Hitler wanted only perfect Germans.
“Wonder if he knows how much his perfect German generals hate him?” Dix muttered, still using the Cherokee language as he coiled the climbing ropes into tidy bundles.
He rolled himself into a blanket and settled by the fire to sleep, intending to rise a little before dawn. He woke with a start and a feeling of deep unease, however, after only a few hours’ sleep.
Lady Grace Corvedale. She’d been in his dreams. She was in danger. He stood up, but forced himself to stop.
To think.
The dream feeling wasn’t now. It wasn’t this minute.
Dix shivered in the cold room, and quickly stirred up the fire. Gardener’s cottages, like the drafty upper stories of the lodge, didn’t rate the centralized heaters that warmed the downstairs rooms.
Finally, when he’d warmed up and the haunted feeling had dissipated, he composed a message. He wrote it out first, then encoded it onto a fine, thin scroll of paper.
Queen of Hearts at the top of the deck. True Knight is feeling the Jester. She must have her tome or never travel. Ace of Spades arrives. The deck is stacked against a fight. Keep options 4QZ375L open.
There. Best he could do.
Going to the dovecote, Dix took out one of the special pigeons he’d brought in the battered old truck he’d driven from Freyming-Merlbach. He kept both pigeons and truck out of sight. He didn’t want these pigeons to get loose, nor have them made into pie. The truck he kept on a hunting track away from the lodge. It would, hopefully, be their way out.
He rolled the note into its special tube and attached it to the bird’s leg. He stroked a gentle hand down the bird’s back.
As dawn broke he slipped into the woods, listening for patrols or the creak of boots on the snow. An expert woodsman, Dix knew this was a vulnerable moment. He hadn’t had enough time to get the measure of the new troops. He didn’t know their routines, because they hadn’t established them.
The chaos of that was opportunity for failure.
Whispering to the bird in Cherokee, he tucked it into his coat. Taking up a rabbit gun, a roll of twine and a game bag, he boldly left the cottage and headed into the woods. He waved to one of the guards, but since he was heading away from the house, the man simply waved back and let him go.
One hurdle cleared. Once into the woods, with the day brightening, he felt almost cheerful. He gave it more than an hour’s walk before he considered letting the pigeon fly. With Franz’s limping gait, an hour hadn’t actually taken him as far away as he wanted.
He’d have to risk it. He didn’t want to be gone too long. At the edge of a clearing, he stopped to listen, his posture that of the gardener, but his senses fully alert and aware in the quiet stillness. Nothing stirred.
Finally, he straightened and brought the pigeon out from under his coat. Thurrring to it softly, he said the words that would send it winging to Standish, or, more likely, Shippingston.
“Go home, Rosie. Go home.”
With a heave, he tossed the bird into the air, tensed for a shot or a shout. He didn’t relax until the bird’s wings caught the wind. It circled a moment, the headed west. Dix dared to stand a bit taller and watch the bird streak away. Toward the coast. Toward London.
“Strong wings, strong heart, good flight to you Rosie-bird,” he muttered, returning to the gardener’s stoop and shuffle, to make his way back through the snow. As he went, he stopped to gather branches of both holly and fir. Frau Shemper was fiercely Lutheran, but she kept the pagan tradition of holly and ivy at the doors and hearth at Yuletide.
With the generals coming, she’d demanded mistletoe as well, if he could find it.
Though he doubted it made an appearance in the main rooms, there was an advent ring in the kitchens with two wicks already charred as the season progressed. With no children in the house, there was no need for presents, or talk of the Christkindl, but he’d heard both Frau Shemper and the cook, Frau Krakle, humming carols as they worked.
“I wonder what Hitler will make of that,” he muttered. As to mistletoe, Dix knew where to look, and soon found a great-grandfather oak.
He was gazing up at it when he felt eyes on him. He let his back stoop a little more as he used his hatchet to mark a blaze on the lodge-side of the tree.
“Ho, you there!” a voice shouted. “What are you doing?”
There was the crunch of booted feet on the snow and two of the new, and heavily armed, soldiers slogged their way to him. Had he been standing properly, he would have towered over them. Stooped as he was, he came only to their shoulders.
He answered in the guttural German dialect he’s adopted for Franz.
“Eh, what about? I’m gittin’ yon mistletoe fer Frau Shemper, belike she wants it quickish.”
The younger man nodded and relaxed but the other didn’t.
“What did he say?” The older man demanded of the younger.
“Ah, lay off, Carl,” the younger soldier grinned at Dix, inviting him to share the joke of miscommunication on the older man. “He’s just country-like. Getting’ mistletoe for the housekeeper.”
Both men grinned. Catching one of the housemaids under the mistletoe was totally acceptable in a country house, so it would only benefit them.
“I’re gots te get a ladder belike,” Dix muttered, pointing upwards. “Found it, gotter get it.”
The younger soldier squinted upward in the early morning light. “Aye, sir, I can get that for you. No ladder needed. Here.” He handed Dix his rifle, and stripped off his coat, which he handed to his comrade. “This’uns easy to climb.”
Within minutes, the young man climbed up into the high branches of the oak and used a pocketknife to cut loose a heap of mistletoe.
Dix bobbed his head toward the young man. “Thenkee, young’un. It’d a taken me a bit o’ time for that, e’en with the ladder. You saved me a mort o’ work.”
“No problem, sir,” the youngster said, buttoning his coat. He took a sprig of mistletoe from the bunch and tucked it into the buttonhole at the top of his coat. “There. I’m well paid. Never know, right?” he said, grinning at the other two men. The older soldier, Carl, bent and broke off a sprig as well, agreeing that it was payment in plenty.
They shared cigarettes and quiet in the woods as Dix lashed the bundle of prickly mistletoe to the mess of holly and pine branches he was bringing back for Frau Shemper. When he was done, he and the men walked companionably back to the house in the brightening day.
“Frau Krakle has breakfast,” Dix growled the words, but grinned at the men from his stooped position. “Her’n sausages are best ‘round these parts. Puts ‘em up herself, belike.”
The men--the younger more of a boy than a man--grinned.
“Good duty this, eh?” Carl commented. “If the food’s always as good as it was when we came in last night.”
He slapped Dix on the shoulder hard enough to make him wince, and tromped toward the kitchen entrance. The younger man grinned again, and offered a hand to help tow the mass of greens to the kitchen door.
“Thenkee for yer help,” Dix said, smiling in return.
“Of course. Gave me a chance to get this, ja?” The boy pointed to the sprig of mistletoe. “That’ll get me a kiss or two. Early present from the Weihnachtsmann.”
Dix laughed and agreed that Father Christmas was more likely to enjoy those kind of gifts than the more angelic Christkindl.
They were sharing a last smoke when Dix once more caught the roar of a powerful engine. He pretended not to notice until there was a shout and a cheer. Pulling up to the gate was a motorcade, flagged and bedecked with swastikas.
Der Führer had arrived.
Chapter V
From her window, Grace watched the most powerful man in Germany--perhaps in all of Europe at the moment--exit his car. She’d cracked the window open slightly so she could hear.
A man in the detested grey and black Nazi uniform opened the passenger door rather than the back, much
to her surprise. Alighting from the elegant Mercedes, Adolf Hitler took in a deep breath and smiled.
“Ah, the air is so good in Germany,” he remarked. Turning, he smiled at the tall man who’d opened his door. “Thank you, Kempka.” The chauffer bowed slightly, snapping his heels together as Hitler surveyed the lodge. Grace froze in place. Even knowing she couldn’t be seen, the power of the man’s gaze surprised her.
He wasn’t the man from her dream. That man had been tall, his chin a sharply chiseled line. Hitler’s chin was rounded, his shoulders slightly stooped. The chauffer was tall, but not the right build, though he was an officer.
“You don’t believe in it,” she muttered desperately. “Why does it matter?”
She just needed the book.
The sound of hurried footsteps on the outer stairs had her racing for the bed. She yanked up the covers and, as the door swung open, sat up as if she’d been disturbed from deep sleep.
“What is it?” She shielded her eyes from the oil lamp Frau Shemper carried on a large tea tray. It was a dark, gloomy day and not far along into the morning. The oil lamp cast bright light, but also made heavy shadows in the curtained, west-facing room.
“Fräulein, he is here!” Frau Shemper exulted. “Come, come, you must dress. He wants to meet with you immediately. I’ve brought you tea,” she said unnecessarily, setting the tray on the table.
The housekeeper hurried to stir the fire’s embers and to throw on one of the dwindling supply of logs. The old lodge had been electrified on the main floor, but not in the upper rooms.
Here, evidently, one was expected to make do with oil lamps and the fireplace. This was, after all, supposed to be a rustic retreat for gentlemen taking weekends to hunt and fish, away from city concerns, not a pampering hotel with full electric and gas laid on.
“Franz is bringing water for you to wash. We will have the boiler up later, before dinner, and you may take a proper bath in the new lavatory, but for now, you will freshen up, ja?”
Frau Shemper didn’t wait for her to answer as she turned to berate Franz as he made his silent way in the door. “Hurry up, you lazy fool. She must go down within the hour.”
Franz grunted in reply, setting down a large, covered copper footbath. Grace hadn’t seen it’s like since she was a child, and then only at the country estate. In the barn.
“Water,” he said, turning to leave.
“Nein, nein,” Frau Shemper said. “You see to the fire while I get her clothes. Wilhelm,” she called out, firing off orders as she left. A younger man had replaced Gregor. He peeked in the door, blushing when he saw Grace by the bed. He promptly turned his face to the hallway. Although the light was low, she saw that the tips of his ears were bright red from his blush.
Stupid to turn your back.
“Green,” Dix muttered, shooting her a look from the one dark eye not covered by the tatty black patch. He nodded toward the young guard.
Evidently he’d seen her look and calculated its meaning. She allowed a brief smile and his flashed in return.
Dix loaded in another log and watched it catch. He wished the flue in his hunting cabin back home drew this well.
A different kind of hunting, here in Germany.
“Are you packed?” he said, under the cover of pulling the fire screen back into place.
“As ready as I can be without the book,” Grace murmured.
“If you get it, put something white at the window glass, I’ll come for you.”
Before she could answer, Frau Shemper bustled in again, Grace’s neatly pressed garments in her arms.
“Shoo, shoo,” she said, flapping at the men, who retreated, closing the door. “Here now, Fräulein. This nice wool, ja? And the jacket.”
The beautiful blouse was crisp with pressing and a light starch, and her wool suit was pressed to a perfect smoothness. If she’d been at home, she’d have been delighted.
“Thank you Frau Shemper. When should I be ready?”
“Three quarters of an hour,” Frau Shemper said, approval in her voice. “I’ll come for you.”
With that, the woman bustled out, leaving Grace to decide between tea and wash water.
“Tea.” Nothing should come before a bracing cup of tea. In the face of dictators and magical dreams, she needed it strong. She stirred sugar in, added milk and tested it for taste.
“Perfect.” How ironic that tea in France had been an ordeal to get prepared correctly, and her hostile captors made it to English exactitude.
Grace took advantage of the water while it was still somewhat hot, then dressed, finishing the pot of tea and the tiny biscuits with ham along the way. She was buckling her stylish, but sturdy shoes when she heard the distinct sound of Frau Shemper’s return. There were others with her, at least two by the sound of the boot steps.
This time when Frau Shemper knocked, she waited for Grace to invite her to enter before she unlocked the door. The older woman was still beaming, but she pushed open the door and motioned for Grace to come out.
“Herr General, may I present Lady Grace Corvedale?” Frau Shemper said in clear German. To Grace, she added, in English, “Lady Corvedale, this is Herr General Vicktor Von Manselm, he will escort you to our wonderful leader.”
Frau Shemper bowed to the man, and continued to beam and flutter as General Von Manselm snapped his heels together and bowed.
“Lady Corvedale, it is an honor to meet you. If you will come with me?” Von Manselm extended his arm for Grace to take. As an escort he was apparently perfect, in that he, like Frau Shemper, spoke impeccable English.
“Danke, General,” she managed as she forced a pleasant smile to her face. “You speak English well, did you study abroad?”
“I did, Lady Corvedale. I took my degree at Trinity College, Oxford.”
“Very good,” she remarked. “And did you enjoy our fair island?”
“Very much,” Von Manselm replied, covering her hand where it lay on her arm. “You’ll want to watch the stairs, Lady Corvedale. The carpet is unsteady on several of the steps.”
“Thank you,” she said, infusing a chill into her voice. He removed his hand at once and they made their way down the stairs, turning away from the front doors toward the comfortable library down the hall.
“I’m glad you could visit with us,” Von Manselm continued, as if nothing were amiss. “I understand you brought something of interest to the Führer.” He smiled warmly down at her. “Thank you for that. The burdens of governance are great, so those of us who are devoted to him appreciate when he can find entertaining distractions in the midst of so much important work.”
“Indeed.” It was all Grace could think to say. Was this the officer from her dream? He wore no SS insignia, but she’d been told that some officers didn’t, and that others gloried in it.
Oh dear. She surreptitiously scanned his features as they paused outside the library doors.
No, his jawline was too soft, and he had a large moustache. The man in the dream had been darker skinned, with sharp chin and jaw. He’d also been clean shaven.
The general knocked and the door was opened by a uniformed staffer. Several men stood at the fire or sat at the large library table. At its head, her precious journal lay on an archivist’s cloth. Sitting at the table, with her the journal in front of him, was der Führer himself.
“Ah,” he said, congenially, standing. “Come, come, don’t linger in the doorway!”
Von Manselm led her straight to Hitler, coming to attention immediately and clicking his heels smartly for second bow as they arrived at the end of the table. All other conversation in the room stopped.
“Mein Führer, may I present your honored guest, Lady Grace Corvedale?”
Hitler took her hand, bowing over it in a courtly manner. “Welcome, Lady Grace. You are indeed as lovely as the reports I received about you indicated. Please, sit.”
Von Manselm pulled out a chair for her and Grace sat, as Hitler resumed his chair.
“How are you finding your stay? The staff has looked after you well?” Hitler asked, and Von Manselm translated. She’d told Frau Shemper she didn’t have much German. A lie, of course. Her German wasn’t perfect, but it would have gotten her by. In this case, better to not admit it.
“All is well, danke,” she replied in halting German. “I thank you for translating, General Von Manselm,” she added, returning to English. “My German is quite scant.”
“Yes, yes,” Hitler replied, beaming at her use of the language. It seemed to please him all out of proportion. “Now, tell me, Lady Corvedale, how your family came to have this fascinating book?”
Frau Shemper bustled in with coffee and tea, bustling right back out when one of the aides blocked her and took the cart, wheeling it off to one side. Within moments, a steaming cup of tea, fixed to her exact standard, was set at her elbow.
“Danke.” She ignored all the niggling implications of this, and bullied her way forward. “It is a book of love stories,” she said, simpering a little. “Tales of true love, of course.”
Let’s see what he made of that. Hopefully, he’d dismiss it.
The hope was dashed aborning, as Hitler thumbed through to a marked page. “This ancestor of yours, here,” he pointed, noting a dated passage. She couldn’t tell if it was 1658 or 1568, but it was old. “He is noted in history books, even in Germany, as a soldier of great renown.” He nodded to himself, running a short, stout finger down the page. “And he is both English and German, yes?”
Grace held her hand out for the book. For a tense moment, she and Hitler stared at one another. With the faintest smile, he handed her the diary.
Grace quickly read the passage, remembering it from her first read of the book five years ago when it came to her at eighteen.
“Yes, his mother was German. A countess, I believe. My lady ancestor did not want to marry him. Not at first.”
Hitler mimicked her gesture, holding his hand out for the book. Reluctantly she returned it and his smile widened. He was enjoying the cat-and-mouse of this exchange.
A Jewel In Time; A Sultry Sisters Anthology Page 16
