Read Chapter 5: The Brothers of the Maquis

The farmhouse appeared out of the marsh like a drowned thing surfacing. Low-slung, its roof sagging under decades of thatch, it huddled against a copse of willows that drank from the flooded fields around it. Henri stopped at the tree line and studied the structure for a full minute before he moved.

Jack watched the Frenchman's back, reading the tension in his shoulders. They'd crossed the marsh in silence, boots sucking through mud, the distant crump of naval artillery rolling across the sky like summer thunder. Twice they'd dropped flat when the dog's bark carried from somewhere south—closer than Jack liked.

"Stay close," Henri murmured, finally stepping into the open. "Claire does not like surprises."

The door opened before they reached it. A woman stood in the frame, a shotgun cradled in her arms with the ease of long acquaintance. She was perhaps fifty, iron-gray hair pulled back from a face that had seen its share of hard seasons. Her eyes flicked from Henri to Jack, then back.

"Henri." Her voice was flat. "You bring trouble to my door."

"I bring a guest." Henri gestured at Jack. "American. He fell from the sky."

The shotgun didn't lower. "They say the sky is full of them tonight."

"They say true." Henri stepped forward, something passing between them that Jack couldn't read. "We need shelter until dark. And clothes."

Claire's gaze lingered on Jack's jump jacket, the American markings visible even in the gray light. A slow calculation crossed her face. Then she stepped aside, jerking her head toward the interior. "Get inside. The patrols have been busy since noon."

The farmhouse smelled of wood smoke and dried herbs. A single oil lamp burned low on a scarred wooden table where a map lay spread, weighted at the corners with stones. Claire moved past them, checking the shutters before turning back to face them.

"Your timing is poor, Henri." She folded her arms. "Émile's been taken."

Jack saw Henri's face change. It wasn't shock—more like a wound opening in already-broken ground. "When?"

"Last night." Claire's voice tightened. "He and the boys hit the fuel depot near Saint-Laurent. The Germans were waiting. They let them get close, then closed the net." She paused. "They took three. Émile was one of them."

Henri turned away, one hand gripping the edge of the table. His knuckles went white.

"Who talked?" His voice was barely a rasp.

"Nobody talked. They were ambushed." Claire shook her head. "The depot was bait. They knew we'd come."

Jack watched the exchange, cataloging details without comment. The map on the table showed the local area—roads, bridges, the marsh. He noted a cluster of German positions marked in pencil near the main highway. Claire was Resistance, and she knew her ground.

"I heard the naval guns," Claire said, turning to Jack. "They're real, then? The invasion?"

"Yes, ma'am." Jack moved to the table, letting his weight settle. "I need to reach a bridge near Mézières. The roads are crawling with Germans, and I don't have a map worth trusting."

Claire studied him with hard eyes. "Mézières. That's fifteen miles through some of the most patrolled country in Normandy." She looked at Henri. "You're taking him the long way."

"There's a crossing at the old mill," Henri said. "Unguarded, if we're lucky."

"If." Claire's mouth twisted. She moved to a chest against the wall, lifting the lid. "Get out of that uniform. I'll find you something that doesn't scream 'paratrooper.'"

She pulled out a rough linen shirt and a pair of worker's trousers, worn but serviceable. Jack took them, stepping behind a screen of blankets hung from the ceiling to change. The civilian clothes felt strange against his skin—no weight of webbing, no familiar pressure of equipment. He kept his sidearm, tucking it beneath the loose shirt at the small of his back. The pocket watch stayed in his breast pocket, a small, solid weight against his heart.

When he emerged, Claire was pouring wine into clay cups. She pushed one toward him. "Drink. You'll need the strength."

Jack took the cup but didn't drink. "You said the 82nd landed south of here. Can you confirm that?"

Claire's eyes met his, and for a moment something flickered there—hope, or the ghost of it. "We heard the drops all night. Most came down south, near Sainte-Mère." She paused. "Some say they're holding the town."

That wasn't what Jack had heard. His fragment of briefing had mentioned Sainte-Mère as an objective, not a certainty. But Claire was telling him what she needed to believe. He could see it in the set of her jaw.

"Good," he said, because sometimes that was what people needed to hear. "They'll push north when they're ready."

Henri drained his cup in one swallow. "Émile. Where did they take him?"

"The château." Claire's voice dropped. "The Baron's place. That's where they've been holding the ones they take alive."

Something passed between Henri and Claire—a shared history Jack couldn't parse. Henri's face had gone stone.

"The Baron." Jack said it carefully, testing the word. "I thought he was Resistance."

Claire's laugh had no warmth in it. "The Baron de Vaux shelters us when it suits him and dines with the Germans when it serves him better. No one knows whose side he's on—not even the Gestapo."

Henri shook his head slowly. His voice low. "He took me in when the Gestapo was hunting me. Hid me in his cellar for three weeks. I owe him my life."

"Men change," Claire said quietly. "Especially when they have something to lose."

Henri's cup hit the table. "He hasn't."

"Émile thought the same." Claire's tone gentled. "He trusted the Baron's name to protect him if things went wrong."

The silence stretched. Jack watched Henri's face, reading the war playing out behind his eyes. Grief. Duty. Old loyalties pulling against new.

Claire broke the moment. "They'll interrogate him at the château. If the Baron is still with us, Émile has a chance." She looked at Henri. "If he's not—the Gestapo will break him, and then they'll come for all of us."

Jack's mind was racing, turning over the pieces. The bridge at Mézières was his mission, drilled into him through weeks of training. But Henri had a brother in a German prison, and a contact whose loyalty was suddenly in question.

"We need to move," Jack said. "The longer we sit here—"

"Émile knows the crossing at the old mill," Henri cut him off. "If he talks, the Germans will be waiting for us there." He met Jack's eyes. "We can't go that way anymore."

Jack felt the ground shift beneath him. He was a soldier, trained to adapt. But every hour he spent off-mission was another hour the Germans had to reinforce the bridge.

"Where else can we cross?"

Henri was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was rough. "There's only one bridge across that stretch of river. The old mill, or the main span at Mézières." He looked at Jack. "The one you're meant to reach."

The main bridge. The one Jack had been assigned to scout in the first place—before the drop scattered them, before the dog patrol, before all of it. He'd been avoiding it because it was watched. Defended. Suicide to approach alone.

Now he had no choice.

"How far?"

"Eight miles," Henri said. "Through the Baron's estate."

Jack didn't miss the look that passed between Henri and Claire. The Baron's estate. A man who owed Henri shelter, whose loyalty no one could confirm. A man with a captured Resistance fighter in his cellars and German guests at his table.

"You're thinking of going to him," Jack said. "To the Baron."

Henri's jaw tightened. "If Émile is at the château, I can get him out. And the Baron can tell us what's waiting at the bridge."

"And if he's turned?"

Henri's hand moved to the knife at his belt. "Then he'll know what I think of traitors."

Claire stepped between them, her voice sharp. "What you're planning is not courage. It's grief wearing a soldier's coat." She looked at Jack, and what he saw in her eyes made something cold settle in his stomach. "If you go to that château, you walk into a German garrison with a Resistance fighter in chains and a Baron who plays both sides. You won't come out."

"She's right." Jack heard the words leave his mouth before he'd fully accepted them. "We don't know who's loyal."

Henri turned on him, fire in his eyes. "You think I don't know my own brother? Émile wouldn't talk. He'd die first."

"That's not what I'm saying." Jack held his ground. "I'm saying we need information, and you're the only one who can get it." He looked at Claire. "Do you have anyone watching the château?"

She nodded slowly. "I have eyes on the road. They know the Baron's comings and goings."

"Then let's find out what side the Baron is truly on before we walk into his house with our throats exposed." Jack looked at Henri. "We'll get to the crossing. We'll find a way to the bridge. But if your brother's at that château, we don't go in blind."

Henri stared at him for a long moment. The anger didn't leave his face, but something else settled there—recognition, perhaps, or the slow yielding of a man who'd been fighting alone for too long.

"You sound like him," Henri said quietly. "Like Émile, before the war."

Jack didn't know what to say to that. He just held Henri's gaze until the Frenchman nodded.

"Fine," Henri said. "We watch. We wait. We learn." He picked up his pack. "But if the Baron has betrayed us, I'll be the one to end it."