I have come here because it is the only place I can go, Jem said. To speak the truth to the Brothers would be to endanger another life than mine. I will not do it.
Tessa looked to Catarina in desperation. “He means it,” she said. “He will never seek help if it means someone else will be hurt. Catarina—he cannot die. He cannot die.”
Catarina inhaled sharply and opened the door a crack to peer into the hall.
“We will need to get him back to the flat,” she said. “I can’t work on him here. I don’t have what I need. We will need to move quickly.”
Tessa seized hold of Jem’s stretcher. She understood the complications involved. They were nurses, in charge of many sick people who would be pouring in during the attack. The city was being bombed. It was on fire. Getting home was not a simple matter.
But it was what they were going to do.
* * *
The city they stepped back out into was not the same one that it had been only an hour before. The air was so hot that breathing burned the lungs. A high wall of orange jumped out of the buildings around them, and the silhouette of St. Paul’s stood out in intense relief. The scene was at once terrifying and almost beautiful, like a dream image from Blake, a poet her son James had always loved. On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
But there was no time to think of things like London burning. There were two ambulances right outside on the street. Next to one, a driver was having a cigarette and talking to a fire warden.
“Charlie!” Catarina called.
The man tossed his cigarette aside and came running over.
“We need your help,” she said. “This man has an infection. We can’t keep him in the ward here.”
“You need me to take him to St. Thomas’, Sister? The going will be rough. We’ve got fires in almost every street.”
“We can’t make it that far,” Catarina said. “We’ve got to move him quickly. Our flat is just on Farringdon Street. That will have to do for now.”
“All right, Sister. Let’s get him in the ambulance.”
He opened the back and assisted them in getting Jem inside.
“I’ll be back in one moment,” Catarina said to them. “I just need to get a few supplies.”
She dashed back into the hospital. Tessa climbed into the back with Jem, and Charlie got into the driver’s seat.
“Don’t usually take patients to nurses’ flats,” Charlie said, “but needs must when the devil drives. Sister Loss always looks after them. When my Mabel was having our second, she had a terrible spell. I thought we was going to lose them both. Sister Loss, bless her. She saved them both. I wouldn’t have Mabel or my Eddie without them. Whatever she needs.”
Tessa had heard many stories like this. Catarina was both a warlock and a mundane nurse with over a hundred years of experience. She had nursed in the last Great War. Old soldiers were always coming up to her and saying how she was “the spitting image of that nurse who saved me in the last one.” But, of course, she couldn’t be. That was twenty years ago, and Catarina was still so young. Catarina stood out to them because of her dark skin. They did not see a blue woman with white hair—they saw a nurse from the West Indies. She had faced considerable prejudice, but it was clear that not only was Catarina a good nurse, she was the best nurse in all of London. Anyone who got Catarina as a nurse was considered lucky. Even the most miserable bigot desired to live, and Catarina nursed all who came to her with equanimity. She could not save them all, but there were always a few, at least one a day, who survived something unsurvivable because Sister Loss was the one at their side. Some called her the Angel of St. Bart’s.
Jem stirred and groaned lightly.
“Don’t you worry, mate,” Charlie called back to him. “Best nurses in the city, this lot. You couldn’t be in safer hands.”
Jem tried to smile—but instead he shuddered, and blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Tessa immediately wiped it away with the edge of her cloak and leaned close to him.
“You hold on, James Carstairs,” she said, trying to sound brave. She gripped his hand in hers. She had forgotten how wonderful it was to hold Jem’s hands—his long, graceful hands, the ones that could produce such beautiful music from the violin.
“Jem,” she whispered, leaning low, “you must hold on. You must. Will needs you to. I need you to.”
Jem’s hand tightened on hers.
Catarina came running out of the hospital carrying a small canvas bag. She leaped into the back of the ambulance, slamming the doors behind her and snapping Tessa back to the present.
“Go, Charlie,” she said.
Charlie shifted the ambulance into gear, and they started forward. Overhead, the drone of the Luftwaffe was back, like the hum of an army of bees. Catarina immediately scooted next to Jem and passed Tessa a bandage to unwind.
The ambulance juddered, and Jem was jolted on his stretcher. Tessa tented herself over him to keep him in place.
“Catarina,” Tessa said, “you said this was a cataplasm. What does that mean?”
“It’s a rare belladonna concentrate with demon poison added in to it,” Catarina said quietly. “Until I can get the antidote, we need to try to keep it from spreading in his bloodstream, or at least slow it down. We’re going to tie some tourniquets, start cutting off blood flow.”
This sounded incredibly dangerous. By tying off the limbs, they could be risking their loss. But Catarina knew what she was doing.
“This will not be comfortable,” Catarina said, unwinding a bandage, “but it will help. Hold him.”
Tessa pressed her body down on Jem a bit more as Catarina looped the bandage around the injured arm and shoulder. She made a knot, then grabbed the ends of the bandages and pulled tight. Jem arched against Tessa’s chest.
“You’re all right, Jem,” she said. “You’re all right. We’re here. I’m here. It’s me. Tessa. It’s me.”
Tessa, he said. The word came out like a question. He writhed as Catarina wound the bandage tightly around the shoulder and arm. A mundane would not have been able to withstand it; Jem was barely able to. Sweat broke out all over his face.
“It’s going to be rough going, Sisters,” Charlie called back. “They’re trying to burn down St. Paul’s, the bastards. I’m going to have to go around the long way. It’s fires everywhere.”
Charlie did not exaggerate. In front of them was a view of solid orange against the black silhouettes of burning buildings. The fires were so high that it was like there was a sun rising up from the earth, dragging day out of the ground. As they drove on, it was like they were pressing into a solid wall of heat. The wind had quickened, and now fire was meeting fire, creating walls instead of pockets. The air shimmered and cooked. Several times they turned down streets that no longer seemed to be there anymore.
“It’s no good this way either,” Charlie said, turning the ambulance again. “I’ll have to try another way.”
Then came the sharp whistling in the air. This time the pitch was different. These were not the incendiary bombs—these were the large explosives. After the fires, the idea was to kill. Charlie stopped the ambulance and craned his head to look up to see where the bomb was likely to land. They all froze, listening to the whistle go quiet.
It was a long moment. Then it came. The impact was at the other end of the street, sending the shock wave down the road and a spray of rubble into the air. Charlie started on again.
“Bastards,” he said under his breath. “Bloody bastards. You all right there, Sisters?”
“We’re fine,” Catarina said. She had both hands on Jem’s shoulder, and there was a low blue glow around the bandages. She was holding it back, whatever it was that was going through Jem’s body.
They had just made another turn when there was another whistle and another silence. They stopped again. The impact was to their right this time, down at the next intersection. The ambulance rocked as the corner of a building was blown away. The ground shook. Charlie turned the ambulance away from it.
“Not going to get through this way,” he said. “I’ll try down Shoe Lane.”
The ambulance turned once more. On the stretcher, Jem had stopped moving. Tessa could not tell if the pulsing heat was coming from the air or from Jem’s body. There was fire on both sides of the street here, but the path looked almost clear to get through. There were fire wardens in the road, shooting water into a burning warehouse. Suddenly there was a creaking sound. The fire began to arc over the road.
“Blimey,” Charlie said. “Hang on tight, Sisters.”
The ambulance ground into reverse and started speeding backward down the alley. Tessa heard a crackling noise—uncanny, almost merry—a great tinkling. Then, all at once, the bricks of the building exploded and the building tumbled down into a mass of fire and rubble, the flames blowing up in a mighty roar. The men with the hose vanished.
“God almighty,” Charlie said, grinding the ambulance to a halt. He jumped out of the driver’s seat and started running for the men, two of whom were stumbling out of the flames. Catarina looked up and out the windscreen.
“Those men,” she said. “The building’s come down on them.”
You must help them, Jem said.
Catarina looked between Jem and Tessa for a moment. Tessa felt herself full of an unbearable anxiety. She had to get Jem to safety, and yet, in front of them, men were being consumed in flame.
“I will be quick,” Catarina said, and Tessa nodded.
Alone in the ambulance, Tessa looked down at Jem.
If they need you, then you must go, Jem said.
“They need Catarina,” Tessa said. “You need me, and I need you. I do not leave you. No matter what happens, I do not leave you.”
The ambulance was heating up like an oven, trapped as it was between multiple fires. There was no water to cool Jem’s brow, so Tessa mopped it and fanned it with her hand.