They watched her. Not with smirks on their faces any more, but there was nothing friendly about the looks she got either. The day after her fight with Fournier, Nancy kicked them out of their sleeping bags as soon as it was light and ordered them into ranks. News of the drop had brought two other groups of men who had been hiding in the hills all winter to join them. There were forty of them now. Not enough, nowhere near enough, but enough to make a start. All local lads apart from the Spanish boys.
Fournier was in the front row, at the far right, staring, but saying nothing and giving no hint to the men about which way to jump either. Below them the patchwork of trees and pasture flowed down into the valley, in a million shifting greens, a land to love, but not their land any more. Not while one German in uniform was within France’s borders. They knew that. Their families knew that. Then she realized she had the key in her hand to unlock their stubborn hearts.
She chose her words carefully, but kept it simple. No more brandy and no more cigarettes until they had learned to handle the weapons that had been dropped, planned escape routes from the camp and started on a full program of marksmanship and physical training. But she had something else to offer them.
“The liberation of France is coming,” she told them, her voice raised and clear. “And we need to be ready when it does. You don’t want us and our guns and our gold, fine. Your funeral. You can stay up here and be slaughtered by the first company of SS soldiers they decide to send up here after you. I’ll take my treasure somewhere else. But do the training, and it won’t be just you who gets British help. Any of you have family, wives, children, mothers struggling on their own while you’re up here?”
A few of the men nodded.
“I’ll give them fifty francs a day, every day you train. First weapons session is in an hour. If you want your family to eat, be there.”
Who was going to leave their people to starve for the sake of their pride? Not these men. For the next week they did what they were told. Sort of.
When she briefed them on tactics, they stared over her head and yawned. When she showed them how to put the Bren guns together, they chatted to each other in undertones. When she sent them on PT runs, they rambled. On Sunday afternoon they practiced marksmanship, and as Nancy was demonstrating the double tap, a bullet bit into the bark six inches above her head.
She shot at her target and struck it before she turned round. Fournier was holding his rifle loosely in the crook of his arm. He smiled at her for the first time since their fight. It was not a nice smile.
That evening she gathered addresses from the men and told them they’d get half the money promised. They swore at her, but under their breath.
“Shall I tell your mother you said that?” she asked one Maquisard from Chaudes-Aigues.
He looked startled. “No, Captain.” He scratched behind his ear and grinned. “Not unless you want her up here trying to take it out of my backside.”
She dismissed him with a nod, then went back to her usual spot at the edge of the tree line where Tardivat was working at his silk supply and Denden was setting up to listen to the BBC transmissions. She flopped down onto the grass next to him.
“What do you think, dearie?” he murmured. “Shall we chuck it all in and pop up to Paris for a cocktail and a show? I’ll take you dancing.”
She turned onto her stomach. “I would, if I didn’t know perfectly well you’d ditch me for the first handsome Frenchman we met.”
“I do love a Frenchman,” he said musingly.
“How can I get these bastards to pay attention to me, Denden?”
“Just do your job, respect yourself and don’t give a crap what they think. It’s their funeral.”
Nancy felt a black rage swirl in her gut. “That’s exactly the point, Denden. If they don’t train, if they don’t listen, they are going to die. The odds are against us anyway. If they try and fight the Germans as they are now, they are going to get slaughtered. And they’ll die without doing any damage. I hate the Boche, but they are well trained. These boys… they are going to be wiped out.”
“Well, yes, that would be a shame,” Denden said as he twitched the dial. A sudden burst of speech, French and very clear, came tripping out of the speaker.
“The Germans are our friends, the true enemy of every Frenchmen are the traitors who undermine their efforts for peace.” Denden put his hand to the tuning knob again, but Nancy stopped him. “We know these vagabonds and criminals who steal the food from your mouths and attack our allies on orders from communists and the treacherous English are not the real French. Remember all it takes is a word to one of our friends and they can be scrubbed from our beautiful land. Wives and mothers of France, daughters of France, these men leave you to battle on alone while they hide in the shadows. Let us defend you. Let us protect you.”
“Weasly sods,” Denden said, turning down the volume. “And these guys are almost as bad as the propaganda says they are.”
Tardivat looked up from his sewing. “With respect, you have delivered guns, yes, but these men came to fight. You want them to go to school.”
“They’ll be no bloody good in a fight without training,” Nancy snapped back. “And we need them for the actions after the invasion. Can’t risk wasting lives and weapons taking them on a little field trip just for the fun of it.”
Tardivat snipped a thread and gave one of those French shrugs that seemed to communicate more than should be possible. “You have training. Show them what you can do with it and perhaps they’ll want to learn then. Fournier’s a good man, he was a soldier before the war, but he’s never trained for anything but leading a hundred men into a field to shoot at a hundred other men in different uniforms.”
“Give them a taster of what we might get up to when the invasion kicks in you mean?” Nancy said. “Whet their appetites?”
Tardivat smiled at her. “An amuse-bouche, a salty snack of an attack.”
“You can’t risk it, Nancy!” Denden huffed.
“But if I took a small group…” She sat up again. “Denden, where is this shit transmitting from?”
“Close, I’d say. Chaudes-Aigues would be my guess.”
“I might have a look around while I’m in town handing out disbursements and picking our next landing site tomorrow.” Denden pursed his lips, but didn’t argue. “Tardi, you haven’t given me your address. I want to drop off your pay to your wife.”
He shook his head. “That is not necessary.”
“I won’t blunder in saying, ‘Hello all, I’m a British Agent, you know.’ I can be discreet.”
He still didn’t look at her. “That is not the point, Capitan. My wife has everything she needs.”
“Fine.” Nancy lay back on the ground. She was growing used to the earth of France as a bed, even if she hadn’t slept much since she’d jumped out of that damned plane, but as she lay there, thinking about that voice on the radio, what Tardivat had said about an aperitif to sharpen the appetite, she began to feel a plan forming, and thought that perhaps tonight she might sleep very well indeed.