Page 145 of Blood Game

Albert Marchand, with more courage than sense. Clever lad, she hadn't known he was there.

“What are you doing here?”

It was no place for a boy, so far from the safety of his father's farm, with the rumor of enemy patrols throughout the countryside.

His voice hardened. “Keeping watch for Germans. We have heard they were spotted not far from here.”

The Allied landing weeks ago, her people guiding them through occupied France. Soon, she prayed, wincing slightly. Soon they would take Paris and push the enemy back into Germany. She had delivered the last dispatch three days ago. The timetable was set, even now as the German army swept across northern France, burning everything in their path.Towns, cities, rail depots bombed. It was winter, and their only objective as they retreated was to inflict as much pain as possible, starving an already starving people, murdering prisoners, their bodies discovered in forest clearings or merely dumped along the roadways.

How many of her people? Fifty, a hundred, more? Her people.

They had fought in the shadows these past years, living off the land or food others risked their lives to give them, setting up a network of safe houses, striking by day, disappearing by night, leaving families far behind—of those who were not herded out into the streets and executed, an example to those who helped anyone against the Third Reich.

There would be those who said it never happened. Time would erase the truth of what happened, except for the few who wrote about, and those who took pictures; photographs too horrible to look at, too horrible to ignore.

She thought of Paul Bennett, older in years, no longer young in what he had seen, and for just those few moments she held the memory close against the dark shadows of the night.

“Where have they gone?” she asked Albert, afraid of the answer yet needed to know.

“Grandmere, your mother, Angeline, they have gone to Ondine's house in the village. They are safe.”

La Maison d'Ondine!

Father in heaven, she thought, the old house used to be a brothel and a way-station on the old road from Amiens to the coast.

She smiled in spite of the pain. He was right. No one would find them, no one would think to look there, or know of the old escape tunnel beneath the house.

She heard the way his voice softened around her younger sister's name. They had played together and gone to the localschool together before the war. Angeline had always looked up to Albert in spite of his stuttering and the way his ears stuck out.

His hair had grown long now for lack of a decent cut, and the stutter eventually disappeared unless with a stranger. Lost youth, like so many other things.

A handsome young man, but old too soon. He was a true son. Like that other one, Albert was no longer a child but a young man who had seen too much, yet he was brave with a true heart, like another son centuries earlier, the story about the tapestry and a young man who had given up his life for others, and protected a secret.

“And you,” she said. “You will be careful.”

“They will not c-c-c-catch me,” he replied, the words tripping over themselves. “I am too fast.”

So young, she thought again. And yet Albert was only a handful of years younger than herself. A handful, yet she was decades older in experience. She could hardly remember when she was twelve years old. She laid the pistol within easy reach.

“You are hurt!” Albert exclaimed, eyes widening at the dark stain beneath her other hand as she leaned against the table. He laid the rifle down and reached for a lantern.

“No!” she told him. “No light. Someone might see.”

He stood over her. “What can I do?”

“Water from the pump and a towel if you can find one.”

“It's too dark, I can't see anything.”

She retrieved a flashlight from inside the coat and pushed it across the table. “Close the shutters and keep the beam low.”

He went about the kitchen, closing the shutters over the windows at the sink that had once looked out on her mother's garden. There was the sound of water from the pump, and he returned to the table. Then silently watched in the beam of that light as she opened the front of the coat and pressed the towel against the wound.

“How b-b-b-bad...?” he whispered.

“Not so very bad,” she lied.

It could have been worse—the bullet had passed through, a narrow escape, but there had been much blood. They had separated then, she and the others. If one was caught, the others might get away and join with their fellow partisans in one of the safe places.