Outside the Orangerie, a surprise was waiting for her, all three trucks as spick-and-span as could be, the mud and dust of the previous day scrubbed off, everything oiled and greased and shining.
“Did the Tommies do this for us?” asked Kate wonderingly.
“I did,” said Alice, heaving her duffel into the White truck, with the hard tires they had acquired at such cost. “Last night, while you were all cooking oatmeal. They’re all greased and oiled and filled with essence. And there’s extra essence in cans in each machine.”
Kate goggled at her. “How on earth did you get the gasoline?”
Alice gave a little half shrug. “They were packing up the supply dump in Ham yesterday, so Emmie and I went along and asked them. They were really quite nice about it.”
Nice didn’t even begin to describe it. Kate hadn’t even thought about fuel. There was so much she hadn’t thought about. “Alice, you’re a wonder.”
Florence staggered up, holding a large crate in each hand. “I’ve got the hens.”
“I thought we might need food for the people on the road,” said Emmie breathlessly, bent nearly double lugging two five-gallon drums of milk. “I’ve packed our entire supply of milk and all the bread, biscuits, and chocolate I could find. The major has some Tommies carrying the rest of it over for us. I told him to put it in the jitney.”
“I’ve got first-aid supplies and gas masks,” said Julia briskly, swinging her doctor’s bag into the back of the jitney.
“I brought blankets,” said Nell, balancing a large pile of the aforementioned item on her head. “Someone is bound to need blankets.”
“And I’ve brought a portable stove,” said Anne. “And my tools. Just in case we need them.”
Kate felt her throat close up. “You’re all wonders,” she said.
She looked at the six other remaining members of the Unit, huddled together around the trucks, each and every one of them a wonder, each and every one of them her sister. They had been strangers to each other when they arrived seven months ago, but now she knew each of them down to the bones, just as they knew her, better than she had ever known anyone.
The Tommies were loading the trucks, piling in the food and duffel bags and crates of hens. It felt horribly, dreadfully final.
Kate drew herself up to her full five foot one, looking at all that remained of their Unit. “They won’t drive us away,” she said fiercely. “We’re not leaving, not really. We’re just stepping away for a bit. The Boche have no idea what they’re up against in us.”
One of Florence’s roosters stuck his head out through the slats of his crate and let out a loud, defiant crow. It pierced the dawn, resounding over the guns and the thrum of the motors.
Nell let out a shout of laughter. “Chanticleer agrees. Take that, Boche!”
“Even the Unit’s hens don’t admit defeat,” said Alice nobly. “Nell, you’re with me in the White truck?”
“That one’s a rooster, actually,” said Florence, swinging up behind the wheel of the Ford truck. She grinned at Kate. “Mr. Buff Orpington himself.”
“You’ll never let me forget that, will you?” asked Kate, settling herself behind the wheel of the jitney, Emmie next to her and Julia behind.
The major touched his hand to his cap. “Good luck. Godspeed.”
“And you,” said Kate. She had no idea what awaited him or them; all she knew was that all of them needed all the luck they could get. Luck and—what had Mrs. Rutherford called it?—grim determination. She nodded curtly at the major. “Kick those Boche back to Berlin for us.”
The small procession of trucks bumped over the moat, through the great gates, down the long alley of fallen trees. Kate was glad she was driving; it kept her from craning her head back to look, to try to memorize it all: the ruin of the castle in the mist; the Orangerie, where they had kept their trucks and held classes and their clinic and their parties; Marie’s tumbledown house, where she had cooked for them on her trusty stove before they had set up the kitchen; the church where they had sung their canticles and celebrated mass.
Just a few days, Kate told herself. The British never let go of anything. And there were the foresters and the engineers and the aviators—all the men who had danced and come to supper and drunk soup out of their tooth mugs—all those brave men holding the line.
But then they hit the road to Ercheu and saw the soldiers, companies upon companies of them, dragging their way wearily down the road, away from the front. There was a Scots band, their drums silent against their chests, their bagpipes furled, and somehow that struck Kate as the most haunting thing of all, their silence, when they had last seen them marching bravely toward the front with kilts swirling and bagpipes screeching.