by Amanda Dykes
“I’m fine,” I said.
“He’s fine,” Matthew said.
“He’ll be fine,” said the lovely lady.
Hank Jones appeared to notice her for the first time and dropped his book, tripping over himself to get it. Poor sap.
“Fellas . . .” Matthew said, sounding like he’d rather not say it at all. “Meet my sister, Celia Petticrew.”
25
Mira
The men came clattering in like a herd of goats, all noise and knees. Something seemed different about them, about the tone of their conversation. Our hostess, Marie-Agnès, whose silver hair escaped in wisps from beneath her red kerchief, had pulled out a tiny packet of sugar while they were away, saying she had rationed her own rations. That any visiting soldier might have something sweet to send him off to battle.
The effect was that when they smelled the plum tart baking in her wood oven, silence fell over them like a blanket.
“What’s that heavenly smell?” The voice of a woman, so cheery. I peered around the stone column of the small kitchen to see who it might be.
“Votre fille?” I asked Marie-Agnès if it was her daughter.
She shook her head no, looking as puzzled as I.
Matthew Petticrew stood beside her, lifting a hand to the young woman’s elbow. She was lovely, I thought. She was young, unsullied by road travel and wide-eyed with an innocence that made me ache for something I had once had. It was silly of me, I knew, to feel so. When I was as she, I did not know what a gift such a time was in this life. And she looked—she looked just right, standing beside Matthew. The ache grew deeper.
“Mireilles,” he said quietly, his voice running gently over the raw parts of me that threatened tears. “Marie-Agnès. This is my sister, Celia.”
“Sis-ter,” Marie-Agnès said. “Sœur,” she spoke again, for my benefit.
Matthew Petticrew’s sister. I breathed relief and then stood straighter, startled by my own reaction. I saw it, now, as they stood smiling side by side. So happy to be together. It made me happy, too. They were alike, though his hair was as dark as hers was light, and his eyes bluer. Hers were green like my forest in springtime, and she seemed full of that same new life. She approached me and clasped my hands in hers. “Mireilles,” she said. “Mira.”
Something fluttered inside me, to hear that name. Matthew had told her something of me, then. I knew not to wonder how much he had told, whether he had betrayed my secret. I knew I was safe with him. But—the thought of him, speaking of me to his family . . . it was like someone opening a door on a cold night, letting light and warmth from inside spill over me.
I did not know what to do. I wished to thank her for the light, the warmth. But all I could say was her name, without giving all way. “Celia,” I said, lifting my chin and nodding, hoping to convey delight at meeting her.
The rest of the afternoon and into the evening was spent in so much happiness, all around, that I hardly knew what world I had landed in. Was there truly a war outside these four walls? Could there really be winter on the way, with such a warm fire snapping in the stone hearth? What were rations and hollow stomachs, when ours were full of Marie-Agnès’s sweet plum tart, and even roasted chicken for the evening meal?
This house, and the people in it, seemed an offering from heaven. A reminder of hope.
Celia had not much time before she needed to return to her duties. I learned she was aboard a hospital barge on its way to Paris—or at least very near it—through the canals. There, she and the other nurses would tend to men wounded and transport them back to field hospitals and beyond, where they could heal or die. We all knew of the latter, though she spoke only of the healing.
“May I see your quarters, Mira?” she said, gesturing up the ladder stair to the attic, the place I was to sleep. Marie-Agnès translated and shooed us out of the kitchen. I led the way, and once we were alone, she hesitated only a moment before facing me. “Mireilles,” she said with familiarity and an inquisitive tilt to her head. “I visited with Matthew a long while today.”
She was speaking as if she knew I understood. No gestures, no stuttering attempts at French. I swallowed.
“Please don’t be upset with him,” she said, her face melting into a plea. “He . . . thought it had been a long time, that you’ve been subject to travel with three bumbling men.” She laughed musically. “His words. And he just thought you might like a bit of a break from all of that.” There was such kindness in her, in Matthew. That feeling of a door spilling warmth, stretched closer to me.
Celia continued, “He thought you might like a chance to talk to—well, someone like you. So he confided in me that you are an excellent speaker of English. He’s so impressed, Mira, and truly would never have betrayed your secret if—”
I could feel the warmth from that cracked-open door turning to consuming heat. How much had he told her?
“Well, if he didn’t think it would help.”
I did not know what to say, without knowing how much she knew. The way he had spoken of Celia before, I felt as though I knew her. I wanted to sit with her, to know her as a sister, as he did. The one who had brought him so much joy in a dark time. But I did not know how to just—poof—be a friend to her and speak of the thing I had only first put words to a few nights before.
But perhaps she did not know that much. Matthew would not betray that trust. And yet . . . he had told her my other secret, of language. My confidence wavered.
Celia waited, and the silence grew uncomfortable.
I closed my eyes and pictured Matthew. The concern that ran so deep, so far beyond words, when he looked upon me.
I could trust him.
Though there were no others in this wide and widening world that I could say such of, I could thank the Lord above that Matthew was a man of honor. He had meant this as a gift.
So I spoke. Three words reaching across worlds and oceans, I laid down the next plank in the bridge between us. “Thank you, Celia,” I said, my words tumbling clumsily in my accent.
She nodded, and looking around, spotted a spindly rocking chair in the corner. She directed me toward it and took the crude straw mattress for herself. She sat upon its edge in her nice coat and skirt, making it look more throne than relic.
“Matthew thinks very much of you,” she said. Her smile was sweet. Dimpled and pure, and I wondered for a moment what it would have been like to have a sister.
“Does he?” I said, my surprise very real. “He must think much of strange women who do not know where in the world they belong, if that is true.”
Celia laughed. “He thinks very much of one woman who knows how to think quickly and sing like a lark and face down journeys of great peril.”
I warmed at the mention of the singing. I had not known he had heard me. I wanted to ask more but clutched another phrase she spoke instead. “Journey of great pearl,” I said. “This is a phrase I do not know. A gem of the sea, yes? I fear I do not take the meaning, though.”
Celia’s laughter was kind. “Per-il,” she said. “It means . . . great danger, much risk to one’s well-being. It means one doesn’t know quite what will happen but faces the unknown with courage and fortitude.”
Her words sounded like very good words, but my tired mind was having trouble following the way they rolled out so fast from her. Her brother was a thoughtful speaker, one who weighed his words and chose few of them to speak, ones that seemed always to carry so much in their depths. His sister seemed to do just the opposite—speak her words, then catch them and consider them, then say more words to explain. As if she were swimming in them, and happily so.
“It means you are brave, Mireilles,” she said, growing serious. “Matthew said as much. He said it was not his story to tell, and that you would choose what to tell. But he hoped I might be able to help, somehow.” She paused. “Are you ill, Mira? We have the hospital barge waiting at the canal. It’s for the soldiers, but I’m sure I could convince them to let you aboard, if we ca
n help you.”
Was I ill? My body felt so, sometimes. My soul felt it much more, when I thought to all that had happened. And yet—I carried life, too. That did not make me feel ill. It made me feel . . . frightened, small . . . and sometimes so full of awe that I knew not where to put such feelings.
I swallowed, wishing for words. For this courage she spoke of, enough to tell her. She was a nurse—she could help. She could tell me what to do, what to expect. I had never known my mother, who breathed her last when an illness came in the months after I had arrived. Would that be my fate, too? I did not know. I had never had the influence of a woman in my life, beside Madame Aline every few months. What would it be like, to take a sister—someone else’s sister, if not my own—into confidence?
I opened my mouth. Closed my eyes. And prepared to speak the truth to a stranger. Whether the horrible story, or the wonder-filled thing it had led to. I was learning that perhaps the only way forward was to separate the two things. This little being inside of me, its flutters and jolts, its tiny little hiccups—it knew nothing of the dark incident that had begun it all. The incident that did not erase the way my breath caught when I thought of this: a life grew within me. Me. The girl of the forest, who did not even know her own origins until a stranger came with tales of balloons and wars.
I looked at my skirt. I had chosen it from the attic a few months before, when my middle had begun to grow. My grandmother’s old dress, I had learned. Grand-père’s eyes glistened with nostalgia when he saw it, never imagining the reason for my donning it.
“I—” My voice scraped over the truth. “I am—”
With child, I was about to say. But the sound of the door closing firmly directly below us made me jump in my seat, jump right out of the words unspoken.
We both whirled our heads to the window, where darkness had begun to fall.
“Who can it be?” Celia asked, standing and approaching the window. I followed her lead, and we both stood there at the chilled pane with its bumpy, blurred glass and watched a familiar figure stride through the little brown picket gate.
“Of course,” Celia said. “Matthew. It’s his way.”
“What is his way?”
“Keeping watch,” Celia said. “I can’t begin to tell you the number of times we did just this, as children. Me, hearing him slip out in the night. Him, keeping watch. Back and forth he would walk, or rather ’round and ’round, in our case.
“At the racetrack,” I said, smiling. I liked to picture it.
“Yes.” She smiled, too. “He told you?”
“He said you—how did he say it? You had the wind inside of you, and you needed to run.”
“I remember desperately wanting to run over the hills and away from our situation. Wishing I could meet our mother. But the only place to run was the racetrack, and if we pocked it up with footmarks, it would mean our hides the next day. We’d run—oh, would we run!—and then he’d send me off to bed after I’d exhausted my legs enough that even my mind would turn off for the night and let me sleep.”
“But he stayed out?”
“That boy would take a rake and walk the track, dragging it behind him, covering over our footprints. Every time, without fail. All so I could get a little distance from my fear.” She shook her head, and I have never seen someone look so filled with joy and filled with sadness all at once. “That’s just Matthew. He breathes justice like other men breathe air.”
We watched him now, walking circles around this little billet farmhouse as his friends reclined by the warmth of the fire downstairs. His solitude didn’t last long, though, and neither did our silence. The door opened again, releasing George and Henry into the gathering dark. With our window cracked open, we couldn’t help but hear when Henry’s voice lifted on the wind. His words were unremarkable. His tone was even, as he always seemed to be. And yet the message—it sent my pulse into its own race.
“We need to talk, Petticrew,” Henry said. “It’s time . . .” He blew out a breath. “To take our leave of Mireilles.”
26
Matthew
My jaw locked. I swallowed, hard.
“What.” Statement or question, I didn’t know. Much more a declaration of impossibility. I shook my head. “Why would we ever do that?”
Henry looked over his shoulder at the house worriedly. I did, too, and noted the windows were empty, where moments before Celia and Mira had been silhouetted in the attic. At least they weren’t hearing this.
“She’s not well,” Henry said. He pinched the side of his spectacles and pulled them up, as he always seemed to do when that brain of his was going ten thousand miles a minute. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the journey’s been hard on her.”
I scoffed. “Of course I’ve noticed.” There were days when she looked as though her legs were ready to buckle beneath her. Though she tried to hide it, her hands often went to her back, rubbing low where she felt pain. I had caught myself, once, reaching out to do it for her. Thank heavens I came to my senses before she noticed; my touch would have sent her jumping out of her skin, the way she reacted to unexpected moves from the three of us. And the truth was, I had no right to touch her, to help her, though my chest fairly beat itself to smithereens, caging that desire.
“Right-ho,” George said, slapping me on the shoulder. I had half a mind to flick his hand off like a flea. “You’ve seen, too, then, eh? The girl’s pale as a sheet, while the rest of us grow toasty and golden in the sun.”
George had an interesting definition of “toasty and golden.” Had he seen his reflection lately, he might know he was the very definition of “pale as a sheet,” the way his skin refused to budge from its translucent state.
“All the more reason for us to get her to Paris,” I said. “To safety. Security. Right?”
“That’s just it,” Henry said, clutching a book I hadn’t seen him carrying beneath his arm. “See—what will we do once we get her there? We were to help her find her lost estate, but I’m beginning to see it was a very ill-planned venture. No one I talk to, in any of these villages, knows what became of the family home of Marquis Fontinelle. Some say it was grown over and remains empty to this day. Others say it was commandeered by the government earlier in the war for use as offices. The point is, without knowing what we’re bringing her into, we could very well be hurting her more than we’re helping. It got me thinking—maybe the legacy we should be seeking on her behalf isn’t that of an inheritance. Maybe it’s a person. See . . .” He flipped pages in that book as I attempted to harness my racing thoughts, syncopated with protests.
“According to this account I found at the library in Épermay, when the Marquis escaped the city, it wasn’t only his riches and home he left behind. He also left a sister”—he ran his finger down the page—“Sophia Fontinelle. She was younger than he was, away at school in Switzerland at the time of that war.”
Family.
The breath went out of me.
For the girl who had lost everything and was about to face the greatest challenge of her life. It sounded . . . too good to be true. I shook my head. “How could we ever find her, now? In the middle of a war?”
“We don’t have to.” He held up an article. “From the news office, here. The archives. Sophia Fontinelle wed a mayor, and according to this, they relocated to Bordeaux when the Paris officials evacuated four years ago. They have remained there since.”
“Bordeaux.” The word seemed bitter as I mapped it in my mind. “That’s . . . far.”
George sputtered. “Far! Far’s putting it mildly, mate. It’s entirely across the country! Why, if you tripped, you’d land in Spain!”
“Bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” Henry scratched his head. “It’s far, yes. A good bit farther south and east than Paris. But also a deal farther away from all this—” He thumbed over his shoulder, as if we could all see through the night, miles away to where battles raged even now. “And it’s not all that far for a train. There’s o
ne leaving tomorrow from here, and it would have her there faster than we would complete our journey to Paris. She’d be off her feet, in a train—”
“A target for the Boche. A cesspool of the influenza.” Never.
“Now hold up, mate,” George said. “We’re all a target to both of those foes, wherever we are. Did you forget the sniper? She’d be leagues safer on a metal beast of a machine racing through the countryside toward civilization than she is with a lot like us.”
It . . . made sense. I hated that it made sense. But they didn’t have all the information. “So we just—what? Pack her off to the other side of the country without a friend in the world? Feeling like she does? To a relative she never met, who possibly doesn’t even know she exists, and even if she did, who might not be inclined to let a—”
I bit my tongue. It wasn’t mine to say.
“What?” Henry said. He held his blasted article and his awful book out with open hands, like an offering.
They both were trying to help. I tried to remember that. I took a deep breath.
“Better for us to stick to the plan,” I said, willing the resolve in my voice to somehow build a path forward. “We’ll see her safely there, connect her with good care. We—we have to anyway, right? Get to Paris and then on to Provins to deliver the book.”
I wasn’t making sense, and I saw it on their faces. We could skirt Paris entirely and get to Provins, and do it in less time. It’d be better for everybody. The thought socked me like cannon fire.
I tried a different tack. “What if this great-aunt won’t take her in?”
“Ah, but what if she does?” George folded his arms over his chest.
“She married a government official, you said.”
Henry nodded.
“A politician.”
Again, a nod.
“Someone in the public eye.”
“Quite so,” George said.
“I could do a piece on it,” Henry said, pulling his pencil out from his jacket.