An Unmarked Grave (12 page)

“Ah, well. But I’ve noticed that everyone has been keeping an eye out for us. I don’t mind telling you, I was badly frightened when you were attacked.”

“Whoever he is, he’s well away from here now,” I assured her, and hoped that it was true.

New orders came for me before the week was out. Dr. Hicks informed me of them when he and I had finished working to stabilize an abdomen torn by shrapnel before taking the risk of sending the patient on to Rouen.

“I shall miss your steady hand and good eye,” he said. “But my loss is another station’s gain.”

“Thank you, sir.” And then, with a sense of foreboding, I asked, “Could you tell me who ordered my transfer?”

“I spoke to him by field telephone this morning. A Dr. Percy had requested you.”

I’d never worked with a Dr. Percy. “Was it Dr. Percy on the telephone?”

“No, no, I could hardly hear the Major, there was so much interference. But he confirmed you are to leave at once and the paperwork is to follow by the end of the week.”

“But that’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“True, but apparently they’re shorthanded outside of Ypres, and they can’t wait for the orders to come.” He studied my face. “Are you worried about this transfer, Sister Crawford?”

“I—yes, I must admit that I am,” I said, speaking frankly.

“I can assure you it was all straightforward. I made sure of that.”

“Could you try to reach Ypres and make certain that this was not a mistake?”

“Is it the attack on you that has made you so wary? My dear, you will probably be safer in your new posting than you are here, so close to the lines. I shouldn’t worry, if I were you.”

“Thank you, sir.” I couldn’t protest any more than I had.

Yet this was what I had dreaded—a new posting I knew very little about. I’d been sure Dr. Hicks would keep me, but someone had been insistent and convincing. I had no choice in the matter.

I went back to my tent, trying to think of a way to send word to my father. I’d seen Captain Barclay no more than an hour ago, but now he was nowhere to be found.

Troubled by his continued absence, on my first break I finished packing my possessions as ordered. If I could reach Rouen, surely I could find a way to contact the Colonel Sahib. But when I changed my apron, I made certain that the little pistol was in my pocket.

Outside I could hear the grumble of ambulance motors as they prepared to leave for the Base Hospital.

Just then Dr. Hicks came to say good-bye.

“Be safe, Sister Crawford. Did I tell you that there will be accommodations for you tonight at the American Base Hospital? Your transport to Ypres, as I understand it, will leave tomorrow morning from there.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Sister Clery also came to say good-bye, and several of the others who weren’t busy with the wounded. But still there was no sign of Captain Barclay.

Sister Clery, seeing me look around a last time before taking my seat, smiled and said, “I’ll tell him you’ll miss him, shall I?”

“Don’t bother,” I said, trying to convince myself that he had gone ahead to look into the transfer.

The ambulances followed the usual track, stopping at one other aid station to take on three more patients, and then finally, when my spine felt like a washboard, I could see the lights of Rouen ahead.

We discharged our patients, handed in the lists of names, and the drivers went away to hose down the ambulances.

I said to the sister in charge, “I’ve received a new posting, but the paperwork hasn’t come through. Oral orders for Ypres. I’m told you have a bed for me tonight.”

She glanced at my valise, then raised her eyes to my face. “Sister Crawford? I don’t think—let me look at the roster.”

My heart sank, but I smiled and waited patiently.

After a moment she shook her head. “No, sorry. There’s nothing here.”

I knew then that this was not an official transfer. “Do you have a bed? I don’t believe my transport leaves until tomorrow morning.”

Again she shook her head. “We’ve got no space, Sister. We had beds for eight hundred and we’ve got nearly sixteen hundred patients. I’ve moved in with another nurse myself, we’re that cramped. I’m so sorry.”

I put the best face on it I could.

“My transport expects to find me here tomorrow before dawn. Could you leave a message that I am in Rouen and will meet it on time?”

She wrote a message and clipped it on a board by her desk where there were some twenty or thirty others. “I won’t be on duty tomorrow, but the nurse who is will see the message. Will that do?”

I could tell she had more on her mind than dealing with my problems. But there was one more question I wanted to put to her.

“There’s one more thing,” I said with a smile. “I’m being sent to work with a Dr. Percy, near Ypres. I hear he’s something of a Tartar. Have you had any dealings with him or his patients?”

“Near Ypres? Most of those cases go directly to Dover.”

I could only push the matter so far. I thanked her and walked out of Base Hospital’s Reception.

So much for my attempts to find out anything useful. Communications were sketchy at best here in France. The military used runners and motorcycles when contact was imperative. Radio telephones were not always dependable. And so it wasn’t too surprising that someone here in Rouen wouldn’t know a doctor on the coastal sector of the Front. Unless of course he had a reputation that fed the rumor mill. I’d have to wait until morning and see what sort of transportation showed up.

Ordinarily I’d have sorted out the problem of where to spend the night without a second thought. Rouen was not a small town; it was a sizable city, and wandering about in it alone—something I’d done a dozen times before this—was no longer something I cared to do. Under the circumstances.

And what had happened to Captain Barclay? I’d convinced myself that he’d come ahead to prepare the way. After all, he could hardly openly desert his duties by leaving the aid station when I did. But there was no indication that he’d even reached the Base Hospital; otherwise he’d have left a message for me. Was he even in Rouen? Now I wondered if he was alive, because he took his duty to me seriously, and yet he had vanished without a word. What’s more, the ambulances that had brought me here had already pulled out for the Front, and there wasn’t even a possibility of sending word back to Dr. Hicks, much less getting his answer before I myself left the city.

I stood there on the street, thinking fast. Hotels were not the best choice for a woman alone. But there was one place I was assured of a bed: the convent I’d visited last winter and several times in the early spring before the influenza epidemic took hold.

I’d always brought something with me—money, medicines, soap, food—to help with the care of any ill or wounded children. This time I had only myself.

And so I found myself on the doorstep waiting for the porteress to answer the ring of the bell. The convent had little comfort to offer a stranger at their door, but they greeted me warmly and shared what they could.

The youngest nun came in quietly to wake me at three o’clock, and I dressed by candlelight in a room that held the night’s chill from the river. Then I slipped out into the predawn darkness to make my way back to where my transport should be waiting.

I wasn’t particularly frightened in the dark, narrow streets where the sounds from the docks echoed and the sporadic shelling at the Front was a counterpoint in the background. No one knew where to find me, and there was no one else about. It was too early for the milk wagon or the lorries bringing in foodstuffs from the outlying villages, too early for the ships to arrive from England with new recruits. I knew the city and could find my way without difficulty, only my own footsteps echoing.

I was within sight of the racetrack and the American Base Hospital, when I glimpsed the outline of a motorcar some thirty yards on the far side of the hospital entrance where summer bushes were thick and dark. My driver? Why hadn’t he halted under the lamps where I could see him better? But of course I was a little early. He was probably sleeping at the wheel after his long drive.

Still, I was uneasy. After all, I had no idea who he was, and I’d already decided to ask for some form of identification. If I wasn’t satisfied, I would have the Base Hospital verify that he’d come from Dr. Percy.

Should I wait where I was? I was vulnerable here, if the wrong person knew I was expecting to meet transport this morning—and even if the transfer was legitimate, in spite of the fact that no accommodations were waiting at the hospital, it would be the perfect opportunity to find me alone and unprotected.

Or approach?

What if the driver was already dead behind the wheel, so that he couldn’t raise the alarm if I didn’t die quietly?

For that matter, what if that motorcar wasn’t for me after all?

Standing there in the shadows of a building, I debated what to do. At this hour of the morning, it was easy to believe in danger of any kind, with my own breathing the only sound I could hear, and not even a bat swooping through the darkness to distract me from my thoughts.

I decided not to wait where I was but to move closer to the Base Hospital, where I could be heard if I had to scream. If all went well, there would be nothing to worry about. If it didn’t, I hoped I could count on help sooner. I’d taken only one step in that direction when there was a sharp movement just behind me. My valise was in my right hand, but before I could swing it at my assailant, it was snatched out of my grip. I was spun into the deeper shadow of a doorway, a rough hand over my mouth.

I realized in that instant that I had stepping unwittingly into a trap, that the motorcar had held my attention while the driver had come up behind me.

Biting down on the hand over my mouth, I began to fight.

I’d just managed to force my hand down toward the pistol in my pocket when a voice whispered savagely, “Damn it, Bess, if you kick me or shoot me, I’ll never take you to the Grand Hotel.”

Captain Barclay. I stopped struggling. He held me close for a moment until he was sure it wasn’t a trick.

As he let me go, I demanded angrily in a whisper of my own, “Did you have to frighten me like that? Why couldn’t you simply tell me who you were?”

“Because,” he said shortly, “you must not get into that motorcar. Or let the driver see you.”

He still had one arm around me, holding me in the shadows of the doorway. I didn’t know if the driver of the motorcar had seen me or not, or if he was even there. It was too hard to tell. It was still a quarter of an hour before I was to meet him, and it was possible that he had gone into a café for coffee to keep himself awake.

“Who is he?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “Did you see him? For that matter, where have you been?”

“It was more important to watch for you and stop you—look! He’s just coming out of that alley across the way. Pay attention to his manner of walking. Do you recognize him?”

But the man who had just appeared was hurrying away, coughing once or twice, as if he had been ill. He disappeared into the darkness beyond, with only a last cough to tell us where he had gone.

“I don’t think—that can’t be him. How long have you been here? Do you know if he’s inside the motorcar?”

“It was there when I got here. I’ve been watching it. Nothing.”

“Then let me go. I won’t get in, I promise you. But it’s important to get a good look at him. We may not have another chance.”

“No. That’s not safe. Bess, I’m no match for him right now!”

“I have the pistol.”

“No, I tell you. It isn’t worth the risk. Wait. See if he shows himself. He’ll grow impatient. He might even walk as far as those lamps by the Base Hospital.”

But he didn’t. Where was he?

As I heard the clock in a nearby church tower strike four, I broke away from Captain Barclay’s clutches and stepped out into the street. Walking sedately toward the motorcar, I took my time. I could now see that one wing was dented, but that not surprising. Most of the motorcars anywhere near the Front were dented and rusty. When I was some ten or fifteen feet away, I stopped, looking around, as if expecting to find my driver.

“Hallo?” I called after a moment. “Anyone there?” I took a step or two nearer the bonnet, and then—apparently uncertain—I turned and took four back the way I’d come. This gave me a chance to look around me, scanning doorways and the windows of a café just down the street without appearing to be suspicious.

I was almost facing the motorcar again when, without any warning at all, out of the corner of my eye I saw movement behind the windscreen, as if someone had been lying out of sight across the seats. In the same instant the great, bright headlamps came on, their black paint gone, and I was pinned in their glare, startled and unable to see or move.

But I could hear the motor as it was gunned, and the headlamps were speeding toward me.

Behind me I heard Captain Barclay shout, but I knew that if I moved too soon, the driver behind the glare of the lights could see where I was leaping, and compensate.

I almost left it too late.

Prepared to spring to the left, where I had the whole street in which to maneuver, I realized that he too could use that space to swerve toward me. And so without hesitating, I flung myself right, into the ragged line of unkempt shrubbery that marked that side of the road.

He swerved too, just as I had feared, but in this direction he had no room—he dared not come too close to the shrubbery, or at that speed he’d lose control and crash into it. Still, he cut it close. I felt the force of his passage, the leading edge of the rusted wing brushing my hip, catching my apron, and nearly dragging me under the rear wheels before the cloth ripped and freed me. I cried out, catching at the prickly, scrubby branches of the shrubs to keep my balance.

The pistol was in my pocket, and I scrabbled for it, trying to reach it in the folds of my uniform, but I already knew it would be impossible to bring it out in time to fire at my tormentor. All the same, I was frightened and angry enough to do just that.

I twisted to take a hard look at him. But his face was half covered by a muffler, a dark striped length of woolen cloth that must have been hot this time of year. All I could see were his eyes.