Page 35 of No Man's Land

“This’ll do,” Josef said, sliding onto the bench behind a small round table tucked into the back corner of the pub. Before he sat down, Alex removed his expensive-looking overcoat and laid it neatly over the back of an empty chair. Josef kept his jacket on, although he unbuttoned it, forgetting that he was wearing Alex’s borrowed cardigan beneath until he saw the man’s eyes drift over it.

“What?” Josef snapped, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’re smiling.”

“Am I?”

Josef pulled off his cap, releasing the lock of unruly hair that always flopped forward over his eyes. Irritably, he pushed it back and reached for his half pint of Mild. “Bloody hell,” he groused, “it’s like dishwater these days.”

“Which is why I avoid it.” Alex lifted his single shot of whisky and knocked his glass against Josef’s. “Salut.”

“Cheers.” Josef swallowed another mouthful of watery beer, grimaced, and set down his glass. “Right then,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

Despite the recent air raids, Londoners were uncowed, and the pub remained busy. The shortened wartime opening hours helped, too, cramming everyone in between midday and two-thirty. All of which meant the place was alive with noisychatter, and in Josef’s experience there was nowhere safer to talk about secrets than in plain sight amid a noisy crowd.

“I’m going to tell you the truth,” Alex said, “but I ask you to let me finish before you tell me it’s all nonsense.”

Josef sat back in his seat, unhappy. “If it’s more of this goblin bollocks—”

“What I’m going to tell youisthe truth. Whether you choose to believe it is up to you.” He held Josef’s gaze and said, “You want to know how the body of the young man we both saw die in Flanders came to be found in a London sewer, and I think you’d like me to say he was brought here by the Intelligence Corps, and that his body was used for experimentation in the search for yet another terrible weapon of mass murder. As if the world doesn’t have enough of those. It would be convenient for me to let you believe that, but unfortunately, it’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Josef folded his arms over his chest. “Go on then—astonish me with the truth.”

Alex appeared to consider that, swirling his whisky around in the bottom of his glass, watching it catch the light. “I hardly know where to begin.”

“Most stories start at the beginning.”

Alex smiled. He had a lovely smile; it quite transformed his face, taking Josef back sharply to that warm room in Poperinge. “That’ll make for a long story.”

Pushing all tender thoughts aside, Josef said, “Pub closes at half two.” He took another sip of beer, watching Alex over the rim of his glass. “Better get a move on.”

Alex met his challenge with a glitter in his eyes that excited Josef more than was reasonable. “Are you familiar with the Norman invasion? The Battle of Hastings?”

“1066 and all that? Yes, I’m not a complete ignoramus even if this country doesn’t see fit to educate working menbeyond the age of twelve.” He tapped his breast pocket and said, with satisfaction, “I have a library card.”

A fleeting smile touched Alex’s lips, and Josef bristled, ready to take offence. Then he realised it wasn’t derision he saw in Alex’s eyes; it was something else. Something… warmer.

“Very well,” Alex said, “then you’re aware that William, Duke of Normandy, landed in England almost a thousand years ago, bringing with him a coterie of Norman aristocrats who set about colonising the country, building castles and—”

“Are you taking the piss?”

“Are you going to listen?”

Josef gave him a mutinous look. “When I said start at the beginning, I didn’t mean the beginning of the bloody history book.”

“It’s pertinent.”

“For God’s sake.” He huffed, slouching back in his seat, lips pursed. “I’m warning you: if you tell me a load of old crock, I’ll punch you on the nose.”

“I consider myself warned.” Alex took a bracing sip of whisky. “William sent his knights about the country to catalogue his new territory—every square foot of land, every building, head of cattle, and so forth.”

“The Domesday Book,” Josef said. “Yes, I know about that.”

Alex inclined his head. “What isn’t known beyond a certain, very narrow set of people is that a second, secret book was commissioned—a book to catalogue all the unnatural threats William would face in his new kingdom.”

Josef frowned. “Unnatural?”

“Boggarts, silkies, grindylows, pixies, wights, changelings, revenants… What we call supernatural creatures.”

“WhatIcall children’s stories.”

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