Assignment in Brittany (37 page)

He tore the paper into four small pieces. They made a poor breakfast, but the hope they had given him helped him to swallow them.

Footsteps outside the cellar door made him alert. But no one came in. Changing guard, probably.

He felt the lead-shot in his pocket, and it cheered him. How had they known he was in this cellar? Had they been watching all last night from the meadows behind the town hall? Had they seen the dim light which the electric torches would send into the darkness? That must be it...Anyhow, that meant he had friends, and patient friends. He felt better every minute. Whoever had written that note was a good psychologist, or perhaps just someone with a heart as well as a mind. It came to the same thing.

As he was slipping into sleep he remembered that this room, at the back of the building, faced not only meadows and trees. There was also the road to the right, the road leading north. That was where he had entered Saint-Déodat when he had first
arrived. And the two houses nearest the market-place along that stretch of road belonged to Guézennec and Trouin: Trouin, who now kept open house where the men brought their drinks to sit and talk together; Guézennec, who now gave shelter to Kerénor. These two houses were together. From their backs one could watch this cellar. Then he thought of the tree in the market-place, yesterday, as he had been marched into the town hall. Kerénor had been there, and he had been with Anne. Anne, he thought: it was Anne who was at the bottom of all this. He was convinced of that in his own mind as he fell asleep. His sleep was all the deeper for that last thought.

This time he was awakened by a heavy, dull, distant noise. An explosion. It could only be an explosion. It wasn’t likely that British air raids were being carried out in broad daylight: not yet, anyhow.

After that awakening he couldn’t get to sleep again. He limped once more round the room. He kept thinking about that noise. Perhaps two or three miles away. It might be on the railway, or on the main road down in the valley. His mind was racing now. The explosion might be accidental. But there was just a chance it had been carefully engineered.

If it had, and if it had been arranged by anyone in this village, then there was only one object in it. It was a diversion to keep Sharkface and his friends occupied elsewhere.
He
wouldn’t seem so important to them today, with an explosion for them to investigate. He didn’t let himself fully believe this wild hope. Yet, through the long day, as he was left alone, he kept finding explanations to justify such an idea. The explosion wasn’t in the village itself, so that no one here would suffer direct reprisals. It was down in the valley within reach of twenty villages, so
that the investigation would be more complicated, would take greater time. Whoever had engineered the explosion had wanted the Huns to be occupied today. Perhaps he only believed all this because he wanted to believe it, because the belief gave him courage for one more day; but he believed it.

In the late afternoon he thought he heard a distant sound of many footsteps, from somewhere upstairs. But down here no one came.

By the time the evening light waned he was convinced that his guess must have been right about the explosion. Without that, he would have had an unpleasant day.

When Ehrlich, Sharkface, and two others entered the cellar late in the evening, he learned just how unpleasant the day might have been. But still they didn’t get any information. The bad temper which they had been unable to conceal when they entered the room must have been considerably increased by the time they left. But long before then Hearne was insensible.

He was becoming accustomed to the painful awakening from unconsciousness. His first worry was how long he could keep up this business of passing out before they twisted any information out of him. Next time, he was sure, the technique would be changed to keep him from being completely knocked out. They would find a way all right. He lay and worried in the darkness. He looked at the patch of window, at the strong silver of the moon. He didn’t even bother to count his wounds this time. He was a bloody mess: that was what he was, a bloody mess.

And then, in the middle of his depression, he remembered that the day was over.
One more day.
And it was over. Painfully,
agonisingly, he crawled across the dark floor. It was sticky; it smelled foully. Hunger was the least of his troubles: even this thirst and the swollen tongue were little enough. He had to get on his feet; he had to be able to move his body as if it were one piece, instead of the twenty throbbing nerve-ends it had become. He touched the wall and slowly pulled himself to a kneeling position against it. He felt a cool, sweet sagging. When he became conscious, he found himself lying again on the floor. Once more he pulled himself on to his knees. This time he was at last on his feet. He clung to the wall in the darkness. It’s getting late, he thought despairingly.
Courage, one more day. Courage.
But it was getting late. There was not much courage in the feeling of a stone wall in a blood-stained cell.

He must think of something to stop this attack of nerves. If he let his mind give way, then there was no hope at all for him. Despair never won any game. Defeat came quickly to those who thought of it.

He stood in the darkness, his weight sagging against the cold wall. Outside the moonlight was fading. He thought of the curve of hills...cloud shadows weaving over furrow-stitched fields...the smell of hay and clover under the sun’s warm rays...the hum of bees and the clear note of a girl’s gentle voice laughing...a light, clear voice made to sing. Made to sing
Au Claire de la Lune.
Grey changing to blue as the sky changed above her. He thought of the blueness of her eyes, and it was the blueness of the sea, changing like the sea in shade and sunshine. He could feel their soft coolness, their warm clearness, as if they were the gentle waves of the sea itself. He clung to the wall, and thought of the sea’s blue depths.

And then he was walking round the wall, feeling his way in the darkness, and the despair had been washed out of his heart. If no friend came, he was thinking, then he would have to work out his own plan of escape. He must do it at once...a few more days of this and he wouldn’t be able to escape at all. Now his mind was busy thinking of chances to take, of ways to get the guard to come into this cellar.

From the darkness outside came footsteps on the village road. There were voices, the sound of a cart. People were moving about, out there. For a moment he wondered if he had already begun to imagine things, and then the melancholy ringing of the bells in the church tower reminded him. Today was the dawn of Sunday, today there was to be the
Pardon.
The people were coming in from the farms and the small hamlets round Saint-Déodat. He could almost see them coming to the church, the women in their elaborate lace caps and black, velvet-trimmed dresses, with their stiff shawls and aprons, the men walking carefully in their best clothes. They were coming through the night to gather in the market-place, in time for the first Mass at dawn. He listened carefully, and knew he must be right in his guess. There was the sound of feet, slow, hesitating feet, or the sound of wheels. But there was no laughter, no talk. Even the children were silent. Only the bell sounded its solemn note. Now, now, now, the notes hammered into his brain.

He turned towards the door. Now.

He could hear a movement from the cellar outside. He had reached the door and flattened himself along its left side: that was the way it opened. That way he could perhaps surprise the man who would come in.

He filled his lungs with air and let out a yell. His throat didn’t
let him make much of a noise, but the guard would hear it. “I’m willing to talk,” he would say, and the guard would halt in the doorway. That was all he wanted. It would be interesting to see if one-armed jiu-jitsu would work. His breath gave out, and he listened. There was a movement from outside, the sound of a key in the lock.

“Keep quiet. Quick. Can you walk?” The voice was urgent, and it was Breton. A dimmed torch searched the room anxiously.

“Here,” he croaked, and put out an arm to the two figures in the doorway. “Here.”

“Quick.”

He needed no more urging. As he came out into the large cellar, lit feebly by a lamp on the table, a third man brushed past him. He was dragging the guard. The limp body was flung into Hearne’s cell. Its swollen face and protruding tongue thudded on the stone floor. The third man locked the door, straightened his large back, and started after the other two, who were helping Hearne to climb the stairs. As he passed a large stack of papers and books in the corner of the cellar he stooped quickly and thrust the keys under the heap of documents. They were well lost. And then he was behind Hearne, pushing him up the stairs. Strong hands he had. Hearne thought of the German’s twisted neck. Yes, strong hands.

“Quietly,” whispered one of the men, and they halted in the narrow passage. This was how he had been brought by Razorpuss, Hearne remembered. Ahead of them would be the large meeting-hall with its flag-draped platform. There were footsteps, either in that hall or beyond it at the front door. The Bretons had heard them, too. Moving silently on their bare feet, they pulled and pushed Hearne, through the unobtrusive
door in the passage wall to their left. He didn’t even remember seeing it last time he had been taken through here.

Now they stood in another long passage, listening as they paused. The insignificant door was silently closed behind them, and then they were moving down the gentle slope of the floor. Hearne, concentrating painfully on each footstep, had only time to think, we’ve doubled on our tracks; we’ve travelled to the other end of the building—to the west, farther away from the road and church; the bells are just so much fainter. And then they were through another doorway, heavy, thick, resisting. They were back in a large room: a store-room. It smelled like a grocer’s shop. After the bleakness of the cellar it was warm and friendly, and yet nauseating. There were too many odours for an empty stomach to digest. Its comfortable stuffiness smothered. One of the men felt Hearne’s weight sagging.

“Just twenty paces more,” he urged in a whisper. Hearne nodded, and moved desperately forward with the two unseen and unknown friends on either side supporting him when his body faltered. The third man, the man with the strong hands, held the torch. Its dim light flickered their way through the islands of barrels and sacks. Once, when footsteps overhead halted them, the large man pointed upwards, caricatured a salute, and grinned. So upstairs in this part of the building soldiers must be quartered.

They had reached the far wall of the room. Hearne, his sense of direction still alert, guessed this must be the outside wall of the building. His cell had faced north, the front entrance to the town hall had faced south. Then this wall would face west: it would be near the village school, for the school stood in the fields behind the north-west corner of the market-place.

The torch picked out the broad double door in the wall. The large man was slowly lifting up the cross-bar until its end was free of one half of the door. Supporting it there with one hand, he pushed the free side of the door slightly open, as the torch was switched off. He stood there, waiting, listening. Hearne could see the black shadow of a tree, could feel the night air whip the gashes on his face, strike his naked shoulders. The Breton motioned quickly, and one of the men holding Hearne leaped down into the darkness. The other shoved him forward, and jumped behind him so that they fell together. They were lying in the shadows of a deep cart-track, on grass edged with deep ruts. Above them the large man edged his way out of the door, one hand still above his head holding the cross-bar in place until the last minute. Then he jumped, thrusting the opened half of the door back in place as he leaped. The door stayed shut. The cross-bar inside had fallen of its own weight and held it secure.

To the south of them was the square and the movement of people grouping under its trees. Harder boots struck the pavement round the corner from where they lay. Patrol or sentries... Hearne didn’t care. The jar of the six-foot drop had seared his bones like a flame. His body couldn’t seem to obey him: it wouldn’t rise at the touch of his companions’ hands; all it could do was to lie and tremble, like a moth after its wings had struck a lighted candle.

“Quick!” The large man’s whisper was urgent. Hearne stifled his groans and raised himself slowly. They half carried, half lifted him into the darkness of trees and bushes. Ahead was a small square house, the school-house, thought Hearne. But that was no good—it was one of the first places the Boches
would look for a hiding man. Dismay and desperation gave him strength. The quicker they reached there, the quicker he could get away from it. For one thing seemed absolutely certain: the three men were determined to take him there.

They almost ran over the last twenty yards of grass. But it wasn’t the school-house to which they led him. They halted in the trees at the edge of the children’s playground, moving cautiously into the three-walled shelter at its side.

From the darkness at the back of the shed a voice vaguely familiar said, “ Splendid.” Hearne, swaying on his feet, looked at the three dark shapes beside him. Even now he couldn’t see their faces properly. The man who had spoken limped forward and held his arm to steady him.

“Can you walk? Try, please.” It was Kerénor all right.

“Yes.”

“Good.” Kerénor was slipping a long, loose piece of clothing over his head, pulling it down into place on his shoulders. When Hearne’s face had struggled free from the folds of the material, he was alone with Kerénor.

“The others?” he whispered, as Kerénor wrapped a cloak round him.

“Gone to change their clothes for the procession. You and I will walk together.” Kerénor had thrust some kind of hat on his head. As they moved out of the shed, towards the path which would lead them into the market square, Hearne saw, even as he felt the long skirts pull round his knees, that Kerénor was dressed as he was. They followed the line of trees across the school playground, back towards the market-place. They were two priests coming to join in the celebration of their people.