On the twelfth, we called all day and didn’t get home until past five. We were just sitting down to supper when a soldier rode up with a letter. It was from the commanding officer saying that six cows had arrived at the station at Nesle and must be removed immediately. After some confusion about where Nesle might be, two of our members set off with the soldier to secure our livestock while the rest of us practiced cantiques with the villagers in their stable for a religious celebration to be held here next week. With the arrival of the cows, the musical evening turned into a moonlit demonstration of best French milking techniques. Your Unit was enthusiastic. The cows were not—and I can’t say I blame them. We must have seemed staggeringly inept.
You can say one thing about life here: there’s no chance for ennui. It’s a constant barrage of one thing after another and I can’t think of anything I like better.
Do tell mother that Freddie and I are both well and hearty. She’s not to worry about us in the least. If she’s feeling fluttery, she should call Dr. Sands, although I am quite certain there’s nothing wrong with her that a brisk walk and a good dose of fresh air wouldn’t cure.
—Miss Frances Englund, ’09, to her aunt Miss Millicent Rattner
September 1917
Grécourt, France
It wasn’t Emmie who found a way to bring the villagers to them. It was Julia.
They were at dinner in their tiny dining room in the first barrack, crammed around a makeshift table, eating lukewarm vegetable soup that Marie had carried over in a battered tureen from her tarpaulin-covered house, everyone talking over each other about their day.
“I don’t see how we can do it all,” Margaret said, poking at her soup. She had been part of the group detailed to go to three of the nearer villages with Julia, serving double duty as driver and social worker. “There’s just so much. We didn’t get through even half of what we intended.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” said Mrs. Rutherford serenely.
“Before Rome can be built, it needs to be washed,” said Dr. Stringfellow. “The levels of hygiene are appalling. We need well pumps and washtubs. By the dozen.”
“Also fine-toothed combs,” put in Emmie, trying not to scratch.
“Miss Randolph, will you add those to the list? Miss Randolph will be in charge of our store.”
Emmie couldn’t help but notice that Maud, beneath her aloof expression, seemed rather pleased with the appointment. “I’ll need to go to Paris,” Maud said importantly. “We can’t rely on anything arriving unless we fetch it ourselves.”
“Next week,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “You can take the White.”
“I can’t drive,” said Maud, looking at Mrs. Rutherford with barely contained contempt.
“Then you can take the train,” said Mrs. Rutherford, “and someone will meet you at Amiens.”
“With all the packages?” demanded Maud.
“You’ll manage,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “You can collect our chickens while you’re there. We’re expecting—how many, Miss Van Alden?”
“Seventy-two,” said Emmie.
“How am I meant to take seventy-two chickens on the train?”
“In crates, presumably,” offered Fran Englund with a remarkably straight face.
“Oooh, goody,” said Liza. “Could you add DeWitt’s biscuits to the list? I’ve gone through all of mine.”
“And candies—not for us, for the children,” Emmie hastily amended.
“Oh, yes,” agreed Anne Dawlish, looking up. “I went through my whole stock of Tootsie Rolls bribing the children to come see Dr. Stringfellow.”
Dr. Stringfellow snorted. “I’m hardly that scary.”
Emmie made the mistake of glancing at Kate, who had such a Kate-like expression of polite disbelief that Emmie had to take refuge in her napkin rather than disgrace herself by laughing out loud.
“But how do we ever get to them all?” Margaret was still worrying at her soup. “There are just so many. And they all need so much.”
“Yes, like seventy-two chickens,” muttered Maud.
Emmie leaned forward eagerly. “Kate and I were discussing this just earlier today, weren’t we, Kate? Not the chickens, I mean, but how to let everyone know we’re here. What we need is to bring the ones who can come this far here to us—to show them what we can do for them. We could have a party! A children’s party. If we could get even some portion of them here . . .”
“How would they get there?” asked Fran, dunking a hunk of day-old war bread in her soup in an attempt to soften it. “Some of those villages are quite far.”
“Oh, that’s no matter,” said Mrs. Rutherford, brushing that aside. “They’ll find a way if they want to come—they walk the most tremendous distances. They might come for curiosity’s sake, if nothing else. But we’ll want to find something—”
“We should have a mass.” Julia’s crystalline voice cut through the group.
“A mass?”
“A church ceremony,” said Julia impatiently. “The church is still standing, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Rutherford fixed Julia with a long, thoughtful look. “It was Bavarians quartered here, Marie says. Being Catholics themselves, they tend to be leery of blowing up churches. Of course, that didn’t stop them from looting the church plate—scruples only go so far. But we can manage without, I imagine.”
“The patron saint of the village is St. Matthew,” piped up Anne Dawlish. “The villagers were telling me about it. His feast day is coming up quite soon—on the twenty-first, they said.”
“That’s it, then. Hold a mass for St. Matthew’s Day.” Julia looked up to find everyone was staring at her. Two bright spots of color showed in her cheeks. “Well, it’s obvious. I spent several years in a village much like this one. They set their lives by the church calendar. There were processions for saints’ days. . . . If we can find a priest to perform a mass for St. Matthew’s Day, it will mean more to them than anything else we can do.”
“You aren’t Catholic, are you?” Maud was staring at Julia as though she’d grown an extra head.
Julia looked at her coolly. “My mother’s second husband, the count, was. They all are here, in case you hadn’t noticed. I spent two years in the tutelage of nuns—for which you’ll be grateful if I ever have to sew you up.”
“There must be a chaplain attached to one of the regiments in the neighborhood,” mused Mrs. Rutherford. “I’m sure we can borrow someone to perform a service. It is an inspired notion, Dr. Pruyn. Well done.”
Julia shrugged. “Anyone who’s lived in France could tell you the same.”
Emmie was full of chagrin that she hadn’t thought of it herself. She plunged in as best she could, trying to make up for lost time. “It’s brilliant! We can learn the prayers, so we can say them with them—it will make us seem less alien. Kate can help, can’t you, Kate? You’re Catholic. You can tell us what to do and what to sing. And then we can have all the children for a party afterward. . . .”
“I didn’t know we had Catholic girls at Smith,” said Liza in a loud whisper.
“There are a few,” Maud said carelessly. “One doesn’t generally meet them, though.”
“You’re determined to have that party, aren’t you?” said Kate to Emmie, smiling, but her smile had a fixed quality to it.
“We don’t have to have a party,” said Emmie, floundering. She hadn’t known it was a secret, that Kate was Catholic. It was just part of the Kate-ness of Kate, like her hair being brown. She hadn’t meant to make things awkward. “Not if it wouldn’t be appropriate. I don’t know what one generally does after a mass. . . . It’s supposed to be a cheerful thing, isn’t it, a saint’s day?”
“The 11th Engineers is stationed near here, aren’t they?” asked Alice, mixing her pronouns with abandon in her nervousness. “There must be some Catholics among our boys who could help.”
“Among the enlisted men, I would think,” said Margaret unthinkingly, then looked at Kate and turned bright red.
“We should ask Madame la Maire.” Kate held herself with white-lipped control. “About holding a mass. She’ll be able to tell us what we ought to do.”
“Of course,” said Emmie a little too quickly. “I should have thought of that.”
“Allô?” Someone rapped on the door of the barrack, making the whole wall shake. The door opened, and a man’s head stuck through the opening, rather cautiously, as though he expected them to be in a state of undress. “Did somebody order a shipment of cows for Grécourt?”
“Cows? Oh. Goodness. Yes.” Emmie half rose from the table, nearly oversetting her soup, incredibly relieved to have the excuse to go. “Those are my cows. I mean our cows. Do you have them with you?”
“The cows are in Nesle. In a boxcar,” the man explained patiently, in very slow, simple French. “The station manager requests you come get them immediately.”
“Nesle,” said Emmie, not sure what to do first or how one was meant to convey cows or, for that matter, where she was meant to be going. She had a vague idea that Nesle was in Switzerland. She tried to picture the map in her head, but she’d never been much good with maps, or any sort of directions, really. She’d once got lost in Gramercy Park. Instinctively she looked to Kate. “Where is Nesle?”
“Six miles,” said Mrs. Rutherford, unperturbed. “You’ll need someone to drive you.”
“And the cows, presumably,” pointed out Julia.
“Oh goodness,” said Emmie. “Will they fit in the White truck, do you think?”
“Take the jitney,” suggested Mrs. Rutherford.
“We’ll need somewhere to put them,” said Fran Englund briskly, managing to push back her chair and rise without rattling so much as a single cup. “I’ll see if any of the outbuildings are fit to hold them.”
“I’ll get my tools.” Anne Dawlish sprang into action, glowing with the opportunity to put her hammer and nails to use. “We’ll need to do some repairs.”
“In the dark?” said Maud.
“You can hold the lantern,” replied Fran, and Emmie, miserably, saw her exchange a small grin with Kate, and hated that Fran had been able to do what she hadn’t, to make Kate feel like one of them again.
“You’ll drive, won’t you, Kate?” Emmie said, and felt about four again, tugging at her mother’s skirt, begging her to look at her, to play with her, to be with her, feeling again that sensation of the fabric whisking away from her, her mother so impossibly far above her, always in motion, always moving away.
There was a small, awkward pause. Kate rose neatly from the table. “Of course.”
The messenger had no time for any of it. He waved them anxiously forward. “The train needs to go. If you could come now?”
It was a bumpy six miles in the dark to Nesle, with the messenger, who had slung his bicycle in the back of the jitney, guiding them through the turnings just a moment too late, so that Kate had to wrench at the wheel. It made private conversation entirely impossible. Kate focused on the road with white-knuckled concentration and Emmie clutched the side of the truck and made bright observations on the weather to which no one at all responded.
She still didn’t, quite entirely, understand what she had done wrong, only that she had, and she felt dreadful about it, with that creeping dread that comes when you know you’ve been in the wrong and have no idea how to make it right again, because you weren’t aware of having done anything wrong in the first place.
It had all been for the villagers. She had only wanted to find a way to make them comfortable.
But she couldn’t forget that horrible silence, that frozen look on Kate’s face, the way everyone had stared at Kate as though she had suddenly grown horns.
But it was nothing to be ashamed of, surely? Not here in France.
One doesn’t generally meet them, said Maud. And it was true she couldn’t think of any other Catholic girls their year. But that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with it. Except for a thousand comments she vaguely recalled hearing, about the servants and their superstitions. Although no one had called it superstitious when Auntie May had married Monsieur le Comte de Talleygord. Then it had all been “terribly romantic” and “so very medieval” and Auntie May had proudly worn a pendant that was supposed to have been blessed by some famous saint or other, but the main point about it was that it had been in the family since the Crusades and boasted a very large cabochon sapphire.
The jitney bumped over a rail, and Emmie had to cling to the seat to keep from going headfirst over the side.
The stationmaster greeted them with something between amusement and pity. Once Emmie looked into the boxcar, she wasn’t sure she blamed him. The cows looked like the beasts in the Bible who had been afflicted with pestilence, all skin and bone and covered with flies.
Kate joined her at the opening of the boxcar. “Are you sure these are the cows you intended to buy?”
“I—I took the best ones they had.” They did look awfully bony. She could have sworn they hadn’t looked this bony in Paris. Emmie bit her lip. “Maybe they’re just tired from the journey?”
“I don’t think they walked all the way.” Kate’s voice still had that dreadful flat note.
“Well, we can feed them up, and then—oh, I don’t know.” Emmie swallowed hard. They should have left this to someone better, someone more competent, someone who didn’t muddle everything she touched. “Maybe they aren’t as bad as they seem. I suppose we’ll be able to get a better look once we get them out of the boxcar?”
“First we have to get them out of the boxcar,” said Kate grimly.
Some helpful soul had inserted a plank into the opening, but the cows didn’t seem inclined to go down it, huddling together in their sodden straw. Bending over, Emmie patted her hands against her knees and called, “Here, cows! Here, cowey cows!”
The cows flicked her looks of what Emmie could have sworn was bovine disdain. The men loading packages stopped to stare. One said something to another and they both snickered. A group of British soldiers climbing down from a train bumped into each other in their fascination.
“It—it worked on our old sheepdog.” Emmie could feel tears prickling behind her eyes and hastily blinked them away. “What do cows like? Do they like grain? We could wave some grain in front of them. Or maybe a carrot. Like horses. They do use carrots to lure horses, don’t they?”
Kate’s face was a study in shadow in the torchlight. “Sugar,” she said at last in an expressionless voice. “My father drove the wagon for a brewery. His pockets were always full of lumps of sugar to bribe the horse to go.”
For a moment Emmie forgot the cows, forgot the soldiers on the siding. She’d never heard Kate speak of her real father before. She knew that Kate had a stepfather and four half brothers—their overabundance of brothers and regrettable lack of sisters had been something they had shared that first week at Smith—but all she knew of Kate’s real father was that he had died.
Emmie put out a hand in the darkness, her fingers grazing Kate’s sleeve. “Kate—I’m so sorry. About tonight. I never meant—”
Kate acted as though she hadn’t heard. “Let’s get these cows back. If you guide from the front, I’ll push from the back.”
“I don’t mind pushing,” Emmie said, but Kate had already clambered up the plank and disappeared behind the large, bony rump of a cow. Emmie took a deep breath, grasped the rope someone had considerately looped around the cow, and tugged as hard as she could.
The cow didn’t budge.
It might have been bony, but it was still large. Large and determined. Emmie was also determined, but not nearly as large, and it didn’t help that her feet kept sliding out from under her.
“Emmie!” came Kate’s exasperated voice from behind the cow. “What are you doing?”
“Pulling! But this wretched beast just won’t go.” Emmie’s voice broke shamefully. “Oh, heavens, and there are five more of them.”
She wanted to sit down in the straw, pull her skirt over her head, and cry. How were they to move any of them? The stench was tremendous, even from outside the boxcar. Emmie couldn’t think how Kate was bearing it from the cow’s other end. She redoubled her efforts, ending up with rope burns on her palms and little else to show for it.
“I think it moved a little!” she called hopefully.
“Oh good,” said Kate. “Another year should do it.”
“Sugar! You said they like sugar!” Holding the rope with one hand, Emmie fumbled in her pocket and came up with a licorice twist, one of the sweets she’d brought for the children. The cow was unimpressed.
“There has to be another way,” said Emmie as Kate straightened up, stretching out her back.
“We could hitch the boxcar to the jitney.”
“I think it’s designed to run on rails,” said a crisp British voice behind them, and Emmie promptly lost her grip on the rope and did an impressive wobble on the plank that ended in a pair of hands grasping her neatly beneath the arms and setting her down firmly on her feet.
“Sir Percy,” said Emmie, vaguely aware that she smelled like cow and that there was something unpleasant on the heel of her boot.
“Always happy to be of service.” Having made sure she wasn’t in imminent danger of keeling over, he stepped back. Emmie hoped it wasn’t anything to do with what was on her shoe. “Miss Van Alden. And your friend.”
“Katherine Moran,” said Kate, making her way cautiously down the plank. “Sir Percy?”
“Blakeney. The Scarlet Pimpernel,” explained Emmie helplessly. “They seek him here, they seek him—”
“Yes, I know that,” said Kate. “Aren’t you a century or so off?”
The captain rubbed his brow with his gloved knuckles. “Whenever England is in peril and all that. . . .”
“I thought that was King Arthur,” ventured Emmie. “Sleeping under the hill.”
The train did something unnerving, belching black smoke. The captain winced as the whistle shrilled, jolting the dispirited cows into protest. One lowed. Another relieved herself. “Yes, if anyone could sleep through this racket. I take it these are your beasts?”
“They’re cows,” said Emmie.
“Are you quite sure?” asked the captain.
“These were the best that were to be had, I’m afraid.” Emmie hurried on before anyone could disagree with her. “We need to get them to Grécourt. And feed them. Poor things, they look quite hungry.”
“So you really are going on with your plans, then.”
There was something in the way he said it that made Emmie duck her head, feeling awkward. “We’re trying to. I’m afraid I’ve made a hash of this. We brought the jitney, you see, and I haven’t the slightest idea of how to get the cows into it. . . .”
The captain turned to look at the jitney and broke out in a fit of violent coughing. “My dear girl, you can’t mean to get those cows into that?”
“If Sir Percy Blakeney can get into the Bastille, I don’t see why we can’t get the cows into the jitney,” said Kate acidly, moving to stand next to Emmie.
“It was the Temple prison,” said the captain helpfully. “Not the Bastille. But even the Scarlet Pimpernel couldn’t spirit those cows away in a Ford van. I think I might be able to help, though. If you’ll pardon me?”
As he strode away, looking impossibly British, Kate turned to Emmie. “My dear girl?”
Emmie hunched her shoulders. “I don’t think he meant it personally. It’s just that he’s English.”
“Mmm,” said Kate. “And a fictional character, apparently.”
The fictional character was looking quite solid as he returned from the stationmaster’s shanty.
“The stationmaster has a nephew who would be delighted to drive your cows to Grécourt for you.”
“Tonight?” asked Kate skeptically.
“Tonight. He knows these roads and is well acquainted with cows—or was, before the war. Your cows should be delivered to you at some point no later than midnight.”
“Goodness,” said Emmie. “Thank you.”
“You’re both of you city-bred, aren’t you?” said the captain, sounding deeply amused. He smiled at Emmie. “A word of advice: a good stationmaster knows everybody and can arrange anything.”
“How much do we owe him?” asked Kate.
“Nothing,” said the captain. “It’s been taken care of.”
“Oh, but we can pay! We do have funds. We’re not nearly as destitute as we appear, are we, Kate?”
“Neither is the British Army, just yet.” Someone called to him, and the captain raised a hand in response. He bowed to Kate and Emmie, a neat inclination of the head. “Consider this payment for getting your cows off our railway line. Good night, ladies. Enjoy your livestock.”
“I really should have insisted on paying him back, shouldn’t I?” Emmie craned her head to try to catch a glimpse of him as she and Kate returned to the jitney. “Perhaps if we could find out how much he paid the stationmaster . . .”
“It was just what he said; he wanted to clear the line.” Kate settled herself behind the wheel. “Let’s hope I can remember the way back.”
Emmie dug around on the floor for the map, losing another four pins in the process. “If he hadn’t been here—”
“We would have thought of it ourselves.” Kate backed the jitney up, inching past an army camion. “Eventually.”
“I feel the worst sort of fool. I should have known we couldn’t get six cows into the jitney.” Or any cows. Now that she thought of it, it did seem insane. Emmie found herself truly, deeply hoping that their agriculturalist would arrive before she could make any other foolish mistakes. The captain was right; for all that her family spent a month every year in their camp in the Adirondacks, she was, fundamentally, city-bred. It would never have occurred to her to speak to the stationmaster. Or that a cow couldn’t go in a jitney.
Kate shrugged. “No one else knew either. Mrs. Rutherford was the one who suggested it.”
It made it even worse that Kate was being so nice about it all. “Yes, but if Mrs. Rutherford had been here, she would probably have persuaded those cows to march nicely up the plank and arrange themselves neatly on the bench like animals in a children’s book. I couldn’t even get them to come out of the boxcar.”
“Yes, you did,” said Kate reluctantly, and Emmie thought how like her it was to be fair even when she was furious. “Eventually. With a little help.”
“Sir Percy Blakeney, baronet. Oh Lord. I forgot to ask him his name. Again. Do you think it’s something deeply awful, like Algernon?”
“Or Cecil,” said Kate, steering carefully around a very large pothole. “Either that or he’s wanted by the police of multiple nations for crimes unspeakable.”
“Don’t say that in front of Maud,” said Emmie, only half joking. “She thinks there are spies beneath every pillow.”
“Not our pillows. They’re far too thin,” retorted Kate. After a moment she added, “We’ll see if our cows make it all the way back to Grécourt or if your mystery man has a taste for roast beef. He might be making himself a feast in the forest.”
“I don’t think there’s terribly much beef left on them to roast.” It was such a relief to have Kate sounding like herself again, but Emmie knew she couldn’t just leave it at that. “Kate. I really am sorry about what happened at dinner tonight. I never thought about your being Catholic—not as something that, well—when you think about it, absolutely everyone was before Henry the Eighth! Catholic, I mean. And he’s not really a very good representation for the Reformation, is he?” She was aware she wasn’t making much sense, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Of course, if I’d been alive then, I would have been Catholic too. In the time of Henry, I mean. Because everyone was. So it wasn’t anything unusual at all.”
“In the time of Henry.”
Emmie nodded enthusiastically. “Can’t you just picture Maud in a wimple?”
Kate choked on a laugh. “Strangely enough, yes. Probably as an abbess of a particularly exclusive convent. The sort of convent that wouldn’t admit me.”
“If Maud were abbess, I don’t think she’d admit anyone,” said Emmie. “I never meant to make you feel awkward. I just—I just thought you might help. Because it was something you might know something about.”
“I know.” The jitney bumped along the road, broken tree stumps crouched on either side like the darker sort of fairy-tale creature. Emmie thought Kate meant to leave it at that, but after a very long while, she said, “It’s . . . disquieting to have people look at you differently. You can be just like everyone else—and then, just like that, you’re not. You’re an imposter. An interloper.”
“I don’t think anyone thinks you’re an interloper.” Even as Emmie said it, she remembered the way they had all stared. “You’re as much a Smith girl as any of the rest of us.”
“Only until they learn that my father drove a delivery wagon,” Kate said drily.
“My great-great-great-grandfather dealt in beaver pelts,” offered Emmie. “That’s how the family fortune began. They call him an entrepreneur, but that’s just a fancy name for a man who skinned small animals for a living. He must have smelled dreadful.”
“A few centuries take the pong off the pelt.” The jitney bumped to a stop by the side of the road. “Would you mind taking a look at that signpost? I want to make sure I’m not driving us straight into the German lines.”
“It’s the sign for Grécourt,” Emmie said. They’d passed it at least three times that day. “Didn’t you recognize it?”
“Sorry,” said Kate briskly. “I must be more tired than I thought. Now how do we explain to the others that we let a fictional character wander off with our cows?”