The Fall

41

What’s that damn animal doing on stage?

At that moment Lee Burton didn’t think anything was amiss. In fact, it was all going pretty damn fine. There he was, in his diamond-pattern harlequin costume, standing in the brilliant limelight, stage centre, reciting the funny poem.

The audience weren’t just laughing.

They were screaming with laughter. He couldn’t see the audience, true enough, those footlights were dazzling, but he could hear them screaming louder and louder. They were loving it. He could imagine them holding their stomachs, rocking backwards and forwards in their seats, their faces purple they were laughing so long and so loud. In fact, their voices were getting shriller and shriller by the moment.

There was only one problem. The stupid pantomime horse had come galloping across the stage right in the middle of his solo act.

It was Harry and Albert playing the fool again. They were probably paying him back for smearing the inside of the horse with blue cheese. It had stunk so much that they’d come out of the horse costume gagging for air.

But Lee wouldn’t let that faze him. He was a pro now. He ploughed on, delivering the funny lines that were so rich in innuendo they’d make a ship’s stoker blush.

He made his hammy gestures even more extravagant.

And the audience screamed.

The brown and white panto horse lumbered back in front of him, knocking him back a step.

Hell, those two would pay for trying to screw up his act. He’d pour glue into the horse’s legs next time and the two would have to be peeled out of the damn costume.

And the audience screamed louder.

Figures ran along the space between the front row of seats and the orchestra pit. He heard a clash of cymbals, as if someone had blundered against the percussion kit.

Lee continued grimly.

It was as if the idiot behaviour of the pantomime horse had spread to the audience.

But still they yelled. Maybe they’d all got stinking drunk before they’d come into the show. He’d never seen them like this before – Hey!

Someone pushed by behind him. He staggered, recovered and continued reciting the poem – and he would continue to the end of the damn thing, come hell or high water. Music hall acts didn’t quit the stage, no matter what. He’d learned that. Like a captain going down with his sinking ship, you continued to the end.

Now more people seemed to be milling around the orchestra pit.

But the lights were too dazzling to see anything more than indistinct shapes. Maybe some lads were getting into a fight over a girl.

Well, let them slug it out down there, Lee thought resolutely. I’m not going to let them throw me.

The pantomime horse lumbered by again, but this time Lee noticed with surprise that the back legs were being dragged by the front ones as if Albert in the back half had dropped down in a dead faint (or dead drunk). And now Harry was doing all the work, the pantomime horse head twisting this way and that with the effort. The horse’s bottom jaw flapped and its eyes rolled in the stuffed head.

Still reciting the lines, still performing the extravagant windmilling gestures with his arms, Lee watched the front half of the pantomime horse drag its back legs across the stage.

Lee looked once. Then looked again in astonishment. Now that really was impossible.

Still reciting the poem, he stared at the back end of the horse.

It was bleeding.

But pantomime horses don’t bleed, he told himself, pausing for the first time in mid-verse before continuing.

But this one did.

Blood gushed from its rear end. What was more, the brown and white costume had been torn open and—

No.

No, it hadn’t been torn. It had been cut.

Slashed in diagonal rents by what must have been a hell of a sharp knife.

For the first time Lee’s delivery began to falter. The yells in the audience were deafening now.

And why on Earth had someone tried to kill a pantomime horse?

It didn’t make sense.

But so blinded by the theatre lights was he that Lee could see nothing beyond the edge of the stage.

At that moment a huge figure strode in front of him. It was dressed in something like a Viking costume and carried a large curving knife that flashed like neon in the blazing limelight. Again, Lee couldn’t process the information that was rushing through his eyes into his brain.

His mindset was that this was another prank. That he was seeing Jack Shillito in the Viking costume (after all, he was the biggest actor in the troupe); that the wicked-looking knife was merely a wooden prop from the store backstage.

By now the lines had dried on Lee’s lips as he stood there rigid as a statue and watched the knifeman bring the blade down in huge slashing blows. The front half of the pantomime horse tried to run.

The knife blows opened up the costume like a man gutting a fish. From the back half spilled the pantomime horse’s innards, which were, when all was said and done, the man in the rear half of the costume. He tumbled out at Lee’s feet.

One look at Albert’s bloody face and staring eyes told Lee the man was dead.

The knifeman sprang onto the front part of the horse, which struggled to escape. He slashed open the horse’s throat, spilling out kapok in snowy white lumps.

The knifeman paused as if confused by the stuffing, perhaps expecting a gush of blood instead.

His confusion didn’t last long. Again the knife flashed as he drove the blade deep into the horse’s neck.

The jaw of the horse chewed the air with a snapping sound, then the blade passed deeply enough through the costume to find Henry’s body inside. The horse jerked and dropped heavily to the stage.

The knifeman tugged ferociously at the horse’s head, pulling away the costume to reveal Henry’s own head.

He yelled, ‘Please, don’t hurt me… leave me alone! Leave me alone!’

The knife flashed again. ‘Leave me – Ah!’ Then Henry’s cries stopped as suddenly as a radio being switched off.

His face clown-white, black diamonds painted around each eye, Lee stood there in his harlequin costume and stared at the chaos erupting around him.

The shock was so great that he didn’t even hear the voice in the back of his head clamouring: ‘Run! Run!’

Big Jack Shillito, still in his long dress and petticoats from his pantomime-dame role, ran on stage. He’d painted his face in the caricature of a woman’s: lips a luscious red; rouged cheeks glowing brilliantly in the limelight; eyelashes as thick as spider legs. He ran holding the skirt up to his knees, flashing layers of white petticoats.

He ran desperately, looking for somewhere to hide.

A pair of men followed him. They were wild, barbarian-looking. They roared with laughter, enjoying the chase. One carried a huge axe in his hands.

Jack, kicking up his skirts, tried to scramble over the bed used in one of the comic sketches earlier.

Laughing hugely, one of the barbarians punched Jack full on the jaw, knocking him back flat onto the bed. Grunting excitedly, the wild man threw himself full-length onto the panto dame and started tearing at the skirts and petticoats.

Lee carefully turned his head, hoping if he could only manage to move slowly enough he wouldn’t be noticed by the men now butchering the audience and players in the music hall. He saw a man clamber up onto the stage directly in front of him. He carried a trumpet in one hand that gleamed a brassy yellow in the lights. It was smeared with blood from the mouthpiece to the finger valves.

The man was laughing as if drunk. In one hand he carried a bloodstained hammer. He paused to raise the trumpet to his lips and blow a note that, although it was monstrously discordant, still resonated with sheer triumph and sheer exultation at the slaughter.

The single thing these wild-looking men had in common was that around their mouths and on their chins were tattooed blue lines, as if they preferred artificial blue beards to the real thing.

Lee blinked. Men with their throats cut were being thrown from the theatre boxes down onto the sides of the stage. Women were being dragged by their long hair, bonnets hanging down below their chins.

The man stopped blowing the trumpet. Then he turned to bring his glittering eyes to bear on those of Lee Burton.

Now Lee understood. He looked again at the blue tattooed lines running across the bottom of the man’s face. It had been a long time coming. But the Bluebeards were here at last.

Lee’s muscles locked tight with shock. He couldn’t move.

Not even when the Bluebeard threw aside the trumpet, then walked slowly towards him, grinning, the axe raised ready to strike.

‘Why have we stopped?’

Jud rubbed the icy window of the stagecoach and looked out. ‘This’s the junction by Barley Wood. We’re still another mile from town yet.’

Sam Baker pushed away the blanket and stood up so he could open the window in the stagecoach door. ‘What’s the betting snow’s blocked the road ahead?’

‘I hope not,’ said one of the female passengers. ‘Our brother is meeting us in the market square at ten.’

Sam leaned out, screwing up his eyes as snowflakes immediately rushed into them. He could hear passengers riding on the outside of the coach talking in hushed voices.

Immediately he realised something was wrong.

‘Oh, my God.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Jud asked.

‘Hell,’ Sam breathed. ‘I think you should take a look yourself.’

Sam opened the door and stepped down from the stagecoach into the deep snow. The landscape ahead had become surreal.

It was as if gigantic roses had bloomed there in the winter’s night.

Yellows, oranges, yellows, pinks, reds – dark blood-reds, at that – burst out from the town that lay in front of them.

‘Oh, sweet Lord have mercy,’ breathed a passenger as she leaned out through the window. ‘It’s on fire, Mary. All the town is burning!’

There was nowhere to run; nowhere to hide. That much was obvious to Lee.

The Bluebeard tearing at Jack Shillito’s panto-dame skirts and petticoats was enraged to find a man beneath them. Seconds later, Jack shrieked piercingly and balled himself up onto the bed, rolling from side to side in agony. The Bluebeard grinned at a bloody lump in his hand before throwing it to one side. Then he pulled off Jack’s blonde wig and slit his throat.

Meanwhile, Lee stepped back from the man coming towards him with the axe.

He could hardly breathe. His heart trip-hammered in his chest, furiously beating at his ribcage.

All he could see in his mind’s eye was the axe swinging down to split his head wide open like a melon.

He took another step.

Then some instinct made him look down.

And just for a second, the next scene of the pantomime flashed into his head.

Wicked Magician Albarzar laughs and stamps his foot twice and disappears in a cloud of smoke with the words: ‘I go to ground where no mortal can follow!’

Beneath Lee’s feet was the blessed trapdoor.

Quickly, he stamped twice as the Bluebeard strode forward, the axe raised.

A flash, a rush of white smoke, and Lee was falling so fast his heart felt as if it would bang into the back of his throat.

He blinked in the dim light beneath the stage.

Old Billy who worked the trap paused as he raised the bottle of gin to his lips. He scowled. ‘Hey, Harlequin… It’s not you supposed to be coming down the trap… ’s supposed to be the feckin’ wizard… Wass goin’ on up thar anyways? Sounds like feckin’ bedlam.’

‘Billy—’

‘Pissed as bleedin’ newts, I expect… Bleedin’ Christmas…’

‘Billy!’ Lee grabbed the old man by the front of his jacket and shook him.

‘Hey, leave me alone, yer bleedin’—’

‘Billy, listen to me! You’ve got to get out of here!’

‘What ya talking about? You drunk too, you—’

‘Billy, they’re killing everyone. You’ve got to hide.’

Loud reports sounded from somewhere above their heads.

‘Feck me. Those are guns. What’s happening, Harlequin?’

‘Find somewhere to hide. No… not here. Get away from here. Oh, God. Find somewhere to hide, Billy. Don’t let them catch you.’

‘Where ya going, Harlequin?’

‘I’ve got to get to the Gainsbroughs’. My wife’s there… I’ve got to see if she’s all right.’

But already a dark suspicion was taking shape in his mind.

‘Where are you two going?’ called the coach driver. ‘You’ve left your bags behind. Hey!’

Sam, with Jud at his side, didn’t reply. Their agreement was unspoken. As soon as they’d seen Casterton was on fire the truth had hit home. The invasion had begun. Both knew they had to get there as quickly as possible.

With the road deep in snow the coach could only move at a snail’s pace. They’d be faster on foot. That was, if the snow didn’t become too deep. Big feathery flakes streamed from the sky.

Sam realised running in this would be near-impossible. But at least they could take the direct route across the fields.

Ahead the town blazed brightly, casting flickering yellows and oranges across the snow.

At this distance it was still too far away to see what damage the Bluebeards had inflicted. But Sam’s imagination had already begun to supply pictures that were as vivid as they were terrible.

Lee knew he could have been killed a dozen times over. But by now killing had largely given way to plundering. The Bluebeards were looting houses, shops, even stripping their dead victims of shoes, clothes, jewellery. Everywhere those barbaric-looking men were walking purposefully through snow-covered streets, their arms full of clothes or food. He even saw a shaggy-haired man coming towards him with a whole side of beef over his shoulder. In the light of the fires springing up from houses he saw the man’s tattooed upper lip – that thick blue line that identified him as one of Bluebeards.

And he also saw something like hedgehog spines bristling from a lumpy growth beneath the man’s left eye.

Lee recalled Nicole Wagner. How she had met him in the forest. Now he not only remembered her stark warning about the Bluebeards, but the mouse legs growing from the side of her neck. Somehow she’d been fused with the creature during the last time-jump. And he remembered Sam Baker’s account of an encounter with a Bluebeard in 1944; the character with snakes coiling from his face. Was Nicole one of this murdering band now? Or was she hiding alone in the woods, leading a hermit’s life, ashamed to return to society because of the thing growing out of her neck?

Still dazed, Lee walked on down the street. He had no answers. All he wanted to do now was to reach the baker’s house, find Sue, then hold her tight in his arms.

He sidestepped a horse lying dead in the shafts of a cart, then walked on through the falling snow.

As if it came from far, far away he still heard the sound of screams, sobbing, laughter, shouting as the Bluebeard hordes consolidated their conquest.

Burning houses lit the snow in shades of flickering yellow and gold. At one point he saw his reflection in a window. He paused for a second to stare at it. It looked so bizarre and freakish against the backdrop of a burning town. There he was: a tall thin man, face powdered white, black diamonds painted over each eye, dressed in the tight-fitting Harlequin suit with its diamond pattern.

In the old harlequinade plays of hundreds of years before, the Harlequin character was supposedly invisible to the rest of the players on the stage; he’d move unobserved like a mischievous spirit.

Now he, Lee Burton, playing Harlequin in the little town that burned so fiercely it lit up the sky like an autumn sunset, felt he’d become invisible too.

The barbarian army took no notice of him now they were concentrating on gathering plunder. The surviving townspeople took no notice of him either as they ran screaming through the streets. Some had their faces disfigured by beatings or knife wounds. Some had been scalped.

No-one takes any notice of Harlequin, he said under his breath, his trance-like gaze fixed ahead of him as he walked.

No-one notices old Harlequin. He’s become invisible again. He skirted a Bluebeard busily pulling the boots from the feet of a headless priest who lay in the snow with a crimson glory all around him.

When he reached the home of Gainsbrough, the baker, he saw it was already burning.

Roof tiles popped like champagne corks in the heat. Timbers crackled; tongues of red and purple flame lapped the sky.

Just a couple of hours earlier he’d left Sue there with Ryan, Enid and the rest of the baker’s family. They were eating warm mince pies and drinking sherry while one of the Gainsbroughs played carols on the piano.

At the thought of Sue he stopped dead. Snowflakes settled on his face, melted. Water trickled down his face. Suddenly he was struck by a vision of her: she’d waved him goodbye from that very front door, standing there in her long violet dress.

With a crack, a roof joist gave way and a dozen tiles slipped out of the flames and into the snow where they hissed and steamed.

The upper storey was burning ferociously. But as yet the ground floor seemed untouched.

The image of his wife and the Gainsbroughs coughing on the smoke as they struggled to escape the burning house suddenly struck him. Snapping out of his shocked trance he ran to the door.

The moment he pushed it open a gust of searing air drove him back.

Eyes smarting, he crouched down before running inside.

In less than a minute he was outside again.

Even inside the smoke-filled house he’d soon found the bodies. The Gainsbroughs were all dead. Even Ryan’s wife hadn’t been spared.

Outside, he coughed, wiped his streaming eyes, then picked up a handful of snow and rubbed his face with it.

He was glad the fire would cremate the bodies. He’d hate anyone else seeing what the Bluebeards had done to them for fun.

He looked round the snow-covered garden. The bodies of the family dogs lay by the hedge.

But there was no sign of Ryan Keith. Nor of Sue. They could be lying in the blazing bedrooms.

But then again…

He ran round to the back of the house, calling Sue’s name.

There he found more blood in the snow – from small round drops the size of pennies to great bloody swathes that covered the ground like red blankets. And everything was lit with that cruel light from the infernos that roared and crackled all across the town.

Standing there beneath shrouds of smoke, he stared up at the burning windows and called Sue’s name over and over again.

It took a good 20 minutes of hard running for Sam and Jud to make it through the snow to the outskirts of Casterton.

Already the heat from the burning houses had turned snow in the streets to black slush.

‘My God,’ Jud panted as they ran. ‘Look at it. It’s like the end of the world.’

Sam said nothing. All he wanted to do was find Zita. Even so, hope was draining from him.

The desolation was shocking. Butchered men and women lay in the street. Horses ran everywhere, panicked by the commotion and the fires. More than once the two men had to throw themselves into alleyways and shop doorways to avoid being trampled by horses that galloped by, riderless, their eyes wild, foam flecking their mouths.

A dog barked shrilly. And everywhere there were cries of frightened and wounded townsfolk.

In the market square Sam saw the Reverend Hather helping the doctor bandage the wounded where they’d been laid out on market stalls.

Behind them in an awful fiery backdrop the town’s church blazed. Falling masonry struck the bells to send a discordant clanging like a funeral toll across the town.

‘Thomas!’ Sam called. ‘Did you see who attacked the town?’

‘Bastards…’ Reverend Hather shook his head bitterly. ‘The bastards even killed the little children.’

The doctor didn’t even look up from bandaging a child’s head as he spoke. ‘Men armed with knives and axes. They each had a tattooed mark here.’ He touched his upper lip.

‘Bluebeards,’ Sam said.

Jud nodded grimly. ‘And we were so damned complacent. We pretended we were living in nothing more than a Victorian theme park. We should have been preparing for the invasion. We were warned it was coming…’ He shook his head sourly.

Sam gripped Thomas’s arm. ‘Are the men who did this still here?’

‘No, at least I think not… The swine took what they could carry and left.’

Sam looked up. Across the market square, standing on the plinth of a statue of the angel Gabriel, was Rolle. He still wore the orange boiler suit. Firelight shone through the corkscrews of red hair, making it look like a glowing halo.

And, apparently oblivious to what was happening to the rest of the town, he stood there with one arm around the angel’s stone shoulder, watching the church burning down.

The sound of the organ now joined the clang of the bell. Hot air expanding in the organ pipes threw out discordant notes that ran from high-pitched shrieks to thunderous, booming bass chords. Sam swallowed. This was music for the damned all right.

Sam felt a hand grip his arm.

He turned to see Jud’s face lit a flickering yellow. ‘Sam, I’m going back down to the amphitheatre. Dot is alone in the boat down there.’

‘But that’s miles. You’ll never make it in this blizzard.’

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll grab a horse. Where are you going now?’

‘To the Gainsbroughs’. Zita planned spending the night there.’

‘Good luck, Sam.’

‘And you, Jud.’

Jud turned immediately and ran away into the swirling snowflakes.

Sam turned his back on the burning church. Then he ran in the direction of the Gainsbroughs’ house.

Lee had stood calling Sue’s name for a good five minutes. Desperately, he willed her face to appear at one of the upstairs windows.

‘Sue! Can you hear me!’

This time he paused, listening for her reply on the off chance she was somewhere nearby.

Then, above the sound of tiles cracking under the ferocious heat, he heard shouting followed by a muffled thumping like fists on a door far away.

‘Sue! Sue!’

This time there was a sharper clattering. Not fists this time but a hammer or an iron bar against wood.

It was close, too.

It came again.

This time Lee realised it came from the trapdoor to the cellar that lay nearby. But for a moment he couldn’t see the door. Slates had poured off the roof in an avalanche to bury the entrance.

Then he remembered. The trapdoor was set beneath the kitchen window.

Lee ran to the spot and began clawing the slates away with his bare hands.

‘Sue! Is that you?’

The answering shout was male. What was more, it was familiar.

‘Ryan? Ryan, hang on, I’ll get you out! Just hang on!’

He tugged at the still-hot mound of slates.

Suddenly he realised that a second pair of hands had appeared to help.

‘Sam? Dear God, Sam, am I pleased to see you!’

‘Who’s down there in the cellar?’

‘As far as I can tell, Ryan Keith. I’m hoping Sue’s down there, too.’

‘Any sign of Zita?’

‘No… but she isn’t here anyway.’

‘I thought she was stopping over with Enid tonight? They were having a party.’

Lee shook his head as he pulled away the tiles. ‘She decided to stay back up at Perseverance Farm. She said she wanted to finish making a Christmas present.’

‘God, I hope she’s all right.’ Sam’s first impulse was to run home, but he knew he had to help Lee here first.

A moment later the trapdoor was clear. Sam kicked the bar that held the trapdoor shut from the outside. ‘Ryan!’ Sam shouted. ‘We’ve got it clear at this side.’ Almost immediately he heard bolts being slipped open on the other side. Sam bent down and heaved open the trapdoor.

An uprush of smoke gushed out, followed by Ryan who coughed and gasped as he stumbled out to fall onto the slushy snow.

‘Ryan, are you okay?’

Ryan nodded, but still he coughed, his eyes streaming.

Sam said, ‘I reckon he should be okay in a minute. Did you find Enid and her family?’

Lee looked Sam in the eye and gave a grim nod, then looked back at the house.

Sam didn’t need to interpret that look of Lee’s. ‘Oh, hell…’

Then he crouched down beside Ryan, who sat heavily in the snow, coughing so hard his chest crackled. He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder.

The flames consumed the house.

Sam watched as the walls collapsed, sending gold sparks rushing into the sky. The destruction was echoed around him as dozens of houses, warehouses, shops, hotels blazed. Again the realisation came to him that what they were witnessing was the beginning of the end of the world.

Later, in the borderlands that lay between yesterday and today, Nicole Wagner, William and Bullwitt saw the procession. They watched from the safety of a wooded hilltop as a thousand or so men passed beneath them in a long, snaking line.

They were close enough to see the faces of the Bluebeards. William held his cloak to one side so Bullwitt could peer through the slit in his clothes. The dark, bulging eyes missed nothing.

‘Lord, there’s old Snake-eye himself,’ he said. ‘You know, some say a battleship couldn’t kill him. He’s been in more battles than I know what.’

‘Just look at what they’re carrying.’ Nicole spoke in a whisper. ‘Where on Earth did they get it all from?’

‘They’ve raided the town,’ William said. ‘We all knew it was coming but we never thought it would be this big.’

‘But we should have seen it coming, me old matey,’ Bullwitt said. ‘We should have seen it coming.’

‘Why’s that?’ asked Nicole.

‘Because, sweetie, their numbers have been growing apace these last few months.’ Bullwitt spoke in a gruff but kindly way. ‘Barbarians from all over the country, from every different century you can think of, have been flocking to them; they knew the Bluebeards were onto a good thing. I mean, just think about it, sweetie. They walk into 1535, plunder a town, then bring their loot back here. The army can’t find them, so the Bluebeards get away scot-free. When they need a bit more plunder, out they go again, out of Limbo here and into any bloody time they want. Take whatever catches their eye. Then they scuttle back where no-one can reach them.’

‘What he says is true, Nicole,’ William said. ‘They can raid the district around Casterton with impunity.’

‘What year are they returning from?’ Nicole asked with a shiver.

‘They’ve used the time gate down by the bend in the river,’ William said.

‘That will give them access to the 19^th Century, won’t it?’

‘That’s right, my old sweetie,’ replied Bullwitt. ‘1865, to be precise.’

Nicole shuddered. ‘Oh my, God. That’s where – when – my friends are.’

Bullwitt raised his eyes to her from the slit in William’s tunic. ‘Then perhaps we should say a prayer for them tonight.’

Nicole shivered. She felt William’s hand slip into hers and give it a reassuring squeeze. She squeezed back. But she was frightened for Sue, Ryan, Lee and the rest. The mouse claws scurried at the side of her neck, running through air as they did when her fear was transmitted to whatever remained of the mouse’s brain buried inside her neck.

Absently she stroked the running legs with her free hand, soothing them.

Below in the valley the Bluebeards marched by, pulling carts piled high with food, clothes, bottles, valuables of every kind.

Then came another group. These walked with their heads hanging down.

Quickly Nicole counted 30 or more women and children.

She pointed. ‘They’ve brought those from the town, haven’t they?’

William nodded. ‘As slaves.’

‘Of various sorts and abilities,’ Bullwitt added. ‘Poor damn fools.’

Nicole didn’t need Bullwitt to elaborate. Seeing the women shuffle by in their long dresses, their hair hanging down in tangled strands, was bad enough. But then she saw a face she recognised.

‘Oh God, no,’ she whispered. ‘I know that woman down there.’

‘Then if I were you, sweetie,’ Bullwitt whispered. ‘I’d pray to the good Lord to strike her down dead at this very moment.’

Clutching William’s hand tightly, she watched as Sue walked by. It hadn’t been so long ago that Sue Royston had been the cheerful travel rep dressed in the Stan Laurel costume. Now she looked as if she’d been dragged through filth. Her hair was a messed tangle of knots.

And now she was walking along the path into the woods. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

‘I’m going to do something,’ Nicole said, gripping William’s hand hard.

‘All we can do is hide and watch.’ William spoke gently.

‘And hope they leave us alone,’ Bullwitt grunted. ‘Which they will do, if they’ve got enough rich pickings to occupy themselves for a while.’

‘No.’ Nicole shook her head firmly. ‘I’m going to find some way of helping those people.’

Bullwitt sighed. ‘I wish you could. But it’s going to take a bloody miracle to help those poor devils now.’