• 13 •

“SARAH WENT OUT after curfew. Why haven’t you arrested her?” Fleurette was lolling on her cot, buffing her fingernails. She had the long, nimble fingers required of a seamstress.

“The one I’m going to arrest is you, if you make trouble while I’m gone.” It raised Constance’s spirits to even make the threat of an arrest. There might be something to this matron business after all.

Fleurette rolled her eyes over to Roxie, who was brushing her hair with the air of a girl preparing for a night out. “I’m not staying in. Even Norma’s out wandering around.”

“Norma has never wandered around in her life. I’ve allowed her to go look after her birds. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

With that, Constance went out into the gathering darkness and walked among the tents with Mrs. Nash’s walking-stick in her hand. The stick was useful for pushing open tent flaps, and for rapping on the ground to call an unruly crowd to attention. There was no doubt in Constance’s mind as to how a camp matron behaved. Having agreed to play the role (for only a few days, she reminded herself, until Miss Miner secured a replacement), she threw herself into the part.

The girls were fairly subdued following the announcement that Mrs. Nash wouldn’t be returning, and seemed willing to observe the rules and keep up appearances until some permanent arrangements could be made.

As she went between the tents, the campers asked her about those arrangements. “Couldn’t you stay on as matron, Miss Kopp? There’s nothing to it,” a freckle-faced Irish girl said.

“If there’s nothing to it, why don’t you volunteer?” Constance asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me,” she protested. “But they’re all afraid of you.”

“I’m going to look for the compliment buried in that remark,” Constance said, but she knew what the girl meant. A woman either carried herself with authority or she didn’t. The girls responded to that: it was why Maude Miner put her in charge.

At the edge of camp resided a particularly noisy group, all with names that Constance couldn’t keep straight: Tizzy, Kitty, Mimi — frivolous names born from summer cottages along the beach in Cape Cod or Long Island, names that they’d carry with them long after they’d outgrown them. Constance had seen it among the friends of Sheriff Heath’s wife, Cordelia. A woman with stiff white hair and a sturdy tweed suit would nonetheless answer to Sissy or Bunny, as she had from childhood.

The difficulty tonight with these girls arose not from their names, but from their extravagant flaunting of the camp’s rules. Among their transgressions: they’d smuggled in a phonograph that they played at all hours, they were often seen in the evenings out of uniform, and they deposited enough confection wrappers and empty tins of smoked fish in the rubbish bins to let the entire camp know that they had treats no one else had.

There was a reason for rules against contraband, and it was one that Constance respected: No one should flaunt their wealth in wartime. They’d have to live together as equals.

Here was one advantage to taking command of the camp for a few days. She could right this particular wrong.

She poked her walking-stick inside the tent. Tizzy rushed to put out a cigarette and turn off the Victrola.

“Is it nine o’clock already? We wouldn’t want to miss lights-out. It’s so enchanting when the lanterns all go dim at once.”

Constance looked around at the lavish rugs and pillows, the half-hidden contraband, and the flimsy dresses tossed about like rags. She said, “You’re out here by yourselves, holding your own little party every night. You stay to yourselves in class. You eat every meal together at your own table.”

“Well . . . we don’t want to be in anyone’s way,” Ginny put in.

“Besides, we’ve known each other so long, we’re practically sisters,” Liddy added.

“And the others are so badly behaved,” Tizzy said. “The girls in tent eight are running a card game, and I assure you they’re not playing for buttons. That’s to say nothing of what goes on with the Tuesday-night kitchen crew. They’re a bad influence.”

“You have quite the eye for misbehavior,” Constance said. “Tomorrow morning I’m moving you to the tent next to mine. You’ll be right in the center of camp, so you can tell me all about the doings of the girls in tent eight. The Victrola goes into storage unless it’s to be played for everyone. And I’ll take whatever treats you have left and set them aside for our graduation party. I’m sure most everything you brought will keep for another month or so. If I see any of you out of uniform again, the entire tent goes on latrine duty for a week.”

The protests were loud and heartfelt, but it gave Constance a great deal of satisfaction. The entire camp would know what had happened. They’d know that she had been the one to lay down the law. Even if she was only to run the camp for a few more days, she wanted to see it run well and with authority. This ought to do it.

She left Tizzy and her friends to wail and moan over their diminished fortunes and went to take a walk along the perimeter fence. The front gate was locked at night. Hack and Clarence kept up a light patrol, stepping out from their tents a few times each night to watch for signs of trouble. There never were any. The camp sat on a peaceful and remote stretch of land, and the road was only ever traversed by farmers.

Nevertheless, she enjoyed an evening beat. Like an officer poking down alley-ways and beating his stick into the bushes at the perimeter of the city park, she walked along a little path next to the fence, taking note of the quiet of the woods beyond and the congenial hum from the campsite. The mess tent had only just been buttoned up for the night. The latrine saw a few visitors, girls picking their way through the grass along a path lit here and there with lanterns. An outburst of laughter rang out from one tent or another, but it was only just nine o’clock and Constance wasn’t going to hand out any warnings about noise so early.

Just as she rounded the edge of the camp nearest the barn and started to come up the other side, she heard a noise in the woods. There was a little footpath leading into the sparse trees right there, and a break in the fence that she hadn’t noticed before. Constance stood still and listened for just a minute more. There were footsteps, certainly, and the sound of some object being shifted from hand to hand. She saw no light, but thought she might’ve caught a glimmer of metal between the trees: a button, perhaps, or a belt buckle.

For the longest time there were no voices, just the shuffling of feet. They didn’t seem to be leaving or drawing near. Were they merely walking back and forth?

Then, at last, she heard a whisper, and another.

“Port, arms,” the voice said. “Order, arms.”

It was a woman’s voice. Someone was conducting rifle drills in the woods.

Constance looked around and realized that the barn blocked the view from camp. No one could see her duck into the forest. She hopped over the fence and walked as quietly as she could down the path. After only a few minutes she came to a little clearing, and there saw Sarah, Margaret Day, and three other women in a circle, their wooden rifles hoisted at attention.

“Are you planning an invasion?” Constance called. Her voice was unnaturally loud in the woods and the women jumped.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Constance stepped away from the trees and lifted her lantern to give them a look at her.

“Oh, I’m glad it’s you,” Sarah said, one hand still over her heart from fright. “We were just out here . . . ah . . . taking a little extra practice.”

“At this hour of the night?” Constance couldn’t help but feel somewhat betrayed: why hadn’t Sarah simply told her what she intended to do?

There was some mumbling and shuffling of feet. They were obviously reluctant to confess. At last Margaret stepped forward.

“Before she was injured, Mrs. Nash told me that there was to be no real firearms training at the camp. She seemed to think we could get by on one day of drilling with wooden rifles, to give us an idea of what the men got up to in training. But some of us do intend to go to France. We ought to be able to look after ourselves.”

Constance looked around at them, each one in a perfectly turned-out uniform, standing, as it were, at attention. They seemed entirely prepared to go into battle.

“Are every one of you bound for France?” she asked.

Margaret eyed Constance evenly. She was the eldest woman in the group and, in Constance’s opinion, the one least willing to bend to camp rules. “Well, you know that Sarah intends to join her brother in the ambulance corps. My husband’s a pilot. He’s gone over to help the British, and I intend to follow him. I’ve nothing and no one to keep me at home. Now, these girls — well, Bernice and Hilda come from military families. Fern just feels called to serve. They’ll need more than a turn around a field with a wooden rifle.”

Fern looked a little hesitant. She fidgeted with a button on her collar. Bernice and Hilda stood rigidly upright, with their hands at their sides, like the daughters of soldiers might do. Sarah stood apart, watching the scene with a little half-smile, which told Constance that she’d been the ringleader. These were her troops.

“But wooden rifles are all you have,” Constance said. “Why be so secretive about it?”

“We’ll train with these for now.” Sarah held up a pocket-sized book. “We’re just following the manual. But I have an idea of how we might get hold of a few real rifles.”

Constance’s heart leapt at the idea, but then she steadied herself. “Under no circumstances are you to fire off a rifle in these dark woods. Do you all understand that? Anyone could be out here.”

Margaret turned and nodded over her shoulder. “There’s a larger clearing just over the next hill. It’s a bit of a march to get there, but we can set up a target on a clear night and hold a practice without disturbing anyone.”

She meant that they could hold a practice without being found out. Constance looked around at them, five women eager for adventure. “Have any of you ever fired a gun before?”

Margaret shook her head. “My grand-daddy lived on a ranch,” she said, “but he only ever took the boys out shooting.”

“My brother likes to hunt,” Sarah said. “I have some idea . . .”

“You don’t have any idea,” Constance said. “I want you to promise me that you won’t bring a gun into these woods. There’s plenty to learn at camp. First aid, wireless, codes, and map-making — it’ll all serve you, if you go overseas. It wouldn’t hurt to study your French, and even learn a few words of German so that you can speak the language of the enemy. You don’t need to gather in the woods at night to study a phrase-book. You ought to know how to drive an automobile, too, if you don’t already. And you might practice some holds, and some combat moves, in case you find yourself overpowered. What does that Army book have to say about fighting hand-to-hand?”

All five women were staring at her. It was not lost on Constance that she’d just rattled off the broad outlines of a real military training program for women.

Sarah cocked her head, crossed her arms over her chest, and said, “You seem to know an awful lot about it. Why don’t you show us?”