“Chloroform.” Paul came up beside her. At the same time, the boat shoved off and the men with the poles got to work again, heading back the way they had come. “They thought it was best to keep him quiet and to combat the pain.”
“Much risk for nothing if he dies,” Jean-Claude grumbled. A dour man of near her own age, he lived with his elderly mother and was one of the last Lillian would have expected to chance all for such a cause.
“We must make certain he does not, then,” Paul replied perfectly pleasantly, but with the ring of a leader. Lillian felt a surge of pride in him. From the time he’d heard the little-known general Charles de Gaulle, in the wake of France’s surrender, speaking over the radio from London to call on all Frenchmen to refuse to accept defeat and continue to fight, that’s what he had done. Living meekly day by day under the iron fist of the occupying Nazis, swallowing the shame of France’s surrender and the collaboration of the Vichy government was not something he could stomach.
“Did you have to get into the water?” Lillian scolded under her breath as she turned Bruno about and headed inland. Left without his rider now for lo these many years, the pony had grown unaccustomed to the saddle and the weight on his back and moved reluctantly, unhappy with his burden. She tch-tched at him under her breath, pulled harder on the rein, got him going at an acceptable pace. “Is there a reason why Jean-Claude, perhaps, or one of the others couldn’t jump out and pull the boat in?”
“I’m taller?” Paul grinned at her. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the charming young man she’d first met shortly after she’d turned thirteen, when, as the aristocratic son of a prosperous landowner, he’d come to visit her physician father’s clinic in Orconte to observe the effects of an administration of smallpox vaccine, which had just become obligatory in France. At that young age, they’d both been starry-eyed about the future, with no idea that it could hold such things as poverty or hunger or death or war. “You worry too much, ma choupette.” He leaned down to whisper confidentially, “Besides, I stole a pair of Henri Vartan’s work boots.”
Formerly their farm manager, forced to find other work once the hard times hit in the thirties, Henri still lived in his cottage at Rocheford but now worked for the railroad, which as it happened served as a valuable cog in the Resistance network. Lillian glanced down, saw that Paul was indeed wearing a pair of unfamiliar rubber boots that reached almost to his knees, and harrumphed her opinion of that.
“I’m all right, Lil.” His voice gentled. “Everything is going to be all right.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Her tone was tart, but the truth was his words soothed her. She knew it was stupid, knew he could no more predict the future than she could, but still his reassurance went a long way toward calming the nervous flutter in her stomach. Usually she was better able to keep the fear at bay. Even the high-risk work they’d been doing in preparation for the major operation that was coming had not unsettled her like this.
All because you heard an owl.
Yes, and also because taking photographs of the tall, mine-topped poles, called Rommel’s asparagus, as they were being set in place to bristle up around the shoreline, and mapping the antipersonnel mines that had been laid down to repel an amphibious landing, and gathering samples of sand from the beaches to make sure they could support the weight of insurgent tanks, which was what they had been doing for the last few weeks, were all easier to explain away than being caught smuggling a British pilot out through the supposedly impassable marsh in the middle of the night.
The searchlights swung past, but thankfully they were now beyond the reach of the beams.
“We must go single file.” Glancing around, she repeated it for the benefit of the others as the spit opened out into a sea of shoulder-high grass that stretched endlessly into the night. With the patrols out, she didn’t dare use a torch. Instead she would navigate by memory, and landmarks, such as the abandoned beaver dam dead ahead. “The path is narrow.”
Some three hours later, they walked out of the marsh into a wood, then paused just inside a line of trees to cautiously survey what lay on its other side: the narrow paved road that led into Valognes.
A blackout was in effect, so no lights marked the town’s location. Farmhouses dotted the surrounding land, Lillian knew, but they were as good as invisible in the dark.
Stepping into the road, they started toward the town.
“How are you doing?” Paul asked, coming up beside her.
Lillian managed a smile for him. “Fine.” It was almost true. Except for the fact that she was so hungry the sides of her stomach were practically stuck together, and her arm ached from dragging Bruno along, and her feet in their sturdy brogues were freezing. The layers of newspaper with which she’d lined her coat were failing miserably in their task of keeping out the cold, so the rest of her was freezing, too. Even the small garnet heart she wore on a chain around her neck—all her other jewelry had been sold or traded long since, but this particular piece had been too precious to give up—felt cold against her skin. Worse, her nerves were on edge in a way that was both unpleasant and unfamiliar. But there was no point in regaling Paul with any of that: he would only worry. With a hint of humor she added, “You couldn’t have had them meet us at the edge of the swamp?”
He took the rein from her, and she relinquished it gladly.
“Better that they don’t know we came through it.” His voice was pitched so that it reached her ears only, and he looked ahead as he spoke. She thought he was searching for landmarks to guide them just as she had done. “The Germans think the marsh is impossible to cross, and we don’t want anyone to tell them differently.”
“You’re right, of course.” This reminder of what, when the invasion came, she would be called upon to do made her pulse quicken.
His expression changed, and she followed his gaze to find that he was looking at a small pile of stones beside a corner fence post. It was clearly the sign he’d been watching for.
“We’re close now.” He glanced around, raised his voice so the others could hear, pointed. “Up this way.”
On the other side of the road, what looked like a cart track led uphill between parallel fence rows. They turned onto it, trudged over the rocky, uneven ground. At the top of the rise was the dark outline of a barn. Their destination, Paul told them; then he gave a soft, three-noted whistle.
The barn door slid open with a rusty rumbling sound. Peering through the floating wisps of fog into the impenetrable black maw of the barn’s interior, Lillian felt a quiver of unease.
A man walked out of the barn, beckoned to them urgently. A gray shape against the darkness behind him, he was impossible to identify.
Paul’s step slowed. He said, “They should have whistled back.” At his tone she experienced a sensation that felt very much like a spider crawling across the nape of her neck—or a goose walking over her grave. To her alone, he added under his breath, “Turn and walk down the hill. Now. If something happens, run.”