Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

The newcomer waited with the others. He gave her another of those hard, appraising looks as she emerged to join them. It made her nervous.

“Follow me. Be quick and quiet,” he said to the group in general as Vartan appeared behind her, and with the two others following, he loped off down the path in the opposite direction from the way she had come up.

Acutely conscious of the too-fast beating of her pulse, Genevieve fell in behind the three men, with Vartan bringing up the rear. Remembering the soldiers on the château grounds earlier that for all she knew were still there, she didn’t speak, nor did anyone else. The only sounds the small party made were their quickened breathing as the leader set a bruising pace and the hurried slither of their footsteps on the path, which was steep and slick with fallen leaves.

Finally, winded, they emerged just above a dirt road where an ancient-looking farm truck waited in a turnout, blocked from the view of anyone passing on the main road by the sheltering woods. In front of her, on the other side of the road, were the hectares of land where Rocheford’s vines had been lovingly tended for more than a century. Now the fields lay muddy and forlorn. Row upon row of broken, shriveled clumps of dead sticks and blackened leaves were all that remained of the grapes that had been the estate’s primary source of income. Even when that income had dropped to a pittance and Papa had been forced to take a job in town so that they could survive, the pride had remained. Papa had cared for the fields and the vines with his own hands, fighting to keep what he called the heart and soul of Rocheford alive.

Shock stopped her in her tracks. She could only gape. Winter was the primary time for pruning the vines. In spring they burst forth renewed. By now the sap should be rising, the buds breaking and the perfect flowers—so-called because they didn’t need bees for pollination—appearing in delicate white clouds. Instead there was ruin.

As Vartan caught up to her she gestured, stunned, at the fields. “The vines—”

Stopping beside her, he gave a mournful shake of his head. “We tried to save them, all of us, the old hands, even in the last years working side by side with your father for no pay. It was no use. When our army retreated toward the coast after the fall of France, the Germans followed with their panzers. Their tanks went right through these fields. Their soldiers bivouacked here. The vines were crushed, trampled. Then came the Allies with their air strikes. The vines were bombed, burned. So many times, I’ve lost count. Until there was too much damage. In any case, for many months now there has been no one left to care for them. They are destroyed, just like everything else we valued.”

Genevieve felt sick to her stomach. Her first thought was how upset her father must be—must have been.

I should have returned sooner. I should have been here to help him bear the burden.

A lump formed in her throat, and the topic she had been avoiding became impossible to hold at bay any longer.

“He was happy?”

“Your Papa?” Vartan shrugged. “Who is happy, in these times? He was surviving, and that was enough.”

“Where is he? His—body? Do you know?” She could hardly get the words out.

Vartan’s mouth thinned. “They took him. Dumped him in the sea like trash.”

She closed her eyes, let the anger and the hate and the pain wash over her. Damn the boche. Then, Maman is alive. I must think of her.

I never want to see you again. Those were the last words she had said to her mother. At the time, she’d meant them with every cell in her body. Now her insides shriveled when she thought that they might be the last words she would ever speak to her in this life.

She opened her eyes, squared her shoulders and walked on down the hill. Vartan followed.

The newcomer had pulled back the tarpaulin covering the truck bed. As she approached, Genevieve saw that it was loaded with carboys filled with a golden liquid. With a rattle and a creak of hinges, he lowered a narrow wooden panel beneath the floor of the truck bed to reveal a hidden compartment.

“Climb in.” He gestured to Tomas and the other man.

“I’m too big,” Tomas objected, hanging back and eyeing the space with misgiving. Meanwhile the other man, with a resolute expression, shoved his rucksack into the opening, stuck his head in after it, and followed that with his shoulders and chest before wriggling the rest of his body inside.

“There is no other way,” the newcomer said to Tomas. “Get in or stay behind.”

“If he’s going toward town, could you ask him to give me a ride?” Genevieve spoke to Vartan in an undertone as Tomas, with much kicking and squirming and under-the-breath cursing, both on his part and that of the newcomer who was rather brutally assisting him, managed to squeeze into the secret compartment despite his doubts. Her voice was steady, but she feared the desperation she was feeling must show in her eyes. The thought of waiting for the bus made her want to jump out of her skin. If transport could not be arranged soon, she would run every step of the way if she had to, to get there. Each minute of delay was agony.

Vartan went up to the newcomer, who was closing the panel and locking it in place, and said something. The newcomer responded with a sour glance in Genevieve’s direction and then a shrug.

Vartan beckoned her over. “Our friend here has graciously agreed to give us a ride to town. I must just get my bicycle.”

Genevieve registered that us with a twinge of relief: at least she would not have to face what was coming alone. Without a word to Genevieve, the newcomer turned to walk toward the truck cab. Determined not to be left behind no matter what, Genevieve did not wait but climbed up into the cab as the newcomer got behind the wheel.

A moment later, the bicycle having joined the carboys in the back of the truck, Vartan heaved himself in beside Genevieve. The truck jounced onto the road and headed out.

“I’m not going all the way into Cherbourg. I can take you only as far as where the road branches off for Valognes,” the newcomer warned them.

“That will do,” Vartan said. Genevieve said nothing. Her heart bumped against her ribs. It was all she could do to sit still.

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Though she bit her lip to keep from saying them aloud, the words beat a tattoo through her head.

The truck pulled over at the edge of town.

“You will send word?” Vartan asked.

“I will,” the newcomer answered.

Vartan nodded and got out. Genevieve slid out behind him.

Perhaps if she went to whoever was in charge and told them she was the Black Swan and Lillian was her mother, she could persuade them to spare her.

It was a nearly impossible hope, she knew, and it came with a host of inherent problems, not the least of which was that it might well turn the eyes of the Nazis toward Max. But she could think of nothing else that had any chance of succeeding.

Desperation knotted her stomach.

I can’t just let her die.

Genevieve rode through town seated on the handlebars of Vartan’s battered old bicycle, fingers locked around the cold metal, teeth clenched against the jolting as the tires bumped over pavement pockmarked with craters left from the bombs, chest so tight with anxiety that she found it difficult to breathe. With gas almost impossible to obtain, bicycles had become the most common mode of transportation throughout France, and they attracted no attention now.

The civilian population was sadly diminished. Genevieve remembered a bustling city of forty thousand people. From what she could tell, only a fraction remained. Shops were closed and houses were shuttered. Thin, shabbily dressed women hurried along the streets clutching shopping bags and holding small children by the hand, their heads bowed as they did their best to avoid notice.

Soldiers stood on every corner, far more of them than she had noticed earlier. She realized with a fresh burst of fear that they must have been ordered to take up their positions in case of trouble. A repeated announcement blasting from military trucks rolling through the streets advised that there would be a public execution in the square at Old Town at one o’clock. All adult citizens who were not at that time engaged in vital work were required to attend. Knowing that the Germans were sticklers for punctuality, she glanced at her watch: it lacked thirteen minutes of the hour.

A crowd of about a thousand was already gathering around the square, which stood almost in the shadow of Fort du Roule. Built high atop a rocky hill overlooking the harbor and the city, Fort du Roule was a coastal fortress freshly armed and outfitted by the Germans to ward off attacks by sea. As formidable as it was, the fort itself was nothing new: it had stood in that spot since the seventeenth century. Genevieve’s eyes focused instead on the massive concrete wall that stretched out along the harbor and beyond. Newly built, ugly and raw, bristling with troop pillboxes, machine guns, antiaircraft weapons and searchlights, it dominated its surroundings. Such an overwhelming display of military might sent goose bumps racing over her skin.

She remembered the old men in the bus. Were they right? Was Germany’s ultimate victory inevitable?

With difficulty she tore her gaze away. Her heart sank as she registered for the first time how overwhelming the military presence truly was. How would it be possible for the Allies to prevail against that? For that matter, how would it be possible for her, alone, or even with Vartan’s help, to get her mother away?

Perhaps I can trade with them for her life. Max had said the Reich minister of armaments and war production had just personally contacted him, declaring himself a fan and inquiring about the possibility of her doing a concert in Berlin.

If they would only release her mother, she would perform a dozen concerts.

But who would she even see to make such a deal? She had no idea, and there was no time.

She wished Max were here.

Rising panic quickened her breathing, dried her mouth.

The streets around the square had been closed to vehicular traffic. They were packed with people. Vartan’s bicycle wound its way among them, slowing repeatedly as it avoided pedestrians and bumped over holes in the cobblestones. Genevieve gritted her teeth as she clung to her precarious perch.

A brisk salt wind blew in from the bay, kicking up whitecaps and sending wispy clouds scudding. Pale sunlight slanted down to gleam on a metal gutter here, a glass window there. Against a background of teal blue sea and ice-blue sky, Old Town, rising up from the docks in layers like a wedding cake, retained at first glance much of the charm it held in her memory. Stone buildings with elaborate wrought iron balconies wrapped around a maze of narrow, cobbled streets. The parklike square, once well kept and beautiful, was in the center of the uppermost layer.

Now, though, the trees were gone, and what grass remained was sparse. All that survived of the central fountain was its broken concrete pool. The cathedral at the far end had fared little better: one of its crenellated towers had been destroyed and a tarpaulin covered the resulting hole in its roof. The buildings around the square likewise bore visible marks of war damage.

As they reached the square, her heart sank. Armed soldiers ringed the perimeter, facing outward, standing shoulder to shoulder with their rifles in their hands to form a bulwark against the crowd that, because of the pressure from those pouring in from behind, surged ever closer to them. More armed soldiers hunkered down on roofs. Still more were positioned on balconies and in upper windows of the buildings. The numbers were staggering. The silent message was clear: any wrong move on the part of the citizenry would result in a massacre.

When the bicycle could go no farther, Genevieve slid off the handlebars onto legs that were unsteady. With fingers stiff from holding on so tightly, she adjusted her scarf, making sure it was pulled far forward enough to hide her face. Shifting from foot to foot, barely able to contain her agitation, she had to fight to hold her ground next to Vartan in the midst of the jostling crowd. A steady hum composed of countless low-voiced conversations rose above the muffled thuds and booms and hammerings of the busy harbor, where what sounded like a hundred projects were currently underway. Except for a few disjointed fragments that reached her ears—“retaliation,” “damn the Brits,” “pilot,” “all their fault,” “how many?”—the individual voices were so intermingled that it reminded her of the buzzing of a swarm of bees. A glance around confirmed what she already knew: dismal resignation was the prevalent mood. Some jaws were clenched in anger, some eyes glittered with outrage, but most of those in attendance stood with shoulders hunched and faces blank. Sickened, maybe, but helpless in the face of what was to come and unwilling to do anything to attract the attention of those who held over them the power of life and death.

“What can we do?” she whispered.

Vartan didn’t reply. The bleakness of his expression made her stomach drop straight down to her toes. It told her as clearly as words might have done how desperate he considered the situation to be.

“Could Emmy—” she didn’t want to be any more specific; she was whispering, but even a whisper could be overheard “—be here somewhere? Or...or someone?”

Vartan would know what she meant: someone from the SOE or the Resistance, anyone whose purpose it might be to stage a rescue.

She could barely hear his reply. “It’s possible. We won’t know until...” He hesitated, scanning the crowd. “Until we know.”

She knew what he was saying: until a rescue attempt was launched. She moistened her lips. But what if it wasn’t?

“We have to—” she began.

His fierce whisper interrupted. “Alone, we can do nothing, do you understand?” His eyes gleamed a warning at her. “Do you not see that they have an army? Getting ourselves arrested or killed won’t help the baroness.”

He was right, she knew. But, dear God, she couldn’t just watch in silence while her mother was murdered in front of her eyes!

I have to do something. There has to be something...

He must have seen the distress in her face, because he grabbed her arm. “Maybe it’s better you leave now. You came by train? I’ll take you to the station. We can slip away if we go now. Anyone watching will think we are looking for a better viewing spot.”

“No! No.” Whatever happened, she had to be here. To witness Lillian’s death would be an unimaginable torture. To walk away and leave her to die with no one of her own present was unthinkable.

His fingers dug painfully into her flesh. “Then you must promise me—”

Three military transport trucks roared into the blocked-off street on the opposite side of the square and squealed to a stop. Genevieve’s eyes riveted on them, and everyone else’s must have, too, because the crowd fell silent. She scarcely noticed when Vartan’s hand dropped away from her arm. Spine straightening until she stood tall and stiff as a mannequin, one hand gripping the handlebars for support, she watched with a pounding heart as a contingent of German soldiers poured out of the covered back of the last of the trucks. Surrounding the other trucks, they stood guard as what looked like maybe thirty civilians were forced out of them and marched at gunpoint into the square.

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