“Courcelles,” said Kate simply.
“Miss Moran?” Dr. Stringfellow beckoned brusquely. “You’re needed.”
“They’ve been wanting to speak to you. I don’t know what about,” said Emmie. “You go. I’ll manage. Margaret? Your poor cold hands! Let’s get you inside and warmed up.”
It was hard getting Margaret out of the truck. She did little to help herself; well, she couldn’t, poor thing. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking, and it took Emmie wrapping an arm around her waist and guiding her step by step to get her back to the barrack, tripping over things and slipping in the damp grass as they bumbled along together like the participants in a three-legged race—if one of the participants was shaking with fever, that was.
“It’s all so useless.” Margaret leaned heavily against Emmie as Emmie tried to maneuver her through the door of the barrack without tripping on her own skirt. “What are we really doing here? We’ll never really be able to do anything.”
“Just one more step now—almost there.” Margaret’s arm around her neck was nearly choking her. “Let me feel your head—I don’t think you’re running a fever. You do seem awfully cold, though. Let’s get you wrapped up in some blankets. Fran left hers. . . .”
“Lucky Fran,” said Margaret violently, and Emmie stared at her in shock. Margaret made a quick, apologetic gesture. “I didn’t mean that. Only I did. It’s just—what are we doing here?”
“Why don’t you sit down.” Emmie guided Margaret to her cot. “Think how wonderful it was yesterday, all of us together and all the villagers so happy.”
“Happy?” Margaret stared up at Emmie, her pupils dilated. “I can hear that girl screaming.”
Emmie bit her lip. “I made a mistake. But the other children—”
“They weren’t like children at all! They were like ghosts. They’re all ghosts here. We’re living with ghosts. No, not ghosts, monsters. It’s hideous. It’s all hideous. Why are we here? We didn’t have to be here.”
She was shaking so hard Emmie could hear her teeth chattering. “Coffee,” said Emmie. “What you need is some hot coffee. . . .”
“No! I couldn’t. I’ll be ill.”
“No coffee, then,” said Emmie soothingly, wondering if she ought to try Alice’s sherry or if that would only make Margaret feel worse.
Margaret was talking again, in a small, hoarse voice. “I thought if I could be busy and useful, then it might not be so awful, but it just gets worse and worse and worse. It was all Beth’s idea, but then Beth didn’t come. I never wanted to be here, I shouldn’t be here. I’m not making anything better by being here, I’m just driving around in circles, recording horrors.”
“Remember the singing?” asked Emmie desperately. “Remember the canticles? Ils ne l’auront jamais, jamais, ce pays des preux, notre France. Wasn’t it tremendous? It made everyone feel so much better—”
“Did it?” Margaret made a choking sound. “We can’t sing everything better. I thought we could—I thought we could do what Mrs. Rutherford said—we could bring them hope!—it all sounded so easy—but the boy I saw today—he wasn’t human anymore. Do you know what they’d done to him? They took an explosive and made him hold it. And then they set it off. He lost his arm and half his face but he didn’t die. That’s the worst of it”—Margaret’s voice rose to a painful pitch, on the edge of hysteria—“he didn’t die.”
Emmie’s stomach twisted. “This was—this was in Courcelles?”
It was Emmie who had insisted they go to Courcelles. She should have been in Courcelles, not Margaret.
“I know it’s a war. You don’t need to tell me it’s a war. But these aren’t soldiers. These are just normal people. And there was no point to what they did to that poor boy. It wasn’t a battle. It was just cruel. They maimed him for the fun of it.”
“Maybe it was an accident. . . . Maybe they didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“They did,” said Margaret sharply. “That was what the villagers said. You didn’t see it. You didn’t see him. It was inhuman, Emmie. It was evil. I don’t want to be here. I don’t—I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m not cut out for it.”
Emmie sank down on the bed next to her, feeling the cot sag under her weight. “You don’t need to go back to Courcelles. You should never have been there. It was my idea. I’m sorry.”