Yours Is the Night Page 31

  His mother waited at home for his medal. Would she instead receive a death notice? I knew what it was to lose a mother. Could not imagine what it was for a mother to lose a son. My own mother, God rest her, would know no loss if I never returned home.

  I looked at the gas. It was at my ankles now, wrapping and swirling as if it had waited long for this moment and was savoring food after long hunger. There was no escape. No place to outrun such a pursuer.

  I thought of Mira, of the baby. What would become of them if I died? Time didn’t allow an answer. But I saw her kind eyes, the strong set of her jaw, the softness of her hair. I could see the picture of a babe, safe in her arms, just as she had been safe in this tree when the wolves had come. Would I cross France by foot in order to give her the safe arrival of her child, and turn around and deprive the same to Chester’s mother? Would I leave my own child a legacy of a hypocrite father? Would I now forsake this child before they were even born? The child had changed me before it had even taken its first breath. Given me the barest, most fragile lens of a father through which to see the world. What if it was my child in Chester’s place?

  Mira had been entrusted to my care for a time, to get her to safety. Away from this very moment, which could have been her fate. Poisoning her home.

  And I . . . I knew, more than that, that I’d been entrusted to her care. Her hands, which held the ragged beating organ inside of my chest, chose to love. We had journeyed together—and it had been more a gift than I ever deserved, or ever could deserve. It was enough. More than enough.

  I had one last bit of me to give.

  My hands flew, unbuckling straps, removing the mask, lifting Chester’s head. Hearing his wheezing. Holding fast to the vision of him offering me his hard tack as a peace offering, bringing me a spent shell like a kid with a trophy. Offering everything he had to me.

  And I prayed the old prayer, the one that marked me for all the life that was to follow, the first night I prayed it. One last time . . . God in heaven, help him. Help them. I wanted to pray to see my own son or daughter. To hold them.

  Instead I held Chester, repeating that prayer over him, again and again. Silent words swirling up among the gas, head bowed over the kid.

  The prayer burned into my mind as the air burned into my lungs. I laid Chester’s barely alive body safely in the same peat that once blanketed Mira away from the wolves. Hung my head between my knees.

  Darkness came. Breath did not.

  And then . . . utter black. Night.

  42

  Mira

  I loved the ballroom cottage the men had made me, and though I tried to sleep there the first few nights, I gave up upon the third night and wrapped myself into a knit blanket, climbing those stairs to a trail of leaves, making my way to the library. It was here that I found rest at last, in the corner where I fashioned a palette of long-forgotten blankets that I’d laundered in the garden and dried there, too. The scent of the sun upon them sang me to sleep, to dream of le cœur. The safety of that tree back in the forest. And to dream of my Matthew.

  I awoke to the memory of his arms around me, to the sun cresting that library window as leaves danced in an early morning breeze. They were odd little companions, the leaves—I swept them away during the day, happy to have work to do. Wishing it would sweep away the war, too, and praying it might help in some small way. Savoring their spice, the way they spoke of the woods so far away. Wondering at their color, the way they lit the earth as they faded away.

  The windows, though, still had gaping holes. I loved them, truly—the way they let in the sound of birds during the day and clean air at night, and how they ushered in these spinning waifs, fallen from trees, as if depositing them at my feet to make me feel at home.

  I had gone to see the Jour de Soleil Sisters today. As the woman at the Motherhouse had said, they had a lodging house for some of the sisters very near to the château. We soon learned that they shared a fence with me. Part of a fence, rather. A little corner in the back of my garden, and they laughed to say at last, someone was here to pluck away the sunflowers in the fall, which kept planting themselves in their kitchen garden.

  Their company, I was finding, was a gift. The company of women was a world I’d never known. Women who knew how to be industrious, who let me learn alongside them, and who made it their purpose to help people, especially in wartime.

  They insisted on sending over their grounds keeper, Michael, who was brother to one of the nuns. He came every morning, sporting a groomed grey moustache that curled at the ends, and a wooden box full of tools. He was boarding up those broken windows one by one. I knew it had to be done, but with each one shuttered, I felt something shutter inside of me, too. Less light, less air.

  It was getting colder, these October nights. And the moon seemed brighter. The night seemed a land to live in, not slumber through. But exhaustion was heavy upon me, so much so that I wondered if I was ill. I had spent days in much harder work back home in the Argonne and felt far less tired than this. This exhaustion—it was so heavy, it was a presence. The city swirled with horrific tales of the influenza sweeping the world. Of how it would steal your breath, and then your life, so swiftly.

  My child’s life.

  It was enough to drive a person quite out of a sound mind, the wondering and worrying. At night, the worrying grew shadows that stretched and devoured—so I pushed back. Filling the dark with memories of a hearth in the little forest house, memories of a loft along the journey to Paris, the moon so bright. And memories of Matthew and his kind touch . . . the rest and depth and strength in it . . . and at last, I slept.

  I dreamed of him. I dreamed of him in my forest, laying that wreath, finding me, dirt-streaked and wild. I remembered him watching with such care I might have been made of glass, when I had been hurt at the ruined city. I dreamed memories I didn’t know I had stored up—and woke with eyes wet, grateful to my Father in heaven for creating memories, and minds able to hold them.

  I did not have him. Nor the promise of a future with him. But I had these memories, and I had the currents of a river, wrapping us and our vows together forever. No one could take that. And no one could take my prayers. I prayed, when I awoke, for whatever he faced in those woods. They were such a good place—and so much bad could take place there, as I knew too well. But they were also a place of bad turning to good again.

  I awoke to sunlight. To more leaves to sweep, and an empty house full of memories of those who came before me, all dressed in ball gowns and feathers. I laughed so often, looking at portraits, wondering who they were, wondering what they would think of a forest waif now presiding over their grand château. I hoped they might like me, if they had known me. A portrait of Sophia Fontinelle as a young woman peered kindly on me from one of the large rooms. She had a sparkle in her eye, eyes of dark blue like my own, and I thought we might have been friends. I wondered about her, and allowed that wondering to drive me to letter-writing. With the help of the sisters and a wartime office in the heart of the city, I found an address in Bordeaux, posted it in the mail, and tried to keep from wondering every moment whether I might yet find family.

  I swept and scrubbed floors, and Michael pounded more planks on more windows. Light was leaving this place. I scrubbed harder, as if that might bring it back. As the layers of dust and dirt and time chipped away beneath rivulets of muddy water from my rag, I saw the white marble begin to shine.

  In it, I saw my reflection. I looked a stranger in this place. And I looked small, with the ceiling so high above me, the walls so wide around me. I was surrounded by a great emptiness.

  Emptiness was meant to be filled.

  I stood, the beginning of an idea quickening. Tightness gripped my stomach and my hands flew to where the child lived.

  It was not time. Celia had told me it should be a month yet, or more. She had also warned that early pains might come and might mean nothing.

  I pinched my eyes shut, as if that might usher the feeling away. Th
e ache subsided but left a shadow behind, a lurking fear that it would grip me again.

  It did not.

  I scrubbed more, the idea taking form with each splash of my rag, until I had it formed enough. There would be much required to make it work, but . . . it could work, I believed.

  After I’d pinched a few late berries from the overgrown garden and pumped water from the kitchen into a chipped teacup, I sent a prayer to the heavens and slipped between the hedge to see Sister Marion. She was Michael’s sister, she was brilliant, and she hailed from Ireland and brought the vibrant green of that place here with her strong spirit. She had also become the closest thing I had to a friend.

  “Our soldiers, they are coming, yes? Needing care?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “And the hospitals are sometimes full. Yes?”

  She looked tickled by my statement. “Sweet Mireilles,” she called me, with only warmth and no condescension. “There is no ‘full’ or ‘not full.’ We find room, or we make room, or we go to them in the streets or tents or homes because we must. We will not let one slip past, if it can be helped.” Her words were kind, but I saw the shadow that fell upon her as she thought of untold scenes she had witnessed.

  “And if you had a large house, a large, empty house with nobody to fill it—could you make room there?”

  Now she beheld me, lines around her eyes softening into understanding.

  I was so full of the idea, thinking of those great gaping rooms serving a purpose, saving lives, that the ideas nearly bubbled up inside of me. And as they did, the pain gripped me once more around the middle.

  I flinched and looked away.

  “Mireilles?” Sister Marion was up and at my side. “Tell me what you feel.”

  I told her.

  “Has this been happening long?”

  I shook my head. “Only twice. It is nothing, I know. I have a month or more still.” I had to. Though I had come to stand in wonder at the thought of the life inside of me, I was not ready. I was not a mother. I did not know how to be one.

  “So,” I said, brushing the episode away like my broom to the leaves. “Will you use it? Château Fontinelle? I will help. I can clean, and though I am no nurse, I know some of tending to wounds, and I can learn. If you’ll let me.”

  “Not so quickly, my dear.” She laughed. “It is a grand idea, to be sure. Excellent, truly. But you cannot be sweeping and scrubbing and transforming a—forgive me for saying so—a tas de déchets into a hospital ward. You need to rest, you know. You are already very busy building a person!” She laughed with joy, and I tried not to be hurt that she had called the château a heap of rubbish. I knew it was true, but in its own way, it was home—or the closest thing I had to one. I did not like to hear it called so. The more reason to change it, fill it.

  “We will send some sisters to clean.”

  “I did not mean to make more work for them,” I rushed to say.

  “They live for this! To transform. To make room for more wounded, that they may make room for more healed. ’Tis the work of life.” She furrowed her forehead. “It may not be a proper hospital ward—that would mean doctors on hand, and inspections from the military and medical people to a greater degree than we may be equipped for. But perhaps a place of rehabilitation for those on the mend. No surgeries, but the changing of dressings, the feeding of body and soul. A safe place to heal.”

  I smiled. So well she had put to words what I felt as I did the simple work of sweeping leaves. The work of life. A safe place to heal.

  And it was settled. The next days were spent in a flurry of scrubbing and dusting, fixing and moving. I did not know what would become of my letter to my great-aunt, but I trusted that she, with the sparkle in her eyes and the years of this place gone empty, would not mind such a thing here. Château Fontinelle was not the dazzling show of riches it once had been—and perhaps never would be. But by the simple act of working hands and willing hearts, the gaping, rotting state of emptiness had been transformed to a far simpler one: that of waiting.

  And so we waited.

  Word reached the Paris hospitals and field hospitals and beyond very soon. Perhaps even the hospital barges in the canals, far and away into the reaches of the front. Perhaps these men who began to arrive had been sent by Celia. Perhaps they knew my Matthew.

  We filled the ballroom with them. Then the foyer, then the drawing room, dining room, sitting room. Nurses came, dotting holes into the heavy decades-long silence with the efficient tap tap tap of their shoes, carrying them from one patient to the next, and with their quiet murmurs amongst themselves.

  The men spoke, too. Sometimes the noises were not pleasant—sometimes they were war, held captive in a man’s body, escaping only in pain. But the sound of those comforting, tending, healing, wrapped those guttural cries like a cocoon, into transforming safety.

  I quickly learned how to clean wounds, stitch them, soothe burns. I watched, always, for Matthew. Listened for his voice. Felt the chasm in my chest grow wider each day he did not come and each day he did not write to me—but thanked God for it, too, for perhaps it meant he was well and fighting. That surely was the reason.

  The pains kept coming, every now and then, and Sister Marion kept a close watch on me, insisting on sleeping nights in the library.

  “Oh, dearie, bless my soul if that’s what you’ve been sleeping on.” She bustled over to my corner and rolled in a cot, starting to stretch my blankets over it.

  “But that will be needed,” I said. “For the soldiers.”

  “Aye, and what do you suppose you are, up at all hours doing battle to save people? A soldier in her own right, that’s what.”

  She wasn’t right. I was just me, just Mireilles, just the forest girl. But I slept on the cot that night and will forever be grateful for Sister Marion’s presence. That night, the pain found me. It found me fast, and unforgivably. Waves upon waves of it. I thought of the soldiers, of what they faced downstairs. Amputations. Infections. Worse.

  “It is your time, sweet Mireilles,” she said, her red hair streaked with white, her face lined with compassion.

  “But it isn’t,” I said, inhaling sharply. “It isn’t.”

  “Alright, then, dearie. You just lie back, and let old Marion tend to you.” Her voice was melodic and calm as she put a hand to my hot face and crossed the room to the window. “Your self is working hard,” she said. She always said that to the soldiers. Not your body, but your self. It was singular to her; I had never heard anyone else speak so.

  “Then my self is terribly confused,” I said, mustering a laugh. “It is not time.”

  She opened the window, turned, and tilted her head. “Why not?”

  “It’s—it’s impossible,” I said. A bushel of ways to explain tried and failed to appear. And I was, perhaps, embarrassed to say that of all the hard things, all the impossible things in the past days, Matthew had been there for them each. Taking my hand. Seeing me. Setting his jaw against injustice. Running his hand upon my face in tenderness.

  Sister Marion waited.

  “It is silly,” I said.

  “I like a good joke,” she said. “But I’ve an inkling that what you have to say is anything but silly. Why not try old Marion? Tell me what burdens you.”

  I did. She had known only that my husband was away at war, nothing more of my story, until I unburdened it all before her, ready for her to draw back in shock or walk away entirely. I told her of Matthew, of our journey. Of the man who came before Matthew. Of the Marne River. And of how I would give anything for my husband, my friend, to be here now.

  She did not draw back in shock. She did not walk away. Sister Marion drew near, instead, and picked up my hand.

  “Brave girl,” she whispered, eyes glinting with a sheen. She looked as if she wished to say more, then shook her head. “Brave, brave girl,” she said simply, voice thick with a depth of understanding. She breathed a deep breath and found a smile. “Your Matthew sounds like a ver
y good man.”

  I nodded, unable to speak for the pain. Pain in my middle, pain in my heart.

  “You think of that river,” she said. “And I will pray that it might bring him back to you soon. And when he comes”—she leaned forward, her voice lined with hope—“what a surprise you shall have to show him!”

  I did. I thought of the river through the watches of the night. Wrapped my heart around the hope of it, as thunder blew in through that open window, off in the distance. Clung to the image of it as rain began to fall for the first time since the ruins of Beaulieu-en-Coteau, lacing the air with a lullaby. And wept with the promise of it as, hours later, I held in my arms the one I had carried beneath my heart so long.

  Château Fontinelle stood silent that night, as if it, too, listened. As if every soldier waited, breath bated, for that first cry. And when that cry did sound, so Sister Marion would tell it later, every broken body and wounded soul inside of those walls hung on the little cry that tumbled through the white-marbled corridors and into their hearts as if it were their life’s breath. Their medicine. Their hope and their reason.

  But one soldier did not hear.

  43

  Henry

  Dear Editor,

  When I agreed to work for you, you said you wanted America’s sweetheart, the boy next door.

  Well, I don’t know that I’m any of those things, but I will say this: A sweetheart is one thing. A true love is another. And a love letter is something entirely different from what you’ve been printing. You’ve taken my words and turned them into preprinted valentines, sold for a dime a dozen or less. I understand. Truly. Papers must be sold, people must be bolstered. They need a face for the cause their sons and husbands have given themselves to. A valentine.

  However, if I may be so bold . . . could it be that at such a time as this, what they need even more than a valentine is a love letter? It may not have the shine and luster of its dime-store counterpart. But it has heart.