The Book of Lost Names(45)

It took three days to convince Père Clément that their system of recording names would work, and he only reluctantly agreed after Eva had threatened to stop producing documents and Rémy had challenged him to take the book and try to decipher the code. The priest spent a day and a half poring over Epitres et Evangiles, and when he finally handed it back, he’d still been hesitant.

“You know, not all the children will arrive with names,” he warned.

“Then we must do our best to discover who they really are before we erase their identities,” Rémy replied immediately. “It’s important.”

Eva glanced at him in amazement, thankful that he was on her side.

Père Clément’s brow creased. “You understand that God will always know who they are.”

“Sure,” Rémy said with a shrug. “But God is busy with many matters right now. Is there any harm in giving him a bit of help?”

“But if anyone gets a hold of the names…”

“They will not,” Rémy said firmly. “Who would think to look in this boring, old religious text?”

The corners of Père Clément’s mouth twitched. “You think this is boring?” He held up the book.

“You don’t?” Rémy shot back with a grin.

Père Clément laughed. “I don’t think I should answer that.”

Rémy left a few minutes later, leaving Eva alone with Père Clément in the small, hidden library. “You know, Eva,” the priest said as he placed Epitres et Evangiles on the table between them, “I was never trying to erase the children. I only want to save them.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I do, too. But someone has to prevent them from being lost.”

He touched the spine of the book once more. “I’m glad you’ve joined us, Eva.”

She thought of her mother. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stay.”

“Remember that God’s plan for you might be different than the plan you have for yourself.”

Eva nodded. She wanted to believe that there was something in store for her, a greater design for her life, but how could any of this be God’s plan? Then again, hadn’t God’s hand been present in steering Eva here, to Aurignon, to a church where she’d somehow found a home and a way to be useful? She wanted to ask Père Clément if he feared, as she did, that God had turned his back on them, but she wasn’t sure she could bear the answer. “How did you become involved in helping people like me?” she asked instead.

He smiled. “I come from Paris, as you do. I’d been here for five years already when the war began, and I heard right away from my contacts in the occupied zone how terrible things were becoming. There’s no strategic significance to Aurignon—we’re in the hills, on the way to nowhere—and so I suggested to some old friends that they might hide out here.”

“Hide out?”

He shrugged and gave her a small smile. “One of them had made the faux pas of striking a Nazi soldier in the Métro, and the Germans were hunting him. He was to be executed, along with his brother, who had been there at the time and did nothing to help.”

“Your friend hit a Nazi? Is he a priest, too?”

Père Clément laughed. “No. An old schoolmate. Not a bad fellow, but when he and his brother got here, I reminded him that perhaps the best way to take on the enemy is not literally to his face, but beneath his nose.

“In any case, he needed to get out of France before the Germans caught up with him,” the priest continued as Eva smiled. “He came with his own false papers, so all I had to do was to connect him and his brother with a passeur to get them across the border to Switzerland, an easy enough task. But the night before he and his brother departed, we stayed up late with a bottle of wine, and before he went to bed, he asked if I would be interested in helping more of his friends. He said that he had already vouched for me, and that if I was willing, a network he knew of might like to begin sending people south to Aurignon when the need arose. I imagined I might encounter one or two résistants a month, and so I agreed, grateful to be able to help the cause in some way.

“But when he got word back to Paris that I was open to helping, it was as if the floodgates had been opened. A man with a British accent came the following week and asked me many questions, and then the refugees began arriving. Résistants at first, and then Jews. Even a few pilots who had been shot down over northern France and were trying to get back home. There were others sent to develop a network here, to assess who could be trusted and who should be involved. And when the volume of people began to increase, they sent me Rémy.”

“Rémy?”

Père Clément nodded. “He was part of a group in Paris, and he’d begun to make a name for himself as a forger, but there were others there who were faster and better, and well, as you know, Rémy has a bit of an issue with his pride. I think perhaps he shot off his mouth one too many times to the wrong people. But the network couldn’t lose such a skilled forger, and so they reassigned him to Aurignon.”

“As a punishment, you mean?” Eva asked.

“I prefer to think of it as an opportunity,” Père Clément said with a smile. “As does Rémy, I hope. Whatever happened, their loss is our gain. As much as I sometimes enjoy suggesting otherwise, he’s talented and dedicated. And though a whole network has developed here, Rémy remains the one person I truly trust with my life.”