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“Wait, wait,” said Emmie, laughing, as her arm was half tugged off in one direction by a six-year-old, her skirt pulled by a toddler. “I’ve treats for you all. Let me just get to my haversack.”

Monsieur le Commandant had slipped them seven hundred francs for bêtises, as he called it. Get yourself some scented soap, he’d said, some fresh hair ribbons. So Emmie and Nell had gone to Amiens and indulged in an orgy of shopping: picture books for the lending library, whatever chocolates could be had, dolls and tops and hobby horses.

“This one is for you.” Emmie dug in her haversack and produced a doll, a real doll with a porcelain head, for Blondine. “Mind you don’t let your little brother get at it.”

It was such joy to make her rounds and see everyone—well, not well settled, but better settled. There was canvas stretched over gaps in the masonry; new mattresses donated by the Red Cross and distributed by the Unit; little potbellied stoves replacing open fires. It was cold, bitter cold, but the children all had warm coats and mittens and mufflers, admittedly a somewhat motley collection, knitted by eager if not always expert alumnae, but warm, all warm.

The milk had been delivered, Emmie was assured. The new storekeeper—she liked her history, eh? They’d made up stories for her and sent her away satisfied.

What made up? contested Blondine’s grandmother from her habitual mattress. It was all true.

Pauline, whose baby still hadn’t come, rolled her eyes at Emmie.

Emmie promised Pauline she’d see the doctors visited within the week, not that there should be any trouble, this was Pauline’s sixth, but all the same.

Family by family, Emmie made her rounds, checking off names, taking notes, making lists of items still needed.

She saved Mme Lepinasse for the very last. Although the older woman was a gregarious soul, she lived away from the rest, up the hill in the ruins of the castle. She’d started as scullery maid and risen to cook in the castle; she’d lived there most of her life and she’d not be leaving it now, she’d told Emmie, when Emmie had urged her to move down to the valley, to live with her cousins in the village. She had her cat for company and her memories, and that was enough.

It was starting to snow as Emmie trekked up the steep path to the castle, thick, beautiful flakes like something out of a Hans Christian Andersen story.

Her haversack was lighter now, most of her gifts distributed, save for a packet of tea and some precious DeWitt’s biscuits for Mme Lepinasse, who did so love to put the kettle on and have a good gossip, telling stories of the glory days of the castle, of Count Sigismund, who sounded like a lovable old autocrat, and his daughter, Aurélie, filching food from the German invaders to feed the village, like a French Robin Hood.

Mme Lepinasse never spoke of the deformed fingers of her left hand, broken, one by one, when the Germans had questioned her about the whereabouts of Aurélie de Courcelles, who had escaped during the great fire that consumed the castle. Or of the husband who had been shot by the Germans in retaliation. It was only the happy stories she told.

“Madame?” Emmie was out of breath by the time she reached the summit. This was why no one from the village ever visited. The hill was steep, the path treacherous, the road that had led from village to castle purposefully destroyed by the Germans.

The castle was beautiful from below, less so at close range. Even two years on, one could smell the soot from the fire that had consumed a thousand years of history in one go. Mme Lepinasse lived in what had once been a guard room, a stone box with narrow windows, which had the benefit of retaining most of its roof, a luxury most of the houses in the village didn’t boast.

Madame’s cat met Emmie at the canvas flap that served as a door, bumping the backs of her legs to push her inside. The stove was cold; the room was freezing. Usually, the stove would be crackling, a rushlight lit, Mme Lepinasse sitting in her chair sewing. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Emmie finally spotted her on her mattress in the corner of the room, huddled under a blanket.

“Mme Lepinasse!” Emmie rushed to her side, grasping her cold hand.

Mme Lepinasse tried to sit up, which was a mistake. She fell back against the pillows, coughing and coughing, a cough that shook her whole frame.

“Hush, hush, don’t trouble yourself, here, let me get you some water. I’ll make you a cup of tea, you’ll feel better after a cup of tea. . . .” Emmie tried to pretend she hadn’t heard the dreadful rattle in Mme Lepinasse’s throat, the rattle that meant pneumonia.

How long had she been sick, how long had she been here like this? A day? A week? Had Ethel even known to come up this way? Probably not. It was Emmie’s own fault. She ought to have told her. She ought to have been here herself.

“Don’t worry, I’ll have you warm and comfortable in no time.” Murmuring useless nothings, Emmie tucked the blanket around the other woman and poked at the stove, which had gone out entirely. There was an old-fashioned flint sitting next to the stove. Emmie hadn’t the faintest idea how to use it.

With a surge of relief, Emmie remembered the matches in her haversack. Emmie made a fire as Mrs. Rutherford had taught them, sticks layered, little spills of paper to catch the flames, struck a match, and set it alight.

The kettle was bone-dry. So was the ewer. There was no water in the house. After checking on her patient, who called her Aurélie and grabbed at her hand, Emmie extracted herself and found the castle well. The Germans hadn’t bothered to poison it; it was too far away from the village. She held a cup of water to Mme Lepinasse’s lips, got her to drink a few sips, wiped away the spill.

By the time she had made the tea, in the broken Limoges teapot Mme Lepinasse had salvaged from the wreckage, Mme Lepinasse had lapsed into unconsciousness, her chest rising and falling with difficulty, her breath still showing in the air. Emmie stoked the stove, throwing in whatever she could find.

The snow fell harder and harder, drifting through the makeshift doorway. Emmie tried to pin the canvas down with a stone, but the wind howled through the edges. On her thin mattress, Mme Lepinasse stirred and whimpered, calling for Vincent, for Aurélie.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Emmie told her, kneeling by the cot, and Mme Lepinasse seemed comforted, at least a little. Emmie stayed by her, frozen in place. She tried to pray, bits and pieces floating through her head. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . It was dreadfully shadowy here. He maketh me to lie beside green pastures. There had been green pastures here once. It was horrible to think what had been done, all the waste of it, so much lost, and why? She couldn’t even remember why anymore, only that here was a woman who had once had a home, a family, and lived now in a ruin with only a cat and a stranger to hold her hand, to sit by her in the valley of death.

Emmie didn’t know what time it was or how long she had been there. There was no way to measure time in that little room, with the old wooden shutters barred, the canvas pinned down, the only light the feeble glare of the stove.

“Mme Lepinasse?” Emmie whispered, but the only sound was the stove, and the hand in hers had gone limp. “Madame, wake up, it’s me, la dame Américaine.”

She wasn’t going to wake up, not ever, and Emmie knew it, had known it as soon as she had walked through that door and seen her lying there in that icebox of a room, forgotten, abandoned.

Emmie lowered her face to the dead woman’s hand and cried hopeless tears as the cat licked the salt from her cheeks.