This Day Shall Gentle His Condition: Kit Hardwicke, #2

By Judy Peters

The story unfolds in an alternate history setting during World War 1, enriched with steampunk elements and a blend of espionage and supernatural intrigue. Kit Hardwicke, initially introduced as reflecting on wartime experiences, is drawn into a complex web of spy missions against the backdrop of historical events interwoven with fictional deviations. He assumes various identities to infilatrate enemy lines and uncover plots with the aid of a group of friends and colleagues. Central to the plot is Peter Garnett, who is revealed to be a formidable antogonist orchestrating espionage activities for Germany. 

 

Themes of loyalty, sacrifice and duty are explored through Kit's interactions with characters who both aid and obstruct his mission. Ultimately the premise revolves around thwarting Garnett's machinations while grappling with internal conflicts amidst external chaos - a quest for truth beneath layers of lies in a world where history diverges into fantastical realms without losing sight of humanity's core struggles during wartime. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judy Peters
• Release date: Feb 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223672272

Judy Peters

Judy Peters has studied history, librarianship, textile art and literature. One day she will embroider a book and catalogue it. She is interested in the female gothic, speculative fiction and alternative history. Occasional poetry is published under the name Judy Edmonds.

Book preview

FORWARD AND GLOSSARY

This novel is set in 1917/18, during what was known at the time as the Great War, now known to history as World War I. A few of the facts mentioned are true. However, it is for the most part an alternative history, and as such is full of anachronisms, inaccuracies, and plain lies. It is also has a predominantly Steampunk setting.

I thought some explanations might be helpful. Or you can just skip over them and get straight to the story. If you’ve already read In the Bleak Midwinter, you will find some repetition.

BASKING SHARK SUBMARINES: Steam powered submarines existed from the mid-nineteenth century. I thought they looked rather like basking sharks, which are kindly beasts who would probably object to me borrowing their name for a weapon of war. Modern nuclear submarines could also be described as steam-powered.

CRYPTIDS/CRYPTOZOOLOGY: In ‘real life’, cryptozoology is considered to be a pseudoscience. It was founded in the 1950s, so the use of the word is anachronistic in this work. It includes beasties like the Loch Ness Monster, Mothman, Bigfoot and the like. Cryptids are a gift to the fiction writer, as they can be neither proved nor disproved.

CU SITHE: Speaking of cryptids... The Cu Sithe (the ‘e’ is optional) is a large green dog who roams the Scottish Highlands in popular mythology. It is believed that if one emits three terrifying barks, and you do not run away before the third bark is finished, you will die of sheer terror. It hunts silently. Given the British Royal Family’s predilection for dogs, and the amount of time spent by Queen Victoria and subsequent generations at Balmoral, I can see no reason why they should not have adopted the Cu Sithe as family pets. Kit acquired Garm in In the Bleak Midwinter.  Kaiser Wilhelm gave him to a German general, but Garm ended up bonding with Kit. It is indeed pronounced Cushie, more or less.

THE FEALTY: What were actually known as the Allies or the Entente Powers during the Great War. To swear fealty to someone is to declare one’s faithful service. It also has an Arthurian tone to it, and as legend has it, when England is at its lowest depths, King Arthur and his knights will arise from the dead to defend her. I keep wondering just how low those depths have to go. Waiting, waiting...

GARM: Garm (or Garmr) is a wolf (or dog) associated with Ragnarök in Norse mythology. Given the fascination many Germans had for Norse mythology, and the nature of the Cu Sithe, it seemed like a good name.

GOLDBEATERS: The German war machine needed to produce many zeppelins for aerial attacks during the war. (The zeppelins were far more effective than I have suggested in this book). Running low on the previously used fabrics, they had to resort to the outer membranes of cows’ intestines. These had been used in the production of gold leaf, hence the name, and even more importantly, as sausage skins. The Germans were forced to choose, or have chosen for them, between sausages or bombing raids. Bombing raids it was. It seemed like a good nickname that poked fun at them for choosing weapons over sausages.

GURNEY CARRIAGE: These steam-powered carriages were invented in the mid-1820s by Sir Goldsworth Gurney, who took out patents on them and attempted to become the head of a dynasty of carriage manufacturers. They could travel at a top speed of twenty miles an hour, and one even managed to make it from London to Bath and back again. But they were not a commercial success. Reasons included protectionist behaviours in the interests of horse-powered carriages. I like to think that nearly a century of progress could have turned them into a far more useful vehicle.

KNOT MAGIC: Used in witchcraft to cast spells. Using a cord, twine or other yarn, specific knots are fashioned while the practitioner utters meaningful words or phrases.

MARMOTS IN THE ALPS: There are any number of myths, legends and fairy tales told about the Alps and their glaciers. Vague rumours of beasties hiding in crevasses, terrifying travellers with eyes of red coals, abound. The Alpine Marmot is a large squirrel. An easy conflation to make in a story including cryptids.

SILVER BULLETS: A regularly recurring folk myth about werewolves is that they can only be killed with a silver weapon. Other stories suggest fire, beheading, stoning to death, staking through the heart – sometimes these stories get mixed up with vampires and other beasties. Silver was a useful weapon in this story as it can be turned into bullets, daggers and crafting implements, thus covering the men of action and the witch of action. My personal choice would be a silver crochet hook – you can perform Knot Magic and stab someone all with the same weapon.

STEAMGRAMS/STEAMPHONES: Steampunk demanded steamgrams instead of telegrams, and steamphones instead of telephones. However, whenever I have tried to write descriptions of them, I have ended up plagiarising the late Sir Terry Pratchett. So, I’m leaving it up to your imagination. I can’t think of a better explanation of them than his.

X-RAYS: Marie Curie and her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, did create and implement a series of portable X-ray machines for use on the Western Front. I imagine that these must have appeared as uncanny magic machines, looming up out of the mist and taking photographs of someone’s insides.  

Date (redacted)

TO (REDACTED)

From (redacted)

Dear (redacted)

Thank you for sending me this manuscript of the second volume of these so-called ‘memoirs’ for clearance. They are less entertaining than the first volume, but still pass muster, I suppose.

Please see that they are published in the Fiction list.

I have removed any sections that are contrary to national security. I am fully cognisant of the events and the individuals involved. Please rest assured that, as before, the supposed author is well known to certain parties as an exceedingly unreliable narrator. They have however done a decent job of muddying the waters so that no-one will ever be able to identify them or their ‘companions’.

I apologise for the fact that the manuscript is now half its length. But you may publish what is left over, with my blessing.

I might even buy a copy.

Yours

(redacted)

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

Isuppose you’re wondering what happened to us after our wild ride into Erzerum with the Cossacks. Vodka happened, for a start. Then it turned out that Manwearing had people there waiting to whisk us away. I’m not sure if was Dixon’s information network, or Manwearing’s – probably both feeding into each other – but he knew everything we knew, and more.

We were given the option to do whatever we wanted to do when we got home. My original idea had been to escape back to England via Russia and Rumania, and return to my regiment, but that idea came from the day when I thought I had failed in my mission and would not be seeing Dixon or Robbie ever again. I still wanted to go back to my regiment, but circumstances had changed.

Robbie insisted that all four of us retreat to Inverie, the family pile in the Highlands, to recover for a little while. Dixon and I were mildly wounded, he was still coming down from the drugs he had been fed by Frau Erlich, and Daniel looked as though he could do with a short rest too. Robbie’s father was working in London, his elder brother was in America on hush-hush business, and we would have the place to ourselves.

Manwearing promised me my own battalion but ordered me to recover first – my broken arm needed to mend, and though the Cossacks had set it for me rather approximately, it needed to be rebroken and reset when we got back to London. He also organised for me to receive a C.B. (Companion of the Order of the Bath), and Robbie too. It was rather embarrassing. What with that and some African medals and a Legion of Honour, I reckoned that next time I had to punch someone, I would just beat them to death my military hardware.

Inverie was everything it should have been. A rambling pile, apparently built in the early fifteenth century but much built on and around, with an eighteenth-century façade and nineteenth century wings. More to the point, it was surrounded by peaceful forest and fields and was close to the sea. Falling asleep listening to the wind in the trees and the sough of the waves was the closest I had come to Paradise for a long time.

Daniel only stayed for a fortnight, most of which he spent roaming the countryside. Then he bade us farewell and caught a train up to London, saying simply that he had something organised that Manwearing had pulled some strings for. It was some time before I found out what that was.

Dixon followed him shortly after. He said he needed to return to America to deal with some business but that we would meet again. I was sorry to see them go, but it was the first time Robbie and I had ever been able to spend time alone in a domestic setting, comparatively certain that no-one was lining up to kill us, and it gave me a glimpse of what real life after the war might look like. The only thing spoiling that was the knowledge that it was an idyll stolen from time, and that the war was not going to be over any time soon.

We soon found out what Manwearing had done with the information gleaned from the four of us. Some of it trickled into the newspapers, of course, as it was deemed to be excellent for civilian morale. We were told as much of the actual story as our security clearances permitted.

In a swift and highly organised series of raids, numerous German scientists were kidnapped and brought back to Britain. They were politely locked up in a number of stately homes scattered around the countryside. Much debriefing happened, I believe. Most of them were cooperative. One or two had to be locked up in the maximum-security prison Montrose Castle, as they would not say a word other than to threaten to unleash the furies of Hell upon us, and no-one could be 100% certain that they were not capable of doing just that. The others remained in their plush gentrified prisons but were given elaborate scientific facilities and considerable incentives to use their knowledge and abilities for the Fealty. Some were deeply ideologized Goldbeaters, and were treated with great caution, but most turned out to be in it for the thrill of the science rather than anything else. Either that, or they had realised who was winning and had the sense to throw their lot in with us. They were still in prison, but all their material needs were met, and they were paid well, with nothing to spend it on. If they kept their noses clean, did what they were asked to do, and didn’t sabotage their work, they were promised British citizenship at the end of it, and new identities. Their families were gradually spirited over here, not all in one fell swoop as the Goldbeaters had got wise to what was going on by then, given new identities themselves, received their husbands’ salaries, and were equally promised citizenship at the end of the war if they behaved.

All of this did not mean that Britain was suddenly transformed into a more technologically advanced society, on the outside. After all, the rest of the world, including Germany, was still driving Gurney carriages even though the German scientists had discovered a revolutionary form of liquid fuel. (The stuff that had smelt so hideous to me when I encountered the portable log-cutting machines). The war effort had to come first.

As suspected, the people who could explode into a cloud of bats had been scientifically enhanced. It had resulted from a mistake, from what I could tell, but its usefulness was realised quite quickly. It enabled people to vanish rapidly from one situation and reappear in another, as I had thought. The bats were also excellent surveillance devices. Sometimes, scientific experiments going wrong can produce better results than the ones originally sought. There were experiments ongoing trying to create berserkers, as Dixon had suggested in Erzerum, but Manwearing seemed to think that that had been less of a qualified success than the Goldbeaters had hoped. They managed to drive a few subjects mad enough to fight like a berserker, but they had a tendency to explode on the battlefield when their level of insanity grew too much. And I really do mean explode, into tiny fragments that could not be reassembled. Our captured German scientists offered to demonstrate but said that already in Germany it was being abandoned as a pointless experiment. Manwearing’s intelligence seemed to verify this. But as the bats had been such an unexpected success, shape shifting had become a focus of many of the scientists. Our military intelligence was not certain that it could be sufficiently developed in our country in time for it to be an effective weapon in the war, as it was hoped that the Goldbeaters would be surrendering soon, but once you find an option for a military weapon, it seems that you keep developing it in the off-chance that it will be useful somewhere, some day.

One of the more secret titbits passed to us was confirmation of the death of Frau Alice Erlich. Not ‘dead’ in the sense that I had seen General von Fledermaus ‘die’ twice, but properly, certifiably dead and buried. Her body was found on the battlefield near where we had last seen her, presumably caught in the crossfire between the Turks and the Russians. There was no sign of large black wings, and I was willing to accept that I had been suffering from at least a temporary form of shellshock at the time when I thought I had seen her burst into flight. I had been under extreme psychological strain during the weeks of juggling three different false identities, avoiding death on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis, being constantly on the run, and worrying about Robbie. All the more important then that I spent the full six weeks it took for my arm to heal properly in the tranquil setting of Inverie.

We roamed the countryside, Robbie, Garm and I. We rode for hours at a time. We sailed a little yacht he had owned since childhood. We hung out with the ghillies. We had time to talk about the future. Robbie suggested we find a female Cui Sithe so that Garm could enjoy happy families too. We decided to leave that until after the war, which we were optimistic would be coming soon. All the auguries were in our favour, we thought. Robbie regaled me with ancient tales from the Highlands, and I learnt a new side of him, a softer yet wilder one. I started to learn a little Gaelic.

I had expected Robbie to join me back at the Front. It’s what we had originally planned when we were convalescing, which felt like a lifetime ago, but was only last November. It was now April. But when we were coming up to the six-week mark in Inverie, he dropped a bombshell on me. He was going off on a thing (he tapped the side of his nose – yes, these gestures do occur in real life outside of melodramas) and he would catch up with me later. Now everyone was deserting me. I must have looked hurt. He said my face reminded him of a squashed sock puppet. I said I thought we were in this together. He promised me we were; we were just doing things separately for a while.

So, I was presented with my battalion, and went off to war feeling like I was clothed in sackcloth and ashes rather than the best of British uniform. But, as usual, I did my duty for my King and Country, and my friends. I had decided to leave Garm behind in Inverie rather than take him to the Front, not wanting to run the risk of him being left behind if I was killed. The head ghillie had taken to him, and vice versa, and I thought he deserved more time to explore his ancestral homelands. I would collect him if (when?) Manwearing called on my services again, which I suspected was just a matter of time.

I got to Flanders just in time to engage in the Battle of the Somme, which took some months and was a bloody disaster. I did my duty and regained some enthusiasm for battle. That was, until I got blown up in the September and landed with my head on a gun emplacement. Fortunately, my body was still attached to it, but it landed me in hospital for quite a while. I got a massive headache and a D.S.O. and spent some time sulking. Robbie hadn’t been there to save my life, and I’d had to do it myself.

By January my head was declared as sound as it ever might be again, and I was given a brigade for good behaviour. I shepherded it through the Battle of Arras in good order, and then we were all ordered to take a month off to rest up. I had an inkling that we were resting up in order to be flung into a final, do-or-die, offensive.

I shot up to Inverie. Robbie had insisted that I treat it as my home, and that his father or brother would be fine with me turning up at any old time. I wasn’t totally sure about that, but some clean Highland air was what I needed if I was being forcibly removed from the fragrant tang of the trenches. I did send a ‘gram to say I was coming (yes, we were still using steamgrams and steamphones, as were the Germans). When I received the reply extending a charming welcome from Mrs Sally Ferguson, I contemplated beating myself to death with my medals, but another read made me realise that, unless Robbie had changed his name to Geordie, the elder brother (and heir to Inverie) must have got married.

I had not seen Garm for ages, and I was faintly worried that he may have changed allegiances to the head ghillie, but that was just as stupid as me thinking that Robbie might have got married. He was twice the size as he had been the last time, having probably reached his adult size by now, but he was definitely still my dog.

Mr and Mrs Ferguson – Geordie and Sally – were in residence and were very hospitable. Geordie was taking a couple of weeks off his mysterious desk job in London in order to settle his new, American wife into Highland life. She was a nice, no-nonsense sort of girl, more at home on a horse than at a bridge game, I would bet. It turned out that she was related to Dixon in some sort of way, and that they had met when Geordie was doing whatever it was he was doing in America, and Dixon was involved in some mysterious way. Dixon and I had written from time to time, and he seemed to have settled down again in America quite happily, but frankly I had not believed that until Sally confirmed that yes, he had attended their wedding in New York. I was still dubious – he may have been there for the wedding, but had he really spent all that time in America? With his network of people, he could easily have sent me letters apparently from New York, from every corner of the earth.

At dinner on the first night, we were interrupted at the port stage by a great clattering in the entrance hall. Robbie never made a discreet entrance unless it was necessary to the playing of a part. He methodically worked his way through the remnants of our meal, as usual mixing the leftover venison with the crème caramel and washing it down with a bottle of champagne that Geordie had, with a comic grimace, asked the cook to bring up as soon as Robbie made his presence known.

It is difficult to have a comfortable conversation when you don’t know who knows what and who is supposed to know what. It wasn’t as hard as having to remember which languages I spoke on any given day, as I had endured last year, but it meant we discussed stags and grouse more than any of us really wanted to. Eventually Robbie grabbed a plate of leftovers and the port bottle and indicated that we were going out onto the terrace, while Geordie and Sally faded away somewhere else, presumably in search of some peace and quiet.

‘You didn’t join me at the Front,’ I said a little reproachfully.

‘No, sorry about that. I got caught up with some stuff. You know what it’s like. But I’m back now. I see Garm has grown a lot. What d’you think of Geordie’s wife?’

‘She seems nice. Outdoorsy. She’s something to do with Dixon.’

‘Yes, daughter of a cousin or something. It was a nice wedding.’

‘Has everyone been in America?’

‘At that precise point, some of us were, yes.’

I sighed and gave up. ‘When you say you’re back now, are you coming back to the Front with me? I’m being spelled for a few weeks, and I think the final push is coming after that.’

‘About that...’

I sighed even more deeply than before. ‘Yes...’

‘I have a ‘gram for you.’

‘Isn’t that usually how it starts?’

‘Open it.’

I did. It was a summons to the War Office. ‘I’m on four weeks leave.’

‘I dare you to tell the War Office that. We’ll go up tomorrow on the train, stay at your flat, and you can make that appointment after breakfast the next day.’

‘You know what this is about?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘Obviously I can’t.’

‘Are we going to be doing it together?’

‘Yes and no. A bit like last time. Buck up, Capercaillie, we’ll have fun.’

I finished my port and declared I was going for a walk. Robbie joined me and we strode through the garden in the moonlight, Garm trotting at our heels,