by Kate Mosse
Lucie was still fussing. She seemed full of jitters this morning, Sandrine thought. She bent forward and kissed her godson on the top of his head. Jean-Jacques wrinkled his nose, his podgy hand flapping at the air.
‘No!’
In her panier, Sandrine had a piece of rotting fish wrapped in newspaper – designed to put off even the most zealous of Wehrmacht patrols. Beneath the fish was a roll of film from Liesl that Raoul had brought, and her copy about the sabotage of the Berriac tunnel.
‘I know,’ Sandrine whispered to the boy, ‘it’s an awful stink.’ She pinched her nose. ‘But it will keep the nasty soldiers from talking to us, J-J, so we don’t mind, do we?’
Jean-Jacques giggled. ‘Gun, gun,’ he said. ‘Gun, bang.’
Lucie raised her eyebrows. ‘I can’t imagine what his father would say.’
Sandrine smiled. Lucie always talked as if Max was with them. She’d not seen him since that day in Le Vernet in August 1942, though she wrote every week. The waitress in the Café de la Paix in Le Vernet village sent news of the camp when she could. It pained Lucie not to be able to tell Max anything about their son, the things he did or the words he was starting to speak. But she was keeping a diary, so Max would be able to read about J-J’s first few years when he came home. She behaved as if it was never in doubt that Max would come back.
Sandrine wasn’t sure if Lucie believed it, or was putting on a good face. Ever since the invasion of the zone nono and the arrival of German soldiers on the streets of the Bastide, the deportations of Jewish prisoners from camps in the Ariège had accelerated. For whatever reason – perhaps his skill with languages, or the constant enquiries by Marianne’s Croix-Rouge colleagues – Max had been lucky. Lucie, she suspected, was still inclined to put it down to Authié’s intervention, though she never said as much and Sandrine didn’t ask.
In the last few weeks, though, things had changed. The Allied landings in the north of France in June proved the tide was turning against the Axis forces, whatever the newspapers claimed. As a reaction, the number of Jewish prisoners being deported from Le Vernet was being stepped up. To a place called Dachau, in Bavaria, a camp on the site of an old munitions factory, so she’d heard. Sandrine knew of no one who had ever been released from that camp. She didn’t know how Lucie would manage if Max’s name was finally put on the list.
Lucie had stayed in Coustaussa with Liesl and Marieta until Jean-Jacques was born, but country living didn’t suit her at all, and in the summer of 1943, she had come back to Carcassonne. A fille-mère, an unmarried mother as the result of a one-night stand with a soldier, was the story put about. Her position was difficult, but by keeping Jean-Jacques’ paternity a secret, she kept her son safe. Since Suzanne lived mostly at the rue du Palais, Lucie lodged with Suzanne’s mother and worked in a haberdasher’s shop near the station owned by one of Madame Peyre’s friends. Her distinctive blonde hair had gone, returned to its natural sparrow brown, and she was thin. She dressed in plain dresses designed not to attract attention, rather than the trim two-pieces she’d worn before the war. Once, she had run into her father in the Bastide. He had frowned slightly, as if trying to recall where he knew her from, but had not recognised her.
‘Ready for the off?’ Sandrine asked.
‘As I’ll ever be, kid.’
Sandrine smiled. Lucie gave the same response every time. She wasn’t really involved, though from time to time – like this morning – she was prepared to run an errand. She felt the best way to help keep Max safe was to do nothing to draw attention. To follow the rules. She had no idea Sandrine, Suzanne and Marianne did anything more than produce an underground newspaper.
‘Kid, kid, kid,’ sang Jean-Jacques. At seventeen months, he was already talkative, keen to try words and sounds out loud.
Lucie’s expression softened for a moment, then she handed him a crust of stale bread and put her finger to her lips.
‘Nice and quiet, mon brave. Quiet.’
Jean-Jacques’ eyes grew wide. Sandrine, too, put her finger to her lips and puffed out her lips, as if blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. The little boy copied.
‘Ssshh,’ he whispered loudly. ‘J-J quiet.’
They walked towards boulevard Antoine Marty, the front wheel of the perambulator squeaking horribly loudly in the quiet of the morning. Their shoes, too, were noisy. Like everyone else, they were having to make do with wooden soles when the leather wore through.
‘Who’s there to meet us?’ Lucie asked.
‘Gaston. Suzanne will come later when the sheets are ready to be distributed.’
The idea for a weekly newspaper had been Sandrine’s. Inspired by the underground press in northern France, after the Germans had invaded the South she had produced the first copy of Libertat – the Occitan word for freedom. She wrote the editorials, articles on atrocities carried out by the Milice, naming collaborationists, passing on information about successful Resistance raids. From time to time they published photographs. Geneviève or Eloise smuggled films from Liesl – of munitions depots, troop movements, leading Gestapo or SS officers, the layout of prisons – to Carcassonne. Suzanne was in charge of the printing, Marianne arranged the distribution, Robert and Gaston Bonnet delivered the newspapers to their couriers. Lucie kept the machines in working order. A childhood spent in her father’s garage had given her a useful knowledge of all things mechanical.
Sandrine’s aim was to highlight the continuing, worsening crimes of Vichy and to expose ‘la barbarie nazie’. Libertat was only one of several partisan newspapers – Combat, Libération, Humanité, Le Courrier du Témoignage Chrétien, Libérer and La Vie ouvrière – each attempting to counteract the increasingly hysterical collaborationist and Nazi propaganda. Every week, tracts were discovered in a suitcase under a bench at the railway station in Lézignan, or pushed under the doors of cafés in the centre of Limoux during the night, or left in the bus depot in Narbonne.
Sandrine reserved her harshest criticism for the Milice, the Frenchmen who collaborated and did the occupiers’ work for them. Formed at the beginning of 1943, the Milice was an amalgamation of the various Rightist groups. In Carcassonne, it had been under the control of Albert Kromer until February, when the Resistance finally succeeded in assassinating him. Their next-door neighbour, Monsieur Fournier, had been killed in the same attack. Lucie’s father was a member, like most of the former LVF members who met at the Café Edouard.
Carcassonne was now a city at war with itself. After two years of living a double life, Sandrine divided the Bastide into places she could go and places she should not. The Feldgendarmerie, under Chef Shröbel, occupied the white stucco building on the corner of boulevard Maréchal Pétain, overlooking the Palais du Justice, where the Deuxième Bureau had been based. The counter-espionage bureau, Abwehr, had established itself in Boulevard Barbès. The Laperrine barracks, where once the mothers of Carcassonne had waved their husbands and sons off to war in 1914, was now the headquarters of the SS, and the Gestapo headquarters was on the route de Toulouse. Of all the commanders of the Aude, Chef Eckfelner and Sous-chef Schiffner, who led the hunt against partisans, were the most vicious.
It was not just their future and their present that was being taken away from them, but their past too. The vert-de-gris had occupied the medieval Cité. A landmark of local pride and international significance, it was now closed to civilians. No ordinary citizens were allowed past the Porte Narbonnaise without a work permit. Sometimes, when Sandrine looked across the water to the majestic towers and turrets, she was almost relieved that her father hadn’t lived to suffer the sight of the ‘green-and-grey’ walking through the cobbled streets, drinking cognac in the lounge of the Hôtel de la Cité. Standing on the battlements where once Viscount Trencavel had commanded his men to stand firm against the northern crusaders. Where Dame Carcas had deceived Charlemagne.
Almost relieved.
For some time, Sandrine felt they were working alone. Then, on 27 January 1943 – t
he same day Lucie had given birth to Jean-Jacques – the disparate partisan groups were brought together as the Mouvements Unis de Résistance, under the leadership of Jean Moulin. The southern zone had been carved into six divisions. The Aude was R3 and the Ariège R4. Ranks and passes, a structure of order and command and control was established. Sandrine heard the code names whispered – ‘Myriel’, ‘Bels’, ‘Frank’, ‘Le Rouquin’ (because of his red hair), ‘Robespierre’ and ‘Danton’. She would not have recognised any of them if she’d passed them in the street. Nor they her.
As well as Sandrine’s code name, ‘Sophie’, Suzanne was ‘André’ and Marianne was ‘Catherine’. Christian names only, unlike their male counterparts. Raoul and Robert Bonnet knew them, but no one else. It wasn’t a question of not trusting Liesl or Geneviève, or Eloise and Guillaume Breillac, but common sense. The less one knew, the less one could be forced to tell. Jean Moulin had been murdered only six months after forming the MUR – caught by, or betrayed to, the Gestapo – but after a month of torture in the notorious Lyon prison, he died without revealing anything. Without giving anyone’s name away.
‘Are you all right?’ Lucie said, her voice cutting into Sandrine’s reflections. ‘You seem tired.’
Sandrine blushed. ‘I didn’t sleep much,’ she said.
‘Ssshh,’ said the little boy, holding his finger again to his lips. ‘J-J dodo.’
Sandrine and Lucie smiled. ‘That’s right, Jean-Jacques. Everyone’s sleeping,’ Sandrine whispered. ‘We mustn’t wake them up.’
‘Dodo,’ he said loudly.
‘Bubi,’ Lucie said quickly. ‘Hush now, that’s my little man.’ He looked at her with his wide brown eyes, but immediately became quiet. ‘He looks so like Max when he does that, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Sandrine nodded, though in truth she could hardly remember what Max looked like.
Even after everything that had happened, Sandrine still felt a residual sense of guilt when she thought about Max. Remembering the morning with the Croix-Rouge at the railway station in Carcassonne and wondering if there was anything she could have done to stop him being taken. She knew it was pointless to think that way, but she did. Somehow it made keeping secrets from Lucie seem even worse.
They walked on, the wheels of the pram rattling on the pavement, a little further into the heart of the Bastide. The sound of the carts delivering milk and the bakers transporting bread to the German garrison in the Hôtel Terminus.
‘Did you hear someone blew up the line at Berriac last evening?’
Sandrine hesitated, tempted for a moment to confide in her. But then common sense prevailed. It was better that Lucie didn’t know. Safer for them all.
‘They?’
‘Resistance, I suppose. And it makes sense,’ Lucie said, stumbling over the words, ‘that’s to say, of what I heard on the wireless.’
Sandrine glanced at her. ‘What did they say on the wireless?’
‘I don’t know if it’s true, of course. They so often get these things wrong, don’t they?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lucie,’ Sandrine said. ‘What makes sense?’
‘There was an item on the wireless. I wasn’t listening properly, so I might have misunderstood. They were talking about how since the head of the Milice in Carcassonne was killed . . . I can’t remember his name.’
‘Albert Kromer,’ Sandrine said.
‘Yes, they said that since he was killed in January, the number of attacks on the Milice has gone up.’
‘That’s true enough,’ Sandrine agreed.
Both the Maquis and the Resistance units – ‘Citadel’ among them – had become bolder after having claimed the scalp of such a high-profile target as Kromer. Two weeks ago, with Suzanne’s help, Sandrine had broken into the Milice offices in Place Carnot and burnt a stack of recruitment posters. As soon as any new poster was put up in the street, partisans defaced them with the Cross of Lorraine, symbol of the Resistance, using penknives or white ink. But better to destroy them at source. In retaliation, the Milice had raided a café on the rue de l’Aigle d’Or.
‘So,’ Lucie continued, ‘the bulletin also said that although the Milice and Germans were winning the battle against the insurgents—’
‘Rot!’
‘That’s what they said,’ Lucie said defensively.
‘It’s what they always say.’
‘Also that although the Germans were winning,’ Lucie continued, ‘increasing numbers of local men and women were supporting the partisans.’
Sandrine nodded. The number of maquisards had been growing and growing, ever since the STO had been introduced in February 1943. A draft to send men to munitions factories or farms in Germany to support the Nazi war effort, the Service de Travail Obligatoire had been voluntary, but soon became compulsory. Food, shelter, messages. A car left with fuel and the keys in the ignition. All ways that ordinary men and women could help. In recent weeks, even Wehrmacht soldiers were deserting and joining the Maquis.
But the cost was high and the reprisals were becoming increasingly vicious. Two days ago, a German unit, supported by local Milice, had launched an attack on the Villebazy Maquis in their forest hideout to the east of Limoux. A warning had got through and the maquisards had fled, so the troops had turned on the villagers instead. Several men were arrested, hostages taken and houses ransacked. One man was dead.
‘The point is . . .’ Lucie took a deep breath. ‘The point is, they said that because of all this, a high-ranking commander from the north is being brought in to lead the offensive against the insurgents in the Aude.’
Sandrine thought about the latest rumours. Entire villages being rounded up. In June, nearly a hundred people murdered at Tulle and nearly seven hundred at Oradour-sur-Glane near Limoges. Closer to home, stories of hostages being taken and summary executions, most recently in Chalabre, to the west of Limoux. The authorities denied any such atrocity had taken place.
‘Sandrine?’ Lucie said anxiously.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sandrine said, forcing herself to stop thinking about things she couldn’t do anything about. ‘Sorry, I am listening.’
‘They said his name, you see, that’s what got my attention.’
Without warning, Sandrine’s mild impatience with Lucie transformed into a sick, sharp fear. Immediately, she realised. Realised what Lucie was struggling to say and why she was finding it so hard to get the words out.
‘Did they say who it was?’ she asked, although she already knew the answer. ‘Did they give a name?’
Lucie raised her head and looked her in the eye. ‘Leo Authié.’
Chapter 103
‘Captain Authié.’
‘Major now,’ Lucie said in a rush. ‘I thought you’d want to know.’
Sandrine stared blindly, then pulled herself together. ‘Yes, of course I do.’ She paused. ‘Did the bulletin say when he was taking up the position?’
‘No.’
‘Or if he was to be based in the Milice headquarters in Place Carnot? In Carcassonne?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m sorry.’
Sandrine fell silent. Authié was a malignant presence in the corner of her mind, always there even though the fear he inspired in her had become weaker as the months – years – had passed without anything happening.
When she’d come back to Carcassonne in August 1942, Sandrine had expected to see Authié or his deputy, Sylvère Laval, on every street corner. She’d anticipated the knock at the door. Then in October, Raoul managed to confirm that, having consulted Monsieur Saurat in Toulouse, Authié had gone on to Chartres and remained there. There was no record of him returning to the Midi at all.
Nonetheless, that autumn and winter, Sandrine still avoided walking past the headquarters of the Deuxième Bureau on boulevard Maréchal Pétain and kept her ear to the ground for any gossip. She even listened to the hated Radio Paris, but heard nothing. Not a whisper.
Then in November the Germans c
rossed the demarcation line and everything changed. The headquarters of the Deuxième Bureau were occupied by the Feldgendarmerie. The enemy was now everywhere, in possession of the streets of the Bastide and the Cité. There was more to contend with than Leo Authié.
Since then, Sandrine had come across Authié’s name only twice. The first time was in a pro-Nazi newspaper, in November 1943. A class at the lycée where Marianne worked had staged a protest on the first anniversary of the invasion of the Midi, marching around the courtyard with placards and singing ‘La Marseillaise’, banned since the occupation. The girls, children all of them, had been suspended for fifteen days, but their point was made. Walking through Square Gambetta later that afternoon, Sandrine had seen a copy of Le Matin lying on a bench. She’d picked it up and been taken by surprise by a photograph of Leo Authié with two SS-Obergruppenführer officers. She had thrust the newspaper into the nearest rubbish bin, feeling contaminated by having even touched it.
The second time was eight weeks ago. Marianne had shown her an article in L’Echo, commending the joint efforts of the Chartres Milice and their ‘German guests’ in preventing an attack on a private museum in the city. Authié hadn’t changed. A little broader perhaps, but the same hateful expression of condescension and arrogance. He was being honoured by Nazi High Command for having masterminded a series of raids against – as the editorial put it – ‘agitators, saboteurs and terrorists’. Sandrine still remembered the exact words, though her abiding memory was one of swooping relief at knowing Authié was still in the North.
In Chartres, not Carcassonne.
‘The thing is,’ Lucie was saying, ‘I was giving Jean-Jacques his breakfast, so I wasn’t really paying attention. It was just his name. Because I wasn’t expecting it, it jumped out at me.’