Ghost Talkers (20 page)

This one had the braids and pips of a captain and could not be above five and twenty. His blond hair was crusted with blood. He might even have been the man who had killed Ben. Ginger pushed his sleeve back and felt for his pulse. The beat was strong and regular, so he was merely unconscious, though she had no real way of knowing how bad his head wound was. She brushed his hair aside and was rewarded with the sight of a length of split skin and a large contusion, but the skull beneath seemed sound.

How was she supposed to do anything for these men? She did not even have bandages. And Merrow. And Mrs. Richardson. Ginger's breath shuddered as she exhaled. She would be in the way if she tried digging. Ben would find them, and then she could decide what to do.

And on the subject of decisions, even if she couldn't bandage anyone yet, she could at least decide priorities. Ginger went down the line, looking at the wounds. Some of the soldiers were conscious. Some would have been better off if they weren't. Some were clearly not going to live much longer.

God forgive her, but some of them were going to report in very soon.

Feeling like a vulture, Ginger picked one who was struggling but still alert. He must have been near the blast, and his right shoulder was gone. His breath strained and bubbled red on his lips. Ginger knelt by him, and his clear blue eyes focused on her with horrible clarity. She wet her lips. “I am so sorry. There is nothing I can do for you.”

He gave a small nod and—God help her—he winked, as jaunty as anything.

“Do you remember your training? About reporting in when you die?”

He nodded again.

“All right…” Ginger took a breath and focused on him. “When you reach Potter's Field, you need to report to Helen Jackson—that will make sense when you get there. Tell her to relive your last moments, and that I said you were very brave.”

Ginger glanced over her shoulder, but none of the other soldiers had time to spare for the wounded, as they continued to try to find more survivors. “Helen, there is a German medium named Peter Schmitt at the prisoner of war camp near Amiens, and he's formed a circle with the prisoners there. I don't know if they have German ghosts reporting to them, but just to be on the safe side I recommend putting salt barriers around all the camps. Ask Lady Penfold to look into Capt. Reginald Harford again. He followed us to the POW camp, and his men attacked us on the road. He seems to know the prisoner Amott Zitron, and Ben thinks they were speaking in code to each other.”

A couple of small tin first aid kits thumped onto the earth beside her. “Best I can find. That'll do for a start, what?”

Ginger jumped and glanced up at Axtell. When had he dyed his hair dark? It seemed as if half the people in the army fit the traitor's description. She popped a kit open and pulled out the roll of gauze inside. “Thank you.”

“How's Royston?”

“Not going to make it, I'm afraid.” Ginger stood and turned away from Royston. “When did you dye your hair?”

“By God! How like a woman to wonder that in the middle of a war.” He grinned. “You'd like the name of my hairdresser next, I suppose.”

“I suppose so.” She turned her back on him and walked to the next man in the line. “Please, go help with the digging.”

He laughed again, shaking his head. “Oh, there's no point. Anyone they haven't found is dead by now.”

She inhaled sharply and then coughed on the dust in the air. Wiping her eyes, Ginger looked back at the mound of dirt. Merrow might be mixed with the other survivors, but nearly anonymous in his khakis. But Mrs. Richardson … surely there would be no missing an elderly woman among the bodies pulled from the earth.

She fixed Axtell with a glare. “If you are supposed to be incognito, you might pretend to care.”

For a flash, his ever-present smile hardened to match his aura. And then he laughed again. “Right-ho. Off I go!”

Someone so obviously callous could not be the traitor who killed Ben, but beyond that, Axtell had nothing to recommend him. Shuddering, Ginger knelt by the next soldier.

This was someone she could, in fact, help. He had a long gash down one arm where shrapnel had torn his skin. He held the edges together with one hand and sat against the remaining wall of the trench, shaking. Dirt covered him, masking all sign of rank on his uniform.

Ginger still had the packet of gauze in one hand and the tin kits in the other. She set the kits down. “Let me see.”

He did not respond, so she tapped him lightly on the shoulder. The young man jumped. He stared at her with wide brown eyes. “I can't hear.”

He must have been close to the blast for the sound to have hurt him. If he had received no more damage than a cut on his arm and the loss of his hearing, he was lucky indeed
. Please … please let Mrs. Richardson be all right.

Ginger patted his shoulder and gestured to his arm.

He held it out. The damage was more severe than it had first looked. He'd likely lose the use of some fingers. She gritted her teeth and tore off some of the gauze. Using that, she wiped away what blood she could. He stiffened but did not cry out, though his aura was filled with pain.

Wrapping the remaining bandage around his arm, Ginger tried to draw the edges close enough together to stop some of the bleeding. Why wasn't Ben back yet?

And where was Merrow? Ginger stood and moved to the next soldier. He had a broken leg, and there was nothing she could do besides telling him to be brave.

Brave.

What a word to use when facing pain. These men were already brave, just to be here. The bold smiles and nonchalance with which they greeted her was not matched by their auras. She did not know how anyone could survive with the amount of grief and fear and pain that these men carried.

“Ginger!” Ben appeared at her side. She almost answered him, despite the soldier sitting right by her.

Excusing herself, Ginger stood and turned so that her back was to the wounded. “Did you find—”

“I can't make him stop. I mean, he can't hear me, so of course I can't.” Ben shook his head and stopped. Inhaling, he closed his eyes and then met her gaze again. “Sorry. I get confused when I'm away from you. Merrow is still trying to dig, but—and I am so, so sorry. More sorry than I can express, but—”

“Mrs. Richardson is dead.” The words had no meaning.

“Yes.” He gestured through a deep purple morass of grief back to the mound of earth. “The dugout collapsed with the blast, and.… but Merrow. Can you make him understand?”

Ginger nodded and walked toward the mound of dirt. Mrs. Richardson was dead. She ought to feel something, but there seemed to be a hollow spot within her. She did not actually believe it was true.

Scrambling over the loose dirt, Ginger worked her way to the other side of the mound and tried to keep her head down below the range of German snipers. Ginger had expected Ben to die in the war, especially after the reports from the dead started coming in, and the death toll became clear. In some ways, she had begun mourning him the first time she saw him in uniform. But Mrs. Richardson? She had mufflers to knit and Mr. Haden to flirt with and Ginger to admonish and grandchildren to chase, and it was not possible that she was dead.

And not even dead for a higher cause. Simply a chance shell landing on the trenches. A stupid, stupid, meaningless death.

A death that was inescapably Ginger's fault.

She slid down the far bank, skirt coming up around her knees. Tugging it down as she stood, Ginger found the same scene on this side that she had left on the other. Wounded men lay along the side of the trench with their comrades attending them. A few still dug at the mound itself, but their work seemed more in line with clearing it than with saving anyone.

Only one man still dug with energy. Merrow had his helmet in hand and was using it as a makeshift shovel. Kneeling, he dug a helmetful of dirt and flung it to the side, widening a hole as if he were going to rebuild the dugout. Dirt covered him. It caked his hair and crusted his uniform.

“Merrow?” Ginger came up behind him.

He kept digging.

What was his first name? She had never heard it. He was always just Merrow or Pvt. Merrow and nothing beyond that. “Merrow—” Ginger put a hand on his shoulder.

He flinched and jerked around, raising a fist. His aura was terrible, all terror and guilt and guilt and guilt. Tear tracks ran through the dirt on his cheeks and left behind startling white lines of skin. His eyes were red with weeping. “Miss—she's—I have to…” The young man turned back to the hole and dropped to his knees again. Digging. “It's my fault. I stepped out, just for a minute, to talk to Sam. I shouldn't have left her.”

“Merrow, I'm so sorry.” Ginger watched him dig without any sign of hearing her. “You couldn't have done anything if you'd been there.”

He kept digging, with his shoulders hunched forward over the hole.

“Dear, you have to stop.” Ginger knelt by him and put a hand on his arm. “Ben has looked for her.”

He flinched again, turning toward her. A line of blood dripped from his ear. Ginger caught his chin and turned his head to the other side. There was blood at the other ear as well.

She released him and waited until he looked back at her. “Merrow, can you hear me?”

His brows turned upward in confusion.

Merrow stared at her mouth as Ginger repeated herself. “Can you hear me at all?”

He touched his ear and brought his hand away to look at the red stain. Then he started to laugh.

 

Chapter Seventeen

Ginger sat outside the field hospital with a cup of tea, waiting for them to finish treating Merrow. The nurses—the real nurses—had taken a single look at her and declared that she was “shell shocked” and of no use without a rest. Shell shock. A nervous condition caused by exposure to intense trauma. By strict definition, she had been in that state for over a year, as had most of the Spirit Corps.

God. What was she going to tell Mr. Haden? Mrs. Richardson wouldn't even be able to report in and send a last message, because only British men were bound with the ID discs. The nexus wouldn't pull anyone else to it.

Ben flickered around her in the ghostly equivalent of pacing. He would take two recognisable strides and then be five paces away, without transition.

Ginger turned the cup in her hand. “I wonder where Axtell got to.”

“What?” Ben was at her side in an instant. “He should be in Berlin by now.”

For a moment, she thought it was another sign of his memory slipping, but Ben hadn't seen Axtell. He had been looking for Mrs. Richardson under the earth, and Axtell had already moved on by the time he came back. She said, “Well … that may be where he was before, but he was in the trench just now.”

“There wouldn't have been time for him to get to Berlin and back.”

“Maybe he didn't go? He said something about investigating that company. Of course, I wasn't supposed to tell you.” She turned the cup again, just warming her hands against it. There were times when it seemed she would never be warm all the way through. She should ask Mrs. Richardson for some … no. There would be no more fingerless gloves or mufflers. “I find Axtell inherently unpleasant, so I don't miss him. Just wondered where he went.”

Ben hunkered down in front of her, frowning. “You're certain about that.”

“That I find him unpleasant?” She raised an eyebrow. “No … no, I know what you meant. Yes. He had dyed his hair brown, and he said he was going by Sgt. Meadows. He told me not to tell anyone, including you, that I'd seen him there.”

“That's … that's not right.” He stroked his mustache in thought, looking past Ginger toward the trenches. “Will you be all right waiting here for Merrow if I go look for Axtell?”

“Of course.” She reached out, as if she could take his hand, and caught herself. “What is bothering you?”

“I am not certain, to be honest. I can't tell if it's something I've forgotten or something that I have yet to put together, but—” He shook his head, grimacing. “Something seems … off. Will you be all right? Truly?”

“Yes.” She glanced at the hospital. “I'll see if can find a copy of
The Story of an African Farm.
”

“You like it that much?”

Ginger stared at him, not quite certain if he was joking. “Well … I thought I might try to translate that book code. From the message we just got?”

He froze, confusion binding his limbs in place. “Ah. Right.” He swallowed and tried to shrug off the braids of murky silver confusion and orange frustration. “Carry on, then.”

“I will.” Ginger smiled at him, knowing her aura must be blue-black with dismay. Did he not remember that they had taken a message from the listening trench, or had he forgotten which book was associated with it? For that matter, she had no way of knowing if Axtell was really supposed to be in Berlin, or if Ben had mixed up another set of memories. “Are you certain that you can go and come back?”

He stood and gave her a wry grin. “I'm more confident in my ability to return to you than I am in my ability to do anything else.” With a wink, he stretched up and soared away, leaving the air dismally warmer with his absence.

Ginger stood and faced the field hospital. It had been a manor at some point, and the nurses who were not working were housed in the servant quarters. She would start there.
The Story of an African Farm
was popular enough, and such a slender volume, that one of them might have brought it along with her books. It was worth a try.

*   *   *

Ginger rubbed her forehead, trying to ease the pain behind her right eye. It did nothing to make the words on the page any more sensible. One of the chauffeuses had brought a copy of
The Story of an African Farm
with her and had been delighted to find someone who appreciated it as much as she did. The theme of the rights of women had been part of what had inspired her to join up to drive ambulances. Ginger had lost a good twenty minutes chatting about the book with the girl before she managed to escape with it to sit at a garden table in the sun.