The Nightingale

“They had a meeting today,” her father said. “High-ranking Nazis. The SS was there. I heard the word ‘Nightingale.’”

“We’re careful,” she said quietly. “And you are taking more risk than I am, stealing the blank identity papers.”

“I am an old man. They don’t even see me. You should take a break, maybe. Let someone else do your mountain trips.”

She gave him a pointed look. Did people say things like this to men? Women were integral to the Resistance. Why couldn’t men see that?

He sighed, seeing the answer in her affronted look. “Do you need a place to stay?”

Isabelle appreciated the offer. It reminded her of how far they’d come. They still weren’t close, but they were working together, and that was something. He no longer pushed her away, and now—here, an invitation. It gave her hope that someday, when the war was over, they could actually talk. “I can’t. It would put you at risk.” She hadn’t been to the apartment in more than eighteen months. Neither had she been to Carriveau or seen Vianne in all that time. Rarely had Isabelle spent three nights in the same place. Her life was a series of hidden rooms and dusty mattresses and suspicious strangers.

“Have you heard anything about your sister?”

“I have friends looking out for her. I hear she is taking no chances, keeping her head down and her daughter safe. She will be fine,” she said, hearing how hope softened that last sentence.

“You miss her,” he said.

Isabelle found herself thinking of the past suddenly, wishing she could just let it go. Yes, she missed her sister, but she had missed Vianne for years, for all of her life.

“Well.” He stood up abruptly.

She noticed his hands. “Your hands are shaking.”

“I quit drinking. It seemed like a bad time to be a drunk.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said, smiling up at him. “Drunk seems like a good idea these days.”

“Be careful, Juliette.”

Her smile faded. Every time she saw anyone these days, it was hard to say good-bye. You never knew if you’d see them again. “You, too.”

* * *

Midnight.

Isabelle crouched in the darkness behind a crumbling stone wall. She was deep in the woods and dressed in peasant clothes—denim overalls that had seen better days, wooden-soled boots, and a lightweight blouse made from an old shower curtain. Downwind, she could smell the smoke of nearby bonfires but she couldn’t see even a glimmer of firelight.

Behind her, a twig snapped.

She crouched lower, barely breathed.

A whistle sounded. It was the lilting song of the nightingale. Or close to it. She whistled back.

She heard footsteps; breathing. And then, “Iz?”

She rose and turned around. A thin beam of light swept past her and then snapped off. She stepped over a fallen log and into Gaëtan’s arms.

“I missed you,” he said after a kiss, drawing back with a reluctance she could feel. They had not seen each other for more than eight months. Every time she heard of a train derailing or a German-occupied hotel being blown up or a skirmish with partisans, she worried.

He took her hand and led her through a forest so dark she couldn’t see the man beside her or the trail beneath their feet. Gaëtan never turned on his torchlight. He knew these woods intimately, having lived here for well over a year.

At the end of the woods, they came to a huge, grassy field where people stood in rows. They held torchlights, which they swept forward and back like beacons, illuminating the flat area between the trees.

She heard an aeroplane engine overhead, felt the whoosh of air on her cheeks, and smelled exhaust. It swooped in above them, flying low enough to make the trees shudder. She heard a loud mechanical scree and the banging of metal on metal and then a parachute appeared, falling, a huge box swinging beneath it.

“Weapons drop,” Gaëtan said. Tugging her hand, he led her into the trees again and up a hill, to the encampment deep in the forest. In its center, a bonfire glowed bright orange, its light hidden by the thick fringe of trees. Several men stood around the fire, smoking cigarettes and talking. Most had come here to avoid the STO—compulsory deportation to forced-labor camps in Germany. Once here, they had taken up arms and become partisans who fought a guerrilla war with Germany; in secret, under cover of night. The Maquis. They bombed trains and blew up munitions dumps and flooded canals and did whatever else they could to disrupt the flow of goods and men from France to Germany. They got their supplies—and their information—from the Allies. Their lives were always at risk; when found by the enemy, reprisals were swift and often brutal. Burning, cattle prods, blinding. Each Maquis fighter carried a cyanide pill in his pocket.

The men looked unwashed, starving, haggard. Most wore brown corduroy pants and black berets, all of which were frayed and patched and faded.