He peeled back the hem of her dress to look at the wound in her thigh, and she shuddered, remembering Bolotov raising her skirt and the ugly fingers that had prodded between her legs. Peter could not have been more different; his touch was gentle and he restricted his attention to the wound site.

“The bullet has emerged through the other side,” he reported. “That’s good. I won’t have to remove it.”

All the same, it hurt a lot when he began to clean around the holes in her thigh, and suddenly a wave of darkness descended, carrying her off to unconsciousness.

* * *

When she came around, Peter was nowhere to be seen. Maria raised herself onto her elbows to look for him, scared that he had left her. The movement caused a wave of sickness. She turned her head and vomited into the grass, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Alerted by the noise, Peter emerged from the woods carrying handfuls of plants. He hurried over, dipped a piece of cloth in the warm water and wiped her mouth clean, then used the remaining water in his bowl to rinse the grass alongside her head.

“This is yarrow,” he told her, indicating the plants he’d brought, which had white flowers on feathery-leaved stems. “We call it soldier’s woundwort because the army often use it in the field. It stops bleeding and prevents infection. I’m going to make poultices with it to bind your wounds. Then I’ll look for some meadowsweet, which will relieve the pain and stop you feeling nauseous. After that, we must be on the move again.”

She watched as he peeled the yarrow leaves from the stems and mashed them in his clay bowl. The pain in her wounds was fiercer now and she couldn’t help moaning as he laid his poultice across her belly and secured it firmly with strips of cloth. She wondered where the cloth had come from, then noticed that he had cut strips from the bottom of her petticoat. He must have done it while she slept.

Next he bound her leg, and finally her head. She tried to be brave, but there was pain radiating around every part of her: her head, her belly, her leg, but most of all her heart. Her chest was so tight it was an effort to breathe. Tears sprang to her eyes, and he watched without speaking, his own eyes full of compassion, as she tried to blink them back.

“I let them down,” she whispered. “I abandoned them.”

“You were the only one alive,” he said quietly. “I promise you.”

That was when she began to cry properly. She didn’t want to, because she was scared she might never stop, but the sobs forced themselves out.