Spook's Gold

by Andrew Wood

  They slithered down the embankment and in the shade of trees bordering the field she handed him one of the cheese-filled baguettes that she had purchased in Conches. The smell of the ripe Camembert made her realise that she too was ravenous and they both demolished the sandwiches with gusto. Lemele had purchased two for each of them but did not tell Marner this, wanting to save something for later since there was no assurance of when they would next find food. She hoped that one of the villages ahead would have a pension or some basic accommodation for the night. But their first priority now was security and avoiding unnecessary questions and attention. Unfortunately they had nothing to drink and so they would have to find something at one of the villages along their route, or take the risk of drinking from a stream or river.

  Leaving the cover of the trees, they set off along the rutted dirt track that skirted around the edge of the field, turning onto a gravel path that ran alongside it, heading north. After just a kilometre they joined a road and crossed an ancient and ornate stone bridge over the River Villaine. From the elevated bridge, Lemele could see a small wood ahead straddling the road. Beyond that and above the trees were the roofs of buildings that she guessed was a village.

  As they followed the road through the wood towards the village it forced her to confront the fact that she did not have a clue regarding how they were going to get to the other side of Rennes to pick up a train going further west. Realistically, the first rail stop on the other side of the city might be twenty kilometres or more from their current position. She was not equipped, in particular her shoes, for walking any distance. There also remained the problem that they had no papers or permits that gave them any reason or justification to be out here if they were challenged at a check point. This meant that any road was dangerous. Marner’s uniform was useful for bluffing their way around Paris and with civilians who were unfamiliar with the SD organisation, but out here in the countryside on foot he was like a fish out of water.

  Lemele paused as they were about to emerge from the wood. It was indeed a village, though large enough to merit a Mairie – the town hall. She decided that it would be best to leave Marner there in the wood; individually they would arouse curiosity in the inhabitants of such a small village, but together, civilian and SD uniform with luggage, they would stand out for sure. So she explained to Marner that he must remain hidden in the trees and that she would be back before nightfall, which was probably two hours away. Hopefully she would have something to eat and drink, as well as somewhere to sleep and some transport planned for tomorrow. He tried to argue with her on the grounds that it might be dangerous and that perhaps he should go instead. Lemele took this obstinacy as a good sign, that he was shaking off the confusion and lassitude that Doctor Corneille had advised might be a side effect of his concussion. In this instance she overrode him, however, insisting that a civilian woman could move around with far less suspicion in a country village.

  Together they found him a dry spot to sit down that was well hidden from the road by shrubbery and branches and Lemele reassured him once again that she would be back before nightfall. Back on the road and walking the remaining kilometre to the village, she passed a field that held the black and white dairy cows that had always been associated in her mind with the region. They were sharing their pasture with a half dozen horses. Something that Doctor Corneille had said to her that morning came to her and she strode on, an idea forming in her mind.

  ----

  Later that evening, far later than planned, she re-entered the trees where Marner was secreted. With the sun almost set, this shaded eastern side of the wood had plunged to almost complete darkness beneath the canopy of branches. Lemele could just make out the black outlines of the tree trunks, but no more. The branches were snagging and pulling at her and she was forced to back out of a tangle of brambles that she had stumbled into, one ankle now stinging from the scratches of the thorns. Lemele realised that she must have misjudged the direction and so had no proper idea of where he might be. “Dieter!” she hissed, wondering if he had fallen asleep again.

  “Here.” The reply came from just a few metres behind her, causing Lemele to shriek in fright. Marner stepped out from a dark mass that might be a bush or a clump of trees, lowered and holstered his pistol. “What took you so long?”

  “It took me a while to find out the information I needed and then to find the right people. Then on the way back I had to dodge a German patrol; they are very jumpy and enforcing a strict curfew. Rennes was bombed twice by the Allies in the last few days, added to which there are Allied paratroopers being dropped around the region and the Maquis are very active.” She handed him the spare sandwich that she already had in her bag, together with a bottle of fresh milk that she had obtained in the town.

  “Are you not hungry?” he asked, munching on a mouthful of baguette.

  “No. I ate in the tavern in the town.”

  Fortunately it was too dark for her to see the half-masticated mouthful of food in his gaping jaw. “What?” he spluttered, spraying crumbs. “You mean to say that you left me out here for hours, getting eaten alive by bugs while you had a nice meal, and then you bring me back a stale sandwich!”

  “Well you’re certainly back to normal, aren’t you?” she muttered, before continuing. “It was necessary for me to sit down and strike up a bit of conversation before working my way around to the questions that I needed to ask! I could hardly, being a complete stranger, just waltz in and start asking questions about German patrols and how to move around the countryside without bumping into them, could I?” she fumed.

  “Hmmm. Okay, I take your point. I guess,” he mumbled in a semi-placatory tone that she was not fully convinced by. “So what did you arrange for us?”

  “I was offered a room in the tavern in the town. It only has a single bed so....”

  “So I’m supposed to bed down out here with the ticks and mosquitoes then?” he croaked in disbelief. “That’s very nice I must say! Now that ....”

  “Shut up!” she roared, the noise startling after their whispered exchange, breaking the deep silence of the night around them. “What I was going to say before you jumped to your own conclusion and finished my sentence for me is that it only has a single bed and it is the only accommodation in the town. The landlady was well overdosed on her own wine and was already sleeping soundly when I crept out to come back here. So we can both sneak in and up to the room, but we need to be out early before she is awake in the morning.”

  “Ah. Right. Sorry I....” but Lemele was already stamping and crashing her way out of the undergrowth towards the road. He considered that it would not be a wise idea right at that moment to suggest that she should try to be quieter, so he retrieved his bag from where he had hidden it and followed in her wake.

  Lemele led him via a convoluted route around the edge of the village. From the blackened massed ranks of buildings he could hear raucous German voices. He assumed them to be soldiers returning to their billets from a night at the local tavern. A dog suddenly started barking from behind a fence as they crept past; the voices ceased and he heard the scrape of boots on cobblestones as the soldiers now moved to investigate the disturbance. Marner saw the shape of Lemele begin to move faster, as quickly as the uneven ground of the track that they were on and her shoes and crouched posture would permit, and he in turn picked up the pace.

  They arrived at a high wooden gate set into a crumbling earthen wall. Lemele pushed through it, the squeak of the hinges shrill and alarming at this close proximity and he heard the dog take up its gruff barking once more. Fortunately the soldiers would be moving in the direction of the dog, and not them.

  They had to high-step through the knee-length tangled weeds in the yard. At the rear door to the tavern, Lemele carefully worked the door handle and waved Marner to pass inside. The meagre illumination that they had been afforded by the sliver of moon now faded to entire blackness. Even though he only took two careful steps, sufficient to leave Lemele spac
e to enter and close the door, he blundered into an unseen cluster of empty bottles on the ground and they went flying and clattering across the hard stone floor like skittles. Lemele batted him on the shoulder and hissed at him to be quiet, which he considered to be entirely pointless now. But again his awareness of her foul mood dissuaded him from making a comment.

  She took his arm and guided him to the left and then up a narrow flight of stone stairs. As they reached the upper floor the sound of deep, throaty snoring became louder, separating into not one but two separate rasps of different tone. Lemele carefully lifted the latch to her room and moved inside, waiting for Marner to follow. This was difficult due to the fact that the room was incredibly tiny, with just a single bed and a narrow strip of floor alongside it. Without speaking, she handed him the quilted cover from the bed.

  “No, you take it,” he insisted, trying to push it back into her arms. “I will be warm enough.”

  “Well lie on it then,” she advised him in a curt tone. “It will be more comfortable than the bare floorboards.”

  In the few moments that it took him to realise that this had resolved the subject of who was sleeping on the bed, Lemele had slipped fully clothed under the single sheet, turned her back to him and was still.

  As best he could, given that he was standing on the spot that he was going to have to lie down on, he spread the quilt out and lay down. After a full minute of arching his back up and tugging he had mostly succeeded in flattening out the creases that had formed under him. All that remained was to make a pillow out of his lumpy bag. Finally settled, he spoke softly, “You didn’t tell me what you have organised for tomorrow, for transport.”

  “That can be a nice surprise for you in the morning,” she grunted, although from her tone and the accent on the ‘nice’, he did not think that he was going to like it.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Marner was already well awake when the first rays of light crept through the filthy muslin sheet covering the window. Due to a combination of the hard floor and the buzz-saw tandem snoring in the room next door, he had barely slept. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times during his entire life that he had not slept in a bed or at least a cot with a mattress. Those few had mainly been during his military training, when the novelty of deliberately staying awake with his fellow trainees during night exercises had overridden any intention of trying to sleep in a hastily dug hole. He remembered that on one patrol they had even dared to sneak off from their assigned position to bed down in the straw of a barn.

  It took him several attempts to shake Lemele awake. At least she had slept well; he hoped that it would improve her temper. In the short time that he had known her, the previous day had been the only occasion that she had deviated from her usual patient and stoical nature, which he much preferred.

  After leaving the tavern by the same rear entrance they skirted along the back yards of the dwellings on the edge of the village. After just a hundred metres of walking through the long grass and weeds his trouser cuffs were soaked from the morning dew. Lemele halted at the north side of the village; ahead of them was a field of lush grass and beyond it the countryside. As the swirling early morning mist shifted in the breeze, the lumps that Marner had assumed were boulders coalesced into sleeping cows.

  “There are soldiers permanently posted on the main roads in and out of the village. This means that we have to cross this field to reach the copse of trees on the far side. Then we turn right on the far edge of the wood and follow a river to a farm. Our transport is there.”

  Marner nodded and gave her a reassuring smile that he hoped conveyed his gratitude and approval of her resourcefulness in having organised this. He was also hoping that it would begin to thaw her glacial mood that seemed to have returned from their initial encounters in Paris.

  As they loped across the field through the long grass and dodged the innumerable piles of cow dung the dew began to soak his boots such that, by the time they brushed though the bushes on the far side to enter the trees, his socks were sodden. The trees, some type of conifer he thought, were closely spaced with thick low branches. When they emerged on the far side of the coppice he was desperately slapping and wiping cobwebs from his neck and face, trying not to think about the insects that had spun them and would probably be crawling in his hair.

  The river was actually a wide, overgrown ditch bordered by reeds and covered with a heavy blanket of green weed; any water that might be underneath was entirely hidden. They were now approaching a decrepit and tumble-down group of buildings, comprising a small single-storey house and two barns. The roof of the smaller of the barns was caved in at one end and Marner could see where the main support beams had broken, the visible ends now grey and fibrous after years, maybe decades of exposure to the elements. The larger barn was also in poor condition; the roof was intact but deeply bowed in the centre, with many of the tiles missing. Only a wisp of smoke trailing from the chimney of the dilapidated house gave any indication that this motley collection of structures was inhabited. When Lemele stepped onto the bare earth track leading to the house rather than away from it he realised that this was the farm that she had referred to. She crossed the yard to bang on the door, whilst Marner examined again the forlorn farm. He could see no equipment that he associated in his mind with agriculture; possibly it was in the barn. Or maybe this was a dairy farm; but where would one milk the cows?

  The sounds of hooves on stone made both of them turn towards the large barn. A youth emerged leading a white horse, its dark brown foal skipping and prancing alongside it on spindly legs. Marner was initially surprised that only the mare was tethered, the foal entirely free; he quickly realised why when he noticed that the foal remained very close to its mother.

  As the youth and horses neared them, Marner could see that he had been wrong about his estimation of the man’s age. He was in fact approximately thirty years old. Marner had been deceived by the man’s chronically thin and short build and his impish acne-scarred face. Moreover, the man was limping heavily. His right foot was smaller than the other, skewed permanently outwards and the leg perhaps a few centimetres shorter; a congenital defect, not the result of a wound or injury. As the man drew closer, the anger in his face became clear.

  “Putain de merde!” he raged at Lemele. “You did not tell me that your mysterious travelling companion was a damned Boche! And I’m not surprised you did not tell me, because the agreement is off. Now get lost, before I call the Germans myself.”

  Marner was undecided as to whether he should intercede. Whatever deal had been brokered the evening before, it had been between Lemele and this hostile individual and so he could only wait for Lemele to take the lead. After a few moments hesitation it was to Marner that she turned, stepping towards him to speak into his ear to ask how much money they had. He took a moment to consider, not wanting to rifle through the various pockets in which the remnants of the acquired bills were distributed. Based upon a quick mental calculation, he whispered his estimation of their finances back to Lemele.

  She turned back to the man, a palm out towards him, placatory. “Loic, I’m sorry for the surprise. You are right; it is unacceptable to spring this on you in this way. But I knew that if I told you last night you would have simply refused, maybe even reported us.” Before Loic could let forth another barrage, Lemele continued, “So we will double the agreed amount.”

  Loic shook his head, “There is no amount of money that is worth the risk of dealing with him, regardless of whether he is on the run or not.” He shook his head again decisively and then suddenly spat on the ground near Marner’s feet.

  Marner was shocked and insulted. Only the fact that a sleepy and enormously pregnant young woman in a bulging nightdress had emerged from the house, woken either by Lemele banging on the door or by Loic’s raised voice, stopped him from taking action.

  “Okay. We will triple the agreed fee. Last offer, take it or leave it,” snapped Lemele, the tone of her voice
making it abundantly clear that this was indeed her final word on the matter. As if to reinforce her point, she took up her bag from the floor and slung it over her shoulder, ready to go.

  “Done,” responded Loic without hesitation and without a smile or any other outward sign that he was happy with the deal other than his single uttered word. Again he spat. Marner was now beginning to realise that this spitting was not aimed at anyone and not intended to express any emotion or insult. It was simply a bizarre habit, a way of punctuating any sentence with a definitive ending.

  Lemele put out her hand to Marner and asked for the money.

  He leaned over to ask quietly, “How much?”

  “All of it,” was the curt response.

  “What?” he exclaimed. “So what are we supposed do for food, for.... for whatever else we might need?”

  Lemele threw her bag back onto the ground, placed her hands on her hips and turned to face him. “Loic will take us all the way to the coordinates that Graf is going to, food included, so we do not need any further travelling expenses. After we are done with Graf, whatever that might entail, whichever side of the ‘law’ we might then stand on, we will figure it out then. As you yourself described your standard operating procedure: improvise and make it up as we go along,” and without giving him time to consider or respond she held out her hand again, palm up in front of his chest.

  After the money had been handed over and secreted by Loic uncounted into various trouser and waistcoat pockets, his wife or girlfriend or whatever she might be realised that some contract or deal had been struck. From the way that she strode over to Loic and began remonstrating loudly with him, arms wind-milling wildly to point here and there around them, as well as at her swollen abdomen, it was clear that she did not approve. He stood stoically absorbing the heat of her argument and the sting of her words. His concern was more for the skittish foal who was frightened by the volume of her voice, which in turn was alarming the mare who was starting to back up and jerk on the tether.