Not dead. That was her first discovery. The dead felt no pain, and Nancy was in agony. She opened her eyes. She could see a little light and she smelled straw and chaff. Someone had put a feed bag over her head. She tried to move. No joy. She was sitting upright on some sort of chair, and her hands were tied behind its back. It was the pain of the howling muscles in her arms that had woken her. Her ankles were bound too and they’d taken her shoes; under her silk stockings she felt a hard earth floor. She lifted her head and breathed in slowly and carefully. Cool air. Wind in the trees. So she was still in the mountains, still in the countryside, and this was a barn, the outbuilding of some farm, not Gestapo headquarters in Montluçon.
Voices outside, echoing as they entered. Men, of course, and more than one, though only one was doing the talking—the rest were just laughing and agreeing.
“Looks like our little guest has woken up.” He spoke in French, his voice low and rasping.
OK. Nancy. It’s show time.
The bag was ripped from her head and she found herself looking up at a smooth-shaven, round-faced man. He wore an eyepatch.
“What a pretty little bitch they’ve sent! Much better looking than that shitbird they’re beating in the cells right now.” Does he know about Henri? No, get it together, Nancy, he’s talking about Southgate. “They’re hoping your tits will save your neck, are they? Come to try and make us Frenchmen scurry around and do England’s bidding, cunt?”
She looked him up and down. Some of the men behind him shifted uncomfortably.
“That’s right, Gaspard.” She kept her voice cool. “They even told me to fuck you if I thought it would help. But you know, I can’t decide between that and the cyanide pill at the moment.”
A couple of the men grinned. Whatever they’d been expecting from a woman sent by the English, it wasn’t that sort of language coming out of her pretty mouth in fluent demotic French. Gaspard—yeah, this was Gaspard all right—twitched. Time to press home her advantage.
“But I can offer you support from London. Honest aid. Guns, money. Whatever you need to win your country back.”
“Bullshit. You want our land. You want us to dance to your tune.”
“You can trust me.”
“A deal with the devil. You’re worse than the Germans, you lying cunt.”
He leaned over her and she could smell his sweat, the sour smell of unwashed clothes. She let a sneer creep into her voice.
“Christ! That’s your favorite word, isn’t it? Does it give you a bit of a thrill? Not seen the real thing for a while?” Some of the guys behind him were smirking now. “If you can get your head out of my crutch for a moment and listen, I’m telling you I’m here as an ally. Guns. Money. Help for your families and intelligence from London. As to the rest, you’re looking at the White Mouse of Marseille and as fierce a patriot for France as any one of you… bastards.”
The blokes behind him were ready to burst out in applause, she could feel it. She could work this crowd. She watched their reactions out of the corner of her eye and felt the corner of her lips twitch. Big mistake.
The second she took her eye off him, Gaspard kicked the leg of the chair out from under her and she went down, heavy and hard on her shoulder. The air was knocked out of her lungs and the pain blossomed in her side.
“Lying bitch! I know about the White Mouse of Marseille. Got her men shot while she pranced around spending all the money she got from her rich old husband. No one in Auvergne is going to pay for you to get your hair done and play at soldiers.”
She tried to breathe. “My husband is a hero, you sack of shit.” She didn’t have breath to say it loud enough.
Gaspard was looking at something in his hand. He crouched down and showed it to her. Her wedding ring.
“So why is this in your bag and not on your finger?”
“Give it back!” Now she sounded like the kid getting bullied in the playground. “I took it off so I wouldn’t get my finger ripped off jumping from a fucking plane, you moron.”
She kicked out hard, but he saw it coming and stepped aside, kicking away the upended chair at the same time. She was on her back now, her hands still tied behind her. She pulled her legs up, ready to push herself up onto her knees, but he straddled her, his weight heavy over her hips. She blinked. She could feel a warmth on her face. Blood. From that blow she’d taken over the head earlier. It ran into her eye, blinding and stinging.
He leaned in close, holding her wedding ring between thumb and forefinger. “What’s to stop us just killing you now? We can take that nice stack of francs sewn into the lining of your handbag, bury you under the floor and say you never made it. Looks like you brought a nice fat wad with you. We might even send this ring back to Marseille. If your poor little husband survives maybe he’ll find someone even prettier to give it to.”
He shifted his weight and she felt the flesh of his thighs pressing against her hips. She drew in her breath and spoke loudly enough for his men to hear.
“It would be the last money you ever get from London if you do. They know I landed safely, I signaled from the ground that I’d made my rendezvous. If you want guns, if you want more than the loose change I carry in my handbag, you’ll have to deal with me. Now, why don’t you just fuck off and let me do my job? If your men don’t want machine guns, army boots and more cigarettes than they can smoke, I reckon there are others who do.”
He glanced up, looking at someone she couldn’t see.
“Is that true? Did she signal the plane?”
Damn. Tardivat was in the room. He knew bloody well she hadn’t sent a signal. He’d been with her every second since she’d landed in that sodding tree.
“She was signaling when I met her.” Tardivat’s voice sounded neutral, bored.
“Bitch,” Gaspard said. She saw him pull back his fist. She could not defend herself. Another explosion of pain, then silence.
Tardivat was there when she woke up. They were still in the barn, but the daylight had faded. She noticed old packing cases and broken furniture round the walls. So this was the place where broken and useless things went to die. Someone, Tardivat probably, had untied her wrists and ankles and put a blanket over her. When he saw her eyes open, Tardivat handed her his canteen and she drank greedily. She thanked him and passed it back. He took it with a nod then reached into his top pocket and took out her wedding ring.
Nancy put out her hand and he dropped it into her palm. It had taken a fight with a beardless lieutenant and a hatchet-faced secretary to bring it with her. Thank God Henri hadn’t got it engraved or bought anything too flashy. Her engagement ring, swollen with emeralds, she had lost escaping from the train. But this plain gold band she had kept on her finger. She remembered the touch of his long cool fingers as he slipped it over her knuckle in the town hall at Marseille, that look of affectionate amusement in his eyes. She put it on again. Perhaps they shouldn’t have married. In the early days they had lived together, and she had been Madame Fiocca to their servants and acquaintances. They had said they’d wait until the war was over at first, then they had become impatient, set the date and arranged the party. Why? They were listening to the BBC reports about the ferocity of the struggle in Russia, and she’d just had a near miss carrying papers from Toulouse. They hadn’t dared wait.
“I can get you to a farmhouse where they can give you a bed for the night,” Tardivat said. “And I know of a radio operator in Clermont-Ferrand. He should be able to get a message to London for you. Arrange your escape.”
She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere, Tardi.”
“They’re just going to kill you some other way, Captain Wake. Make up another story—yes, she got here, but she was murdered by a patrol or something.”
“Call me Nancy. Where’s my pack?”
He nodded toward it. She got to her feet and fetched it. It had been ransacked and roughly repacked. Her handbag was still there and so was the money. Strange. She guessed Gaspard wanted to work out his new plot before he did anything. She took everything out then carefully repacked again: two embroidered nightdresses, a red satin pillow, then the usual changes in underwear, a simple outfit suitable for an Auvergne housewife of moderate means, her high heels for if she needed to take a train or go into one of the local towns, her hairbrush and makeup. She began to make herself look respectable. A bit of water from Tardivat’s canteen and her handkerchief got rid of the blood. The cut on her forehead was long but shallow, and just under the hairline. No need for stitches.
She was applying her V for Victory lipstick with the aid of Buckmaster’s compact when she noticed Tardivat was at work at the silk of the parachute.
“Making something for your wife?”
He nodded.
“Do you feel guilty, leaving her alone while you fight?”
He didn’t look up from his stitching. “This is the second world war in twenty years. We are all guilty.”
She lifted her chin and bared her teeth to check for lipstick. All in order. “How do you suppose they mean to kill me?”
“They know you are trained. Probably they will pretend to be friendly and kill you in your sleep.” His voice was conversational.
“Are there other groups of Maquis near here? Another leader I could talk to?”
“A man named Fournier, up on the plateau near Chaudes-Aigues. The other side of the valley. He and Gaspard are not friendly. But he had only thirty men and they live wild up there.”
Nancy rolled her shoulders. Her arms still ached and she could feel bruises coming on her side. Her brain felt sick and swimming. Sod them.
“Will you take me to him?”
“Now?” he said, and began to pack up his sewing.
“In a minute. I want to have dinner with my hosts first.”
Around a hundred Maquis were gathered around a central fire pit, bent over billycans of some sort of foul-smelling stew being served from an improvised cauldron. Gaspard was sitting in the firelight, perched on a packing crate, while his men gathered round him like disciples. He saw Nancy at once, and gradually all other eyes turned toward her too.
One man got up from his crouch at Gaspard’s feet and fetched a plate of the stew from the cook, then brought it across to her. He was a good-looking man, twenty-five perhaps, huge brown eyes and an athletic build. He presented the plate to her with a flourish, a low bow.
“Madame, forgive our rudeness. We have been so long in the wilds we hardly know how to treat a lady.”
Nancy could see Gaspard watching, grinning.
The good-looking young man continued. “This slop is not fit for your lips, the talk of this company not fit for your ears.”
Nancy still did not take the plate, but she smiled, a warm grateful V for Victory by Elizabeth Arden smile, looking up slightly from under her eyelashes.
“Thank you…?”
“Franc, Madame.”
“Franc! How very kind of you.” She touched his arm.
“I have managed to find a bottle of decent wine, perhaps that might make the food a little easier to swallow. Let me entertain you in privacy in my tent.”
“How kind!” Nancy said in a murmur, then raising her voice just a little. “The new plan being to lull me into a comfortable snooze, strangle me and then steal my money?”
Franc blinked.
“Madame, I…”
“Then tell London if they come asking that I wandered off into the forest and got eaten by wolves like Red Riding Hood? God, you’re stupid.” She grabbed the bowl out of his hands and upended it over his head, then threw the tin plate at his feet.
He gasped and tried to wipe it out of his eyes. “Bitch.”
“Too bloody right, but while I am here you will call me Captain Wake, because that is the rank I’ve earned while you lot have been playing in the woods.”
She turned toward Gaspard. “Where are your escape routes? Where are your lookouts? I’ve seen girl guides run a better camp. You’ve got too many men here out in the open and not a damn clue what to do with them other than sheep stealing. You here to fight the Germans or what?”
They stared back at her, silent, resistant.
She walked up to Gaspard on his packing crate. He stared at her, his thick jaws still chewing at his slop.
“I’m going up to the plateau. Fournier’s men are going to be the best-armed, best-trained fighting force for fifty miles within a month. You are, and will always be, a bunch of amateurs.” She raised her voice again. “When you are done starving and screwing about down here, come and join me. Until then, go fuck yourselves.”
She spat a satisfyingly solid mass with just a little blood in it into Gaspard’s stew, then went back to the door of the barn, picked up her pack and headed off into the darkness without looking back, following the rising ground. Under the treeline she stopped and rested her head against the trunk of a young birch tree. It shivered behind her. Footsteps. One man. A match flared, and she saw it was Tardivat, lighting his cigarette.
“This is the wrong track for the plateau, Captain,” he said softly.
“I thought asking for directions might have ruined my exit,” she replied, trying not to let too much relief creep into her voice.
“You may be right.” She could feel the smile. “Tant pis, it will add only a mile or two to the walk. Are you ready?”
“I am ready.”