She reached out and took the plate in her hands, bringing it toward her. The salty, smoky scent of the ham, combined with the slightly stinky aroma of the cheese, intoxicated her, overwhelmed her better intentions, seduced her so thoroughly that there was no choice to be made.
* * *
In early March of 1942, spring still felt far away. Last night the Allies had bombed the hell out of the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, killing hundreds in the suburb on the outskirts of Paris. It had made the Parisians—Isabelle included—jumpy and irritable. The Americans had entered the war with a vengeance; air raids were a fact of life now.
On this cold and rainy evening, Isabelle pedaled her bicycle down a muddy, rutted country road in a heavy fog. Rain plastered her hair to her face and blurred her vision. In the mist, sounds were amplified; the cry of a pheasant disturbed by the sucking sound of her wheels in mud, the near-constant drone of aeroplanes overhead, the lowing of cattle in a field she couldn’t see. A woolen hood was her only protection.
As if being drawn in charcoal on vellum by an uncertain hand, the demarcation line slowly came into view. She saw coils of barbed wire stretched out on either side of a black-and-white checkpoint gate. Beside it, a German sentry sat in a chair, his rifle rested across his lap. At Isabelle’s approach, he stood and pointed the gun at her.
“Halt!”
She slowed the bike; the wheels stuck in the mud and she nearly flew from her seat. She dismounted, stepped down into the muck. Five hundred franc notes were sewn into the lining of her coat, as well as a set of false identity papers for an airman hiding in a safe house nearby.
She smiled at the German, walked her bicycle toward him, thumping through muddy potholes.
“Documents,” he said.
She handed him her forged Juliette papers.
He glanced down at them, barely interested. She could tell that he was unhappy to be manning such a quiet border in the rain. “Pass,” he said, sounding bored.
She repocketed her papers and climbed back onto her bicycle, pedaling away as quickly as she could on the wet road.
An hour and a half later, she reached the outskirts of the small town of Brantôme. Here, in the Free Zone, there were no German soldiers, although lately the French police had proven to be as dangerous as the Nazis, so she didn’t let her guard down.
For centuries, the town of Brantôme had been considered a sacred place that could both heal the body and enlighten the soul. After the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War ravaged the countryside, the Benedictine monks built an immense limestone abbey, backed by soaring gray cliffs on one side and the wide Dronne River on the other.
Across the street from the caves at the end of town was one of the newest safe houses: a secret room tucked into an abandoned mill built on a triangle of land between the caves and the river. The ancient wooden mill turned rhythmically, its buckets and wheel furred with moss. The windows were boarded up and anti-German graffiti covered the stone walls.
Isabelle paused in the street, glancing both ways to make sure that no one was watching her. No one was. She locked her bicycle to a tree at the end of town and then crossed the street and bent down to the cellar door, opening it quietly. All of the doors to the mill house were boarded up, nailed shut; this was the only way inside.
She climbed down into the black, musty cellar and reached for the oil lamp she kept on a shelf there. Lighting it, she followed the secret passageway that had once allowed the Benedictine monks to escape from the so-called barbarians. Narrow, steeply pitched stairs led to the kitchen. Opening the door, she slipped into the dusty, cobwebby room and kept going upstairs to the secret ten-by-ten room built behind one of the old storerooms.
“She’s here! Perk up, Perkins.”
In the small room, lit only by a single candle, two men got to their feet, stood at attention. Both were dressed as French peasants in ill-fitting clothes.
“Captain Ed Perkins, miss,” the bigger of the two men said. “And this here lout is Ian Trufford or some such name. He’s Welsh. I’m a Yank. We’re both damned happy to see you. We’ve been goin’ half mad in this small space.”
“Only half mad?” she asked. Water dripped from her hooded cloak and made a puddle around her feet. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into her sleeping bag and go to sleep, but she had business to conduct first. “Perkins, you say.”
“Yes, miss.”
“From?”
“Bend, Oregon, miss. My pa’s a plumber and my ma makes the best apple pie in four counties.”
“What’s the weather like in Bend this time of year?”
“What’s this? Middle o’ March? Cold, I guess. Not snowing anymore, maybe, but no sunshine yet.”
She bent her neck from side to side, massaging the pain in her shoulders. All this pedaling and lying and sleeping on the floor took a toll.
She interrogated the two men until she was certain they were who they said they were—two downed airmen who’d been waiting weeks for their chance to get out of France. When she was finally convinced, she opened her rucksack and brought out supper, such as it was. The three of them sat on a ragged, mouse-eaten carpet on the floor with the candle set in the middle. She brought out a baguette and a wedge of Camembert and a bottle of wine, which they passed around.
The Yank—Perkins—talked almost constantly, while the Welshman chewed in silence, saying no thank you to the offer of wine.
“You must have a husband somewhere who is worried about you,” Perkins said as she closed her rucksack. She smiled. Already this had become a common question, especially from the men her age.
“And you must have a wife who is waiting for word,” she said. It was what she always said. A pointed reminder.
“Nah,” Perkins said. “Not me. A lug like me don’t have girls lining up. And now…”
She frowned. “Now what?”
“I know it’s not exactly heroic to think about, but I could walk out of this boarded-up house in this town I can’t fucking pronounce and get shot by some guy I got nothing against. I could die trying to bike across your hills—”
“Mountains.”
“I could get shot walking into Spain by the Spanish or the Nazis. Hell, I could probably freeze to death in your damned hills.”
“Mountains,” she said again, her gaze steady on his. “That’s not going to happen.”
Ian made a sighing sound. “There, you see, Perkins. This slip of a girl is going to save us.” The Welshman gave her a tired smile. “I’m glad you’re here, miss. This lad’s been sending me ’round the bend with his chatter.”
“You might as well let him talk, Ian. By this time tomorrow, it’ll take all you have inside to keep breathing.”
“The hills?” Perkins asked, his eyes wide.
“Oui,” she said, smiling. “The hills.”
Americans. They didn’t listen.
* * *
In late May, spring brought life and color and warmth back to the Loire Valley. Vianne found peace in her garden. Today, as she pulled weeds and planted vegetables, a caravan of lorries and soldiers and Mercedes-Benzes rolled past Le Jardin. In the five months since the Americans had joined the war, the Nazis had lost all pretense of politeness. They were always busy now, marching and rallying and gathering at the munitions dump. The Gestapo and the SS were everywhere, looking for saboteurs and resisters. It took nothing to be called a terrorist—just a whispered accusation. The roar of aeroplanes overhead was nearly constant, as were bombings.
How often this spring had someone sidled up to Vianne while she was in a queue for food or walking through town or waiting at the poste and asked her about the latest BBC broadcast?
I have no radio. They are not allowed was always her response, and it was true. Still, every time she was asked such a question she felt a shiver of fear. They had learned a new word: les collabos. The collaborators. French men and women who did the Nazis’ dirty work, who spied on friends and neighbors and reported back to the enemy, relaying every infraction, real or imagined. On their word, people had begun to be arrested for little things, and many who were taken to the Kommandant’s office were never seen again.