WARNING
All males who come to the aid, either directly or indirectly, of the crews of enemy aircraft coming down in parachutes or having made a forced landing, help in their escape, hide them, or come to their aid in any fashion will be shot on the spot.
Women who render the same help will be sent to concentration camps in Germany.
“I guess I am lucky to be a woman,” Isabelle muttered to herself. How was it that the Germans hadn’t noticed by now—October 1941—that France had become a country of women?
Even as she said the words, she recognized the false bravado in them. She wanted to feel brave right now—Edith Cavell risking her life—but here, in this train station patrolled by German soldiers, she was scared.
There was no backing out now, no changing her mind. After months of planning and preparation, she and four airmen were ready to test the escape plan.
On this cool October morning, her life would change. From the moment she boarded this train bound for Saint-Jean-de-Luz, she would no longer be Isabelle Rossignol, the girl in the bookshop who lived on the Avenue de La Bourdonnais.
From now on, she was Juliette Gervaise, code name the Nightingale. “Come.” Anouk linked arms with Isabelle and led her away from the
warning sign and toward the ticket counter.
They had gone over these preparations so many times Isabelle knew the plan well. There was only one flaw: All of their attempts to reach Madame
Babineau had thus far failed. That one key component—finding a guide— Isabelle would have to do on her own. Off to her left, waiting for her signal, Lieutenant MacLeish stood dressed as a peasant. All he’d kept from his escape kit were two Benzedrine tablets and a tiny compass that looked like a button and was pinned to his collar. He had been given false papers—now he was a Flemish farmworker. He had an identity card and a work permit, but her father couldn’t guarantee that the papers would pass close inspection. He had cut off the tops of his flight boots and shaved off his moustache.
Isabelle and Anouk had spent countless hours training him in proper behavior. They’d dressed him in a baggy coat and a worn, stained pair of work trousers. They’d bleached the nicotine stains from the first and second fingers of his right hand and taught him to smoke like a Frenchman, using his thumb and forefinger. He knew he was to look left before crossing the street
—not right—and he was never to approach Isabelle unless she approached him first. She had instructed him to play deaf and dumb and to read a newspaper while on the train—the entire trip. He was also to buy his own ticket and sit apart from Isabelle. They all were. When they disembarked in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, the airmen were to walk a good distance behind her.
Anouk turned to Isabelle. Are you ready? her gaze asked. She nodded slowly.
“Cousin Etienne will board the train in Poitiers, Uncle Emile in Ruffec, and Jean-Claude in Bordeaux.”
The other airmen. “Oui.”
Isabelle was to disembark at Saint-Jean-de-Luz with the four airmen—two Brits and two Canadians—and cross the mountains into Spain. Once there, she was to send a telegram. “The Nightingale has sung” meant success.
She kissed each of Anouk’s cheeks, murmured au revoir, and then walked briskly over to the ticket window. “Saint-Jean-de-Luz,” she said, and handed the attendant her money. Taking the ticket, she headed for platform C. Not once did she look back, although she wanted to.
The train whistle sounded.
Isabelle stepped aboard, taking a seat on the left side. More passengers filed in, took seats. Several German soldiers boarded the train, sitting across from her.
MacLeish was the last to board. He stepped into the train and shuffled past her without a glance, his shoulders hunched in an effort to appear smaller. As the doors eased shut, he settled into a seat at the other end of the compartment and immediately opened his newspaper.
The train whistle blew again and the giant wheels began to turn, picking up speed slowly. The compartment banged a little, heaved left and right, and then settled into a steady thrumming movement, the wheels clackety-clacking on the iron tracks.
The German soldier across from Isabelle glanced down the compartment. His gaze settled on MacLeish. He tapped his friend in the shoulder and both men started to rise.
Isabelle leaned forward. “Bonjour,” she said with a smile.
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 schön 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.” “Interesting.” The woman used her booted foot to push out the chair
across from her. “I am Micheline Babineau. Sit.”
“I know who you are,” Isabelle said. She added nothing. Information was dangerous these days. It was traded with care.
“Do you?”
“I’m Juliette Gervaise.” “Why do I care?”
Isabelle glanced nervously at the old man, who watched her warily. She didn’t like turning her back on him, but she had no choice. She sat down across from the woman.
“You want a cigarette? It’s a Gauloises Bleu. They cost me three francs and a goat, but it’s worth it.” The woman took a long, sensual drag off of her cigarette and exhaled the distinctively scented blue smoke. “Why do I care about you?”
“Julien Rossignol believes I can trust you.”
Madame Babineau took another drag on the cigarette and then stubbed it out on the sole of her boot. She dropped the rest of it in her breast pocket.
“He says his wife was close friends with you. You are godmother to his eldest daughter. He is the godfather to your youngest son.”
“Was. The Germans killed both of my sons at the front. And my husband in the last war.”
“He wrote letters to you recently…”
“The poste is shit these days. What does he want?”
Here it was. The biggest flaw in this plan. If Madame Babineau was a collaborator, it was all over. Isabelle had imagined this moment a thousand times, planned it down to the pauses. She’d thought of ways to word things to protect herself.
Now she saw the folly of all that, the uselessness. She simply had to dive
in.
“I left four downed pilots in Urrugne, waiting for me. I want to take them
to the British consulate in Spain. We hope the British can get them back to England so they can fly more missions over Germany and drop more bombs.”
In the silence that followed, Isabelle heard the beat of her heart, the tick of the mantel clock, the distant bleating of a goat.
“And?” Madame Babineau said at last, almost too softly to hear.
“A-and I need a Basque guide to help me cross the Pyrenees. Julien thought you could help me.”
For the first time, Isabelle knew she had the woman’s undivided attention. “Get Eduardo,” Madame Babineau said to the old man, who jumped to do her
bidding. The door banged shut so hard the ceiling rattled.
The woman retrieved the half-smoked cigarette from her pocket and lit it up, inhaling and exhaling several times in silence as she studied Isabelle.
“What do you—” Isabelle started to ask.
The woman pressed a tobacco-stained finger to her lips.
The door to the farmhouse crashed open and a man burst in. All Isabelle could make out were broad shoulders, burlap, and the smell of alcohol.
He grabbed her by the arm and lifted her out of the chair and threw her up against the rough-hewn wall. She gasped in pain and tried to get free, but he pinned her in place, wedged his knee roughly between her legs.
“Do you know what the Germans do to people like you?” he whispered, his face so close to hers she couldn’t focus, couldn’t see anything but black eyes and thick black lashes. He smelled of cigarettes and brandy. “Do you know how much they will pay us for you and your pilots?”
Isabelle turned her head to avoid his sour breath. “Where are these pilots of yours?”
His fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arms. “Where are they?”
“What pilots?” she gasped.
“The pilots you are helping escape.”
“W-what pilots? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He growled again and cracked her head against the wall. “You asked for our help to get pilots over the Pyrenees.”
“Me, a woman, climb across the Pyrenees? You must be joking. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you saying Madame Babineau is lying?”
“I don’t know Madame Babineau. I just stopped here to ask for directions.
I’m lost.”
He smiled, revealing tobacco- and wine-stained teeth. “Clever girl,” he said, letting her go. “And not a bit weak in the knees.”
Madame Babineau stood. “Good for her.”
The man stepped back, giving her space. “I am Eduardo.” He turned to the old woman. “The weather is good. Her will is strong. The men may sleep here tonight. Unless they are weaklings, I will take them tomorrow.”
“You’ll take us?” Isabelle said. “To Spain?”
Eduardo looked to Madame Babineau, who looked at Isabelle. “It would be our great pleasure to help you, Juliette. Now, where are these pilots of yours?”
* * *
In the middle of the night, Madame Babineau woke Isabelle and led her into the farmhouse’s kitchen, where a fire was already blazing in the hearth. “Coffee?”
Isabelle finger-combed her hair and tied a cotton scarf around her head. “No, merci, it is too precious.”
The old woman gave her a smile. “No one suspects a woman my age of anything. It makes me good at trading. Here.” She offered Isabelle a cracked porcelain mug full of steaming black coffee. Real coffee.
Isabelle wrapped her hands around the mug and breathed deeply of the familiar, never-again-to-be-taken-for-granted aroma.
Madame Babineau sat down beside her.
She looked into the woman’s dark eyes and saw a compassion that reminded her of her maman. “I am scared,” Isabelle admitted. It was the first time she’d said this to anyone.
“As you should be. As we all must be.”
“If something goes wrong, will you get word to Julien? He’s still in Paris.
If we … don’t make it, tell him the Nightingale didn’t fly.” Madame Babineau nodded.
As the women sat there, the airmen came into the room, one by one. It was the middle of the night, and none looked like they had slept well. Still, the hour appointed for their departure was here.
Madame Babineau set out a meal of bread and sweet lavender honey and creamy goat cheese. The men planted themselves on the mismatched chairs and scooted close to the table, talking all at once, devouring the food in an instant.
The door banged open, bringing with it a rush of cold night air. Dried leaves scudded inside, dancing across the floor, plastering themselves like tiny black hands to the stones of the fireplace. The flames within shivered and
thinned. The door slammed shut.
Eduardo stood there, looking like a scruffy giant in the low-ceilinged room. He was a typical Basque—with broad shoulders and a face that seemed to have been carved in stone with a dull blade. The coat he wore was thin for the weather and patched in more places than it was whole.
He handed Isabelle a pair of Basque shoes, called espadrilles, with rope soles that were supposedly good in the rough terrain.
“How is the weather for this journey, Eduardo?” Madame Babineau asked. “Cold is coming. We must not tarry.” He swung a ragged rucksack from
his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. To the men, he said, “These are espadrilles. They will help you. Find a pair that fits.” Isabelle stood beside him, translating for the men.
The men came forward obediently and squatted around the rucksack, pulling out shoes, passing them around.
“None fit me,” MacLeish said.
“Do what you can,” Madame Babineau said. “Sadly, we aren’t a shoe shop.”
When the men had exchanged their flight boots for walking shoes, Eduardo had them stand in a line. He studied each man in turn, checking his clothing and his small pack. “Take everything out of your pockets and leave it here. The Spanish will arrest you for anything, and you do not want to escape the Germans only to find yourself in a Spanish prison.” He handed them each a goatskin bota bag full of wine and a walking stick that he’d made from knobby, mossy branches. When he was finished, he slapped them on the back hard enough to send most of them stumbling forward.
“Silence,” Eduardo said. “Always.”
They left the cottage and filed onto the uneven terrain of the goat pasture outside. The sky was lit by a weak blue moon. “Night is our protection,” Eduardo said. “Night and speed and quiet.” He turned, stopped them with a raised hand. “Juliette will be at the back of the line. I will be at the front. When I walk, you walk. You walk in single file. There is no talking. None. You will be cold—freezing cold on this night—and hungry and soon you will be tired. Keep walking.”
Eduardo turned his back on the men and began walking up the hill.
Isabelle felt the cold instantly; it bit into her exposed cheeks and slipped through the seams of her woolen coat. She used her gloved hand to hold the pieces of her collar together and began the long trek up the grassy hillside.
Sometime around three in the morning, the walk became a hike. The terrain steepened, the moon slid behind invisible clouds and blinked out, leaving them in near-total darkness. Isabelle heard the men’s breathing become labored in front of her. She knew they were cold; most of them did not have adequate clothing for this freezing air, and few of them had shoes that fit correctly. Twigs snapped beneath their feet, rocks clattered away from them, made a sound like rain on a tin roof as they fell down the steep mountainside. The first pangs of hunger twisted her empty stomach.
It started to rain. A gnashing wind swept up from the valley below, slamming into the party walking single file. It turned the rain into freezing shards that attacked their exposed skin. Isabelle began to shiver uncontrollably, her breath came out in great, heaving gasps, and still she climbed. Up, up, up, past the tree line.
Ahead, someone made a yelping sound and fell hard. Isabelle couldn’t see who it was; the night had closed around them. The man in front of her stopped; she ran into his back and he stumbled sideways, fell into a boulder and cursed.
“Don’t stop, men,” Isabelle said, trying to keep the spirit in her voice.
They climbed until Isabelle gasped with every step, but Eduardo allowed them no respite. He stopped only long enough to make sure they were still behind him and then he was off again, clambering up the rocky hillside like a goat.
Isabelle’s legs were on fire, aching painfully, and even with her espadrilles, blisters formed. Every step became an agony and a test of will.
Hours and hours and hours passed. Isabelle grew so breathless she couldn’t have formed the words needed to beg for a drink of water, but she knew that Eduardo wouldn’t have listened to her anyway. She heard MacLeish in front of her, gasping, cursing every time he slipped, crying out in pain at the blisters she knew were turning his feet into open sores.
She couldn’t make out the path at all anymore. She just trudged upward, her eyelids struggling to stay open.
Angling forward against the wind, she pulled her scarf up over her nose and mouth and kept going. Her breath, coming in pants, warmed her scarf. The fabric turned moist and then froze into solid, icy folds.
“Here.” Eduardo’s booming voice came at her from the darkness. They were so high up the mountain that there were sure to be no German or Spanish patrols. The risk to their lives up here came from the elements.
Isabelle collapsed in a heap, landing hard enough on a piece of rock that she cried out, but she was too tired to care.
MacLeish dropped down beside her, gasping, “Christ Almighty,” and pitching forward. She grabbed his arm, steadied him as he started to slide downward.
She heard a cacophony of voices come after it—“thank God … bloody well time”—and then she heard bodies hit the ground. They fell downward in a group, as if their legs could hold them no more.
“Not here,” Eduardo said. “The goatherder’s shack. Over there.”
Isabelle staggered to her feet. In the back of the line, she waited, shivering, her arms crossed around her body as if she could hold heat within, but there was no heat. She felt like a shard of ice, brittle and frozen. Her mind fought the stupor that wanted to take over. She had to keep shaking her head to keep her thoughts clear.
She heard a footstep and knew Eduardo was standing beside her in the darkness, their faces pelted by icy rain.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m frozen solid. And I’m afraid to look at my feet.” “Blisters?”
“The size of dinner plates, I’m pretty sure. I can’t tell if the rain is making my shoes wet or if blood is bubbling through the material.”
She felt tears sting her eyes and freeze instantly, binding her lashes together.
Eduardo took her hand and led her to the goatherder’s shed, where he started a fire. The ice in her hair turned to water and dripped to the floor, puddling at her feet. She watched the men collapse where they stood, thumping back against the rough wooden walls as they pulled their rucksacks into their laps and began searching through them for food. MacLeish waved
her over.
Isabelle picked her way through the men and collapsed beside MacLeish. In silence, listening to men chewing and belching and sighing around her, she ate the cheese and apples she’d brought with her.
She had no idea when she fell asleep. One minute she was awake, eating what passed for supper on the mountain, and the next thing she knew, Eduardo was waking them again. Gray light pressed against the dirty window of the shack. They’d slept through the day and been wakened in the late afternoon.
Eduardo started a fire, made a pot of ersatz coffee, and handed it out to them. Breakfast was stale bread and hard cheese—good, but not nearly enough to stave off the hunger that was still sharp from yesterday.
Eduardo took off at a brisk walk, climbing the slick, frost-covered shale of the treacherous trail like a billy goat.
Isabelle was the last one out of the shack. She looked up the trail. Gray clouds obscured the peaks and snowflakes hushed the world until there was no earthly sound except their breathing. Men vanished in front of her, becoming small black dots in the whiteness. She plunged into the cold, climbing steadily, following the man in front of her. He was all she could see in the falling snow.
Eduardo’s pace was punishing. He climbed up the twisting path without pause, seemingly unaware of the biting, burning cold that turned every breath into a fire that exploded in the lungs. Isabelle panted and kept going, encouraging the men when they started to lag, cajoling them and teasing them and urging them on.
When darkness fell again, she redoubled her efforts to keep morale up. Even though she felt sick to her stomach with fatigue and parched with thirst, she kept going. If any one of them got more than a few feet away from the person in front of him, he could be lost forever in this frozen darkness. To leave the path for a few feet was to die.
She stumbled on through the night.
Someone fell in front of her, made a yelping sound. She rushed forward, found one of the Canadian fliers on his knees, wheezing hard, his moustache frozen. “I’m beat, baby doll,” he said, trying to smile.
Isabelle slid down beside him, felt her backside instantly grow cold. “It’s Teddy, right?”
“You got me. Look. I’m done for. Just go on ahead.” “You got a wife, Teddy, a girl back home in Canada?”
She couldn’t see his face, but she heard the way he sucked in his breath at her question. “You aren’t playin’ fair, doll.”
“There’s no fair in life and death, Teddy. What’s her name?” “Alice.”
“Get on your feet for Alice, Teddy.”
She felt him shift his weight, get his feet back underneath him. She angled her body against him, let him lean against her as he stood. “All right, then,” he said, shuddering hard.
She let him go, heard him walk on ahead.
She sighed heavily, shivering at the end of it. Hunger gnawed at her stomach. She swallowed dryly, wishing they could stop just for a minute. Instead, she pointed herself in the direction of the men and kept going. Her mind was muddling again, her thoughts blurring. All she could think of was taking this step, and the next one, and the next one.
Sometime near dawn, the snow turned to rain that turned their woolen coats into sodden weights. Isabelle hardly noticed when they started going down. The only real difference was the men falling, slipping on the wet rocks and tumbling down the rocky, treacherous mountainside. There was no way to stop them; she just had to watch them fall and help them get back on their feet when they came to a breathless, broken stop. The visibility was so bad that they were constantly in fear of losing sight of the man in front and plunging off the path.
At daybreak, Eduardo stopped and pointed to a yawning black cave tucked into the mountainside. The men gathered inside, making huffing sounds as they sat and stretched out their legs. Isabelle heard them opening their packs, burrowing through for the last bits of their food. Somewhere deep inside, an animal scurried around, its claws scratching lightly on the hard- packed dirt floor.
Isabelle followed the men inside; roots hung down from the dripping stone-and-mud interior. Eduardo knelt down and made a small fire, using the
moss he’d picked that morning and packed in his waistband. “Eat and sleep,” he said when the flames danced up. “Tomorrow we make the final trek.” He reached for his goatskin bota, drank deeply, and then left the cave.
The damp wood crackled and popped, sounding like gunfire in the cave, but Isabelle—and the men—were too exhausted even to flinch. Isabelle sat down beside MacLeish and leaned tiredly against him.
“You’re a wonder,” he said in a hushed voice.
“I’ve been told I don’t make smart decisions. This may be proof of that.” She shivered, whether from cold or exhaustion, she didn’t know.
“Dumb but brave,” he said with a smile.
Isabelle was grateful for the conversation. “That’s me.”
“I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly … for saving me.” “I don’t think I’ve saved you yet, Torrance.”
“Call me Torry,” he said. “All my mates do.”
He said something else—about a girl waiting for him in Ipswich, maybe— but she was too tired to hear what it was.
When she wakened, it was raining.
“Bollocks,” one of the men said. “It’s pissing out there.”
Eduardo stood outside the cave, his strong legs braced widely apart, his face and hair pelted by rain that he seemed not to notice at all. Behind him, there was darkness.
The airmen opened their rucksacks. No one had to be told to eat anymore; they knew the routine. When you were allowed to stop, you drank, you ate, you slept, and in that order. When you were wakened, you ate and drank and got to your feet, no matter how much it hurt to do so.
As they stood, a groan moved from man to man. A few cursed. It was a rainy, moonless night. Utterly dark.
They had made it over the mountain—almost one thousand meters high where they crossed the previous night—and were halfway down the other side, but the weather was worsening.
As Isabelle left the cave, wet branches smacked her in the face. She pushed them away with a gloved hand and kept going. Her walking stick thumped with each step. Rain made the shale as slick as ice and ran in rivulets alongside them. She heard the men grunting in front of her. She trudged
forward on blistered, aching feet. The pace set by Eduardo was gruelingly hard. Nothing stopped or slowed the man, and the airmen struggled to keep up.
“Look!” she heard someone say.
In the distance, far away, lights twinkled, a spiderweb pattern of white dots spanned the darkness.
“Spain,” Eduardo said.
The sight rejuvenated the group. They continued, their walking sticks thumping, their feet landing solidly as the ground gradually leveled out.
How many hours passed this way? Five? Six? She didn’t know. Enough that her legs began to ache and the small of her back was a pit of pain. She was constantly spitting rain and wiping it out of her eyes, and the emptiness in her stomach was a rabid animal. A pale sheen of daylight began to appear at the horizon, a blade of lavender light, then pink, then yellow as she zigzagged down the trail. Her feet hurt so much she gritted her teeth to keep from crying out in pain.
By the fourth nightfall, Isabelle had lost all sense of time and place. She had no idea where they were or how much longer this agony would go on. Her thoughts became a simple plea, tumbling through her mind, keeping pace with her aching steps. The consulate, the consulate, the consulate.
“Stop,” Eduardo said, holding up his hand.
Isabelle stumbled into MacLeish. His cheeks were bright red with cold and his lips were chapped and his breathing ragged.
Not far away, past a blurry green hillside, she saw a patrol of soldiers in light green uniforms.
Her first thought was, We are in Spain, and then Eduardo shoved them both behind a stand of trees.
They hid for a long time and then set off again.
Hours later, she heard a roar of rushing water. As they neared the river, the sound obliterated everything else.
Finally, Eduardo stopped and gathered the men close together. He was standing in a pool of mud, his espadrilles disappearing into the muck. Behind him were gray granite cliffs upon which spindly trees grew in defiance of the laws of gravity. Bushes sprouted like cattle catchers around formidable gray
rocks.
“We hide here until nightfall,” Eduardo said. “Over that ridge is the Bidassoa River. On the other bank is Spain. We are close—but close is nothing. Between the river and your freedom are patrols with dogs. These patrols will shoot at anything they see moving. Do not move.”
Isabelle watched Eduardo walk away from the group. When he was gone, she and the men hunkered down behind giant boulders and inside the lee of fallen trees.
For hours, the rain beat down on them, turned the mud beneath them into a marsh. She shivered and drew her knees into her chest and closed her eyes. Impossibly, she fell into a deep, exhausted sleep that was over much too quickly.
At midnight, Eduardo wakened her.
The first thing Isabelle noticed when she opened her eyes was that the rain had stopped. The sky overhead was studded with stars. She climbed tiredly to her feet and immediately winced in pain. She could only imagine how much the airmen’s feet hurt—she was lucky enough to have shoes that fit.
Under cover of night, they set off again, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the roar of the river.
And then they were there, standing amid the trees at the edge of a giant gorge. Far below, the water crashed and roiled and roared, splashing up along the rock sides.
Eduardo gathered them close. “We can’t swim across. The rains have made the river a beast that will swallow us all. Follow me.”
They walked along the river for a mile or two, and then Eduardo stopped again. She heard a creaking sound, like a boat line stretched by rising seas, and an occasional clatter.
At first, there was nothing to see. Then the bright white searchlights on the other side flashed across the white-tipped, rushing river, and shone on a rickety suspension bridge that linked this side of the gorge to the opposite shore. There was a Spanish checkpoint not far away, with guards patrolling back and forth.
“Holy Mother o’ God,” one of the airmen said. “Fuck me,” said another.
Isabelle joined the men in a crouch behind some bushes, where they waited, watching the searchlights crisscross the river.
It was after two in the morning when Eduardo finally nodded. There was no movement on the other side of the gorge at all. If their luck held—or if they had any at all—the sentries were asleep at their posts.
“Let’s go,” Eduardo whispered, getting the men to their feet. He led them to the start of the bridge—a sagging sling with rope sides and a wooden-slat floor, through which the rushing white river could be seen in strips. Several of the slats were missing. The bridge blew side to side in the wind and made a whining, creaking sound.
Isabelle looked at the men, most of whom were pale as ghosts.
“One step at a time,” Eduardo said. “The slats look weak but they’ll hold your weight. You have sixty seconds to cross—that’s the amount of time between the searchlights. As soon as you get to the other side, drop to your knees and crawl beneath the window of the guardhouse.”
“You’ve done this before, right?” Teddy said, his voice breaking on “before.”
“Plenty of times, Teddy,” Isabelle lied. “And if a girl can do it, a strapping pilot like you will have no problem at all. Right?”
He nodded. “You bet your arse.”
Isabelle watched Eduardo cross. When he was on the other side, she gathered the airmen close. One by one, counting off in sixty-second intervals, she guided them onto the rope bridge and watched them cross, holding her breath and fisting her hands until each man landed on the opposite shore.
Finally it was her turn. She pushed the sodden hood off her head, waiting for the light to scrape past her and keep going. The bridge looked flimsy and unsound. But it had held the men’s weight; it would hold hers.
She clutched the rope sides and stepped onto the first plank. The bridge swung around her, dipped right and left. She glanced down and saw strips of raging white waters one hundred feet below. Gritting her teeth, she moved steadily forward, stepping from plank to plank to plank until she was on the other side, where she immediately dropped to her knees. The searchlight passed above her. She scrambled forward and up the embankment and into the bushes on the other side, where the airmen were crouched beside Eduardo.
Eduardo led them to a hidden hillock of land and finally let them sleep. When the sun rose again, Isabelle blinked dully awake.
“It’s not s’ bad here,” Torry whispered beside her.
Isabelle looked around, bleary-eyed. They were in a gully above a dirt road, hidden by a stand of trees.
Eduardo handed them wine, his smile as radiant as the sun that glared in her eyes. “There,” he said, pointing to a young woman on a bicycle not far off. Behind her, a town shimmered ivory in the sunlight, like something from a children’s picture book, with turrets, clock towers, and church spires. “Almadora will take you to the consulate in San Sebastián. Welcome to Spain.”
Isabelle immediately forgot the arduous journey and the fear that had accompanied each step. “Thank you, Eduardo.”
“It won’t be so easy next time,” he said.
“It wasn’t easy this time,” she replied. “They didn’t expect us. Soon, they will.”
He was right. They hadn’t needed to avoid German patrols or mask their scents from dogs, and the Spanish sentinels were relaxed.
“But when you return with more pilots, I’ll be here,” he promised.
She nodded in thanks and turned to the men around her, who looked as exhausted as she felt. “Come on, men, let’s go.”
Isabelle and the men trudged down the road toward the young woman by the rusted old bicycle. After brief introductions, Almadora guided them through a maze of dirt roads and back alleys. Miles passed until they stood before an ornate caramel-hued building in Parte Viejo—the old section of San Sebastián. The distant sound of waves crashing against a seawall reached Isabelle’s ears.
“Merci,” Isabelle said to the girl.
“De nada.”
Isabelle looked up at the glossy black door. “Come on, men,” she said, striding up the stone steps. At the door, she knocked hard, three times, and then rang the bell. When a man in a crisp black suit answered, she said, “I am here to see the British consul.”
“Is he expecting you?” “No.”
“Mademoiselle, the consul is a busy—”
“I’ve brought four RAF pilots with me from Paris.” The man’s eyes bulged a bit.
MacLeish stepped forward. “Lieutenant Torrance MacLeish. RAF.”
The other men followed suit, standing shoulder to shoulder as they introduced themselves.
The door opened. Within a matter of moments, Isabelle found herself seated on an uncomfortable leather chair, facing a tired-looking man across a large desk. The airmen stood at attention behind her.
“I brought you four downed airmen from Paris,” Isabelle said proudly. “We took the train south and then walked across the Pyrenees—”
“You walked?”
“Well, perhaps hiked is a more accurate word.”
“You hiked over the Pyrenees from France and into Spain.” He sat back in his chair, all traces of a smile gone.
“I can do it again, too. With the increased RAF bombings, there are going to be more downed airmen. To save them, we will need financial help. Money for clothes and papers and food. And something for the people we enlist to shelter us along the way.”
“You’ll want to ring up MI9,” MacLeish said. “They’ll pay whatever Juliette’s group needs.”
The man shook his head, made a tsking sound. “A girl leading pilots across the Pyrenees. Will wonders never cease?”
MacLeish grinned at Isabelle. “A wonder indeed, sir. I told her the very same thing.”
