The Dead Men Stood Together Read Online Free PDF

‘It’s a waste of energy, my friend.’
    ‘I can’t help feeling guilty,’ I replied.
    ‘You’d be surprised,’ said my uncle. ‘I have done many things I should feel guilty about but do not. I stopped feeling guilty a long time ago. There is no point to it.’
    I frowned and shrugged. I didn’t know what to say.
    ‘Will the bird come back to life?’ he asked. ‘Will it change anything?’
    ‘Well, no –’
    ‘And you say it was an accident anyway?’
    ‘Yes, but –’
    ‘Well, then,’ he said, clapping his hands and grinning. ‘There is nothing to feel guilty about.’
    He shepherded me towards the house.
    ‘Is all well?’ said my mother as we approached.
    ‘Aye,’ said my uncle. ‘He’s only upset because he couldn’t hit the target. But I told him it was only his first time and he shouldn’t be hard on himself.
    ‘Your uncle’s right,’ said my mother. ‘You can’t expect to master something in the first few moments.’
    I was grateful to my uncle at the time for saying nothing of the bird. My mother would have been as upset as I was by its wanton killing. But I later suspected that the lie was for his own benefit, not mine, for he knew my mother would have blamed him and not me.
    That night, when I looked from my window out towards where my uncle had left the bird, having taken the bolt from its body, I saw the pilot’s son.
    He lifted up the bird in his hands and looked at the house, mouthing words I could not hear. I ducked down, fearing he would see me. When I eventually felt it safe to look, he was gone.
    I closed the shutter and lay back on my bed. I slept and dreamt: dreamt of battles and the fizz of crossbow bolts.
    I dreamt too of that sad and lifeless nightingale.

VII
    The following day my uncle, as he took his leave of us, told us the ship was ready and he would return later in the day for one last farewell.
    My mother cried. I stood beside her and watched as he walked away down the lane heading towards the harbour. It felt like my last chance of escape was sailing away.
    My mother sensed this, I think, though she said nothing. I could feel it somehow through the skin of the hand she placed gently against my face before she turned and walked back to the house.
    I stayed where I was, looking down the now deserted lane, catching the faint whiff of seaweed and the cry of seagulls on the breeze.
    But as soon as he was gone, thoughts of the nightingale faded and were replaced by dreams of sailing, of exploring, of adventuring. All that day, I could think of nothing else but my uncle and his intended voyage. My mind quivered with images of Japan and the islands of the East. Where these images came from, I couldn’t say, for I had no idea of what those places looked like.
    Every chore I did seemed more dull, every pail of water heavier than it had ever been before. The minutes seemed to last for hours, the hours for an eternity.
    When my uncle did at last return to the cottage, he told us that his ship was set to leave before the dawn, sailing on the next tide.
    We ate our last meal together and, though my uncle once again entertained us with tales of his adventures and treasure-hunting, it was a melancholy affair. We embraced and tears were shed.
    And though I was exhausted when night fell, I couldn’t sleep. I turned this way and that, and every time I closed my eyes I imagined I was in the hold of some ship bound for foreign lands.
    The wind blew round the eaves of the house and it sounded like sailcloth filling, and every other noise recalled the creak of timbers or the lapping of the waves against the hull.
    I had put the sea out of my head – or thought I had. In the year since my father died, I had learned to live without it. It had been hard at first but in the last few months I had given sailing no thought at all.
    But it had come back in on a high tide and I knew now that any idea that I could spend my life ashore was a pretence. I was born to be a mariner. It was who I