An Unmarked Grave

by Charles Todd

  I took a deep breath before I spoke.

  “What’s to become of him, Sergeant?”

  His gaze never leaving the Captain’s face, he said with some satisfaction, “He doesn’t have the proper papers to be in Rouen. Desertion is a capital offense, and so is spying. And if you ask me, he looks more like a blood-a German officer than an orderly. He doesn’t even sound like an Englishman.”

  “Yes, well, I expect that’s because he’s Canadian. He’s an orderly, one Private Barclay, and Dr. Hicks can vouch for him.”

  “And who is Dr. Hicks when he’s at home?” the Sergeant demanded, turning to look at me. I was suddenly grateful for the nuns’ care in cleaning my coat and cap. The Sergeant was prepared to think the worst.

  I told him, but it made no difference. Dr. Hicks wasn’t here, and he wasn’t likely to leave his post to come here and identify this man, much less explain why he had no pass.

  We were getting nowhere.

  I said, “Very well, take me back to the Major. He’ll have to deal with this matter.”

  Turning on my heel, I started back the way I’d come, and the Sergeant was hard-pressed to usher Captain Barclay into his cell and still catch me up before I reached the Major.

  I said, as I was summoned to his presence, “The man you have in custody is one Private Barclay, a Canadian. If you will contact Colonel Crawford through the War Office, you will be told why Private Barclay is in Rouen.”

  “Sister Crawford? Any relation to this Colonel?” he asked, dubious.

  “That’s not the issue here. Please contact the Colonel immediately. It’s urgent business, and he will not care to have this man in your custody any longer than absolutely necessary.”

  “How is it that you know so much about this matter?”

  I said, showing my exasperation, “I was asked to provide a reason for Private Barclay to pay a brief visit to Rouen. He was the driver who accompanied me when I was transferring patients from the forward aid station to the Base Hospital here.”

  He didn’t believe me. But I thought perhaps he was just curious enough about what was going on to contact London.

  The Major said, his voice sour, “And if that’s the case, why wasn’t a pass provided?”

  “You must ask Colonel Crawford the answer to that. I expect there was no time to see to it.”

  “Why Rouen? And why weren’t we told?”

  “I’m not Colonel Crawford, Major. You must ask him. I’m overdue at my own post, and must make arrangements to return. I wish you a good morning.”

  Before the Major could think of a reason to detain me as well, I left his untidy office and walked away from the port with some misgivings.

  And what was I to do now? I was hungry and it was starting to rain. I had no papers assigning me to transport to England, and I wasn’t likely to be given them by this officer. I still had no way to reach my father. My best hope was that the Major would indeed contact him, and once the Colonel Sahib heard that Captain Barclay was in difficulty, he would assume that I needed help as well.

  The only thing left to me, then, was to go to the Base Hospital, beg paper and pen, and then haunt the port until I found a Naval officer I knew by sight. With a smile and some excuse such as not having had time to write before this, it might be possible to persuade him to carry my letter to Portsmouth and post it there.

  The American nurse in charge this morning looked askance at me when I was ushered into her tidy office. The small board on her desk identified her as Nurse Bailey.

  “Sister Crawford? What can I do for you?”

  “My transport back to the aid station hasn’t come,” I said pleasantly. “Is there somewhere I could sit and write letters? They will reach England sooner if I can hand them to someone at the port.”

  I could see that she was of two minds about offering me space. She was new to me, a small woman with light brown hair and a thin scar on her cheek. Pursing her lips, she considered me.

  “The convoy back to your sector has already left,” she told me primly. “You came in with wounded, I think? I was just going off duty.”

  I held on to my patience. “I’ve been posted to Passchendaele. Ypres. I was to meet someone here to transfer me to that sector. But he hasn’t come.”

  “On the contrary. He was here looking for you at six o’clock this morning.”

  She lifted a sheet of paper from a basket to one side of her desk and read what someone had written there.

  “ ‘Driver arrived for one Sister Crawford. He was informed that she was not staying with us, and he left. No message.’ ”

  “Indeed!” I said, repressing the urge to look over my shoulder. “Who took that down, may I ask?”

  “Nurse Saunders, I believe. She would have been on duty.”

  “Would it be possible to speak to her? It’s rather important.”

  “It is not possible. What are we to do with you, Sister Crawford? It would seem-and I must say your appearance rather bears it out-that you have mislaid your driver, rather than the other way around.”

  I lost my temper. It had been a long night, I’d had a fright, dealt with the recalcitrant port authorities trying to release Captain Barclay, and now this woman was treating me as if I had spent the night carousing and found myself too late for my transport. I’d only come here for pen, paper, and an opportunity to write to my father.

  I said coldly, “If you care to look into my movements, I suggest you send someone to the convent where I spent the night. The nuns there will be happy to confirm that I chose to stay with them rather than go to an hotel as a woman alone. Now, will you allow me to write my letters or not?”

  “I think not, Sister.” She reached for paper and took up her pen. After a moment she considered what she had written and then said, “Your nursing service has very high standards, Sister Crawford. I am sending you to England for proper disciplining. One of our orderlies will escort you to the port, see you aboard the first available ship bound for Portsmouth, and hand this letter to the First Officer to be delivered to the proper authority as soon as you land at your destination. Do I make myself clear?” She was reaching for an envelope as she spoke, inserting the letter into it and sealing it.

  I had to bite my tongue at the reprimand. I was getting what I wanted, actually, an opportunity to sail to England straightaway. Once there I could deal with these charges easily enough. And I could reach my father by telephone when I had landed, and set Captain Barclay free even sooner than I’d expected.

  And then I had a brilliant notion.

  I said, in as petulant a tone as I could muster, “It’s not fair that I have to be sent home. What about the orderly who got me into this trouble? The port authority is holding him, but is he being sent home in disgrace? I think not! You are a woman, Nurse Bailey. Do you think it right that he escapes scot-free? He’s in the Army Medical Services just as I am. Because he’s a man, should his dereliction of duty be seen in a lesser light than mine?”

  I watched her eyes. They narrowed as I was finishing.

  “I have no authority over the port officials.”

  “The Major there would most likely honor any request coming from the American Base Hospital.”

  She was tempted.

  “At the very least, you could try,” I pleaded. “He’s quite handsome, Barclay is. I tried to withstand his advances, that’s why I went to the convent, but he followed me from the Hotel de Lille. Thank God he was stopped and asked for his papers! I don’t know what he would have done.”

  She considered me for a moment, eyes narrowing again. Finally she rose from behind the desk, asked the direction of the convent, ordered me not to leave the room, and for good measure locked the door behind her as she went out.

  I sat there fuming for over an hour. Had she believed any part of my story, or had I only succeeded in ruining my own reputation for no purpose? Time was passing, and I was locked in here.

  Halfway through the long wait, I felt a spurt of horror. What if
she’d gone in search of my driver instead? If he came here, promised to deliver me to Ypres as ordered, would she feel that I had learned my lesson and remand me into his care?

  Surely not. He had gone long before this.

  When I finally heard the key turn in the lock, I tried to make myself look frightened and contrite.

  Nurse Bailey came in accompanied by a man dressed in the uniform of an orderly, but he was older, and I guessed-correctly as it turned out-that he was in charge.

  I was told that he would escort me to the ship waiting on the river even now, and that he would deliver the letter Nurse Bailey had written to the First Officer, as she had intended from the start.

  I didn’t protest when he took my arm and led me out of the small room, through the passages, and out the gate of the hospital.

  We walked together to the port. I was escorted up the gangway and handed over to a young officer who looked at me as if I were carrying the plague. Disgust was writ large in his face, and whatever he’d been told, he’d believed every word of it. I was conducted to the quarters of one of the officers and once more locked inside.

  After a while I heard the sounds of the ship weighing anchor, then moving with the tide as it prepared to follow the river to the sea.

  I’d failed to get Captain Barclay freed, but I’d be in Portsmouth in a matter of hours.

  My worry now was, could I reach my father once I got there? Or was he off on one of his mysterious forays and out of touch for days on end? What could Mother do in his stead? Was Simon even well enough to attend to this?

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT SEEMED TO take longer than usual to reach the mouth of the river. More often than not, unless I was assigned to duty with the wounded belowdecks, I stood at the rail, watching our passage downstream. Instead, here in this stuffy little cabin, I tried to picture it in my mind as a distraction.

  Finally I could feel the swells as we left the river behind and met the Channel. That much closer to England. Somewhere in the narrow ship’s passage outside my door I heard someone begin to retch, and then the sound of feet rushing toward the companionway.

  I was a good sailor, and I stood at the porthole, the lamp behind me turned off, and looked out at gray water meeting a gray sky. There was always a chance that we would encounter a German sub, and if the weather was good, the chances were doubled. But from my vantage point, there could have been half a hundred out there, and I’d have no way of guessing.

  With a sigh, I closed the black curtains and sat down, not in the mood to relight the lamp. I was tired enough to sleep, but tempting as the bunk was, I wanted to stay alert if I could.

  I’d just stifled a yawn when I heard the click of the key in the lock, and my door opened a very little.

  I reached for the lamp, lit it, and stood there, waiting in its pool of light.

  A familiar face peered around the edge. I recognized an officer I had sailed with before on a number of occasions.

  “You aren’t about to throw the inkwell at me, are you?” Captain Garrison asked with a grin.

  “I promise,” I said, and he stepped into the tiny cabin.

  “I was just informed you were on board. Locked away like a common miscreant. What happened, Sister Crawford?”

  “It’s a long story,” I told him wryly, “but I’ve transgressed, I’m told, and I’m being shipped home in disgrace to face my hour of judgment.”

  He laughed outright. “Good God, Bess, did you take a shot at the First Lord of the Admiralty?”

  “Nothing so grand. I was accused of fraternizing with an orderly and in consequence missing my transport to Ypres.” My hand went of its own accord to my pocket. What if I’d been searched and Simon’s little handgun had been discovered?

  “I don’t believe it! Hang on-is that the other felon we have in irons belowdecks?”

  “Unless he’s an American, I wouldn’t know.”

  “Yes, he must be. He told one of my men that his ancestors had shown us a thing or two at Yorktown, and he was ready to have another go at it himself.”

  It was my turn to laugh. But what was I to tell Captain Garrison? I decided on the truth. Well, part of it.

  “We were both assigned to Ypres. But something went wrong with our transport, and I spent the night in a convent I knew of in Rouen. On his way back to the hotel where he was staying, Barclay was picked up for not having the proper papers. I tried to explain the situation to the harbor police with no luck, and when I went to the Base Hospital in the hope of finding pen and paper to write to my father, a nurse there decided I looked disreputable enough to have been up to something nefarious, and she sent me back to England. I begged her to let my betrayer be punished as well, and I expect that’s why he’s in irons below.”

  “You were deucedly lucky this was my ship. There are letters in my safe that must be meant for the Inquisition. I was told under pain of death not to open them but to hand them over along with you when I reached Portsmouth.”

  “Yes, well, I do understand in part. There’s always the fear of spies in a place like Rouen. You’ve got people coming and going in every direction, speaking I don’t know how many languages, and there are warnings everywhere to report any suspicious activity. I doubt Nurse Bailey has been in France very long. She put the worst possible interpretation on the situation. I’d have done the same in her shoes.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” he said. “You’d have got to the bottom of it. Wait here, I ought to let your American out of the brig before he thinks of a way to scuttle the ship. I’ve enough on my hands with the Germans.”

  With that he was gone, and it was some time before he reappeared. “I’ve offered Barclay my cabin to clean himself up a bit. He was all right once he knew you were safe. I need to go to the bridge and keep an eye on things.” He reached into his pocket and took out two letters. “I’ll leave these with you.” He hesitated. “Barclay strikes me more as an officer than an orderly.”

  “He is. He was so eager to get back to France he was willing to take any position available. I think his doctor back in Somerset was trying to teach him a lesson, that his wounds haven’t healed sufficiently to return to his regiment. A little humble pie, as it were.”

  Nodding, he went on his way. I folded my arms on the makeshift desk, put my head down on my arms, and went to sleep.

  I’d consider what to do once we approached Portsmouth Roads.

  I must have slept soundly. It was the rumble of the anchor cable feeding out that brought me awake, startled and confused. I tried to make myself presentable and settled my cap on my hair. My valise was by the cabin door. But I stayed where I was. It was one thing to be treated as a guest by Captain Garrison and quite another to appear on deck prematurely and place him in an awkward situation.

  I could hear the wounded being carried off the ship, and then the tramp of many feet as the next contingent of troops came aboard.

  Finally there was a tap at my door and Captain Garrison was there. “All clear,” he told me. “I think it’s safe enough to go ashore. There was no welcoming committee out there, and my officers won’t talk. I’ve procured passes out of the port for you as well. I’m afraid after that, my authority stops.”

  “You’ve been more than kind,” I told him warmly. “I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done.”

  He brushed that aside. “I’ll look forward to seeing you on another voyage, this time not under duress.”

  We walked together to the deck, where I saw Barclay, looking far more himself now, waiting for me. Without a word we disembarked and made our way along the docks to the gates. The Captain was several steps behind me, as was proper, but once we were in the town itself, he caught me up.

  “Do you know everyone in Christendom, Bess Crawford?” he asked, a repressed note of disapproval in his voice.

  “You forget,” I said. “Since Britannic, I must have made the journey to France and back half a hundred times. It would be strange if I didn’t know most of th
e ships’ officers. Which makes it all the worse when they go missing. The First Officer is new, replacing a man who lost his leg during the winter. And the Third Officer is new as well. His ship was sunk on convoy duty and he’s learning the run to France-”

  I broke off, watching a motorcar coming toward us. I stopped stock-still as I recognized it.

  “What is it?” Captain Barclay asked, tensing.

  But by that time it was near enough for him to recognize the driver. My father.

  As he greeted us I asked, “How did you know I was coming in?”

  “I was having dinner with the Port Captain when you arrived. Captain Garrison sent a signal. He didn’t specify my daughter was on board, but he did say wounded and nurses. Not sisters. And a signal never includes hospital staff-it’s assumed they’re aboard with the wounded. I thought I ought to have a look. But we hadn’t finished our Port, and Mackenzie insisted that I stay until it had been round once.”

  Then he turned to greet Captain Barclay, making no remark about the torn uniform or the scrapes and cuts on his face, not to mention his knuckles.

  “Thank you for bringing her home safely,” he said.

  Captain Barclay grimaced. “Not without difficulty.”

  The Colonel Sahib ushered us into the motorcar, and we said very little as we drove through the narrow, twisting streets toward the main road north through Hampshire. Clear of the city, we picked up the first showers of rain. My father settled to a steady speed and then nodded to me to begin my account of events, interrupted from time to time by the Captain. As I spoke, he listened with a grim expression clearly visible even in the cloudy darkness.

  “Good God!” he said when I had given him all the details. “I’ll see what I can do to set this business to rights. I think it might be best if Barclay the orderly simply disappeared, and Captain Barclay returned to the clinic for further treatment of his troublesome wound after his brief furlough to London.”

  Captain Barclay opened his mouth to argue, thought better of it, and said only, “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’m afraid my reputation can’t be repaired quite so easily,” I said ruefully.