Legends of the Lost Lilies

by Jackie French

  She wondered vaguely if she would ever get to tell the commander that a string of dried mushrooms could be as lethal as a chiffon scarf.

  She clambered to her feet, and looked down as his frantic hands clutched at his throat, his face red, his eyes bulging, breath gasping. She saw the moment that consciousness ebbed.

  Should she kill him? No need, nor probably time. She simply ran to the cellar door, navigated the steps without a betraying light — she knew every movement needed by heart now — ran silently across the floor and grabbed the shelves to move them back, then stumbled, almost falling, as something stabbed her hand.

  For a moment she thought someone had followed her, shot an arrow, perhaps, though why a German soldier would have an arrow . . . She felt her hand carefully. A large sliver of glass protruded, a bottle obviously broken by the looters. She pulled it quickly, before she had time to anticipate the pain, felt blood flow, ignored it, touched the shelves carefully this time, found more glass then moved her grip.

  The shelves shifted the few inches it took to slip through, then pull them back again. Just in time, for she heard boots above.

  She did not dare light her precious matches, or the even more precious single candle, in case a chink of light showed through. She gathered her skirt together and pressed it against the wound on her hand, her left one, and felt it grow wet with blood.

  She waited, as the sounds continued. And finally, she closed her eyes.

  She woke an unknown amount of time later. She felt oddly light, from loss of blood most probably. The padding had dropped from her wound. She touched it gently with the fingers of her other hand and found it still moist but no longer bleeding profusely.

  The Lodge was quiet, though outside a thrush sang, liquid notes that danced through trees. They had not found her then.

  She did not want to waste matches and candle. She felt around with her right hand, orienting herself, found the mound of bandages she’d made, deeply glad she had made them. She wished she had brandy or some other disinfectant for her cut, for the bottles down here were crusted with dust, and even bat or rat droppings. The best she could manage was a pad of cloth, tied securely, and then her hand fastened above her breast to help slow any bleeding and to stop her automatically trying to use it.

  Water now. She drank nearly a whole bottle, slowly, for she must replace the blood she’d lost. She had no appetite, but nibbled at crusts of bread, knowing she needed food, and then she drank again, for she hadn’t needed to use the bucket, which meant she was still dehydrated.

  Simply survive, and she would see Daniel, Rose and Danny, the waving gum branches against Thuringa’s vivid sky. Simply live, and she would see Lily . . .

  She closed her eyes again.

  The cellar was hot when she woke. It took her minutes, days, months, for time had lost its meaning now, to realise she was hot, and not the cellar. Her hand throbbed, swollen to the wrist.

  She tried to think, but all she found was fog. She knew she had to drink . . .

  She drank. She tried to eat, and vomited, retching over and over till even the water left her. She crawled over to the blankets and lay down, cradling a bottle of water, which she would drink soon . . . soon . . . soon . . .

  When she woke again she found she must have woken before, as the bottle was half empty. The fog had deepened, making it impossible to move except to pull over some more water. She drank again, vaguely pleased with herself, for she was safe. Finally, totally, absolutely safe, here curled in the darkness, underground, carefully making no sound.

  No one would ever find her.

  Chapter 51

  Potato Cakes

  For every cup of grated potato add 1 dessertspoon chopped parsley, 2 chopped cloves garlic, 1 dessertspoon chopped onion, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon plain flour. Mix well. Drop spoonsful on a hot pan with plenty of olive oil or butter. Cook till brown on one side then turn.

  If the cake sticks, the pan wasn’t hot enough or clean enough. If the potatoes are very liquidy, you may need to add a little more flour.

  28 APRIL 1945

  HANNELORE

  Hannelore woke in darkness, then realised there was light coming through the cracks in the wall. It was not just dawn, but fully light, although the hut had not been unlocked yet, nor the order given for the pre-dawn roll call.

  The women had heard thunder all week, thunder which was not a storm but guns. Planes had criss-crossed the late snow clouds above the factory, though anyone who did more than briefly glance out the window was beaten.

  Hannelore could hear the same not-thunder now, as well as the closer sound of unfamiliar engines. And something else. A flicker, a crackling, almost too soft to hear. And the smell of burning wood.

  The other women were mostly asleep, exhaustion biting deep, or lying still in the luxury of a longer time to rest.

  ‘Wake up!’ Hannelore scrambled up and gazed around in the hut’s dim light. She could see the smoke now, a trickle like morning fog at the furthest corner of the hut. She screamed and tugged Judith awake next to her, then the thin form of Fräulein Schneider on the other side. She slid off the bunk, taking the single blanket with her. ‘Fire! Quickly! Grab your blankets. We must get out.’

  Already one wall was blackening. ‘Come!’ she yelled. She hauled Judith off the bed too, wrapped the blanket over both of them. ‘No, don’t bother with the door!’

  The door and its heavy bolt was certainly the strongest part of this building. They would all be burned to death before they managed to push it down. The weakest point was where it was burning, but every woman here was skeletally weak as well.

  ‘Follow me,’ she commanded, as a prinzessin used to barking orders and, miraculously, the women did, holding their blankets and each other, linking arms, copying her as she and Judith placed their blanketed backs to the blackening wall and pushed backwards.

  Nothing moved. The roof above them was alight now. Hannelore could feel the heat, like a sun fallen from the sky. She pushed again. The wall quivered, but did not give way. Any second now the roof would come down on them.

  Judith yelled, ‘Eins, zwei, drei . . .’

  Thirty women pushed together. The wood moved, collapsing, and the women fell too, wood burning around them. Women screamed, beating the flames from their ragged dresses.

  ‘Roll!’ shouted Judith, and the women rolled onto the snow-covered ground, spring snow they had cursed a few weeks ago, welcome now. Men ran towards them. The women scrambled to their feet, even those who had been burned. They ran behind their building, behind the flames of every other building, in what must be a vain attempt to hide from the running men. Their own hut must have been the last to be set alight.

  The women kept on running, stumbling, straggling, helping each other, now towards the forest behind the factory, expecting the guards to shoot them every second. But no shots came. Ammunition was in short supply. Their guards must have relied on the fire to kill them all, had not dreamed they might need to arm themselves to kill weak female escapees.

  And, finally, the women stopped running, still thirty of them, every woman who had been in the hut. Snow blew through the trees in scattered flakes. The trees above them stood bare, their branches dappled with snow or hung with icicles. Thirty women, all starving, with blackened faces or skin burned red raw, shivering and partly fried, still grasped blankets, their feet in their rough pattens or bound with rags blue even though they had tried to avoid the patches of snow.

  Instinctively the women moved together, seeking the same warmth as when they slept together, which was not just physical warmth but the knowledge that another person lived and breathed beside them, a person who had broken every twentieth wire.

  ‘They burned them alive,’ said Judith finally. ‘All except us. Burned them so they could not testify what they had done to us.’ She looked at the others. ‘You know what this means?’

  That we did not burn but still may freeze to death in the next few hours? thought Hannelore.


  ‘The Nazis are gone. Kaput. We are free.’

  ‘Perhaps not yet,’ said Hannelore cautiously.

  ‘We will be soon. But we cannot stay here. There is only one place where we can find shelter, perhaps even food.’

  Judith meant the factory. It is not safe, thought Hannelore, brushing a damp snowflake from her face, but safer than staying here and turning into ice. And perhaps the guards had already fled now the enemy were coming closer.

  ‘I will go first,’ said Hannelore. She looked at the other women. ‘If you hear me scream, run further into the forest. If I do not come back try to find some other shelter.’

  ‘Who would take us in? We will all go,’ said Judith.

  One person should spy out the land. I have been a spy for years, Hannelore wanted to say. Let me do my job again. I owe you all this, and far, far more. But she did not want to be alone and nor did she want to give more orders.

  The women crept among the trees, women in rags blackened by the breath of flame, arms, legs or faces raw with heat. Snow fell in shivers from the branches as they passed. Leaves crackled underfoot. They paused at the final line of trees before the factory. The flames from the huts had died down now, a shimmer of smoke and coals. Hannelore tried not to think of how many had died there.

  The factory itself was unburned.

  Judith walked forwards, grabbed a singed piece of wood from the smouldering wreckage, then banged it on the ground till the burned part fell away, leaving a wooden spike at one end. Other women did the same.

  The trucks had gone. The cars had gone. The women crept around the factory, women limping, women supporting those who could no longer walk by themselves, women wielding the best weapons they could scavenge. They stopped, as voices came from the window of the guards’ room just in front of them. The voices of two men, perhaps three.

  ‘Go in the front door,’ Judith whispered to Hannelore and Fräulein Schneider. ‘Make a sudden noise, then duck down behind the benches.’

  ‘What will you . . .?’ Hannelore stopped as Judith nodded at the window.

  There was a garden along the factory wall, or a plot that was a garden in summer, bordered by a rough stone wall. Two of the women hefted the largest rocks. Others wrapped blankets around their hands.

  One in every twenty wires sabotaged, carefully planned by women. Now the women planned again.

  Hannelore took Fräulein Schneider’s skeletal hand. The two of them crept around to the front door. It stood open. Hannelore walked inside that way for the first time since the child had curtseyed and given her flowers.

  She and Fräulein Schneider stepped quietly, quickly gazing around the empty room, then Hannelore deliberately scraped a metal box along one of the benches. She and Fräulein Schneider ducked behind the bench. The men’s conversation in the office paused. Someone muttered a query.

  Glass broke as two rocks crashed through the office windows. More glass splintered. Hannelore imagined blanket-wrapped hands pushing the rest of the glass away, the women helping each other up to the window, clambering inside, their sticks in their hands.

  Men shouted. A pistol barked, a single shot. Then men screamed.

  Judith emerged from the office, her hands red with blood. For a moment Hannelore thought she had been hurt, then saw she was smiling. ‘Hannelore, come! There is bread and cheese in here,’ called Judith. ‘And sausage.’

  The power had been turned off or blown up or possibly it was just a blown fuse. It did not matter. The women did not even bother to drag away the bodies of the three guards who for whatever reason had not left with the others. They laid Frau Fischer, who had been shot in the shoulder, in a corner and tended her, all the while chewing bread, very slowly, for Grünberg warned them that their bodies were too unused to food to absorb too much, too soon. They ate cheese slowly, too, waited, then ate more bread, then shared out the sausage into thirty equal tiny pieces.

  And then they sat upon the floor, for six chairs were not enough for thirty women and none of them would sit above the others. With the door shut it was warmer, even if crowded.

  Their faces were still black and red and their hands bloody, from the guards or from Frau Fisher or from their own burns or cuts from branches as they’d run through the trees, their dresses torn, hanging from their shoulders or showing bare burned legs. They leaned against the walls, against the guards’ bodies, against the table legs, exhausted but not sleeping now, not while there was still food. They waited to make sure their bodies had accepted nourishment then ate again, carefully but steadily, using both hands, for they had all learned how precious a crust was, how easily it might be snatched away.

  Shots outside. The women flinched, but kept on eating. Were they Russians or Americans or English? If they were Russians they might still be killed, raped, in revenge for the Russian women and children and troops who had been slaughtered in the past few years. But where could thirty women hide now?

  Booted footsteps. A voice yelled in an appalling accent, ‘Komm hier raus!’

  Come out here. Not likely, thought Hannelore, chewing cheese.

  The door opened cautiously. Men peered in. American uniforms, Hannelore thought with deep relief, but it was not reason enough to put down the slice of bread in her one hand, the cheese in the other. Judith nibbled sausage next to her.

  Hannelore could see the men’s horror, and their disgust too, at the wild-haired bloody women gnawing at their bread. But then she saw the moment they recognised the uniforms, saw the yellow badge for Jews, the red for traitors to the party, the purple for the Poles. Disgust turned to sympathy and a kind of incredulous horror.

  ‘Er, Gutes Frauen, Sind Sie, um . . .’ The man was obviously trying to find the word for prisoners.

  ‘We are prisoners,’ said Hannelore in English, through a mouthful of bread. She nodded to the bodies. ‘Those were some of our guards.’ She closed her eyes for a second and added, ‘You will find the rest of us have been killed in the burned huts behind the factory. Please treat the bodies with respect. Some of us are injured, one badly. We need medical help, if that is possible or, if not, clean bandages, disinfectant.’

  The soldier stared at her. He yelled something about a medic to the men outside, and waited.

  Another man appeared, an officer in an English uniform, not American. He stared at the women, then said, in English, ‘I am looking for the Prinzessin von Arnenberg.’ He added six more names that Hannelore didn’t recognise, and then ‘Sophie Higgs-Vaile-Greenman’.

  ‘Why do you want them?’ demanded Judith, from the floor.

  ‘Orders from England,’ said the man briefly.

  Judith carefully did not look at Hannelore, but her posture said, ‘Do you trust these men, or not?’

  James, thought Hannelore. The pigeon had reached its destination. And now the English are looking for all their lost sheep, their secret agents. She rose, her back as straight as she had been taught it must be since she was a year old, as gracefully as Miss Lily had shown them. I am a swan, she thought, and almost laughed, the bread still in one hand, the cheese in the other. But she tucked the chewed food neatly into the spaces under her tongue as she said quietly, ‘I am the prinzessin.’

  ‘You know the password?’

  Password? James would never use such a term, nor Miss Lily. But there had been a signal phrase she had memorised for identification. ‘The swans are on the lake,’ she said, remembering the crumpets with honey, the warmth of Miss Lily’s voice and the drawing room.

  The officer stared at her. Hannelore bent and helped Judith stand. ‘This is my friend, Judith Grünberg. Wherever you are taking me, we go together.’

  ‘Our orders are to take you to your home until transport to England can be arranged, your, er, highness?’ said the American. He had been ordered to find a princess, but not instructed how to address her. ‘A palace by the lake.’

  Why would she want to go to England? Nothing she knew could be of value to the English now. But there were far more ur
gent matters. ‘It is a hunting lodge, not a palace, but it is by a lake. Is it still there? It . . . it is possible that another person on your list may be there, Sophie Higgs-Vaile-Greenman, though she may be known as Frau Müller.’ Sophie, she thought. Please let Sophie be there, be safe.

  ‘We haven’t searched that area yet.’

  Hannelore looked around. The other women stared up at her, still eating.

  ‘Do you have a lorry?’ she asked the officer.

  ‘We have a car, your, er, highness.’

  ‘We need a lorry, please, or several cars, to take us all to the Lodge as soon as it can be arranged. For all of us. I can direct you there. Unless there is another safe place you know where we can all go.’

  The officer shut his eyes for a second. He opened them and then said, ‘No. I know of no safe place for you all yet. There are still parties of German soldiers roaming the forest. The other places . . . No, they are not . . . safe.’

  ‘Then we will wait here for the lorry,’ said Hannelore calmly, as the medic arrived with his kit bag, then sat, with Judith beside her, and ate her bread.

  Chapter 52

  30 APRIL 1945

  SOPHIE

  She lay on the cool kitchen floor of Thuringa. If she opened her eyes she would see the white branches sway against the drought-blue of the sky through the window. No, she was at Shillings, for she could hear Lily’s voice.

  ‘Sophie? Darling, where are you? The twins are ready for their tea.’

  Sophie smiled, her eyes still shut. They would toast crumpets by the nursery fire for Rose and Danny, and by the end all four of them would be giggling, sticky, happy, and Nurse would scold, but be laughing too, for tea with Lily was always joyous, perfect, though the fire was too hot. They needed to pull the fire screen across, for she was burning, sweat running down her face. No, she was cold . . .