The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 47)

He held her up, supporting her as she seemed about to collapse. ‘Stand tall, Eliane,’ he said. His voice wavered, but then he said more firmly, ‘Don’t let them destroy you, too. Promise yourself. We will survive this. We won’t let them beat us. Courage, ma fille, courage.’

Madame Boin and Eliane did their best to tidy the château, which had been left in a sorry state by the departing soldiers. They swept up broken glass, scrubbed graffiti off the walls in the salon and tidied away stray belongings and items of uniform that had been left behind in the rush to leave. ‘What shall we do with this?’ Eliane asked, holding up a black serge jacket belonging to one of the soldiers of the Panzer regiment. Its silver insignia glinted dully in the light that streamed in through a broken bedroom window, which Gustave was measuring in order to board it up.

Madame Boin snorted. ‘Burning would be too good for it.’

Gustave glanced over his shoulder at the garment. ‘Best put everything in the attic, just in case they come back looking for it. Make a pile of things on the landing and I’ll get the ladder and put them up in the roof for you.’

Cleaning the chapel had been the most harrowing of their tasks. Gustave and Yves had carried the count’s body back to the château to be prepared for his funeral. While Madame Boin washed him and dressed him in a once-fine suit of clothes, Eliane had scrubbed the stone flags beside the altar. It took several buckets of water and a whole bar of the soft, ineffectual soap – which was all they had to clean with these days – to wash the blood from the floor. She’d done her best, but a dark stain remained where Monsieur le Comte’s lifeblood had drained from his wounds, seeping into the stones of the chapel as he’d manned his wireless set for the last time; as he’d urged his countrymen to rise up and join the fight to rid France of its enemy.

And yet, it felt strange having the German soldiers gone, so suddenly and so completely. The first thing the mayor had done, once the guards left Coulliac, was to announce that Monsieur le Comte’s body would lie in state for two days so that everyone who wanted to could come and pay their respects. The people who filed past the plain pine coffin were threadbare and shabby, bony wrists protruding from frayed cuffs as each in turn removed a shapeless cap or worn beret, but they held their heads high, each person waiting their turn with a quiet dignity, ready now to take back responsibility for their patrimoine, for which the count had made the ultimate sacrifice. At long last, the French tricolour flew from the flagpole in front of the mairie again.

A news blackout had been declared, but rumours of the upsurge in Resistance activity circulated on every street corner, in the cafés and the queues outside the shops; telephone lines had been sabotaged, and railway lines and bridges destroyed so that the progress of the Germans in their headlong dash northwards was frustrated at every possible turn. Madame Fournier had heard from the mayor’s secretary, who seemed to know about such things via who-knew-what secret and tortuous route, that the Panzer divisions from Montauban to the south were moving slowly up the road towards Limoges but had been repeatedly delayed by disruptive action and even fighting in the streets of some of the towns along the way. Eliane wondered where Mathieu was and what he was doing in the midst of this chaos and confusion. Surely he wasn’t working against la Résistance, still trying to protect the railways? Wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, Eliane sent up a silent prayer that he and his family were safe: the route the southern-based Panzer divisions were taking must run very close to Tulle, she supposed.

As the last few people filed past the count’s coffin, the mayor’s secretary came to lock up the mairie for the night. Tomorrow, the funeral would take place in the church in Coulliac – which was large enough to accommodate all the mourners who would be there – before Charles Montfort, Comte de Bellevue’s body was laid to rest beneath the flagstones of the little chapel up at the château. Eliane and Madame Boin, who had been sitting on chairs against the wall, watching over the count for the final time, got to their feet.

‘I’m hearing that there’s been some serious fighting going on over your young man’s way,’ Madame la Secrétaire said to Eliane.

‘He’s not my young man anymore,’ said Eliane, but her heart still leaped with dread.

The mayor’s secretary shot her an astute look. ‘If you say so, Eliane. Anyway, I’ve heard they’ve done a good job of holding up les Boches. Where’s that brother of yours these days?’

Eliane shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t seen him since he came to find us at the château after the Germans had gone.’

‘Keeping himself busy, I’m sure.’ The secretary patted Eliane’s hand sympathetically, noticing that the colour had drained from the girl’s face at the thought of the peril her loved ones might be facing. ‘Don’t worry; it will soon be over and those we love will come home safely, God willing. Go home now and get some sleep. You will need your strength for tomorrow.’

Yves woke her from a troubled sleep just after dawn. For a few moments, she was disorientated. She’d been dreaming that she was in the cavern beneath Château Bellevue again, and Mathieu had been there with her. She was trying to comfort him, because she could see he was in great pain, but as she did so she heard great rocks being rolled over the trapdoor above them and then the entrance to the tunnel collapsed. She realised that there was no way out. Frantically, she’d tried to claw at the stones that blocked the tunnel, her hands torn and bloody. Mathieu had watched her, helpless, and then in her dream the ground had begun to shake. Terrified that the cavern was collapsing in on them, she’d fought her way back to Mathieu and held him as he dissolved into the pale light that crept in through the windows of her attic room and she found her brother shaking her.

‘Wake up, Eliane, wake up!’

‘Yves? What is it? Are you alright?’

He nodded. ‘Something’s happened. In Tulle. I’m going over there to look for Mathieu. Will you come too? There may be some people in need of help. Bring Maman’s basket.’

‘Papa? And Maman?’

‘Leave them here. I don’t know what we’ll find; maybe it’s nothing, just rumours. Let them stay and look after Blanche. We’ll leave them a note to say where we’ve gone.’

They climbed into the truck and Yves accelerated along the track, swinging out into the road and turning east as the sun began to rise.

‘What have you heard?’ Eliane asked him, squinting into the light as the truck swayed around a bend in the road, its tyres skidding slightly in the dust.

With his eyes fixed grimly on the road ahead, Yves said, ‘There was fighting in the streets of Tulle. The maquisards almost managed to take the town from the occupying forces. But the Germans sent an armoured detachment from Brive as reinforcements. The boys were no match for them and in the end they fled.’

Eliane nodded, digesting this. ‘Did they get away?’

Yves pressed his lips together in a hard line and swallowed before he was able to reply. ‘Most did, I think. But the Germans rounded up everyone they could find, whether or not they’d been involved in the fighting. There have been reprisals.’ He stopped, apparently concentrating on steering across the narrow bridge over the river at Coulliac, one of the few that still remained intact after the carnage of the last few days.

Eliane’s blood seemed to freeze in her veins. ‘What sort of reprisals?’

Yves shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure. These are only rumours . . . There’s been no official word.’

She turned to look at his profile. He seemed so much older, all of a sudden, a stranger, his features no longer those of the carefree boy he’d once been. All the things he had seen and all the things he had done had etched lines into his face that appeared as pale as marble in the morning light, carved into something harder than it had ever been before. And, despite all he had seen and all he had done, he was still struggling to speak of what he had heard had happened in Tulle. His jaw was clenched and she saw the sinews in his throat tighten as he swallowed again, hard. And then he spoke.

‘There have been hangings.’

The silence was loud for a moment, ringing in her ears, making her dizzy.

‘Mathieu . . . ?’ She almost choked as she said his name.

‘I don’t know, Eliane.’ He shook his head, as if trying to shake off the images that had lodged themselves there. ‘I just don’t know.’

The most noticeable thing, as they entered Tulle, was the silence. It was a Saturday morning and the town should have been bustling with activity as its inhabitants congregated in cafés and outside shops. But instead an eerie atmosphere of stillness engulfed them as the truck negotiated the streets. And then, as they came around the last corner and reached the centre of the town, Yves stood hard on the brakes.

When they turned on to the main street, the scene was so surreal that it took them a few moments to register it. From each of the lampposts, as far as they could see along the road, a body was suspended, hanging heavy and motionless. From a distance, the figures looked almost peaceful, their hands appearing to be clasped behind their backs and their heads bowed as if in prayer.