I must have walked another hundred yards or more. And then someone spoke just behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
It was Simon Brandon. He'd been following me at a distance.
"It's late, Bess, and that direction isn't wise."
I realized that I'd left the hospital well behind me, and ahead was a short, cluttered street with rather rundown shops and a pub or two, their doors shuttered. The street itself was dark, empty, dustbins casting long shadows. At the far end, two men stood in the shelter of a doorway, the lighted tips of their cigarettes glowing red. They seemed to be intent on their conversation-I could just hear the murmur of voices-but I turned and together Simon and I started back toward the motorcar.
"How is she?" he asked. "I saw Inspector Herbert come out again to speak to you."
The clanging of an ambulance speeding toward the hospital drowned out my voice. After it passed, I told Simon what Helen Calder had said.
"It's very likely she'll never remember, Bess. And that leaves Lieutenant Hart in a limbo of sorts. She could have cleared his name-or she could have condemned him. It might work in his favor that she doesn't recall the attack. On the other hand, there may be assumptions that aren't true entered into evidence."
We had reached his motorcar, and he held my door before continuing. "There are witnesses who heard her call out to Michael Hart. And the police will act on that evidence instead." He turned the crank and then got in next to me. "Why did she call his name, do you think? She was in great pain, bleeding heavily. Why not call for her husband. Or a sister. Someone connected with her family."
"I don't know," I told him truthfully. "And when I asked her, she told me Michael wasn't at the dinner party. Then she added, 'Afterward.' Did she mean that she'd seen him after the dinner party? Or was she going to tell me something else?"
"There's no way to know. You must prepare yourself, Bess. This case is going to trial, and there's nothing to be done about it."
I turned to him. "Simon, attend the trial for me, if I'm in France. I want to know everything, what witnesses are called on either side, what they testify. What the rebuttal is. And the verdict-you must be there to tell me what the verdict is. I don't think they'll give me leave. Inspector Herbert told me that my statement was sufficient. Please? I need to know all of it."
"Shall I sketch their faces as well?"
"That's not amusing, Simon."
He nodded, threading his way through light traffic. "Sorry. I was trying to lighten your mood."
I hadn't realized that I had been so intense. "Please?"
He turned to me, his face in shadows cast by the canvas roof. "I promise, Bess. If it will give you any comfort. But there's nothing more you can do. Don't let it haunt you. Your patients will suffer if you do."
"He wouldn't let me see Michael. Or write to him. Inspector Herbert, I mean. He doesn't want me to contact him in any way. Will you try to see him? I want to know how he's planning to fight these charges."
"I'll do my best."
I settled back into my seat as we left the busy city streets behind us and found the road leading to Somerset. "Thank you, Simon. And, Simon-don't tell Mother or the Colonel Sahib that you're doing this for me. It will only worry them."
I saw Simon's mouth tighten into a straight line. "And I'm not to worry?"
I didn't know how to answer. And so I said nothing.
My mother closed my valise, sighed, and said, "When your father went off on a dangerous mission, I was so grateful to have a daughter. She would never walk in harm's way, I told myself. I won't lose a night's sleep over her out in hostile territory. My only worry will be whether or not she chooses wisely when it comes to marriage. And look at what this war has brought me."
It was the closest she'd ever come to admitting to worrying. And I thought perhaps it had been the sinking of Britannic last year while I was aboard that had brought her fears out into the open. With a broken arm, I couldn't have fended for myself in the water, if we hadn't had time to launch the boats, and I could well have drowned.
I smiled, glad I hadn't told her about the German aircraft strafing us at La Fleurette. "I shan't be in any danger. It's my patients you must say a prayer for, every day."
My father came just then, to carry the valise down to the motorcar. After he'd gone, my mother said, "He would prefer that I didn't tell you, Bess, but I think you ought to know this. Your father has been in touch with Lieutenant Hart's aunt and uncle, suggesting a good barrister if they haven't already found one to their liking. They were in such a state of shock and were grateful for his advice."
I felt a mixture of shame that I hadn't thought of calling on them again and a surge of hope that my father believed Michael was innocent.
I said, "Then the Colonel Sahib agrees with me."
But she dashed my hopes almost at once. "I think it's more a case of the Army looking after its own, whatever one's regiment. The lieutenant's own commanding officer hadn't called on them yet. He's still in France."
"Thank you for telling me."
"I'd like to know why you're so sure he's innocent?"
"I drove him to Somerset and then to London, and back to Little Sefton. I'd have known if he were a murderer. And I didn't feel it."
"Hardly evidence that would sway a jury," she said.
I embraced my mother, and she returned it fiercely. "Be safe," she whispered into my ear, then let me go.
As I walked out the door to where my father and Simon were waiting with the motorcar, I found myself remembering a lesson in ancient Greek history: how the women of Sparta sent their loved ones into battle with the brave words, Come back with your shield-or on it.
How many women over the millennia had fought back tears to smile and wish their men safe?
The door shut behind me, and I didn't look back. My father held my door for me while Simon turned the crank. And then we were on our way.
My father walked me to the gangway of my ship, took me in his arms for a brief moment, then stepped back, smiling.
As Simon bent to kiss my cheek, I murmured, "Don't forget!"
And then I was at the rail, waving, and we were pulling out, our escort already under way.
I wondered afterward what premonitions my family had felt before my departure. I'd had the strongest impression of an undercurrent of concern. It hadn't been like Simon to kiss me, nor my father to put his arms around me. Whatever foreboding there was, I began this next posting far from the front lines and well out of range of danger. I'd been there several weeks when I heard from Simon.
He had gone over Inspector Herbert's head and found a way to speak to Michael. It must not have been a very successful visit, for Simon reported that the shoulder was healing well although it appeared that Lieutenant Hart wasn't recovering the use of that arm. VAD therapy wasn't available in prison, and so there was no hope for a successful convalescence. With gallows humor, Michael Hart had told Simon that it wouldn't matter, he wouldn't live long enough to worry about it. But Simon rather thought he was worried.
My father reported that Michael's family had retained the barrister recommended to them, and they felt he might well save their nephew.
It occurred to me that my father had written those lines to encourage me, as much as to report on the legal issues.
We were sent shortly after that to a new hospital, one with severely wounded patients from all over the Front. This was well behind the lines too, and I was beginning to think my father had had a word with someone about his only daughter.
I was becoming a favorite surgical nurse among the staff, and this kept me too busy to think or worry about anyone, myself included.
And then I was sent to another forward hospital, a receiving station for wounded brought in by stretcher bearers rather than ambulances. We could hear the guns, see their flashes all night long, and sometimes their screams as they raced overhead deafened us.
We had just cleared out a contingent of our own wounded when the Front moved forward three hundred yards in that salient, and suddenly the men I was working with wore the field gray of German uniforms.
I'd heard several nurses state flatly that they wouldn't touch German wounded, Edith Cavill fresh in their minds. She had been shot by firing squad for staying with her duties to her own wounded when the Germans had overrun that part of Belgium. They had called her a spy, and rid themselves of her.
But as I looked at these men, some of them so young and frightened, others stoic in their pain, I could hardly turn them away.
I spent endless hours working over them, sorting the more serious cases from those we couldn't move until they were stabilized, listening to the ragged breath of the dying, holding the hands of those facing surgery, trying to discover the names of those who couldn't speak.
I soon forgot that this was the enemy. But for their uniforms and their language, they could have been any soldier from our own armies. I gave them all the care at my command, and cried when one of them died in my arms.
Their officer, his foot badly lacerated by shell fragments, hobbled around the tent speaking to each one of his men, comforting and reassuring them, taking down their names in a little leather book along with a description of their wounds, so that there would be a record of where they were and why.
Twice I asked Hauptmann Ritter to sit down and let me examine his foot, but he shook his head, continuing his rounds. Finally I stood in front of him, forcing him to stop and face me.
"You are risking infection that will cost you your foot and possibly your leg as well. It might even kill you. Is that what you want? If so, it's a poor example for these men who are letting us care for them."
I wasn't certain he understood me until I saw a flash of anger in his blue eyes, and he said in passable English, "I am responsible."
The Colonel Sahib would have liked him in other circumstances. They saw eye to eye on the duties of command.
"Yes, well, you can be just as responsible once I've cleaned and disinfected that wound, then bandaged it."
He gave me a look that was withering, and then as he turned he saw that the men on cots around him were listening with open interest to hear what he would say.
It must have taken enormous effort to quell his pride and let me lead him to one side where his foot could be examined properly. He refused to let his men out of his sight, but I found a bench where he could sit and rest his foot on a wooden crate.
And it was a nasty wound. I summoned one of the doctors and he came to have a look as well.
"You could lose this, you know," he told Herr Hauptmann. "And with it your career in the Army." He fetched what he needed and began to clean the foot and remove any fragments still buried there.
I watched as the muscles in our patient's jaw tightened, and I knew what sort of pain he was enduring, refusing to show weakness.
I realized that not only the German soldiers but Dr. Newcomb himself was watching Captain Ritter with interest.
Dr. Newcomb did what he could with the wound, then said, "This will require surgery. We must get him and those five men over there back to where they can be taken care of."
Ritter wanted no part of being separated from his men, the walking wounded already being lined up to be taken under guard to a processing center for prisoners, the others to remain here until they were fit to move.
It took some argument and persuasion before Captain Ritter accepted the fact that he had no choice in the matter. He finished the entries in his small notebook, then reluctantly allowed us to put him in the ambulance waiting outside.
I was the transport nurse, and after making certain the other critical cases were as stable and comfortable as possible, I climbed into the seat next to the driver. Captain Ritter called from the back, "Claus is bleeding again."
I got out and stepped into the rear of the ambulance. And Claus had indeed pulled at his bandaging, blood already welling in the wound in his chest. I worked to stop the bleeding, and finally succeeded.
Captain Ritter said bitterly, "The war is over for him. I don't know whether to mourn for him or congratulate him."
I stayed with Claus, sending Captain Ritter to take my place next to the driver, who gave me a long look. I knew what he was asking-if this German officer was to be trusted next to the driver, where he could try a mischief.
I said, "Captain Ritter understands I am exchanging places in order to keep this soldier alive. He will give me his word to respect this decision."
Captain Ritter smiled at me, and I knew he'd been weighing his chances. But he nodded, and closed the ambulance door on me before hobbling painfully to the front of the vehicle.
We set off along the rutted road, lurching and swaying like some mad creature in the throes of despair. It was always a wonder to me when a severely wounded man survived this ride. I felt bruised and battered as we pulled in at the hospital and I could turn my patients over to the staff waiting there.
Captain Ritter thanked me for my care of his men, and then said, "I have learned one thing in life at least. When I have given up all hope, there is still something to live for. I swore I would never be taken prisoner. And here I am, a prisoner. But I shall write to my wife now and tell her that very likely I shall survive the war after all. She will have a little peace, knowing that. It will be my good deed."
"There's no shame in being taken prisoner," I told him. "You are no use to your country dead."
He smiled. "I shall remember that. Good-bye, Fraulein." And he was gone, supported by two orderlies, followed by an armed guard.
I was to think about Captain Ritter when my mail at last caught up with me.
When I have given up all hope, there is still something to live for.
Michael Hart was speaking almost those same words to Simon Brandon that same afternoon. Only I wouldn't hear about it for another two weeks.