The Nightingale(119)

“Gone like the bunny?” Tears filled his brown eyes, spilled over. His mouth trembled. Vianne took him in her arms and held him and rubbed his back. But she couldn’t soothe him enough, nor could she let him go. At last, she eased back enough to look at him. “Do you understand … Daniel?”

“You’ll be my brother,” Sophie said, her voice unsteady. “Truly.”

Vianne felt her heart break, but she knew there was no other way to keep Rachel’s son safe. She prayed that he was young enough to forget he was ever Ari, and the sadness of that prayer was overwhelming. “Say it,” she said evenly. “Tell me your name.”

“Daniel,” he said, obviously confused, trying to please.

Vianne made him say it a dozen times that night, while they ate their supper of sausage and potatoes and later, when they washed the dishes and dressed for bed. She prayed that this ruse would be enough to save him, that his papers would pass inspection. Never again would she call him Ari or even think of him as Ari. Tomorrow, she would cut his hair as short as possible. Then she would go to town and tell everyone (that gossip Hélène Ruelle would be first) of the child she’d adopted from a dead cousin in Nice.

God help them all.





TWENTY-FIVE

Isabelle crept through the empty streets of Carriveau dressed in black, her golden hair covered. It was after curfew. A meager moon occasionally cast light on the uneven cobblestones; more often, it was obscured by clouds.

She listened for footsteps and lorry motors and froze when she heard either. At the end of town, she climbed over a rose-covered wall, heedless of the thorns, and dropped into a wet, black field of hay. She was halfway to the rendezvous point when three aeroplanes roared overhead, so low in the sky the trees shivered and the ground shook. Machine guns fired at one another, bursts of sound and light.

The smaller aeroplane banked and swerved. She saw the insignia of America on the underside of its wing as it banked left and climbed. Moments later, she heard the whistling of a bomb—the inhuman, piercing wail—and then something exploded.

The airfield. They were bombing it.

The aeroplanes roared overhead again. There was another round of gunfire and the American aeroplane was hit. Smoke roiled out. A screaming sound filled the night; the aeroplane plummeted toward the ground, twirled, its wings catching the moonlight, reflecting it.

It crashed hard enough to rattle Isabelle’s bones and shake the ground beneath her feet; steel hitting dirt, rivets popping from metal, roots being torn up. The broken aeroplane skidded through the forest, breaking trees as if they were matchsticks. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, and then in a giant whoosh, the aeroplane burst into flames.

In the sky, a parachute appeared, swinging back and forth, the man suspended beneath it looking as small as a comma.

Isabelle cut through the swath of burning trees. Smoke stung her eyes.

Where was he?

A glimpse of white caught her eye and she ran toward it.

The limp parachute lay across the scrubby ground, the airman attached to it.

Isabelle heard the sound of voices—they weren’t far away—and the crunching of footsteps. She hoped to God it was her colleagues, coming for the meeting, but there was no way to know. The Nazis would be busy at the airfield, but not for long.

She skidded to her knees, unhooked the airman’s parachute, gathered it up, and ran with it as far as she dared, burying it as best she could beneath a pile of dead leaves. Then she ran back to the pilot and grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him deeper into the woods.

“You’ll have to stay quiet. Do you understand me? I’ll come back, but you need to lie still and be quiet.”

“You … betcha,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

Isabelle covered him with leaves and branches, but when she stood back, she saw her footprints in the mud, each one oozing with black water now, and the rutted drag marks she’d made hauling him over here. Black smoke rolled past her, engulfed her. The fire was getting closer, burning brighter. “Merde,” she muttered.

There were voices. People yelling.

She tried to rub her hands clean but the mud just smeared and smeared, marking her.

Three shapes came out of the woods, moving toward her.

“Isabelle,” a man said. “Is that you?”

A torchlight flicked on, revealing Henri and Didier. And Ga?tan.

“You found the pilot?” Henri asked.

Isabelle nodded. “He’s wounded.”