Chapter 24: Now Is Come Salvation

CHÂTEAU COUTHOVE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM

March 1918

They took Laura upstairs to a bare room with a sloping ceiling, and there she was sick for four days. Early on, Pim hovered with tea and broth and mustard-plasters, but by the third day Laura grew delirious as her fever climbed, and Jones ordered Pim out. Laura was racked with nightmares of her mother, of reaching hands and ruined eyes. She dreamed she was in an endless corridor full of doors and someone was crying, in a half-familiar voice, “Why can’t I remember?”

She said, “Who can’t remember?”

“The blessed,” Faland’s voice said. “The blessed forget and the damned remember.”

“Where are you?” she demanded. But his voice had already faded into a sharper one saying “Iven, come back,” and Laura opened her eyes. Doctor Jones sat by her bed, his thumb pressed to the pulse point on her wrist, a towel and a basin on an overturned crate beside him. Laura realized that her hair was wet; little runnels of cold water ran across her throat and jaw.

“I didn’t know surgeons went in for nursing,” she said. Her mouth was paper-dry.

He looked into her face, and she thought his expression lightened. “There you are. Not usually, no. But we’re understaffed and you’re in the crisis; I came up to browbeat you through it. Your fever’s come down in the last hour. You’re past the worst of it now, I hope.” He wet the cloth again, laid it on her hot forehead. “But in case I am wrong, you are still not to die, I need someone to assist in surgery. Have some water, you look like you just crossed the Sahara in August.”

He got her to sit up, put a cup to her lips. She gulped until her head swam, flinched at the pain in her lungs. His hands smelled faintly of disinfectant. “All right, enough, lie down again,” he said. His tone was acerbic, but his hands were steady, professional. He’d taken the same oaths she had. He was trying to save her life.

“Thank you,” she whispered, lying back, letting her eyes drift shut.

“Why the devil did you come back here?” It sounded as though he were talking half to himself. “Wounded, honorably discharged—why come back?”

She didn’t have an answer, but he didn’t seem to expect one. “Just keep breathing,” he advised, as more cool water ran with the sweat down her face.

---

· · ·Laura came through the crisis, and that evening she woke up alone, found herself staring at a spiderweb on a roof beam, trying to piece together all the hours since she’d arrived in Europe. She hoped they’d been able to give Fouquet a proper burial. The room was small, the ceiling sloped, and it contained nothing but two narrow brass beds, one on each side, with a nightstand each and hooks like crooked fingers on the wall. It must have been a maid’s room, when the château was a home instead of a way station. Laura’s trunk sat by her bed, retrieved from the wrecked lorry, and Pim’s lay at the foot of the other.

They’d come to Dunkirk, gotten on a lorry. She remembered Fouquet. Bombs. A dark shape in the road. Music. But try as she might, the rest would not come clear. Finally, in frustration, she rolled to her feet, stood stiff-kneed against a bout of light-headedness. Began groping in her trunk for a flannel and a clean uniform. She couldn’t do Freddie any good in bed. When she was dressed, she sat down for a few minutes to clear her swimming head. Then she hauled herself upright again, and turned determinedly for the door.

A narrow staircase took her out of the servants’ quarters, down and down, and finally spat her out in the main foyer, the evident nerve center of Mary’s small hospital, full of the sound of quick feet, a mingling of men’s and women’s voices, the smell of decay, chocolate, and carbolic.

A door swung open, revealed a sterilization room, made over from what might once have been a music room. Splintered parquet, chipped putti near the ceiling. Syringes in boiling water, an old table, probably dragged up from the kitchen. A hodgepodge of fine furniture, raveling upholstery. A coal fire in the fireplace. Laura felt a little puff of warmth on her face, even from the doorway. Jones’s unmistakable American voice was berating an orderly in heavily accented French:

“My knee,” he said. “I left it here, just there, on the table, in a saucepan. Where is it?”

Laura felt her brows climb. She still wanted to sit down.

“Your—knee, Monsieur?” stammered the orderly.

“Yes, yes,” said Jones. “Just there. I meant to seethe off the flesh—some very interesting…”

The orderly murmured something.

“A leg of mutton. A leg of mutton?” said Jones. “You mistook my knee for a leg of mutton? It was the perfect specimen! Such an interesting presentation of the anterior ligaments.”

Mary spoke right behind Laura, who jumped. “You didn’t eat it, I hope, Colas,” she called sternly to the orderly.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Laura.

Jones stepped out of the sterilization room. She hadn’t misremembered the flat American voice, the bony face, the fine eyes. “I am sorry about your specimen,” Laura said.

“So am I,” said Jones. “And you may stop thinking ghoul at me, Iven; I didn’t eat it. How’s your chest? Take your dress off.”

“In the sterilization room,” said Mary, herding them.

Laura obediently undid her dress, shrugged it off her shoulders. Jones put his icy stethoscope to Laura’s back in several points. Her chest still hurt. “Do I have you to thank for my recovery, Doctor?” asked Laura, trying to be cordial.

Cordiality was wasted on him. “Yes, of course. Me and a reasonable constitution.” He stepped back. “You’ll do, if you eat properly and don’t get chilled. Get dressed and let me see your hands.”

Her shoulders went rigid. Letting him examine her hands was much harder than taking her dress off. “My hands are all right.”

“You have considerable scarring,” said Jones clinically. “And you will almost certainly be arthritic in the next five years. Let me see.”

“I’m not an amputated knee,” said Laura.

“You’d argue less if you were,” said Jones. He put out one of his own hands. Long fingers, perfectly kept nails. Jaw set, Laura put her hand in his. He manipulated the scar tissue, tested the range of motion.

“Well, the damage is done,” Jones said, letting them go. “A shame. You’ll want to massage them every night, so the scars don’t stiffen further. With lanolin, or beeswax. Can you assist in surgery?”

“Yes,” returned Laura, hating the way his black eyes covered the wreck of her fingers.

“All right,” he said. “Join me on rounds, will you? If you’re up to it?” He let go her hands, and was out the door.

Laura said a very bad word.

“It’s just his way,” said Mary. “Weak in the bedside manner.”

“I am not in bed anymore. And I have a credential or two. How does he think I got the scars on my hands? Not lounging around a civilian hospital.”

Mary said, “Iven, you may rant to me all you like, but I beg you will attempt to tolerate Jones. In the interest of harmony. Highly qualified American surgeons do not simply fall from the sky, you know.”

“Never mind him anyway,” said Laura, mastering herself. “Shouldn’t we discuss inadvertent cannibalism amongst your staff instead?”

Mary snorted. “I don’t want to know. Do you?”

“Not particularly.” Laura flexed her hands, trying to erase the sensation of Jones’s grip. “How is Pim?”

“Thriving,” said Mary. “The men think she’s their earthly angel. Come this way. I’ll show you about. I need you taking a shift as soon as ever you can. They are saying the Germans are going to try to break the line at Ypres and sweep us toward the sea.”

Laura said nothing. Four years and how many million lives, and they could lose it all now. And then she thought, Time, I just need time…

“Won’t happen, Iven,” added Mary, seeing her face. “This way.”

Mary opened the front door onto a glorious dusk: a scarlet, saffron, and violet sky that hardly seemed to belong to the gray earth. “The ambulances come up the drive. And we have triage in the carriage house,” she said, pointing. “You’ll be out there quite a bit.”

They turned back into the house. The main ward of Couthove had been set up in the once elegant ballroom, full now of close-packed beds and sickroom smell: alcohol and iodine, bodily fluids, and sweat. The glorious parquet was stained. There had been a buzz of conversation as they entered, and Laura caught just the edge of it:

—paradise, if you find it.

So? Every whorehouse is paradise to some.

Another voice, low and grave: My mate found it. Coming back drunk from leave. Was crying when he told me. He forgot the war, he said. Just like the stories. Saw his girl, even. In that magic mirror. A perfect night. But he never found it again.

You don’t ever find it again.

He don’t charge money. No, not money…

He split with the girl, you know, not long after. It was like he’d forgotten all about her. He’s dead now.

The conversation subsided into a general murmur, and then Pim was hurrying over. “Laura!” she cried. “I was so worried. You’d such a fever. But Dr. Jones said you’d do. Isn’t he marvelous? How are you, dear?”

“Blooming,” said Laura. Pim’s face was thinner than it had been in Halifax, but she was smiling. Mary hadn’t exaggerated. The men were all looking at her as though she were their own personal miracle.

“I’ve been writing the men’s letters,” said Pim. “They dictate, or if they—if they can’t dictate, then I just write their mothers myself. And I draw little pictures—look.”

She pulled out a sketchbook, unfolded a loose page to show a very credible sketch of a young man with a bandaged shoulder, smiling.

“I am sure they are grateful…” began Laura, and then Jones appeared, and cut her off.

“Rounds, Iven,” he said. “Half an hour, then supper, then back to bed with you.”

Laura sighed internally. Reminded herself that Jones was not the most dictatorial surgeon she’d ever met, even if he had a knack for getting under her skin. “Yes, Doctor,” she said mildly, mouthed Later to Pim, and crossed the room.

They went from patient to patient, checking charts, taking temperatures, asking questions. Jones at work was dispassionate but careful, decisive. She began to relax into the routine of it. But then, six beds in, they came to a man called Trovato. His leg was very clearly gangrenous, and Laura was nonplussed. Why hadn’t Jones amputated? The smell was unmistakable: ripe, swampy, unlike anything else. “Doctor—” she began.

“Yes, yes,” said Jones, not looking up. “Unorthodox, I’ll give you that. But the gangrene hasn’t spread; there’s a chance it will slough and we will save the leg.”

“I’d like to keep my leg,” put in Trovato earnestly.

Laura just managed to keep her thoughts to herself. No doctor she’d ever known would have hesitated to amputate. “Dress the wound, Iven,” said Jones, as though he could hear her disapproval. He was making notes on the chart. Laura began laying out bandages and disinfectant. Jones, after a glance at the patient’s set face, called, “Mrs. Shaw, come here.”

Laura bit her lip. But Pim had signed on for this, and so Laura said nothing when her friend hurried over and took Trovato’s hand, smiling. He relaxed a fraction.

Laura set to irrigating the wound. Trovato made a small, animal sound. Pim held his hand tighter. Laura didn’t stop. Army medicine was as much about ruthlessness as anything else. “You’ve been out here before, Sister, haven’t you?” Trovato said to Laura, with the air of a man trying to distract himself. His eyes were closed, but he must have seen her hands.

“I came out in the spring of ’15. With the bluebirds.” The Canadian nursing service, she meant. “Was discharged this November.” She shot him a brief, reassuring smile, but his eyes were still closed. “Suppose I couldn’t stay away from you lot.”

“Got a story for us, Sister?” he asked. “From those far-off days?”

Anything to distract him,Laura thought, beginning to dress the wound fresh. She shot Jones a sideways look. She wasn’t in the regular army anymore—she didn’t have to behave. “Have you heard the story of the ammonal at Hooge?” She let her voice carry to the room at large. Saw men stir under their blankets.

Jones raised both brows.

“It was early days,” Laura said, winding the bandage. “Just when they’d first got the bright notion to dislodge Fritz from Hooge by undermining his positions and blowing him up. Steady. That’s the worst over.” Trovato had gone an extraordinary gray-green. Pim bent to murmur something in his ear. He gave her a wavering smile, an incisor missing.

“In ’15,” Laura went on, “the lines passed right through the grounds of Hooge Château, and Hooge, as you maybe know, was the worst place on the worst salient on the worst sector of the Front.”

Some of the men were lifting themselves up to hear better.

“Fritz held the château itself, and Tommy held the stable, and they’d dug trenches in between. Each one was making plans to blow the others out. Well, the British hit on the idea of mines: Dig holes, pack them with gun cotton, fire it, there you have it.

“Higher-up had a big stunt planned for just a week later, and the bright lad in charge of the mining realizes there is no way on earth that they can dig a hole big enough in a week to hold all the gun cotton they need to blow Fritz out.

“So he suggests using ammonal, like they’d use in the coal mines. Harder to handle, but more powerful, you can put less in, see? All very well, but the supply master has no notion what manner of thing ammonal is. They’ve never encountered it before. He asks a chemist friend, and receives this reply…”

Laura paused, grinning. The room was listening, rapt. Jones gave her a look.

“A medicament, says he,” Laura resumed. “For the lessening of sexual desire.”

The room broke up into laughter.

“Now,” said Laura, “I do not know what the reaction of the supply master was, or if he asked what they were doing in Hooge to require so much of the stuff—”

More laughter.

“—but,” said Laura, “they did blow Fritz out, in the end, so someone must have straightened it up. Eventually.”

There was a chorus of laughter and indelicate suggestions. Pim looked scandalized. Jones surprised Laura by barking a laugh, shaking his head. Laura had finished Trovato’s dressing. His head fell back against the pillow. His sprouting beard was stark in the clammy hollows of his throat, but he was smiling too.

The next patient was an attempted suicide, and he was going to die.

Laura didn’t need Jones to tell her. She could see it in the angle of his wound, and the color of his face. Hear the stertor. From the look of things, he’d put the rifle under his chin, tried to fire with his bare toes. “What’s his name?” she said.

“We don’t know,” said Jones. “He came in such a mess. No tags. He kept shouting a name though. A girl’s name. It was all he’d say. Mila, he shouted. Mila. Maybe he shot himself for her, who knows? But we’ve been calling him Mila, for want of anything better.”

Trovato had turned his head to watch. “Poor bugger. Saw the fiddler. Couldn’t stick it. Some say he takes their souls. But maybe the war’s already done that.” Laura had given him morphine; he was rambling.

Pim had been sponging his face; her cloth stilled and she said, “But who is the fiddler, sir?”

Laura found herself listening intently, although she didn’t look up. She had to shake off an involuntary sense-memory, like something dreamed in fever, of the rising cry of a violin, the heavy smell of wine.

Trovato muttered, “There’s all sorts of stories, but none of them’s right for a girlie like you. Fiddler’s for the likes of us. If a man wants to risk it—well, that’s for him to decide. But you—stay away.”

“Sir—” Pim began, but Jones said, “Let him rest, Shaw.”

Laura had questions of her own. But Mila’s wound distracted her. It was as though the doctor hadn’t…She finished the dressing and glanced with some surprise at Jones.

He looked strangely uneasy. Finally he said, “A word, Iven.”

Laura followed him across the hall and into the sterilization room. Jones shut the door. He was watching her. Finally he said, “What do you think?”

“His prognosis? Poor,” said Laura. Cautiously, she added, “It would have been better if he’d gone into surgery straight off. Or at all.”

Jones said nothing.

She added, more carefully still, “I noticed that he hasn’t.”

“No.”

“Strange,” said Laura. “Since I suppose they told you to do your best to save him.”

“They did.” They would have. Suicide was a capital offense. The army didn’t want men just getting away with it. No, they had to be saved so they could stand up and face a firing squad. Maybe Jones was sounding her out because he thought she’d be—shocked, that he was going against protocol, letting a man die in bed? Lord. Poor Jones. A few months ago he had probably been doing surgery in a clean Boston hospital, far from the stew of competing ethics and ad hoc morality that was a military hospital.

“I want us to understand each other,” said Jones stiffly.

“I think we do,” said Laura. “Poor man. No hope. Couldn’t be saved, despite your best efforts.”

They looked at each other. Suddenly Jones’s face relaxed; his lips twitched. “You’ve seen men like him before.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things,” said Laura.

“More than I have,” said Jones, with candor, surprising her again. “I’ll remember it in future. I don’t mean to be insufferable, Iven, however I come across. What’s Mrs. Shaw’s interest in this fiddler person? It’s some bugbear of the patients’. Whenever anyone mentions it, there she goes, scampering over, listening for all she’s worth.”

A coldness spread across Laura’s skin. “I don’t know.”

Jones said, “Keep an eye on her; people take on strange manias out here. In the meantime, we have rounds to finish, and then you are to eat some supper, Iven. I could count your ribs, earlier.”

To Laura’s surprise, she felt her face flush. Without another word, Jones stepped through the door and was gone.

---

· · ·Supper was army rations, somewhat improved with fresh bread and an egg each. Laura, still coughing, had little appetite. But she got her soup anyway, her mug of tea, sat down at the long, scarred table where the staff not on duty were cramming in nourishment. “Pim,” she said, “Jones told me you are hounding the men with questions about the fiddler.”

Pim tasted her tea, made a face, and added more sugar. Quite prosaically, she said, “I’ve been thinking he’s really that man Faland.”

Laura put her spoon down. “What do the men say about him?”

In answer, Pim pulled out a notebook filled with her handwriting, licked a finger, and started reading off tidbits, going from page to page. “You can only find him at night,” she said. “No one’s ever heard of anyone seeing him by day.”

“Is he a vampire?” asked Laura dryly. She spooned up more soup.

“Hush. He plays the violin— Well, we know that, don’t we? Not much agreement on what he looks like.” She turned another page, and there was Faland’s face, the hair done in swift strokes, the dark eye and the light. Pim really did draw well. “His hotel—sometimes they say it’s a bar—is the best place anywhere, although some say it’s also the worst.” She flipped another page. “You have the best night of your life there. They say he’ll show you the thing you want most.” Her voice wavered on most. “But you can only find his hotel once. And people who’ve drunk there, they pine for it, once they’ve gone. Then they go mad, some of them.” Pim frowned at her closely written pages. “That’s quite a lot of rumors, isn’t it? About the same person. I’m curious.”

“Only curious?”

Pim flushed. “Faland’s hotel was like a miracle, I thought. So—so warm. His music. And then it vanished at dawn.”

Laura didn’t trust the look on her friend’s face. They pine, the men had said. “He’s just a swindler, Pim. A mesmerist selling uncustomed wine. Probably spikes it too. Wormwood. Sugar of lead. How are your bowels?”

Pim pressed her lips together.

“Pim, I don’t think Faland’s a good person,” said Laura more seriously.

“Maybe not. But it all felt like magic, didn’t it? The music, the night, the—the mirror. The morning. All of it.” There was a thread of unwilling longing in her voice. “When was the last time anything in your life felt like magic?”

Laura was silent. Her conviction, born of long days and longer nights, was that if the world contained any magic at all, then it could not also contain their war. She asked, “Pim, what did you see in that mirror?”

“Oh—” said Pim, her gaze far away. “Jimmy, of course. I saw my son.”

“Pim, it was hypnosis.”

“Oh, I know,” said Pim, although she didn’t sound wholly convinced. “Anyway, never mind that. There is one piece of the legend that’s easy enough to check.”

Laura was pulled from her own thoughts. “What’s that?”

“I want to go back to the hotel, of course. Because the men say you can’t find it twice. I’m going to see if I can. By day, even.”

Pim turned away to her dinner before Laura could voice her vehement opinion of that notion.

---

· · ·It was dark when they finally took themselves upstairs to bed.

Pim was disgruntled, because Mary, to Laura’s relief, had put paid to any notions of leave to go anywhere. “Shaw, the wounded are going to keep coming down on us like three tons of bricks. If Fritz breaks the line up here, we may have to evacuate the hospital. I need every hand ready, and no one is going off pleasure-bound for any reason.”

Laura had never much appreciated Mary’s caustic authority, but in this case she agreed entirely. In their shared room, Laura stripped off her dress, peeled out of waist and stockings and chemise, stood there naked as Eve with a wet flannel, and attacked the sticky remains of fever-sweat. Pim sat primly on her bed and looked at anything in the room but Laura. “You’ll be doing it next,” said Laura, amused. “Unless you want to go to bed mucky.”

Footsteps sounded in the corridor and Mary pushed the door open. Pim yelped in surprise.

Laura glanced up, went back to sponging.

“It’s all right, Pim,” said Mary. “Iven will defend your virtue.”

“I’m not defending anyone without three hours of sleep, a cup of coffee, and a cigarette,” said Laura, drying herself off. “Mary, what are you doing up here? I hope no one is hemorrhaging. Go rouse Jones. If I try to work a shift right now, I will poison someone by accident.”

“I am aware,” said Mary. “No, I was going through my correspondence and there was a letter for you.” She held it out. “Go to bed. Tomorrow will come quick, and you have shift schedules to think of, Iven. And Jones tells me you must put on ten pounds at least, and that your cough is still unpleasant.”

“Officious man,” said Laura. She tossed the letter onto her cot.

Mary was studying Laura’s limbs, the way a horse-coper looks at a horse. “He’s quite right. Lord, I thought you were bony before.”

“Good night, Mary.”

Mary departed, and Laura put on a ratty jumper over her chemise, laid her uniform dress, apron, and boots ready to hand. “Get some sleep while you can,” she told Pim. “If Mary’s right, we won’t be getting much in the near future.” She picked up her letter, slit it with her pocket lancet.

She knew the handwriting. Kate.

My Dear Laura,

How are you? Imagine my surprise when you wrote and told me you were coming back, that you’d taken a place at Couthove. So near. I should very much like to see you, if you can get away. I’ve got one or two things of yours here, and of course news. I met a friend of yours a few weeks ago, and I know how much you love a good gossip, my dear. Come and I shall tell you all.

Laura blinked. She had left nothing at Brandhoek. And what friend?

They’ve moved me back from Brandhoek, thank goodness. I’m at Mendinghem now, a much pleasanter place, on the whole, and a scant few miles from your château. At least we don’t have to do rounds with our gas masks at the ready. I am so eager to see you, Laura.

Laura wanted few things more than to see Kate White again. But the tone was unlike her, there was an eager undercurrent, just like her last letter. What are you trying to tell me?

Thinking hard, she put the letter aside and climbed into her cot. If she was to go anywhere, it must be soon. The tension gathering in the air was palpable. The next great battle was a matter of when, not if, and it would, quite possibly, be decisive. And when it was joined, she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere at all.