The House at Mermaid's Cove(74)

I kept my eyes lowered as I got up to leave. To look at her would have brought fresh tears, tears of guilt this time. I hadn’t realized just how powerful an effect it would have, putting on the habit, hearing the singing, kneeling before the kind of woman I would have had to answer to if I’d gone back to Dublin. The magnitude of my deception made me burn with shame.

The sister who had helped me to dress asked if I would like to come with her to the refectory for breakfast. But I couldn’t face the sea of curious faces that would greet me there. I told her that I needed to be on my way. I waited in the courtyard while she went to fetch the medical supplies to put in the bicycle basket. This was to be my cover if I was questioned at any checkpoint: that I was on my way to treat a sick patient who was housebound. When she returned, she tucked a croissant and a couple of apples under the bandages.

My hands trembled as I pushed the bicycle out of the gate into the street. It was still early, but there were more people about now. Women with shopping baskets, elderly men with baguettes in one hand and newspapers in the other, children loitering in shop fronts on their way to school. I thought people would stare at me as I wobbled along, veil flying out behind me. But no one did. To the residents of Lannion, a nun on a bicycle was likely an unremarkable sight. The Ursulines were not an enclosed order. Like the one I had belonged to, this order had sisters working in the community as nurses, midwives, and teachers.

Soon the shops and houses petered out. I gripped the handlebars tight, the fear intensifying with the prospect of encountering a checkpoint. I didn’t know exactly where it would be. According to intelligence, the Germans moved them often in a bid to outwit the Resistance.

In an attempt to calm myself, I tried to concentrate on the sights and sounds of the countryside I was passing through. The road had narrowed into a lane with hedges of hazel, hawthorn, and honeysuckle on either side. I could see the landscape through the gaps, where farm gates enclosed fields of ripening wheat and barley. It looked so much like Cornwall. Even the names of the places had a familiar ring. When I’d studied the map of the area around Lannion, I’d come across villages that sounded quite like Cornish ones: Penvern, Trebeurden, Brélidy. I hadn’t realized until then that the ancient language of the region, Breton, had the same Celtic roots as Cornish and Irish.

I was heading to a place called Kermaria—five miles northeast of Lannion. Not far on a bicycle, I told myself. I wobbled as I took a tight bend in the road. The long black habit flew out in the breeze, threatening to catch in the spokes of the wheels. I could feel the hard edges of the explosives dig into my ribs as I leaned forward to keep my balance. The thought of falling was terrifying. What might the impact do to those miniature bombs?

Please, help me get through this. Keep me safe.

My whispered prayer was drowned out by the sudden trill of a blackbird in the branches of a sycamore that overhung the road. I went on praying, summoning faces to distract me from the mounting panic. I prayed for Ned, for Merle and her children, and, of course, for Jack. I pictured him on board La Coquille, throwing nets over the side as he and the other men played the part of fishermen, whiling away the daylight hours until it was time to drop anchor and lie in wait for me. I told myself that by this time tomorrow, we would be together, heading back to the Isles of Scilly, en route to Cornwall. The memory of his kiss was a powerful antidote to fear. All I had to do was keep calm and play a role I knew by heart.

I heard the German guards before I saw them. A vehicle screeched to a halt on the road ahead, screened from my view by the hedgerow. Doors slammed and greetings were shouted. I didn’t speak the language, but guten morgen was easy enough to understand. I slowed down and dismounted, pushing the bike slowly toward the checkpoint. There were four of them, leaning against a truck painted in camouflage colors. They were laughing and passing round a flask of something. One of them stepped forward when he caught sight of me.

“Bonjour!” I tried to smile with my eyes, not my mouth, remembering what Sister Margarita had drummed into us at the convent in Dublin: A sister should always have a serene visage and a gracious air. With every breath I could feel the explosives strapped beneath my robe.

My French identity card was in the bicycle basket, tucked in beside the medical equipment. I reached for it and handed it over. I had my Irish passport, too, but I was only going to show that if they tried to arrest me.

The guard looked at the photograph—one of the ones Jack had taken a month ago. Then he searched my face. In the photo I wore nothing on my head, as regulations required. For one awful moment I thought he was going to ask me to remove my veil and wimple to see if I truly resembled the image on the card. But after a couple of moments he waved me through.

My legs were trembling as I climbed back onto the bicycle. I almost got tangled up in my long robes. What an idiot I would have looked if I’d fallen flat on my face. My heart was pounding as I rode away. I was terrified that the guard would change his mind and come running after me. But all I could hear was the rise and fall of the men’s laughter as they resumed their conversation.

I kept pedaling until I could no longer hear them. A few minutes later I spotted a signpost up ahead. It pointed the way to Kermaria and gave the distance I still had to travel. There were no such signs in Cornwall. All over Britain, they’d been removed in case of an invasion. I’d memorized the route to Kermaria, just in case the same thing had happened in Brittany—but it was reassuring to see the signpost.