Chapter Nineteen #2
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.
The men came forward obediently and squatted around the rucksack, pulling out shoes, passing them around.
“None fit me,” MacLeish said.
“Do what you can,” Madame Babineau said. “Sadly, we aren’t a shoe shop.”
When the men had exchanged their flight boots for walking shoes, Eduardo had them stand in a line.
He studied each man in turn, checking his clothing and his small pack.
“Take everything out of your pockets and leave it here. The Spanish will arrest you for anything, and you do not want to escape the Germans only to find yourself in a Spanish prison.” He handed them each a goatskin bota bag full of wine and a walking stick that he’d made from knobby, mossy branches.
When he was finished, he slapped them on the back hard enough to send most of them stumbling forward.
“Silence,” Eduardo said. “Always.”
They left the cottage and filed onto the uneven terrain of the goat pasture outside.
The sky was lit by a weak blue moon. “Night is our protection,” Eduardo said.
“Night and speed and quiet.” He turned, stopped them with a raised hand.
“Juliette will be at the back of the line. I will be at the front. When I walk, you walk. You walk in single file. There is no talking. None. You will be cold—freezing cold on this night—and hungry and soon you will be tired. Keep walking.”
Eduardo turned his back on the men and began walking up the hill.
Isabelle felt the cold instantly; it bit into her exposed cheeks and slipped through the seams of her woolen coat. She used her gloved hand to hold the pieces of her collar together and began the long trek up the grassy hillside.
Sometime around three in the morning, the walk became a hike.
The terrain steepened, the moon slid behind invisible clouds and blinked out, leaving them in near-total darkness.
Isabelle heard the men’s breathing become labored in front of her.
She knew they were cold; most of them did not have adequate clothing for this freezing air, and few of them had shoes that fit correctly.
Twigs snapped beneath their feet, rocks clattered away from them, made a sound like rain on a tin roof as they fell down the steep mountainside.
The first pangs of hunger twisted her empty stomach.
It started to rain. A gnashing wind swept up from the valley below, slamming into the party walking single file.
It turned the rain into freezing shards that attacked their exposed skin.
Isabelle began to shiver uncontrollably, her breath came out in great, heaving gasps, and still she climbed. Up, up, up, past the tree line.
Ahead, someone made a yelping sound and fell hard. Isabelle couldn’t see who it was; the night had closed around them. The man in front of her stopped; she ran into his back and he stumbled sideways, fell into a boulder and cursed.
“Don’t stop, men,” Isabelle said, trying to keep the spirit in her voice.
They climbed until Isabelle gasped with every step, but Eduardo allowed them no respite. He stopped only long enough to make sure they were still behind him and then he was off again, clambering up the rocky hillside like a goat.
Isabelle’s legs were on fire, aching painfully, and even with her espadrilles, blisters formed. Every step became an agony and a test of will.