her back was turned. I gasped. When he grabbed her by the arm, I shot up.
‘Mavis—’ Marguerite whipped her head away from whatever she had been looking at, but the hustle and bustle of the day’s busy foot traffic swallowed up the road behind us. A blink and Mavis had disappeared. I stuttered, not sure if I had actually seen what I thought I had. ‘She… she…’ A flit of cool air whistled through a crack in the hatch. We were long gone from the crypt now. I crouched further into the corner of the hatch and convinced myself I saw nothing.
Marguerite closed her eyes.
*
We waited at the hill cottage for the Maquis to claim the cache of guns. Marguerite sat stiffly in a broken chair sipping cold lavender tea, her cup rattling in its saucer when it wasn’t held to her lips. Hours passed; Marguerite was now unable to keep still as a surge of rain splattered against the windows outside, her bottom lifting from her seat, shifting here and there every few seconds.
‘They’re just late,’ I said.
The clock chimed and Marguerite bolted from her seat. ‘I saw it too,’ she said, pacing around the room. ‘Mavis—when we left.’
‘What? You did?’ I sat down, having not allowed myself to get frightened until she admitted she was scared too. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Mavis, her veil and devotion to Christ, wouldn’t be enough to save her from the Gestapo. ‘Mavis, tiny little Mavis—’
‘What could we do? We were driving away with a crate of guns.’
Two other résistants, a husband and wife the Alliance called the Dove Birds because of their matching blonde hair and soft voices, sat on the ground poring over maps, glancing up at us in intervals. I threw my hands up, not knowing what to do about any of it—Mavis, and now the Maquis being late. ‘Do you think the Gestapo know about us, at this cottage?’
Marguerite looked through a split in the curtains and into the dark night. ‘I don’t know.’
The door flew open and a woman dressed in cut-off men’s trousers with a rolled-up shirt walked in. She adjusted the gun slung over her shoulder, shivering from being out in the rain. ‘The Maquis aren’t coming,’ she said. ‘Gestapo. They’re everywhere.’
Marguerite hurriedly shut the door behind her. ‘Where?’ Her eyes were closed tight when she spoke, asking the question we needed to know.
The woman used a candle from the mantel to light a loose cigarette she pulled from her pocket. ‘In the fields. Gunshots. A line of them.’ She took a nervous, deep breath. ‘Last time I heard a line of shots, twelve résistants fell backward into a trench.’ The Dove Birds sat up, looking at one another and then to the woman. ‘There was a raid, and not just one group but many. Maquis, Alliance… I had just left to come here when I heard the shots.’ She smoked through her cigarette and lit another, moving about the room, her feet clicking and clacking against the wood floor from wearing men’s dress shoes—a souvenir from someone she had killed. ‘An entire radio command centre not far from here burned to the ground. Took the men with them into the wilderness.’
I sprung from my chair. ‘Radio operators?’
She snarled. ‘Bastard Germans got ’em all and our notes—valuable ones if you know what I mean.’ She shook her head, peeking through the curtains. ‘Never heard them coming.’ I pulled the curtain closed, and she looked at me, shocked at first.
‘Was there an operator named Luc—medium-sized man, strong arms—’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, turning away. ‘Maybe.’
‘It’s Luc.’ I started for the door, but Marguerite stopped me by the arm.
‘In the morning, maybe there will be more news.’
I paced the room, feeling very jittery, emotional, rubbing my hands together. The thought of never seeing Luc again alive suddenly felt like a reality. I can’t wait here till morning. I thought about the long months I’d been hiding out at the hill cottage. Not one moment went by without wondering where Luc was. His voice: I barely remembered what it sounded like. His face: vaguely familiar after an incredibly long absence; but the feel of his hands, his breath on my cheek when he kissed me, and the flutter in my stomach when he said my name—Catchfly—was as real as my heart beating in my chest.
I thought I was going to burst from my skin if I didn’t get outside. I played with the heart pendant Luc gave me,