“Nancy, wake up!”
Not Henri’s voice. That was how she knew she wasn’t dead. That and the pain.
“Denden?”
“Yes, my only love, it’s me. How are you? Can you move?”
She opened her eyes and cautiously pulled herself up on her elbows. The pain was different. Dull, throbbing, rather than bolts of agony. She realized she was wearing a thin cotton shirt, a pretty clean one too. Her thighs and ankles were bandaged and she was lying on a thick layer of blankets in a wooden cot in a small square room. Wooden floors, no glass in the windows. Bright sunshine and Denden sitting on a three-legged stool by her head.
“Good. You’re alive,” Denden said with a deep sigh of relief. “I thought you were just going to slip into a very picturesque coma and we’d end up having to bury you here. I have already started work on a very touching eulogy.”
She smiled. “How long have I been out?”
“A little more than two days, if you ignore the occasional semi-lucid moment when you woke up enough to take a drink and ask if Henri was here yet.”
Nancy noticed a paperback book on the floor beside him, a pitcher of water.
“Have you been playing nursemaid, Denden?”
He crossed his ankles. “When I haven’t been tapping away in a frenzy at my splendid new radio. London has made two drops to our new sites since you got back, the darlings, packed with all sorts of goodies. Including the rather fancy antiseptic creams the doctor and I have been rubbing all over the remains of your lovely skin. How does it feel?”
She thought. “Like cold water on a hot day. Since when do we have a doctor?”
“His name is Tanant. He’s come up to join us full time.”
Nancy nodded. Tanant was one of the sympathetic medical men whom Gaspard had “kidnapped” on D-Day to help with the wounded, a gray man in late middle age who had moved with calm and speed among those horrors. He was most welcome.
Nancy put out her hand, and Denden held her wrist as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up properly. Little flickers of fire ran through her muscles and when she put her hand to her neck she found another bandage on her shoulder.
“And the war?”
“Oh, that!” Denden said, handing her a glass and pouring a mix of water and wine into it. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“Just tell me.” She took a long swallow.
“Very well. The Germans are on the run, and the Allies have landed in the south.” He reached forward and put a hand on her knee. “Marseille has been liberated, but before you ask, no, we have no news about anyone the Gestapo might have still been holding there.” She took another drink. “So, Das Reich are desperately trying to get back to Germany before the Ruskies overrun the Fatherland and take revenge for all the shit the Nazis pulled when they invaded. It will not be pretty.”
He paused and rubbed the back of his neck, looking at her sideways.
“Denden…”
“Well, if you must know, London would like us… they are rather insistent in fact, to stop a battalion of SS getting back to Germany. They suggest forcing them to ‘a permanent halt’ in Cosne-d’Allier. They think we have three days.”
A battalion? Jesus.
“Oh yes, and they have a Panzer tank or two with them.”
“I don’t suppose they explained what they meant by ‘permanent halt,’ did they?”
Denden refilled her glass. “Reading between the lines, which is tough to do in code and a signal spiky with interference, they know perfectly well we can’t take prisoners, so the implication is if we have to kill them all even after they’ve surrendered, they won’t look too hard for the mass grave. Or we can hold them if we want until the Americans come sweeping in and handle the official cleanup.”
Nancy gave him back her glass and tried to stand up. A fresh Catherine wheel of pain shot off around her nervous system, but she didn’t fall over. For the first time she noticed her working clothes, slacks, tunic hanging from the back of the door. Did they get a laundry maid up here as well as a doctor?
She tottered over, and giving Denden a look which said, pretty clearly, I shall dress myself thank you very much, asked, “And what do the men say to this exciting suggestion from London?”
Denden sniffed. “The only person who is really happy is René because he’s been dying to fire his bazookas at a Panzer. The others are… inclined to be surly. It’s nearly over. They want to go home. Why risk dying and never seeing your family again when the Germans are beaten? Actually, I don’t think Tardivat cares any more. Fournier could go either way. Did you know his father ran a garage in Clermont? He wants to go back there. And Gaspard has apparently done taking orders from London now he’s been resupplied. Oh, and he’s promoted himself again. He’s a general now.”
Nancy shrugged on her tunic, and found a clean pair of socks in the pocket.
“Colonel Wake! Why are you putting your boots on?”
“Time to rally the troops. And if Gaspard has awarded himself a promotion, I think I shall too, so that’s Field Marshal Wake to you.”
Gaspard did not approve of her new title, but she didn’t give him much time to think about it. The moment she walked out of the farmhouse in her fresh uniform like Christ risen from the dead, she had them.
Fournier took one look at her, then crossed the yard to stand at her side. Tardivat followed, and as he passed in front of her, winked. Gaspard wasn’t coming over easy though.
“We are done! France is free!” he yelled at her when she announced her new rank and their orders. “The Germans are leaving! Why should we stand in the way? That was the whole fucking idea!”
The men behind him shifted nervously. The urge to go home and the urge to fight back, especially now they had new weapons in their hands again, were at war within them. She guessed the urge to fight was still stronger.
“On their own terms?” she said, straight at Gaspard, but loud enough for them all to hear. “Is that what you want? They come here, take your land, kill your people, and you’re just going to sit back and let the Americans and British get rid of them for you? Let them leave with their tanks and troops like they are on a parade? Wave them through so they can go fight the Russians after everything they have been through? What sort of men are you?”
She dropped the pretense she was talking to him, held out her arms.
“Gaspard’s right, I can’t make you stay. Know this, though: if you quit, France may achieve peace for a time, but you’ll never be at peace with yourselves. You can go home safely, but can you look your wives, your daughters in the face knowing you let the Germans walk over your land without striking a blow? Those Americans and British fighting to free your country, will you go whining to your mothers saying you wanted to go home? Or will you give them back their pride in their men? Will you give the women of France who have suffered and fought alongside you that gift? Give them back their belief. Deliver them their liberation!”
Then they started to cheer.