Their captain shook his head. He was friends with Florence, Emmie knew. He’d loaned Florence his mare for riding, since he couldn’t use it at the front. “It was all such confusion. They came on us out of the mist. We never saw them coming.” He looked at Emmie, his face twisted in anguish. “They got our guns.”
“You’ll get them back,” said Emmie, as she might have to one of the children. “If there’s anything we Americans know about old England, it’s that you never let go of what you think is yours.”
The captain mustered a weary grin. “And if there’s anything we know about you Yanks, it’s that you never let well enough alone—and thank goodness for it.” They both snapped upright as a dispatch rider hurried in. “Yes? What news?”
“What is it?” Emmie asked anxiously as the captain scanned the short message, his face going very, very still. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. She mentally began to calculate how many loads they had left. Alice had gone three rounds so far.
“We’re to retreat,” he said, looking around at his weary men. “They’re five miles away—or were, half an hour ago. All right, men. Onward.”
From house to house Emmie went, urging people out, trying to stay calm and reassuring even as the sound of the guns became louder, knowing that every minute brought the Boche closer to Verlaines.
“Would you like a book for the journey?” she asked, knowing that Nell would understand, that she wouldn’t mind her books being given away. It broke Emmie’s heart to see a fourteen-year-old boy hug a battered book of fairy tales close to his chest, holding tight to the book as he was forced to leave his home, again, never knowing if he would ever come back or what there would be to come back to.
Emmie hurried people to the town square, distributing milk and boiled eggs as they waited for Alice to return with the jitney, hunting up one woman’s missing hens and another’s misplaced sack of clothes, trying to guess how many more loads it would take, how many people they could fit on the jitney before the springs gave way. One elderly couple refused to leave. Emmie begged and pleaded but they were obdurate.
“My wife is ill,” said Monsieur Philippot. “She is dying. I cannot move her.”
“I’ll take her on the mattress,” Emmie promised recklessly, hoping they could fit the mattress into the jitney. She’d deal with that when they came to it.
Monsieur Philippot shook his head. He had been a prosperous man before the war and his dignity hung around him like an old suit that was too large for his wasted frame. “This is our marriage bed, the bed in which our children were born. She cannot leave and I will not leave her.”
Emmie left them some milk and bread and begged them to come to the town square if they reconsidered. The jitney was loaded and loaded again, packed as full as the springs would bear, but it wasn’t enough, they couldn’t fit everyone on, especially not when Mme Lebrun refused to be separated from her prize hens. Emmie might have fought with her over it, but there was no point to it; they’d have to do another round anyway.
It was a terrifying feeling watching Alice drive away, trying to be bright and cheerful for the group that remained, who all looked as terrified as Emmie felt.
Emmie looked for her watch, which she always kept pinned to her breast, but it must have come off somewhere, abandoned with all the other debris of lives interrupted. Not knowing the time made it worse somehow; she was aware of time working against her, every minute stretching into hours as the shadows grew longer and the guns grew louder. A Boche plane flew so low over their heads that Emmie could see the black cross on the tail.
How long did it take a German army to march? How much time did they have left?
Even with books and toys scrounged from the social center, the adults were getting anxious, the children restless. Some were threatening to just return to their houses, others to take to the road by themselves. The British troops were marching out, all of them. Emmie had never felt anything like the fear that came with the sound of those retreating feet, knowing that at any moment they might be left to their own devices with the German army pushing down upon them.
Where was Alice?
The jitney rattled into the square, looking even more dilapidated than usual.
Alice was covered head to toe with dust, her lace collar askew, thoroughly frazzled. “I didn’t mean to take so long—the roads are nearly impassable. Everyone in the world seems to be going in both directions at once.” She looked down at Emmie, suppressed fear in her eyes. “One of the men told me they’re sending every man they can to the front.”