Treacherous Is the Night

by Anna Lee Huber

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shook his head, scraping his hair back from his face. “Nothing. Forget it. It’s just . . . your ease with him only seems to highlight there’s something lacking between the two of us. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  I stilled, feeling oddly exposed having this conversation in the middle of a street in Liège, even a deserted one. I could hear voices somewhere nearby chattering softly. And yet, if I refused to discuss it, I was afraid neither of us would raise this specter again.

  “Yes. I-I know,” I replied softly.

  “It’s not like the way it was.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, his voice tight with frustration. “Even during the war, I would come home on leave and be reassured that, in a world going to hell, at least everything between us was good. But now, it’s like . . . it’s like I can’t reach you. It’s like you don’t want me to.” His gaze seemed to implore mine, asking me to help him make sense of it all. He exhaled raggedly. “Or maybe I’m reaching toward the wrong thing. But whatever the case, the harder I try, the further away you seem to retreat.”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. My stomach was twisted in knots along with my tongue.

  Everything he said was true. For I had felt it, too. We had always been opposed in that I tended to retreat to evaluate a situation when I felt threatened or uncertain, whereas he pushed forward, sometimes almost relentlessly—thinking he could conquer the situation with perseverance and resolve, or at least endure it. I had both craved and feared his determined pursuit of intimacy since our return from Umbersea Island, wanting to feel close to him again and yet knowing that would put my secrets at risk.

  I knew what needed to happen. I knew I had to tell Sidney what had happened between Alec and me when I’d believed Sidney was dead. We would never be able to move forward until I did. But I was afraid that might also spell the end of us.

  “Sidney, it can never be like it used to.”

  He looked up at me as if I’d just punched him in the gut, and it tore at my heart.

  “Not exactly,” I murmured to soften the blow. “You’re different. I’m different. How can we expect our relationship to be the same when we aren’t?”

  He studied my features, considering my words. “You’re right.” His eyes were heavy with sadness. “I suppose . . . I’m having a hard time accepting that. The war took so much.”

  I moved a step closer, pressing my hand to his chest. “But it didn’t take me. Yes, it changed me, but I’m still here. And so are you.” I inhaled a ragged breath, remembering all the months I’d believed that wasn’t so. “And I don’t think I’m the only one who retreats when the subject gets difficult, or who worries the other won’t like the truth.”

  Sidney’s hands lifted to clasp my waist. His entire body seemed to heave a long sigh as his head fell forward, his forehead touching mine. “I suppose you’re right.”

  I pulled my head back so that I could look into his eyes. “You suppose?”

  His lips quirked, and he pulled my body flush with his. “I’m not retreating now.”

  I wanted to argue that physical intimacy had never been the problem, but the familiar heat blossoming inside me urged me to stay silent instead.

  But before Sidney could make good on the promise flickering in his eyes, a pair of gentlemen rounded the corner. I buried my face in his chest as he lifted his head to greet the two men. I could hear the gentle humor in their voices, as well as Sidney’s, who turned me in to his side to guide me out of the lane to the busier street beyond.

  Neither of us spoke for several moments, and I might have been content to remain silent until we returned to the privacy of our hotel room. Until my hand brushed against the outline of his pistol beneath his coat.

  “How long have you been carrying this?” I asked.

  His eyes flicked down toward me before scanning the boulevard before us. “It seemed a good precaution since you didn’t appear to know exactly what you were stepping into.”

  “Yes, but why a Luger?”

  “Truth be told, Webleys are rubbish. I may be British, but I’m not so foolish as to equate loyalty to the Crown with carrying a British weapon now that the war is over. Especially when the Germans’ Lugers are so much better.”

  I couldn’t refute that logic.

  “What of you?” he asked. “I thought you might have a small one tucked in your handbag you’d carried during the war.”

  I shook my head. “Too risky. The citizens in the occupied territories weren’t allowed to possess firearms. And as often as one was searched, the chances of my keeping one concealed were minuscule. It would have been the quickest way to get myself detained or worse.”

  “So you’ve never fired a gun?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Sidney looked at me in question as we passed a restaurant with tables set out on the pavement. The hum of its patrons’ conversations would have made our softly spoken words inaudible. So I waited until the voices had all but died away, leaving us alone in the dusky twilight that had settled over the city.

  “Rob taught me. On his last leave before . . .” Before my brother’s aeroplane was shot down over France. I didn’t need to say the words, Sidney understood.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “The trains running north were always so sporadic, so he spent his leave in London with me. He convinced me to drive up to Hampstead Heath so he could teach me to shoot.” My lips curled reluctantly in a smile, one that was as painful as it was amused. “Of course, we treated it as a lark, but I knew it was meant for my own protection, seeing as I was alone in London with you away at the front.”

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t told my husband about this before, except that it was my last memory of my second brother. I suppose I’d been jealously guarding it.

  “I asked for leave, you know.”

  I looked up at his shadowed features.

  “When I heard he’d been killed,” he clarified. “I knew you would take it hard. But it was denied.”

  There was no use asking why. If every soldier who ever asked for leave was granted it when a close friend or family member died, there would have been no one left to fight the war.

  I inhaled past the tightness in my chest. “Yes, well, work kept me busy in London.” C had offered me a leave of absence, but I had declined, preferring to push through the pain. Besides I was needed there. All our agents along one sector of the front had been reporting an extraordinary air of excitement, preparation, and heel-clicking among the Germans, and there were rumors the Kaiser would be paying a visit. Part of my job at that time was to help sift through that intelligence. If we could discover when and where exactly the Kaiser would be making his inspection of the troops, then a surprise run by our bombers might very well end the war.

  Of course, we didn’t succeed, and the war dragged on for over three more years. Even now, the Kaiser resided safely in exile in neutral Holland.

  If only . . .

  I internally shook myself. With all the near misses and foiled plots I’d been party to throughout the war, if I were to begin making “if only” statements, I might never stop.

  * * *

  We arrived in the tiny village of Macon along the Franco-Belgian border about an hour before midday. I had visited the town close to half a dozen times during the war, but never by direct route on the road from Chimay. The journey was always taken on foot through the rolling fields and woods, ever vigilant of German soldiers patrolling the area. It felt odd to drive straight into the village and halt in front of the St. Jean the Baptist Church. The leaves of the many-centuries-old linden tree in the square, its branches supported by braces, glistened bright green in the morning sun rather than the shadowy gray I was accustomed to.

  Rose Moreau, code name Emilie, had lived in a house at the edge of the village, which backed up to the heavily forested land, which lined this stretch of the border. Although that part of France was also occupied by the
Germans for most of the war, the boundary between the countries was surveilled almost as severely as the frontier with Holland. Not only was the region an important staging area behind their front lines, containing one of the crucial railway lines which ran parallel to the battlefront—utilized to shift troops and supplies from one area of the front to another—but it also boasted the headquarters of one of their armies at Château de Merode in Trélon. As such, the La Dame Blanche platoon operating in this area was of strategic importance to Britain and the Allies. Which was how I’d come to be in contact with Emilie so often during my time in Belgium.

  Sidney and I decided our first visit in the village should be to the priest. In my experience, they often knew more about their parish and its residents than anyone, and their presence in wartime had proven no different. In fact, a fair number of La Dame Blanche’s members, including three battalion commanders, were priests.

  It did not take long for us to find him, for he stood next to the linden tree in his black cassock and a wide-brimmed hat, tending its branches. He stood watching us as we approached, no doubt having already surveyed our expensive motorcar and smart clothes and surmised we were not from this part of his country, if we were even Belgian at all. His expression was carefully genial as he greeted us in a Picardy accent.

  “Good day, Monsieur and Madame. How may I assist you?”

  “Good day, Father,” Sidney responded, sliding his hands into his pockets as he cast a glance upward at the church’s steeple. “It’s good to see that not all the old buildings in this stretch of Europe were damaged by shell fire.”

  The priest, a man I estimated to be about forty, smiled reflexively. “Yes. Though we contended with our fair share of stray projectiles. Particularly at the end, as the Allies were advancing. The aim was not always true, no?”

  That was an understatement, if ever I’d heard one. More often than not, the bombs and shells fired from both sides or dropped from the skies had missed their targets—and struck residences and places of business, killing civilians in the process. Nowhere had been truly safe.

  “I can recall a near miss,” I agreed, conceding his point. “Just west of town.” I nodded in that general direction. “There’s a crater in the woods.”

  His dark eyes studied me more carefully. “You spent time in Macon during the war?”

  I nodded. “Briefly. Actually, that’s why we’re here.” I drew breath to say more, but he surprised me by speaking first.

  “You are Madame Moreau’s friend.”

  The manner in which he spoke the word “friend” made it clear he meant something more.

  I blinked, now scrutinizing him in much the same way he had me moments before. “She mentioned me?”

  “We spoke on occasion. I was her priest after all.” He hesitated, as if considering how much more to reveal, and I got the distinct impression I was being weighed and measured, my worth calculated in a matter of seconds. “And . . . I acted as her letter box.”

  This astonished me, for I had never suspected there was another agent in the village. I’d always assumed Emilie carried the reports from Baives, France—several miles to the north—across the border, through Macon, and on to Chimay. I’d not realized this was where her relay ended.

  “You were also part of La Dame Blanche?”

  “Yes. And if I’m not much mistaken, you are Gabrielle Thys.” He arched his eyebrows in expectation.

  “I am. Or at least, that was my code name.”

  He clasped his hands in front of him. “She said you might be coming to see me.”

  Sidney and I shared a look of foreboding at this revelation. That Emilie should know me so well, that she should realize I would come looking for her. Or had she been the one to set me on the trail to do so?

  “Then you know where she is?” I asked.

  But he would not be rushed. “Come. Sit in the cool shade out of this hot sun and I will tell you what I know.”

  He gestured toward a pair of benches positioned between the wooden braces under the wide canopy of the linden tree. As the tree was in bloom with its buttery yellow, star-shaped flowers, I was instantly enveloped by its sweet perfume. The patented blend reminded me of honey mixed with the zest of lemon and attracted softly buzzing bees to gather its nectar.

  I settled in the middle of one of the benches between the priest and Sidney, who reclined back to smoke one of his Turkish cigarettes. Its spicy sweet aroma was not an unpleasant combination with the linden tree and did something to discourage the bees from hovering over our heads.

  “When did you last speak with Madame Moreau?” the priest inquired.

  “A few months before the end of the war. Around mid-August.”

  “So you were not here at the end, when it became obvious the Germans were unraveling.”

  “No. I was needed elsewhere.”

  He dipped his head once in understanding. “Just so. Well, not long after that, Madame Moreau became concerned that someone was watching her. You can appreciate what a sensible, astute woman she is, I think.”

  I nodded.

  “Then you will understand why she passed her courier duties on to another agent, anxious to keep the network from being compromised. In any case, by that point the Spanish influenza was running rampant through the village and countryside, and she was overwhelmed trying to do all she could to help those who were stricken. She even fell ill herself for a short time.” He crossed one leg over the other. “As such, I saw little of her during that time. And even after the armistice and the Germans departed, she seemed to keep to herself.”

  His brow furrowed as he stared out into the village square. “Then a few months ago, she came to see me. She seemed agitated. She insisted we converse through the confessional, though more than once she broke off to check to be certain no one else had entered the church.”

  I frowned, that did not sound like Emilie at all. The woman I had known had always been incredibly cool in tense situations. I had watched her stare down German soldiers more than once, annoyed at them for questioning her special pass to move about freely on her midwife duties.

  Even Sidney seemed to sense the gravity of this alteration in her behavior for he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, waiting for the priest to continue.

  “What did she say?” I prodded.

  “She told me she was going away for a time. That there was something she needed to look into, and that it wasn’t safe for her to be here.”

  Alarm crept up along my spine upon hearing my suppositions were correct. Emilie had been in trouble. “Did she tell you why she wasn’t safe?”

  “She would not say.” This seemed to trouble him greatly, for his eyes were clouded with worry. “But there was a fire at her home.”

  “What?”

  He held up his hands to reassure me. “A small one. Easily put out. She wasn’t injured. Though it might have been much worse had she not awakened,” he admitted.

  I shared a glance with Sidney, wondering if he’d noted the same thing I had. Emilie’s house had caught fire, just as Madame Zozza’s had. Had the one at Emilie’s cottage also been set intentionally?

  “She said that you might come looking for me,” the priest continued. “And that if you did I was to tell you ‘all her hens had come home to roost.’” His gaze searched mine, clearly ignorant of what this meant.

  I frowned, feigning confusion. “That’s it?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yes. And that you could inquire after her at her sister’s home in Quevy.”

  I did not fail to note the manner in which she’d worded this message. That I might ask for her in Quevy, not that she would necessarily be there. I also perceived that Quevy was one hundred kilometers or more from the village she told the chiefs of La Dame Blanche she was moving to.

  I sat very still, contemplating these matters, and trying to determine the best way to ask what I wanted to know next, without drawing too fine a point on it. When Sidney exhaled a long stream of smoke and a
sked for me, almost as if he could read my mind, I could have kissed him for it.

  “So she’s not here in Macon?”

  The priest shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Monsieur. She has not been here in many months.”

  “But she is planning to return?”

  “Perhaps. I do know she hasn’t sold her cottage. So perhaps she plans to return one day.” He shrugged. “But I cannot tell you when.”

  I shifted to face him more fully. “Do you have any suspicions why she left? Why she thought she wasn’t safe here? Other than the fire.”

  He did not answer me immediately, and I didn’t think it was simply because he was sorting through his own impressions. I could tell there was something specific on his mind.

  I pressed a hand to his arm. “I know you do not know me. That there is only my connection to Madame Moreau to recommend me. But it truly is most important I find her,” I pleaded, hoping my earnestness would persuade him. “I do believe she’s in danger, but I do not know from exactly what quarter, and without that I cannot protect her. Please, will you tell me what you know?”

  He reached up to pat my hand. “I will. Because I believe Madame Moreau would want me to. And because she spoke highly of you.”

  Even so, it took him a moment to gather his words, his expression lowering as if a veil was drawn over him. “When one agrees to undertake such a role in an organization like La Dame Blanche, no matter how pure the motivations of patriotism and justice, one must also accept the necessity for some amount of deception. You must lie to your neighbors, your family, the enemy, and even yourself in order to preserve the secrets you have sworn to keep. And you hope, you pray . . .” he pressed his hands flat together as if in supplication “. . . that your actions will not harm the innocent. That the choices you make and the information you pass on will save more lives than it takes. That it will bring the suffering to an end and not make it worse. That you will not be forced to sacrifice your honor in the quest for what is right.”