Contents (45)
- DULCE ET DECORUM EST
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- CONTENTS
“There isn’t a crown large enough to fit your big head,” Thomas teased.
“Blasphemy!” George yelled, throwing one of the dice at Thomas.
Thomas dodged the first die, but the second struck him between the eyes.
George readied the last die. “You will not insult your king, peasant.”
Thomas held up his hands in surrender. “My apologies, Your Majesty.”
“If you’re to be king, you do need a crown,” Frederick said. “Mouse, is there anything left in that Maconochie tin?”
Charlie grabbed the can next to him and looked inside. “No.”
“Toss it here.”
Charlie passed him the can that had contained the crew’s dinner, a beef stew of thin gravy, sliced turnips, carrots, and, if a soldier was lucky, a few chunks of fatty meat. Frederick held the tin above George’s head. “I, Frederick Chamberlain the Third, one hundred and fifteenth in line to the throne—”
George glanced up at him. “Seriously?”
“Yes, and don’t interrupt during a coronation. It’s uncouth.”
“I’ll give you uncouth,” George mumbled.
Frederick cleared his throat. “I, Frederick Chamberlain the Third, one hundred and fifteenth in line to the throne of Britain, crown you George, King of the Secret Soldiers.” With an exaggerated flourish, he placed the soup can on George’s head.
The small battered tin rested at an angle in George’s hair, and a drop of soup dribbled down the side of George’s face.
“Told you no crown would fit,” Thomas said.
Ignoring Thomas’s comment and the chunk of pale orange carrot sliding down his cheek, George puffed out his chest and lifted his head with an absurdly regal air. “Aren’t you supposed to bow to me now?”
Thomas bent forward, nearly brushing the floor with his hands. “Long live King George!”
“Long live King George!” Frederick and Charlie echoed between laughs.
TWENTY-NINE
AS TALKATIVE AS he was after their shifts, following his near-drowning George didn’t speak a word while working in the galleries. His silence crept beneath Thomas’s skin. When George was calm and comfortable enough to talk about everything from the woman with eleven fingers he’d met in London to the size and smell of his last bowel movement, Thomas’s anxiousness about being back in the tunnels decreased—at least a little. But George’s silence left too much space in Thomas’s thoughts. Space that fear, guilt, and grief eagerly filled. The unwelcome emotions dragged Thomas back to his conversation with George outside the tunnels.
As tough as it had been to hear, George had been right. In Thomas’s determination to find James, he’d given little thought to how his leaving would hurt his mum and dad and even less consideration to what would happen to them if, like James, Thomas never returned. The thought of dying beneath no-man’s-land, never to be found, terrified Thomas, but knowing his parents were thinking of him, even if they didn’t know where he was, gave him a small sense of peace. When fear kept him awake, he pictured his mum kneeling beside her bed, saying her rosary and praying for his safe return. But what had Thomas left behind for his mum to calm her fears? When she closed her eyes, she had only her imagination to fill in the many blanks he’d left, and Thomas knew how cruel imagination could be when stoked by fear.