by Anna Fargher
‘Stay where you are!’ Madame Fourcade ordered. ‘Lucia knows nothing!
‘Go!’ Pip cried, her mind whirring with an idea. ‘I know what I’m doing!’
Madame Fourcade’s prickles bristled. ‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘Trust me!’ Pip whispered, and as they met each other’s gaze her friends understood what she was doing. ‘If you want me, Lucia –’ she turned and faced the bird defiantly – ‘then you’ll have to come and get me!’
‘And me!’ Madame Fourcade cried.
‘Me too!’ GI Joe added.
‘Count me in as well!’ Nancy said defiantly, paws on hips.
‘So if you want us,’ Pip repeated, her pulse pounding in her ears, ‘you’ll have to come and get us!’
‘As you wish,’ Lucia cooed. With a flick of her wings the Goliath Rats plunged into the murky water and a sickly expression of satisfaction drew across her face as they glided powerfully across the pool.
‘Please come, please come,’ Pip whispered to herself, the rats nearing with every second. Her friends brushed against her fur and, together, they stood tall with racing hearts, watching a long tail fin emerge from the water.
‘No!’ Lucia shrieked, fluttering her wings in alarm.
The catfish’s wide, gaping mouth lunged. Squealing in panic, the rats feverishly tried to outswim it as it greedily darted through the water, rose up and swallowed them whole. Lucia let out a piercing cry of fury and launched into the air with her blue eyes bitterly narrowing at Pip on the other side of the chamber.
‘Run!’ GI Joe yelled, bursting open his wings.
‘I’m not leaving you again, GI!’ Pip replied firmly beside Madame Fourcade and Nancy.
The pigeons collided above the catfish as its vast, speckled green body rocketed out of the water and closed its monstrous, long-whiskered jaws around the last rat. As it disappeared below the surface with a splash of its tail, GI Joe took a sudden scratch to the eye and he tumbled through the air in pain. Quickly coming to his senses, he swiftly beat his wings and skimmed the pool with his tail feathers, and the catfish lurched out of the water with an empty snap of its mouth. Above, GI Joe charged into Lucia and together they somersaulted through the air and landed heavily on the ledge on the opposite side of the chamber.
Lucia was pinning GI Joe against the ground when a sudden gust of wind blew against Pip, Madame Fourcade and Nancy from the corridor to their right, and a moment later, they hurled themselves into little balls as a dark cloud of ravens stormed into the chamber and torpedoed into Lucia in a whirlwind of black feathers.
‘I’ll get you for this, Pip!’ Lucia screeched, tumbling from her perch on GI Joe’s chest and fleeing up the secret passageway to the city above with the swarm of ebony birds swiftly pursuing her. ‘You’ll be sorry! I’ll destroy you if it’s last thing I do!’
‘And don’t come back!’ Nancy shouted after her. She shook the water and her fury from her fur and looked down at Pip and Madame Fourcade, peeling each other from the floor. ‘I think we deserve a stiff drink after the night we’ve had, don’t you?’
CHAPTER TWENTY
HOUSE ARREST
The air was tense with exhaustion as Pip, Madame Fourcade and GI Joe entered the hideout and followed Nancy to the medical ward that was draped in Amélie’s webs and gleamed with the glow of fireflies. The candlelit room felt even bigger now that most of the animals were fighting above ground, and as they passed what animals remained Pip noticed they were all droopy-eyed with fatigue. The hours without sleep seemed to hang from their fur and feathers. Pip glanced at her friends walking beside her, and saw they were all just as dishevelled, with Madame Fourcade looking most wretched of all.
Robert the bullfinch and Noor the kingfisher were still sending and receiving Morse code, and when Pip passed them scribbling messages the tight knot in her chest loosened a little, seeing the umbrella where she had left it on the ground beside them. Passing the tea stall made from a broken carriage clock turned on its side, they continued onwards under the vigilant gaze of the eight stony-faced rats guarding the stage in the centre of the room. The small, scruffy stray dog and ginger cat argued here, standing over the map of Paris that marked the Resistance’s progress. Nancy hurried to them and they scowled, listening to how they had just encountered Lucia and the Goliath Rats. With one word from the dog, four of the burly rat guards marched to the entrance of the hideout.
‘Umbrella Mouse!’ the ginger cat cried, promptly moving to her with Nancy and the scruffy stray dog. Pip shuffled on her paws, wanting to find Leo and Philippe more than talk to the animals who were in charge of the Resistance’s hideout. ‘Nancy tells us you saved the Eiffel Tower and sabotaged the telephone lines inside the Nazis’ military headquarters.’ He energetically shook her little paw. ‘Well done!’
‘It was all of us –’ Pip’s cheeks flamed as she nodded to GI Joe, Madame Fourcade and Nancy – ‘and Leo and Philippe.’
‘We heard the white pigeon and her Goliath Rats attacked you,’ the ginger cat added gravely, darting his gaze to Madame Fourcade.
Pip looked up at the hedgehog for comfort, but she was staring at the floor, her thoughts consumed by a fog of dismay.
‘There’s no need to worry, Madame.’ The ginger cat’s brow crinkled, seeing the defeat on Pip and Madame Fourcade’s faces. ‘Our hideout is the safest place for you. The raven guards will catch the white pigeon and make her sorry.’
‘But Lucia got away.’ Pip sighed, and the ginger cat’s tail flicked angrily. ‘She’s still out there somewhere and she wants to harm everyone we hold dear.’
‘The last we saw of her,’ Nancy added firmly, ‘she had an army of ravens on her tail. She’d be as mad as a cut snake to fight them, and as long as she’s trapped she can’t hurt anyone.’
‘We’ll find your hoglets,’ Pip whispered to Madame Fourcade as GI Joe wrapped a wing round the hedgehog’s shoulders. ‘Let’s go now.’
‘It’s not that simple.’ Madame Fourcade shook her head and Pip’s chest throbbed, seeing her so pale and haunted. ‘Rémi the swallow may not have told Lucia exactly where my hoglets were, but he gave her enough intelligence to find them soon, and now that she knows where I am her Goliath Rats and Butcher Birds will be watching and waiting for me to go and find them. I could lead the enemy straight to my hoglets and anyone who is with me could be captured or killed too.’ She paused and a solitary tear trickled down her cheek. ‘But if I don’t go I’m losing my chance to save them with every second that goes by. I feel as though I’m being buried alive. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Oh, Madame,’ Nancy soothed as the scruffy stray dog and the ginger cat eyed one another with hardening jaws. She clicked her paw tips three times and urgently motioned for the squirrel sitting behind the carriage-clock tea stall to bring over some warm drinks. ‘Our ravens will catch her and then none of us have anything to worry about,’ she added as the squirrel arrived carrying a tray of three steaming thimbles. ‘Drink this – it’ll keep your strength up.’ Nancy passed one each to Pip, Madame Fourcade and GI Joe, who all stared at the refreshments absentmindedly. ‘Come on,’ she bossed. ‘Down the hatch!’
They did as they were told and slurped the thimbles dry.
‘I’ll take us to your hoglets now, Madame,’ GI Joe offered, putting his empty cup back on the tray with the others. ‘There’s gotta be another exit into the city that the enemy doesn’t know about. I bet Philippe and Leo will help us too. The bigger the team, the stronger the strike. Lead the way to them, Pip!’
But Pip wasn’t listening. Her eyes and ears were fixed on the scruffy stray dog and the ginger cat who were abruptly stepping away with Nancy and speaking quickly to one another in hushed tones. Pip swallowed, sensing none of them wanted Madame Fourcade to leave.
‘Look, loves!’ Nancy caught Pip’s gaze and spoke in a cheery voice as she pointed to the far side of the chamber where Philippe sat. ‘Leo’s just over there.’ Pip turned at once. ‘He’ll b
e wanting to see you.’
Pip raced ahead of Madame Fourcade and GI Joe as they weaved through the beds inside the medical ward, and a lump swelled in her throat when they found Leo lying under a handkerchief draped over an empty sardine can with blue fish printed on the side.
‘How is he?’ Pip whispered to Philippe, unable to take her eyes off Leo’s little chest wrapped in one of Amélie’s spider web bandages, but the parrot only drew a deep sigh. Pip bit her lip, fearing the worst.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Amélie interrupted, squeezing between Pip and Madame Fourcade on the other side of the bed. She picked up Leo’s wrist in one of her tarsi and waited a moment, before patting it and resting it by his side again. ‘Nice, slow, strong pulse,’ she said, jotting something on a clipboard made from a metal bottle top. ‘The shock is subsiding.’
‘Oh, Doctor!’ Leo croaked, and Pip beamed with her friends. ‘You could have let her worry about me for a little longer!’
‘If you had kept your mouth shut and pretended to be asleep like I said –’ Philippe chuckled – ‘she would’ve believed you.’
‘Si, I know,’ Leo said, gazing up at his friends, ‘but I wanted to see you all again.’
‘Leo is bashed and bruised, but it’s nothing a good rest and a hearty meal can’t fix.’ Amélie’s eight eyes travelled over Pip and the others. ‘You should all try to do the same.’
She scuttled away to attend to other patients in nearby beds and Leo’s brow furrowed, seeing the devastation lining the faces of his friends.
‘Topolina,’ Leo said, wincing a little as he lifted his head off his pillow made from a pink velvet pincushion. ‘What’s happened?’
Pip’s eyes brimmed with tears as she recounted their confrontation with Lucia and the Goliath Rats. Leo and Philippe gaped in alarm at hearing that Madame Fourcade’s hoglets were in peril, and they instantly vowed to help get them back in whatever ways they could.
The animals in the chamber were suddenly startled by the troop of ravens returning inside the Resistance’s hideout in a flurry of squawks and clattering wings. A pair of them raced Max’s limp body to the medical ward and Amélie and the fireflies rushed to his aid, while the rest of the birds hurried to Nancy, the scruffy stray dog and the ginger cat.
‘What? ’ Nancy roared, and the fury in her voice made all whiskers droop in the room. ‘If the white pigeon escaped, then the enemy knows where our hideout is!’
‘If we’re attacked and captured here –’ Madame Fourcade’s eyes widened with fear – ‘my hoglets are doomed.’
Pip locked eyes with GI Joe, and his feathers ruffled with unease.
‘Nancy, we need to move the hideout before we’re besieged,’ Madame Fourcade said, turning from Leo’s bedside and marching towards the middle of the room.
‘So you can abandon us and find your hoglets, Madame?’ Nancy snapped, whipping her head round to her.
Madame Fourcade ignored her tone and stood tall under her stare. ‘My hoglets are my business, not—’
‘No,’ Nancy corrected, ‘they are everyone else’s in this room, Madame! That dastardly white pigeon has laid a trap for you, knowing a mother will protect her young at all costs. You will give the enemy everything they want to save your hoglets’ lives.’
‘I would never!’ Madame Fourcade bristled, but doubt soon made her stutter, ‘I . . . I swear it! I promise I won’t—’
‘Let me make myself clear,’ Nancy said firmly. ‘If you leave, you are endangering not only yourself and your hoglets, but also the entire Resistance. You know too much, Madame. In an interrogation, you could be our undoing when our liberation rests on keeping our secrets safe. The enemy greatly outnumbers us in weapons, and our ammunition is running out. The Allied armies have not arrived and victory is uncertain. The uprising could fail at any moment. Your judgement is impaired by exhaustion and fear. You and your friends cannot be trusted until Paris is free.’
‘But if we are attacked or captured or worse,’ Pip cried, ‘then we don’t have a chance of rescuing her hoglets!’
‘It’s a sacrifice I wish we did not have to make,’ Nancy said sadly, and the blood instantly drained from Madame Fourcade’s face, ‘but many more lives will be lost if you talk, Madame. We cannot lose Paris to the invaders again. As Madame Fourcade said herself, the white pigeon has not found her hoglets yet. The Milice are already being crushed like fleas as the human Allied army advances—’
‘But if we stay here, we could all be captured!’ GI Joe added, rushing to Madame Fourcade’s side. ‘We’ll have fewer fighters on the ground to fight the enemy. We must at least move somewhere else inside the catacombs.’
‘And get lost in more than a hundred miles of underground quarries?’ Nancy scoffed. ‘And let our members returning from battle be trapped by the enemy inside our own hideout? Never!’ she cried, her hazel eyes darting to the raven guards. ‘Ravens! Go and guard the entrance in the abandoned railway tunnel at once and kill any Goliath Rat or white pigeon on sight.’
‘But what if they’re overrun like Max?’ Pip frowned as the birds disappeared from the chamber.
‘Fifty ravens cannot be overpowered.’
Madame Fourcade scowled. ‘Then you’re risking everyone’s lives on the arrival and victory of the human Allied armies.’
‘All our lives depend on that!’ Nancy spat as Madame Fourcade suddenly swayed to the right. GI Joe propped her up and stumbled himself. At the same moment, Pip also felt faint, and Madame Fourcade and GI Joe paused, then stared at the squirrel behind the tea stall with a gasp of alarm.
‘You’ve drugged us!’ Madame Fourcade cried out, aghast. ‘You ruthless . . . How could you . . .’
‘It’s the only way I can guarantee our safety,’ Nancy interrupted. ‘If you escaped the Nacht und Nebel camp, you’ll try to break out of here too. You and your group are under my authority now and I forbid any of you to leave! Guards!’ The white mouse clapped her paws together and at once the rats standing at the four corners of the stage turned their heads to her. ‘Take the Umbrella Mouse and her friends to the beds beyond the medical ward and do not let them out of your sight.’
‘You can’t make us stay here against our will.’ Pip shook her head in disbelief as the guards pointed their spears at Madame Fourcade and GI Joe.
‘Please,’ Madame Fourcade pleaded as she and GI Joe were prodded across the chamber towards the dormitory. ‘My hoglets are in danger. They need me!’
‘Keeping you under my watch is the only way I can stop you and your friends being caught and interrogated, Madame.’ Nancy’s face softened as a third guard neared Pip, trying her hardest to fight the effects of the drug by stubbornly gripping Leo’s bedside with her paws. He squeezed one of her paws in his and his warmth made her feel stronger. ‘The rats and ravens are the finest guards in France – no other place is safer for you and your hoglets now. By staying here, you cannot lead the enemy to them.’
Pip looked around at all her friends submitting to Nancy’s will and her heart sank with defeat.
‘Rest well, little one,’ Nancy added as Pip hung her head and followed Madame Fourcade and GI Joe, ‘and I hope the human Allied armies will come to Paris’s aid soon.’
Under the watchful eyes of the guards, Pip clambered inside a small, cream tin with the word Pastilles printed in red between green illustrations of curling leaves. Sinking into a thick pile of fluffy feathers, she covered herself with an old checked handkerchief draped upon it, and watched Madame Fourcade clamber into the neighbouring bed made from a fraying wicker breadbasket, and curl up into a ball. A lump swelled in Pip’s throat, seeing the hedgehog’s fear and despair ripple across her quills. Unable to bear the thought of her being alone, Pip whipped off her blanket and hurried to her. Climbing into Madame Fourcade’s bed, Pip nestled against her prickles and the hedgehog’s cold paw reached out for hers. Pip drew it into her chest with tears filling her eyes, and promised herself she would defy Nancy and stay awake for her friend. But, with
in a few minutes, both the hedgehog and the little mouse drifted into a cold, dark sleep.
In the hours before dawn, high above the Resistance’s hideout in the catacombs, the great bell of Notre-Dame swung on its yoke for the first time in four years of occupation. Booming into the night, hope spread with every chime as, one by one, all the churches joined in the refrain, joyously ringing in a citywide symphony under the stars.
The citizens of Paris flung open their windows and doors and giddily dashed into the streets to hear them drown out the sounds of gunfire.
At the same time, the animals barked and cawed and leaped into the air with their tails wagging and their hearts singing.
The human Allied army had finally arrived.
Pip woke groggily, feeling an urgent shake of her shoulder. Blinking nervously, her eyes focused on Madame Fourcade, squatting at the side of the bed, and a sharp bite of shame gnawed at her as she realized she’d failed to stay awake for her.
‘What’s going on?’ Pip asked, darting her eyes about her, and she brightened as she spied Leo looking more himself, standing behind Madame Fourcade with GI Joe and Philippe. Pip’s heart sank, staring into the hedgehog’s face. She’d never seen her look so wretched with anxiety.
‘The human Allied army arrived last night!’ Leo grinned with Philippe.
‘The German General von Choltitz has just surrendered,’ Madame Fourcade added earnestly. ‘The Allies and the Resistance fought the enemy all day. Get up, chérie, we must get out of here and find my hoglets.’
‘I’ve slept all day?’ Pip gaped as Madame Fourcade helped her to the floor. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
‘There was no point,’ the hedgehog replied. ‘The sleeping draught which that Nancy gave us made us dead to the world, and her guards have been like our shadows up until now. Come on, we need to get your umbrella and then we cannot stay a moment longer. I don’t trust Nancy. She can’t keep us here now, but she could find a reason for us to stay. She’s distracted by the celebrations – we must go now!’