Love by the Morning Star

by Laura L. Sullivan

  Thus is history made, Hannah would think in the years to come. A king has a love affair, and a nation shows its teeth instead of its belly. A disappointed girl pettishly throws her drink, and an assassination is thwarted.

  Just then, though, all she thought was Even my sadness must not make me stop feeling compassion for others. She pushed her way through the branches and knelt to touch the man’s burly shoulder. “Are you all right?” With some effort she rolled his bulk over. His face, turned toward her, glistened with dripping champagne, and the tiny sliver of glass embedded below his fixed, staring eye caught the light of the setting sun. When he stumbled, he had fallen on a long knife, piercing his belly just above his navel.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she began, before she recognized the face.

  “Hannah?” came Teddy’s tentative voice behind her.

  Hannah uncoiled from her crouch. “I’ve killed a man. The king’s equerry.” Her voice was shaking, and not just from the sight of the blood that oozed in viscous finality across the grass.

  King George, flanked by his real equerries, approached. “He is not one of mine. I don’t know him.”

  “But he once came here and said I was to . . . Oh!”

  A man with a knife hiding in the bushes near the king. How stupid I was, she thought, to believe a king would send a servant by cloak of darkness to tell me a recipe. Bitter herbs with yew—how very bitter it would have been had I succeeded. This man tried to get me to poison the king! How stupid I was to . . .

  Her eyes sought out the tall golden girl, alone and forlorn on the green.

  How stupid I was to believe Anna.

  Anna must have ordered the note to be delivered to her, the newest kitchen maid, ignorant of both cooking and English custom. It was Anna who told her that ridiculous story, so blithely, without a blush or stammer. She and that man had planned to poison the king and pin the blame on Hannah.

  And now—she’d heard from the below-stairs talk that it was Anna who had persistently begged that the king be invited to Starkers again; Anna who wheedled Lady Liripip into making this not an indoor dinner and ball, but a garden party where an interloper could easily creep across the densely wooded grounds to within sight of the monarch. And Anna had been urging the king to go with her, and looking anxiously toward the very shrubbery in which Hannah—and the assassin—had been concealed.

  Hannah brushed past Teddy, wove among the equerries, and passed the king without so much as a nod.

  “Assassin!” she hissed, so low that only Anna could hear it. But before she could denounce her to the assembly, she saw Anna’s naked terror. Chalk white and trembling, Anna reached out an uncertain hand to touch Hannah’s.

  “Please help me,” she mouthed without a sound.

  That beseeching touch, that plea, stopped Hannah cold.

  Anna was a vain, selfish egoist, but Hannah could not believe she was an assassin. At least, not voluntarily. That very vanity, coupled with her foolish ignorance, must have trapped her somehow. She thought of Buchenwald, of all the innocent people who had been cast in there. She thought of the night of broken glass when her world had been torn apart. This was not the same, not nearly, but there is a parallel in all pain, and all the cruelties of the world rhyme with one another, have the same flavor. Hannah knew that though Anna wasn’t quite innocent, she wasn’t guilty either.

  Just as silently, Hannah asked, “Did you want that to happen?” She gestured over her shoulder to the corpse, the king, and beyond them all the looming specter of the brooding yews.

  “No!” Anna swore. “I never wanted any of it to happen.” Tears like crystal drops rolled heavily down her cheeks. “All I wanted was to get married, to be taken care of.”

  Hannah could have been cruel. With her own hurt smarting so freshly, she could have condemned Anna simply out of spite.

  But then she would not have been Hannah.

  “We must talk of this, and soon,” Hannah said. “Finish celebrating with your betrothed.” She swallowed hard, and thought she could not go on. But she did. “Meet me in the kitchen later,” she managed at last. “That’s where I belong.” Then with Herculean effort she choked out, “I hope you will both be very happy.”

  Anna held fast to Hannah’s hand when she tried to go. This is my chance, Anna thought. I can be good. I can make everything right.

  But Teddy was coming, beautiful Teddy, her lifelong insurance against want and humiliation.

  He will forgive me everything, she thought. After the wedding.

  She composed her face into a smile—a smile that almost made Hannah regret her generosity—and said, “Thank you, Hannah,” before letting her go and opening her arms to embrace Teddy . . . who sailed right by her.

  “Hannah? Are you—”

  “Leave me in peace, Teddy,” she said in German, and tried to flee.

  She was as fast as a deer for the first three steps, but when Teddy cried, “Stop her!” the king’s equerries, army and navy men all, instantly surrounded her and seized her. They weren’t sure what was happening, but there was a dead man near the king, and a girl who had confessed to killing him.

  “Let me go!” she cried, struggling against their strong grips on her arms and wrists. She cursed at them, creatively and fluidly, in German.

  At that, Teddy was almost sure. There was only one thing left to discover.

  “Whatever you do, don’t let her go,” Teddy said softly, never taking his eyes from Hannah’s exquisite little face.

  He extricated her hand from their grip, and looked at the delicate waist of her thumb.

  His face fell. There was nothing there.

  “It is the other one, Dummkopf,” Hannah said.

  “So it is,” he said, taking it into both his hands and holding it like a jewel beyond value. Then he looked up at the girl whose price was above rubies. “You were the one in the yew?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you are the one that I love.”

  He pushed back her dark hair, took her sweet face in his hands, bent, and kissed her. “Will you marry me, my morning star?” he asked.

  “I already said yes,” Hannah answered. “Perhaps you should not ask me any more times in case I change my mind.”

  Hannah Is Forgiving

  HANNAH’S BLISS WAS INTERRUPTED by a high, uncanny scream.

  “No!” Anna shrieked, her white face streaked with red, the veins in her neck raised and throbbing. “You marry me! You asked me before all of these people. You have to!”

  “Anna, I don’t know exactly what happened, but it is the woman I met by night that I love. I don’t know how I was so blind. You’re an excellent girl, Anna, but I don’t love you. I love Hannah.”

  “The kitchen maid?” Anna snorted with disgust, almost forgetting the truth. “You could love a lowly kitchen maid?”

  “I hope I could,” Teddy said. “But Hannah is much more. I have heard her talk. I’ve heard her sing. She . . . Wait, Hannah, you are the contralto singer, from the cabaret? But I thought . . . my cousin . . .” He looked from one girl to the other, and then at the perplexed but deeply fascinated guests who were drinking in every word of this exciting scandal. “Let us go inside where we can speak in private.”

  But Anna thought publicity was her best weapon. He had made a public proposal to her, and she meant to force him to carry it through. And when she dropped the bombshell, in front of all these earls and dukes and royals, he would have no choice but to marry her.

  Very loudly, very clearly, Anna announced, “You must marry me, Teddy. I’m carrying your child!”

  At that, even the birds stopped chirping.

  Then, very kindly, Teddy said, “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

  “Oh no?” Anna said, reverting entirely to her fishwife voice. “I might not be as clever as that kitchen maid, but I know how babies are made, and we made one in the hothouse!”

  “I’ve never even—” Teddy began, but Hardy interrupted him.

&n
bsp; “That was me,” he said, looking very proud and manly, and to Anna, utterly irresistible. Except, he was not a lord.

  “Teddy,” she said imploringly, “I gave myself to you, because you said you loved me. You said you would marry me. This is your child, and you can’t forsake us, Teddy. Please. You wanted me. You sent me the flowers and asked me to meet you.”

  “It’s Hardy who loves you,” Hannah said. “I delivered the flowers to you, from him. Didn’t you know?”

  “You mean,” Anna said, dismayed, disgusted, “I gave myself to the under-gardener?”

  Hardy took her hand. “I love you, dearest. You aren’t what you pretend to be. You act like a lady but you’re not, and there’s no shame in that. Not these days. A man is what he makes himself, and a woman too. I’ve got a good job now. Come to London with me, Anna.”

  “No, I’m meant to be with Teddy,” she moaned. “I’m meant to be the Lady of Starkers.”

  “Over my dead body!” came an aristocratic voice that still managed to be every bit as fishwife-ish as Anna’s. “I take you in from Germany, from your nasty little Jew father and your trull of a mother, and this is how you think to repay my kindness? Caroline was a blight on the Curzon family, and you’re no better. How dare you think to insinuate yourself into this noble family!”

  Hannah drew a breath to reply, then realized with shock that Lady Liripip was talking to Anna.

  “No, no,” said Lord Liripip, hobbling over. “She’s not at all like Caroline, but she is welcome in this family. Unhand her, Hardy. She will marry my son. I loved her mother, you know. Now Teddy will have the daughter. It is right and fitting.”

  “Sir,” Teddy said, “that is not the girl I’m marrying.”

  “Eh?”

  Teddy presented Hannah.

  “But the gel’s a floozy!” Lord Liripip cried. “No offense, Hannah, and I’m sure you’re a splendid one, but my son can’t marry a floozy. He marries Caroline Curzon’s daughter.”

  “But I am Caroline Curzon’s daughter,” Hannah said, those simple words that could have prevented such a world of trouble had not pride forbade her to say them.

  Then Anna did something unfashionable, something that ought to come back into fashion, because it is really one of the very best ways for a woman to delay having to answer for the consequences of her actions: she fainted.

  Into Hardy’s arms.

  IT IS EASY TO BE FORGIVING when one has one’s heart’s desire.

  “Now, are you sure you want to stick to that ridiculous story you concocted?” Lord Liripip asked as he drank in the delightful sight of his son and Caroline Curzon’s daughter cuddled on a bench overlooking the Liripip Yew. “I’ve no objection to seeing the scheming hussy tossed in the Tower. You should hate her for what she did.”

  I should, Hannah thought, but she’d spent several hours alone with Anna after the garden party engagement debacle, and instead she felt profound sympathy for her. Anna had been shanghaied into her mission, threatened with her life. Of course the wise thing would have been to run to the authorities, but it was no more Anna’s fault that she was stupid than it was Hannah’s that she was Jewish, and she was sick and tired of people being condemned for accidents of birth. Teddy told her it was nothing like the same, but Hannah stood firm.

  “Being born foolish is like being born blind,” she said. “We must protect the less fortunate, and make sure they are taught, so they can live full lives.”

  “You think Anna is teachable?”

  “Well . . . she still thinks the Sudetenland is in Africa, near Swaziland, but there is hope for her.”

  The story Hannah told, with an absolutely straight face, was this:

  When they first met at Starkers, Anna came to Hannah to confess her secret mission. Hannah, seeing hers as the superior intellect and loving the country of her mother’s birth, volunteered to play the part of the kitchen maid until the details of the treasonous scheme were revealed. She thwarted the poisoning attempt easily, but was unable to identify the perpetrator, so she waited until the second attempt.

  Asked why she didn’t alert the authorities, she pleaded British pluck. “Would Boadicea have run to the other kings and chieftains before fighting? Would Grace Darling have stopped to call the coast guard?”

  Luckily the dead man had a letter in his pocket, proclaiming his beliefs and calling for all his brothers to join the NAFF and fight for a fascist England and a restored King Edward.

  “It bothers me, though, that they think I killed that man on purpose. I couldn’t have. The only heroic thing I could have done was shriek for help, which might have been enough with all those guards around, but still. They think I’m a heroine.”

  “You are,” Lord Liripip said. “But in any event, the whole thing is being hushed up. The monarchy can’t afford to look vulnerable just now. It’s happening, you know. Tomorrow or the next day His Majesty will make the announcement. We will be at war.” He tottered off to examine some withering ferns.

  “If she hadn’t lied, we might not have fallen in love,” Hannah said when she and Teddy were more or less alone.

  “I would have loved you no matter what,” Teddy said, nuzzling her cheek. “Even if my mother approved of you, I would have loved you, though it would have been very hard.”

  “I hope your mother is feeling better soon,” Hannah said, doing her best to sound sincere. Lady Liripip had followed Anna’s example, but regrettably everyone’s attention was on the young people and no one happened to notice and catch her. The doctor said she’d broken her collarbone and would have to keep to bed for weeks. (Actually, he’d first said she’s bruised her collarbone and ought to be careful for a day or two, but after a charitable donation from Lord Liripip he amended his diagnosis and prescription drastically.)

  “What Anna did was not so bad,” Hannah mused, snuggling comfortably under Teddy’s arm. There was just enough light to see each other’s faces.

  “She stole your life and tried to kill her king!”

  “In one way,” Hannah said slowly, putting her thoughts together. “But she didn’t lie, exactly, did she? Not at first, any more than I did. I showed up and they thought I was one person and I accepted it. She showed up and they thought she was quite another person and she accepted it. Then we both filled in the details to stay in our places. We each were where we thought we deserved to be. You must admit, she makes a much more convincing daughter of an English aristocrat than I do.”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” said Lord Liripip, limping out of the gloom. “I know quality when I see it, and you, my girl, are it.”

  “With respect, sir, you thought I was a floozy.”

  “But a quality floozy, my dear,” he said with a rakish wink that he’d been saving for twenty years.

  A Sudden Need for Flowers

  WAR CAME ON SEPTEMBER THIRD, and with it the impossibility of receiving any letters from Germany. It was very hard for Hannah to be happy, but despite the uncertainty of her parents’ safety, she was—blissfully happy, and terribly guilty.

  “But I won’t marry you until I know they’re safe,” she insisted to Teddy.

  She might have been persuaded if Teddy had to go to Germany, either as soldier or spy, but after the engagement debacle, when Hannah in her deeply injured wrath had spoken openly of Teddy’s spy work, all that was nixed. A furious telegram had come from Burroughs after a paragraph appeared in the next morning’s gossip column. All that work wasted on a spy who was outed before his mission began! When Teddy wanted to enlist, Burroughs told him not to be a fool. He was far more valuable at home managing other spies in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive than volunteering to be cannon fodder.

  So Teddy, seeing all of his friends join up, and half of them killed in the first year while he stayed safe at home, had a burden of guilt all his own.

  THE FIRST LETTER CAME IN the summer of 1940, via the Red Cross.

  Darling Hannah,

  I’m having the most jolly time as a pris
oner of war. No, the guard looking over my shoulder to censor any dangerous bits points out that soldiers are prisoners of war, while mere civilians such as I are internees. In any event, I find myself in a most wretched place called Tost, in Upper Silesia. (My censor says I may say the name of the town. I suppose you might tell any RAF boys you happen to meet not to bomb it.) To my delight, the population is predominantly male. Apparently I was sent here because of a clerical error, and it would be too much trouble to remove me at this point, so here I stay.

  You’ll never, ever guess who is here with me, at this very moment, sitting at the next camp table and looking hungrily at my fresh paper supply. Old Plum himself! Mr. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse! Apparently he and wee wifie were in France when it was invaded and they refused to leave their little dog, so they were snatched up. Wifie is in Paris, Plum is here, and the poor dog is probably eaten by now, for I’ve heard there are grim food shortages in France, and everywhere else too.

  (Here my censor insists that everyone under the Reich eats like a king. Perhaps the Reich has not yet found Tost, for we live mostly on potatoes and rumors.)

  Poor Plum! He is such a charming innocent, and I fear he will catch it after the war. He’s so chummy with everyone, friend and foe alike. I personally keep a certain frosty distance between my captors and myself, as I am still technically English. Only occasionally do I accept chocolate or lipstick from an officer. Then I barter them for paper for Plum. I dare not eat chocolate. The perpetual potatoes have gone straight to my hips. Your papa will not know me when he sees me again.

  I am well, though unutterably bored in this dreary place. What a dump! I had never even heard of Upper Silesia before, and now I know why. I told Plum, if this is Upper Silesia, I’d hate to see Lower Silesia. He said he will steal that for his next book. So you see, there are bright spots. My quips will be immortalized. I must be like Plum, and not see problems and enemies, but people and opportunities. He’s like a puppy, endlessly optimistic. You must be like a puppy too, love. Be happy, for all is well.