فصل 25

TWENTY-FIVE

Isabelle crept through the empty streets of Carriveau dressed in black, her golden hair covered. It was after curfew. A meager moon occasionally cast light on the uneven cobblestones; more often, it was obscured by clouds.

She listened for footsteps and lorry motors and froze when she heard either. At the end of town, she climbed over a rose-covered wall, heedless of the thorns, and dropped into a wet, black field of hay. She was halfway to the rendezvous point when three aeroplanes roared overhead, so low in the sky the trees shivered and the ground shook. Machine guns fired at one another, bursts of sound and light.

The smaller aeroplane banked and swerved. She saw the insignia of America on the underside of its wing as it banked left and climbed. Moments later, she heard the whistling of a bomb—the inhuman, piercing wail—and then something exploded.

The airfield. They were bombing it.

The aeroplanes roared overhead again. There was another round of gunfire and the American aeroplane was hit. Smoke roiled out. A screaming sound filled the night; the aeroplane plummeted toward the ground, twirled, its wings catching the moonlight, reflecting it.

It crashed hard enough to rattle Isabelle’s bones and shake the ground beneath her feet; steel hitting dirt, rivets popping from metal, roots being torn up. The broken aeroplane skidded through the forest, breaking trees as if they were matchsticks. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, and then in a giant whoosh, the aeroplane burst into flames.

In the sky, a parachute appeared, swinging back and forth, the man suspended beneath it looking as small as a comma.

Isabelle cut through the swath of burning trees. Smoke stung her eyes.

Where was he?

A glimpse of white caught her eye and she ran toward it.

The limp parachute lay across the scrubby ground, the airman attached to it.

Isabelle heard the sound of voices—they weren’t far away—and the crunching of footsteps. She hoped to God it was her colleagues, coming for the meeting, but there was no way to know. The Nazis would be busy at the airfield, but not for long.

She skidded to her knees, unhooked the airman’s parachute, gathered it up, and ran with it as far as she dared, burying it as best she could beneath a pile of dead leaves. Then she ran back to the pilot and grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him deeper into the woods.

“You’ll have to stay quiet. Do you understand me? I’ll come back, but you need to lie still and be quiet.”

“You … betcha,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

Isabelle covered him with leaves and branches, but when she stood back, she saw her footprints in the mud, each one oozing with black water now, and the rutted drag marks she’d made hauling him over here. Black smoke rolled past her, engulfed her. The fire was getting closer, burning brighter. “Merde,” she muttered.

There were voices. People yelling.

She tried to rub her hands clean but the mud just smeared and smeared, marking her.

Three shapes came out of the woods, moving toward her.

“Isabelle,” a man said. “Is that you?”

A torchlight flicked on, revealing Henri and Didier. And Gaëtan.

“You found the pilot?” Henri asked.

Isabelle nodded. “He’s wounded.”

Dogs barked in the distance. The Nazis were coming.

Didier glanced behind them. “We haven’t much time.”

“We’ll never make it to town,” Henri said.

Isabelle made a split-second decision. “I know somewhere close we can hide him.”

“This is not a good idea,” Gaëtan said.

“Hurry,” Isabelle said harshly. They were in the barn at Le Jardin now, with the door shut behind them. The airman lay slumped on the dirty floor, unconscious, his blood smearing across Didier’s coat and gloves. “Push the car forward.”

Henri and Didier pushed the Renault forward and then lifted the cellar door. It creaked in protest and fell forward and banged into the car’s fender.

Isabelle lit an oil lamp and held it in one hand as she felt her way down the wobbly ladder. Some of the provisions she’d left had been used.

She lifted the lamp. “Bring him down.”

The men exchanged a worried look.

“I don’t know about this,” Henri said.

“What choice do we have?” Isabelle snapped. “Now bring him down.”

Gaëtan and Henri carried the unconscious airman down into the dark, dank cellar and laid him on the mattress, which made a rustling, whispery sound beneath his weight.

Henri gave her a worried look. Then he climbed out of the cellar and stood above them. “Come on, Gaëtan.”

Gaëtan looked at Isabelle. “We’ll have to move the car back into place. You won’t be able to get out of here until we come for you. If something happened to us, no one would know you were here.” She could tell he wanted to touch her, and she ached for it. But they stood where they were, their arms at their sides. “The Nazis will be relentless in their search for this airman. If you’re caught…”

She tilted her chin, trying to hide how scared she was. “Don’t let me be caught.”

“You think I don’t want to keep you safe?”

“I know you do,” she said quietly.

Before he could answer, Henri said, “Come on, Gaëtan,” from above. “We need to find a doctor and figure out how to get them out of here tomorrow.”

Gaëtan stepped back. The whole world seemed to lie in that small space between them. “When we come back, we’ll knock three times and whistle, so don’t shoot us.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said.

He paused. “Isabelle…”

She waited, but he had no more to say, just her name, spoken with the kind of regret that had become common. With a sigh, he turned and climbed up the ladder.

Moments later, the trapdoor banged shut. She heard the boards overhead groan as the Renault was rolled back into place.

And then, silence.

Isabelle started to panic. It was the locked bedroom again; Madame Doom slamming the door, clicking the lock, telling her to shut up and quit asking for things.

She couldn’t get out of here, not even in an emergency.

Stop it. Be calm. You know what needs to be done. She went over to the shelving, pushed her father’s shotgun aside, and retrieved the box of medical supplies. A quick inventory revealed scissors, a needle and thread, alcohol, bandages, chloroform, Benzedrine tablets, and adhesive tape.

She knelt beside the airman and set the lamp down on the floor beside her. Blood soaked the chest of his flight suit, and it took great effort to peel the fabric away. When she did, she saw the giant, gaping hole in his chest and knew there was nothing she could do.

She sat beside him, holding his hand until he took one last, troubled breath; then his breathing stopped. His mouth slowly gaped open.

She gently eased the dog tags from around his neck. They would need to be hidden. She looked down at them. “Lieutenant Keith Johnson,” she said.

Isabelle blew out the lamp and sat in the dark with a dead man.

The next morning, Vianne dressed in denim overalls and a flannel shirt of Antoine’s that she had cut down to fit her. She was so thin these days that still the shirt overwhelmed her slim frame. She would have to take it in again. Her latest care package to Antoine sat on the kitchen counter, ready to be mailed.

Sophie had had a restless night, so Vianne let her sleep. She went downstairs to make coffee and almost ran into Captain Beck, who was pacing the living room. “Oh. Herr Captain. I am sorry.”

He seemed not to hear her. She had never seen him look so agitated. His usually pomaded hair was untended; a lock kept falling in his face and he cursed repeatedly as he brushed it away. He was wearing his gun, which he never did in the house.

He strode past her, his hands fisted at his sides. Anger contorted his handsome face, made him almost unrecognizable. “An aeroplane went down near here last night,” he said, facing her at last. “An American aeroplane. The one they call a Mustang.”

“I thought you wanted their aeroplanes to go down. Isn’t that why you shoot at them?”

“We searched all night and didn’t find a pilot. Someone is hiding him.”

“Hiding him? Oh, I doubt that. Most likely he died.”

“Then there would be a body, Madame. We found a parachute but no body.”

“But who would be so foolish?” Vianne said. “Don’t you … execute people for that?”

“Swiftly.”

Vianne had never heard him speak in such a way. It made her draw back, and remember the whip he’d held on the day Rachel and the others were deported.

“Forgive my manner, Madame. But we have shown you all our best behaviors, and this is what we get from many of you French. Lies and betrayal and sabotage.”

Vianne’s mouth dropped open in shock.

He looked at her, saw how she was staring at him, and he tried to smile. “Forgive me again. I don’t mean you, of course. The Kommandant is blaming me for this failure to find the airman. I am charged with doing better today.” He went to the front door, opened it. “If I do not…”

Through the open door, she saw a glimpse of gray-green in her yard. Soldiers. “Good day, Madame.”

Vianne followed him as far as the front step.

“Lock and close all the doors, Madame. This pilot may be desperate. You wouldn’t want him to break into your home.”

Vianne nodded numbly.

Beck joined his entourage of soldiers and took the lead. Their dogs barked loudly, strained forward, sniffing at the ground along the base of the broken wall.

Vianne glanced up the hill and saw that the barn door was partially open. “Herr Captain!” she called out.

The captain stopped; so did his men. The snarling dogs strained at their leashes.

And then she thought of Rachel. This is where Rachel would come if she’d escaped.

“N-nothing, Herr Captain,” Vianne called out.

He nodded brusquely and led his men up the road.

Vianne slipped into the boots by the door. As soon as the soldiers were out of sight, she hurried up the hill toward the barn. In her haste, she slipped twice in the wet grass and nearly fell. Righting herself at the last minute, she took a deep breath and opened the barn door all the way.

She noticed right away that the car had been moved.

“I’m coming, Rachel!” she said. She put the car in neutral and rolled it forward until the cellar door was revealed. Squatting down, she felt for the flat metal handle and lifted the hatch door. When it was high, she let it bang against the car fender.

She got a lantern, lit it, and peered down into the dark cellar. “Rach?”

“Go away, Vianne. NOW.”

“Isabelle?” Vianne descended the ladder, saying, “Isabelle, what are—” She dropped to the ground and turned, the lantern in her hand swinging light.

Her smile faded. Isabelle’s dress was covered in blood, her blond hair was a mess—full of leaves and twigs—and her face was so scratched it looked like she’d gone running in a blackberry patch.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“The pilot,” Vianne whispered, staring at the man lying on the misshapen mattress. It scared her so much she backed into the shelving. Something clanged to the ground and rolled. “The one they’re looking for.”

“You shouldn’t have come down here.”

“I am the one who shouldn’t be here? You fool. Do you know what they’ll do to us if they find him here? How could you bring this danger to my house?”

“I’m sorry. Just close the cellar door and put the car back in place. Tomorrow when you wake up, we’ll be gone.”

“You’re sorry,” Vianne said. Anger swept through her. How dare her sister do this thing, put Sophie and her at risk? And now there was Ari here, who still didn’t understand that he needed to be Daniel. “You’ll get us all killed.” Vianne backed away, reached for the ladder. She had to put as much distance as she could between herself and this airman … and her reckless, selfish sister. “Be gone by tomorrow morning, Isabelle. And don’t come back.”

Isabelle had the nerve to look wounded. “But—”

“Don’t,” Vianne snapped. “I’m done making excuses for you. I was mean to you as a girl, Maman died, Papa is a drunk, Madame Dumas treated you badly. All of it is the truth, and I have longed to be a better sister to you, but that stops here. You are as thoughtless and reckless as always, only now you will get people killed. I can’t let you endanger Sophie. Do not come back. You are not welcome here. If you return, I will turn you in myself.” On that, Vianne clambered up the ladder and slammed the cellar door shut behind her.

Vianne had to keep busy or she would fall into a full-blown panic. She woke the children and fed them a light breakfast and got started on her chores.

After harvesting the last of the autumn’s vegetables, she pickled cucumbers and zucchini and canned some pumpkin puree. All the while, she was thinking about Isabelle and the airman in the barn.

What should be done? The question haunted her all day, reasserting itself constantly. Every choice was dangerous. Obviously she should just keep quiet about the airman in the barn. Silence was always safest.

But what if Beck and the Gestapo and the SS and their dogs went into the barn on their own? If Beck found the airman in a barn on the property where he was billeted, the Kommandant would not be pleased. Beck would be humiliated.

The Kommandant is blaming me for this failure to find the airman.

Humiliated men could be dangerous.

Maybe she should tell Beck. He was a good man. He had tried to save Rachel. He had gotten Ari papers. He mailed Vianne’s care packages to her husband.

Perhaps Beck could be convinced to take the airman and leave Isabelle out of it. The airman would be sent to a prisoner of war camp; that was not so bad.

She was still grappling with these questions long after supper had ended and she’d put the children to bed. She didn’t even try to go to sleep. How could she sleep with her family at such risk? The thought of that made her anger with Isabelle swell again. At ten o’clock, she heard footsteps out front and a sharp rap-rap on the door.

She put down her darning and got to her feet. Smoothing the hair back from her face, she went to the door and opened it. Her hands were trembling so badly she fisted them at her sides. “Herr Captain,” she said. “You are late. Shall I make you something to eat?”

He muttered, “No, thank you,” and pushed past her, rougher than he’d ever been before. He went into his room and came back with a bottle of brandy. Pouring himself a huge draught in a chipped café glass, he downed the liquid and poured himself another.

“Herr Captain?”

“We didn’t find the pilot,” he said, downing the second drink, pouring a third.

“Oh.”

“These Gestapo.” He looked at her. “They’ll kill me,” he said quietly.

“No, surely.”

“They do not like to be disappointed.” He drank the third glass of brandy and slammed the glass down on the table, almost breaking it.

“I have looked everywhere,” he said. “Every nook and cranny of this godforsaken town. I’ve looked in cellars and basements and chicken pens. In thickets of thorns and under piles of garbage. And what do I have to show for my efforts? A parachute with blood on it and no pilot.”

“S-surely you haven’t looked everywhere,” she said to console him. “Shall I get you something to eat? I saved you some supper.”

He stopped suddenly. She saw his gaze narrow, heard him say, “It is not possible, but…” He grabbed a torchlight and strode to the closet in the kitchen and yanked the door open.

“What are you d-doing?”

“I am searching your house.”

“Surely you don’t think…”

She stood there, her heart thumping as he searched from room to room and yanked the coats out of the closet and pulled the divan away from the wall.

“Are you satisfied?”

“Satisfied, Madame? We lost fourteen pilots this week, and God knows how many aeroplane crew. A Mercedes-Benz factory was blown up two days ago and all the workers were killed. My uncle works in that building. Worked, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Vianne drew in a deep breath, thinking it was over, and then she saw that he was going outside.

Did she make a sound? She was afraid that she did. She surged after him, wanting to grab his sleeve, but she was too late. He was outside now, following the beam of his torchlight, the kitchen door standing open behind him.

She ran after him.

He was at the dovecote, yanking the door open.

“Herr Captain.” She slowed, tried to calm her breathing as she rubbed her damp palms down her pant legs. “You will not find anything or anyone here, Herr Captain. You must know that.”

“Are you a liar, Madame?” He was not angry. He was afraid.

“No. You know I am not. Wolfgang,” she said, using his Christian name for the first time. “Surely your superiors will not blame you.”

“This is the problem with you French,” he said. “You fail to see the truth when it sits down beside you.” He pushed past her and walked up the hill, toward the barn.

He would find Isabelle and the airman …

And if he did?

Prison for all of them. Maybe worse.

He would never believe that she didn’t know about it. She had already shown too much to go back to innocence. And it was too late now to rely on his honor in saving Isabelle. Vianne had lied to him.

He opened the barn door and stood there, his hands on his hips, looking around. He put down his torchlight and lit an oil lamp. Setting it down, he checked every inch of the barn, each stall and the hayloft.

“Y-you see?” Vianne said. “Now come back to the house. Perhaps you’d like another brandy.”

He looked down. There were faint tire tracks in the dust. “You said once that Madame de Champlain hid in a cellar.”

No. Vianne meant to say something, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.

He opened the Renault’s door, put the car in neutral, and pushed it forward, rolling it far enough to reveal the cellar door.

“Captain, please…”

He bent down in front of her. His fingers moved along the floor, searching the creases for the edges of the hatch.

If he opened that door, it was over. He would shoot Isabelle, or take her into custody and send her to prison. And Vianne and the children would be arrested. There would be no talking to him, no convincing him.

Beck unholstered his gun, cocked it.

Vianne looked desperately for a weapon, saw a shovel leaned against the wall.

He lifted the hatch and yelled something. As the door banged open, he stood up, taking aim. Vianne grabbed the shovel and swung it at him with all of her strength. The metal scoop made a sickening thunk as it hit him in the back of the head and sliced deeply into his skull. Blood spurted down the back of his uniform.

At the same time, two shots rang out; one from Beck’s gun and one from the cellar.

Beck staggered sideways and turned. There was a hole the size of an onion in his chest, spurting blood. A flap of hair and scalp hung over one eye. “Madame,” he said, crumpling to his knees. His pistol clattered to the floor. The torchlight rolled across the uneven boards, clattering.

Vianne threw the shovel aside and knelt down beside Beck, who lay sprawled face-first in a pool of his blood. Using all of her weight, she rolled him over. He was pale already, chalkily so. Blood clotted his hair, streaked from his nostrils, bubbled at every breath he took.

“I’m sorry,” Vianne said.

Beck’s eyes fluttered open.

Vianne tried to wipe the blood off his face, but it just made more of a mess. Her hands were red with it now. “I had to stop you,” she said quietly.

“Tell my family…”

Vianne saw the life leave his body, saw his chest stop rising, his heart stop beating.

Behind her, she heard her sister climbing up the ladder. “Vianne!”

Vianne couldn’t move.

“Are … you all right?” Isabelle asked in a breathless, wheezing voice. She looked pale and a little shaky.

“I killed him. He’s dead,” Vianne said.

“No, you didn’t. I shot him in the chest,” Isabelle said.

“I hit him in the head with a shovel. A shovel.”

Isabelle moved toward her. “Vianne—”

“Don’t,” Vianne said sharply. “I don’t want to hear some excuse from you. Do you know what you’ve done? A Nazi. Dead in my barn.”

Before Isabelle could answer, there was a loud whistle, and then a mule-drawn wagon entered the barn.

Vianne lurched for Beck’s weapon, staggered to her feet on the blood-slicked floorboards, and pointed the gun at the strangers.

“Vianne, don’t shoot,” Isabelle said. “They’re friends.”

Vianne looked at the ragged-looking men in the wagon; then at her sister, who was dressed all in black and looked milky pale, with shadows under her eyes. “Of course they are.” She moved sideways but kept the gun trained on the men crowded onto the front of the rickety wagon. Behind them, in the bed of the wagon, lay a pine coffin.

She recognized Henri—the man who ran the hotel in town, with whom Isabelle had run off to Paris. The communist with whom Isabelle thought she might be in love a little. “Of course,” Vianne said. “Your lover.”

Henri jumped down from the wagon and closed the barn door. “What in the fuck happened?”

“Vianne hit him with a shovel and I shot him,” Isabelle said. “There’s some sisterly dispute on who killed him, but he’s dead. Captain Beck. The soldier who billets here.”

Henri exchanged a look with one of the strangers—a scrappy, sharp-faced young man with hair that was too long. “That’s a problem,” the man said.

“Can you get rid of the body?” Isabelle asked. She was pressing a hand to her chest, as if her heart was beating too fast. “And the airman’s, too—he didn’t make it.”

A big, shaggy man in a patched coat and pants that were too small jumped down from the wagon. “Disposing of the bodies is the easy part.”

Who were these people?

Isabelle nodded. “They’ll come looking for Beck. My sister can’t stand up to questioning. We’ll need to put her and Sophie in hiding.”

That did it. They were talking about Vianne as if she weren’t even here. “Running would only prove my guilt.”

“You can’t stay,” Isabelle said. “It isn’t safe.”

“By all means, Isabelle, worry about me now, after you’ve put me and the children at risk and forced me to kill a decent man.”

“Vianne, please—”

Vianne felt something in her harden. It seemed that every time she thought she’d hit rock bottom in this war, something worse came along. Now she was a murderess and it was Isabelle’s fault. The last thing she was going to do now was follow her sister’s advice and leave Le Jardin. “I will say that Beck left to look for the airman and never returned. What do I, an ordinary French housewife, know of such things? He was here and then he was gone. C’est la vie.”

“It’s as good an answer as any,” Henri said.

“This is my fault,” Isabelle said, approaching Vianne. She saw her sister’s regret for this, and her guilt, but Vianne didn’t care. She was too scared for the children to worry about Isabelle’s feelings.

“Yes it is, but you made it mine, too. We killed a good man, Isabelle.”

Isabelle swayed a little, unsteady. “V. They’ll come for you.”

Vianne started to say “And whose fault is that?,” but when she looked at Isabelle, the words caught in her throat.

She saw blood oozing out from between Isabelle’s fingers. For a split second, the world slowed down, tilted, became nothing but noise—the men talking behind her, the mule stomping his hoof on the wooden floor, her own labored breathing. Isabelle crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

Before Vianne could even cry out, a hand clamped over her mouth, arms yanked her back. The next thing she knew she was being dragged away from her sister. She wrestled to be free but the man holding her was too strong.

She saw Henri drop to his knees beside Isabelle and rip open her coat and blouse to reveal a bullet hole just below her collarbone. Henri tore off his shirt and pressed it to the wound.

Vianne elbowed her captor hard enough to make him ooph. She wrenched free and rushed to Isabelle’s side, slipping in the blood, almost falling. “There’s a medical kit in the cellar.”

The dark-haired man—who suddenly looked as shaky as Vianne felt—leaped down the cellar stairs and returned quickly, carrying the supplies.

Vianne’s hands were shaking as she reached for the bottle of alcohol and washed her hands as best she could.

She took a deep breath and took over the job of pressing Henri’s shirt against the wound, which she felt pulsing beneath her.

Twice she had to draw back, wring blood out of the shirt, and start again, but finally, the bleeding stopped. Gently, she rolled Isabelle into her arms and saw the exit wound.

Thank God.

She carefully laid Isabelle back down. “This is going to hurt,” she whispered. “But you’re strong, aren’t you, Isabelle?”

She doused the wound with alcohol. Isabelle shuddered at the contact, but she didn’t waken or cry out.

“That’s good,” Vianne said. The sound of her own voice calmed her, reminded her that she was a mother and mothers took care of their families. “Unconscious is good.” She fished the needle from the medical kit, such as it was, and threaded it. She doused the needle in alcohol and then leaned down to the wound. Very carefully, she began stitching the gaping flesh together. It didn’t take long—and she hadn’t done a good job, but it was the best she could do.

Once she’d stitched the entrance wound, she felt a little confidence, enough to stitch the exit wound and then to bandage it.

At last, she sat back, staring down at her bloody hands and bloodied skirt.

Isabelle looked so pale and frail, not herself at all. Her hair was filthy and matted, her clothes were wet with her own blood—and the airman’s—and she looked young.

So young.

Vianne felt a shame so deep it made her sick to her stomach. Had she really told her sister—her sister—to go away and not come back?

How often had Isabelle heard that in her life, and from her own family, from people who were supposed to love her?

“I’ll take her to the safe house in Brantôme,” the black-haired one said.

“Oh, no, you won’t,” Vianne said. She looked up from her sister, saw that the three men were standing together by the wagon, conspiring. She got to her feet. “She’s not going anywhere with you. You’re the reason she’s here.”

“She’s the reason we’re here,” the dark-haired man said. “I’m taking her. Now.”

Vianne approached the young man. There was a look in his eyes—an intensity—that ordinarily would have frightened her, but she was beyond fear now, beyond caution. “I know who you are,” Vianne said. “She described you to me. You’re the one from Tours who left her with a note pinned to her chest as if she were a stray dog. Gaston, right?”

“Gaëtan,” he said in a voice that was so soft she had to lean toward him to hear. “And you should know about that. Aren’t you the one who couldn’t bother to be her sister when she needed one?”

“If you try to take her away from me, I’ll kill you.”

“You’ll kill me,” he said, smiling.

She cocked her head toward Beck. “I killed him with a shovel and I liked him.”

“Enough,” Henri said, stepping between them. “She can’t stay here, Vianne. Think about it. The Germans are going to come looking for their dead captain. They don’t need to find a woman with a gunshot wound and false papers. You understand?”

The big man stepped forward. “We’ll bury the captain and the airman. And we’ll make sure the motorcycle disappears. Gaëtan, you get her to a safe house in the Free Zone.”

Vianne looked from man to man. “But it’s after curfew and the border is four miles away and she’s wounded. How will…”

Halfway through the question, she figured out the answer.

The coffin.

Vianne took a step back. The idea of it was so terrible, she shook her head.

“I’ll take care of her,” Gaëtan said.

Vianne didn’t believe him. Not for a second. “I’m going with you. As far as the border. Then I’ll walk back when I see that you’ve gotten her to the Free Zone.”

“You can’t do that,” Gaëtan said.

She looked up at him. “You’d be surprised what I can do. Now, let’s get her out of here.”