The Mark of Merlin

CHAPTER THREE

The major had stoked up the fire in my bedroom so it was warm enough to dress. I dug out army issue longjohns and officer pinks I had had tailored for me when Dad got new uniforms just before going overseas. I forced myself not to dwell on that inadvertent association. I pulled on a green long-sleeved sweater and then a gray sweatshirt. It was too cold to be feminine. I dug out heavy socks and the mukluks Dad sent me from his Alaskan inspection trip. I even had a fur parka from that jaunt, exceedingly practical for crossing frigid Cambridge common.

I set up the pictures of Dad and Mother and a couple of little mementoes I always carry with me to make hotel and boarding rooms mine no matter how short a time I inhabited them. Dad, in an expansive mood, used to call me “Pussy” because I was able to make myself at home the minute I entered a new place. Turtle had taught me that flexibility and I was overwhelmed with a desire to see that old reprobate. Because he was part and parcel of my life with Dad, I crowded down that longing. Turtle was overseas anyway. I wouldn’t see him till after the war. If he survived this one.

Such gloomy thoughts were disastrous and I hastily scrambled under the bed for the clothes I had thrown there last night. I made the bed and, slamming the cover down on my suitcase, felt free to leave.

I decided to do a reconnaissance of the upper floor as an antidote to my nostalgia. The first door on the right opened into another period-perfect room, dominated by a spindle four-poster bed complete with muslin canopy. I’d’ve moved my things right in if my relations with the major had been better. I’d wanted a four-poster canopy bed since I was a little girl. There’d been one in a boardinghouse near Benning. I’d thought the canopy was to keep dreams in and obviously the bed was fit for a princess. For months afterwards I’d plagued Dad to get me a “princess bed.” Mother’d squashed that notion the first and every time I brought it up. She hated living on post and avoided it by not having any furnishings at all. We’d always lived in boardinghouses off base. There were advantages. Army wives used to say they never made a move without losing the one valuable piece they owned or having their best china pulverized. Misdirected personal belongings were s.o.p. so you were better off by far carrying what you owned with you, whenever possible.

Mother invariably managed to find temporary quarters which included my care. As a small child, I’d adored my mother - but always at a distance that wouldn’t muss her dress or smudge her makeup. Now I see her as a frivolous woman, unsuited for motherhood, self-centered and selfish. I never let my father know I had overheard the gossip that mother had been killed on her way to meet another man. It had made me love my father more, excuse him his tempers and his eccentricities. Perhaps if he had loved the army less, he would have kept his wife. There I was again, reminiscing.

I closed that door and went on, looking in briefly at the bathroom. It was larger than a conventional one so I assume it had been added much later in the house’s life. It might have originally been a nursery or a sewing room but it made a most luxurious bathroom.

The first room in the rear of the house was a catchall; cedar chests and a wardrobe I didn’t investigate. I was turning to go when I saw the army footlockers. There were three, one on top of the other. The camouflaged paint pattern of one of them was strangely familiar. I walked over. The middle one. The old stenciling had been masked out with a smear of army green and the new legend gave Major Regan Laird’s name, serial number, and this address. The other two were newer and obviously his but I could have sworn the middle one was my father’s.

Only one small box, tucked right now in the outside pocket of my bomber bag downstairs, had come back to me, containing his most personal effects. I had assumed Turtle had disposed of the uniforms and clothing. I certainly didn’t want to see them again. I’d better ask the major though. There were some things of Dad’s, his stamps, for instance, that had not come back yet. I’d been too ill when the first package came to pursue the matter. The major would know. I’d ask him.

There were two other bedrooms on the floor, frigid but furnished, dusty with long disuse. In the front bedroom I paused to look out the window, over the frozen drifts to the gun-green sea tossing whitecaps beyond the protecting dunes of Nauset strand. This would be a lovely spot, come spring and summer. The poles of a small wharf stuck up through the snow across the way so there must be a navigable cove for the neighbors further down the Point.

A movement, barely discernible through the veil of falling snow, caught my eye. I peered out but the angle was wrong and I couldn’t see far enough up the road to distinguish man, beast, or car. Just then Merlin barked.

I raced around the hall and thundered down the stairs, skidding on the bare treads in the slick-soled mukluks. Between my noise and Merlin’s, the major came whipping out of the study. Merlin, tail awag, came bounding in from the kitchen and propped his front feet on the windowsill, craning his head, barking furiously.

“Whoever it is, Merlin knows him,” I said in surprise, pointing to Merlin’s lashing tail.

The major, his face anxious, leaned around Merlin’s head to squint through the shifting snow.

“Whoever it is is coming here,” I exclaimed.

“You must be mistaken,” he said, half in anger.

“I’m not mistaken and furthermore, it’s an infantryman. You can’t mistake that gait,” I asserted, peering through the window beside him.

The figure swung clumsy arms up and down to warm himself as he trudged head down against the swirling snow. Suddenly the angle of the head, the attitude of the whole figure were incredibly familiar. Merlin barked twice, his voice carrying through the walls into the air outside. The man stopped, looked up at the house.

I dashed for the front door, flinging it open, heedless of the snow blown in on the freezing wind.

“Turtle! In here! On the double!” I shrieked.

“Gawd, that can’t be Little Bit!” Waving an arm in violent greeting, Turtle lumbered forward, floundering in the drifts, half staggering, half slipping up the incline. I would have leaped out to help him but the major grabbed my arm. Merlin leaped into the snow, raucously welcoming Sergeant Edward Turtle Bailey. I wrenched myself free of the major’s grip as Turtle waddled up to the door. Flinging myself at him, I was suddenly choking on tears of relief and nostalgia. The old familiar hulk of Turtle Bailey, so constantly my father’s companion, brought home at last the fact that Dad would not return from this tour of duty.

Instead of me ushering Turtle in, it was Turtle and the major carrying an hysterical me back to the fire.

“He’s gone, Turtle! He’s gone! He said he’d always come back and he won’t! He’s not going to come back this time,” I wailed.

“Yessir, Bit, I know,” Turtle’s gravelly voice muttered, roughened by the tears that coursed down his own stubbly cheeks. He looked gray and stricken and every year of his age. The major must have taken off his overcoat because the fruit salad on Turtle’s chest scratched my face as I abandoned myself to grief.

“He’s not coming back! He bought it! He bought it,” I cried.

“Honest, sir, this isn’t like her. She was always the soldier, a regular little bit of a soldier. Even when her mother died.”

Turtle’s huge hands held me with great tenderness. He dabbed at my streaming cheeks with a khaki handkerchief, then blotted his own brimming eyes.

“She’s been rather sick,” the major murmured understandingly.

That made me blubber worse. It was all too true. Maybe that’s why I broke up so completely, seeing Turtle. Dad had been out on summer war games in the wilds of southern Jersey when mother had been killed in a car accident.

We’d been based at Dix. Turtle had been in the O.D.’s office on some errand from the games when the local police had called in to report the accident. It had been Turtle who had called me from a sand fight, I remember that very well, to tell me about my mother. At five, I hadn’t fully understood what he had tried to explain. So naturally I hadn’t cried. Now I did. Perhaps I cried for my mother, too.

“C’mon now, Bit. This ain’t like you,” Turtle growled. “Sick ‘er not.”

“Give her this,” I heard the major say.

“Knock it back the way I taughtcha,” Turtle ordered, handing me the shot glass.

Still boohooing, I looked first at the resolute major and then at an equally determined Turtle. The Scotch did the trick because I had to stop sobbing or choke. Once I could stop crying, I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. But, honestly, it was Turtle who touched it off. Certainly I’d prefer not to blubber in front of the major, my guardian, Regan Laird.

“Oh, Turtle! I’m so liquid. Major, give him a shot, too. He must be frozen. Don’t tell me you slogged it all the way from the station?” I demanded, fussing in my turn over the sergeant. I pushed him into the leather chair by the fire, handed him the drink the major poured, and then started to strip off his combat boots, soaking despite their waterproofing.

“Major don’t have no phone. Only a couple of miles. No great thing,” Turtle grated out in that marvelous-to-hear, indescribable broken voice of his.

A flood of memories, held back because up to now I had carefully avoided associations that would remind me of those times, came charging back. But this time I controlled myself.

“Hey, Bit, y’ain’t waiting on me!” Turtle bellowed, batting halfheartedly at my hands as I unlaced his boots. I know, despite his show of embarrassment, he was pleased. I’d done it before.

“And why not? Your fingers are too cold to do it and if you don’t get these wet things off, you’ll get pee-new-monia.”

“Me!” roared Turtle, indignant at the mere suggestion of such frailty. “Not on your -life.”

“Sergeant!” The major’s voice crackled.

“Leave him be.” I grinned up at Turtle. “The sergeant’s not himself without four-letter words. However, to ease your guardian conscience, the one and only time I mimicked him, he soaped my mouth out with army issue.” I shuddered at the memory of that taste.

“That’s right, Major, begging your pardon,” Turtle put in, mindful that the major’s one word had been tantamount to a direct order.

“At ease,” the major said, mollified.

I bridled at such offhanded assumption of complete authority over my Turtle Bailey. United States Army notwithstanding, my claim on Turtle predated the major’s. Turtle grinned at my bristling defense and laid a soothing hand on my shoulder. Another thought struck me and I stared at Turtle, torn between surprise and irritation.

“Turtle, why in God’s green world didn’t you tell Major Laird that James Carlysle Murdock is a girl?”

“Huh?” Turtle was so astonished I knew he couldn’t be acting. I’d seen him pull incredible performances on visiting generals and colonels’ wives. But he was not shamming now. “Didn’t he know?”

I rocked back on my heels as the second boot suddenly released its watery grip on Turtle’s foot.

“No, he didn’t,” I said with a sideways glance at the major as I propped up the soaking footgear by the fireplace.

“Bailey didn’t know your father had appointed me your guardian either,” Laird put in, absolving Turtle of all guilt. It also left me unable to pass the buck. “I was wounded not long after your father died, you know. Between his death and the push towards Julich, there wasn’t much time for talk.”

It was then I noticed the purple heart bar among the stuff on Turtle’s barrel chest. I stared, grabbing the sergeant’s arm, and pointed to it.

“Turtle, where?” I gasped.

“Huh? Aw, knock it off, Bit,” Turtle growled. “I only took it fer points. I wanted out.”

I shook his arm because I didn’t believe for a moment that was the reason. It was then I began to wonder. What on earth was Turtle doing looking up a major on a stormy day at the elbow of Cape Cod? Furthermore they were both looking awfully ill at ease. Which had nothing to do with a silly girl’s tears. They were hiding something from me. In that moment I began to feel the first tendrils of an honest fear. Merlin picked up my embryonic apprehension and growled softly in his throat. He’s uncanny in his ability to sense mood shifts and not just in me. His soft growl intensified my uneasiness. The dog and I exchanged glances just as the major and Turtle did.

“I didn’t know you’d copped it,” Laird remarked. He proffered cigarettes but Turtle shook his head, reaching into his breast pocket for the ghastly Fatimas he preferred. His battered face broke into a grin as he pointed to his ear. I saw then that the tip of his ear was missing as well as the first joint of his index finger on the left hand, the stump barely healed.

“Goddamnedest fool - piece of luck. We mopped up at Julich after you got hit, Major. Then hooked up with the Hundred and Sixteenth because the krauts had shot the hell out of the unit in those - beetfields. You know some rear echelon fart made Warren a light colonel after you got clobbered?”

The major nodded solemnly, his jaw muscles working.

“Jeeze, Bit, I thought the general had that - pegged for what he was,” Turtle hissed at me through his teeth. “- rear echelon - “

“Knock it off!” the major ordered curtly, his eyes flashing.

Turtle was not going to be intimidated by any rank lower than four stars and he was only polite then.

“Wai,” he continued blandly, “we were knocking the - out of a block in Julich. Snipers on the roof, in the cellar, you know the drill. I was waving the squad up,” he demonstrated, “when some - sniper winged me. Got the BAR man behind me though, right through the eye.”

“You mean, you

” I gasped, utterly unable to believe the indestructible Bailey pulled a blighty for an earlobe and a finger joint.

“- no!” Turtle exploded indignantly. “I didn’t even report it till I got the major’s letter. Then I hunted up the medic and took my points.”

“What letter?” I asked suspiciously.

“The letter that the major was invalided stateside.” Turtle was evading now and he knew I knew it even if the major didn’t.

Obviously I wouldn’t get Turtle to come clean with the major hanging on every word. Whatever was going on between those two did concern me. Of that much I was sure. How, why, I hadn’t an inkling but I wasn’t going to leave this house until I found out. I had the feeling it also concerned Dad. But, if Dad were involved and he had never been anything but a good soldier, why wouldn’t Turtle level with me? Unless, of course, the major had antiquated ideas about helpless females or me blabbing about company business.

“Well,” I said, rising abruptly, “with two guardians, one of them totally above reproach, I can stay on here.”

“No!” they chorused explosively.

“Now you two knock it off. I don’t know what gives between you but I want you to know, you’re not fooling me for one split second.”

“This isn’t a woman’s concern,” Laird answered hotly, the ridges of his scars reddening.

“Women. Ha! Have you men done so well with the world?” I asked with fine scorn. I turned on Turtle who had the grace to look abashed. “I’ll bet you never even stopped to eat in town,” I accused him. Turtle shook his head in quick affirmation.

“Well, I’ll fix you something to eat,” I offered grudgingly. “Get some clean socks from the major. You both appear to wear the same size shoe when your feet aren’t in your mouths.” I flounced out of the room, slamming the door with a satisfactorily resounding crash.

I’d get it out of Turtle in my own way and the hell with the major. I poked unnecessary wood in the range, burning my finger on the hot plate-iron top. With more caution, I pulled the coffeepot onto a front ring and hunted in the icebox for the Dutch kettle. I knew we hadn’t consumed all the stew last night. Turtle was very partial to stew. The idea of Turtle trying to put one over on me, I muttered to myself.

The stew was not, absolutely not, in the refrigerator. Congealed messes, improperly covered, and some partially molded over, two bunches of good carrots and four limp stalks of celery, a half-gallon metal can of milk almost full, a huge wheel of butter, a bowl of eggs, a slab of bacon, and an indecent quantity of beer completed the inventory of the box, but no stew.

“If I were stew, where would I go?” I asked myself a la Stanislavsky.

Merlin whined at the back porch door. I guessed that the men had let him out the study door. Exasperated, I let him in.

Now I can’t say he overheard me muttering, but as I opened the door I caught sight of the iron kettle perched on the shelving on the back porch. I peered inside and the contents were frozen solid. Naturally, important things like beer should be kept at a proper degree of refrigeration, I muttered to myself, whereas relatively unimportant items like a meat stew, not to mention the chickens I had also observed in cold storage and the hunk of meat, would be left to their own devices against the weather. First things first.

By the time I had washed up the backlog of dishes, the stew had thawed and was simmering. There was more than enough for all three of us to eat our fill. The major’s culinary skill seemed limited to making up quantities of one thing that would last for days. That might be all right for him, himself alone, but not this li’l chile.

I gave a chow yell and heard Turtle hop to with a “Yo.” He padded down the corridor in, I hoped, fresh-stockinged feet. I heard his oath as the steaming hot water in the bathroom sink caught him by surprise.

When he and the major entered the kitchen, they both had that look about them which meant they’d confirmed their idiotic boy scout pact. They made a determined effort to forestall any reopening of the subject while I was equally determined to ignore the whole ploy.

I served Turtle first, grinning at the gusto with which he attacked the meal.

“Major,” he said around a generous mouthful of meat and potato, “you make the best goddam stew this side of the Divide. That includes hmmmmah all Europe.” He pointed his fork at me, waving the potato speared on it like a baton. “Bit, you shoulda tasted the rabbit stew the major scrounged up near Montcornet.” (He mutilated the French pronunciation.) “Jeeezuz but that tasted good.” He smacked his lips retrospectively. “Marty got the rabbit. Big bastards over there, they are.”

“Was it Landrel or the Bum who liberated the vegetables?” the major asked, grinning.

“The Bum,” and the curt way Turtle answered indicated both men were now dead.

“That one could scrounge from St. Peter,” was the major’s admiring accolade. Turtle nodded his head, his mouth too full to speak.

“Bosworth swapped K rations for some vin ordinaire as I recall,” and there was nothing wrong with the major’s accent. Regan Laird took up the tale, “and M. LeMaitre loaned us a pot against his wife’s better judgment.”

Gravy spilled out of the corners of Turtle’s mouth as he grinned at the memory. He caught the gravy deftly with a hunk of bread, then popped bread and all in his mouth, licking his fingers.

“And then,” and Turtle shook with malicious mirth, “the mutts in the village cornered Warren and he never did get anything to eat. Then he tried to get the colonel to give us hell because we weren’t supposed to be bivouacking in the village, annoying,” Turtle snorted with contempt, “annoying the inhabitants. Annoying? Hell, they adopted us!”

Mention of Warren was sobering. It improved my opinion of the major that he shared our dislike of Major no, damn it, Colonel Donald Warren.

I had always hated Warren myself. No one ever succeeded in convincing me that he hadn’t poisoned Merlin’s litter brothers. He was irrationally frightened of dogs, any dog, down to and including a Chihuahua. And I knew for certain he had been instrumental in putting away Morgan le Fay, Merlin’s dam. Warren could swear and allege all he wanted to but I’d never believed Morgan had bitten him. She had more sense. She’d’ve got blood poisoning. Dad had been off post at the time and, because Marian Warren was toadying up to the C.O.’s wife, neither Turtle, I, nor the Dowrtingtons, who owned Morgan, could change the edict.

It infuriated me that Warren had assumed Dad’s command, however briefly, after Major Laird had been wounded. It was intolerably bitter to me that Donald Warren still walked the earth and my father was under it. War is not only hell, it is too damned indiscriminate in its victims.

“I always wanted to know, Bailey,” the major was saying, his eyes twinkling, “if you and Casey had anything to do with the bedroll problem?”

“Bedroll .” Turtle was seized with a violent paroxysm of choking, complicated by a fit of laughter that brought tears to his eyes.

“Bedroll?” I asked suspiciously.

Regan Laird’s grin threatened to break open scar tissue. Chuckling, he managed to explain.

“Ah, Major Warren seemed to have trouble keeping his bedroll free of ah .”

“Messages?” I cried, delighted.

“Messages,” Laird agreed. That set Turtle off again so I had to pound his shoulder blades before he choked to an untimely end. Laird managed to straighten his face before he continued. “DeLord was of the opinion the dogs homed in on him. That right, Bailey?”

Turtle choked again, turning bright red, and this time Major Laird swatted him smartly on the back. Turtle finally got his breath back, downing a full can of beer to set things right.

“That

DeLord,” he gasped finally, belching noisily. ” ‘Scuse it. That DeLord! I can’t figure him.”

“Why not? Damn good officer. Thought on his feet.”

“Yeah. Well, guess who got mighty thick with Warren after you got clobbered?”

“Not DeLord?” The major frowned in surprise.

“Yeah, DeLord,” Turtle confirmed sourly. “I never figgered he’d suck up to Warren after the colonel was buried.”

Turtle looked stricken. He swallowed furiously, glancing nervously at the major. The major stared back at him angrily, his eyes snapping, and awkward silence settled on the room. I still wasn’t up to discussing Dad’s death, particularly with Turtle. And obviously the subject was as painful to the sergeant as it was to me.

“Is that

Dad’s footlocker upstairs?” I asked.

Both men turned sharply around to glare at me. The major recovered first.

“Yes, it is, Carlysle,” he said quietly. “I spotted it at Division HQ and had it sent on with mine. Some idiot painted my name over it. The key should have been sent back with the other personal effects.”

“Yes. I have it with me,” I admitted before I realized this was exactly the information he wanted.

“You’ll want to go through it, to make sure everything’s accounted for.”

“Yes, I will. When it warms up upstairs.”

“Sure,” the major agreed easily. I didn’t miss the looks they exchanged as I rose to clear the dishes.

“I need some sacktime, Major,” Turtle announced, kicking back his chair. He caught it with an experienced hand before it clattered to the floor.

“Colder’n a cold upstairs,” the major corrected himself.

“Oh, Turtle can use my room for a while,” I suggested “It’s warm in there and this kitchen is a positive disgrace even for a KP-less major.”

“Good,” exclaimed the major, rising purposefully. “I’ll build a fire now in the back bedroom. Take the chill off.”

They stomped away, glad to be out of my company. Merlin trotted off with them, infected by my irritation with the male sex. He gave me a backward look, chastened and reproachful. I didn’t call him back but I wasn’t angry with him.