The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis

  “Olivia Marsh? Olivia Marsh?” At the hospital he chanted her name like a mantra, confronting people with it. A nurse directed him to the room Liv shared with two more new mothers.

  Liv slept propped up in bed, her head tipped to one side and her mouth slightly open. Sweat had plastered her hair to her forehead, but now it had evaporated, leaving her bangs frizzy, disheveled. Dark bags hung beneath her eyes. Her face was round and puffy.

  She’d never been more beautiful.

  And in the crook of one arm, held close to her chest, nestled a bundle of pink swaddling.

  Marsh tiptoed across the room to Liv’s bedside. He leaned over her, tugging as gently as he could on the folds of blanket to get a first look at his baby.

  “Hi, you,” said Liv in a hoarse voice. She smiled. It was an exhausted smile, but it touched her half-open eyes. “You’re home.”

  Marsh kissed her sweat-salted lips. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t home sooner. I’m so sorry.”

  Liv lifted the bundle. “Meet your daughter.”

  His baby felt lighter than a snowflake. Her tiny face was bright red, and her eyes and mouth were scrunched together under folds of baby fat. Wisps of pale hair traced across her perfect scalp like gossamer.

  She smelled marvelously. She smelled like family. Her silken skin tickled Marsh’s lips. He hadn’t shaved, so he took care not to let his whiskers scratch his daughter. Nothing would ever hurt her. He’d tear the world apart, brick by brick, if he had to.

  Liv scooted over on the narrow bed. Marsh lay on his side, cradling their daughter between them.

  “You look absolutely manic,” she said. “I left a note.”

  “I found it. Eventually.”

  “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Me, too.” He kissed his daughter and his wife again. “Me, too.”

  In spite of his exhaustion, hours passed before the cogs in his head finally ground to a stop so he could sleep.

  Congratulations. It’s a girl.

  11 May 1940

  Westminster, London, England

  The invasion of France forced Will’s hand. He’d planned to pitch his idea to Marsh before approaching Stephenson. But Marsh was stuck somewhere in France with the Jerries closing in. Will had to speak with the old man at once.

  To hell with von Westarp. They needed to find Marsh, and Will knew how to do it.

  Will tried SIS HQ first, knowing Stephenson hadn’t finished moving his office to Milkweed’s new space in the Old Admiralty. The old man had used his clout to turn Milkweed into a semiautonomous agency isolated from the rest of SIS. By declining the promotion his seniority deserved after Admiral Sinclair died, Stephenson gained a few favors from Lieutenant Colonel Menzies, the new C.

  But Stephenson wasn’t in the Broadway Buildings. Will decided to cut through the forty acres of St. James’ Park on foot, because walking to the Admiralty was easier than riding the Tube to Charing Cross and then backtracking.

  He exited the park directly across Horse Guards’ Road from the Admiralty. He found Lorimer having a smoke on the steps. It appeared the Scot was having a rest. But then Will saw that Lorimer was studying something in his lap. It looked like a belt with a strange battery attached to it.

  A smoldering cigar hung from the corner of Lorimer’s mouth. The man smoked less frequently these days; good tobacco was hard to come by. Lorimer looked up as Will approached. He removed the cigar from his mouth with fingers discolored by long exposure to developing reagents.

  “Missed the excitement, Yer Highness.”

  “So I gather. I can’t find Stephenson.”

  Lorimer jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Just returned from meeting the new PM.” He paused to puff on his cigar, then added, “He took the film with him.”

  “Ah.” The old man hadn’t wasted any time briefing Churchill on Milkweed. “Good. I need to speak with him about Marsh.”

  Another puff. “They’re in the cellar.”

  “They?”

  “Marsh, Stephenson, and the prisoner.”

  “He’s back?” Giddy relief flooded through Will, followed by confusion. “Wait. Prisoner?”

  Lorimer waved off the question while he took another puff. “Have Marsh explain it to you. I’m busy.” He focused his attention back on the battery, turning it this way and that.

  “I certainly intend to,” said Will. He bounded up the stairs two at a time. Near the top, he paused, patted his pockets, and turned. “Oh, damn. Hi, Lorimer, I wonder if you’d part with a cigar?”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “Heavens, no. Dreadful habit. Can’t abide it.”

  “I had a shit time getting my hands on these.”

  “Ah. Well. It’s for a good cause. Morale, you know.”

  Lorimer fished another cigar from the breast pocket of his overalls. He handed it over, grumbling. “My last.”

  “Brilliant.” Will tipped his hat to Lorimer. “Cheers.”

  The space beneath the Old Admiralty was a rabbit warren of vaulted brick tunnels that intersected in groined arches. They extended almost to St. James’ in the west, under Whitehall in the east, and practically to the Admiralty Arch in the north. The fortified section had less character, gray concrete corridors lit with naked lightbulbs that cast severe shadows.

  Will found Marsh and Stephenson standing outside one of the storage rooms at the end of a long corridor. The pair spoke quietly, occasionally peering through the square window of glass and wire mesh set high in the steel door.

  Marsh was saying to Stephenson, “And then she gave me this.” He twirled a daisy in his fingers. The crumpled flower had seen better days. A petal fluttered to the concrete at Stephenson’s feet like a bit of crepe paper.

  Will cocked an eyebrow as he took in the flower. “You devil, you. I see it clearly now: a trail of broken hearts across France, winsome milkmaids and Parisian grandes dames.”

  Stephenson ignored him. “She didn’t say anything else?” he asked, again staring through the grille.

  “No. I dosed her after that. Hi, Will. And nothing of the sort. It’s—”

  “I should hope not,” said Will. With a little flourish he produced the cigar and popped it into Marsh’s mouth.

  Marsh jerked back in alarm, yanked the cigar from his mouth. “Blech.” He spat. Marsh didn’t smoke. “A simple ‘congratulations’ would suffice. Blech.”

  Will laughed. “I’d get used to this if I were you. I believe it’s traditional.” He pounded Marsh on the back.

  Stephenson indulged in a little chuckle. “He’s right.”

  “So,” said Will, “boy or girl?”

  “Girl,” said Marsh. He smiled, but the hard light highlighted the dark papery skin under Marsh’s eyes. It made him look gaunt. And his hair was mussed. The poor fellow looked as though his last sleep had been several days ago. In a haystack.

  “You look awful,” said Will.

  “I’ve heard.” He started to turn toward the window again, but then the stopped and turned. “Thanks for getting Liv to the hospital, Will. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “It was nothing, Pip. I was glad to help, and as it happened your neighbors had left her high and dry.”

  Marsh nodded more thanks, but a strange look passed between him and Stephenson as he did so.

  Looking back and forth between them, Will asked, “And what, pray tell, has kept you from your loving wife? You made a rather hasty exit from the Continent, I gather.”

  Marsh summarized the events of the past several days. Just as he’d done with his Spanish adventure, he made it all sound routine: secret meetings, speeding toward the German army, capturing a foreign agent.

  After Marsh wrapped up his story, Will pointed at the window through which Stephenson had been peering. “Our new guest?” Stephenson nodded. Will peeked inside the makeshift brig.

  The storeroom was empty but for a cot. A woman lay across it, hair fanned about her head like a sable halo. Darker-skinned than he’d expecte
d. She had bony ankles.

  “Heavy sleeper, is she?”

  “I dosed her as we entered the city. Better if she doesn’t know where we are.”

  At this, Will rolled his head back, feeling dense—Ah, of course. I’m hopeless. Again he caught the glance flickering between Stephenson and Marsh.

  “I sense you chaps are hiding a bloody great secret.”

  “She knows things, Will.”

  “Things?”

  “She knew my name. And that we’d just had a girl.”

  Air whistled through Will’s teeth as he inhaled. Though he was a tyro in this business, he understood Marsh’s liaison work for the Entente, and meeting Krasnopolsky, had both been carried out under false identities. And if those had been compromised—

  “A mole?”

  “Or,” said Stephenson quietly, “we have to consider the possibility that somebody has been watching Marsh. Perhaps watching each of us.”

  The news made Will feel naked, exposed. He suppressed the urge to glance over his shoulder, but only just. “Why? And since when?”

  “Since Spain would be the logical conclusion,” said Marsh. He pointed through the window. “And there’s more. Look. She has the wires.”

  “No?”

  Marsh nodded. Will’s palms slapped the door as he pressed himself to the window for a closer look. “I’ll be damned.” He couldn’t see anything under all the hair. “I don’t recognize her,” he said.

  “She’s not in the Tarragona film,” said Stephenson.

  Oh, hell. Nothing for it, then. “Ah. Well. Speaking of that, and since I have you both here—though you ought to be home right now, my friend—that’s something I wanted to discuss.”

  Stephenson said, “At last. You have an answer for us?”

  “No and yes. As to what von Westarp has done, and how, I still can’t say.” Stephenson frowned. Will continued, before Stephenson could object: “But! There’s a way to find out. It’s a bit drastic . . . In fact, I came looking for you,” he said, pointing to Stephenson, “to suggest instead using this approach to find Pip in France.” He grinned at Marsh. “Glad we didn’t have to.”

  “How do you propose we obtain this information?”

  “Simplicity itself,” said Will, expressing a confidence he didn’t feel. “We ask the Eidolons.”

  “Who the hell are the Eidolons?”

  “Not who, Pip. What.” In response to blank stares, Will elaborated. “A warlock doesn’t perform magic. A warlock isn’t a magician. A warlock is a negotiator. A warlock changes the world around him by petitioning an Eidolon to circumvent the laws of nature. The Eidolons, being entities that exist . . . outside . . . of space and time, acknowledge no such laws.” He looked at Marsh. “That night in the Bodleian? The thing you felt was the passage of an Eidolon not quite noticing us.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Marsh.

  “I fail to see how this helps us,” said Stephenson.

  Will said, “It’s clear from the film that what ever von Westarp has done, it’s quite unnatural. That means the Eidolons are involved. But the most vexing thing about that film is how it shows no evidence of the negotiations. Which has made his methodology a deuce to unravel.”

  “So,” said Marsh, warming to the subject, “we just ask these Eidolons to tell us how the Jerries are doing it?”

  “More or less.”

  “It can’t possibly be that simple.”

  It won’t be so bad, if I’m properly prepared.

  Will rubbed his aching hand and shrugged. “Mostly.” He pointed at the makeshift brig. “In fact, our little guest is a boon. Having her on hand could simplify things.”

  “We’ve got Lorimer at work on her belt,” said Marsh.

  Stephenson nodded. “Set it up, Beauclerk. I want it done as soon as you can. And you,” he said, squeezing Marsh’s shoulder, “go home. That’s an order.”

  Will slapped him on the back again. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  Marsh pulled him aside when they reached the top of the stairs. “I need to ask something of you.”

  “I am, as always, your servant. What can I do?”

  “Look, Will,” said Marsh, looking at his feet. “First, I’ll always be grateful to you for looking after Liv while I was away. But now I need you to keep your distance from my family. Just until . . .” Marsh made a vague gesture that encompassed their surroundings. “ . . . until this is over and things go back to normal.”

  Will took a step back, feeling slapped. “Why?”

  “Because if they’re watching us, we have to keep as separate as possible.” Marsh raised his voice, perhaps even without realizing it. His eyes flashed. “I can’t protect my wife and daughter with you leading the Jerries straight to the bloody house. When I arrived this morning, the door was unlatched. Practically wide open. Was that you?”

  The question, and the accusation veiled within, caught Will off guard. “I, I don’t know. Perhaps—”

  “Well, it was you, or it was the Jerries rummaging through my house after you’d taken Liv. Didn’t occur to you to watch your surroundings, did it?”

  “I stood for you at your bloody wedding.” The words came out forcefully, propelled by bitterness and hurt. “I introduced you.” Will’s voice echoed in the corridor. “You wouldn’t have Liv if it weren’t for me.”

  Liv deserved better than to be cloistered from the world. She would suffocate. If Will understood that, why couldn’t Marsh? The man didn’t know what he had. Will spat, “She isn’t a china doll and she isn’t a trophy. Were she my wife, I’d have the respect to warn her of danger.”

  Marsh’s eyes narrowed, and he pulled himself to his full height. Though he was still shorter than Will, his anger gave him a palpable force of presence. Will had never seen him truly angry; he immediately regretted his words. Marsh tamped down on the fire in his eyes with visible effort, leaving just a smoldering irritation there.

  “Stephenson’s arranging to have one or two men from SIS keep an eye on Liv and the baby, to find our watchers. Anything more runs the risk of drawing attention to Milkweed. Including your visits.”

  “Haven’t I at least earned the privilege of meeting your daughter?” Will’s question acted like a bellows blowing fresh air on hot coals.

  But Marsh swallowed the anger again. This time he shrugged, as though physically shaking it off. “The war will be over soon, and then things will go back to the way they were.” He patted Will on the arm. “Honest.”

  Will knew that pressing the issue would only start a row when Marsh clearly wanted to avoid one. He resigned himself to hoping for a quick end to the war, so that he could visit with Liv again and meet Marsh’s daughter. Someday he’d get to be an uncle. “Can you at least relay my congratulations and best wishes to Liv?”

  “Of course.” Marsh tried to lighten the mood. “By the by, does Lorimer know you stole one of his cigars?”

  Will played along, though he didn’t feel like it.

  12 May 1940

  0°41'13" East, 50°26'9" North

  It creaked and it sweat, this submersible coffin.

  Every few minutes another bead of water rolled down the hull, leaving behind a trail that glistened like tears on the face of some iron leviathan. The droplets formed around the welds and rivets where the hull plates joined together. The submariners called it sweat; they said it was condensation from inside the boat.

  But to Klaus’s eyes it looked like the English Channel bleeding through the steel skin of Unterseeboot-115.

  It was nearly as cramped as the box that Doctor von Westarp used to punish him. The crew—made more crowded than usual, and therefore more churlish, by Klaus’s presence—breathed one another’s breath, breathed air tainted with a hydrocarbon cloy of diesel that lingered long after the engines had been switched to electric power for silent running. He could have escaped the constriction by drawing upon the Götterelektron, but that would have meant dipping into the store of extra batteries they carried.
And Gretel had been vague on why they were necessary.

  He needed to rest. Though how anyone could sleep on a U-boat defied imagination. Every time he closed his eyes, another creak or groan echoed through the boat. And then his eyes would pop open, and he’d watch another bead of water rolling down the hull, and he’d be achingly aware of the ocean poised overhead to crush them at any moment.

  He wished the submariners hadn’t told him about the minefields. The Channel had already claimed several U-boats; the coast of Scotland was a safer insertion point. But this route was faster, and the Reich’s commanders had every reason to expect a successful mission: Gretel had foreseen it. Or so she led them to believe. But as for the ultimate fate of the submarine, she had also kept that vague. This mission might include a three-mile swim to shore, and it would be just like Gretel not to mention it.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrated on breathing. He forced himself to relax, to take in air with a slow, relaxing rhythm.

  The hull groaned as the boat sliced through the sea, changing depth once again.

  Three days since he’d had any sleep. Before long, he’d start hallucinating.

  Klaus pulled the crumpled paper from the breast pocket of his uniform. Soon he’d have to change clothes, but as long as he could get away with it, he wore his uniform. The Götterelektrongruppe insignia on his collar raised eyebrows and more than a few confused glances among the crew. They hadn’t learned to fear it yet. Not so with his rank insignia. He was an SS-Obersturmführer. That, at least, these submariners understood.

  He unfolded the note he had found in his pocket on the night of the Ardennes offensive.

  Dear Brother: By the time you relay the contents of this note to

  Standartenführer Pabst, I will be in the custody of our enemies. . . .

  12 May 1940

  Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

  Have you come to take me to the ball?”

  “Get up.”

  Marsh hauled the prisoner to her feet from where she’d been sitting cross-legged on the cot. He pulled her arms behind her back. So thin were her wrists that the handcuffs, twin bracelets of cold iron, hung loosely on her feverish skin.