Silence for the Dead(19)

“That wasn’t a madman,” I said, “speaking on the platform that night. We were moved to tears.”

It was true. Even I, who hadn’t cried perhaps in years, had cried that night in Trafalgar Square, where we’d gone to see Jack Yates speak as the winter of 1917 settled in. It was supposed to be a recruitment speech, a war bond speech, the kind we’d heard countless times in the past three years. England will endure. England will not be defeated. Your brave soldiers need you. But Jack’s speech had been different. He’d been over there, he’d fought, he was one of us, and he was the only one, in those four long years of propaganda, who spoke to us with honesty. Who had actually meant what he said.

“It was a written speech,” he said to me.

“Of course it was. And you wrote it.”

Surprise made him pause. “What makes you say that?”

“Do you think,” I said, insulted, “that I don’t know the difference between a speech written by a government official and a speech written by a real soldier?” Something about the entire situation made me angry: that magnificent man in Trafalgar Square, his breath puffing icy clouds as he spoke, moving us with his words—that man here, reduced to a madhouse, telling me it had been nothing. “Do you think I’m that stupid?”

“I have no idea.” He rubbed his eyes, his fingers slowly pressing into the sockets. “I don’t even know who you are.”

He didn’t care. My anger stuck in my throat. “Never mind. I’ll take the dishes and go.”

I had turned and moved back to the tray when his hand landed on the dressing table next to me. “Wait.”

I froze. He was too close, his body too near my own. Heat was coming off him as if he had a fever. His arm was solid, the sleeve of his uniform shirt rolled up past the elbow, his forearm sinewy and strong. I felt my back go rigid, my neck begin to knot. I didn’t speak.

“Wait,” he said again, as if I’d said something, and for the first time I realized he was speaking slowly, as if dragging words up reluctantly from his brain. “Trafalgar Square. My speech. Let me explain.”

I swallowed. Drunk, a shrill part of my mind screamed. Or on a narcotic. He outweighs you by three stone and could overpower you as easy as breathing. He could put those hands around your neck in an instant. Damn him anyway. None of the things you believed in mattered to him at all. Get out. Get out now.

“There’s no need,” I managed, my voice stiff and strangled.

His hand touched my bare forearm, and I jumped. “It’s just—”

“Don’t touch me.”

He didn’t let go; I didn’t think he’d even heard me. His fingers were long and agile, the nails cut short, the hand an almost perfect study in the dim light, curling to touch the sensitive skin on the inside of my arm. It wasn’t a tight grip, but I thought of the last time a man had touched my bare skin and I felt like screaming. The fact that my blood raced under Jack Yates’s fingers made it worse.

“You’re right,” he said, the drag still on his words, just a slight lag that a casual observer might not notice. He was fighting it hard. “I did write the speech. I thought they’d censor me, cut me off somehow, but they didn’t. I think they knew what I would say. I believed it.” He took a breath, began to quote the speech itself. “‘I’m just a regular soldier . . .’”

“Let me go,” I said.

“‘. . . but despite this war, in this new world, I am more. I can be more. You can be more. Anyone can be more . . .’”

I turned. I thought I was fast, but—drugged or not—he was damnably faster. He caught my wrist before I had the ghost of a chance to slap his face.

“What is your name?” he said, his dark eyes looking into mine. His pupils were dilated, but somewhere in there I saw a spark that made me want to look away.

“Kitty Weekes,” I said, holding his gaze.

“Kitty Weekes,” he said slowly. “I think you’re in some sort of trouble.”

“Nurse Weekes.”

I whirled. Matron stood in the open door behind me, the massive bulk of Paulus Vries at her shoulder. Wedged in on her other side was Boney, her eyes nearly bulging out of her narrow face.

We made quite a tableau, Patient Sixteen and I: I filthy and covered in mold, my hair askew, my uniform damp, my wrist in the grip of a man wearing only a loose shirt and a pair of trousers. I wrenched my hand and he let me go.

“Nurse Weekes,” said Matron again. “You do not have the proper clearance to be in this room.”

“I—”

“According to Nurse Shouldice, you claimed the proper clearance. An untruth.” Matron’s eyes blazed with real anger, and I wondered what had so dearly set her off. “Nurse Fellows tells me the procedure has been clearly explained to you, so there can have been no misunderstanding. Have you any explanation for your actions?”

“Of course she does,” Jack Yates said from behind me. “I asked her here.”

Boney was nearly choking with indignant energy; this was likely the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a month. But Matron narrowed her eyes, her anger cooling under a swift look of uncertainty. “Mr. Yates. The nurses at Portis House are required to follow the rules. You needn’t cover for this girl.”