Édouard shook his head. “I cannot, Frederik. Look at me, I’m sick. It is the ladies who must leave. I would be too noticeable and hinder their escape.”
“Frederik!” Sophia stood at the door, searching for her lover’s whereabouts. “What’s happening?”
He walked swiftly toward her and held her against him. “Don’t worry, my Sophia, I’ll make sure you’re safe. I’m telling your brother that this household is under suspicion and that the Gestapo will be here at any moment. You must leave immediately,
mein Liebling
.”
“Sarah has already packed for me. My brother told her to do so last night. We are ready. Édouard, now you must rouse yourself and dress,” Sophia called to him.
“I have the car downstairs. I can take you anywhere you wish to go in Paris,” added Frederik. “But we must leave now.”
“Surely, Frederik, you put yourself in great danger by doing this?” said Édouard as he tried to sit up but, failing, fell back onto the pillows.
“We do what we must for those we love,” said Frederik, still clasping Sophia to him.
Sophia pulled herself from his grasp and made her way toward the bed, feeling for Édouard’s hand and then his forehead. “You have a fever, but you must get up! Dear God, Frederik says they will be here at any second!”
“Sophia, you know very well it’s impossible for me to travel,” Édouard stated as calmly as he could. “But please believe I will find a way to reach you. You’ll have Sarah and Constance with you on your journey, and I’ll follow as soon as I can. Now, go!”
“But I can’t leave you—”
“For once you will do as you are told, Sophia! Godspeed, my beloved sister, and I pray we will meet again soon.” Édouard reached up and kissed her on both cheeks, then signaled to Frederik to take Sophia
from the bedroom. The door closed behind them, and Édouard tried to turn his feverish mind to a plan.
Downstairs, Sarah and Connie were waiting for them. Frederik led them out to the car and they climbed inside.
Édouard, painfully upright now, watched them from the window as Frederik drove off.
• • •
“Where should I take you?” asked Frederik, looking strange in his chauffeur’s cap.
“Gare de Lyon. We’ll first go to my sister’s house, where we can obtain new papers,” said Sarah, the only one of the three women who was in a fit state to answer.
“And then where will you go?” he asked.
Connie shot Sarah such a look that she closed her mouth and remained silent. Sophia, who couldn’t see this, said, “We will travel down to our family château in Gassin.”
Frederik caught Connie’s look of horror in his mirror. “Constance, I know it’s impossible for you to trust a German. But please believe that I risk a lot too, simply by doing what I have done so far. It would be easy for me to arrest all three of you now and take you straight to Gestapo headquarters. I can assure you my actions this morning will not remain unnoticed. This may well be my death sentence.”
“Yes,” agreed Connie, her nerves still in shreds from the past few hours. “I apologize, Frederik, and I appreciate your help.”
“Even though we share the same blood, I’m very different from my twin,” Frederik continued. “Doubtless he will suspect me of aiding your escape and will do all he can to convince others of my actions too.”
At Gare de Lyon station, the three women climbed out of the car. Frederik handed them their suitcases from the trunk.
“Good luck to you all,” he breathed quietly.
Sophia made a move to touch him, but he stopped her. “No, I’m the chauffeur, remember? But,
mein Liebling
, I swear to you I will come and find you soon. Now, get out of Paris as fast as you can.”
“I love you, Frederik,” Sophia told him urgently, before the women joined the crowds in the station.
“I love you too, my Sophia. With all my heart,” Frederik murmured as he climbed back into the car.
• • •
Falk arrived at the de la Martinières house on the Rue de Varenne one hour after the women had left. No one answered his banging on the front door, so he had his storm troopers break it down. Scouring the house from top to bottom, he and his men found it deserted.
Swearing under his breath, Falk left the house to return to headquarters.
As he walked into Frederik’s office, he saw that his brother was packing his briefcase to leave for Germany.
“I’ve just called on the de la Martinières household to arrest them. It seems they have vanished. It’s as if someone warned them. How can this be?” Falk asked, fury on his face. “The only one I told of my suspicions was you, Brother.”
Frederik clicked the clasp on his briefcase shut. “Really? That is indeed troubling. But as you always say, in Paris, walls have ears.”
Falk leaned closer. “I know it was you—do you think I’m stupid?! That night when you told me Sophia wished to listen to the radio, you were covering for Édouard. We both know that a radio reciever cannot be intercepted like a wireless transmitter can! You make
me
look like a fool when it’s
you
who’s the traitor to the cause. And I know this is not the first time. You should watch out, big brother,” Falk sneered. “For all your clever words and ideas, which you use to confuse others into believing your loyalty, I know who you really are.”
Frederik stared back across the desk, his eyes benign. “Then, Brother, you must speak of what you know. I will say good-bye now. I’m sure we will meet again soon.”
“Attchh!” As always, Frederik’s calm superiority irritated Falk to the breaking point. “You think you’re so much higher than me, with your degrees and your doctorates and the paper plans you’ve drawn up to impress our Führer. But it is I who works tirelessly every day for the cause.”
Frederik lifted his briefcase from the desk and walked toward the door. He stopped and turned back in afterthought. “It’s not me who thinks I’m high, Brother, but you who believes you are low.”
“I’ll find them!” Falk called down the corridor after him as he left the room. “And that whore you’re so entranced by!”
“Good-bye, Falk,” Frederik sighed as the lift removed him from sight.
Falk slammed his fist full force into the office door.
• • •
Édouard awoke from a feverish sleep. It was pitch-black, and he felt for the matches he had brought with him. He lit one to look at his watch and saw it was past three o’clock; five hours since he’d heard the storm troopers enter the house above him. He moved his stiff limbs to stretch them, and his feet touched the wall on the other side of the confined space.
This tiny brick hole, deep under the ground, accessed from an invisible trapdoor in the cellar, had originally been dug to protect his ancestors during the Revolution. There was only enough space for one or two people. Although legend had it that one particular night, as Paris burned above them and aristocrats were taken by the dozen on open carts to face the guillotine, Arnaud de la Martinières and his wife and two children had taken shelter here.
Édouard crouched on his knees as he lit another match to locate the edge of the trapdoor above him. And, finding it, used what little energy he had left to release it.
Hauling himself out into the cellar, he lay on the damp stone floor, panting in agony. Dragging himself across to the cupboard where flagons of water were kept for the nights the air-raid sirens forced them down here to shelter, Édouard took some large gulps. Shivering and sweating in equal measure, he looked down and saw that liquid from the wound on his shoulder was seeping through his shirt, the fluid tinged with yellow. He needed medical help urgently or the infection would slowly poison his blood. But that was an impossibility. He knew they would be watching the house to see if anyone returned. He was trapped.
Édouard thought of his sister and only prayed that she, Sarah, and Connie were now on their way to safety.
He looked up to the rough, cracked ceiling of the cellar, but it swam in front of his eyes. So he closed them and found comfort in sleep.
• • •
Connie was only too glad that Sarah had taken charge. As they sat in their first-class carriage, she closed her eyes to block out the faces of the two German officers sitting opposite. Sarah made polite conversation with them, and Connie was grateful for the older woman’s calming presence. Sophia was silent, staring sightlessly out the window as they passed through the industrialized outer reaches of Paris as the train headed south. If she lived or died, Connie thought, what did it matter? Last night, her very soul had been violated; she had been treated as an animal—a useless bag of flesh and bones, degraded beyond endurance.
How could she ever face Lawrence again? And what had it been for? She had fought to protect Édouard, to give him the night to make plans of escape. But Édouard was still in Paris, alone and wounded. Even now, perhaps he was in Falk’s clutches at Gestapo headquarters.
“I tried, Édouard,” she cried silently.
Exhausted, Connie dozed as the train pulled its passengers into the flatness of the French countryside. At every station, she felt Sarah tense up next to her, her eyes alert for Gestapo who might have been warned about their flight south. The officers opposite them left the train at Sens and, while the enclosed compartment was empty of other travelers, Sarah spoke in hushed tones to her two charges.
“We’ll leave the train at Dijon and stay with my sister nearby, where we can buy new identity papers. Édouard arranged last night for us to be met there by a friend of his. It’s too risky for us to cross at an official checkpoint. Undoubtedly, by now, Colonel Falk will have alerted the authorities to be on the lookout for us.”
Sophia’s sightless eyes gazed in fear at Sarah. “But I thought we were going down to the château?”
“We are.” Sarah took her hand and patted it. “Do not worry, my dear, all is well.”
Hours later, as night was falling, the three women left the train. Sarah strode confidently through the narrow streets of the town, approached the front door of a village house, and knocked on it.
A woman of similar appearance to Sarah’s opened the door and looked at her in surprise and delight.
“Florence,” said Sarah, “thank God you’re at home!”
“What are you doing here? Quickly, come inside.” Florence glanced at the two women accompanying her. “And your friends.”
Once the door was closed, Florence led them to a table in the small kitchen and sat them down, fussing over them, and disappearing to bring a jug of wine and some bread and cheese.
“Who is Florence?” asked Sophia imperiously.
“She’s my sister, Sophia,” said Sarah, her eyes dancing with happiness at the reunion. “And this town is where I grew up.”
Connie sat at the table sipping her wine and listening to the two sisters talking. Her body was still protesting from the brutality of the night before. She forced the bread and cheese down her throat and did her best to blank out the dreadful pictures that kept appearing in her head.
Florence was talking of how the Gestapo had recently rounded up a number of young men from the village and shipped them to labor camps in Germany, in retaliation for the Resistance’s blowing up a railway bridge close to the town. In return, Sarah spoke of Paris and her employer, Édouard, whose fate was currently unknown.
“At least you’re all safe with me here tonight,” Florence said, patting her sister’s hand. “But we’ll put your two friends up in the attic, just to be sure.” She glanced over to Sophia, who sat at the table, her bread and cheese untouched. “You must forgive me, Mademoiselle de la Martinières, if the accommodation does not compare with what you’re used to.”
“Madame, I’m simply grateful that you provide a roof over our heads tonight. And at risk to yourself. My brother, I’m sure, will reward you if—” Sophia’s eyes filled with tears and Sarah put an arm around her shoulder.
“My Sophia, I’ve known Édouard since he was a seed in your mother’s stomach. He will have found a way, I know it here.” Sarah thumped her breast.
Later, Sophia and Connie were shown upstairs to the attic, Sarah helping Sophia climb the steep stairs, then undressing her and tucking her into bed as if she were still a small child.
“Sleep well, my dear.” Sarah kissed Sophia. “Good night, Madame Constance.”
When Sarah had left, Connie undressed, not daring to look down at what she knew would be a mass of ugly black bruises, and pulled her nightshirt over her head. She climbed into her narrow bed, grateful to rest her aching body, and pulled the patchwork quilt around her, feeling the bitterness of the December night.
“Sleep well, Sophia,” she called.
“I’ll try, but I’m so cold, and my thoughts are with my brother. Oh, Constance, how can I bear it? I’ve lost Édouard and Frederik in the same day.”
The sound of pitiful tears encouraged Connie to leave her own bed and walk over to Sophia’s. “Here, move over, I’ll climb in with you to warm you up.”
Sophia did so, snuggling into Connie’s open arms.
“We must both believe that Édouard is safe and will find a way to come to us,” said Connie with a conviction she did not feel. Eventually, both women fell into a troubled sleep, their bodies huddled together for warmth and comfort.
• • •
Édouard saw his mother standing over him. He was seven years old and she was urging him to drink some water because he had a fever.
“Maman, you’re here,” he murmured, smiling at her wonderful, comforting presence. Then her face changed and she was Falk, wearing a Nazi uniform, pointing a gun at his chest . . .
Édouard woke with a jump and groaned as he saw the cellar ceiling above him. He needed water desperately—the thirst he felt was unbearable. But when he ordered his body to move toward the cupboard containing the flagons, it would not obey him.
As he fell in and out of consciousness, he accepted that death would soon be upon him. And he would be glad of it. He only wished he could know before he died that his treasured sister was safe.
“Dear God,” he rasped, “take me, but let her live . . . let her live.”
And now, again, he knew he was hallucinating as his soul prepared to depart his body, for an angel with raven hair was hovering above him, placing a blissfully cool cloth on his fevered brow and dripping water between his parched lips. Something on a spoon, which tasted
unpleasant, was being forced down his throat. He gagged, but swallowed and fell asleep again. The same dream persisted endlessly as the angel stayed with him. At some point, he felt the angel heaving him onto a bed, and he began to feel calmer, cooler, and more comfortable.