The Nightingale(89)

“How is the weather for this journey, Eduardo?” Madame Babineau asked.

“Cold is coming. We must not tarry.” He swung a ragged rucksack from his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. To the men, he said, “These are espadrilles. They will help you. Find a pair that fits.” Isabelle stood beside him, translating for the men.

The men came forward obediently and squatted around the rucksack, pulling out shoes, passing them around.

“None fit me,” MacLeish said.

“Do what you can,” Madame Babineau said. “Sadly, we aren’t a shoe shop.”

When the men had exchanged their flight boots for walking shoes, Eduardo had them stand in a line. He studied each man in turn, checking his clothing and his small pack. “Take everything out of your pockets and leave it here. The Spanish will arrest you for anything, and you do not want to escape the Germans only to find yourself in a Spanish prison.” He handed them each a goatskin bota bag full of wine and a walking stick that he’d made from knobby, mossy branches. When he was finished, he slapped them on the back hard enough to send most of them stumbling forward.

“Silence,” Eduardo said. “Always.”

They left the cottage and filed onto the uneven terrain of the goat pasture outside. The sky was lit by a weak blue moon. “Night is our protection,” Eduardo said. “Night and speed and quiet.” He turned, stopped them with a raised hand. “Juliette will be at the back of the line. I will be at the front. When I walk, you walk. You walk in single file. There is no talking. None. You will be cold—freezing cold on this night—and hungry and soon you will be tired. Keep walking.”

Eduardo turned his back on the men and began walking up the hill.

Isabelle felt the cold instantly; it bit into her exposed cheeks and slipped through the seams of her woolen coat. She used her gloved hand to hold the pieces of her collar together and began the long trek up the grassy hillside.

Sometime around three in the morning, the walk became a hike. The terrain steepened, the moon slid behind invisible clouds and blinked out, leaving them in near-total darkness. Isabelle heard the men’s breathing become labored in front of her. She knew they were cold; most of them did not have adequate clothing for this freezing air, and few of them had shoes that fit correctly. Twigs snapped beneath their feet, rocks clattered away from them, made a sound like rain on a tin roof as they fell down the steep mountainside. The first pangs of hunger twisted her empty stomach.

It started to rain. A gnashing wind swept up from the valley below, slamming into the party walking single file. It turned the rain into freezing shards that attacked their exposed skin. Isabelle began to shiver uncontrollably, her breath came out in great, heaving gasps, and still she climbed. Up, up, up, past the tree line.

Ahead, someone made a yelping sound and fell hard. Isabelle couldn’t see who it was; the night had closed around them. The man in front of her stopped; she ran into his back and he stumbled sideways, fell into a boulder and cursed.

“Don’t stop, men,” Isabelle said, trying to keep the spirit in her voice.

They climbed until Isabelle gasped with every step, but Eduardo allowed them no respite. He stopped only long enough to make sure they were still behind him and then he was off again, clambering up the rocky hillside like a goat.

Isabelle’s legs were on fire, aching painfully, and even with her espadrilles, blisters formed. Every step became an agony and a test of will.

Hours and hours and hours passed. Isabelle grew so breathless she couldn’t have formed the words needed to beg for a drink of water, but she knew that Eduardo wouldn’t have listened to her anyway. She heard MacLeish in front of her, gasping, cursing every time he slipped, crying out in pain at the blisters she knew were turning his feet into open sores.

She couldn’t make out the path at all anymore. She just trudged upward, her eyelids struggling to stay open.

Angling forward against the wind, she pulled her scarf up over her nose and mouth and kept going. Her breath, coming in pants, warmed her scarf. The fabric turned moist and then froze into solid, icy folds.

“Here.” Eduardo’s booming voice came at her from the darkness. They were so high up the mountain that there were sure to be no German or Spanish patrols. The risk to their lives up here came from the elements.

Isabelle collapsed in a heap, landing hard enough on a piece of rock that she cried out, but she was too tired to care.

MacLeish dropped down beside her, gasping, “Christ Almighty,” and pitching forward. She grabbed his arm, steadied him as he started to slide downward.