The First of July(78)

The light almost blinded him; he had to turn his head away. The firm land beside the river seemed to lurch, to move beneath his feet, and he was almost grateful for Émilie’s possessive grasp on his arm. Soldiers and bargees passed him, carrying massive loads and scarcely glancing at the nurse and her patient. There was no way Émilie was going to let him walk away, no way he could find a senior French doctor to hand over the note in his pocket. With her hovering, he would look like a questionable informer. Then he saw the British officer, sitting on a bollard by the river, sketching. He was a major. It appeared to be the boats and, indeed, him and Émilie that the man was drawing. There was no alternative but to act.

The officer looked up as they came within voice range.

“You don’t mind?” he said, in good French, indicating his drawing.

Émilie straightened her veil. Jean-Baptiste simply shook his head. Then, as Émilie tugged on his arm, an act of desperation, he pulled free of her, bolder now that he knew the officer spoke French.

“Sir, please. Could you deliver this for me?” He had it out of his pocket, thrusting it forward. “It is of the utmost importance. Please, sir.”

He could see first surprise, then amusement, in the man’s face. Clearly he would refuse. He thought he was being asked to post a love letter—Jean-Baptiste could see it in his face. He sensed Émilie’s anger beside him.

The British officer looked down, his expression now puzzled, then grave. Where he had folded the letter, Jean-Baptiste had written Colonel Marzine, Hôpital Militaire d’Amiens, in his best writing.

“Sir. I have no one else.”

The officer looked him straight in the eyes. He’s seeing if I am mad, Jean-Baptiste thought.

“Is it a complaint? About your treatment?”

“No. No, I swear.”

The major put out his hand without a word. He just nodded.

“How dare you?” Émilie asked as she dragged him back to the barge. She let go of his arm completely and he staggered. “How dare you. I should report you, using a British officer to deliver your billets-doux. What will he think of you? Of us French?”

“It wasn’t—” he began. Yet as she pushed him back on board, he looked at the sun and the gulls, and then upward to the vast cathedral, and felt something like hope or joy. Something he hadn’t felt for months. He dropped his gaze to the tall brick houses of the quayside, and then he saw the café table. There was Vignon, standing by the barges, staring back at him as he lit a cigarette.

Émilie had helped him back to bed, seeming to hurt him deliberately. He was sweating. He closed his eyes, exhausted. Either way, it was done.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


Benedict, Amiens,

June 1916


LORD KITCHENER HAD BEEN LOST in the sinking of the Hampshire, the French were mired in their forts around Verdun, and the town of Albert was all ruin, nerves, and bad news. But Benedict thought that in Amiens, for a little while, one could pretend things would work out.

Some big push was coming, perhaps within days, but for now he had forty-eight hours of leave; and after days of rain, the sun had broken out, although there was a strong breeze. From where he sat, looking across the river, the great cathedral was half mountain crag, half ship. The eye traveled upward to it from the old city below, which was half land, half water: the river, the quayside, and the narrow waterways; the grid of tiny canals crossed by simple bridges. On the Somme itself, at its widest part, the river was clogged with barges, barge after barge with a red cross on almost every roof.

Men and women in uniform dominated the quayside, but a few bars and cafés were open; a family with three small children sat noisily at one. He’d heard that the city was being evacuated, but there were still plenty of citizens who appeared to be biding their time.

He took a table next to one where two English women—nurses, he guessed—were being persuaded by the proprietor to try local mussels.

He didn’t dare order mussels, so he pointed to the dish in front of the French family and nodded and then, as an afterthought, asked for brandy. When the elderly waiter went back into the café without demurral, he assumed he’d asked for the wrong drink.

The bells rang the hour. Foreign-sounding and thinner than the bells at home, the twelve alternating strokes resonated in stars of pink and then pewter gray.

Tiny clouds were moving swiftly across a fragile blue sky and seagulls swooped down the quayside, strutting aggressively, perhaps lured by a memory of better times when barges held edible cargoes and café-goers had bread to spare. He watched them until something startled them, and his eyes followed them as they rose with heavy wingbeats into the air.