The Moonlight Mistress. Victoria Janssen

posted train schedule was overly optimistic, but the trains were running. One had only to be patient amid the tense, unusually large crowds. They bought tickets and drank coffee at the station as the sun set. Lucilla bought a pack of cards from an enterprising vendor and taught Pascal to play All Fives while they sat crammed onto a bench near the departures board. The snap of their cards vanished in the noisy clack of numbers being constantly changed on the board and the low roar of hundreds of conversations.

      On the crowded train, Pascal used his long legs to secure seats for both of them, and for all the ride to Rouen, though she’d intended to converse, Lucilla dozed with her head on his shoulder, waking only when he waved a sandwich beneath her nose sometime after midnight. The paper-thin slices of ham and dark mustard might as well have been paper, for all she tasted; the fizzy lemonade burned in her stomach, which was uneasy with nerves.

      Pascal poked the crumpled sandwich paper into a pocket on the outside of his rucksack. “Sleep,” he said, his voice rough. “I will wake you at Le Havre.”

      “It’s your turn to sleep,” she said. “I can play Patience.”

      “I’m not tired,” he said. A moment passed, then he touched her cheek, tracing the shape of her cheekbone. Lucilla shivered. He said, sounding angry, “I would go with you if I could.”

      “I know you must stay here.”

      “I could leave. I have lived in England before.”

      “You will go back to the army,” she said. “I understand that you must. Just as I will do what I must.”

      Scowling, he turned his head toward the window. Lucilla slipped her arm into his and laced their fingers together, not caring if anyone saw. She would never see these people again. His hand tightened painfully. He did not speak again. Lucilla closed her eyes and fell into shallow, chaotic dreams.

      Despite the early hour of their arrival, Le Havre was even more overwhelmed with travelers than the train station had been. She heard English spoken more than once, fragments carried to her on waves of the crowd’s ocean. Have the tickets?…Where’s Teddy? I told you to watch…leaves on the hour, but I don’t believe…what shall we do…hold the bags…

      Lucilla was glad enough to cling to Pascal with one hand and to her carpetbag with the other. She was gladder still when he led her away from the mobbed station and through a series of small side streets to his uncle’s house, a white twostorycottage wedged tightly in a row of similar homes, each one featuring a different array of flowers in front. Pascal introduced her as a chemist and colleague, which garnered baffled looks from his uncle, aunt and three female cousins, but she was still offered kisses on both cheeks and fresh coffee and croissants and a chance to freshen up. She scrubbed her face and the back of her neck roughly with a cloth, hoping to wake up before she had to be polite to strangers.

      Lucilla spoke French with some facility and understood it better, but their accents baffled her unless they spoke very slowly, so she smiled and nodded as often as she could. Pascal’s accent was the same, she noted, as he explained her needs to his uncle with a number of expressive hand gestures. His uncle departed soon after reassuring her that a berth would be easy to obtain, for him at least. Lucilla would have given him money for bribes, but he assured her it was not necessary; he was calling in favors.

      Her lack of proper sleep had left her in a hazy, numb state. When one of the cousins took her by the arm and led her upstairs to a cramped loft, she was only barely aware of having her shoes unhooked for her as she drifted off to sleep, fully clothed and atop the coverlet.

      “Lucilla,” Pascal said.

      She patted the mattress next to her, but he wasn’t there. She rolled over and reached for him; he captured her hand and brought it to his lips. She shivered all through the center of her body, waking into a rush of sensual awareness. What was she to do without him?

      He said, “You must get up. Your ship leaves in an hour.”

      “What time is it?”

      “Nearly six.” Pascal tugged, and she sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed in a tangle of crumpled skirt and petticoats. She spotted her stockings draped tidily over the fireplace screen, her shoes set beneath. “I’ll go with you to the dock,” he said in a tone that permitted no argument. “My aunt has made you sandwiches. She is sorry she could not brush out your clothing for you.”

      “It’s too late for mere brushing to do any good. Please thank her for me,” Lucilla said. “I need to wash my face.”

      Pascal bent and kissed her, briefly but not chastely. “Come downstairs when you’re ready to go.”

      Lucilla barely had time to thank her hosts before, smiling, they bustled her and Pascal out the door. He walked quickly, this time carrying her carpetbag for her while she kept her hand around his biceps, careful not to stray toward his bruises, which he had not shown to his family.

      “You’ll see your father, won’t you?” she asked.

      “After you’ve gone,” he said. He led her past a boatbuilder’s shed and toward a row of ships, their railings crowded with passengers. “This one,” he said, and stopped at the foot of the gangway.

      “Already,” she said, foolishly.

      He set down her carpetbag, took off his hat and dug in his jacket pocket. He held up three wrapped chocolates, then slipped them into her skirt pocket with a stealthy caress. “I will find you when this war is ended.”

      Lucilla tipped up her chin, trying to send her sudden impending tears back into her head. She wasn’t so brave when it came down to it. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and beg him never to leave her, like someone in a cheap novel. “I’ve enjoyed our time together. I’ll miss you.”

      “Don’t speak as if you’ll never see me again.” Pascal ducked beneath her hat brim and kissed her, long and lusciously. Her knees turned to water, and she clutched at his jacket until he pulled away and slapped his hat back on his head. “Au revoir.”

      “Goodbye,” she said. She picked up her carpetbag and turned away. All the long walk up the gangplank, she did not look back.

      Chapter Six

      ON THE FIFTH DAY AFTER HER ESCAPE FROM THE cage, the wolf decided she had finally outrun all pursuit. She stopped to lick at the dried blood on her wounded shoulder before she slept, to allow herself to heal. She waited for twilight that evening before she moved on, and did the same on many subsequent nights, covering perhaps twenty kilometers without ceasing her steady lope, unless she found water; then she would stop to drink and clean herself. Traveling as she did through fields of grain and vegetables, devouring field mice, only clean dirt clung to her pelage’s stiff hair, but she had become fastidious since her escape.

      She not only swam in any suitable water she encountered, but rolled vigorously in sand or against rough rocks, whatever she could find. The stench of him lingered, no matter what she did, and to the wolf an illusory stink was as real as the ground beneath her paws. She took to scrubbing her muzzle in the grass when the taint overpowered her. That helped, or at least provided a distraction from her mother’s never-ceasing voice in her mind: “You must not attack a human. It’s forbidden. Forbidden. Forbidden.”

      The weather grew steadily warmer and the days longer. The farther she ran, the more her mother’s voice faded, submerged in the wolf’s mundane concerns. The air of freedom smelled sweet as a fresh kill.

      Only once did memory return. Weary of hunting mouthfuls of mouse, one evening she hunted hare, successfully predicting its zigzag dash and seizing its quivering body in her jaws. Blood spurted into her mouth, over her tongue, and it was a man’s blood flowing down, soaking her ruff as she gripped his hip in panic and anger, too weak and fearful to let go and rip instead at his tender belly. The shock of memory almost forced her to change. When she came back to herself, she found the hare’s mangled corpse lying at her feet, but could not summon any appetite for it. She left it for the smaller predators