A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  It all swam. Light into dark into grey. Though her face was surely not moving with that solid something holding onto it, it rocked about. Maybe she was on the boat after all. Maybe this was all a nightmare. Maybe—

  Words. Unfamiliar. Throaty vowels, sharp consonants. But the voice. The voice was familiar.

  She blinked. Blinked again. But it was still just white and black and grey and . . . brown. A patch of brown.

  The earth quaked underneath her, sending tremors through her whole body. Or perhaps it was the hands that gripped her, shook her. There were two of him. Or three. All moving in and out of each other. But she saw that brown. It meant something, but . . .

  Brown.

  She sucked in a breath. V had failed to arrest him. Said he escaped the country. And here he was . . . with his fingers digging into her shoulders and a sneer emerging from the darkness.

  He said something. Barked it, but she couldn’t tell what words he used. Or if they were for her. A minute later, though, something cool and wet splashed against her lips.

  Water. She sucked it up, gulped what was poured in until she choked and coughed and spat a mouthful out again. It settled, cold and cruel, on her shirt. And her side screamed in fresh agony. New wetness trickled there too, making her want to writhe away from it, if she could move. Were her legs tied too?

  His face again. Familiar but fuzzy. Though there was only one of him just now. “I thought it impossible that it was you when I heard there was a female English spy captured.”

  I am not a spy. Her lips moved, but her tongue was still too swollen. Her throat too dry. Nothing came out.

  “Yet here you are. And why is that, Miss Forsythe? Why are you in Belgium rather than in Wales, with your Belgian? Getting that key for me. Hmm?”

  She was already dead. It wouldn’t be thirst or bleeding that did it though. It would be him. Of course it would be him. Delivered into the hands of the Germans by Cor Akkerman—but at least his vengeance had only demanded her. The others had made it to the boat. It had been running. They would have gotten away. They had to have gotten away. And Cor would deem his vengeance complete. She was captured. Dead. And heaven looked a long way off. Hell, though—she could imagine it now. It would be dark and silent and scented with blood.

  Knuckles connected with her cheek. The world spun again, this time keeping it up until it came to a crashing halt against something cold and damp and grey. It all went fuzzy again, but for the pain. Her side. Her cheek. And the opposite temple.

  God, if you’re there . . . I’m in pieces.

  She was a violin, broken and shattered into splinters. Nothing left to fix. Margot had said God put their pieces back together, but how could He? Even the best luthier couldn’t fix a ruined violin. Even God couldn’t . . . couldn’t . . .

  A shout. Maybe it was English, but her ears were ringing too much to say. She saw Brown’s shoes, twin smudges of black against the darkness.

  She ought to be afraid. Shouldn’t she be afraid to die? Someone like her, who knew well no paradise awaited?

  But she heard the strangest thing. A note, high and pure. A violin’s voice. Singing that note and then going up a third. Then a fourth, trickling back down. Five notes. That was all. The simplest of melodies. But it filled her head. Filled her heart. Drowned out the harsh noises coming from Brown’s direction.

  Her beginnings. Simple. Not sweet, exactly, but innocent. Five notes. Then the same five again.

  The smudge of black moved. Drew back, flew forward. She tried to curl her stomach in, away from him, but there was nowhere to go. Just pain. More blood. Darkness.

  But it wasn’t silent. It stretched on and on, through the slamming of something metal. Through the pulsing of an ache in her head. Until her side dulled to a low throb. Darkness.

  But the music serenaded her. Those five notes, then ten. Then the first note of the phrase dropped down a step, but the four to follow stayed where they’d been. Again.

  It went back and forth for a while, then a beat of silence. Two. Only two, but she felt it—that sudden shift. The sudden change.

  Alone.

  She closed her eyes against the darkness. It wasn’t the being alone that had really bothered her, was it? It was the being left. That feeling of nothingness. Of not mattering. Of never being the one someone chose.

  What made her father never care she lived?

  What made her mother leave her?

  What made Rosie start another family, without her?

  What made her so certain she could never, never trust Lukas?

  What made the darkness close in around her while Barclay and Lukas and his family all hurried onto the boat as Cor singled her out?

  Not just alone—abandoned.

  Is that all there was? In life, and now in death?

  God, if you’re there . . . I’m sorry. I don’t know if you can fix me, but I want you to. I want to go back and listen. I want to know about Jesus. I want to have a chance to be part of your family, like Rosie said we all can be. Can you forgive me? Can you . . . can you love me?

  The questions faded away. She’d never expected to hear His voice. Was sure she wouldn’t know it if she did.

  But she heard music. And for the first time in her life, she wondered if maybe . . . maybe this was what the Lord sounded like. If He’d been whispering to her all along, all these years. Little snippets of melodies she’d never quite caught.

  But now the music filled her. Those simple early notes. The silence of abandonment. And then . . . then the life He’d given her, bursting onto the score with movement and light.

  She kept her eyes closed against the darkness. And let the weakness tug her into the night.

  She would die here. But it wasn’t silent. And as the music filled her, she knew she wasn’t alone.

  That she never had been.

  Twenty-Eight

  Willa must have been granted access to heaven, though she wasn’t sure why. Could one cry to God really earn her a place there? Forgiveness?

  It must have. And it was ablaze with electric lights as bright as day. She could feel the light behind her closed eyelids, through the hair that had tumbled down and was crusted to her face. With tears? Blood?

  Though heaven hurt more than she’d thought it was supposed to. She blinked, trying to sort through the sounds that had interrupted her dream. They were so harsh compared with the music she’d been replaying over and over again. How many times? A dozen. A hundred. It hadn’t mattered. It had lulled her, blocked out the pain.

  Which reared again now as she dragged in a breath. No, not heaven. But not hell either, so there was still hope for that forgiveness. She was still in the cell, or whatever the room was. Her face was mashed into the concrete floor. Her left arm had gone numb. But the eyes she blinked couldn’t find even a patch of darkness.

  Words. In two voices. One nearly an octave deeper than the other, both speaking in German. Brown’s and . . . it wasn’t altogether unfamiliar. But wasn’t altogether familiar either. She must have heard it at some point while she slept, if sleep was the proper word for it.

  And they were near. In the room with her, though she couldn’t see shoes or trousers or anything but . . . a door, cracked open.

  A door. Open.

  She could barely even open her parched lips, but she didn’t have it in her to see escape and not try for it. She pulled up her knees as much as she could, dug them into the floor and scooted. An inch, maybe. Maybe. Another two hundred and she might get somewhere. God, please.

  Now feet and legs filled her vision. Not Brown’s—these wore high black boots polished to a shine, with grey trousers tucked into them that she saw only when he crouched down.

  “My apologies, fräulein, for the poor care you have received. Some people do not understand hospitality.” A hand slid under her head, warm and soft. The other seemed to grip the chair behind her. Then a grunt, and her head went light as the world rocked back to upright.

  Willa tried to focus on
the face. Blond brows. A ruddy complexion. Handsome features, though they showed their age. He must be in his fifties, but . . . she had seen him before. She blinked away the fog still possessing her mind.

  And went utterly still. Gottlieb.

  Brown seethed into view behind him. He snapped something in German, motioned to her.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to faze Gottlieb. He reached to the side, took a step in that direction. A table sat there, at Willa’s right. With a pitcher of water, a glass, and a stack of bandages. He dampened one of the pieces of cloth and came back to dab at Willa’s temple.

  She didn’t mean to wince away. She just couldn’t stop the reaction to the pain that unfurled at the touch.

  “Again, my apologies. But we must clean you up, ja? Or you risk infection.” His eyes were blue. And kind. That had to be a lie, didn’t it? He ought to know who she was—unless the shadows in the kitchen had masked her. Even so, he ought to assume.

  But he cleaned her face, tipped some water into her mouth—more slowly than whoever had done it last time. And only then sighed and crouched down beside her again. “Now. Are you able to speak?”

  Speak? She wasn’t sure her tongue remembered how. But she cleared her throat and forced air through it. “Y-yes. I . . . How long . . . have I . . . been here?”

  “Two days. You have apparently said nothing, much to the dismay of my colleague.” He shot a frown over his shoulder. “Though how he expects you to speak when he has neither cleaned your wounds nor given you water to drink, I do not pretend to know.”

  Brown, though obviously capable of speaking English, snarled a response in German and slashed a hand through the air.

  Gottlieb turned back to her, met her gaze and held it. As if saying something his lips would not.

  That he knew who she was. Knew she’d just been with Margot and her mother. But was that a good thing or a bad? Was he good or bad? He’d let them go in Brussels, yes. But if he’d been looking for a way to curry favor with the High Command, Cor Akkerman had just handed it to him.

  And he wouldn’t even have to turn on the family he’d obviously grown fond of to do it—he could just take it out on her. Willa was nothing to him. What hope did she have now, here, with this particular officer?

  Two days. Two days she had been separated from Lukas and Barclay. If they were coming back for her, they would have done so already.

  Her soul sagged. But only a shade or two. Because she’d already known it. And God had given her a song anyway.

  Brown strode the three steps forward. “Generalleutnant Gottlieb . . .” The rest was incomprehensible.

  Gottlieb didn’t so much as look at him. He kept his gaze on Willa. His voice, when he spoke, stayed light. “This man here insists he knows you, that you are an English spy. But this, of course, conflicts with my information. Perhaps you can tell us which is correct, fräulein, now that you can speak. Are you a contact he made in England . . . or the daughter and protégé of the American reporter touring Belgium?”

  She blinked. Reporter? American reporter?

  Brown growled. “Dummkopf! You can tell by the few words she spoke that she is English, not American!”

  Still Gottlieb didn’t look away. “We both know many Americans send their children to England for their education. Accent means nothing. Just as we both know that the High Command is very eager for the Americans to write pleasant, positive articles about our occupation, ja? Now tell me, Herr Baumann. Is the reporter outside claiming his daughter is our prisoner likely to write a pleasant, positive article?”

  “He is not a journalist! No doubt he is English too. Probably her employer. I have never seen him, but I have heard stories. A sly trickster of a man. I would not—”

  “Enough, Herr Baumann.”

  Baumann—no, she couldn’t think of him as anything but Brown after all this time—sneered. “You are a fool if you believe his story, Generalleutnant.”

  Now Gottlieb stood. Slowly, without bending his back, until he towered over Brown. “I am a fool? I invite you to remember that I am a general—and what are you? A spy. Who do you think the High Command will trust first, hmm? You? After I tell them you are a double agent?”

  Brown flushed red. “I—”

  It happened so quickly Willa hadn’t even time to jump. In one motion Gottlieb pulled out his sidearm, aimed, and fired. The crack filled the room, filled her head, cut off Brown’s objection. Her eyes felt as big as her face as she watched his eyes go blank. He slumped to the floor.

  Other feet rushed toward the door, two soldiers bursting in together.

  Gottlieb waved to Brown, casually, and said a few short words. Apparently not at all worried about what he’d just done. And the soldiers didn’t seem alarmed either. They nodded, saluted, and then dragged Brown out of the door.

  Gottlieb shut the door behind them. When he turned again, his motions were quicker. She heard the familiar gliding of a knife from a sheath, and then that of hemp being cut. When it snapped free, her arms sagged.

  She had to bite her lip to keep from screaming at the pain as her shoulders rotated, as blood rushed into her fingertips like needles.

  Gottlieb returned to the front and bent down to work at the ropes on her ankles. “That man has never once passed along useful information—he will not be missed. But you, fräulein, would do well to get out of Belgium as quickly as you can.”

  She didn’t know what to rub first—her hands, her raw wrists, her aching shoulders. She didn’t know what to trust. Or how to hope.

  She’d been dead. Now she was . . . alive. “How?”

  He lifted his brows. “With your father, of course. And if you would be so kind as to tell him that we went to great lengths to free you the very moment we realized the mistake that had been made, Germany would thank you. And we will be sure to find this local who turned you in and caution him against feeding us false information in the future. But that is no concern of yours. You need only go home with your father.”

  Her father. The words wouldn’t settle, wouldn’t set.

  It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t know him if it were.

  “There now.” Gottlieb re-sheathed his knife and held out a hand. “You will be unsteady. Lean on me.”

  Unsteady was putting it mildly. Her knees buckled, her ankles turned, and her side blazed anew with the movement. But Gottlieb’s arm proved strong and gentle as she leaned into it. He walked her slowly to the door. “I can take you to clean up first, if you’d like. Or directly to your father.”

  If she tried to clean herself up, she’d probably fall into a heap and not get up again. “My . . . father. Please.”

  The corridors blended together, one grey passage melding into another, until at last they emerged into a well-lit lobby.

  It was day. And it was bright. And it was beautiful.

  She scanned the faces in the direction Gottlieb led her, still not sure who she was looking for. Not until she spotted the bowler hat. The silver-gold hair. The fine—but not too fine—suit of clothes.

  “Willa! There you are. Lands, girl, what did they do to you?” Mr. V rushed toward them, concern on his face and a strange accent tilting his words the wrong direction. American, she would guess, though she wasn’t sure which region of it he was pretending to be from.

  But when his arms came around her, she sagged into him. He wasn’t her father. Not even close. In this moment, though, she’d happily call him her best friend.

  “It was as I feared, sir,” Gottlieb said. “She’d been apprehended by mistake. And questioned none too gently—though I have dealt with the man who treated her so harshly, I assure you. I pray you understand that he did not act in accordance with the German High Command. We would never condone treating a young lady in such a way.”

  “I’m just grateful you’ve returned her to me, General.” Mr. V tucked her into his side and turned toward the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse us—my daughter looks like she could use some pampering.”

&n
bsp; “Of course.” Gottlieb bowed and walked them to the exterior door, even opened it for them.

  Willa looked up at him, not sure what she expected.

  He gave her half a smile, and his eyes were deep and . . . amused? Perhaps so. He’d done, after all, what Margot had said he meant to do—dealt with what his superiors would believe was a double agent. Found favor with the Americans. Made himself a hero. And saved the De Wildes—and her—in the process.

  He pivoted away with a click of his boots.

  They stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. Into freedom. Into life. Willa soaked it all in and listened to the melody of it as it danced through her veins. She waited until V had led her hobbling into an automobile before she dared to ask, “Where are they?”

  V positioned his hands on the wheel and pulled out into the street bustling with German soldiers. “Safe in London. Except for Mr. Pearce—he’s waiting at the boat. It was all I could do to make him stay there, but having him with me didn’t fit the story I’d devised. And Mrs. Holstein and the little ones will be in London by the time I get you there, of course. I daresay she would have insisted on coming too, if we hadn’t left before she’d had the chance to get to us.”

  Barclay hadn’t cut and run—he’d run for help. God bless you, Barclay. Thank you, God. And of course Rosie would come—they were sisters. But that meant . . . “Then who’s in London now?”

  Mr. V angled her a knowing look. “The De Wildes, of course. I have seen that all their needs are met and have repaid the Misses Davies the funds for this trip. Young Margot is settling in at Room 40.”

  “At what?”

  “Our new codebreaking headquarters—though mum’s the word on that. You’ll have to pretend you’ve never even heard the name.”

  “No.” Willa turned on the seat, wishing she had the energy to lash out at him. But even that movement made pain shoot up and down her side. “No, she’s just a child. You can’t force her to work like that, she’s—”