by L. E. Waters
Kathrin can’t control her smirk at his slight recognition, and it’s a good thing she’s standing behind him.
“Let’s go up this street to the old abbey,” I say and Kathrin’s eyes shine.
“What abbey?” Lee asks as we briskly walk away. “How do you know where all these places are? I thought you’ve never been to London before.”
“I studied a map,” I yell back as he catches up.
We turn onto Minories, which I’m sure got its name from minoresses, an old name for nuns. The change astounds me. Gone are the stone outbuildings, the stone walls, the gardens Simon chased me in, the ample rolling fields where Oliver, Rowan, and Mousie played. They have been replaced with towering brick-and-concrete atrocities.
Kathrin points. “Look, a chapel.”
There, crouched between two plain buildings, up a cobblestoned path, lies the small parish chapel I took my last breath in. It’s the same size, but much of the plain chapel has been altered. Brick now lies where fieldstone used to be; the windows are the same arched shape and size, but a steeple has been added where the old church bells used to ring. The sound that drew us to it so long ago.
“But this is the Holy Trinity Minories church,” Lee says.
“It was an abbey before,” I say with a smile. “The most beautiful abbey there ever was.” I run my hand down the newer brick to find the old medieval north side still intact. I place Kathrin’s hand on it. “This is part of the old chapel.”
“I can feel it, Annelie.” Kathrin has tears in her eyes. “So much love in this place.”
Lee’s eyebrows knit. “How do you know that this used to be an abbey? It hasn’t been an abbey since it was surrendered over to the king in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.”
“I read a book,” I lie, but can’t be bothered with his questions at this moment. “Kathrin, this abbey sat on hundreds of the finest grazing and hay fields. This chapel was surrounded by the loveliest walking gardens, sculpted and perfectly planned. Our—the place where the nuns slept was across a walkway to the right, and the chickens and the other livestock were behind that.”
Lee shakes his head. “Very few people know these things. I only know because my father was a historian and he told me the history of this land.”
“Did the Great Fire destroy everything?” I ask.
“Didn’t your book tell you what happened?” He raises a suspicious eyebrow but gives in. “Not the Great Fire, but another fire much later. Destroyed all of the old medieval buildings that still stood. The only remnant left was that north wall.”
Kathrin tries the door. “It’s open!” she gasps.
I hurry to walk inside with her. Lee straggles in behind us. I can’t believe how bright the chapel is. There is a circle of light coming down from the windows of the steeple in the center of the chapel where the smoke from Daniel’s fire used to vent. I take a deep breath in with my eyes closed and I swear I still smell the juniper and rosemary which seeped into the stones long ago, only to be released on these warm summer days. The pews that fill the chapel are much larger and fancier than the plain ones that were moved out of the way to make room for the sick. The woodwork was replicated after the dark gothic paneling I remember and the simple, glorious altar remains the same, with three peaked windows shining God’s light down on where I prayed for Rowan’s life beside Oliver. I can almost hear Malkyn singing Languisco e Moro. It’s hard to tell if the stone floor is the same one Simon and I scrubbed on our hands and knees. I lift my gaze up to a whole choir loft that was added where stained-glass windows used to be. I look to the right of the altar where an ancient, rudimentary pew bench quietly hides in this modern world. I sit down on it, hoping not to break it, and it gives slightly with my weight. How much taller I must be now that this bench feels like it’s almost on the ground.
I say quietly, “Kathrin, you might have sat on this very bench.”
Kathrin attempts to sit beside me. “I don’t think it can take both of us at once. Especially now that Lee has been fattening me up.”
Lee looks up for a moment, but goes back to reading pamphlets left by the door.
She sits there and, in a moment, I see Rowan swinging his chubby legs, trying to keep busy during those long masses, while I scold Oliver for carving something into the side of the bench. In the here and now, I rush to the arm and bend down close to see the unfinished scratching:
O L I V E
“I don’t believe it.” My hand flies to my mouth. “Oh, I wish I’d let him finish.”
Kathrin gasps and runs her fingers over each beautiful letter. “Carsten would have loved to be here with us. To see this.” She wipes a few diamond tears away and breathes in deep. “This would have made him a believer.”
I put my arm around her shoulder. “I guarantee you, he’s a believer now.” I try to distract her. “That corner is where Simon passed.” Then I point near the center of the room. “That is where you fought the plague.”
She turns around, walks a few steps toward the altar, and holds her hands out for me to see their slight tremor. “What happened over here?”
“This is the spot where I passed.” Kathrin stares at the stone floor.
“What are you two whispering about over here?” Lee gets curious and comes up behind us. Once he walks onto the space we’re both staring at, he hops back. “I just got the coldest chill.” He rubs his arms, even through the air is so thick it’s hard to breathe. His eyes dart to the ceiling around him, like he’s watching an invisible bird in the rafters. “I don’t know why you two like this church so much. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
Kathrin and I look to each other and share a smile with our eyes.
Lee skips back to the center aisle. “Let me take you to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Now that’s a majestic sight.”
As soon as Kathrin closes the door to our past, Lee tries to retrace our steps, but I walk off in the opposite direction. He throws his hands up to Kathrin. “Where is she going now?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going too.” Kathrin runs off the steps to follow me.
I head toward the Tower and down to the River Thames. The last time I was here, blue bloated bodies of women, men, and children floated like logs down the river, and the ghost ship sailed down, altering so many lives for so long. Now the sky is bright and the water’s sparkling as the summer sun starts to hang low on the horizon. I look around to see if anyone can feel the residual emotions. I hear laughter, chatter, and see smiles all around me. The people who are enjoying a stroll and the view have no idea what happened here. What we lived. The history stamped on this place.
Chapter 31
The next few weeks, we always have an ear out for sirens and keep our gas masks close. Anytime we hear any sirens in the distance, we get under the stairs. Each day, we brace for the attack and none comes. I’m torn between wanting it over and wanting to prolong it until Georg can be freed.
Lee prances in that night, declaring, “I predicted it. Churchill was made Prime Minister today.”
“Turn the radio on,” I say.
Lee switches it on. “He’s speaking about the defeat at Dunkirk. Our boys came back but in rough shape.”
“Shhh,” Elfi hisses. “Lee, tell us what Churchill is saying.”
“He says, ‘We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds: we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills—” Lee’s voice cracks slightly. “‘We shall never surrender.’”
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
The next day, Kathrin and I are in the garden, harvesting our first beans, when we hear a man ride by, ringing his bell, yelling, “Hitler has France!”
We know enough English to understand. We rush inside to tell Elfi and turn on the radio. We listen for the phrases we can recognize and sure enough, it is true.
I slide to the sofa. “We’v
e lost our ally.”
Elfi slips on her mask.
“Just because France just fell doesn’t mean they’ll bomb us immediately.”
“There’s nothing now between us.” Her voice sounds like it’s in a fog. “I bet they’ll come tonight.”
I stare out the window. “I wish Lee was here.”
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
He doesn’t come until the next day, but he blows in like an autumn breeze. “You should see the hordes of soldiers and volunteers reporting for duty. Every village is a mass of people pledging to do all they can for the country.”
He stares at Elfi in her mask.
“She’s been wearing that since France fell,” I say.
Elfi garbles, “And I’m not going to take it off.”
“It took me ages to get here today. They’ve taken down every blessed sign: street signs, town signs, shop signs, station signs, anything Germans could use to figure out where they are, gone.” He flops onto our worn sofa. “I didn’t realize how much I relied on them to get here. I’m not looking forward to finding my way back. I have to leave way before dusk, since I need every bit of light to figure out where I am.”
“Do they truly think Hitler will invade?” Kathrin asks.
Lee gives us a look that tells us how vulnerable we are. “They’ve been creeping closer to London.”
Elfi says, “If they do, then I’m going to run to them screaming in German that they’ve been holding me captive here. Then maybe they won’t kill me on the spot.”
“That’s very brave of you, Elfi.” Kathrin laughs.
“What are people signing up to do?” I ask, guilty we can’t contribute at all.
“Citizens were called up to the Local Defense Volunteers. You should have seen who showed up for duty. It looked like boys from fifteen to old men in their eighties responded. And don’t count the women out. They came out in droves and created their own defense corps.” He shakes his head. “Hitler wants everyone hiding under their dining room tables, but here men, women, and children flock to the streets to do all they can to fight them.”
I see a glisten in his eyes.
“Do you think we could volunteer for anything?” I ask, but he immediately shakes his head. “Maybe something that we don’t have to talk for?”
“They’re rounding up German and Italian male adults all over the country. You will have to be even more careful right now to stay unnoticed.”
A plane flies low overhead and Lee leaps up and points to the stairs. We scramble underneath. Kathrin stares out the kitchen window. “They’ve only dropped papers.”
I open up the front door and sure enough, papers are drifting down like snow and fluttering like butterflies on the road and grass. Kathrin dashes to pick one up, trying to step on it twice before she seizes it.
“Hitler sent us a love note.” She pretends to sigh. “Funny that we’ll have to get Lee to translate the letter from Germany.”
“A Last Appeal to Reason.” Lee stops there and tears the leaflet up. “He thinks he’s reasonable.”
I say, “Lee, Kathrin and I could always share a room if it would be safer for you to stay with us.”
That pulls a crooked smile from him. “I’m flattered, but I have to stay where I am. Yet, I have something that will protect you even better.” He disappears out the front door, then calls for us in the backyard. He’s leaning on a huge piece of plastic and metal. “This is an Anderson shelter. Once I assemble this beauty, you’ll be safe as long as a bomb doesn’t fall directly on top of you.”
Elfi asks, “What if the bomb falls on top of us, though?”
“You won’t even feel it, then.”
“Where are you going to put that huge thing?” I ask.
He looks around the garden. I’ve used every inch except for the huge pile of compost I’ve been making. His eyes set on it. “We’ll move the compost aside and then put it on top of the shelter for more protection.”
Kathrin scrunches her nose up. “We’ll have compost all around us. The creepy-crawlies will be everywhere.”
Lee lays the piece of shelter down. “Would you rather have bugs around you or shrapnel?” He hands all of us shovels and Elfi takes off her mask to get to work.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
The next morning, Kathrin isn’t anywhere to be found. “Did Kathrin tell you where she was going?” I ask Elfi, who is back in her mask.
“She was gone before I woke up.” She gathers up cans in stacks near her seat. “The moon was red last night, like all its skin was peeled off.”
“I didn’t notice the moon last night.” I wonder if she was the only one who saw it or if it really was red. I casually check her bottle of pills to see if she’s been taking them. It looks like they’re depleting at the usual rate.
“The spiders are going to attack soon, I know it.”
The threat of attack is not helping Elfi’s paranoia, but we can’t tell her this time that there’s nothing to worry about.
I search down the road and can’t spot Kathrin anywhere. By afternoon, I tell Elfi, “I’m going for a walk to look for her. She’s been gone a long time.”
“Don’t go too far from the house. You’ll have nowhere to hide if they come now.”
I imagine that Elfi always sees Nazi parachutes streaming down from the sky at any moment.
“You’ll come and rescue us if they do.”
She shakes her gas mask back and forth and I laugh as I close the door.
It’s a gentle late-summer day, just cool enough that I’m not sweating. Anderson shelters have cropped up behind every quaint little farmhouse. The modern and unattractive shelters clash harshly with the antique dwellings. I walk quickly through the small block of shops and see that Lee wasn’t kidding. Each shop name has been boarded over so that one now reads: The ______ Bakery. Even the milestones have been removed. I pass by the only church in the small village whose bells have been silenced, except in the event they’re needed to announce an invasion. The once beautiful and welcoming sounds of church bells are now greatly feared. I leave the hamlet and head directly to the beautiful, eight-arched bridge stretching over the River Stour. I see her at once, peering over into the water at the middle of the bridge. A lone dark horse grazes on the picnic field on the other side of the bridge. It shakes its mane into the fair breeze as slow summer water drifts by.
“I love this bridge,” I say. She jumps at my voice.
“It was built in 1175. Maybe you’ve crossed it in another life.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I just think it’s beautiful.” I hang my elbows over the edge to look down into the brown waters below. “Have you been here all day?”
“Ah, you came looking for me.” She twists a ribbon in her fingers. I worry that it’s going to slip through her grasp into the water below. “I went for a long walk.”
Upstream, a tall-treed island separates the river in two.
“Are you all right?” I finally ask, after weeks of watching her drift away.
“I have no hope. Do you know how empty life is without hope?” Her voice is strained but resigned.
“That’s all I have right now is hope.”
“I’m jealous that you do.” She turns to me. “You know I would never want you to suffer, but right now Georg is still on this earth.”
“Who knows where he is right now.”
“I know where Carsten is, and I might have to wait a very long time to see him again.”
“But I’m right here.” I wrap an arm around her shoulder.
“You are the only reason I’m still here.” I look into her honey eyes and can see the truth in the shadows.
“I need you more than ever.”
Tears sparkle in her faded eyes. “But I feel like only half a person.”
I hold her tight. “Well, then, together we make one whole person.”
Church bells sta
rtle us and clang in the distance. We turn to look at the church I just passed, but it doesn’t seem to be coming from that direction.
I say, “Isn’t that—?”
“Invasion!” she yells as she grabs my hand and we rush toward town.
I pant out, “Should we go into a store?”
She grabs my hand tighter. “I think we should just keep running home.”
I don’t care how hard it is to breathe, or how much my lungs burn—I keep going. People caught in town scream to each other in complete surprise. We pass by a cottage that an ancient woman comes running out of, waving a bottle of petrol and a match, hollering, “Take this, you bloody bastards!”
A few properties up, small children run about the front lawn with daggers and shout at the tops of their lungs. We never ran so fast before. We fling the door open and a can hits me in the stomach. One just misses Kathrin’s head. We duck behind chairs until the deluge of canned Spam relents.
“Elfi, stop! It’s us.”
Elfi peeks her gas-masked head from under the table to be sure. She has Teresia tucked under her arm. “I thought you two were goners.”
“Come on. We should be in the shelter.” I help her up, but Kathrin runs upstairs. “The second floor is the worst place to be!” I yell after her, but she doesn’t even turn.
“Forget…about her.” Elfi can barely breathe.
I take her outside and we spill into the four-and–a-half-foot by six-foot shelter. To my relief, Kathrin has followed us out, so I don’t have to go back in and drag her out. I throw down a few blankets so we can lie comfortably on the ground. Thankfully it’s been dry, otherwise it would be a mud bath. Kathrin and I slip our masks on and I have Teresia’s at the ready.
For the first twenty minutes, we don’t even talk, since we keep our ears tuned for any sounds of battle, raids, or all clear signals. It’s only now that I see what Kathrin went upstairs to get.
“What is that?” I point to the chocolate-colored box clutched in her hands.
She holds it out for both of us to see. “Carsten had it made for me for my birthday.” She caresses the inlaid lily on top. “It’s not the ballerina music box that you told me about, but it plays the same song.”