Ettie sat alone in the church for so long that the woman who swept up noticed her and went to Father Varnier, who soon enough came to see if Ettie was all right. He asked if she would like to pray with him, and she said no, she wished to do more than pray. She was so slight, hardly more than a girl, not especially pretty, except to those who had loved her, but she looked fierce, with a brittle sort of determination. She was pale beneath her freckled skin, and her eyes were luminous and damp. The priest didn’t need further evidence to know what she meant. He had ties to both the French who were loyal to Charles de Gaulle and to the Jewish Resistance. Still, he was cautious even when speaking with a girl of seventeen. This is what had happened to their people, a division that would take decades to heal. When Ettie greeted him, he took note of her faint German accent, and was aware that she was a refugee, a most dangerous thing to be. He told her she was taking a foolish chance speaking to a stranger. She responded that the same was true of him, but after all, weren’t fools the ones who were willing to do what others would not? Wasn’t this the true meaning of faith?

“I work in the café,” she told the priest. “Send whatever fool you know to find me. I’m willing to do anything.”

She didn’t flinch under his gaze, something the priest couldn’t help but notice. She shook his hand, quickly pulling her sleeve down so he wouldn’t notice the letter she’d carved into her skin. But he did, and he knew she was serious about matters; she had her own war to wage.

Ettie left and went through the old streets of Vienne. She took her time walking back to the café. She went to work, as she always did, but every morning and every night she was waiting for whatever was meant to happen next.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE GIRL IN THE COUNTRY

HAUTE-LOIRE, SUMMER 1941

MARIANNE FÉLIX HAD LIVED IN Paris as the Lévis’ employee for five years, but she was a country girl, and was still able to find her way in the dark. It was a talent she’d learned during childhood on her father’s farm, a place he called Maison de la Ruche, Beehive House. In the dusky evenings she would go into the woods to look for the cows let out into the pastures. At first she had stumbled over bramble bushes and the twisted roots of oak trees, but after a time she realized night fell in different textures of black and blue. Some things turned the color of ink, some became ebony. It was easy enough to find the cows, gathered together in the soft darkness, and to go home she followed a trail of white wildflowers.