While his father washed up in the water closet, Raphaël kissed her. He was wearing a uniform coat from the Great War that she’d dug out of an old trunk, and its coarse wool scratched her cheek. Even though Raphaël was much taller than she, he clung to her, and she felt the hunger and sorrow of their last lovemaking an hour earlier.
She was crying when she led the men back to the dark kitchen. The underground operation was shrouded in mystery. Whoever took them away tonight might save them from death—or betray them once they realized that these two men were Jews.
A package wrapped in oilpaper and tied with string was resting on the side counter, and Claudette motioned for Isaac Baume to take it. Outside, freezing rain drizzled, and she tightened her cape around her. If only Raphaël and his father could find shelter in a dry, warm place.
Isaac Baume’s hand, in a mitten she had knit for him from old wool, hovered over Claudette’s head. “May God bless you and keep you. May God shine light on you and be gracious to you. May God turn toward you and grant you peace.”
“Thank you for your blessing.” Claudette’s eyes teared up again.
He touched her wet cheek. “One day, God willing, we’ll meet in peacetime.”
Where?
Raphaël stood still under the door overhang, his sad green eyes boring into hers, and she could feel the heat of the message he was sending her. He loved her.
“I promise to come looking for you here after the war,” he said.
She put her hand over her heart. “I promise that I will wait. Right here.”
The sound of rolling carriage wheels coming from the direction of the vineyard grew louder. The carriage came to a stop, and a horse snorted and pounded its hooves on the gravel. The driver, a young man Claudette recognized as a gardener despite the oilcloth covering his head, asked, “Ready?”
Raphaël gave Claudette’s hand a last squeeze before following his father into the cart. The rhythm of his uneven gait continued like music in her head after the cart had disappeared from sight.
She crossed herself and sent Jesus a silent prayer to protect these two Jews.
Chapter Fifteen
Claudette
Château de Valençay, France
September 1942
“You have never seen any pregnant maids at the château,” Madame Couture said.
Claudette wrapped protective arms around her protruding belly. Her morning sickness had given her away to Madame Couture early on. Lately, Claudette’s back had begun aching more, a small punishment for her sin. First an affront to God, her sin was now an offense to humans, as Madame Couture’s haranguing reminded her.
“A girl stays in the village until she can return to work,” the seamstress said, “leaving the baby in the care of her mother or a neighbor.”
Claudette looked down at the garment she was sewing. Madame Couture meant well; she was concerned about her. At La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois, whenever a girl married in a hurry and delivered a baby shortly thereafter, the stigma accompanied the child well into his or her school years. The disgrace of having conceived out of wedlock had become a part of Claudette, like her cursed leg. But unlike her disability, the baby growing inside her filled her with an inner glow. Her love for her unborn child was worth the shame. She had never expected to be a mother, and now the miraculous events—being loved by Raphaël and carrying his child—were two blessings tied together. She would raise their baby until the war was over, then Raphaël would return, and they would be a family.
Madame Couture opened the window, and Claudette breathed in the fresh scent of the lemon orchard. Her senses had become more acute, perhaps because she was smelling for two, bringing the outside world into her baby’s safe, cushiony place. Yesterday, she walked outside to take in the fragrance of moist earth of the herb garden. It had been over two years since she worked the soil, and she missed growing her own vegetables. She would do it again once her baby was old enough to toddle next to her.
Apparently having had a new thought, Madame Couture turned to face the room. “Claudette, were you violated? Is that what happened?”
Claudette shook her head.
“Is he already married?”
“No,” she murmured.
“Well, then, since it must be a staff member, why don’t you let Monsieur Vincent take it up with him?”
Marguerite, Madame Couture, Monsieur Vincent, and even the duchess might believe her immoral, but they showed her kindness. That sympathy would evaporate if she revealed the truth. She couldn’t risk getting fired and losing her protection at Valençay when the Nazis were at the door.
Sunday, Monsieur Vincent told Claudette to go to the village church instead of the duchess’s Mass. “At least you can confess to Father Sauveterre,” he told her.
The priest pressed, and when Claudette refused to name the father, he threatened her with eternal hell. “You’re about to bring a bastard into the world. Your sin will forever brand both of you,” he said. “Bastard,” he repeated, spitting out the word.
Claudette cried, scared of burning in hell, yet she swallowed her secret. What choice did she have? Bastard. She wrapped her arms around her stomach to shield her baby from the unforgiving word. The only thing she knew for sure was that the child growing inside her was a sign that his father was still alive. Until they reunited, she had to keep herself safe for all of them.
Father Sauveterre changed his tone. “Child, isn’t your disability enough of God’s punishment for your stubbornness?”
Claudette sobbed harder. Of course she had been the cause of her own disability. She, no one else, had been stuck in her mother’s birth canal, presenting her buttocks to the world and clinging inside with fetal fingers. Yet now, in her misery, she craved compassion and mercy, not this cruelty. She craved Jesus’s comforting hand on her hair and Mary’s motherly love.
Except that she couldn’t repent. She would have loved Raphaël all over again. Forgive me, Jesus, for not seeking Your forgiveness, she prayed instead.
“These things happen more often than people care to admit,” Madame Couture told Claudette the day after Father Sauveterre’s failed interrogation. “The man is forced to marry the girl and make the baby legitimate—”
Her lecture was interrupted when the duchess entered the atelier with a grand sweep of her silk robe’s ostrich feathers. Accompanying her was a svelte woman with bobbed brown hair and deep-set eyes like the centers of poppy flowers. At first, the dresses draped over her arm concealed the small bulge of pregnancy.
“Please take out the seams to fit her condition, and would you please sew Madame Galvin a couple of comfortable frocks?” the duchess asked Madame Couture.
The guest threw a look at Claudette, probably comparing their pregnancies; Claudette was farther along. She suffered from back pain and was reclining in an upholstered chair, her feet propped up on a stool, her work in her lap. She tried to straighten up but her arms couldn’t reach to lift her bad leg off the stool.
