The Nightingale(87)

Taking a deep breath, she left them and walked to the main road. A mile or so later, as night began to fall, she crossed a rickety bridge. The road turned to dirt and narrowed into a cart track that climbed up, up, up into the verdant foothills. Moonlight came to her aid, illuminating hundreds of tiny white specks—goats. There were no cottages up this high, just animal sheds.

At last, she saw it: a two-storied, half-timbered house with a red roof that was exactly as her father had described. No wonder they had not been able to reach Madame Babineau. This cottage seemed designed to keep people away—as did the path up to it. Goats bleated at her appearance and bumped into one another nervously. Light shone through the haphazardly blacked-out windows, and smoke puffed cheerily from the chimney, scenting the air.

At her knock, the heavy wooden door opened just enough to reveal a single eye and a mouth nearly hidden by a gray beard.

“Bonsoir,” Isabelle said. She waited a moment for the old man to reply in kind, but he said nothing. “I am here to see Madame Babineau.”

“Why?” the man demanded.

“Julien Rossignol sent me.”

The old man made a clicking sound between his teeth and tongue; then the door opened.

The first thing Isabelle noticed inside was the stew, simmering in a big black pot that hung from a hook in the giant stone-faced fireplace.

A woman was seated at a huge, scarred trestle table in the back of the wide, timber-beamed room. From where Isabelle stood, it looked as if she were dressed in charcoal-colored rags, but when the old man lit an oil lamp, Isabelle saw that the woman was dressed like a man, in rough breeches and a linen shirt with a leather lace-up neckline. Her hair was the color of iron shavings and she was smoking a cigarette.

Still, Isabelle recognized the woman, even though it had been fifteen years. She remembered sitting on the beach at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Hearing the women laugh. And Madame Babineau saying, This little beauty will cause you endless trouble, Madeleine, the boys will someday swarm her, and Maman saying, She is too smart to toss her life to boys, aren’t you, my Isabelle?

“Your shoes are caked with dirt.”

“I’ve walked here from the train station at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”

“Interesting.” The woman used her booted foot to push out the chair across from her. “I am Micheline Babineau. Sit.”

“I know who you are,” Isabelle said. She added nothing. Information was dangerous these days. It was traded with care.

“Do you?”

“I’m Juliette Gervaise.”

“Why do I care?”

Isabelle glanced nervously at the old man, who watched her warily. She didn’t like turning her back on him, but she had no choice. She sat down across from the woman.

“You want a cigarette? It’s a Gauloises Bleu. They cost me three francs and a goat, but it’s worth it.” The woman took a long, sensual drag off of her cigarette and exhaled the distinctively scented blue smoke. “Why do I care about you?”

“Julien Rossignol believes I can trust you.”

Madame Babineau took another drag on the cigarette and then stubbed it out on the sole of her boot. She dropped the rest of it in her breast pocket.

“He says his wife was close friends with you. You are godmother to his eldest daughter. He is the godfather to your youngest son.”

“Was. The Germans killed both of my sons at the front. And my husband in the last war.”

“He wrote letters to you recently…”

“The poste is shit these days. What does he want?”

Here it was. The biggest flaw in this plan. If Madame Babineau was a collaborator, it was all over. Isabelle had imagined this moment a thousand times, planned it down to the pauses. She’d thought of ways to word things to protect herself.

Now she saw the folly of all that, the uselessness. She simply had to dive in.

“I left four downed pilots in Urrugne, waiting for me. I want to take them to the British consulate in Spain. We hope the British can get them back to England so they can fly more missions over Germany and drop more bombs.”

In the silence that followed, Isabelle heard the beat of her heart, the tick of the mantel clock, the distant bleating of a goat.

“And?” Madame Babineau said at last, almost too softly to hear.

“A-and I need a Basque guide to help me cross the Pyrenees. Julien thought you could help me.”

For the first time, Isabelle knew she had the woman’s undivided attention. “Get Eduardo,” Madame Babineau said to the old man, who jumped to do her bidding. The door banged shut so hard the ceiling rattled.