The close-pressed crowd bristles. Harry can almost see the static between them. He looks at the circle of faces and then feels obliged to look away. He wishes that his eye had found Edie’s face in the circle, that she could be here to share in the definition of this. It is a landmark, if not an end. For all of them it is an end of sorts. The trumpets blare and have their silence. Fabric falls, silently seismic. It is done.

They walk to the edge of the square afterward and lean on the balustrade by the church. Harry measures his steps. The wind is the only sound, as if the village cannot bear to speak, cannot bear to break it, to acknowledge it and to pass on. It is a collectively held breath. They stand in black units, in pairs and mute groups, in wordless surmise. There are no words.

Harry looks over the valley. The mist clings to the river, but for a minute the sun breaks through, hedges and barns show their shapes, fields are green, and it is over. They watch the mist roll over the contours of the valley.

Harry feels a strange mixture of sorrow and satisfaction as he sees Gabriel’s statue for the first time. The bare feet of the stone woman are planted in a hayfield and her left hand, palm downward, caresses the tops of the grass. Her head is bowed forward and her right hand covers her eyes. She is unmistakable, though.

“It’s her. It is Madeleine, isn’t it?” Harry compares the statue with the young woman who is standing just feet away from him.

“It is, but she’s also France,” Gabriel adds. “She is all the mothers, daughters, widows, and sisters, their loss and the weight of war.”

“It’s just what it should be.”

Madeleine is standing at Gabriel’s side then. “T’as froid?” he asks.

Gabriel rubs the cold from her hands, peels his gloves off, and pushes them onto her fingers. There is a strange sudden intimacy to the action, and Harry is both compelled to watch and feels as if he ought to avert his eyes. Her face is very pale today and unmistakably the twin of Gabriel’s statue.

“Il est malade?” Her eyes turn to Harry. She wiggles her comically oversized fingers and nods a smile toward him.

“C’est ces temps.”

“What does she say?” Harry asks.

“That we all need a drink.”