The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  “Did you leave a girl behind?” Nina asked Seb, shaking her bleakness away. “Before you enlisted.”

  His eyes shifted away. “No.”

  “Boy?” Nina asked matter-of-factly and saw his face drain of color. “I don’t care, I just wondered.” If anything she was relieved, knowing he wasn’t likely to try anything with her.

  He didn’t speak for almost an hour. Until Nina said into the silence, “I had someone. A girl. So . . .”

  “Oh,” said Seb.

  “I thought it was usual for the English, boys and boys? That’s what they tell us, that all the English bugger each other and that’s why they can’t fight.”

  “No.” Seb’s face had nearly regained its normal pallor. “They say it’s a thing that happens at school, because you don’t have girls. That you grow out of it.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “No. I didn’t have anyone, I just knew I didn’t . . .” He trailed off. “I always thought once I got to know any women, it would be different. Growing up with just my father and brother, then school with nothing but boys, then the army, then four years as a kriegie . . .”

  “You don’t have to know anything about women to know if you want them in bed or not,” Nina pointed out in some amusement.

  “I suppose.” Seb blushed. “Your girl, when did you know . . .”

  “I don’t talk about her,” Nina said, and they were done with the entire subject.

  Days grew shorter, an autumn note touching the air as September slid toward October. Laying snares, cleaning game, washing socks and shirts and their own grimy bodies in the stream. Nina still got bouts of the shakes, longing for her Coca-Cola pills, and she couldn’t sleep longer than a few shallow hours at a time, but mostly she was bored. Seb had endless ways to pass the hours: poker with his leaf deck, practicing birdcalls, trying to teach her English. “You’ll have to learn if you’re coming to England.”

  “English is a stupid language.”

  “Take it slow. God—save—the—King.”

  She parroted back, trying to imagine a life in a fogbank eating these strange things Seb called pudding and scones, drinking tea from a teapot and not a samovar. Perhaps she could get work at an airfield? But even if she could, there would be no women like the Night Witches. No mechanics singing as they passed wrenches, no armorers blowing on their blued fingertips, no pilots sprinting toward their planes, straining for the honor to be first.

  Yelena’s flying dark hair, her soft mouth.

  Nina rose abruptly. “Forage?”

  They always avoided busy roads and towns, waiting hidden in trees or crouched behind brush until there were solitary refugees or peasant women with baskets who could be approached. Seb had a story about how they’d fled Warsaw and were now living rough; there were all too many such stories. Every crossroads was strewn with the discarded detritus of refugees seeking safety: upended traveling cases, an empty handcart, ransacked bundles abandoned by travelers following signs to towns Nina had no desire to seek out. Few looked suspiciously at Seb and Nina when they came to barter essentials; Seb did the talking, and Nina kept her eyes open for trouble.

  Seb held up the day’s prize, a few mealy potatoes in a sack. “Tonight we feast. Better than trying to sneak past Berlin, eh?”

  I don’t know, Nina thought, trying to shake her superstition that this wrecked country was cursed. There was no rhyme or reason to be found in this bleak, wasted moonscape of a land where the passing hand of war had swept through, raked its sharp claws, and moved on. She raised her nose to the wind as they trudged back toward their camp, sniffing. “Winter’s coming.”

  BY NOVEMBER, the cold had begun to wear Sebastian down. The trees stood stark branched, films of ice gleamed here and there in the darkest hollows, the earth was hardening, yet winter had only started to close its jaws. “This is nothing,” Nina said, trying to bolster him. “You should see the winds come howling across the Old Man.”

  Seb was sitting huddled in every piece of clothing he had. He was thinner, his eyes shadowed. “Can we light a fire?”

  “It’s not even freezing. Save it for tonight when the temperature drops.” He didn’t complain—he never did; Nina liked that about him—but his mouth pressed into a straight line of frustration. “Weren’t you used to being cold in that camp?” Nina said, her own frustration rising.

  “Forty men sleeping in one hut warm the room with their breath. It’s enclosed.” Seb gestured at their shelter. They’d left their old camp, looking for something more shielded for the winter. Seb had argued they should make their way into Poznań itself, the wide forested swath that cut through the city to add a touch of the wild—calm lakes and thick woods—in the midst of civilization. Closer to the Germans, Nina argued back. Close to the city means easier foraging, he countered, and Nina reluctantly agreed, finding a good-size rock hollow in a tumble of boulders northeast of one of the artificial lakes, sheltered among pines and protected by an overhang on three sides. With a fire pit dug and all their laundry-line-pilfered blankets, it was as dry and snug a shelter as they were going to find. But it didn’t keep out the cold. “I won’t go so far as to say I miss my kriegie bunk,” Seb said, trying to joke. “But at least it had a roof!”

  Nina fought a wave of exasperation, thinking of Marina Raskova surviving ten days in the taiga without an emergency kit; Moscow-bred Yelena shrugging off the temperatures at Engels with jokes about the frost making her eyelashes look longer. But it wasn’t Sebastian Graham’s fault he was too civilized to know what real cold was. He was here, he was all she had, and Nina realized, looking at his hollowed face, how fond she’d grown of him.

  “Malysh,” she said quietly, taking his cloth-wrapped hand. “It’s going to get worse. There will be snow. Our teeth will feel loose because I won’t find enough greens or berries. We’ll spend most of our time foraging for firewood, and even then it won’t keep us warm. There will be times you want to die, but you won’t, because I know how to survive a winter in the wild—and we aren’t in the wild, Seb. We’re in a tamed wood in Poznań, civilization just a few kilometers beyond the trees. We’ll survive, we just won’t enjoy it. You understand me?”

  “Yes.” He made an effort to smile. “I’m the one who persuaded you to camp through the winter, rather than push west. Stiff upper lip, I promise.”

  But from the way his smile fell away into silent brooding afterward, Nina still felt a pang of disquiet.

  FORAGING THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, along the edge of the artificial lake. A long narrow body of water, edible reeds to be pulled, places to be marked for fishing if she could fashion hooks and lines . . . “What’s that?” Seb pointed at an inlet a good distance down the shore. They’d never foraged this far before. “Something yellow.”

  Nina squinted, making out a peaked roof, glass windows. A house, and not a farmer’s cottage either. “Some Fritz’s lakeside retreat.” Anything gracious or expansive in Poznań these days was owned by a German. At least for now; there were more and more rumors (whenever Nina and Seb found refugees with whom they dared trade news) about the possibility of a German retreat toward Berlin.

  “A big house like that, they’ll have a larder or cellar to raid.”

  “Too risky,” Nina began.

  “If there are too many people, we’ll retreat,” Seb cajoled. “Word of honor.”

  Nina fingered the razor in her overall pocket, the revolver at her waist. No more ammunition; that had long run out. But Seb was right; they didn’t have to try. Only look.

  Her stomach was growling as they set off along the lake’s shore. Beaches scattered along the far shore; perhaps swimmers came here in the summer, but now all was quiet, nothing but the chatter of birds overhead. Seb knew them all and imitated their calls, color flushing his cheeks. Nina was glad to see it. By the time they reached the ocher-walled house, it was late afternoon. Long, low, mellow in the sunshine, the residence overlooked a sweeping view of water and trees, a dock stretching out before i
t into the blue expanse of lake. Nina looked away. Even a lake so blue and placid—as unlike the wind-whipped, ice-lashed Old Man as possible—gave her the shivers.

  No one seemed to be moving around the house; the shutters were drawn, but smoke drifted from a tall chimney. Seb and Nina crept toward the rear, where the trees had been cleared and landscaped to frame the house like dark encircling arms. No livestock or chicken pens, no laundry lines, nothing easily foraged. They exchanged wordless glances; Nina shook her head. Seb rose from his squat to follow her back into the trees, and then a woman cleared her throat behind them.

  How did she get so close without me hearing? The thought went through Nina like a bullet, even as she whirled around. There had been no sound on the leaf-strewn ground, yet there the woman stood: slim, dark haired, blue eyed, about Nina’s age, warmly wrapped in a blue coat and checked scarf, placating hands held out. She smiled, but Nina’s fingers stretched for her razor. How did you get so close?

  She was speaking Polish in a low pleasant voice. Seb replied warily, his own Polish stumbling. The woman frowned, switched languages. English? Nina could cobble simple broken phrases together by now, but she was far from fluent. Seb started in surprise, switched languages too, talking too fast for Nina to follow. She kept her eyes fixed on the woman in blue, her quiet feet in their fine leather shoes, her calm eyes.

  “She says this is Lake Rusalka,” Seb broke off at last, switching back into Russian.

  Rusalka. The word ran over Nina’s skin like a rat. She took a step back. The woman smiled, took a step back too, empty hands raised. She said something else. Seb translated, face showing a cautious hope.

  “She asks if we’re hungry.”

  “Why?” Nina’s every hackle was up.

  “She wants to help.” Seb’s expression fought with itself, caution against hope, and hope was winning. “She says we have nothing to fear.”

  Chapter 45

  Jordan

  August 1950

  Boston

  Anna!” Jordan exclaimed, opening the door of the darkroom. “I thought you were going to be away another week.”

  “I missed my girls.” Anneliese gave her a hug, all neat dark perfection in her chip hat and half veil, her black full-skirted coat. “Is Ruth playing over at the Dunnes’?”

  “Yes.” Jordan kept her eyes fixed scrupulously on her stepmother, letting out a quick cough to hide the sound of rustling from the darkroom below. “How was your buying trip?”

  “Come upstairs; I’ll fix some iced tea and tell you.” Anneliese’s brows lifted. “Unless I’m interrupting your work?”

  “Not at all,” Jordan said, very aware of Tony out of sight under the staircase below, buttoning up his shirt. “Give me ten minutes.”

  Anneliese’s heels clicked off as Jordan shut and bolted the door. “Close call,” she said with a laugh. “Are you decent?”

  “Never.” Tony came out shrugging into his suspenders, grinning. “You’re going up for iced tea?”

  “Yes, I should go be a good daughter.” Tony caught Jordan around the waist as she came down the steps, and she wound her arms around his neck. “I’ve had weeks by myself to play, after all.”

  “I’ll come over and play anytime.” He kissed the side of her throat, then began looking for his shoes. “Want me to come up, be respectable with my hat in my hand?”

  “No.” Jordan found one of his shoes under the darkroom table—they’d been in a bit of a hurry this afternoon to get to the cot she’d prudently set up with spare blankets. “Absolutely not.”

  “Mothers like me, I promise. I know how to look like a nice clean-cut boy from Queens, not a shameless seducer lurking under darkroom stairs.” He spoke with his usual teasing tone, but Jordan saw the wariness that sometimes came over him in a reflex. The wariness of his voice the first night here, when he’d told her about the girl who stopped returning his calls once she learned he was Jewish.

  Jordan came closer, sliding her fingers through his. “You know why I don’t want to introduce you upstairs?” she asked. “Not because Anna wouldn’t like you. Not because you aren’t the most charming, presentable gentleman I could hope to have on my arm anywhere. Because of Ruth.”

  “Princess Ruth loves me.”

  “Exactly. You call her Princess Ruth and applaud wildly every time she masters a new scale, and if you come up and start being charming over iced tea to her mother, she will be thrilled by the idea that you are my young man. And I’m not doing that to Ruth again, because she also adored Garrett and it broke her heart when I had to tell her he wasn’t going to be her big brother, after all. I’m not letting her think anyone else is family unless I’m sure he’s sticking around a long, long time.” Jordan squeezed his fingers. “That is why I’m not taking you upstairs for iced tea.”

  That faint wariness disappeared. “I love iced tea,” Tony said. “It might be worth sticking around a long, long time, if it’s sufficiently good iced tea.”

  “I thought we were just having a mad summer fling.”

  “Modifications could be made to the original contract. A potential extension into a mad autumn fling, as per agreement by both parties.”

  “Maybe you’ll be bored with me by autumn,” Jordan parried.

  “Not a chance, J. Bryde.”

  “Or maybe I’ll be bored with you,” she suggested. “I’ll be in New York, meeting all kinds of fascinating men.”

  “It so happens I have family in New York. Lots of reasons to come visit . . . and no one ever gets bored with me.”

  “I don’t know about sleeping with a Yankee fan past September. What happens when the Red Sox beat them in October and you’re refusing to speak to me?”

  “I’m a very gracious winner. I’ll dry your tears, and you’ll have the off-season to learn the error of your ways.”

  “Not a chance, Rodomovsky.” She gave him a hard, swift kiss good-bye, let him extend one kiss into three, four, hard up against the nearest wall with her hands buried in his hair and his fingers slipping open the buttons she’d done up so hastily to answer Anneliese’s knock. “No time,” she murmured, but it still ended up being more like twenty minutes before she was upstairs in the kitchen with hastily combed hair, peeking out the front window to see Tony duck out of the darkroom.

  I wouldn’t mind having you for an autumn lover as well as a summer lover, Jordan thought, watching that lean form jog up the street as behind her Anneliese poured out iced tea. This wasn’t like her times with Garrett, when it had been a little awkward if enjoyable, and there had been the feeling of being funneled inexorably toward the altar with every kiss. This was something looser and better fitting. They weren’t going steady, they weren’t pinned, they weren’t making it official—they were just lovers, work and play and passion and friendship blending together into something so very easy.

  “You have stars in your eyes.” Anneliese handed her a cold glass, fending off Taro, whose tail was still lashing in delight at the lady of the house’s return. “Who’s put that glow in your cheeks?”

  A man who makes my toes curl, Jordan thought, who makes me laugh, who even helps me work better. And maybe it will only be a summer fling and he’ll lose interest when I go away, or maybe I’ll be the one to move on. But right now . . . Jordan buried her smile in the iced tea. Possibly some nosy neighbor would tell Anneliese about a young man seen leaving the basement, but Jordan knew her stepmother wouldn’t launch an inquisition. “What did you buy at the auctions?”

  “Nothing,” Anneliese said ruefully. “Not a thing. Your father made it look so easy; one look at a Queen Anne highboy and he just knew if it was a reproduction or an original, or if the restoration was good work or shoddy. It was foolish to think I had picked up enough to match him. I’ll just have to let that go to someone more knowledgeable.”

  “At least you had a vacation.” Jordan folded her hands around her glass. “And your week in Concord?”

  Anneliese’s face softened. “Your father was r
ight there with me, I could have sworn. I even had the same room we had on our honeymoon. How have you and Ruth been?” Jordan filled her in, omitting for now the details of darkroom lovers and music lessons. “My photo-essay is almost done too. I have fourteen prints; I want fifteen.”

  “Then you should start thinking about a place to live in New York. I did a little apartment hunting while I was there. We can’t have you sleeping in some flea-riddled bedroom with a toilet down the hall.”

  “It’s still a bit soon to be apartment hunting.”

  “Why? Your project is almost done; what better time to look for work? And you did say you wanted to move in the fall. You’ll need a chic suit for interviews—I found the perfect Butterick pattern . . .”

  “I was going to wait till Ruth was settled back in school. It’s going to be hard for her.”

  “Nonsense, she’ll still have me and her friends and her dog. She shouldn’t be the one holding you back. Unless”—Anneliese shot Jordan a shrewd, humorous look—“you have some other reason?”

  Jordan laughed. “There is no getting anything by that sixth sense of yours, is there?” She should have known Anneliese was far too sharp not to discern the real reason for flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.

  “He must be quite something.” Anneliese drew a fingertip around her glass. “But I’d hate to see you changing your plans for some young man, however special.”

  “He won’t stop me leaving.” However lovely things were with Tony, Jordan wasn’t putting off a chance for work, real work. She wouldn’t put that off for anyone . . . except one person. “I can’t leave until Ruth’s used to the idea, though. I just can’t.”