I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
—From a letter, unsent, found among the things of Captain Fitzwilliam DeWitt, 2nd Battalion, Durham Light Infantry
March 1918
Grécourt, France
They’d scarcely been asleep an hour when the guns started again.
Kate struggled up, trying to make sense of where she was and what was happening. It was Grécourt, but she was in her clothes, the room was jammed with extra cots, and the guns were rumbling nearer than she’d like.
Feeling hot and cold all at once, Kate sat up, reaching for the coat-covered lump that was Emmie. Alice and Florence were already stirring, rubbing their eyes and pinning up their hair, but Kate knew from college that Emmie could sleep through just about anything. Even, apparently, a machine-gun barrage.
“Emmie—Emmie.”
Emmie grumbled, trying to stick her head under her pillow.
There was a rat-a-tat-tat on the door, and the major entered, manfully averting his eyes, even though it was pitch-dark and they were all fully clothed. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “But the Boche seem to be on the move again.”
“Then I guess we ought to be too.” Kate’s voice felt scratchy. It hurt to even think of leaving. But the guns—they were close. Closer than she had ever heard them. Three miles away. Five if they were lucky. She wondered what had fallen in the night, which of their friends were dead. “We’re already packed. We can be out in fifteen minutes.”
Alice stuffed her knuckles into her mouth, making a muffled sound of distress.
Kate fished in her pocket, digging out a set of heavy keys. “Here.” She thrust them at the major. “These are the keys to the cellar. You’ll find our supplies down there. Take anything you can use. Give any blankets and food to the soldiers, and medical supplies to the hospital corps. As for anything that’s left . . . if you have to retreat, burn it. Burn it all.”
“The seeds—” said Alice faintly, and stopped. They’d all spent weeks sifting seeds into tiny little packets, thousands and thousands of them. Weeks of effort, gone. All their hard-won supplies, all their Hague parcels, all the extras they’d wrangled from the Red Cross, gone.
“What Kate said,” said Emmie, heroically coming to Kate’s aid. Her hair was out of its pins and half-down around one shoulder. “We’d rather lose everything than have it fall into the hands of the Boche.”
“I suppose so,” said Alice, hugging her duffel to her chest. “It does seem a shame, though. Think of all those nubias the Bangor Committee collected for us.”
“Oh heavens, not the nubias,” said Florence. “Even the Boche couldn’t possibly want the nubias.”
“What’s a nubia?” asked the major, sounding so politely bewildered that Kate had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Or possibly crying.
“I’m just going to take my duffel to the truck,” Kate said in a muffled voice, and staggered out before she could disgrace herself.
Behind her, she could hear Alice explaining, “A nubia is a sort of woolen hood—they’re not worn very much anymore.”
“Ah, I see,” said the major gravely, as if she were explaining a military tactic of utmost importance.
Kate paused just outside the barrack, her shoulders shaking, her chest tight. She was about to cry over the blasted nubias, and she couldn’t, not now, not when they needed her to be strong, even though she had no idea what she was doing, what she was meant to be doing.
She wanted Mrs. Barrett; she wanted Dr. Stringfellow; she wanted anyone who could tell them what to do and where to go. Grécourt looked different already, the anemones churned up by the tread of two hundred soldiers, tents dotted around the lawn. Maybe, if she closed her eyes and wished hard enough, she could make it a week ago: the ground bright with flowers; slipping into story time and holding Zélie on her lap while Nell read to the basse-cour children in French about Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf; joking with the Unit around the supper table about their amazing ability to differentiate between types of guns.
But it wasn’t a week ago. The Big Bad Wolf was here, he was on the march, with his big, big teeth and big, big guns, and maybe she wasn’t the best the Unit could have, but she was what they had right now.
“Is it too heavy?” asked Emmie, coming out, lugging her own duffel.
Kate fumbled for the bag, grateful for the predawn dark that hid her face. “N-no. Just awkward. I can’t seem to get a good grip.”