When summer came to the Loire Valley, it was as hot as the winter had been cold. Vianne longed to open her bedroom window to let air in, but not a breeze stirred on this hot late June night. She pushed the damp hair from her face and slumped in her chair by the bed.
Sophie made a whimpering sound. In it, Vianne heard a muddled, drawn- out “Maman,” and she dipped her rag into the bowl of water she’d placed on the only remaining nightstand. The water was as warm as everything else in this upstairs room. She twisted the rag over the bowl, watched the excess water fall back into the bowl. Then she placed the wet rag on her daughter’s forehead.
Sophie muttered something incomprehensible and started to thrash.
Vianne held her down, whispering love words in her ear, feeling heat against her lips. “Sophie,” she said, the name a prayer with no beginning, no end. “I’m here.” She said it over and over until Sophie calmed again.
The fever was getting worse. For days now Sophie had been ailing, feeling achy and out of sorts. At first Vianne had thought it was an excuse to avoid the responsibilities they shared. Gardening, laundry, canning, sewing. Vianne was constantly trying to do more, get more done. Even now, in the middle of the summer, she worried about the coming winter.
This morning had shown Vianne the truth, however (and made her feel like a terrible mother for not seeing it from the start): Sophie was sick, very sick. She had been plagued by fever all day, and her temperature was rising. She hadn’t been able to keep anything down, not even the water her body
needed so desperately.
“How about some lemonade?” she said. No answer.
Vianne leaned over and kissed Sophie’s hot cheek.
Dropping the rag back into the bowl full of water, she went downstairs. On the dining room table, a box waited to be filled—her most recent care package to Antoine. She’d started it yesterday and would have finished and mailed it off if not for Sophie’s turn for the worse.
She was almost at the kitchen when she heard her daughter’s scream. Vianne ran back up the stairs.
“Maman,” Sophie croaked, coughing. It was a terrible, rattling sound. She thrashed in the bed, yanking at the blankets, trying to shove them away. Vianne tried to calm her daughter, but Sophie was a wildcat, twisting and screaming and coughing.
If only she had some of Dr. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne. It worked magic on a cough, but of course there was none left.
“It’s all right, Soph. Maman is here,” Vianne said soothingly, but her words had no effect.
Beck appeared beside her. She knew she should have been angry that he was here—here, in her bedroom—but she was too tired and scared to lie to herself. “I don’t know how to help her. There are no aspirin or antibiotics to be had at any price in town.”
“Not even for pearls?”
She looked at him in surprise. “You know I sold my maman’s pearls?”
“I live with you.” He paused. “I make it my business to know what you are doing.”
She didn’t know what to say to that.
He looked down at Sophie. “She coughed all night. I could hear it.” Sophie had gone still, frighteningly so. “She’ll get better.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle of antibiotics. “Here.”
She looked up at him. Was she overstating it to think that he was saving her daughter’s life? Or did he want her to think that? She could rationalize what it meant to take food from him—after all, he needed to eat and it was her
job to cook for him.
This was a favor, pure and simple, and there would be a price for it. “Take it,” he said gently.
She took the bottle from him. For a second, they were both holding it. She felt his fingers against hers.
Their gazes locked, and something passed between them, a question was asked and answered.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are most welcome.”
* * *
“Sir, the Nightingale is here.”
The British consul nodded. “Send her in.”
Isabelle entered the dark, mahogany-lined office at the end of the elaborate hallway. Before she even reached the desk, the man behind it stood. “Good to see you again.”
She sank into the uncomfortable leather chair and took the glass of brandy he offered. This latest crossing of the Pyrenees had been difficult, even in the perfect July weather. One of the American airmen had had difficulty following “a girl’s” orders and had gone off on his own. They’d gotten word that he’d been arrested by the Spaniards. “Yanks,” she said, shaking her head. There was no more that needed to be said. She and her contact, Ian—code name Tuesday—had worked together from the beginning of the Nightingale escape route. With help from Paul’s network, they had set up a complex series of safe houses across France and a group of partisans ready to give their lives to help the downed airmen get home. French men and women scanned the skies at night, watching for aeroplanes in trouble and parachutes floating downward. They combed the streets, peering into shadows, looking through barns, seeking Allied soldiers in hiding. Once back in England, the pilots couldn’t fly missions again—not with their knowledge of the network— instead, they prepared their colleagues for the worst: taught them evasion techniques, told them how to find help, and supplied them with franc notes and compasses and photographs ready-made for false papers.
Isabelle sipped the brandy. Experience had taught her to be cautious with
alcohol after the crossing. She was usually more dehydrated than she realized, especially in the heat of summer.
Ian pushed an envelope toward her. She took it, counted the franc notes inside, and slid the money into a pocket in her coat. “That’s eighty-seven airmen you’ve brought us in the past eight months, Isabelle,” he said, taking his seat. Only in this room, one-on-one, did he use her real name. In all official correspondence with MI9, she was the Nightingale. To the other employees of the consulate and in Britain, she was Juliette Gervaise. “I think you should slow down.”
“Slow down?”
“The Germans are looking for the Nightingale, Isabelle.” “That’s old news, Ian.”
“They’re trying to infiltrate your escape route. Nazis are out there, pretending to be downed airmen. If you pick up one of them…”
“We’re careful, Ian. You know that. I interrogate every man myself. And the network in Paris is tireless.”
“They’re looking for the Nightingale. If they find you…” “They won’t.” She got to her feet.
He stood, too, and faced her. “Be careful, Isabelle.” “Always.”
He came around the desk and took her by the arm and led her out of the building.
She took a little time to enjoy the seaside beauty of San Sebastián, to walk along the path above the crashing white surf below and enjoy buildings that didn’t bear swastikas, but such moments of brushing up to ordinary life were a luxury she couldn’t indulge for long. She sent Paul a message via courier that read:
Dear Uncle,
I hope this note finds you well.
I am at our favorite place by the sea. Our friends have arrived safely.
Tomorrow I shall visit Grandmère in Paris at three o’clock. Love always,
Juliette
She returned to Paris via a circuitous route; she stopped at each of the safe houses—in Carriveau and Brantôme and Pau and Poitiers—and paid her helpers. The feeding and clothing of airmen in hiding was no small undertaking, and since every man, woman, and child (mostly women) who maintained the escape route did so at the risk of their lives, the network strived to make it not ruinous financially, too.
She never walked through the streets of Carriveau (hidden beneath a cloak and hood) without thinking about her sister. Lately, she had begun to miss Vianne and Sophie. Memories of their nights playing Belote or checkers by the fire, Vianne teaching Isabelle to knit (or trying to), and Sophie’s laughter had taken on a warm patina. She imagined sometimes that Vianne had offered Isabelle a possibility she hadn’t seen at the time: a home.
But it was too late for that now. Isabelle couldn’t risk putting Vianne in danger by showing up at Le Jardin. Surely Beck would ask what she’d been doing in Paris for so long. Maybe he would wonder enough to check.
In Paris, she exited the train amid a crowd of drab-eyed, dark-clothed people who looked like they belonged in an Edvard Munch painting. As she passed the glittering gold dome of the Invalides, a light fog moved through the streets, plucking color from the trees. Most of the cafés were closed, their chairs and tables stacked beneath tattered awnings. Across the street was the apartment she’d called home for the past month, a dark, squalid lonely little attic tucked above an abandoned charcuterie. The walls still smelled vaguely of pork and spices.
She heard someone yell, “Halt!” Whistles shrieked; people screamed. Several Wehrmacht soldiers, accompanied by French policemen, encircled a small group of people, who immediately dropped to their knees and raised their arms. She saw yellow stars on their chests.
Isabelle slowed.
Anouk appeared beside her, linking her arm through Isabelle’s. “Bonjour,” she said in a voice so animated it alerted Isabelle to the fact that they were being watched. Or at least Anouk worried that they were.
“You are like a character in one of those American comics the way you
appear and disappear. The Shadow, perhaps.”
Anouk smiled. “And how was your latest holiday in the mountains?” “Unremarkable.”
Anouk leaned close. “We hear word of something being planned. The Germans are recruiting women for clerical work on Sunday night. Double pay. All very secretive.”
Isabelle slipped the envelope full of franc notes from her pocket and handed it to Anouk, who dropped it into her open handbag. “Night work? And clerical?”
“Paul has gotten you a position,” Anouk said. “You start at nine. When you are finished, go to your father’s apartment. He will be waiting for you.”
“Oui.”
“It might be dangerous.” Isabelle shrugged. “What isn’t?”
* * *
That night, Isabelle walked across town to the prefecture of police. There was a hum in the pavement beneath her feet, the sound of vehicles moving somewhere close by. A lot of them.
“You, there!”
Isabelle stopped. Smiled.
A German walked up to her, his rifle at the ready. His gaze dropped to her chest, looking for a yellow star.
“I am to work tonight,” she said, indicating the prefecture of police building in front of her. Although the windows were blacked out, the place was busy. There were German Wehrmacht officers and French gendarmes milling about, going in and out of the building, which was an oddity at this late hour. In the courtyard was a long row of buses parked end to end. The drivers stood together in a huddle, smoking and talking.
The policeman cocked his head. “Go.”
Isabelle clutched the collar of her drab brown coat. Although it was warm out, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself tonight. One of the best ways to disappear in plain sight was to dress like a wren—brown, brown, and more brown. She had covered her blond hair with a black scarf, tied in a turban
style with a big knot in front, and had used no cosmetics, not even lipstick.
She kept her head down as she walked through a throng of men in French police uniforms. Just inside the building, she stopped.
It was a huge space with staircases on either side and office doors spaced every few feet, but tonight it looked like a sweatshop, with hundreds of women seated at desks pressed close together. Telephones rang nonstop and French police officers moved in a rush.
“You are here to help with the sorting?” asked a bored French gendarme at the desk nearest the door.
“Oui.”
“I’ll find you a place to work. Come with me.” He led her around the perimeter of the room.
Desks were spaced so closely together that Isabelle had to turn sideways to make her way down the narrow aisle to the empty desk he’d indicated. When she sat down and scooted close, she was elbow-to-elbow with the women on either side of her. The surface of her desk was covered with card boxes.
She opened the first box and saw the stack of cards within. She pulled out the first one and stared at it.
Sternholz, Issac
12 avenue Rast 4th arrondissement
Sabotier (clog maker)
It went on to list his wife and children.
“You are to separate the foreign-born Jews,” said the gendarme, who she hadn’t noticed had followed her.
“Pardon?” she said, taking out another card. This one was for “Berr, Simone.”
“That box there. The empty one. Separate the Jews born in France from those born elsewhere. We are only interested in foreign-born Jews. Men, women, and children.”
“Why?”
“They’re Jews. Who cares? Now get to work.”
Isabelle turned back around in her seat. She had hundreds of cards in front of her, and there were at least a hundred women in this room. The sheer scale of this operation was impossible to comprehend. What could it possibly mean?
“How long have you been here?” she asked the woman beside her. “Days,” the woman said, opening another box. “My children weren’t
hungry last night for the first time in months.” “What are we doing?”
The woman shrugged. “I’ve heard them saying something about Operation Spring Wind.”
“What does it mean?” “I don’t want to know.”
Isabelle flipped through the cards in the box. One near the end stopped her.
Lévy, Paul
61 rue Blandine, Apt. C 7th arrondissement Professor of literature
She got to her feet so fast she bumped into the woman beside her, who cursed at the interruption. The cards on her desk slid to the floor in a cascade. Isabelle immediately knelt down and gathered them up, daring to stick Monsieur Lévy’s card up her sleeve.
The moment she stood, someone grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down the narrow aisle. She bumped into women all down the row.
In the empty space by the wall, she was twisted around and shoved back so hard she slammed into the wall.
“What is the meaning of this?” snarled the French policeman, his grip on her arm tight enough to leave a bruise.
Could he feel the index card beneath her sleeve?
“I’m sorry. So sorry. I need to work, but I’m sick, you see. The flu.” She coughed as loudly as she could.
Isabelle walked past him and left the building. Outside, she kept coughing until she got to the corner. There, she started to run.
* * *
“What could it mean?”
Isabelle peered past the blackout shade in the apartment, staring down at the avenue. Papa sat at the dining room table, nervously drumming his ink- stained fingers on the wood. It felt good to be here again—with him—after months away, but she was too agitated to relax and enjoy the homey feel of the place.
“You must be mistaken, Isabelle,” Papa said, on his second brandy since her return. “You said there had to be tens of thousands of cards. That would be all the Jewish people in Paris. Surely—”
“Question what it means, Papa, but not the facts,” she answered. “The Germans are collecting the names and addresses of every foreign-born Jewish person in Paris. Men, women, and children.”
“But why? Paul Lévy is of Polish descent, it’s true, but he has lived here for decades. He fought for France in the Great War—his brother died for France. The Vichy government has assured us that veterans are protected from the Nazis.”
“Vianne was asked for a list of names,” Isabelle said. “She was asked to write down every Jewish, communist, and Freemason teacher at her school. Afterward they were all fired.”
“They can hardly fire them twice.” He finished his drink and poured another. “And it is the French police gathering names. If it were the Germans, it would be different.”
Isabelle had no answer to that. They had been having this same conversation for at least three hours.
Now it was edging past two in the morning, and neither of them could come up with a credible reason why the Vichy government and the French police were collecting the names and addresses of every foreign-born Jewish person living in Paris.
She saw a flash of silver outside. Lifting the shade a little higher, she stared down at the dark street.
A row of buses rolled down the avenue, their painted headlamps off, looking like a slow-moving centipede that stretched for blocks.
She had seen buses outside of the prefecture of police, dozens of them parked in the courtyard. “Papa…” Before she could finish, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs outside of the apartment.
A pamphlet of some kind slid into the apartment through the slit beneath the door.
Papa left the table and bent to pick it up. He brought it to the table and set it down next to the candle.
Isabelle stood behind him. Papa looked up at her.
“It’s a warning. It says the police are going to round up all foreign-born Jews and deport them to camps in Germany.”
“We are talking when we need to be acting,” Isabelle said. “We need to hide our friends in the building.”
“It’s so little,” Papa said. His hand was shaking. It made her wonder again
—sharply—what he’d seen in the Great War, what he knew that she did not. “It’s what we can do,” Isabelle said. “We can make some of them safe. At
least for tonight. We’ll know more tomorrow.”
“Safe. And where would that be, Isabelle? If the French police are doing this, we are lost.”
Isabelle had no answer for that.
Saying no more, they left the apartment.
Stealth was difficult in a building as old as this one, and her father, moving in front of her, had never been light on his feet. Brandy made him even more unsteady as he led her down the narrow, twisting staircase to the apartment directly below theirs. He stumbled twice, cursing his imbalance. He knocked on the door.
He waited to the count of ten and knocked again. Harder this time.
Very slowly, the door opened, just a crack at first, and then all the way. “Oh, Julien, it is you,” said Ruth Friedman. She was wearing a man’s coat over a floor-length nightgown, with her bare feet sticking out beneath. Her hair was in rollers and covered with a scarf.
“You’ve seen the pamphlet?”
“I got one. It is true?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” her father said. “There are buses out front and lorries have been rumbling past all night. Isabelle was at the prefecture of police tonight, and they were collecting the names and addresses of all foreign-born Jewish people. We think you should bring the children to our place for now. We have a hiding place.”
“But … my husband is a prisoner of war. The Vichy government promises us that we will be protected.”
“I am not sure we can trust the Vichy government, Madame,” Isabelle said to the woman. “Please. Just hide for now.”
Ruth stood there a moment, her eyes widening. The yellow star on her overcoat was a stark reminder of the way the world had changed. Isabelle saw when the woman decided. She turned on her heel and walked out of the room. Less than a minute later, she guided her two daughters toward the door. “What do we bring?”
“Nothing,” Isabelle said. She herded the Friedmans up the stairs. When they reached the safety of the apartment, her father led them to the secret room in the back bedroom and closed the door on them.
“I’ll get the Vizniaks,” Isabelle said. “Don’t put the armoire in place yet.” “They’re on the third floor, Isabelle. You’ll never—”
“Lock the front door behind me. Don’t open it unless you hear my voice.” “Isabelle, no—”
She was already gone, running down the stairs, barely touching the banister in her haste. When she was nearly to the third-floor landing, she heard voices below.
They were coming up the stairs.
She was too late. She crouched where she was, hidden by the elevator.
Two French policemen stepped onto the landing. The younger of the two knocked twice on the Vizniaks’ door, waited a second or two, and then kicked it open. Inside, a woman wailed.
Isabelle crept closer, listening.
“… are Madame Vizniak?” the policeman on the left said. “Your husband is Emile and your children, Anton and Hélène?”
Isabelle peered around the corner.
Madame Vizniak was a beautiful woman, with skin the color of fresh cream and luxurious hair that never looked as messy as it did now. She was wearing a lacy silk negligee that must have cost a fortune when it was purchased. Her young son and daughter, whom she had pulled in close, were wide-eyed.
“Pack up your things. Just the necessaries. You are being relocated,” said the older policeman as he flipped through a list of names.
“But … my husband is in prison near Pithiviers. How will he find us?” “After the war, you will come back.”
“Oh.” Madame Vizniak frowned, ran a hand through her tangled hair. “Your children are French-born citizens,” the policeman said. “You may
leave them here. They’re not on my list.”
Isabelle couldn’t remain hidden. She got to her feet and descended the stairs to the landing. “I’ll take them for you, Lily,” she said, trying to sound calm.
“No!” the children wailed in unison, clinging to their mother.
The French policemen turned to her. “What is your name?” one of them asked Isabelle.
She froze. Which name should she use? “Rossignol,” she finally said, though without the proper papers, it was a risky choice. Still, Gervaise might question why she was in this building at nearly three in the morning, prying into her neighbor’s affairs.
The policeman checked his list and then waved her away. “Go. You’re no concern to me tonight.”
Isabelle looked past them to Lily Vizniak. “I’ll take the children, Madame.”
Lily seemed confused. “You think I’ll leave them behind?”
“I think—”
“Enough,” the older policeman shouted, banging his rifle butt on the floor. “You,” he said to Isabelle, “Get out. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Madame, please,” Isabelle pleaded. “I’ll make sure they are safe.”
“Safe?” Lily frowned. “But we are safe with the French police. We’ve been assured. And a mother can’t leave her children. Someday you’ll understand.” She turned her attention to her children. “Pack a few things.”
The French policeman beside Isabelle touched her arm gently. When she turned, he said, “Go.” She saw a warning in his eyes but couldn’t tell if he wanted to intimidate her or protect her. “Now.”
Isabelle had no choice. If she stayed and demanded answers, her name might eventually reach the prefecture of police—perhaps even the Germans. With the escape route network she and her father were managing, she couldn’t afford to draw attention, even for something as minor as finding out where a neighbor was being taken.
Silently, keeping her gaze on the floor (she didn’t trust herself to look at them), she slipped past the policemen and headed for the stairs.
