The Nightingale

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.”





THIRTY-THREE

Isabelle woke tied to a wooden chair at her wrists and ankles; the ropes bit into her flesh and were so tight she couldn’t move. Her fingers were numb. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling above her, a cone of light in the darkness. The room smelled of mold and piss and water seeping through cracks in the stone.

Somewhere in front of her, a match flared.

She heard the scratch of sound, smelled the sulfur, and tried to lift her head, but the movement hurt so much she made an involuntary sound.

“Gut,” someone said. “It hurts.”

Gestapo.

He pulled a chair from the darkness and sat down, facing her. “Pain,” he said simply. “Or no pain. The choice is yours.”

“In that case, no pain.”

He hit her hard. Blood filled her mouth, sharp and metallic tasting. She felt it dribble down her chin.

Two days, she thought. Only two days.

She had to last under questioning for forty-eight hours without naming names. If she could do that, just not crack, her father and Ga?tan and Henri and Didier and Paul and Anouk would have time to protect themselves. They would know soon that she had been arrested, if they didn’t already know. Eduardo would get the word out and then he would go into hiding. That was their plan.

“Name?” he said, withdrawing a small notebook and a pencil from his breast pocket.

She felt blood dripping down her chin, onto her lap. “Juliette Gervaise. But you know that. You have my papers.”

“We have papers that name you as Juliette Gervaise, true.”

“So why ask me?”

“Who are you, really?”

“I’m really Juliette.”

“Born where?” he asked lazily, studying his well-tended fingernails.

“Nice.”

“And what were you doing in Urrugne?”

“I was in Urrugne?” she said.

He straightened at that, his gaze returned to hers with interest. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two, or nearly, I think. Birthdays don’t mean much anymore.”

“You look younger.”

“I feel older.”

He slowly got to his feet, towered over her. “You work for the Nightingale. I want his name.”

They didn’t know who she was.

“I know nothing about birds.”

The blow came out of the blue, stunning in its impact. Her head whipped sideways, cracked hard against the chair back.

“Tell me about the Nightingale.”

“I told you—”

This time he hit her with an iron ruler across the cheek, so hard she felt her skin break open and blood spill.