CHAPTER 47 - AIRAINES, FRANCE

CHAPTER 47

AIRAINES, FRANCE

The staccato rhythm of rain on the barn roof slowed to a stop. Ollie’s breath, penetrating the cold air, produced a puffy mist. Morning sunlight spilled through cracks in the boards.

He’d spent the night alone in the barn, with the exception of Madeleine stopping in at one point. Without speaking, she’d placed his jacket over his shoulders, set a blanket at his feet, and returned to the cottage. And for the next several hours, he deliberated over the note. Boar wrote the message, he repeated to himself. But a voice deep inside his head continued to remind him that Madeleine, not Boar, had been the first to retrieve Duchess.

Ollie’s body shuddered with anguish. He shook away images of the message and thought of Susan—her eloquent stature, the exquisite curvature of her cheekbones. A flash of their trip to Clacton-on-Sea and the way she had enlightened him on the history of pigeons in war, making him realize how little pilots, especially crop-dusters, knew about flying. The way their knees slightly touched as they sat on the sofa together, sending a tingle up his spine and making him forget, at least for the moment, about the loss of his family. He admired her bravery as bombs fell on London, her unwavering belief that her mission would enable Britain to win the war. And her tenacity to carry on, no matter how bad things got.

Ollie struggled to maintain his faith. As he reached into his jacket to reexamine the message, he heard the plodding of hooves. He stepped to the barn door and peeked outside to see a large wagon being pulled by a pair of bristly mules, vapor spewing from their nostrils. Holding the reins was a priest, Ollie assumed, considering the man was wearing a dark-brown clergy robe with a hood pulled over his head.

The cottage door opened. “Lieutenant,” Madeleine called.

The priest pulled on the reins. The mules brayed, and the wagon stopped.

Ollie, realizing that this must be the guide Madeleine had arranged, left the barn. As he approached, the priest turned and removed his hood, causing Ollie to slow his pace.

A mask covered half the priest’s face, below the eyes. What appeared to be a molded piece of copper was painted a bright flesh tone, a shade or two lighter than the exposed skin on the man’s forehead. Hair clippings, the same dark brown as his sideburns, were glued to form a mustache.

Boar stepped to the doorway and stopped. He glanced at the priest, then turned to Madeleine. “Is this our man?”

Madeleine nodded and walked to the wagon. “Lucien Bellamy, my husband’s friend.”

Boar cleared his throat. “I didn’t expect a priest.”

“He’s a monk, not a priest,” Madeleine said.