“This one’s bad,” one of the firemen loading it shouted to no one in particular. “He’s lost a good deal of blood.”

A hand grabbed Eileen’s arm.

Oh, no, it’s the station guard, she thought, but it was the ARP warden who’d forced her to come to Blackfriars.

“Can you drive?” he asked.

“Drive?” she repeated blankly. “What—”

“I need someone to drive that ambulance to hospital. The driver’s unconscious. Hit on the head. And I’ve got an Army lieutenant who’s bleeding bad. Do you know how to drive?”

“Yeah,” Binnie said, appearing out of nowhere with Alf.

“The vicar taught her,” Alf put in.

“ ’E taught me, too,” Binnie said. “I’ll drive the ambulance.”

“You will not,” Eileen said, and to the warden, “These children have no business—”

“Do you know first aid?” the warden asked Binnie.

“Course.”

She scrambled into the back of the ambulance.

“Show her what to do!” the warden shouted to the stretcher-bearers. He turned back to Eileen. “I’ve no one else to send.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I must get to St. Paul’s. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“So’s this. I’ve got a driver!” he called to the men, opened the ambulance door, and pushed Eileen in. “It’s already running. Take them to St. Bart’s. It’s nearest.”

“I don’t know the way.”

“I do,” Alf said, getting in. “I know this ’ole side o’ London. Even if you didn’t bring my map back.”

“You better ’urry,” Binnie said from the back. “ ’E’s really bleedin’.”

And Binnie no more knew first aid than the man in the moon. Eileen scrambled over the seat into the back, where Binnie squatted between two stretchers, holding a folded gauze pad on the lieutenant’s blood-soaked leg. “Press down as hard as you can. Push,” Eileen said, thinking, Thank goodness Lady Caroline insisted I attend those first-aid classes.

“How bad is it?” the lieutenant asked weakly.

Eileen hadn’t realized he was conscious. “Not bad,” she said.

“Not bad?” Binnie exclaimed. “Lookit all that blood.”

“You mustn’t worry,” Eileen said, glaring at Binnie. “We’re taking you to hospital.”

She took a quick look around the back for sticking plaster to fix the pad more tightly to the wound, but there was no sign of a first-aid kit, and the driver on the other stretcher was in no shape to tell her what had happened to it. She was unconscious, her face gray even in the orange light from the fire.

They both needed to get to hospital immediately. If Eileen could find it. And if she could get out of here. Another fire pumper had arrived, bells clanging, and it blocked her way. She had to back and turn the ambulance, which was at least three times the size of the vicar’s Austin, twice to get it past it. “Which way?” she asked Alf.

“That way.” He pointed, and they took off through the burning streets.

It seemed as if every road had at least one fire, and in the few that didn’t, incendiaries glittered and spat white sparks. “Take the next turning,” Alf said.