She disconnected and looked at the phone in her hands.
Thanks a lot, Rowan, she thought. Where are you when I need you?
The phone lit up in her hand and she nearly pushed Accept thinking it was Rowan when she saw a photo of Heidi show up on her screen. She wasn’t ready to talk to Heidi—or anybody German at the moment. She let the call go to voicemail, hoping and praying that Rowan hadn’t done the very same thing to her five minutes earlier.
She thought of the voicemail she just left and wondered what Rowan would think of it. What was he supposed to even do? Stupid. She should never have called. Embarrassing, too. Because by the time she got back to the States it would all seem like a major overreaction on her part. She wasn’t sure if she would ever even see Rowan again—what with their relationship having come to an ignoble, whimpering, long-distance end—but if she did, her face would be three shades of red in the bargain.
She stood up. Her need to move and get out of the apartment overwhelming. She needed noise and people and fresh air. She needed to get out. Plenty of time tomorrow to figure out how she was going to get back to the States. She still had a full month left on her lease—and it was paid in advance.
What a mess of everything she had made. She tugged her leather jacket on and dropped her phone into her bag, double checking that her Taser was there. When she turned to leave the apartment, her glance fell on the photo of herself and Rowan. Why did she even keep it out? To remind herself of how badly she can screw up? She vowed to pack it away first thing in the morning.
She left her apartment and disappeared into the dark, wet night. It was cold out on the street and she was glad she had the wool scarf wrapped around her throat. She walked up the side street to Eppelheimerstrasse. She could see people and cars moving about and felt pulled toward the activity and the noise.
Why did she and Rowan break up? she found herself wondering for the hundredth time. We’d started out like Johnny and June: hotter than a pepper sprout. Had she quit first? Why was that? Was she just determined to be miserable and alone?
As she walked down the street, she felt her phone vibrate in her bag. She looked at the screen with every intention of letting it go to voicemail. It was her father.
“Hey, Dad,” she said, holding the phone to her ear and continuing down the sidewalk. This section of Heidelberg was always busiest at night.
“Do you have a moment to talk, sweetheart? I hated how we left it the other day…”
“Yeah, now’s good,” Ella said. “But I don’t know what else there is to say. It was a big shock, to say the least but it explained a lot. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“God knows your mother went to extreme lengths to keep it secret,” her father said “But the war was a long time ago. I hoped you might never need to know.”
“That my grandfather was hanged as a war criminal?”
“I wanted to spare you.”
“Well, I didn’t get spared today when I went to the office and everyone had clearly been given a PowerPoint on my genealogy.” Ella began to walk faster, her fist clutching her purse strap.
“People will always condescend to judge when they can,” her father said.
“This is such bullshit!” Ella said, feeling the anger and frustration pouring out of her. “I can understand how Mom must have felt but I’m an American! We liberated France, for crap’s sake. We’re the heroes! Why were they looking at me like I’m somehow responsible for…for…”
“I’m sure you imagined it, sweetheart.”
“You weren’t there, Dad. They couldn’t even look me in the eye. I can totally see how Mom wouldn’t be able to bear living in Germany after the war.”
“She never got over it,” her father said. “Her shame touched every part of her life. Every part of my life, too, frankly.”
“Well, it is pretty horrible. It explains a lot about her, though.”
“Exactly. You can see how devastated she was when she found out she was pregnant with you,” her father said. “She kept going on and on about how it was the worst thing to happen to her.”
Ella stopped walking and listened to his words fall on her like rocks breaking against the pavement.
“When she was pregnant?” Ella said.
“It was everything I could do to prevent her from…you know…aborting it.”
“By it, you mean me.”
“Well, we didn’t know it was you at the time, did we? At the time, it was just your mother thinking she was passing on the bad seed. I told her how unlikely that would be. And look how you turned out. But still, she never forgave me.”
“She never forgave you for allowing me to live.”
“Don’t put it like that, Ella. Susie told me I shouldn’t tell you but I said you’d be able to see the big picture on this.”
“She didn’t want me.”
“She was afraid, Ella. Her whole life—her whole self-concept—was wrapped up in him and redeeming herself because of him. Continuing his bloodline was obviously not something she wanted to do.”
At least that explained why Ella saw so little of her mother growing up. Why she had no memory of hugs or kisses or even smiles. For a moment, Ella didn’t care if she walked in front of one of the many city trams rushing by her.
“Ella? You still there? Was Susie right? Should I have kept my mouth shut? It’s just that, now that you know about Vogel, I figured you’d put the rest of it together on your own. And you always were so wanted and loved.”
Just not by my mother.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can get a flight out,” she said dully.
“I feel like I’ve upset you, Ella. That’s the last thing I wanted to do.”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’ll call you when I’m back in the States.”
She disconnected.
The fairytale of the loving mother so busy making the country safe for everyone that she had no time for her own little girl faded to dust as Ella stood on the dark Heidelberg street. Her mother hadn’t wanted to have time for her own little girl. What she wanted was for her own little girl to never have been born.
She hadn’t noticed when it had started to rain but the puddles were forming in the uneven walkway and, looking down, she saw that her shoes were already wet. She turned her phone off and put it in her shoulder bag and let the rain fall on her. She kept walking. The street was now deserted but she didn’t care. She could see that she had already walked a mile or so toward the Altstadt. She hesitated a moment to reorient herself. The last thing she wanted was to meet someone she knew.
Ella turned and went down a narrow alley, mindless of the flashes of lightning and the icy needles of rain punishing her. She didn’t know where she was going, she just felt like she had to be gone from where she was. Had her mother ever looked at her with affection or longing? She paused at the end of mews and looked up at the dark sky.
She clutched her bag slung crosswise on her chest and pulled her jacket tighter around her. The temperature had dropped significantly and she was shaking with the cold. Her hair was wet and plastered to her neck. Her jeans stuck to her, weighing her down. She rested against the ancient brick wall lining the alley and pulled her jacket collar up to deflect the stream of cold rain trickling down her neck. She left the alley and crossed the street—she didn’t know which one—to another alley, more narrow than the first but allowing more protection from the rain and wind.
She tried to galvanize her brain to think as she forced her legs to move.
Her mother had wanted to abort the baby. Her mother did not want to be pregnant. Ella tried to imagine her mother, pregnant, big, full and hating it.
Hating me.
She walked out of the alleyway but wasn’t sure where she was. Her landmarks were distorted in the rain. All the buildings began to resemble each other.
This whole stupid trip to Heidelberg had been a massive mistake on every level. She hated her work, she hated her whole career. She had thrown away a promisi
ng relationship, the first one in years.
She stopped walking and closed her eyes momentarily. She willed herself to tune out the world and try to shut everything out. When she opened her eyes, she saw the gray hulking form of the Church of the Holy Spirit. She was surprised to find herself so close to the Old Market. When she saw the church, she realized that this is where she had been coming all along. Careful not to fall on the wet cobblestones, she ran across the empty road, pulled open the heavy double wooden doors and slipped inside the church.
She found a darkened pew and sat down, closing her eyes and listening to the shuffling sounds of the city’s homeless with whom she shared the back of the church. The pounding rain outside seemed to make the ancient church ceiling hum. Through the stained glass windows, lightning illuminated the sanctuary with bright flashes. She was soaked through and shivered in the cold stone church.
Her father couldn’t help her. He couldn’t even help himself and he certainly never helped her mother. Thinking of her father sent a wash of hopelessness through Ella. Who else was there? She fell asleep sitting up.
She awoke to the sound of thunder echoing through the chambers of the big cathedral. For one mad moment, Ella thought the church was being bombed. She looked around and saw that she was totally alone.
Am I making this worse than it is? she wondered. My mother’s secret is now mine. When I go home nobody will even know.
Except I will know.
She ran a hand through her hair and looked around the empty church. Am I here for sanctuary? Or for absolution? She looked at the vacant altar. She was not a churchgoer back in the States. She didn’t know why she had been drawn to the church tonight.
Her nap seemed to have helped. She felt calmer. Her clothes were still wet and she could still see and hear the storm outside. She recognized that she felt an instinctive urge not to return to her apartment. But she also knew she needed to go back. Her mind raced with the preparations she would need to make to book her return flight and pack up. Just the thought of it felt like more than she could deal with.
She stood up and walked to the main entrance at the rear of the church, her clothes chafing at her cold skin as she moved. As she stepped outside, the rain was pouring down, making the dark cobblestones look like black mirrors. A wave of despair swept over her. Her arms and legs were cramped from sleeping on the hard wooden pew. She felt sick to her stomach.
Inexplicably, she knew she had to move. Without thinking, she bolted into the exposed courtyard in front of the church and headed for the first alley she came to. All at once, the narrow darkened path became brilliantly illuminated by a shocking flash of light followed by a crash of thunder as loud as cannon fire. Ella screamed and edged past the smoking trunk of the tree the lightning had struck. When she emerged from the alley, she saw a scene of devastation—kiosk carts, store awnings and shop signs had been destroyed in the storm.
It was madness to be out in this. She turned to run back to the church. How had the storm built so quickly? The alley ended but, instead of leading to the church, it opened to a narrow cobblestone road leading to Heidelberg Castle. She looked up and saw the ruins of the castle in silhouette looming over her. The lightning was flashing through and over the windows, like explosions over a battlefield.
As she stepped into the street, the blowing rain stung her cheeks as she felt hopelessness wash over her. The betrayals, the lost love, the missed chances, the lost mother, her own refusal to see the truth in front of her. She sank to her knees on the cobblestones in exhaustion and defeat and reached up to her throat to grasp the opal necklace that had once belonged to her mother. As soon as she touched it, she was overwhelmed by an acute nausea that spread upward until she thought her head would explode. She no longer felt the rain or the cold or the fact that she was on her knees on the hard cobblestones in the street. She closed her eyes and felt like she was falling. The sound of the rain and the thunder was muted and then disappeared altogether.
When she forced herself to open her eyes, she was still on her knees, only now she was kneeling in front of an ancient moss-covered wall. It was still raining, but not hard. She felt a strong urge to get up and hide herself. Her stomach was cramping and seizing and she had to grab for the stonewall to keep from falling over.
And she was no longer alone.
She heard people coming down the narrow road from the castle but she was powerless to get off her knees to avoid them. She watched them come, slowly at first, and then more quickly as they spotted her kneeling there.
Suddenly, rough hands grabbed her by the shoulders and her nose was assaulted by a terrible smell. A large man gripped her tightly. He was dressed in rags. Looking past him and his companion, she struggled to understand why they had donkeys with them. Were they homeless? She tried to stand but she was too weak. The man holding her peered into her face and then scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder. Before she passed out she heard him speak to his companion in what sounded like German but not like German at all.
5
Greta Schaefer stood in the late afternoon sun and tried to focus her mind on the dappled effect of light against the castle walls. It was an unsuccessful attempt to distract herself from what the man was doing to her body.
Two men held her but they needn’t have bothered. She would not have resisted them as their leader pressed into her body as close as a lover. He was bent over his work and she could smell the soap he used to bathe with, allowing herself a moment of surprise to realize that, regardless of how close it was or wasn’t to godliness, even devils often like to be clean.
“Hold the bitch still,” he snarled. “She keeps flinching.”
“We can make her real still, my lord,” said one of the men holding her. The other man laughed. “Just say the word.”
“All in due time,” their leader said.
Perhaps someone was bathing, Greta thought, staring at the fortress walls, her arm screaming in fiery pain, or it might be washday. She stood between the two men who were supporting her. Facing her, his head so close to her breast that it might be resting on it, was Axel Krüger, eldest son to the warlord Krüger of Heidelberg. He gripped her right arm, the sleeve of her nun’s habit raked up past her elbow, the inside of her forearm in his hands. She dared not look at what he was doing just as she dared not look at the sobbing novice being held by another man on horseback directly in her line of vision.
“So there will be no mistake, Mother,” Axel said to her holding his knife up in front of her face. “So you will know precisely when I return for you and the rest of your mewling harpies, I make you a notation that you may carry with you.”
Greta allowed herself to look into his eyes and there she saw such depths of hatred and guilt that she was able to gain enough strength to endure what would come. The novice screamed and again Greta forced herself not to look. She could do nothing to help the child. Axel demanded her attention by touching the point of his blade to the tenderest, most vulnerable part of her arm to finish what he had begun.
He sliced a slow, curving arc into her arm but his eyes never left hers. She knew he was looking to see her weakness, her pain, her terror. She knew that if he didn’t get it, he would go further. As far as he needed to go. The pain blossomed from her arm and radiated up to her throat and shoulders, shooting outward like fireworks of agony. She could not disguise her reaction. She moaned.
“It’s a crescent moon, you see,” Axel said, holding up her bloodied arm so she might see his handiwork. “I will return for you and the others when the moon is no longer full.”
She returned his gaze but said nothing. She watched him give the signal to his men to mount up and they let her drop silently to her knees on the rough stones of the alley, her arm bleeding freely down the front of her dress. She watched Axel mount his horse. She looked at the whimpering novice who was held in front of one rider. The man holding the novice had one hand on the reins of his horse and the other clutching the girl’s breast through her
habit. The girl looked at Greta with terror and pleading in her eyes before her horse turned down the road toward the castle.
Greta sat in the cold alley, pressing her arm to her chest to staunch the blood. She looked in the direction they had gone. She bowed her head to blot out the sounds of the child’s sobs until she realized they were her own.
Ella’s eyes opened slowly to focus on the beautiful nun who sat beside her bed. The smile on her face was so perfect, so loving, that Ella had to resist the urge to reach out to her. Slowly, she pulled herself to a sitting position and positioned the thin rough woolen blanket around her shoulders. She was in a cell-like room but the heavy wooden door across from the bed had no lock on it. On the table next to her was her cellphone, her Taser, her billfold full of Euros, and a pack of matches from a club in the Altstadt she and Heidi had visited last month.
Ella’s mouth felt dry. She had no immediate memory of how she came to be out of the storm and in this bed. The woman by her bed wore the black habit of a nun, the wimple framing a beautiful face with large expressive eyes.
“Does your head hurt? Can you see me?”
Ella stared at her.
“Are you feeling ill? Or just weary?” The woman handed Ella a cup of water.
Ella drank from the cup quickly and handed it back. “More, please.”
“Of course.” The nun spoke abruptly over her shoulder in a language Ella didn’t recognize. A young woman who had been standing in the hall answered her.
[Tempus Fugitives 01.0] Swept Away Page 6
