Page 125 of Band of Sisters

In the silence, Emmie thought she could hear the sound of marching feet, the German army, thousands of them, bearing down on Grécourt, pitiless, unstoppable, laying waste to everything in its path like a beast from a child’s nightmare.

“Good night,” she whispered, and closed her eyes and tried to pretend it was yesterday, when Will was well, and all was well, and the Germans weren’t marching inexorably toward them.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I was never afraid before I met you. But now I am. I know we said we wouldn’t speak of the war, but the war is here, the war is coming for us, and I’m afraid as I was never afraid before, when there was only my own miserable life at stake. I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid for myself. I’m afraid I’ll never see you again, never hear your voice again, never have the chance to tell you, in my own weak, miserable words, how much I love you.

I’ve been trying to take solace in others’ words. I have my John Donne here with me (not Shakespeare, I promise), reminding me that our souls are joined even if our bodies are parted, circling like the points of a compass. I never told you that you are all the points of the compass to me: my east, my north, my south, my west. My America. My newfound land. My Emmie.

I’m babbling now. I can’t seem to think clearly in the midst of all this, and time is short. So if you can hear only one thing through the rubble and the noise, I hope you hear the echo of this:

I love you.

—From a letter, unsent, found among the things of Captain Fitzwilliam DeWitt, 2nd Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

March 1918

Grécourt, France

They’d scarcely been asleep an hour when the guns started again.

Kate struggled up, trying to make sense of where she was and what was happening. It was Grécourt, but she was in her clothes, the room was jammed with extra cots, and the guns were rumbling nearer than she’d like.

Feeling hot and cold all at once, Kate sat up, reaching for the coat-covered lump that was Emmie. Alice and Florence were already stirring, rubbing their eyes and pinning up their hair, but Kate knew from college that Emmie could sleep through just about anything. Even, apparently, a machine-gun barrage.

“Emmie—Emmie.”

Emmie grumbled, trying to stick her head under her pillow.

There was a rat-a-tat-tat on the door, and the major entered, manfully averting his eyes, even though it was pitch-dark and they were all fully clothed. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “But the Boche seem to be on the move again.”

“Then I guess we ought to be too.” Kate’s voice felt scratchy. It hurt to even think of leaving. But the guns—they were close. Closer than she had ever heard them. Three miles away. Five if they were lucky. She wondered what had fallen in the night, which of their friends were dead. “We’re already packed. We can be out in fifteen minutes.”

Alice stuffed her knuckles into her mouth, making a muffled sound of distress.

Kate fished in her pocket, digging out a set of heavy keys. “Here.” She thrust them at the major. “These are the keys to the cellar. You’ll find our supplies down there. Take anything you can use. Give any blankets and food to the soldiers, and medical supplies to the hospital corps. As for anything that’s left . . . if you have to retreat, burn it. Burn it all.”

“The seeds—” said Alice faintly, and stopped. They’d all spent weeks sifting seeds into tiny little packets, thousands and thousands of them. Weeks of effort, gone. All their hard-won supplies, all their Hague parcels, all the extras they’d wrangled from the Red Cross, gone.

“What Kate said,” said Emmie, heroically coming to Kate’s aid. Her hair was out of its pins and half-down around one shoulder. “We’d rather lose everything than have it fall into the hands of the Boche.”

“I suppose so,” said Alice, hugging her duffel to her chest. “It does seem a shame, though. Think of all those nubias the Bangor Committee collected for us.”

“Oh heavens, not the nubias,” said Florence. “Even the Boche couldn’t possibly want the nubias.”

“What’s a nubia?” asked the major, sounding so politely bewildered that Kate had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Or possibly crying.

“I’m just going to take my duffel to the truck,” Kate said in a muffled voice, and staggered out before she could disgrace herself.

Behind her, she could hear Alice explaining, “A nubia is a sort of woolen hood—they’re not worn very much anymore.”

“Ah, I see,” said the major gravely, as if she were explaining a military tactic of utmost importance.

Kate paused just outside the barrack, her shoulders shaking, her chest tight. She was about to cry over the blasted nubias, and she couldn’t, not now, not when they needed her to be strong, even though she had no idea what she was doing, what she was meant to be doing.