Still . . .

  I said, meaning it, “You have been very kind, monsieur. I am staying with Dr. Moreau and his wife while I am in Paris. They will take very good care of me. But is there any way to repair my appearance before I see them? It will frighten Madame and worry her unnecessarily to see me like this.”

  He took me down several passages to a small room with a sink, a mirror, and several towels. Finding me a clean one, he said, “I wish I could do more. I will have one of my men waiting in the passage for you, and he will find a taxi and see that the driver takes you safely home.”

  I could do nothing with my hair, but I put it up again without all the pins I usually required, set my poor trampled cap back on and then did what I could about my coat. My stockings were ruined, my shoes scraped and muddy, but at least my face and hands were clean, and I would have time in the taxi to think up something to tell the doctor and his wife. And Marina. Poor Marina, she’d be horrified.

  The magistrate was as good as his word. A policeman was waiting, and he courteously escorted me to the street and found a taxi.

  He spoke personally to the driver—I could imagine what mayhem he was threatening if I didn’t reach home safely—and only then settled me into the rear of the taxi. I thanked him, leaned my head back against the seat, and took a deep breath.

  Had he hated me so much? Lawrence Minton? To want to kill me?

  I didn’t want to believe it. But what else could I believe? I had no enemies here.

  Only then did it dawn on me that the Lieutenant was in Paris. And still alive.

  The Moreaus were horrified to see me, just as I’d thought, and they whisked me off to the surgery before anyone else could see me, gave me a small glass of brandy to sip, and demanded to know what had happened.

  I told them the truth—as much of it as I dared—and they scolded me for not being more careful.

  “The streets are not safe in that district. And the man must have been demented, to attack you in that fashion.”

  I let them fuss over me, sipped a little more brandy to warm me, then asked to be taken to my room. Madame went ahead to order hot water, assuring me that she would see personally to the cleaning of my coat and shoes. And then she was off, leaving me alone with Dr. Moreau.

  “Was it Lawrence? Do you know?” he asked anxiously. “He must have been out of his mind to do such a thing. Are the police searching for him now?”

  I set the brandy aside. “I don’t know. I didn’t tell the police because I couldn’t be sure. But who else could it have been? I called his name. He must have known who it was, coming toward him.” I shook my head. “If we don’t find him soon, heaven knows what will happen to him. Or to someone else,” I added.

  “Keep this to yourself. For my wife and Marina’s sakes. And from now on, I must accompany you when you feel you must search for Lawrence. To keep you safe, and to handle him in whatever state of mind he may be in.”

  “No. He won’t have the opportunity to attack me again. I’ll be on my guard. I promise you.”

  But that took some persuading. When at last he let me go, I could only think of the hot water waiting, and my bed. The brandy, I thought, was having its effect, and I would be able to sleep.

  Madame didn’t ask me if I thought the man had been Lawrence Minton. I don’t think she could quite wrap her mind around such a possibility. And I was glad. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone about it now.

  She took my damp and muddy clothing, tossed my torn stockings into the fire on the hearth, and helped me wash my hair. And then, mercifully, she was gone. An hour later she brought me a cup of soup, thinking I might be able to swallow a little. I thanked her, and drank most of it to make her happy.

  I expected to dream. But I didn’t. I slept the night through like someone drugged, not opening my eyes until the first gray of dawn lightened the room a little. But every bone in my body complained vigorously as I tried to move. I only hoped that my attacker was feeling as wretched.

  It rained hard that day, giving me an excuse to stay in and rest. But on the following day I began my search again, first close to the bridge where the attack had happened, and then widening the search from there.

  I had the odd feeling sometimes that I was being watched. But when I looked, I didn’t see anyone whom I recognized. Mostly I searched the streets where artists and students lived, because lodgings were cheap there. The day after that, I was just crossing the bridge below the Pont Neuf when in the distance I spotted Captain Jackson, waiting to cross the street beyond the end of the bridge. Hurrying to catch him up before he’d got too far ahead, I called to him. I hadn’t really expected him to hear me over the din of traffic, but he looked around, tall enough to be able to see over the heads of passersby, and then as I called again, he turned and spotted me.

  “Just the person I’d been hoping to see,” he said somberly. “I think I’ve found your missing friend. But I can’t be sure. And I had no way to find you.”

  “You’ve found him?” I repeated, amazed and excited. Then, really taking in his expression, I said, “Captain—are you—is he alive?”

  “Only just.”

  All I could think of was that the encounter with me had pushed the Lieutenant over the edge, either in shame or determination to finish it, and I felt my spirits plummet.

  My companion was already searching the street for a taxi, found one, and ushered me inside. “The Holy Angels hospital,” he told the driver, then turned back to me. “It’s a Catholic hospital for the indigent,” he said. “They take in those who can’t afford to pay, who are old and in ill health. It’s in one of the poorer quarters.” His lightly teasing manner had vanished, and I was seeing quite a different view of him. Here was the man who had flown countless forays against the best flyers that Germany had in the air, and still survived. “It seems that a priest found him in an alley, terribly beaten. He was barely conscious and yet he kept saying something over and over again. Something about angels. The priest understood him to mean he was known at Holy Angels, but when the ambulance brought him there, he was not someone the nurses recognized. They took him in, anyway.”

  “Are you sure it’s the man I’m searching for?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not. But I think you ought to have a look at him all the same.” The drawl was back. “He was wearing an English uniform when he was found, but the condition it was in gave the police to believe he’d bought it secondhand somewhere or stolen it. A good many of the soldiers who chose to stay here in Paris got rid of their uniforms. They didn’t want to stand out. British and American.”

  “But what happened to him? Why was he in a French hospital?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me. I thought you, being a nurse yourself, might convince them to talk to you. Failing that, I just don’t know.” The grimness was creeping back in.

  Twisting and turning through the outskirts of the city, we found ourselves in increasingly poor quarters, the houses shabby, a few windows broken out and stuffed with rags, paint peeling, and a general air of despair. Even the people, hunched against the wind that had been increasing all morning, seemed to carry the burden of hopelessness on their shoulders. At the end of one street, a dreary stone building stood inside a tall iron fence. It too appeared to be a victim of time and decay. I thought, noticing the grilles at the upper windows, that this might once have been an asylum.

  The staff was as worn as the building, the nurses older, with lines in their faces that aged them beyond their years. One or two looked up as they passed by us but didn’t speak. After a few minutes an orderly came into Reception and asked our business.

  I could barely understand him, and I asked to be taken to the place where I’d been told a man wearing a British uniform had recently been brought in.

  We were led down a tiled corridor, and the odor of sickness and dirty bodies wafted out of the doors we passed. And then the orderly stopped and pointed into a room on our left.

  Inside were a double row of cots, each one occupied. I looked at the orderly. “Which is the bed we are seeking?” I asked.

  “Number seventeen,” he told me and I started down the aisle between the two rows, looking for the correct number. All I could see in most of the beds were heads, the men themselves covered by a blanket that appeared to be Army issue, now reverted to civilian use. Old men with tousled white hair stared back at me, and younger men with only one leg, the blanket empty on one side. And beggars from the streets, toothless and gaunt.

  How could Lawrence Minton have wound up here?

  I found seventeen, and looked at what I could see of the patient. A head swathed in bandaging, only a tuft or two of dark hair showing.

  Lawrence Minton’s hair wasn’t that dark.

  I was about to walk on to the next bed, thinking I’d been given the wrong number, when something made me move closer instead. And I realized that this man’s hair was still matted with blood.

  Stepping even closer, I said softly, “Lawrence? Can you hear me? It’s Sister Crawford.”

  There was no response. I lightly touched his shoulder, thinking he might be sleeping, and the reaction was shocking.

  His whole body lurched away from me in terror, and I fell back, staring at the man in the bed. A wave of pity swept through me. Whatever he’d done, he hadn’t deserved this.

  Behind me, I heard the Captain suppressing a sound, somewhere between swearing and denial.

  I turned. “Can you find a chair for me?”

  He looked around the room. “There—at the far end.” And he walked briskly toward it.

  I went back to the patient. Bending low, so that my voice didn’t carry, I said, “Lawrence? What happened, who hurt you this badly?”

  There was no movement, no response. And yet I thought there was tenseness, as if he knew who I was, and wanted me to go away. I decided to speak to that.

  “I’m stubborn, you know, I find it hard to give up on someone. That’s why I was a good nurse, I cared about my patients.”

  No reaction. And then a thread of a voice I barely recognized said, “The Angel. He—he turned his b-back on me. At M-Mons. Even y-you can’t chan-change that.”

  Whatever it was I’d expected, it wasn’t this.

  The retreating British forces, struggling to hold the German advance in the first days of the war, had nearly been overwhelmed. And then there was an account of an Angel appearing in the sky, between the Expeditionary Force and the German Army. Giving them time to regroup and hold on a little longer. Combined with the French Army rushing men by taxi to stop the Germans at the Marne River, these men kept the Germans from taking the coast and preventing loss of the ports Britain badly needed to reinforce them. Until then the German onslaught appeared to be invincible. It had in many ways turned the tide of war.

  Some claimed the Angel was the invention of newspapers. Others swore that the Angel was there—men who had actually seen it.

  But I’d never heard anyone say that the Angel had turned his back on a single British soldier.

  Captain Jackson had returned with my chair. I sat close to the bed, not touching it for fear of disturbing Lawrence again.

  And then I remembered—remembered standing on the stairs at the house in St. Ives. When Lawrence was in the throes of nightmare.

  What had Lawrence said?

  You turned your back on me then. Why? I went back. I couldn’t help it if it was too late. I never meant it to be too late.

  “Did the Angel turn from you in St. Ives, when you saw him on the stairs?”

  There was a different stillness from the figure on the bed now.

  I let the silence lengthen.

  “How cou-could you kno-know about that?” The voice was muffled, unsteady.

  “A priest found you. This is a hospital. Holy Angels, the French call it. How can you think that God has abandoned you?”

  I heard the cry of a man in anguish, low and shatteringly harsh.

  I turned to Captain Jackson and mouthed, Leave! And gestured to the door we’d entered.

  He started to say something, then left without looking back until he reached the door. There he stopped and waited for me.

  I didn’t want any witnesses to Lawrence Minton’s reaction. It was a private thing, so deeply personal that he would be ashamed later that others had heard him.

  But the breakdown I’d expected never came. Just that one cry. I realized that he must have lost consciousness even as he made it.

  After a moment, when I was sure it was safe to leave him, I quietly went to find the nurse in charge of his care. Captain Jackson followed me.

  She was busy, tired, her face prematurely lined. I thought she could be in her forties, possibly early fifties—she looked sixty.

  “Number Seventeen? Alors, he should not be alive, you understand? A concussion, we fear bleeding in the brain. A broken collarbone, a broken arm, bruised kidneys, a broken leg. Internal injuries that we have not yet been able to assess. It was not a man’s fists, you know. It was wood or metal, to do such damage to a human body. His assailant wanted him to die in great pain.”

  “Who could have done such a thing? Someone trying to rob him? An enemy?”

  She shook her head. “This was vicious. Not anger, but intent. He was beaten long after he could defend himself. Until, perhaps, some noise, someone, frightened his assailant away. He could still die, you understand? It is still possible.” Sighing, she went on. “I have sent word to the British Army, but I had to tell them the truth, that I thought the uniform was not his. No one has replied to me.”

  “Were the police summoned? Did they take the details of the assault on Number Seventeen?”

  “They were summoned, they interviewed the priest, but not the patient. We were too busy trying to save his life.” She handed the key to the medicine cabinet to a nurse who had come to ask for it, then said, “Does the poor man have any family, do you know? He can tell us nothing.”

  “Not in France. I must send to England to find them.” I was afraid if I told her about Matron, she would insist on waiting until Lawrence’s mother arrived before agreeing to any changes. “What more can be done, meanwhile? Is there a private room where he can be treated? Could I bring in my own doctor to attend him?”

  She looked back at the door to the ward. “There are no private rooms here—except for quarantine. And not enough doctors for private care, even if that were possible. We do what we can for these wretched souls. We save as many as possible, and sometimes they die in another way. Too much wine, too little food. An infection from a knife wound or broken teeth. A heart or a liver that can do no more. There is always something. It is very sad.”

  “I know a doctor here in Paris who is willing to accept a private case. Would it be possible to take him away, to try to save him? If there is any glimmer of hope for him, I must find it.” For Matron’s sake.

  She smiled, but it wasn’t an encouraging smile. “You will require an ambulance. He cannot be moved otherwise or he will be in too much pain. Even moving could kill him. We’ve feared for clotting from his wounds. And the stress to his body, just to breathe. And there is more. He flinches from us when we try to change dressings. As if he fears another attack. You must provide for him mentally as well as seeing to his physical needs. Do you realize the task you will be taking on?”

  “I worked in forward aid stations, I know how men suffer.”

  “Very well. I will give my permission. But you must speak to the doctor as well.”

  I did just that, persuading him that Dr. Moreau could give this patient the care that the ward couldn’t possibly offer someone so ill. “I am grateful that he was brought here and that you took him in and did all that you could for him. But from my own experience with badly wounded men, he will require care for a very long time. There must be others who will be in need of his bed, long before he’s well.”

  An older man, nearly gray, he studied me for a moment. “This is true. And I know of this doctor you speak of. If he comes himself, to sign the papers, I will allow the young man to leave. It’s highly irregular. But if you are certain he’s English, then I see no reason to refuse permission.”

  I said, “I have heard him speak. I have no doubts there.”

  “Do you trust this doctor you’re sending him to?” the Captain asked later, when I’d finally got the temporary permission I required to begin the removal of Number Seventeen.

  “He has known Lawrence for some time. He will see that he’s given every care.” We’d stepped out into the fresh air, outside the main door. I took a deep breath. “He’s going to die in there. Dr. Moreau couldn’t be any worse.” Looking around at the poor neighborhood, I added, “How do I find an ambulance?”

  “That’s going to be a problem. They’re not at the beck and call of an English nurse.”

  “I can’t leave him here. I won’t.”

  And what to do about Marina?

  “Could I ask another favor of you? Will you go to the address I’m about to give you, and ask Dr. Moreau please to find a way to bring Lawrence Minton to his house, where he can be treated? Tell him that there is no hope for him, if he can’t save him. Ask him if his other guest could be returned to her own duties. It would be for the best, if that was possible. And anyway, he must come himself to sign the papers.”

  It was all I could do. I was needed here.

  I gave him the address and said, “Please do your best, persuading him that I am right. That man was a good soldier. He deserves a chance.”

  The Captain smiled. “Leave it to me, ma’am. I’ll see that there’s an ambulance coming for him, if I have to steal it myself.”

  Well, that was not very reassuring!

  I saw him on his way, then went back inside, found my way back to the ward, and sat down again by my patient. Dr. Moreau’s, to be perfectly accurate now.

  I stayed there, telling myself over and over again that I had done the right thing. And then I felt guilty that I hadn’t told Dr. Moreau long before this that there was something in Lawrence Minton’s background that was terribly uncertain. He deserved to know, if only to protect his family. If Lawrence had attacked me, I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t try to attack the Moreaus.