The Nightingale

The soldiers immediately sat back down. “Bonjour, M’mselle,” they said in unison.

“Your French is quite good,” she lied. Beside her, a heavyset woman in peasant clothes made a harrumphing sound of disgust and whispered, “You should be ashamed of yourself” in French.

Isabelle laughed prettily. “Where are you going?” she asked the soldiers. They would be on this carriage for hours. It would be good to keep their attention on her.

“Tours,” one said, as the other said, “Onzain.”

“Ah. And do you know any card games to pass the time? I have a deck with me.”

“Yes. Yes!” the younger one said.

Isabelle reached in her handbag for her playing cards. She was dealing a new hand—and laughing—when the next airman boarded the train and shuffled past the Germans.

Later, when the conductor came through, she offered up her ticket. He took it and moved on.

When he came to the airman, MacLeish did exactly as instructed—he handed over his ticket while he kept reading. The other airman did the same.

Isabelle released her breath in a sigh of relief and leaned back in her seat.

*

Isabelle and the four airmen made it to Saint-Jean-de-Luz without incident. Twice they’d walked—separately, of course—past German checkpoints. The soldiers on guard had barely looked at the series of false papers, saying danke sch?n without even looking up. They were not on the lookout for downed airmen and apparently hadn’t considered a plan as bold as this.

But now Isabelle and the men were approaching the mountains. In the foothills, she went to a small park along the river and sat on a bench overlooking the water. The airmen arrived as planned, one by one, with MacLeish first. He sat down beside her.

The others took seats within earshot.

“You have your signs?” she asked.

MacLeish withdrew a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It read: DEAF AND DUMB. WAITING FOR MY MAMAN TO PICK ME UP. The other airmen did the same.

“If a German soldier hassles any of you, you show him your papers and your sign. Do not speak.”

“And I act stupid, which is easy for me.” MacLeish grinned.

Isabelle was too anxious to smile.

She shrugged off her canvas rucksack and handed it to MacLeish. In it were a few essentials—a bottle of wine, three plump pork sausages, two pairs of heavy woolen socks, and several apples. “Sit where you can in Urrugne. Not together, of course. Keep your heads down and pretend to read your books. Don’t look up until you hear me say, ‘There you are, cousin, we’ve been looking all over for you.’ Understood?”

They all nodded.

“If I am not back by dawn, travel separately to Pau and go to the hotel I told you about. A woman named Eliane will help you.”

“Be careful,” MacLeish said.

Taking a deep breath, she left them and walked to the main road. A mile or so later, as night began to fall, she crossed a rickety bridge. The road turned to dirt and narrowed into a cart track that climbed up, up, up into the verdant foothills. Moonlight came to her aid, illuminating hundreds of tiny white specks—goats. There were no cottages up this high, just animal sheds.

At last, she saw it: a two-storied, half-timbered house with a red roof that was exactly as her father had described. No wonder they had not been able to reach Madame Babineau. This cottage seemed designed to keep people away—as did the path up to it. Goats bleated at her appearance and bumped into one another nervously. Light shone through the haphazardly blacked-out windows, and smoke puffed cheerily from the chimney, scenting the air.

At her knock, the heavy wooden door opened just enough to reveal a single eye and a mouth nearly hidden by a gray beard.

“Bonsoir,” Isabelle said. She waited a moment for the old man to reply in kind, but he said nothing. “I am here to see Madame Babineau.”

“Why?” the man demanded.

“Julien Rossignol sent me.”

The old man made a clicking sound between his teeth and tongue; then the door opened.

The first thing Isabelle noticed inside was the stew, simmering in a big black pot that hung from a hook in the giant stone-faced fireplace.

A woman was seated at a huge, scarred trestle table in the back of the wide, timber-beamed room. From where Isabelle stood, it looked as if she were dressed in charcoal-colored rags, but when the old man lit an oil lamp, Isabelle saw that the woman was dressed like a man, in rough breeches and a linen shirt with a leather lace-up neckline. Her hair was the color of iron shavings and she was smoking a cigarette.

Still, Isabelle recognized the woman, even though it had been fifteen years. She remembered sitting on the beach at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Hearing the women laugh. And Madame Babineau saying, This little beauty will cause you endless trouble, Madeleine, the boys will someday swarm her, and Maman saying, She is too smart to toss her life to boys, aren’t you, my Isabelle?

“Your shoes are caked with dirt.”

“I’ve walked here from the train station at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”