The Crimea was nothing like home.
When Thomas first laid eyes on the battlefield, his breath left him in a gasp. The hills rolled in endless white and mud, snow bleeding into trenches carved like open wounds across the land. Cannon smoke hung thick in the air, blotting out the horizon. The cries of the wounded and the thunder of musket fire were constant, a hellish chorus that replaced the familiar sounds of London's market cries and clattering carts.
The boy from Whitechapel became a soldier in days. He learned to march through the mud until his boots split at the seams. He learned to fire and reload with numb fingers while cannonballs churned the ground around him. He learned that a friend could be laughing beside you one moment and gone in the next, torn apart by shrapnel.
Every night, Thomas lay awake in the damp trenches, the cold gnawing at his bones. And every night he whispered Mary's name to himself, over and over, as if the very sound could shield him from death. He carried her face in his mind the way others carried talismans or prayers. She was his anchor, the reason he forced himself to rise each dawn and charge into the fire once more.
It was in the assault on Sevastopol that his world cracked. The guns screamed from the fortifications, and the air filled with fire and lead. Thomas advanced with his regiment, musket in hand, the roar of command barely audible above the chaos. Then came the blast.
Shrapnel tore through the line. Men fell screaming, clutching at limbs mangled beyond recognition. Thomas was thrown to the ground, his ears ringing. Pain like molten iron seared through his arm. He looked down, dazed, and saw the ruin of it—flesh torn, bone shattered. Blood poured freely, staining the snow crimson.
The field surgeons worked swiftly, without pity. He was held down as the saw bit into him, and his voice rose in an inhuman cry that echoed across the camp. When it was over, he lay pale, drenched in sweat, staring at the stump where his arm had been. Half a man, he thought bitterly. Half a man for Mary.
But he lived. Against all odds, against the grave that beckoned so many, Thomas Whitaker endured. He fought through fever, through infection, through despair. And when peace finally came, when the war was declared over and medals were pinned to his chest, Thomas stood—scarred, broken, yet alive.
They offered him a promotion, spoke his name with respect. But all he wanted was to go home. "Send word to London," the officers said. "Tell your family you survived."
Thomas shook his head. He thought of Mary's face, of the day he had left her in the snow. He wanted—no, he needed—to see her joy in person, to feel her arms around him when she learned he had come back from the dead.
"No," he said softly. "I'll tell her myself."