All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 8

  The sound of shelling became a steady accompaniment to the whistle and thump of the scythe. Aurélie rose exhausted and fell into bed exhausted. Her team of harvesters consisted of the baker’s oldest daughter, who was very conscious of her own dignity; two ten-year-old boys; and a sixty-year-old sot. Kilting up her skirts, Aurélie did her best to lead by example.

  Unfortunately, she had about as much experience with a scythe as with a plow, so her example was one, she rapidly realized, that no one ought to follow. But with a great deal of error and waste that made her wince, they made some progress, and the pile of bales in the carts began to grow. They weren’t very shapely bales, but they were bales all the same.

  It wasn’t just the harvest, although to get even the barest fraction of the wheat in took cajoling and bribing and constant vigilance. No. Everyone looked to the lady of Courcelles for advice and reassurance. With the telegraph wires all cut, Aurélie was the first word from the greater world they had heard for some time. No use to tell them that they were as much in ignorance in the capital as at Courcelles; Aurélie began shamelessly making up stories, reinforcements from England, German spies uncovered, the Kaiser sick with food poisoning. That last was pure wishful thinking, but she certainly enjoyed the image, and she could tell her audience did, as well.

  Perhaps saying it would make it so. She certainly hoped so.

  Miraculously, the weather held. The only thunder was the constant echo of the guns, sometimes stuttering, sometimes in full volley, but never silent. To the west, the battle raged on and on, but Courcelles, in its valley, might almost have been Noah’s boat in the storm, cut off from the world, bobbing along alone.

  “Those are French guns,” said Victor hopefully. “Can’t you hear? It’s our boys, routing the Hun.”

  To Aurélie, the guns sounded like guns, and she was so weary, she was about to plant her nose in her soup, but she nodded all the same.

  On the afternoon of the sixteenth of September, ten days after her return home if one believed the calendar, a century or so according to her aching muscles, Aurélie was in the village, badgering the baker, when the sound of hoofbeats sent everyone running into the square. A French cavalry division thundered toward them. Chasseurs, cuirassiers, dragoons, cyclists, gunners all thronged the small square, bringing with them shouts of joy. The baker’s wife rushed to bring them loaves of bread; the café owner hauled out bottles of wine.

  “It’s over!” called out a dragoon, as his horse reared back, hooves clattering on the cobbles. “You won’t see anything more of the Germans but the back of them!”

  “Praise God!” called out old Madame Lemaire, the baker’s mother-in-law, dropping her false teeth in her excitement.

  One of the cavalry officers reined in, dropping to his feet. “Aurélie?”

  “Jean-Marie?” Aurélie embraced her intended on both cheeks. “Is it true?”

  “I thought you’d said you’d go back to Paris.” For a man celebrating a great victory, Jean-Marie didn’t look joyful. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes haunted.

  “What does it matter if the Germans are really gone?”

  “I—” Jean-Marie cast a furtive look over his shoulder. “I’m not so sure they are, not really. It’s—it’s not what I thought war would be like.”

  Poor Jean-Marie, thought Aurélie with affectionate toleration, just like her father, caught in a chivalric dream of an era long ago.

  “Who cares so long as it’s over?”

  “But it’s not. We’re still fighting. We’ve pushed them back, but . . . Do you think they’ll give up that easily? The things we’ve seen . . . the things we’ve done—”

  Aurélie squeezed his hand. “It’s war,” she said comfortingly. “The priest will shrive you.”

  “I suppose,” said Jean-Marie doubtfully. “But—”

  “Come to the castle,” urged Aurélie. “My father would be glad to see you. He’ll want to hear all about your battles.”

  “But I’m not sure I’d want to tell it,” said Jean-Marie, with unwonted resolve.

  He did not, realized Aurélie with alarm, look at all like the same man she had dropped at Haudouin ten days ago. It wasn’t just the gray cast of his skin. It was something more, something behind his eyes. But that was silly and fanciful.

  “Come,” said Aurélie again. “Our hospitality isn’t up to my mother’s standard, but we can offer you a good, thick stew and a soft bed—with fresh sheets.”

  “It sounds like heaven,” said Jean-Marie, and he sounded more like himself again, more like the boy she had always known. “But that’s the signal. We’re moving on. I can’t stay. I—”

  “D’Aubigny!” barked his commanding officer.

  “You should be proud,” said Aurélie, trying to raise his spirits. She stood by his stirrup as he mounted. “I always said one Frenchman was worth twenty Huns!”

  Jean-Marie gave her a wistful smile. “Then it’s a pity there are so many of them.”

  “Wrap up warmly,” Aurélie called after him as he cantered away. He was probably sickening from something, that was all. But a vague feeling of gloom lingered, all the same, all through the festivities in the village that night, through the feasting in the castle, the bonfires and songs. Aurélie found herself feeling vaguely annoyed at Jean-Marie. He’d never been so faint of heart before. If they’d pushed the Germans back, well, then. Even if the war wasn’t done, it meant it would be.

  The talisman was at Courcelles and France could not fall.

  There was no getting her workers into the field the next morning; there had been too much genièvre consumed the night before, the fierce, local gin that could send men mad—or at least give one a very bad head.

  Rumors percolated around the village. Le Catelet had been liberated. The Germans were running away. The sounds of the fighting became louder and closer. French machine gunners dug in at a farm the next village over, holding off a squadron of Uhlans. Aurélie thought her father would go mad with the strain of inactivity, standing on the parapet with a telescope, scanning for uniforms, trying to figure out which way the fighting was going.

  “Skirmishes,” he said disapprovingly. “Skirmishes.”

  “It has to be over soon,” said Aurélie fervently, thinking of the talisman in its hiding place. “It has to.”

  But when the troops came, they were the wrong sort. It was her father’s shout that alerted them. Holding her skirts, Aurélie ran up the twisting stairs to the parapet. Her father handed her his telescope. His hands were shaking. Without comment, Aurélie snatched it from him, holding it to her eye.

  They looked like ants. Lots and lots of ants. The road from the north was black with them, with motors and men and cyclists. On and on they came, in ordered rows, marching, marching, marching south and east, Germans upon Germans upon Germans, like a plague of locusts, covering the ground, making the sky dark.

  Aurélie made a strangled noise deep in her throat and tried to turn it into a cough. “They said they’d driven them back.”

  “If they don’t, we will,” said her father grimly, and Aurélie had the vague suspicion that he was enjoying this, that he was looking forward to wielding his antique arquebus.

  Her hands were suddenly very cold. She rubbed them together, wincing a little as the blisters on her palms stung. “Maybe they’ll pass us by. They did before.”

  There was the sound of a motor gunning, of men shouting. Aurélie could hear Victor’s voice, raised in remonstrance.

  Aurélie didn’t wait for her father. She took off down the stairs, spiraling down, down, down, bursting out of the narrow stairwell into the light of the courtyard, where Victor stood with his musket raised like a club, as if he could bar the entrance of the men who stood beyond by sheer will.

  “Entry, pah! I’ll show you where you can—”

  “Stop!” Aurélie stepped forward before Victor could write his own death warrant.

  She drew herself up, wishing she was wearing something more impres
sive than the old frock she had donned to work in the fields. She would have liked to have been garbed like Minnie, in her Paris best, or, even better, in breastplate and helmet.

  “Who goes there?” she demanded, cursing the light that made halos in front of her eyes. They had the sun to their backs, rendering her sun-blind. “I am the Demoiselle de Courcelles and this is my land on which you trespass.”

  “Mademoiselle de Courcelles?” One of the Germans stepped forward, out of the mess of men. He had removed his hat and his fair hair shone in the sun. His French was fluent and cultured and alarmingly familiar. “Do you not remember me?”

  “Why should she?” demanded Aurélie’s father, arriving breathless beside her. He was toting a fourteenth-century sword so heavy that the point dragged in the dirt behind him. “And what are you doing here? I didn’t invite you.”

  The German officer stood to attention, clicking his feet smartly together. “We’ve come to ask the favor of lodging in your castle, on behalf of my commanding officer, Major Hoffmeister. And by favor,” the German added apologetically, “I mean that we’ve come to requisition it.”

  He had moved sideways, out of the sun. His hair was shorter than the last time Aurélie had seen him; it had been worn long then, curling at the collar. The image wavered in front of her, rain-streaked windows in the Louvre, a man standing beside her in a gray-striped suit, a posy in his buttonhole, gray kid gloves with pearl buttons holding a portfolio of rich leather stamped with gold.

  “Herr von Sternburg?” she said.

  Chapter Six

  Daisy

  Rue Portalis

  Paris, France

  May 1942

  “Von Sternburg,” said Pierre. “Here, in my own home. I can’t believe it.”

  Daisy set her hat on the hall stand and frowned at the appearance of a small new stain on the brim. How had it got there? And how was she to disguise this one? She said absently, “Von Sternburg? Who’s this?”

  “Who’s this?” Pierre repeated, in his high, mocking voice. “Who’s this, Pierre?”

  Daisy turned to the children, who lingered behind her, slinging their school satchels wearily from their shoulders. “Olivier, Madeleine,” she said. “Go to your room, please, and change out of your uniforms. Remember, dinner’s early, in the kitchen, because of the party.” She watched them trundle down the hall, Madeleine with her dark braids and Olivier cheerfully blond, and said to Pierre, more quietly, “I’m sorry. I just don’t seem to recall the name.”

  “Oh, I don’t recall the name! I’ve never even heard of Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian von Sternburg!”

  Daisy turned to face her husband, who stood in the small, cramped foyer of the apartment, still clutching the scrap of paper that contained this information with which he’d greeted her. Some German fellow named Max von Sternburg had hastily inserted himself into tonight’s dinner party, which seemed to Daisy like the worst kind of news, another mouth to feed when food was already scarce and expensive, when a single German officer might wolf down as much meat as three Frenchmen, no regard at all for the subtleties of taste and digestion, and lick his lips for more. How was she to manage another guest? Pierre’s face was pink and shiny and round, his black eyes bright, his sneer familiar on his plump lips. The shirt collar looked as if it strangled him, so great was his contempt for his ignorant wife. Daisy, whose nerves had buzzed all the way home from rue Cambon, felt the old tide of weariness engulf her. She spread her palms. “I’m sorry. All those German names, I can’t always remember which is which.”

  Pierre folded the paper and ran his thumb and forefinger along the crease to sharpen it. “Only one of the most important men in Paris, that’s all, as anyone knows who reads a newspaper.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much time to read the newspaper these days.”

  “Oh, I don’t have time to read the newspaper. I’m so busy idling about the apartment all day—”

  “Pierre, please. Won’t you just tell me who he is?”

  Pierre sucked in a little breath. He hated to be interrupted. In fact, he hated any gesture that smacked of disrespect, anything that pricked in any small way, real or imagined, at his own importance. Daisy braced herself, dug her nails into her palms, and cursed her hasty words, but the expected volley of mockery never arrived. Instead he turned away and said, over his shoulder, in a tone of deep contempt, “Max von Sternburg is the right-hand man of the commandant of Paris, as everybody knows, and he’ll very likely be named commandant himself before the summer’s out.”

  Daisy brushed back her hair from her forehead and followed her husband down the hallway toward the study. “Is he a big man?”

  “Big? Big? What do you mean, big?”

  “I mean, does he eat much? We have only a single ham for eight guests—”

  Pierre stopped at the door of the study, opened it, and turned to Daisy. “My God, do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I haven’t thought of that?”

  “Of course not—”

  “Then if it isn’t too much bother, you might stop by the kitchen. If you look closely—closely, mind you!—you might discover a fine leg of lamb from that butcher on rue du Rocher.”

  “A leg of lamb! Pierre! But how? Where did you get the money? The coupons?”

  Pierre brandished the paper in his hand and spoke again in his mocking falsetto. “But how? Where? My God, have you no idea how things work in Paris? I’m an important man now, don’t you know that? Don’t you understand? I work in the Ministry of Agriculture and Supply! If I want meat, I can get meat. Now do something useful—just once, that’s all I ask—and prepare it properly, like a housewife should. A mint sauce. Yes.”

  “I don’t think there’s any—”

  “And decant that Burgundy your grandmother gave us for Christmas. I want everything perfect.”

  “But—”

  “Off you go. I’ve important work to do. Don’t disturb me until our guests arrive.”

  Pierre stepped inside his study and slammed the door. Daisy stared at the louvered surface, the delicate grain of the wood. With her finger, she traced the swirl that always reminded her of the neck of a swan, traced the beak like a salient and wondered how it formed, what ancient, tiny impediment had changed its course.

  “Is Papa angry at us?” Madeleine wanted to know, as she wriggled into her nightgown.

  “No, of course not,” said Daisy. “He’s only worried about this dinner. So many important men are coming to see him! He wants everything to go well.”

  “So we are not to make a peep,” said Madeleine glumly.

  “And we are not to show our noses,” piped up Olivier.

  “And it’s a shame, because they’re very handsome noses.” Daisy kissed the tip of Madeleine’s nose, then the tip of Olivier’s. “But children must go to bed, after all, so they get plenty of sleep before school the next morning. Now, how do I look?”

  Olivier threw his arms around Daisy’s neck. “You look beautiful, Maman!”

  “You look exquisite,” said Madeleine, serious as always.

  “Why, thank—”

  A heavy knock sounded down the hallway and through the door.

  Daisy unwrapped Olivier’s arms from her neck and rose to her feet. “I’d better answer that, before Papa—” She bit off the rest of the sentence by kissing Olivier on the cheek.

  “Before Papa gets angry,” Madeleine said.

  Daisy kissed Madeleine. “Before Papa starts to worry. Now into bed, both of you! Into bed and sweet—”

  “Daisy! What’s the matter, are you deaf? They’re here!”

  “—sweet dreams!” Daisy switched off the light and hurried into the hallway, where Pierre glowered in his dinner jacket and his polished black shoes that—Daisy knew—contained hidden lifts, which Daisy couldn’t quite understand because what difference did it make? These German soldiers towered over him regardless, and which of them would notice an additional three centimeters on this Frenchman scurrying below his ch
in? From Pierre’s right hand burned the stub of a cigarette, which he stabbed out into the ashtray on the hall table. As Daisy passed, he hissed at her. “That’s what you’re wearing? It looks like a potato sack.”

  “I’ve lost a little weight, I’m afraid.”

  The knock came again, just as Daisy reached the door and drew back the bolt. She turned the handle and threw open the door before Pierre could say another word, and because she had grown wise about towering German officers by now, she knew to look up to find his face. So yes, she tilted her chin and looked up, expecting some grim, fair, blue-eyed stranger, and yes, his eyes were blue, and his hair the color of straw, but he had also a sharp, large nose like the beak of a predatory bird, and his scarred face—far from strange or grim—was both familiar and soft with kindness.

  From behind her right shoulder, Pierre exclaimed, “Lieutenant Colonel von Sternburg! What an honor to have your company at my humble table this evening.”

  Von Sternburg, who wore a dress uniform and a pair of white gloves, lifted Daisy’s hand to his lips and then sandwiched her fingers gently between those two large, gloved palms.

  “I assure you, Monsieur Villon,” he said, in perfect French, “the honor is all mine.”

  Daisy knew better than to offer any conversation at the table. There were a great many Frenchmen who took pleasure and even pride in the wit and beauty of their wives, but Pierre was not one of them. He liked to make all the conversation himself. Daisy ate the lamb and the fried spring potatoes (Pierre had also brought home a lump of real butter, more precious than gold) and the puny boiled carrots, and she drank Grandmère’s Burgundy, which was excellent and much the best part of the meal. And she listened. She listened with more attention than usual, and she took particular notice of each man’s name, which she engraved on her memory, along with his face.