And when the boys got up and found Nick, he stirred, and they saw the look in his eyes. He hadn’t looked that way since he told them they had to leave Germany, and they knew something terrible had happened.
“What’s wrong?” Toby said immediately. Maybe they were going to have to leave the circus and they were losing their home again. Lucas was scared too. The telegram was folded and put away in Nick’s pocket so the boys wouldn’t see it. He wanted to tell them himself.
“It’s Opa,” Nick said sadly. “He got very sick, with pneumonia.” He took a breath before he dropped the bomb. They were waiting. “He died yesterday. I got a telegram from Alex last night when we got home.” Both boys burst into tears, and Nick pulled them into his arms. The three of them cried all morning, and then they went for a long walk together, and after that they went back to the trailer. When they got there, Joe Herlihy was waiting for them, to express his sympathy, with a personal letter of condolence from John Ringling North, and Nick was very touched. He stayed for a few minutes and then left, not wanting to intrude on them in their grief.
Nick and the boys were heartbroken as they talked about his father all day. Christianna didn’t want to disturb them, and she left them alone and told her family what had happened. News had already traveled around several families in the circus, and Gallina and Sergei paid them a condolence visit that afternoon too.
Christianna’s sisters-in-law prepared them a big casserole, and Christianna dropped it off that evening, and was going to leave quickly. But Nick asked her to stay and have dinner with them. She could see how sad they all were. It upset Nick even more knowing that he couldn’t go to his father’s funeral, but he was sure that Alex would have him buried properly in the cemetery on the estate, with a mass said in the chapel. It was agony not being there for something as important as this. And he knew exactly why this had happened. He and the boys had been banished from Germany, and it had killed his father. And at that exact moment, Nick knew that he would never go back. He didn’t say it to anyone, but now he was certain that he had come to America to stay. The door to his past had just closed behind him forever.
Chapter 16
As Nick had hoped he would, Alex arranged for Paul’s burial in the family cemetery, attended the mass for him in the chapel on the estate, and ordered the headstone to mark his grave. He and Marianne were bereft at the loss.
And two weeks later, there was a flurry of activity in the village. Alex was working in the stables, cleaning stalls, when one of the young boys who helped him came running in, red-faced and excited. Alex turned to see what had happened. He had been solemn and depressed since Paul died, and he could only imagine how Nick must feel, after receiving the telegram. Alex had written him a letter immediately after, expressing all he felt, and his deep sympathy for his friend. He assured him that Paul’s absence would be sorely felt by them all, and that he and Marianne were heartbroken as well.
“They’re taking the von Bingen schloss!” the boy shouted across the stable, as Alex looked at him in confusion.
“Who is? Taking it where?” What he had said made no sense.
“The soldiers. A colonel, I think, or a general. They came in a big car and they’re moving in.” What he said chilled Alex to the bone, and he felt a rage rise up in him, like a tidal wave of bile.
“What do you mean?” Alex’s eyes were blazing.
“There are a lot of soldiers there with boxes, and big cars, and officers. The schloss is open, and someone told me that they are taking it over. It will be headquarters for the area now, and the officers will live there.” Alex wanted to kill someone as he strode out of the stables without comment and marched across the courtyard to his own home. Marianne was out visiting a woman who had just given birth on one of the farms, to bring her some food for her other children, and see how she was. The thought of them taking over Nick’s home, two weeks after Paul died, was more than Alex could bear. He put on his most dignified suit, combed his hair, got in his Mercedes, and drove over to Nick’s schloss. And just as the boy had said, there were cars outside, trucks in the courtyard, boxes everywhere, two dozen soldiers, and a colonel in charge, shouting directions. Alex took a breath and looked calmer than he was, as he walked over to where the colonel was standing. Alex looked at him with a pleasant smile.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” Alex said as he extended a hand to the colonel, and noticed with a pain in his stomach that there were two flags with swastikas flying from the colonel’s car, and two lieutenants were standing at his side.
“And you are?” The colonel eyed him coldly, seemingly unimpressed.
“Alex von Hemmerle. Schloss Altenberg. Five kilometers from here.” He pointed vaguely in the right direction. “I see that you’re visiting Count von Bingen,” Alex said, trying to keep as much sarcasm as possible out of his tone, and barely succeeding.
“Count von Bingen is dead,” the colonel said bluntly. “Two weeks ago. We are taking over the schloss for the army.”
“I was referring to his son, Count Nicolas von Bingen,” Alex said innocently. “I assume he’ll be inheriting the title and the estate from his father.”
“I regret to inform you,” the colonel said with an icy stare, “the late count was married to a Jewish woman, and ‘Count Nicolas,’ his son, fled a year ago as a Jew, as I’m sure you know. Jews can no longer inherit or own land in Germany. This schloss now belongs to the Third Reich. I have claimed it in the name of our Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler.” His salute could have sliced an iceberg, and stopped just shy of his hat, and then his right arm shot out in the familiar salute that turned Alex’s stomach. Alex did not return the salute, and as a civilian, he wasn’t obliged to, although some zealots did.
“I see,” Alex said with surprise. “I didn’t know. They kept it very quiet.” He feigned ignorance, and the colonel nodded.
“Understandably. I’m told you have very handsome stables,” he said with a pointed look at Alex, “and some very fine horses.” So he knew exactly who Alex was, and it was only a matter of time before he paid them a visit, and possibly took whatever he wanted. Including the schloss, if he chose to. The army had license to do whatever they wished.
“Thank you for the compliment. I hope you will pay me a visit now that you’re so close by.” Alex executed a formal bow, and clicked his heels in the style of German aristocrats, not soldiers. It was as respectful as the colonel’s salute, and far more elegant, and reminded the colonel of just how noble Alex was, which was his intention.
“Thank you, Count. I will visit you soon,” the colonel assured him, and then he disappeared through the front door of Nick’s home, followed by a trail of officers and soldiers. Alex looked after him and wanted to burst into tears or scream. It was the most horrifying sight he had ever seen. And it would be the next piece of bad news he would have to share with Nick, to tell him that his elegant home, inhabited by six centuries of his ancestors, had been commandeered by the Third Reich, and was now being lived in by officers and soldiers. With any luck, when the Reich fell one day, if it did, it would be returned to Nick. But God only knew when that might be or what they would do to it in the meantime. Alex was shaking like a leaf as he drove home, parked his car, strode into his own schloss, and slammed the door. Marianne could hear him from the library, where she had returned to warm her hands by the fire, and she knew from the sound of the front door that something bad had happened. She hurried out of the library to see her father cross the landing. He had murder in his eyes.
“What’s wrong, Papa?” she asked, frightened. He lowered his voice to answer her. He trusted no one now. There were people everywhere, longing to become puppets of the Reich, and spy on people they had known or worked for all their life.
“The army just took over Nick’s house. They’re moving in. I want you to go nowhere now. You do not leave this house without me. Do you understand?” he said to her harshly. “There are soldiers everywhere, and it will get worse. They could come here, and even
move in with us. I don’t want them anywhere near you. You do not leave this house!” he said again, and she could see that he was shaking with fear and rage. The fear was for her, and the rage against a government that had violated everything he held dear, including his best friend and his home.
“How can they just move in?” she said with a look of amazement, as they walked back into the library and her father closed the door behind them.
“I do not want you speaking to anyone. Make no comment. Say nothing. We can no longer know who to trust or who will betray us even in our own home.” It was a reign of fear and larceny. The country had been taken over by boors, who were prepared to take anything they wanted. “I think the colonel is after our horses.” And worse than that, Alex was terrified that one of them, or several of them, would be after her. She was eighteen years old and a beauty, soon to be nineteen, and he was afraid for her. He had a strong sense that these men would stop at nothing.
He realized now that there were several things he had to do. One of them was write to Nick, to tell him what had happened. And the other was to write to his old friend Lord Beaulieu in England. They had gone to school together thirty years before, and had remained close friends for many years. Nick knew him well too. Like the English, he pronounced his name “Byew-lee,” not as the French did. But Alex realized now that he needed his help. He could not keep Marianne in Germany for long.
The letter he wrote to Nick that afternoon was one of the hardest he’d ever had to write, other than the telegram about his father. And Alex also knew that he had to word it carefully, lest he arouse the suspicions of the censors. But a letter to America might not be of great interest, and rather than using Nick’s full name as he normally did, he addressed it to Nick Bing, in the hope that an uneducated censor reading it wouldn’t make the connection. And he would try to make it sound like a fortuitous event, rather than the disaster both he and Nick would consider it to be.
Because of the delicacy of it, it took him a long time to write the letter. He explained that he was sure that Nick would be pleased to know that the old schloss near his own had been put to good use. Due to the departure of its once-rightful owner, and a recent death, it had now been taken over by the Third Reich and the army, and officers and soldiers would be living in the house, and had already moved in. Alex said that it would finally add life to the area and the right spirit, and he was sure that Nick would be pleased to hear such good news. He could only imagine the horror on Nick’s face when he read it, but there was nothing he could do. He thought he should know. He added only one cryptic line to cheer him. “All of that could change one day, and surely will, if the family returns, but for now it is very happy news.” There was nothing happy about it.
And after Alex had shared other minor news with him, he began his letter to Charles Beaulieu, which was equally hard to write, and the routing of it was complicated too. He wrote it enclosed in another letter, to a mutual school friend of theirs in New York, and asked him to send the letter on to Charles. Alex was almost certain that he couldn’t get a letter from Germany to England now that they were at war. It would be a great deal easier from the States, and Alex could only pray that the letter would arrive. He apologized to his old friend Beaulieu for asking such a large favor, but he had no one else he could ask. He took both letters to the post office that afternoon, and hoped that they would reach their destinations, particularly the one to Charles. And then he went home and sat by the fire with Marianne, and tried to reassure her. It had been a distressing day for them both, and one thing Alex was certain of now, it was only going to get worse. And he didn’t tell her so, but he wanted his daughter out of Germany before it did. It was in Charles Beaulieu’s hands.
Chapter 17
Alex’s letter to Nick arrived and he understood it perfectly although Alex had billed it as “good news,” which they both knew it was not. Nick fully comprehended that the Third Reich had taken over his estate, and his father was dead, which he already knew from the telegram. And since Nick no longer existed civilly, only as a Jew with no right to own property in Germany, according to the Reich, the estate and the schloss were up for grabs, and now theirs. He no longer owned his own land or anything in Germany. He was not only displaced, but penniless as well, with no inheritance. All he had was his title and his name. He was less upset than he had been when his father died, but he was shocked nonetheless. And he also understood Alex’s cryptic reference that if the Reich fell, if they lost the war, his land would revert to him again. But who knew if that would happen, or when? He could no longer count on anything, except himself. And like Christianna and her family, the circus was Alex’s life. He had been disinherited by Adolf Hitler. After six centuries of his family in the same place, he was now without a country or a home. In barely more than a year, he had lost everything, including his father. It was hard to imagine. All he had left of the past were his boys.
He told Christianna about it later that day, and she was shocked.
“Can they just do that? Take your house that way and move in?”
“Apparently they can,” Nick said with a bitter, angry look. “I have virtually nothing, even in Germany now. I have nothing to go back to, and I never will. I never want to go back to Germany again.” He looked as though he meant it, and she felt sorry for him.
“Maybe they’ll lose the war.” But it didn’t look like it. Hitler was being aggressive with all the neighboring countries on his borders and across Europe, and gave the impression of wanting to swallow them whole.
The next day Christianna told her father and brothers about Nick’s family home being seized by the Nazis, and they felt sorry for him. And others in the circus grew increasingly worried about their relatives, especially those that were Jewish and were now in countries under Hitler’s control. None of them could go home again either, and they were afraid for their loved ones.
At the beginning of February, Hitler ordered unrestricted submarine warfare against his enemies, while England blockaded Germany. And German U-boats were sinking ships. He hadn’t heard from Alex again.
Alex’s letter to the friend in New York had found its way to Charles Beaulieu in Hertfordshire within three weeks, in early February, and Charles’s response via the same route took another month to get back to Alex, but his response was immediate and sincere. First, he said he was sorry to hear about Nick’s father. He also shared Alex’s concern with what was happening in Germany, and he suggested that Alex get Marianne to England as quickly as possible, if he could get her there, which they both knew would not be easy to do. Many German children had been sent to England just before the war, as well as Hungarians and Poles, mostly Jewish children, who had been gotten out by the British on the Kindertransport trains, but since war had been declared six months before, it was not easy to seek asylum in England, nor find a way to get her there. And Marianne was not a child. She was considered a woman at nineteen. So she would have to leave Germany as an adult, with all the ramifications and risks of any woman.
And both the British blockade and Germans sinking ships made sailing across the channel extremely risky. But Alex thought keeping her in Germany with soldiers all around them was worse, and he wanted to take the chance, although his heart ached at the thought. He had to get Marianne into France, to cross the channel from there, or by a safer route if he could find one.
Charles and his wife Isabel were more than willing to have her—in fact, they said they’d be delighted—for the duration of the war if necessary. They had two sons, both in the RAF, and no daughters, and Charles said in his extremely kind letter to Alex that Isabel would be delighted with the company, since life in Hertfordshire was very dull these days, and they rarely saw their boys. And he assured Alex that she would be safe with them, as safe as anyone was in England these days, but surely more than Germany. He said that many people were sending their children and families to the country, whenever possible, even to strangers who had signed up to take them in. And he and Isabe
l had been thinking of having children stay with them, on their very large estate. Charles was the seventh marquess of Haversham, and a member of the House of Lords, and he and Alex had been in the same class at school.
Alex was greatly relieved to get his letter, and all he wanted now was to find a way to get Marianne safely to England, without alerting anyone in the Third Reich while he did. And since Germany and England were at war, he couldn’t just book a ticket and send her. He had to find a discreet way to get her out. And after careful examination of the problem, he thought the best way to do so would be through Belgium, which was neutral. But he had no idea who to contact to set the wheels in motion. Alex had no connections in government or the army, and although there were some aristocrats in the Wehrmacht and the SS, he thought most of them a bunch of badly behaved riffraff. And he wasn’t willing to take a chance on any of them, and surely not with his daughter. He had no underground connections either, nor wanted to use them for Marianne. He wanted to get her out of Germany legally, with proper papers. He was still thinking about it when the colonel came to pay him a visit to see his horses.
He went through the stables and stopped in amazement when he saw the four Lipizzaners that Alex still had, two mares and two stallions, whom he needed for his bloodlines. They were as fine as Pluto and Nina had been, though slightly older.
“Are they trained?” the colonel asked with a look of awe.
“Fully, to liberty commands,” Alex said, hating to even show them to him, but he couldn’t deny him. The colonel could do anything he wanted.
“May I see?” he asked, skeptical, and one of the young boys helped Alex bring the four horses into the main ring he used to train them. And wanting to impress him and show him how insignificant he was, Alex let all four horses loose in the ring and commanded them in the precise exercises of the Spanish Riding School that he had trained them for. The horses were exquisite, ending in a levade, followed by a croupade one by one in perfect symmetry. The colonel nearly had his mouth open when they finished. “You trained them yourself?” he asked in disbelief, and Alex nodded with amusement. He was tempted to tell him that aristocrats were far better at training horses than soldiers, but he said nothing.
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