Finally the flow of soldiers trickles away, and by silent understanding we all regroup and begin walking again. The silence is electric and uneasy. I try not to think about those people at the camp, cupped in a bowl of land, trapped. An old expression comes back to me—like shooting fish in a barrel—and I feel a wild and inappropriate desire to laugh. That’s what they are, all those Invalids: wild-eyed, pale-bellied fishes, rolling up toward the sun, as good as dead.
We make it to the safe house in slightly more than twelve hours. The sun has made a complete revolution and is now sinking down over the trees, breaking up into watery streaks of yellow and orange. It reminds me of the poached eggs my mother used to make me when I was sick as a small child, how the yolk would seep across the plate, a vivid and startling gold, and I feel a sharp stab of homesickness. I’m not even sure whether I’m missing my mother, or simply the old routine of my life: a life of school and playdates and rules that kept me safe; boundaries and borders; bath time and curfews. A simple life.
The safe house is marked by a small wooden over-structure, no larger than an outhouse latrine, fitted with a clumsily constructed door. The whole thing must have been assembled from scraps after the blitz. When Tack heaves open the door on its rusted hinges—these, too, twisted and bent—we can just make out a few steps tunneling down into a dark hole.
“Wait.” Raven kneels, fumbling in one of the packs she took from Pippa, and produces a flashlight. “I’ll go first.”
The air is thick with must and something else—a sour-sweet smell I can’t identify. We follow Raven down the steeply pitched stairs. She aims the flashlight around a room that is surprisingly spacious and clean: shelves, a few rickety tables, a kerosene stove. Beyond the stove is another darkened doorway, leading to additional rooms. I feel a flicker of warmth in my chest. It reminds me of the homestead near Rochester.
“There should be lanterns around here somewhere.” Raven advances several paces into the room. The light zigzags across the clean-swept concrete floor, and I see a small pair of blinking eyes, a flash of gray fur. Mice.
Raven finds a pile of dusty battery-operated lanterns in the corner. It takes three lanterns to beat away all the shadows in the room. Normally Raven would insist on conserving energy, but I think she feels—as we all feel—that tonight we need as much light as we can. Otherwise, images of the camp will come pressing back, carried on silken shadow fingers: all those people, trapped, helpless. We must focus instead on this bright, small, underground room, and its illuminated corners and wooden shelves.
“Do you smell that?” Tack says to Bram. He picks up one of the lanterns and carries it into the next room. “Bingo!” he shouts.
Raven is already rifling through the pack, removing supplies. Coral has found large metal jugs full of water stored on one of the lower shelves, and has crouched down, swigging gratefully. But the rest of us follow Tack into the second room.
Hunter says, “What is it?”
Tack is standing, holding the lantern up to reveal a wall crisscrossed with a diamond-lattice of wooden shelves. “Old wine cellar,” he says. “I thought I smelled the booze.” Two bottles of wine, and one bottle of whiskey, remain. Immediately, Tack uncaps the whiskey and takes a swig, before offering it to Julian, who accepts after only a split-second hesitation. I start to protest—I’m sure he’s never had a drink before, would practically swear to it—but before I can speak he has taken a long sip and, miraculously, managed to swallow without gagging.
Tack breaks into one of his rare smiles and claps Julian on the shoulder. “You’re all right, Julian,” he says.
Julian wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “That wasn’t bad,” he says, gasping a little, and Tack and Hunter laugh. Alex takes the bottle from Julian wordlessly and swigs.
All the exhaustion of the past few days hits me at once. Beyond Tack, across the room from the lattice-shelves, are several narrow cots, and I practically stagger to the one closest to me.
“I think . . .” I start to say as I lie down, curling my knees to my chest. There are no blankets and no pillow on the cot, but still I feel as though I’m sinking into something heavenly: a cloud, a feather. No. I am the feather. I am drifting away. I’m going to sleep for a bit, I mean to finish, but I don’t get the words out before, already, I am.
I wake up gasping in total darkness. For a moment I panic, thinking I’m back in the underground cell with Julian. I sit up, heart slamming against my ribs, and only when I hear Coral murmur on the cot next to mine do I remember where I am. The room smells bad, and there’s a bucket next to Coral’s bed. She must have thrown up earlier.
A wedge of light cuts through the open doorway, and I hear muffled laughter from the next room.
Someone placed a blanket over me while I was sleeping. I push it to the bottom of the cot and stand up. I have no idea what time it is.