We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [27]
“Yes, sir.” Joseph stood up sharply. His mind was racing now to Schenckendorff. How would they get him out? He could not tell Hook that the man needed to leave. Perhaps they would find out what had happened quickly and it would all be settled in a day or two, then Schenckendorff’s fever would have broken and he could travel. He would be in pain, but so were tens of thousands of men. War was about pain of one sort or another.
Hook drew in his breath as if to add something further, then let it go again in silence. Joseph excused himself and went to find Matthew before going to the station.
Matthew was standing with a group of other men around a small fire with a Dixie can of boiling water. He was about to make tea. Joseph greeted him. He turned around, regarding Joseph with some concern. He did not ask what was the matter, but it was clear that Schenckendorff was just as much on his mind.
“You’d better come,” Joseph added simply.
Matthew thanked the men for the tea, leaving it behind as he fell into step with his brother single-file between the old craters. Only when they could move side by side did Joseph tell him what Hook had said.
“I suppose he’s sure?” Matthew asked, hunching his coat collar up. “That’s going to make it harder to get Schenckendorff out, isn’t it? They’ll be pretty unhappy about German prisoners, even injured ones. And I was worrying about him dying!” He pulled his mouth down in a hard line. “I suppose the only good thing is that he was too ill to be suspected. Filthy irony of it.”
“He wasn’t too ill to stand,” Joseph replied. “Not early in the evening, anyway. You’d be amazed what a man can do, injured almost to death.”
“Murdering a nurse?” Matthew’s voice rose in disbelief. “What the devil for? He’s on his way to London to give up his ally, and pretty certainly to be hanged!”
“No one in the Casualty Clearing Station knows that,” Joseph pointed out. “At least, please God, no one does. Let’s hope this Swiss priest of yours was careful.”
Matthew hastened his stride toward the clearing station. All the men were moving forward in file toward the ever-shifting front line: the wagons of ammunition boxes, two tanks mired in mud and making heavy weather of churning it up on their huge tracks, and mule teams pulling guns forward on carriages.
Judith Reavley pulled her ambulance into the mud as close to the Casualty Clearing Station as she could and climbed out. She was tired and stiff from driving most of the night, and more than anything she wanted a hot drink to ease the chill inside her. First she must help unload the wounded, however, then when they were safe check her engine, which was misfiring. It was early daylight now. Mist hung over the craters, softening the harsh lines of the old supply trenches and for the moment making them look more like cart tracks than the gashes in the land that they were.
She stood, turning slowly, looking for someone to help. It was a two-man job to carry a stretcher. Someone must have seen her coming. A doctor hurried by fifty yards away, increasing his step to a run, but he took no notice of her. She started toward the Admissions tent. She was halfway there when another doctor came out whom she recognized immediately. It was Cavan, one of the best surgeons in the army, a man with whom she had worked through some of the worst nights during the battles of Ypres and Passchendaele, and in the long, desperate days since. His courage had merited him a Victoria Cross, and his rash loyalty had caused him to lose it.
He saw her and went back to the opening, shouting something inside. Two more men appeared and ran toward the ambulance. Cavan came to her, his face grave, his eyes smudged with shadows of exhaustion. She assumed he had lost many wounded through the night. There was no point in saying anything comforting to him. They had both seen this happen