by Cara Putman
She imagined her father as a famous painter who’d dislike having a child show up. Without the journal could she find him?
Her eyes closed, and she wondered if she should pray, but she couldn’t force any words so she waited. For what she wasn’t sure. Maybe for peace. For the thought that her time in this war-torn place wasn’t wasted. That in the midst of it all there was purpose and meaning.
God, are you even here? Sometimes I wonder how all of this must grieve your heart. This can’t be what you intended.
She slumped to her side across a bag. All this introspection wouldn’t change a thing. The tent flapped open, and a group of gals waltzed into the room.
“Keep it down over there.” The words came from the nurse who huddled on her cot. “Not all of us feel joy today.”
“Come on, Annie. It’s a gorgeous day.”
“It’s just another one.”
“Leave her alone.” A new nurse nudged Heidi, a bouncy redhead who always smiled. “She lost a patient today.”
“At least we’re alive and the birds are singing. That makes it glorious.” Heidi tugged her fellow nurse up. “Come on. We’re moving out in the morning.”
Annie flopped back down. “I need to sleep while I can. The wounded don’t stop arriving.”
Heidi sank next to her. “Fine. I’ll join you in your doldrums. Will that make you happy?”
“Sure, honey. Misery loves company.” Annie stretched out her lanky form. “Hey, Rachel, ready to move again?”
“As long as it’s north and not to the rear.” Her editor’s note reinforced her need to keep moving with the army.
“I kind of liked it here.” Annie harrumphed and sat up.
Heidi nudged Annie and pushed her off balance until the girl slid to the floor. “Ignore her. She’s not always this insufferable.”
Rachel stifled a laugh at the girls’ pointed banter. While it might seem intense, an underlying affection for each other was clear. “Are you sure you didn’t know each other before enlisting?”
“Are you kidding?” Heidi poked Annie with her toe. “We’d kill each other if we had history.”
“What do you call this?” Annie tugged Heidi’s shoe off and tossed it toward Rachel.
“Sisters in arms keeping each other sane.”
“I always wanted a sister.” On all those long days and nights when Momma worked and Rachel was alone in the small apartment, she’d wondered what little brothers and sisters would be like. Even one annoying sister would have made the loneliness bearable. The neighbors were older with busy lives. While kind, they often forgot she lived there too. “So where are we headed?”
Heidi leaned across the space between the cots and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The medical unit is headed due north about twenty kilometers. I’ve heard you’re headed somewhere different. With a certain handsome escort. You have to tell me how you ended up with a designated assignment versus floating like so many correspondents.”
“I wasn’t looking for it.”
“I would have.” Heidi waggled her eyebrows and slipped closer. “Haven’t you noticed how easy on the eyes he is?”
“Scott?”
“My, my. Don’t you mean Lieutenant Lindstrom?” Annie laughed as she grabbed her shoe. “This is cozy.”
“Not really.” She hadn’t thought her consistent assignment with Scott unique. It was a way for higher-ups to keep her out of the way. It didn’t hurt there was something magnetic and compelling about him. Heat traveled up her neck, a color she hoped the girls couldn’t see.
“The girl protests too much.” Heidi settled back on the cot. “What’s he like?”
Rachel shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.” Except that his kisses could bring her to her knees.
“After all the time you spend together? Not buying it. You’ve learned something worthwhile.”
“He’s dedicated to preserving art.”
Annie groaned and pantomimed throwing the shoe at Rachel. “You’ve got something better than that. Who cares about art when they’re under attack?”
“Scott does. He gave up curating a museum in Philadelphia to come here.”
“You mean Uncle Sam invited him.”
“I got the idea he made the first move.”
Annie snorted. “Typical man. Creating a better story than reality. Nobody enlists to parade around a war zone and find art.”
Rachel had thought that at first. “With him it’s different. He’s a gentleman committed to his assignment. Even when the general gives him impossible ones like me. He does what’s asked.”
“The girl is smitten.” Annie faked a swoon worthy of a film star and then jumped back to her feet. “Time to eat some of that junk they call grub.”
Part of Rachel wanted to deny she was smitten. But the words lodged in her throat, and she knew the larger part of her wanted to accept the words. All that was good in Lieutenant Lindstrom drew her, even when she wanted to resist a relationship. Annie and Heidi had shone a flashlight into the deep corners of her heart and seen something Rachel wouldn’t admit.
A tumble of thoughts and emotions coursed through her as she followed the girls to the mess tent. She wasn’t hungry, but maybe she’d see Scott’s face, and her heart would tell her if the words it whispered were true.
Chapter 24
August 1
The chatter of the nurses and zips of their bags woke Rachel the next morning. “Come on, sleepyhead.” Annie clapped next to Rachel’s head. “I have it on good authority your man is pacing out there, waiting for you. And don’t bother denying he’s yours.”
Rachel tried to open her eyes, but a night of restless dreams with images of the skirmish colliding with Scott left her unprepared to meet the day. Instead, she wouldn’t mind being back in Rome or Naples with the comfortable hotels and bed. The opportunity to block out the fact she was preparing to chase the front lines again.
Annie grabbed a tin cup of water and held it over Rachel.
“You wouldn’t!”
“Try me.” Annie cocked an eyebrow.
Rachel kicked the bedroll away from her feet and tried to stand. Instead, she rolled to the ground and collided with a bag as the bedroll encased her feet. “Okay, you got me.”
Annie laughed so hard water tipped from the cup and splattered against the worn grass. “Glad to know that old trick still works. Seriously, the man is creating a path out front.”
“I’m half tempted to leave him pacing.”
“You could. But the soldiers will be here to tear down this tent in fifteen minutes. You might as well get up.”
As they packed, Rachel asked the gals if they’d seen her sketchbook. “I had it in my bag but it disappeared.”
Heidi and Annie looked at each other. Heidi frowned. “You don’t think we took it?”
“No.” That was the last thing Rachel believed. “Have you seen anyone with it?”
Both shook their heads. Annie rolled up a stained pair of trousers and shoved them in her bag. “But when I’m here I tend to sleep like the dead.”
Heidi nodded. “Me too. The rest of the time I’m eating or at the hospital.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Ten minutes later Rachel collected her bags and bedroll and said good-bye to Annie and Heidi. She doubted she’d bunk with them at the next stop. Still she’d miss the way they kept her days interesting.
Scott grabbed her bags when she exited. His continued chivalry in the face of war honored her. When they reached the jeep, he set the bags in back, then turned to her. Her mouth dried as he helped her into the vehicle. He held her hand a moment longer than needed, but she didn’t want to end the connection. Tyler cleared his throat, and Scott dropped her hand like he’d touched a pot of boiling water.
The kilometers clicked by as they joined another
convoy headed north through a fog that settled over the area. A fog that surrounded her inside and out. Rachel scanned the surroundings, imagining the enemy watching and waiting for the perfect shot that had missed her the prior day. The eerie feeling settled along her spine. After they’d driven in silence awhile, Rachel leaned forward. “Where are we headed?”
“A villa. Or castle. It’s called Montegufoni, located in the heart of Tuscany about twenty kilometers from Florence. The father told me it’s a repository for some of Florence’s treasures.” Scott stared through the spiderwebbed windshield.
“It can’t be good people know where those paintings are.”
“Perhaps statues and other antiquities too. I don’t like the idea of the knowledge floating around. I doubt there’s great security.”
The jeep traced a bend in the road. The vista opened and Rachel couldn’t stifle a gasp. A beautiful, utterly old castle graced the horizon. With yellow stucco walls soaring stories into the air, it had an imposing tower that stood point over the middle of the building.
“It’s beautiful.”
The words had slipped out when a plane flew in at great speed and overtook the castle.
“Don’t drop anything!” Scott moaned as he rubbed his shoulder.
“Maybe nothing’s there.” Tyler ground the gears and edged toward the side of the road under the meager protection of a cypress. “We’ll wait until the plane’s gone.”
Scott’s mouth opened, then closed. His gaze never left the plane as it soared and then circled back. “Is it coming for us?”
Rachel shuddered. She’d heard stories of pilots on both sides of the fight using their machine guns to strafe those unlucky enough to be on the road when they flew overhead. She didn’t want to become a target. Staying in the vehicle would paint a large circle on her in the middle of a shoot-me zone. “We can’t stay in the jeep.”
She started to climb out but noticed the plane turning around again. “Is it headed for the castle?”
Her heart ached at the thought of that gracious building taking a hit. Forget the art; the building itself was worth preserving.
“Come on.” Scott pushed harder against the floor of the jeep. “Get us there now, Tyler.”
“You want to be plane bait? You’re nuts.”
“I have to be there.”
“Then you might want to run. I’m not approaching until the plane disappears.”
If Scott had to sit here and watch that plane bomb the villa, he might throttle Tyler. Then he wouldn’t need a driver because he’d spend the rest of the war in a cell.
“Tyler, the plane’s gone.” Rachel’s voice soothed him.
Scott searched the sky afraid the plane would circle or come back with friends. After the plane didn’t reappear, he thumped the dashboard. “Let’s move.”
Tyler grunted. “You’re explaining to my family if I’m killed.”
Scott ignored the comment, instead praying for protection as they approached the estate. The castle didn’t grow closer as they drove. The way it sat on a slight rise with a road winding around it lengthened the journey. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the ochre tones contrasted against the vibrant grass and pale sky. It looked like the plaster-covered walls were intact. He focused but didn’t hear the drone of a plane. Instead, the song of a bird chased by the laughter of children reached him. Children? God help them if they remained when the plane returned.
“Stop the car.” Rachel tapped Tyler’s back. “Now.”
“Why?” The man didn’t budge as he steered through a curve.
“I need a framing shot.”
“Of course you do.”
As soon as he slowed, she hopped out and snapped a couple pictures. Scott caught her glances at the sky. “Okay, I’m done. Thanks.”
“Dames.”
“Photographers.” Scott corrected Tyler.
Tyler grunted. “Now what?”
“I’ll see who I can find.”
“Know anything about this castle?” Rachel slipped into the backseat, and Tyler pulled back to the road.
“Just what the father told me.”
“And that was . . . ?” Tyler looked at him.
“It’s owned by an Englishman. He’s fighting for the Brits but allowed art to be stored here.”
“Sounds about right.”
Scott stared at the private. “What do you mean, that sounds right?”
“I make it a practice to know what I can about important people and places.”
Scott snorted, then turned away. The man liked to give the illusion he knew more than anyone else, yet he didn’t share fresh information. “Spent time at Montegufoni?”
“In the area as a kid. My father dragged us here for a summer. Thought it’d be our version of a Grand Tour. Such an outdated idea. Bored me to tears.”
Rachel leaned between them. “You spent a summer in Tuscany?”
“Yep. Aren’t you jealous?” The man navigated another turn.
Scott kept his peace as he wondered how much of Tyler’s story was true.
“Actually, yes.” Rachel sighed from her spot in the back. “I would have loved the opportunity. My summers consisted of a once-a-month trip to the beach if we had money.”
“Well, it wasn’t so swell being stuck with a bunch of kids who didn’t speak a word of English when I didn’t know Italian. Got so mad I decided I’d never learn.”
“Why not learn as fast as you could?”
“I didn’t want it to matter.”
“Still, it must have been marvelous. I’ve always wanted to come.” A wistful tone colored her words.
“Why?” Scott turned around to catch her expression as she answered.
“Not Italy so much really.” She looked out of the jeep. “I’ve always wanted to follow my mom’s journey.” The breeze blew her hair across her face, and she didn’t brush it aside like usual. His fingers moved to do it for her, but he pulled back. Her face had closed, and he could feel the wall she’d erected.
With the last turn before the castle, activity on the road increased. It sat on a bit of a raised hill, like a gorgeous peridot set in a ring of deeper emerald hills. Some part of the Allied army had taken residence.
“Tyler, any idea whose military that is?”
“Well, it ain’t the Germans.”
“That’s good, but I’d sure like to know who I’m dealing with.” Scott tried to see the flag, but it flapped too much in the wind.
“No one in headquarters gave an indication?”
“Not much more than it was contested but should be in Allied hands when we arrived. Far as they knew, we were the first headed here.”
“We came before it was secure?” Rachel stared at him.
Tyler muttered something Scott hoped Rachel didn’t catch. “It’d be nice to have good intel once.”
“Like you said, this is war.” Scott squinted to try to make out who held the approach. “Guess I should have paid attention to flags in school.”
“It’s British of some sort.” Rachel pointed where it flew in front of the castle. “See the Union Jack on the background. Maybe New Zealand.”
“Well, boys and girls, I think this is where we stop and hope those folks are friendlies.” Tyler halted in front of a couple men standing beside the road, each holding a Lee-Enfield rifle at the ready.
“Papers.” The lilt to the voice indicated the man had British ancestors, but an independent tone accented the words too.
Scott pulled them out. “Here you are.”
The man took the papers and scanned them while his friend kept his gun at his hip. “Monuments and Fine Arts? You’ve found the right place. Watch for the Italian.”
“What?”
“The chap’s into his art and explaining it to whoever stops.”
The other s
oldier nodded. “Passionate fellow.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Scott looked beyond them to see a milieu of soldiers milling. “Where to now?”
“Wherever you can park. Be on guard. Locals moved into the castle during the fighting. Children are everywhere.”
“Thanks.”
Tyler launched the jeep into gear, then edged up the incline and parked. A bell hung above the formidable entrance. It bore a slight resemblance to drawings of Texas’s Alamo, if you subtracted the desert and added the Tuscan countryside. Imposing yet with the sunshine-colored plaster welcoming.
“Can’t leave our stuff in the jeep. Especially if this is a refugee camp.”
Scott nodded at Tyler. “Unless you want to stay here while I see what’s happening.”
“Not on your life.” Tyler glanced up the hill.
“All right.” The castle drew Scott to it. He had to know if the rumors were true. Did great masters hide inside its walls?
Rachel eyed the steep hill. It wouldn’t be easy to schlep her gear up there, but with the guys carrying their own, she’d handle hers. Soldiers had deployed their tents on a large field next to the castle, the one sign they weren’t British being their unique patches and the occasional flag. She grabbed one bag and her bedroll, but Scott grabbed her other bag before she could. She offered him a smile, then headed up the hill, sandwiched between Scott and Tyler.
She was so close to her destination. The last map she’d scoured had shown Montegufoni twenty-five kilometers southwest of Florence. She could almost see the city. Once there among its occupants she’d find someone who remembered her momma. She pressed her lips together and jutted her jaw. It might be impossible, but she would.
She staggered over the top and turned to gaze over the vista. Her breath caught at the rows of hills, some with grapevines, others with fields or lines of trees. It looked like an oasis; yet hints of battle remained. At least it hadn’t been as horrible as the fighting around Anzio and Cassino, but to those who lived here, it had been every bit as terrible. To have opposing armies battle for position across your land and home. She forced the image from her mind and tried to memorize what lay before her. A tapestry of immense beauty crafted by an amazing Creator.
