All Is Fair

by Dee Garretson

  I took some German coins, half marks and different denominations of pfennigs. “Whatever an old man can have to sell at a train station, it can’t be worth much.”

  “Be careful,” Lucas said. His voice was strained.

  “I will.”

  “Wait,” he said, pointing at my coat. “Don’t forget to take off the ribbon.”

  I had completely forgotten about it. I untied it and put it in my pocket and then checked around the edge of the building. There was no one nearby, though there were workers loading bags onto a train parked on one of the tracks.

  No one paid attention to me as I walked around in the train station. There was a mix of both civilians and military personnel. They all looked like the people we’d seen on the street in Belgium, worn down by the war.

  I saw a woman trying to sell dried plums who wasn’t getting much business. The fruit looked so old and cracked that it had probably been dried years earlier.

  A few soldiers who looked like guards stopped talking when I walked by them. I dropped my head and tried not to hurry. I was afraid it would look suspicious if I acted like their presence made me nervous. As I walked around, I saw plenty of old men, but no one selling anything. I began to fear that Lucas would come looking for me if I didn’t get back to him soon.

  An elderly man shuffled by me carrying a bag. I watched him take up a spot by a pillar and lean against it. He opened the bag and took out a much smaller bag made of burlap and tied at the top with a string.

  He held it up and called out, “Walnüsse!”

  Walnuts. The man was selling walnuts.

  I walked over to him, my hand in my pocket. “How much?” I asked in German, jingling the coins so he could hear them.

  He stared at me. He mumbled something that it took me a moment to understand. Fifty pfennig for four nuts.

  I realized that I didn’t know how much extra I was supposed to pay him. I got out three fifty-pfennig coins and handed them to him. He examined them like he’d never seen a coin before. I waited. If he handed two back to me, he was the wrong man.

  “You’ll like these,” he said to me in German. “But let me get you a better bag.” He reached in and pulled out another bag of similar size, but it was tied with twine instead of string. He handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said. I walked away, worrying that I’d see Lucas wandering around the station looking for me.

  When I got back to our resting spot, he was still there, though he was pacing around. “Mina! I was just about to come looking for you! Did you find him?”

  I held up the bag. “I did, but I haven’t opened this up to see what’s inside.” We sat down and I pulled it open so fast, the nuts tumbled out, as did a tiny slip of paper. I picked it up. The lettering on it was so small I had to hold it close to my eyes. “This is the book cipher,” I said. “See, the first number refers to the page, the second to the line, and the third to the word, though in this case we just use the first letter of the word. We need the book.”

  As Lucas opened the rucksack, my breath caught. The bag had been soaked in the skiff. It was stiff with the dried salt water. The book might be ruined. We might be unable to go any farther.

  He pulled out an oilskin bundle and unwrapped it.

  “Thank goodness,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about protecting the book from the elements.”

  “I did. I wrapped it up on the ship when you were up on deck.”

  Even though the cipher wasn’t long, it took more time than I wanted to decipher it, but I was relieved at the result. It pointed us to the abbey in the hills above the village and to a nun named Sister Ann. We were to wait behind a henhouse until a nun came to find us. I knew the abbey. I’d seen it many times on my rambles with my cousins.

  When I told Lucas about it, he said, “I remember that from one of the maps. It’s only a few hours’ walk from here.”

  My stomach rumbled. “Before the war the nuns kept bees and sold the honey to people in the surrounding villages. I hope they still have some.”

  He took my hand. “Let’s go see. I could use about a gallon of honey right now.”

  As we walked, all the awfulness of the train ride dropped away and I didn’t feel quite so exhausted. With Lucas next to me, I could almost pretend that we were just going on an outing. We shared the nuts between us, which did a little toward calming the growling of my stomach. We came to a small stream and Lucas jumped across. I tried, but nearly fell back into the water when the far edge of the bank crumbled beneath my feet. Lucas pulled me up.

  “So even if I don’t speak German well, I guess I’m good for something,” he said.

  “I almost made it,” I said. “I can’t help it if I’m not as tall as you, but yes, you are good for something.” I smiled. “More than one something.” Like kissing, but I didn’t add that. “So I’ve been wondering, what would you have done if you had arrived here and there was no contact to meet you?”

  He grinned and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? We’re here and we know where to go. No sense in worrying about something that didn’t happen.”

  I couldn’t help but grin back at his unruffled attitude. “Right. We go this way.”

  As we walked, I wondered how much the village had changed. I knew it wasn’t realistic to think it would be the same, but I wanted to keep my memory of the way it had been before, during all those splendid summers I spent there. My cousins and I had been out from dawn to dusk, exploring the countryside and the village. I clung to the hope that the village was so isolated that it hadn’t been forced to change much.

  It didn’t take us as long as I thought it would to get to the abbey. We came over the crest of the last hill to see the abbey below us, halfway down the slope. Shadows still darkened the valley, but the rays of the sun illuminated the church that dominated the cluster of buildings, making the stones glow as if lit from within.

  The abbey was a beautiful place, but it had always felt to me like it was protected from time, the nuns moving about their activities as they had for hundreds of years. Even now it had a peaceful air about it, the old gray stone of the buildings barely showing through the ivy that grew up it. The gardens were mostly bare now, but in the summer they exploded with color and the faint droning of bees carried through the air.

  “Look, I see some wooden outbuildings,” I said. “The henhouse is probably somewhere around there.”

  We ventured down through a meadow full of flowers just starting to show their yellow blooms. Our passage startled a covey of quail, which burst up and overhead, breaking the silence. As we drew closer, I felt a growing sense of unease. The only signs of life came from a fawn-colored goat staked in an area just beyond a vegetable garden. The goat bleated at us, eyeing us curiously. We crossed a small grove of apple trees and a cluster of cone-shaped beehives. The first few bees of the day had crawled out of the hives and up the sides and were resting on the coiled ropes as the sun warmed their wings.

  “The whole place looks almost empty,” Lucas said.

  At that moment a keening cry came from a nearby building, a man’s voice calling out, “Help me!”

  We both stopped.

  “Maybe the abbey is being used as a hospital,” I said. “Nuns in England are doing quite a bit of nursing, so the same is probably happening here. Should we go see?”

  “Someone is coming,” Lucas hissed.

  I took his hand and we ran until we came to a small building. We darted around behind it, startling three chickens pecking in the grass. The birds squawked and flapped their wings, running a little way away before they stopped and resumed their pecking.

  I flattened myself against the wall, Lucas next to me. I heard someone humming as they came closer. “Humming means they probably aren’t dangerous, right?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered back.

  Something was poking me in the back, and I looked behind me to see a flowering branch that had been fastened to the building. I realized t
hat the entire structure had flowers fastened to it, scattered randomly over the sides, a combination of wildflowers and some early garden flowers. Someone had made crude metal brackets out of wire that held canning jars filled with water as makeshift vases. There were also feathers nailed to the walls, and little brackets that held unusual rocks.

  I heard a woman’s voice. “Anything to share this morning?” she asked. At first I thought the woman had seen us, but then I realized that she was talking to the hens. I peeked around the corner. It was a nun. I hoped it was the right one.

  She went into the chicken coop and came out just a moment later. “Mrs. Feathers, I confess I am a little disappointed,” she scolded. “Only one egg today from Mrs. Cluck, and none from you. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.” She walked a few feet away and smiled, raising her voice slightly. “We’ve got some freshly baked bread in the kitchen,” she said, “and a bit of honey.” Did she think the chickens were going to follow her to the kitchen for bread and honey? I didn’t know much about chickens, but I didn’t think they ate honey. When she spoke again, I realized she knew we were there. “All friends of the White Lady are welcome to it. Walk with me.”

  Lucas must have understood some of it, because when I looked at him, he nodded and then went around the corner of the henhouse. I followed him, still nervous to be in the open.

  The woman couldn’t hide her surprise at seeing me, but when she spoke, she made it sound as if it was not unexpected and that we had just arrived for a nice visit. “Hello. I’m Sister Ann. You are right on time. We’ll send word that you’ve arrived safely and then we’ll find you some food. I expect you are hungry.” She began to walk away.

  I hung back. “Won’t the soldiers see us?”

  The woman stopped, turning back to beckon us forward. “No. We feed many hungry people who come our way, and besides, the soldiers who are brought here no longer have the capacity to care about the world outside.” She took hold of the cross she wore around her neck and murmured something. Speaking louder, she said, “Most have little time left on this earth. And the healthy ones who bring them here only want to leave as quickly as possible. None of them are here now. Very few want to linger among the dying. You have nothing to worry about. This way.”

  She led us down the hill to a young man digging in a garden, a basket of seeds next to him. The boy looked up at us, and I recognized him. Even for a German, he was very fair. His hair was silvery blond, almost white, and his eyes were a very light gray. They were wide-set and large, which had always made him look younger than his age.

  “Are you…?” I struggled to remember his name. “You’re Oscar, aren’t you?” It had been years since I had seen him, back when I had visited my cousins every year, but I’d have known him anywhere, though he’d grown tall. He’d always been on the fringes of the group of village children who played together, never saying much. He’d been a year or two younger than me. That would put him at about fifteen now.

  He nodded but didn’t speak.

  “You know our Oscar?” the nun asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I used to visit the area years ago. I remember he lived in the village.”

  “I see.” The woman smiled at Oscar. “Now, we need the bird for Düsseldorf for our friends here,” she said to him. He nodded and headed for a gate in a stone wall.

  The nun motioned for us to follow him into an herb garden that looked as if it could have come right from the Middle Ages, down to the sundial in the middle of it. I would have liked to linger, to take in the scent of newly sprouted plants, to forget we were tired and cold and far from home, but Oscar made straight for a small garden shed at the opposite wall. It was decorated in the same fashion as the henhouse, with swirling designs of stone and metal all over the outside. I could hear the faint cooing of birds inside.

  We followed Oscar in and watched as he opened a cage full of pigeons and pulled one out. The sister took a jar full of grain off a shelf. She opened the lid and reached inside, pulling out a stub of a pencil and a small glass bottle that held thin strips of paper. Taking one out, she wrote on it quickly, then handed the paper to the young man, who carefully attached it to the pigeon’s leg with a gray metal band. He cooed at the bird and stroked its feathers as he carried it outside, cradling it in his arms. “Come back and visit us,” he whispered to it. The pigeon struggled to get away, clearly eager to be free. Raising it up in the air, Oscar held it for a moment and then let go. Immediately the pigeon rose, flapping its wings. It circled once and then flew off to the north.

  “Aren’t they amazing creatures?” the sister said.

  “Amazing.” I watched until it was out of sight, wondering who the friends in Düsseldorf waiting for news of our arrival were.

  I turned back to see the nun smiling at us. She handed me one of the tiny pieces of paper rolled up, like the one the bird carried.

  “This came yesterday. I haven’t read it. Don’t read it until you leave. If something happens before then, get rid of it.” I held it carefully. It was so small. It would be easy to lose. I was very tempted to read it then, but I put it in my pocket instead.

  “Come along to the kitchen now,” the woman said. We followed her. Oscar came too, trailing a few feet behind us. I was confused as to why he was there. His mother was a washerwoman, and her house in the village had had clotheslines strung in front and in back, always full of clean laundry waving in the breeze. When I’d last been here, Oscar helped her with the laundry, hauling water from the village well one pail at a time. I didn’t remember a father.

  When we went into the kitchen, I was nearly overwhelmed by the scents of baking bread and dried apples and beeswax candles. I could almost imagine countless candles burning over the hundreds of years the abbey had been there, their fragrance permeating the stone walls.

  The sister set down her egg basket. “Now, I’m sure you’d like something to eat, then a wash, and then a place to sleep until you leave tonight. I’ve made some prune soup, and we do have bread and honey, even if it’s just black bread. The honey helps with the taste. Please sit.”

  She brought out the food and arranged it, then bowed her head, saying a prayer. Lucas, who had been reaching for a piece of bread, stopped, abashed.

  When the sister had finished, she smiled at Lucas. “Please, go ahead. I know you must be hungry. Young men your age always are.” She looked at me. “Young ladies too.”

  I had never tasted honey so good. I tried not to bolt it down, but I was so hungry, it was difficult to be polite. “The honey is delicious,” I said, trying to slow down.

  “We’ve found the best honey comes from rapsflower. Do you know it?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s what’s growing in the meadow above the abbey. When it blooms, the whole meadow looks as if the sun itself has loaned us some of its color and light. The bees like our other flowers as well. Oscar does such a good job of coaxing them to grow.”

  Oscar came over and sat with us, across from me. He didn’t eat, but he watched us, smiling the whole time.

  “I like gardens too,” I said to Oscar. “I can’t wait to get home to mine.” He nodded and then suddenly pushed back his chair and jumped up, hurrying into the other room.

  “Does he live here now? I remember his mother from the village,” I said.

  “He has lived here for several years, ever since his mother passed away.” The sister offered us more food, but when we declined, she began to put it away. “He grows quieter each year, though. I worry about him. He’ll soon be old enough to fight, but I don’t know how he will survive. He’s such a gentle soul. It’s the young soldiers who pay the price for war.”

  Oscar came back into the room, carrying a cut piece of paper painted gold. He laid it down gently on the table, smoothed it out, and then handed it to me. It was a paper crown. Smiling broadly, he took it back and put it on his head.

  “Oh, I think I see,” said the nun. “You are the English girl who was so kind to him and let him
be part of your games. We heard all about it, how you had him act in your play. He has always cherished this,” she said, indicating the crown.

  The memory came flooding back to me. I had written a play, one of dozens over the years, about a treasure hoarded by trolls and a group of children who went on an adventure to get it. There had been too many parts for just the children of the household, so my cousins and I had recruited village children to act in it. One of my cousins had made the crown, and I’d given it to Oscar to be the troll king.

  “It was nice of you to include him,” Sister Ann said.

  I hadn’t included him to be kind. We’d needed someone to play the troll king because the others wanted more lines. We’d made him sit on an old stump that was the troll’s throne and ordered him to roar at us at certain parts in the play. I remembered how angry I had been when he grinned with delight after he roared, ruining the scary part of the performance. I even yelled at him for it.

  “It’s nice he remembers,” I managed to say, feeling guilty that I’d been so bossy then.

  Lucas yawned so loudly his jaw popped.

  “Young man, you can use Oscar’s room for the day,” the sister said to Lucas. “He’ll be working outside and won’t need it until nightfall. It’s right over here off the kitchen, and it’s always nice and warm because it’s so close to the ovens. There’s clean water in the basin for you.”

  “Thank you, Sister,” Lucas stood up and then stumbled a little as he walked into the room the sister had indicated. He looked almost asleep on his feet. I realized I’d concentrated so much on the misery I’d been feeling at different points that I hadn’t given enough thought to him.

  “I’ll show you to your room too, if you’d like to rest,” she said to me. “Oscar, we will need another grave dug by tomorrow or the next day at the latest. The weather is clear now, so perhaps you should dig it today.” She said it as if she was asking him to dig a vegetable patch. I thought of the man we’d heard moaning in pain.