Captain DeWitt nudged the duckwalk with one booted toe. “What is this?”
Emmie looked up at him in surprise. “Duckwalk. Isn’t that what you use in the trenches to keep your feet dry?”
“By a certain definition of dry.” The Captain detoured around the duckwalk. “That isn’t duckwalk.”
“The Germans said it was,” said Emmie, stepping blithely onto the duckwalk and tripping over a protruding twig.
Captain DeWitt grabbed her arm before she could go over. “It was clearly a mistranslation. Or a booby trap. You’ll break your neck on that if you’re not careful.”
“We’re careful,” Emmie promised, just as Liza came running from the Orangerie, launched herself onto the duckwalk, and went into a long skid that had her arms waving like propellers. Miraculously, she managed to right herself and scramble through the door of her barrack.
Captain DeWitt raised an eyebrow at Emmie.
“Mostly careful,” amended Emmie, smiling helplessly at Captain DeWitt. She felt strangely giddy, as if that smile had taken over her whole head, turning it into a sort of balloon. She could just float up and away—only her legs were quite firmly planted in mud up to the middle of her rubber boots and her hem was so sodden she couldn’t float anywhere.
“Forgot my tooth mug!” Liza panted, waving it at them from the door of the barrack. “Who’s this? You’re not the engineers, are you?”
Emmie made a note to herself to take Liza aside at some future point and gently suggest it wouldn’t be such a dreadful thing to wear her spectacles. “Miss Lewes has arrived! And this is Captain DeWitt.”
“Oh, like the biscuits?” Her face lighting up, Liza started forward, tripped over the edge of the duckwalk, executed a complicated sort of flip, and landed hard on one shoulder. “Oooooph.”
“Liza!” Dropping Miss Lewes’s parcels, Emmie flopped down on her knees in the mud beside her.
“Don’t worry—I’m fine—” Liza made an attempt to lever herself up, turned an alarming color of gray, and collapsed back down.
“No, you’re not.” Captain DeWitt was on Liza’s other side. “Can you move your arm?”
Liza tried, and immediately turned gray again.
“If I may?” Captain DeWitt rapidly and impersonally examined Liza’s arm and shoulder. In an undertone, he said to Emmie, “It’s not the arm. I think it’s the collarbone. You have a doctor on-site?”
“Yes, two of them.”
Miss Lewes elbowed Captain DeWitt. “Let me take a look. I’ve set a few broken hocks.”
“Hocks? Like ham?” Liza made another attempt to sit, and rapidly subsided.
“That’s terribly kind of you,” said Emmie to Miss Lewes, “but would you mind getting Dr. Stringfellow? She should be at the dispensary. It’s the little temporary house next to the Orangerie. Down that path that way. It would be a great help.”
For a moment she thought Miss Lewes might protest, but she evidently saw the wisdom of it, because she sprang to her feet and slogged off through the mud, largely in the right direction.
“Well done,” said Captain DeWitt quietly, and Emmie decided not to remind him that she wasn’t one of his soldiers. “We need to get her out of this mud—and get that bone set. Do you think you can bear it if we lift you?”
Liza started to nod, and then stopped abruptly, her lips an alarming bluish white.
“It’s a good thing we haven’t far to go,” said Emmie cheerfully. “We’ll have you in your own bed in just a tick.”
“On the count of three,” said Captain DeWitt. He took one side while Emmie took the other, sliding their hands into the mud under Liza’s back and knees. “This is going to hurt.”
His eyes met Emmie’s across Liza’s prone form, and she could read what he was thinking as loudly as if he had said it. There was no room for error. No slipping in the mud, no losing their grip or their balance. This had to be done quickly and cleanly.
Emmie gave a short, firm nod.
“Three,” said the captain, and together they rose to their feet, as smoothly as they could, which wasn’t very smoothly at all. Liza made a gurgling noise, her face going very white and her eyes rolling back in her head. “Together now.”
Together, they carried her through the open door of the barrack. Emmie thought vaguely that the first time she had seen the captain had been just after Margaret had keeled over. It was much easier carrying Liza with the captain than it had been carrying Margaret with Kate—she and the captain were nearly of a height; there was no need to stoop or jostle. They moved together as one.