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Emmie looked for her watch, which she always kept pinned to her breast, but it must have come off somewhere, abandoned with all the other debris of lives interrupted. Not knowing the time made it worse somehow; she was aware of time working against her, every minute stretching into hours as the shadows grew longer and the guns grew louder. A Boche plane flew so low over their heads that Emmie could see the black cross on the tail.
How long did it take a German army to march? How much time did they have left?
Even with books and toys scrounged from the social center, the adults were getting anxious, the children restless. Some were threatening to just return to their houses, others to take to the road by themselves. The British troops were marching out, all of them. Emmie had never felt anything like the fear that came with the sound of those retreating feet, knowing that at any moment they might be left to their own devices with the German army pushing down upon them.
Where was Alice?
The jitney rattled into the square, looking even more dilapidated than usual.
Alice was covered head to toe with dust, her lace collar askew, thoroughly frazzled. “I didn’t mean to take so long—the roads are nearly impassable. Everyone in the world seems to be going in both directions at once.” She looked down at Emmie, suppressed fear in her eyes. “One of the men told me they’re sending every man they can to the front.”
Emmie took a deep breath. “Can we fit everyone on, do you think?”
The sun was setting already, the village abandoned except for the Philippots, back there in their marriage bed, waiting for the Germans to come. Emmie just managed to cram everyone on, the jitney riding low on its sorely pressed springs. Somehow, it moved. Slowly, but it moved. The road from Verlaines to Ercheu had never been so lovely. It seemed unfair that it should be so beautiful, just now, when they had to leave it, when a German army was coming to wreck it all. The sky was rose and gold and purple over the fields they’d worked so hard to plow, those fields with all their promise.
It was twilight, that most melancholy hour of the day. Her crazy rush of energy was gone; Emmie felt her spirits plummeting with the sun, as the warmth of the day waned, leaving her cold and spent, here in this broken-down truck filled with people who had lost their homes yet again, who they had tried so hard to help, only for it to come to this.
“Mademoiselle Aimée?” It was one of her students, nine years old but suddenly very young again. Emmie could see she was trying not to cry, hugging a makeshift sack to her chest like a doll. “Mademoiselle Aimée, will we come home again?”
“As soon as the English get rid of the Boche for us,” Emmie said, trying to sound as encouraging as she could.
But it was hard. It was so hard. She’d never seen anything so weary as the British troops they passed as they made the achingly slow journey from Verlaines to Ercheu.
They were lovely, those troops. They moved aside to let the jitney go through, lifting their hats when they could, waving, and raising ragged cheers.
“Good old America!” called out one officer, lifting his cap to them as he and his men rumbled past in an open truck, and Emmie waved back, trying not to cry.
“It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said, to cheer herself as much as Alice.
“Ye-es,” said Alice, looking worriedly over her shoulder. There were shells whizzing overhead, English shells, aimed at the Germans. “But I’ll be very glad to get back. They won’t make it as far as Grécourt, will they?”
“They can’t,” said Emmie, but they’d only just dropped that last group at Ercheu, painfully late, nearly nine, when they heard the rumble of a big gun coming from quite the wrong direction.
It was dark now, full dark, the night broken only by the flashing lights of airplanes overhead, battling to the death. Emmie squinted into the darkness, feeling cold to the bone. “Was that—did that come from Grécourt?”
“It can’t be,” said Alice, but she coaxed the jitney as fast as it could go. She made a little noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I’d go faster if I could, but I’m not sure the poor old jitney could take it.”
“They’re all right—I’m sure they’re all right.” It was impossible to think of the Germans at Grécourt, their Grécourt. This was their little bit of Smith in France, and to think of it being invaded was like trying to imagine the Germans marching their way into Northampton. Emmie harbored a momentary fantasy of a phalanx of professors fighting off the Germans, beating them off with umbrellas and Latin textbooks.
There was an army camion stuck in the ditch by the gate—a British one. Emmie felt light-headed with relief. She’d half expected to find the Germans there, ready to march them off into a German prison. This was a Grécourt transformed, dotted with lights, like something out of a fairy tale, people moving about, carrying flashlights, striking tents. The area around the moat was so thick with vehicles Alice could barely get the truck through. It was like every tea and every dance they’d ever had multiplied by ten, the courtyard swarming with uniformed men, except that their guests didn’t usually bring a giant antiaircraft gun with them.
Kate came hurrying out. “As you can see, we have visitors, about two hundred of them.” She paused by the side of the jitney, working very hard at refraining from expressing alarm or concern or relief. “Alice said you were taking villagers from Verlaines. You got them all out?”
“All except Monsieur and Madame Philippot. They wouldn’t go.” Emmie lowered herself out of the jitney, feeling about a hundred years old, every muscle aching. “Poor Anne—we had to abandon her curtains. And I gave away Nell’s books.”
“They’ll understand,” said Kate. She started to reach for Emmie and then let her hand fall. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have you back. Both of you.”
Emmie swallowed hard and gave Kate a big hug, as if they were at Smith again, when life was simpler. In a muffled voice, she said, “We heard the gun and thought Grécourt was under siege.”
Kate swiped at her eyes and gave a crooked smile. “You could call it that. We have two hundred hungry Tommies billeted on us. Julia is dealing with scratches and fevers, Nell is making up beds, and Anne is running the canteen. I’ve sent our basse-cour people on to Roye, with Marie to boss them.” Some of Kate’s brave facade crumpled. “Zélie may never forgive me for parting her from Minerva. She had to be carried protesting into the wagon. I felt like Lady Macbeth.”
“It had to be done—they couldn’t possibly have taken the goat with them. You can’t imagine what the roads are like. You did it for her own good.” With all the khaki uniforms bustling about around them, their insignia indistinguishable in the darkness, Emmie couldn’t help but ask, “Will—Captain DeWitt—he’s not here, is he?”
“No, he’s not,” said Kate with genuine regret. “He did come by this morning—he wanted to make sure we knew the Germans were coming. He came riding out of the mist like something out of one of your books. Young Lochinvar and the Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled into one. Poor man. It was utterly wasted on me—he pretended he was here for all of us, but it was you he wanted.”
It was so hard when Kate was being kind. “Did he leave any message for me? Did he say where he would be?”
“He had to go back to the line. He told me to tell you something about compasses,” Kate added as an afterthought. “The points of the compass always come together in the end.”
