Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (15 page)

He didn’t want to take off the vest, but she finally coaxed him to remove it. She used it to wipe the smudges of dirt off his face before stuffing the vest and slivers of paper deep into the trash can.

“What is your name?” she asked.

When he didn’t answer, she knelt beside him. “Are you scared?”

This time he gave her the slightest of nods.

She was terrified, but she didn’t tell him. Instead, she gently squeezed his hand. “If anyone asks, you must say you’re my brother.”

Gisèle prayed quietly as she pushed her bicycle slowly through the town center. The boy walked beside her, clutching her hand, her bread displayed prominently in the basket so the Germans knew the reason they were here.

There were no automobiles on the street; the government was rationing gas along with food. She didn’t care much about the gas—she had no need to go anyplace farther than a bicycle ride—but she
missed sugar and coffee. Though she could hardly mourn such things when the boy beside her didn’t even have bread.

They neared the town center. The stone courthouse that the Germans had taken for their headquarters was on one side of the street, the gray prison on the other. A long red banner was draped over the front windows of their headquarters, displaying a black swastika.

Two soldiers guarded the entrance to the headquarters while three soldiers smoked nearby.

She refused to look at the soldiers, but she knew they were scrutinizing her and her companion. A smile on her face, she leaned down to the boy and whispered for him to laugh. While the soldiers watched, they both forced their quiet laughter.

The Jews in Saint-Lô no longer laughed.

“Halt!” a soldier ordered, and she tightened her grip on the boy’s hand as fear gripped her heart. She’d worked hard the past two years not to draw attention to herself, to appear as if she was complying with the law of their occupiers even as she worked covertly to help those resisting. She’d yet to have to stand face-to-face and confront their enemy.

Her teeth chattered as she smiled at the soldier. He looked to be about her age. “Yes, monsieur?”

He held out his hand. “Your papers,” he demanded, his French poor.

She opened her satchel and pulled out her identity card. He scanned it quickly and then looked at the boy’s neck for his document. Only the smallest children weren’t required to wear their papers. “Where is his
Kinderausweis
?”

She sighed. “We left it at home,” she explained in French. “I keep telling my brother that he has to wear his card, but you know boys—”

He stopped her and lifted a small radio, asking for a translator. She pretended not to understand his German.

Moments later, a woman stepped out of the headquarters, her yellow scarf flapping behind her. Gisèle’s heart plummeted when the woman waved. She’d known Lisette had been conscripted to work as a secretary for the Germans, but she hadn’t spoken to her in months. As Lisette rushed up beside her, she prayed the younger woman wouldn’t betray her and the child.

Lisette spoke to Gisèle instead of the soldier. “What happened?”

Gisèle pressed her lips together before she replied, trying to steady her voice. “My little brother and I came to town to buy bread.”

“Your little bro—” Lisette’s gaze dropped and a soft gasp escaped her lips. “He looks like Michel.”

“Could you please tell this man—”

The soldier stepped between them, talking rapidly in German to Lisette. Her friend turned back to her. “He’s asking about his identity card.”

“We forgot it,” Gisèle said.

Lisette’s eyes grew wide. “You can’t forget your papers!”

“But I did.”

Lisette chewed at the edge of a fingernail before addressing the soldier again. “She said she will bring the document back to you.”

He eyed Gisèle again, ignoring the boy, and she cringed at the lust in his gaze. She’d heard horrific stories of what some of the Nazis had done to the Frenchwomen. A few wooed the local women. Others forced themselves on them.

“Where does she live?” he asked.

Before Lisette could translate the man’s words, a dozen soldiers poured out of the prison, and Gisèle stared as they crossed the street. In the midst of them were four men in tattered clothes,
their hands tied behind their backs, heads bowed. Her heart raced even faster as she stared at the prisoners, trying to see their faces.

What if they’d caught Michel?

One of the men glanced over at her, and she recognized him—a former banker in Saint-Lô. He seemed defeated with his head down, but fire blazed in his eyes.

The soldier before her stopped one of the guards. “Who are they?”

“Resistance,” the man spat.

With that single word, her interrogator grunted at her, telling Lisette that Gisèle must carry her brother’s card with her. Then he followed his fellow soldiers and the prisoners away from the town center.

She turned to Lisette. “Where are they taking the men?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lisette whispered, nudging her down the sidewalk. “You have to get that boy away from here!”

With a quick nod, Gisèle tugged on the child’s hand. They hurried to the north edge of town, trailing about three hundred meters behind the pack of soldiers. She had to get this boy to safety, had to visit Nadine, but her priorities shifted again. Before she did anything else, she needed to make certain her brother wasn’t among the prisoners.

The soldiers turned down a narrow lane between the trees, and she hid her bicycle behind one of the hedgerows. She and the boy trailed far behind them, walking among the trees instead of using the trail. The men stopped in a clearing, and she backtracked with the boy almost a hundred meters.

“Wait here,” she said, hiding him behind a bush.

The boy didn’t argue with her. Instead he sat down and pulled his knees to his chest. She snuck back toward the clearing and watched in horror as the soldiers tied the men against four poles.

She could see the men’s faces now. Her brother wasn’t among them, but her relief was fleeting. All of these men had families who loved them.

Were the soldiers going to torture these men where no one could hear their screams?

Her stomach reeled again; she felt as sick as she had the night they found their father.

She glanced at the tall oak trees around the clearing. If only there was something she could do. Distract the soldiers in some way and help these men escape. What if she screamed and ran away? Would they follow her?

Perhaps the Frenchmen could run away as well.

But what if the soldiers found the boy in the brush? They would kill him too.

Clutching her arms around her chest, she rocked back and forth, helpless. Was there nothing she could do to stop the Germans?

This time the fear paralyzed her.

The crack of a gunshot exploded in the forest, and the head of one of the men pitched forward. At the second shot, she ran, fear clinging to her like the talons of a hawk.

She would never be able to fight the dragon.

The boy was where she’d left him, his eyes wide.

She held out her hand. “We must hurry.”

Together they rushed down the lane, away from the madness. A few kilometers down the road, she found the path where she and her mother had once walked hand in hand, when the world seemed to make sense. She and the boy turned, and ahead of them was the tower of a stone manor peeking out above the trees.

For the first time, she felt his hand tremble in hers.
She might not be able to fight the dragon, but she prayed she could rescue this boy.

T
he Château d’Epines rose majestically above the trees that sheltered it, and I leaned back in my car seat to soak in the beauty—the magic—of the medieval château. Intricate strands of ivy wove around two turrets that climbed above the three stories of stone, and dozens of glass panes shimmered peach in the setting sunlight.

I remembered sitting here with my parents and my grandmother twenty years ago, soaking in the mystery of it all. The château hadn’t lost the wonder for me, but after all these years, I still didn’t understand. On that trip long ago, why had Mémé and my father refused to go inside?

Marguerite, the caretaker of our family’s property, parked the station wagon in the courtyard. She turned off the ignition and stared up at the château beside me. “It is lovely, yes?”

I opened my door and the breeze awoke my senses. “Breathtaking.”

“It was even larger, you know, before the war.”

“I didn’t know.”

Marguerite pointed toward the left. “There was another wing on the west side of the house, but Allied pilots bombed it during the German occupation.”

“It’s so sad . . .”

She nodded. “Thousands of civilians died in Saint-Lô, but the Allied forces had no choice. The Germans refused to leave.”

“Refused to leave Saint-Lô?”

Marguerite dumped the keys into her pocket and opened her car door. “They refused to leave our city and they refused to leave the château. The Allies had to almost flatten Saint-Lô and the surrounding villages before the Germans fled.”

I needed to read the material Olivia had compiled for me. “I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been to have the Germans occupying the town.”

“At first, people were shocked by the blitzkrieg,” Marguerite said, “but then Hitler commanded his men to be friendly to the French people and win them over with food depots and such until they decided that collaborating with the Nazis would be to their advantage. For two years, they were more like annoying neighbors than tyrants to the people here.”

“What happened after those first two years?” I asked.

Marguerite’s eyes focused back on the château in front of us. “The Nazi Party began to unravel.”

My head tilted back again as my hostess stepped out of the car, my brain dazed from the shock of Austin’s betrayal and my few, fitful hours of sleep. Did the filmmaker want to know the stories about the German occupation? If so, I was afraid I didn’t have anything to tell him. Once again, I wished my dad had been able to make the trip.

I stepped out onto the gravel drive and glanced behind me. The château wasn’t alone on the property. Along the driveway was a second house, a smaller, rambling structure where Marguerite and her husband lived, surrounded by a half-dozen outbuildings. Across from the château was a chapel. The cluster of old
buildings reminded me of the ceramic French village Mémé used to display each Christmas on her mantel.

My gaze shifted back to the forest that curved around the back of the house like a warm stole. I wondered if the lake Mémé had told me about was still there in the trees. In the morning, perhaps I could find her favorite place and quiet the racing in my mind.

Marguerite slammed her car door and crossed over to my side. Her trousers and vest were a mossy brown color, her bushy eyebrows hedged above her green eyes. She was a large woman, but the extra pounds didn’t seem to do anything to diminish her energy. In exchange for a place to live and a monthly stipend, she and her husband had been entrusted to care for the property and keeping squatters from sneaking into the house.

I slung my handbag over my shoulder. “Do you know where the lake is?”

Her eyebrows slid up. “Do you mean the river?”

I shook my head. “My grandmother said there was a lake in the forest.”

She pointed left. “There’s a small lake over there, but the path is overgrown.”

I heaved my suitcase out of the back of the station wagon and set it upright on the gravel. The pewter-colored cover seemed to be made of titanium, and in my rush to get to France, I’d brought a hodgepodge of stuff—shorts and T-shirts, skirts, dress pants for the interview, even an evening dress, just in case I had a night out in Paris.

When I arrived at the train station in Carentan, a fellow passenger took pity on me and my mammoth bag, carrying it down to the platform. Rolling it to Marguerite’s waiting car had been a simple affair, but it had taken both of us to lift it into her car. Now
I eyed the three floors of the château, wondering on which floor I would find my room.

“Are you certain you don’t want to stay with us in the farmhouse?” Marguerite asked.

I thanked her and then reassured her that I wanted to sleep in the house where my grandmother had lived.

“I don’t think anyone has slept here in several years, but I’ve cleaned the main rooms for you.”

A new thought flashed into my head, one I should have considered before I insisted on staying in the house. “What about the utilities?”

“We’ve kept on the water and electricity, but there’s nothing fancy like Wi-Fi.”

“That’s okay.” I had Internet access on my phone and iPad, but the less connection I had to the outside world, probably the better.

Marguerite glanced down at the behemoth of a suitcase. “My husband can carry that up the stairs for you.”

“There’s no need for him to help—” I started to say. Her eyebrows rose in question as she slid her cell phone out of her purse, and I realized the ridiculousness of my words. “I would be grateful for it.”

When she lifted her phone to her ear, I leaned back against the car. I was supposed to be here two full days before the arrival of Riley Holtz to overcome my jet lag and acquaint myself with the château, but with the delay in my flight, it was already Thursday. He would be here tomorrow.

My body was exhausted. My broken heart felt numb. How was I supposed to smile for his camera?

Being here, though, was much better than being at home. My phone hummed and I pulled it out of my purse. This time Olivia was texting me.

Call me, Chloe! We will work this out before the wedding.

My harsh laugh earned me a look of concern from Marguerite, as if she were trying to determine my mental capabilities. I mustered a smile. Olivia was a campaign manager, not a counselor, and there was nothing for her or us to
work out
.

I texted back.
The wedding is off!

A flood of texts followed, begging me to call her, telling me the wedding could be postponed, not canceled. But standing outside Austin’s room at the Plaza, my fingers pressed against my phone, I had made my decision not to overlook Austin’s liaisons now or in the future. No matter what Olivia said, I would never marry Austin. The publicity might be messy, but I had no doubt that she had cleaned up bigger messes in the past.