Page 9

“We are entering a war zone,” said Mrs. Rutherford practically, with that disarming smile that made everything seem just as it ought. “We’d be fools not to be nervous.”

“Well, yes, but . . . that is, I think we’d all feel better if . . . it would be such a useful thing to know what we’re to do once we get there.”

“But didn’t I tell you already?” said Mrs. Rutherford, already half-distracted by whatever it was she was writing. Emmie shook her head as hard as she could. “I thought I had. Oh well, if you really think it would be an aid to morale . . .”

“Oh, I do,” said Emmie fervently. “I really do.”

Mrs. Rutherford called them together in the saloon the next day.

“Our voyage has almost ended,” she announced. “And I must say, I’m very proud of how you all have conducted yourself. Just this morning, Dr. Van Dyke took me aside to tell me how fine he thinks you all are.”

“Dr. Van Dyke?” Emmie murmured to Kate.

“The old goat with the beard and the monocle,” Kate whispered back, and Emmie had to suppress a nervous giggle.

“You are just the right sort, he said, not neurasthenic enthusiasts, but with a natural dignity, and modesty without prudery.”

“Neurasthenic?” wondered Liza.

“Barmy,” Maud hissed back, not quite sotto voce.

Emmie did her best to look dignified and modest, but wondered just how Dr. Van Dyke would know. Or Mrs. Rutherford, for that matter. Hadn’t they seen Miss Patton’s sherry flask or Miss Cooper’s hunched shoulders? Or maybe they were right and Emmie was wrong and this was all completely natural and normal when one was entering a war zone, and not the least—what had he called it?—neurasthenic.

“It has been brought to my attention that you might wish to have more information about our intentions.” Mrs. Rutherford tapped the map spread out on a tea table, weighted down with books on four sides. “We shall make our home here, in the village of Grécourt. When the Germans retreated, they laid waste to the surrounding area—and then they sent the villagers home to live in it. Not all the villagers. The fit ones they took with them to Germany. The very young, the very old, the infant, and the infirm. Those are our charges.”

“Pardon me.” Maud was peering at the map over Mrs. Rutherford’s shoulder. “Did you say we’d be here?”

She jabbed at the area with a finger.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “That is why it is marked with an X.”

“But—those lines over there—”

“Are the frontline trenches,” said Mrs. Rutherford. She turned away from Maud. “Now, as I was saying . . .”

“But—we’re practically in the trenches!”

“Actually,” said Miss Dawlish helpfully, leaning so close to the map that her nose practically touched the print, “if you read the legend, it looks to be about ten miles away.”

“Nine,” corrected Mrs. Rutherford briskly. “Now—”

“Nine?” Maud appeared to be having difficulty speaking. “No one told us we’d be offering aid from the frontline trench!”

“We can hardly help villagers rebuild their lives from Paris, can we?” said Mrs. Rutherford in the same tones of exaggerated patience Emmie imagined she used on students who mistranslated Homer. It was a tone Emmie had heard frequently from her own professors, in a variety of subjects. “Now, our entire usefulness rests on our ability to travel between the villages. Our first order of operation is to retrieve our trucks. Our chauffeurs will go directly to Brest to fetch the trucks.” She consulted her notes. “Miss Shaw, Miss Patton, Miss Cooper, you’ll be in charge of the Ford trucks. Miss Moran, Miss Englund, you will share responsibility for the White truck.”

Kate sat very still, her face dangerously expressionless. “I’ve never driven a White truck. Only a Chalmers touring car.”

“And I’ve never driven a Ford,” chimed in Liza. She thought for a moment. “Or a White.”

“You’ll learn,” said Mrs. Rutherford, obviously considering this an entirely irrelevant interruption. “As for the rest of us, we shall be engaged in seeing to our papers and securing the necessaries we need to bring to Grécourt. We shall need upwards of sixty chickens and at least four cows.”

“Cows?” echoed Maud. “Did you say cows?”

“Or vaches, if one wants to get into the local spirit.”

No one did.

Mrs. Rutherford sighed. “Cows have one great advantage, Miss Randolph. They create milk. We will have eleven villages in our charge, with nearly two thousand souls relying upon us. There are babies without mothers; children wasting away from want of good, nourishing food. So we shall have cows.”