Clash by Night (33 page)

“I know the camps are really bad,” she said softly.

“Bad enough,” he said lightly. “They’re a little different from the kind of camp we have at home, with cookouts and canoes on the lake. I took an early exit visa.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Laura asked quietly.

He looked at her, then away. “Later,” he said. “When we’re really alone.” He pulled her back into his arms and held her close, inhaling her fragrance, feeling her silken hair next to his face. “Laura,” he said brokenly. “I was afraid I’d never see you again.”

“I always believed you would.”

“Did you?” He looked down at her and caught sight of the thin silver chain about her neck. Suddenly he knew what it was. He pulled it free of her shirt and examined the miniature wings glistening on his palm.

“I see that you did,” he murmured.

“I never took them off,” Laura said, and their eyes locked.

A knock sounded at the door.
 

“Come in,” Laura called.

Curel entered and said gruffly, “I hate to break this up you two, but we have to get going. Dawn is in three hours.”

Harris released Laura and stood up, embracing the older man, slapping him on the back. “Curel, it’s great to see you,” he said in French. “Still spitting in the eye of Hun?”

“
Mais oui
,” the old man said, grinning. “
Certainement
.”

“That’s my man,” Harris said with satisfaction. “Smite them hip and thigh. Got any cigarettes?”

Curel dug into his pocket, shaking his head and saying to Laura in French, “I guess he hasn’t changed.”

“I guess not,” she whispered. I hope not, she thought.

“Just like the old days,” Harris said, accepting the cigarette and lighting up. “The three of us working together.”

“
La belle France
,” Curel said, making a fist.

“
La belle France
,” Harris repeated, duplicating the gesture. Sister Mary Joel entered the room.

“You must go,” she said anxiously. “It is getting late.”

They followed her out into the corridor.

“Do you have anything to take with you?” Laura asked Harris.

He extended his arms to indicate the clothes on his back. “You’re looking at it,” he said.

“I’ll walk you out to the door,” Sister Mary Joel said.

They made an odd nocturnal procession trailing the nun through the hushed halls of the convent. The only sound was the swishing of her garments, the soft clicking of her beads, and their padding, muffled footsteps. Harris, in the rear, caught up to Laura and took her hand.
 

In the front hall they gathered under the stained glass window that topped the entry door. None of the visitors looked as if they belonged there. Harris, with his bomber jacket, battered physique and Midwestern face, looked like a whiskey drummer at a temperance meeting. He glanced around for a place to put out his cigarette. He settled for pinching the stub with his fingers and dropping it in a trash receptacle by the door.
 

Curel turned to the nun and, “Sister, thank you for everything. I’d better go outside and get the horse.”

Sister Mary Joel nodded to him and said, “Safe journey.”

He left as Laura and Harris stood together to make their farewells.

“Sister, please tell your Mother Superior how grateful we were for all of your help,” Laura said.

“I will,” the nun said graciously. “We were happy to be of service.”

Harris lifted the nun’s hand to his lips and kissed it. Laura looked on in amazement as Sister Mary Joel blushed. No one, it seemed, was impervious to his charm.

“You saved my life,” Harris said simply. “I won’t waste it.”
 

The boy who had taken the horse when they arrived came into the hall and indicated that Curel was ready.

“Goodbye, Sister,” Laura said.
 

“Goodbye,” the nun replied. “I’ll remember you in my daily rosary.”

“Thank you,” Laura said.

They were leaving when the nun called after them, “God help you in your work.”

Laura looked back at her.

“I am French too,” the nun said indignantly. She stood with her folded hands concealed beneath the drape of her habit as they went through the door.

“Did you hear that?” Harris said to Laura, laughing as they ran down the steps. “Everybody’s muscling in on the act.”
 

“People do what they can.”
 

“Those nuns did a lot for me,” Harris replied, sobering, jerking his head backward at the building they’d just left. “They took a big chance. The Krauts would have shot them if they’d found me hiding in there, habits or not.”

The snow had thickened, falling from the sky in wet, sticky flakes. It already blanketed the roadway and lay on the brown grass and bare bushes like vanilla frosting.

“White Christmas,” Harris said.

Curel had reined the horse to the buggy and was sitting inside it, waiting.

“You get in the back, under the hay,” he said to Harris. “Be quick about it. Laura, cover him up.”
 

Harris grabbed Laura’s shoulders and kissed her quickly. “See you in Fains,” he said, and climbed into the rear of the trap. He burrowed under the loose hay and Laura distributed it evenly about the wagon, concealing his form completely.

“Can you breathe?” she asked anxiously.

“I’m fine,” Harris replied, his voice muffled. He was lying with his nose and mouth pressed to a crack in the wooden slats and his air passages were clear.

“All right back there?” Curel asked impatiently.

Laura thumped the rear of the buggy twice and then ran around to jump up beside Curel. He tossed the lap robe at her and clicked to the horse at the same time. They jolted forward.
 

“What’s our story this time?” Laura asked the old man. Despite the holiday and the late hour there was still no guarantee they wouldn’t be stopped.

“We’re on our way back from my sister’s with a load of feed for the horses,” Curel replied.
 

“In the middle of the night?”

“To make early mass.”

“What if they decide to look in the buggy?” Laura asked.

“Then I use this,” Curel replied, touching the knife in the waistband of his pants. “Now stop asking so many questions and let me drive.”

Laura settled back in her seat, remembering the pistol in her bag. If they were fortunate it wouldn’t be necessary to use either weapon.

What a war we are waging in France, she thought. Everything done by night and by stealth.

Because for us there is no other way to fight.
 

She listened to the horse’s bridle jingling and tried to make herself believe that Harris was only a few feet away from her, delivered by chance like a gift from the gods. A reward, perhaps, for the long time of emptiness when Alain and Thierry were dead and she was left to go on without them?
 

For a moment she saw Alain’s face as he had looked the night before he was shot, the angel of death standing at his shoulder, wings furled possessively across his breast, waiting patiently for the following day to claim his own.

I remember, Alain, she said to him in her mind, recalling his last words to her. I remember our cause and I remember you.

The horse’s hooves rang on the cobblestones in the convent yard as Curel turned the buggy toward Fains.

Harris resisted the strong urge to sneeze. He raised one hand carefully to his face, dislodging about two pounds of hay in the process, and scratched his nose. All he needed was to develop a new allergy at this point. He could tell that the buggy was still moving so there really was no danger of detection. But to be safe he directed his thoughts away from the itch. Then it was easier to ignore the scratchy needles sticking into the back of his bare neck and climbing up his throat like a rash. Hay. It reminded him of the time he’d spent in Langtot’s barn and the woman he’d met there.

The moment he saw Laura he felt twenty-seven months melt away like the aftermath of a dream. When she’d walked into the room, dressed in some colorless bulky sweater, her luxuriant hair bobbed to her ears, he’d wanted to pull her onto the cot with him and slam the door on the world. Nothing, it seemed, could change that: not time, or altered appearance, or the crazy state of a planet at war. Ever since he left Fains he’d been cursing himself for not convincing her to get out with him. He’d been imagining all sorts of horrible fates for her and now she was here, and alive, and apparently still feeling the same. It was too good to be true.

The buggy hit a rut and Harris lurched wildly, banging his head on the side of the cart. He winced and blinked, fighting back the wave of pain. The cart wasn’t the most comfortable mode of transportation but on this snowy Christmas Eve there was nowhere else he would rather be.
 

Soon, he said to himself, relaxing into the pocket of warmth created by his body heat. Soon he would be with her again without Curel, without anyone else. He had waited this long and he could wait a couple of hours more.
 

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
 

The travelers arrived back in Fains at six in the morning, less than an hour before daybreak. The village was asleep, with only a few lighted windows as early risers prepared to attend the seven o’clock mass. Curel turned the buggy into the lane that ran between the Duclos house and Langtot’s barn, heading for the latter to stable the horse.

As soon as they slowed Laura moved to jump to the ground.

“Wait!” Curel called as he let the reins slacken. “Look around,” he added in a lower tone.

Laura did. The snow continued to fall steadily, masking the gray dawn creeping slowly across the sky.

“There’s nobody here,” she hissed. “Everybody’s still in bed. Will you let me get down? I want him out of this damn buggy.”

“All right, all right.” He stopped and they alighted. Curel unbolted the barn door and started to lead the animal inside.
 

“I’m taking Harris to the house,” Laura said as she walked to the rear of the cart.

Curel turned and stared at her.

“It’s freezing in that barn! He’s been ill and he’s not staying there!” Laura announced. She turned her back on the old man.

“What about Henri?” Curel asked. They both whirled as Pierre Langtot, in a flannel bathrobe, hurried around the corner of the barn, eyeing them anxiously.
 

“He wouldn’t be aware of it if I had the entire seventh army bunking in the front room,” Laura replied to Curel’s question. “You know that.”

Curel had a whispered conference with the other man and to her surprise they accepted her decision, and said no more. She waited until they went inside the barn, and then tapped on the side of the cart to alert their passenger. She listened, and then started plowing through the hay.
 

“Dan, are you awake?” she called.

A form sat up, cascading hay. “I guess so,” Harris said groggily, gazing at her through bleary eyes. He had sticks of straw plastered to his cheeks and forehead like the scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz
.

“Come on, get out,” Laura commanded, reaching for him. He grasped her hand and then vaulted over the side of the trap, landing catlike on his feet.
 

“Where we going?” he asked, dusting himself off, coming quickly to full awareness in the breath snatching cold. Snowflakes settled on his hair and shoulders, melting rapidly.

“To my house,” she said firmly.

“Is that safe?” he asked, hesitating.
 

She nodded. “Henri is the only one there and he doesn’t know who
I
am half the time.”

Curel emerged from the barn. “Get out of here,” he said, when he saw them standing next to the cart. “I’ll be in touch.” Langtot appeared in the doorway, raising his hand in greeting at Harris.

Harris saluted him, grinning.

“Let’s go,” Laura said, and they ran together across the frozen field, vanishing into the curtain of falling snow.
 

The kitchen when they entered was only slightly warmer than the outside air. The fire on the hearth was long dead and Laura’s exhalation was visible.

She held her finger to her lips. “Let me go upstairs and check on Henri,” she whispered to Harris.

He nodded, leaning back against the wall. He put his hands in his pockets and crossed his ankles, following her slim form with his eyes.

Laura crept up the uncarpeted stairs and opened Henri’s door. He was sleeping, turned away from her, the large log she had left for him still burning feebly. Laura studied him for a moment. These days she often found herself watching for the rise and fall of his chest. She made sure he was still breathing and then shut the door quietly.

Harris was waiting for her. He hadn’t moved since she left.
 

“Henri’s sleeping,” she announced.

“Good.” Harris shifted his feet awkwardly.