Page 19 of The Widows of Champagne

Gabrielle

H ours after racing into the library, Gabrielle’s insides still shook. What had her grandmother been thinking? Sneaking into von Schmidt’s private office had been wildly unwise. There were so many ways he could have punished her if he hadn’t been taken off guard by her outlandish accusations and shouting. It had been a masterful strategy on Josephine’s part, but one that could never be repeated. Von Schmidt was not a stupid man. He would not be fooled twice.

When Gabrielle cornered her grandmother after dinner she told her this, and more. She’d added that under no circumstances was she to take such a risk again. It had taken considerable convincing, but eventually Josephine had agreed to stay out of von Schmidt’s private office.

Only then did Gabrielle leave her grandmother in Marta’s care to make the telephone call to her father-in-law. She’d used the code they’d agreed upon. And now waited for the rest of the house to go silent before venturing beyond her room.

Peering out into the hallway, she paused and listened. All was quiet. She slipped into the shadows and hastened down the back stairwell, carrying her shoes to keep her footsteps muffled. At the time she’d been tossed out of her own room, she’d chosen her new accommodations for the view and with the added purpose of getting far away from von Schmidt.

Now, as she exited the chateau, dressed from head to toe in black, she realized how fortuitous her choice had been. Von Schmidt was so concerned with his own position in the household that he’d failed to see the danger of putting Gabrielle so far away from him. He should keep a closer eye on his enemies.

She left the terrace and slipped on her shoes. Then, finally, she could run. How she needed to run. She let her mind stop and was simply inside her body, her legs pumping. Her feet, her arms, every part of her moved in a single coordinated effort. The wind whipped her hair around her face. Clouds swollen with rain hung low over her head.

A crack of thunder shook the air.

The journey from chateau to shed was short, but long enough to revive Gabrielle’s spirit, and clear her mind. For this first clandestine meeting with her father-in-law, she’d alerted Max with the preset code he’d laid out in his library. Two rings of the telephone followed by a hang-up. Then, another phone call, and another hang-up to indicate the time of their rendezvous. One ring, midnight. Two rings, one o’clock in the morning.

Tonight, on the second call, she’d let the phone ring twice before hanging up.

It was raining by the time she mounted her bicycle and took off in the watery gloom. Her breath puffed, and her movements were full of intent as she made the trip through the blackened vineyard.

This year, unlike last, the rain came too late and entirely too infrequently. Where too much moisture had been her enemy a year ago, drought was the adversary now. The water-stressed vines had created a feeding frenzy for the grape moth and harvest worm. Advanced ripening, scorched leaves, and another harvest was ruined. They hadn’t even attempted to pick the grapes. They’d buried the shriveled carcasses beneath their water-starved roots.

Gabrielle wanted to rage against a God that had allowed two bad harvests in a row. It would be a wasted effort. God didn’t care about her, or her anger. His attention was elsewhere.

She pedaled faster, harder, head down, her memory guiding her along the rows as she lost herself in the rhythm of the spinning wheels. Now she was flying across the vineyard, up a rise, down another, her breath raw and painful in her lungs. Something caught her eye, a swish of stark white fabric, and she turned her head, expecting to see her father-in-law, but he wasn’t there. Nothing was there but the withered vines. She came to a stop, set her feet on the ground and looked around, struggling to catch her breath, her bearings, under the hard drizzle of rain.

The movement came in the corner of her eye again. She straightened and swiped at her forehead, half thinking that her hair had been the culprit, though the movement had been much larger and lighter in color than the dark, rain-soaked strands.

Gabrielle closed her eyes and listened for something, anything, beyond the patter of rain forming puddles at her feet. She thought she heard the sound of labored breathing. Her own?

No, more sporadic.

A moan followed. Yes, that was definitely a moan coming from her left, a snippet of sound barely above the breeze. She kept her eyes on the row of vines bending under the rain. Her own breathing picked up again. Then, she heard her father-in-law whistle through his teeth, indicating his position three rows over from where they were supposed to meet.

She climbed on the bike again. Her legs took over, moving faster than before. She thought of the danger of being out in the vines when German soldiers were billeted only a few miles away. Had one of them come across Max? Was he hurt? Alone and writhing in pain?

There, in the distance, she saw him. She was nearly there. One row over, Max stood, beckoning her closer, his hand raised high in the air, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. She squinted past the rain. She could hardly make out more than his shape. She clambered off her bike, let it fall to the ground and started jogging in his direction. Her heart sped up as she saw the black lump at his feet. A person?

That couldn’t be right.

Gabrielle stopped cold, pushed the water away from her eyes, but no. She wasn’t mistaken. Her father-in-law stood over a slumped body. The moan came again, a pitiful sound.

The figure rolled up inside itself. It was a man, dressed in clothes she’d never seen before. Goggles covered his eyes and there was a sort of tube hanging from his odd head covering. A helmet? Flight gear, perhaps? There were markings on the side of the goggles. She looked closer, narrowing her eyes to see through the dark and the rain, but couldn’t make out the writing. “A German pilot?” she asked Max.

He shook his head. “An airman, yes. A German, no. A foreigner.”

The lump launched into a series of mumbled, incomprehensible words that projected his confusion and pain and very little else. Nevertheless, Max was right. The language was not German. Rather English. The accent was definitely British. At Grandmère’s insistence, Gabrielle had spent a summer in England before she married Benoit. Her time had been spent learning the difficult language and meeting with wine merchants.

Where had this man come from? She hadn’t heard a truck, or even a plane. Or any of the sounds she remembered from the previous war. “How did he get here?”

“Parachute.” Her father-in-law indicated the pile of material, dingy and gray from the mud. “It either failed, or the wind blew him off course. He somehow managed to untangle himself from the contraption before I quite literally stumbled over him.”

The swish of cloth she’d seen earlier. The gut-wrenching moans. Both had been real. “How long has he been here?”

“I don’t know. He’s hurt and, I think, delirious. His words make no sense. He could be speaking any number of languages, possibly more than one.”

“I think he’s British.”

Max considered this. “Possibly. I don’t speak English. Whoever he is, he needs our help.”

It was the Christian thing to do. It was also the decent, human thing to do. And still, Gabrielle wanted to run away. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted never to have left her bed. She looked away from the injured man, and from Max’s earnest expression, and searched for her courage. The sky seemed to lower over her, creating a terrifying intimacy as she considered the ramifications of helping this man. Then, she considered what it would mean not to help him.

She faced her father-in-law once more. He’d lowered to kneel beside the limp body. She dropped her gaze. The injured man’s eyes met hers. Even through the goggles she saw his silent plea, his pain. His fear. She went utterly still, then approached him, consciously making her decision. She would help him, whoever he was, however he’d come to be here. Whatever nation he’d sworn his allegiance to.

It didn’t matter that she was as scared as he was, or that she was soaking wet and cold. “We need to get him out of the rain,” she said to Max, who was already drawing to his feet.

“I’ll fetch a cart. You stay with him.”

She knelt beside the man and carefully removed the goggles from his face. He was shockingly young, possibly only a year or two older than Paulette. He attempted to speak. Gabrielle stopped him with a finger pressed to his lips. “You want to conserve your energy.”

He blinked.

She lifted her hand. He immediately tried to speak again. Again, she placed her finger over his mouth and said, “Non.”

This time, he nodded. Beneath the gesture his fear boiled in his unfocused eyes. She wanted to tell him he had nothing to fear. She wanted to tell him he was safe now. That would be a lie. She would help this man, but she would not lie to him.

The wind picked up, whipping a wet strand of her hair across her vision. She shoved it aside and, thinking it better not to know his name, said in French, “Where are you hurt?”

He blinked again. His confusion was evident in the blank, dazed expression. She asked the question again, but in English. It had been years since she’d spoken the language and the words came out heavily accented. “My leg,” he croaked. “I think my leg is broken.”

The words nearly unbalanced her. She had to fight to keep from falling backward. Her mind brought up the image of another injured man, lying prone like this, only a few rows over, pinned under a wagon’s wheel, uttering the same words but in French. I think my leg is broken.

Max returned with the promised cart. He was out of breath, clearly flustered, his dark hair plastered to his head by the rain that continued its assault on their miserable little trio. Gabrielle glanced at him over her shoulder. “His leg is broken.”

A grim sigh met the remark. And now her father-in-law was as dejected as she. She wanted to say something to alleviate the pain of their mutual loss. “Max, I...I’m sorr—”

“Shh,” he said, his voice a harsh reprimand. “This is not the time to speak of him.”

It took her a moment to process who he meant. By the time she did, Max was already leaning over the injured man and Gabrielle knew her father-in-law was right. Now was not the time to speak of Benoit.

“We must be quick. Someone may have seen him fall from the sky.” Max took her arm and tugged her gently to her feet.

“We’re going to move you now,” she told the injured man from her standing position. “It will probably cause you pain. You will want to be as quiet as possible.”

He was bigger and heavier than his crumpled form suggested. It took both Gabrielle and Max to load him onto the cart. Other than a nearly imperceptible hiss of pain, the airman remained silent. He even managed to provide a small amount of assistance, hoisting himself with his arms while they took care of his lower half.

The parachute was not so helpful, made awkward and heavy by the rain.

Gabrielle and Max agreed it would be best to hide the airman in the Dupree wine cellar because, as he stated, “I do not have a German living in my home.” When they reached the muddy entrance, he tried to send her home. “You have done your duty. It is safer for you to walk away now.”

She couldn’t leave. She wouldn’t abandon her father-in-law to take on this burden alone. Heart pounding, she glanced at the injured Brit. In the light from the cellar she could see that his skin had taken on a sickly tinge of green. She’d seen that color once before on another man’s face. “You’ll need my help setting the bone.”

“I can do it myself.”

It would be difficult, made harder because her father-in-law didn’t speak English. And the injured man didn’t speak French. “Let’s get him out of the rain,” she said.

Giving Max no chance to argue, she reached for the wounded man. There was no sound as they entered the wine cellar, nothing but a peaceful hush and the rasp of the man’s strained breathing. Once they had him settled, and they’d cleared a space to work, Max ripped away the material and examined the injured leg.

Gabrielle leaned forward and let out a breath of relief. It was a clean break, no broken skin. They agreed on a plan of action, Max on the left, Gabrielle on the right.

“This will hurt,” she told their patient. “Bite on this.” She handed him a strap of leather she’d found in the cart. He still cried out, the sound that of a wounded animal rather than a man. His eyes rolled back in his head and then, nothing. No sound. No movement. Was he dead?

She checked his pulse, relieved to discover a thready beat. “He’s alive. He just passed out.”

“It’s for the best,” Max said, so calm, so certain.

They finished setting the leg, then dealt with the parachute. And that was that. Gabrielle had done what she could. The injured man was no longer her concern. Still, she asked, “What will happen to him?”

“De Vogüe will make that decision.” Of course their de facto leader must be involved.

Outside, the rain had turned into a cold drizzle. She embraced the slap of cold on her cheeks. It helped clear her head. She went to retrieve her bike. Max said her name.

She glanced back. “Yes?”

He scanned her face, looking for...something. “You have information for me?”

In all the commotion, she’d forgotten the reason she’d asked him to meet her in the first place. Quickly, succinctly, she told him everything she knew about the massive champagne shipment to North Africa. He smiled for the first time since she’d come upon him in the vineyard. “Well done, Gabrielle. This is good.”

“Is it?”

“The Germans reward their soldiers with our champagne. They must be sending many troops to Africa.”

They decided upon the date and time of their next meeting, assuming no surprises arose beforehand. Gabrielle also walked Max through the steps needed to care for his unexpected guest should infection or fever set in. When there was nothing more to say, they nodded to each other, and then Gabrielle was pedaling through the rows. The rain provided excellent cover. But then the church bells rang above the gloom. Five strikes. A clear warning that dawn would soon be upon her, though the sky was still dark as pitch.

She was careful to place the bike where she’d found it. To hide the signs of her nocturnal adventure, she retrieved a rag and began wiping. Mud had found curious places to settle. The rain stopped before she was through, and gray light threaded through a heavy fog.

Grateful for the concealment, she stepped into the murkiness. Closer to home, she kept to the shadows cast by the chateau’s high walls. Near the terrace, a fine mist descended over her, snaking around her feet. She swallowed back a wave of unease. If someone saw her, she would claim worry over the vines had driven her out of doors.

Explaining her choice of clothing would be harder. The best solution was not to be caught. The morning chill followed her inside the house, and put an edge to her mood, but the hallway was empty, as was the back stairwell. She pushed into her room and quietly shut the door behind her. Her shoulders heaved. Then she sagged, her eyes closing on a sigh.

She’d made it. No one had seen her. She was safe.

She hoped Max and the injured airman found the same success.