starved or frozen last winter.’
Jean couldn’t deny this, but was too proud to admit how much his Maquis’ survival depended on Allied air drops.
‘I don’t have time for this fight,’ Henderson shouted, as he backed away. ‘Go back to your tent and deal with your ration cards.’
‘Or what?’ Jean hissed. ‘Are you threatening me?’
Jean and Henderson regularly fought over how to run the Maquis, but there were a dozen onlookers, none of whom had ever seen the pair in such a violent public disagreement. Awkwardly for Henderson, Jean was well liked and Henderson knew that he’d be the one kicked out of the woods if it came down to a popularity contest.
‘Do what you have to,’ Henderson told Jean, after a pause. ‘I’ve got orders and I’m sending these teams out.’
Jean glowered then cursed, as he stormed back to his tent.
‘Want me to cut Jean’s throat in the night, sir?’ Luc asked, only half joking.
‘Don’t you start winding me up,’ Henderson hissed, as he handed Joel the last sheet of his decoded message. ‘Stop gawping and get on with your jobs.’
While everyone else dashed off to prepare for the latest sabotage operations, Edith and Paul were left facing Henderson.
‘Shall I walk down to the orphanage with Paul?’ Edith asked.
‘Yes,’ Henderson said, as he absent-mindedly reached back under the canopy. ‘You two start walking, I’ll catch you up.’
‘Aren’t you sorting out the operations back here?’ Edith asked.
‘Joel, Luc and Sam are perfectly capable, and there’s another code word in my message. It’s a job only I can do.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Marc Kilgour had spent his first twelve years living in the orphanage where Rosie had died earlier that day. He’d run away when the Germans invaded four summers earlier, met Charles Henderson, escaped to the UK, trained as part of the first group of CHERUB agents, completed several espionage missions, spent a year as a prisoner in Germany, then escaped and completed two more critical missions.
Marc was sixteen now and felt more man than boy after all that he’d been through. He was still part of Henderson’s team, but while Paul, Luc, Sam, Joel, PT and Edith slummed it in the woods, Marc lived with his girlfriend Jae Morel in the area’s most luxurious farmhouse.
The Morel farm stretched over several hundred acres, but labour shortages meant that over half the land had gone fallow. Even this level of cultivation relied on groups of Maquis coming out of the woods and working the land in exchange for food. But this was dangerous, because farmers caught using undocumented labourers could be thrown in prison and have their land seized by the requisition authority.
‘Paul,’ Marc said softly, as he opened a double front door, with a grand staircase directly behind. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
It was 9 p.m., but being June the sun had barely dropped. Behind Paul stood Edith, and behind her Henderson held the rails of a wooden handcart which bore Rosie’s body wrapped in a cotton sheet.
‘What about the others?’ Marc asked.
‘Luc, Joel and Sam are on operations,’ Edith explained. ‘We asked PT if he wanted to come, but he didn’t want to leave his team at the orphanage.’
‘What’s it like down there?’ Marc asked.
‘PT’s got things well organised and there’s no sign of Milice activity,’ Henderson said. ‘But all the kids saw Sister Magdalene executed. The nuns are doing their best, but you can imagine the state some of the boys are in.’
As Henderson explained this, Marc’s girlfriend Jae came down the staircase. She was taller than Marc, but her slender body probably weighed half as much.
‘I had to put my father to bed,’ Jae said, needing no further explanation because everyone knew that the stress of the war had turned Farmer Morel into an alcoholic.
Jae hugged Paul. He appreciated the gesture, though Paul didn’t much like her. Marc and Paul remained good friends, but Marc was madly in love and Paul was jealous that he spent all of his free time with Jae.
‘You’re welcome to come out of the woods and stay with us for a few days,’ Jae said, as she reached behind the open door and grabbed a basket of wild flowers. ‘I thought Rosie would have liked these.’
Marc led a solemn walk across fields and between two large barns to the side of a lake. It was a peaceful spot, with thick reed beds and pond-skaters darting across the water. Marc and a couple of farm labourers had prepared a deep grave.
With no coffin, Henderson made the