by Anna Schmidt
Peter had thought about those words and the piece she had read from George Fox all the next week while she was back in Brussels. If his calculations were right, today was the day she would return for the weekend. He was so looking forward to seeing her, hearing her voice, wishing that her hand would touch his brow; although now that the danger of fever had passed, she no longer included placing her small palm against his cheeks and forehead as part of her routine.
He judged it to be late afternoon as he sat on the side of the cot and studied the angle of the light filtering through the black curtain. Anja had promised that beginning today he would take some short walks. He had already practiced standing, putting weight on the weak leg, and with little else to occupy him, he spent hours exercising it to rebuild strength.
From outside the thin walls of the cottage, he heard the low murmur of a car’s engine. No one on the farm owned a car. Even Josef Buchermann did not travel by car when he came to visit. And given the quiet purr of the motor, Peter would wager that this was an expensive car—a car driven by someone of importance or at least someone with power. He concentrated on each sound.
The slam of a car door. A beat. A second car door closing, followed by footsteps mounting the steps to the front door of the cottage. From below him he heard the murmur of conversation—Anja’s grandparents, their muffled voices filled with anxiety. Daniel was at the orphanage. Anja was still at work in Brussels.
Three sharp knocks at the front door.
Peter leaned close to the floor, straining to hear.
Olaf Jensen moved slowly through the house, in broken German calling out to the visitor that he was coming. Peter could imagine Ailsa standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her forearms wrapped in the skirt of her ever-present apron.
Outside the December wind howled, and tree branches scratched at the cottage windows.
Peter caught only a few words. Not that he could understand any of it. Olaf spoke only a little German—the result of having the island that he’d lived on most of his life occupied by the Germans before he and Ailsa had come to Belgium with Anja. Like Anja he was Danish by birth. Unlike Anja he was unschooled, and while she was fluent in at least three other languages that Peter knew of, her grandfather’s command of languages other than his own was not good.
Peter heard Olaf open the front door, heard the squeak that always accompanied that gesture, then heard a man speaking German in a quiet but authoritative voice as he entered the house. The door closed. Next he heard Ailsa’s quavering greeting as she welcomed this unexpected—and Peter had to assume, unwanted—guest. That was followed by the scrape of a chair on the wooden floor and the clink of glass on glass. Olaf and Ailsa were buying time—offering the man a drink from the bottle of schnapps Anja had told Peter they kept for just such visits. It was no doubt the same bottle that Josef had insisted Peter drink from the night he’d come to remove the bullet.
More sounds—these from outside.
Someone was sliding open the door to the shed where he had stayed that first night after his rescue. Next he heard chickens squawking as someone evidently searched the henhouse. And then the crunch of bicycle tires on the gravel lane and Anja’s voice demanding to be told what was going on.
He had been looking forward to her arrival. It always lifted his spirits to know that she—not her grandmother—would be caring for his needs for the next two days. But now he wished she had not come. If they found him …
At least Daniel was out of immediate harm’s way. Peter was very glad that Anja had decided that it would be best for her son to stay permanently at the orphanage while Peter was with them. For until Peter could be moved away from the farm, his presence put them all in grave danger as it did now. He was well aware that the man downstairs had not simply stopped by for a routine visit. He would not waste his time. He suspected something or, worse, had received some information that had brought him to the farm after all these weeks.
Peter searched the tiny space, looking for options in case the search should lead these men up the stairway to Ailsa and Olaf’s bedroom. He focused on the small doorway that was the only way in—or out.
Anja supposed she should be frightened at the sight of the sleek black car parked outside her grandparents’ cottage, but she was so very tired of this war—of these men strutting about as if they and they alone could decide the fate of anyone they chose. Of course they could, but that didn’t keep Anja from being infuriated by their arrogance.
She had gotten an earlier train from Brussels—one filled with people attempting to muster some holiday spirit—and she’d been so pleased that for once she would be home before dark set in. It was Christmas Eve, and she had a surprise for Peter.
Belgian tradition held that Saint Nicolas came to see which children had been good or naughty on December 5. Quakers did not hold with the idea that one day was more special than any other—in their view all days were holy. Still she saw no harm in allowing Daniel to enjoy such moments of pleasure. There was little enough joy in his life. By the time this war ended, his childhood would be at least half over, so if she could give him the myth of Saint Nick, where was the harm? And because in Peter’s country Christmas was celebrated on the eve and the day with gifts and carols and such, she wanted to do something to make this day as special for him as she had made the visit of Saint Nicolas special for her son.
Earlier that week she had heard rumors that the Gestapo had stepped up their hunt for the missing American. Mikel had gotten word to her that the sooner they moved Peter from the farm, the safer she and her grandparents would be.
“We can hide him here,” Lisbeth had offered. “It’s for the best in all ways. Josef can work with him to help him heal and regain his strength, and you and your grandparents will no longer have to worry every time a troop truck or Gestapo car passes the farm.”
They had agreed that Christmas Day—tomorrow—would be the perfect day to make the move. Even the Gestapo agents tended to relax their vigilance a bit on that day. So Anja was now on her way to give Peter the good news. Tomorrow he would take his first steps toward freedom.
As she pedaled up the lane, the sight of the car spoiled her good mood, and the sounds of Germans thrashing about in the outbuildings only served to fuel her anger.
She dropped the bicycle in the yard and ran to the henhouse. “What on earth do you think you will find here?” she demanded in German of the young soldier ransacking the place. “Oh, please let me help you,” she continued sarcastically. “Let’s see. I assume you are looking for an evader? Perhaps he is here,” she said as she placed her hand deep into a hen’s nest and brought up an egg. “No. Too small.”
The soldier had frozen in the act of breaking up a section of the henhouse with the butt of his rifle. He looked at her as if she might be quite mad. She faced him squarely and said very calmly, “Get out of our henhouse. You are scaring the chickens, and they will not lay. And if they do not lay, your officers will have no eggs, and that will make them very, very irritable, especially when I explain that hens cannot lay their eggs if they are being harassed.”
The soldier lowered his rifle and brushed past her as he exited the small structure and called out to his comrade, who was apparently intent on doing as much damage as possible to the shed.
Involuntarily, Anja glanced quickly up to the tiny window nestled in the eave. She was so very thankful that Josef had listened when she’d told him they had to move Peter to a safer hiding place that very first night. Of course, it had not been easy getting all six feet and more of him up the narrow winding stairs with his leg sticking straight out because of the makeshift splint that Josef had constructed. But they had done it.
The front door squeaked, bringing her attention back to the cottage. A German officer—the same German officer who had searched their home the night of the plane crash—stepped outside. He smiled at her.
“Ah, Frau Jensen,” he said. “You did say the last time I visited that Jensen is your husband’s n
ame, is it not?”
“I have no husband,” Anja replied, her defiance still very much in evidence.
“And yet you have a son.” He came toward her, tapping a riding crop lightly against his thigh.
She shrugged. “You have a riding crop but no horse,” she replied, and took pleasure in the way his eyes widened with respect.
He actually chuckled and then used the tip of the riding crop to trace the shape of her jaw. “It has other uses,” he said. “Your husband?”
“Is dead.” As are my parents and my beloved daughter, she wanted to scream at him, but she held her tongue.
“Where is your son—Daniel, is it not? Unusual name for one born Danish.”
Her blood ran cold that this man knew so much about her. “He is in school at the orphanage. My grandparents are old and must manage the farm alone while I work in town. We do what we must do.”
He studied her for a long moment, taking in the nurse’s wool cape with its insignia. “You work with the Quakers. They pay you?”
“I volunteer for the committee and am employed at the hospital in Brussels. We have treated many of your soldiers there,” she reminded him, searching for any advantage.
“And locals as well.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Even perhaps some locals with sympathies for the enemy?”
“We do not ask about their politics.”
He had lowered the riding crop to his side and was now looking toward the fields behind her—the fields where Peter’s plane had gone down. “And in your work, Frau Jensen, I wonder if you may have come across an American? He may be in disguise, but then the Americans have certain characteristics that make them noticeable.”
“Such as?”
“Their height, their inability to converse in other than their own language, their total lack of appreciation for cultures that were here centuries before their own.”
She switched from answering him in German to conversing with him in French and hid a smile when it became obvious that he had no idea what she was saying. “So sorry,” she said hastily and switched back to German when he arched an eyebrow in irritation. “I have not treated such a man in the hospital, but I can certainly ask around and …”
His gaze moved from her face back to where her grandparents waited at the entrance to the house. And then she saw him look up toward the upstairs bedroom windows. Without a word, he moved briskly back to the house, brushed past her grandparents, and started up the stairs. Seconds later he pushed open the window of the room she shared with Daniel and barked an order to his men. They ran across the yard and into the house, their boots leaving mud and puddles on her grandmother’s polished floor.
Her heart in her throat, Anja followed them inside.
CHAPTER 4
Anja and her grandparents stayed downstairs by the fire while the officer and his men were upstairs. To have followed them up the narrow stairway would have been to reveal their fear. So they sat together, their heads bowed, their eyes closed as they prayed for God to show them His way.
Upstairs the intruders were taking their time. Anja focused on identifying every sound. Now they were in the room she shared with Daniel. The furnishings consisted of two narrow beds and a small chest of drawers. She counted each drawer as it was taken out. No doubt the contents were dumped on the bare wooden floor. Did they honestly think a man could be hidden in one of those drawers?
She squeezed her eyes tight and tried not to think about them moving across the hall and into her grandparents’ room. But when she heard the unmistakable sound of the dresser being moved aside, she instinctively reached out and took hold of her grandmother’s hand.
They waited.
“Perhaps they will not notice the difference in the wall,” Ailsa murmured to her husband.
The opening to the space under the eaves where Peter was had been carefully crafted so that the edges blended into the rest of the paneling on the wall. There was no knob or latch. The door could only be released by sliding a knife along the edge to trip the latch on the inside and then using your fingernails to pull it open.
Or in the absence of a knife, Anja realized, it could be ripped apart by blows from the butt of a rifle, as was happening above them. She heard the splintering of the wood and waited, her shoulders tense. Ailsa was squeezing her fingers until Anja thought they might be permanently welded together.
Silence.
She waited for the officer to order Peter from the room, wondered how he would manage the walk in his weakened condition, waited for the officer to lose patience and strike him with that riding crop.
Silence.
She opened her eyes and saw that her grandfather was staring at the ceiling. Above them where the hiding place was located, they heard a tapping as if the officer were testing the walls for a hollow space.
Then there was more silence followed by the murmur of voices—specifically the officer’s voice. A moment later, the two soldiers came back down the stairs and leveled their weapons at Anja and her grandparents.
From above, Anja heard the slow, measured footsteps of the officer as he returned to the hiding place. He must have stood in the opening for several minutes, and she could imagine him allowing his eyes to slowly rove over every inch of the space, searching for anything that would tell him what in his head he was certain to be true. Then step. Step. Step. And the tearing of fabric.
A moment later, he came down the stairs in that measured way he had of moving and presented Ailsa with the blackout fabric from the window as he dismissed the two soldiers with an indifferent wave of his hand. “This needs replacing,” he told her, and Anja saw it for the test that it was.
If Ailsa accepted the cloth without protesting that since the space was never used there was never a light up there in need of hiding, then he could at least cling to his certainty that the room had been used as a hiding place—if not for the American he sought, then for others, for why cover a window where there was no chance of light coming through in times when every penny, every scrap of fabric, counted?
Anja watched her grandmother, silently praying that she, too, would see the man’s purpose. Ailsa accepted the fabric, held it so that where he had snatched it down showed the tear, and frowned. “I had forgotten about this piece,” she said in her halting German. “My husband covered the window up there when our great-grandson was staying here with us. He liked to use that little space in the evenings to read and play his games, but now that he is at the orphanage … It’s a pity to waste it.”
Anja took it from her. “We can mend the tear, and then it will be perfect for covering the opening in the henhouse. Remember, just the other night Moffee was worrying that the lantern would show now that it is so dark when you go to collect the eggs.” She turned to the officer. “So something has come of your search after all.”
He studied her for a long moment then lifted his riding crop and once again traced the edge of her chin. “Your son is permanently with the sisters?”
“Only until the war is over,” she said. “Soon he will be back here with us—we will all be together again.” Certainly she could have stepped back away from him touching her even indirectly. But that would be to admit that he had power over her, and that she would not do. Instead, she reached up and gently pushed the riding crop aside as she moved toward the front door. “I imagine that you and your men are anxious to return to your quarters—it is, after all, Christmas Eve….”
He scowled down at her. “We do not take holidays. There is a war to be won.” Without another word he walked briskly out the front door and got into the waiting car.
Anja, Ailsa, and Olaf stood still as statues until they heard the sound of the engine fade into the distance. Then the three of them headed upstairs to find Peter.
Methodically and in silence they went through every possible hiding place, putting the ransacked rooms to rights as they searched. He wasn’t there. Her breath coming in heaves as if she’d run a long distance, Anj
a stood in the doorway to the hiding place and studied every inch of it—the same way she had imagined the German doing.
Not only wasn’t Peter there, but the mattress had been turned as she had instructed so that searchers could not feel the warmth of his body and know someone had been there. The covers were stuffed like insulation into the rafters.
Slowly she walked to the window, bare now of any covering. She pushed it open, trying to judge whether or not it was large enough for Peter to climb through. But he had such broad shoulders, and besides, his leg had healed nicely but the muscles had atrophied in the process. Even if he had managed to shimmy out the window, where would he go?
She pulled the cot closer so she could stand on it and lean out. She saw the vine dangling from the tiles—surely too far above the ground for Peter to have used it to escape. A sound from the road caught her attention. It was nearly dark. She listened hard.
Bicycles turning onto their lane. Josef and Mikel coming for Peter. Her Christmas surprise for him. But where was he?
Knowing that to escape the hiding place by the opening in the wall was like surrendering to the Germans, Peter had turned his attention to the small window. He heard the commotion outside when Anja arrived and started berating the soldiers searching the outbuildings. To his relief, her antics caused the officer to go outside as well, and Ailsa and Olaf followed.
He had only minutes—perhaps less—to move around without the risk of being heard, and he made the most of them. First he stripped the blanket and linens from the cot, and then he turned the mattress so there would be no hint of the warmth of his body having been there recently. Next he stuffed the blankets and sheets into the spaces between the beams to make it look as if they had been put there to keep out the cold. All the while, he kept glancing at the window and roof beyond, envisioning how he would angle his body through the small opening.
He had lost weight over the last several weeks. Rations in Belgium—even on a farm—were not like rations on base back in England. He was wearing the clothes of a laborer—layers to keep him warm in the cold nights. He stripped off a jacket and sweater and stuffed them deep inside a wicker storage basket with some other clothes of Olaf’s that Anja had brought for him to try, leaving only a shirt and trousers. He wore no shoes—just the thick socks that Ailsa had knitted for him.