Fournier had organized two field hospitals on the plateau, and half a dozen safe houses where a nurse, or a teacher who had some medical training, or a priest might do what they could to help the injured.
One of Rodrigo’s boys had taken a bullet through the shin and Tardivat insisted Nancy drive him up to the plateau hospital and get herself seen to at the same time. She hadn’t even noticed her own wound, a bullet straight through the flesh of her upper arm, until she noticed the blood mixed in with the water dripping from her sodden clothes. Tardi would gather reports from the other teams active that day and get back to her. He swore he would as he bandaged her arm.
The boy was pale with loss of blood, and dozed fitfully against the window while Nancy drove. The charcoal-powered cars were painfully slow, but they could take the climb. Three miles from camp, a Maquisard, his Bren across his chest and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, stopped them. He approached the window with his gun raised, but as soon as he recognized Nancy, dropped it and ground out his fag on the gravel road.
“Colonel Nancy! We have two wounded. Can you take them?”
“Hop in.”
He waved his arm and a cluster of men emerged from the woods, carrying two boys between them, one unconscious, the other awake and gibbering with pain. He screamed when they set him down in the back.
“You were taking out the rail tracks west of here, weren’t you? What went wrong?”
The man who had stopped her shrugged. “Nothing. Bad luck. Doing the tracks was easy, then we walked straight into a patrol on the way home.”
Probably too pleased with themselves to be paying attention.
She didn’t say that. “Get in the back. Try and keep them alive until we get help.”
He looked like he’d rather go and take on the patrol again, but he clambered up, folded his jacket and stuck it under the head of the man who was screaming. The others they left in the road to make their own way back to their camps.
The field hospital was overflowing. Two doctors, three nurses and anyone who could stand it were helping out where they could. Outside the boys clustered around Nancy, shoving each other aside in their eagerness to talk of their successes—bridges burned, telephone and telegram wires brought down. Inside no one had any time to speak.
Nancy was there for hours, first to get her wound washed and dressed, then to help. She held down one whimpering boy as the doctor pulled a bullet from his shoulder. The morphine was reserved for gut shot and severe burn cases. An older recruit, a farmer in his forties, thought she was his wife. He talked to her calmly about the harvest, then squeezed her hand, said, “I have to go now,” and died.
When she finally left the building the plateau was in darkness. Far below them in the valley a church bell was ringing. Gaspard, Denden and Tardi were standing, heads bowed, by a fresh row of graves. The priest from Chaudes-Aigues was standing over them, saying his prayers, his voice exhausted.
Nancy waited a little way off until he had finished, then went to join them. Gaspard’s leg was bandaged and he leaned on a pale shepherd’s crook—pilfered from one of the abandoned farms, no doubt. Between that and the eyepatch he looked more like a pirate than ever. It wasn’t funny.
“The bells are ringing for our victories, mon colonel,” he said as she approached. “France is rising.”
“Victory?” Nancy said, staring at the graves. The gut shot boy in the back of the wagon hadn’t made it. He’d stopped screaming about a mile before they reached the plateau. His friend was weeping when they finally stopped. He jumped off, head down, and strode toward the woods without looking at her.
“They knew the risks going in, Nancy,” Denden said.
“Brave words from a fairy who didn’t even fight,” Gaspard spat out.
“The radio is my weapon,” Denden said back, his voice haughty.
Oh, not this again. The more she worked with Gaspard, the more Denden seemed to go out of his way to provoke him. Fournier seemed to find their spats amusing and Tardi didn’t care.
Nancy brushed the hair off her face with a trembling hand. “Not today, boys. Not here.” Then she walked away.