The Nightingale (29 page)

Anouk turned to Isabelle.
Are you ready?
her gaze asked.

She nodded slowly.

“Cousin Etienne will board the train in Poitiers, Uncle Emile in Ruffec, and Jean-Claude in Bordeaux.”

The other airmen.
“Oui.”

Isabelle was to disembark at Saint-Jean-de-Luz with the four airmen—two Brits and two Canadians—and cross the mountains into Spain. Once there, she was to send a telegram. “The Nightingale has sung” meant success.

She kissed each of Anouk's cheeks, murmured
au revoir,
and then walked briskly over to the ticket window. “Saint-Jean-de-Luz,” she said, and handed the attendant her money. Taking the ticket, she headed for platform C. Not once did she look back, although she wanted to.

The train whistle sounded.

Isabelle stepped aboard, taking a seat on the left side. More passengers filed in, took seats. Several German soldiers boarded the train, sitting across from her.

MacLeish was the last to board. He stepped into the train and shuffled past her without a glance, his shoulders hunched in an effort to appear smaller. As the doors eased shut, he settled into a seat at the other end of the compartment and immediately opened his newspaper.

The train whistle blew again and the giant wheels began to turn, picking up speed slowly. The compartment banged a little, heaved left and right, and then settled into a steady thrumming movement, the wheels
clackety-clacking
on the iron tracks.

The German soldier across from Isabelle glanced down the compartment. His gaze settled on MacLeish. He tapped his friend in the shoulder and both men started to rise.

Isabelle leaned forward.
“Bonjour,”
she said with a smile.

The soldiers immediately sat back down. “
Bonjour,
M'mselle,” they said in unison.

“Your French is quite good,” she lied. Beside her, a heavyset woman in peasant clothes made a harrumphing sound of disgust and whispered, “You should be ashamed of yourself” in French.

Isabelle laughed prettily. “Where are you going?” she asked the soldiers. They would be on this carriage for hours. It would be good to keep their attention on her.

“Tours,” one said, as the other said, “Onzain.”

“Ah. And do you know any card games to pass the time? I have a deck with me.”

“Yes. Yes!” the younger one said.

Isabelle reached in her handbag for her playing cards. She was dealing a new hand—and laughing—when the next airman boarded the train and shuffled past the Germans.

Later, when the conductor came through, she offered up her ticket. He took it and moved on.

When he came to the airman, MacLeish did exactly as instructed—he handed over his ticket while he kept reading. The other airman did the same.

Isabelle released her breath in a sigh of relief and leaned back in her seat.

*   *   *

Isabelle and the four airmen made it to Saint-Jean-de-Luz without incident. Twice they'd walked—separately, of course—past German checkpoints. The soldiers on guard had barely looked at the series of false papers, saying
danke schön
without even looking up. They were not on the lookout for downed airmen and apparently hadn't considered a plan as bold as this.

But now Isabelle and the men were approaching the mountains. In the foothills, she went to a small park along the river and sat on a bench overlooking the water. The airmen arrived as planned, one by one, with MacLeish first. He sat down beside her.

The others took seats within earshot.

“You have your signs?” she asked.

MacLeish withdrew a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It read:
DEAF AND DUMB. WAITING FOR MY MAMAN TO PICK ME UP
. The other airmen did the same.

“If a German soldier hassles any of you, you show him your papers and your sign. Do
not
speak.”

“And I act stupid, which is easy for me.” MacLeish grinned.

Isabelle was too anxious to smile.

She shrugged off her canvas rucksack and handed it to MacLeish. In it were a few essentials—a bottle of wine, three plump pork sausages, two pairs of heavy woolen socks, and several apples. “Sit where you can in Urrugne. Not together, of course. Keep your heads down and pretend to read your books. Don't look up until you hear me say, ‘There you are, cousin, we've been looking all over for you.' Understood?”

They all nodded.

“If I am not back by dawn, travel separately to Pau and go to the hotel I told you about. A woman named Eliane will help you.”

“Be careful,” MacLeish said.

Taking a deep breath, she left them and walked to the main road. A mile or so later, as night began to fall, she crossed a rickety bridge. The road turned to dirt and narrowed into a cart track that climbed up, up, up into the verdant foothills. Moonlight came to her aid, illuminating hundreds of tiny white specks—goats. There were no cottages up this high, just animal sheds.

At last, she saw it: a two-storied, half-timbered house with a red roof that was exactly as her father had described. No wonder they had not been able to reach Madame Babineau. This cottage seemed designed to keep people away—as did the path up to it. Goats bleated at her appearance and bumped into one another nervously. Light shone through the haphazardly blacked-out windows, and smoke puffed cheerily from the chimney, scenting the air.

At her knock, the heavy wooden door opened just enough to reveal a single eye and a mouth nearly hidden by a gray beard.

“Bonsoir,”
Isabelle said. She waited a moment for the old man to reply in kind, but he said nothing. “I am here to see Madame Babineau.”

“Why?” the man demanded.

“Julien Rossignol sent me.”

The old man made a clicking sound between his teeth and tongue; then the door opened.

The first thing Isabelle noticed inside was the stew, simmering in a big black pot that hung from a hook in the giant stone-faced fireplace.

A woman was seated at a huge, scarred trestle table in the back of the wide, timber-beamed room. From where Isabelle stood, it looked as if she were dressed in charcoal-colored rags, but when the old man lit an oil lamp, Isabelle saw that the woman was dressed like a man, in rough breeches and a linen shirt with a leather lace-up neckline. Her hair was the color of iron shavings and she was smoking a cigarette.

Still, Isabelle recognized the woman, even though it had been fifteen years. She remembered sitting on the beach at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Hearing the women laugh. And Madame Babineau saying,
This little beauty will cause you endless trouble, Madeleine, the boys will someday swarm her,
and Maman saying,
She is too smart to toss her life to boys, aren't you, my Isabelle?

“Your shoes are caked with dirt.”

“I've walked here from the train station at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”

“Interesting.” The woman used her booted foot to push out the chair across from her. “I am Micheline Babineau. Sit.”

“I know who you are,” Isabelle said. She added nothing. Information was dangerous these days. It was traded with care.

“Do you?”

“I'm Juliette Gervaise.”

“Why do I care?”

Isabelle glanced nervously at the old man, who watched her warily. She didn't like turning her back on him, but she had no choice. She sat down across from the woman.

“You want a cigarette? It's a Gauloises Bleu. They cost me three francs and a goat, but it's worth it.” The woman took a long, sensual drag off of her cigarette and exhaled the distinctively scented blue smoke. “Why do I care about you?”

“Julien Rossignol believes I can trust you.”

Madame Babineau took another drag on the cigarette and then stubbed it out on the sole of her boot. She dropped the rest of it in her breast pocket.

“He says his wife was close friends with you. You are godmother to his eldest daughter. He is the godfather to your youngest son.”

“Was. The Germans killed both of my sons at the front. And my husband in the last war.”

“He wrote letters to you recently…”

“The
poste
is shit these days. What does he want?”

Here it was. The biggest flaw in this plan. If Madame Babineau was a collaborator, it was all over. Isabelle had imagined this moment a thousand times, planned it down to the pauses. She'd thought of ways to word things to protect herself.

Now she saw the folly of all that, the uselessness. She simply had to dive in.

“I left four downed pilots in Urrugne, waiting for me. I want to take them to the British consulate in Spain. We hope the British can get them back to England so they can fly more missions over Germany and drop more bombs.”

In the silence that followed, Isabelle heard the beat of her heart, the tick of the mantel clock, the distant bleating of a goat.

“And?” Madame Babineau said at last, almost too softly to hear.

“A-and I need a Basque guide to help me cross the Pyrenees. Julien thought you could help me.”

For the first time, Isabelle knew she had the woman's undivided attention. “Get Eduardo,” Madame Babineau said to the old man, who jumped to do her bidding. The door banged shut so hard the ceiling rattled.

The woman retrieved the half-smoked cigarette from her pocket and lit it up, inhaling and exhaling several times in silence as she studied Isabelle.

“What do you—” Isabelle started to ask.

The woman pressed a tobacco-stained finger to her lips.

The door to the farmhouse crashed open and a man burst in. All Isabelle could make out were broad shoulders, burlap, and the smell of alcohol.

He grabbed her by the arm and lifted her out of the chair and threw her up against the rough-hewn wall. She gasped in pain and tried to get free, but he pinned her in place, wedged his knee roughly between her legs.

“Do you know what the Germans do to people like you?” he whispered, his face so close to hers she couldn't focus, couldn't see anything but black eyes and thick black lashes. He smelled of cigarettes and brandy. “Do you know how much they will pay us for you and your pilots?”

Isabelle turned her head to avoid his sour breath.

“Where are these pilots of yours?”

His fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arms.

“Where are they?”

“What pilots?” she gasped.

“The pilots you are helping escape.”

“W-what pilots? I don't know what you're talking about.”

He growled again and cracked her head against the wall. “You asked for our help to get pilots over the Pyrenees.”

“Me, a woman, climb across the Pyrenees? You must be joking. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Are you saying Madame Babineau is lying?”

“I don't know Madame Babineau. I just stopped here to ask for directions. I'm lost.”

He smiled, revealing tobacco- and wine-stained teeth. “Clever girl,” he said, letting her go. “And not a bit weak in the knees.”

Madame Babineau stood. “Good for her.”

The man stepped back, giving her space. “I am Eduardo.” He turned to the old woman. “The weather is good. Her will is strong. The men may sleep here tonight. Unless they are weaklings, I will take them tomorrow.”

“You'll take us?” Isabelle said. “To Spain?”

Eduardo looked to Madame Babineau, who looked at Isabelle. “It would be our great pleasure to help you, Juliette. Now, where are these pilots of yours?”

*   *   *

In the middle of the night, Madame Babineau woke Isabelle and led her into the farmhouse's kitchen, where a fire was already blazing in the hearth. “Coffee?”

Isabelle finger-combed her hair and tied a cotton scarf around her head. “No,
merci,
it is too precious.”

The old woman gave her a smile. “No one suspects a woman my age of anything. It makes me good at trading. Here.” She offered Isabelle a cracked porcelain mug full of steaming black coffee.
Real
coffee.

Isabelle wrapped her hands around the mug and breathed deeply of the familiar, never-again-to-be-taken-for-granted aroma.

Madame Babineau sat down beside her.

She looked into the woman's dark eyes and saw a compassion that reminded her of her maman. “I am scared,” Isabelle admitted. It was the first time she'd said this to anyone.

“As you should be. As we all must be.”

“If something goes wrong, will you get word to Julien? He's still in Paris. If we … don't make it, tell him the Nightingale didn't fly.”

Madame Babineau nodded.

As the women sat there, the airmen came into the room, one by one. It was the middle of the night, and none looked like they had slept well. Still, the hour appointed for their departure was here.

Madame Babineau set out a meal of bread and sweet lavender honey and creamy goat cheese. The men planted themselves on the mismatched chairs and scooted close to the table, talking all at once, devouring the food in an instant.

The door banged open, bringing with it a rush of cold night air. Dried leaves scudded inside, dancing across the floor, plastering themselves like tiny black hands to the stones of the fireplace. The flames within shivered and thinned. The door slammed shut.

Eduardo stood there, looking like a scruffy giant in the low-ceilinged room. He was a typical Basque—with broad shoulders and a face that seemed to have been carved in stone with a dull blade. The coat he wore was thin for the weather and patched in more places than it was whole.

He handed Isabelle a pair of Basque shoes, called espadrilles, with rope soles that were supposedly good in the rough terrain.

“How is the weather for this journey, Eduardo?” Madame Babineau asked.

“Cold is coming. We must not tarry.” He swung a ragged rucksack from his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. To the men, he said, “These are espadrilles. They will help you. Find a pair that fits.” Isabelle stood beside him, translating for the men.