Emeralds & Ashes

by Leila Rasheed

  “Not only that.” She paused. “Ravi, I have been thinking, ever since I saw Georgiana and heard this news. My father is gone; the countess is from all I hear prostrated with shock and grief. I cannot leave Somerton without knowing whether it is in safe hands for the future. I cannot leave my sister without support.”

  “But you must let go of the past,” he said quietly, firmly. “Your family has always prevented you from being who you truly are. Your title has been nothing more than a millstone around your neck.”

  “That is not quite true.”

  “You said—”

  “I know it has felt so sometimes.” She clenched her hands. “Ravi, please try to understand. Whatever my family is to me, whatever Somerton is to me—it is part of my self.”

  “And what about me? Am I not also part of you?” His arms went around her, his lips touched her neck. “I have tried to be; I long to be. I will be your family; I will be your Somerton.”

  “I wish you could be,” she murmured, her eyes aching with tears. “But I fear nothing can replace them.”

  “What are you saying? Ada, think carefully—”

  “I have been thinking. I have been thinking for months. Let me ask you something.” She turned to face him, and stepped back, her hands resting lightly on his. “Will you give up any thought of returning to India, will you stay here with me?”

  There was a long silence. She could see the emotion on his face.

  “You know I cannot.”

  “Then you know how I feel.”

  “You mean you will not go to India with me.” His voice trembled.

  “I mean that no matter how much I long to go to India with you”—she hesitated, not wanting to say the words that she knew she had to say—“I know that I would not be happy there. I could not live with the guilt of abandoning my family and my country in their hour of need.”

  “But you will abandon me,” he said bitterly. “That is what you are saying, isn’t it? You are saying that you…that you…” He paused; she could tell he was on the brink of tears and was struggling to hold them back. “That you will not marry me.” The words came out fierce and angry. “That everything you said was a lie. That you do not care for me. That you do not love me—”

  “Stop!” she cried out. Her hands were up as if to defend herself from a blow. A moment later he was covering her hands with passionate kisses.

  “Ada—I am sorry—I didn’t mean it—I am a brute. Forget I said it, forget it. We can start again. We can forget all these insane words. Please, forgive me.”

  She leaned against him and let her tears soak into his shirt. Finally gaining control of herself, she looked up at him. “We cannot start again. You know it. You know that if I were to come to India, or if you were to do the impossible and stay here, we would always be having scenes like this. In the end it would destroy us. You know that, Ravi; please, have the courage to admit it.”

  He held her tight. After a long time, his answer came. It was what she had asked him to say, what she had known he would have the integrity to admit, and yet it broke her heart.

  “Yes. It is true.”

  They clung to each other, without words. The sunlight brightened on the wall, but Ada had never felt less as if dawn were breaking. Dawn should come with hope and strength, she thought. Not tears and silence.

  A small noise told her he was crying. Her heart felt as if it were being wrenched in two. She felt such great love for him, such passion and such heartbreak. She kissed him, whispering how sorry she was, how much she loved him. He returned her kisses; she tasted his tears. She knew they should stop, but she could not bear to. It seemed too cruel that they should be brought together, then driven apart, without ever knowing each other as deeply as they longed to. The kisses became desperate; she found her fingers unbuttoning his shirt, his hands plunged deep in her hair, her dress slipping from her naked shoulders…

  “Tell me to stop,” he murmured, as he had done once before, but now there was no tease in the words, just an intensity that made her tremble with desire.

  “I don’t want you to stop,” she replied, and as he lifted her and carried her to the bed, she knew with all her heart that it was the truth.

  As she gazed from the train window it was as if she could still feel his kisses on her skin, burning her. She would never forget what they had done, she thought. It was a precious jewel, locked deep in the black velvet of her memory. She knew that over the years to come, she would be able to touch it, caress it, gaze into its shining depths. No one could snatch this memory from her.

  Through the window, she could see they were coming into Oxford. She tried to see the rooming house where they had been, where it had happened. She had heard the rattle of the trains passing; it must have been close to the railway line. She remembered saying to him, I have always longed for this. I will never regret it. And later, If only I had known. If only I had known that it would be so perfect.

  And even later, Good-bye. Good-bye forever, my darling, good-bye.

  The train slowed at the platform. The men stood, and one of them politely handed her case down. Ada wanly smiled her thanks and followed them out of the carriage.

  She took in her beloved refuge. Oxford. She had arrived here with such joy, every time, but now she could see nothing but the gray misery of a land under siege, a dark future, shapeless and terrifying as the shadow of the zeppelin. She would have to go back to university, work, work, work, as if Ravi had not left, as if he were not even now taking ship from Southampton.

  In time the pain will fade, he had told her.

  I will never forget you, she had replied.

  No, but the pain will fade. And he had kissed her. They had been standing at the station. Anyone could have seen. Ada did not care. What was there left to lose now?

  She picked up her case and, head high, walked out of the station. The crowd parted before her, some giving her curious glances, others indifferent.

  If only they knew, she thought with a bitter, reckless glory. If only they knew how free I feel.

  France

  The CCS was in a half-ruined, rain-sodden little farm from which all the animals, people, and evidence of life had long since disappeared. It was strange how quickly it had come to seem like…well, not exactly home, Charlotte thought as she hurried across the yard, but familiar.

  She entered her hut, a shack built up in the ruins of the barn, and collected her leather motoring coat and muff. She was glad that she’d invested in them, buying them at Boulogne from a VAD who was leaving to go back to England to care for her elderly parents. She thought with a moment’s regret of her beautiful furs, left behind in England, and then pushed the memory away. That was then; this was now. Fur would be sodden and heavy, worse than useless on the regular ambulance runs to the front line to collect the wounded.

  She came out of the hut and ran over to the waiting ambulance. She scrambled up next to the driver, a grizzled, chain-smoking bus driver from the East End called Sid. The first time she had been in the ambulance, even though its rusty, mud-encrusted exterior had given her some idea of what it might be like traveling inside, she had been dismayed to find that there was no seat, except for a rusty oilcan. She was used to it now, after many trips down to collect the wounded from the dressing stations where they were taken immediately after battle, but still felt very exposed; it was little more than a wagon with an engine bolted on and canvas sides to the back part where the wounded traveled.

  Sid shoved the ambulance into gear and it shot off violently, nearly throwing Charlotte off her seat.

  Charlotte had known before she arrived that they could not use headlights so close to the front for fear of being spotted by planes or snipers, but she hadn’t realized exactly what that would mean, driving over muddy, slippery, potholed roads in the pitch dark, between the churned fields at either side. Back and forth they lurched, the ambulance sticking frequently, now and then dark shapes looming out of the night—the wrecks of other cars, a s
ingle, blackened, leafless tree that had somehow escaped a shell. On the horizon, the sunset left its last glow, and the thundering of the shells was their compass. Charlotte clung to whatever she could, fixing her eyes on that distant scene, frightened but also desperate to get there and help.

  “Who are we picking up this time?” she asked Sid.

  “B-Four Trench, they’ve been in the thick of it.”

  “Poor boys. It must be time for leave for some of them at least.”

  “We should be so lucky. Nineteen fifteen’s looking like the year we dig in and stay dug in.”

  Charlotte didn’t reply. It was depressingly likely to be true. After swaying back and forth across France and Belgium for most of 1914, the front line had solidified, as if stuck in the mud. Neither army was gaining ground. It was starting to look as if it would be a long war.

  So I must do my best to help, and keep the men’s spirits up, she told herself determinedly. But she had never been so exhausted. It was painful to feel that what she was doing was not the nursing she had found so rewarding in London, but a desperate, rushed patching up of broken and torn bodies until they were well enough to be loaded onto another train and dispatched back to the general hospital at Étaples. It was only now that she realized that in London she had been caring for men who were stabilized, who were already as likely to survive as they ever would be. There had been few deaths there. Here, when the men came right out of the battlefield, hemorrhaging and in shock, there were too many deaths to count. Too many to remember their names. Tears stung her eyes, partly from sheer tiredness, as she thought of it.

  On and on they went—and then she realized the red glow was not the sunset. It was the dressing station that they were heading for. The dressing station itself was on fire.

  “Oh Lord!” she exclaimed, knowing it must have been a direct hit. Adrenaline sizzled through her; she sat up, all her self-pity vanished. Sid seemed to realize at the same moment; he swore and put his foot on the accelerator.

  It was more tense minutes before the ambulance got close enough to stop. The heat from the flames hit Charlotte as she jumped out, and the glow gave an eerie brightness. Distantly she could hear the crump of exploding shells and the whine of shrapnel. She almost fell over a soldier who was sitting with his back against a ridge of earth, silent and shivering with shock. Charlotte could only guess at the extent of his injuries; she wrapped a blanket around him and helped him drink water.

  “Over here!” a man shouted out to her, and she stood up to see stretchers being lifted out of the trenches. The man who had shouted came running up to her. She could not see his face through the crust of dirt and blood, but red-gold hair glinted in the flames.

  “We’ve got men who need help here,” he told her.

  She noticed that his accent was American, but had no time to think about it further. More men were coming from the trench, some stumbling on crutches, others leaning on each other. Some had to be carried; there had been no time for stretchers, and they were simply laid into the back of the ambulance, screaming in pain. Charlotte and the American helped position them more securely.

  “Watch out!” Charlotte snapped as he almost let a badly burned soldier slip. She didn’t dare to think how many of the wounded would survive the trip back to the hospital. The most important thing was to get them out of the way of the firing before another shell wiped them all out.

  “That’s the lot.” Sid came running past her, toward the driver’s seat. “Get in, now!” Charlotte jumped into the back of the ambulance and reached out a hand to the man who had been helping her. For the first time, as he struggled to get onto the step, she realized he was hurt.

  “Oh—your arm!” It was clearly broken, tied up in a sling. Now she understood why he had been so awkward.

  He climbed up next to her with a grunt of pain and effort. A shell exploded to their left, and Charlotte ducked, jumping at the noise. The ambulance moved off with a jerk and she was thrown against the American man. She heard him gasp with pain. There was a patch of space on the boards, and he sat down, and pulled her down too—onto his lap. Charlotte jumped up as if she had been burned.

  “Sit still, ma’am!”

  She had no choice: the ambulance reeled across the road and threw her off balance, back into his arms. She clung to him, furious at the position she was in, aware that she had to keep her dignity as a nurse at all times. Then a shell burst directly overhead. She couldn’t stop herself shrieking in fear. His arm tightened around her; she found herself clutching at him. But the glare of the explosion had shown her the chaos inside the ambulance. She had to do something. She felt for her first-aid bag and crawled on hands and knees to each of the men, giving them what help she could in the shaking darkness. By the time they had left the explosions behind and the road had grown smoother, she had worked her way back round to the American.

  “Who put this sling on?” she demanded, turning her fear into anger. “It’s a filthy mess.”

  “Me, ma’am. Sorry—not a medic by training.”

  “You’re not a medical officer?” She looked at him again. In her flashlight’s beam she made out an insignia on his torn uniform: wings. “You’re a pilot!”

  “Shot down behind the German lines—bailed out, broke my arm coming down in a tree. Got to the dressing station, but looks like the enemy followed me.” He smiled through the pain.

  So he’d been shot down behind enemy lines, made his way back to the British side with a broken arm, and then helped her get the others into the ambulance. Charlotte was impressed despite herself.

  “Well, I hope you haven’t done any permanent damage” was all she said. You couldn’t get close to the men, especially not one as cocky as this. If she showed him how impressed she was, he would lose all respect for her. She wondered what an American was doing in the war—his country was still neutral—and then a bump in the road sent her gasping into his arms again. She fought him off furiously.

  “If you dare to take advantage—”

  “Don’t worry, ma’am, I’m a man of honor. I’ll marry you first chance I get.”

  Charlotte was breathless with indignation. Luckily the ambulance pulled up at that moment, and she didn’t have to think of a cutting response. She jumped down and began assisting the orderlies with unloading the wounded men. Then it was back to the routine of chaos, helping the medical officer perform emergency operations, administering sedatives and water and comfort, cleaning and bandaging wounds, and always with the screams of pain and always, always, someone calling for their mother. There was no time to think, no time to stop, no time to do anything but try as hard as she could to save as many lives as she could.

  It wasn’t until much later that the medical officer in charge, Dr. Field, told her to go to her hut and rest.

  “There’s still so much to do,” she replied. Distantly, someone was moaning in delirium.

  “There’s always so much to do,” he told her. His face was gray and lined with exhaustion. “Go and sleep now, or you will be no use tomorrow.”

  Charlotte nodded, knowing the older man was right. She turned away and went up the ward toward her hut.

  “Hey, there.”

  A familiar voice spoke up from one of the beds. She turned and saw his blue eyes smiling at her. Cleaned up, he was handsome. A sprinkle of boyish freckles covered a once-broken nose.

  “That was a fine job you did there, ma’am. Name’s Flint, Flint MacAllister.” He held out a bandaged hand. “Yours?”

  Charlotte drew herself up, despite her aching feet. She was glad to find she still had the energy to put him in his place. “You may call me Nurse Templeton. If you must call me anything at all, that is—and I’d rather you didn’t.”

  She spun on her heel, shaking with exhaustion, and stalked off to her hut. She collapsed on the camp bed and fell asleep without even removing her uniform.

  Somerton

  Rebecca made her way down the servants’ stairs, her basket of mending in one
hand. It was a relief to be sure that this afternoon, at least, she wouldn’t have to keep putting it down to run around answering bells. Of course, she reminded herself, it was for a sad reason—all the family were at the reading of Lord Westlake’s will.

  It still seemed impossible to realize that he was gone. She had only seen him a couple of times, while waiting at table, and he had never spoken to her. Still, she had heard the kind way he spoke to his family, and he had never seemed a harsh master. Lady Georgiana must be heartbroken, she thought with pity. It had been so hard when her own father died, she remembered; how she had longed for someone to talk about it with. But there had been no one. Mother had needed her support; Rebecca couldn’t let her feelings show. She had needed to be cheerful and keep things going for her and Davy. And now…it felt as if she had pushed the grief so far down that she could not imagine speaking of it to anyone. But it was still there, like an underground river.

  She walked into the kitchen. Instantly she was struck by the atmosphere. Annie and Martha were talking to Thomas—or had been, until she came in. The instant they saw her, they stopped. Annie was pink in the face. Martha had her arms folded tightly. Cook looked furious. The other servants were silent and serious.

  Rebecca stopped on the threshold, shifting the heavy basket into her cradling arms.

  “Is something the matter?” she asked, thinking at once of the war. Had there been some bad news—had the Palesbury Pals taken another beating? Or one of those terrible zeppelin raids that seemed to come so randomly?

  Thomas looked up at her. He seemed troubled. “Unfortunately,” he began, “we are unable to find—”

  “Oh, do tell it straight, Thomas,” Annie interrupted. She stepped forward and pointed at Rebecca. “We know you stole them spoons.”

  Rebecca, shocked, took a step back. “I didn’t! I’ve not stolen anything!” She looked at Thomas in appeal. “How can you let her say that? It’s a lie!”

  “Well, you tell us who it could have been, then,” Cook said, tutting at her. “No, I won’t hold my tongue, Thomas. You’re too kind to her. You know no one else had the key to the silver cabinet.”