The Nightingale(113)

Vianne could only nod. Ordinarily she would have been undone by this tension with her daughter, overwhelmed by a sense of having failed. Now, she just sighed and got to her feet. She wiped the grass from her skirt and headed up to the barn. Inside, she rolled the Renault forward and opened the cellar door. “Rach? It’s me.”

“Thank God” came a whispery voice from the darkness. Rachel climbed up the creaking ladder and emerged into the dusty light, holding Ari.

“What happened?” Rachel asked tiredly.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I went to town. Everything seems normal. Maybe Beck was being overly cautious, but I think you should spend one more night down there.”

Rachel’s face was drawn, tired-looking. “I’ll need diapers. And a quick bath. Ari and I both smell.” The toddler started to cry. She pushed the damp curls away from her sweat-dampened forehead and murmured to him in a soft, lilting voice.

They left the barn and headed for Rachel’s house next door.

They were nearly to the front door when a French police car pulled up out front. Paul got out of the car and strode into the yard, carrying his rifle. “Are you Rachel de Champlain?” he asked.

Rachel frowned. “You know I am.”

“You are being deported. Come with me.”

Rachel tightened her hold on Ari. “Don’t take my son—”

“He is not on the list,” Paul said.

Vianne grabbed the man’s sleeve. “You can’t do this, Paul. She is French!”

“She’s a Jew.” He pointed his rifle at Rachel. “Move.”

Rachel started to say something, but Paul silenced her; he grabbed her by the arm, yanked her out to the road, and forced her into the backseat of his automobile.

Vianne meant to stay where she was—safe—intended to, but the next thing she knew she was running alongside the automobile, banging on the bonnet, begging to be let inside. Paul slammed on the brakes, let her climb into the backseat, and then he stomped on the gas.

“Go,” Rachel said as they passed Le Jardin. “This is no place for you.”

“This is no place for anyone,” Vianne said.

Even a week ago, she might have let Rachel go alone. She might have turned away—with regret, probably, and guilt, certainly—but she would have thought that protecting Sophie was more important than anything else.

Last night had changed her. She still felt fragile and frightened, maybe more so, but she was angry now, too.

In town, there were barricades on a dozen streets. Police wagons were everywhere, disgorging people with yellow stars on their chests, herding them toward the train station, where cattle cars waited. There were hundreds of people; they must have come from all the communes in the area.

Paul parked and opened the car doors. Vianne and Rachel and Ari stepped into the crowd of Jewish women and children and old men making their way to the platform.

A train waited, puffing black smoke into the already hot air. Two German soldiers were standing on the platform. One of them was Beck. He was holding a whip. A whip.

But it was French police who were in charge of the roundup; they were forcing people into lines and shoving them onto the cattle cars. Men went into one cattle car; women and children in the other.

Up ahead, a woman holding a baby tried to run. A gendarme shot her in the back. She pitched to the ground, dead; the baby rolled to the boots of the gendarme holding a smoking gun.

Rachel stopped, turned to Vianne. “Take my son,” she whispered.

The crowd jostled them.

“Take him. Save him,” Rachel pleaded.

Vianne didn’t hesitate. She knew now that no one could be neutral—not anymore—and as afraid as she was of risking Sophie’s life, she was suddenly more afraid of letting her daughter grow up in a world where good people did nothing to stop evil, where a good woman could turn her back on a friend in need. She reached for the toddler, took him in her arms.

“You!” A gendarme stabbed Rachel in the shoulder with the butt of his rifle so hard she stumbled. “Move!”

She looked at Vianne, and the universe of their friendship was in her eyes—the secrets they’d shared, the promises they’d made and kept, the dreams for their children that bound them as neatly as sisters.

“Get out of here,” Rachel cried hoarsely. “Go.”

Vianne backed away. Before she knew it, she had turned and begun shoving her way through the crowd, away from the platform and the soldiers and the dogs, away from the smell of fear and the crack of whips and the sound of women wailing and babies crying. She didn’t allow herself to slow until she reached the end of the platform. There, holding Ari closely, she turned around.