‘I don’t want to be brave.’ Her eyes seemed very large, there in the darkness.
‘Please. For me.’ They would both have need of bravery, he knew, before the month was over. It had been weeks now since the enemy had come ashore upon the Norman beaches to the north. Weeks, and still the Reich was fool enough to stand its ground. They knew, they all knew, it was over. Just last night, Jurgen – strong solid Jurgen who had been there longer than anyone – had turned world-weary eyes on Hans above his glass of whisky. ‘We’re finished, you know,’ Jurgen had told him. ‘Finished. Only the Führer won’t admit it. He thinks we’ll win it back for him, the fool.’ It was treason to talk like that, but Hans hadn’t said anything. Jurgen had looked at him again, and smiled wryly. ‘Ah well, I’ve lived enough, I think, and there is no one left at home to miss me when I’m gone. Tell me, do you still see that girl?’
‘What girl?’
‘I do have eyes, you know. Do you still see her?’
‘Yes.’
Above the whisky glass the weary eyes had grown curious, and almost kind. ‘Do you love her?’
‘Yes.’
A moment longer Jurgen had watched him, and then he’d thrown something on the table, a small black bag of velvet cloth, tied with a cord. It rattled when it landed, like a sack of shifting pebbles. ‘Then give her these. I have no use for them.’
‘What are they?’ he had asked.
He’d been stunned, then, and even tonight his hand shook slightly as he felt inside his jacket for that same small velvet bag. ‘I have brought something for you,’ he said to Isabelle. He held out the bag and she looked at him.
‘I don’t need anything.’
‘This is not anything. It’s diamonds.’
She echoed the word back at him, her dark eyes flashing disbelief. ‘But where would you get diamonds?’
‘From a friend. He was given orders to bury them below the hotel, for safety. So they will be there when our Army comes back.’ Again he touched her face, he couldn’t help himself. ‘Only, we won’t be coming back
‘Don’t.’
‘I said you must be brave. I do not plan to die, my love.’ His smile was a promise. ‘I will come back when this is over. I will come back for you.’
He felt the longing in her kiss, and the dampness of her tears against his own skin, but when he opened his eyes she was smiling. He murmured something soft, in German, that she couldn’t understand, and closed his fingers over hers, around the velvet bag. ‘You keep these safe, for us,’ he told her. ‘They are our future.’
Our future, he thought sadly, and he reached for her again …
The night was nearly over when he wound his way back through the tunnels. Six steps on, then left … this must be how the blind felt, he thought, with the darkness thick against his face and the sound of his own breathing harsh in that still space. It was a despairing sort of feeling. Fourteen steps … he put out his hand, trailing it along the dry and dusty stone, feeling for the iron ring of the door. His hand touched cloth instead.
Warm cloth, that breathed.
He felt the fingers groping at his throat, cutting off his choking gasp of surprise, but five years of army life had made his own reactions swift and automatic. This was no fellow soldier, standing sentry – the shirt he felt was soft, not stiff. Not a uniform. And the words of hate were hissed in French, not German. Deprived of breath, Hans moved from instinct. Up came his own hands, feeling, finding, then one sharp twisting motion and a sickening crack. The fingers at his throat relaxed, fell away, and he breathed a painful breath.
This time he found the iron ring and wrenched the thick door open, letting in a singing rush of air. Beyond the door the road and roofs were silent. Nothing stirred. The sky was something less than black, a creeping greyness edging out the stars, but still he had to risk the torch to see the body at his feet. The yellow light touched a torn shirt, and brown long-fingered hands, and travelled upwards to the staring face.
Her face. Oh, God. Her brother’s face. She’d shown him once, a photograph. ‘You wouldn’t get along,’ she’d said.
‘Isabelle …’ His hand jerked and the torch fell from it, shattering upon the ancient stone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Before me shower’d the rose in flakes;
behind I heard the puffd pursuer;
Beside me, Jim Whitaker bent his head to light a cigar, and the scrape of the match sounded loud in the quiet room.
Garland shifted in her seat, her eyes gleaming like the eyes of a satisfied cat. ‘Oooh, it’s just like something out of a movie. He really killed her brother? How exciting.’
It was not, I thought, the word I would have chosen. Not exciting. It was, as Madame Chamond had warned us, a story of great sadness. Of all the fighters of the French Resistance, why did it have to be Isabelle’s own brother who met Hans in that dark tunnel? Fate had a heartless sense of humour, sometimes. One death, I thought, and three lives ruined. So it had been with John and Isabelle, more than seven hundred years earlier, when young Arthur of Brittany’s murder had brought John’s great empire crashing to the ground. How many times had they relived those moments, John and Hans, and wished the deed undone? Two men in separate centuries, both loving Isabelles, bound by a single destiny that sent its unrelenting echo down the years.
A tiny chill swept fleeting through the room, and Simon fidgeted, unable to stand the suspense. ‘So what happened?’ he asked Madame Chamond. ‘What happened to Hans and Isabelle?’