And what was Dolphie’s status now? He had implied he had neither the money nor position to help Hannelore. Was he disgraced? Had his wound left him crippled? Asking about him might be dangerous for him as well as her, revealing that he had enemy connections.
The longer they stayed in Germany, the greater the risk to herself, and to others. This was her search; and tomorrow, she alone would have to take the greater risk.
‘If there is no message from me in twenty-four hours, you are to leave for Naples. Jones, take Georgina and Green to the ship as planned. After that,’ she shrugged, ‘it is up to you, or you and Nigel.’ Nigel’s orders would always supersede hers, for Jones. And Jones would trust his own judgement, she suspected, even above Nigel’s.
‘Yes, Miss Sophie,’ said Green. She gave a small, silent nod as her eyes met Jones’s.
Sophie smiled wryly. Green, too, would prefer her own judgement to orders. But at least she and Jones kept up the pretence of deferring to their employer.
Her clothes were laid out on the bed; respectable coat and jacket, the ‘trench coat’, and next to it, the knitting needles again, this time with a bunch of tufts of brown wool as well as the ball of wool and beginning of a knitted scarf — all Sophie could believably manage.
Sophie glanced at the brown tufts, then looked questioningly at Green.
‘Drop one tuft of wool at each turn,’ said Green. ‘They’re inconspicuous. Tie a small knot if the enemies are armed; a knot on two strands means ten to twenty enemy. Three strands means forty to eighty . . .’
‘I’m supposed to be meeting a friend. Or friends.’
‘Who may be enemies,’ said Green quietly.
Sophie did not reply. But she put the strands in her pocket.
The morning was grey, looking heavy as snow clouds, though only a grey drizzle fell in the warmth of late spring. The affable Herr Süss kept offering coffee, schnapps, strudel mit Sahne, and his plans for the renovations of his hotel. ‘The most splendid in Europe it will be, Fraülein Higgs. You must bring all your friends to visit.’
She agreed it would be a most glorious hotel, then pleaded a headache and the need to stroll, which he accepted, managing to refrain from asking her to be careful, which might have ruined his reiterations of the safe and peaceful present as well as future of his city.
At one-forty exactly she began to walk along the promenade then back again, wearing the same gabardine trench coat, once made popular by officers early in the war, and recently adapted for women’s wear, and a woollen scarf about her hair and neck. She wished she could wear trousers, but although she did own a pair they would make her more conspicuous on this city street.
Her pistol lay in one pocket, hidden she hoped by the wool; extra ammunition in another, along with the knitting needles, her billfold holding an unwieldy lump of bills, and the Brussels chequebook — Munich banking was still too unstable to risk setting up a local account, but she expected a draft on a Brussels bank would be acceptable here, if it was a large enough amount to be worth a journey to cash it in another country.
A car passed. She looked up, trying to meet the driver’s eyes, but he passed on. A cart full of potatoes and cabbages stopped, but before she could reach it the driver headed for the hotel kitchen. He returned only to lug the sacks to the hotel, then jig the reins of his thin horse.
She walked again. Herr Süss would think this a most peculiar headache.
Another cart, this time with empty sacks, its load sold. The horse was even thinner than the one before, blind in one eye and lame, the driver muffled in a sacking coat, with scraps of the same hessian draped around his head and throat. She waited for this cart too to pass.
The cart stopped next to her.
Dolphie’s voice said, ‘Sophie!’ and then, ‘Climb into the back. Quickly. Hide under the sacks as soon as we are out of sight of the hotel.’
She obeyed without speaking, her heart beating louder than the limping clop of the horse, for the cart moved on within seconds. She realised it would have blocked the view of anyone looking from the hotel, and the footpath and road had been clear, the Munich streets still eerily empty even during the day.
The horse kept shuffling on, its uneven hoofbeats hollow on the cobbles. Dolphie didn’t speak.
The road rose. The cart turned a corner, bumping now on a rutted surface. Sophie could smell cows and mud above the scent of old potatoes and dusty jute.
Sophie hesitated. This was Dolphie. She trusted Dolphie. And yet she threw out one of the tufts of wool, watched it float down to the ground between the cracks in the floor of the cart.
An hour passed, or more. It was impossible to see her watch in the dimness under the sacking; nor did she want to risk moving in case she was seen. The cart turned again. Once again she pushed a tuft of wool between the cracks. She could smell something new, both old and familiar . . . Swans, she thought, just as Dolphie said, ‘You may come out.’
Or swan dung. For as she thrust the sacks aside she could see a lake and a muddy stream leading to it, with white birds ducking their necks hopefully into the water. A black-green forest of tall pines slithered down the mountains to the lake and behind them too, except for the track they had come along, but here two pale brown cows cropped short grass. A small turreted building, a bit like a palace that had shrunk several times in the wash, sat with its back to the forest.
Apart from the cows and the swans and Dolphie, the land was lifeless.
She clambered stiffly from the cart, trying not to ladder her stockings. Dolphie had already got down and was unwrapping his sacking scarf. He did not offer her his hand.
She stood and stared at him, unable to move. Both his arms worked — she had been terrified his wound in France might have become infected, that he would have lost his arm, or at least the use of it. He was thin, with the sunken eyes most ex-officers had. He wore uniform trousers, but a jersey over a civilian shirt with a soft collar.
‘Sophie?’
She nodded, unable to find words. She should drop another tuft of wool, in case they moved again. Dolphie wouldn’t notice, or would think it was just some sacking she needed to brush from her clothes. But she could not.
‘I knew you would come,’ he said stiffly. ‘Sophie Higgs would always come if she was needed.’
‘Hannelore?’ she whispered.
‘I will take you to her.’
‘She is alive?’
He nodded.
‘I . . . I was so afraid. Afraid for you too. I am so sorry. There is no way to say how much I am sorry.’ How could you apologise for lying to a man, shooting his men, leaving him wounded, stranded, near the front line?
It was impossible. She should not even try. She stared at him, trying to find something, anything, to say next.
‘Oh, Sophie.’ He stepped towards her. Suddenly his arms were around her, and hers around him. Their lips met. His were cold and firm, and only slightly desperate. His body fitted against hers, smelling of sacks and old potatoes and horse and man.
Time and place vanished. She had never felt like this, not with Angus, or Nigel. It was as if Dolphie too needed the world to vanish, or shrink till they were the only creatures in it.
She did not know a kiss could last so long. Or perhaps time had simply stretched, or they had moved to a world where there was no time . . .
She stepped back, smiling uncertainly, saw his smile, just as uncertain. She gave a cry of joy and clasped him again. Nothing mattered, not the danger nor the strangeness, just the beat of his heart, the warm male smell of him . . .
. . . and Hannelore.
She looked up at him. ‘Hannelore?’
He blinked, as if finding himself again after the kiss. ‘She is recovering.’
‘Recovering?’ The world returned. ‘From what?’
Dolphie gave a shaky laugh, one arm still around her waist, as if he could not bear to let her go. ‘From war, from revolution, from influenza . . . Where should I begin?’ His voice grew emotio
nless. ‘The rebels stormed our aunt’s house. They killed our aunt, and the servants who had stayed loyal. Hannelore and Old Pieter, the gardener, carried Grossmutti to safety in another house, but someone must have tipped off the rebels. They killed Grossmutti and the servants, and shot Hannelore, but decided to try to keep her alive, for ransom or public execution, I do not know. She thinks the Freikorps must have killed her captors. She asked a group of Freikorps for help. Many of the Freikorps know me.’ He shrugged. ‘I brought her here.’
‘Where is here?’
‘My uncle’s hunting lodge. It might be mine, for he died last year and his sons perished in the first year of the war, but without a government to manage land titles . . .’ Dolphie shrugged again. ‘Who knows who we are, or what we own? But the farming couple who live here have a garden and an orchard and cows. There are deer in the forest, mushrooms and berries and fish. We have managed, Sophie. And in a few weeks it may even be safe again to be a count and prinzessin in Germany.’
‘And now I am here perhaps you can do more than manage. Please, may I see Hannelore?’
‘Of course. Sophie, there are no words to thank you for coming here.’
She looked at him sombrely. ‘There are no words to apologise for what I did, back in Belgium.’
‘You did what you had to, and with courage. I have never admired a woman more.’
Angus had been intimidated by a woman who would shoot an enemy for the sake of ten thousand other men. She did not know what Nigel — or Miss Lily — would have felt. But the hard core of shame at her own actions, which she would do again if faced with the same circumstances, began to melt.
‘Come and see Hannelore,’ he said, taking her hand.
Chapter 17
A perfume for the boudoir:
1 tbsp candle wax
1 tbsp almond oil
6 drops gardenia oil
1 drop oil of Bulgarian roses
Melt the wax in the oil over a candle. Take off the heat. Pour into a small jar and add the perfumed oils. Keep well sealed. Apply to the hollow of the neck and to the wrists.
Miss Lily, 1914
Three broad steps led to a stone portico. The swans glanced at them from the lake, evaluating their potential as threat or perhaps throwers of bread — more likely the former, as there’d have been little bread spared for swans over the past four years, and meat had been scarce.
The front door led to what was evidently the main room, a vast fireplace meant to hold whole logs, smelling now of old damp ashes; a long table that could have held a banquet for Henry VIII. The heads of deer, bears, wolves and tusked boars stared down at her glassy eyed. It was unnerving, being watched by generations of dead animals. The flagged floor breathed cold. But Dolphie’s hand was warm in hers.
He opened a small door behind a dusty curtain, a servant’s door, meant for serving the master inconspicuously. A narrow passage between stone walls was lined with doors carved with more animals among scrollwork. Dolphie opened the second door along and gestured to her to go inside.
Warmth and shifting light reflected from the lake through an uncurtained window — the curtains were piled on a bench next to the wall. And then she realised it was a bed, not a bench, and the curtains had become blankets. Hannelore’s white face gazed at her from the nest of velvet. ‘Sophie,’ she whispered.
Sophie ran to her. ‘Hannelore! I am sorry I’ve been so long.’
‘Three weeks since I sent the letter,’ said Dolphie behind her. ‘That is fast indeed, even for liebe Sophie.’
Sophie took Hannelore’s hand, automatically feeling her pulse. Too fast, but steady. ‘You were shot? Let me see the wound.’
Hannelore laughed weakly. ‘No social pleasantries! Darling Sophie. Miss Lily would be appalled that your manners have deteriorated so. I am shocked!’
Sophie managed a smile. ‘It’s terrible weather, isn’t it? Do you think it will be fine tomorrow? Your . . . blankets are most colourful. I have never seen green velvet blankets before. Now may I see your wound? I have been helping to nurse for four years,’ she added.
‘Then you may replace the bandages. If you do not mind,’ added Hannelore. ‘Helga’s ointment is good but she does not see well any more and, well, your hands will be gentler. Dolphie, bandages?’
‘You see how she orders me about? A general would be less demanding!’ Dolphie sketched a salute and closed the door behind him as he left.
‘He has been so good to me,’ said Hannelore quietly. ‘He should be with his friends, finding a proper position in the new government. Instead he stays with me.’
‘You have me now.’ I will send a message to the hotel, Sophie thought. If Hannelore was not well enough to travel yet, Jones and Green and Georgina could stay here too and help. Dolphie would not object once he knew they could be trusted. Georgina would have to contact Mr Slithersole to delay their passages home.
‘Dolphie said you would come. He was so sure.’
‘Hannelore, don’t cry. Please. Of course I came. You should have known I would.’
‘When the soviets held me, I dreamed of you, and kangaroos and sunshine. But you might have been back in Australia already. It could have been months before you ever saw his letter . . .’
‘I nearly was on the ship to go back home. I am so incredibly glad I wasn’t.’ She stopped as Dolphie came in again, carrying a tray with two steaming bowls on it, and a sticky-looking jar. An old woman — no, not old, just bent and careworn so she might have been forty or eighty — followed him, carrying what looked like freshly boiled, ironed and rolled bandages.
‘This is Helga,’ said Dolphie. ‘Helga, this is our most dear friend, Sophie, who has come to bring beauty and happiness to us again.’
It was perhaps the most wonderful thing anyone had said of her. Sophie flushed, then took the tray and put it on the floor by the narrow bed.
The old woman curtseyed low to Hannelore, then to Sophie, then handed Sophie the bandages. She said something in German, too fast for Sophie to catch a word of it, or possibly she spoke in dialect. Dolphie answered in the same fast tongue. Helga smiled, curtseyed again to Hannelore, to Sophie and then to Dolphie, and backed out.
As if we are royalty, thought Sophie, and then realised, slightly stunned — Hannelore is royalty. She had never quite understood how much that would mean in Hannelore’s own country. And in Australian society too. Being a princess would far outweigh being a former enemy.
‘Out,’ she said to Dolphie.
‘So I am to be ordered around by two women now? Will it be this way all my life? I can see it now. Bring the coffee, Dolphie, fetch the footstool.’
Hannelore managed a weak laugh again. ‘Dolphie, go.’
He did, with a small intimate smile for Sophie.
Sophie lifted the curtains from Hannelore’s body. They smelled clean, not even musty. Hannelore wore only a man’s soft shirt. Sophie lifted it, carefully keeping her face expressionless.
Two wounds. No sweet corrupt smell of gangrene, no ominous red lines that meant blood poisoning and certain death. She unwrapped the bandage on Hannelore’s leg first. The flesh around it was swollen, so there was some infection, but the granulation meant the wound was healing, Hannelore’s own body keeping the toxins under control.
‘Well?’ asked Hannelore, only the sweat on her forehead showing her pain as the wound was disturbed.
‘Healing well.’ Sophie bent and sniffed again. A herby smell . . .
‘Helga has been putting her cream on it. She makes it herself. Beeswax, comfrey, calendula, chickweed, some names I do not know in English, a sort of cactus plant. I think it must work, if the wound is healing.’
Sophie thought of Monsieur le Docteur at her first French hospital, with his maggots, and the herbal cures the village women had provided that did indeed help, and gave her hospitals a far higher recovery rate than the official army ones.
‘This will hurt. Do you have anything for the pain?’
‘Lauda
num just makes me ill, and we have only a little. It is best kept for emergencies . . . schnapps does not touch the pain. It just makes it harder to cry out. Change the dressings, Sophie,’ she said quietly. ‘I am used to pain.’
Sophie washed her hands carefully in one of the bowls — a rosemary and lavender tea, she thought. She dried her fingers on a cloth, applied the cream as gently as she could, then bandaged the leg again.
The wound should have been stitched long ago. The scar might stretch and tear later, but it was too late to disturb it by trying to stitch it now. Now for the one on Hannelore’s chest . . .
To her relief that one was nearly healed and had scabbed over, just needing more cream and fresh bandages.
Hannelore looked even whiter when she had finished. Sophie sat, holding her hand, wiping the perspiration from her forehead, until the shock of the pain subsided.
The door opened. Dolphie appeared again and Helga was holding another tray. She placed it on the floor and then took the soiled dressings and bowls, again curtseying deeply, then backed out of the room with a muttered farewell.
Sophie looked at the tray. Three bowls of a soup-like stew, with meat and potatoes and swede. The food in one of the bowls had been puréed into a pale brown slop, presumably to make it easier for Hannelore to eat.
‘The last of the venison,’ said Dolphie. He picked up Hannelore’s bowl and began to feed her, spoon by spoon. ‘Eat while it is hot,’ he advised Sophie. ‘Heat is its best characteristic.’
Sophie obeyed, suddenly desperately hungry. The stew was filling, though for her taste the venison was beyond its prime and had a faint taint of rot. But perhaps, like game in England, venison there was not eaten till it had hung so long it had a pale green surface and an Australian cook would have thrown it out or at least steeped it in vinegar for a day.
‘I will check the rabbit snares tonight,’ said Dolphie, pausing to eat a spoonful of his own stew. He smiled at Sophie. ‘I am becoming a poacher on my own land, setting snares and traps. Shots would attract attention.’
The Lily and the Rose Page 10
