“And later we’ll fly?”
“Not fly, no. We’ll take a train.”
“Because you don’t have your wings.”
“No, not anymore.”
Sister Therese stooped to Luki’s level and took her hands and, with them, the kangaroo’s. “It has been one of the great pleasures of my life to have spent this time with you, Luki. Now Tante Nanée will take great care of you until you get to your papa. And he’ll be the happiest papa in the world, to see you again.”
The child turned her big, dark eyes to Nanée. “Will you hold Pemmy’s hand all the way?”
Nanée hesitated. She felt so inadequate to step into the shoes of the Virgin Mary and the Reverend Mother and this lovely young Sister Therese, and unsure whether to admit to Luki that she was scared too, or if knowing a grown-up was scared would make Luki more so.
She said finally, “I’ll hold Pemmy’s hand all the way, but will you hold mine?”
NANéE FELT ODDLY comforted by the slightly scratchy mohair kangaroo hand and the child’s warm fingers in hers under the scratchy hay. The jostle of the wagon was uncomfortable, the borrowed peasant garb uncomfortable too. But she’d become so used to discomfort that she was more comfortable being uncomfortable than not. She only wished she could do more to comfort the girl.
It seemed to take forever to cover the eight miles from Amboise to Chateau de Chenonceau, their heads together on Nanée’s overnight case, which was awkward to have on this part of the journey but would help them avoid suspicion as they traveled in the free zone. （Who trained across half of France without luggage?） The cart would turn, and slow, and even stop, and Nanée would hope finally that they were there. But it would be only an intersection or another cart or a dog in the road.
Again, they stopped. She listened. They were at the chateau’s gatehouse, finally. But even at the chateau only a very few knew of Madame’s efforts to help people escape occupied France: the foreman of the chateau’s farm operation, his wife and grown daughters, who worked in the kitchens, and his son who served as Madame’s chauffeur. One couldn’t know who might keep a secret and who might use it to better his own place.
The gate tender circled the cart, then said to the driver, “I’ll need to examine the hay.”
Nanée wished they’d thought to add some manure to the hay just in case, to make the examination more unpleasant. She was a woman hiding in a hay cart, smuggling a Jewish girl into an estate that was an escape route. If they were found, Nanée would have to claim to have slipped under the hay when the driver wasn’t looking, to save him or at least give him a chance.
“Shall I do it for you? I can run a pitchfork through it,” the driver offered, already climbing up onto the back of the cart, his feet close to Nanée.
She let him know by her touch where they were, as they’d practiced. She held Luki tightly, protecting her in case the driver misjudged as she listened to the slice of the pitchfork above her head, the rustle of hay being tossed.
“Again,” the gate tender said.
Again, the driver dug in the pitchfork, farther up the truck bed now. He tossed the hay perhaps a dozen times.
The man, satisfied, allowed the cart to pass on into the estate, and a moment later they turned again. The cart slowed and came to a stop amid the sounds of people in the early morning beginning a day of work.
Their driver said to someone, “I have extra with the hay this morning, at Madame Menier’s request.”
Menier? The chocolate family?
They would have to hurry, the man replied; Madame had requested one of the cars in just a few minutes.
Nanée squeezed Luki’s hand, their signal to remain silent.
A moment later, a small Frenchman with protruding, close-set eyes hurried Nanée and Luki from the hay wagon to a Bugatti Coupé Spécial, the same rare model with the same royal-blue cab that Nanée’s mother preferred to be chauffeured around in when she was in France. A younger man stood beside the car in a tidy chauffeur’s uniform. Beyond the garage, steep-roofed little cottages clustered into a tiny village, each with three sets of steps up to three red-door entrances, where those who worked the chateau farm must live, and perhaps the house staff as well.
“The rain be just beginning,” the older man whispered. “With a bit of luck it will blow in a big ’un.”
He popped the trunk. “At the house, me wife and daughters’ll bring things to load in the trunk for Madame to take into town. As the first girl goes back inside, you go with her. Pretend you’re kitchen girls. Leave everything behind. Just you and the girl.”