As if realising he had lost his temper, he spluttered to a silence and then sat back in his chair. Gabriel waited until he was certain the rant was finished before speaking. ‘I know they can be very demanding, Colonel.’
He shook his head. ‘They’re more than demanding, Captain. Those harlots are an undermining and pernicious influence in this town.’
Gabriel flinched at the insult. He felt the first stirring of anger but managed to stay silent as the colonel continued.
‘To make things worse, when it was decided they were to be transferred to Switzerland, they insolently wrote directly to Vienna and insisted they be escorted by an Austrian, rather than a German officer. Well, Captain, I take it as a personal insult that they have gone over my head. Very regrettably, Viennese High Command has listened to their nonsense and forced Berlin to comply with this request. I find it impertinent that an Austrian officer is thought more suitable for this task.’
‘Actually, Colonel,’ Gabriel said, having reached the end of his tolerance, ‘it was not Viennese High Command who sent me, but the Austrian Medical Board, who have taken responsibility for the women. And the women are correct: medical personnel are exempt from being taken prisoner and should be allowed to continue their work of tending the wounded unhindered. But the rest of what you have said is true – the women did send a request to Vienna that an Austrian should escort them to neutral territory. The reason the women gave for this request is they claim to have suffered verbal and physical intimidation by certain German officers.’
The colonel’s eyebrows lifted with indignation, but Gabriel ignored him.
‘Whether that is true or not, Colonel, is now a moot point, because Berlin has agreed to transfer responsibility for the safe repatriation of the women, and in my orders there is a letter from Berlin that orders you, Colonel, as commander of the garrison, to supply your full co-operation with this task.’
The colonel’s facial pallor had disappeared; his cheeks were scarlet as Gabriel continued.
‘Now, as for why I was selected: I suspect the women’s request must have arrived at the Austrian Medical Board’s offices at the same time I was undergoing a medical examination to assess my fitness after being a prisoner. The medical board passed me fit to return to my unit, which is currently fighting in Italy, but at the end of the examination they asked me whether I knew the Scottish women and whether I would agree to act as their escort to neutral territory. I have agreed, Colonel, because I believe these women have done good humanitarian work for all parties involved in the conflict. Once these women are safely in Switzerland, my assignment will be over and I will return to my unit in Italy. Sir.’
The stress on the last word only emphasising his insolence, Gabriel held the gaze of the Colonel, who sat back in his chair and scowled, the muscles above his moustache tight with anger. After a moment he shook his head again, and then spoke quietly.
‘You see, that’s the trouble with you Austrians: too lax, too lenient. These women are not stupid. They know a soft touch when they see one.’
He roughly folded Gabriel’s documents and tossed them across the desk towards him. ‘I’ll need travel warrants for all of the women,’ Gabriel said as he leant forward to pick them up.
‘My staff sergeant will give you what you need. Now get out of my office.’
Gabriel saluted, and with a smile he turned and left the room.
***
Gabriel obtained directions for the Czar Lazar Hospital from a clerk at the town hall, who told him that it was only a five-minute walk away. As he walked through the streets, Gabriel felt his anticipation build at the prospect of seeing Elspeth again. Even just thinking about her made everything feel more alive; the bricks of the buildings he passed seemed redder, the snow whiter, even the grey piles of icy slush on the street corners seemed somehow more defined. He turned a corner and the crimson brick and concrete edifice of the hospital came into view.
Vienna had told him that the Czar Lazar had originally been built as a military barracks and training academy before being converted into a four-hundred-bedded hospital. He also knew that the scale of casualties meant that even more beds were required, and so the Magazine – a concrete bunker in the grounds of the complex that had previously stored explosives and ammunition – had been turned into three hundred extra beds, which were now under the care of the Scottish women.
Two German sentries were on duty at the main entrance to the hospital and Gabriel showed them his papers and then asked for directions to the Magazine. He was pointed towards a low, rectangular concrete bunker a short distance away. Stepping through the protective steel doorway into the bunker, he saw that the ammunition shelves that ran the length of the Magazine were filled with men lying on straw mattresses. A number of VADs who Gabriel remembered from his time in Kragujevac were attending the men, and one of them – he could not recall her name – glanced up at him, frowned, and then hesitantly approached him.
‘It’s…it’s Captain Bayer isn’t it?’ she said.
Gabriel nodded and smiled as another VAD came and stood beside the first.
‘Are ye here tae escort us to Switzerland?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Gabriel confirmed, and both women grinned with delight as he continued. ‘Is Dr Inglis here?’
‘Och no, she’s in our living quarters,’ the first replied.
He looked around him but saw only the shelves lined with wounded men. ‘And where are your quarters?’
‘In the old office in the main hospital,’ said the second woman, and as Gabriel gave a puzzled frown she smiled at him. ‘Everywhere is so crowded, that the only space they could put us in used to be the administrator’s office in the main building. There are fifteen of us living in that room. You’ll find Dr Inglis in there, writing up her surgical notes.’
He thanked them, then left the magazine and crossed back to the main hospital building, where the guards at the entrance gave him directions for the administrator’s office.
As he was walking along the hospital corridor he suddenly recalled there had been thirty Scottish women in Kragujevac, yet the VAD had just told him that fifteen women were living in the room.
What had happened to the others?
Before he could give this mystery any further thought, he found himself standing outside the door the guards had directed him to. The door had a frosted window panel: he tapped lightly on the glass and a voice from within instructed him to enter.
It was freezing cold inside the office and even smaller than he had expected. Light reflected from snow lying outside a window shone onto a mound of mattresses and blankets piled to his left. To his right was a dining table with folding legs and a stack of chairs propped up on either side of an unlit fireplace. Sitting in front of a small card table in the middle of the room was Dr Inglis, wrapped in an old Serbian army greatcoat, a pen in hand and an open ledger in front of her. On seeing him, her face broke into a smile, and, quickly recapping her pen, she stood to greet him.
‘Captain Bayer,’ she said, reaching across the table to shake his hand, her fingers icy cold in his grip. ‘I’m so very glad to see you again.’
As he smiled back at her he noticed the redness of her nose and the blue tinge to her lips. ‘I’m sorry about the temperature,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘But there’s so little coal or wood. We only light the fire when everyone is back from work in the evening. But I could offer you some hot tea?’
He declined with another smile, lifted a chair from the stack by the forlornly empty fire-grate and sat opposite her at the card table.
‘We are very grateful you have agreed to escort us to Switzerland,’ Dr Inglis began. ‘Initially the Germans appeared reasonably friendly and efficient – beastly efficient, as some of my girls have put it. But familiarity has bred contempt and as the weeks have gone by they have become increasingly insolent and, at times, frankly abusive.’
Gabriel smiled. ‘Having just met the garrison commander, I’m not sur
prised to hear you say that.’
‘Oh, he’s quite a bully. Last week he asked us to take over the cholera sheds in this hospital – which of course we were happy to do. But some of my girls have not been inoculated against the disease, and when I insisted that they should be, I received a torrent of threats from him. In the face of such intimidation I sent a letter direct to the medical board in Vienna asking that an Austrian and not a German officer should escort us to safety. I was pleased that this was agreed and delighted that you were selected for the task.’
‘I’m honoured to have been asked, Dr Inglis. Your unit’s commitment has greatly impressed me and I’m only too happy to make sure you all get to safety.’
‘Well, I never thought I would say it, Captain, but it will be a huge relief to get back to Britain. It has been very hard, looking after for so many patients in such conditions. Getting decent food has been very difficult: the war has disrupted the harvest and all we’ve been given is a scanty ration of sour black bread and beans, some rice and condensed milk.’
‘Who will look after the patients once you depart?’
‘A number of Bulgarian surgeons and orderlies will take over as soon as we leave.’
‘Good. Well, please give me a list of names and I will have the appropriate travel documents authorised, today if possible. In which case, we should be ready to leave as early as tomorrow.’
‘I have it all ready for you,’ she said, turning the pages of the ledger. She removed a slip of paper and gave it to him. He looked at it for a moment and then frowned: he could only count fifteen names. And Elspeth’s was not amongst them.
‘If I recall correctly, Dr Inglis, you had thirty women in your group?’
‘Yes, but half our number left before the Germans arrived. Dr Curcin is in charge of that party. They were trying to get to Greece, but we believe they may have joined the great exodus of Serbians over the Montenegrin mountains to Albania.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Gabriel felt a flicker of unease in the pit of his stomach. He had recently read a report in a Viennese newspaper of this ‘Great Serbian Retreat’, but had not considered that some of the Scottish women – including Elspeth – might be taking part in it.
‘And sadly there have been two deaths.’ Dr Inglis’s face darkened. ‘Shortly after Dr Curcin’s party left us, we were told that Nurse Toughill was killed when a wagon slipped off the road into a gulley. I understand they buried her in a small village nearby. And then of course…’ She paused to shake her head and sigh ‘…there was the tragic news about poor Elspeth.’
Her words struck Gabriel like a hammer blow to his chest and for a moment he was unable to breathe. There was a high-pitched buzzing in his ears, and although he could see Dr Inglis’s lips moving he could not take in what she was saying. He blinked, forced himself to breathe, made himself listen to what she had to say.
‘…and we heard that Elspeth missed the last train from Kragujevac, but managed to find a band of Chetniks that contained a woman she knew from London – Anya somebody. And it was this Anya person who came here a few weeks ago to tell us the tragic details…’
Keep breathing, Gabriel told himself as her words faded again from his ears. He felt numb, disconnected from the room and everything in it, almost as if he was watching someone else receive the news. Gripping the table edge in front of him, he made himself refocus on her words.
‘…and so Anya told us she ran down the mountain trying to follow the wagon as it was carried downstream, but then found it smashed to pieces on rocks underneath a waterfall. She said she saw Elspeth’s body wedged between the rocks…’
She stopped speaking as Gabriel leant forward and covered his face with both hands. Listening to her was almost more than he could bear. After a moment he felt her touch his shoulder and he lifted his head to look at her.
‘I’m so sorry, Captain Bayer,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten that you and Elspeth used to work together.’
He could think of nothing to say and could not look her in the eye; the anguish he had felt on hearing the terrible news was already replaced by regret he had not insisted on going with her.
‘If it’s any consolation, Captain,’ Dr Inglis continued, ‘everybody felt the same when we heard the news and I bitterly regret allowing her to stay behind that last evening in Kragujevac. I should have insisted she go with us to the station, but Elspeth would not have had it any other way; that had always been her nature. And her sacrifice was not a futile one, because she did many wonderful things during her time in Serbia: she saved many lives and improved many others. We have seen so much death here, so many decent young women giving their lives to save others. Regardless of how they died – whether from disease or injury – their deaths were not in vain. We must hold on to that.’
He knew she was trying to console him, but her words seemed trite. Slowly he got to his feet, swaying before regaining his balance by grasping the edge of the card table. ‘And Dr Stewart’s friends?’ he muttered. ‘Sylvia…Vera?’
‘Vera left with Dr Curcin’s party before Anya arrived, so she doesn’t know of Elspeth’s fate. Sylvia, poor girl, was distraught when she heard, but like the good nurse she is carried on working. You might go up and see her if you like: the Bulgarians have asked her to help out in their surgical ward on the floor above us.’
Sylvia. He knew how close she and Elspeth were; she would be devastated at the news. He felt a desperate urge to see her – a last connection to Elspeth. But to do it he would have to pull himself together: ignoring the pain inside his chest, he straightened up, then folded the list of names Dr Inglis had given him and put it in the breast pocket of his jacket.
‘I will return tomorrow morning with the travel documents for your party,’ he managed to say. ‘Please have everybody ready.’
‘Oh don’t you worry, Captain Bayer: we’ll be ready. Everyone is desperate to leave.’
***
Outside the office he slumped against the wall. It took him almost a full minute to regain his composure, but after several deep breaths he managed to steady himself and stood tall again. His legs felt weak: when he found a staircase he had to grip the handrail hard to support himself. Ignoring the curious side-glances of Bulgarian nurses and Serbian prison orderlies who brushed past him he climbed the steps. He paused at the top of the stairs before walking along the corridor to the surgical ward.
The ward was – as expected – packed with casualties, attended to by a number of Bulgarian nurses and orderlies, but he immediately recognised Sylvia. She was dressed in a plain white blouse and grey skirt – as Elspeth used to wear – and was talking with a patient, a soldier with both legs in traction. He stood and watched her for a while. Then he saw her frown – almost as if she knew someone was observing her – and she turned towards him. Her eyes widened in recognition and a smile formed on her lips. But it lasted only a moment before it began to fade and he realised that she could tell he had already been told the awful news. She began to walk towards him, and he became aware that the other nurses, orderlies and patients were staring at him with curiosity. But he focussed only on her and saw the watery-eyed look of sorrow in her eyes as she arrived and stood before him without speaking, blinking as she tried to hold back the tears.
He did not know what to say to her and for a moment they stood there awkwardly, until she silently took hold of his hand and led him back towards a small door near the entrance and pushed it open to reveal a small galley kitchen. Inside the room were two Bulgarian orderlies, laughing at a shared joke as they sliced loaves of maize bread. However, on seeing Sylvia’s face their smiles faded and they quietly laid down their breadknives and walked out the room, closing the door silently behind them.
The kitchen was now silent, apart from an occasional rattle from a large copper samovar, which simmered in the corner, Gabriel watched as Sylvia fought to maintain her composure. And then she could no longer hold back the tears and went towards him; he enfolded her in his arms and held her clos
e. She sobbed silently into his chest for a while, and then she took a deep breath and pulled away. As he gently released her, he saw the dark shadows underneath the soft green of her eyes, now red-rimmed and puffy.
‘Dr Inglis told you?’ she asked him.
He nodded. ‘Are we sure it’s Elspeth that’s…that’s…’ He found he could not say the word.
‘Luka came to tell us,’ she whispered huskily and then sniffed back a tear. ‘He and Anya told us the story—’
‘I don’t know who this Anya person is. Dr Inglis mentioned her to me, but I’ve never heard of her before.’
Sylvia took a deep breath before continuing. ‘We both knew Anya in London, before we joined the Scottish Women’s Hospital. She was one of our arson squad.’
Arson squad? thought Gabriel, and she saw his puzzlement.
‘There are so many things about Elspeth you don’t know, Gabriel—’
‘But did Anya actually see it happen?’ It helped to suppress his grief, by focussing on the facts, to activate his rational mind again.
Sylvia sniffed again and shrugged
‘She told me she saw the cart that Elspeth was travelling in. It slid into a river and was swept away. She chased it downstream for more than a mile only to find the smashed wreckage lying on the boulders underneath a waterfall. She said she saw Elspeth, dressed in her cape and coat, wedged between the rocks…’
The Furies Page 34