Water Song Part 13

He nodded.

She still didn't entirely understand how he was doing it. The opening they were in had pipes along the ceiling and had no doubt been constructed to conceal the plumbing when her mother had the new bathroom added. But they were on the third floor, so how was he escaping?

He indicated for her to follow him down the pa.s.sage farther. It ended abruptly, dropping off into some kind of stone shaft. Looking up, she saw that it went up as well as down. "It's the chimney from the old fireplace in the kitchen," he whispered. "It's boarded up, but I cut a hole big enough to get out. Claudine's seen me scoot out from behind the board, but she's not tellin'."

"How do you get down?"

"I climb."

She gazed down with a s.h.i.+ver. "If you fell, it would be three floors. You might be killed."

"I'm real careful."

How was he getting into the well or the pond, if he was in fact the frog-man Kid and she had seen? This was a question that would be more difficult to ask. She didn't think he would admit to being a frog.

They returned back through the pa.s.sage to the bathroom. When they were through the closet opening, Jack replaced the panel with the shelving. Emma stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom just as Colonel Schiller walked in, looking angry. "My soldier informs me that you were outside picking flowers," he barked. "I did not give you permission to do this."

"I thought you and your men would appreciate the flowers," she replied. She answered in English and spoke loudly, wanting to alert Jack to the colonel's presence.

"I suggested that they would enjoy them," Jack added, coming out beside Emma. "When I was cuttin' their hair they complained to me that the place was dreary."

"Neither of you will go anywhere without consulting me," the colonel said angrily, speaking in English. "From now on the door will be locked, the guard will be doubled, and a soldier will bring in your meals. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly," Jack said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Darkness

After she'd told him of the day's events, of how she'd gotten Kid to safety, she'd wanted to know how he'd gotten to Kid. Jack was amazed to hear her come straight out and ask if his magic gave him the ability to turn into a frog.

"You think I'm a frog?" he asked, laughing incredulously as he stretched out on the bed.

Emma sat on the chair and faced him. "You saved me from the well. And you saved Kid from the pond. I know you did! I saw one of your crazy cures on his side."

"That doesn't make me a frog."

"We both saw something large swim up at us from below."

"I told you, I'm a great swimmer. And I have my ways of gettin' around. Why don't you let it be and stop asking so many questions?"

"Why must you be so mysterious and strange?"

He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. He enjoyed teasing her. "It's my nature, I 'spose. I probably get it from my mam. She made some folks nervous too."

"How'd she die?" Emma asked.

"Caught the malaria while she was tending to sick folk in the swamps. She told me what to do for her, but there was a couple of ingredients I couldn't find in time." He looked away from Emma. He never liked remembering how he had scrambled to find the things she told him to get and couldn't. "It's somethin' I still feel real bad about, though I know she forgives me."

And he did know. "When I'm dreamin', I sometimes try to direct my spirit to her spirit. We talk. She helps me with cures and the like. It's not easy to explain. She helped me to get better from the gas."

He himself didn't know if these were dreams or if his spirit really transported. The dreams felt so real and he had gotten much better after each time he dreamed his mother had worked a cure on him.

"You're lucky to know you're forgiven," Emma said softly, and explained how her mother had died in the attack. "I couldn't help my mother when she needed me. I wish I knew that she forgave me."

"There was nothing for her to forgive. It wasn't your fault."

"I know," Emma said as tears overfilled her eyes, spilling down her cheek. "Still ... it feels as though there should have been something I could have done."

"There wasn't," he a.s.sured her, "there was not a thing you could have done."

"I'd really love to see my father again, and now I'm so frightened that they'll shoot us before that happens. Or maybe he'll be shot, you know, if they attack England. Maybe we'll all-" Unable to go on, she buried her face in her hands as tears rushed forward.

He came and perched on the chair beside her, rubbing her back. "You cry, Em. Go ahead," he said. "It'll do you good."

Nodding, she buried her tear-drenched face into his chest. With a sigh, he stroked her soft hair and let her weep there. Somehow he knew that these tears were touching him more deeply than even her kiss would have.

That night he pretended to sleep in the chair, listening to her breathing over on the bed, waiting to be sure she was asleep. The rain continued to pound down, making it hard to hear. Not even moonlight lightened the complete darkness.

Just when he was sure she was asleep, she surprised him by sitting up and crossing in the dark to him. "We have to get out of here and tell someone at Allied command what we heard today," she said.

"We don't have to go," he disagreed. "I've been sitting here thinking about it all this time. The world's gone insane. I was insane myself to sign up. All we have to do is survive until this ends."

It was only part of what he'd been thinking. Despite the insanity he planned to go and tell what he knew, but he had to go alone. If he reported the information to the Allies and returned in time before he was missed, that would be best. He'd travel faster without her, and she'd be safer here. He might have to travel far, and the rain was torrential. He wasn't sure how much territory the Germans had claimed; he couldn't know for sure which direction was best.

But he couldn't tell her. She'd insist on going with him.

"How can you say that?" she questioned. "Don't you feel any loyalty to your fellow soldiers?"

"You haven't seen the things I've seen, Em. Things I don't want to talk about because if I tell you it'll give you nightmares for the rest of your life, the kind of nightmares I'm going to have forever. This war has changed me for always." That much was absolutely true.

"We can't sit here and do nothing," she objected.

"Sure we can," he disagreed. "What's to stop us?"

"It's wrong not to try," she insisted.

"Who says? It seems to me there's a wrong thing happen' every second of every day right now. Who cares if we do a wrong thing?"

She rose indignantly. "Do what you please. I have to try to get word to someone." She gathered her clothing and began pulling things on over her nightgown.

In her top dresser drawer, she searched in the dark until she found the locket and put it around her neck. "This time I won't be back," she told him.

"There are two guards at the door. How do you plan to get out?" he asked.

"I'll go down the chimney like you do."

"Have you ever climbed down a rock wall before?"

"I can do it."

"In those high-heeled boots?" he scoffed. "And I wouldn't recommend doin' it barefoot, either."

"I'll find a way," she said.

"Listen, Emma," he said, gripping her arm. "You're goin' to get killed out there. I'm tellin' you, don't do it. What if I go and you stay here?"

"Then we both go together," she suggested.

"No," he insisted.

She shook his hand off. "I'm going. I don't care if you want me to or not!"

"Stubborn idiot!" he cried, walking away from her toward the bathroom.

He'd hoped to slip away once he knew she was asleep. Now she was acting exactly as he'd expected she would. Fortunately, he'd prepared for this possibility and knew what he'd have to do-as much as he hated to do it.

"Do you think that just because your life in London was safe that nothing can hurt you now?" he argued, turning toward her.

"What do you know about my life?" she came back at him, furious. "At least I've been taught values like loyalty and patriotism. What would a swamp rat like you know about that?"

"Nothing!" he replied coldly. "Nothing at all! I guess someday I'll have to go ask the queen."

She followed him into the bathroom and turned on a dim nightlight. She pulled open the closet and began pulling out the shelves.

"Hey, Em." Jack came silently behind her. He really hated doing this.

She turned around to him. He held his palm flat out horizontally, tipping it up to her. It was filled with a grayish powder, a concoction he'd made from a bat's wing and other ingredients for just this moment, should it prove unavoidable.

"What?" she asked, annoyed, as he blew the powder into her face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

Fire

Emma awoke and realized she was lying on the bed, on top of the covers, still dressed in her clothing, even her boots. Blinking in the dark, it took her a moment to recall what had happened but, when she did, she sat up quickly. She turned on the light at her bedside.

Outside in the hall, she heard soldiers speaking German to one another. Beyond the windows was the incessant pounding of rain. But Jack was not in the chair, and she didn't detect any sound of him moving anywhere in the bathroom.

A note propped against the lamp base caught her attention. It was a rhyme: Jack Sprat's a real swamp rat But on his wife he would not lean.

He ran away So safe she'd stay While he went to scare the queen.

"To scare the queen?" Emma pondered the meaning of his words. Did he mean he'd gone to tell the Allies the bad news? It would scare them, but of course they needed to know.

She continued to read: Did Jack the rat Climb out like that?

No, he acted like a hedgehog.

But have no fear- He'll persevere Through the muddy bog.

It's no problem for him If he must, he'll swim For he's not a rat or hedgehog -he's a frog!

A breeze chilled her, and she saw that the bottom of the window had been opened just enough for a man Jack's size to slip through. Several knotted bedroom sheets had been tied together and fastened to the dresser at one end. The other end had been pa.s.sed through the window opening.

Emma pocketed the note and got out of bed. She went to the window for a closer inspection. Peering out, she saw the white sheet bouncing in the rainy wind along the outside wall. Had he taken it all the way to the bottom? Why would he do that and risk being seen when he could go down the old chimney?

The bedroom door flew open, flooding the room with light from the hall as Colonel Schiller stomped in flanked by the two guards who had been stationed at the door. "Frau Sprat!" he barked. "Where is your husband?"

"He won't get far," Colonel Schiller said with a smirk on his face. He stood by the open window and sneered down at Emma as she sat on the big chair. The soaked line of bedsheet had been hauled in and now lay coiled, making puddles on the floor.

"He will, no doubt, head north to the other side of the forest. Our men regained that farm road only yesterday. I've sent a soldier with a message to our field commander there to look for him. Our troops will pick him up. And if he stays off the road, he'll wish he hadn't."

"Why is that?" Emma asked tensely.

"The mud in the fields out there will swallow him whole. The farmers have already lost sheep and pigs into it. It nearly engulfed an entire ambulance yesterday. It will suck him right into the ground. You had better hope we pick him up first."

"Will they bring him back here?" she asked.

"Yes, and then we will shoot him."