Read Chapter 12: The Field of Mud

The mobile hospital at Saint-Rémy was a corpse drowned in mud.

Élise stood at the entrance of the main tent, watching rain fall in gray sheets across the churned earth. The field before her had been a pasture once—now it was a bog of trenches, splintered carts, and the dark humps of horses that no one had come to bury. The smell of it reached her even through the rain: rot, cordite, and something sweet beneath that turned her stomach.

Three days. Three days at the new position, and already she understood why James had fought against coming.

Behind her, someone coughed—a wet, rattling sound that ended in a groan. Élise turned and moved to the row of cots. Twenty-two men lay in various states of ruin. The last convoy had arrived at midnight, delivered by exhausted stretcher bearers who had carried them through waist-deep mud from the forward dressing station. Some of those men had died before dawn, their wounds too old, too infected, too much.

Corporal Reeves passed her with a bucket of soiled bandages, his eyes flickering toward her face with that particular attention she had learned to dread. He said nothing, only continued toward the incinerator pit, and Élise felt the familiar prickle at the back of her neck.

She found James at the operating table, bent over a man from the Bedfordshire Regiment. The soldier's leg was a ruin above the knee—shattered bone, blackening flesh. James worked without pause, his instruments moving in the dim lantern light, while Sister Albright swabbed and handed.

"How is he?" Élise asked quietly.

James did not look up. "He'll live. He'll wish he hadn't for a while."

She helped where she could, changing dressings on the men who waited, spooning broth into the mouths of those who could swallow. By mid-afternoon the rain had not stopped. The tent floor became a slurry of mud tracked in by every pair of boots. Rats moved boldly along the edges of the canvas, their eyes like wet seeds in the gloom.

By evening, Élise's head ached. She ignored it.

The next morning she could not lift her arms without trembling.

"You're burning up," Sister Albright said, pressing a hand to Élise's forehead. "You need to lie down."

"I'm fine." Élise pushed her hand away and reached for the next dressing tray. Her fingers fumbled. The tray tipped, scattering gauze and bandages into the mud at her feet.

She stared at the mess for a long moment. Her vision swam.

"Helen," she said. "I can't—" But she sank before the sentence finished, her knees folding like paper.

Strong arms caught her before she hit the ground. James. He lifted her as though she weighed nothing, cradling her against his chest while she protested in a voice that came out thin and strange.

"Put me down."

"No."

"I have work."

"You have a fever." He carried her past the rows of cots, past Corporal Reeves who had stopped to watch, his face unreadable. James ducked into the small supply tent she shared with Sister Albright and set her down on the cot with rough care.

Élise tried to rise. He pressed a hand to her shoulder, firm.

"If you get up," he said quietly, "I will tie you to this cot. Do not test me."

His eyes held hers for a moment—the same gray-blue as the sky beyond the tent—and then he was gone, the canvas flap falling shut behind him.

She lay in the dimness, listening to the rain. Her body burned and shivered at once. The rough wool of the blanket scraped her skin like sandpaper. Images floated through her mind, fragments she could not hold: Pierre's face fading into the smoke of the frozen dawn, Leclair's eyes closing under the anesthetic, Marguerite's mother standing in a dark cottage with her hands twisted together.

Élise closed her eyes. The tent spun.

Sometime later—an hour, a day, she could not tell—footsteps approached. The flap lifted. Cool hands on her forehead, a cup pressed to her lips. Water, blessed and cold.

"Drink." James's voice, low. "You have to drink."

She drank. The water was the best thing she had ever tasted. She drank until the cup was empty, and then she sank back, and the darkness took her again.

Voices murmured around her. She could not make sense of them.

"—cannot keep her here—"

"—no choice. She won't go to the base hospital—"

"—is she always like this? Stubborn as a mule—"

"—worse." A pause. "I have known no one with more courage and less sense."

Something in her wanted to answer, to tell them she was fine, that she could get up. But her body would not obey.

The fever dreams came in waves. She was in the field at home, walking through poppies that swayed in a wind she could not feel. Pierre stood ahead of her, arms out. He had his old smile, the one that reached his eyes before the war. She ran toward him, but the poppies grew taller, thicker, red as wounds, and when she broke through them, he was gone.

She was in the mud of Saint-Rémy, alone. Rain pouring down. A distant voice calling her name.

"Élise."

She turned. The field was empty.

"Élise. Come back."

A hand on her cheek. Warm. She leaned into it, desperate.

"James," she whispered. "James."

She heard her own voice as though from far away, and then a sharp intake of breath. The hand drew back. She reached for it, but it was gone.

"James," she said again, and then the darkness closed over her completely.

When she woke, the tent was quiet. Gray light pressed through the canvas—morning, or evening, she could not tell. Her mouth was dry as ash. Her body felt heavy, emptied.

She turned her head. James sat in a folding chair beside her cot, a book open in his lap, his head tilted against the canvas wall. His eyes were closed. He looked older in sleep, lines cut deep around his mouth.

He had stayed.

The memory surfaced like a stone through water: herself, whispering his name into the dark. His hand on her cheek, drawn back. The warmth of it vanishing.

Élise closed her eyes and lay still, breathing carefully. After a moment she heard the rustle of his chair as he shifted.

"You're awake." His voice was flat. Clinical. He had retreated behind his professionalism like a soldier behind a parapet.

"Where's Sister Albright?"

"Resting. She took the night shift with the men." He closed the book and set it aside. Rising, he crossed to her cot, pressing two fingers to the side of her neck. His touch was impersonal, precise. "Fever has broken. You'll be weak for a day or two."

"I'll be back on the ward today."

"You'll rest until tomorrow." He said it to the canvas wall, not to her. "Those are orders."

"Orders." She laughed weakly, but the sound dissolved into a cough that shook her ribs. He waited until she stopped, then poured water from the basin into a cup and handed it to her without ceremony.

She drank. The silence stretched like wire between them. He had heard her call his name. She did not remember what else she had said, what other confessions the fever had dragged from her, and the not-knowing was worse than any shame.

"Captain Leclair," she tried. "Was he—"

"Evacuated." A muscle in James's jaw tightened. "He left no message. He was too weak to speak by the time the ambulances came." He met her eyes briefly, then looked away. "You were there. You saw the state of him."

She had been. The memory was a blur of blood and morphine and Leclair's gray face.

"I'm sorry," James said. It was not clear for what.

Outside, the rain had stopped. A cart creaked past, wheels sucking in the mud. Somewhere a man shouted, and another laughed—a broken, surprised sound that cut off quickly.

James moved toward the flap, pausing with his hand on the canvas. His back was to her. A long moment passed. She saw his shoulders rise and fall with a slow breath.

"I should not have let them send you here."

"We had no choice."

"There is always a choice." He turned, and for a moment his face was unguarded—raw, tired. "I make them every day. Whether to operate or save the morphine for the ones with a chance. Whether to eat or let the men have it. Whether to move a hospital into a field of mud because the generals need us closer to their war." He shook his head. "I am tired of choices, Élise. But I would make this one again."

He stepped out through the flap and was gone.

Élise lay in the gray light, her hand pressed to her chest, where she could feel her heart beating too fast.

The canvas moved again. Corporal Reeves entered with a small tray—bread, tea, a tin of jam. He placed it on the stool beside her cot with careful deliberation. His eyes lingered on her face.

"Heard you were poorly, miss." His voice was soft, solicitous. It made her skin crawl. "Need anything else, you only have to ask."

She thanked him. He left, and she watched the flap settle behind him, certain she had just been catalogued.

She drank her tea while it was still hot, and she marked the hours until she could stand again.