Flame in the Night Read online

  Benjamin was shaking his head over and over, his eyes like a spooked horse’s. “Not—not the cave. I can’t.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t—I can’t—in the dark—”

  Julien took his friend by the shoulders and shook him. Now you come out with this? Now?

  “The farm—your grandfather’s farm—”

  “I can’t take you there,” Julien hissed. “I’m assigned to warn the north road!”

  “I—I—” Benjamin’s breath was coming faster and faster. The sky was dim; in the east beyond the garden wall the dark was rising. Benjamin looked up sharply at some sound from a second-floor window and made to pull away from Julien toward the garden gate.

  Rage rose hot in Julien’s belly. He dug both thumbs into Benjamin’s shoulders, brought his face within centimeters of his friend’s, and ground out: “You will come with me.” Benjamin’s eyes were huge in the twilight, fixed on him. The scent of crushed mint rose sharp from beneath their feet. Benjamin nodded once. Julien took his friend’s arm and pulled him into the street.

  He kept his grip as they walked up the narrow streets: the Rue Emmanuel, the Rue Peyrou, the crossroads yet to come. Benjamin’s steps were uneven, but he faced rigidly forward. Julien’s heart was drumming, his breath coming ragged. The streets were empty, the streetlamps still dark. In the east the black crept upward, the stars lighting one by one like watching eyes.

  The crest of the hill loomed up ahead, a dark bulk beneath the stars. Benjamin swallowed convulsively; Julien tightened his grasp. “We’re not going to the cave,” he whispered. Words came to him as he raised his head and saw the dark shapes of the last houses of Tanieux, and remembered who was assigned to the east road. “We’re going there.”

  The door he knocked on opened a crack, one eye peering through. “Madame Chaveau,” Julien said, then as she flung the door wide: “is Marcel home?”

  “No. Come in. Come in!”

  Marcel’s mother hurried them into the little living room. The lamp was lit, the shutters closed. “Does he need hiding? The basement?”

  “I …” Hope flared in Julien. Benjamin was looking at him dark-eyed. “I …” He saw in his mind his father, a small far figure beneath that bloody August sunset, confronting the police with a cold eye. He saw that same sunset dying now above the north road, above the farms that hadn’t been warned. “Yes,” he said. “I have duties. I’ll be back in an hour. Less, if I can.”

  Benjamin didn’t speak.

  Julien stood in the living-room doorway, watching his friend being led away, Madame Chaveau telling him she would bring him a cushion down there, and did he want anything to drink? Then he turned away, and slipped out into the night.

  The rising moon hung high above Julien when he came back to the crossroads from the north. He was sweating. On his left as he ran, woods and pastures lay thick and dark around the road to Grandpa’s farm; on his right the bluff fell sharp to the gleaming river and the wild, broken land beyond. Tanieux came into view over the rise, its streetlamps still dark, and he slowed to a walk. An owl hooted. Another answered far off, and a dark shape loomed up from the road on his left. He froze.

  Marcel’s face came up out of the gloom. “Julien.”

  “Marcel? Have you—”

  “I walked Benjamin to Pierre’s place. Pierre’ll walk him to your grandfather’s.”

  “Thank you,” Julien gasped. “Thanks.” His chest hurt. He wiped his sweating palms on his shirt, seeing in his mind Benjamin’s face in the lamplight, and all the faces of the farmers he had warned tonight.

  “He told me how he panicked. He says you’re going to kill him.”

  “Not me,” said Julien grimly. “Too much competition.”

  Marcel twitched a smile, but his eyes didn’t change. He thrust his hands into his pockets. “Is your father home?”

  “No idea. Probably.”

  They walked. Marcel passed his own house without turning. Slate rooftops glinted dully under the moon. “Julien,” said Marcel, “is your father still glad we wrote that letter?”

  Julien turned to the Scout leader. His face was in shadow. “Is that what you want to talk to him about?”

  Marcel shook his head fast. “No. Maybe.” He jerked his chin upward twice as if something hurt, then spoke fast. “I was reporting to them in the church office, a policeman came in to fetch the pastor, he—he wasn’t very polite, he says to your father, ‘Who are you, are you anyone important?’ It wouldn’t have been any kind of lie to say no.”

  “And?” Julien breathed.

  “And Monsieur Faure says the police chief threatened them both with deportation, right there in the place in front of—” He broke off. “I’m sorry—”

  “No. I knew.”

  “I’m sorry, I just—I think maybe there are people who shouldn’t go around defying the authorities. Witness or no witness. People whose lives other people depend on.”

  “What, because he’s my father? Isn’t that my business?”

  “No. I’m talking about lives depending on—” Marcel jerked his chin, hunched in on himself, and said in a barely audible voice, “I’m talking about his work.”

  “The school—” Julien started, frowning a little, and saw Marcel in the moonlight turn and stare. “He designed our alert chain,” Julien said softly. “Didn’t he?” No one had ever said, but it had his stamp on it somehow—so thorough.

  “Yes.” Marcel said it quickly. Julien could hear the wet sound of his mouth as it opened and closed. See the fear in his eyes.

  Julien stopped and looked at Marcel. He heard his own voice as if from elsewhere. “You weren’t talking about that, though.” The blood went swash, swash in his ears. “Were you?” Marcel was receding from him, pulling back; Julien’s hand whipped out and grabbed his friend’s wrist. “What were you talking about?”

  Marcel shook his head. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I gave my word. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought—I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m sorry, I really am—”

  “You thought I knew,” said Julien heavily. At the end of the street stood his house, light spilling from the second-floor window: Mama or Papa, or both, in the kitchen making tea. His throat hurt. He walked on.

  They went up the stone stairs in silence. The sound of Mama singing reached Julien as he climbed: the pure, clear alto swooping through the dark with the assurance of a night-flying bird. He stopped to listen, his heart pinching, then opened the door.

  Papa was hunched over a cup of herbal tea, every line of his body etched with weariness. His head came slowly up, and his face eased as he took in Julien. Then he stood abruptly. “Marcel,” he said in a tone of surprise, then jerked his head toward the inside of the apartment. “My study.”

  Mama beckoned Julien to the table. Papa laid a hand on his shoulder in passing, not looking at him. Mama took the kettle off the wood-burning stove; the coals beneath the burner hole glowed dull red.

  “Chamomile? Or mint?”

  “Mint,” mumbled Julien, and sank into a chair.

  “Benjamin?” Mama bent over the table to pour for him. The worry lines ran like furrows above her dark-brown eyes; the crow’s-feet lay dormant, ripples in the sand. He looked down.

  “He’s at the farm. I mean, I mean he’s at Pierre’s—Pierre’s walking him down from there.” Steam hissed up hot and fragrant, and he took a sharp breath, searching for something to say. “Did you—were you out doing—”

  “We hid the L’Espoir boys. For the girls, false papers are enough. I had to rock a one-year-old to sleep on my chest and carry him down to the Thibauds’ farm. That’s why I’m up so late.” The crow’s-feet came out now, her smiling eyes warm in the lamplight. “Besides making you and your father tea, of course. Was everything all right on the north road?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Mama, do you know—? Would Papa have told his wife what he hadn’t told his son? He blew on his tea, blinking at the steam. Mama smiled at him, and stood to put t
he dishes away.

  She offered Marcel tea when he came out. Marcel excused himself politely. Julien shook his hand; they didn’t meet each other’s eyes.

  Papa strode out of his study as the stairwell door closed behind Marcel, a strip of blue-lined paper hanging unregarded from his right hand. He came to the sink to kiss Mama briefly, their free hands clasping each other a moment; then he took up his cup. “Benjamin is safe?” he asked quietly, and Julien nodded. He saw the relief spread through Papa’s face, saw his head go back to gulp his lukewarm tea, saw the paper sway in Papa’s hand. He kept his eyes on that paper, on its neat creased-and-torn edge, till his father’s hand moved just enough for it to flap gently open; and finally, as if reaching out to snatch a lizard off a sun-baked wall, he caught five words.

  Need 2nd safe house Annemasse.

  Then Papa set down his cup and, mildly, inattentively, not even looking at the paper in his hand, he dropped it down a burner hole into the stove. There was a brief flare. Mama sipped her tea. Julien gulped his, though it scalded his mouth, and swallowed.

  Annemasse. Where’s Annemasse? He looked at the stairwell door. Took another quick swallow. His parents were sharing a long, weary look.

  “Julien,” Papa said, “was it you I saw in the place?”

  Julien set his cup down. After a moment he nodded.

  “Did you hear what they were saying?”

  He nodded.

  “I want you to know it meant nothing. Men like him make threats in case they work. If he could have cowed us tonight his job would have become easy. You saw he didn’t act on it. He won’t.”

  Mama had gone still, her cup half raised to her mouth. “What threats, Martin?” she asked quietly. Papa raked a hand through his hair and opened his mouth.

  The hot tea burned in Julien’s throat. The empty cup rattled on its saucer as he put it in the sink. They were still looking at each other. “Thanks, Mama. Good night.”

  As the stairwell door closed he heard Mama asking again, “What threats?” and Papa giving her an answer he couldn’t hear.

  He took the stairs silently, two by two. He walked softly down the hall and opened Benjamin’s door. The bed was neatly made, the books lined up perfectly on the shelf. Except for the atlas, which stuck out.

  He spread it open and sat cross-legged on the hard boards of his friend’s floor. At least he had an idea of where to look.

  He put his finger on it. Annemasse. A town of twenty-five thousand in the greater Geneva area.

  Right up against the Swiss border.

  He closed the atlas and put it away. He crept down the stairs, heard Mama’s and Papa’s soft voices behind the second-floor door as he passed it by. He opened the downstairs door and stood on the stoop in the darkness. The night wind had risen and the moon had set. A million stars stared down.

  He will have to cross a border, said Papa. Am I going to be forced to arrest you both? said the police chief. I know some people, said Papa. Marcel said, I’m talking about lives.

  He shut his mind against the voices, shut his eyes. He breathed the cool night air deep into him, letting his mind spread out into the land around his home: the shadowed silence of the woods, the farmhouses and old stone barns, the tumbled rocks of the Tanières. Feeling presences in them, like the sound of people breathing in a pitch-dark room, hundreds of people still and silent as mice inside a wall.

  And the hunters, passing by.

  A border. His lips shaped the words without sound. He sank down and gripped the stoop beneath him with both hands, stilling their shaking against the stone.

  My father knows what he’s doing, eh? he said to Marcel in his mind. Marcel did not answer. The stars looked down at him, thousands upon thousands of eyes in the dark.

  Chapter 3

  WHAT HE’S DOING

  THE POLICE SEARCHED Tanieux the next morning during the church service. Motorcycles droned in the distance as Pastor Alexandre preached. One of Julien’s Catholic friends—Mass ended earlier—was on the steps of the Reformed Church with the news when the doors opened: the buses on the place were still empty.

  Tanieux held. So far.

  After lunch Julien went down to the farm. He climbed first into the Tanières with his empty Scout pack; Benjamin’s things were in the cave. He’d want them. Not the shiny prayer book, which he’d mostly seemed to want out of the Losiers’ house, but the little bundle of clothing, the chemistry notebook, and the pens. Julien crouched in the cave mouth as he packed them, looking in: a deep slit in the dark volcanic rock of one of the ancient hills, almost high enough to stand in, with a broad ledge in front and a tiny stream visible down the rocky hillside. It even faced west, away from the road. The safest place on this plateau. He cast an eye around at the neat stacks of firewood and kindling, the water bottles, the fire ring; then he crawled out, slung the pack on his back, and climbed back down.

  He gathered wild thyme for Mama as he came down through the Tanières, and the tender top leaves of nettles for soup. He did not think of Marcel. He felt rock and lichen under his fingers, grass around his calves, pine needles brushing him, each—in the little ravine where the sun hadn’t reached—with its perfectly round drop of dew. He bent to the stream and let the cold clear water well around his hands, lifted them and drank. He made his way down to the river and waded it where it spread ankle-deep over stones; he scrambled up the short, steep slope to the pines beside the north road and walked up toward the crossroads.

  On his right was the wild land he’d come from, rock and grass and twisted pine; on his left the little farms tucked into the folds of the land, pinewood and pasture and little fields brown with barley or golden with wheat. As the road climbed, the Vivarais plateau laid itself out around him wider and wider, green to the horizon beneath the huge sky. There were no words for what he felt for this place. This place he had come to as a stranger from Paris, three endless years ago now; his father’s hometown he had told Papa he hated, only to find it was bred in his bones.

  He looked west again, past the Tanières, away to the far green peaks of Mount Mézenc and the Vivarais range on the horizon. Ancient volcanoes grown over with grass, worn ramparts undefended by any but the weapons of the Spirit.

  And whoever had sent Pierre looking for guns.

  Julien had turned eighteen two months ago. Mama had served real beef that night. Jokes about men needing meat, while Julien held back from gulping his like a dog. Young man, fine young man. Jokes about shaving; Papa’s hand on his shoulder, warmth in his eyes, a little smile. What did you have to do to get them to call you a man without a little smile? Eighteen. Old enough for a soldier, in a nation that no longer had an army. Old enough, by all the laws of man, to learn to kill.

  That wasn’t his path. He had known that a long time, and he had chosen it. Evil was resisted by the power of God, not the power of the gun. This had come down to him from his father, from his pastor, from his grandfather, and he had chosen it, in the dark of the old stone church, his soul standing up like a candle flame at Pastor Alexandre’s ringing voice vowing, We will resist them by the weapons of the Spirit.

  Witness was one of those weapons. He knew that too. He remembered, in that church courtyard, how the letter had looked like the sword of the Lord in Marcel’s hand. He remembered Papa’s passionate voice: We dare not deny any man his chance at repentance, either by killing or by failing to speak out against his evil. He looked at the road ahead, and in his mind he saw the préfet’s unmoved face, eyes hard and empty as gun barrels, heard the police chief’s laugh ring like a blade. Was it for those men’s souls his father had risked himself?

  Himself, and the people who needed him and what he did.

  Himself and Benjamin.

  Julien stopped on the road and faced west, toward the far green peaks. You had to keep secrets, even from your family. He understood that. But keeping secrets and standing witness—protest letters and safe houses in Annemasse? Burning your notes before your son can see them and defying
your enemy to his face when you don’t even have to?

  “He knows what he’s doing,” he said aloud. His voice came out small and hard in the vastness, in the wind. “He knows what he’s doing,” he said louder. “Look what they’re having him organize.” He turned sharply to look behind him. But he was alone beneath the wide sky. “I wish You would tell me what to do,” he whispered.

  The mountains stood green and silent in the sunlight, as they had for a thousand years. The east wind from behind him blew his hair into his eyes.

  After a long minute he turned, and walked on.

  “Yeah. It’s really good. Really hidden.” Julien stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the brush shelter Pierre had built in the woods behind the Rostins’ farmhouse. It was good. Julien hadn’t spotted it till he was ten meters from it, even with Benjamin pointing. The woods themselves felt like a shelter here, dark pines packed together, the air dim and green.

  “He took me out here this morning,” Benjamin said, “and dared me to find it. I think he wanted to lay an actual bet, but his mother was listening. He said if walking in circles for fifteen minutes trying to find a hideout I knew was there didn’t make me feel safe, nothing would.”

  And do you feel safe? Julien didn’t ask.

  “Listen …” Benjamin hunched his shoulders.

  Julien looked away into the evergreen shadows. “So you want me to walk you to Grandpa’s or not?” he asked abruptly.

  “We already talked about it, the Rostins and I. There’s room for me and Gustav in the shelter, easily, and your grandfather has the Pelzinskis—”

  “All right. Fine. D’you need anything else from home?”

  “Julien.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” Julien shrugged, seeing again that dying sunset, the dark bulk of Marcel’s house against it. “We got through.”

  “Yeah.” Benjamin scuffed at the tawny pine needles underfoot. “I—I don’t know, I just couldn’t think, I kept seeing myself getting hurt up there and then you couldn’t dare bring me down. Even if you were there, and if you weren’t? You told me yourself people can die of exposure if they’re stuck in the rain for long enough—”