Page 1 of The Widows of Champagne

Gabrielle

Reims, France. 3 September 1939

B eneath the creaking bones of the ancient chateau, clocks chimed from room to room, speaking to one another in a secret language all their own. Gabrielle LeBlanc-Dupree moved quickly through the darkened corridors, counting off each peal as she went. Twelve in total.

Not enough time. It had to be enough. Evil lurked on the horizon, prowling like a hungry lion. Tonight, Gabrielle would prepare for the unthinkable. That she had to act alone only heightened her sense of urgency. And pushed her feet faster. Faster.

Wrapped inside the thick folds of her cloak, she exited the house as soundless as a wraith. She’d taken this path hundreds of times, thousands, down the twenty-one stone steps, through the vineyard, past the champagne house, and into the miles of limestone caves cut beneath the chalky earth.

The frigid wind blew over her face, carrying the scent of rain and decay, a stark reminder that the Lord had taken His hand off her family long ago. History haunted the LeBlanc vineyard like an uninvited ghost at a christening. We are people marked by war , her grandmother said. The soil is drenched in blood and death. More was coming.

Gabrielle kept moving, never faltering, never stopping to wail against the unfairness of two enemies bearing down on her. The rain let loose, waging its relentless war on the vines her family had tended for two hundred years. The weather was proving a more immediate threat than the evil lurking on the other side of the Maginot Line.

One bad harvest would not ruin them.

The other enemy very well could. Hitler and his ravenous henchmen showed no mercy. They conquered. They invaded. And then, they looted. If France fell into Nazi hands, they would not get the best of the LeBlanc treasures. Not if Gabrielle succeeded tonight.

All but running now, she unlocked the heavy door and plunged into the wine cellar cut into the stone beneath the vineyard. She hurried past the racks of upturned bottles maturing under the 24-volt lights. This young wine, not yet champagne, was her family’s legacy. Their future.

The bottles at the back of the cellar represented their past. Gabrielle had personally selected the most valuable blends from the last two decades. She’d also chosen from the previous century. Most notably the single-vintage 1867, and the infamous 1811, rumored to be of remarkable quality because a comet had crossed over Champagne that year. Finally, and not without much internal debate, she’d added five hundred bottles of the celebrated 1928.

When she’d first come up with her plan, she’d considered confiding in her grandmother and perhaps, in that moment, she would have, if the rain hadn’t started up again and pulled her attention to the vines. Now, she was glad for the interruption. What her grandmother didn’t know, she couldn’t worry over. Gabrielle alone would carry this secret, this burden.

Twenty thousand bottles were a mere drop in their stock, but enough to start over if the worst happened and the Nazis—

She did not let her mind finish the thought.

She went to work instead, constructing one horizontal row of stone at a time, bottom to top. Last week she’d instructed her vineyard manager to place the stones in this part of the cellar. He’d given her no argument. His loyalty had encouraged her to confess her intent. But he’d stopped her, hand on her arm, and said, “What is left unspoken can never be repeated.”

Pierre was not wrong, but Gabrielle could have used his help tonight. Her unschooled methods proved full of error. And wasted precious time. Beads of sweat trickled into her eyes. She wiped at her face with her sleeve, hardly noticing how the dirt coated her hands and dug under her cracked fingernails.

Her muscles cried out from fatigue.

One hour turned into two, two into three. Then, she stepped back and her stomach swooped from satisfaction to despair in an instant. Her construction was faulty at best.

Someone will notice the wall. Only if she let them in this part of the cellar.

She kept building. Until one gruesome task remained. Teeth gritted, she retrieved the jar she’d left hidden in a nearby wine barrel. Dozens of spiders crawled over their fellow prisoners, each attempt at escape a miserable failure. Gabrielle could not feel sorry for their plight. She hated spiders. Nevertheless, they would serve their purpose.

Hands shaking, she released the little devils. They scattered across the wall, invading their new home with focused, frightening precision. The creatures would spin their webs. They would capture their prey, eventually creating an archaic facade over the freshly laid stone.

Feeling as old as the champagne house, Gabrielle exited the cave and stepped into the dark nothingness before dawn. A moment of utter aloneness laid siege on her tired brain. She nearly stumbled under the weight of it but managed to keep moving toward shelter, toward home. The rain still fell, slow and steady, stippling the puddles at her feet.

Back in her room, she tossed her clothing in the basket with the other muddied garments she’d worn in the vineyard the previous day and the one before that.

Promising herself she would take a short rest—a few minutes, nothing more—Gabrielle collapsed atop her bed. She fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming of crumbling walls and giant spiders. The grotesque bodies marched across a bloodred field, their eight legs becoming four then morphing into Nazi swastikas. They circled around her, round and round, spinning, spinning until her arms and legs were trapped and she could no longer move. No longer breathe.

She woke gasping for air, her heart battering against her ribs. Only a dream, she told herself, not real. She blinked into the predawn light, again and again.

But the terrifying images of spiders remained.

From that day forward, the eight-legged little monsters would remind Gabrielle of war.