again, even if she had to disguise her sex to do it.

When her duties were finished for the day she begged some warm water from one of the cooks and washed herself as best she could. Running a comb through her shorn hair she wished she could see herself, but she had no mirror. Victoria had said she looked like a boy, and the resemblance had been good enough to fool the lieutenant and Malkovic, apparently. She had to rely on that. She was reminded of Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
. ‘What country, friend, is this?’ ‘This is Illyria, lady.’ Wasn’t Illyria supposed to be somewhere in the Balkans?

She was still hesitating when a voice from outside the tent called, ‘Brown? Are you in there?’ and she went out to find the lieutenant waiting for her. He conducted her through the camp to the colonel’s tent, which had been set up a little away from the rest, in the shelter of a ruined building. Malkovic was sitting behind a folding table, studying maps by the light of a hurricane lamp. He looked up when the lieutenant announced her.

‘Ah, there you are. Come in. Thank you, Michaelo, you can go.’

The lieutenant saluted and left, dropping the tent flap behind him, and she was alone with the man whom she had disliked on first meeting and whose face had haunted her dreams ever since. He stood up, stretching as if he had spent too long at his desk, and looked down at her. There was a smile at the corner of the arrogant lips and a glint in his eye that she found unsettling. Had he recognized her from the beginning, and was he teasing her now?

‘So,’ he said, ‘my English lion cub. What language shall we converse in? I regret I do not speak English. You speak a little Serbian, obviously.’

‘A little,’ Leo agreed. ‘I speak Bulgarian better.’

He shrugged. ‘There is little difference. I think we shall understand each other. Tell me, how old are you?’

She had given that some thought. Too young and he might send her away, too old and the deception would be difficult to sustain. She cleared her throat and dropped her voice to its lowest register. ‘Seventeen, sir.’

The glint in his eyes grew to a sparkle of amusement and she knew he had assumed that she would lie about her age. ‘If you say so.’ He turned away to the table where a bottle of wine stood beside two silver goblets. He filled them and handed one to Leo.

‘
Prost!
’

‘
Prost!
’ she responded and drank. It was the first wine she had tasted for several weeks and as the warmth spread through her belly she began to relax. He indicated a folding chair that stood in front of the desk.

‘Sit.’

She sat and he resumed his former place behind the table.

‘So.’ The dark eyes studied her. ‘What brings a young English gentleman to care for wounded Bulgarian soldiers?’

She had thought about this, too, and decided that Luke’s story, with suitable alterations, would serve very well. ‘My grandparents were from Macedonia, sir. They were driven from their land by the Turks and fled to England. I grew up hearing their story, so when I heard that you and the Bulgars were driving the Turks out of the country I decided to volunteer to help. I wanted to join the army but they told me I was too young. So I volunteered as a medical orderly.’

‘And how do you come to speak Turkish?’

This was more difficult but she decided that in this case truth was the best policy. ‘My father was very interested in archaeology and he worked for a time helping Herr Dorpfeld at Troy. He took me with him.’

‘That is a big leap, for the son of Macedonian peasant farmers,’ Malkovic commented.

Leo drew herself up in an attitude of hurt pride that was only partly assumed. ‘My grandparents may have been peasants, as you call them, but they were both very intelligent. When they reached England they became prosperous merchants and my father was well educated. He was also a very clever man.’

‘You say “was”?’

‘He died a few years ago. Both my parents are dead.’

‘But your grandparents know you are here and have given their approval?’

‘Oh yes!’ She was in so deep one lie more or less seemed unimportant.

Malkovic regarded her broodingly for a moment, then he rose to his feet. ‘I promised you a reward. What shall it be?’

‘I don’t want a reward,’ she answered. ‘I saw someone’s life in danger and I did what I could to save it. That is all.’

‘At some risk to yourself,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t stop to think about that.’

He gave her one of his rare smiles. ‘So I saw. But courage and self-sacrifice should be rewarded. I won’t insult you by offering you money, but perhaps something as a keepsake . . . ?’

He crossed to a chest which stood at the side of the tent and opened it. It took him a few minutes to find what he was looking for. Then he turned towards her and held out a small dagger with a beautifully enamelled hilt. ‘It’s a toy, of course, not much use in a fight, but it is sharp so have a care.’

She took it from him with a hand that shook slightly. ‘It’s beautiful. I shall treasure it.’ She looked up and met his eyes. ‘A keepsake, as you said.’

For a moment his gaze held hers and she saw a small frown form on his brow, as if he was troubled by an elusive memory. It passed in a second and he turned away.

‘You can go now. Thank you again for what you did.’

She went to the tent flap but as she reached it he said, ‘There may be times when I need a Turkish interpreter. I may send for you again.’

Leo caught her breath. ‘If there is anything I can do, sir, you have only to ask.’

He nodded dismissal and she went out into the dark.

Leo said nothing about the incident to Victoria and Luke when they returned. She was certain that Victoria would tell her she was mad to think that her deception could go undetected for very long. In her more sober moments she knew that that assessment was probably correct, but common sense was overridden by the feeling that she had embarked on an adventure that she must see through to the end. She spent the next two days in a ferment of anticipation, wondering if and when Malkovic would send for her. Sometimes she asked herself why she was so anxious to see him again. He had behaved rudely when they first met, she reminded herself. He was condescending and arrogant. Yet the very knowledge that he was present in the camp and might send for her at any moment made the air electric with excitement.

The call came on the second afternoon. Leo was busy stitching a bayonet wound in a man’s shoulder when she looked up to see the young lieutenant standing over her.

‘The colonel wants you.’

Irritation at the brusqueness of the request kept her excitement under control. ‘I’m busy, as you can see. Please tell the colonel that I will come as soon as I have finished here.’

He hesitated, unused to having his superior officer’s orders questioned. He looked down at what Leo was doing and she saw him blanch. He said curtly, ‘Very well. I will tell him. But he does not like to be kept waiting.’

Leo finished the stitching, applied a dressing and settled her patient as comfortably as was possible in the circumstances. Then she washed her hands and, seeing that Draganoff was occupied, slipped out and headed for the Serbian tents.

She was prepared for Malkovic to be angry with her but in the event he looked up from the maps he was studying and said simply, ‘Ah, you’re here. Come in. I want you to help me interrogate a prisoner.’ He strode to the tent flap and called to someone outside to bring in the prisoner, while Leo grappled with a sudden sense of unease. ‘Interrogation’ had a brutal sound. Suppose the prisoner had been maltreated, or that she might be expected to witness and condone ill-treatment?

To her relief, when the Turk was brought in, there was no sign that he had been harmed. He was a big man, with a flamboyant moustache and flashing dark eyes. It was apparent from his uniform that he was an officer and he carried himself with a haughty dignity that proclaimed a strong sense of his own importance. Malkovic rose to greet him and the two men saluted each other with formal courtesy.

Malkovic lifted the wine bottle. ‘Ask him if he would like a glass of wine.’

The Turk did not need her translation. His head went back and his nostrils flared as if he had been insulted.

Leo said hastily, ‘He is a Moslem, sir. Alcohol is forbidden by his religion.’

Malkovic struck the heel of his hand against his brow. ‘Of course. How foolish of me. Ask him if he would care for a drink of water.’

The offer was accepted, the water brought and the Turk drank thirstily. Malkovic offered him a chair and the interrogation began. He wanted to know which regiment the prisoner belonged to, where they were stationed, what condition they were in. Did they have adequate supplies of ammunition? Were they expecting to be reinforced in the near future? How many of their men had deserted? To every question he received the same response. ‘I will tell you nothing.’