They looked like ants. Lots and lots of ants. The road from the north was black with them, with motors and men and cyclists. On and on they came, in ordered rows, marching, marching, marching south and east, Germans upon Germans upon Germans, like a plague of locusts, covering the ground, making the sky dark.
Aurélie made a strangled noise deep in her throat and tried to turn it into a cough. “They said they’d driven them back.”
“If they don’t, we will,” said her father grimly, and Aurélie had the vague suspicion that he was enjoying this, that he was looking forward to wielding his antique arquebus.
Her hands were suddenly very cold. She rubbed them together, wincing a little as the blisters on her palms stung. “Maybe they’ll pass us by. They did before.”
There was the sound of a motor gunning, of men shouting. Aurélie could hear Victor’s voice, raised in remonstrance.
Aurélie didn’t wait for her father. She took off down the stairs, spiraling down, down, down, bursting out of the narrow stairwell into the light of the courtyard, where Victor stood with his musket raised like a club, as if he could bar the entrance of the men who stood beyond by sheer will.
“Entry, pah! I’ll show you where you can—”
“Stop!” Aurélie stepped forward before Victor could write his own death warrant.
She drew herself up, wishing she was wearing something more impressive than the old frock she had donned to work in the fields. She would have liked to have been garbed like Minnie, in her Paris best, or, even better, in breastplate and helmet.
“Who goes there?” she demanded, cursing the light that made halos in front of her eyes. They had the sun to their backs, rendering her sun-blind. “I am the Demoiselle de Courcelles and this is my land on which you trespass.”
“Mademoiselle de Courcelles?” One of the Germans stepped forward, out of the mess of men. He had removed his hat and his fair hair shone in the sun. His French was fluent and cultured and alarmingly familiar. “Do you not remember me?”
“Why should she?” demanded Aurélie’s father, arriving breathless beside her. He was toting a fourteenth-century sword so heavy that the point dragged in the dirt behind him. “And what are you doing here? I didn’t invite you.”
The German officer stood to attention, clicking his feet smartly together. “We’ve come to ask the favor of lodging in your castle, on behalf of my commanding officer, Major Hoffmeister. And by favor,” the German added apologetically, “I mean that we’ve come to requisition it.”
He had moved sideways, out of the sun. His hair was shorter than the last time Aurélie had seen him; it had been worn long then, curling at the collar. The image wavered in front of her, rain-streaked windows in the Louvre, a man standing beside her in a gray-striped suit, a posy in his buttonhole, gray kid gloves with pearl buttons holding a portfolio of rich leather stamped with gold.
“Herr von Sternburg?” she said.
Chapter Six
Daisy
Rue Portalis
Paris, France
May 1942
“Von Sternburg,” said Pierre. “Here, in my own home. I can’t believe it.”
Daisy set her hat on the hall stand and frowned at the appearance of a small new stain on the brim. How had it got there? And how was she to disguise this one? She said absently, “Von Sternburg? Who’s this?”
“Who’s this?” Pierre repeated, in his high, mocking voice. “Who’s this, Pierre?”
Daisy turned to the children, who lingered behind her, slinging their school satchels wearily from their shoulders. “Olivier, Madeleine,” she said. “Go to your room, please, and change out of your uniforms. Remember, dinner’s early, in the kitchen, because of the party.” She watched them trundle down the hall, Madeleine with her dark braids and Olivier cheerfully blond, and said to Pierre, more quietly, “I’m sorry. I just don’t seem to recall the name.”
“Oh, I don’t recall the name! I’ve never even heard of Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian von Sternburg!”
Daisy turned to face her husband, who stood in the small, cramped foyer of the apartment, still clutching the scrap of paper that contained this information with which he’d greeted her. Some German fellow named Max von Sternburg had hastily inserted himself into tonight’s dinner party, which seemed to Daisy like the worst kind of news, another mouth to feed when food was already scarce and expensive, when a single German officer might wolf down as much meat as three Frenchmen, no regard at all for the subtleties of taste and digestion, and lick his lips for more. How was she to manage another guest? Pierre’s face was pink and shiny and round, his black eyes bright, his sneer familiar on his plump lips. The shirt collar looked as if it strangled him, so great was his contempt for his ignorant wife. Daisy, whose nerves had buzzed all the way home from rue Cambon, felt the old tide of weariness engulf her. She spread her palms. “I’m sorry. All those German names, I can’t always remember which is which.”
Pierre folded the paper and ran his thumb and forefinger along the crease to sharpen it. “Only one of the most important men in Paris, that’s all, as anyone knows who reads a newspaper.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have much time to read the newspaper these days.”
“Oh, I don’t have time to read the newspaper. I’m so busy idling about the apartment all day—”
“Pierre, please. Won’t you just tell me who he is?”
Pierre sucked in a little breath. He hated to be interrupted. In fact, he hated any gesture that smacked of disrespect, anything that pricked in any small way, real or imagined, at his own importance. Daisy braced herself, dug her nails into her palms, and cursed her hasty words, but the expected volley of mockery never arrived. Instead he turned away and said, over his shoulder, in a tone of deep contempt, “Max von Sternburg is the right-hand man of the commandant of Paris, as everybody knows, and he’ll very likely be named commandant himself before the summer’s out.”
Daisy brushed back her hair from her forehead and followed her husband down the hallway toward the study. “Is he a big man?”
“Big? Big? What do you mean, big?”
“I mean, does he eat much? We have only a single ham for eight guests—”
Pierre stopped at the door of the study, opened it, and turned to Daisy. “My God, do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I haven’t thought of that?”
“Of course not—”
“Then if it isn’t too much bother, you might stop by the kitchen. If you look closely—closely, mind you!—you might discover a fine leg of lamb from that butcher on rue du Rocher.”
“A leg of lamb! Pierre! But how? Where did you get the money? The coupons?”
Pierre brandished the paper in his hand and spoke again in his mocking falsetto. “But how? Where? My God, have you no idea how things work in Paris? I’m an important man now, don’t you know that? Don’t you understand? I work in the Ministry of Agriculture and Supply! If I want meat, I can get meat. Now do something useful—just once, that’s all I ask—and prepare it properly, like a housewife should. A mint sauce. Yes.”