by Charles Todd
She seemed a little calmer, and I held the cup for her once more. This time she managed a few sips. I bathed the cut on her cheek and the scratches on her hands, cleaning them and putting an antiseptic on them. She winced as I worked on her face, but let me do what needed to be done.
Looking up at me, she said, “You’re Sister Crawford, aren’t you?”
I’d seen her the previous evening but we hadn’t been introduced. A nod as we passed, she on the way to bed, myself on the way to where the ambulances were turning in.
“Yes. Bess Crawford.”
“I arrived three hours before you did, and Matron gave me your room because mine wasn’t ready. She said it wouldn’t matter, they were alike, and you could take mine when you got in. I couldn’t help but wonder—whoever it was—could he have been looking for you?”
She was searching my face, waiting for some sort of answer. She didn’t want to be the intended victim, and she didn’t want this to be a random choice, something she would have to fear happening again.
“I don’t know that the change in rooms mattered. I’ve only just arrived as well. I can’t think why anyone should wish to harm either of us.”
Another sentry stuck his head in the doorway. “Whoever he was, he’s gone now, Sister. I’ll post a guard by your door, shall I?”
Sister Morris said quickly, “Oh yes, please.”
I got her to drink the rest of her tea, then urged her back to bed. She didn’t want to go at first, but when she saw the sentry by the door, smiling down at her, she went into her room and I helped her right the lamp and make up the cot again, smoothing the sheets and settling her. It was then I saw the bedraggled cushion, its covering a heavy burlap roughly sewn together. It had fallen to the floor and been kicked to one side.
“Is this yours?” I asked Sister Morris, holding it up.
“No.” She swallowed hard, frightened again. “I never saw it before—it wasn’t in the room when I came in.”
“Not very decorative, is it?” I asked lightly, to distract her. I tossed it toward the half-open door. “Shall I leave the lamp burning? Would that help?”
“Please. And will you stay with me for a few minutes?” she asked. “I don’t want to be alone.”
I found the camp stool and sat down. “You’re safe. Try to sleep—tomorrow will surely be another long day, and you will think more clearly if you are rested.”
But it was nearly three quarters of an hour before she drifted into sleep and I could go. I picked up the cushion, closed her door, and then went to find Dr. Lytton. He was just coming out of surgery, his face grim. “Touch and go,” he said in explanation. “Is Sister Morris resting? I couldn’t be sure whether she’d had a nightmare or if something had really happened. Still, the sentry claims there was someone else in the room.”
I could tell he wondered if she had invited someone in and then panicked.
I held up the cushion for him to see. It was large enough that it would have covered her face completely, smothering her even as it smothered her cries. “I think it was real. Not a lover’s quarrel.”
“It’s not hers?”
“She says it isn’t, and I believe her. Nor was it there when she walked into that room for the first time.”
“We’ve never had any problems with the Sisters before this,” he said. “Someone drunk, I expect.”
I didn’t tell him what Sister Morris had said about switching rooms. I wasn’t completely convinced about that. After all, I’d just arrived. Who would have known where I was posted, much less which room was mine? It was far more likely to have been a random choice.
I said, “I don’t think he’d been drinking, whoever he was. I didn’t smell it as I helped Sister Morris back into bed.”
“The sentries are alert now, that’s what matters. All right, I have another patient to see. Go back to your bed, Sister. Morning will come soon enough.”
He was right. I thanked him and went to my own room, taking the ugly cushion with me.
Where had it come from? And why should anyone attack Sister Morris? Or me?
Sister Morris avoided me the next morning. She seemed convinced that having taken the room set aside for me had put her in jeopardy. I overheard several people asking her about the cut on her face, and she hesitated before answering that she’d bumped into something in the dark.
I arose early enough to go and speak to the sentries who had been on duty during the night. They hadn’t seen anyone who could be described as an intruder. They’d searched the area carefully after the alarm had been raised, but whoever it was had vanished.
Nor could the aide in charge of cleaning our quarters recall ever seeing the cushion in either room, mine or Sister Morris’s.
I was increasingly certain that whoever attacked her must already be here, assigned to the hospital in some capacity, not an outsider breaking through the perimeter of sentries.
There were the doctors, of course, and the nursing Sisters, orderlies, the burial detail, the people who worked shifts in the laundry, the sentries, the ambulance drivers, those who worked in the canteens and prepared the patients’ meals, aides who did the housekeeping, the patients themselves, and those in the pharmacies dispensing medicines. A veritable small city of those who kept a hospital running.
I went to the board that listed staff, and found my name there as a replacement for a Sister Nelson, invalided home with appendicitis. And my room was still listed as the one Sister Morris now occupied. So far no one had changed it.
The hospital laundry here employed seven Chinese laborers who for one reason or another were no longer fit for repairing roads and other tasks. Many like them had come to France to fight our war and to make money, and some of them had died of disease, the shelling, the influenza, and the occasional accident. During the time allotted for my lunch, I went to the building where they worked. It was noisy, steamy, hot, and smelled of disinfectant. I watched the men doing this menial but essential work, then stepped through the door. Most of them, I learned, spoke very little English, depending on a single person to translate for them.
They were very unlikely to come in as far as Matron’s office, much less read the listing for my posting. I bowed to them as they bowed to me, and left them to their work.
The canteen staff also had almost no access to the board outside Matron’s office, but still I looked at the duty roster there for familiar names.
The roster for orderlies was also posted by Matron’s door, and I scanned that as I was hurrying on to report to the surgical unit.
More than a hundred men had died in the destruction of the Ashton Powder Mill. I didn’t know most of their names. Only Branch and Rollins, Hood and Brothers, possibly Groves and even Worley. And of course those Mark or Mrs. Ashton had mentioned. I could have passed over dozens of other names. It was a hopeless task.
That evening I pulled out the cushion from the corner where I’d tossed it, and took a better look at it. It could have come from anywhere. And yet I thought it must be something that someone had sat on for a very long time.
A lorry driver, to ease his back over the impossible roads? An ambulance driver, for the same reasons?
Or had someone made a rough pillow of it?
I took my nail scissors and unpicked the stitching that had sewn the burlap into a cover for the cushion. Roughly done, but sturdy enough to last. Underneath was a canvas covering, worn threadbare. I unpicked the stitching on that as well. And now I was at the original cover of the cushion. It was wool, a dark gray, possibly, or even a faded black, it was hard to tell. I turned it over.
Someone had embroidered the face of the cushion. Although most of the threads were loose or missing altogether, I could just recognize the pattern.
The white cliffs at Dover and beneath them the word INVICTA.
Unconquered. Undefeated.
The ancient motto of Kent.
CHAPTER TEN
I TOLD MYSELF that this did not necessarily mean that the cushion belonged to someone from Kent. It could have been found or taken away by anyone in need of a better seat. From a transport ship, from the wreckage of a lorry, from someone’s kit. It could have been wandering around the battlefields of France since the BEF landed and marched north to Mons, passed from one hand to another.
And yet . . . Someone had made an effort twice to replace the worn covering over the pillow. First with canvas and then with burlap. Someone hadn’t intended for the pillow to be used until the stuffing had fallen out, then tossed aside. It meant enough that it was kept in use.
When the furor died down, would the owner of the cushion come looking for it? I really should have considered that possibility last night.
I picked up first the canvas covering and then the burlap, sewing them back in place, trying to match the awkward, untutored stitches that had held them together this long.
Could someone tell what I’d done? Would he—or even she—look at the stitching to see if the cushion’s secret had been discovered?
I thought not. Most people wouldn’t have tried to take that cushion apart looking for evidence. Although my mother, who had taught me to make tiny, almost invisible stitches, would raise her eyebrows at my poor workmanship.
I got up from the camp stool by my bed and tossed the cushion in a heap just outside my door, as if I’d taken it from Sister Morris’s room but had not wanted to keep it.
I undressed and went to bed but hardly slept, one eye on my door, in case whoever it was came in—with that pillow. But close to morning I fell into a deep sleep and nearly missed breakfast.
I got up and hastily prepared for my day with a clean uniform and apron, laced up my boots, and put up my hair after brushing it.
It was only then that I realized that the cushion was no longer lying there just outside the passage door.
The cases of trench foot were moved to a base hospital to allow their damaged toes to heal. They had been gone for two days when one of the ward Sisters said, as I helped her make up a fresh bed for a shoulder surgery case, “I was glad to see the back of them. A cheeky lot. Not ill enough to lie there and simply moan. Not well enough to help out with feeding some of the other patients. But I did catch one of them sleepwalking, when he’d been told to stay off his feet.”
“Sleepwalking?” It did happen, but it was rare. Most of the men we cared for were recovering from serious wounds that kept them in their beds.
“Oh yes. It was around two in the morning. He came limping back to his bed. I startled him when I asked him what he thought he was doing. ‘Sister, you’ll give a man heart failure if you frighten him like that.’ ” She mimicked his voice, grinning up at me.
I’d worked with the trench foot cases. “Are you sure he was sleepwalking?”
She shrugged. “What else could it be? I ask you. Limping down the rows with his arms outstretched, and his eyes closed?”
But that wasn’t sleepwalking. I’d seen a patient do just that when I was in training. He’d got up from his bed, his eyes open, and walked down the passage toward the hospital door. I’d followed him, uncertain what to make of him. But he couldn’t manage the bolt, and he stood there, trying to pull the door open for several minutes. And then he’d turned and walked back to his bed, lying down as if nothing had happened.
“Which of the trench foot cases was he?”
“His name was Private Britton. Charley Britton.”
“Do you know where he was from?”
She shook her head. “A Kent regiment. I saw the badge.”
But at this stage in the war, a man could be assigned to any regiment needing to make up numbers. He might be from Kent or Lancashire or Hertfordshire.
I changed the subject as we finished the bed, asking about another patient that Dr. Lytton had been concerned about.
“The incision is draining well,” she said. “If his fever breaks, I think he’ll be all right.”
“Good news,” I told her, and went back to the surgical unit to help transfer the shoulder case to the ward.
But I made a mental note of the sleepwalker’s name, and that night I wrote a letter to Mrs. Ashton, asking her if she recognized it.
And as I set the letter out to be collected for the morning post, I wondered if it was Private Britton who had come for his cushion before being transferred.
I’d asked around the wards, but no one remembered seeing it. Still, if it had been in his kit, it was possible no one had.
Three days later I was sent to a forward aid station, replacing a Sister who was due to have leave.
It was Mary, one of my flatmates.
She saw me step out of the ambulance and ran over to embrace me. “Bess! I can’t believe it. I’d just written to Mrs. Hennessey to ask for word of you. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I told her. “And you?”
“Tired, but aren’t we all?” She made a wry face. “You’d think, wouldn’t you, that with all these rumors of an end to the war, the fighting would have slowed down a bit, but they seem to be just as eager to kill each other now as they were in 1914.”
“We’ve been busy back at the hospital,” I agreed, and shivered as a cold wind swept across No Man’s Land and made its way behind the lines to swirl around the tents behind Mary. We spent another five minutes catching up on each other’s news, and then the ambulance driver called to her, and she had to go.
I waved her out of sight, and looked up at a sound overhead. It was the black aircraft I’d seen before, swooping down toward the convoy heading south. I shook my fist at it and hoped that Mary would be all right.
I was busy for twenty-four hours, and then there was a lull in the fighting. I sat on a low stool by the surgical tent, finishing a sandwich.
In the distance I heard a familiar sound, and looked up to see Sergeant Lassiter coming toward me.
“They told me you’d returned,” he said complacently.
“They? Who?”
He grinned. “The lads who keep an eye on you. You’d be surprised how fast news travels.”
“I would indeed. Sergeant, do you know a Private Britton? He’s from a Kent regiment, I’m told. Out with a case of trench foot. Have you heard anything about him?”
“I don’t know the name, lass. But I’ll keep an ear to the ground. Any particular reason you want to know about him?”
“I want to know where he’s from. I think he may have tried to kill one of the Sisters back at the hospital, thinking she was me.”
His fair brows twitched together in a frown. “That makes a difference,” he said. “Is she all right?”
“A good fright. One of the sentries got there in time, but he couldn’t hold the man.”
“Why should he want to kill you?”
“The truth is, I don’t know. There was trouble in Kent on my last leave, but I can’t see how he might be connected with that. It might even be that Sister Morris was his target after all. She’s quite pretty. He might have gone into her room to speak to her and when she started to scream, he tried to smother her.” But why had he taken that cushion with him? I shook my head. “It’s strange, Sergeant. He had a cushion with him. Small, but large enough to do what he set out to do. It was covered in burlap.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.” He rose. “I hear the Sergeant-Major was back in France. On a peaceful errand this time.”
My eyebrows flew up. “Indeed?” How on earth had Sergeant Lassiter learned that?
“One of the lads saw him. Something to do with that black bas—black craft flying behind the lines. There’s a reward out for bringing it down. Did you know? Three of my mates had a go at him the other day. But he knows what he’s doing. He comes over the lines too high for us to touch him.�
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“What’s the reward?” I asked, curious.
“A weekend’s leave in Paris. So they say. All expenses, and all you can drink.”
I laughed. That would appeal to more soldiers than coin, which would smack a little of blood money.
Sergeant Lassiter got to his feet. “Well, lass, I’ve seen your fair face and assured myself that you were still alive and well. And still unmarried.”
He was irrepressible.
“No thanks to the Australian Army. I’ve had ten proposals a day when an Aussie is in hospital.”
“Only ten? I’ll have a word with my mates. They’re slackers.”
He reached out and touched my cheek, and then he was gone.
I finished my tea, washed my cup, and put it back on the tray. With a sigh I went back to work.
Two days later a soldier with a splinter of shrapnel in his shoulder asked my name, and when I told him, he turned his palm a little to show me a scrap of paper. I pocketed it when no one was looking. He was in great pain, but he smiled lopsidedly at me and said, “I’ll pass the word.”
At my first break I went into my tent on a pretext, and sat down on my cot to read the message.
It was brief.
B is from Devon. Served an officer as batman for the first two years of the war. Then transferred to K R and sent to France.
I stared at the message. A Devon man? Transferred to a Kent regiment. I couldn’t imagine how he could possibly have had anything to do with Cranbourne or the explosion or even with me.
I’d hoped to learn just the opposite. That there was some connection—that possibly he’d even been the person who attacked Sergeant Rollins.
More disappointed than I cared to admit, even to myself, I struck a match and burned the fragment of paper, then ground the ashes underfoot.
