Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

The narrow stone bridge that arched across the stream running parallel to the road had a gravel path twisting uphill through a thick wood on the other side of it. It was there that Genevieve left the bus to continue her journey on foot. The bridge was hand built in the previous century of local stone. As she crossed it, the creek, brown and shallow, babbled over the rocks as it had always done. In the summers she and Emmy had waded in that creek, their shoes off and their skirts tucked up. Sometimes they’d been alone, sometimes they’d been joined by Phillippe Cheviot, son of the farmer who’d owned the aforementioned barn. In those later summers, Phillippe, who was Emmy’s age exactly, had seemed to spend a lot of time fishing that creek. She realized only later that he’d done so because he’d been crazy in love with Emmy—all the boys, it seemed, had been crazy in love with Emmy, but he’d had an advantage because he lived so close. She, of course, had followed the little-sister script by falling crazy in love with Phillippe. The heartbreak that had resulted—there’d been so much heartbreak, too much heartbreak, she couldn’t bear remembering.

If we’d only known what was to come.

But the terrible truth of life was that it was never given to anyone to know what the future held.

Thrusting the shade of her younger self, their younger selves, from her mind, she concentrated instead on what lay ahead as she followed the familiar path that twisted this way and that through a medley of beeches and oaks and pines and hawthorns.

The branches, some thorny, some budding with newly green leaves, some evergreen and heavy with needles, interlaced above her head, forming a dim tunnel. Climbing, she took in the smell of resin and pine and broom, listened to the chatter of birds and squirrels, and realized she was running only when she burst out into the clearing at the bottom of the final rise and looked up past the final ten meters of sheer granite cliff that rose like a wall in front of her—and there it was.

Rocheford.

She stopped where she was, breathing hard, as her heart swelled and her throat choked tight.

Situated on a promontory that jutted out over a rocky beach and crashing waves far below, with unparalleled views of the harbor and the sea in one direction and the estuary and its surroundings in the other, the château was four stories tall with a soaring slate roof. Built in the seventeenth century in the Louis XIII baroque style, its facade of stone and brick had faded over the centuries to a soft rose-and-cream coloration. Heavily decorated with stone carvings of gargoyles and related otherworldly creatures above the eaves and around the innumerable arched windows, it bore the de Rocheford coat of arms embedded in the pediment above the front door. The gardens and grounds encompassed the five plus hectares at the top of the promontory. The home farm and the fields used in the cultivation of the Melon de Bourgogne grapes that were the estate’s lifeblood spread out at the base of the cliff for another two hundred hectares.

Looking up at the house, a thousand memories swirled through her head in an instant: not the later years, when the economy had crashed and they’d had to sell Maman’s jewelry and then the furniture piece by piece to survive, but the earlier ones, the happier ones. Running into Emmy’s room at night when storms raged and thunder boomed so close above the château that the very walls seemed to shake, jumping into her sister’s bed and huddling under the covers with her until the night grew still again; singing, always singing, especially Maman’s favorite, “Ca c’est Paris,” in duet with Emmy as Maman played the Mistinguett tune on the piano in the green parlor; hanging over the banister, first with Emmy and then, as Emmy grew up, alone, watching the girls in their swirling dance frocks, the boys with their slicked-back hair and correct evening clothes that made them look so grown up. She remembered Emmy, sixteen at the time, beautiful in a white party dress, looking up to find her there behind the banister where the two of them used to watch the partygoers together. Emmy had smiled and waved, just a small wave, not enough to give her little sister’s presence away, and whispered, “Je te tiens, tu me tiens.” It was their catchphrase—I’ve got you, you’ve got me—taken from a nursery rhyme in a book their mother used to read to them, and it immediately made Genevieve feel better, reassuring her that the twosome that had been her and Emmy was unbroken. Then, later, Emmy had brought up a selection of delicacies from the refreshment table that they’d shared, giggling at the tales Emmy told about the boys she’d danced with, before Emmy went down to rejoin the festivities. Genevieve felt a stab of nostalgia for those long-ago days, for the way things had been, for the glittering parties she had never, in all the years she had lived there, been officially old enough to attend—not that that had stopped her. Nothing and no one had ever been able to stop her from doing anything she chose, although her mother had certainly tried.

Maman. Papa. Emmy. How she longed for them.

Despite the way it had ended, despite the darkness and the pain, all she wanted to do in that moment was race the rest of the way to the top of the cliff, race up the imposing stone staircase that led to the front door, race inside to them.

But they’re all gone. The shaft of pain that accompanied the thought was agonizing.

A flag had been mounted beside the front door. The wind caught it, set it to waving. Red, white and black: a swastika.

Her mind recoiled. She took an instinctive step back.

Papa would never permit...

But they said he was dead.

A German soldier came out the front door. An officer in a peaked cap and greatcoat, calling a cheerful “Auf Wiedersehen” to someone behind him in the house.

Genevieve melted into the shadow of the trees as two soldiers came running around the side of the château to stand at attention while the officer descended the steps. At the same time, a big black Mercedes-Benz, its tires crunching over the gravel drive, came round from the back where the garages and stables were located. One of the soldiers opened the rear car door. The officer got in, the soldier slammed the door shut and the car drove away.

The soldiers then went up the steps and into the house. She could only assume they were quartered there.

Her heart gave an odd little kick. With a real effort of will she managed to shift a mental gear that put her immediate visceral reaction behind her. That there were Nazis living at Rocheford was simply one more blow she had to accept, one more desecration wrought by war.

Turning, she walked swiftly through the trees along the path that wound through this last heavily wooded part of the cliff.

If her mother was in hiding, she would not be in the house anyway.

But Genevieve had a good idea where she might be.

That knowledge was the reasonable part of what had prompted her headlong rush to Rocheford. The other part was pure unreasoning emotion.

Leaving the path, pushing through a tangle of hollies and gorse overhung with vines, she reached the fissure in the rock that would be invisible to anyone outside the curtain of plants and slipped inside. The passage was narrow and crooked, a tight fit in places even for someone as slender as herself. The stone on either side was the rough, cold granite of the cliff that supported the house. Barely enough light filtered through to enable her to see the wooden door at the end—and, beside it, the knee-level gash in the stone that was just wide enough for a woman’s smallest finger to probe inside.

She crouched, probed and found it, stashed away in that crack where it had been kept for the whole of her life, and longer: a key.

Fishing it out, she unlocked the door, then tucked the key safely back inside the gash. Doing so had been drilled into her by her mother, whose spare key it was, until the action became as automatic as breathing.

She pushed the door open. The heavy panel moved without making a sound: no creak, no groan. Which told her that the door had been used recently and had been cared for to prevent the rust and swelling with which the damp sea air afflicted all things wooden and metal.

No sound, either, from inside what was in essence a small natural cave that opened through a door on its other end into the outermost of the château’s labyrinthian cellars.

Genevieve found herself hesitating on the threshold, peering cautiously into pitch darkness as a pungent fishy odor rolled out to envelop her.

She knew that smell: mushrooms. It brought her mother back to her as vividly as if Lillian stood before her. All her life, her mother had studied mushrooms, collected them, cultivated them.

Her hopes soared: she had not been inside the cave in years, but it was obvious from the ease with which she had opened the door, from the smell—living, growing mushrooms—from the very quality of the air, that someone made frequent and familiar use of it.

Who could it be, except—

“Ach, look, it’s the BDM!” That taunting cry—the BDM was the League of German Girls, the distaff segment of the Hitler Youth—made her jump. The voice belonged to a man she could only assume was a soldier. It floated down from above, from the château grounds. A second soldier, clearly indignant at being jeeringly called a girl, shot back, “Shut your mouth, imbecile, and get moving.”

A shiver of warning slid down Genevieve’s spine as she was reminded of exactly how close the Germans were. She closed her lips, which had been parted to call out to her mother: she dared not, lest she bring the soldiers down upon them.

Cursing herself for not having thought to bring a torch, she walked cautiously inside the cave, looking about her as she traversed the well-worn stone underfoot. It was warmer in here, and the air was heavy and moist. The shaft of dim light from the open doorway allowed her to see only so far: the high curved ceiling, the uneven corners, the nooks and crannies shrouded in gloom. Her mother, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be seen.

If Lillian was in hiding, logic dictated that she would have whisked out of sight at the opening of the door. If she was injured, she could be lying on the floor, tucked into a corner, curled up anywhere, concealed by darkness.

Narrowing her eyes, Genevieve tried probing the shadows: she could see nothing.

Only then did it occur to her to wonder what she would do with her mother if she found her. Save her had been the impetus that had driven her to Cherbourg, but exactly how that was to be accomplished she hadn’t questioned. Now she did. The logistics were daunting: she had to be back in Paris, at the theater and prepared to go onstage, for a six o’clock show. Attempting the return journey in the company of a woman being actively hunted by the Nazis would be beyond risky. If Lillian was wounded or injured, the task of getting her to Paris became that much harder. It was also possible that Lillian would be too injured to travel. Then what?

I’ll worry about that when I find her.

Everything else must fall into place from there.

Walking deeper into the cave, ears straining to separate the outside noises from any possible sounds coming from the darkness in front of her, she saw the shadowy outline of the wooden table where her mother was accustomed to sit while she cleaned the mushrooms, sorted them or removed the pores from the undersides of mushroom caps, which was a delicate, tedious procedure.

Placing a hand on the smooth, cool surface, Genevieve glanced down to find her mother’s curved knife with the scarred beechwood handle and brush on one end resting mere centimeters from the tips of her fingers. There was no mistaking that the knife was the same, that the table was the same.

Her throat tightened. Despite everything, despite all that had happened, it seemed impossible that she had stayed away so long.

Lillian had taught her the fine art of handling mushrooms at that table, with that knife. A vision of her younger self, in her oldest frock with a kerchief tied around her head to keep out the dirt that might sift down from the ceiling, seated there while her mother, similarly attired, lifted the mushrooms they had collected together from a basket as she explained how to tell the ones that were good to eat from the poisonous ones replayed itself in her mind’s eye.

She had always loved to go into the marsh to gather mushrooms with her mother, then bring them in here to sort and clean. Possibly, she saw with the wisdom of hindsight, because Emmy had wanted nothing to do with it. Fastidious Emmy had hated the marsh, and the cave, and mushrooms.

This was a place and an interest that she and Lillian alone had shared.

A heavy ache radiated out from the middle of her chest.

Remembering how close the four of them had been once upon a time hurt.

She would never have suspected that in the deepest recesses of her heart, beyond the chasm created by Vivi’s death, they remained her family still.

The years of estrangement had felt long and hard. At times she’d been so lonely, and missed them so terribly, that it was a physical ache inside her. But to reach out to them would be to open a door to the past, and that she couldn’t do.

The past held so much pain. Rejection, shame, loss—closing herself off from it had been the only way she’d been able to survive.

Shuddering, Genevieve thrust the memories from her mind.

She glanced down. Besides the knife there was also an oil lamp on the table—no electricity in here.

Wait. She heard something—she thought she heard something—at the far end of the cave. Her gaze snapped up. Was something—somebody—there?

Loath to move completely beyond the reach of the triangle of light, she stayed where she was. Her eyes having grown more accustomed to the darkness, she peered intently toward where she thought the sound had come from. She saw nothing, heard nothing more.

After a moment of concentrated listening with no result, the tension in her body eased. She turned her attention to assessing everything she could see. Years before, shallow tiers of earth and growing medium had been built terrace-style up the walls. Now a variety of mushrooms filled the tiers. The cèpes with their spongy undersides; the reddish-tinted sanguins; the pied de moutons, so called because they looked like a sheep’s foot; the large and small amethysts; the grisettes; the common funnel caps: all those and more she recognized. Trowels and rakes and watering cans hung from their accustomed hooks. Wicker baskets were stacked on shelves. As far as she could tell, nothing had changed since she had last entered this place at the age of fifteen.

She had no doubt at all that this was still the workroom, and the work, of her mother.

Beyond the end of the table, from the area where she thought the sound had come, the darkness remained impenetrable. If Lillian was there, she gave no sign. Of course, even if Lillian was there and saw her, she would appear to her mother as no more than a dark silhouette against the light filtering in through the door. Lillian almost certainly would not recognize that silhouette as her younger daughter. After all this time, she had to be just about the last person her mother would expect to see.

There was no help for it.

Taking a breath, all too conscious of the danger of being overheard, Genevieve whispered, “Maman.”

A rustle of movement was the only warning she got before someone leaped on her from behind.

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