Merde, merde, merde!
For a crazed moment I think about stealing a car from the village or trying to siphon its fuel. Any solution I think of takes time I don’t have, or involves people I’m not sure I can trust. Five minutes have already passed since the phone call to the authorities. I might have only twenty minutes more to hide these kids.
An imperfect, panicked solution comes to me, and I run all the way to the girls’ lazaret, bursting in with a clipboard. “The doctor is asking for the follow-up examinations of a few of the girls,” I tell the nurse, and before she can question me, I pretend to read off the fifteen names, trying to hurry the Jewish girls out of bed and into their shoes without creating a panic. When they’re dressed, I pick up the littlest, and the others follow me like ducklings.
I don’t take them to the examination room, though. Instead, I violate every rule about keeping newcomers in isolation, and sneak them into the side entrance of the mostly empty castle. “Let’s be quiet as we pass the kitchen . . .”
Fortunately the cook’s back is to us as she tends the hearth, and I usher the girls quickly past, leading them to the oldest part of the castle, with its trapdoors and hidden passages. How many people left on staff know about them?
The baroness knows, but she’s gone. Madame Simon is gone too. Madame LeVerrier would keep quiet. But I’m the idiot who told Anna about them, and now I’m having to bet my life that she won’t tell the Gestapo. As I lead these fugitive girls into the dank passages carved between the walls, I think they might be safe here even if the Gestapo searches building by building and room by room. But I don’t want to chance it.
Taking a flashlight from where it hangs on the wall, I turn off the electric lights and plunge us all into darkness. “Let’s play follow-the-leader and see how quiet we can be.”
“The Nazis are coming, aren’t they?” Rachel asks, having been through too much to believe it’s a game.
Reluctantly, I nod. “But they won’t know to look here.” Probably. Germans are horrifically thorough. “And we’re going to be gone before they know it.” We’re not trapped, after all. These aren’t just passages. They’re tunnels. One leads to where Adrienne Lafayette used to read the Bible to the village women when Catholic services were banned. If I can get the girls away from the castle, without anyone seeing—if I can get them into the woods and upstream . . .
“Allez allez allez!” I say to hurry them.
As the girls follow, I hear their panicked breaths. They’re holding each other’s hands, making a human chain, and I lead them through the dark using the stone wall as my guide. I remember the old stories we used to scare one another with, about getting trapped in the tunnels and turning to a pile of bones, and my breath quickens too.
Eventually, we come to a door. It’s meant to keep people out, not to keep people in, so there’s got to be a key here somewhere. We start searching—looking for loose stones it might be hidden behind. Am I going to have to go back and search Anna’s desk in the library?
For Chrissakes, I have no idea what I’m doing. I wanted to be an artist, not a child rescuer. Did I think I was brave enough and smart enough just because I live in a hero’s castle?
I’m no Lafayette.
I blow out a breath, asking myself what he’d do. Probably something reckless. Adrienne was the clearheaded one. When the soldiers came to arrest her, she hid the valuables and sent the kids fleeing into the woods. But there wasn’t a door in her way. I can’t find the key, and time is running out. Could the Gestapo be pulling trucks into the drive already? They might even be in the castle, their jackboots thundering on the parquet wood floor. On the other side of these stone walls, they might be throwing doors open, smashing valuables, interrogating Anna and everyone else in the house . . .
I’ve endangered everyone.
Are they going to be punished for what I’ve done? I remember Travert’s warning as the walls close in on me. And I press my forehead to the cool stone to fend off panic. Madame Beatrice used to say there are voices in the stones and that we can hear them if we listen. I strain to hear them now. Adrienne. Beatrice. The baroness, Madame Simon, Madame LeVerrier, and every other person who made themself a part of this place.
One of them needs to tell me what to do!
Damn it! I kick the door twice in a fury of frustration, feeling as if I could batter it down, and that’s when something metallic clinks to the stone floor. The key must’ve been resting on the wooden door ledge. I’m so giddy with relief I nearly laugh, though we’re not out of trouble yet. I’ve wasted so much time, the girls will have almost no head start. Unless I give them one . . .