Chapter Thirty-One
After a long trek up the cobblestone road, Elliott and I were finally once again standing at the grand entrance of Saint Orens. I wiped at my forehead with the back of my arm and brushed a few hairs from my eyes. It was close to two o’clock, the sun was still burning brightly upon the rolling hills of Provence, and its warmth felt wonderful on my skin. Elliott pushed open the church’s large front door, and a cool breeze greeted us from inside, the old marble building helping to retain some of the cooler morning air. We stepped into the chapel and navigated our way to the rectory, familiar with the route from the last time we’d come.
I peeked my head past the open door and saw an older, portly gentleman dressed in ordinary but formal clothes. He was peering over his readers at some handwritten notes and marking edits as he went.
“Bonjour, we are looking for Father Fran?ois. Do you know if he is in today?” I asked.
“Oui, Mademoiselle.” He gestured at himself and said, “Moi, c’est Père Fran?ois.” He rose to greet us and extended a hand. “Are you here for a certificat de mariage?” He shook a finger between me and Elliott. “Vous faites un couple adorable.”
“Un couple adorable? Certificat de mariage?” I repeated back slowly in my painfully American accent. I looked over at Elliott, who had turned an endearing shade of pink. “Oh no, Monsieur. We aren’t here for a marriage license. Um. I mean, he and I aren’t together. We’re just ...” Are just what? I shook the question from my head and focused on the real purpose of the visit. “We were hoping you could allow us back into the church’s archives?”
“Back in?” he repeated, trying to work out the meaning of the expression. “Oh, are you Mademoiselle Everly?”
“Yes. I am Plum Everly.”
“Ah, my apologies that I was not here to meet you on your last visit. I have some time to take you there now before afternoon Mass, if you are available?”
We followed Father Fran?ois past the altar and down a long hallway to the set of stairs leading up to the annex.
“Remind me,” Father Fran?ois said, “what it is you are looking for?”
“Any information you have on Chateau Mirabelle or Maubec?”
“Or the Adéla?ses?” Elliott added.
Father Fran?ois pulled a ring of keys from his pocket, searched for just the right one, and used it to crack open the door. Then he went around the room unearthing files and placing them in neat stacks on the table.
“Every artifact on Chateau Mirabelle is here,” he said, pointing to the two largest mounds.
Elliott placed his camera on his shoulder and turned it on. “I brought the right one this time—no light. May I?”
Father Fran?ois nodded and sat down at the table beside us.
I reached for one of the piles. “Somewhere in here there’s a photograph of the Adéla?ses with two other couples I saw the last time.”
Father Fran?ois held up a picture he managed to wedge out of his thick stack. “Is this the one?”
I snatched it from his fingertips. “Yes! Look at the back.” I turned the photo over to show Elliott what I was talking about.
He lowered his camera and shrugged. “DP? I don’t get it. Who are those other people in the photo?”
“Don’t you see? DP? Dutch-Paris network? Those other couples have to be Marthe and Grégoire Archambeau and Ginette and Alain Grenouille. They all must’ve been a part of the Dutch-Paris network.”
Father Fran?ois’s head shot up. “Oui, the Dutch-Paris network had a small operation out of Chateau Mirabelle.” He reached across the table for one of the accordion folders. “You will find whatever information we have here.”
Over the next two hours, Father Fran?ois, Elliott, and I sorted through mountains of documents that helped (along with Google) piece together the history of the Dutch-Paris network in Maubec and the role that the Adéla?ses played in it. We learned that in 1942, Jean Weidner, a Dutchman living in France, began helping smuggle those targeted by the Nazis into the south of France, via Paris, and then eventually to Switzerland. He recruited help along the way, eventually growing his Resistance efforts to include over three hundred people.
Based on a letter we found among the files, in early 1942, Jean Weidner was introduced to the Adéla?ses, and by that spring, Chateau Mirabelle was being used as a safe house along the route to Geneva, its winery serving as cover and its underground cellars excellent hiding space. It was unclear exactly when Marthe and Grégoire Archambeau and Ginette and Alain Grenouille joined forces with the Adéla?ses, but their names began to appear on falsified winery invoices by late August.
Father Fran?ois set the documents out on the table in a line. “Here, look at the names of the towns of the wine deliveries: Privas, Valence, Grenoble, Chambéry. It’s a straight shot to Annecy. This must have been the route they followed.” He stood up from the table and stretched. “I am so sorry to do this, but I must get downstairs to get ready for Mass. You are welcome to stay here a bit longer, if you would like.”
“I think we have everything we need. Plum, what do you think?” Elliott asked.
“Actually, would you mind if I snapped a picture of the photograph?” I asked, holding up the black-and-white shot of the group. “And Elliott, can you be sure to get a close-up of it also?”
“You may borrow the picture, if you would like,” Father Fran?ois said.
“Are you sure?”
“Please, if it helps in your efforts, I am happy to let you hold on to it a bit longer.”
I tucked the photograph safely into my bag.
“Are you finished? Would you both like to stay for Mass?” Father Fran?ois asked.
“Thank you, but it’s been a long day. We should probably start heading back to the inn,” Elliott replied.
“Actually, I’d like to stay, if that’s okay?” I said.
Elliott did a double take. “You would?”
“I’m not a particularly religious person, but after everything we learned today, it feels only right to pay our respects.”
He nodded, and we followed Father Fran?ois down to the chapel where, together, we lit seven candles: one each for Luc and Imène Adéla?se, Marthe and Grégoire Archambeau, and Ginette and Alain Grenouille, and one extra for all the other brave men and women we would never know the names of.
After Mass, Elliott and I took a seat on a stone wall outside the church that overlooked lush lavender fields outlined by rows of tall cypress. Elliott was pitching small pebbles into the road, and my eyes trailed them as they tumbled down the steep hill.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
I was swimming in my own thoughts. “Sorry, what?”
“I asked how you’re holding up?”
“They were around our age, right? The Adéla?ses, the Grenouilles, the Archambeaus.”
“I think so. They looked to be, anyway.”
“They could’ve easily stayed under the radar through the end of the war and gone on to lead full and happy lives.”
He considered this for a moment before responding. “I think could’ve is a relative term. They literally could have looked the other way and stayed safe, sure, but maybe they couldn’t have lived with themselves if they had an opportunity to do something and didn’t. They did what they felt was right, even knowing what could happen to them. It’s remarkably courageous.”
“I know. It’s incredible. So selfless and brave. When I think back to the girl I was, the girl who fretted about her luggage not fitting into the car, I’m ashamed.” I looked up and into Elliott’s warm eyes.
“You’re a good person, Plum. I’ve really gotten to know you, and you’re a good person.” Elliott’s eyes crinkled in the corners as he hopped down from the wall. “Hungry?”
“Actually, I am.”
He craned his neck toward the bottom of the hill. “C’mon, there’s a little ice-cream shop in town Agnès told me about that supposedly serves legendary lavender ice cream. Not normally my kind of thing, but I’m feeling inspired to open myself up to a world of new possibilities.”
I smiled and nodded. “You know what, so am I.”
And for possibly the first time since we met, we found ourselves in absolute and total agreement.