The Nightingale

Vianne didn’t know what the woman meant, but it didn’t matter. She could see that the women were suffering from exhaustion and hunger. “Just a moment.” She went into the house and packed them some bread and raw carrots and a small bit of cheese. All that she had to spare. She filled a wine bottle with water and returned, offering them the provisions. “It’s not much,” she said.

“It is more than we’ve had since Tours,” the young woman said in a toneless voice.

“You were in Tours?” Vianne asked.

“Drink, Sabine,” the old woman said, holding the water to the girl’s lips.

Vianne was about to ask about Isabelle when the old woman said sharply, “They’re here.”

The young mother made a moaning sound and tightened her hold on the baby, who was so quiet—and his tiny fist so blue—that Vianne gasped.

The baby was dead.

Vianne knew about the kind of talon grief that wouldn’t let go; she had fallen into the fathomless gray that warped a mind and made a mother keep holding on long after hope was gone.

“Go inside,” the old woman said to Vianne. “Lock your doors.”

“But…”

The ragged trio backed away—lurched, really—as if Vianne’s breath had become noxious.

And then she saw the mass of black shapes moving across the field and coming up the road.

The smell preceded them. Human sweat and filth and body odor. As they neared, the miasma of black separated, peeled into forms. She saw people on the road and in the fields; walking, limping, coming toward her. Some were pushing bicycles or prams or dragging wagons. Dogs barked, babies cried. There was coughing, throat clearing, whining. They came forward, through the field and up the road, relentlessly moving closer, pushing one another aside, their voices rising.

Vianne couldn’t help so many. She rushed into her house and locked the door behind her. Inside, she went from room to room, locking doors and closing shutters. When she was finished, she stood in the living room, uncertain, her heart pounding.

The house began to shake, just a little. The windows rattled, the shutters thumped against the stone exterior. Dust rained down from the exposed timbers of the ceiling.

Someone pounded on the front door. It went on and on and on, fists landing on the front door in hammer blows that made Vianne flinch.

Sophie came running down the stairs, clutching Bébé to her chest. “Maman!”

Vianne opened her arms and Sophie ran into her embrace. Vianne held her daughter close as the onslaught increased. Someone pounded on the side door. The copper pots and pans hanging in the kitchen clanged together, made a sound like church bells. She heard the high squealing of the outdoor pump. They were getting water.

Vianne said to Sophie, “Wait here one moment. Sit on the divan.”

“Don’t leave me!”

Vianne peeled her daughter away and forced her to sit down. Taking an iron poker from the side of the fireplace, she crept cautiously up the stairs. From the safety of her bedroom, she peered out the window, careful to remain hidden.

There were dozens of people in her yard; mostly women and children, moving like a pack of hungry wolves. Their voices melded into a single desperate growl.

Vianne backed away. What if the doors didn’t hold? So many people could break down doors and windows, even walls.

Terrified, she went back downstairs, not breathing until she saw Sophie still safe on the divan. Vianne sat down beside her daughter and took her in her arms, letting Sophie curl up as if she were a much littler girl. She stroked her daughter’s curly hair. A better mother, a stronger mother, would have had a story to tell right now, but Vianne was so afraid that her voice had gone completely. All she could think was an endless, beginningless prayer. Please.

She pulled Sophie closer and said, “Go to sleep, Sophie. I’m here.”

“Maman,” Sophie said, her voice almost lost in the pounding on the door. “What if Tante Isabelle is out there?”

Vianne stared down at Sophie’s small, earnest face, covered now in a sheen of sweat and dust. “God help her” was all she could think of to say.

*

At the sight of the gray stone house, Isabelle felt awash in exhaustion. Her shoulders sagged. The blisters on her feet became unbearable. In front of her, Ga?tan opened the gate. She heard it clatter brokenly and tilt sideways.

Leaning into him, she stumbled up to the front door. She knocked twice, wincing each time her bloodied knuckles hit the wood.

No one answered.

She pounded with both of her fists, trying to call out her sister’s name, but her voice was too hoarse to find any volume.

She staggered back, almost sinking to her knees in defeat.

“Where can you sleep?” Ga?tan said, holding her upright with his hand on her waist.