by Kate Quinn
The bespectacled Leonie van Houtte was very real to history, working under the code name of Charlotte Lameron (changed to Violette Lameron, as I already had a Charlotte). Leonie first joined the war effort as a Red Cross nurse, and soon afterward was recruited as Louise de Bettignies’s staunch aide and loyal friend. “I was ready to follow her anywhere,” Leonie later wrote, “for I knew instinctively that she was a girl capable of great things.” Though Leonie was arrested shortly before Louise, the two were tried together, sentenced together, and served their prison time at Siegburg together. Louise died in Siegburg of a pleural abscess, but Leonie survived, a be-medalled veteran spy who married a journalist after the war and managed a china shop in Roubaix. Her husband later wrote La Guerre des Femmes, a memoir of Louise de Bettignies’s war work as related to him by his wife. Leonie’s precise first-hand accounts were invaluable, including detailed descriptions of the network’s operations, Louise’s arrest, the trial, and the years in Siegburg filled with horrendous abuses and rare triumphant moments—like the occasion when Louise incited her fellow inmates to strike rather than make munitions. Many of Louise’s sparkling bon mots are also quoted direct from La Guerre des Femmes.
Another historical figure on the network’s roster is Antoine, briefly mentioned in this book as Lili’s document forger. The real Antoine le Four was a bookseller with the soul of a poet, an expert in forged antiques—and as his modern-day descendants are only now learning from his archived letters, he very possibly turned his skill at forgery detection in the other direction, and made fake papers for the Alice Network. Several of his family may also have been involved in the network, including his young sister Aurélie le Four, who acted as courier escort and was raped and impregnated by German soldiers as described by Violette in chapter 22. Her subsequent abortion, also verified by family archives, was performed by a nurse friend of Louise de Bettignies, though it is not known for certain if that nurse was Violette/Leonie. Both Aurélie and Antoine appear to have continued their resistance work even after Louise’s imprisonment, fortunately escaping arrest themselves. Their letters (one of which is quoted in the P.S. Section by permission of the family descendants) provide a poignant, powerful look into the depth of French suffering, and the power of French patriotism.
English patriotism is no less powerfully represented in the person of real-life historical figure Captain (later Major) Cecil Aylmer Cameron. The man known to his sources as Uncle Edward recruited not only Louise de Bettignies, but Leon Trulin, another French spy who became a martyr after being arrested and shot by the Germans. Cameron’s unusual past—his arrest on charges of insurance fraud, the prison term he served supposedly trying to protect his wife, his reinstatement to intelligence work during the war, and his post-war suicide—is all true, though any speculation on my part about motivations for the fraud, the state of his marriage, or the character of his wife are purely fictionalized for the sake of the story. One of Cameron’s code names during the war, however, was “Evelyn,” and that is the name he gave to his only child.
René Bordelon, like Eve, is a fictional character based on a tiny scrap of historical truth. Profiteers like him certainly existed, and he became my bridge between the two wars and the two timelines. He also became the historically-nameless informer who passed the name of Oradour-sur-Glane to the Milice, and thus to the Nazis during World War II.
The massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane’s inhabitants remains a mystery as well as a tragedy. Confusion and conflicting reports abound: an informant apparently reported to the Milice that French Resistance activity centered in the area had resulted in the kidnapping and execution of a German officer, but it isn’t known if the Resistance activity was centered in Oradour-sur-Glane or in nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres, or if it existed at all. It will probably never be known why the SS officer who handled the matter decided to massacre an entire village in reprisal (he received considerable censure from his German superiors afterward), or if a complete massacre was even his intent in the first place—there is some conjecture that Resistance explosives were already being stored in the Oradour-sur-Glane church, resulting in the explosion and fire that killed so many. The only thing certain in the fog of war is that the men of Oradour-sur-Glane were mostly rounded up and shot in barns and surrounding village buildings, while the women and children were herded into the church and killed. The outlying execution sites had some survivors, but only one survived the inferno at the church: Madame Rouffanche. I lifted the story of her escape almost word for word from her testimony at the 1953 trial where the surviving known SS officers who took part in the massacre were tried and condemned for their crimes. It is true that a young mother and her baby attempted to climb through the church window after Madame Rouffanche, and that they were killed by gunfire—it was, however, a local woman named Henriette Joyeux and her infant son, not the fictional Rose Fournier. The town of Oradour-sur-Glane stands empty to this day as an eerie ghost-town memorial: roofless bullet-scarred buildings, burned clocks permanently stopped at four in the afternoon, the rusted-out Peugeot permanently parked by the fairground. Madame Rouffanche lived nearby for the rest of her long life.
Finn Kilgore is fictional, though his experiences liberating the concentration camp at Belsen are lifted directly from the testimony of soldiers of the 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment of the Royal Artillery who took part in the liberation. Charlie St. Clair and her family are also fictional, though the bleak situation faced by unmarried pregnant girls was nearly as dire in her day as it was in Eve’s. Abortions were illegal, but obtainable for women who were rich enough (like Charlie) to pay for a safe operation, or desperate enough (like Eve) to risk death rather than pregnancy. Many women in German-occupied territory faced such harsh choices in World War I—Aurélie le Four’s letters, begging God and her family to forgive her for choosing not to bear the child of her rapists, are heart-breaking. Eve would have faced even more disastrous consequences than unwed motherhood, given the historical double standard for women in the intelligence world. Spying at that time did not have the glamorous gloss it later achieved thanks to James Bond and Hollywood; it was not seen as a gentleman’s profession, much less a lady’s. If a woman had to dirty herself in spying she must keep her reputation intact, and great pains were taken to emphasize that female sources like Louise de Bettignies were still virtuous. “Coquettes they may have been, but prostitutes never,” a biographer of Louise wrote earnestly of the women in the Alice Network. “[They] never resorted to the customary feminine wiles to obtain information.” Women like Eve and Louise lived with harsher realities, but would have known very well that female spies were seen either as Madonnas or whores: stainless visions of purity like the martyred Edith Cavell, or sultry untrustworthy harlots like Mata Hari.
As always, I have taken some liberties with historical record, shifting some events and compressing others to serve the story. Car ferries like the one that transported Finn’s precious Lagonda to France existed in 1947, though I wasn’t able to verify there was such a ferry from Folkestone to Le Havre. Louise de Bettignies and Marguerite le François were driven to Tournai for their interrogation before Marguerite’s release and Louise’s official arrest. There was a lapse of a few days after the trial in Brussels before the women were told their death sentences had been commuted to prison terms.
The matter of Louise’s conviction and what evidence the Germans had on her remains debatable. She refused to give away anything during her months of imprisonment; the Germans finally got her cellmate Mlle. Tellier to pass on some letters Louise had written, but it’s difficult to say if they got anything incriminating from those letters. I have arranged the existing conflicting reports to make a clearer climax, but Louise de Bettignies may have been convicted on very little hard evidence at all besides being caught with multiple identification cards while trying to sneak past a checkpoint on a borrowed pass.
The sequence of events around Louise’s death is another place I have condensed the narrative. Her operation for pl
eural abscesses happened somewhat earlier that year, as she did not die immediately after surgery but managed to survive for some months as an invalid—another example of her remarkable toughness, since according to La Guerre des Femmes, Louise’s operation lasted four agonizing hours in an unheated and inadequately-disinfected room of the notorious Siegburg infirmary that had recently housed a typhus epidemic. It’s impossible to say if the Siegburg officials intended for that surgery to kill her; the infirmary’s lack of hygiene and proper medical care killed many patients even without extra malice intended. But Louise was certainly a problem prisoner for the Germans, and they had little compassion for her dying days, refusing her final request to be sent to die in her mother’s care, and ultimately sending her from Siegburg to a lonely deathbed in Cologne, away from her loyal friends and fellow prisoners. I dearly wished I could have changed history and given Louise a better fate; I confess I condensed her post-operation suffering. Louise’s grand funeral took place in 1920 rather than 1919, when her body was finally repatriated.
The female spies of World War I are largely forgotten today. As much as their contributions during the war were appreciated, there was a certain unease with how to treat them afterward. Women who entered the active zone of combat were generally viewed by the public in one of two ways: as females who shed all womanliness and became hardened and mannish thanks to the dangers of war, or as gallant little women forced by duty to take up dangerous burdens, but still fragile flowers at heart. Louise de Bettignies was admired, praised, and heaped with medals, but her contemporaries focused far less on her toughness and bravery than on her tiny stature, her femininity, her patriotism. “Louise was the most womanly woman one could imagine . . . There was nothing of the Amazon about her.” Matters were no different after World War II, when Charlie St. Clair would have been seeing the calls for Rosie the Riveter to put down the burdens of war and return to hearth and home where she belonged. Clearly, women in active fighting zones unsettled their contemporaries, but they still left a legacy behind. Girls of the ’30s and ’40s joined the SOE to train as spies against the Nazis because they had been inspired by books and stories about women like Louise de Bettignies—and they weren’t inspired by her feminine graces. They were inspired by her courage, her toughness, and her unflinching drive, just as I imagined Charlie being inspired by Eve’s. Such women were fleurs du mal indeed—with steel, with endurance, and with flair, they thrived in evil and inspired others in doing so.
Acknowledgments
I owe heartfelt thanks to many people who helped in the writing of this book. My mother, who hashed out countless plot tangles with me over long walks and even longer phone conversations. My husband, who fine-tuned Eve’s stammer in every scene and frequently told me, “You keep writing, I’ll make dinner.” My wonderful critique partners, Stephanie Dray and Sophie Perinot, whose red pencils and insights proved absolutely invaluable. My agent, Kevan Lyon, and editors, Amanda Bergeron and Tessa Woodward, cheerleaders par excellence. My MRW chapter mate, Lisa Christie, and her husband, Eric, for answering my questions about classic cars, fact-checking my mechanical details, and providing me with a tour of the wonderful Henry Petronis car collection. And finally, Annalori Ferrell, whose bilingual talents aided immeasurably in translating French research documents and teaching me suitably colorful French curses, and who provided an insider’s look at the World War I occupation of northern France under which past generations of her family lived. It is with the permission of Anna and her family that the letter by her great-great uncle Antoine le Four in the P.S. Section is translated and printed . . . and that Antoine himself, along with his stalwart sister Aurélie, are named in the book as members of the Alice Network.
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Voices of the Past: Letters and Trial Records
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About the author
Meet Kate Quinn
KATE QUINN is a native of Southern California. She attended Boston University, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classical voice. A lifelong history buff, she has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga and two books set in the Italian Renaissance detailing the early years of the infamous Borgia clan. All have been translated into multiple languages. She and her husband now live in Maryland with two black dogs named Caesar and Calpurnia.
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About the book
Voices of the Past: Letters and Trial Records
Letters, trial records, memories . . . they give voice to the dead and breathe life into history. These are a few of the voices that rose from the past to inspire The Alice Network.
Excerpt of a letter, 1916
Louise de Bettignies after her trial, to her Mother Prioress
You know, Mother, how much I need help and intercession near God for His mercy. My life was not without faults, and I have not been a model of gentleness and self-sacrifice. Since I am alone, I have had time to examine my life; what miseries I have discovered! I am ashamed of myself and the bad job I’ve made of my time and my health, my faculties and my freedom . . .
The decision of the council of war is not debatable. I accept my sentence with courage. During my operation, I envisioned death calmly and without fear; today I add a feeling of joy and pride because I refused to denounce anyone, and I hope those I saved through my silence will be grateful and thank me by keeping me in their prayers. I declare that I prefer the rigors of my sentence to the dishonor of exonerating myself by denouncing those who did their duty to their country.
I ramble, Mother, being still under the emotion of the verdict; I’m all broken and without strength. Tomorrow I will be better.
The leader of the Alice Network springs to vibrant life in every historical account she graces, courageous and outrageous at the same time. In 1914, France must have been full of women like her—impoverished gentlewomen turning their education to governess work or whatever genteel occupation they could find on the fringes of aristocratic society—but unlike the others, Louise de Bettignies did not content herself with nursing, bandage rolling, or traditional feminine war work. She wanted to fight, and what a fight it was. Her bravery was remarkable, but I found her humor and her self-awareness even more astounding—she is perhaps best summed up by an estimation made some thirty years later of a war correspondent: “He was a good soldier, and he had a way of laughing about things that was healthy.” Louise too had the priceless ability to laugh danger away. She remarked of the Germans, “They are too stupid! With any paper one sticks under their nose and plenty of self-possession, one can get through.” When urged to be more careful, she laughed, “Bah! I know I’ll be caught one day, but I shall have served. Let us hurry, and do great things while there is yet time.” When asked if she was ever frightened, she shrugged, “Yes, just like everyone else. But only after the danger was past; before then it is an indulgence.” She must have had her private dark moments—when sentenced to Siegburg she confessed with unsettling prescience, “I have a feeling I shall never return”—but she never allowed fear to stop her from doing her job, and doing it very well indeed. Her death may have been painful, but it found her unflinching—and if she felt at the end that she had not done enough with her time and her faculties, others would certainly not agree. A member of the British Intelligence said years later, “Possibly, during the course of the war . . . one or two services equaled hers. Not one has ever surpassed it.”
Excerpt of a letter, 1919
Antoine Le Four after the liberation of Lille, to his sister
This is a haunted city now and its people are the living ghosts. We live, we breathe, we go about our daily routines, but the color is gone, perhaps forever. For we who have seen so mu
ch, how can the world appear in other than mourning hues of grays and black? It seems the world around us has been no other way, and yet there was once music and art and life. People danced and sang. Life was beautiful here once, little sister, and that memory kept so many of us alive. I believe it can be that way again as long as we who loved this place so refuse to give up on it. I believe it because I must, for to believe that beauty gone forever would give them a victory my heart will not permit. War changes everything, this we know. Change is inevitable, but where does it say change must be eternal? We can never recover our innocence, but we can rebuild. No, we owe this to our dead: we must rebuild and this can only be done by those who knew what our city was before the war. For this reason, if no other, I must stay. You, my sister, of you, I would ask that you savor every moment and preserve the beauty around you for while I pray there will never be another war such as this, ours is a troubled history.
Antoine le Four is mentioned briefly in this novel as Louise de Bettignies’s document forger—and he was a very real man, a citizen of Lambersart near Lille. Writing to his sister some nine months after the war was over, his words make poignant poetry of the wretched state of occupied France during the First World War. It was a period of unbelievable misery and oppression, and French citizens lived for years under daily reminders of the boot on their necks: clocks turned to German time, French streets given German names, the unbelievable shortages of food and fuel, the requisitioning of everything from weapons to soap to kitchen curtains. Starvation, imprisonment, abuse, and rape were constant hovering threats—Antoine wrote with sorrow and rage of his younger sister Aurélie’s violation by German soldiers, mourning “I think that shadow behind her eyes will always remain.” The legacy of such brutality cast a long shadow from World War I to World War II. It is facile to condemn the French for giving in to the Nazis too easily when many French citizens would have still borne the horrendous scars of the first occupation, would have clearly remembered having to stand back while German sentries robbed them of everything but the nearly inedible ration bread because the only alternative was to be arrested, beaten, or shot. The French survived not one but two brutal occupations in a span of less than forty years, and deserve more credit for their flinty endurance than they receive. “Those who have never suffered an enemy invasion in their own land,” wrote another Lille citizen, “can never understand what war truly is.”