Assignment in Brittany

  They covered the next three miles in Indian file, first the boy, then Hearne, with the Yorkshireman bringing up the rear. The pace was surprisingly good. They only had to slow down twice: once when they circumvented a village, once when they struck a broad stretch of completely open ground. Then the choice was either a wide detour up a hillside, or a ten-minute wait for the cotton-wool clouds to spread themselves over the hard, bright stars. The boy, to Hearne’s surprise, chose to wait. It amused Hearne to see how calmly the younger man had taken the command from the start; and he had taken it well. This was the first time that Hearne disagreed with him. And then he remembered that compared to these two men he was fresh and rested. He could only make a guess at how far they had travelled and under what conditions. Even then, like all guesses, his would be short: guesses didn’t tell the half of it. He noticed that the boy’s jacket was too thin: he was shuddering in spite of himself. Sam had noticed that shivering, too. He looked up at the sky and the slow clouds.

  “Blast you and blast you and blast you,” he muttered with surprising venom.

  Then the light dimmed at last, and they had a few minutes’ grace to cross the open ground. They ran silently with a grim desperation. Ahead of them were some trees, beautiful trees, lovely, trees, gracious trees, noble trees. Hearne sank breathless beside Sam on the cool, shadowed ground.

  “I’m a tree-lover for life,” he said, but the others weren’t listening to him. The boy, standing so rigid, suddenly groaned and moved away.

  “He’s ill,” said Hearne in alarm, although his voice was no higher than a whisper.

  “Don’t let him hear you say that. He’ll be all right.” But Sam was anxiously watching the trees behind which his friend had staggered. Hearne started to move, but Sam’s hand stopped him. “He wouldn’t have you near him. Sort of worries him for anyone to hang about him. He has these attacks regular as the clock every hour. Ate something which turns him inside out, even when he hasn’t anything left inside him to turn out.”

  They lay and waited. “Pretty bad attack,” Hearne whispered.

  “Aye.” Sam was more worried than he had pretended. “Plucky lad all right. Come all the way from a prison camp across the Rhine.” He was talking now for the sake of talking. Hearne welcomed that too.

  “Were you with him?”

  “No. Met him half-way. I was in Belgium.”

  “How the devil did you get as far south as this?”

  “There was some of us got lost, and we thought we’d fight our way back to the French. Funny, come to think of it. We landed in a French part of the line all right, and there we were, moving back and moving back, just moving back without ever a stand. It was right discouraging, I can tell you. Then they told us the fight was off, and there we were slap in t’ middle of France. An officer said we were to get a train to where the last English were getting off in boats. But the blasted engine-driver just spat and said the war was over. Then one of the Poles—”

  “Poles?”

  “Aye, Poles and Belgians and some Czechs and us. A proper tower of Babel, I can tell you. Well, this Pole, he had been an engine-driver, and we threw the Parley-voo off his cab—we were all raving mad, that we were, what with fighting our way south and then being left high and dry—and we started the train.” He paused and listened. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go and see how his nibs is now.” He slipped noiselessly into the further darkness of the trees. Hearne grinned to himself. And what had happened to the train, he wondered. It hadn’t got very far, obviously. He saw the two dim shapes returning to his tree. Sam barked his shin on a stump, and grunted.

  “Black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat,” he said angrily.

  “Sorry.” It was the boy. He sat down weakly beside Hearne. “Sorry. Tummy all skew-wiff.” He was wiping the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. Hearne nodded. Cold sweat it would be, and the twisting pains would still be clutching at his stomach and bowels. What he needed was a rest for a couple of days and a starchy diet to cement him up.

  “Do you know where you are going?” Hearne asked.

  The boy nodded. “Got a man’s name at Dinan. He will take us in his boat down that river towards the coast.”

  “Down the Rance? That sounds okay. But can you depend on him?”

  “Others have, and managed it. Well, I’m all right now for a while. Let’s move.”

  And then once more came the roar of a huge fleet of trucks. Hearne motioned silence, and kept his eyes fixed on his watch. When he had finished, he noted that the boy was looking at him curiously.

  “Let’s move,” he said again, and his tone was friendlier. “Can you lend us a map, by any chance? I lost mine while I was having a spot of trouble with a river, and I’m doing this sort of out of my head. We are fairly near Dinan now, aren’t we?”

  Hearne hesitated for a moment. “I’ll put you on the road for Dinan. You’ll reach it by dawn,” he said. “And I can give you some stodgy food.” He fished in his pocket and handed over what was left of his rations. “Rest up for a couple of days when you get there,” he added. “Keep warm. Don’t let them feed you shell-fish, or cheese, or butter, or heated wine. The Bretons believe in a wine toddy. It cures a lot of things, but not your trouble. Herbal tea is good, and plain unseasoned macaroni or potatoes. It all tastes rotten, though.”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  “And you’d better listen to me. You’ve a long sail ahead of you. Now come on.”

  This time Hearne led the way.

  There were still more roads to cross now, little straggling roads which twisted and turned from village to village. And there was a German patrol to be avoided. They managed that by throwing themselves flat into a ditch beside the road which they had been on the point of crossing. It was unpleasant but effective. The motor-cycles swept past them, and they could breathe again in spite of the mud. When they crawled out of their hiding-place, Hearne looked anxiously at the boy. But the haggard young face gave an attempt at a smile.

  “All right for another half-hour, I think,” he said. “Come on, Sam; breakfast in bed tomorrow.” Sam only gave that slow grin of his. And then they were moving silently again: walking, slipping, crouching, crawling, but always moving forward.

  They had passed the village Hearne had been expecting. There was no mistaking that church tower. Norman-Gothic, English influence, interesting, the guide-books would say. It was interesting all right. This was where they’d branch off, and he could make up for the time he had lost. Matthews would have been apoplectic if he could have seen him in these last two hours. “Well, I’m damned,” he would say. “Of all the infernal stupidity...”

  Hearne halted. He pointed to a line of trees. “There’s your road,” he said. “When you reach it, turn left and that will take you west to Dinan in six miles or so. I’ll leave you here, now that we are getting towards the towns. Three’s a crowd in this game, too.”

  They saw reason in that. “By the way, what would have happened if I had put up a real fight or tried to dodge you?” he asked, as they parted.

  “Our suspicions would have been aroused,” the boy said. He handed over the revolver to Hearne. He was beginning to shiver again. His eyes were looking towards the line of trees.

  “In plain English, I’d’ve twisted, your damned neck with my two bare hands,” Sam said amiably, and then he noticed the shivering too. “Time to be off, lad,” he added, and taking the boy’s arm, pulled him quickly away. Hearne watched them go—two shadows as he had first seen them, merging cautiously into the blackness of the trees.

  “With my two bare hands,” he repeated to himself. Then, “See, Matthews?” as if to the stars overhead.

  I wonder, he was thinking, just what did happen to that train. Well, he wouldn’t know now. Good chap, that Sam. Hearne remembered how carefully he had listened to his advice about the diet for the boy. Sam would see that young man did rest up. Yes, they were a strange couple all right, each of them thinking he was responsible for the other. That way, ev
en with the odds against them, they might have a chance. For a minute Hearne envied them. The worst of his job was that he was always so completely alone. But, he reminded himself, that could also be the best thing about it, too. He looked at his watch, and smiled to himself as he noted he now called it his quite naturally. He had about four hours left and twelve miles or so to go. If the ground was easy and patrols not too frequent, the distance could be lessened. He should manage it all right.

  As he turned eastward, he felt more confident. In these last two hours, he had felt all the old tricks and instincts coming back to him. He was covering the ground more quickly now, decisions were easier, movements were surer. The footling pessimism and nervousness which had attacked him at the beginning of this night were gone. When dawn came he would be home.

  4

  THE SLEEPING VILLAGE

  The last obstinate stars were fading in the sky when Hearne came to Saint-Déodat. His arrival at this hour solved some minor problems for him, for even the early-rising villagers would not yet be stirring. He paused on the path which had brought him so quickly round the curves of these last gentle hills, past the endless slate-roofed farm-houses, past the orchards and well-tilled fields. And right there, just below where he stood, lay Saint-Déodat: fifty, or less, stone houses clustered near the church and its soaring towers. Nothing moved. There was no sound. It seemed a deserted village, asleep in its sheltered hollow.

  Hearne repressed his excitement. He had better see how far wrong he had been in his idea of the place, before he started congratulating himself. He had two choices: either he could keep to this path on the hill, rising to the west of the village, until he reached the Corlay farm, or he could cut down to the road and enter the village at the north end. He chose the second course. It was safe enough with the village still asleep. Even if some early bird did see him it would be noted that be came from the north, which fitted in very nicely with his story of walking from the coast. Also, he would feel surer of reaching the Corlay farm if he followed the road through the village, for there were many small farms all remarkably alike scattered over the hillside. It would take some explaining if he were to approach the wrong house and claim it as his. Slight shell-shock would hardly be an adequate excuse. Finally—and this was the chief reason, he admitted to himself quite cheerfully—he just wanted to see Saint-Déodat. He had thought of it constantly in the last three weeks; he had examined drawings, memorised descriptions, made his own sketches. He knew it forwards, backwards, sideways—on paper. Now he had the chance to walk quietly, slowly, through Saint-Déodat, and in the greying light he would see it as it really stood.

  It was a compact little village. First, there had been the church, built in the tenth or eleventh century: the two Romanesque towers bore testimony to that. Then, gradually, houses had grouped themselves round it; and a narrow road found its way up between the little hills, from the flat plains of the north-east. By the fourteenth century, Saint-Déodat was a flourishing community. It had a proud castle on the western hill, and feudal overlords to bring it relics from the Holy Land. In the market-place which had formed itself opposite the church, the country people from miles around came to buy and sell. That was when the Gothic part of the church had been added by the prosperous, and grateful, villagers.

  “Nothing changes” had been the proud motto of the castle. Saint-Déodat kept faith with it, although the castle now lay in ruins since its last overlord had abandoned the village for the richer graces of Versailles. Hearne wondered if he had still said “Nothing changes” when he had mounted to the guillotine. If he were a true Breton he probably did, just to spite the howling mob. Even as the blade descended, and the unchanging Comte had change thrust upon him, his village asserted itself for the last time in its history. Its people joined the desperate Vendée revolt against the Revolution, and were rewarded by the despoiling of their castle, the burning of their houses, the slaughter of their young men in the market-place. Yet their church, although bruised and crippled, still stood.

  The people took courage from it, and when they came back from their hiding-places they rebuilt enough of the destroyed houses to suit their diminished numbers. The market-place once more heard weekly gossip. But after that bloody 1793, the inhabitants of Saint-Déodat avoided trouble by strictly minding their own business. And they had succeeded, at the price of becoming a forgotten village.

  Hearne stopped thinking of Saint-Déodat’s past as he reached the narrow road which entered the village. Now he was concentrating on its present. He passed fourteen houses, five of them empty (not only a forgotten village, he amended then, but a dying one; and a deserted one, in years to come, unless something were to happen to rouse Saint-Déodat from self-destruction), and he named them as he went. He could no longer repress his excitement. There was no doubt about it: he could recognise this village.

  That was the house of Trouin, carpenter and candlestick-maker. And that belonged to Guézennec, the retired schoolmaster. One small school, Hearne remembered parenthetically, tucked away behind the trees beyond the houses round the marketplace, despised because it was the usurper of the education which the Church should have been allowed to continue. It hadn’t been so bad when Guézennec had been appointed, for he was one of them, and he had been half a priest before he became a schoolteacher. But now there was a young foreigner in the school, a man from Lorient in South Brittany who had studied in Paris. Kerénor was his name. He limped badly. He lived in the little hotel on the market square.

  Hearne reached the church. On the far side of the marketplace facing it were grouped the grain dealer, and baker, Guérin; the butcher and veterinary surgeon (kill or cure), Picrel; and Picrel’s mother, the widow who kept the very small, very general store. On the north side of the square was the Town Hall. On the south was the hotel, where the new schoolteacher, Kerénor, lodged. It really was a glorified pub, Hearne decided with a few rooms to let upstairs for occasional commercial travellers and stray summer visitors. It was called quite logically the Hôtel Perro: Madame Perro owned it. She came from somewhere in the east of France, had married a Saint-Déodat man stationed in Lyons during the last war. But her late husband and her twenty-one years’ residence in the village were extenuating circumstances. Now she was only half a foreigner.

  Beyond the church, the road passed the curé’s house. Hearne heard the sound of running water. That would be the stream from the western hillside, flowing under the road into the curé’s garden (and there, on either side of the road ahead of him, were the two short stretches of stone wall to prove his guess and give the effect of a bridge). But he wouldn’t have time now to explore the meadows below the church, with their little lake in which the stream ended. The sky was changing to a greenish-grey. He increased his pace to pass the last row of houses. Another Trouin lived there; and there, another Picrel; and some “negligibles.” The word had been Corlay’s. Seemingly the Corlays didn’t know the “negligibles.” And then he was across the piece of road which formed the bridge, and he had reached the path which led west from the road to the Corlay farm.

  He paused there for a moment to look back. So that was Saint-Déodat or at least the main part of it. There were also the small farms scattered around the village. He had a feeling that he would know the fields better than the village before the end of his stay. It was through them that his business lay.

  The path led him up through a thin wood. And then he was walking over Pinot’s land. He could see the blue, slate roof of its farm-house glinting in the first rays of the morning sun. He hurried. He was glad of the soft white mist which was rising from the grass.

  When the Pinot farm had been safely passed, he let himself admit that he hadn’t been exactly enthusiastic about crossing these fields. He looked back over his shoulder. Only the last edge of the farm-house roof was visible. And under that was Anne Pinot... Anne Pinot; just another of the minor headaches on this job. “And, by heaven, I’ll keep her minor,” he said savagely to himself. After all, it w
asn’t the first time that a man had come back from a war, and had seemed changed. It would be better to seem cold rather than to assume affection that was false; it would be kinder in the long run, for when the war was over the real Corlay would return. Not that Corlay had displayed marked sentiment when he had mentioned her name. “Arranged,” he had said. “Practical and suitable. The farm is next to ours. If they were joined, they would form the biggest farm in Saint-Déodat, and my mother and old Pinot would stop quarrelling about the dovecote.”

  The farm is next to... Why, of course, he must be now on Corlay ground. To prove it, he saw the dovecote rising out of the mist on his right, a round tower of grey stone with a pointed cap of blue slate, marking the border of the two farms. He should soon see the Corlay house. He couldn’t miss it, not on this path. “Stop it, you fool,” he told himself. “You’re too anxious again. That won’t do.” He could look tired, ill, unkempt—and he probably did—but not anxious. He, Bertrand Corlay, was reaching home at last, weary and bitter, impatient of foolish questions and futile answers. He only wanted to be left in peace, to brood in his room, to take solitary walks over the fields. It would only be natural if he couldn’t bear the sight of a German. And all that could be convincingly managed if he didn’t start worrying; if, he grimly reminded himself, he managed to get through the next half-hour. He could almost hear Matthews saying, “Worry before, and you’ll be prepared. Worry afterwards, and you’ll keep your feet on the ground. But don’t worry during action; that’s fatal.” Well, he had worried plenty in the last three weeks over the smallest detail. Even Matthews would have been almost satisfied with his preparations. And he might have some memories, before he finished this job, which would worry him afterwards. But now...well, now the Corlay farm-house was just fifty paces away. Hearne braced himself.

  There was a short path of rough stones, patched together in the rich black earth. On one side of the two-storeyed house were apple-trees; on the other, a hayfield almost ripe for cutting. The narrow windows were tightly shut and screened. But smoke was thickening above the chimney, as if someone had just thrown more wood on the night embers. He skirted the corner of the building, following the path into the back courtyard of the farm. The door ahead of him lay open.