“Just here,” he told the driver, then swung down as the driver made a rolling stop, then down-shifted and waved him off. He pulled up the collar of his field jacket and climbed the steps to the entrance of the cathedral.
A sign board near the entrance gave the hours of Sunday services. In the center of Arras, with the war all around them, occupied by yet another foreign army, the people of France went about their lives.
It was quiet inside the cathedral, several candles on the high altar. The war seemed far away, beyond those ancient medieval walls with Gothic vaults looming in the shadows. It was here he hoped to learn something about Micheleine's family, something Nico had mentioned the last time Paul saw him.
“She never spoke of her family, you see,” the young man told him. “To protect them, I think. But more than once, I heard her ask about Arras, in the north.”
Arras. At the center of two world wars. A medieval city that had withstood bombing, invasion, and occupation. Yet it survived.
How long it had been since he had been in a church, the quiet stillness of it wrapping around him, reminding him of Sunday mass as a child, the certainty of faith a constant in his life, the world beyond far away. And then the typical questions of youth—was it real? The stories, the teachings, the absolute faith in a world that seemed to rapidly spin out of control, the rumored atrocities, foreign-sounding names and places.
He'd wandered, to London, university, then the war exploded at their doorstep, and he took his photographs. He left the university. Between assignments he drove ambulance, while the world exploded at their doorstep. Raised on it, he attended mass only sporadically, then not at all.
Did God exist is a world that seemed determined to destroy itself?
“There is no service this evening.”
He spun around, instincts sharpened over the past months, his hands closed over his rifle. The priest held his hands up.
“We have little of value, my son. The Germans have seen to that.”
Paul shook his head, hands relaxing. “Forgive me, Father, I meant no disrespect.”
“We live in uncertain times,” the priest smiled gently. “You are welcome of course. Please, come. Stay for a while.” He indicated the rows of pews in the main chapel.
“The church is always open.” He walked with him, his cassock frayed at the edges but immaculate.
“It has been a while since you were in a church,” he speculated.
“A while.”
“Your accent,” the priest speculated. “Not English. Scottish perhaps?”
Paul nodded. “My mother is Scottish. My father was English.”
“Ah, and family?”
“My mother and sister are in the north.”
“They are safe, then?”
“Yes, far from the cities.”
“And you are far from your faith?”
“It has been a while.”
There in the chapel, he felt the pull, that deeply ingrained sense of awe as a child that had wavered as he became an adult.
“God is always here, waiting, patient, and now you have found your way here.”
“I'm looking for someone,” he began. He realized how that sounded. Millions of people had been displaced across the whole of Europe. If rumors were true, hundreds of thousands had simply disappeared, loaded onto trains that disappeared—men, women, children, whole families. And he was looking for someone.
“Her family may be in Arras. I had hoped there might be some records here at the church; the city hall has few records.”
He'd been there the day before and learned the German occupation army had destroyed all official records—records of births, marriages, deaths, as if the people whose names were on those records and documents never existed.
“I know the Church keeps records of its parishioners. I was hoping you might be able to find them. Robillard was her family name.”
