Yes, Nanée too had seen the man. She’d seen him first and was already moving, motioning him silently to follow.
More rocks spilled from above, less cautiously now. The man was headed for them. His cap appeared over the top of a boulder, then disappeared again.
They started as the man spilled down onto the path in another spray of rock. A lean, sun-worn man with packages tied all over his body.
“What are you doing here?” the stranger demanded, taking them in. They were not professional smugglers. They were no threat to him, just an opportunity.
The smuggler glanced to Nanée, standing with the kangaroos in one hand and her other in the pocket of her flight jacket. She looked like she might spring at the man.
“I can show you the way over the mountain,” he offered—for a price, he meant. “No one knows these paths like I do.”
He saw Luki then. “You’re taking a child over the mountain?” He backed away.
Edouard adjusted Luki and told her to hold on to him tightly, then returned his attention to the climb. The smuggler, reaching for one of his packages, moved toward them. Eduard turned to fend him off.
The smuggler stopped where he was. Put his hands up to show he meant no harm. “For the girl,” he said.
He untied one of his packages and unwrapped a length of dried sausage, the smell of it mixing with the faint scent of thyme and rosemary and lavender that must be strong here in summertime. The man didn’t hand him the sausage, though. He offered him the length of dirty cloth that had held it to his body.
“For the girl,” he insisted. “She’ll be safer.”
Edouard hesitated.
“Like that,” the man insisted, pointing to the kangaroos Nanée still held, Joey fallen out of Pemmy’s pouch but still pinned to her.
The cloth flapped once in what was now more breeze than wind.
Edouard took it from the man and used it to tie Luki to him at his waist.
“A child. Bon chance.” The smuggler shook his head as he set off down the path they’d come up, the sausage still in his hand.
Edouard reached for one of the rocks above him, set a foot on a low one, and began to climb.
Monday, December 9, 1940
THE PYRENEES
They were close to the road now, on a narrow path between a cliff edge and a wall of rock, not easily visible from the road thanks to the overhang but close enough that they might be heard. They were moving as silently as possible, listening intently. Edouard held tightly to Luki’s hand, worried with each step that he might slip, or Luki might. He would have kept her tied to him the whole rest of the way if she allowed it, but she was her mother’s child, she had her own mind.
They followed Nanée, he and Luki. He and Luki and Pemmy and Joey, Luki might have said. How thankful he was for Madam Menier sending the kangaroos. How thankful he was for her helping Nanée get Luki out of occupied France. For the foreman and the housekeeper and the chauffeur who helped her. For the nuns who kept her safe before that. For Berthe. For everyone who had protected Luki when he couldn’t.
Nanée stopped. She stood absolutely still. He heard what she heard then. Not voices but something lower, something that quickly took shape as the sound of footsteps. Not just one person but several, it sounded like.
Nanée backed away from the cliff edge, to the wall of rock, for the protection of the overhang.
He did the same, pulling Luki with him, wishing the awful howl of the wind would return so they wouldn’t be heard.
A small, muted note sounded.
Edouard listened in fear, horrified to see that Pemmy and the little musical joey had fallen onto the ground on the other side of the path. An inch or two farther, and they would tumble into the chasm.
“Was war das?” a voice above them demanded. What was that?
Monday, December 9, 1940
THE PYRENEES
Nanée squatted carefully, silently. The footsteps overhead had stopped, the voices so close that she could reach up and pass them a canteen for a sip of water. She didn’t think they could see Edouard and Luki and her, but if they looked over the edge, they would see the kangaroos.
Voices responded to that first familiar voice, Robert’s voice—the German from the Kundt Commission who’d tried to charm her the night before in Banyuls-sur-Mer. The soldiers spoke among themselves, German she couldn’t begin to understand.
Could she get the stuffed kangaroos before the Germans caught sight of them? Her flying scarf around Pemmy’s neck was so close she could almost reach it from where she was.
“Musik,” Robert said. “Ich h?re Musik.”