I rubbed the back of my neck and looked at the pair perched on the boulder. Hugo dragged the back of his hand over his damp eyes. “I want the pair of you to stay here.” I held up my hand to indicate what I was requesting and pointed at the rock upon which they sat. “Stay. I will be back.”
When I turned to continue the climb, Hugo scrambled after me. “Non, non!” He fisted a hand in the leg of my trousers. “Ne me quitte pas.”
“Easy now, cariad bach. Easy.” I could see there was no use coaxing him, though, so I lifted him onto the rock above me and turned so he could climb onto my back. I patted my shoulder, and he slung his arms around my neck and wrapped his legs around my torso. I adjusted his arms so that he was not gripping over the gouge the bullet had left in my shoulder. “Hold tightly now.”
I was cautious as I climbed, aware of the weight on my back and how it affected my balance. Otto’s progress became slower and more careful as well. The last half kilometer was a near-vertical climb up a ladder of boulders.
The gorge opened up into an alpine bowl. If the range we sought to traverse were a four-step staircase, we had reached the pinnacle of the first step.
I braced my hands on my hips and paused to catch my breath. I turned back to survey the valley we had climbed from and stood in awe at the vista below me. The valley was deep and verdant. Mist curled down the ridges and clung to the treetops like the white, eddying crest of a green wave. It was a rugged, breathtaking sprawl that loosened something tight within me as I took it in.
The weight on my back reminded me of my responsibility, though, and I turned from the view to study the bowl into which we had emerged.
We could not make it up to the next ridge by direct approach. This was avalanche territory, and though the snow that skirted the bowl was gray and frozen into ice, the loose scree would be as deadly in a slide as a fall of snow.
The only way to traverse this dangerous section to reach the tundra was to follow a ridge that led north before curving back to the east. From the tundra, we would have to cross a glacier field, but the White Horse was visible above us.
Before we began our descent, I surveyed the view once more and noted the valley branched to the north from where Charlotte and the rest of the children sheltered. I would explore the adjacent valley tomorrow and see if there were an easier path, but this one would see us over the mountain and to safety if not.
The descent was more challenging than the climb. By the time we made it to the base of the gorge, my knees and shoulder ached and my back was damp with sweat.
I set Hugo on his feet, and the three of us drank greedily from the cascade. The water was cold enough to make my teeth ache, but it was a relief after the climb. I dipped my head under the stream, and an icy sluice flowed over the back of my neck and under my shirt. Hugo mimicked my actions and yelped at the cold.
“Mae’n oer,” he said.
I chuckled. “Ydy.”
The afternoon was sliding into evening when we reached the lodge. Hugo and Otto returned to their sprawl under the table, and both were asleep almost immediately.
“We can make it over the mountain.”
Charlotte’s shoulders slumped in relief. “You’re certain? Even the littlest ones?”
“We will have to go slowly, and we won’t be able to make it in a day. But I found a way that is passable. Challenging but not impossible.”
She stared at the children, her brow furrowed. “We have plenty of food from the farmhouse.”
“What of the clothing? It will be cold on the mountain at night.”
“Between the sweaters in the chests and the cloaks from the abbey, I think we will be well outfitted.”
While the valley was still well-lit, I searched the outbuildings. I found three coils of rope hanging in the shed, two ice pick axes, and a pair of crampons. On a shelf, I saw a hammer and a box of pitons. I did not think we would need to climb, but I collected them just in case. An ax was stored across the beams of the lean-to.
Back in the lodge, I climbed into the loft and retrieved the four rucksacks hanging from hooks on the wall. They appeared to be Swiss-made, durable combinations of tough leather and thick canvas. I carried them from the loft and placed the largest on the floor.
“Simone.” I gestured for the young girl around three years of age to come closer, but she ducked her head and hid behind her older brother.
Charlotte set her sewing aside. “Will we need to carry her?”
“Aye. She will not be able to make the climb up the gorge. She will be more secure riding in this, and I will not be concerned about her losing her grip.”
She led the child closer, speaking softly in French, and helped her climb into the rucksack. When she was seated and curled within, she was completely concealed from view. The younger children giggled as Charlotte helped me hoist the rucksack onto my back and adjust the straps more securely. The little girl was a small, warm lump at the center of my back, not much heavier than a lamb.
I climbed the ladder into the loft with the pack on my back and then descended. The rucksack was sturdy, the seams sound, and she was small enough that I would have no trouble carrying an additional rucksack loosely over the one that held her or carrying Hugo and Yvette if need be.
I slipped the pack from my shoulders and placed it gently on the floor. When I folded back the flap, her small, pale face peered up at me like a startled woodland creature whose burrow was suddenly exposed. Her eyes were large and dark, and the skin beneath appeared bruised. I had never seen such old eyes in such a young face.
I smiled down at her, and she stared at me for a long moment before she tentatively returned the gesture.
“Were you comfortable, cyw?” Charlotte translated my question, and she nodded her head once. “Were you frightened?” She shook her head.
“Good.” I lifted her slight body from the rucksack.
Save for Hugo, the children had all watched me warily since they had first seen me in the subterranean chapel at the abbey. But now Simone followed close at my heels as I took the three additional rucksacks to the table.
“Food in one, blankets, bedrolls, and supplies in the other two.” I gathered the map from the shelf and found a compass as well. “We will need to use something else for the infant.”
“I can fashion a sling for Anne-Marie. I cut up one blanket for everyone to have a scarf. I can use another for a sling.”
“Show me how I can help with the sewing.”
We did not light a fire in the hearth, and we boarded up the windows and doors as dusk’s shadows deepened before we lit the lantern. The younger children huddled close to our pool of light as Charlotte and I sat on the floor and altered the cloaks she had pinned earlier. The three oldest children hung back in the shadows, watchful and suspicious like wild creatures drawn to light but too frightened to step beyond the fringes of the gleam.
I wondered how my son had come to this. How many children he had risked his own life for in saving. I glanced around looking for signs he had sheltered in this mountain outpost, but the dark, barren lodge offered no hint of Owain.
My fingers grew sore from pushing the needle through the thick wool, and I strained to see in the lantern light. When Charlotte straightened and rolled her shoulders and neck, her bones creaked and cracked.
“We can save the rest for tomorrow.”
She flexed her fingers. “And leave at first light the following day?”
“Aye.”
We ate cuts of the cured ham and wedges of cheese followed by slices of five of the peaches that were softening. Once the rounds to the outhouse had been made and the baby changed, the children were settled into the loft. I pushed the bed frames aside and Charlotte arranged the bedrolls in a pallet on the floor. We would be warmer all together, and Charlotte and I settled on either end of the children like bookends.
I heard the soft whine when I leaned over to snuff the lantern. Otto stood at the base of the lad
der, tail wagging with an expectant canine smile on his face. I descended, and when I held out my arms, he leapt into them. He settled on my hip like a small child, and I kept an arm around him as I climbed the ladder.
“Has no one broken the news to you, bach, that you are a dog, not a human?”
He responded by licking my cheek, and I chuckled, rubbing his ears once I placed him on his paws in the loft. He sprawled at the children’s feet with a sigh, and Hugo shuffled under the blankets to lie with his head on Otto’s side.
Charlotte caught my eye and smiled as she readjusted the blankets. I waited until she was settled as well before I extinguished the lantern.
I lay back with my hands folded over my chest, and a deep, dreamless sleep crept over me.
_______
My breath created white wisps of fog as I trekked through the north spur of the valley. Water had scoured either wall of the canyon, and the creek beds that had their confluence on the valley floor were like tangled threads, overlapping and snarled together.
The way was easier through the depths of this valley, though it narrowed the further I ventured. The western walls would be far easier to climb, but the route would take us days to circle to the north and east, if it were even passable at the higher elevations. The eastern walls were steep and rugged. When I tried to climb, the ground crumbled and rolled beneath my feet, sending me sliding back down to the valley floor.
I stepped back and peered upward. Even if we managed to climb out of the valley to the ridge above, the peaks looming over this northern gorge were nearly sheer and covered in snow that would either give way in an avalanche underfoot or be a precarious frozen ice slick.
The sound of voices was as galvanizing as if it were the sound of a gunshot. There was little tree growth on this side of the valley, only low-lying shrub for coverage. The sound came from deeper in the valley, around the next bend, but drew closer.
I dropped to my stomach and crawled beneath the sparse shrub, knowing that anyone looking closely would discern my hiding spot. I lay unmoving, breathing shallowly, face pressed into the cold dirt.
The voices drew near after a few moments and three pairs of boots soon entered my field of vision. I did not dare to lift my head to see more, but their voices confirmed my suspicion: they were German.
I did not dare to even breathe as the Germans walked along the edge of the woods. The limp, lifeless weight of a dead soldier over me was both crushing and scant protection. I struggled to remain motionless. The flies that nipped at the corners of my mouth and eyes made me want to shove the body aside and claw at my face.
I had buried Arthur under a pile of bodies nearby. His lips had trembled, his eyes wide with terror as I hid his limp body with the dead. “Do…not…leave me, Rhys.”
“I will not,” I whispered to him as I dragged a fallen man over him. “I promise.”
The Germans were silent as they picked over the dead save for one who laughed raucously.
The toe of a boot connected with my ribs in a rough kick, and the breath I had been holding left me in a wheeze. I froze, heart lurching in my chest when I felt the soldier pause beside the pile of bodies under which I lay. After a long moment of stillness, there was a sudden slicing sound of metal on cloth and flesh. The body jostled above me, and I bit the coarse fabric of his uniform. It was the only thing that kept me from screaming when the bayonet pierced my arm.
Shouting erupted nearby, and I was certain Arthur or I had been discovered. But someone else had been found alive, and he cried out before gunshots pierced the air.
I was breathing hard, shaking, hot and chilled at once, straining to hear the soldiers as they moved on across the field of the slain.
The voices around me went silent, and I jolted into the present, afraid that I had made a noise while lost to memories and alerted the three Germans to my presence. I tensed, sliding my hand inside my shirt to rest against the butt of the Luger. There was a shuffle of noise, and then a sigh and the spatter of urine streaming into the dirt.
I kept my hand on the pistol as the German finished and readjusted his uniform. When he rejoined the other two, the three began their conversation once more and ventured back in the direction from which they had come.
I cautiously lifted my head but did not move from my hiding place. I searched the opposite ridge for any sign of movement indicating a lookout. Long minutes passed, and I saw nothing. If there were a lookout perched up the canyon wall, I would likely already be dead.
I slid from my hiding place and drew the Luger as I crept after the three Germans. I stayed well behind them, never venturing into sight and keeping close to the canyon wall. The morning sun was far from reaching its zenith, and the shadows along the eastern wall were deep.
As I approached one sharp bend in the valley, I could hear the murmur of voices and movement. I backtracked, not wanting to get too close, and knelt in the shadows to watch. No one rounded the bend, and the sounds drew no closer.
Here, the shrub was taller, denser, skirting the canyon’s sloping walls in a green thicket. I ventured into the growth, climbing higher, careful not to create any rockslides. When I reached a ridge, I dropped into a crouch and crawled to the precipice.
The valley came to an abrupt end in a level bowl deep in the heart of the mountains. A small cascade tumbled down the cliff and curved along the edge of the meadow. It was quiet, isolated, far from where anyone would wander in their day to day goings.
It was the perfect hideout for the twenty to thirty German soldiers camped there.
22 September 1942
Dear Nhad,
I killed a man today.
-Owain
xvii
Henri
When I arrived at the military health school, I found the façade lying in rubble. I climbed over the bomb-stricken debris into the remnants of the school, descended a crumbling staircase, and found the entrance to the hidden tunnels in the basement.
I was accosted immediately, shoved against the wall of the tunnel. I held up my hands and assented to the brusque search.
“I am here to see the Hauptsturmführer.” It was a relief to speak in German, and the pair searching me paused. “I am part of the Sonderstab Bildende Kunst.”
They led me through the labyrinth of passages to a series of hidden rooms. One knocked on a door and snapped a smart salute when it opened.
My path had crossed with the man before me in ’43. He was everything that had gone wrong with the National Socialist Party. I had disliked him instantly, and I was certain the feeling was mutual.
“Heinrich Jäger,” he said, sweeping his hand out in a grand gesture to admit me into the room. “A pleasant surprise. Join us.” His broad smile made me suspicious, and the reason why was apparent as soon as I entered. The metallic smell of blood and the sharp ammonic of urine filled the room. My stomach turned in disgust, and when I met Klaus’s gaze, his lips quirked knowingly.
His smirk made me want to wipe it from his face with a swift blow from the back of my hand. He was little more than a boy, full of undeserved self-import, puffed up with the power allotted him. He relished the pain he could inflict on others, and the evidence was clear from the tenting of his trousers. Watching the Gueule Tordue beat the girl with a spiked ball hanging from a cosh excited him. Francis André’s broken face, though, remained impassive as he delivered blow after blow.
I looked away, disgusted, and hid a flinch when I heard the girl’s spine crack. She was too weak and beaten to even scream, but her agonized groan went abruptly silent when she fainted.
Klaus laughed like a delighted child. “That will be all, Francis.” The Gueule Tordue’s mouth appeared even more twisted than usual as he left the room.
I forced a smile when Klaus turned to me and inclined my head. “Well done, Hauptsturmführer.”
“Indeed. Would you care for a drink?”
“Nein.”
He paused to stroke his han
d over the girl’s bloody, wrecked flesh before he crossed to his desk and poured a glass of amber liquid. He left a smear of blood on the decanter. “I miss our beer. But you are more of a wine drinker yourself, are you not?”
“My vineyards are the best in the country.”
“Perhaps after this mess is finished I shall come visit you and partake of your wine.”
“I would be honored.” I smiled, even as I imagined killing him deep in the rows of my vines. It would have to be bloodless. I did not care to imagine being able to taste him in the year’s harvest.
“Now, what is it that has brought you here?”
“I am looking for a man I believe you have captured.”
“And what makes you believe I have him?”
I would have to tread carefully. I could tell from the tone of his voice he was looking for an opportunity to play one of his malicious games. “The ingenuity in the way the situation was handled in La Balme-les-Grottes could only be at your orders.”
His chest expanded. “You are speaking of the Englishman.”
“Welshman.”
He shrugged. “I have both he and his wife.”
I kept my surprise carefully veiled. I had not realized he was married. “I have a debt to settle with the pair.”
“So this is personal, a favor to you?”
I could not back up the request with orders, so I adopted an acquiescent mien. “Ja.”
He stroked his chin. “This will inconvenience me. I have information I need from him.” He was too distracted by the thrill of torture to care about prying answers from some poor soul. The girl tied to the overturned chair moaned. “I have heard your art collection rivals even Göring’s.”
It did, it had, but he would be the last person to whom I would admit it. And how much was left now, I did not know. I shrugged. “Göring’s collection is admirable. I doubt anything could compare to it.”
“I want one of the Degas paintings you took from Paris. One of the nudes.” He leaned over and traced the bare curve of the wounded girl’s buttocks. She flinched away from him. “No, two. Since I am handing two over to you.”
Once More Unto the Breach Page 17
