The Nightingale (8 page)

Vianne barely remembered anything of that time except for her own grief. When she'd lost the first baby, she'd fallen into despair. The lost year, Antoine called it. That was how she thought of it, too. When Antoine told her he was taking Isabelle to Paris, and to Papa, Vianne had been—God help her—relieved.

Was it any surprise that Isabelle had run away from the boarding school to which she'd been sent? To this day, Vianne felt an abiding shame at how she had treated her baby sister.

“She was nine the first time she made it to Paris,” Vianne said, trying to find comfort in the familiar story. Isabelle was tough and driven and determined; she always had been.

“If I'm not mistaken, she was expelled two years later for running away from school to see a traveling circus. Or was that when she climbed out of the second-floor dormitory window using a bedsheet?” Rachel smiled. “The point is, Isabelle will make it here if that's what she wants.”

“God help anyone who tries to stop her.”

“She will arrive any day. I promise. Unless she has met an exiled prince and fallen desperately in love.”

“That is the kind of thing that could happen to her.”

“You see?” Rachel teased. “You feel better already. Now come to my house for lemonade. It's just the thing on a day this hot.”

*   *   *

After supper, Vianne got Sophie settled into bed and went downstairs. She was too worried to relax. The silence in her house kept reminding her that no one had come to her door. She could not remain still. Regardless of her conversation with Rachel, she couldn't dispel her worry—and a terrible sense of foreboding—about Isabelle.

Vianne stood up, sat down, then stood again and walked to the front door, opening it.

Outside, the fields lay beneath a purple and pink evening sky. Her yard was a series of familiar shapes—well-tended apple trees stood protectively between the front door and the rose-and-vine-covered stone wall, beyond which lay the road to town and acres and acres of fields, studded here and there with thickets of narrow-trunked trees. Off to the right was the deeper woods where she and Antoine had often sneaked off to be alone when they were younger.

Antoine.

Isabelle.

Where were they? Was he at the front? Was she walking from Paris?

Don't think about it.

She needed to do something. Gardening. Keep her mind on something else.

After retrieving her worn gardening gloves and stepping into the boots by the door, she made her way to the garden positioned on a flat patch of land between the shed and the barn. Potatoes, onions, carrots, broccoli, peas, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and radishes grew in its carefully tended beds. On the hillside between the garden and the barn were the berries—raspberries and blackberries in carefully contained rows. She knelt down in the rich, black dirt and began pulling weeds.

Early summer was usually a time of promise. Certainly, things could go wrong in this most ardent season, but if one remained steady and calm and didn't shirk the all-important duties of weeding and thinning, the plants could be guided and tamed. Vianne always made sure that the beds were precisely organized and tended with a firm yet gentle hand. Even more important than what she gave her garden was what it gave her. In it, she found a sense of calm.

She became aware of something wrong slowly, in pieces. First, there was a sound that didn't belong, a vibration, a thudding, and then a murmur. The odors came next: something wholly at odds with her sweet garden smell, something acrid and sharp that made her think of decay.

Vianne wiped her forehead, aware that she was smearing black dirt across her skin, and stood up. Tucking her dirty gloves in the gaping hip pockets of her pants, she rose to her feet and moved toward her gate. Before she reached it, a trio of women appeared, as if sculpted out of the shadows. They stood clumped together in the road just behind her gate. An old woman, dressed in rags, held the others close to her—a young woman with a babe-in-arms and a teenaged girl who held an empty birdcage in one hand and a shovel in the other. Each looked glassy-eyed and feverish; the young mother was clearly trembling. Their faces were dripping with sweat, their eyes were filled with defeat. The old woman held out dirty, empty hands. “Can you spare some water?” she asked, but even as she asked her the question, she looked unconvinced. Beaten.

Vianne opened the gate. “Of course. Would you like to come in? Sit down, perhaps?”

The old woman shook her head. “We are ahead of them. There's nothing for those in the back.”

Vianne didn't know what the woman meant, but it didn't matter. She could see that the women were suffering from exhaustion and hunger. “Just a moment.” She went into the house and packed them some bread and raw carrots and a small bit of cheese. All that she had to spare. She filled a wine bottle with water and returned, offering them the provisions. “It's not much,” she said.

“It is more than we've had since Tours,” the young woman said in a toneless voice.

“You were in Tours?” Vianne asked.

“Drink, Sabine,” the old woman said, holding the water to the girl's lips.

Vianne was about to ask about Isabelle when the old woman said sharply, “They're here.”

The young mother made a moaning sound and tightened her hold on the baby, who was so quiet—and his tiny fist so blue—that Vianne gasped.

The baby was dead.

Vianne knew about the kind of talon grief that wouldn't let go; she had fallen into the fathomless gray that warped a mind and made a mother keep holding on long after hope was gone.

“Go inside,” the old woman said to Vianne. “Lock your doors.”

“But…”

The ragged trio backed away—lurched, really—as if Vianne's breath had become noxious.

And then she saw the mass of black shapes moving across the field and coming up the road.

The smell preceded them. Human sweat and filth and body odor. As they neared, the miasma of black separated, peeled into forms. She saw people on the road and in the fields; walking, limping, coming toward her. Some were pushing bicycles or prams or dragging wagons. Dogs barked, babies cried. There was coughing, throat clearing, whining. They came forward, through the field and up the road, relentlessly moving closer, pushing one another aside, their voices rising.

Vianne couldn't help so many. She rushed into her house and locked the door behind her. Inside, she went from room to room, locking doors and closing shutters. When she was finished, she stood in the living room, uncertain, her heart pounding.

The house began to shake, just a little. The windows rattled, the shutters thumped against the stone exterior. Dust rained down from the exposed timbers of the ceiling.

Someone pounded on the front door. It went on and on and on, fists landing on the front door in hammer blows that made Vianne flinch.

Sophie came running down the stairs, clutching Bébé to her chest. “Maman!”

Vianne opened her arms and Sophie ran into her embrace. Vianne held her daughter close as the onslaught increased. Someone pounded on the side door. The copper pots and pans hanging in the kitchen clanged together, made a sound like church bells. She heard the high squealing of the outdoor pump. They were getting water.

Vianne said to Sophie, “Wait here one moment. Sit on the divan.”

“Don't leave me!”

Vianne peeled her daughter away and forced her to sit down. Taking an iron poker from the side of the fireplace, she crept cautiously up the stairs. From the safety of her bedroom, she peered out the window, careful to remain hidden.

There were dozens of people in her yard; mostly women and children, moving like a pack of hungry wolves. Their voices melded into a single desperate growl.

Vianne backed away. What if the doors didn't hold? So many people could break down doors and windows, even walls.

Terrified, she went back downstairs, not breathing until she saw Sophie still safe on the divan. Vianne sat down beside her daughter and took her in her arms, letting Sophie curl up as if she were a much littler girl. She stroked her daughter's curly hair. A better mother, a stronger mother, would have had a story to tell right now, but Vianne was so afraid that her voice had gone completely. All she could think was an endless, beginningless prayer.
Please.

She pulled Sophie closer and said, “Go to sleep, Sophie. I'm here.”

“Maman,” Sophie said, her voice almost lost in the pounding on the door. “What if Tante Isabelle is out there?”

Vianne stared down at Sophie's small, earnest face, covered now in a sheen of sweat and dust. “God help her” was all she could think of to say.

*   *   *

At the sight of the gray stone house, Isabelle felt awash in exhaustion. Her shoulders sagged. The blisters on her feet became unbearable. In front of her, Gaëtan opened the gate. She heard it clatter brokenly and tilt sideways.

Leaning into him, she stumbled up to the front door. She knocked twice, wincing each time her bloodied knuckles hit the wood.

No one answered.

She pounded with both of her fists, trying to call out her sister's name, but her voice was too hoarse to find any volume.

She staggered back, almost sinking to her knees in defeat.

“Where can you sleep?” Gaëtan said, holding her upright with his hand on her waist.

“In the back. The pergola.”

He led her around the house to the backyard. In the lush, jasmine-perfumed shadows of the arbor, she collapsed to her knees. She hardly noticed that he was gone, and then he was back with some tepid water, which she gulped from his cupped hands. It wasn't enough. Her stomach gnarled with hunger, sent an ache deep, deep inside of her. Still, when he started to leave again, she reached out for him, mumbled something, a plea not to be left alone, and he sank down beside her, putting out his arm for her to rest her head upon. They lay side by side in the warm dirt, staring up through the black thicket of vines that looped around the timbers and cascaded to the ground. The heady aromas of jasmine and blooming roses and rich earth created a beautiful bower. And yet, even here, in this quiet, it was impossible to forget what they'd just been through … and the changes that were close on their heels.

She had seen a change in Gaëtan, watched anger and impotent rage erase the compassion in his eyes and the smile from his lips. He had hardly spoken since the bombing, and when he did his voice was clipped and curt. They both knew more about war now, about what was coming.

“You could be safe here, with your sister,” he said.

“I don't want to be safe. And my sister will not want me.”

She twisted around to look at him. Moonlight came through in lacy patterns, illuminating his eyes, his mouth, leaving his nose and chin in darkness. He looked different again, older already, in just these few days; careworn, angry. He smelled of sweat and blood and mud and death, but she knew she smelled the same.

“Have you heard of Edith Cavell?” she asked.

“Do I strike you as an educated man?”

She thought about that for a moment and then said, “Yes.”

He was quiet long enough that she knew she'd surprised him. “I know who she is. She saved the lives of hundreds of Allied airmen in the Great War. She is famous for saying that ‘patriotism is not enough.' And this is your hero, a woman executed by the enemy.”

“A woman who made a difference,” Isabelle said, studying him. “I am relying on you—a criminal and a communist—to help me make a difference. Perhaps I am as mad and impetuous as they say.”

“Who are ‘they'?”

“Everyone.” She paused, felt her expectation gather close. She had made a point of never trusting anyone, and yet she believed Gaëtan. He looked at her as if she mattered. “You will take me. As you promised.”

“You know how such bargains are sealed?”

“How?”

“With a kiss.”

“Quit teasing. This is serious.”

“What's more serious than a kiss on the brink of war?” He was smiling, but not quite. That banked anger was in his eyes again, and it frightened her, reminded her that she really didn't know him at all.

“I would kiss a man who was brave enough to take me into battle with him.”

“I think you know nothing of kissing,” he said with a sigh.

“Shows what you know.” She rolled away from him and immediately missed his touch. Trying to be nonchalant, she rolled back to face him and felt his breath on her eyelashes. “You may kiss me then. To seal our deal.”

He reached out slowly, put a hand around the back of her neck, and pulled her toward him.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his lips almost touching hers. She didn't know if he was asking about going off to war or granting permission for a kiss, but right now, in this moment, it didn't matter. Isabelle had traded kisses with boys as if they were pennies to be left on park benches and lost in chair cushions—meaningless. Never before, not once, had she really yearned for a kiss.

“Oui,”
she whispered, leaning toward him.

At his kiss, something opened up inside the scraped, empty interior of her heart, unfurled. For the first time, her romantic novels made sense; she realized that the landscape of a woman's soul could change as quickly as a world at war.

“I love you,” she whispered. She hadn't said these words since she was four years old; then, it had been to her mother. At her declaration, Gaëtan's expression changed, hardened. The smile he gave her was so tight and false she couldn't make sense of it. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“No. Of course not,” he said.

“We are lucky to have found each other,” she said.

“We are not lucky, Isabelle. Trust me on this.” As he said it, he drew her in for another kiss.

She gave herself over to the sensations of the kiss, let it become the whole of her universe, and knew finally how it felt to be enough for someone.