“I’m fine. My back hurts.” He rubbed it for her, and she started to drift back to sleep and then jolted awake with a sharp stabbing sensation. He looked at her then and sat up in bed. And he could see that she was in pain.
“I think you’re having the baby,” he said in a strong, quiet voice. “I don’t think this is indigestion.” He suddenly realized that she was in denial, and she’d been having contractions earlier. “Come on, baby, let’s go.”
“I want to stay here,” she said in a small voice.
“We can’t,” he said firmly. “I don’t want you to have the baby here.” He was definite about that.
“They won’t let you be with me,” she said plaintively, and then in a smaller voice, “I’m scared …” And as she said it, a viselike pain gripped her, and she clutched his shoulders with both hands, and he could see in her eyes how bad it was.
“I’ll stay with you if they’ll let me,” he promised. He got up, put on his pants and a shirt, his socks and shoes, then rapidly brushed his hair. “Come on,” he said as he scooped her up in his arms, and wrapped her in the blanket. He tried to stand her up, but she could no longer walk, and he was panicked they had waited too long. He set her down on the couch in the living room. “I’ll get the car.” They had already arranged to borrow one from a trapeze act down the road, who had agreed to leave the keys on the seat. And when he got there, he found the keys, quickly started the car, drove it back to their trailer, and went inside to get Christianna. She was in the throes of terrible contractions and could barely speak. She stopped him when he tried to pick her up.
“I can’t … I can’t …” she whispered. “It hurts too much … don’t move me,” she begged him, and then she screamed.
“Christianna, don’t do this to me … baby, please—let’s go.” But she was in agony, and he didn’t have the heart to just pick her up and move her, she was in too much pain, and she wouldn’t let go of him. He helped her lie down on the couch, and he ran next door to wake Gallina. “Get a doctor—an ambulance—somebody—she’s having the baby!”
“I thought you were going to the hospital.” Gallina looked at him in surprise, still half asleep.
“I think it’s too late—she won’t let me move her.” Gallina woke up fast then, and promised to get someone there, the fire department if she had to. Nick ran back to their trailer, praying that someone would come soon. And by the time he got back to her, Christianna had gone back to their bed, and was writhing in agony.
“I can’t …” she kept saying to him, “I can’t …” and then she was racked by another pain, and he didn’t know what to do, and finally he held tightly to her hands and looked her in the eye, and knew what he had to do. It was no different than Pegasus when he wanted to give up.
“Yes, you can,” he said to her firmly. “Yes, you can. You’re doing it … it’s going to be fine … I’m right here—”
“No!” she screamed at him, as a pain bored through her that was so powerful, she felt like she was drowning and could no longer see him. Everything was underwater, except the pain that followed her everywhere, and she could hear him but she couldn’t see him. And as he watched her, there was terror on his face. He didn’t want to lose her or the baby if something went wrong, and then he laid her down gently, and when he looked, he could see the baby’s head coming through, moving toward him, as Christianna screamed, one long unending howl of agony, until the baby lay in his hands, and she stopped screaming, and there was silence in the room. It was a girl, with the cord wrapped around her. She wasn’t making a sound, but she was looking at him with wide-open eyes, and he was crying as he held her and turned her gently and tapped her back, and she took a breath and started to cry, and Christianna cried too.
“She’s so beautiful,” she said in awe. “And I love you so much.” She touched his face, as they looked at each other and laughed and cried.
“I love you too.” What he had just experienced had made up for almost everything that had happened to him. It was the greatest gift of his life. And so was Christianna. And their child.
He had no idea how to cut the cord, but he didn’t have to. The fire department arrived five minutes later, and the firemen took over and knew what to do. They offered to take Christianna to the hospital, but she didn’t want to, and the baby was fine. She was already at her mother’s breast, and looking around with interest. And Nick knew he would never forget the instant she’d been born and what they shared. And maybe Christianna had been right. She didn’t want to leave him, and if she’d gone to the hospital, he would have missed all of it. It was the greatest miracle of all.
The firemen checked Christianna’s vital signs and the baby’s, and helped them clean things up, and Gallina came to help too. And an hour later the firemen left and wished them luck. Other performers had gathered in the road by then, and Gallina told them what had happened, and everyone was happy for them. Lucas came to see his baby sister for a few minutes, and then went back to play with Rosie in the other trailer.
In their tiny room, Christianna lay holding their baby, and Nick looked at them both with adoration.
“You were fantastic,” he praised her, “and so brave.”
“No, you were. I’m so glad we were together,” she said softly, as Nick stroked the baby’s cheek and she slept in her mother’s arms.
“Me too. You were right.” She was right with most things. Christianna always seemed to know what was best for them. They had already agreed to call her Chloe if she was a girl, and Nick whispered her name, and then kissed Christianna. And as he looked at them, he knew that one day he’d give them a better life than this, in this tiny room in a trailer, touring all over the country, with no place to call home. He knew he would do it—he didn’t know how, but he would. Christianna deserved it, and so did their baby, and Lucas … but for now, what they had just shared was a miracle in itself, and enough for them both. He curled up in bed next to them, and all three of them went to sleep. It had been a very big day.
Chapter 24
A year later, in the spring of 1944, when Chloe was nearly a year old, the tides were turning. The Allies were bombing Germany relentlessly, and landing in Europe, the Russians were pushing the Germans back, and Adolf Hitler’s forces were finally losing ground. It was a long time coming, and it wasn’t over yet. But there was hope at last that Hitler might not conquer the world. Things were moving in the right direction.
Nick was worried about his old friend Alex—he hadn’t heard from him in nearly a year. The letters just weren’t getting through anymore. He had heard from Marianne, and she had had no word of her father either. Nick just prayed he was still alive. Marianne’s baby was two years old by then, and she was living with her parents-in-law at Haversham, and she said it was a peaceful life, but there was an unmistakably sad tone in her letters. At twenty-three, she had lost a country, a home, a husband, and possibly a father. She said the great joy in her life was her little girl. She was a year older than Chloe, Nick and Christianna’s baby, who was the light of his life too.
After Alex had helped get the tenant farmer’s friend close to the Swiss border, and concealed him in his wine cellar before that, there had been others, Jews who had remained hidden or been overlooked, and were trying to escape before they were sent to camps. Most were men who had the strength to survive the hardships, and were wily enough to flee the Germans, and live in hiding or on the run. There had been women on a few occasions, and once two little girls whose entire family had been taken—they were trying to get to their aunt in France, who was willing to conceal them there.
Alex had never planned to help them, but each time the opportunity came, he rose to the occasion and did what he could. There was no formal underground, just a handful of people who were brave enough to help. It was the only thing that gave meaning to his life now. Marianne was safely in England with the Beaulieus and her baby, he hated his countrymen, and he was willing to do almost anything he could to undermine the Nazis, a
nd he had a perfect front as a distinguished aristocrat whom no one suspected. And in time it took over his life. It had become his reason for living, and he continued to help and conceal people, assisting them to escape. He knew it was his mission. And he had gotten bolder as he gained more experience. Still the local high command treated him with respect. He was just a local nobleman alone with his horses, and they saw him out riding every day. He was on cordial terms with all the officers, and had invited them to dinner several times. They thought him a charming man.
In June 1944, the Allies began landing on the coast of northern France. Hoping they would come soon, and wanting to clear a path for them, Alex helped a group of men blow up a train carrying rockets and munitions, to do all he could to wreak havoc for the Nazis. It had gone well.
Alex worked as part of a six-man team that night, with one woman among them. It was the first time he’d done anything like it, but he had agreed to join them, when they said they needed his help.
They had a surprisingly easy time laying the wire for the explosives, and they were bringing in the dynamite later that night, by wheelbarrow and by hand and by car. Alex was planning to walk through the woods to them. He was fearless, and if they killed him, he didn’t care. Marianne was safe with the Beaulieus, and the world he knew and loved had been blown to smithereens in the past five years. Nothing he had ever held dear still existed. And whatever he could do to destroy the Nazis as revenge seemed fair.
He carried feed bags full of explosives that night, and handed them man to man to set them. And then they all waited in the woods for the train the next morning, and when it appeared at dawn, they lit the fuses. The reaction was immediate. The train was blown to kingdom come and everything in it. Their mission had been accomplished. They disappeared like mist into the woods, and Alex walked home through the forest. He had just reached the path to the schloss, when the colonel appeared out of nowhere on Favory. The horse still recognized the man who had trained him and pawed the ground when he saw Alex. Alex smiled at both rider and man, and looked like a gentleman out for a morning walk.
“Going somewhere, Count?” the colonel asked him with an evil glint in his eye.
“Just out for a morning walk, Colonel. How’s our friend there? He looks lively. Is everything all right? It sounds like you had some trouble this morning.” The entire neighborhood had heard the explosion. There was no way to ignore it. Alex couldn’t pretend not to know.
“And where were you an hour ago, Count?”
“Getting some air,” he said innocently, as the colonel watched him. Alex could see he was suspicious, but he was fearless.
“Along the train tracks? It stinks of dynamite there,” the colonel said angrily. It would go badly for him that the explosion had happened in his district and on his watch. And the high command was sensitive these days to betrayals and failures. The colonel didn’t want that on his record, and Alex knew it.
“Does it?” Alex said benignly. And as he did, the colonel pulled a gun on him and pointed it at his head from the distance.
“You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to, hiding Jews and making trouble! Always the innocent aristocrat, looking down your nose at us. And now you think you can blow up a munitions train and get away with it! We’ve been watching you for months.” He was shaking with anger. Alex only smiled.
“Have you? It must be disappointing for you. I lead a quiet life.” If he was trying to scare him, he hadn’t, but Alex had his hand on the pistol in his pocket, just in case. It was the gun he’d been given the first night his tenant came to see him with the man he had hidden in his wine cellar for two days.
“Not so quiet as you’d like us to think. And when the Allies come, you’ll welcome them with open arms?”
“Are they coming?” Alex asked, feigning surprise. “What interesting news. I haven’t heard that on the radio.”
“What have you heard?” the colonel asked, as the horse danced and he approached.
“About our victories on the eastern front, and how the British are cowering beneath our bombs. Is that not true, Colonel? Propaganda or truth?”
“You traitor!” the colonel said as he drew closer. “I hate your kind! Always supercilious! You think you’re better than everyone else, because you were born with a title and a schloss, and can do anything you want.”
“And you think you can steal it from us, and be one of us. You’re not, any more than the Fuehrer. You can’t steal it, Colonel. You have to be born to it. That’s how it works.”
“You bastard!” the colonel shouted at him, and cocked the pistol he held at Alex’s head.
“You can kill me, or drive us out of Germany.” Alex was speaking for Nick then. “But there are thousands more like us, and we’ll win in the end. Truth is mightier than the sword, and so is honor. You can’t dishonor us. You can kill us, but there will always be more of us than of you.” As he said it with eyes full of hate and rage, the colonel pulled the trigger. He wanted to silence him forever. But Alex had had his pistol pointed at him, ready and cocked. And as the colonel fired, so did Alex—not at the man but at the horse, which Alex knew would be the final blow to him, and far more subtle. As Alex fell dead to the ground, so did Favory beneath the colonel. Alex had had the last laugh, and he had chosen the most elegant exit, which was so like him. He was a nobleman to the end.
Chapter 25
The summer of 1944 was a strange season for the circus, too, a summer of disasters. They had decided to change their route that year, and went north in the early months of the tour, planning to head west later, so instead of California in July, they were in Hartford, Connecticut. And on July 6, with the big cats in the center ring for the first act, a fire broke out in the first twenty minutes of the show. It began as a small blaze but ran up the sidewall of the tent. The band broke into “Stars and Stripes Forever” immediately, which was the agreed-upon SOS signal to all circus personnel that something was amiss, without alarming the crowd. And the ringmaster attempted to warn the audience to leave the tent and not panic, but a power failure caused his announcement to go unheard when the microphone died, just as people began noticing the flames. They stampeded toward the exits, two of which were blocked by the big cat cages and tunnels that funneled them into the ring. Pandemonium broke out, as people became separated from their children, and the paraffin-coated tent, which had been treated for waterproofing, erupted in a blaze and collapsed within eight minutes, to the horror of the audience, the crew, and all who saw it. From then on it became a battle to save those inside, rescue children, find parents, get the animals as far away as possible, and put the fire out. A hundred and sixty-eight people were killed, and more than seven hundred were injured, and everyone associated with the circus was devastated and shocked at the loss of life and the damage. Some of the victims had been burned beyond recognition, but many were killed by the crowd trampling them as they tried to flee. It was a tragedy like none other they had experienced.
Five officials of the circus were later charged with involuntary manslaughter, and the circus accepted full financial responsibility to pay whatever damages were requested. But the tragedy had left its mark on them all. John Ringling North was no longer running the circus then and had left it a year earlier, but everyone associated with the circus was in deep grief over what had happened. Nick and Christianna and everyone they knew were deeply shaken. And tragically for those who knew and loved him, Joe Herlihy had been killed in the fire. He had just come back from a scouting trip and wanted to see some new additions to the show. Nick and Christianna were heartbroken by the loss of a good friend.
The circus closed down during the investigation, and opened in Akron, Ohio, a month later. Disheartened by what had happened, and working without a tent in heat and bad weather, they made it as far as Texas, decided to end the season early, and went back to Sarasota. And once back in Florida, after the disaster, Nick knew it was time. He wanted to leave the circus. It was an insecure, nomadic existence, an
d he wanted a normal life for their children, and he said as much to Christianna.
“This is normal,” she insisted. She had never known anything else, but he had, and even if he could no longer provide the way of life he had grown up in, he wanted stability for them. He wanted more than tattooed freaks and bearded ladies, high-wire acts and big cats, and jugglers and contortionists, for Chloe and Lucas. He knew that Lucas would miss the clowns and the friends he had made in the past six years, but he wanted Chloe to grow up in a healthy, sane atmosphere, like other children. But no matter what he said, he couldn’t convince Christianna. She wanted to stay at all costs. And what her father had predicted was proving to be true. Nick knew he would leave someday.
In November, Nick got a letter from Marianne that nearly broke his heart. He had been afraid of hearing it for months. British Military Intelligence, at the request of Charles Beaulieu, had been able to discover that Alex had been engaged in subversive activities in his area, against the authorities on a small scale, and had saved many lives. He had done all he could to undermine the Nazis and help Jews, and had even helped to blow up a munitions train as a final mission. And the same morning, he had been shot and killed and his body dumped on his doorstep. He was buried in the family cemetery by one of his tenant farmers. But there was no question now as to what had happened to Nick’s old friend. Alex was dead and had been for several months, and Marianne was devastated when she shared it with Nick.
He wrote her a long letter of sympathy in response, but once again Nick had suffered another painful loss, and Christianna was worried about him. He was restless and unhappy and sad, and even Chloe’s antics didn’t always cheer him. The war had gone on for too long for all of them, and taken too high a toll.
And in England, Isabel said the same to Charles. She was frantic about Marianne, who was a young girl leading an old woman’s life, and was seriously melancholy after she learned in October of her father’s death. After the shock of losing Edmund two years before, she was deeply depressed again. She had been widowed for two and a half years. And although Marianne adored Violet, her sadness over her father’s death was greater than any pleasure she derived from her little girl.
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