“You have to cycle a long way tomorrow,” he said, after a while.
“Almost sixty miles from here,” Remy reminded us.
“I’m aware,” I said, but even though I couldn’t see his face in the dark, I sensed Marcel flinch at my flat tone. It would do me no good to offend my new circuit leader before we even started working together. “I’m sorry. This is an old injury and I don’t know what I’ll do if I’ve aggravated it badly again.”
“We will figure it out,” he assured me gently, then he offered again, a little more insistently this time, “Try leaning on me. We have to keep moving but you don’t have to do this on your own.”
Reluctantly, I wound my arm around his waist and he mirrored the posture, then we began to shuffle forward together along the track through a thatch of trees.
At the safe house, Marcel prepared some food for us while Remy washed up. I gritted my teeth as I eased my boot off my ankle, heart sinking as I saw the extensive swelling beginning to bloom around the joint, the skin already mottled purple and red.
“There’s no way you’ll be walking on that tomorrow, let alone cycling such a long way,” Marcel remarked, setting down a plate of bread and cheese beside me on the sofa.
“Perhaps,” I said. He walked back to the kitchen and returned with a glass of wine, which he handed me.
“For pain relief,” he offered. I took it greedily, hoping the alcohol might silence the voices of doom and gloom in my mind. “Don’t worry. Worst-case scenario, we signal London and ask for an evacuation—”
“No,” I said, sitting up immediately. Marcel leaned forward in his chair opposite me.
“I don’t want to do it,” he said firmly. “But we have to be realistic.”
“Even if you send me home, you won’t get another agent right away. I have a lot to get home to, but I have a job to do first. I don’t intend to let this ridiculous injury stop me.”
“Sometimes things don’t happen as we expect in the field and we have to adapt. A few months ago, my circuit tried to coordinate the destruction of a large factory and the air raid went terribly wrong, but my previous courier had a real knack for lateral thinking. She came up with a much better way to achieve the same result, and safely too. That’s the kind of thinking we need for this situation.”
“That wasn’t Chloe, was it?” I asked hesitantly. Marcel’s eyes widened.
“It was!”
“I trained with her. I’m not surprised to hear she saved the day with a little creativity.”
“She told me she trained with another woman. She said you were the best agent she knew.”
“Well, I’m not much good to you now, am I?” I muttered.
“What would Chloe do right now?”
“Honestly? She’d pretend to cry and convince some burly man to carry her the whole way,” I said wryly. Marcel threw back his head and laughed.
“Good grief,” Remy said, wincing as he joined us in the living room and saw my ankle. “Well. What’s the plan?”
“We pray that we wake up and my ankle is miraculously healed,” I deadpanned.
“There is no plan,” Marcel said, sighing. “Not yet, anyway. Fleur will rest it tonight and we will see how she is in the morning.”
I knew as soon as I woke up that my prayers had not been answered. My first thought was that my ankle felt monstrously swollen, just as it did the first time I sprained it. When I tentatively moved my foot, pain shot up my leg. Leaning on the stick Remy had found for me, I hobbled all the way outside to use the outhouse, and by the time I made my way back, Marcel was seated at the dining room table. He winced when he saw my ankle.
“I’m okay,” I said even though I knew I was not. Marcel tapped his fingers against his cheek thoughtfully as I made my way to the table. “Can’t I just stay here for a few weeks, until it heals? I know it’s not ideal for the mission but…”
Marcel shook his head.
“One of the Maquisards owns this house. We need to be gone before his family returns from a trip tomorrow. We simply have to get you to the next safe house.”
“I can try to cycle,” I said uneasily, peering down at my swollen ankle. “Walking is painful, but cycling might not be so bad.”
I pushed my chair back. I thought I’d limp to the bicycles to try to ride, but as soon as I took a first step, my weakened ankle gave way and I only kept myself from falling by awkwardly catching the chair to hold myself up. Marcel pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I find it so frustrating that they ask so much of you women,” he said, scowling in frustration. “You get injured falling out of a plane but I’m still supposed to ask you to cycle halfway across France. They send Chloe halfway across the country, all on her own to a city where she knows no one, and I had to let her go. Whatever happened to men protecting women? It’s just not right!”
I knew for sure then that this was the man Chloe had fallen in love with during her mission. The concern and affection in his eyes as he spoke about her was unmistakable.
“Marcel,” I said flatly. “Chloe may be slight, but she is far from fragile. She doesn’t need you to protect her. Nor do I. My gender has nothing at all to do with this ankle and I am every bit as capable as a man.”
Marcel rubbed his eyes wearily.
“Sorry. Of course. I don’t mean to insult you, Fleur. Nor do I mean to suggest that Chloe is anything but fiercely capable. Sometimes I feel this war goes against every piece of common sense and social convention I’ve ever understood. And I don’t just mean about women—I mean, my God. These bastards have no respect at all for human life, and I always thought that was one thing we’d evolved to agree upon. It’s like the rules are topsy-turvy and sometimes I just can’t make sense of it.”
“I understand that,” I said heavily. “Boy, do I ever.”
“I can’t figure out how to make an evacuation work, either,” he said suddenly, groaning softly. “The full moon was days ago and there was barely enough light for the landing last night. Perhaps they could try tonight—but it’s sixty miles ride even to reach my w/t, so I’d have to cycle all the way there and back in one day, and we’d still have the problem of where to put you today.”
“Can’t you get a car?”
“The Germans have prohibited car travel. They’re trying to slow the resistance down after the landings.”
“But we needn’t drive the whole way,” I suggested. “And perhaps we can take the back roads…”
“I really don’t know,” Marcel muttered. “A dead agent is no good to anyone.”
“Can you think of an alternative?” I asked him. “It sounds very much like even if you’re to send me home, you still need to get me to the next safe house to wait for the next moon.”
“Okay,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “I know of a Citroen we can borrow. We’ll leave in an hour.”
The trip was uneventful at first. It was a beautiful day—a light breeze had blown in overnight and pushed every hint of cloud away. But despite the beauty of my surroundings and the calm start to our journey, I couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding that morning. My injured ankle left me unusually helpless. Baker Street sent some munitions with Remy and I to be distributed to the Maquisards around Brive-La-Galliarde. Marcel wanted to hide the Sten gun and ammunition in the boot of the car, but I insisted they remain in the back seat with me. If things went awry and I couldn’t run, I could at least try to shoot my way out of trouble.