The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 36)

The count nodded, pulling the thick wooden door closed behind him and locking it with a heavy iron key, which he replaced in his jacket pocket. ‘Lead the way, my dear.’

At the kitchen door, Eliane hesitated, unsure whether she should leave them to talk in private. But the count ushered her in. ‘We may need you to walk again, Eliane. And anyway, by now I think you’ve guessed much of what is going on.’ He smiled at her, kindly, and she nodded.

‘It’s Jacques.’ Gustave spoke with no introduction, as if this were a conversation that they were already in the middle of. ‘He’s compromised.’

The count nodded. ‘We knew it was probably only a matter of time. The Milice have been sniffing around for months now and, as we know, their methods of extracting information can be brutally persuasive.’

‘We need to get him out of Coulliac immediately.’

‘Where is he now?’

Gustave glanced at Eliane. ‘Up in the hills today – he had a rendezvous with our friends there. He should be on his way back now, but the Germans are waiting for him at the bakery. I went to deliver flour and saw them. There was a Gestapo officer watching from the window of his apartment, and soldiers in the square.’

‘In that case, it’s imperative that we let him know. It’s not too late for our friends to intercept him. Eliane, would you mind taking a little walk?’

She didn’t reply, but simply untied the scarf from around her neck and fastened it over her hair.

‘It’s going to be a different pattern from the usual today,’ the count explained. ‘I’d like you to go to the far side of the garden wall and walk back and forth. Please do so continuously until I come and tell you to stop. Can you do that?’

She nodded and picked up her basket. ‘If anyone asks, I’ll be gathering sweet cicely. It grows along that side of the wall. We could do with some more, in any case.’ Madame Boin used the seeds and leaves in place of sugar, to take the edge off the tartness of any fruit they managed to get hold of.

Beside the path that ran alongside the garden wall, the white flower heads of cicely foamed above the fern-like fronds of their leaves. They were just beginning to set seed and the narrow green spears sat proud of the flowers. She walked back and forth, back and forth, hardly pausing as she harvested the plants and placed them in the basket that she carried over her arm. Back and forth she walked again, holding her head high.

The land fell away steeply on that side of the château and the valley below was covered with dense woodland which could conceal . . . What? A band of maquisards? Or a couple of miliciens? A patrol of German soldiers? Or Jacques Lemaître? She tried not to think about who was watching her. On the far side of the valley, the hillside rose steeply again, the trees giving way to the dry scrub – the maquis from which the Resistance fighters took their name. As she walked, she thought she saw a flicker of light from the high ground, as if something had reflected the afternoon sunlight, momentarily, back towards the château. Shortly after that, Monsieur le Comte appeared, leaning on his stick.

‘Thank you, Eliane. Have you collected a sufficient harvest to keep Madame Boin happy?’

She showed him her basketful of greenery.

He nodded his approval. ‘Take it back to the kitchen now, my dear. Your father has gone home. All is well.’

He walked away from her, towards the chapel again. Despite the heat of the afternoon, a slight shiver of foreboding ran through her as she watched him go; he looked so frail, all of a sudden, such a vulnerable old man to be engaged in untold acts of courage beneath the very noses of the mighty German army.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary when she walked along the track to the mill house that evening. Beyond the barbed wire, the river flowed quietly on its way and the evening insects floated in the last rays of sunlight above the surface of the water. Every now and then, a fish rose to catch one of the tiny flies, disappearing as quickly as a dream and leaving only a circle of ever-widening concentric ripples as evidence of the act.

But when she entered the kitchen, Gustave was pacing to and fro, in an agitated state.

‘Oh, thank goodness, there you are at last, Eliane!’ he exclaimed.

‘I’m no later than usual, Papa,’ she replied, smiling calmly.

‘I know. But the Milice are sure to come and pay us a visit this evening. They are trying to trace the whereabouts of Jacques Lemaître, since he didn’t return to his apartment above the bakery this afternoon. They will particularly want to speak to me, I’m sure, but they may want to question you and your mother too. It would be better if you weren’t here when they arrive.’

‘Where is Maman?’

‘She’s upstairs, putting Blanche to bed.’

‘But Papa . . .’ Eliane began to protest, and he silenced her.

‘No objections, ma chérie. In any case, I have another job for you to do. I need you to help hide Jacques.’

‘But where? And where is he?’

‘He’s in the barn. We need to get him out of there, right now.’

‘And where can we hide him?’

Gustave smiled, a little grimly. ‘We have the perfect place. And it’s right under the feet of the Germans.’

‘The tunnel?’

He nodded. ‘The tunnel. Come, take this basket of food that your mother has prepared. There’s a bottle of water in there too. We must go. Now.’

At the barn, he pulled open the door and called softly.

‘Hello, Eliane,’ said Jacques as he emerged from the dark interior. ‘You did well today. I owe you my life.’ He was carrying a suitcase that appeared heavy, its weight making him lean slightly to one side.

‘You managed to get some of your things out of the apartment?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘No, Eliane. This is a radio transceiver. Fortunately, we were using it to transmit messages to the network this afternoon so I had it with me. They wouldn’t have found anything suspicious when they raided the apartment. We’ve managed to save a valuable resource, as well as to conceal a piece of very incriminating evidence.’

Gustave had already thrown open the rough wooden door of the pigsty and was pulling aside the stack of wooden planks and corrugated-iron sheets that leaned against the back wall. Behind them was the makeshift door, set into the rock wall at the back of the small cave where the pigs used to be housed. He took a key out of his pocket and fitted it into the rusty lock. With a bit of effort, it turned and he pushed the door open, beckoning them to follow him. On lighting an oil lamp that sat on a shelf hewn into the bedrock, they could make out the stores of wine and flour hidden there – sadly depleted now. There was no more ham left in the secret storeroom and the jars of pâté and grattons had been finished long ago.

At the back of the small room, a narrow opening led off into the darkness. Gustave handed Eliane the lamp and pointed. ‘Follow it upwards. It twists and turns. When you reach a fork, keep to the left. Eventually you will come to the big cavern that sits directly beneath the château. Stay there. There’s enough oil in the lamp to last you for a couple of hours and there are matches and spare candles in the basket. We’ll come and get you when it’s safe again, Eliane. But be prepared to sleep the night there if need be. You know how persistent our friends in the Milice can be.’

He kissed her and held her tight for a moment. She noticed how thin his arms were now; and yet they still had a steely strength, which gave her the courage she needed to take the lamp and lead Jacques into the darkness beneath the rock face.

Before he left them, Gustave pointed to a sturdy bolt on the inside of the storeroom door. ‘Lock that behind me,’ he told Jacques, shaking his hand.

Jacques nodded. ‘Bon courage, Gustave.’

‘And to you too.’ He turned abruptly and left them.

Once Jacques had bolted the inner door, they slipped through the opening at the back of the storeroom and entered the tunnel, where the path began to climb steeply. Eliane held the lamp aloft to light the way. The tunnel was narrow here and, behind her, Jacques had to carry the heavy suitcase awkwardly in front of him to squeeze through. But as they climbed, sometimes following a smooth path carved into the limestone millennia ago by flowing water, sometimes negotiating steep, rough steps hewn into the rocks by the hands of men, eventually the tunnel began to widen. The darkness was silent and cool, and they seemed to have travelled a hundred miles from the warmth of the evening outside in just a few hundred steps, but the atmosphere was surprisingly dry. They came to a fork in the tunnel, just as Gustave had described, and went left, carrying on upwards. The tunnel grew wider and the gradient less steep, until they were able to walk almost upright along the limestone path that had been carved and smoothed by an ancient river. Finally, it opened out in front of them and, lit by the light from Eliane’s lamp, they found themselves standing in a spacious cavern. The floor was dry, powdered with a fine dust, and the rays of the lantern illuminated a curving, vaulted ceiling several feet above their heads.

‘Oof!’ Jacques grunted as he set down the radio set, flexing his fingers, and stretching to ease out the stiffness in his back from carrying the heavy case through the tunnel, stooped over for much of the way.