were meticulous with so much high brass on the platform. “Let me do the talking,” Lili said. She was Vivienne the cheese seller today, with a straw boater and a high-throated blouse of worn lace, and the story was prepared: she would address the guards while Eve had an armload of packages ready to juggle and drop so they were more inclined to be impatiently waved through. But eyes were lingering fiercely on anyone not in a German uniform, and the lines inched along. We cannot miss that train, Eve thought, gnawing her lip until Lili got to the front of the line. She was just reaching for her identity cards when a German-accented voice called out in French.
“Mademoiselle de Bettignies! Can that be you?”
Eve saw the German first, over Lili’s shoulder—mustached, perhaps forty-five, his hair combed to a point on his forehead. He glittered gold and rank: heavy epaulettes, a double row of medals, and Eve recognized him: Rupprecht, crown prince of Bavaria, Generalloberst of the Sixth Army and one of the best generals the Fritzes had. He had visited Lille three weeks ago, Eve remembered with frozen clarity, and dined at Le Lethe where he complimented both René Bordelon’s tarte Alsacienne and the German airfield’s new Fokker Eindecker aircraft. Eve, pouring his brandy, had stored away his comments about the Fokker.
And now here he was, bearing down on them both in a crowd of German aides, his hand falling on Lili’s shoulder as he exclaimed, “Louise de Bettignies, it is you!”
For an instant Lili still faced away from him, her hand half out of her handbag with the identity cards of Vivienne the cheese seller—and Eve saw her eyes go blank. Only for a split second, and then Lili swept Vivienne’s cards back into the bag like a gambler flicking away a losing hand. Her shoulders straightened as she turned, her smile dialed from Vivienne’s eager-to-please smirk up to something far more brilliant, and she dropped a curtsy Eve was fast to imitate. “Your Royal Highness! You know very well how to flatter a lady, knowing her only from the back of her neck under an exceedingly unattractive hat!”
The general kissed Lili’s hand, his stars and medals flashing. “You need no stack of silk roses to dazzle, mademoiselle.”
Lili (Louise?) dimpled at him, and even in the midst of dizzying shock, Eve marveled at how completely the leader of the Alice Network had altered herself. Her smile was now a flash of confidence, her chin had a proud angle, and with a tip of a finger her dismal boater sank over one eye at a dashing angle just like any of those cartwheel-size mounds of gauze she’d left in train compartments all over France. Her voice was liquid-pure French aristocrat—down-on-her-luck aristocrat, perhaps, but the court drawl was unmistakable as she said, “Such is always my luck. I meet the crown prince of Bavaria in last year’s lace!” A flick for her old blouse. “Princess Elvira would never let me forget it.”
“My cousin was always very fond of you. Remember that game of chess we played in her drawing room in Holleschau, the night of—”
“Yes! And you won. Encircled my knights from behind and pried my king out of his castle. I should not be surprised you command the Sixth Army now, Your Royal Highness . . .”
More chatter. No one had glanced at Eve, not the general nor his aides nor Lili. Eve clutched her armload of packages and shifted behind Lili like a maid. In a drab hat of her own, with none of Lili’s sparkle, she undoubtedly resembled a servant. The train, she saw with a shiver of fear, was leaving.
“What are you doing in Lille, Mademoiselle de Bettignies?” the general asked, oblivious to the train or his hovering aides. Laugh lines grew at the corners of his eyes, and his smile was avuncular. If he weren’t one of the best leaders at the kaiser’s disposal, Eve would probably have liked him. “Such a dreary place!”
You made it dreary, Eve thought, and any possibility of liking disappeared.
“On my way into Belgium to see my brother. If I can even get across the border now, mon Dieu, my train has gone . . .” Lili made a comic face of despair, a tragic columbine clown, and the general immediately snapped for one of his hovering aides.
“A car for Mademoiselle de Bettignies and her maid. You will be escorted across by my own driver.”