The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

  THE

  GATHERING

  STORM

  Summerside Press™

  Minneapolis 55438

  www.summersidepress.com

  The Gathering Storm

  © 2010 by Bodie & Brock Thoene

  ISBN 978-1-60936-033-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV).

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or publisher.

  Cover designed, concepted, and illustrated © 2010 by Robin Hanley (www.robinhanley.com), in cooperation with Koechel Peterson & Associates, Minneapolis.

  Authors’ photo © 2010 by Robin Hanley | www.robinhanley.com

  Interior Design by Müllerhaus Publishing Group | www.mullerhaus.net

  Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker

  “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” words by Eric Maschwitz, music by Manning Sherwin and Jack Strachey, first performed in 1939, on page 345.

  “I Shall Not Live in Vain,” by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) on page 301.

  Summerside Press™ is an inspirational publisher offering fresh, irresistible books to uplift the heart and engage the mind.

  Printed in USA.

  With love for Natan Shalom—

  “He gives Peace”

  JEREMIAH 1:7

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part Two

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Three

  Chapter 8

  Part Four

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Five

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Six

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Seven

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Taking it Deeper…

  About The Authors

  PROLOGUE

  DECEMBER 22, 2008

  HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE, LONDON, ENGLAND

  The sun set as I rode the Northern Line from central London north to Hampstead Village for the scheduled interview with the woman I had come to know as “Loralei B.G.”

  Lora had escaped from the Nazi Blitzkrieg as a young woman. Over fifty years had passed when the old woman read my early non-fiction account about the Kindertransport of Jewish children and the evacuees during the Blitz. She contacted me through the publisher.

  Her letter read:

  I am a Christian Zionist, not Jewish by birth, but by heart and through marriage. I was born in Texas to a missionary family, though I grew up in Europe. My mother was American. My father was an Austrian and among the leaders of the Christian resistance opposing Hitler. He was killed by the Nazis in France during the war. I was very involved with the refugees. Perhaps I could add details to your research.

  Over ten years’ time I received Lora’s story in bits and pieces by post. The true identity of Lora remained a closely guarded secret because her son was a member of the Israeli government. I was faithful to answer her letters at a box in northwest London. Before the era of e-mail we became old-fashioned pen pals.

  Though uncertain of Lora’s true age, I guessed she was in her late seventies or early eighties. Though I knew many details of the elderly woman’s past, I knew surprisingly little about her present life. When the letters began to come less frequently, I wondered if her health was failing. Perhaps the old woman’s sense of dignity was one reason she did not want to meet me.

  Now, as Lora approached the end of her life, she reached out to me. I received a telephone call from her granddaughter, also named Loralei. It had come one month earlier, summoning me to a home on Church Row in Hampstead Village.

  “Will you come for dinner on December twenty-second? Your old friend would like to meet you before Christmas.”

  I knew the Hampstead street well. My husband and I frequently met friends for supper at the Holly Bush pub around the corner. How strange it seemed to me that I had probably passed Lora’s house a hundred times over the years and had never known she lived there.

  The aroma of roasting chestnuts greeted me as I emerged from the tube station onto Hampstead’s High Street. It was the stuff Christmas carols were made of. Irresistible.

  Shifting a big bouquet of roses, I buttoned my jacket against the sudden chill and fished for the heavy one-pound coins in my jeans’ pocket. “One, please.”

  “American? Done in a minute.” The chestnut seller stirred a fresh batch over the coals of his brazier. “The south?”

  “Close, Henry Higgins. Arkansas, originally. Then central California.”

  His eyes brightened. “Arkansas. Y’all?”

  “Arkansas may have seceded from the Union since I left. I’ve lived in London for ten years.”

  “Then you’re almost home.”

  “Almost.”

  He scooped the warm chestnuts into a fist-sized, brown paper bag. “Very hot. Take care. Cheers, thanks, and happy Christmas.”

  Pocketing the paper sack, I used it as a hand warmer. Striding quickly past shops, restaurants, and my favorite creperie, I made my way toward the Georgian townhomes lining Church Row.

  Christmas garlands and twinkle lights gave the village a feel like something out of a Dickens’ novel. I shelled a hot chestnut and popped it into my mouth. Nothing like it on a cold winter’s night.

  The directions to the house simply said, House on the end of the row—right. Corner of Holly Walk and Church Row.

  Eighteenth-century construction had not included street numbers on houses. Instead, fan-shaped windows called fanlights, above the front doors, contained a unique pattern used to identify the residence. Like a logo, letterhead on household stationery reproduced the pattern of the residence’s fanlight. The image was then copied on all answered correspondence. This assured even an illiterate messenger could look at an envelope, compare the patterns, and deliver mail to the correct residence.

  I walked briskly to the imposing brick townhouse. Christmas lights beamed from every window. I could plainly see in the leaded glass of the fanlight the images of a nightingale and a rose.

  Beautiful, I thought. It was so much like the Lora I had come to know through correspondence: the rose and the nightingale; a story by Oscar Wilde; or a poem by Keats. Like much of London, coded in the very building was the memory of a distant, more noble, age.

  I suddenly wished I had not worn jeans and my usual black ostrich cowboy boots. I had meant to honor Texas, the state of Lora’s birth, but I was acutely aware I was underdressed. And, worse yet, I looked like an American tourist. The dignified elegance of the Church Row townhome made me self-conscious.

  I rapped the brass lion
’s-head knocker on the black door and announced my arrival. Holding the roses beneath my chin, I smiled, hoping the flowers would be noticed, rather than my casual attire.

  Hinges groaned as the door opened. A beautiful young woman in her midtwenties beamed at me. Her hair was thick blond, shoulder length, and framed her oval face. With blue eyes and straight white teeth, I noticed the clear family resemblance to a photo Lora had sent of herself and her husband from those desperate years before the war.

  “You must be Missus Thoene?” The young woman pronounced my name correctly in the accent of an American who had long lived in England. “Tay-nee? Is it? Welcome. I am Loralei Golah.” She was wearing jeans and a red wool cardigan like mine.

  I resisted the urge to mention our identical red sweaters. So she shopped at the street merchants’ stalls in Covent Garden? I laughed. “You pronounced Thoene right. So few do. But call me Bodie. Thoene is for author bios.”

  Loralei said cheerfully, “Yes. Sunny eyes. Green. Like a forest in this light. Red curls. And the boots! Lora would love them. Her heart is half-Texan, you know. Yes, Bodie suits you.”

  Relief!

  “So good to meet you. Loralei? Lora’s granddaughter? You rang me. I recognize the smile in your voice. Happy Christmas.”

  Loralei inhaled the roses. “Oh, lovely! So beautiful! Who would think? Roses in the dead of winter. Must be grown in greenhouses, don’t you suppose?”

  Feeling instantly welcome, I stepped into the warm mahogany-paneled foyer. A row of coats was draped on a rack above an umbrella stand. When Loralei hung up my coat, hot chestnuts dribbled out.

  I retrieved them, feeling like an idiot. “Kent. You can get everything out of season. Tomatoes, even.”

  Loralei headed off down a corridor and grinned back over her shoulder as a signal I should come along.

  Happy to see me, I thought.

  The aroma of basil and oregano in simmering sauce filled the house. Loralei said, “But winter tomatoes don’t hold a candle to the ones from the garden in summer.”

  I followed Loralei into a living room decorated with fine antiques and wreathed in reds and golds for the holidays like an Oxford shop window. An eight-foot Steinway filled one end of the room, overlooking French doors and a garden. The instrument was open and sheet music of J. S. Bach was unfurled above the keyboard. The grand piano was more than mere decoration.

  A small, drab bird fluttered in an ornate cage beside the piano.

  “A nightingale,” Loralei said. “I found her in the garden a month ago with a broken wing, the same day I rang you.”

  “She seems to be doing well,” I marveled. “Nursing wild birds never worked out for me as a kid. I always ended up burying them in the flowerbed in shoeboxes.”

  “That’s why she lives beside the piano. My husband sings to her.”

  “You’re married.” I noticed her ring for the first time.

  “Enough about me. Look! We’re both wearing jeans and red sweaters. I’m so glad. I wondered if I should dress up a bit. I’ve made pasta for dinner. There’s Chianti. Garlic bread. Tri-color salad with balsamic. Hope the tomatoes are all right.”

  We both laughed, and I decided I liked her immensely and instantly. I followed her into the kitchen where marinara sauce steamed in a saucepan.

  The table, antique pine, was set for two.

  “Will Lora…?”

  “Not tonight. I’m sorry. But she has a Christmas gift for you—and a request for you. Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

  I obeyed, trying to conceal my disappointment. “Will she know I’m here?”

  “She knows. I’ll be right back.” Loralei bounded up the stairs to the bedrooms. Doors opened and closed. I heard voices. A man’s deep voice. The elderly voice of a woman. Was that Lora? The young Loralei laughed like a bright bell. Moments passed, and she returned with a thick black binder. I knew what it was. For several years I had been encouraging Lora to comb through her diaries and set down her own story.

  “I’ve been typing it all out so you could read it. It’s all here. Everything. She’s written a book, you see. Her story, like you wanted her to. The full story. Changed the names, but the story…all the same. Before the war. And then the Blitz. She said you wrote her once and said you would stay up all night to review a manuscript if only she would write it down.” She paused, hesitant for a moment as she searched my face. “Did you mean it? I mean, that you would like to read it?”

  “Would I? I’ve begged her to write it down!”

  “Well, then, she asked me if you would…would you read it? Tonight?”

  I was ecstatic. Of all the interviews I had conducted and all the personal accounts I had gathered, not one person had ever taken me up on the suggestion that the stories should be set down.

  Loralei blushed and, suddenly shy, said quietly, “She combed through her diary. Dictated into a recorder. Changed the names, of course. Pseudonyms. She wouldn’t write it any other way. Details she wouldn’t trust to anyone but you. I’ve read your books…and she…well, it would mean so much to her to have you review the manuscript. Offer suggestions. And, maybe someday…if you know a publisher perhaps?”

  I felt cheered by the prospect of hours spent reviewing a manuscript no one had ever read before. What a gift!

  We ate spaghetti while Loralei gleaned the details of my life and work. I answered her questions between bites of pasta. “I’m forty-four. Three kids in college. Family originally from around Fort Smith. University of Hawaii alum. Long story there. Working on my Ph.D. at London University. Married to Brock Thoene, Ph.D. in history, among other things. Researcher, writer, and director of an American study-abroad program in England.”

  When we finished dinner Loralei led me to an overstuffed chair before the fire. The black-covered journal was open on my lap: The Book of Hours—L.B.G. Part One. War Years.

  Loralei patted my shoulder. “It’s a quick read, I think. Quicker to read than it was to write. Only Part One. I’ll wash up and bring coffee…coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee, please.”

  “White or black?”

  “Black.”

  “Go on…enjoy.” Loralei poked at the coals in the fireplace. “I love a good fire and a good read. She hopes…well, it reads like a novel, but she needs the help of an expert. Your help.”

  “I love a good story. Her letters are the bright spot of my day when they come. Always have been.”

  I suddenly realized this young woman knew a lot about me, but I knew nothing about her except the color of her eyes, that she cooked great pasta, liked red sweaters and boots, and wore a size six jeans.

  Mellow baroque music played over the BBC. The fire crackled and embers glowed as the story of one life unfolded.

  PART ONE

  A time to get, and a time to lose;

  A time to keep, and a time to cast away.

  ECCLESIASTES 3:6

  1

  BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

  MAY 8, 1940

  The night before everything about my ordinary life changed forever, I dreamed a dream.

  It was dark and I sat on a boulder in a garden where the stone of a tomb had been rolled away. A rose tree grew with thirty-six white roses in bloom beside the great stone. A nightingale sang in the branches among blossom and thorn.

  I heard a soft voice like wind chimes sing, “And if I want him to live until I return, what is that to you?”

  Sleeping or half-awake, I saw thirty-five men and women, each dressed in the costume of a different generation. They gathered outside the gaping mouth of the grave. They were discussing something. What was it? The war? The Jewish refugees who slept in the dorms of Alderman Seminary? The conversations seemed familiar to me, but I could not quite make out what they were saying.

  The first in line, a pretty woman of middle age, with gentle brown eyes and soft curls, was wrapped in a cerulean blue shawl. She held a torch aloft. Stooping low, she entered the cave, fire first, carrying the flame into th
e darkness without terror. A golden glow emanated from the hewn interior. Flickering light cast her shadow onto the feet of the tall young man who was second in line. He looked down at her shadow, then at his toes and smiled, before turning his face toward where I observed. He beckoned to me.

  I did not move. I wondered how he had seen me dreaming about him….

  By and by the woman emerged, smiling, from the tomb and said quietly, “Death is conquered at last. It truly is empty. He is risen indeed.”

  She passed the torch to the man. He entered as she had and returned, declaring her proclamation to the next in line. And so it went through the hours of the night, from one witness to the next and then the next. One by one, they left the garden, and I could hear their footsteps and their voices. “Don’t be afraid,” they declared. “The tomb is empty. Death is no more.”

  Finally, the last of the thirty-five, his face concealed, emerged from the tomb and looked to the right and then the left. The sun was rising. “Who’s next?” he called.

  I was the only one remaining. I stood, and the light was too bright for me to see clearly. Lifting my hand to shield my eyes, I felt the handle of the torch pressed into my palm.

  “It’s your turn now. The long night is almost over. It’s your turn to stand as witness. You shall be the Watchman on the Walls.”

  This, then, is my story.

  MAY 9, 1940

  Light shone through the stained glass flanking the green lacquered door of the stone cottage. Ruby red blossoms and emerald glass leaves made puddles of color on the flagstone steps. I stepped onto a rose-hued pool, shifted my valise, and fumbled for the latch key. Though my mother had died four months earlier, the engraving of my parents’ names remained unaltered on the brass lion’s-head door knocker: ROBERT & JANET BITTICK.

  The lock clicked and turned. I wiped my feet and entered the dimly lit foyer. It was almost curfew in Brussels. I closed the blackout curtains. Today, May 9, 1940, was my twenty-second birthday. My first birthday without Mama. The house felt especially lonesome.

  “I’m home,” I called, hoping my sister, Jessica, and eight-year-old niece, Gina, might have dropped in. No one answered.