Henri was alive. The idea she could save him made her heart flower and burst. She could see him arriving back in Marseille, see him being greeted by his old friends, even his father and his sister, and the joy she felt stopped her breath. She had not known, had never dared realize, how desperate she was to trade her life for his. She had thought only of helping speed the war to an end, willing him to survive until then. This was so much better. The road passed without registering on her mind; she only realized they were back as the truck nosed carefully up the track to the camp. Something was wrong. Perhaps it was the lack of a reception committee. The men knew they’d been out looking for bazookas and normally the prospect of new kit would make them as giddy as kids waiting for Father Christmas. No cooking fires either. She spotted Juan jogging toward her across the field. The way he carried himself confirmed her fears.
She got out. “Wait here,” she said to Anne over her shoulder. “Stay in the truck. Don’t say anything to anyone other than René and Mateo.”
Mateo had gone to greet his brother, and now they came toward her together.
“What is it?”
“Mon colonel, Gaspard caught Captain Rake with a recruit. Fournier and Tardivat are away at the lower camp. Gaspard—”
“Shit!”
She strode up the hill. Most of the men were staying at a distance, but a group of perhaps twenty were clustered round one of the waste pits, laughing and nudging each other. A couple of them slunk off sideways as they saw her approach, without even bothering to warn their playmates she was on her way. One guy had his cock in his hand and was pissing down into the hole.
At last the pisser heard her coming and half turned, his greasy little face still pink with amusement. She hit him, hard on the side of the jaw, and he went down, getting piss all over his trousers in the process.
“Where is Gaspard?”
The men started backing away. For the first time she looked into the hole. Denden was curled up in the corner of the pit on a pile of shit and animal bones. His hands covered his face, but she could see the bruises blooming on his neck and cheek. They had beaten him first. The impulse to shoot someone was almost overwhelming.
“Mon colonel.” It was Gaspard, sauntering out from under the tree line with a fag between his stubby fingers, looking as if he was just out for a quiet stroll.
“Get him out of there,” she said.
Gaspard shrugged. “The pervert was discovered corrupting a recruit.”
“I imagine the recruit was enjoying it.”
Irritation flickered across Gaspard’s face. “These men do not volunteer to be the prey of a disgusting deviant.”
She spoke softly and clearly. “That British officer is the reason you have weapons, ammunition and information. Without that highly trained British officer, you are nothing but a bully stealing sheep from the peasants and playing hide and seek with the local collaborators. Now get him the fuck out of there.”
Gaspard’s gaze didn’t shift from Nancy—one, two, three—then he lifted his hand and a couple of the men crouched down at the edge of the pit and put out their hands to haul Denden up.
“No,” Nancy said, still quietly, but shifting the Bren across her chest. “You, Major. You get in there and help him out.”
The breeze shifted through the trees, and the dappled shade rippled across their faces. Nancy heard Mateo clearing his throat discreetly behind her.
Gaspard blinked. He sat down on the edge of the waste pit, then shoved himself off the side. His boots squelched in the crap and bones as he landed, and she thought he was going to fall face forward into the stink, but he managed to stay upright. He took three uneven precarious steps across the foul-smelling, shifting morass and put his hand out.
Denden grasped it and hauled himself upright. He was covered in filth, and blood trickled from his nose and a cut above his eye. He did not speak.
The men nearest to him outside the pit lay prone on the ground, their faces contorted as they tried to stop breathing in the stench, and put out their arms. Gaspard lifted Denden from below and Denden was hoicked bodily from the pit and rolled onto the grass. He got to his feet and wavered for a second. One of the fighters grabbed on to his arm and held him steady, and when Denden had his balance back he patted the boy’s hand and was released, then walked slowly off into the woods without looking at any of them.
Nancy didn’t stay to watch them hauling out Gaspard. She went straight to Denden’s tent, fished out a shirt and shorts from his pack, grabbed a towel and followed him.
He was waiting for her by the bathing spot and as he saw her approach, began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Gaspard will pay for this,” she said as she set down his fresh clothes and helped him pull the sodden and stinking shirt off his shoulders.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“It’s a fucking outrage.”
He turned to let her peel the fabric from his back.
“I said it’s nothing.” His voice was vicious, clear. She was about to insist, then she saw. His back was covered in scar tissue. The thick ropes of whip scars.
“Denden…”
He bent down to untie his laces and stepped out of his boots. “You knew this wasn’t my first time in France, Nancy. I was here in thirty-nine. I toured with a circus troop and ended up in Paris, passing information through the network there. Lasted almost three years. Trained to use the radio in the field when one of the other operators was shot. I was one of the agents they picked up when they broke our radio codes.”
“The Gestapo?”
He took off his trousers and stepped gingerly from the rock platform into the water. He was as thin and wiry as she was. His arms from elbow to wrist were deeply tanned. She sat down cross-legged on the shore while he lowered himself under the water then emerged, pushing the hair back from his face.
“Who else? They had me for six months then deported me, but I jumped from the train with a couple of others. Made it to the Breton coast. Found a friendly fisherman.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her chin in her hand.
He poured the warm water over his skin with his cupped palms, working it through his hair.
“Because I shouldn’t need to show people my scars to prove I’m not a queer coward.”
Nancy flinched. She’d said that. To a man who had survived three years in occupied Paris. To a man who it turned out knew exactly what would happen to him if he were caught. To her friend.
“Denden, what I said… I didn’t mean it…”
“Yes, you did.” He palmed more of the water, rubbed it across his chest, then more to clean the blood from around his nose. “Everyone thinks queers are cowards. I was afraid they were right; I think that’s why I started passing information in the first place.” He leaned his head back, feeling the sun on his face, his arms wide. He looked like Jesus being baptized. “You think you’re a modern girl, Nancy. But you’re still your mother’s daughter. All that dreary Bible shit is still in you somewhere, judging us all.”
He stepped out of the water and she handed him the towel. He wrapped it round his middle and sat down next to her.
“You might be right. I judge myself too. It makes me a miserable bitch sometimes.”
He lay back on the cool stone and looked up into the sky.
“Was it Jules they caught you with?”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
Nancy had drawn in her breath, ready to tell him about the Milice, about Böhm, about what she was going to do, but that curt little dismissal caught her own confession in her throat. She’d literally dug him out of the shit, and she’d tried to apologize. She didn’t owe him any more than that. Yes, she did. She knew she did, but she couldn’t give it to him.