The noise was like nothing Kate had experienced before. It was terrible, crash after crash after crash, unceasing, unrelenting, driving out all thought, leaving nothing but raw fear and a dreadful instinct to huddle and hide.
Emmie lifted her face from her knees and shouted over the din. “Will—someone told me they meant to pound the Germans to keep them from advancing. If it ever came to it.”
“I hope they can,” said Kate through numb lips, but her words were lost in the sound of the guns.
The barrage continued all that day and into the evening as they went about their rounds, visiting villages, directing the teams harrowing the fields, hauling furniture donated by the Red Cross to the poor of Douilly, trying to pretend this was just another day. Julia doled out headache powders without comment, possibly because no one would have been able to hear it if she had commented.
When the guns finally stopped, a little after breakfast on Friday morning, the very silence made Kate’s head hurt.
It felt very strange to hear the normal everyday noises, like the sound her boots made against the thin floor of the barrack, or the way her breath seemed to rasp in the suddenly still air. Next to her, Emmie was filling her rucksack with handkerchiefs, soap, and combs for her weekly hygiene class at the new civic center in Verlaines.
Kate took a deep breath. “I guess your Englishmen beat them off.”
Emmie paused, looking at her over the rucksack. “I only have one of them,” she said. “One Englishman, that is. I can’t take credit for all of them.”
“You can take credit for whatever you like.” Kate bit her lip, trying to find the right words. “Emmie. I never thought you were a child—I never meant to treat you that way. If I did, I’m sorry.”
Emmie’s rucksack hung off one shoulder, the empty strap dangling. “I know you didn’t mean to.”
She hesitated, but before she could finish her thought, Florence barged through the door as though she still lived there.
“Kate? Kate? Those blasted guns spooked the horses. Emmie, Alice is waiting for you with the jitney. She says you’re going to be late.”
“Thank you,” said Emmie. She looked at Kate and gave her head a sad little shake. It felt like farewell.
“If you look east and I look west, we should be able to find the horses,” said Florence, cheerfully oblivious.
At least tramping through the mist hunting for horses gave Kate an excuse to stomp heavily.
By the time she’d been hunting for an hour, Kate was sweaty and cross. Her hair was falling in scraggles from her chignon and her shirtwaist clung damply to her back in a most unpleasant way. Kate just hoped Florence was having more luck than she was. They had parted ways somewhere just past the water tower, Florence going left while Kate went right.
The blasted horses could find their own way back as far as Kate was concerned. She was meant to have been out with the store an hour ago.
Except that they really did need those horses for plowing.
Sighing, Kate flapped her jacket a few times for some cool air, shook a stone out of her boot, and trudged forward, through what once had been woods and was now mostly scrub. The mist was so thick she could scarcely see a yard ahead of her, making her flounder and trip over things. She had just stubbed her toe on yet another felled tree—another thing she could hold against the Germans—when she heard the incredibly welcome sound of hoofbeats.
“Well, thank goodness for that,” she muttered.
It was certainly coming on very fast for a plow horse. Out of the mist not a yard in front of her emerged a magnificent beast, all heaving flanks and glossy withers.
Kate had a healthy dislike for horses—one tended to when one’s father was kicked in the head and died—but even she could tell that this was a beauty of its kind.
The horse’s rider reined in sharply at the sight of her.
“What are you doing out here?” demanded Emmie’s captain without preamble. “Didn’t you get our message? The colonel sent a groom an hour ago.”
Kate put her hands on her hips, sweaty, disgruntled, and generally not in the mood to deal with high-handed Englishmen. “I’ve been chasing horses,” she said sharply. “So I have no idea what your colonel wants. If it’s tea, he’ll have to call another day.”
The horse sidled. Captain DeWitt got it back to where he wanted it to be. “Where is—the rest of your Unit?”
“If you mean Emmie,” said Kate, “she’s gone to Verlaines to teach a class.”
The captain said something he really ought not to be saying in front of a lady, even if that lady was covered in mud and sweat.