he’s still got both legs and arms. If we point his hands in the right place he can lift. The others are too far gone. One poor devil will be lucky if we get him there alive.” His voice caught. “Jesus wept! This is so bloody senseless!” He turned and plowed back through the mud to the back of the ambulance and pulled the door open.
Judith started after him. It would take both of them to help the injured men out to lighten it enough to lift. They were heavy, awkward, and in desperate pain. Her hands slipped on the wet stretcher handles and her back ached unbearably as she tried to keep her balance and carry the heavy bodies to the side of the road.
“I’m sorry,” she said to them over and over. “Got to lighten it so we can lift it out.”
The first man was peacefully unconscious, blood soaking through his bandages in the rain.
“It’s not too bad,” the second said, trying to smile. “Don’t worry, miss.”
She felt the hot tears on her face as she bent to touch his hand. “Won’t be long. Just got to lift a little, then we’ll get you back.”
Together with Wil she lifted two more out, leaving only the worst injured behind. Alf Culshaw she led slowly, warning of the puddles and ruts, until he and Wil were on either side of the stuck wheel. She placed Culshaw’s hands under the edge of the frame. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked him. “I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have to.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “Just don’t ask me to guide you where we are going.” He gave a dry, hacking laugh.
“You lift. I’ll drive,” she replied. “Better that way. I can’t lift for toffee! Thanks.” She had the wood ready— broken pieces from a dead tree and a couple of lengths of old sacking.
“Go on then,” Wil directed. “One, two, three!”
The ambulance rocked and heaved level. Judith threw the wood and sacking in and it settled down again. She ran to the driver’s seat and scrambled in. Wil moved Culshaw out of the way, then cranked the handle and they moved forward at last.
“Right!” Wil yelled, jumping backward. “Let’s get them in again!”
She left the engine on, brake tight, and scrambled back to lift the stretchers in again to a cheer, and then to help Culshaw back into the seat.
She drove without incident the rest of the way. It seemed to take hours—but it was probably not more than forty-five minutes longer. A strange doctor, white-faced and obviously harassed, took the wounded in. The last man was already dead. Judith and Wil got back into the ambulance and started for the front again, this time with Wil in the front.
“We’ll get Cavan back,” he said when they were half a mile from the dressing station. “We’ll find a way. He can’t have been the one who shot Northrup. He must be covering for someone. It’ll come out.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, glancing sideways at him, although she could see nothing more than his outline in the dark.
“We’ve got to make it!” he said grimly. “If General Northrup could find out who the twelve most likely are, then we have to be able to find out why, as well. They’d never have done it without a hell of a good reason. We’ve got to find the people who’ll swear to it.”
“And take it to Northrup?” she asked. Her stomach knotted up with fear at the thought of it.
“You game?” Wil said, touching her arm for a moment.
She swallowed and felt her heart beating in her throat. “Of course.”
On the final trip of the night she found Joseph at the field dressing station. He helped her with the last stretcher. The man was already dead from his wounds. Defeat overwhelmed her, and a sense that everything was slipping out of the last trace of control that she had.
“If we could have taken him to Cavan’s dressing station he’d have been alive!” she said furiously, tears choking her. “But those men are bleeding to death because he’s locked up in some damn farmhouse waiting to go on trial and be shot over that idiot Northrup!” She stared at him defiantly. “Why couldn’t you leave your stupid conscience out of it and just keep your mouth shut? You didn’t have to tell Colonel Hook it was a kangaroo trial! You could just have said you didn’t know! Why can’t you ever leave well enough alone?”
Joseph looked so tired his skin was gray in the early daylight, the stubble dark on his chin. There was no light in his eyes at all.
“I had to tell him something close to the truth, or he could too easily find out I was lying,” he answered her.
“Don’t tell him anything at all!” she shouted back. “Why didn’t you just say you didn’t know? He can’t force you!”
Joseph looked down at the muddy boards they were standing on. “I thought if General Northrup knew it was at least a dozen men, a court-martial, not a private murder, he’d be so ashamed he’d let it drop rather than leave his son so disgraced. It would have been better for everyone. Otherwise he could just have found the worst enmity, the man he thought unjust, and blamed him. He isn’t going to let it go.”
“He isn’t
“I know….”
She felt guilty for attacking him when he was so obviously blaming himself anyway, but she was too angry and too frightened to stop. “We’ve got to save Cavan. What are we going to do?” She tried to moderate her voice a little, hearing the shrill edge to it. “Does Northrup really want it to come out that his son caused all those people’s deaths? If we can prove it, find all the evidence of what a fool he was, who’s dead because of him, and why there were twelve men willing to risk their own lives in order to get rid of him, wouldn’t he want that silenced?”
They could both hear the sounds of movement inside, voices giving orders, stifled murmurs of pain.
“He wasn’t meant to be killed, only frightened,” Joseph explained.
“So who shot him?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“Then they won’t believe it. It sounds like an excuse. Were they really going to let him go again, after they’d put him on a mock trial?”
“I don’t know, Judith. That’s all I could get out of the man who told me.”
Another ambulance pulled up outside. They saw the lights and heard the squelching in the mud, and voices shouting. Joseph moved aside and she followed him.
“Was he there? Is he in prison now?” she urged. “Why should anyone believe him? And if he told you in confession, why did you report it? He betrayed all his fellows!”
“He wasn’t one of them,” Joseph corrected her. “He knows because I think lots of the men do. Consider, Judith—if there were twelve men as a jury, surely others kept watch for them and covered what they were doing. There are a lot more than twelve men involved.”
She saw a glimmer of hope, just a thread. “Then that’s better. Everyone agreed Major Northrup was a disaster! Can’t we take that to the general, and show him what it’ll do to his son’s reputation? Even to his own, for that matter?” Men started carrying stretchers into the dressing station. She stepped closer to Joseph. “Joe, in the general’s place wouldn’t you forgo revenge rather than have the name of someone you loved publicly vilified and all their mistakes proved?”
“Of course I would. Revenge is worth nothing anyway. But General Northrup doesn’t feel that way.”
“Then we’ll have to make him!”
He looked at her blankly, anxiety puckering his brow, but he did not argue. It was only then that she realized he had intended to do it anyway; he merely needed time to gather the evidence. Perhaps her pain had made her too quick to judge.
“Hurry!” she urged. “The general could leave, and then it’ll be too late. I’ll help. I know Wil Sloan will, too, and others.”
He drew in his breath to argue and—realizing the futility of it—let it out again without speaking.
Judith knew there was no time to wait for Joseph to speak to General Northrup. Northrup was somewhere far behind the lines. She and Wil knew who was involved and they had transport. It was not difficult to arrange to be the drivers who took several patients back to the hospital at Lille, and then divert on the way back and find Northrup’s headquarters. Certainly they would be away longer than they should be, and they would have to commandeer petrol for the extra miles, but no one would have to be asked to cover for them or tell the necessary lies. A score of men were only too eager, vying for the privilege.
