On and on and on they came, the blessés, each ambulance turning and going back to the front for more, as Tommies, blank-faced with exhaustion, wrestled with sticks and canvas to make more tents to house the onslaught of wounded.
Was Will somewhere, in one of those tents? Emmie had never asked him, she realized with sudden panic. She’d never asked him what exactly they did at the front, where he was to be stationed, how he was to serve. They’d never talked about that, only about nonsense. He was in the Durham Light Infantry, he’d told her that much, with its insignia of a bugle surmounted by a crown. But she had no idea what any of that actually meant, where he was, what his part had been in whatever battle had taken place.
Why hadn’t she asked?
Because he couldn’t tell her, because he wasn’t allowed to tell her, and because neither of them had wanted to think about it, about the reality of all this, only the newly harrowed fields and the latest exploits of Zélie’s pet goat and the woman Emmie had found in Douilly who hadn’t any bed but somehow, for some inexplicable reason, had ten chairs, all piled one on top of the other.
“I think I’m going to be ill,” said Alice faintly. She was holding the steering wheel very hard, her hands as white as wax.
Emmie took one of Alice’s hands between her own. “You’re not going to be ill. Let’s go to headquarters and find out what’s going on.”
At headquarters, everyone was packing up, hastily sweeping documents into dispatch boxes, yanking out telephones and telegraph wires, running this way and that and bumping into each other. Emmie managed to catch the arm of a lieutenant who had been to tea at Grécourt. She couldn’t remember his name, but he had a friendly, freckled face.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“Oh, Miss—” He couldn’t remember her name either. “You didn’t hear? The Boche have pushed down from Saint-Quentin. We’re trying to pack up and move HQ to Nesle before the Boche get here.”
“How long?” Emmie thought of all those people on the road, all the people in Verlaines and Eppeville and Villette who had no idea what was coming toward them.
“I don’t know—you’d have to ask—”
“What is this? A tea party?” His commanding officer strode in, staring at Emmie and Alice with unconcealed fury. It was the horrible major who had interviewed them all back in January, to make sure they weren’t spies. “What in the devil are you doing here? This is no place for women! We sent a messenger. You were meant to clear out—not walk right into the path of the ruddy Germans!”
“Wait.” Emmie grabbed him by the arm. “What about the neighboring villages? Have they been warned to evacuate?”
“How the devil would I know? They’re like rats, they can tell when to leave the sinking ship—but you clearly can’t, so I’m telling you now. Get. Out.”
They got.
“We need to get back to Grécourt and warn them,” said Alice, turning the crank of the jitney with all her might.
“No.” Emmie wasn’t sure where the certainty came from; she just knew. She knew what she had to do, even if she was scared out of her wits. “Didn’t he say someone had sent a messenger? They’ll be all right at Grécourt. But the people of Verlaines won’t. Once the Germans take Ham, the next place they’ll go is Verlaines. We can’t just leave them there.”
Alice paused, her hand on the crank. “But the major told us to get out.”
“He told us to get out of Ham. He didn’t say anything about Verlaines.” They’d been with their people this long; they couldn’t abandon them now. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. The British Army clearly has a great deal on its hands right now. I say we leave them to their work and we do ours. We can move people in the jitney faster and farther than any of them can go on foot.”
Alice straightened, her eyes meeting Emmie’s. “We’ll need gasoline,” she said, and Emmie felt her heart lift, a crazy sort of energy pulsing through her. “I think I know where we can get some.”
The boys at the supply dump were packing up, but when Alice explained the need, they stumped up fifty gallons of essence, strictly under the table, no ration books required.
“Saves us carrying it,” they said, and Emmie had to resist the urge to hug them.
All along the road to Verlaines, they stopped to pick people up—women with toddlers clinging to their hips, an old woman clutching a sack of linens, an elderly man hobbling with a stick who told them he had lost his leg in the last war against the Prussians and he’d be damned if he’d let them take another one—until the springs of the jitney were groaning with the weight and Alice warned Emmie that the old truck couldn’t possibly manage another. They decanted their burden in the town square of Verlaines, urging them to wait, that they would take them on farther when they could.