“So he made sure hers was the name to be reported?” I whispered. “Why wouldn’t he just fire her if he wanted her away from his restaurant?”
“He probably viewed it as safer to have her permanently disposed of. He could have shot her himself—certainly by then, he had no qualms about pulling a trigger. But he might not have felt he could do such a thing again, not after the public incident with the sous-chef. That might have cost him too many Nazi favors. So he just passed on your cousin’s name, and the town where he already knew she went on weekends, and took care of her that way.” Eve tilted her head. “In fairness, he couldn’t have known the entire town would be massacred. But even had the Germans been merciful to the rest of Oradour-sur-Glane, your cousin would undoubtedly still have been rounded up and executed by the SS. Because of René Bordelon.”
My skin was crawling. The photograph in my hand burned me. I looked again at that smug old face.
“There is no vengeance to be had against the Germans who actually ended your cousin’s life,” Eve said. “Sturmbannführer Diekmann, the man who ordered the massacre, died a matter of weeks afterward in the Allied assault—that’s a matter of military record, confirmed by Allenton. The soldiers who carried out his orders would have either died with him, been disseminated back to Germany after the war, or still linger on in prisoner of war camps. None were named and brought to trial for what happened at Oradour-sur-Glane, either at Nuremburg or afterward, and without another mass trial, it’s unlikely you’d ever find out which man fired the shots that killed your cousin. Those men are probably beyond your reach. René is not. He didn’t pull the trigger, but he certainly did his best to arrange your cousin’s death.”
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe. I sat staring down at that smug face. Oh, Rose . . .
“I am going to track down René Bordelon, Charlie St. Clair, and make him pay for what he’s done.” Eve flexed her destroyed hands. “Are you coming with me?”
PART IV
CHAPTER 32
EVE
March 1916
Brussels
The trial was over in a single day.
For Eve, those grinding hours in the imposing room passed in a blur. Violette stared straight ahead when they were all marched in under guard, and Lili cast her mobile gaze all around the high glass ceiling and curule chairs and proud Belgian lions—but Eve focused downward on her mottle-skinned, half-healed fingers clenched together in front of her. They still hurt savagely despite the passage of the intervening months; the pain seemed far more important than the drone of German words overhead.
More formalities as the other officials filed in. Eve’s eyes traveled from face to face. German soldiers, German officials, German clerks . . . But no Frenchmen, no civilians allowed in to view the spectacle. René Bordelon was not here to crane his gaze at the ruin he had made of her, and for that Eve was grateful. She dreaded seeing his face more than she dreaded hearing her sentence. Had she seen him, she knew she would have collapsed, shivering, to the thick carpet.
I did not use to be so small and fearful, she thought as one of the judges harangued them. She had been this broken thing for months now, lying in her cell trembling and weeping at any provocation, and she still wasn’t used to it. The only thing fierce about Eve anymore was her self-loathing.
Betrayer. The whisper was a part of her blood now; it pulsed with every heartbeat, poisonous and matter-of-fact. Betrayer.
Lili knew of her betrayal. They’d barely been allowed to speak to each other, these past months in their separate prison cells in Saint-Gilles, but Eve had bribed one of the guards to tell Lili what she’d done. She couldn’t have carried the weight of that betrayal as a lie. Eve’s heart hammered now as she gazed across the room, forcing herself to look past Violette’s stolid profile to where Lili sat. Spit on me, Eve begged silently. I have earned it.
But all Lili did was smile. Her small face flashed one of its mischievous looks as though she didn’t sit ringed about by hostile guards, as if she was still a free woman—and she put two fingers to her lips and blew Eve a kiss.
Eve flinched as though the kiss were a blow.
They were questioned one at a time, not allowed to hear each other’s testimony. Violette first, her real name of Léonie van Houtte spoken for the first time in Eve’s hearing, though she still couldn’t think of Lili’s lieutenant by any name but Violette. She at least viewed Eve as the traitor she was; the other woman’s stare was hate filled as Eve filed out under guard. Eve was brought in to be questioned next, and she didn’t bother with a defense. Everyone here knows what the outcome will be. She stood silent under the harangue of German, feeling her hands throb, breathing the stale smells of hair oil and shoe polish, and soon enough she was led out again. Lili was the one they wanted most; she could sense the liquid ripple that went over the room in anticipation, almost savage, and wondered if such a ripple had gone over the viewers in the Colosseum before the lions were released. The lions in this room were gold and carved, but they could still levy death.
The judges disappeared; half an hour ticked past measured by a deliberate clock—and it was over. Eve, Lili, Violette, and several lesser defendants were all arrayed before the court, and a vast silence fell. Eve’s mouth went dry as paper, and she could feel herself trembling. At the corner of her eye, she saw Violette’s fingers twitch as though she wanted to reach for Lili’s hand. Lili stood like a statue.
The words rolled out in nasal German.
“For Louise de Bettignies, death.”
“For Léonie van Houtte, death.”
“For Evelyn Gardiner, death.”
Ripples crossed the room, and Eve felt as though she had been kicked in the chest. Not by dread.
Relief.
She looked down at her mangled hands with blurring eyes and thought, as she’d thought while weeping on the floor of René’s green-walled study, I want to die.
No more months of cells and monotony, pain and morphine and guilt. Just the mouths of the guns, arrayed before her. The imagined sight was beautiful. A ripple of gunfire and then—nothing.
But before her heart could squeeze in relief, Lili stepped forward. She spoke in soft, perfect German, the only time in the entire trial she spoke in the language of the enemy.
“Gentlemen, I ask you not to shoot my friends. They are young, and I implore your mercy for them.” Her blond head tilted. “Me, I want to die well.”
“I accept my sentence.” Violette spoke in clear, contemptuous tones, cutting her leader off. “You can shoot me. But I ask you before I die, and you cannot refuse me: do not part me from Lil—from Louise de Bettignies.”
Eve heard her own voice. “Or me.”