“That’s not funny,” protested Aurélie, her hand on the ornate doorknob. Whatever the papers said, however much they tried to boost morale, there was no getting around it. They were losing. The word had gone around, all available troops had been called up, all the reserves, all the able-bodied men, all to be rushed west to make one last stand to protect Paris.
Had the Germans already overrun Courcelles? Had her father raised his sword and swung into battle as he had before, one man against an army? There was no word, no way to receive word. All communications had been cut, all was in disarray. Aurélie had tried to use her father’s position and her mother’s reputation to extract information from the Ministry of War, but had been sent pointlessly from one department to the next, shunted along with a bow and a few polite words, before being told, after hours and hours of being shuffled here and there, that spies were everywhere and no information could be given.
I’m hardly a spy, Aurélie had protested. I’m the Demoiselle de Courcelles.
It was a name that ought to have some resonance. Her ancestors had fought with Joan of Arc.
But the official, a very minor official, had only shook his head and repeated that he couldn’t tell her anything.
Can’t or won’t? Aurélie had asked desperately. Do you know anything of my father? Anything?
But he hadn’t answered, had only flipped the tails of his coat and seated himself again at his desk, as though Aurélie weren’t there at all.
She wasn’t sure what was worse, that there might be news of her father, of her people, and she was not told, or that they didn’t know, that the very Ministry of War was as much in the dark as the rest of them. It did not inspire confidence.
“If the Germans take Paris . . . ,” she said, and broke off, not being able to imagine it.
“Then we’ll treat for peace,” said her mother matter-of-factly.
“What peace can there be with the Hun?” Her father’s stories of 1870 mingled with the pathos of the papers, Belgian babies murdered, women violated, villages laid to waste and plunder.
“They’re not all savages, sweetheart.” Maman’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “One can’t believe everything one reads in La Patrie.”
Aurélie hated being made to feel young and naive.
“They’re not all poets, either,” she retorted.
Paris drew a particular type of German nobleman, or at least her mother’s salon did. They all seemed to quote Goethe, read the poetry of Rimbaud, and have strong feelings about the works of Proust. It was very hard to imagine the Germans of her mother’s entourage spitting babies on the spikes of their helmets.
But they were Germans. Goodness only knew what they might do. What they might be doing even now.
“No, I imagine not,” said her mother. “But a man’s a man for all that. When the war is over, one might even be inclined to like them again.”
Like them? There were thousands dead, thousands more likely to die, whole areas of France overrun by soldiers. How could one forgive something like that? How could one take tea with a conqueror?
“If you were French—” Aurélie bit off the words, knowing she was only opening herself up to mockery. “Never mind.”
“Will you pardon me?” With a gracious smile for her guests, Maman rose from the settee and came to stand by Aurélie. The smell of her mother’s distinctive perfume, the particular way her silk skirts swished around her ankles as she moved struck Aurélie with a combination of old affections and resentments. Once, those had spelled comfort to her; recently, they had been the opposite. Aurélie stood stiffly as her mother set a jeweled hand on her arm. “Darling, I’ve lived in Paris since I was nineteen. More than half my life. Don’t you think I care just a little?”
Yes, that her coffee not be served cold.
She was being unfair, Aurélie knew. Her mother wasn’t like the Marquise Casati, who had gone into hysterics in the lobby last week—not because of the men dead or the babies butchered, but because the reduction of staff had meant her breakfast had been delayed. Her mother did care. In her own way.
“It’s not the same for you,” said Aurélie, hating her voice for cracking. “You’re not a Courcelles.”
Her mother glanced fleetingly across the room at a glass curio case lined with velvet in which rested a single item: the Courcelles talisman, a scrap of cloth dipped in the blood of Joan of Arc. One could hardly see the precious relic; her mother, as a young bride, had had it cased in an elaborate pendant of gold, studded with precious stones, so that all one saw was the glow of rubies and diamonds, not the frail remnant of the holy martyr.