The Nightingale (49 page)

The men looked unwashed, starving, haggard. Most wore brown corduroy pants and black berets, all of which were frayed and patched and faded.

For all that Isabelle believed in their cause, she wouldn't want to be alone up here.

“Come,” Gaëtan said. He led her past the bonfire to a small, dirty-looking tent with a canvas flap that was open to reveal a single sleeping bag and a pile of clothes and a pair of muddy boots. As usual, it smelled of dirty socks and sweat.

Isabelle ducked her head and crouched low as she made her way inside.

Gaëtan sat down beside her and closed the flap. He didn't light a lamp (the men would see their silhouettes within and start catcalling). “Isabelle,” he said. “I've missed you.”

She leaned forward, let herself be taken in his arms and kissed. When it ended—too soon—she took a deep breath. “I have a message for your group from London. Paul received it at five
P.M.
tonight. ‘Long sobs of autumn violins.'”

She heard him draw in a breath. Obviously the words, which they'd received over the radio from the BBC, were a code.

“Is it important?” she asked.

His hands moved to her face, held her gently, and drew her in for another kiss. This one was full of sadness. Another good-bye.

“Important enough that I have to leave right now.”

All she could do was nod. “There's never any time,” she whispered. Every moment they'd ever had together had been stolen somehow, or wrested. They met, they ducked into shadowy corners or dirty tents or back rooms, and they made love in the dark, but they didn't get to lie together afterward like lovers and talk. He was always leaving her, or she was leaving him. Each time he held her, she thought—this will be it, the last time I see him. And she waited for him to say he loved her.

She told herself that it was war. That he did love her, but he was afraid of that love, afraid he would lose her, and it would hurt more somehow if he'd declared himself. On good days, she even believed it.

“How dangerous is it, this thing you're going off to do?”

Again, the silence.

“I'll find you,” he said quietly. “Maybe I'll come to Paris for a night and we'll sneak into the cinema and boo at the newsreels and walk through the Rodin Gardens.”

“Like lovers,” she said, trying to smile. It was what they always said to each other, this dream shared of a life that seemed impossible to remember and unlikely to reoccur.

He touched her face with a gentleness that brought tears to her eyes. “Like lovers.”

*   *   *

In the past eighteen months, as the war had escalated and Nazi aggression mounted, Vianne had found and hidden thirteen children at the orphanage. At first she had canvassed the nearby countryside, following leads given to her by the OSE. In time, Mother had connected with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—an umbrella group for Jewish charities in the United States that funded the struggle to save Jewish children—and they had brought Vianne into contact with more children in need. Mothers sometimes showed up on her doorstep, crying, desperate, begging her for help. Vianne never turned anyone away, but she was always terrified.

Now, on a warm June day in 1944, a week after the Allies had landed more than one hundred and fifty thousand troops in Normandy, Vianne stood in her classroom at the orphanage, staring out at the children who sat slumped and tired at their desks. Of course they were tired.

In the past year, the bombing had rarely stopped. Air raids were so constant that Vianne no longer bothered to take her children into the cellar pantry when the alarm sounded at night. She just lay in bed with them, holding them tightly until either all clear sounded or the bombing stopped.

It never stopped for long.

Vianne clapped her hands together and called for attention. Perhaps a game would lift their spirits.

“Is it another air raid, Madame?” asked Emile. He was six years old now and never mentioned his maman anymore. When asked, he said that she “died because she got sick,” and that was all there was to it. He had no memory at all of being Jean Georges Ruelle.

Just as Daniel had no memory of who he used to be.

“No. No air raid,” she said. “Actually, I was thinking that it's awfully hot in here.” She tugged at her loose collar.

“That's because of the blackout windows, Madame,” said Claudine (formerly Bernadette). “Mother says she feels like a smoked ham in her woolen habit.”

The children laughed at that.

“It's better than the winter cold,” Sophie said, and to this there was a round of nodding agreement.

“I was thinking,” Vianne said, “that today would be a good day to—”

Before she could finish her thought, she heard the clatter of a motorcycle outside; moments later, footsteps—jackboots—thundered down the stone corridor.

Everyone went still.

The door to her classroom opened.

Von Richter walked into the room. As he approached Vianne, he removed his hat and tucked it beneath his armpit. “Madame,” he said. “Will you step into the corridor with me?”

Vianne nodded. “One moment, children,” she said. “Read quietly while I am gone.”

Von Richter took her by the arm—a painful, punishing grip—and led her into the stone courtyard outside her classroom. The sound of falling water from the mossy fountain gurgled nearby.

“I am here to ask about an acquaintance of yours. Henri Navarre.”

Vianne prayed she didn't flinch. “Who, Herr Sturmbannführer?”

“Henri Navarre.”

“Ah.
Oui
. The hotelier.” She fisted her hands to still them.

“You are his friend?”

Vianne shook her head. “No, Herr Sturmbannführer. I know of him, merely. It is a small town.”

Von Richter gave her an assessing look. “If you are lying to me about something so simple, I will perhaps wonder what else you are lying to me about.”

“Herr Sturmbannführer, no—”

“You have been seen with him.” His breath smelled of beer and bacon, and his eyes were narrowed.

He'll kill me,
she thought for the first time. She'd been careful for so long, never antagonizing him or defying him, never making eye contact if she could help it. But in the last few weeks he had become volatile, impossible to predict.

“It is a small town, but—”

“He has been arrested for aiding the enemy, Madame.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I will speak to you more about this, Madame. In a small room with no windows. And believe me, I will get the truth out of you. I will find out if you are working with him.”

“Me?”

He tightened his hold so much she thought her bones might crack. “If I find that you knew anything about this, I will question your children … intensely … and then I will send you all to Fresnes Prison.”

“Don't hurt them, I beg you.”

It was the first time she'd ever begged him for anything, and at the desperation in her voice, he went perfectly still. His breathing accelerated. And there it was, as plain as the blue of his eyes: arousal. For more than a year and a half, she had conducted herself with scrupulous care in his presence, dressing and acting like a little wren, never drawing his attention, never saying anything beyond yes or no, Herr Sturmbannführer. Now, in an instant, all of that was undone. She had revealed her weakness, and he had seen it. He knew how to hurt her now.

*   *   *

Hours later, Vianne was in a windowless room in the bowels of the town hall. She sat stiffly upright in her chair, her hands clamped around the armrests so tightly that her knuckles were white.

She had been here for a long time, alone, trying to decide what the best answers would be. How much did they know? What would they believe? Had Henri named her?

No. If they knew that she had forged documents and hidden Jewish children, she would already have been arrested.

Behind her, the door creaked open and then clicked shut.

“Madame Mauriac.”

She got to her feet.

Von Richter circled her slowly, his gaze intimate on her body. She was wearing a faded, often-repaired dress and no stockings, and Oxfords with wooden soles. Her hair, unwashed for two days, was covered by a gingham turban with a knot above her forehead. Her lipstick had run out long ago and so her lips were pale.

He came to a stop in front of her, too close, his hands clasped behind his back.

It took courage to tilt her chin upward, and when she did—when she looked in his ice-blue eyes—she knew she was in trouble.

“You were seen with Henri Navarre, walking in the square. He is suspected of working with the Maquis du Limousin, those cowards who live like animals in the woods and aided the enemy in Normandy.” At the same time as the Allied landing at Normandy, the Maquis had wreaked havoc across the country, cutting train lines, setting bombs, flooding canals. The Nazis were desperate to find and punish the partisans.

“I am barely acquainted with him, Herr Sturmbannführer; I know nothing of men who aid the enemy.”

“Are you making a fool of me, Madame?”

She shook her head.

He wanted to hit her. She could see it in his blue eyes: an ugly, sick desire. It had been planted when she'd begged him for something and now she had no idea how to eradicate it.

He reached out and grazed a finger along her jaw. She flinched. “Are you truly so innocent?”

“Herr Sturmbannführer, you have lived in my home for eighteen months. You see me every day. I feed my children and work in my garden and teach at the orphanage. I am hardly aiding the Allies.”

His fingertips caressed her mouth, forcing her lips to part slightly. “If I find out that you are lying to me, I will hurt you, Madame. And I will enjoy it.” He let his hand fall away. “But if you tell the truth—now—I will spare you. And your children.”

She shivered at the thought of his finding out that he had been living all this time with a Jewish child. It would make a fool of him.

“I would never lie to you, Herr Sturmbannführer. You must know that.”

“Here's what I know,” he said, leaning closer, whispering in her ear, “I
hope
you are lying to me, Madame.”

He drew back.

“You are scared,” he said, smiling.

“I have nothing to be afraid of,” she said, unable to get much volume in her voice.

“We shall see if that is true. For now, Madame, go home. And pray I do not discover that you have lied to me.”

*   *   *

That same day, Isabelle walked up the cobblestoned street in the hilltop town of Urrugne. She could hear the echo of footsteps behind her. On the journey here from Paris, her two latest “songs”—Major Foley and Sergeant Smythe—had followed her instructions perfectly and had made it past the various checkpoints. She hadn't looked back in quite some time, but she had no doubt that they were there walking as instructed—with at least one hundred yards between them.

At the top of the hill, she saw a man seated on a bench in front of the closed
poste
. He held a sign that read:
DEAF AND DUMB. WAITING FOR MY MAMAN TO PICK ME UP
. Amazingly, the simple ruse still worked to fool the Nazis.

Isabelle went to him. “I have an umbrella,” she said in her heavily accented English.

“It looks like rain,” he said.

She nodded. “Walk at least fifty yards behind me.”

She kept walking up the hill, alone.

By the time she reached Madame Babineau's property it was nearing nightfall. At the bend in the road, she paused, waiting for her airmen to catch up.

The man who'd been seated on the bench was the first to arrive. “Hello, ma'am,” he said, pulling off his borrowed beret. “Major Tom Dowd, ma'am. And I'm to say best wishes from Sarah in Pau, ma'am. She was a first-rate hostess.”

Isabelle smiled tiredly. They were so … larger than life, these Yanks, with their ready smiles and booming voices. And their gratitude. Not at all like the Brits, who thanked her with clipped words and cool voices and firm handshakes. She'd lost track of the times an American had hugged her so tightly she'd come off her feet. “I'm Juliette,” she said to the major.

Major Jack Foley was next to arrive. He gave her a big smile and said, “Those are some mountains.”

“You said a mouthful there,” Dowd said, thrusting his hand out. “Dowd. Chicago.”

“Foley. Boston. Nice to meet you.”

Sergeant Smythe brought up the rear. He arrived a few minutes later. “Hello, gentlemen,” he said stiffly. “That was a hike.”

“Just wait,” Isabelle said with a laugh.

She led them to the cottage and knocked three times on the front door.

Madame Babineau opened the door a little, saw Isabelle through the crack, and grinned, stepping back to allow them entrance. As always, a cast-iron cauldron hung above the flames in the soot-blackened fireplace. The table was set for their arrival, with glasses of warm milk and empty soup bowls.

Isabelle glanced around. “Eduardo?”

“In the barn, with two more airmen. We are having trouble getting supplies. It's all this damned bombing. Half of town is rubble.” She placed a hand on Isabelle's cheek. “You look tired, Isabelle. Are you well?”

The touch was so comforting that Isabelle couldn't help leaning into it for just a moment. She wanted to tell her friend her troubles, unburden herself for a moment, but that was another luxury lost in this war. Troubles were carried alone. Isabelle didn't tell Madame Babineau that the Gestapo had broadened their search for the Nightingale or that she worried for her father and sister and niece. What was the point? They all had family to worry about. Such were ordinary anxieties, fixed points on the map of this war.

Isabelle reached out for the old woman's hands. There were so many terrible aspects to what their lives now were, but there was this, too: friendships forged in fire that had proven to be as strong as iron. After so many solitary years, spent tucked away in convents and forgotten in boarding schools, Isabelle never took for granted the fact that now she had friends, people whom she cared about and who cared about her.