As attics went, it could have been worse. The room was a large one on the top floor, one side taken up by French windows that opened onto a long and narrow balcony edged with a decorative iron railing. It might even have been pretty—the windows looked out over the Seine, or would have, if it hadn’t been too dark to see—but dark curtains had been hung haphazardly over the windows.
Madame wrenched them closed before lighting an oil lamp with an elaborate glass shade. “No light. It is not allow.” She spoke in English for the benefit of the others but couldn’t resist adding, “Les boches.”
In the lamplight, Kate could see a sewing machine, a dressmaker’s dummy, and some rather battered side tables that appeared to have been exiled from the lower rooms. The one thing the room lacked was any sort of sleeping surface. The eight members of the Unit who had elected to share the garret stood there, in the center of the room, their coats still on, staring around them in despair. At least on the boat, the deck chairs had been broad enough to serve as beds.
Emmie bent over, shaking, weird snorting noises coming from between her fingers.
“Emmie?” Kate put a hand tentatively on her arm.
Emmie lifted her head, her eyes streaming, laughter coming out in great, undisciplined gasps. “Oh, Kate! A garret! What could possibly be more French than a garret! I feel like La Dame aux Camélias and Mimi and all the cast of La Bohème rolled into one!”
Kate grinned reluctantly. “This is far too nice a garret for that sort of thing. We need a few more holes in the roof, at least.”
“A garret is a garret,” said Emmie, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes. “I refuse to be balked of my garret.”
Miss Englund gave them a look of resigned toleration and began moving the furniture about to make room for pallets.
Unbuttoning her jacket, Kate went to help her. “Please promise me you won’t start writing bad poetry and contract consumption?”
“I’m certainly not going to promise good poetry,” said Emmie, joining Kate in shifting the dressmaker’s dummy to a corner of the room. “What are we to sleep on until our cots arrive?”
“Our coats, I imagine,” said Kate. “I’d try to cadge some pillows from Madame, but I’m not sure we can push her any further. She’s already feeling ill-used.”
Emmie carefully straightened the dummy, lowering her voice so only Kate could hear. “What were they thinking to only reserve for nine?”
“Perhaps they assumed that half of us would drown on the way over.” At Emmie’s expression of distress, Kate said, “Or it might be that Mrs. Rutherford only asked for the number of rooms she thought she could get and figured she would sort it out later.”
That did seem to be the way their founder worked. Act first, sort out the details later. It seemed strange to Kate. Here was a woman of international reputation, the first woman to oversee a dig in Crete, ordering hundreds of workmen, responsible for an infinity of details—but from what Kate could see, her plans so far were sketchy in the extreme. She seemed to expect they would follow her blindly. Kate remembered the speech on the ship; how even she had, for that moment, been inclined to charge with Mrs. Rutherford into the breach or anywhere she chose to lead. Well, she could only hope that the hotel was an aberration and the rest of her arrangements were undertaken with more care.
Madame appeared at the door with an armful of blankets. Kate made a point of thanking her profusely, which mollified Madame not in the slightest.
Emmie pulled a wrinkled nightdress over her head. From inside the folds, she said, “I suppose we shouldn’t tell her we’ll also need a room for our baggage when it arrives.”
Kate choked on a laugh. “Not tonight, no. I’m not sure Madame’s nerves can take it.”
Emmie dropped down on her pile of blankets, smothering a yawn. “I don’t care what we’re sleeping on. I feel like I could sleep for a week. Good night, girls.”
A chorus of “good night”s answered as, one by one, they changed into nightgowns and pajamas, relishing the sheer luxury of being out of their uniforms, of sleeping in a room, an actual room, with windows and a door.
With the blackout, it was dark, true dark, in a way it never had been in Brooklyn or Boston, where the streetlights glowed throughout the night. The dark wrapped Kate about, cushioning her, the tension of those last few days on the boat melting away. She hadn’t even realized how terrified they had all been of torpedoes until the threat was gone. It was such a relief to be able to curl into a blanket, even a blanket on a floor, without having to use a life vest as a pillow or worry about awaking to water. . . .
Until someone awakened her by dropping a pile of pots. That’s what it sounded like, metal pots, clanging, a cacophony of pots, all tumbling down, one on top of another. There was shouting and confusion, and for a horrible moment Kate was on the ship again and they were going down . . . down . . . down.
Kate opened her eyes but she couldn’t see anything. She was blind. She was underwater. She was drowning, her limbs wrapped in seaweed, pinning her down, that complete darkness fearsome, pressing down around her, stopping her breath.
Until someone yelped, “Owwww! My foot!”
And she was in an attic in Paris, a very dark attic in Paris, surrounded by seven other members of the Smith Relief Unit, some already up and blundering about, trying to find the curtains. The noise, the awful noise, clanging and banging and blaring, was coming from outside.
“I think you just stepped on my spleen,” said an aggrieved voice, thick with sleep. Kate thought it might be Miss Baldwin, but she wasn’t sure.
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t see—what is that?” demanded Miss Englund’s voice, rising over the din. “Ouch!”
“That was my arm,” said Miss Patton plaintively.
“No, not that. The noise.”
Miss Englund tripped over one of Kate’s feet. Kate hastily scooted herself back as close to the wall as possible, wriggling to try to get free of the blanket, which seemed to have wrapped itself around her like the seaweed in her nightmare. Just a nightmare, she reminded herself, blinking away the sleep and the horror. Only a nightmare.
But the sirens were still sounding. There was some sort of horror going on out there. Kate resisted the urge to wrap her blanket around her head and pretend she was back in Boston.
“I’ve got it!” called Miss Englund, achieving the wall of windows, having maimed roughly half her fellows in the process. She tugged one of the heavy curtains open, fumbling for the window latch. “Girls, girls, come out here! You must see this.”
Kate stumbled to her feet, pulling the blanket around her shoulders like a shawl. Emmie was already there ahead of her, her angular form belted into a dressing gown.
“What is it, what is it?” asked Miss Cooper breathlessly, coming up behind Kate.
Together, they crowded onto the iron balcony, blinking at the cars racing down the street, dozens of them, hundreds of them, a multitude of them, horns blaring.
“Look up,” said Miss Englund, and Kate did and saw the improbable sight of colored lights winking in the sky, red and green, attached to shadows like giant dragonflies, long wings stretched out on either side, swooping down, then up again, making the stars dim, blotting out the moon. Kate couldn’t take her eyes away from it.