Waging War (26 page)

He nodded and pulled open the door to an
empty animal stall. Against the back wall, carefully concealed, was
the edge of a trap door in the floor. Archer pulled it open and
indicated Ringo should go first. “It’s about five feet down,” he
whispered, and Ringo dropped straight down. I wasn’t a fan of blind
drops, so I did use the ladder, and Archer was right behind me as
he closed the trap door over our heads.

“Another priest hole?” I whispered in the
dark. It reminded me of the hidden cellar where we had found young
Pancho, the twelve-year-old brother of Thomas Wyatt, hiding from
the Queen’s Guard. Archer lit a candle stub and a small room was
illuminated. There were blankets stacked in one corner, and a crate
with a lantern on it stashed behind the ladder.

Archer smiled. “Something like that. These
are tough times, and I imagine this hiding spot has been used more
than once since the war began. Francoise DuLac showed me this place
when we were children. The current owner of the farm, Marianne,
knows I’ve come once or twice in the past few years.”

“What does she know about you?” I was
curious how he explained himself to other people through the
years.

Archer piled some blankets together for us
and tossed some others to Ringo. “She knows our families have been
friends for several generations and that the scholarship I set up
for the girls of the DuLac family is putting her daughter through
school in England.”

“Just the girls?” I wasn’t sure what
surprised me more, that he’d set up a scholarship, or that it was
for the girls.

“Francoise was my best friend as a child,
until I went to school and her father sent her home to France. He
thought an education would be wasted on a woman and refused to
allow her to attend even the primary school in this village. So,
when Francoise had her own daughter, I made sure there was a fund
in place for her to send little Dominique to school. That fund has
continued, and can only be accessed by the DuLac women for their
daughters.”

“Is Marianne part of the Maquis?” I quickly
ran a toothbrush over my teeth. The little hidden room was actually
reasonably warm for being underground, and I thought I might even
be able to sleep without my boots on.

Archer shook his head. “Her husband is in a
German prisoner of war camp, and her son is still young. She grows
enough food to feed them and some of her neighbors too, and
otherwise, she keeps her head down and stays out of the Germans’
sights.”

“I didn’t know you had such strong ties to
France.” I stretched out on the blanket and used my satchel for a
pillow.

Archer sat down on the blanket and looked at
me oddly. “I haven’t spoken about the DuLacs to you?”

I shook my head. “I remember a hunting story
you told me once about your father, but otherwise, no.”

He sank into thoughtful silence, and I
suddenly realized why. I reached a hand out and held his. “We’ve
talked about the important things. If they had died tragically, you
would have told me.”

Ringo lay on his blanket with his eyes
closed and an arm thrown across his head. “She’s right. Ye would
‘ave said somethin’.”

Archer finally nodded, then blew out the
candle. It was pitch black in the underground room, and I felt
Archer put something near my satchel. “A fresh candle and matches,
for when you wake.”

“Thanks,” I whispered. Then I felt Archer
tug at the laces on my boots. “What are you doing?”

“You’re safe here, and I’ll keep you warm,”
he answered, as he pulled my boots off, laid down next to me, and
pulled a blanket up to cover us. I laced my fingers through his and
fell deeply asleep.

Oradour-sur-Glane

Archer left the barn at sunset to see how
things fared with Marianne DuLac and her son. He was back twenty
minutes later with an invitation for us to join them for
dinner.

We were careful to stay to the shadows as we
made our way into the ancient farmhouse. As with every farm I’d
ever entered, the door opened right to the kitchen, where a fire
burned cheerily in the hearth and a pot of soup bubbled away in a
big cast iron pot hanging above it.

A young woman, not older than Nancy, stood
at the sink basin peeling winter beets. Her fingers and the knife
were stained a deep, dark red that looked too much like blood for
comfort. The room smelled so good and was so bright and welcoming
after the angry vibe of the Maquis safe house, I shrugged off the
sense of foreboding and stepped inside.

“Marianne, I’d like you to meet my friends,
Hélène and Louis,” Archer said in French. Marianne’s face lit into
a lovely smile and she wiped her hands clean on her apron.

She held her hand out to shake ours, and
told us in French how welcome we were in her home. Both Ringo and I
smiled graciously but said nothing, and I realized Archer had
introduced us by our aliases in order to protect Marianne from the
information that there were more foreigners in her neighborhood
than just himself.

When neither of us spoke, Marianne merely
switched to more non-verbal cues to invite us to sit. She and
Archer carried on a rapid-fire conversation in French, which Archer
didn’t translate, and I looked around for something I could do to
help. There were carrots to be peeled, and after a couple of hand
gestures, I settled in to work at the big kitchen table with a
paring knife.

I was zoning out on the lyrically guttural
sounds of French when a bang sounded at the door, and all three of
us were out of our seats in an instant. Marianne said something to
Archer with the next bang. When something dropped outside, Ringo’s
posture relaxed and he went to the door to open it.

A young boy stood in the doorway with an
armful of chopped wood. He looked shocked to see Ringo and sheepish
at having dropped several pieces. Ringo snatched the wood from his
arms before more could fall, and the boy smiled gratefully at
him.

Archer introduced us to the boy, whose name
was Marcel. Marianne’s son was not more than about seven or eight
years old. He clopped inside on worn, wooden-soled shoes, which
looked remarkably out of place on a child. He was too thin for any
growing boy, and pale in a way that spoke more of fear than of a
life spent indoors.

Ringo gave him a grin and indicated that
Marcel should show him where to stack the wood. Within a few
minutes Ringo and the little dark-haired boy had stacked a very
professional-looking pile near the hearth.

Marianne pulled the heavy pot out of the
fireplace, and I jumped up to help her serve five bowls of steaming
vegetable soup. Marcel and Ringo washed their hands, and then we
sat at Marianne’s heavy wooden table to eat. Marianne and Marcel
immediately bowed their heads in prayer, and even I sent a quick
thank you to the universe for the moments of peace this meal
represented.

My attention wandered around the room while
Archer and Marianne talked. Heavy timber beams held the ceiling and
framed the waxed plaster walls. The ceiling was higher than Tudor
era rooms I’d been in, so I guessed it was probably built in the
1700s. There were faded patches on the walls where it looked like
paintings had hung, and I wondered if they had been hidden, stolen,
or sold for food. We ate with simple pewter spoons, yet the ladle
Marianne had served the soup with was silver that had been allowed
to tarnish, maybe to hide its quality from casual thieves.

The soup was excellent, full of root
vegetables and wild mushrooms, but the bread was coarse, and
Marianne kept apologizing for it, especially since Archer had
claimed a prior meal as the reason he wasn’t eating. She had wanted
to open a bottle of wine for us, but he quickly assured her that
none of us drank it, so she should save it for a special occasion.
I had the sense that the four years of war in France had affected
the DuLacs, and probably everyone else, badly. Marianne’s garden
was growing, and she had the woods to forage for firewood,
mushrooms, and probably meat, but things like wine, refined flour
for bread, and leather for shoes were scarce and expensive.

When the table had been cleared, Ringo
brought a chocolate bar out of his bag and slid it across the table
to Marcel. The little boy’s eyes lit up with so much surprised joy
I felt tears prickle. He looked to his mother for permission to
open it, and after her quick, grateful smile at Ringo, she told
Marcel he could. Marcel took a big bite of the chocolate. The
expression of pure bliss on his face brightened the whole room.

Marianne and Archer continued their
conversation, and from the bits and pieces I understood, it seemed
that they discussed German soldiers in Limoges. I knew from my own
reading that France had been divided in Hitler’s agreement with the
Vichy government in 1940. The Vichy was to keep the middle and
south of France, and German forces would control the north,
including Paris. Then, in 1942, Germany invaded the south anyway,
and Marshall Phillipe Petain became a puppet leader. Consequently,
free France was a hotbed of Maquis - the very angry sons and
brothers of men who had been sacrificed by the Vichy in their
feeble attempt to keep the Germans at bay. The best that history
said about the Vichy was that they’d kept France from being fully
occupied. The worst was that they were collaborators, anti-Semites,
and more culpable than even the Nazis in rounding up and deporting
their countrymen.

Marianne wouldn’t let any of us help clean
up after dinner, and she sent us away with some bread, cheese, and
a jug of water. Marcel solemnly shook all our hands and said very
formal goodbyes to us as we left the farm house. He gave Ringo a
shy smile though, which Ringo returned with a quick rough hug.

When we were back in the barn, Archer
finally spoke to us in English again.

“Marianne offered us a room in her house,
which I turned down. She said her farm has not been bothered by
either the Germans or the Maquis, so I told her we’d be very happy
to stay in her barn. This way we can make use of the cellar room as
necessary.”

Ringo shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” He
looked around the big stone barn that had farm equipment housed
against one side and empty animal stalls on the other. Bales of old
hay stood against the back wall and he pointed at them. “Anyone
mind if I make some beds?”

“I’ll help,” I said, and together we unbound
a bale and pulled the straw into two of the stalls. Archer went to
get water from the pump in the garden, and with the addition of a
couple of blankets from the cellar room, Ringo and I had fashioned
a decent double bed in one stall and a comfortable twin bed next
door. We left the rest of the straw bale in the stall with the trap
door, just in case we ever had to cover the traces of our occupancy
there. We decided our personal bags would either be on us or in the
cellar room hidden from view.

Everything about our stay at the DuLac farm
had to be secret, and none of us felt very good about putting
Marianne and Marcel at risk. But we needed a secure base from which
to search for Tom and his Werwolves. We all agreed that the Maquis
were useful for France but shouldn’t be trusted for our much
smaller mission.

Ringo was shifting the last of the hay from
where it had been stacked. “Well, ‘ello. What’s this?” He reached
down and pulled out a bow. The wood was old and worn, but the
string was still tight when he twanged it. He handed it to me and
dug around under the loose hay until he found a simple cloth quiver
with five arrows in it. The arrowheads were all hand-hammered
metal, and the feathers in the shafts were still intact. I handed
the bow back to him, and Ringo nocked an arrow and let it fly
across the barn. The arrow struck the far wall with a thunk that
left the shaft vibrating, and we stared at each other in
surprise.

“This is fantastic,” he said a little
breathlessly.

“When did you learn to shoot a bow and
arrow?” My eyes narrowed at him, and he grinned.

“Ye were out learnin’ to be a Shifter. I ‘ad
to find somethin’ besides electricity and chemistry to learn.
Somethin’ useful.”

There were so many ways to respond to that
statement, I just went with the question that struck me first.
“Okay, maybe a better question is, who taught you archery?”

Ringo grinned. “Millicent, of course.”

The hinge on my jaw broke and I stared at
him in shock. “You’re joking.”

He shook his head. “As if I’d joke about
anythin’ ‘avin’ to do with Millicent Elian. I’d sooner drink
spoiled milk from a yeasty codpiece than face ‘er wrath about
anythin’ misspoken.”

“A yeasty codpiece? That’s … vivid.” I
shuddered and tried to school my expression, but he could see the
laughter that threatened.

Ringo looked pleased with himself as he
shouldered the quiver and bow. He turned as Archer came in with two
buckets of water. “Do ye know these woods?”