“Wrap up warmly,” Aurélie called after him as he cantered away. He was probably sickening from something, that was all. But a vague feeling of gloom lingered, all the same, all through the festivities in the village that night, through the feasting in the castle, the bonfires and songs. Aurélie found herself feeling vaguely annoyed at Jean-Marie. He’d never been so faint of heart before. If they’d pushed the Germans back, well, then. Even if the war wasn’t done, it meant it would be.
The talisman was at Courcelles and France could not fall.
There was no getting her workers into the field the next morning; there had been too much genièvre consumed the night before, the fierce, local gin that could send men mad—or at least give one a very bad head.
Rumors percolated around the village. Le Catelet had been liberated. The Germans were running away. The sounds of the fighting became louder and closer. French machine gunners dug in at a farm the next village over, holding off a squadron of Uhlans. Aurélie thought her father would go mad with the strain of inactivity, standing on the parapet with a telescope, scanning for uniforms, trying to figure out which way the fighting was going.
“Skirmishes,” he said disapprovingly. “Skirmishes.”
“It has to be over soon,” said Aurélie fervently, thinking of the talisman in its hiding place. “It has to.”
But when the troops came, they were the wrong sort. It was her father’s shout that alerted them. Holding her skirts, Aurélie ran up the twisting stairs to the parapet. Her father handed her his telescope. His hands were shaking. Without comment, Aurélie snatched it from him, holding it to her eye.
They looked like ants. Lots and lots of ants. The road from the north was black with them, with motors and men and cyclists. On and on they came, in ordered rows, marching, marching, marching south and east, Germans upon Germans upon Germans, like a plague of locusts, covering the ground, making the sky dark.
Aurélie made a strangled noise deep in her throat and tried to turn it into a cough. “They said they’d driven them back.”
“If they don’t, we will,” said her father grimly, and Aurélie had the vague suspicion that he was enjoying this, that he was looking forward to wielding his antique arquebus.
Her hands were suddenly very cold. She rubbed them together, wincing a little as the blisters on her palms stung. “Maybe they’ll pass us by. They did before.”
There was the sound of a motor gunning, of men shouting. Aurélie could hear Victor’s voice, raised in remonstrance.
Aurélie didn’t wait for her father. She took off down the stairs, spiraling down, down, down, bursting out of the narrow stairwell into the light of the courtyard, where Victor stood with his musket raised like a club, as if he could bar the entrance of the men who stood beyond by sheer will.
“Entry, pah! I’ll show you where you can—”
“Stop!” Aurélie stepped forward before Victor could write his own death warrant.
She drew herself up, wishing she was wearing something more impressive than the old frock she had donned to work in the fields. She would have liked to have been garbed like Minnie, in her Paris best, or, even better, in breastplate and helmet.
“Who goes there?” she demanded, cursing the light that made halos in front of her eyes. They had the sun to their backs, rendering her sun-blind. “I am the Demoiselle de Courcelles and this is my land on which you trespass.”
“Mademoiselle de Courcelles?” One of the Germans stepped forward, out of the mess of men. He had removed his hat and his fair hair shone in the sun. His French was fluent and cultured and alarmingly familiar. “Do you not remember me?”
“Why should she?” demanded Aurélie’s father, arriving breathless beside her. He was toting a fourteenth-century sword so heavy that the point dragged in the dirt behind him. “And what are you doing here? I didn’t invite you.”
The German officer stood to attention, clicking his feet smartly together. “We’ve come to ask the favor of lodging in your castle, on behalf of my commanding officer, Major Hoffmeister. And by favor,” the German added apologetically, “I mean that we’ve come to requisition it.”
He had moved sideways, out of the sun. His hair was shorter than the last time Aurélie had seen him; it had been worn long then, curling at the collar. The image wavered in front of her, rain-streaked windows in the Louvre, a man standing beside her in a gray-striped suit, a posy in his buttonhole, gray kid gloves with pearl buttons holding a portfolio of rich leather stamped with gold.