“Stop whimpering or you’ll weaken your grip. Now move!” the duchess ordered in a tone she’d never used with Claudette before. Her hand pressed on Claudette’s back. “Go!”

In a daze, Claudette stepped forward and sat on the windowsill. In her head she heard Marguerite crying over her sister and saw the Nazi officer shoot the old woman.

“The war will be over, and you’ll get back to him. Alive.” The duchess held out the rope and forced it into Claudette’s hand. “Go now!”

Claudette looped the rope around her leg brace and, using all the strength in her arms, let herself slide down.

Hands caught her as she reached the ground on the château’s north side. A minute later, the duchess lowered down her bag.

No! She couldn’t leave. Claudette turned to look up the solid wall. No; scaling the stones buttressed against invading enemies was a feat for a young knight in a romance novel.

Monsieur Vincent ushered her to the waiting Peugeot. Several jerricans of petrol were strapped on the car’s roof along with suitcases. Whispering, he instructed Claudette to remove her brace, then helped her climb into the trunk of the car. She had barely arranged herself in the tight space when Jules Hallberg slid in. He rounded himself around her folded knees, his feet next to Claudette’s head.

“Once you’re on the open road, the two of you can move to the back seat. You’ve got your IDs.” Then Monsieur Vincent added, “God be with you.”

The smell of petrol and old shoes filled Claudette’s nostrils. “Benjamin!” she cried out in a low voice. “Please keep him safe from the Nazis.”

“Of course I will. I’ve known Léonie Doisneau since she was a child. I promise to pay for his keep.”

Claudette’s heart was breaking as he slammed down the trunk. The sound of heavy breathing from the young man curled against her legs was mixed with the slapping of leather straps and the rattle of buckles. They were locked inside.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Uzi Yarden

Loire Valley, France

September 1946

Get the lay of the land. Hilda’s words echoed in Uzi’s head. Rather than returning the way he’d come, he walked away from the road. Behind the tavern building was a small ravine, its grassy banks rising toward scattered willow trees whose branches drooped into the water. One nearby shack was a toolshed, the next was for laundry. Past them was a large stone shed with a fenced enclosure, and Uzi smelled the distinct odor of cow manure and wet hay.

He purposely didn’t look back to see if he was being watched as he ambled, trying to appear aimless. He had to avoid confrontation.

And there, in the cowshed, propped on a one-legged stool, a prepubescent boy was singing a tune while milking a cow. Uzi had noticed these kinds of stools; a French farmer belted it to his backside and moved with it from one cow to the next, freeing his hands. Eight cows in two rows waited for their turns. Uzi couldn’t see if there was another person in the shed.

“Bonsoir,” he said, realizing too late that he should have said Bonjour. The boy’s singing stopped, but he continued to milk. Uzi picked up an empty pail, grabbed a stool leaning nearby, and settled next to the cow across the aisle.

The boy raised his eyes in surprise. Uzi smiled and began to milk. The boy asked a question. Uzi shrugged and released one hand to indicate that he didn’t understand. A second boy, identical to the first one, appeared. He was holding a long, thick wooden stick, its end whittled to a point, like a sword.

Uzi rose, letting his unbelted stool fall sideways, and raised both hands in mock surrender. “Je suis de Palestine.” I’m from Palestine—the French phrase he had rehearsed. The boy relaxed his hold on the sword-stick, and Uzi pointed to himself, said, “Juif,” then pointed to the two boys. “Juifs?”

They exchanged a glance, then shook their heads.

“Tobias? Elias?” Uzi said the names he assumed they hadn’t heard in a long time.

They recoiled. Uncertainty furrowed their young brows. Their cheeks were pink and soft, and their upper lips did not show a first fuzz. Under their work shirts there was no muscle mass. This was a good stage for them to arrive in Eretz Israel; there they’d develop and become men.

Uzi searched his pocket for the flash cards and showed them the one that translated to Do you want to come to Eretz Israel with me? He added, “A kibbutz,” and showed them a flash card that read Une grande famille.

The eyes of one of the boys suddenly widened as he looked past Uzi. Uzi turned and saw the tavern keeper and another man.

“What is going on here?” the second man asked Uzi in English.

“We’ve been looking for these boys,” Uzi replied, relieved to have an interpreter. “Their uncle left them in that village—” He scrambled to find his slips of paper, wishing he could pronounce the names of the places without them.

“Where is that uncle?”

Uzi took a guess. “Killed in the war. There are relatives in Palestine who want to raise the boys. Parents,” he added, using the French pronunciation to strengthen his case. “If the boys want to come, that is,” he said, glancing at them.

From their positions by the cows, out of sight of each other, the boys stared at him with identical childish, blank faces, as if they’d been trained to show no emotion.

“I am their teacher,” the man said. “Are you saying that I was wasting myself on Jews?”

Uzi had never encountered anti-Semitism in its naked form. Arab hatred of Jews stemmed from mounting territorial disputes. What was the basis for it here? How had Jews wronged these people? Yet all over Europe, hateful words progressed to actions—to the murdering of Jews. Uzi had never felt the sting of such a hateful remark uttered with no shame.

Concealing his fury, he forced a smile. “You didn’t waste your time, I’m sure. Are they good students?”

The teacher puffed a nonverbal reply and stepped away.

Uzi sensed movement behind him and turned his head in time to see half a dozen men from the tavern approaching. One burly man carried a pitchfork. They surrounded Uzi, and the stares they had speared him with at the bar exploded into shouts. Breath smelling of alcohol assaulted him. One man raised a fist four centimeters from Uzi’s nose.

They would pounce on him the moment they spotted a twitch of fear on his face, Uzi knew. The first to throw a punch would unleash the crowd’s aggression, and this Jew-hating mob might turn murderous. Recently, Arabs had lynched a Jewish merchant in the Haifa market.

Uzi hadn’t come here to fight. It wouldn’t deliver the children to him. But prepared he must be. He inched his foot toward the stick-sword that the boy had dropped. Uzi knew he was younger and quicker than all of these men, and he was an expert in kapap, the hand-to-hand combat developed by the Haganah in response to the British decree forbidding the Jews to carry arms.

Three men stepped forward.

In a flash, Uzi picked up the stick and planted himself in front of them, body taut, knees slightly bent. He held the stick with both hands, one on each end, and raised it in a defense-attack position. His eyes fired a warning.

Stunned at his quick maneuver, the men stopped moving. Uzi read a tiny loss of determination on their faces. The pitchfork was lowered. Uzi straightened and dropped one end of the stick but not his guard. He scanned the men’s faces, locking eyes with each one in a message of his strength. He stopped at the tavern keeper and gestured with his chin to signal that the two of them should step aside.

The tavern keeper moved, and the men parted like the Red Sea.

Adrenaline still flowing in him, Uzi followed the man deep into the cowshed, where they stopped behind a pile of hay. Uzi selected the flash card that read Puis-je payer vos dépenses? He raised two fingers to indicate both boys. He didn’t know whether they would go with him, but first he had to clear this hurdle. If the boys left, this man would lose two laborers.

“Cinquante mille,” the man said. With his finger, he sketched the number in the air.

Fifty thousand francs? “No,” Uzi said. That sum was several times more than what Miriam and Hilda had given him. Two thousand? he signaled with two fingers.

Eight, the man signaled back.

They settled on five thousand. Uzi opened his backpack and kept his hand deep inside while locating the bills.

They walked to the front of the cowshed, and the man shooed away the crowd. Only the boys remained. He spoke to them. They lowered their heads. Their chins trembled, and they put their arms around each other.

They glared at Uzi. “Non,” they said in unison.

Confused, Uzi wondered if he should just leave. He had ruined this life for them. Or had he? When the tavern keeper and his wife accepted the boys, they must have known they were Jewish. Going forward, though, the whole community would know it too.