She hesitated, then let him assume what was easiest.
“He's from the U.K.,” she replied, side-stepping a direct answer.
“Ah, yes. I thought I heard a bit of accent there. Scots, is it?”
He had a good ear. As she had discovered, most of the time the accent disappeared, and James Morgan could have been from anywhere in the English-speaking part of the world. She only picked it up a few times when they were in Scotland, the way most people had of slipping back into the local accent when they were home for a while.
“I'll leave you to it, then, pastry and coffee at the courtesy bar,” he was saying.
“Just ask if you have any questions. We're familiar with all the local sites from the war, and with low season it's a good time to get out and about to see things. Not quite so crowded.”
Coffee and pastry could wait.
“I was hoping to find information about the French underground during the war, and those who belonged to the Resistance.”
“Ah.” He lit up with new interest. “My dear wife might be able to help you there. Her uncle was quite active in the Resistance during the war. He was the only man in the family. Poor chap never returned. Sophie has done a great deal of research on that part of the war—letters, journals, that sort of thing, quite a collection and people send her things all the time. She's quite an authority on the resistance, with her uncle one of them and all. She's at the museum, across the way, this morning.”
“Across the way?”
“Just there,” he indicated the building across the street through the paned window at the great room. It was one of those picturesque, white-washed Norman-style buildings, with heavy timbers that had probably stood there for the past three hundred years, give or take a few decades, and were found throughout the French countryside.
“She opens up for the museum people when she’s finished here for the morning. Quite a collection they've acquired over the years. It's a passion for her. You might drop by. Most interesting...” He looked around.
“Very well then. I'll keep the coffee hot,” he said to the empty room.
The street was quiet except for an occasional car, a Café owner next door rolling out the awning over tables in the patio, the smell of coffee thick in the air, damp from rain the night before.
A flat, polished piece of granite at the entrance was etched in both French and English—'Dedicated to those who bought freedom with their blood.'
Inside, the museum smelled of old wood, the sort of mustiness found in hundreds of old stone houses, churches, and public buildings throughout Britain and France, with dark wood floors and glass cases that contained an amazing amount of artifacts—photographs, a canteen, several firearms, a bloodstained scarf, a silver chain and cross, letters, fabric insignias, all carefully documented, a few with the simple, sobering words—Found in the forest in an unmarked grave.
The museum was cool and dimly lit, with lamps set at intervals at a long, low table, much like a library. Photographs of those who had belonged to the Resistance, lined a wall—some portrait-style from before the war, family photographs, but most were random black-and-white shots, an expression caught unexpectedly by the camera.
One had been enlarged, life-size, and mounted onto a wall. She recognized it immediately. It was an enlargement of a photograph taken by Paul Bennett!
As with all of his war-time photographs, it was a black-and-white photo. But there was something haunting about it, shades of gray in the shadows on the man's face.
He had no name, at least not one that was provided in the brief narrative that went along with the mural. It wasn't necessary. That image watched her, even as she walked past, the man's gaze fastened on her, a nameless man willing to risk everything to protect his family, neighbors, strangers against overwhelming odds.
What was it that made a person willing to risk everything? That made people like James Morgan, her brother, Cate, willing to risk their lives, for something greater than themselves? Something they believed in? The story?
Time had a texture that could be felt. She had discovered that years before when she first traveled to Europe, that summer break from college. Old pebbled glass, the cool patina of old wood, stones worn smooth from generations of footsteps, the scent of wood and stone that someone else had breathed two hundred years ago, that she could almost imagine a voice whispering, “I'm still here. Don't forget me.”
There were newspapers in wood-framed cases in English, French, and German, that told stories of bombings and lists of the dead from a nearby city, carefully preserved, along with other photographs, letters, and personal diaries from ordinary French citizens — men, women, boys, school girls, farmers, clerks, teachers, and a priest. Several had been enlarged and covered the walls, so that other generations later might remember. The words pulled at something deep inside her:
“1942, October 7: Remy was caught by the Gestapo yesterday. We attempted to learn where he was taken; only fourteen years old, a child, and many are never heard from again. There is no word yet...”
“1943, April 11: We have heard that life is much the same as always in Paris. So it is in a city with Cafés and the theatre. The Germans do not want to destroy what they enjoy. So easy to look the other way and pretend nothing has changed. But here, the people do not have enough to eat, and always there is the fear of the knock on the door in the middle of the night, and the execution squads...”
“1943, October 19: N. (initial only) was nearly run over by a German convoy as she returned from the village yesterday on her bicycle. She must be more careful. She is fourteen years oldand there are stories about what they do to young women. But she will not listen. She insists what she does is important. My greatest fear is that the Germans will discover the messages she carries.”
Of thousands who had joined the Resistance, their names printed on lists displayed on another wall, many were killed or imprisoned. Others were simply never heard from after the war, including Sophie Martin's uncle. After the war, families had provided pictures with names, stories, mementoes, to make certain they weren't forgotten. Their faces looked down at her from the walls of the museum.
This had been Vilette Moreau's world, a dangerous world of young partisans like Nico Simonescu, and a young woman named Micheleine, from a photograph Paul Bennett had taken.
“Their faces tell a story, no?”
Sophie Martin was tall and slender, dressed in a long black skirt with a brilliant, multi-colored sweater in shades of red, green, and blue against a black background. Her silver hair was closely cropped, molding her head, and framing warm brown eyes and pretty features.
