“Please, miss, for the love of Christ, go away afore he starts to scream,” one of the other soldiers pleaded. “He saw a woman—a civilian—blown to bits on the road with her little girl. He can’t bear to look at women now. Even seeing nurses gives him fits.”
Eleanor backed away, then went outside. Fraser was helping the chaplain load the back of the ambulance with boxes and crates. The chaplain was still looking at her doubtfully. She gritted her teeth so they wouldn’t chatter in the icy wind and be mistaken for fear. It was a fearful place—the air smelled strange, metallic and smoky, and the very air shook with the constant roar and vibration of the guns. She searched the sky for bombs as she got into the back of the ambulance, but saw nothing. Sergeant MacLeod had said they were far away, to the east, that it was safe here. She certainly didn’t feel safe. Shouldn’t it be morning by now? Was the sky here always this sickly yellow-gray color? Off in the distance, another gun exploded, making her flinch again.
Sergeant MacLeod got in beside her. She wanted his company, the reassurance of him, the familiarity, though she’d known him for mere hours. He made her feel safe, protected. Perhaps it was his height, his uniform. “All right?” he asked, and even the sound of his voice was comforting in this terrifying place. She resisted the urge to move closer to him.
“All right,” she agreed. She shifted over on one of the long shelves—which she knew usually held stretchers or wounded men—to accommodate him, but he shifted as well, sat close to her.
“Hold on tight to the straps,” Fraser said. “I’ll sit next to ye to keep you from tumbling out if we have to make any sudden stops or swerves, but mind if the boxes shift.”
“Ready to go, Miss Atherton?” the reverend asked from the front seat. A tall lad stood behind him, smiling shyly. “This is Private Gibbons, Miss Atherton. She’s a doctor, Tom, here to visit one of the wounded officers at 46/CCS. She’s not here to serve, lad—though we all serve as best we can, of course.”
“That’s good,” Gibbons said. “Because the colonel says lady doctors are as much use as two-legged mules and—”
The chaplain gripped the young man’s shoulder. “We know what the colonel says,” the chaplain said gently.
Another shell landed somewhere close enough to make the truck rattle, and Eleanor gasped.
The chaplain patted her arm. “Not to worry, Miss Atherton. The guns are a good way off this morning. And we’ve got Sergeant MacLeod with us. Did you know he’s considered lucky? He’s been here since ’16 and never even been wounded, which is nothing short of a miracle. There are soldiers who watch for him when they’re hit or one of their chums is wounded. They think he has a charmed life, and they believe they’ll survive anything if they see Sergeant MacLeod coming for them. Forgive me, Sergeant, but I prefer to put it down to the fact that God knows we need good men like Fraser MacLeod down here, and with him beside us, and the good Lord upstairs, we’ll be just fine.” He started the engine. “Ready, Tom?”
The lad held up a pair of binoculars. “Aye, Reverend.” He leaned out the window.
“Hold tight, Miss Atherton,” the reverend said, and he swung the vehicle out onto the road.
The ambulance moved forward, lurching over the rutted track, and she clung to the strap and wondered how wounded men endured such a jolting.
“Left!” she heard Private Gibbons call out, and the vehicle swerved. Sergeant Fraser’s body moved with the call like a man on horseback, fluid and easy. She bumped into his shoulder and straightened herself at once.
“What’s wrong with the road?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Winter rains, too many boots marching over it, and shells lobbed from miles away, aimed at the rail lines or the station to disrupt transportation and unnerve and inconvenience folk. It’s safer to travel in the dark, but there’s always new damage to watch for. It wouldn’t do to break an axle or puncture a tire—or to attract a sniper.”
Eleanor felt the skin between her shoulders tingle, as if her back were in the crosshairs of some unseen gun.
“Relax, Miss Atherton. The guns are pointing the other way at the moment, and they’re a dozen miles from here.”
“Only a dozen miles?” she asked.
“Aye, for now. We usually know when there’s a battle planned—our side or theirs moves up men and supplies, and the senior officers drive back and forth in fancy cars with observers and advisers, and they put the medical staff on alert, even if they won’t say exactly when things will start. Things have been quiet for the past week or two, and we haven’t heard of anything being planned, so there’s naught for ye to fear, especially if you’re not going to be here very long.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
He raised one eyebrow. “If this doesn’t scare ye, what does?”
She drew herself up, stiff and prickly. “I’m not a hothouse rose, Sergeant.” She lowered her eyes, hiding the lie. She felt like a hothouse rose, out of place amid the mud and men and the harsh sound of the guns. The sight of the neurasthenic lad had shocked her, even though she’d seen wounds and blood before, and she was a grown woman of nearly twenty-four. She was a doctor, and she couldn’t help him. She hoped someone could.
“Are you afraid?” she asked. “Not now, but—in battle, I mean.”
He hesitated for a moment. “I’ve made my peace with things. If it’s my time to go, nothing will change that.” She wished she could see his expression better, but it was too dark inside the vehicle, even with the tarp at the back open to let in air and what little light there was. “I only hope I won’t end up like some of the poor blighters we carry in with their faces half gone, or their limbs shot away, or their minds destroyed.”
She swallowed, but said nothing. She’d seen such men on the streets of Edinburgh and York, disfigured and maimed, forced to endure the stares of the horrified and the curious.
“Left!” Gibbons called. This time she braced herself.
“When ye get to the CCS, promise me something,” Sergeant MacLeod said.
“What?”
“Stay inside. Don’t go wandering in the wood, or away from the tents. It isn’t safe.”
She stiffened again. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” she said.
“At home perhaps ye are, in your own Yorkshire village, where you’re known and there’s no real danger,” he said as if he’d read her thoughts. “But here you’re a civilian, and a woman. Either side might take ye for a spy. And men—men change in war. They’re here to kill. No one will know or care that you’re a doctor, or an Englishwoman, or just visiting.” His voice was gruff and hard.
She felt a lump in her throat and swallowed.
“Chaplain Strong will see ye back to the train when you’re ready to go. Your wounded flier will need an ambulance anyway.”
“Not you?”
“No. I’ll be on duty,” he said sharply.
“Of course. I hadn’t thought.” She’d probably never see him again once they reached the CCS. She felt the fact like the loss of a friend. She didn’t want to lose his company. He’d been kind. He made her feel safe. He hadn’t looked at her with surprise or distaste because she was a doctor. He made her feel . . . feminine, perhaps. The way he looked at her made her breath catch, and she liked it.
“I was only in Calais because I was tasked with escorting a wounded man who needed someone to watch him. It wasn’t leave, or a lark,” he said raggedly.
“No, of course not,” she said.
“Right! Right!” Gibbons yelled, and the ambulance lurched over a deep rut.
She looked out the back of the vehicle. Deep puddles shone like pools of polished metal in the pale glimmer of dawn. There was fog over the fields, a veil drawn down to hide whatever it was that lurked in the distance, but close to the road, they sidled past the ghostly silhouettes of broken fences and blighted trees, and sha
ttered carts and ruined vehicles lay by the side of the track. They drove by roofless houses, damaged beyond repair. She’d seen photographs of such sights in newspapers and magazines, but here, before her eyes, it was far worse, the smell, the sounds, the stark sorrow and destruction almost overwhelming. The enemy was just twelve miles away. Her father drove to see patients twelve miles from Thorndale. It was considered close by, in the neighborhood.
There’s a war on, she thought. It had another meaning here, a deadly one, a warning.
They turned off the road, and the vehicle tiptoed awkwardly over more ruts before it pulled up in front of a gathering of tents and makeshift buildings that stood around a stone farmhouse. She saw signposts pointing toward reception, triage, cmo, and supply. Below those, waggish handwritten signs indicated the way to Piccadilly, and Tipperary, and Buckingham Palace.
Sergeant MacLeod climbed down and turned to reach for her, setting his big hands on her waist once again and lifting her with ease. She put her hands on his shoulders and held his gaze as he swung her to the ground. For an instant his face was close to hers, and a shock raced through her, a desire to hover there, in space, in his arms, but he set her down at once and stepped back, though his eyes stayed on hers. “As I thought. Seven stone even,” he murmured.
He looked away, scanning the collection of white bell tents, small huts, and the wooden walkways that ran between them like sutures, and she followed his gaze. She noted the orderlies, the few wounded she could see, and the nurses hurrying by. His stance relaxed, the tension in his body easing. She felt it, just by standing beside him.
“Is it quiet, then?” she asked.
He nodded. “Aye, but there could be wounded arriving any minute. Dawn is a favorite time for attack.” He scanned her face again. “I have to get back,” he said, almost an apology instead of a farewell. “And ye best get to your flier.”
She’d forgotten Louis even existed. “Oh. Yes, I suppose so,” she murmured.
He caught the arm of a passing orderly. “This is Miss Atherton. She’s here to see a patient named Chastaine, an officer, Flying Corps.”
The man looked her over boldly, then grinned. “The lieutenant gets a lot of visitors. You could just follow the well-worn path, of course, but I’ll take you to him. You’ll need to see the sister in charge before going in, just so everyone’s decent and proper and no one gets an unexpected surprise, if you know what I mean.” He gave her a jaunty wink.
“That’ll do, Corporal,” Fraser said gruffly.
The orderly’s flirtatious gaze dropped at once, and his smile faded as he came to attention. “Aye, Sergeant. If you’ll come this way, miss.”
Eleanor looked at Fraser MacLeod expectantly, but he took a step backward.
“I’ve got to go. I’m due back to my unit.” For a moment he let his eyes travel over her, his expression thoughtful, as if he was memorizing her. “Stay inside,” he reminded her, and then he turned and left her, striding away along the duckboards, pulling up the collar of his greatcoat against the wind, and she watched him go, holding her breath, hoping he’d turn, look back at her, but he didn’t. He rounded the corner of a tent and disappeared.
“If you’ll come this way?” the corporal said again.
“I didn’t get to thank him,” Eleanor said.
“He’d likely say he was just doing his duty. Sergeant MacLeod is a good man. Now let’s get you inside and out of this wind.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Captain David Blair, RAMC surgeon, sat on the bench outside the triage tent, letting the cold morning wind scrub the smell of the operating theater out of his hair and off his skin. He held his pipe between his teeth, unlit. He was too tired to go fill it and find a match to light it.
Four hours to pick shrapnel out of a man’s chest, arms, and jaw. Three hours before that to remove a kidney with a bullet lodged in it. He’d been quick and precise, but the patient had died anyway. He hated losing patients, though it was hardly a rare occurrence. No matter how skillful the surgeon, how deft his hands, how quick and careful, the war was quicker, and the waste of limb and life was tragic and constant. David Blair, score of one, the war—hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands. The lad he’d lost today had been fresh from England, on the line for just two days. He’d looked to be about fourteen, though his papers swore he was nineteen.
Perhaps it was another trick of this war, making him feel so old and tired that everyone else looked too young to his eyes. He aged years every single bloody day. He looked at his unlit pipe dolefully. He was out of the good tobacco, and he wanted food and sleep and a bath that would clean away the blood and the iodine that had soaked through his operating gown to his skin—a proper bath, in a full-size tub, with unlimited hot water, and fragrant soap that didn’t contain the faintest hint of carbolic. He frowned, knowing he’d have to settle for a few inches of lukewarm water in a chipped basin. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to recall the last time he’d been well rested and clean. He wanted a drink, too, but he was on duty for another twenty-four hours. This time tomorrow he could drink himself blotto and sleep for sixteen hours after that. Then he’d be back at it, doing the impossible task of putting the next mangled lad back together if he could. David Blair, score two . . .
He’d been here since ’17, nearly eight months. Fool that he was, he’d been glad to come, because he hated the junior position in the London hospital that saw him doing nothing more than sterilizing instruments and lancing boils. He’d thought the war would be his chance to perform real surgery, to save lives and do proper honor to the Hippocratic oath by healing broken bodies and holding death at bay.
He never knew what happened to the ones who survived surgery. Once they left his table and were stabilized, they were sent up the line for further care as quickly as possible, no longer his concern.
He stared into the black mouth of the pipe again like an anxious addict. It really was a filthy habit, and he’d promised his mother he’d give it up, but it was one of the few comforts in this place—when he could get tobacco, of course. His brother, Patrick, serving with the Canadians, seemed to have an unlimited supply, and better stuff than the British got. He was happy to share it with David, and they made it an excuse to see each other as often as they could here in France.
He listened to the guns, noted the volume of artillery and the direction, and hoped Pat was out of it for the moment. Bellford would inform them if there was a push on and they could expect heavy casualties. Then getting drunk would have to be postponed. The colonel hadn’t said a word this morning, though, and the guns thumped away in the distance, drumming up new business for medical officers and surgeons and the ambulance corps, but without a concerted effort. It was just each side sending their regards to the lads across No Man’s Land. With luck, it would be a relatively quiet day.
David leaned back against the post behind him. It was a cold morning, gray and overcast, but it was the first time he’d seen daylight in three days, and he didn’t care about the weather. He should go inside, catch up on writing letters to the families of the fallen he’d operated on or pronounced dead. He’d promised Reverend Strong he’d get to it as soon as he had a minute, since the good padre believed such missives offered comfort and closure to grieving widows, mothers, and fatherless children. They always wrote that their lad had died bravely, without pain, lucid and noble to the last, and that his final thoughts and words were for those he loved. It usually wasn’t true. They died in screaming agony, or silently, their eyes blank. So much for the fine dream of being a surgeon who saved lives. Instead, the war had made him a liar and a butcher, patching broken bodies together as fast as he could, fearing—knowing—it was never enough. What was he against the destructive force of bullets, or gas, or a two-hundred-pound shell? He didn’t feel like a hero, a trained surgeon who spent his days saving lives and fixing the world’s ills—he felt like a cog in a ghastly machine. The war bl
ighted everything it touched—a man’s body, his mind, his soul.
Maybe he’d write to Patrick instead, ask him to send more tobacco. Lucky Canadians—according to Pat, there was plenty of everything a man could want in Canada—it was a land of plenty and opportunity, and of clean, wide-open spaces. His brother had left England six years ago, bought a ranch in the foothills of Alberta in the west, and spent his days raising cattle and horses. Before the war, Patrick had been breeding horses and looking for oil on his land, like most of his neighbors. “Neighbors,” they called them—it always made David laugh, since Pat’s nearest ones were a three-hour ride away, through green rolling hills, over high rivers fringed with cottonwood trees, under skies so blue in the summer that it dazzled a man’s eyes to look at them. Or so Patrick told him. David had never been to Canada.
His brother had asked him time and time again to come out and join him, but there’d been medical school, and his first hospital posting, and his dying mother to care for. He was tempted now, though. Perhaps he’d go after the war—if he lived, of course. No one made long-term plans anymore. Nothing past tomorrow was the new motto. He’d told Pat he’d think about it, and some days, most days, it was all he thought about.
“Good morning, Dr. Blair. Have you had a few minutes to write those letters?” Reverend Strong asked, passing by, his arms laden with supplies.
David opened his eyes, and Hanniford Strong smiled at him, a tireless, efficient, endlessly busy man with true faith shining in his kind eyes, a certainty of heaven that made him willing to do even the very worst tasks. No matter how bad things got, the chaplain’s smile never dimmed. David wished he had that kind of faith, that strength. The chaplain surely did more good than he did. In fact, he was certain of it, and felt shamed. He sat up straight, like a lad in Sunday school.
“I’ve been in surgery. I’ll do some now,” he mumbled.
The chaplain smiled. “I’ll just put these supplies away and see the colonel, then perhaps you and I can have a cup of tea and a bite of breakfast and tackle them together.”
The Woman at the Front Page 12