by Bonnie Toews
NO!! No!!
“Grace, it’s a dream. You’re safe. You’re safe, darling.”
The voice, far-away, beyond the mist, beyond despair. The voice slipped in and out, again and again. It pulled her back and forth, but she didn’t want to hear it. The children. God promised her they would be safe.
“The children,” she moaned.
“Grace, I love you. Please wake up. Please come back to me.”
The voice again. She should be with the children. They protected her. She failed them. If she hadn’t hidden in the convent, the bombers wouldn’t have come. They died because of her. She welcomed the swirling energy sucking her down. Lee was right. What god allows such terrible things? It was all a lie. She wanted to die.
“The children,” she moaned.
“Oh Grace, my darling Grace. I failed you. I’m so sorry.”
Failed her. Was God telling her he failed her?
“I believed you would be safe in the convent. Oh, please, please, I love you with all my heart. Please don’t leave me.”
She heard the words through a prism of murky waves and a sea of faces. Love. The memory of penetrating blue eyes swam toward her.
“Please, God, don’t let her die. I’ll do whatever You want, just bring her back to me.”
Memories. Music. Two pianos. He sat beside her and they played a duet.
“Erich.”
A breath inhaled.
“Yes, Grace. I’m here.”
The smells. Antiseptic smells. A hospital. She fingered her sheet. Soft cotton. A hand on hers. Warm, tender touch. She reached for the touch.
“Oh, Grace.”
She dared to open her eyes. Everything telescoped in size. Her gaze drifted to the face leaning toward her.
“Erich?”
“Yes, Grace, I’m here.”
His face, his voice… images, voices flooded her mind. The injury. Erich finding her. The boat to Sweden. The operation. The flight to Scotland. More operations. The pain. Oh, dear God, the pain!
A doctor and nurse closed in on her bed.
“This injection will ease the pain.”
Within moments she could feel herself floating and then nothing.
The creak of wheels sifted through Grace’s whisks of wakefulness. She focused on the click-squeak. Somehow she knew it was the sound of the medicine cart. She opened her eyes. Sunlight bounced off the wall across from her. She gingerly turned her head to the right to see the raised window. Through the opening, a breeze puffed out the white cotton curtains. She breathed in the fresh air. Hints of roses accented its scent.
She lay still, enjoying her return to life. And then she noticed Erich’s bowed head over her bedside. She tried to shift herself to give him more room, but pain flared from her stomach through to her back like a flaming spear piercing her.
OHHhhh… escaped between her lips before she could control it.
Erich stirred and raised his head. Surprise lit up his eyes.
“You’re awake.”
She smiled and reached for his hand.
“How long have you been here?”
“The whole time.”
“Oh, Erich.”
He took her hand between both of his and raised it to his lips. He kissed each finger. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back to me.”
The operation. She remembered. “Where am I?”
“In Scotland, in a military hospital north of Edinburgh.”
“Will I be able to walk?”
He nodded.
“By next spring, you’ll be running down the aisle as my bride.”
“Your bride?”
She stared at him, not sure if she understood.
“Is that a proposal?”
“Most definitely,” he grinned.
Had she dreamed this? So many years thinking about him, not knowing if he were alive or dead. Could it be true?
“But do you love me?”
“From the first moment I saw you.”
“I couldn’t forget you either.”
He bent his head and peered into her eyes. “So, is that a yes?”
“Most definitely,” she smiled back.
The rings of fatigue bagging his underlids vanished into crinkles of laughter as he gently held her face between his hands and kissed, first her forehead, and then her lips. Their pressure sent quivers of desire through her. She raised her arms to embrace him, and pain shot through her again.
“Yikes,” she caught her breath. “I hurt.”
Erich eased her hands down, smoothed her hair back from her forehead and tenderly brushed it with his lips.
“Soon, all this will behind you. Have patience.”
“Ah, our patient awakes.”
The doctor strode up behind Erich, who slipped back on his heels to stand up and push the chair aside, making room for the doctor to take his place by Grace’s bedside. He fingered her wrist and timed her pulse. After a moment, he patted her hand.
“A little excited, are we?”
Erich’s eyes twinkled.
“Grace just consented to be my wife.”
The doctor deadpanned. “I see.”
Grace glanced at Erich. She didn’t understand the doctor’s reaction.
“I will walk again, won’t I?”
“Yes.”
With a frown, the doctor took hold of the stethoscope draping his neck and bowed his head as if gathering his thoughts.
“Then, what is it?”
The doctor sighed.
“Grace, it has taken nine operations to save your shattered hip. You haven’t been strong enough to understand all that this has been involved, but not only your hip was crushed, so was your uterus. The Swedish surgeons had to remove it to save your life. They were able to save your ovaries, but you will not be able to have children.”
Not to be able to have babies! She stared at the doctor and then at Erich. “Did you know this?”
“Yes, of course.”
She turned her head away.
“So, this is my punishment for surviving when the children didn’t.”
“Grace, God isn’t punishing you. He saved you.”
“For what?”
Unfamiliar bitterness crept into her question.
Erich gently turned her head back to look at him. He seemed to drink in her face.
“To save me. I don’t know why He has saved us both, but in time we’ll find out. Now we need our faith more than ever.”
“Faith,” she whispered. “With all that has happened in Germany and to Germany, how can you of all people believe God exists?”
She watched anguish filter through his expression.
“As a boy, my parents took me to the Lutheran Church. I loved the Bible stories, especially those about Jesus. His perfection awed me, but once I became a British spy—believing it was the only way I could save my country—His perfection frightened me because I led a life of subterfuge and lies. I tried to save my country from the mad men running it, but the horrible things we did… I could never tell my mother I hated the SS for fear of what the Gestapo might do to her if they suspected I was a spy. She died hating what she believed I had become, and I stopped talking to God. What could I promise Him?”
“Oh, Erich, I’m so sorry.” She reached out to touch his cheek.
Misery lined his face. He grasped her hand and pressed it to him.
“I could not forgive myself until I saw you in Copenhagen. Then, my hope returned. All that mattered was saving you. If you lived and I died, it would redeem me in the Lord’s eyes.”
“But, you didn’t die.”
His expression reminded her of the young German soldier in the chapel.
“No, I didn’t, but I now believe God led me to find you.”
Grace nodded. “Because of the little girl.”
He had told her how he had rescued her when she awoke in the Swedish hospital.
“Yes. I found her first, and she told me about you. If not for her, you might
have died.”
She lay quiet, mulling over his words. She had never questioned God before. All her life she believed she was a faithful servant. She had prayed God would keep Erich safe, and He had. She had prayed for Lee, and Lee had survived, but at what cost to her mind? She had accepted her parents were safe in God’s heaven, but the sisters and the children had protected her at risk to their own lives. They lived in God’s house. They should have been safe, yet He allowed them to be struck down. If it wasn’t some fault within her, whose fault was it? How could she live happily with Erich if they died because of her?
Erich caressed her cheek. She nestled her head against his loving touch.
“Grace, Morgan Saunders has been in Copenhagen tracking down Amanita’s traitor. He says the church and the Danes are rebuilding the convent in memory of the nuns and girls who died.”
“It won’t bring them back.”
Erich bit his lower lip and took a moment before he replied.
“No, rebuilding doesn’t replace the loss of lives. But, Morgan, also brought back a message from the Mother Superior to you.”
“The Reverent Mother survived?”
Erich nodded.
“How?”
“I don’t know. But, she was concerned you would blame yourself for hiding in the convent and causing the bombing.”
The Mother Superior always seemed to know what was in her soul before she did.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Erich’s eyes softened.
“Grace, sometimes God makes sacrifices of those most innocent and pure. As He did with His own son. The convent was always in danger of being bombed because of its close location to Gestapo Headquarters. Your hiding there never changed that risk. The Danes don’t blame the British or the Allied pilots, and certainly not you, for their deaths. To defeat the Nazi evil, they are proud of the sacrifice the sisters and children made to save their country. That’s the message the Mother Superior has sent back to you.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Thursday, April 18,1946
Lee felt abandoned to the damned. The nightmare was always the same, before the sudden flash of bright light awoke her. Lee instinctively pulled the covers up over her bandaged face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she raged from under the sheets. “Get those bloody shades down.”
Her baby started crying.
“Take her away. She hates me. I can’t stand the crying.”
A strange woman’s voice ignored her outburst.
“It’s morning, young lady. Time to get up. Your baby’s hungry.”
“You feed her,” Lee ordered petulantly from under the sheets.
“That’s it,” said this new voice. “Your self-pity party has gone on long enough.”
“What do you know?”
The woman yanked the covers off Lee.
“You haven’t even given this wee tyke a fair chance. Now sit up.”
Lee blinked at the light and, with difficulty, focused on this person who dared defy her.
“Who are you?”
“Your nanny.”
“My what?”
The blurry image cleared. A tiny woman with steel gray hair and flashing green eyes stood before her.
“You heard me,” she said.
“I never asked for a nanny.”
“Morgan Saunders did. You have exhausted the staff at the sanatorium with your mean moods, but now I’m here. I will be nursing you through your recovery and looking after your baby.”
She plumped the pillows behind Lee’s head.
“Now sit up so you can feed her.”
“When you pull the shades down.”
“That’s not negotiable. If you don’t want to know the difference between day and night, your baby has to learn the difference, or she’ll never sleep through the night.”
“Why should she have it any better than me?”
The nanny glared. Lee knew she was being childish, but the hatefulness within her didn’t want to give it up. The baby’s cry turned into an angry wailing.
“Okay. Okay. Anything to stop her bloody crying.”
The nanny lifted the baby from her carriage and settled her into Lee’s arms. The starched woman cooed to the baby, while she brushed the infant’s lips with the nipple of the bottle. The baby’s chubby hands grabbed the bottle and held it by herself. The room filled with the sounds of her sucking.
“She’s a beautiful little girl. What’s her name?” the nanny asked.
“Kendra Alexandra.”
“How lovely.”
Lee didn’t ask the woman her name. She didn’t want to know it. And she ignored the nanny’s efforts for a friendly chat.
No one cared how the war was won or what was lost to win it. What did Gertie’s hangnail or the price of butter have to do with what Lee suffered? Why would anyone think that washing diapers and preparing baby formulas would heal her scars and erase her nightmares? No one understood. No one wanted to understand. She was abandoned to the damned.
Voiceless screams struggled for release. She felt old, too old, as if her soul had traveled a million years through the galaxy, lost and afraid, and was finally too weary of the journey and the things she had seen to keep on going from one empty hope to another. She did not fit in anywhere. There was too much to absorb, too much to resolve, too much hate, too much disillusionment, and too much recrimination. What was normal for other people was not normal for her. She had come back from hell only to find a different hell awaiting her.
After Quinn left her in Sweden, Morgan Saunders secreted her away to a place where no one could find her. He moved her to Switzerland, to a remote sanatorium called Meiringen in the Alps, in the hope that plastic surgery to smooth out the grotesque pits ground into her cheeks and brows by Ketmann’s cigarette butts would heal her spirit as well as her face.
For a time, she savored her secret in the peaceful scenery surrounding the sanatorium. Baldur-Meyer had not violated her body, and she had no desire to destroy the decent part of Baldur-Meyer she carried inside her. Her body amazed her. Through all the horror, it had clung to that fetus. She was proud of that. Baldur-Meyer in death had granted her the last chance to experience the greatest miracle of womanhood: the birth of a baby.
But, when the time came for delivery, her mind could not bear even joyous pain. Being strapped into the stirrups brought back all the terror. Each contraction became a cruel torture revisited. Mercifully, the doctors performed a caesarian section. Once the umbilical cord was cut, however, her bond to motherhood severed. When she awoke, she felt no rush of motherly love spilling over to the baby she bore.
Instead, she saw a tiny creature screaming, a stranger demanding the subjection of her will to it. Her newborn’s cries convinced Lee it was her disfigured face, which terrified the infant. Each wail reinforced her mistaken belief the baby was rejecting her. It never occurred to her the baby was simply hungry, or wet. Out of frustrated motherhood spawned a new resentment, which festered into more self-hatred. The doctors feared she would withdraw so far into herself she could never be saved from the impregnable black hole of madness.
And so the middle-of-the-night visitations from hell, the wandering in and out of Ketmann’s fiendish face in her dreams, of his demonic voice hissing forth from the gaping jaws of death, grew and multiplied into chanting, hooded, sunken-eyed masks of satanic laughter. The confusion of haunting echoes tore at her, reminding her of her own fragile immortality. And they all congealed with the infant’s real-life wails until she could not tell them apart. The scars scourging her soul robbed her baby of its mother. She had nothing left with which to nurture this one born of her body. Only an inner will to survive prevailed.
As she was burping Kendra, Saunders walked in.
“Well, if it isn’t my two favorite girls,” he said cheerfully.
Through her bandages, Lee glared at him.
“Get rid of this woman. I don’t want her.”
She saw the nanny and M
organ exchange silent messages. He bent over and lifted Kendra up. She gave him a delighted grin.
“Well, thank-you. At least you’re glad to see me.”
He played with her for a moment before he handed her over to the nanny and suggested she return Kendra to the nursery.
He put his arm around Lee.
“Come over to the rocker, Lee. We have to talk.”
“We certainly do,” she agreed.
He led her to the rocking chair and helped her into it.
“Please pull down the shades.”
“I have some papers with me I want you to read. You need the light.”
“This isn’t working, Morgan,” she cried. “Before I conceived the baby, I felt empty. Now that she’s here, I feel trapped. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t sleep. Maybe this is what I did to my mother. Maybe this is why she gave me up.”
“When are you going to face you need professional help?”
“No, I need to go back to work.”
“And when you have to interview someone face-to-face, how will you feel?”
“The doctors say this last operation restored my face.”
“But not your mind. What about Kendra?”
She was silent.
He changed the subject.
“I have news.”
“About Grace?”
“Her too.”
“Tell me about Grace first.”
“The operations were successful. She can walk normally, but she will never have children.”
Lee winced. “It’s not fair, is it?”
“I know you refused to attend her wedding, but, when she found out I was returning here, she told me to tell you she and Erich want you and the baby to join them when Intrepid races in the Epsom Derby.”
“Intrepid?” Her voice lifted, and then it dropped. “That’s rotten blackmail.”
“Your face should be completely healed by then. After the race, they will be leaving for Canada. It’s your last chance to see them before they go into hiding,” Saunders reminded her.
“Hiding?”
“Yes. Remember, even though Erich and Grace are married, as individuals they have been declared dead. The Official Secrets Act prevents us from revealing their activities for British Intelligence during the war, so it makes greater sense to give them new identities and a new location.”