Sea of Memories (Page 27)
No distractions, she admonished herself. She concentrated on thinking of Caroline, wishing she could tell her friend that she was here, on French soil, bringing help, doing her bit to hasten the end of this awful war.
She kept her breath slow, calming the jangle of her nerves so that she could keep her senses about her.
She pressed her fingertips into the moss-covered ground, shivering again and swallowing the lump that blocked her throat as she thought of Christophe’s beautiful, war-battered body buried all those miles away beneath this same chill soil. A cold anger flickered within her suddenly, helping to crystallise her emotions into a clear resolution to see this mission through.
Periodically, her guide peered round from behind the shelter of the tree trunk and eventually he stood, gesturing to her to do the same. She scrambled to her feet, easing the stiffness out of the tense, cold muscles of her legs. In the first faint light of dawn, a quilt had been hung from one of the upper windows of the château. He pointed to the door at the end of the covered bridge and mimed that she should knock on it four times.
She nodded and then set off, darting across the open ground. She felt completely exposed, suddenly aware that she was being watched, and not only by the guide. She sent up a brief prayer that the only other eyes that were following her progress at this moment were friendly ones from within the château.
With a thudding heart, she reached a wooden drawbridge and crossed it to the heavy door at the end of the bridge where she knocked four times, as instructed. There was a silence, filled only with the first tentative trill of bird-song from the woods behind her and the pounding of her blood in her ears. And then, almost weeping with relief, she heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Bolts slid back, a key turned and the door swung open a crack. She slipped through it and found herself standing in a long corridor. The windows were covered with thick blackout material and, once the door had been closed safely behind her, a lantern was lit, causing her to blink as her eyes adjusted to the sudden light.
She took a long breath, to calm the racing of her pulse, and then blinked again, in surprise this time. If at Arisaig she’d felt a little like Alice in Wonderland, here, she realised, she had most definitely stepped through the Looking Glass. Because she found herself standing in a long, elegant gallery, paved with black and white tiles whose diamond pattern seemed to swim and shift as it drew the eye to the far end. The hall’s white stonewalls were bare, lined with a series of tall, rounded niches. They were big enough for a person to conceal themself in and, as she followed the lantern-bearer, she couldn’t help casting nervous glances into the shadows on either side. At the far end was a massive carved stone fireplace with a small wooden door on each side of it. They went through one of the doors, along a corridor, which twisted and turned, and she realised she must now have crossed the river and be in the main body of the château.
They descended a staircase and pushed open another door. Ella found herself standing in a cavernous kitchen, whose arched ceiling formed part of the stone piers supporting the château. A fire blazed in the hearth and a vast cast-iron range was giving out a steady heat, as well, warming the room. The lantern-light made the brass pots and pans hanging on one wall gleam invitingly and Ella suddenly realised she was ravenously hungry.
‘Welcome to Chenonceau.’ The woman who’d led her here extended a hand. ‘We do not introduce ourselves by name, I think it’s better that way, n’est-ce pas? Sit down here and warm yourself. I’ll get you something to eat while we wait.’
Having eaten a hunk of hard bread (‘We have to make it from chestnuts these days as the Germans take all the wheat. And the coffee is made with chicory. They have reduced us to eating like animals,’ lamented the woman), spread with jam made from yellow plums to make it palatable, Ella felt her energy levels rise again. When the sun came up, the woman opened the blind that covered the kitchen’s small window and the room was flooded with the light that reflected off the river. She wished she could explore the château – it seemed a beautiful and intriguing place – but Ella knew that was impossible. She needed to remain concealed so that as few people as possible were aware of the presence of an extra person amongst the staff. The warmth of the range made her feel drowsy after her sleepless night and she felt safe enough in this friendly stronghold to close her eyes for a few minutes and doze.
Eventually, she was woken by the sound of the door opening and a pair of sturdy boots crossing the stone flags. Another woman stood before her and solemnly offered her hand for Ella to shake. Wordlessly, she passed her a headscarf in a distinctive, bright-red paisley fabric and Ella drew it over her hair and knotted it under her chin. She picked up the wicker basket that the woman had set on the floor and nodded that she was ready. The woman led her back up the stairs and through the castle’s elegant rooms to the main door which was the château’s northern entrance. They walked briskly, but not fast enough to draw attention to themselves – just two women setting off to shop in the village. Despite the temptation to look around at the château’s formal gardens and statuary, she was careful to keep her gaze lowered, as if she were accustomed to the setting. Ella had been warned to expect a Nazi presence since there were troops occupying some of the buildings in the grounds of Chenonceau and, as they crossed the final narrow bridge to the river’s north bank, she spotted the distinctive uniforms. But this morning expedition was clearly part of the normal routine at the château because the guards scarcely glanced at the women as they passed and one even raised a hand in acknowledgement.
The woman led her into the village and they turned off the main road, down a small side street. She pointed to a house with a blue door and then whispered, ‘I’ll be back for you in one hour.’ Ella checked her watch and nodded.
The door of the house was opened as she approached it by a woman who must have been watching out for her from behind the heavy lace curtains that hung in the window. She was ushered into a small parlour at the back of the house, which gave on to a courtyard hemmed in by high walls, affording complete privacy. A man stood up as she entered the room and shook her hand, his own broad palm as hard and leathery as a glove. Again, they didn’t exchange names and there were no pleasantries. She slipped off her overcoat and began unbuckling the S-Phone concealed beneath it. He inspected the component parts with interest, nodding his approval and understanding. Quickly and quietly, conscious that she needed to make every minute count, she showed him how it worked, explaining how to connect the aerial and point it directly at the receiving transceiver. She used the tip of her commando knife to unpick the stitching of the lining of her coat and handed him the silk squares on which the coded instruction manual was printed. He nodded again, smiling broadly, then kissed her hard on either cheek. ‘Mademoiselle, we know you have been most courageous in bringing us this. Your friends in France are grateful and we salute you.’
‘Use it well,’ she said with a smile. ‘I hope it will save many lives.’ She paused, imagining the friends and colleagues this man must have lost so very recently in the Gestapo’s raid. ‘And I pray for an end to this war very soon.’
The woman, who had been keeping watch from her station behind the lace curtains, beckoned that it was time to go. Ella pulled on her coat, fastening the buttons again to conceal the fact that a part of the lining now hung loose, and tied the distinctive, bright scarf over her head. The woman from the château was on the doorstep and she quickly slipped a couple of the paper-wrapped parcels of shopping from her basket into Ella’s.
As they reached the castle grounds, a pair of German guards stopped them. ‘What have you managed to glean in the shops today?’ one asked in broken French.
Ella proffered her basket and he picked up one of the packages and sniffed it. He wrinkled his nose. ‘I don’t know how you French can bear to eat such stinking cheeses.’ He tossed it back into the basket.
Ella smiled, keeping her eyes downcast. ‘It’s good with soupe à l’oignon,’ she said, surprised to hear the tone of her own voice was light and steady, not betraying the terror that made her heart thud in her chest behind the buttons of her coat. She nodded towards the other woman’s basket, which contained several large brown onions.
The Germans waved them on and they crossed back into the château. It was only once she was safely back in the warm stronghold of the kitchen that Ella drew in a deep gulp of air, realising she’d scarcely dared breathe since she left the house.
She’d done it! The first S-Phone was now safely delivered into the hands of the Résistance. She felt a rush of joy at the thought, then immediately gathered her wits about her. Angus had warned her: ‘Don’t relax your guard for a moment until you are safely back in the plane and out of enemy territory. Remember, the job’s not done until you are home.’
She sat quietly in a corner of the kitchen, watching the two women go about their daily chores, saying little, eating the food they offered her to keep her strength up and trying to stay focused on the evening to come.
Dusk fell and they retraced their steps through the darkened château and along the length of the gallery across the river. The woman covered her lantern before drawing back the bolts on the door and opening it a crack. Ella slipped out into the darkness, feeling a pang of longing, for a split second, to stay in the warm safety of the castle under the protection of these people who were risking their lives for her; but she forced herself to walk forwards, her heart thumping again beneath her heavy overcoat as she stepped across the drawbridge and out into the area of felled trees. She ducked down and hurried across the clearing to the cover of the forest, then paused to get her bearings and check her watch. Her guide was supposed to have been here by now. She scanned the woods, her eyes straining to catch a glimpse of dimmed torchlight. But all she saw was darkness and shadows. There was no sound, other than the quietly flowing river behind her.