‘And if we stay low the fighters can come out of the clouds,’ Sergeant Grimm argued. He’d met enough pilots to know how the war in the air was fought.

‘True, old chap. But if I fly above these clouds I might get lost.’

‘Great,’ Silver Hand said sourly.

They climbed and looked down on Bray. The rains had put out the last of the fires but the streets had black and broken buildings where soldiers like ants tried to keep the roads clear of bricks and beams. Then the pilot turned east. He flew low over the empty plain.

His passenger was looking at the clouds and his one hand clutched at the machine gun that pointed backwards. He was ready to fire at anything that moved.

A gust of wind rocked the plane and Grimm looked over the side to see where he thought he was going to die. He saw a track across the land. Two figures were shuffling along. A girl was helping a boy to walk slowly towards the east.

‘He’s dead,’ Silver Hand groaned. ‘I watched them shoot him.’ He swung round and shouted to the pilot over the noise of the engine and the rushing air. ‘You see those two people on the track?’

‘What about them, old chap?’ Brand began to circle the plane around the couple. They turned their pale faces up to watch him.

‘Fly down and machine-gun them,’ Silver Hand ordered.

‘I can’t shoot unarmed people. They don’t look like soldiers to me. Can’t kill a couple of helpless peasants in cold blood,’ the pilot argued.

Grimm swung the machine gun round and tried to point it at the two helpless fugitives. ‘It won’t point down,’ he raged.

‘Of course not. It only fires upwards. Otherwise some careless Charlie would shoot our own tail-plane or wings off.’

‘They aren’t helpless peasants. They’re German spies. If we don’t stop them they’ll take a pack of secrets to the enemy. Hundreds could die if you don’t stop them.’

‘Ah, if you put it like that I suppose it’s my duty,’ Brand said.

He circled again and lowered the nose of his RE8 till the Vickers machine gun was pointing at the frozen figures on the track.

Marius looked at the plane as it circled them. ‘It’s British. It won’t harm us.’

But Aimee was looking at the figure in the rear seat of the plane. A hand rested on the edge of the cockpit. In the weak morning sun the hand shone silver.

‘Oh yes he will,’ she said quietly and moments later found herself staring into the barrel that meant death for them both. ‘Oh yes he will.’

27 August 1918: The drovers’ road to Cléry