Page 55

But no, as long as the money was being paid, it shouldn’t matter where it was coming from.

They were laying the table for dinner, Emmie trying to remember not to set places for Fran and Alice, the table looking so much emptier with their chairs removed from it, when the White finally lurched over the moat.

Emmie left Anne Dawlish and Miss Baldwin laying out plates and ran out to greet them. “Oh, thank goodness you’re back. Did you have a puncture? You’ve missed Alice and Fran. They left an hour ago.”

“It’s Margaret,” Kate said without preamble, sliding down out of the White into a patch of mud. “She’s not well.”

Emmie hurried to the other side of the truck, where Margaret sat curled up on the bench, her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands, her thin back shaking.

Emmie looked back at Kate with concern. “Oh goodness, what happened? Is she ill? I can get the doctors—”

Kate lowered her voice, forcing Emmie to bend to hear her. “She’s been like this since Courcelles. She had a fit of hysterics, and then threw up by the side of the road, and she hasn’t spoken since.”

“That pot-au-feu did taste a little off last night. . . . Poor thing, I think I have some bicarbonate left.”

“It’s not the food. I think she’s having what the French would call a crise de nerfs.”

“An anxiety attack?” It sounded so much better, so much more elegant, in French, but the result was the same in either language. “What happened?”

“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.”