The Nightingale

“Vianne, don’t shoot,” Isabelle said. “They’re friends.”

Vianne looked at the ragged-looking men in the wagon; then at her sister, who was dressed all in black and looked milky pale, with shadows under her eyes. “Of course they are.” She moved sideways but kept the gun trained on the men crowded onto the front of the rickety wagon. Behind them, in the bed of the wagon, lay a pine coffin.

She recognized Henri—the man who ran the hotel in town, with whom Isabelle had run off to Paris. The communist with whom Isabelle thought she might be in love a little. “Of course,” Vianne said. “Your lover.”

Henri jumped down from the wagon and closed the barn door. “What in the fuck happened?”

“Vianne hit him with a shovel and I shot him,” Isabelle said. “There’s some sisterly dispute on who killed him, but he’s dead. Captain Beck. The soldier who billets here.”

Henri exchanged a look with one of the strangers—a scrappy, sharp-faced young man with hair that was too long. “That’s a problem,” the man said.

“Can you get rid of the body?” Isabelle asked. She was pressing a hand to her chest, as if her heart was beating too fast. “And the airman’s, too—he didn’t make it.”

A big, shaggy man in a patched coat and pants that were too small jumped down from the wagon. “Disposing of the bodies is the easy part.”

Who were these people?

Isabelle nodded. “They’ll come looking for Beck. My sister can’t stand up to questioning. We’ll need to put her and Sophie in hiding.”

That did it. They were talking about Vianne as if she weren’t even here. “Running would only prove my guilt.”

“You can’t stay,” Isabelle said. “It isn’t safe.”

“By all means, Isabelle, worry about me now, after you’ve put me and the children at risk and forced me to kill a decent man.”

“Vianne, please—”

Vianne felt something in her harden. It seemed that every time she thought she’d hit rock bottom in this war, something worse came along. Now she was a murderess and it was Isabelle’s fault. The last thing she was going to do now was follow her sister’s advice and leave Le Jardin. “I will say that Beck left to look for the airman and never returned. What do I, an ordinary French housewife, know of such things? He was here and then he was gone. C’est la vie.”

“It’s as good an answer as any,” Henri said.

“This is my fault,” Isabelle said, approaching Vianne. She saw her sister’s regret for this, and her guilt, but Vianne didn’t care. She was too scared for the children to worry about Isabelle’s feelings.

“Yes it is, but you made it mine, too. We killed a good man, Isabelle.”

Isabelle swayed a little, unsteady. “V. They’ll come for you.”

Vianne started to say “And whose fault is that?,” but when she looked at Isabelle, the words caught in her throat.

She saw blood oozing out from between Isabelle’s fingers. For a split second, the world slowed down, tilted, became nothing but noise—the men talking behind her, the mule stomping his hoof on the wooden floor, her own labored breathing. Isabelle crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

Before Vianne could even cry out, a hand clamped over her mouth, arms yanked her back. The next thing she knew she was being dragged away from her sister. She wrestled to be free but the man holding her was too strong.

She saw Henri drop to his knees beside Isabelle and rip open her coat and blouse to reveal a bullet hole just below her collarbone. Henri tore off his shirt and pressed it to the wound.

Vianne elbowed her captor hard enough to make him ooph. She wrenched free and rushed to Isabelle’s side, slipping in the blood, almost falling. “There’s a medical kit in the cellar.”

The dark-haired man—who suddenly looked as shaky as Vianne felt—leaped down the cellar stairs and returned quickly, carrying the supplies.

Vianne’s hands were shaking as she reached for the bottle of alcohol and washed her hands as best she could.

She took a deep breath and took over the job of pressing Henri’s shirt against the wound, which she felt pulsing beneath her.

Twice she had to draw back, wring blood out of the shirt, and start again, but finally, the bleeding stopped. Gently, she rolled Isabelle into her arms and saw the exit wound.

Thank God.

She carefully laid Isabelle back down. “This is going to hurt,” she whispered. “But you’re strong, aren’t you, Isabelle?”

She doused the wound with alcohol. Isabelle shuddered at the contact, but she didn’t waken or cry out.

“That’s good,” Vianne said. The sound of her own voice calmed her, reminded her that she was a mother and mothers took care of their families. “Unconscious is good.” She fished the needle from the medical kit, such as it was, and threaded it. She doused the needle in alcohol and then leaned down to the wound. Very carefully, she began stitching the gaping flesh together. It didn’t take long—and she hadn’t done a good job, but it was the best she could do.