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Victoria lay awake in her bed all that night, she was so excited she
couldn't sleep. This was why she had come here. But it was harder to
remember the next morning. It was cold, and it was damp, and she hadn't
slept all night. She was glad to find that the hotel had packed a lunch
for them, and the boy had brought a thermos of coffee given him by his
mother.

"Why did you come here? " he asked as she poured the first cup, on their
way to their first stop on the way to Doullens. It was going to be a
long journey.

"I came over because I thought I was needed here, " she said, wondering
if she could explain it to him. It was hard enough explaining it to
herself these days, let alone a boy from Calais who barely spoke her
language. "I felt useless where I was, because I wasn't doing anything
for anyone. This seemed more important." He nodded. He had understood
her. It sounded noble, even to her, the way she expressed it.

"You have no family, " he said, assuming she didn't. She didn't tell him
she had a husband and a stepson that she had left behind, or he really
would have thought she was crazy, or at least rotten.

"I am a twin, " she said to him, Jumelle, " which seemed more
interesting and it was a word she knew in almost every language. It was
a word which always made people brighten. And it did him, as he glanced
at her.

"Antique? " Yves asked her with interest.

"Ouch." She nodded.

"Tres amusant." He nodded his approval. "She did not wish to come with
you? "

"No, " Victoria said firmly, telling the lie that she had created in
order to come here, "she's married, she couldn't." He nodded that he had
understood, but in truth he had no idea how complicated it all was.

He just thought he understood it.

And after that, they rode on for a long while in silence. They passed
farms and churches, and the occasional country school, and fields that
hadn't been planted that year. There were no young men to do it.

He tried to explain that to her in pantomime, and she got it. And then
they rode in silence again for a while and she lit a cigarette and had
another cup of coffee.

"Vousfumez? " He looked impressed. French women of her ilk didn't do
that. But she nodded. "Tres msderne." He nodded and laughed.

She was "tres moderne" even in New York, in fact a little too much so.

And then they drove through Montdidier, and after that Senlis, and it
was long after nightfall when they finally got to Reims. She had long
since missed her five o'clock rendezvous with the Red (ross and the had
long since run out of coffee and food, and she t V and Yves could both
hear guns in the distance. They sounded closer than they were, and there
was the occasional rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns.

"It's not good for us to be here, " he said nervously, glancing around
him, but they were coming in to Chalons-sur-Marne exactly . the way
they'd been told to, and a few minutes later, they saw a field hospital
and she told him to stop there. There were stretchers being carried in
and out, and men in bloodied aprons standing in little knots conferring,
and nurses rushing to help dying men, or wounded ones.

Yves looked uncomfortable, and Victoria just stood there and stared at
the action around her. She felt as though she had been awake for days,
and her whole life had been turned upside down, and yet she felt a
sudden surge of excitement just to be there.

She asked someone standing by if there was anyone from the Red Cross
there, and they just smiled at her, and moved on, although she was sure
they spoke English. And Yves said he had to go then. He was going to
just leave her there and let her work it out for herself. But she hadn't
hired him to be a guide for her for the rest of the war, her private
chauffeur. He waved as he got back in the car again and she shouted
"Merci" as he drove off, but he was obviously in a hurry to get out of
Chalons-sur-Marne, and she didn't really blame him. But she had no idea
what to do next as she stood there.

There were people hurrying in and out of the tent, and a few stared at
her. She looked so clean and so untouched as she stood looking somewhat
forlorn with her suitcase. And finally, not knowing what else to do, she
asked an orderly for the nurses' station.

"In there, " he said vaguely, motioning over his shoulder, as he hauled
a huge bag of refuse away, and Victoria shuddered to think what was in
it.

But the nurses were too busy to talk to her, a fresh group of wounded
had just come in, and no one had time to waste on a greenhorn.

"Here, " an orderly said suddenly, throwing an apron at her as the last
nurse ran away to a man screaming in the corner. "I need you.

Follow me." He moved hurriedly between two hundred stretchers Lying on
the ground, twelve inches apart, and she had to move as quickly and
carefully as she could, not to step on them as she followed.

There was a smaller tent beyond being used as an operating room. And
there were men lying on the ground waiting to be carried in, some of
them moaning softly, others shrieking piteously, some of them mercifully
unconscious.

"I don't know what to do, " Victoria said nervously. She had l .

expected to meet someone, to have them explain things to her, to drive
an ambulance, or do something she knew she could do, not be here with
these men, so badly savaged by explosions and shells and shrapnel.

There were hideous burns, and many of them had been poisoned by the
phosgene and chlorine gases the Germans were pelting them with. It was
so new and so cruel that the Allies had no comparable weapon with which
to fight it.

The orderly she was following was short and wiry, he had bright red
hair, and she had heard someone call him Dither when they passed him.

She was very grateful he spoke English. And she almost fainted when she
realized he expected her to help him care for the men who had just been
brought in from the trenches. All of them had been severely gassed, and
many of them were incoherent. He pointed out a group of them to her, and
spoke in an undervoice in English.

"Do what you can for them, " he said quietly amidst the hellish din.

She was suddenly reminded of the people she'd seen around her in the sea
when the Lusitania went down. But this was so much worse, and they were
still living. "They won't last the night. Too much gas. We can't help
them." There was a man at her feet with green vomit oozing from his nose
and mouth, and Victoria clutched Dither's arm as he moved to leave her.

"I'm not a nurse, " she said, gagging on her own bile. This was too much
for her. She couldn't do it. She knew she shouldn't have come here.

"I can't .. ."

"I'm not a nurse either, " he said sharply, "I'm a musician ..

.

are you going to stay or not? " he asked her bluntly. This was her trial
by fire. This was what she had said she wanted. "If you're not, go.

I have no time for this .. ." He looked angry at her, as though she had
come here for nothing, a dilettante, to show off to her friends.

But the look in his eyes challenged her, and she nodded.

"I'll stay, " she said hoarsely, and knelt slowly toward the man closest
to her. Half his face had been shot off, and there were bloody bandages
covering him, but the doctors in the surgery had decided not to waste
their time on him. He was too far gone for them to spend hours on him.

In a proper hospital perhaps, but not here. He'd never make it.

He'd be dead within hours.

"Hello .. . what's your name? " he asked in a voice already tinged with
death, "I'm Mark." He was English.

"I'm Olivia, " she answered, giving him the name she had to use now.

She felt helpless, as she took the boy's hand in her own, and held
tightly to his fingers, trying not to look at him and see the wound, but
something beyond it.

"You're American, " he said softly in a Yorkshire accent. "I was there
once .. ."

"I'm from New York." As though it mattered.

"When'd you get here? " He was clinging to life, holding on to her,
feeling that if he talked to her, he would make it through the night,
but they both knew he wouldn't.

"Tonight, " she said, feeling very green again, as she smiled at him,
and another boy yanked at her apron.

"From America, I mean .. . when did you come? " Mark asked her.

"Last weekend .. . on the Lusitania, " she said numbly. There were so
many of them. All she could hear were their sobs and their screams.

It was just like when the ship had been sinking.

"Bloody rotten thing of the Jerries to do .. . women and children .

.

. they're animals they are, " he said, and she could see it from what
they had done to him. And then she turned to the other one who was
calling for her, he wanted his mother and he was thirsty. He was
seventeen, from Hampshire, and he died holding her hand twenty minutes
later. She talked to hundreds of men that night, and dozens of them died
as she watched them. She did nothing in particular for them, held a
hand, lit a cigarette, she gave all of her own away, gave them water
though they shouldn't drink, but it didn't matter anyway, some of them
had no stomachs left, or no lips, or lungs filled with gases. It was
horrible beyond belief, and she wondered if she'd been of any use at all
as she staggered out of the tent again in the morning. She was covered
with vomit and blood and spit, and she had no idea where to go, or where
her suitcase had gone the night before. She'd forgotten it and all else
as she knelt beside the boys who called her name, held her hand, or just
died in her arms as she watched them. She'd helped Dither carry them
outside on stretchers and lay them on the ground until i l other men
came to carry them away to be buried. There were thousands of them now,
all so young, buried in the hillsides.

"There's food in the tent over there." Dither came by on his way to get
fresh supplies, and he pointed to a larger tent just far enough away
that she wondered if she'd make it. She hadn't slept all night, and
every inch of her ached, but he looked tireless as he smiled at her.

"Are you sorry you've come yet, Olivia? " he asked. She was so tired she
almost slipped and told him Olivia was her sister. But while she was
here, it was her name now.

"No, " she lied with a tired smile, but he knew she was Lying.

She'd worked hard the night before, she might actually be worth having
around, if she stayed. Most volunteers didn't. They stayed for a few
days, and then ran away, shocked by what they'd seen, and happy to go
home again.

Others, the hardy ones, the ones who could take it and they were rare,
came and stayed forever. Some of the volunteers had been with them since
the beginning. It had been nearly a year now. But he didn't think she'd
be one of them. She was too young and too pretty. She had probably just
come for the excitement, he figured.

"You'll get used to it. Wait till winter, you'll love it." They'd been
up to their hips in mud for months. The rains had been relentless.

But it was better than what had happened to the Russians, freezing in
Galicia. But as she listened to him, she realized that by winter she
wouldn't be there. She'd be back in New York again, with Charles and
Geoffrey. They seemed so far away to her now, as though they didn't even
exist anymore. The only one who still seemed real to her was Olivia, she
seemed to live in her soul, and Victoria could almost hear her talking
to her at night sometimes. It was uncanny.

She left Dither then, and staggered toward the tent that he said was
their mess hall, and as she approached it, she smelled coffee and food
and unfamiliar smells, and she suddenly realized that despite the
carnage she had seen, she was starving. She helped herself to powdered
eggs and stew that was mostly gristle, and a thick slab of bread that
turned out to be so stale it was like a block of wood, but she ate it
anyway, softening it in her stew. And she drank two huge cups of strong
black coffee. A few of the nurses and some of the orderlies said hello
to her, but everyone was either busy, or exhausted. They seemed to have
a whole city organized there, with tents as barracks, a hospital, supply
depots, the mess hall.