Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (25 page)

When I looked back toward Riley, he had his camera out now, filming the château above me. Then he lowered the camera. “You ready to do this?” he asked.

I put my paddle on my lap. “As ready as I’ll ever be . . .”

I clipped on the microphone he gave me, and then he lifted the camera again, training it on my face. I pretended I was back in my classroom, ten hands raised to ask questions. This time I would pick Riley.

“What do you know about the history of your family’s château?”

I glanced up at the house and then looked back at Riley.

Olivia had put me through hours and hours of exhaustive media
training. For my interviews, presentation was more important than content, the trainer had said. I’d memorized the campaign talking points in about an hour, and then the trainer had worked with me on the position of my shoulders and legs, the tilting of my head, the tone of my voice. In front of a mirror, he showed me the differences between a comfortable, warm smile and a strained one.

But there was no studio around me now. No chair.

I flashed what I hoped was a warm smile and began. “The first walls were probably built about a thousand years after Christ, during the reign of William the Conqueror. They named the area Agneaux because legend has it that Saint Martin of Tours prayed for the dead sons of the first Norman family who lived here. After the twins were restored to life, they were known as the Lambs—
les agneaux
—of St. Martin.

“The house probably harbored knights at one time, but three hundred years ago, King Louis XV gave the property to the Duchant family as a reward for fighting alongside him.” I pointed toward the river. “Before the French Revolution, our property stretched all the way down to Saint-Lô.”

“Did your family live here during World War II?” he asked.

“My grandmother was only twenty-two when the war started. Her mother had already passed away, but her father died during the war and her first husband was killed during a battle.”

“Was your father born here?”

“He was, but he moved to the United States when he was six.”

The current pushed us away from the château, and he put down his camera. “Should we continue onshore?”

“Sure.” I dipped my paddle back into the water, and when I reached the edge, I pulled my kayak onto the grassy bank. We were at the base of the trees and cliff, and Riley set up his tripod and had me stand where he could capture the trees and river
behind me. I readjusted my microphone and he began filming again.

“You said your grandmother was a widow at the end of the war,” he said, prompting me.

I nodded. “My father was a young boy in 1944 and Mémé was a widow. A friend introduced her to Henri Sauver right after the Allies defeated the Germans in Saint-Lô, and they married about a month later. Henri adopted my father, and their family immigrated to the United States that same year.”

“What did your grandfather do during the war?” he asked.

“At first, he fought with the French army as a captain until the Germans defeated them. Then he joined the French resistance. My grandmother said he used to travel all over Normandy and wreak havoc on the Germans.”

Riley crossed his arms. “What sort of havoc?”

“He and his men disrupted the German phone service and telegrams and other means of communication.”

“With bombs?”

“No, they snipped the lines.”

“Did he bomb the railways?”

Mémé once said he did, but I wasn’t sure she would want me to broadcast that on national television. Nor was I sure what the resistance had to do with a documentary profiling German soldiers.

I decided to redirect the conversation, a skill I’d acquired both from my media training and in negotiating disputes among third graders. “My grandfather was good at accounting and record keeping. My grandmother said he kept their records in a way no German could decipher, in order to protect all the men in their cell.”

“What did your grandfather say about the resistance?” Riley asked.

My own questions resurfaced. I wished Grandpa had told me his stories before he passed away.

But I didn’t have to prove anything to Riley or the reporter in Richmond or to anyone else. Mémé was proud of Henri Sauver’s military and then resistance record, and so was I. “My grandfather didn’t like to talk about the war.”

“I wonder why not,” he said.

He waited for me to respond. Defend my grandfather perhaps.

I wanted to cross my arms like Riley, but instead I smiled at the camera. My media trainer had shown me dozens of clips from people who’d screwed up their interviews, usually by getting defensive with their body language. Others by stomping off in a huff. “Do you have any other questions for me?” I asked, even though I wanted to stomp off as well.

“How did you say your grandmother met Henri Sauver?”

“On a blind date, at a café in Saint-Lô.”

“But after the war . . .” He tilted his head. “There were no cafés left in Saint-Lô.”

I’d read about the bombing of the city but had never thought to question Mémé’s story. Perhaps I’d heard wrong. “It might have been near the end of the war instead.”

He watched me for a moment, and I expected him to ask why a member of the French resistance would be on a blind date, at a public café, while the Germans still occupied the town. Instead, he asked, “Was your grandmother part of the resistance?”

My lips pressed together for a moment before I remembered to smile. “The Germans stayed at the château during the war,” I said. “I’m sure she resisted them in her own way.”

“Did she ever talk about the German soldiers in her house?”

My smile widened, hoping to engage him along with the camera as I spoke. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Of course.”

I nodded casually toward the tripod. “Off camera.”

His eyes on me, he turned the camera off. My smile collapsed, hardening into a grimace. This time I crossed my arms. “What are you keeping from me?”

“I’m trying to put together a documentary.”

“But you know something I don’t . . .”

He glanced up at the rocky cliffs towering above us and then looked back at me. “My grandfather flew a B-24 during World War II. He hid in a tunnel under the Château d’Epines with some members of the resistance.”

My heart quickened. I didn’t know any of the old tunnels had remained through the war. Or that the resistance had hidden in them.

“His plane crashed near a river outside Saint-Lô.” Riley glanced back to the fields across the Vire. “He said Gisèle rescued him and brought him into the tunnel.”

My gaze roamed over the hillside again, and I wondered at my grandmother rescuing the pilot of a downed plane.

“Was my grandfather there?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Where is the tunnel entrance?”

“Someplace in the forest.” He took his camera off the tripod and began to pack it. “When my grandfather told me his stories, I was at rock bottom and didn’t listen to the details, but I heard about redemption through everything he told me. There were second chances for him and others who survived the war.”

I eyed him again. Was it possible the man before me was different from the man in the pictures? I hoped he had changed, for his sake, but still I didn’t trust him.

He glanced at his diver’s watch. “I’m supposed to interview Madame Calvez in an hour.”

Madame Calvez had asked me not to return, but perhaps if I was with Riley she would change her mind. Or if she was like my grandmother, she might not even remember that I was Gisèle’s granddaughter.

“Can I tag along with you?” I asked.

He raked his fingers through his thick hair. “I suppose, if you let me ask the questions.”

I readily agreed.

Chapter 33

H
er rescuer was named Hauptmann Milch. Lucien said the officer had a family in Berlin and was respected among most of his fellow officers, but Lucien knew little else about his background.

Gisèle didn’t tell Lucien or even Émilie what had happened in the wine cellar. It was much too humiliating to share with either of them. The only ones who would ever know were Hauptmann Milch and Viktor Braun, the
Fähnrich
—sergeant—who attacked her. Lucien said Braun was a bitter man. He’d asked to join the Luftwaffe to fight Hitler’s war from the sky, but he’d been assigned to act as a warden to the people of France.

Even after she bolted her bedroom door—and pushed her dresser across it—Gisèle hadn’t slept well. With Adeline in the bed next to her, she replayed her minutes in the cellar over and over. Had her solitude been some sort of invitation to that man? The thought of what might have happened terrified her. If Milch hadn’t rescued her, she might have been killed.

How could she live in her home with these men here? She would never feel secure again.

She ripped her soiled blouse into threads. It would be impossible to replace, but even if she could patch it, she would never wear it again. Nor would she ever return to the
cave
.

The morning light brought tepid comfort, enough for her to get up and dress Adeline for the day. As she prepared breakfast, Gisèle determined to avoid both Milch and Braun—one because of her humiliation and the other because she feared what he would do the next time he found her alone.

While Émilie tended to the laundry, Gisèle began making scrambled eggs from the supplies the Germans had carried into her home last night. Not only had they secured eggs, they’d brought a ham smoked in ash, crates filled with vegetables, and bags of flour to make biscuits. She hadn’t seen this much food since the war began and didn’t dare ask where they had obtained it.

Adeline was sucking her bottle in her playpen when Lisette strolled into the kitchen and hopped up onto the counter, her legs dangling over the linoleum.

Gisèle cracked eggs into a porcelain bowl. “What are you doing here?”

“The Germans requisitioned me to work here instead of in Saint-Lô.” Lisette glanced around the kitchen. “Please give me a job.”

“Don’t they need you to type or translate?”

She shook her head. “One of the new men does most of the typing so I won’t see their correspondence with Berlin, and others can translate for them. If I’m no longer useful, I’m afraid they’ll send me to work in Germany.”

Earlier this year, the government had enacted the Service du Travail Obligatoire—Compulsory Work Service—to force hundreds of thousands of young Frenchmen and women to join their labor force. Lisette would be safer here, under the roof with the German occupiers, than living at a camp in Germany, as long as she avoided places like the cellar.

“I can’t go to Germany,” Lisette said, her voice trembling.

Adeline began to cry, and Gisèle wiped her hands on her apron so she could pick her up. Their guests didn’t need any more reminders that there was a baby in the house.

Lisette reached into the pen. “I can hold her.”

Gisèle wiped her hand under the
couvre-chef
that held back her hair. “Thank you.”

“It’s so sad about her par—”

Gisèle stopped her, pointing to the ceiling. “I told them her name is Adeline.”

“Adeline.” Lisette offered her a piece of a biscuit. “It’s the perfect name.”

“They think she’s my daughter.”

Lisette paused. “I suppose they should think that. I will keep your secret as well.”

Émilie breezed into the kitchen. “The major said we should not be late with breakfast.”

Gisèle sighed. The Germans were punctual about everything, as if the war would be lost if everything from meals to bedtime were not observed at the precise hour.

Émilie began whisking the eggs, and Lisette sat down at the table with a bottle to care for Adeline. Gisèle was grateful for two women she could trust. None of them wanted to serve the Nazis, but they each had to do what they could to survive.

When the eggs were almost finished, Gisèle retrieved the ham from the oven and sliced it before taking the platter upstairs. Then she came back down for the coffeepot, eggs, and biscuits.

As she served breakfast to fifteen men, she was relieved that Viktor Braun wasn’t among them. The
Hauptmann
was
there, but she didn’t dare steal a glance at him. Part of her feared any acknowledgment from her would put him in jeopardy with his commanding officer. And part of her was ashamed of what he had seen.