Once More Unto the Breach

by Meghan Holloway

  Something swept past our legs, and Charlotte cried out and lunged after it. “Otto!”

  I grabbed her arm to keep her from falling as she tried to follow the poodle. I tracked him with the light as he nimbly descended from the ledge and darted down one of the tunnel offshoots.

  “Rhys, he’ll get lost.”

  I waited and kept the light trained on the mouth of the tunnel down which Otto had disappeared. After a moment, his dark shape separated from the shadows. He barked, and the sound bounced off the cave walls. “No, he is trying to lead us. Come along, but carefully. And stay close.”

  It was a slow climb down, but Otto waited, and once we reached the damp cave floor, he raced ahead of us. The tunnel was wide at its opening, narrowing the deeper we forged. I could feel Charlotte at my back, and I fought to keep my breathing steady. The sound of dripping water grew louder, competing with the pulse hammering in my ears.

  The tunnel opened up at the top of a terrace-like structure. Water pooled along the pale ledges and spilled down the rock. In the light of my torch, the stone appeared white.

  We skirted the edge of the cave, where the way was precariously slick but the water was no more than a few centimeters deep.

  The chamber split into two tunnels. The shallow underground river flowed into the one with a ceiling so low I could only have traversed it at a crawl. Otto disappeared down the other. I would be able to walk upright through the second tunnel, but the way was so narrow I would have to turn sideways to pass.

  I could hear my own breath as it sawed and wheezed from my tight chest, and my palm was slick where it gripped the torch.

  The fire-step made for a narrow, uncomfortable bed, but I shut my ears to the mutters of conversation around me and closed my eyes against the murky midday sun. Arthur played his pibgorn nearby, and with my eyes shut, I could almost imagine we were home in the hills, the sheep grazing nearby. I drifted between wakefulness and slumber. I could not remember the last time I had properly slept. It seemed a luxury now, exhaustion as constant a companion as the boredom and fear.

  I filled my mind with home, breathing slowly, struggling to force the tension from my limbs. I recalled the smell of my mother’s bread as it cooled; the sound of my father playing the fiddle, the firelight gleaming on the wood of instrument and bow; the feel of air so clean and pure it pained the lungs; the hills a rolling, open expanse that stretched past my vision’s limit; the softness of Aelwyd’s skin and the sweetness of her smile.

  “Incoming!”

  The shout was a whisper against the whining shriek of an incoming shell. I rolled off the fire-step onto my hands and knees. The duck-boards had long since disappeared beneath the mire. I buried my face in the mud and covered my head with my arms just as the shell struck.

  The earth lurched, bellowed, and erupted with a violence that felt as if the world were ending. The side of the trench buckled, and chunks of soil rained down on me. A sandbag hit me between the shoulder blades and drove me flat, knocking the wind from my chest. And then the bodies piled into the dug-out shelter fell over me like a rank tide released from a bursting dam.

  I screamed, choking and drowning in the mud as the weight of earth and the dead threatened to bury me.

  “Rhys?”

  Charlotte’s soft query made me realize my feet were rooted to the floor, and I locked my knees to keep them from buckling. The ceiling seemed to sink lower, and when Otto barked somewhere ahead in the darkness, it reverberated through the air like a drumbeat.

  “Rhys.” Charlotte’s fingers closed around my wrist, stilling the trembling beam of light. “Do you need to return to the surface?”

  My mouth was parched, and I had to swallow several times before I could speak. “No. We have already come this far.”

  She coaxed my fingers from their clenched grip and relieved me of the torch. “I will lead the way and let you know when the going is tight.”

  She ventured ahead of me, close enough to reach out and touch her, warning me of the labyrinth’s tight twists and turns. The trek seemed to last a century before she said, “Careful here. I think it widens ahead, but this spot is especially close.”

  The rock was pressed against my back, and as I slid through the narrow opening, the curved wall at my front brushed against my chest.

  “Do you smell that?” Charlotte whispered.

  Aye, I did. The rank odor of rotting flesh and putrid wounds, of gunpowder and hot metal. Between one blink and the next, the wall before me turned from solid rock to dank mud writhing with lice and rats, stratified with blood.

  “Rhys, do you smell that?”

  I shook my head, and the memories of the trenches faded. I squeezed after Charlotte, and the passageway began to widen. Otto’s frantic barking suddenly stretched into a haunting bay, and on my next breath, I caught the scent Charlotte had smelled earlier.

  She picked up her pace. “Otto! Here, boy!”

  “Wait, Charlotte,” I said, mind clearing abruptly, jarred by the smell. “Do not—”

  She yelped as she turned the corner and fell, tripping over an obstruction at the entry of the next chamber. She was scrambling backward when I reached her, a strange whimper coming from her as she crashed against my legs. I caught her about the elbow and hauled her to her feet. She clung to me, turning her face into my chest.

  She had lost her grip on the torch when she fell, and it was wedged with the light pointing upward, illuminating the sprawled bodies blanketing the cave floor.

  13 January 1942

  Dear Nhad,

  My path has crossed with a man who is much admired.

  He is brilliant and passionate about art.

  But I sense all is not as it seems with him.

  He calls himself Henri.

  -Owain

  xii

  The bodies lay where they had fallen in a tangled interweaving of limbs that told me they had been herded into the cavern like livestock and systematically executed. Men, women, and children alike had been mown down with ruthless precision. Blood had seeped across the floor and saturated every article of clothing and lock of hair it touched, drying into blackened pools beneath the bodies.

  The slack, graying body of an infant was draped over her mother’s bullet-riddled chest. An old man and woman had been murdered even as they held onto each other, falling wrapped around one another.

  Charlotte had tripped over the slight body of a child who had been shot in the head and who was tangled with his father’s sprawled legs. Still holding her to me, I leaned over and retrieved the torch from where it was wedged between limbs.

  I played the light over the cavern. The dead numbered well over a hundred, forming a grisly carpet that covered the floor of the cave. We had found the villagers.

  Charlotte moaned, pressing her hands over her mouth.

  “Do not look,” I said roughly, focusing the light on where Otto stood in the midst of the dead. He tilted his head back, and the mournful howl he emitted raised the hair at the nape of my neck. “Come, bach. Come here.”

  His howl tapered off, and he nosed at the bodies around him.

  “Otto, come.” He looked at me and whined. “Wait here,” I told Charlotte, and she nodded wordlessly, eyes closed.

  I had to nudge aside arms and legs, wedging my feet between torsos, to make my way to Otto. The cave floor was tacky beneath my boots. I avoided looking into the sightless eyes that caught the beam of my torch, but I could not miss the look of terror frozen onto the features of young and old. The poodle waited for me in the midst of a group of school children. Three nuns were sprawled with the children, and Otto whined again, prodding one of the nuns with his nose.

  I rested a hand on his back as I crouched beside him. “Easy, Otto bach.” I could see no reason for him to be frantic over this body. Her habit was stained with a diaspora of blood originating from a bullet wound high in the left side of her chest. I brushed her veil aside and rest my hand alon
g her throat.

  Her eyes flew open, and she latched onto my wrist. I started, heart lurching into my own throat. Her gaze darted around frantically before locking onto my face. “Owain,” she breathed.

  “You are safe now. You’re safe,” I assured her.

  Her eyes were sunken, lips colorless, and her throat worked as she tried to speak. I leaned closer to make out the words.

  “Les enfants,” she whispered brokenly. “Les en—” She fainted, eyes rolling back in her head, hand slipping from my wrist.

  I lifted her carefully into my arms and picked my way back across the cave. Otto followed.

  “She’s alive?” Charlotte knelt next to her when I placed the nun on the floor of the tunnel.

  “For now.” I shone the light over the cave and looked at Otto. He was panting, and though he sat, he edged closer and closer to Charlotte. “From his reaction, it seems she is the only survivor.”

  Charlotte wrapped an arm around the dog.

  “She said my son’s name. She called me Owain.” I pulled in a deep breath through my mouth. “I cannot…I have to know.”

  Charlotte looked out over the cave’s profusion of death and blanched. “I will help you.”

  “No, you do not need—”

  “It will be quicker this way,” she said, voice brisk.

  We moved through the cave, wading through the grim sea of bodies and picking through it as if searching the shores at low tide. We peered at faces one after the other, turning the bodies over if they had fallen facedown. Some faces had been obliterated by a bullet, but none of their bodies matched my son’s tall build.

  “Stop,” I said finally when we reached the far side of the cave where Otto had found the nun. “There is no need to search further. The rest are children. Owain is not here.”

  It was a challenge to get the gravely wounded nun out of the grottos, but Charlotte and I managed it together. It was midday when we emerged from the labyrinth of caves. The sun was blinding after the depth of darkness from which we climbed, and I had to squint against the brightness of the clear noon day as I carried the woman to the farmhouse. Her breathing was shallow as I placed her on the settee in the parlor, her pulse a mere flutter.

  “Charlotte, do you—”

  She strode past me, Otto trotting at her heels. Her face had taken on a careful blank mask in the cave, but now her movements were hurried. I followed her as she dropped her Colt onto the table in the kitchen and snatched up a bristle brush and cake of soap. She rushed out the back door.

  I paused in the doorway as she stripped off her dress and cast it aside, letting it flutter to the ground as she headed to the pump. She untied the holster from about her waist and thigh and dropped it into the grass before levering the handle almost frantically until the bucket was overflowing. She picked it up and dumped the water over her head.

  I grimaced, knowing the water sluicing over her was frigid. She tossed the bucket aside and took the soap and brush to her skin with a vigor that turned her flesh red. I approached and righted the bucket, filling it again with water for her and setting it in the sun to alleviate some of the chill.

  “Give me your shoes,” I said, voice soft. “I will clean them for you.”

  Her chin trembled as she unlaced her battered Oxfords and handed them to me, leaving her shivering in her brassiere, girdle, and anklets.

  I retreated to the back step and used a dusting of dirt and a handful of leaves to remove all traces of blood from her shoes. I set them aside when they were cleaned and removed my boots, repeating the process.

  “How long ago were they killed?”

  I glanced up to find Charlotte kneeling beside Otto, rinsing his legs and scrubbing his feet. She was gentler with the poodle than she had been with herself, and I could see her skin was raw in places.

  “Less than a week,” I said, recalling the grotesque bloating and putrefaction of the bodies left strewn where they had fallen at Mametz Wood and Ypres.

  “They spared no one. Not even…” She looked away and dragged the back of her wrist over her eyes. “Why? I have never even heard of this village. Everyone here must have been farmers and not much more. Why a…a massacre?”

  I stood and unbuttoned my shirt, feeling the need to wash the taint from the grim tomb from my skin as well. “To make a point.”

  _______

  When the nun opened her eyes, Charlotte leaned forward into her line of vision and spoke gently in French. The nun’s face was tight with anxiety until she glanced past Charlotte and caught sight of me. The tension about her eased, and she responded to Charlotte’s queries. She faded quickly, though, slipping out of consciousness within moments.

  Charlotte sat back and sighed. “She is from a convent in Grenoble. Once she met Owain here, their plan was to travel to the abbey at Dingy-Saint-Clair.”

  “Where is Dingy-Saint-Clair?”

  “I don’t know. I do not recognize the name.” She looked up at me. “The village’s executioners were German.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “And, Rhys,” she said, voice soft, “they were here looking for Owain.”

  “And did they find him here?”

  She shook her head. “She lost consciousness before she could say more.”

  I turned away, rubbing the back of my neck.

  “What do you want to do from here?”

  I stared into the empty, cold hearth. I followed the same path as my son, but a dawning, heavy feeling that he would always be just out of my reach settled over me. I hung my head, squeezing my neck. “Let’s look at the map. The only thing we know for certain is he was supposed to make for this abbey next.”

  Charlotte retrieved the map from the ambulance and spread it over the table in the kitchen. We peered at it closely, searching in quadrants, to no avail. Dingy-Saint-Clair was not listed on the paper.

  “He has been moving east this entire time,” Charlotte mused.

  “Is he headed toward Italy or Switzerland?”

  Her brow wrinkled. “If he were going to Italy, why would she come so far north from Grenoble?”

  I studied the map and finally pointed to a speck of blue in a pool of green. “Here. I think we should make our way to Annecy.”

  _______

  The nun never reawakened, and as the day faded, she faintly breathed her last.

  Charlotte and I met again in the study after we had turned in to our borrowed rooms. She coaxed haunting melodies from the piano well into the night.

  We left at first light, taking provisions from the larder and baskets of fruit and vegetables from the garden and orchard. We found cans of petrol stashed away and added those to our loot. Charlotte checked the ambulance’s petrol, oil, and water after replacing the distributor cap, and then we left the empty village behind.

  Charlotte drove east, and when we reached the cerulean waters of the Rhône, we crossed the river at the first bridge we found. The narrow track led us through a small village nestled in the river basin at the foot of stone-faced cliffs. A towering monolith stood in the center square, gilded in the early morning light. The village was just beginning to stir and waken.

  We traversed the foothills of the mountains to the north, following winding paths through the undulating terrain. It was midday before we reached the Rhône where it curved back toward its headwaters in the glaciers of the Swiss Alps. Where we crossed, the Rhône ran parallel to the Savoie. We drove north between the rivers before finding a place to cross the eastern Savoie.

  The roads we had traveled through the foothills had been rough, crude paths, but now the gravel was smoothed and maintained. The road circumvented the northern curve of a long lake, and then it continued its northeast amble, leading us along the edge of the mountains to the south.

  We reached Annecy as the sun was sinking at our back. The city cradled the northern reaches of a pristine lake, the hills we had traversed to the east, mountains to the west. This w
as the France Aelwyd would have loved. The city’s rustic charm was evident even as it sought to recover from the occupation. Profusions of flowers spilled from window boxes. On a street corner, a café overflowed onto the walk. Some of the men and women had rifles propped against their chairs, but no gunfire echoed through the streets. Glances were still wary, but the tension that had gripped Paris, Vichy, and Lyon seemed to be loosening its grip here.

  “Someone in this crowd may know of Dingy-Saint-Clair,” Charlotte said, studying the lively café. “Wait here, and I will inquire.”

  I rested a hand on Otto’s back when he would have followed her, and the poodle whined his displeasure.

  “She won’t be but a moment,” I reassured him, and watched as Charlotte spoke to a table populated with old men. One nodded, and when he spoke, he gesticulated with gnarled hands.

  Otto’s tail thumped when Charlotte returned, and she stroked his head before putting the ambulance in gear. “You made the right choice with Annecy. Dingy-Saint-Clair is only about fifteen kilometers from here. The man said to take the road on the eastern side of the lake up into the mountains. When it branches in Bluffy, we are to take the left road.” She glanced at me. “At the next branch, we take the left road. At the next, the right. The next, take the left, and that road will lead us to the village.”

  “Well. I do not see how we could become lost with those directions.”

  Her laughter was infectious, and I joined in, the chuckle seeming to relieve some of the weighted pressure that had taken up residence in my chest overnight.

  After a moment, though, she sobered. “He warned me to have a care. There are still Germans up in the mountains.”

  We traversed the cobbled streets of the Old Town, which had been spared from bombs, and then took a narrow, tree-lined street that led us through the city along the northern bank of the lake. Annecy curved around the northeast edge of the lake, and the road followed the curve, hugging the water, soon leaving the town behind. The lake was stunning as the sun set over the western slopes in colors akin to a conflagration. The deep evening light gleamed emerald off the water, so still as to appear solid, not even a ripple to crack the surface.