Page 58 of The Unknown Birds

“Should we ask them?” she said, nodding towards the soldiers.

“They’re infants. They don’t know anything.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but somehow it sobered them both. They’d been infants in uniform once too, though Ashley hadn’t known Rook in his infancy.

“I read your article,” he said to change the subject. “War and the Art of Poetry.”

Ashley’s heart gave a tremulous thud. She hadn’t realized the issue was already on newsstands. “What did you think?” she asked, a little breathless.

“Brilliant, of course. Almost made me wish I’d paid better attention during your lecture.”

“Almost?”

He smirked sideways. Charming. Disarming. “You left one poem out.”

She tilted her head, unsure what he could mean. She’d left a great many poems out, whole poets for that matter. Tough choices were made—there simply wasn’t room for them all.

From his breast pocket, Rook withdrew a folded piece of heavy paper, yellowed now with age, and her breath caught.

“You kept it?” she rasped.

“In a little tin, right here.” He pointed to that same breast pocket.

Ashley swallowed, then swallowed again. As was becoming her wont, she couldn’t think quite what to say. “It’s only a first effort. It doesn’t belong beside their work.”

“These words saved my life, Ash. More than once.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she shook her head, not wanting to think about his life in need of saving.

“When they dragged me in from No Man’s Land, they saw the bullet in my chest and thought for certain I was done. Turned out, it had lodged itself in that tin, just a tiny burn mark on my skin where it had lain.”

Absently he rubbed his chest until Ash covered his hand with hers. He squeezed her fingers, then lifted her knuckles to his lips in benediction.

“The doctors and nurses gathered all around me, flabbergasted as to how that little tin could have stopped a Mauser cartridge in its tracks. It was impossible, they said. But I knew. It wasn’t the tin.”

He placed the poem in her hand, still warm from his body heat, so Ash could see the singed round hole. He didn’t mean the paper had saved him either. He meant her. He meant friendship. Fealty. Maybe even love.

“Keep it,” she said, closing his fingers around the postcard once again and turning back to face the boys marching on the field. “Lord knows you might need more saving before all this is through.”

Slowly Rook refolded the poem like it was something sacred and tucked it safely back inside his pocket. “I’ll be fine. The British Army doesn’t make a habit of conscripting forty-three-year-old men with only one leg. Are you worried for Charles?”

She wasn’t, not really. Her twin was, as Rook had pointed out, hardly of an age. Shaking her head, she sighed. “Charles went back to Spain. And then Canada when their own war broke out. There were too many white feathers here for his liking.”

“White feathers for cowardice? Even after the war, when everyone believed he’d done the thing?” He tried to hide it, but his voice held a little disdain for her twin’s part in the deception.

“Not from women. From the sky.”

Rook tilted his head, confused.

“He was paranoid. Or I suppose he noticed them because they meant something to him. He blamed himself for my melancholy. His relationship with my mother was in tatters. He’d always been her favorite, but she never quite forgave him for running away without a word. I think she blamed him for my distress, as well.”

Ash shook her head. It wasn’t really fair to blame Charles. Her depression stemmed from losing Rook, and she wouldn’t have traded knowing him for all the world.

“So when he started seeing white feathers everywhere—on the street, in the alley, alongside his favorite park bench—he couldn’t stand it, and he went back home to Spain. No, whatever happens, Charles will take care of Charles, although his son will soon be of age.”

She shuddered, and Rook squeezed her hand.

“It’s my mother and Frau Wintter that keep me up at night worrying. Seems like a miracle they survived the last time between the bombings and the anti-German hate. And then my students of course, past and present.” And you. “I suppose I fear for all of London, really.”