The boy hauled the dusty rope up from the tower. It was thick and almost too heavy to lift. It took him five minutes before the bottom end slipped over the rail. He passed it up to Aimee. She pushed the end through the hole and between them they managed to thread it through the gap. At last there was enough heavy rope outside to pull the last ten metres through and it slid through with a rush. Aimee almost fell off the rain-slicked steeple.

She reached a hand inside and Marius climbed up to join her. ‘The worst is over,’ she said. ‘You first.’

The boy stretched his aching shoulders and gripped the rope between his hands and feet. He had climbed ropes in some long-ago time when he had trained in the school gym. That had been a dry, six-metre rope with a soft mat below to break his fall. This wasn’t.

He didn’t look down. He took a deep breath and slid down carefully.

Aimee climbed out after him. As she rested on the edge of the hole they’d made she heard a sound from beneath them. The door to the tower was being unlocked. If the priest and Silver Hand heard her they would walk out of the church and catch her as she reached the ground.

The rope grated softly against the wood. She held her breath.

The voice of Sergeant Grimm rose up the tower. ‘They’re not there.’ He seemed to be arguing with the priest on the other side of the door. The girl lowered herself carefully and began to slide down.

Marius dropped the last two metres to the soft soil of a grave and moments later Aimee tumbled on top of him.

They hadn’t time to lie gasping as they wanted to. They picked up their packs and crept around the tower towards the gate. If Silver Hand stepped out of the church door now he would shoot them.

Yet Aimee lingered on the path. She ran back to the church door as Marius watched on in horror.

She snatched the British army pack that lay there and dropped her own. Then she sprinted down to the graveyard gate and pulled Marius through after her.

‘It’s Silver Hand’s backpack. He has the special pass from General Bruce that we were meant to have. And he’ll have food in there too.’

Marius grinned. ‘Food. Then the bells of hell won’t ring for me just yet.’

They turned east and ran down the road to Peronne.

The old gravedigger watched them go. He looked at the rope and the broken tiles. ‘Father Gaulle won’t be very happy when he sees that damage,’ he said.

He didn’t know how unhappy the priest would be.

30 August 1918: Cléry