Poets And Chess Players #6-2: In Which Miss Martin Demonstrates The Use Of A Rifle (Part Two)
Jeanne Martin, age twenty-four, birthplace Québec, was a fabrication from the ground up.
This is chapter 6 (part two) of Poets and Chess Players, a WWII spy adventure and drama serial. Previously, Mat and Jeannie found themselves running from the local gendarmerie for the crimes of their mutual contact Ibarra. This time, Matia has an idea to get away safely, and we finally take a good look at Jeanne herself.
< Previous || Directory || Next >
The cold night wind bit into Echevarria’s skin as he attempted a few steps and then stumbled sideways into the brush, adding a thousand little stabs to the count. He tried to curse, but the best he could do through the gag was a muffled groan.
A mental note: this was the last time you’d catch him asking Jeanne Martin to make something look realistic.
He struggled upright again, not bothering this time to try to protect the makeshift bonds around his wrists and ankles - though it didn’t make a difference. The woody vines stayed stubbornly put as he half hopped, half limped up the trail, trying to make as much noise as he could along the way. Even so, he got uncomfortably close to the farmhouse before anyone seemed to notice.
“Oh, la policía - praise God and the Virgin,” Echevarria whined in an exaggerated Castilian accent, spitting out his handkerchief as soon as the puzzled gendarme cut the gag loose. “It is not to be believed, Señor. These godless sons of dogs, these thieves, they steal my clothes, my money, my auto, they tie me up-”
A tall, stern-looking type swooped around the corner while his fellow was still sawing at the vines. “Your car? Sir, where was this?”
“Not far,” he said, shivering only half for effect since he was naked to the waist. “I take the road to Tarbes, but the damn-auto, it break down. It won’t run for long. You can catch them if you hurry.”
“Merci, monsieur,” the policeman said firmly, in the most reassuring tone Matia had ever heard from a lawman. “D’Aramitz, take the gentleman inside and find something to keep him warm. Cloutier, you and your boys are with me.”
As Mat was being ushered into the darkened house by lantern-light, he heard the police car starting up outside and relaxed a little to see most of them leaving. Although the floor was mostly mud - he supposed that was why no one had been camping out here - one wall of the two-room farmhouse was lined with crates and other stand-ins for furniture, all stacked with supplies. Unwilling to stray too far from their fire, D’Aramitz allowed him to forage for himself, a task that could easily have become distracting if he hadn’t happened so quickly on just the thing he needed. The clothes were a little large and definitely of low quality, but dry and warm enough that he didn’t care. Still, the gendarmes wouldn’t be nearly far enough away yet, so he sauntered further in, poking through the piles as he went.
It was an interesting collection; out of habit, if nothing else, Matia quietly filled his pockets with odds and ends that might be useful if he remembered them later. Otsoa surely wouldn’t have grudged it to him. In went some dubiously preserved biscuits, a lighter to replace the one he’d lost overboard off Port-au-Prince, various loose small-caliber rounds, twine, a few coins - “Now, what’re you?” he murmured, shifting a blanket aside to shine the light on a book. There was no title on the cover, but when he picked it up and flipped through it, it was full of writing, fast and angular…
Before he could investigate, Jeanne knocked on the other side of the wall. The book was small, so he shoved it into another pocket and knocked back. “Yeah, hol’ on, I’m coming.”
“I trust that’ll suit you,” Officer D’Aramitz drawled from the fireside as he exited.
“Yes, yes. Muchas gracias.” Matia limped toward the fire, angling for the side furthest from the house.
The two remaining gendarmes seemed about to resume their conversation, but one held up a finger. “D’you hear that?”
“I hear nothing,” Matia said loudly, his voice covering the purr of a small charcoal-driven motor as he set the lamp down and leaned back to look at the adjoining stable Jeanne had referred to as ‘the garage’. The officers followed his line of sight; they gave each other a look and then got up to advance slowly, hands moving toward their weapons.
A motorcycle shot out of the open door between them, its headlight off, and Jeanne slowed just enough as she passed for him to grab at the cargo rack and jump on behind her. Shots echoed too late through the night as the farmhouse receded into the distance, and the forest road appeared ahead to swallow them up.
It was a long, hard, silent ride back into Toulouse. Jeanne drove fast enough to make Matia’s rapidly numbing hands go white-knuckled holding onto the frame, never once putting the light back on, and switching from road to trail and back again in a pattern that he could only hope she understood. At last they pulled up under a bridge, and he looked up to see that they’d made it into the city.
“C’mon, help me dump this,” she said as she climbed off. Mat jumped down and lent his shoulder to topple the bike over into the river, jumping back from the splash.
“We should be all right now, yeah?” he asked breathlessly.
Jeanne looked down hard into the water, and then reluctantly pulled off the rifle and ammo belt and threw them in after. “I think so,” she said. “Hotel?”
“Yeah. It’s, uh-” Matia squinted into the distance, but was no longer sure what he’d been trying to look at. “It’s early now. Let’s get cleaned up and then head for the station.”
Jeanne Martin closed and locked the bathroom door behind herself and leaned back against it, letting the cold wood hold her up as she tried to force her body, muscle by muscle, to relax. It didn’t work. Abandoning the project with a groan, she staggered across the tiled floor and sat down heavily on the edge of the tub instead. Her boots were the first thing to come off, her feet kicking at each other as she snatched at the laces until they pulled free. Next she snapped the elastics that held her braids in place and finger-combed the hair loose as her scalp screamed in relief. A small pistol was drawn from its hiding spot and set down within reach. Socks, stockings, skirt, blouse, woolens, and underthings all hit the floor piece by piece until she was down to a cotton slip. Then she turned the knob for the heater (damn, this was a fancy hotel) and sat back again, unencumbered. A to-do list was already forming in her head: darn socks, get this skirt washed - her coppery roots caught her eye in the mirror, and she added ‘buy hair dye’.
That was that, wasn’t it? She’d put off coloring it brown again, assuming more than hoping that this would be “Jeanne Martin’s” last ride, but there seemed little chance of that now. Not without the notebook Ybarre had been holding for ransom.
She had told Echevarria the truth - part of the truth, at least. Her MI6 handler had left her high and dry during the invasion. The thing was, she hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms with him before the invasion, either. More to the point, falling out with Mr. Graves had meant losing access to an identity that only he knew belonged to her. Jeanne Martin, age twenty-four, birthplace Trois-Rivières, Québec, occupation domestic, was a fabrication from the ground up. That was understandable: using her real identity on the job he wanted her to do would have looked bad for everybody. She was done with that now, though, and when she’d left France earlier this year, it was with the object of getting her own papers back. They’d had a deal, and it was his turn to deliver.
The girl had honestly thought it would be easier than this. Brennan had boasted about the COI’s connections with MI6; working for him seemed like her best chance to get back in touch, so she’d taken the job. So far, so good. But by the time she did manage to make that call, her old handler was off somewhere in the Caribbean, and the man on the phone wanted proof. The only thing she could think of was the notes she’d made while carrying messages between Ybarre and his Soviet controllers - and how to get those back? She’d let her own connections slip to Mr. Brennan, knowing he’d demand she write to Ybarre. It had only been a matter of time before their work furnished some excuse for her to return for them. The setup - trading the information Ybarre so badly needed for a notebook that surely wasn’t dangerous to him anymore - seemed perfect, and she’d almost worked it out. If only Mr. Echevarria hadn’t floundered into the middle of things when he had…
Well, she supposed she was just going to have to get used to being Jeanne.
In the meantime, the bath - when was the last time she’d stayed somewhere with a working bath, even in New York? - was calling her name. Jeanne leaned over, dropped the plug in, and recklessly opened the hot tap as far as it would go. Whatever it cost to fill an indoor washtub these days, it wasn’t going to be her problem. While the water ran, she turned away from the mirror and pulled her slip off over her head; the medal on its silver chain caught for a moment on the neckline, and then dropped cold onto her skin. Out of habit, she reached back up and slid her fingers down the chain to grasp it and feel for the raised lettering. Bienheureuse Jeanne D’Arc - prier pour nous…1
There was no explicitly religious significance in her attachment. Jeanne accepted the existence of God as a rote fact in the vein of blue skies or the law of gravity, but failed to see how it might bear on her own life. The medal was simply proof that she had once been worth thinking about. Her father had brought it home from France back in ‘18, amid a fit of religious fervor and vows that she was sure he hadn’t kept, and ultimately put it away for a hoped-for child who had turned out to be her. It had been one thing she could always hold onto, no matter where she was.
The thought brought back Dad’s voice like a slap in the face: rule number four, don’t be a sissy. Jeanne grimaced and - just to prove she wasn’t one - turned back to the mirror to give herself an honest look. She was used to her face; that was ordinary enough, if less like her father’s than she had always hoped for. Large, strong features, blemished skin, crowded teeth. Nothing you couldn’t paint over. The scars didn’t start until her neck. Jeanne Martin might someday need an excuse for all this, she realized, her eyes following the raised trail of slashes dispassionately from throat to elbow. It had been a decade now and none of them seemed likely to fade any further. Someone tried to kill me was an honest answer for those, and should suffice. She wasn’t sure what she could say about the burns and gouges creeping up from her ribs to her collarbones, somewhat distorted as her body had grown uselessly soft and curving in spite of them, but still stubbornly there. Maybe she’d just keep her damn shirt on.
But of course that had been the point, right? The scars were a sentence she was only strong enough to live with, not to rebel against. Looking at them was enough to summon memories she otherwise never contemplated, that woman’s words seared into the depths of her soul like the hot clothes iron into her flesh: You scrawny little slut, no man is ever going to look at you again.
She turned again and shoved the thought away: it would do her no good now. Eager to put it all out of her head, Jeanne tested the bath and wasted no more time in slipping into it. The unearned luxury of it all was so overwhelming that she managed to think about nothing serious again until Echevarria knocked at the bathroom door.
< Previous || Directory || Next >
‘Blessed Jeanne d’Arc, pray for us’. The Maid of Orleans wouldn’t be upgraded to Sainte until 1920.