“I don’t think . . . ,” she whispered.
“Shh!” I sounded gently to hush her, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. I knew what she was about to tell me: she wasn’t going to make it.
She lifted her hands and signed, Promise me. Protect them. Be brave. Promise me.
I signed my reply.
I promise.
I held my palm up, and she placed hers against mine.
She seemed to lose interest in the people around her then. Much later I would speculate that not only was she too sick to care, but she was steeling herself not to feel anything, to let the baby go without attachment.
I fought to hold back the tears but lost. Suddenly I was sobbing into her chest, and she had her hand on the back of my head like when we were small. You see, in my heart I knew she was right. I knew that they would never let her go. And if the baby was left, who knew where they would put him, what would become of his little French life. He was the son of an enemy. A nuisance perhaps when there were already so many mouths to fill.
I raised my head and looked in her eyes, and she smiled back encouragingly. I knew that smile well. She had used it many times when I had been distressed or fearful. I would take her baby and wait hopefully for this madness to be over.
Sister Joan hastily entered the room.
“I have just had a message that the captain is on his way here with a number of wounded soldiers. You must go!”
I told Joan that I must take the baby out of here and hide him, and I whispered to her my fears about Helene’s illness also. She nodded sadly but without much reflection, as if expecting both of the things I told her. Joan said that she would bring the other sister back, and Edith and I were to leave immediately. If the captain found us here, we would most certainly be imprisoned.
“It might be your only chance to leave,” said Sister Joan, “while the shelling continues.”
There were only seconds now to say our goodbyes.
I knelt by Helene’s side and kissed her hand, leaving some tears behind.
Edith brought the baby over to Helene, who looked sheepishly away before finally resting her eyes on the baby’s face. She reached for him to kiss his downy head. The sadness was unbearable to witness.
“Goodbye, my beautiful boy, Samuel,” she said.
Sister Joan told us to hurry, and we followed her outside, and I felt sick leaving my sister behind. The soldier guarding the door stopped us to look at the baby. It might have been my imagination, but I saw the man’s expression soften slightly at the sight of Samuel, followed by a sudden intake of breath. I wondered then if he had left his own wife and children at home for the senseless war and was now wondering why he was here and not with them.
“Where are you taking it?”
“The mother is very ill, and this baby is too small. It is doubtful he will survive the night here,” said Joan. “There is a wet nurse in one of the villages.”
“The baby should stay here until the captain comes to collect the prisoner.”
Just then Samuel released a high-pitched cry.
“I will speak to the captain directly,” said Sister Joan, “and we will discuss the child.” And I thought then how brave she was. That she would likely be punished if this deed were uncovered. I could not see her giving away our location for anything. But I wondered how long it would be before the captain came to break down our door. He did not seem to be the type to give up on anyone.
The soldier briskly nodded and turned away from us, and we made our way back through the kitchen. Edith took some milk, and in our disguise we raced through the night, with Samuel held tightly to my chest while I prayed he wouldn’t cry again. We did not at that moment have the sounds of war to drown him out.
We reached the orchard less than an hour later, and I could see through the window Jerome pacing the length of the small house. He rushed to meet us as we entered, discarding our habits. He had been distraught not knowing, and said he had stopped himself from loitering around the town, which might have aroused suspicion.
He looked tenderly at the baby now lying on a table in a fruit crate that I had just filled with bedding, and he touched Samuel’s chest with his big hands.
Edith instructed us to dip some cloth in warm watery milk to soothe the baby until she returned with feeding bottles. I knew that the milk would not last and wondered how we were to come by more.
“Is it true what Sister Joan said about a wet nurse?”
“I don’t think so, but there are people I trust who will help me with other things for the baby. Give me whatever you can, and I will barter for it.” Jerome went to his bedroom and returned with the emerald ring that had belonged to his wife and a bag of tobacco.
“I know that tobacco is probably worth more than jewelry right now,” he said.
“Papa . . . ,” I said, and touched his arm, but he didn’t look at me as he wrapped the items in Edith’s hands with his own. He had some cash stored also, and I knew he would give that up as well should it come to it.
“Get as much as you can, anything that you can for the baby,” he said.
“Be safe,” I said to Edith, gripping her hands. I knew it wouldn’t be easy under the noses of the guards in the town, and like me, she’d not had a proper meal in days. “And thank you. I can’t tell you how much we owe you.”
“You owe me nothing,” she said. “I want to show my son, who is probably watching us from above, bless his soul, that these barbarians cannot take us all.”
“His name is Samuel,” I said to Jerome after Edith had left. We were sitting in the living room, gazing at Helene’s tiny miracle. Samuel was sleeping and making strange shapes with his mouth, the innocence of this new life so startling that I could not pull myself away. I touched his tiny fingers and leaned down close to smell the newness and sweetness of his skin, to be close to Helene. I had seen many babies, but I don’t remember ever wanting to hold one. Now with Samuel, I did not want to ever let him go.
I revealed Helene’s condition and what she said about looking after Samuel. Jerome said nothing, and I watched him smoke the last of the tobacco that remained in his pipe.
Edith came back with the milk as promised but reported there was no wet nurse. From her pockets she also produced some turnips, honey, and bread, as well as a basket for the baby to sleep in, blankets, clothing, and bottles that she carried from her sister’s. She instructed me to make a mixture of milk, water, and honey to feed Samuel until we could find him a better alternative elsewhere. We offered that she stay with us, but she thought it more helpful if she was in the town and reported anything she saw. Some people had secretly left the town during the chaos of the recent round of shelling. They had in plain sight walked past soldiers with loaded-up carts and traps. There were few left now in the town. Edith had also seen the captain busy reorganizing soldiers for battle to replace the ones killed.
“Perhaps it is too dangerous,” said Jerome. “Maybe you should leave also.”
“No,” said Edith. “I cannot leave Jules behind. And there are other people here who need me also.”
Jerome and I understood. It would be difficult to leave here without Helene if it came to it. Neither of us had discussed exactly when we would leave, both delaying the inevitable.
Before she returned to the town, Edith helped me cut up the nuns’ robes to make some nappies and taught me some things about feeding babies, how tight to swaddle Samuel in a blanket, how to burp him, and how best to rock him to sleep. Jerome listened, too, though I suspect he knew much of this already.
That night we fed Samuel and listened to the sounds from the battleground. Jerome would often walk out to see what was happening on the horizon. Although people were leaving, I felt sure that the Allies would return to reclaim the town. Thoughts of Edgar, ever since my visit to him, had evaporated, or maybe I was simply willing him out of our memory and lives. Helene still believed in him, but I must admit my admiration for Edgar had waned, and the secret infatuatio
n I’d had with him after our first meeting now seemed foolish. There were only feelings of anger when his name was mentioned.
CHAPTER 27
I was woken by the shaking of my bed, from another round of explosions. I jumped up quickly to check on Samuel in the basket beside me, but he had slept through it. Jerome ran outside and into the early morning, pulling his braces over his shoulders as he did so, and I followed in my nightgown. We could see smoke rising high above the town in the distance, and there was an eerie silence. After this several people came from that direction, carrying bundles of items under their arms, some of them covered in dust, others with faces streaked in blood.
I had a sense that things had changed that day. The landscape of Bailleul looked strangely misshapen. I hastily dressed then left Jerome with Samuel while I investigated, before he could offer to go himself. I was faster on my feet. Before I reached the town, I could see the rubble in the streets where bombs had landed and a cloud that hung above everything. Smoke and ash consumed me, and I had to hold my hand over my mouth so as not to breathe it in.
“Get out of here quickly while you can!” said one of the townspeople.
German soldiers, who normally gazed suspiciously at everyone, seemed not to notice anyone leaving. Soldiers hurried to vehicles and horses and called instructions to one other, some slapping their helmets on their heads to march for the manned machines south of the city. I think if not for the chaos, Samuel and I would most certainly have been searched for by the captain, but it was clear now that there were far more important things to occupy him at that point.
Down another street I stopped dead in my tracks. Edith’s house was completely reduced to rubble, still smoldering. I stepped forward to query a soldier about the occupants, but he did not understand my French and swatted me away. Another man I barely recognized, his face dusted with powdery white ash, looked over at the building, shook his head, and walked away.
People ran through smoke, their faces smeared with ash and blood, and pavements flickered yellow, lit by buildings on fire. It was chaotic. The town hall had taken a major hit. I helped some people lift an elderly couple up from the street to carry them to a cellar where others had gathered. I did not stay, but returned to help others also injured to other places of refuge. When there were no more people to help, I looked toward the asylum hospital that appeared now as a jagged silhouette against an ashen sky. As I ran toward it, there was a loud and sudden crash nearby, the force of which shook the earth and sent me sprawling. Someone helped me up and told me to take cover. I ran home as fast as my legs could take me. Jerome met me at the door.
“Papa, Bailleul is being destroyed. We have to get Helene.”
Jerome had a strange look on his face, like he hadn’t heard me. In his hands he held a small dark-green book, which I recognized, and a string with colored tags that I had seen the Allied soldiers wear around their necks.
“Is that Edgar’s?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Is he dead?”
“No. He carried these down his shirt.”
I was confused but only briefly, looking past him through the door to see Edgar sitting on the couch and holding the baby. Edgar was gaunt and covered in tiny cuts. His eyes were red, his face unshaven, and he wore ill-fitting trousers, a shirt streaked with mud, and no shoes.
I pushed past Jerome to take the baby from Edgar’s arms, and Samuel began to wail.
“What are you doing here?” I said. “Why aren’t you out there fighting?”
He looked at me with those intense blue eyes, but no words came out of his mouth, and his silence made me seethe.
The sounds of shelling were closer now, and our house rattled before Jerome grabbed milk for the baby, the basket, and food and water for us and urged us all to the cellar. Once underground, Jerome lit candles that were already there and spread out pillows for us to sit on. I sat as far from Edgar as I could. The hospital visit had left a scar. To me, Edgar was a different man from the one who had once stayed here with us and who had made my sister believe in a future that she might never have. I also resented the fact that Edgar was now here to take more of our food, our stocks nearly depleted. I wanted to tell him to go, that he had no right to be here, but I remembered my promise to Helene.
I got up to place Samuel in his bed while the floor above us continued to shake.
“It is because of you that Helene is ill, that she is in prison,” I said finally to Edgar, who had been staring at the ground.
He did not look up at me but at his hands that were balled into fists.
“Hush!” Jerome said angrily to me.
“No, I will not,” I said to Jerome, before turning my sights again on Edgar. “You still haven’t said why you aren’t out there fighting!”
“He is ill, Mariette. Silence now! The baby has just fallen asleep.”
“Tell me!” I demanded, ignoring Jerome. “What are you doing here? Why now?”
But Edgar just sat there stunned, before then placing his arms over his head, as if protecting himself.
“He left the army,” said Jerome. “In the middle of battle, men falling around him when he was left out there alone to die—”
“He looks perfectly fit.”
“He is not fit for the army,” Jerome whispered; however, I suspect in the small space Edgar could hear everything. “He ran, then kept running. He left so he could come back here and take us to safety. His mind is altered, Mariette. Surely you can see the change.”
“What is your plan to save us then?” I said to Edgar. “Do you even have one?”
He looked up at me, and I saw something shattered, pieces of the man I had known before. His face was lined with anguish, the grooves in his forehead filled with dirt. His eyes, though, were still bright and clear behind the sun-darkened, freckled face. I was moved briefly, and then angry again that I had felt something for him.
“I had to reach you here—”
“To save your own neck, no doubt.”
Samuel started crying, and Jerome picked up the baby and wrapped him tightly in the blankets that had belonged to Edith’s son.
“I don’t know what happened. I woke up in a field of bodies, and I ran,” he said, his face contorted into one of misery before he dropped his head. When he raised his face to me again, there were tears in his eyes, though I remained hardened.
“I would rather see you fight on her behalf than hide behind civilians who appear braver than you.” It was hurtful what I said, but it was, I see now, to cover my own feelings of hurt.
“Please,” said Jerome to me. “Hear him out.”
“I am not worthy to be a father. I am not worthy to ever be her husband. Jerome told me that Helene has been held a prisoner because of me. I feel so ashamed.”
“So you should,” I said, not looking at him, the candle flickering from another ground assault.
Edgar stood and looked up the short stairs to the floor above, then walked toward me. “I’m so sorry for Helene.”
“Not sorry enough to write a letter.”
He frowned, bereft, and I had a feeling that he was punishing himself more than my words could.
“She is in prison because she carried a British soldier’s baby. You did this!” I shouted, pointing at him.
“You must stop, Mariette!” Jerome shouted. He had never raised his voice to me before, and it was enough to shock me into silence. Then his tone changed to one of pleading: “Please, Mariette . . . Stop torturing him. He’s been through enough. We all have. He lost men and then almost his soul out there. He is not the man who left England.”
Edgar stood there, a morose creature, not saying anything, looking at his hands. I saw his eyes rest on the baby in Jerome’s arms, and I saw the confusion, the edge of derangement that I would be told about years later: that some men could only take so much.
I didn’t look at either of them for the remainder of the time we were in the cellar. Once the shelling had stalled, we came out, and
I put Samuel back into the basket. Edgar’s limp was more noticeable, and Jerome asked to inspect the injury. He rolled up the leg of Edgar’s trousers that had a patch of dried blood. A small piece of metal was wedged in his thigh, and the area was red and swollen.
“We must get a doctor!”
“No one can find the doctor, Papa. He has probably gone, taken his family to safety.”
“Then I must look elsewhere. I know of one retired in one of the villages. He may still be there.”
I noticed that Edgar was sweating and pale. He sat at the table with his head between his hands.
“But how will you get him there? He cannot be seen. If he is questioned, he is disturbed enough to give himself away.”
“I will cover him in the back of the trap.”
“But what if you are stopped? It is too dangerous. The doctor is more than likely gone. If you are caught with an Englishman, you will be shot.” Even harboring Edgar at our house was dangerous enough, something also I resented now.
“Then I will bring the doctor here if I find him,” said Jerome. “I will travel across the fields to avoid being seen.” He did not wait for me to argue with him, and he left quickly. I tried not to think of him exposed to soldiers, guns, and bombs.
Edgar lay curled up on the lounge, but his eyes were open. He did not seem to have a desire to talk, to explain his actions any further. It was as if the fire that once shone within had burned out.
“Do you want some water?”
He shook his head.
As I stood up to check on Samuel, I heard the sound of horses trampling on the road between the two towns and coming from the direction of Bailleul. I raced to the window, and my chest tightened at the sight of Captain Lizt and two of his men.
“You have to hide back down in the cellar,” I said. “Quickly!” I picked up the sleeping baby from inside the basket, praying he would not wake, and rushed down the cellar stairs, Edgar following.
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