Water Song Part 14

Emma leaped up from the chair. "No! Why? You can't blame him for wanting to escape from this prison. It's my fault. We quarreled terribly. I said cruel things to him. He was simply desperate to get away from me."

"A lovely performance, Fraulein Winthrop, but I know better."

"That was my name before I was married," Emma attempted to cover. "But now-"

"It was a pleasant joke, I am sure," Colonel Schiller interrupted. "I do not like to be made a fool of, however. We intercepted this bag of mail being smuggled in by a captured Belgian soldier. In it we found this letter addressed right here to the estate."

He took a letter from inside his jacket and Emma instantly recognized her father's neat, curved handwriting. It had been torn open along the top. "That's mine," she insisted, reaching for it. "Give it to me, please."

He handed her the letter. She scanned it quickly. It was full of encouragement so loving that it nearly brought tears to her eyes.

"He says that he hopes you will all live to see happier days, like your wedding day, perhaps," the colonel pointed out.

"My husband and I eloped," Emma told him, but he simply raised a dismissive hand to her and she knew he didn't believe it. "All right, we're not married, but Jack is an American and you can't just shoot Americans for no reason."

"We can do what we like to spies for any reason," he countered.

"He's no spy!"

"He is a spy. And so are you!"

He took a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "One of our informants works for a butcher at the market. I a.s.sume you gave him this on your last day out." Before she had even completely unfolded the paper she saw that it mentioned Oliver Twist. "I don't know what this is," she said.

"I suppose those numbers mean nothing to you?" Colonel Schiller said skeptically. "Please, Fraulein, do not insult me further."

She gazed down at the line of numbers. "Is this some sort of code?" she asked.

Colonel Schiller's face began to color with fury. "Do not pretend that you do not recognize this book code. You know very well that each number signifies a letter on the designated page. Your hand is clearly in this. You brought this book from the library downstairs, did you not?"

"I had nothing to do with this. Why do you think it even came from this room? I can't work this message out," she insisted. "What does it say?"

"It says too much about my men and how we are supplied!" he shouted, pounding his hand on the dresser with rage.

Emma began to understand what had been happening. Jack had been going outside and learning things about the fortifications the Germans were bringing in: the cars, tanks, munitions, extra food, even the reinforcements of soldiers who were arriving daily. He probably even saw things when he was downstairs cutting hair. Claudine and Willem knew things too.

Then he wrote what they collectively knew, using the pages of the book as some kind of code template. He got the coded message to Claudine when she brought the meals. Claudine and Willem then pa.s.sed it on to their friend the butcher, the man she'd seen them talking to at the market. He must have had some way of pa.s.sing it on from there.

Slow reader. She cringed remembering how she'd pa.s.sed that judgment on him. All the terrible things she'd said to him tonight, accusing him of indifference, of cowardice-it killed her now to remember them. What a fool he must have thought she was! A sn.o.bbish fool!

Emma heard talking in the hallway, and one of the guards came quickly into the room. One of the staff officers from the day before was downstairs requesting to see Colonel Schiller. Scowling at her as he turned to go, he slammed the door behind him.

Emma took the rhyme from her pocket. Did Jack the rat climb out like that? No, he acted like a hedgehog.

She understood! He was telling her that the window setup had been to mislead the Germans into thinking he'd gone out that way. As long as they thought that, they wouldn't search any further for a way out.

But he'd really taken the pa.s.sageway out. That was what hedgehogs did, they moved through underground tunnels. This pa.s.sage, although not underground, was a tunnel. He was telling her that she could still use it if she needed to.

She did need to use the pa.s.sage-as quickly as possible too. She had to catch up with Jack before he became bogged down in one of those fields.

Glancing at the clock on the dresser, she saw that only forty minutes had pa.s.sed since she'd attempted to leave. If she took the horse path, she might make faster progress than he did and maybe she could catch up to him. She could at least warn him not to go out into the mud that was sure to suck him down and swallow him whole.

Emma stood on the edge of the dark pa.s.sage behind the wall and struck a match. The stone of the chimney flue lit up before her. Lighting the lantern she'd brought in, she hung it on a nail jutting from one of the thick wooden beams.

She had brought along the same knotted rope sheet Jack had used to fake his escape out the window. This time, she hoped, it would really do the job. She fastened it around the beam, tying it firmly. The other end, she tied around her waist. She'd attempt to climb down the chimney flue shaft as Jack had done, but this would give her some added safety should she slip.

"Here goes," she murmured, lowering herself into the black pit. Inch by tenuous inch, handhold by tense handhold, groping in the dim light for the next spot to place her foot, she slowly descended. At first, the light from the lantern was sufficient but as she went farther from it, her progress became increasingly difficult.

Her fingers were soon sc.r.a.ped and raw. Her shoulder muscles ached with the strain. But she kept descending, determined to put the misery out of her mind.

Several feet lower she cried out in pain. A twisting cramp clenched the muscles from the arch of her foot and ran up her calf muscle. The sudden spasm caught her by surprise and she lost her grasp on the wall. In seconds she was tumbling down the dark shaft.

Then she bounced up again, letting out a gasp of shocked air. The sheet held her swinging there, feet and arms dangling like a puppet.

With a terrible tearing sound, it dropped her several more feet. She braced for the impact. But the tear wasn't complete, and the sheet rope held for a while longer at least.

Below, she heard soldiers speaking loudly in the kitchen. Light seeped through the boarded area. She was only about twelve feet from the bottom.

Kicking out, she was able to touch the sides of the chimney with her toes. By rocking harder still, she reached the wall again. With one hand, she untied the sheet from her waist and continued the slow climb down.

Once at the bottom, she saw that her way out was blocked by the presence of the soldiers carousing in the kitchen. She didn't have the luxury of waiting. Although she'd plumped some pillows under the blanket to look like her sleeping body and shut the lights, she couldn't be certain Colonel Schiller wouldn't return, demanding to speak with her. And if she waited too long, she'd never catch up to Jack.

She paced in a small circle, not knowing what she should do next.

"They have rats in this place," one of the German soldiers declared. "You can hear them running through the walls!"

Emma froze. She hoped he was referring to the noise she was making and not to any actual rats.

In the darkness she realized that an even darker shape was behind her. With hands extended, she felt her way to it. It was a hole, a break in the stones of what must have once been the back wall of the fireplace.

Forcing herself not to think about rats, she climbed through the opening. It led to a wide, turning tunnel with a dirt floor. In places there were pieces of stone, as though this was some very old part of the estate and these had once been wide, winding stone steps.

Emma followed it down to a vast underground room filled with bottles. Lifting one from a shelf, she blew dust from it. The label said it was wine that had been bottled in 1760. She wondered when anyone had last been down here. She'd never heard her parents speak of it.

On the wall was an unlit torch in a holder. Taking it down, she lit it and began searching for some way out. Before long, she found a door and stepped through it.

Once inside, she s.h.i.+vered. Was it some kind of room for storing wine at an even colder temperature? With the torchlight to guide her, she crept farther into the narrow room. It wasn't long before she arrived at another door. There was a small window at the top of it. She peered through it out into darkness, but then realized that there were drops of water on the other side of the window.

Leaning forward, she put her ear to the door.

Rain falling into water?

Why would there be water on the other side of this door? But if she could hear rain, it meant she had found a way out.

Carefully, she pulled the door inward. Water lapped at the toes of her boots. She was standing right at water level inside the well.

Holding the torch high, she saw that the ladder was on the other side of the wall. Getting to it meant plunging into the rain-rippled well water.

"It's going to be cold," she whimpered as she stepped out into it. The light sputtered into darkness as the torch hit the water. Floundering, shocked by the icy chill, she splashed across until her hand finally gripped a rung of the ladder.

A rung at a time, she climbed up. Her mind raced. What should she do next? How could she get out of this well without being seen right away by a guard? They were looking for Jack, so there would be soldiers all around.

When she had climbed to just below the top of the well, she still had no plan but she was distracted from her thoughts by a strange glow filtering down to her from outside. It almost looked like dawn, though it was too soon for that.

Soldiers were shouting to one another in German.

And she smelled something unpleasant.

Had the Allies attacked unexpectedly?

She stretched up to see just over the top of the well.

Her hand clapped over her mouth to stop herself from crying out in alarm.

Flames roared out from her parents' bedroom window. The library below it and the kitchen, too, were also engulfed in flames. The rain wasn't even enough to quench the inferno that roared out the window and shot up from the roof.

Her first thought was the lantern. She'd left it burning inside the wall. If it had fallen and set the sheet rope on fire, it would have traveled past the library and right down to the kitchen. It probably burned behind there until it was so hot that the walls burst into flames.

The realization that she might have destroyed the family's ancient manor sent a chill through her. She couldn't think of it now. It might be bombed to the ground soon, anyway. Who could tell anymore? Anything might happen. At least this way it would help her to escape.

Soldiers poured out of the house into the rain. She recognized Colonel Schiller's voice yelling, ordering his men to carry away the crates and burlap bags of munitions stacked against the outside wall of the estate.

Emma didn't wait to see what would happen next. Climbing out of the well, she ran across the wet gra.s.s toward the forest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Mud

At least the rain's finally stopped, Jack noticed as he reached the edge of the dripping forest. Out on the farm road, just beyond the trees, muddy water several inches deep gushed along like a river.

He ducked back under the cover of the trees when two headlights appeared on the road. Someone inside the car was sweeping a light from side to side, searching. In the light he saw that they were German soldiers.

Where they looking for him?

It was certainly possible.

The road would not be safe. He was clearly still behind enemy lines. It might be wiser to stay to the fields. The night was so dark, he could cut right across. With this black night to cover him, he could probably cover miles before dawn.

Until being ga.s.sed with the French troops, he'd been stationed with the British Fourth Army somewhere northwest of here. They might still be around there. He'd head west before turning north later.

Of course, it wouldn't be easy crossing these fields in their current condition. He'd have to look for rocky sections and elevated patches as much as he could. "Ah, what's a little mud to a frog like me," he said, covering his anxiety as he stepped out of the forest and into the field.

His foot instantly sank up to his calf into the soggy earth. He was forced to use both hands to yank it out and was nervous about his next step.

He saw a line of rocks. That's it! he thought, elated. He leaped to the closest one, and then to the next. Hopping from rock to rock would allow him to get across the field without sinking into the mud.

He kept going, trying not to worry too much about what he would do if the trail of rocks ended. In that case he could go back the same way he had come and hope to pick up another trail of rocks, but it would cost him precious time.

But what other choice did he have?

Even if he wasn't moving in the most efficient way, at least he was making a distance between himself and the estate.

And Emma.

As he moved deftly from rock to rock, he wondered what she was doing. If they were in fact looking for him, it meant they had already discovered he was gone. What would that mean for her?

A strange light was coming from somewhere. Was a battle going on somewhere? Boy, the minute the rain stops, they start right to it again, he thought, shaking his head bitterly.

He realized, after a moment more, that the glow was coming from The Ridge.

And then he heard an explosion up there, and the light grew even brighter.

What was going on?

Was Emma in danger?

He had to go back for her! There was no other choice.

It would take too long to go back the way he'd come. Frantically he searched the black mud for another trail of rocks to move along.

He'd gone several yards when he saw a figure emerge from the forest. Normally he wouldn't have been able to see the advancing person but the glow from The Ridge had cast an eerie, dancing illumination over the field.

And he saw, incredibly, Emma coming toward him!

She'd spotted him and was waving.

No! She couldn't come out here! What was she thinking? "Stay put, Em!" he shouted. "I'll come to you!"

It seemed she couldn't hear him, because she kept coming forward.

"You crazy girl! What are you doing out here?" he muttered, leaping as quickly as he could from rock to rock.

Then he realized why she kept coming forward. She saw him standing and thought it was safe. She couldn't tell that he was standing on a rock!

He shouted to her, "Em, hold up! It's not safe! I'm on a rock! Find a rock!"