She was so lost in her own thoughts that it took her a moment to realize that something was wrong, that the door to her room, which she had left closed, was ajar, and Victor was hopping from one foot to the other in the corridor like an agitated mime.
“Mademoiselle Aurélie, Mademoiselle Aurélie . . .”
“Ah, Mademoiselle de Courcelles.” Her room. Hoffmeister was in her room. The doors of the wardrobe gaped open, dresses piled haphazardly on the bed. The drawer of her dressing table stuck out like a distended tongue. She had precious few books and papers—she had always preferred action to reflection—but those she did have had been pulled from the escritoire and left gaping on the desktop.
From beside the wardrobe, Drier stood smirking at her, his arms full of her underthings.
“I . . . what . . . what are you—”
Dreier had the decency to look mildly abashed. Hoffmeister did not. He took a step forward, his movements deliberate. “You have been stealing from us.”
“I . . . what?” Her confusion was genuine.
Aurélie tried to think what she might have done, what he might think was hidden in her room, that he needed to search it so, tearing apart the bindings of her books, ransacking her dressing table drawer, which contained nothing more exciting than several dried-out powder puffs and a saint’s medal given to her by Victor on the occasion of her First Communion.
Her father . . . stealing information . . . the pigeons . . . had they thought she might have . . .
Aurélie felt as though she’d been carved from wood. “You are mistaken. I’ve taken nothing.”
Hoffmeister favored her with a humorless twist of the lips. “Do you think I don’t know? Everything is seen. Everything is counted. You have been stealing food and taking it to the village.”
“Stealing food?” Was that what he was doing, scrabbling through her chemises looking for madeleines? Aurélie removed her thick shawl, dropping it over the dressing table chair, and, coincidentally, over her empty basket. “I have given to the villagers of my own rations—as I believe you yourself suggested, major. If I choose to part with my bread, it is none of your concern.”
“Everything that occurs in this region is my concern, mademoiselle.” Hoffmeister was a spare man, barely her own height, but the self-importance that radiated from him made him seem larger. “I did not authorize those disbursements.”
Aurélie refused to be cowed. She lifted her chin in approved style, taking advantage of her height to look down her nose at him. “I gave only what was mine.”
The major was not impressed. “You do not seem to understand, Mademoiselle de Courcelles. There is nothing that is yours. Nothing.”
He smiled at her, a narrow, thin-lipped smile. That smile made Aurélie suddenly very nervous.
“This room. This room is required. You will no longer occupy it. I find my current chambers inconvenient. This will do better.” He raised a hand, and Dreier obediently scuttled forward. “Lieutenant. Help Mademoiselle de Courcelles with her things.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dreier, and before Aurélie could say anything, before she could move, he turned and wrenched open the window, dropping an armload of her most intimate garments into the courtyard below.
“I—” Aurélie would have stepped forward, but Hoffmeister was between her and the lieutenant. Dreier gathered up an armload of her dresses.
“A moment.” Hoffmeister arrested his subordinate with a gesture. “Leave us.”
Us, as though he were the Sun King, throned in state.
“This is unworthy of civilized men,” said Aurélie, doing her best to keep her tone level.
“This is war, Mademoiselle de Courcelles. I do not know what chivalric tales your deluded parent has fed you, but there are no knights—and very few ladies. I have an exchange to propose to you.”
“My honor or my life?” Aurélie felt she would make a better account of herself if she could stop her arms from clutching around her chest. Deliberately, she unclenched them and lowered them to her sides.
Hoffmeister looked almost amused. “What would I want with either? I have no desire to make a martyr of you. As for the other—no. No. There is a relic. A . . . talisman, I believe you call it.”
“A talisman,” Aurélie repeated dumbly. “The talisman?”
Hoffmeister suppressed his irritation at the idiocy of the conquered. Speaking slowly and clearly, in atrocious French, he said, “Give me the talisman and you may keep your accommodations. And I will turn a blind eye to your activities in the village.”
“Do you truly believe I would trade my patrimony for silk wall hangings?” She had never liked those wall hangings. They had been chosen by her father’s mother, whom Aurélie suspected might have been color-blind. Either that, or she had exceedingly dreadful taste in drapes. “I wouldn’t, even if the talisman were here, which it isn’t.”
“I could have you shot for stealing.”
There was a time when it had seemed rather romantic to be martyred for France. Now that the moment was here, Aurélie discovered that she strongly preferred not to be shot.
“I can summon fifty men—including your own subordinates—who can vouch that you advised me to share my own rations with my people.” Aurélie struggled to show a brave front, the front her people would expect. “If you want to shoot me, shoot me. Make a martyr of me. Let the world know that the Demoiselle de Courcelles died for France.”
Died for a few eggs and half a chicken, which wasn’t nearly so impressive, but still.
“Is this talisman so important, then?” Hoffmeister seemed to think he had stumbled on something; she could see his eyes light the way they did when he thought he’d discovered an accounting anomaly.
“The talisman,” said Aurélie, “is in Paris.”
“Is it?”
There was no way he could know. No one had seen it beneath her shirtwaist, that day she arrived; no one had seen her hide it. Unless . . . The thought made her cold.
They liked to pretend that no one would betray them to the conqueror, but people did. All the time. Sometimes for as little as a bag of coffee beans, a block of chocolate.
“If you rediscover it, you will come to me.” Hoffmeister paused for a moment, surveying the wreck of her room. “In the meantime, since you find the kitchens of such interest, I suggest you find lodging there.”
He took up the dresses Dreier had abandoned and dropped them, casually, out the window. Then he stood there, looking at her.
“Yes?” said Aurélie, her nerves on the verge of fraying. She just wanted him to go, to go and leave her be.
He gestured with a parody of courtesy, indicating that she was to go. “This room, mademoiselle. It is no longer yours.”
“Oh.” The color flared in Aurélie’s cheeks. Somehow, the reality of it hadn’t quite hit her. She turned and exited, avoiding Hoffmeister’s eyes.
It was just a room. Just a room with very ugly wall hangings. But it was her bolt-hole, her hideaway, and she felt strangely naked without it.
She truly would be naked if she didn’t collect her clothes from the courtyard. There was no spare cloth to make anything new.
In a daze, Aurélie went down the familiar stairs. Or was she meant to be using the back stairs now, as befitted her new station? Would Hoffmeister outfit her in an apron and cap and have her serve at table? Or was she to sleep in rags at the hearth like Cinderella in the old tale?
None of it mattered, she knew that. Clothes were merely coverings for the body; a bed was a bed was a bed.
But she was shaking all the same.
Her belongings were scattered all over the courtyard. A pair of camiknickers was hanging, like a schoolboy’s prank, off the arm of the cherub that adorned the Italianate fountain. Aurélie made her way around the courtyard, gathering her belongings one by one, like a peasant foraging for firewood. A chemise here, a shirtwaist there, all so sad and crumpled, such pitiful little pieces of a life, useless embroidery on her underthings, beadi
ng on her evening frocks. What good did any of that do her now? She would do better to dress in wool as the country people did.
Her favorite dress, the one with the large flower embroidered on the bodice, had landed square in a mud puddle, the delicate fabric dark with dirt.
Aurélie knelt and lifted it from the mud. No amount of washing would bleach the stain of the clay of Picardy out of that silk. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t. What use had she for evening dresses now? But she caught herself clutching the crumpled silk to her chest, hunching over it as the sobs caught in the back of her throat.
“Mademoiselle?” Someone cleared his throat. “Mademoiselle de Courcelles?”
Aurélie turned her face away, a blind instinct born of shame. She couldn’t let him see her this way. She couldn’t let anyone see her this way. But particularly not Lieutenant von Sternburg. Not he.
His shadow fell across the clothes; she saw the tips of his uniform boots as he crouched down beside her. Their polish seemed like an affront. “What happened here?”
“Why? Do you want to catalog it? Write the items down in a ledger? So many soiled skirts? One ruined evening gown?” It might have sounded more impressive if her voice hadn’t cracked.
“I had thought,” he said gently, “to render assistance.”
She couldn’t bear his pity. “To whom? Would you like to dance what’s left into the dirt?” She wasn’t being politic. Aurélie rubbed the back of her hand against her eyes. It was, she belatedly realized, streaked with mud. Which was probably all over her face. Turning away, Aurélie said woodenly, “Forgive me. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She made to rise to her feet, catching one heel in her hem. Von Sternburg was immediately there with a hand on her elbow to help her. “Who did this? Did Lieutenant Kraus . . .”
Mutely, Aurélie shook her head. “I’ve been required to change my chamber. It appears my circumstances have been reduced. Your commanding officer was kind enough to help me move my things.”
“This is insupportable.”
Insupportable because the Demoiselle de Courcelles might have to live in a room without ormolu cabinets and eighteenth-century boiseries? Something inside Aurélie cracked. Wrenching her elbow away, she demanded, “Is it? Is it any more insupportable than confiscating Madame Lely’s only mattress? More insupportable than taking all of Monsieur Dubois’s chickens when he has a sick mother to feed? More insupportable than melting down the brasses from the church to make shell casings?”
His throat moved beneath his stiff military collar with its imperial insignia. “Those were for the war effort. This—”
“Were all the coffee grinders in the village required for the war effort?” Aurélie shook her ruined dress in his face. “Is that your plan, Lieutenant von Sternburg? To starve your prisoners to death? Because that’s what’s happening. There are children—children who haven’t had a proper meal in weeks! While you dine on foie gras and the best wine from our cellars.”
“I haven’t been. Dining on foie gras.” Von Sternburg winced, as though he realized the irrelevancy of that. “I wouldn’t . . . I haven’t . . . oh bother. You’re right, you know. That is exactly what some people think we ought to do. Starve the occupied population into submission. Make you so weak, you can’t resist.”
His voice was as she’d never heard it before. Clipped. Expressionless.
“And the old men?” she asked, her voice hoarse with fear. “The ones whose wits have gone with genièvre?”
Von Sternburg’s blue eyes met hers. She was tall, but he was taller. One seldom noticed it, because he had such an unassuming air, but now he stood straight, unsmiling.
“Shot,” he said. “That’s what Hoffmeister has proposed to Berlin. Unnecessary mouths to feed.”
Aurélie couldn’t help it. She hadn’t meant to show her distress but to hear it said so baldly horrified her. The back of her hand pressed against her mouth; she bit her knuckles to keep from crying out.
“It’s abominable,” said Lieutenant von Sternburg. “Mademoiselle de Courcelles—please. Don’t look so. This will not stand.”
“But . . . if Hoffmeister . . .” Oh Lord, how had it come to this, that she was bowing to the wishes of a petty dictator? But he was supreme here. He had the power of force, the only power that mattered now.
Von Sternburg’s face was set. Aurélie hadn’t known he could look so stern. “Hoffmeister answers to Berlin and Berlin will know of this.”
“That Mademoiselle de Courcelles has lost her bedchamber?”
“That Major Hoffmeister is abusing his privileges.” Lieutenant von Sternburg leaned forward, his expression earnest. “I have written to my uncle. He is . . . well placed. Something will be done.”
Aurélie drew back, feeling off-balance, unsure who to trust. He seemed sincere enough, but—these were his people. His commanding officer. “Why should Berlin care?”
Lieutenant von Sternburg’s lips twisted in a rueful smile. “Berlin may not care about widows and children, but they will care that the population is no longer fit to work. The army needs the grain they will sow in the spring.”
“Oh.” That told her.
“And,” said Lieutenant von Sternburg quietly, “one hopes the world still has some decency left.”
He bent and began gathering Aurélie’s scattered belongings out of the mud.
“You don’t—you don’t have to do that,” Aurélie croaked. She could see Dreier watching from the window. This would all be reported back to Hoffmeister.
Von Sternburg straightened, her dresses draped over one arm. “Please. Let me do what I can to make things right. Goodness knows it’s little enough.” His eyes were very blue in his thin face. “You have mud on your cheek.”
Aurélie’s hand rose automatically to her face. “It’s appropriate, don’t you think? Or maybe it should be ashes.”
“If I may?” His handkerchief was large, and white, and smelled of violets. He touched it gently to her cheek.
“Do you really—do you really think your uncle can do something?” It wasn’t what she’d meant to say.
“I will write tonight,” said Lieutenant von Sternburg gravely. “And tell you when I hear. We are not all barbarians.”
See? she could hear her father say. See how easily it’s done?
“Thank you.” Aurélie felt out of place in her own skin, clumsy and awkward. She hadn’t been bred for this, for scheming. “Would you . . . might you help me? With my things?”
Lieutenant von Sternburg bowed, entirely unaware that he was about to be used, betrayed. “Mademoiselle de Courcelles, it would be my honor.”
Chapter Twelve
Daisy
Rue Volney
Paris, France
May 1942
Honor. It was a word Monsieur Legrand spoke often, without irony. He had already said it four times since ushering Daisy into the cramped back room in which he worked, a courtyard annex, the door to which you couldn’t find unless you knew where to look. Daisy noticed because honor wasn’t a word that existed in Pierre’s vocabulary, except as a joke.
“You must be an Englishman,” she said.
“Nonsense. I am French, madame, as French as the tricolor itself.”
“And I say you’re an Englishman. Only an Englishman uses that word in that particular way, these days.”
“Which word?”
“L’honneur.”
Legrand shrugged, and Daisy had to admit that this was indisputably the Gallic kind of shrug, accompanied by a wink even more so. He removed his pipe from the corner of his mouth and sat back in his chair. “I suppose I still have hope, that’s all. A little faith in ideas. French honor is not dead, Madame Villon. It lives and thrives. You only have to know where to find it.”
Madame Villon. The sound of it, coming from this man’s throat, tanned and taut, made her wince. She linked her hands together atop the table. “Call me Daisy.”
“Speaking of English words.”
> She shrugged, the same way he had. “My grandmother’s American. As you know.”
Legrand stuck the pipe back in the corner of his mouth and held it there, his elbow propped on his other arm, which crossed his middle. Studied, thoughtful. He tilted his head and stared at her without shame. Daisy tried to stare back, but the sheer glamour of him was too much for her. Those cheekbones, those blue eyes. He wore the same knitted vest as he had in Grandmère’s suite, over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows to avoid staining them with ink, and all she could think was how unlike those tanned forearms were from Pierre’s forearms.
They were quite alone. In the front of the bookshop, the owner and his boy Philippe took care of the customers, but they might have existed in another country. Daisy looked down at the book in the middle of the table.
“The Scarlet Pimpernel. An inspiration, perhaps?”
“My dear madame, I have just told you I’m not an Englishman.”
She lifted the book and thumbed the pages. “A master of disguise and forgery, spiriting the persecuted out of Paris. I can’t imagine any resemblance.”
He reached out and pulled the book from her hands. “It’s a good story, that’s all.”
“It was my favorite, when I was a girl. When I was thirteen or fourteen, when I had all these romantic ideas.”
“Like honor?”
“Yes, honor. Among others. But we have business to discuss, I believe.”
Legrand sat up, knocked the ash from his pipe, and set it to one side. “True. The first thing, we must have a name for you.”
“You already know my name.”
“I mean a code, a secret name, so your identity isn’t compromised if some Gestapo squad should knock on my door one night and beg for a cigarette.”
“Is that likely?”
“I imagine you know the odds, more or less.”
He said it carelessly, but his eyes were serious, and his expression didn’t move. Daisy’s palms were damp. She had the feeling she was plunging off a cliff somehow, that she had closed her eyes and taken some giant, terrible leap without pausing to see what lay beneath, and now it was too late. Too late. Yes, she knew the odds. Of course she knew the odds. The odds were that she would likely die. She was going to die for this thing she was doing, let’s admit it, this cause that was so futile and so fraught, this defiance of the German occupation of France. Possibly her children, too, unless Pierre could protect them. And yet the blood pulsing through her veins right now, the keen perception of every detail around her, it wasn’t exactly terror, was it? It was something else. It was like coming to life. She glanced back down at the book and saw herself again, her young self, a ripening girl, all the new thoughts and emotions galloping down her limbs, all the romantic possibility, the possibility for life. And the real reason she had adored the book, which was not for the sake of the dashing Sir Percy, much as she longed for such a hero at that age, in her world made of nothing but school and home, and home being that strange, glamorous zoo of peculiar creatures known as the Ritz. She loved the book because of Marguerite St. Just. Brave, clever, irresistible French wife of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The toast of Paris. Marguerite, the French word for daisy.
All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 17