On Wings of Fire

by Frances Patton Statham

  “Alpharetta, he’s not worth it—even if he is my cousin.”

  “He didn’t even notice me. I bought a beautiful dress to wear today. But that wouldn’t have mattered, either. Will you. . . will you excuse me for a few minutes, Marsh?”

  He stood. “Take as long as you want. I’m in no hurry.” She rushed to the powder room. And it was as if the eight months had never passed since the time she had fled Atlanta. The same hurt was there in her throat as on that July day. But now it was a double loss, of hope regained and hope vanished.

  The specter of Belline appeared in the mirror beside her. But hadn’t she always been there, like a silhouette, from the time Ben Mark had first entered her life?

  No one but Anna Clare suspected that she knew the truth, that she and Belline shared the same father. Alpharetta had been sworn to secrecy and even her father, Tucker Beaumont, had died without confiding to her that he had sired another daughter. Alpharetta had always wanted the sister that she had been denied in childhood. But instead, she had been handed an adversary who had just taken Ben Mark from her.

  She struggled with her disappointment. And she began to find excuses for Ben Mark’s behavior. She had expected too much from him. After all, she was the one who had broken their engagement and fled. It was too much to hope that he would welcome her at their first meeting, even if Marsh had tried to prepare the way.

  Conscious of Marsh waiting for her, she blew her nose and left the powder room. As she walked back to the table, she rounded the corner just as another man in uniform approached. To avoid collision, she quickly stepped aside, but the man, waving good-bye to his friends, continued walking backward until he stepped on her foot.

  “Oh, I say, I am sorry.”

  As Alpharetta came face to face with the white-mustached officer, she recognized Air Marshal Sir Nelson Mitford, the British officer who had accompanied General Meyer to Avenger Field to view the women pilots’ program in action.

  “It was my fault, Sir Nelson.”

  Her use of his name startled him, for his was not a household name like Monty’s. “Do I know you?”

  “I was Cadet Alpharetta Beaumont, your guide, sir, when you visited Avenger Field in the United States.”

  He peered at her as if trying to place her. Then the light came into his eyes. “Yes, of course, I remember now. You’re the one with the uncanny knack for reading aerial maps. And what are you doing in England, Miss Beaumont?”

  “I’m flying air transport now, sir.”

  “Well, I hope your foot won’t give you any trouble with your flying, Miss Beaumont.”

  “No, I’m sure it won’t.”

  He walked past her and Alpharetta, with a slight limp, returned to the table.

  Acting as if the confrontation with Ben Mark had never taken place, she managed a smile as she said, “I just bumped into someone I know.”

  Marsh, prepared to be sympathetic to a devastated Alpharetta, was completely surprised at her quick recovery. “Who?” he asked.

  “Air Marshal Sir Nelson Mitford. He stepped on my foot.”

  Marsh laughed. “I know him. He was on Tedder’s staff. They called him ‘Pelican’ Mitford behind his back because he’s so clumsy on land. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  “I’ll get over it,” she admitted. “But he’s really done me a favor.”

  At Marsh’s quizzical look, she added. “You know the old comic routine. To take your mind off your headache—”

  “You hit your knee with a hammer,” Marsh finished for her. Relieved at her ability to make a joke despite her disappointment, he added, “I still have those reservations for dinner.”

  “That’s not necessary, Marsh. If you’d like to cancel them—”

  “No.”

  Three hours later in the pink-marble dining room of the Ritz, tapers protected from sudden drafts by glass bathed the tables in a warm, soft glow and danced a pas de deux on the high ceiling, wreathed in golden garlands.

  At eye level, lovers sat, hearing the pulse of their own music beyond that of the small orchestra near the dance floor, and reaching toward Venetian wineglasses—long-stemmed, green, like tulips of wine on fragile stems.

  Each night was different, yet always the same—the touching of hands, the fleeting smile, the sadness hidden under the surface concealing earthly desires in full bloom that could suddenly be sniffed out.

  Tonight was no different. The dream continued even amid the quiet acceptance of danger.

  Into this atmosphere, Marsh and a regretful Alpharetta entered. Dressed in the green wool and silk, with hair like refined gold still molten from the furnace, Alpharetta took her appointed place opposite the blond-haired man. Regret, shared, became a powerful force. Although so different from her stepsister Belline, their façades were alike. Alpharetta could never be more than a friend to Marsh. But tonight, she needed a friend most of all, for Ben Mark had deserted her, even as she had reached out to him.

  Marsh held her in his arms, his mind on another woman in green, Paulina di Resa, who had died in the villa in Sicily, while Alpharetta was wrapped in her own dream. But others at the tables and on the dance floor, had no way of knowing that they dreamed different dreams, least of all a frowning Dow Pomeroy.

  “Dow, you’re not listening.”

  He turned to his fiancée, Meg. “Sorry, darling. What were you saying?”

  “I said one of the children at the nursery came down with measles yesterday. I’m sure we’re going to have a regular epidemic.”

  “Would you like to dance, Meg?”

  He had not heard a word she had said. She sighed, “If that’s what you want to do.”

  They left their table and walked to the dance floor as the small orchestra began to play “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”

  In Berlin, over one hundred musicians began tuning their expensive instruments for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s Saturday evening performance.

  General Emil von Freiker, seated midway in the orchestra section of the hall, was particularly happy for two reasons—first, the orchestra was playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and second, his son Henrich, on medical leave, was seated beside him.

  General Von Freiker was tired. The lines in his face revealed his age as well as worry over the progress of the war. Himmler, the head of the SS, was becoming more cruel by day, and Hitler, the madman, unable to sleep, was becoming schizophrenic as he prowled at night. Together, the two seemed intent on destroying as many lives as possible, even those of ordinary German citizens.

  But tonight, Emil was at no one’s call save his own. He sat patiently during the first half of the concert and waited for intermission to enjoy his glass of schnapps before the second half of the program.

  After intermission the choir began to gather behind the orchestra for the great choral finale. Frau Emma von Erhard was soprano soloist. Only through General von Arnim was she able to sing at all these days, for her Austrian husband had refused to join the Nazi party and had been shot. Von Arnim, interceding directly with Himmler, had kept the woman from being arrested with her husband. It would be interesting to know what gift Himmler had received in return.

  “Heinrich, do you remember the first time I brought you to hear the Beethoven Ninth?”

  “Ja, Vater, I was six years old.”

  “And you embarrassed me,” von Freiker said fondly, “squirming before it was half over.”

  “I like Wagner better than Beethoven, Vater.”

  “So does the Fűhrer,” the general commented in a dry tone. And for one brief moment, Emil von Freiker, veteran of two world wars, decided that he liked peace better than war.

  In anticipation of the music to come, Emil watched the musicians tune up, with his attention finally focusing on the three cellists adding to the cacophony. Proud Germanic heads leaned forward as great, powerful arms, clothed in black, bowed their instruments. While Emil watched the wrist movements of the three, they began to resemble the German woodcut of
the three bears, for the patches of hair, visible on the backs of their hands, were almost as thick as the short, curled hair on their heads.

  Emil became amused. To pass the time, he began to look for Goldilocks in the vast choir behind the orchestra. It didn’t take him long. The shaft of light in the center of the choir acted as a spotlight on one young soprano. Emil smiled. There she was, the woman mit goldenes haar.

  Emil turned to say something to his son, but Heinrich was occupied with his binoculars, intent on examining each female singer in the chorus.

  Emil’s attention returned to the stage. The Koncertmeister took his place in the first violinist’s chair and the audience grew quiet again as the conductor, followed by the soloists, walked on stage. Frau Emma von Erhard bowed with the others, and when the applause had died, the conductor lifted his baton for the music to begin.

  Emil leaned back and closed his eyes, but Henrich, using his binoculars, ignored the conductor and instead watched the young blond woman hidden in the soprano section of the chorus.

  Waiting all season for this one night, Emil was not disappointed. The music grew in majesty and magnificence, gaining in rhythmic momentum with each theme hurled above the tympani, like Thor throwing a thunderbolt into the midst of the orchestra and then finding rest in the melancholy voice of the violins.

  When the orchestra was spent, when each theme was renewed and discarded, the human voices began—first, one, then, four; and finally the entire chorus, searching for an ode to joy, a hymn to recall the brotherhood of man and to touch the soul of Emil von Freiker, seated in the great hall.

  But then a discordant note swept over the hall—the sound of air-raid sirens. A stunned audience fled comfortable seats to seek uncomfortable shelter from the bombs of the Allies.

  In the rush, Emma von Erhard called to her daughter. “Gretchen! Hier!”

  The young woman, the one Heinrich had been watching on stage, struggled to reach her mother. But Gretchen, with the chorus between her, was swept along with the others in their flight to the stairs and the dark catacombs underneath the hall.

  In the audience, Heinrich stood, watching the exodus, while Emil von Freiker raised his fist to the skies. Damn them—for spoiling the evening.

  The German people, so used to reading of the Lufftwaffe’s nightly blitz on London, were stunned that Allied bombers had penetrated into their capital city. How had such a thing happened, when they were supposed to be winning the war?

  Emil von Freiker took small comfort in the knowledge that any day now their powerful new rocket weapons would be aimed toward London with devastating results. His night was spoiled.

  He refused to take shelter with Heinrich, choosing instead to walk toward the outside of the building, where antiaircraft guns were pointed toward the brightly lit sky.

  Emma von Erhard did not rest until she had reunited with her daughter. Huddled together in the shelter, they listened as the others did, for the sound of bombs.

  Emma had another reason besides the bombs to be worried. Her daughter Gretchen had narrowly missed being sent to Himmler’s brothel for his SS officers. Warned by von Arnim, Emma had shaped her fifteen-year-old daughter into a child. Strapping her young breasts with gauze, unpinning her hair to let it fall to her shoulders, and dressing her in a school girl’s uniform with heavy black stockings, she had made her four years younger in appearance.

  But now Gretchen was eighteen and the masquerade threatened to come to an end because of the maturity evident in her face—blue eyes, porcelain skin over high cheekbones, a mouth that promised a soft sensuality. Gretchen’s only salvation was in being small and slender.

  “Frau von Erhard?” Emma recalled the SS officer at the door of her apartment three years earlier.

  “Ja?”

  “I have come for your daughter,” he said, stepping inside.

  “My daughter? What do you want with my daughter, Herr Captain? What has she done?”

  “I have orders to take her to Leipzig. Please see that she is ready in five minutes.”

  Emma gazed at the clock on the mantel. “There must be some mistake, Herr Captain. Gretchen has not yet come home from school.”

  The officer frowned. “School? That information was not on her dossier. Your daughter is at university?”

  “Certainly not. She’s far too young to be enrolled there. But you may see for yourself. Please have a seat,” Emma said. “She will be home in a few minutes.”

  The SS officer reluctantly sat in the fine old chair with its faded velvet upholstery. If the woman were not telling the truth in the hope it would give her daughter time to escape, her efforts would be futile. The apartment house was surrounded by his men.

  “Would you like a glass of wine while you wait?”

  “That would be most pleasant, Frau von Erhard.” He felt almost guilty taking the wine from her, for he could tell she lived a frugal life. But then his heart grew hard once again. The great Frau Emma had brought it upon herself—she and that husband of hers. If he had not been so stubborn. . . He began to drink the glass of wine without regret, for it was nothing in comparison to what he was taking from her.

  He had been told that the woman was intelligent, but she hadn’t blinked an eye when he mentioned Leipzig—as if she had no idea what awaited her daughter. Yet in her ignorance, she was far easier to deal with than the old grandfather an hour earlier. The bile rose in his throat as he thought about it.

  “Here she is—my granddaughter.” The old man, weeping, had stood aside for SS Captain Manfred Schőnbrun to view the body of the young woman lying on the cot. Freshly drawn blood indicated the choice she had made. Seated in Frau Emma von Erhard’s apartment, Manfred wanted no repeat performance.

  “I think I hear her now,” the woman commented with a smile. “You know how noisy schoolgirls are, when they’ve been held in restraint all day.”

  Walking down the cobblestoned street, Gretchen passed the biergarten on the corner where old men gathered each afternoon, and turned into the narrow street where she lived with her mother. The window boxes were bare of flowers.

  She stopped, for the dreaded black Horch parked outside the apartment building spelled trouble. Gretchen shifted her school books in her arms, and, looking at her friend, Elsa, she said, “Come on, Elsa, let’s sing.”

  “I’m too scared.”

  “No, you’re not. Come on.” Tucking her arm into Elsa’s, Gretchen began singing in her small, high soprano voice as they skipped along, laughing, singing, bumping into the streetlight and then bounding across the street. They both wore armbands with swastikas over their white blouses, and as Gretchen approached the steps where the amused SS men had watched their arrival, she batted her eyes flirtatiously and lifted her arm in salute.

  “Heil Hitler!” she said to them.

  And they responded, “Heil Hitler.”

  Gretchen and her friend burst into giggles and ran up the steps into the apartment.

  “Mutter! Mutter! You’ll never imagine . . .” Gretchen stopped, wide-eyed, in the open door.

  “Gretchen,” her mother scolded, “we have a guest. Please remember your manners.”

  “I’m sorry, Mutter,” she said, her eyes staring contritely at her black brogan shoes. And Captain Manfred Schőnbrun, gazing in dismay at the flat-chested child before him, said “This is your daughter?”

  “Of course. Gretchen, you must curtsey to our distinguished guest.”

  Again Gretchen shifted her books, and with an awkward charm she curtseyed toward the SS officer, the slight run obvious in one of her ugly black stockings.

  The SS officer stood, clicked his heels in acknowledgment. “There has been a mistake, Frau von Erhard,” he said. “I bid you guten tag.”

  “Guten tag, Herr Captain,” Emma replied, and when the door was closed, mother and daughter collapsed into each other’s arms.

  “Frau von Erhard?” The SS officer clicked his heels and Emma, so immersed in the past, froze.

 
; “My name is Heinrich von Freiker, and I had the pleasure of hearing you in Vienna some time ago.”

  Although he spoke to the woman, his eyes were on her daughter. The old fear struck in Emma’s breast. “How kind of you to remember. May I present my daughter, Gretchen?”

  Heinrich again clicked his heels, just as the sirens signaled the all clear.

  Gretchen acknowledged the introduction, but Heinrich’s bold stare disconcerted her. And the childlike bewilderment that had served her so well in the past vanished before the frank desire written in the officer’s eyes.

  The crowd began to move from the catacombs. For the musicians, there was no need to reassemble on stage for the remainder of the performance. The audience was anxious to go home. Emma, also anxious, walked with Gretchen to the dressing room where her daughter removed her choral robe.

  Outside the musician’s entrance, Heinrich was in no hurry to leave. He wanted to see Gretchen without the black choral robe. When she appeared, dressed in a schoolgirl’s outfit, he was disappointed. She had seemed much older, and yet—He narrowed his eyes and stepped back into the shadows to watch her, unobserved. Something was not quite right. For in the meager light, he saw a woman masquerading in a child’s clothing.

  Chapter 13

  In London, the soldiers disappeared overnight, just as the cabbie had predicted to Alpharetta. Ben Mark returned to his squadron and began a nightly bombardment around Pas de Calais on the French coast. Marsh also vanished, rejoining the 82nd Airborne Division in its final training before the Normandy invasion. And a sad but wiser Alpharetta continued to ferry much-needed planes to Prestwick in a stepped-up program, with no time to revisit London.

  Across the channel, in the town of Ste.-Mère-Église, the old bellringer, Maurice Duvalier, rose a half hour before six A.M. on June 1, 1944, dressed, retrieved his sabots near the doorway, and began his daily journey toward the church in the square.

  Maurice was the only Frenchman authorized to be about before the Angelus signaled the end of curfew, since it was he who rang the bells at the beginning and the end of each day. As he walked along the street, he made as much noise as possible to alert Hans, the German guard, for he had no wish to be shot.