Valley of Betrayal

by Tricia N. Goyer

Another soldier stepped forward and took Philip's rifle from him, pointing it at his back. "We have reason to believe you assisted a German spy."

  "What?"

  "Ritter Lindemann escaped this morning in a Republican plane. You were the one who found him, and the morning you left, he escaped."

  "You've got to be kidding!" Sophie stepped up to the officer. "Ritter was a spy? But—but even if he was, Philip had nothing to do with it—"

  The officer pointed to the cab of the truck. "Ma'am, I suggest you get inside before you are questioned too."

  Philip placed a hand on her shoulder. "Sophie, this is just a misunderstanding. Don't worry. We'll have it all straightened out soon. Just do as the man says."

  Sophie turned to him. "You don't understand. I don't want to be alone. Not again."

  The officer pulled Philip's hands behind his back and cuffed him.

  "What about God, Sophie?" Philip said.

  "What about Him?" She crossed her arms over her chest.

  "You're not alone. God is watching over you. And when we get this thing cleared up, I'll be back, you understand?"

  The truck driver approached. "Ma'am, the injured men are loaded. We need to head out."

  Sophie clutched her satchel to her and climbed into the cab. A colored man sat there already, gripping his leg, and he moved over to make room for her.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am. There’s no more room in back."

  "It's okay," she said. She slammed the truck door and turned in the seat, watching the soldiers put Philip in another car. But the truth was, it wasn't okay. Nothing was okay.

  Sophie didn't know what to believe anymore. Or whom to believe. "Arnold Benedict . . . Benedict Arnold, the traitor . . ."

  "Pardon, miss? Did you say somethin'?"

  "Nothing . . . I was thinking out loud. Only thinking out loud."

  Chapter Thirty One

  No hay mal que por bien no venga.

  There is no misfortune that doesn't come with good.

  Spanish proverb

  The Spanish village's natural colors changed only slightly as Sophie looked through the viewfinder on her camera. Brown roofs seemed a little darker, richer, grayish-white stucco walls a little less gray. Undulating, green hills with craggy granite outcrop-pings filled the background. The sound of distant cows lowing soon yielded to desperate cries, as workers lined the stucco-walled school with injured men.

  Sophie snapped photographs as they unloaded the soldiers. It helped somehow, to have the camera filter the images for her. To separate herself from the blood, the pain. If only she could block out the stench of burnt flesh and the screams of agony.

  "Can you help me, señorita?" a man asked in Spanish. He knelt beside an injured soldier with a stomach wound. His bloody fingers pressed a piece of gauze into the hole, but it did little good as the seeping red quickly soaked the gauze. "I need you to hold this. Don't let go. I must help unload the rest of these brave men."

  Sophie tucked her camera back into the satchel and knelt before the man. It was hard to distinguish the bloody gauze from the torn skin, and her stomach lurched. Bile rose in the back of her throat, and she swallowed it down.

  The man took her hand and shoved it into the wound. "Just hold it tight."

  The gauze was already soaked, the blood warm and sticky. A sense of aloneness overwhelmed her, and she wished Philip were there to help. To comfort her.

  How could they accuse him of such a thing? Not Philip . . .

  Then again, she would have never guessed Ritter had been an enemy soldier, or that Michael would betray her. She had trusted her emotions and his words. A heaviness settled on her shoulders, and she wondered if anyone was trustworthy.

  As she looked around at the broken bodies, Michael's words came back to her, and she was suddenly hit with a horrible foreboding. What if he had been right? What if she’d allowed her ignorance of Spanish politics to sway her sympathies to the wrong side? After all, the dead Nationalist soldiers on the side of the road looked no different from the ones she’d met on her train ride to Madrid. What if the train had carried her into their territory? Would she be fighting as diligently for their side?

  These questions unnerved her. Yet they also turned her thoughts to what Philip had said. Like him, she was here for a reason. It was not fate or destiny that had brought her here, but something more. Sophie thought she'd come for Michael, and imagined she'd stayed to paint—to make a difference for the cause. But perhaps something more kept her here. Maybe it was enough simply to comfort a dying man. She pushed harder on the bandage, and with her free hand took the man's hand. She caressed his fingers with her own.

  A medic rushed past and glanced down at the injured soldier in her care. "Don't worry no more, señorita. He's dead."

  "He's not talking about me, is he?" The man's eyes popped open, and he squeezed Sophie's hand. "Tell them I'm not dead."

  She turned to the medic, amazed by the strength in the man's grip. "He's not dead. Now will you please do something?"

  The medic called to a nurse, and they carried the man away. Sophie looked around for someplace to wash her bloody hand. She found a pump and let the cool water flow over her hand to cleanse the blood—the red staining the white rocks at the base of the pump. Even after the blood washed away, she allowed the cool water to flow, stinging her fingers, numbing them just like her emotions.

  Another ambulance arrived from Jarama. More men were unloaded, then laid upon the ground.

  Sophie rushed to the ambulance as the driver climbed back inside. "What are you doing?" She waved her hand toward the rows of injured bodies. "You just can't leave them there."

  "No choice, lady. There's ten times that waiting for a ride. Men are dying by the second. . . ." And with that the ambulance roared off.

  She turned back to the scene before her. Removing her camera from the satchel, she took one shot, then returned it. One photo was all she had time for.

  Sophie knelt down beside the man at the end of the row. He reached for his leg, screaming like a young child who'd been torn away from his mother. Yet his hands met only air, and Sophie's stomach lurched when she saw the mangled stump that remained.

  "The pain, the pain, do something for the pain. Get the bullet out!" He tried to sit up, reaching for a leg that wasn't there.

  She tried to hold him down, pressing against his shoulders, but his movements grew more frantic. Dear God, help me please. If You're here, I need help. . . . It wasn't one of Benita's recited prayers, but it was all she could manage at the moment.

  "Doctor, someone, please, get the bullet out!" the man screamed.

  Sophie moved her hands to the man's face, stroking his sweaty brow and looking into his eyes. "It's out, I promise you. There is no bullet."

  The man's screams calmed.

  Her tears joined his. "It's gone. It's gone," she whispered.

  Finally, a nurse rushed over and held a cloth over his nose, and the powerful drug forced him into a listless sleep. The nurse hurriedly checked the wound.

  "Have mercy." Sophie pressed her hand to her chest and sank onto the ground, watching the nurse. "There's no leg. How can you treat something that doesn't exist?"

  "Phantom pain," the nurse said hurriedly, moving to the next patient. "We see it all the time. The feeling is as real as if the wound were still there fresh and aching. The pain of what you have lost. It's the worst pain you can get."

  The pain of what you have lost. Sophie's mind couldn't wrap around all she’d lost since coming to Spain. Then she chided herself. How could she even compare her losses to the sacrifices of these men?

  "Can you come with me?" the nurse asked. "I know you're not here for this, but we need help inside."

  Sophie cringed from the stench in the schoolroom, now transformed into a first-aid hospital. Cots lined the narrow room. White-faced men filled the space on beds and floor, moaning with pain and crying out words that knotted her heart. Some words were in languages she couldn't understand. And thos
e she could were dying words.

  The soldiers' faces reminded her of the Christs El Greco drew. Pale, thin, heavily bearded. Except this one. She recognized the colored man she'd ridden beside in the truck, yet his eyes were wild, as if he were caught in the middle of a waking nightmare.

  "Ian!" he called, trying to sit up. "Where's Ian? He was right next to me before the explosion."

  "Listen to me. He's safe. He made it." Sophie grasped the man's hand, refusing to look at the wound on his leg. She had no idea who Ian was, or if he still lived, but she knew these were the words this man needed. If he was going to make it, he needed hope more than anything. "You can rest now. You can rest."

  His features softened. "Thank you. Thank you for telling me." His eyes fluttered shut. "Ian remembered his mama's Bible stories," he mumbled. Then he fell into a fitful sleep, his heavy, shuddering breaths evidence of his pain.

  The poupinelle, a French copper sterilizer, was loaded with surgical instruments. Though she had awakened this morning not even knowing what one was, let alone how to run it, Sophie now worked the machine with skill. Bottles and boxes of medical supplies lined the shelves that previously had held children's schoolbooks. There were donations from America, Holland, France, even Poland—but no bandages. No matter where she looked, she couldn't find one clean bandage.

  Sophie had been gathering, cleaning, and delivering supplies for the nurses and doctors for hours. Her clothes were black. Her hands were rough and swollen, her face dusty. Her hair dirty and tangled. And still those around her worked by the light of oil lamps. Sophie had never witnessed a more dedicated group of people.

  Most of the men in this section had been cared for, except for one new soldier. His face was ashen, the color faded like the Spanish tiles that lose their color in the sun. Bright red seeped through the bandaged wound in his shoulder.

  The other nurses were assisting in surgery and had asked Sophie to watch the bleeding. And there were no bandages. No clean sheets. Nothing to stop the flow of blood.

  Sophie thought of her satchel in the corner and what it contained. She released the pressure on the wound and hurried to the tray of medical instruments, snatching up the scissors. In a few steps, she was at her satchel, quickly unbuckling the latch.

  "Nurse . . ." The soldier's voice was desperate, and she glanced back to see the bleeding had increased.

  "I'm not a nurse," she called back, the knot in her neck tightening with each passing second. "I'm not supposed to be here." She dug through the last of her things. "I had a different plan," she said under her breath. "Don't you understand? This is not what it was supposed to be about."

  But I am here, God. I'm here for some reason. Give me strength.

  She yanked the light blue dress from her bag and immediately set to work cutting two long, wide strips from the skirt. Without hesitating, she hurried back to the soldier and folded one strip into a small square, pressing it into the wound. Then she quickly wrapped the other strip to hold it in place.

  She held her breath and waited. Waited for the deep, red fluid to seep through the cloth, proving her efforts had been in vain. But after ten minutes, there was still no blood seeping through. Only then did she let out a sigh of relief.

  The soldier's eyes were wide. "Why did you do that? Cut up your dress like that?"

  "I don't need it anymore," she said flatly. Then Sophie glanced down at her bloodied hands and stained clothes. "And now that you're taken care of, I really need a shower." She smiled and winked at him. "And because a shower was out of the question as long as I had to watch over you."

  The man offered a slight grin.

  She set the scissors on the tray of items needing to be sterilized and crossed the room. Gingerly she picked up the dress, determined to finish what she'd started. But for now, she did need a shower, and she was determined to get one before the next wave of injured men came in.

  "If the nurse returns, tell her I'll be back in fifteen minutes. You're doing great, my friend." She put the rest of the dress into the satchel and snatched up clean clothes, then plodded wearily to the back of the building where a manual shower stall had been rigged.

  Sophie undressed and gently tipped the bucket of lukewarm water, letting its coolness wash over her. She started to lather her body when a new sound flowed from the hospital. A deep male voice rose in song, and it seemed the moans of the other men lessened.

  As she listened to the Negro spiritual, sung with a low Southern accent, Sophie knew who the singer was. The colored man's leg had been stitched up hours ago, and now he had awakened. He sang with a voice so full of emotion that her heart seemed to double in size.

  She finished washing, dressed, and returned inside. Many of the nurses had gathered, their weary faces reflecting a moment of peace. The looks on the faces of the men in the room had also brightened, and they seemed to forget for a moment their tattered bodies and lost friends. It was like balm for their souls.

  He was now singing "Amazing Grace," and as she stood and listened, Sophie remembered Philip's words. Philip was right. God was with her—and would be with her, in spite of the war that raged on every side.

  SPRING

  And they arose early:

  and it came to pass about the spring of the day. . . .

  —1 Samuel 9:26

  Chapter Thirty Two

  APRIL 24, 1937

  Lo que no mata, engorda.

  What does not kill, fattens.

  Spanish proverb

  The sun hung in the air, and evidence of spring's return could be seen wherever Father Manuel looked. The streets filled with people enjoying the sunshine and flowers budding in window boxes or the leafy grapevines that trailed up many of the town's stone buildings. Some sat outside at the Arrién Restaurant's sidewalk tables, enjoying a leisurely lunch. Others ambled through the marketplace or strolled through the Plaza Las Escuelas, the town's main square. And in their joy of life, most were not aware of the numerous ambulances passing through the outskirts of town, laden with the human toll of battle.

  When he looked at the people, Father Manuel couldn't help but think of the Scriptures that spoke of sheep without a shepherd. In addition to the familiar faces, thousands of refugees now filled the town, fleeing from aerial bombings in Bilbao and other nearby towns. The refugees knew too well from hearing stories on the radio that once the bombs were dropped, ground troops followed. And if faceless men caused such destruction from the air, what devastation would come from those on the ground?

  Only twenty miles now separated the front lines from this town—from the people he'd vowed to shepherd. Rugged terrain and thousands of Basque troops provided protection, but would it be enough?

  The injured filled every bed in the convent, and within the yard-thick walls those receiving care felt safe for the first time in months. Only a direct hit from a large aerial bomb or artillery shell could do any real damage. The nuns believed the large red cross painted on the roof would discourage such a blow, but Father Manuel wasn't so sure. If the bombers dropped their load on whole cities filled with innocent people, what would one red cross do to hinder them?

  With a long-legged stride, he hurried to the convent. Since waking this morning, he’d felt an urgency to make sure the town and the people were ready . . . for what he did not know. Is this from You, Lord? Is it possible You speak through an unsettling in the pit of our stomachs too?

  He opened the convent door and noticed Sister Joséfina walking the halls with a man on crutches. The man turned Father Manuel's direction, peering at him with unseeing eyes. So too are the people of this town, looking without seeing. . . .

  "Sister Joséfina, do you still have that black cloth purchased for the nuns' new habits?"

  "Yes, Padre. In the storage room, but I . . ." She glanced down at her own stained garments. "I know these do not honor our Lord, but I have no time to make new ones. . . . "

  "You think I wish for you to sew? Oh, dear Sister, I would not ask such a thing of you. It
's the windows I'm thinking of. We must black them out. Just hang the cloth the best you can. Do you think you can find enough hands around town to help?"

  "Of course, Padre. I'll see what I can do."

  "Good. Make sure it is done by Monday at the latest."

  Father Manuel strode from the building and ran his fingers through his hair, realizing the curtains would only be a start. They must find a way to hide the ambulances unloading the wounded and camouflage the wash lines strung with white surgical linen. Both would easily catch the attention of those from the sky.

  If the bombers came, he wanted to know they'd done all they could.

  Before rounding the corner, he turned and waved to the young nun perched on the roof in her habit.

  Lord, the end must be nigh. To have women—brides of Christ—giving part of their day to scan the skies for enemy planes. What is this world coming to?

  The nun waved back enthusiastically, then lifted the field glasses to her eyes, once more looking to the north, then east. If only it was the Lord's return for which they waited with such eagerness.

  Father Manuel continued back to his parish church, walking by the school where he'd served as spiritual advisor for the past few years. Children clad in school uniforms ran around the fenced play yard. He waved to them as he passed, and they cheerfully waved back. Many of the boys in their early teens already spoke of leaving their studies to fight. But out of five hundred pupils, half were girls. Girls whom the Moors would violate unspeakably if they ever reached this peaceful town.

  He thought too of the other order of nuns in Guernica, the Sisters of Penance of the Order of Santa Clara. Unlike the nuns who worked among the people and cared for the injured soldiers, the twenty-nine Sisters of Santa Clara lived in cloisters and never stepped beyond their walls.

  The order was founded in 1422, and each new nun was given the number of a nun who'd passed away. The sisters were even buried within the walls when they died. For five hundred years outsiders had cared for them by taking the shopping lists the nuns passed through a grill on the convent door. What would happen to them if outsiders broke in? Did they even realize a war raged outside their walls?