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Phantom Pain
by Steve Argyle
Gottfred’s right foot itched abominably, which was a patent impossibility. Gottfred didn’t have a right foot. Gottfred didn’t have anything below his right knee except a wooden stock and chronic discomfort. How feelings of pain could come from an extremity that no longer existed puzzled Gottfred no end. Why could he feel the itch between his first and second toes, yet not feel the stirrup dangling empty at his mule’s side?
The mule plodded on, oblivious to the agonized musings of its rider. Gottfred supposed he should be grateful to have the beast. At least he could ride, rather than hobbling down the road on crutches as so many of his former companions were doing. The Swedish cannonball that took his leg had killed his fine warhorse. Until that bloody day at Breitenfeld, Gottfred had been a successful troop commander in Von Pappenheim’s cavalry, with a charger, a riding palfrey, and three pack mules of his own.
Somehow, he had managed to strap his belt around the stump of his leg before losing consciousness on the field, and thus had survived the wound. Even more miraculously, he had survived the ministrations of the chirurgeon who trimmed up and cauterized the ragged end. He had survived the long recovery period that drained all his resources, all the plunder he had collected until he found himself a crippled veteran with nothing to his name but his clothes, his sword, and one lethargic mule.
And now it was midwinter and Gottfred was going home. He wondered if Margrethe would still be there. He doubted it. She had been opposed to his going off to war. She could not understand how the possibility of glory and plunder had tugged at his heart. She was not moved by the recruiters on their splendid horses, their bright steel hilts glinting with gold inlay and their supple leathers trimmed with fine lace. Gottfred had been enthralled with the idea of making his fortune for life in a short campaign or two, then settling down with his new bride to a long life of leisure. Margrethe had said she was perfectly content to work as a farmer’s wife and raise happy children with a father who was at home. He hadn’t listened.
At first, it had gone well. He took to soldiering as if he were born to it. He rose quickly through the ranks and began to collect his fortune. It took longer than he had anticipated, true, but with each campaign his situation improved. Until Breitenfeld. Now, for him, the campaigns were over, his fortune had evaporated, and he couldn’t even walk behind a plow.
Gottfred absently adjusted the buckle on the leather socket holding the wooden peg to the stump of his leg. His eyes could clearly see the appendage of oak thrust into the leather cup that had once held the butt of a lance, but he could distinctly feel his missing calf beginning to cramp, aching to be stretched. He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle and tried to think of something else.
The smell of smoke had been in his nostrils for some time before he became consciously aware of it. Not the smoke of a hearth, but of burning thatch on a cottage roof. Riding with Von Pappenheim, one learned to tell the difference. Gottfred didn’t even look around at first; the smell was all too common throughout the Empire these days. Instead, shutters began to close in his memory as the stench threatened to recall images of the scorched ruin of Magdeburg.
His consciousness had focused so tightly that he was only aware of his mule’s left ear. Soon, however, he realized that the mule had stopped. Coming to himself as if from far away, he looked up to see a column of smoke rising from a ruined farm a quarter of a mile away. Two miles away across some fields and a small river, he could see the tail of a moving column of soldiers. He couldn’t tell if they were Imperials, Protestant Saxons, or Swedes. It obviously had not mattered to the farmer and his family. All soldiers preyed on the peasantry. He had done it himself. Gottfred’s memory began to shut down again, the ropy, emotional calluses he had built up around his heart squeezing out any spark of feeling.
Then he saw the child. Standing barefoot in the dead weeds at the side of the road, it was looking up at him. It was clad in a simple smock of dirty gray wool that hung just below its knees. It clutched a sprig of pine in its little fist, which it waved at him. Gottfred didn’t have much experience to judge by, but he thought the little mite could not have been more than two years old. It had a mass of wild, golden curls and eyes of piercing blue. It smiled at Gottfred, showing an incomplete row of tiny teeth like little ivory pegs.
Darkness rushed in to fill Gottfred’s brain. The mental shutters slammed with numbing force. They had almost been in time to blot out the image of another little child, spitted on a pike in the streets of Magdeburg. Almost, but not quite. Gottfred began to reel in the saddle, feeling as if a band of iron were squeezing his ribs, his vision narrowing down to a pinhole.
“Gug-gug! Gug-gug!”
There was a child’s smile in the pinhole. Gottfred’s vision expanded to include the world again. And at the center of his vision was a homeless waif holding out its arms to him and merrily calling out nonsense. “Gug-gug! Gug-gug!” The child was plainly asking Gottfred to pick it up.
The calluses constricted. Gottfred looked to the farm. All he could see was a smoldering cottage and inert, awkward bundles lying in the yard. The bundles were indistinct at this distance, but all too familiar to a soldier. The child had no family left here.
“Gug-gug! Gug-gug!” The little one implored him to lift it up, oblivious to the tragedy behind it.
Gottfred clucked to his mule and gave the reins a half-hearted flick. The beast stood motionless. He nudged it in the ribs with his one good heel. The mule ignored him. Gottfred cursed, irritated at the unresponsive mule and shying away from the decision he knew he was going to make. In the end, it was the sight of his own breath in the still, cold air and the child’s bare, blue toes that pushed him over the edge. He struggled out of the saddle, wincing as the wooden stock thumped on the ground.
The soldier knotted his threadbare cloak into a kind of sling across his shoulder and put the child into it. The child’s extremities were as cold as ice, but it was strangely docile as he shifted the sling to his back so he could mount the mule. Grasping the saddle and balancing painfully on the wooden leg, Gottfred lifted his left foot to the stirrup. Hoisting himself up, he threw his right leg over the saddle, fumbling awkwardly to fit his oaken appendage into the lance socket. Finally, he pulled the sling around in front of him and, trying to ignore the toddler’s calm regard, kicked his mule into motion.
They rode calmly and quietly together for several miles. For part of the way, the child seemed to sing some tuneless but oddly soothing gibberish, and then Gottfred found himself humming the lullaby his mother had sung to him. He hadn’t even known that he could remember it. Before long, the child was asleep.
After another few miles, the child began to whimper and squirm. With the movement, a stink came to Gottfred’s nose. His heart sank within him as his mind shrank from the implications. He tried to ignore the obvious for as long as he could, but before long the child was crying irritably and thrashing about so vigorously that Gottfred feared he would drop it beneath the mule’s hooves.
Reluctantly, Gottfred reined in and painfully dismounted. He glanced up and down the road, looking forlornly for assistance, then sank to the ground with a sigh. Laying the child on his cloak, he lifted the hem of the smock. Untying the linen breechcloth, Gottfred felt his gorge rise. His ears burned with shame in the cold air. Here he was, a soldier inured to the gore and offal of a score of battles, gagging at the soiled linen of a baby!
Well, the child was a boy. He didn’t have to think of it as “it” anymore. He cast the soiled rag aside, cleaning the little lad as best he could with the scrap of bandage he had in his pouch. He ended up tearing a piece from the tail of his shirt to knot about the little fellow’s loins. The child laughed merrily and gave Gottfred a look that could only be described as grateful.
Another three miles brought them to a small roadside inn as the sun sank low. Gottfred remembered the inn. It was near his own farm, but it had a new roof and a new south wall, and he did not recognize the proprietor. Obviously this region had not escaped the calamities of war. But, just as obviously, the people were carrying on with life. A twinge of fear for his own farm, and for Margrethe, pulled at his bowels. He thrust it aside as he dismounted and carried the little boy inside.
The common room was empty save for one farmer. Pulling two small coppers from his pouch, he tossed them to the landlord and said gruffly, “Bring whatever that will buy.” Thus he disposed of the last of his fortune. Gottfred sat near the fire, pulling the lad from the sling and setting him down on the bench. The landlord’s wife brought a mug of beer, a loaf of coarse black bread, and a bowl of onion broth. Then she set down a small horn cup. “Goat’s milk,” she said, “for the little one.”
The beer and bread were good, the broth savory. Gottfred hadn’t realized how hungry he was. The boy was hungry too. He gulped greedily at the milk as Gottfred held the cup, and clamored for bits of bread. Gottfred could hardly feed himself he was so busy meeting the demands of the little tyrant. But somehow, he didn’t mind. Something about the little fellow calmed fears and agonies that had been locked long in Gottfred’s heart.
“Mama, why do we light the candle?” Gottfred looked up to see a girl of five or six watching the landlord’s wife place a candle on the windowsill.
“To light the way for the Christkindlein as he wanders through the world tonight. Now, Gretchen, off to bed with you.” The woman hugged the girl and sent her up the stairs. Gottfred looked at the landlord in some surprise.
“Is it the night before Christmas, then?” Gottfred had lost track of time since his injury.
“Ja!” said the landlord, looking at Gottfred as if he were some kind of simpleton.
“Ja, ja, ja, ja!” burbled Gottfred’s companion happily. He threw a fragment of bread in Gottfred’s face and giggled.
Finished with the meal, Gottfred slung the boy and remounted as twilight deepened in the innyard. The child was playing with the pine twig. “Strange,” thought Gottfred to himself, “I thought he had dropped that miles ago.” He shrugged and set the patient beast in motion.
In the last of the light, they approached a small wood through which the road passed. Gottfred knew that wood. He knew that in the midst of it the road forked. The right fork led to his own farm. The left continued to the next village. As the trees closed around him, the tightness about his heart returned. What would he find down the right fork? A burned out shell and unburied bones? A whole but empty cottage, devoid of Margrethe? A cottage full of Margrethe and a new husband? Gottfred agonized for what seemed an eternity, then decided to take the left fork.
There it was. The fork in the road was at hand. In the gloom, Gottfred saw a young girl standing at the juncture. He stopped the mule in front of her. Her face seemed to shine with a subtle glow in the soft darkness. Beneath her dark woolen shawl her hair was gold and her eyes blue. She smiled at Gottfred and reached out her hands.
“You have found him, then! Thank you! I will take him now.” At the sound of her voice, the dozing child cried out in joy.
“La-la!” he cried, “La-la!” He struggled to climb free of the sling.
“He is yours, then?” asked Gottfred in wonder. “So far from where I found him?”
The girl laughed, a musical sound in the evening shadows. “We belong together, he and I,” was all she said as Gottfred handed the squirming child down to her. As the girl made to turn away, the little boy squawked and held his arms out to Gottfred. “Gug-gug!”
The world seemed to stop as Gottfred looked at the imploring boy. He hardly moved as the girl handed him back up one last time. The child threw his arms around Gottfred’s neck and laid his little golden head on the man’s shoulder.
The calluses began to unravel. Freed of its bonds, Gottfred’s heart began to break. The shutters of his mind splintered and fell. Tears coursed down the hard man’s leathery cheeks. Great sobs racked his body as the poison of years of cruel war was purged from his soul. He scarcely noticed when the girl took the child from him for the last time. He did not feel her lay her hand gently on the stump of his leg. He did not hear her say “Go home, Gottfred.” He did not notice when the mule began to amble down the right-hand fork.
Then the cottage was in front of him. His cottage, whole and unscathed. Blinded by tears and darkness, he dismounted from the mule. He missed his “footing”, the wooden leg collapsing under him and sending him to the ground. As he struggled to rise, a woman opened the cottage door. She looked fearfully at him for a moment, then shrieked, “Gottfred!” and ran to him. Strong hands pulled him up. Strong arms embraced him as if they would crush the very life from him. A strong voice, strong even through sobs, repeated his name. “Gottfred, Gottfred, Gottfred…”
As he struggled to see Margrethe through his tears, her voice changed.
“Gottfred!” she called, as though to someone far away. “Gottfred! Papa is home! Come and meet your papa!”
And then Gottfred the Elder saw, standing in the cottage door, the son he did not know he had. The lad looked to be a sturdy fellow, about four years old. He had his mother’s eyes, but his father’s husky frame. As the maimed soldier clung to his wife and gazed at his son, he noticed the candle in the window.
“The Christkindlein,” he thought. “Could it be? No! Not for one such as I. And yet…”