“Merciful heavens, I hope so,” said Nell, yawning. “If I never see another tin of beans, it will be too soon.”
Kate rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “They’ll need breakfast.”
Julia pushed herself off the wall against which she’d been leaning, half-asleep on her feet. “We’d best get started, then, hadn’t we?”
“Noooo . . .” said Nell, but Julia gave her a light shove.
“If I can make oatmeal,” said Julia, “so can you.”
Emmie had no idea what had happened between Julia and Kate in Paris, but whatever it was, she had never seen Julia pitch in like this before, like she was actually part of the Unit and not just there for medical experience. Julia tucked up her sleeves and boiled and scoured with the rest of them. Her sharp-tongued jibes galvanized them into moving when they needed it, and Emmie didn’t even mind the sting.
Oatmeal. Cauldrons of oatmeal. Lakes of coffee. They left it all sitting in buffet form in the Orangerie and staggered down the duckwalk to their barracks, only remembering just in time that they’d given up one barrack to officers, shoving Alice’s and Florence’s cots into Kate and Emmie’s room. There was barely room to move between the cots and their bulging duffel bags.
“You packed my duffel?” said Emmie, looking at Kate.
“Just in case.” Kate paused for a moment and then added, reluctantly, “The major said we should be ready to go if needed.”
Their eyes met. They both knew what that meant.
“They meant us to evacuate this morning,” said Emmie. “Alice and I just ignored them and carried on.”
“So did we—and then we weakened their resolve with tea and beans,” said Kate. “They were hardly going to insist once we started feeding them. But I doubt that will work again if the Germans come closer. We should get what sleep we can. While we can. Alice, what on earth are you doing?”
Alice shoved another paper into the fire. “I’m burning my letters so the Germans won’t get them.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Kate, nobly refraining from pointing out that the German infantry probably wasn’t terribly concerned with Alice’s private correspondence. Emmie had to tamp down an entirely ridiculous fit of the giggles at the thought of the Boche puzzling over Alice’s letters from her sister, looking for codes in crochet patterns.
“I’ve got the chickens in their crates,” said Florence heartily as she plumped down on her own bed. “And I’ve sent the cows and goats on to Moyencourt in care of Marie’s son. We don’t want the Boche to get them. Just a precaution, of course.”
All just a precaution. They knew it wasn’t, though. They’d moved past precaution somewhere around nine that morning.
Emmie lay down on the bare springs of her bed, pulling her coat over herself in lieu of a blanket. The mattress was currently on the floor of the dining room, as was the blanket, both being used by exhausted British soldiers who needed them far more than she did. She was still wearing the shirtwaist and uniform she had put on to teach a hygiene class in Verlaines a lifetime ago, before the world had exploded in blood and ash.
In the silence, Emmie thought she could hear the sound of marching feet, the German army, thousands of them, bearing down on Grécourt, pitiless, unstoppable, laying waste to everything in its path like a beast from a child’s nightmare.
“Good night,” she whispered, and closed her eyes and tried to pretend it was yesterday, when Will was well, and all was well, and the Germans weren’t marching inexorably toward them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I was never afraid before I met you. But now I am. I know we said we wouldn’t speak of the war, but the war is here, the war is coming for us, and I’m afraid as I was never afraid before, when there was only my own miserable life at stake. I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid for myself. I’m afraid I’ll never see you again, never hear your voice again, never have the chance to tell you, in my own weak, miserable words, how much I love you.
I’ve been trying to take solace in others’ words. I have my John Donne here with me （not Shakespeare, I promise）， reminding me that our souls are joined even if our bodies are parted, circling like the points of a compass. I never told you that you are all the points of the compass to me: my east, my north, my south, my west. My America. My newfound land. My Emmie.
I’m babbling now. I can’t seem to think clearly in the midst of all this, and time is short. So if you can hear only one thing through the rubble and the noise, I hope you hear the echo of this: