The Prisoner (20 page)

He spoke French, but with a weird accent. ‘Don’t move a muscle.’

The man who’d been inside the barn had heard the noise and run outside. He pinned Marc’s arms, while the guy with the knife grabbed his legs. They took Marc inside, threw him down in the hay and shone a torch in his eyes as he rolled over.

‘Just a kid,’ a man clutching his stomach said, ‘But he’s got a kick on him.’

‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ the one with the torch said.

Marc was a little dazed. The men wore baggy linen shirts like a French farmer, but their trousers were commando grey and they wore rubber-soled American-style boots. The puzzle pieces formed a picture in Marc’s head when he remembered some men he’d met in Devon almost a year earlier.

‘You’re Canadians,’ Marc said. ‘Did you land at Dieppe?’

‘You heard about that?’ the one with the torch said.

‘I heard,’ Marc said. ‘And Hitler’s order: any survivors from the Dieppe raid who don’t surrender will be shot as spies.’

‘We’re not here to hurt you,’ the one Marc kicked in the guts said. ‘My name’s Noah. We’re trying to move south. But we need food, and maps.’

‘I thought you were from the Requisition Authority,’ Marc said. ‘I sent my two mates up to fetch the farmer. There’ll be coming any minute, so start packing your things up.’

‘If it’s just a farmer …’

Marc didn’t let him finish. ‘There’s Germans billeted to live in the house too There’s a ditch back there, about twenty metres. It’s muddy, but you get down in there and I’ll cover for you.’

The two Canadian’s didn’t seem too sure about trusting Marc, but Noah peeked out of the barn door.

‘Think I hear something, Joseph.’

Marc sat up and spoke with authority. ‘If you get in the ditch
now
I can cover for you. Pick up all your stuff and
move
.’

Marc had no idea if the two Canadians would do what he said, but they started running towards the ditch and Marc strode towards the group jogging through the wheat field from the farm house. One of the Germans billeted at Morel’s house led the way, brandishing a rifle. Morel, Jae, Victor and Jacques were close behind.

‘Don’t shoot,’ Marc shouted. ‘It’s me.’

It was half a minute before Morel was on the scene and had caught his breath.

‘It was kids,’ Marc said. ‘Less than my age. I think they were playing, but they both scarpered when they saw me.’

Jae smiled at Marc as Morel opened the door of his barn and looked inside.

‘Nothing even worth stealing in here,’ he said. ‘Looks like they busted my lock though.’

‘Which way did they run?’ the German asked in broken French.

Marc pointed away from the ditch. ‘Down towards the lake. I’d have chased them, but I turned my ankle jumping over the ditch.’

‘I’d better report the sighting,’ the German said. ‘They’re still on the look out after the Dieppe raid.’

‘Not much point if it was kids,’ Morel pointed out. ‘I’d rather not have my farm torn apart in a search. And no doubt they’ll have us up half the night answering questions.’

‘It definitely was,’ Marc said. ‘They were littler than me.’

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ the German said. ‘And seeing as I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

Morel and the German turned back towards the house, leaving Marc standing beside Jae.

‘It was really nice earlier,’ she whispered.

Marc gave Jae a quick kiss on the lips, ‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’

Marc had whispered, but it was still loud enough for Victor and Jacques to hear and they both started to giggle.

‘You looooove her,’ Jacques howled, as Victor laughed so hard that he had to clutch his sides.

‘I’d better go before my dad flies off the handle,’ Jae said. ‘I’ll find you at lunchtime tomorrow.’

As Jae caught up with her father and the German, Jacques and Victor started picking up the sacks filled with dead rabbits and squirrels. Marc rushed to the ditch. He thought the Canadians might have run off, but they’d waited as he’d asked.

‘Saved our bacon,’ Joseph said.

Marc spoke quickly, in a whisper. ‘I’m not sure I can trust the two younger boys to keep their mouths shut. But we’re going cross country. There’s no checkpoints. So follow us. When we go inside our orphanage, you two wait behind the wall at the back and I’ll come out and meet you. I can definitely get you food and directions, maybe some better clothes. OK?’

Two sets of grinning teeth looked out of the muddy ditch. ‘Thank you, son,’ Noah said. ‘I reckon we’ll need all the help we can getting out of this scrape alive.’

‘Don’t you like getting your hands bloody?’ Victor asked Marc, as they stood alongside the burned-out barn at the side of the orphanage gutting a squirrel. Jacques was doing the chicken and Sister Raphael was helping out too.

‘I twisted my ankle in that ditch,’ Marc said, as he headed towards the orphanage. ‘I need to sit down.’

He’d looked back a couple of times and seen the Canadians following. If they’d done what he’d asked, they’d now be crouching by the perimeter wall.

Marc stepped through the back door of the orphanage and headed for the kitchen. The nuns pulled every trick in the book to keep their orphans well fed, so stealing from the kitchen was a grave offence. Luckily at this time of day the nuns had their hands full putting the little kids to bed, so Marc was able to sneak some bread, a couple of eggs and a big hunk of cheese.

He had to go out of the front door and right around the outer edge of the orphanage grounds to avoid being seen by Jacques and Victor, but walked straight into Sister Madeline. She looked furious when she saw the food, but spoke in a whisper because she was cradling a toddler.

‘Don’t you wake him,’ Madeline said sharply. ‘He’s got an ear infection and his screaming was keeping the others awake. What are you doing?’

If it had been any other nun Marc would have said he was scoffing the food for himself and taken a caning as punishment. But Madeline was a caring person. She’d always had a soft spot for Marc and had been the only nun brave enough to regularly stick up for him during Director Tomas’s reign.

‘I found two Canadians,’ Marc said. ‘They’re dirty and hungry.’

‘From the Dieppe raid?’

‘I think so,’ Marc said.

Madeline looked anxiously at the little boy in her arms. ‘I’ll put him to bed. You take the men to the oratory.’

‘You can’t tell anyone,’ Marc said. ‘There are notices up in Beauvais. Any men who didn’t surrender immediately after the raid will be shot as spies.’

‘We’ve dealt with this before,’ Madeline said firmly, and to Marc’s complete surprise. ‘Just do as I say.’

Marc realised he was in an awkward position as he ran around the crumbling limestone wall surrounding the orphanage. He was a trained espionage agent, but he was only fourteen and the nuns would expect to take control of the situation.

‘Here,’ Marc said, as he handed the two big Canadians some food. ‘We’re going to the oratory, next to the convent house where the nuns live.’

‘Why are we going there?’ Joseph asked, as he greedily scoffed bread and cheese.

‘I’m not forcing you to do anything,’ Marc said, as he remembered a line he’d heard during his parachute training the previous year. ‘But if you’re going to get home, you’re going to have to trust someone. And if you’re going to trust someone, it might as well be a nun.’

Joseph and Noah exchanged glances and muttered in English.

‘He’s just a kid.’

‘He had the smarts to save our bacon at the barn.’

As far as Marc could tell, Joseph was a native English speaker, while Noah was native French. Marc put on his best attempt at a posh British accent and spoke in English for the first time in ages.

‘I can still understand what you’re saying, chaps.’

The two Canadian’s found Marc’s accent hilarious and the joke broke the ice.

‘What was going on back there at Dieppe?’ Marc asked, as he led the two soldiers across a couple of hundred metres of open country towards the small convent house.

‘Whatever the plan was, it didn’t bloody work
⁹
,’ Noah said, smiling uneasily as he scratched three days’ stubble. ‘Heavy machine guns covered the beach from every angle. We landed within the first hour, but you couldn’t put your boot down without squelching a dead body. We spent three hours pinned at the base of a cliff, ran out of ammo and surrendered. We got captured, but took our chances and scarpered while the Boche were trying to work out where the hell to put all the prisoners.’

‘Tough break,’ Marc said.

They’d now crossed behind the orphanage and reached the small convent house, which was home to the six nuns who worked in the orphanage and two frail old sisters who rarely ventured out. Next door was the small brick-built oratory where each nun retreated for several hours of daily prayer.

Although he’d lived his first twelve years in the orphanage, Marc had never been inside the oratory, partly because the nun’s quarters were off limits, but mainly because it was surrounded by a graveyard for orphans which always freaked his younger self out.

The octagonal prayer space was elegantly simple: whitewashed walls, with rough pine benches and a fireplace with a wooden cross resting on it.

The teenage Sister Peter knelt in flickering candlelight, studying a Bible as Marc and the two burly servicemen stepped in. The smell of three days without a bath quickly overpowered the incense, and the light gave Marc his first proper chance to study the two soldiers.

Joseph was stocky, touching thirty, with bushy, red hair and slightly sad eyes. Noah was a bigger man, no more than twenty but with huge hands and thighs as broad as Marc’s waist.

‘God be with you,’ Sister Peter said awkwardly. ‘You’re welcome here, strangers.’

Sister Madeline was only a few moments behind and the two young nuns began fussing over the Canadians, bringing wine and more food, along with bowls of hot water so that the men could wash and shave.

Given that they’d travelled ninety kilometres from Dieppe in under two days, the nuns gave most attention to the mens’ injured feet, popping blisters and pushing straw into their soggy boots to dry them out.

While the nuns fussed over the soldier’s immediate physical needs, Marc hoped to help them in other ways. The silenced pistols and detonators he’d noticed on their belts indicated that they were part of a commando team rather than just regular soldiers.

‘You’ve done well to get this far,’ Marc said. ‘Do you have a plan?’

‘Got lucky a couple of times. Near misses, with sniffer dogs and checkpoints,’ Noah said, sounding every bit like a man who’d not slept in three days. ‘First priority was to get away from Dieppe as fast as we could. Walking mostly, but we did jump on the back of a truck for a while.’

Marc nodded. ‘You’ll need civilian clothes to have any realistic chance. You’ve been able to sneak through countryside so far, but it starts getting built up not far south of Beauvais.’

Joseph looked wary. ‘In uniform we can be taken as prisoners of war,’ he said. ‘We’ll be protected under the Geneva Convention. Once we switch into civilian clothes they can shoot us as spies.’

‘They might shoot you anyway,’ Marc said. ‘The Germans are pissed off about the raid, and you’re a long way from Dieppe already.’

‘Can you find us civilian clothes?’ Joseph asked.

‘We can all sew,’ Sister Madeline said brightly. ‘It’s identity documents that are the problem.’

‘You got mine easily enough when I came back,’ Marc pointed out.

‘Because we’re an orphanage,’ Sister Madeline said. ‘Children arrive here regularly and we have special arrangements at the identity office. Requesting documentation for two adults is more suspicious.’

‘It’s almost impossible to move around anywhere close to Paris,’ Marc explained to the Canadians. ‘You get stopped at checkpoints two or three times a day.’

‘A man gave us an address,’ Noah said, only for Joseph to give him a look that suggested he shouldn’t have spoken.

‘What address?’ Marc asked.

‘We jumped off the back of a German truck, and ended up near Amiens,’ Noah explained. ‘We knocked on doors, but everyone was terrified of helping us.’

‘The Gestapo send out spies pretending to be airmen, or allied soldiers,’ Marc explained. ‘If you help them, you’re for the chop.’

Noah raised an eyebrow. ‘So how are you so sure we’re not Gestapo spies?’

‘I knew a Canadian once,’ Marc said. ‘Plenty of Gestapo officers speak French, but not with those kooky accents.’

Joseph laughed. ‘Kooky, eh?’

‘Anyway,’ Noah said, continuing his story. ‘We finally found one old guy. He let us fill our canteens, gave us a little food, dry shirts and socks, plus the address for someone in Paris who he said might be able to help us.’

Marc took a crumpled piece of paper from Noah and unfurled it. He was horrified that the name
Chalice Poyer
and an address of an apartment in the 18th Arrondisment of Paris had been written down uncoded. If the two Canadians had been captured, the address would have been raided and its occupants tortured.

‘Did the man say who Chalice is?’

‘He was a farmer. Keen to help, but scared out of his wits,’ Noah said. ‘He just said that the girl was connected to people who might be able to help us.’

‘He didn’t say how he knew her?’ Marc asked.

‘The old man had copies of this anti-Nazi newspaper,’ Joseph said. ‘Not even a newspaper really, just a typed sheet. I think he wanted to help us more, but he had a daughter and three young grandchildren in the house. His hands were trembling.’

‘I’ve seen anti-Nazi newspapers,’ Marc said thoughtfully. ‘People leave piles of them in Metro carriages. Perhaps this Chalice is involved in distributing them.’

Marc had made no effort to unearth any local resistance activity since he’d arrived back at the orphanage. Partly it was because he doubted there was any around, but mainly because he’d found a degree of comfort, with a tolerable job, plenty of food and his burgeoning relationship with Jae.

‘I met an RAF fellow in Britain who said there were lines of resisters that regularly help downed aircrew escape into Spain,’ Joseph said. ‘Do you think this girl could have links to them?’