Aimee went on. ‘They are powerful enough to blow open your treasure chest. We can take all of your treasure any time we want. But we are not thieves, Madame Clare. All we want is to be paid fairly for our help. At the next town you will stop and buy us some new clothes. Our boots are as thin as paper and winter will soon be here. We want warm coats and stockings and hats and oilskin coats. Is that not fair?’

The woman’s mouth set in a hard line. ‘It’s fair.’

‘Then let’s go.’

Daisy was harnessed and fresh in spite of her race up the hill. As they’d walked back down from the wood to Attilly, Aimee told Marius she had never been this far on the drovers’ road and didn’t know the way east. Anyway, when Silver Hand and the tank crew recovered their sight they would set out down that moorland road looking for then. The best plan was to keep travelling with Madame Clare on the main roads. It would be crowded and blocked from time to time. But they’d have food and shelter and look like a family, not a pair of runaways.

The wagons set off from Attilly towards Saint Quentin. News spread like a spilled oil-lamp fire that Saint Quentin was being taken by the Australians. To the south the Americans had joined the war and were driving the Germans back.

It was gloomy news for Marius. Aimee said, ‘If it means an end to the war by Christmas then it’s good.’ The boy just nodded.

29 September 1918: Attilly

Father Benedict shook Sergeant Grimm warmly by the hand. ‘You have done well,’ he said.

Silver Hand rubbed his eyes, still sore from Marius’s gas grenade from two days before. ‘I think the game is up, Benedict, my friend. We need to get across to the German side even if we don’t have the Whippet tank plans. At least we can tell them a gas shell can knock the tanks out.’

They sat in the bar room of the tavern at Attilly. The landlord came to collect the empty plates from their mutton stew. Benedict looked up at him. ‘Did you see that woman with the two runaway kids?’

The red-faced, sweating landlord glared. ‘I had the posters up but I never went outside. I didn’t know she had those kids with her when she asked for a room.’

Benedict smiled like one of the angels in Cléry church he’d left behind. ‘Of course you didn’t. How could you? No one is blaming you, good sir.’

The man gathered the empty plates and gave a silent nod. ‘But what can you tell me about the woman?’ Father Gaulle asked.