APRIL 22, 1944
LES TROIS-MOUTIERS
LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE
Gunfire rocketed through the trees.
“Stay down.”
The man wasted no time in issuing the order, just raised his rifle over a fallen tree and scanned the dense thicket as more shots echoed overhead. He’d only just led them out of the chapel and begun a steady trek through the woods when a rapid succession of gunshots had cut through the trees. Several steps later, despite the slight hitch of his limp, he halted and pulled Vi down to her knees in the underbrush beside him.
His demeanor read as straight confidence, enough that she obeyed. But she wasn’t a novice at running from a threat. With what she’d seen, Vi had been war tested long before now. He might have stopped to consider that if she’d been running from guns herself, she knew when to keep her head down and would do it on her own.
“It’s alright.” He shot a glance back at her, just once, then turned back to the direction of the gunfire.
“Why do you say that?” Vi stared ahead. Watching. Adjusting her knee away from a stone bent on cutting into her flesh as they held their positions.
“Because you’re shaking.”
Vi edged back. Blast! She’d crept up so close behind that she’d fused her nails into the moss-covered log and had pressed up against his back. She relaxed her fingertips. Her hands were shaking on their own, and being so close, he certainly would have felt it.
There went her plan to declare an assertion of courage.
“Well, I consider it a victory that I am not screaming in terror, to tell you the truth,” she whispered back, still scanning the forest for the telltale uniforms of Nazi gray. “I’ll take silent trembling and a cool head over that any day.”
His profile eased into the hint of a smile. “As would I.”
Nature stilled in response to the gunfire. Its usual sounds were replaced by something far more eerie: a melody creeping through the trees.
Music? Surely not.
Vi strained her ears, listening, waiting as notes drifted closer. The ping-ping of high-pitched notes lilted through the trees like a lost music box.
“What is that?” she whispered, seeing no movement against the overgrowth of fern, felled trees, and rocks that covered the forest floor around them.
“A gramophone. The Nazis probably found a stash of wine and are taking their jollies out with target practice on the castle ruins.”
“And they do that often?”
“Not as a rule, no. But we’ve seen it before. Sometimes they look to pick a fight in town. Other times they amuse themselves with whatever they have at their disposal. It’s something to do while they wait.”
That was little explanation. “While they wait for what?”
“The Allies.”
“The Allies?” Vi swallowed hard. “You’re quite sure of that.”
He nodded, his eyes fixed in front of them. “They’re coming. We just don’t know where or when. But it’s a rumor that persists enough to keep the Nazis locked in their posts. So now? We all wait. And pray to God to sustain us.”
A rumor.
Vi nodded. How many in France believed the Allies were coming? And what would happen when the truth finally played out? The intelligence she’d been privy to was more than rumor. More than innuendo she’d heard of Hitler’s military leaders at Château de La Roche-Guyon.
She clutched the messenger bag at her side, instinct eager to keep her secrets close. His attention wasn’t broken by the action though. He appeared not to notice—just pointed a finger over a ridge ahead of them.
“There’s enough cover beyond the hill that we should be able to slip out unseen. It’s something of a good hike, but we’ll be able to get out if we go right now.” He looked down at her shoes and shook his head. Dirt-caked shoes with thick heels probably weren’t what he’d hoped to see. “I hadn’t remembered what you were wearing. With the accent I was half afraid to find a pair of heels on you. But lace-up oxfords are close enough to it. You won’t be able to keep up.”
“I would have given up these heeled stompers a long time ago, had I been given a choice. The old coat and dress too. But war is not a garden party, monsieur. You take what you can and hold on to what you have. I learned that about the same time I started my career in pear stealing.”
That comment garnered a genuine smile from him. “I suppose you do have to make quick getaways in that line of work.”
“If you say we’ll escape Nazis with itchy trigger fingers, then I’m more than ready to make any getaway you’d like. You just might find that in the end, you’re the one who has to keep up with my oxfords.”
Mustered courage in her words was something she used to overshadow the opposite tells of her physical presence. He must have known it because Vi could still feel the slight quiver of her hands. She hid them in busyness, adjusting the bag’s strap over her shoulder instead.
Hunger. Fear. A combination of both—whatever had caused the trembling, he either hadn’t noticed or simply let it go without comment. With one final check over the vantage point to the direction of the castle, he edged forward like he was about to spring.
She stopped short, pulling him back at the elbow. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Your name?” she whispered. “I can’t keep calling you monsieur, and I sure don’t want you calling me English again. I shouldn’t want to keep smacking the sod who’s rendering my aid.”
“For a Brit you sure don’t pull any punches.”
“Aren’t we in the business of survival? Your words. If we’re risking our lives with this run, I’d like to at least be on a first-name basis in case I have to curse you for getting me killed.”
“I’m not sure what good it does to exchange names when we’ll only have to part ways again. It’s safer if we don’t know anything about one another.”
“Safer how?”
He wasn’t ready to elaborate, apparently. Neither was she. So they were at a hefty stalemate in the middle of the woods.
“Julien.”
“Is that your name?”
Again, he didn’t linger in the details.
“You’re English, so . . . Lady. That’s your name while you’re here. Anyone asks, that’s what you reply.”
“That’s fine for the French, but you do realize what Dame is in English? You don’t have to be terribly clever to connect the dots on what that implies.”
She could think of a list of less flattering things to be called, starting with mud-caked pear-stealer. But he’d moved on, pulling his rifle down, preparing to run. Lady it would have to be for now, and she’d pick a fight over propriety later.
“We’ll head northwest. You’ll see a small riverbed after a kilometer or so. There’s only one way over—a stone bridge they like to keep up with random patrolling. We’ll have to cut over in the other direction, along the forest, where it’s shallow enough to wade through. Then across the vineyards to the opposite tree line.”
Vi sighed low. “Is that all?”
“For the moment, it’s enough.” A pair of errant pistol shots pierced the woods. Julien shifted his glance in the direction of the sound. It was followed by the faint echo of laughter somewhere far off, though it only lasted for a few seconds. “Ready, Lady?”
She nodded.
It was then or never—and she’d come too far to accept never.
“Allons-y!” He sent her off with the whispered shout of “Let’s go,” then jumped out on her heels and lapped her to lead the way.
The trek through the woods was faster than she’d imagined, especially since she was in foreign surroundings and Julien didn’t appear exactly surefooted. Still, they angled over rocks and around overgrown thickets, moving at a quick pace.
Twigs poked at her legs. Branches—the scraggly, sharp kind—punished with unyielding snaps as they swept by. Vi ducked and moved each time she felt them reach for her. Best to be nimble or she’d take a limb to the face. She could navigate the rough terrain, though bone weary and hungry as an ox. Running through the woods was her specialty now, as was hiding from hunger. Even death. As long as Julien could keep pace against those things, so could she.
The landscape muddled in a blur of greens and ruddy browns, trees and earth. The ground was soft from spring rains—disastrous if the sole of her oxford caught in the forest floor. She could turn an ankle or worse. Vi picked up her feet as best she could, keeping her gaze locked on Julien’s back, minding her footing even without a sense of direction as to where he was taking them.
The same landscape bled by like a moving picture show until she’d lost sense of anything but trees. Underbrush. The sound of water as they crossed rocks lining the streambed. More earth and sky and running.
Then—gold.
That’s what swept in around them. The overgrowth of the thicket broke open and the vineyards spread out before them, rolling in hills of lush vines, greens and warm golds awash in sunlight piercing rays through the clouds.
“This way.” Julien led them into the vineyard rows, his gait in a steady half run.
Vi had seen the Loire Valley’s grape arbors before, though most she’d passed by had been burned, picked clean, or withered as casualties of war. They bordered roads, uneven. Bombed out and littered with the carcasses of horses and abandoned wagons and—Lord help her—the occasional crumpled body . . . The remnants of death were left to rot for days, weeks, even months now. It was stark, to have passed by darkness as if unaffected.
But then, in a snap: life again. Vines covered with scores of tiny grape buds, vibrant and green, and young leaves shining under a glaze of morning dew. The view became otherworldly—a mirage of normalcy in their war-ravaged world, with row after cultured row of life flourishing under the warmth of the sun.
Julien didn’t stop, so she didn’t either, not even when her side issued a sharp hitch from the pace. Vi ran with her shoulders drooped but her head up, keeping in step with him as they passed through arbor rows.
The forest landscape was finally revived, creating a thick tree line at the opposite extension of the vineyard. He led them over a rise, taking her hand to help her climb the rocky incline. He released her when the ridge leveled out. An expanse of a stone wall took shape, running behind a humble cottage tucked in the crest of the incline. It was hidden, with lofty trees overhead and a vantage point of the break in the canopy, a perfect view of the long road to the castle below.
Vi stood, taking in a fairy-tale view of castle spires climbing through the trees, grazing the clouds. “What is this place?”
“Old winemaker’s cottage on the estate.” He’d slowed to a walk but kept moving, intent upon getting them under cover. “This way.” Julien pulled a key from his pocket—one of the old, iron kind that rusted in the folds of intricate carvings along the shaft. He turned it in the tiny lock hole in a weathered wood door, then led her inside.
Two steps in, Vi bent over at the knees, still trying to catch her breath. Julien recovered more quickly, gripped his rifle tight in one hand, and clicked the door closed with the other.
Dark fabric blacked out the windows, but a thin veil of sunlight peeked under the door, just enough that Vi could begin to make sense of the cottage layout. It was a single ground-floor room. Stairs snaked up the far wall, looking dangerously aged. There were no other doors that she could plainly see and few furnishings, save for an oversized bookshelf, near empty, that dominated a corner tucked behind the stone fireplace.
Julien stepped into view, arms braced across his chest and a severe clench to his jaw. “That was incredibly foolish.”
They were the absolute last words she’d expected to hear. Vi shot up to standing, her breaths still rocking in and out. “Pardon?”
“You trusted me.”
“Of course I trusted you—it was either that or risk getting a bullet in the back. I hadn’t any other choice.”
“Didn’t they train you at all?”
“Who?” She swallowed hard, feigning her best show of innocence. “Train me for what?”
“What are you, a secretary masquerading as a spy?” Julien shook his head, making no effort to hide what he felt about such a ludicrous idea.
Vi’s heart rate kicked up a notch, the drumbeat echoing in her ears.
What? How much does he know?
The Nazis may not have been the only ones to circulate her photo. The thought rocked her, that Julien may know more about her than he was letting on. But that was pure speculation, and it would require her to reveal too much even to inquire.
Julien flitted his glare to the rifle he’d leaned up against the table, then rested his eyes back on her. “How did you know I wouldn’t put a bullet in your head right here? Or turn you in to the nearest uniform for a pittance of food? You must be smarter than this if you mean to stay alive here longer than five minutes. They shoot milkmaids too, you know. And secretaries. The multilingual kind go first.”
As much as Vi hated to admit it, he was right.
Men at war wouldn’t hesitate to work out their trigger fingers. And truth was, besides the name Julien had given and where he stashed food rations, she knew next to nothing about him. He could have been in league with the Nazi presence in nearby Loudun, and that would have been it; a firing squad in the town square with her as an example to the rest.
“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking . . .”
Julien didn’t take it further, much to her relief.
He crossed the room and tinkered with the surface of a sideboard against the wall. The small flicker ignited the end of a matchstick with a pop. He cupped his hand around the flame and lit a kerosene lamp, then turned around to face her.
“Only use the lantern if absolutely necessary. I lit it now so you can get your bearings. Bumping into things could signal your presence inside. The matches are in the sideboard, top drawer. But take care with them. They’re a luxury now—all we’ve got left.”
He walked the length of the room, casting a glow on the back corner beneath the stairs. The light revealed a cot and a folded woolen blanket, a wooden stand with a metal pitcher and chipped porcelain basin, and a floor-to-ceiling shelf with empty mason jars and stacks of books.
“Pitcher and basin in the far corner with water left over from yesterday. Soap next to the basin and a towel on a bar under the window. There’s an old hand mirror in the drawer but it’s cracked, so mind you don’t cut yourself.”
“A broken mirror. Isn’t that bad luck?”
“Let’s hope not, for both our sakes. We need all of it and more at present.”
Vi paused at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. They were steep and wooden planked, with a flimsy rail overlooking the room where they stood. “And up there?”
“A loft. Sleep there if you’d like, but it’s near empty. We used the last of the furniture to feed the woodstove last winter.”
She ran a finger along the edge of the bookshelf. “But not these.”
“They’re bolted to the fireplace. Would’ve taken too much effort to dislodge them when there’s firewood growing all around the cottage. But don’t worry. They’ll have their day. Another winter like the last one and this cottage may be reduced to kindling and a pile of stones.” He looked around and sighed. “I wish it were more, but this is all we have to offer you.”
We.
It was the first time she’d considered that this man may have a family. She had to know. If it was the case, a wife—children even—she’d put them all at risk just by being here.
“You have a family then?”
He nodded. “Every person on the vineyard grounds is part of our family. Unless they’re the enemy. The enemy we tolerate. Watch. And keep our rifle sights trained on in the event we’re forced to defend against their threat. Boches are our enemy around here, and any indifference on their part eventually becomes our ally.”
The fact that he’d make such a distinction didn’t sit well.
“Which do you think I am? Family, or enemy?”
“Neither. You’re invisible right now. That is, until I decide what to do with you.”
“You said you’d hide me here . . .”
“Yes. And I’m sorry if this is not what you were expecting, but it’s the way it must be. With no disappearing back to the castle ruins or the chapel. If they think anyone has helped you, we’re all at risk. I won’t take that chance. Do you understand? If I let you stay here, you stay.”
Julien was right. Besides the sparse furnishings and a central stone hearth, there wasn’t much to the space. No running water. No bathroom facilities. Certainly no phone line. It was like some woodcutter’s cottage she’d read about in a fairy story—tucked away, forgotten by time, just like the castle. She couldn’t think of a single friend back home who would give up her rationed nylons or her lipstick, let alone rough it out in some rustic hovel in the woods. But if he thought the surroundings were a detriment to her, they were just the opposite.
Even for its lack of comforts, the cottage was what Vi needed most.
It was her third savior of the day.
“Can you abide by my terms?” He’d already placed the lantern on the table and stood off behind her, quiet. Waiting. Watching her as she took in what the cottage offered.
“Thank you, Julien. I’ll stay.” To look around and feel a measure of safety was so foreign, she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have her heart beat at a normal decibel. “And I’m grateful. Truly.”
“Thank me by doing as I ask.”
Vi wrapped her hand around the cross-shoulder strap of her bag. “And how long am I to be here?”
“We’ll see tomorrow. For now, rest. Will you need anything else tonight?”
“Wait—you’re leaving?”
He cupped his hand around the lantern’s glass hurricane, preparing to extinguish the flame. “Yes. Before anyone realizes I’m gone, and certainly before I have to explain why. I’d rather not lie my way through breakfast if I can help it. Stories always manage to come to light, no matter how we try to protect them. If no one asks a question, then I don’t have to provide an answer. If there’s no answer, then there’s no you.”
“And that’s what you’re doing then, protecting me?”
“I’m protecting everyone.” He surprised her by retrieving a pear from one pocket and setting it on the table. “For lunch.” And then another, setting the fruit side by side. He lowered his head to her, offering a polite nod. “And dinner, though I wish it was more.”
“It’s enough.” She tipped her shoulders in a light shrug, patting the canvas bag against her side. “I didn’t mention it, but I kept back some of the walnuts too, just in case. Couldn’t risk going hungry if you’d said no.”
Julien nodded again and let a soft smile spread his lips in a speechless touché. He picked up the rifle and carried it over, extending it to her. “Do you know how to fire one of these?”
Viola took the rifle, wasted no time inspecting the chamber to see if it had a live round. It did. She then checked that the sight was level, eyeing a stone she picked in the far wall, then lowered it in a firm, double-fisted grip in front of her.
“I think I can manage.”
“Right. Well, then I’ll leave you to it. And I’ll bring you water in the morning, before sunup if I can. Until then, stay out of sight. And get small in that loft if you hear the slightest noise outside.”
She nodded. “I will.”
“Bonsoir, Lady.” He left without another word, the sound of the door bolt jarring and final.
Vi went to the window and slipped her finger against the black woolen fabric, enough so she could see him disappear into the woods.
The same view rose behind him: castle spires peeking up over the tops of the trees. The sun pierced the sky above it now, in the spot where clouds had once met the ground in layers of morning mist. Other than a slight touch of wind that kissed the treetops, no movement stirred along the road. No sound. The gunfire had stopped and music no longer carried through the trees, though she doubted she could have heard it from that far away.
There was only . . . stillness. Her body protested with the realization of it.
Safety brought the nagging ills of her weary physique back to the forefront, her stomach lurching and muscles crying out for attention. She turned to the pitcher and basin first, pouring water over her cupped hand.
Washing was the first, weary step.
Vi took time with it, though the water stung like daggers against her skin. But she couldn’t care. It was a luxury to wash—to feel like a woman, even human again. She reached for the molded lump of soap, a sickly beige color smelling of turpentine. Washing pain away with the dirt and grime tingeing the water.
The cracked mirror she left in the drawer. Maybe another day she’d take it out. But not today. Exhaustion befriended her the moment she’d replaced the towel on its rack.
Vi picked up the rifle, carrying it to the back corner of the cottage. The pears and walnuts would also have to wait their turn. And the rest of the forest would have to pass the time without knowing where she was. Because in that moment, Viola Hart felt her physical hunger abate. The hunger for a safe haven was now satiated, and for however long it lasted, it was enough.
She leaned her back against the wall and slid down to the floor.
The rifle she laid by her right hand, for quick access should she need it, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Vi would do as Julien asked. She’d stay put. Remain invisible to the world, and try to sleep in the meantime. Above all, she would protect her secrets—starting with the fact that he’d been an answer to her most desperate prayers.
He was her fourth savior in one day.