*
That same day, Isabelle walked up the cobblestoned street in the hilltop town of Urrugne. She could hear the echo of footsteps behind her. On the journey here from Paris, her two latest “songs”—Major Foley and Sergeant Smythe—had followed her instructions perfectly and had made it past the various checkpoints. She hadn’t looked back in quite some time, but she had no doubt that they were there walking as instructed—with at least one hundred yards between them.
At the top of the hill, she saw a man seated on a bench in front of the closed poste. He held a sign that read: DEAF AND DUMB. WAITING FOR MY MAMAN TO PICK ME UP. Amazingly, the simple ruse still worked to fool the Nazis.
Isabelle went to him. “I have an umbrella,” she said in her heavily accented English.
“It looks like rain,” he said.
She nodded. “Walk at least fifty yards behind me.”
She kept walking up the hill, alone.
By the time she reached Madame Babineau’s property it was nearing nightfall. At the bend in the road, she paused, waiting for her airmen to catch up.
The man who’d been seated on the bench was the first to arrive. “Hello, ma’am,” he said, pulling off his borrowed beret. “Major Tom Dowd, ma’am. And I’m to say best wishes from Sarah in Pau, ma’am. She was a first-rate hostess.”
Isabelle smiled tiredly. They were so … larger than life, these Yanks, with their ready smiles and booming voices. And their gratitude. Not at all like the Brits, who thanked her with clipped words and cool voices and firm handshakes. She’d lost track of the times an American had hugged her so tightly she’d come off her feet. “I’m Juliette,” she said to the major.
Major Jack Foley was next to arrive. He gave her a big smile and said, “Those are some mountains.”
“You said a mouthful there,” Dowd said, thrusting his hand out. “Dowd. Chicago.”
“Foley. Boston. Nice to meet you.”
Sergeant Smythe brought up the rear. He arrived a few minutes later. “Hello, gentlemen,” he said stiffly. “That was a hike.”
“Just wait,” Isabelle said with a laugh.
She led them to the cottage and knocked three times on the front door.
Madame Babineau opened the door a little, saw Isabelle through the crack, and grinned, stepping back to allow them entrance. As always, a cast-iron cauldron hung above the flames in the soot-blackened fireplace. The table was set for their arrival, with glasses of warm milk and empty soup bowls.
Isabelle glanced around. “Eduardo?”
“In the barn, with two more airmen. We are having trouble getting supplies. It’s all this damned bombing. Half of town is rubble.” She placed a hand on Isabelle’s cheek. “You look tired, Isabelle. Are you well?”
The touch was so comforting that Isabelle couldn’t help leaning into it for just a moment. She wanted to tell her friend her troubles, unburden herself for a moment, but that was another luxury lost in this war. Troubles were carried alone. Isabelle didn’t tell Madame Babineau that the Gestapo had broadened their search for the Nightingale or that she worried for her father and sister and niece. What was the point? They all had family to worry about. Such were ordinary anxieties, fixed points on the map of this war.
Isabelle reached out for the old woman’s hands. There were so many terrible aspects to what their lives now were, but there was this, too: friendships forged in fire that had proven to be as strong as iron. After so many solitary years, spent tucked away in convents and forgotten in boarding schools, Isabelle never took for granted the fact that now she had friends, people whom she cared about and who cared about her.
“I am fine, my friend.”
“And that handsome man of yours?”
“Still bombing depots and derailing trains. I saw him just before the invasion at Normandy. I could tell something big was up. I know he’s in the thick of it. I’m worried—”
Isabelle heard the distant purr of an engine. She turned to Madame. “Are you expecting anyone?”
“No one ever drives up here.”
The airmen heard it, too. They paused in their conversation. Smythe looked up. Foley drew a knife out of his waistband.
Outside, the goats started bleating. A shadow moved across the window.
Before Isabelle could yell out a warning the door smacked open and light poured into the room, along with several SS agents. “Put your hands over your heads!”
Isabelle was hit hard in the back of the head by a rifle butt. She gasped and stumbled forward.
Her legs gave out beneath her and she fell hard, cracking her head on the stone floor.
The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was “You are all under arrest.”