The priest shook his head. “Sadly, I cannot help you. When the Germans came, they destroyed the records in the cathedral—hundreds of years of history, the names of families, records of births, deaths, everything. As if they could wipe out the past of the church. The few things that have survived were books and some of the older archives that are centuries old that we were able to hide from them. Everything else was lost. They burned everything they found.” He shook his head sadly.
“Do you remember the family?” Paul asked. “Husband, wife, two sons, and three daughters. One of the daughters was named Micheleine. She would have been fifteen when the war started. Her father and brother were with the Resistance. They were killed.”
Again, the priest shook his head. “Robillard is not an unusual name. There are parish churches beyond the city, in the smaller towns and villages. Perhaps they belonged to one of them.” He laid a hand on Paul's shoulder.
“I will ask about the family. Someone may know of them.” He started to ask where he could contact him, then stopped.
“But you will be moving on when the weather clears.”
“I'll come back.”
Paul took out a pencil and tore a piece of paper from the notepad he carried to keep a log of the photographs he took. He wrote down his name and the address of the newspaper in London.
“If you should hear of them, please send a letter to this address.” If they were still alive. He handed the paper to the priest, then turned to leave.
“Stay for a while,” the priest told him. “The storm has not yet passed. It is dry inside, and you are welcome. God does not require that you pray. He asks only that you are here.”
How long had it been since he had been in a church? Four years? Longer?
In London, with the bombs and the city burning around them, there were times when the only thing that mattered was survival. There had been no time for church. There had only been the warning sirens, and the mad dash for one of the underground shelters.
There, once, with the bombs raining down overhead, the explosions felt through the stone walls and underfoot, a deacon and several parishioners had also sought shelter. There in thesmothering darkness his voice reached out through the fear and uncertainty.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for though art with me...”
The 23rd Psalm, and a voice in the wilderness of death and destruction.
He had walked away then, just as he walked away now, unable to reconcile the death and destruction he'd seen, in London and on those beaches months earlier, and in villages and towns since.
“I will pray for you,” he heard the priest say as he left the chapel.
He caught a ride back to the apartment over a market where he and Dunnett had been encamped the past several days. It was one of the few buildings the Germans hadn't occupied. It was small and the water service was often non-existent, but it was dry and near the city center where the high command was housed. The owner of the market had only the barest of canned supplies on the shelves, but had greeted them with much enthusiasm.
“Take my photograph,” he said in heavily accented English when they arrived and he saw Paul's camera.
“So the world will know that we are at last liberated.”
Dunnett had just returned from a meeting of the handful of fellow correspondents who made up the press corps.
A cigarette hung from his mouth as he pulled his latest dispatch from the typewriter and stuffed it inside the leather portfolio.
“What is it?” Paul Bennett asked, eyeing the open duffel bag on the narrow cot behind Dunnett.
“We're moving out, part of the forward advance.” There was an excitement in Dunnett's voice—the hound on the scent of prey; in this case the prey was the next story to be written.
“We have to report to base camp in thirty minutes. A driver will pick us up. But I need to get this over to communications to make the next flight out to London.”
Thirty minutes. There wasn't enough time to get back to the cathedral and leave a message if Micheleine's family should be found.
Dunnett returned just as the driver was pulling up to the front of the market. His typewriter had already been packed into the case. He tossed his duffle bag into the back of the Morris military vehicle.
“That was good timing,” he commented, as Paul crawled into the cab of the Morris beside him.
“Did you find the person you were looking for?”
Paul shook his head.
“Too bad, that,” Dunnett commented. “Now it appears we're off on the final push against the Germans. No telling when we might get back this way.”
