The infiltrators, who were evidently in the pay of the Sicherheitsdienst, didn’t enter Group Rainbow, but an allied one, based about thirty kilometres away, called Afrique, which formed part of the regional organisation run by Lucien Maniotte. This they had managed to work out later. At the time the first they knew of the danger they were in was an attack by the Germans on Afrique’s camp in the forests. Two boys had been killed, at least twenty arrested and a mere half dozen had succeeded in stumbling away into the woods to hide until the Germans withdrew. To make matters worse, the camp had been a central training point and papers listing other Maquis groups in the region had been seized. They never knew if the papers alone were enough to betray the organisation and its leader, or whether any of the prisoners talked. Henri always said they could not be blamed if they did. Everyone knew torture worked and why. All you could hope for was time to take cover.

A week later he came into the schoolroom at Bonnemort where she was teaching the girls, and led her down to the garden.

‘The doctor was arrested yesterday at the clinic. The SD came for him.’

‘Oh, God.’ However much you prepare yourself, however well you know the risk, you can only go on by thinking it won’t happen. And when it does, it’s as bad as if it came as a total surprise. ‘Where have they taken him?’

‘No news.’

‘Henri, be careful. Go away to the Correze or the Tarn for a month or two.’

‘No need for that. The farm … The harvest… Micheline …’

A week later he was arrested in the cafe of Lepech Perdrissou with a dozen other men. The news was telephoned through to them at Bonnemort by the wife of the proprietor, whose husband had also been taken.

The first questions: Who took them? Where did they go? The answers, the gendarmes, to Racines, were a relief. Ariane was cheered that Henri had not been sought by name, but simply seized as part of a general round-up. Micheline saw nothing to reassure her. She did not weep; her stoicism was a rehearsal of her reaction a year later when Henri was killed. She went about her work with a dull endurance, doing twice as much as before.

Ariane went into Racines to make enquiries. She discovered that the supervision of the town had recently become stricter with the arrival of a new boss at the Kommandatur and a new chef at the Gendarmerie. The latter, she was told, who was French, was almost as bad as the former, who was German. He was from Alsace, a gross figure; he spoke German and had been especially chosen for his toughness in this difficult region. When she explained her plan to Micheline and Florence, the former was sceptical, even hostile.

‘You’ll just get yourself arrested,’ she said. ‘Then where’ll we be?’

Florence, however, supported her, killing a chicken, plucking it and wrapping it in a napkin. She descended to the cellar and brought up a tin of Micheline’s foie gras and a string of dried mushrooms.