Her mother caught her wrist. “What about Peter? Have you no message for him?”
Eleanor hesitated a moment, then shook her head. That would surely be message enough. Her mother’s grip tightened slightly. “Eleanor,” she whispered, filling the word with loss. “How I wish things could have been different. Now it’s too late.”
It was unexpected, this show of maternal emotion. All her life Eleanor had looked for it, hoped for it, and now there was no time left. “I’ll be home in a fortnight, Mama,” she promised. And then what would happen? Her mother would not be any happier with her if—when—she became a doctor with the countess’s support. Nothing would change. She’d still be a disappointment in her mother’s eyes. Her mother knew it, too—her hands went slack on Eleanor’s sleeve and dropped away, falling back to her lap like two dead doves.
There was no more to say, and no time. There was a knock at the door, and Eleanor went to open it. Francis Ross stood in the doorway, impeccably dressed. He touched the brim of his hat without smiling. He indicated her case to the chauffeur behind him with the point of a gloved finger, and the driver nodded to her as he stepped forward to take her luggage, turning smartly to carry it to the shining automobile at the end of the walk. “Shall we?” Mr. Ross swept a hand toward the car, and Eleanor nodded and drew on her black kid gloves. She preceded the secretary to the car and waited while the chauffeur opened the door for her. Eleanor got in and settled herself on the leather seat, and the secretary rounded the car and got in next to her.
She looked up at the house. Her mother stood at the window. Eleanor waved, but the curtain fell shut.
They drove the short distance to the station in formal silence. The chauffeur handed her out. “Thank ye, miss,” he said briefly, glancing at Francis Ross to make sure he wasn’t observing. He gave her a smile. “We’re all fretting about the young viscount, especially now, after Lord Cyril’s death. Bring ’im back safe, eh?” When Ross got out of the car, the chauffeur stiffened to attention, his face falling back into placid lines.
“Are you ready, Dr. Atherton?” Francis Ross asked. He escorted her to the platform. She watched people taking their leave of loved ones before they boarded. Other than the stiff secretary, there was no one here to see her off.
He handed her a leather folder. “These are the necessary letters and warrants from her ladyship, and your itinerary through to Calais. From there, you’ll take the train to Arras, and ask for further directions at the station there. Viscount Somerton is at the number forty-six Casualty Clearing Station at Sainte-Croix. I believe he still uses the family name, rather than his title, and is listed there as Lieutenant Chastaine.”
She took the folder. “I see. Thank you.”
He tipped his hat again. “Have a good journey, Miss Atherton,” he said, and left her. She boarded the train, found the right compartment, and took her seat, her heart thumping in her breast, her hands clasped tight together on her lap. The whistle blew and the train lurched forward, leaving the platform and the little crowd of well-wishers behind, nosing along the track, gliding into the open countryside in a cloud of noise and black smoke.
As the train pulled away from Thorndale, she saw her father’s car parked on the road. He stood beside the dented bumper, watching the train depart.
Eleanor put her gloved palm against the glass and wondered if he’d see it.
If he did, he gave no sign.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Calais
Adozen times, she read the itinerary her ladyship’s secretary had prepared. Thorndale to Leeds, Leeds to London, London to Folkestone, Folkestone to Calais, then on to Arras, where she’d have to inquire about transportation to take her the last few miles of the journey to the Casualty Clearing Station at Sainte-Croix. The whole trip would take three days, possibly longer if there were delays crossing the Channel—or on the rail lines in France, with troops moving up, or ammunition trains rushing more bombs and bullets to the front, or wounded being carried back to hospitals in the rear. Even in England there was danger, the chance of a surprise enemy attack or a zeppelin raid. German U-boats lurked in the Channel, waiting to pick off British ships as they butted back and forth across the narrow waterway. There was always the chance she might not reach France at all, that she could become one more casualty of the endless war.
She scanned the Yorkshire countryside as the train rushed south, memorizing it just in case. The familiar landscape of hilly fields bordered by ancient stone walls and filled with flocks of winter-weary sheep gave way to gray cities that huddled under shrouds of smoke as factories chuffed and coughed under the endless strain of making materials for the war. Boxes and crates marked munitions stood in towering stacks at the stations, ready for shipment to the front lines. So many bombs and bullets. There was no need to ponder the harm they could do to human flesh—the evidence was all around her. At every station new-minted recruits stepped aside to make way for columns of hollow-eyed soldiers hobbling on crutches, or pushed by VADs in wheeled chairs, or carried off the trains on stretchers, bandaged and broken. Mothers shuddered and pulled their children away.
Eleanor looked at the recruits and thought of Charlie Nevins. Like him, they seemed far too young to be going to war. They were pink-cheeked and fresh scrubbed, their eyes soft and wide, their new uniforms clean and stiff over thin shoulders squared under the weight of patriotism, pride, and expectation. Entire families stood in their own little battalions around “our boy,” holding him, touching him, protecting him for as long as they could. Mothers sobbed as the trains pulled in and the lads boarded.
The ones who’d already been to war watched the tender farewells, gray-skinned and grim, their eyes hard as flint. Their uniforms were worked in, the khaki wool rough and rumpled, the cuffs frayed. They carried themselves with terrible weariness or a fierce facade of prickly pride that made them look as if they’d be blown apart now by a kind smile or a mother’s kiss. They stared at the green lads from behind cigarettes gripped tight between grimy fingers and looked away when the women cried. Eleanor shivered at the sight of them.
Surely being in France, seeing wounded men, battlefields, a hospital so close to the front lines, would change her as well, harden her or break her. She wouldn’t know until she got there, stood in the places where the hollow men had been, saw what they’d seen. A frisson of nausea made her swallow.
Handkerchiefs fluttered as the train departed again, white against black smoke, khaki uniforms, and the gray sky.
Did hope have a color? Did love, or joy? Those things seemed in short supply, like rationed butter. So were courtesy and manners. At every slight, every late train or jostled woman on a crowded platform, the cry was always the same, a chant, an excuse, or a blessing. “There’s a war on!” The precise meaning was determined by the tone, whether it was yelled in anger or frustration, whispered in sorrow, or sung with hubris or as a dark jest. The phrase had taken the place of Please or Thank you or Excuse me.
On the train, as their mothers disappeared in the distance, the young soldiers’ smiles turned manly and knowing and their faces hardened. They squinted, took the measure of the lads around them as they bummed cigarettes or matches to light them, and coughed at the first drag. They slouched in their seats, feigned sleep, and pretended they weren’t afraid.
It was late afternoon when Eleanor’s train arrived at Folkestone, her last stop in England. Bellowing sergeants rounded up their men, restless and stiff after hours on the train, and marched them away to wait for the boats. Civilian passengers bound for France were hustled into a crowded waiting room that smelled of sweat, tobacco, and fish pies.
And then they waited.
Ships traveled across the Channel at night to avoid German U-boats. Eleanor read the posters while she sat for interminable hours, memorizing the instructions in case there was a need to abandon ship. Many ships had already been torpedoed.
She must have
drowsed. A porter shook her awake. It was dark, and the ship was waiting.
Eleanor had never sailed before—she’d never done any of the things she was doing lately. She stared out at the dark waters, along with the watchers with their heavy binoculars looking for signs of enemy submarines in the black water, and wondered if this would be her last voyage as well as her first. She stood with the soldiers who crowded the rails, looking back at the twilit coast of England as it retreated into the mist. She wondered how many of these eager young men would come home again, and how many were crossing the sea forever. They traveled in a slow zigzag pattern toward the dark coast of France.
She was almost limp with relief when they reached Calais and the boat eased its way into port, sidling carefully past hospital ships lit with the red and green lights to identify them as medical vessels. They’d sail as soon as they were full, taking the wounded home to England, perhaps for good, their war over—if the U-boats allowed them to slip past.
It took an hour for the soldiers to disembark, form ranks, and march away. When Eleanor left the boat with the other civilians it was long past dark.
In French, Eleanor asked a harried female porter for directions to the train station. “There are no taxis. You must walk.” The porter offered directions in rapid French, and Eleanor followed her points and hand gestures and left the station, hauling her case and her medical bag with one hand, holding on to her hat with the other. The streets were busy, even in the dark. Perhaps especially in the dark. The blackout was nearly total, and with so little light to see by, the men were bolder here. They called out to her as she rushed past, in French and in every conceivable English dialect, including the colonial accents of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. It didn’t matter what she looked like, just that her silhouette was female.
Her cheeks heated at the crude suggestions they made. Her stomach rumbled for something to eat, but she didn’t dare stop. She reached the train station and tumbled up to a ticket booth. “Arras?” she asked, all but breathless.
The ticket seller regarded her without interest. “Là-bas,” he said blandly, pointing toward a crowded platform filled with soldiers.
“Is there—” She swallowed, remembering the soldier’s rude calls on the street. “Is there a waiting room for ladies? A place for tea, or coffee?”
He regarded her over his cracked spectacles. “Zer eez a whar on,” he said, as if it explained everything. “You will have to wait on ze platform.”
“And the train? What time does it depart?”
He shrugged. “It must come in before it can go out. It has not arrived. Priority is given to trains transporting troops and supplies, then to hospital trains. Sometimes there is damage to the tracks, or other delays. Zer eez a whar on.”
“As you’ve said,” she replied, snappish with hunger and fatigue.
“Just so,” he agreed dully. He turned away to shuffle papers, his black-clad back a clear dismissal.
Outside, the platform was blue-gray with cigarette smoke. Soldiers lounged on couches made by piling their packs together. Their rifles, new, clean, and gleaming, were standing upright in tidy triangles like bundles of mown hay.
Eleanor looked down the tracks for the train, but beyond the station there was nothing save the dark and empty winter landscape. She found a spot by the pillar and sat primly on her suitcase, balancing her doctor’s bag on her knees, and did her best to be as invisible as possible.
She listened as the recruits chattered and laughed. “I promised my da I’d kill a hundred Huns,” one said. “My brother’s only killed forty. He’s with the 166th, the Liverpool Scottish. Been here since Third Ypres, last summer.” He pronounced the name of the town as “Wipers.”
“You should’ve signed up as a gunner,” one of his mates suggested. “Those blokes can kill a hundred men with just one shell. You’d be done in no time.”
The original lad grinned. “Aye, but we’re the brave ones, eh? Getting up close, looking ’em in the eye. We’re trained killing machines. Bayonets, Mills bombs, machine guns, rifles—I’d use my bare hands if I had to. Won’t take me long to do a hundred. I intend to go home covered with medals, carried on the shoulders of a dozen cheering sergeants, just so I can give them orders for a change.”
“Got a girl at home?” someone asked.
“I got a sister,” one of the lads said.
“Pretty?” another asked.
“Aye—she looks just like me.”
There was a general groan of horror, followed by jokes about how the unfortunate lass would never find herself a sweetheart with a face like that. Several of the lads offered to write to her anyway with indecent proposals that made Eleanor blush. Even the poor lass’s brother was laughing. Did Edward joke about her that way with friends—or worse, with Louis? Though they were twins, she looked nothing like her brother—he was fair-haired, and his charming grin and handsome face broke hearts. His eyes were so blue they made women sigh. Hers were plain hazel—A color that puts one in mind of a swamp, he’d teased her once. He told her she was too serious, her smile too infrequent. She had no experience with romance, no idea how to flirt or play the coquette to attract male interest. Edward had assured her that it didn’t matter a whit, since she was not the kind of girl any man would find appealing, even in the dark, even if he was desperate. He predicted she’d end up an old maid.
She’d heard the same from her male classmates, about how being clever never kept any woman warm at night. The one who’d come up with that witticism was far less clever than she was, but still the quip had stung her feminine heart, stuck there like a dart. If she wasn’t pretty or womanly, or appealing, didn’t it make sense to try even harder to prove her worth as a doctor?
She wondered why on earth Peter Ellersby had wanted to marry her.
Her ears pricked as the young soldiers quieted and their comments dropped to whispers, their laughter to rough sniggers. When she glanced at them, she found them grinning at her, their eyes roaming over her prim suit and dull hat.
“Skooz-eh me, mam’zelle—parlay voo?” one called out, and the others laughed. Hot blood rose in her cheeks. She held her tongue between her teeth, turned her eyes forward, and stared at the far wall.
“She doesn’t understand. You need proper French lessons,” one of the others suggested. “And I don’t mean talking. My brother says that’s the thing to ask for. You say, ‘Do you teach French, mam’zelle?’ and for a few francs, she’ll take you upstairs and—”
A train whistle screeched like an incensed maiden aunt, and Eleanor shot to her feet. The soldiers rose as well as a train chuffed into the station at last. She saw the red cross painted on the front.
“Wounded!” a sergeant called. “Get back, lads, and give ’em room.”
CHAPTER NINE
The recruits were silent as the train arrived, their grins gone, their eyes wide.
Eleanor held her breath as the doors opened. The terrible smell of blood and wounds and sweat overwhelmed the fog of cigarette smoke and hot metal.
There was another smell as well, one Eleanor didn’t know. “Gas,” the sergeant in charge of the recruits said, glancing at her. “Poor blighters. It sticks to their clothes. You’d best keep back, miss. Cover your nose with your hankie, turn away, and don’t look.”
But she did look. The walking wounded got off the train first, helping one another, or assisted by orderlies and nurses. The recruits stared.
Then came the stretcher cases, carried off the train with as much care as possible. She saw men swathed in bandages that covered their faces or the stumps of missing limbs or wrapped their battered bodies. Their eyes were dull and dead as they looked dispassionately at the new men, took in the clean, whole bodies, the bright collar badges, the cigarettes, the shiny new boots.
The orderlies laid the stretchers down in rows along the platform and went back for more.
; “Anyone got a fag?” one of the stretcher cases croaked to the recruits. The effort made him cough. Eleanor noted the bandages around his torso, arms, and neck. He had cuts and bruises on his face and head as well. Burns had singed his hair down to the scalp in places, and the skin shone raw and red.
One of the lads stepped toward him. “I do, mate,” he said. He bent to put a cigarette between the patient’s cracked lips and searched his pockets for a match.
The man on the ground was breathing shallowly, and Eleanor could hear the air rattling in his lungs.
“Don’t!” Eleanor hurried forward. “He can’t. He’s got a chest wound.” The soldiers frowned at her, and the wounded man regarded her with dull surprise, then fury.
“Not another bloody nursing sister who won’t let a man smoke in peace,” the patient rasped, glaring at her balefully. “Why aren’t you in uniform, sister? New here?”
“I’m not a nurse. I’m a doctor,” Eleanor said. She crouched down next to the stretcher, moved to check the dressing. It needed changing. She could smell the old blood. She looked for help, but everyone was busy. More stretchers poured off the train. The row reached almost to the end of the platform now.
She heard the mutters of surprise around her. “A doctor? Her?”
She reached to look under the bandage, but the patient pushed her away. “Get off! What the devil do you want with me? I only want a cigarette. The damned medical officers are bad enough without some bloody woman poking at me. No more pills or shots! I’ve had my fill. Let me die in peace!”
Eleanor’s hands froze. She saw fear and fierce pride in the man’s eyes.
“How’d it happen, mate?” one of the recruits asked, jostling Eleanor aside to light the cigarette anyway. The patient took a long drag and glared defiantly at Eleanor. She winced as he puffed blue smoke into the air and coughed. When he could speak, he turned his eyes to his audience, regarding each face.
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