This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  “No. Just be ready to let us in.”

  Johanna went back indoors. Dodging around the table loaded with dirty glasses, she reached the door into the hall, which she had previously locked as a precaution, and peeped through. Nobody was in the hall or on the stairs. She flew up a flight to the landing where an army first-aid box and spare bandages were kept in readiness in a cupboard. With blankets under her other arm she returned to the kitchen and deposited the items on the stone floor of the storeroom. Then back she went to the linen cupboard. She had taken out some sheets when Tom came up the stairs.

  “Hello? Remaking beds at this hour?”

  “Somebody has vomited,” she replied casually.

  “It happens,” he remarked philosophically, well under the weather himself, and went into a bathroom. Releasing a sigh of tension, she hastened down the stairs again before he could reappear.

  Gunnar, reaching the boathouse, found Steffen still conscious but unable to get to his feet unaided. Hauling him up amid his grunts and stifled groans, Gunnar once more supported him and together they reeled and staggered towards the house, Steffen’s legs constantly giving way.

  When they reached the kitchen porch there was a brief moment in which Steffen focused on Johanna’s face in a haze of light before pain and exhaustion finally overtook him and he blacked out.

  Along the rocks and boulders at the fjord’s edge Karen scrambled along, making good progress at times, at others slowed down by sections difficult to surmount. The knees of her slacks were torn where she had fallen several times and her sneakers were sopping wet where she had plunged her feet into rock pools hidden in the darkness. Occasionally there was a narrow strip of shingle and she would run that distance. Her route was fraught with the danger of slipping on seaweed that clung to much of the rock mass and breaking or spraining an ankle, and her hands and legs were gashed by rugged surfaces. The conviction that nobody could see or hear her from the land rising away from the fjord encouraged her to speed where at times caution would have prevented a fall. Once she heard a patrol boat approaching and flattened herself on a rock only seconds before its searchlights suddenly switched on, illuminating the whole section where she lay, the rain slashing through the beam in rainbow colours as it passed over her and out again over the surface of the water. Many times the choppy waves splashed up over her when she was forced to follow a lower line of rocks, but she was too soaked through already for that to make any difference. Somewhere along the way she had lost her headscarf and her hair clung to her scalp like a cap.

  Then ahead, black against the water, was the crag beyond which she would find the waiting fishing boat. She was compelled to come away from the rocks as the height of the land rose, and she ran through the wet grass, knowing she was on the right side of the point and away from the place where Steffen had barely escaped ambush. Coming level with the little bay she saw the boat below, lying without navigation lights. It was here she was to start giving the password, for someone from the vessel would be waiting near the track that led down to the bay.

  “Midgard!” she called in a low voice. The name of a sanctuary created for mortals by the Norse gods was appropriate to the wild night, galloping hoofs in the noise of the waves. “Midgard!”

  A figure in black oilskins emerged from the trees almost within touching distance, making her start. “Karen? Is it you, Karen?”

  “Erik!” She hurled herself into his arms and their mouths met gloriously. They swayed within their embrace of each other. All the past was wiped out for her. She forgot the misery and self-doubts, the conviction that she was lost to him beyond recall, that Carl had destroyed what might have been. Everything she had ever wanted had returned to her in the loving impact of his kiss. When they drew breath, he laughed softly in his joy at this unexpected reunion until she gasped out why she had come.

  “Then you’ll be caught if you stay here,” he exclaimed. “You’re coming with me! I’ll take you back to the Shetlands with me.”

  She thought she was crying with happiness but she could not be sure. He paused only to signal a Morse light to the fishing boat to be alert for departure and then began to run with her towards the track. Below them the vessel’s engine had tonk-tonked into life.

  “Achtung!”

  It seemed to her that her heart stopped. A single soldier had appeared, chest heaving from running, to face them, rifle pointing. Erik’s reaction was instantaneous. He thrust her behind him and fired a signal-gun that she had not known he was carrying. A single red warning star arched through the blackness down to the water below. If orders had not been given for all captives to be taken alive for interrogation, Erik would have been shot. The soldier ran forward, swearing.

  “Hands up! Get your hands up! You too,” he added to Karen, who had stumbled down through the impact of Erik’s attempt to save her. Then the soldier fired a shot into the air in a summons and more soldiers came swarming out of the woods. He shouted to them and many went pouring down the track, firing their rifles at the fishing boat which was drawing out into the fjord. A sergeant snapped an order, detailing a man to get a radio message through to the coastal patrol. Then he came to have a look at the prisoners, shining a torch into Erik’s face and then into Karen’s. His voice behind the beam brusquely ordered the seaman to be placed under special arrest. The girl was to be escorted back into the village to join those already arrested.

  As Erik was shoved forward by rifles, he strained his head back for a last word with Karen. “We’ll find each other again one day.”

  “I love you,” she called to him, helpless with tears. Whether he heard her or not she did not know, soldiers coming between them. Sobs racked her, all the more agonising for being soundless. A rifle gave her a sharp push. Allowed to drop her arms to her sides, she stumbled along, her sneakers slopping uncomfortably on her feet. She was chilled to the bone. Neither of the escorting soldiers spoke to her. The woods had become aflicker with flashlights and she heard the bark of tracker dogs.

  She smelt burning before she saw the smoke and then the glow of fire. When the village came into sight she stared in disbelief at the scene of destruction. Soldiers were putting a torch to each house and building in turn, the wood crackling, paintwork spitting. The fishing boats moored by the jetty were also in flames. In the red-gold light she saw the women and children of the village gathered into a group watching their homes burn down. The menfolk were being shepherded away into waiting trucks, only the very old men being weeded out and sent to join a little group of their own, some with coats over their pyjamas, having been raked out of bed, several blank-faced or completely disorientated. Every person had a dazed look of disbelief. Karen felt it stamped on her own features.

  “Why are you doing this?” she cried to her escort.

  “By order of the commandant. A just punishment for you and those like you for harbouring secret agents. There’s the one we caught.” He pointed ahead with his rifle. “We would have taken him alive, but he killed an officer and two men before he was brought down.”

  The dead Norwegian lay sprawled in his own blood. Karen looked down in grief at his quiet face as she went past. It was neither of the men who had been in Raold’s bakehouse. Two plainclothesmen, whom she guessed to be Gestapo, were going through his pockets while Axel Werner, jackbooted feet astride, hands clasped behind his back, stood looking on. She could only conclude that by some devious trick of fate there had been a third agent in the village that night on some purpose of his own. The probable tip-off had been aimed at the two men she had seen and this poor stranger had been accidentally caught in the net.

  “Over there!”

  The thrust sent her spinning towards the group of women. Some of the babies and the toddlers were crying. Marthe had seen her coming and burst into sobs in her arms. “They’ve taken Raold away. We don’t know what’s happening to the men or to us.”

  Karen held her close. Over her sister’s head she saw the gilded sign of the kringler above the door of
the bakery turn scorched and brown as the flames licked up the building. The unremitting rain did nothing to quell the fierceness of the fires, and sparks hissed and spat in the puddles.

  The razing of the village continued. There were spasmodic shots as pets were destroyed or a horse too old for confiscation was found in a stable. Cackling hens were silenced. It was a disciplined destruction. There was no looting. Everything went to the flames.

  After a while more trucks arrived. Now it was the turn of the women and children to be loaded up. As with the old men, the women in the same age group were pushed aside. They wept pathetically, seeing daughters and grandchildren taken from them. The cries from those in the trucks were as heart-rending as those from the group being left behind. Karen, helping with the children, was the last one up into the truck in which Marthe was waiting for her.

  The trucks began to move off slowly in convoy. Through the flap of the canvas opening Karen looked out on the burning village, half hidden now by black clouds of smoke. A sergeant stepped into the wake of the truck, standing in the middle of the road, the glow touching his helmet and the planes of his starkly agonised face. Karen recognised him and let her eyes dwell on him in silent condemnation as the distance lengthened between them.

  A soldier spoke to him. “What’s going to happen to the villagers?”

  Carl spoke dully, watching the disappearing trucks. “The men are to be sent to concentration camps in Germany. The women and children to the same type of camps in this country.”

  “What about the old folk?”

  “They’re being left, because some of them would probably have died en route.” He was uncomfortably aware of an echo in his own words. Hadn’t the medical officer said similar words on the day he had met Karen again? Abruptly he turned and snarled at the corporal. “Get back to the fires. On the double!”

  He strode off in the same direction. It was his duty to see that nothing was left undestroyed. His thoughts followed Karen. If it had been an officer near at hand instead of himself at the time of her capture she would have been taken with the seaman for interrogation by the Gestapo. At least he had spared her that. Nobody in the heat of the moment had thought to question his action in sending her back to the village and now nobody would remember anyway. The memory of her face as she was driven away would stay with him. He hoped she was strong enough to survive whatever lay ahead for her.

  Chapter 12

  In the storeroom Steffen lay unconscious on a bed of blankets. Gunnar knelt on one side of him and Johanna on the other. She handed across whatever was required from the German first-aid box and helped cut away the blood-soaked jersey and the shirt beneath to reach the wound. There proved to be no damage to any major blood vessel. It was a flesh wound that had been greatly aggravated by his efforts to reach the bakehouse. He was suffering from shock, exhaustion and a considerable loss of blood. When the dressing was completed, Gunnar drew up the blankets under his colleague’s chin and settled the pillow more comfortably.

  “He needs rest. Lots of it. When he comes round we must give him plenty of fluid. That’s the only treatment in these circumstances.” He sat back, setting his hands across his thighs, elbows jutting, and looked across to Johanna. He thought she made an incongruously beautiful sight in their strange surroundings of flour sacks and bottled preserves and storage pots, the wounded man lying between the two of them. Her silky evening dress fell in folds around her where she knelt, a diamanté strap slipping down off one shoulder, a swing of hair tucked behind one ear. Her expression was transparent as she gazed down at Steffen. There was such intense feeling, so much love.

  “Is he in a lot of pain, do you think?” she asked anxiously.

  “He’s not aware of it at the moment.” Gunnar saw the tears spill out of her eyes in two large drops and she half covered her mouth with her hand as if holding back a sob. His tone became gentle. “Hey! He’s not going to die. I wouldn’t let him. Now or any other time.”

  She lowered her hand to her lap and forced a watery smile. “I know. I’m crying with relief that his wound isn’t worse than it is. He looked in a terrible state when you brought him in.” Hastily she dried her eyes with the back of her hand, blinking over it. “I must return to the party. You’ll be safe enough here. I wish I knew that Karen was all right. Do you think she could have reached the fishing boat in time?”

  “As I told you, she was confident that she could.”

  “I won’t be easy in my mind until she’s back. I hope she makes it before anyone is up and about in the morning.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll get a jug of water in readiness for Steffen and get rid of his shirt and jersey. Tom’s wardrobe has replacements.”

  When she had put the discarded emergency dressings and the garments to burn and had emptied away the bowl of water with which she had washed the blood from Steffen’s chest and arms, she filled a jug from the tap and handed it with a cup to Gunnar. After shutting the storeroom door she leaned against it, closing her eyes briefly as she fought against a delayed reaction to the shock that the sight of Steffen had given her. There had been such a rush of love in her that she had wanted to hold him, kiss him and weep over him like a character in a Greek tragedy, terrified that he was going to die. But such primeval behaviour had come nowhere near the surface. Thoroughly twentieth-century, she had stayed calm, taken on the role of nurse and kept her head even when the mess of the wound was exposed, her own flesh feeling pain in empathy. Now drawing in a deep breath, she went across to a mirror and checked that there were no blood streaks on her face, and released her hair from behind her ear. When she went out of the kitchen she fully expected to be met by Tom expressing annoyance over her prolonged absence from the gathering. To her surprise, the army musicians who had made up the band that evening were packing up their instruments in the hall.

  “Are you going already?” she queried, glancing at her watch. “It’s barely midnight.”

  “Nobody wants to dance any more,” one of the band answered her. “Those who aren’t outside on the verandah have gone to the fire. We’re taking the—er—ladies back to town in our truck.”

  “Fire?” She was alarmed. It was not often that a house caught fire, but when it did it frequently went up like tinder. “Whose home is it? Does anyone know?”

  “It looks like the whole village.”

  She ran through the deserted party room to the verandah. The glow lit the sky above the trees and tinted the fjord. The officers who had not left the house stood smoking cigarettes and exchanging comments. Half a dozen women, subdued by what they were witnessing while at the same time annoyed at being left high and dry, waited together for their ride back. Johanna spotted Tom and darted to him.

  “Whatever is happening there? We should go and join a bucket chain or something. The local fire brigade can’t cope with that on its own until other brigades arrive. People will be homeless. There’ll be lots we can do.”

  Tom maintained an uncomfortable silence. The officer next to him half turned to address her. “A sergeant has just reported back to us. It’s not that kind of fire, fräulein. This is an elimination of subversion. There’ll be no homeless there. The population is to be dispersed into places of correction.”

  She drew back instinctively, struck by a wave of aversion, and stood as if unable to move in any direction, hands limp at her sides. There was a flurry of movement from the direction of the women as the band members’ truck appeared. They jumped down the verandah steps and ran across the wet grass, heads down against the rain, grumbling fiercely amongst themselves. Without exception they had arrived in cars. They were used to being treated with callous indifference on occasion, but the present indignity rankled.

  Feeling nauseated, Johanna turned back into the house. Tom, seeing her go, followed her. She had sat down sideways on a chair, her arm resting along the back, and was turned away from him. He hovered uncertainly, twisting a gold ring on his finger.

  “It could have been worse, Johanna. You heard wh
at was said. The people are being taken away, not shot.”

  Her voice came tight and strained. “Are you trying to tell me that mercy has been shown?”

  “In a way, yes. So far there are no details. We shall hear more when Axel Werner returns. He told me when he arrived that he had to be on duty for a few hours locally this evening. Naturally the firing of the village has upset you. It has upset me. I’ve known those village families for years. I’m not made of steel.” He balled his fists in agitation and shook them in emphasis, even though she remained facing away from him. “For your sake and for mine, don’t show any hostility. The Germans are edgy at times like these. We don’t want to get involved in trouble of any kind.”

  He saw her shake her head despairingly and thought she said, “Oh, Tom.” He could not be sure. The company was coming in from the verandah and their voices drowned out her quiet murmur. Switching on a jovial smile, he bounced forward to meet them.

  “Now, gentlemen. I’m sure your glasses need replenishing.”

  When he turned again she was no longer in the room. He thought it was as well. Later, when the house guests had retired and the place was quiet again, he took a last look from the front steps. The glow had gone. There was an acrid smell of smoke hanging in the air. Somewhere along the road a car was approaching. As he expected, the S.S. commandant was returning. The driver jumped out to hold the car door and Axel alighted. He looked tired and less than satisfied.

  “We wounded one agent, who escaped in the undergrowth,” he informed Tom, mounting the steps, “and killed a second one whom we surprised with a transmitter.”

  “Is the search still on?”

  “The area is being tooth-combed.” Axel went ahead into the house, removing his shiny-peaked cap and setting it aside. He smoothed his hair back above his ears with the palms of his hands, eradicating the indentation caused by the inner cap band. “A hard night. Not one that I relish.”