A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  Willa craned her neck around to see what he had spotted. Cellar steps opened up just feet away from them. They looked old and unused in recent years, and were likely not connected to the farmhouse in the clearing.

  It worked for her. They all crawled their way over, Barclay leading the way down. Margot followed without hesitation, her mother going next with a ginger step and a glance over her shoulder.

  Lukas sent Willa a gaze as warm as an iceberg and jerked his head. In the face of such a gracious invitation, she had no choice but to jerk her own head toward the opening and whisper, “Stay with your family.” She would feel better making sure no one had spotted them. That Gottlieb hadn’t somehow sensed them and sent up a shout.

  He growled but followed his mother down the steps. Willa edged down a few steps behind him but kept her head at ground level until she was certain the German general hadn’t sent anyone to investigate.

  “Willa, out of the way. I have a door.”

  She pulled herself into the dim space and backed down the steps, out of Barclay’s way. The wood in his hands could only loosely be termed a door, as rotted as it was, but anything newer would have looked out of place. He managed to ease it up into position and wedge it there at an angle.

  Not the most secure hiding spot they’d ever found when they had to duck away from authorities, but not the worst. She spun to take in the space, expecting darkness and spiders and rats and who knew what else.

  Instead she saw, in the glow of an old lamp Lukas had lit, old wooden shelves with openings square and deep. Gravel on the floor. And scuffed work stations that had a strange bit of style to them.

  “Wine cellar,” Lukas said, setting the lantern on the counter.

  His sister scanned the space, thoughts clamoring through her eyes. As if she were measuring it. Casing it.

  Willa’s lips twitched. Had she met this girl on the street, she would have tried to recruit her into the family.

  Lukas sank to a seat at his sister’s side. “How many bottles can it hold?”

  Willa leaned against the stone wall, though it was damp and cold.

  Margot tilted her head. “Two hundred and forty.”

  “Stones?”

  “One thousand seven hundred twenty-eight.”

  Lukas pursed his lips. “Pounds of gravel?”

  She lifted a piece of it, weighed it in her hand. “Half a ton.”

  He smiled and slid an arm around her, pulled her close to his side. “I missed you.”

  “Me too.” She sighed as she said it and turned those inquisitive eyes on Willa and Barclay. “You never introduced us, Lukas. I am surprised Maman did not chide you.”

  “Mm.” Their mother sat as well and closed her eyes. “Yes, Lukas. Introduce us.”

  He didn’t so much as glance at them. “Barclay Pearce. Willa Forsythe.”

  Margot lifted her brows. “And?”

  “And what?”

  She rolled her eyes and motioned toward them. “How do you know them? Why did they come with you? And which of them should I ask to teach me to pick a lock?”

  He looked almost ready to explode at that one. Willa laughed and slid down to take a seat as well. When had she last slept? She wasn’t sure. “When we get to England, I’ll teach you. If your mother allows it.”

  Margot looked to her mother with a hopeful lift of her brows, but Madame De Wilde made no reply. Her breathing had gone deep and even, her hands slack in her lap.

  Barclay sat on the bottom stair. “Not a bad idea. Everyone catch a bit of sleep now, while it’s safe. Let Gottlieb and his men get well ahead. We’ll get back on the road later.”

  Willa stood again and nudged her brother’s knee with her boot. “I’ll take first watch. I’ve another hour or two in me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Do I volunteer unless I am?”

  He pushed off with a nod, mussed her hair fondly on his way past, and staked out a place on the floor. Lukas did the same without a word, and Margot leaned into her mother.

  Willa drew in a long, musty breath and set her face toward the steep stairs and the bits of daylight that snuck through the crooked door. With her companions all quiet, she could still hear the steady steps on the road. How many of them were up there, marching to Antwerp?

  Were they looking for them?

  Instead of dwelling on it, she tried to conjure some music into her mind. It had been days since she’d played anything. More than days—a week. A week since she’d held a violin and heard it singing in her ear. The last piece she’d played had been one of Lukas’s, but on her own violin. That Sunday evening before she went down for supper with him. Before Mr. Rees had burst in. Before Cor had wrecked it all.

  No. She would think of the music, not him. She pulled it into her mind, rested her arms on her drawn-up knees to roughly imitate the correct position. And she played in time to the marching feet.

  She finished her private, silent concert with a long exhalation and started when Margot sat opposite her on the bottom step.

  “Violin or viola?”

  Willa’s lips pulled up. “Violin.”

  “Like Lukas.”

  “Mm.” Her gaze found him of its own volition. His hair was tumbling all over his forehead. He was dressed in the rough clothes of a farmer. Dirt smudged his face and hands. And he was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Blast him.

  “Is that how you met him? Through the orchestra?”

  She sighed. “He probably would not want you talking to me, Margot. I’m a thief. Fulfilling a contract for a job. Nothing more.”

  Margot gave her a look a fourteen-year-old ought not to be able to give. “I talk to whomever I want. And I have never seen my brother not look at a woman as deliberately as he was not looking at you this morning. He must be in love with you. And not happy about it. Is it because you are a thief?”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or do something else altogether. “A fine summation.”

  “I am good at sums.” The girl rested her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and studied Willa. “But you do not have to always be a thief. If you are as talented with a violin in your hands as you are with your invisible one, you can be a musician instead.”

  Willa picked at a dried-on glob of something or another on her ugly brown skirt. “I like being a thief.”

  “And he liked being a rake—but there always comes a time for change, oui?” She stood and dusted off the back of her skirt. “When you are ready, Jesus will forgive you. As He did Lukas.”

  Why did her life keep filling up with all these people who wanted to talk about Jesus? Willa shook her head. “Why would I want Him to do that?”

  “Because”—Margot smiled as if it were all as simple as two plus two—“that is when He can start piecing us back together.”

  Willa’s breath caught as the girl returned to her spot. Caught and knotted and made her eyes burn.

  She turned back to the slivers of light and bit her lip until the tears marched away.

  Twenty-Six

  Why are you telling me this?” Lukas dug his fingers into the dirt covering the stone steps. All was silent up above them and had been since he’d woken half an hour earlier and come over here to see if he could relieve Barclay of the watch.

  He rather wished all had remained silent in the wine cellar as well. He ought to have objected the very moment Barclay had whispered, “You don’t understand, you know. Why she is the way she is.”

  Lukas didn’t need pity stirring in his chest for the woman asleep on the floor in the corner. What he needed was to build a wall around his heart, like the one she’d kept so well guarded around her own. He needed a way to force her from his heart altogether—a place she’d never wanted to be to begin with. As she’d said time and again.

  Why hadn’t he listened?

  Barclay sighed. “You really mean to tell me it changes nothing in your opinion of her, knowing where she comes from?”

  He brea
thed a laugh that felt as carefree as war. “She does not care what my opinion is. And even if she did, it does not matter from where she came, only where she has chosen to go. And she has chosen to be a thief, as if it were the only option. As if there are not thousands in the same position who choose to lead honest lives.” He stood, put a foot on the crumbling step. “But you know, that is not the worst of it. The worst is that she has tried so hard to avoid being like her mother that she has become her father instead—running from involvement that might risk her heart.”

  Barclay’s eyes glinted, but any retort about Willa must have given way when Lukas took one step up and then another, because Barclay hissed, “Where are you going?”

  “To look around. See if perhaps I can find a farmer with a cart who will drive us.”

  He didn’t wait for a response, simply shoved the rotting door aside and blinked his way into the afternoon sun that assaulted his senses.

  He couldn’t stay down there a moment more, with her so close by, and so closed off. With the weight of responsibility for his family so heavy, and telling him every moment that he must hurry.

  A wordless prayer surged through his heart. If they were to find their way back to the docks, find another boat, find a way across the Channel, it would be by God’s grace. He was none too sure Cor Akkerman would still be waiting for them, regardless of the fact that Lukas still owed him fifteen pounds for the return trip.

  “Hey! Where did you come from?”

  Lukas started, biting back a choice word when a figure straightened from its seat on the low stone wall. The German uniform tied knots in Lukas’s stomach. His gaze tracked to the automobile pulled off the road, its bonnet up.

  He fastened on a smile, motioned toward the farmhouse in the distant clearing, past the bare trees, and prayed the man wouldn’t hear the French in his German. “I saw you seemed to be having problems. Can I lend assistance?” Bluster was his only hope. Pretend confidence. With that in mind, he hopped over the wall and made for the automobile as if he had some clue as to how to fix the thing.

  But the soldier narrowed his eyes. “I did not see you approaching when I looked that way a minute ago.”

  Blast. He’d rather hoped that the cigarette dangling from the man’s fingers meant he’d not been paying attention to anything. “Nein?” He knit his brows together and leaned over the space left open by the bonnet. “Odd. Perhaps a tree blocked your view of me.”

  The man—if one could call him such, for he looked to be no more than twenty—took another drag from his cigarette, obviously contemplating the truth of that. At length, he shrugged. “I thank you for your offer. But my colleagues already know of the breakdown and have gone to fetch the needed supplies to fix it. They will be back in a matter of minutes.”

  No, no, no. That was no good at all. How was he to warn the others?

  “Wait a minute. You look familiar. Almost like . . . but that cannot be, he has already been killed.”

  Would nothing go right this afternoon? Had they used up all their good fortune escaping from the house in Brussels? But no, God would not abandon them now. Lukas would just have to bluff his way out of this. He forced a chuckle. “I have been mistaken for many things in my life, sir, but never for a dead man.”

  “It is an uncanny resemblance. I’d studied his photograph for hours when we were watching for him. You—”

  Thunk. Lukas spun back around just in time to see the soldier crumpling to the ground. Barclay stood behind him, a stone in hand. He tossed it down and bent over to check the soldier’s pulse.

  Lukas drew in a sharp breath. “Why did you do that?”

  Barclay gave him a look he’d received no fewer than a dozen times from Willa. “He recognized you. What would you have had me do? But he’s only unconscious, which means we haven’t much time. When his colleagues return . . .”

  They had better be long gone. Lukas vaulted back over the wall. “Margot! Mère! We have to leave now!”

  But it was Willa, of course, who was the first to respond, and to urge his family to wakefulness and up the stairs. She didn’t look at him—which was fine, because he certainly wasn’t looking at her. Which meant he had no reason to note the angry look she shot her so-called brother.

  He suddenly suspected she hadn’t been asleep while Barclay told him about her childhood.

  There was no time to worry about that. He set his sights on the distant farmhouse—and the wagon in front of it, with one horse hitched to it and another even now being led that direction by a figure too small at this distance to be discernable.

  Friend or foe?

  They had little choice but to gamble.

  It was better to rage than to weep, which was what she really wanted to do. Willa kicked at a little pile of hay that lay in the freshly scythed field across which they tramped—remarkably unsatisfying, given that it simply scattered in the wind—and debated the wisdom of slapping Barclay upside the head. She might, were it not so blasted hard a head.

  “I’ll not apologize,” he said again, keeping his gaze fastened on the De Wildes, who were a few strides ahead of them. “Not for trying to see to your happiness. It’s my privilege as your brother.”

  “As if he will make me happy?” She kept her voice low, kept her pace quick. And darted a glance over her shoulder. They’d trussed up the soldier and put him in the boot of his automobile, but he could wake up and make a racket at any moment. “As if he could.”

  “Willa.” Barclay sighed. “What if life has more for you than this? Have you never considered it?”

  More? More than the existence she had carved out for herself? More than children who clamored around her, relied on her? More than music whenever she picked up a violin—assuming she got her hands on another? “I’m happy with our life, Barclay. It’s what we are. What we’re good at.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “No, Will. It’s something we did because we saw no other way. But wasn’t the goal always to escape it? To give the little ones a chance for a different life? An honest one? We’ll never be rich, that’s a given, but working for V now, for the government . . . we could be better. Normal.”

  “I don’t want to be normal.” And how could he do this to her? Start talking about changing everything, giving up on all they’d worked so hard for?

  Barclay breathed a laugh. “Well, good. Because you, at least, don’t have to be. Not with your talent. Don’t you see? You can play your violin. Join an orchestra somewhere, put all this behind you. Give yourself a chance at happiness and entertain the possibility that maybe Lukas De Wilde is a part of that.”

  Why did it make her eyes sting? Oh yes. Because it was impossible. She couldn’t undo all she was. She couldn’t just become something else. “Next you’ll start spouting the same nonsense as Rosie and Peter and Lukas. About God and prayer and Jesus.”

  Still he looked at her as if he couldn’t fathom what went on inside her head. “Do you really never pray?”

  “Do you mean you do?” She sidestepped a furrow in the field.

  Yet he smiled a strange, crooked smile. “I have. Not often, mind you—didn’t dare. An urchin going before the King, as it were. But when I prayed, He answered—He brought me to Pauly, to you and Rosie and the others. And it’s made me think. Peter said something before he left about God calling us, drawing us while we’re still sinners. And I wonder . . . I wonder if that’s what He’s been doing all along. Calling us to Him. To His work. If maybe that’s what He’s doing now, providing us a way out of the life we made for ourselves.”

  She shook her head, her back going stiff when a shout came from the farmer whose wagon they were approaching. Lukas had said he was amenable to taking them into Antwerp with him, but what if it was just a trap? Or if they came upon the friends of that soldier Barclay had bashed over the head and they got a good man in trouble? “Maybe I don’t want out.”

  “Willa.” Barclay moved close, rested a hand on her shoulder, and spoke in a bare murmur. �
�You can spend your life regretting what you’ve lost. Or you can thank the Lord for what He’s given. We could have been alone. Each of us. We could have struggled and fought and starved and likely died or landed in prison. But instead . . . we have a family. A blamed good one, if you ask me. One I love every bit as much as I did the one I was born into.”

  More. More, because they’d chosen each other. Chosen to love and to stay and to sacrifice so they could.

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t let stubbornness keep you from happiness. Seize it. Don’t let it go.”

  As if the choice were only hers. Assuming she ever could have found happiness with Lukas, she’d already ruined everything there. He’d never trust her again. For good reason.

  But it didn’t matter. “Let’s just get them back to England for now, Barclay. That’s enough for today.”

  Barclay’s sigh said he’d give up. For now. Which was just as well, because the farmer was speaking rapidly in Flemish, motioning them into the back of the wagon. And looking over his shoulder all the while, no doubt making sure no one saw them.

  While Lukas handed over a few coins, the rest of them climbed up into the back of the wagon loaded with hay. They each tucked themselves among the bales so they’d be invisible from the road. Willa ended up sandwiched between Barclay and Margot, careful not to so much as crowd Lukas with her gaze once he joined them and the wagon lurched into motion.

  Yet still it felt like he was pushing her away. Willing her out of his vicinity.

  She didn’t love him. So it shouldn’t hurt.

  Why, then, did it?

  They were on the road no more than ten minutes, by her count, before the clatter of an engine broke in upon the monotony of horses’ hooves, coming from the direction in which they were going. The Germans, coming to rescue their comrade, she imagined. She didn’t dare peek out, nor did any of the others. Rather, they all burrowed deeper into the hay, covering themselves up as much as they could.

  The others were praying—she could see lips moving, hear the breath of whispers. She could feel them all, straining upward. Willa squeezed her eyes shut, but she wouldn’t have known how to pray had she wanted to.