Citadel (84 page)

Mathilde looked up with a neutral expression. She frowned, faltered, then recognised Lucie and a smile broke out on her face.

‘Madomaisèla!’ she said. She leant across the counter and pinched Jean-Jacques’ cheek. ‘And look at your little chap, hasn’t he grown? I hardly recognised either of you. Where’s all that lovely blonde hair of yours gone?’

‘Couldn’t get the peroxide,’ Lucie replied. ‘Aren’t I a sight? But what can a girl do but go natural?’ She smiled. ‘You don’t look any different at all, Mathilde. How’s Ernest?’

Mathilde’s face clouded over. ‘He’s no longer with us,’ she said.

‘Oh no.’

‘Got caught up in the Gestapo attack on Villerouge-Termenès,’ she said. ‘He killed three of them before they got him. His bravery allowed his comrades to get away, so they told me.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mathilde,’ Lucie said quietly.

‘It’s how he would have wanted to go,’ the older woman said simply. She gave a brief nod, to indicate the conversation was over, then put her broad hands on the counter. ‘So. What can I do for you, madomaisèla?’

Lucie looked at the empty shelves. There were no baguettes, just two loaves of black bread wrapped in a twist of paper with a name written on it. It was clear that everyone else had come in much earlier in the morning.

‘A little something for J-J to keep him going until I get to the house,’ she said, fishing in her bag and producing a strip of coupons.

Mathilde waved them away. ‘No need to worry about that,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if I can find something special.’

She vanished into the back, reappearing a moment later with a madeleine sponge cake. ‘My own recipe,’ she said. ‘I have to make do with powdered egg and saccharine, but they seem to go down quite well all the same.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Lucie said warmly.

‘Here you are, little chap.’ Mathilde handed it to Jean-Jacques. ‘A special cake for a special boy.’

He reached out and took it.

‘What do you say, J-J?’ Lucie said sharply.

He paused. ‘
Très bon
.’

The women both laughed.

‘I don’t suppose the Saturday market bus still runs?’ Lucie asked.

‘No, but someone’s sure to be going that way. If you give me a minute, I’ll arrange something.’ She reached under the counter and produced a package wrapped in newspaper. ‘And if you could take this for Marieta, that would save the boy a journey later.’

‘How are things in Couiza generally?’ Lucie said, dropping her voice.

‘As well as can be expected,’ Mathilde said, putting the bread in Lucie’s bag. ‘A few work for the other side. And there’s plenty of
miliciens
about because of the Wehrmacht depot. One or two parachute drops have missed their targets recently. Brings the Gestapo into the town.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ she said firmly, meeting Lucie’s eye.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Are you back for good?’ Mathilde asked. ‘You and Jean-Jacques?’

Lucie hesitated, then she smiled. ‘I hope so.’

It took no time for Mathilde to organise a ride to Coustaussa on the back of Ernestine Cassou’s dog trap. An hour later, Lucie was sitting in the kitchen at
CITADELLE
with Marieta and Liesl, Marianne and Suzanne and Geneviève. There had been tears and embraces, a rapid-fire exchange of day-to-day news – nothing serious – as she was brought up to date with everything Marianne and Suzanne had already been told. She felt as if she had never been away.

She exchanged a look with Liesl, who smiled. Lucie had expected Liesl to have changed a great deal. She was tall and beautiful, a woman, not the nervous child Lucie remembered. Sandrine and Raoul spoke of her as very resourceful and brave. Lucie found she was a little intimidated by her.

They had gone outside on their own to show J-J the garden and talked for a few minutes about Max. They had cried a little, then discussed the rumours that the camp was being evacuated. There had been no news from their friend in the Café de la Paix for more than a week, so Liesl was intending to try to go to the village herself, if at all possible, to find out the truth. As Lucie looked at her now, so self-contained and still, she hoped that she and Liesl would have a chance to get to know one another again. Also that the sense of feeling a little at a disadvantage in the younger woman’s company would pass.

‘Ernestine Cassou wasn’t as awful as I remembered,’ Lucie said. ‘She didn’t say much, but she seemed happy enough to bring me here.’

‘She and her father aren’t unusual,’ Geneviève said. ‘They went along with Pétain to start with. They turned a blind eye because they thought it was for the best. Then they realised what collaboration actually meant – no food, forced labour, being second-class citizens in their own country. They don’t know what to do.’

‘But they’re not doing anything to help bring the occupation to an end,’ Suzanne said.

‘No,’ Geneviève admitted.

Marianne nodded. ‘You didn’t say anything in front of her?’

‘Lord, no.’

After only two days in Coustaussa, Marianne was already looking less haggard and gaunt, though there was still that underlying nervousness. Lucie smiled at her son, hoping the country air would do him good too.

‘Mathilde told me about Ernest,’ she said.

‘Dreadful,’ Marieta said, without looking up. ‘A dreadful loss.’

‘But to know Monsieur Baillard is all right,’ Lucie continued, ‘that’s the most wonderful news.’

Marieta stopped what she was doing, a smile breaking across her tired, worn face.

‘I never doubted it,’ she said.

‘Have you seen him yet, Marieta?’ Lucie asked. ‘How is he?’

‘Not yet. He’s in Tarascon with Monsieur l’Inspecteur,’ she said. ‘He has business there. He will come when he can. For now, it’s enough to know he is well.’

‘Eloise and Guillaume are helping him,’ Geneviève said, ‘although . . .’ She paused, casting her mind back to the conversation they’d had on the day of Pierre Déjean’s funeral. ‘Though I get the feeling that it’s Sandrine he’s really waiting for. Eloise says he is planning to go into the mountains to search for the Codex, even though the entire area is now off limits. There are SS patrols everywhere. Anyone caught in a prohibited zone is arrested.’

‘Or shot,’ Liesl said.

Straight away, Lucie’s contented frame of mind vanished. She knew Suzanne had told the others about Authié’s return to Carcassonne, so at least she didn’t have to be the bearer of bad news. But as she looked at Marianne, she saw her thoughts had returned to her sister.

‘I’m sure Sandrine’s all right,’ Lucie said. ‘Raoul stayed behind so they could travel together. Sandrine will be all right. She always is.’

Chapter 133

CARCASSONNE

R
aoul cradled Sandrine’s head in his lap, doing his best to insulate her from the jolts and potholes on the track. Her breathing had grown shallow and her skin was drained of colour.

‘How much further, Bonnet?’ Raoul said. ‘I’m not sure she can last any longer.’

They had pulled off the road some time back and were slowly making their way along a forestry path between the pine trees in the woods around Cavayère, the chassis of the car bumping over the uneven surface of the
draille
.

‘We’re nearly there.’

He made one final switchback turn, following a winding path that led steeply up, then parked beneath the branches of a
pin parasol
.

‘This is it.’

Raoul looked up at the log cabin. An idyllic location in the hills, perfect for hunting. A warm oil lamp glowed in the window.

‘He’s here,’ Bonnet said, quickly getting out of the car. He knocked on the door of the cabin, then came round to Raoul’s side to help him lift Sandrine out. She had lost consciousness and there was a slick of blood on the back seat.

Jeanne Giraud appeared in the doorway. Raoul saw distress flood her face at her first sight of Sandrine, but she kept her head.

‘Bring her through,’ she said.

‘Is Giraud here?’ Raoul asked desperately.

‘My husband’s washing his hands,’ she said.

Carefully, so as not to open any of Sandrine’s wounds, Raoul and Robert carried her into the cabin. A sturdy table had been covered with a rough woollen blanket in the centre of the single room.

‘Is there nowhere else? A bed?’ Raoul said.

‘This is what Jean-Marc needs,’ she replied calmly. ‘We’ll make her comfortable afterwards.’

Between them, Raoul and Robert laid Sandrine down on the makeshift operating table, on her side so the burn wasn’t in contact with the blanket.

Bonnet stood back. ‘I’m going to leave you, Pelletier. Get back to the Bastide and make sure Yvette and Gaston are all right.’ He glanced at Jeanne. ‘Someone will let me know? If you need me to come back later.’

‘She’ll be here for a few days,’ Jeanne said in the same calm and steady voice.

Raoul nodded his thanks. Moments later, he heard the engine start up and the car begin its careful descent down the rough track through the forest.

He looked around the cabin. There was one small window and a bookshelf on the far wall. In the corner there was a small table with a typewriter on it. Madame Giraud noticed him looking and covered up the papers lying on the desk.

‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am that—’

‘They are monsters,’ she said in a low voice. ‘They arrested my father-in-law yesterday.’

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise.’

Jeanne met his gaze. ‘They released him, but not before giving him a broken nose and a black eye. Sixty-five years old. He knows nothing.’ She poured him a large measure of brandy. ‘Anyway, drink this. You look like you need it.’

Raoul knocked the measure back in one go, then moved to stand closer to Sandrine’s head. She was very pale and her breathing was shallow, snatched, as if every gasp cost her more than she could spare. Raoul wanted to hold her hand or stroke her hair or rest his head on her shoulder, but everything about her was battered and torn.

The back door opened and a dark-haired, wiry man in his mid twenties came in, drying his hands on a towel. He didn’t waste time with niceties, but went straight to his patient. Raoul saw him blanch as he saw the extent of her injuries.

‘Will she be all right, Giraud?’

‘Did my wife say your name was Pelletier?’

‘That’s right.’

He looked at his patient. ‘And she is?’

‘Sandrine.’

‘Marianne Vidal’s sister?’

‘That’s right.’

‘She was a pupil of mine,’ Jeanne said. ‘She was the girl who helped on Bastille Day when the bomb went off at Saint-Michel, remember? Papa thought a lot of her.’

Giraud met Raoul’s eye. ‘Might I know her by another name?’

Raoul held his gaze. ‘You might.’

He said nothing more, but Raoul realised Giraud knew her reputation and hoped it would make him even more determined to save her.

He took an ophthalmoscope from his bag, lifted the less swollen of her eyelids and shone the light in her eye.

‘Mademoiselle Vidal? Sandrine? Can you hear me?’

There was no reaction. Giraud looked up at Raoul. ‘How long’s she been unconscious?’

‘She talked a little in the car at first, but not for half an hour or so.’

‘What happened?’

‘Gestapo. We managed to rescue her as they were transferring her from the route de Toulouse to the Caserne Laperrine.’

Giraud didn’t look up, but continued to examine Sandrine’s injuries. ‘How long was she with them before that?’

‘She was arrested at five o’clock this morning,’ he said quietly.

Giraud stopped. ‘She was there for six hours.’

‘Yes.’ Raoul hesitated. ‘Will she make it?’

Giraud paused and looked up for a moment. ‘So long as no infection sets in, she’ll make it. Physically, at least, though she’s going to be pretty uncomfortable.’ He pointed at the suppurating burn on her shoulder. ‘But mentally? I don’t know. They did a job on her, Pelletier.’

Raoul forced himself to look at the burn properly, realising that it wasn’t a random shape at all, but rather something specific.

‘It’s some kind of crucifix, by the look of it,’ Giraud was saying.

Raoul felt the bile rising in his throat and took several deep breaths. ‘It’s the Cross of Lorraine,’ he said quietly. They had branded her with the symbol adopted by the Resistance.

Giraud peered. ‘Gestapo, did you say?’

Raoul thought about Authié staggering out of the car. ‘I’m not certain.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ Giraud said. His gaze moved down to the blood on Sandrine’s skirt and thighs. ‘If you want to wait outside, Pelletier,’ he said quickly, ‘Jeanne will assist me. No need for you to watch.’

‘I’m staying.’

Giraud held his gaze, then nodded. ‘Very well. I need to disinfect the burns, to prevent infection – that’s the challenge.’ He paused. ‘It will hurt.’

Raoul noticed that Jeanne was holding a jug of vinegar. ‘We haven’t got any antiseptic,’ she said. ‘This will have to do.’

‘Take this,’ Giraud said, thrusting a cloth into Raoul’s hand. ‘Fold it over. Make a wad.’

‘What do I . . .?’

‘Put it between Sandrine’s teeth when she screams,’ Jeanne said.

Raoul felt his stomach clench as Jeanne, gently, helped her husband roll Sandrine further on to her side. As Giraud dabbed the disinfectant on to the livid red weals, Sandrine let out a deep, wild howl, shocked back into consciousness. For a moment, Raoul was so relieved to hear her voice, to see she was awake, that he just stared down at her.

‘For God’s sake, man. The cloth!’

Jolted into action, he put the wad into her mouth, and Sandrine, despite the madness of the pain, understood what was required and bit down hard as Giraud cleaned, then dressed the wound.

‘That’s it, Sandrine,’ Jeanne murmured. ‘It will be over in a moment.’

Raoul saw the agony in her half-open eyes, but she didn’t cry out again. He felt her fingers reaching for his. Her grip was strong and he struggled to keep the tears from his eyes.

‘You’re so brave,’ he whispered to her. ‘No one more so.’

It took nearly an hour for Giraud to clean and dress every wound, sending Raoul out of the room to fetch water as he moved to the injuries further down. Raoul felt a coward for not wanting to know. When he came back with a pail from the stream, Sandrine was covered with a sheet from the waist down.