The German Heiress

by Anika Scott

  She dabbed a bit of the powder onto her finger and touched it to her tongue. She immediately made a face, and her mouth watered to push the intensity away. The whisky and the lemon would harmonize with it, she hoped. She finished grinding all the nutmeg from the tin. When she tried to pour it into the pot, Jennings waved her away. “We’ll add it to the cups,” he said.

  With a cry of triumph, Reynolds produced another bottle of whisky from the bottom of a box. This threw the men into a fit of merriment. They began singing Christmas carols while warming the teacups near the fire. Whisky was poured into each and then the hot brew of water and spices was ladled in. Dwight spooned in the lemon juice. By then, they were cheerful enough to allow Clara a cup, and so four of them were set out on the table. Clara had placed the bowl of nutmeg in the middle, and the men took a pinch each. It would hardly be enough to affect them the way Jakob had described. He’d given her the impression it took spoonfuls of the stuff. She could get the keys to the truck only if the men were sufficiently distracted—drowsy, drunk, or nauseated. For that, she needed them to dose themselves up. She would have to lead the way.

  Sighing, she scooped up a heaped teaspoonful and stirred it into her steaming cup.

  “What are you doing that for?” Reynolds asked. “It’ll spoil the taste.”

  “It might,” she said, stirring, “but I don’t care. I heard a lot of nutmeg all at once can make you feel good.”

  “What do you mean, good?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it. I was told it can give you a kind of . . . high. I could use one right now.” She set down her spoon. If the men didn’t follow her example, the worst that could happen was that she felt better. Or sick to her stomach. Anything was an improvement on how she felt in her head and her heart right now. “Cheers, lads.” She took a sip, made a face at the grit in her mouth as she forced it down. After one swallow, most of her drink was still left in the cup, nutmeg skimming the top.

  The men were watching her closely, and she shrugged. “Taste does take some getting used to. More lemon juice would be nice.”

  Dwight spooned more into her cup, and then, at a nod from them, did the same for the others. Jennings was the first to reach for the teaspoon and dump in a healthy heap of nutmeg. Dwight followed suit. Reynolds was cautious, adding only another pinch.

  “Right,” Jennings said cheerfully, “a happy Christmas to all.”

  Clara raised her cup to her lips and watched the others drink. They were, she saw, used to drinking quickly, their cups empty after several swallows as if they truly were taking a medicine. They portioned out the next round of whisky, talking loudly about home, about mothers and sisters and girlfriends and what they might be doing right now. Clara rested her chin on her hands and let the fatigue she felt show in her whole body, her hand on her half-full cup. They didn’t ask why she wasn’t drinking.

  After the second round, the nutmeg bowl was empty. She still didn’t see any effect on the men beyond the fact that even Reynolds—who’d had very little extra spice—was in a better mood. Jennings had the excellent idea to go out into the woods and find a little tree to bring inside and decorate, which he promptly went off to do with Dwight in tow. Reynolds stayed inside, smoking a pipe and watching Clara as she took a sip now and then from her cold cup.

  She had moved Fenshaw’s paper and pencil onto her bed, and she fetched them, still unsure if she should draw the map to the mine. She needed to get to Willy, but she had no intention of avoiding whatever punishment Fenshaw had in store for her. If she escaped the cabin, it would be a temporary freedom. After she helped Willy, she would willingly return to Fenshaw’s custody. She could wait for him in the mine if there was a way to get her brother out first, and to safety. Somewhere.

  Deflated, she thought longingly back to the nights spent sleeping with Jakob’s arms around her, holding her together. She wondered where he was right now, if he was worried about her at all. What would he recommend she do? Draw the map? She didn’t suppose he would. He wouldn’t want the British to get all the food in the mine. She looked at the fire and imagined her head on his chest, his voice rumbling inside her as he talked. “Do what you think is best, liebling.” That’s what he would say. And she did know what was best. She wasn’t her father. She didn’t blind her conscience for her own ends.

  As she was finishing the map, Reynolds watching over her shoulder, Jennings stumbled through the back door with Dwight sagging against him, deadly pale, holding his chest. “Something’s wrong with him.”

  Dwight was gasping, breathing quickly. “My heart’s racing.”

  Together Jennings and Reynolds helped him to his bed. Reynolds put his hand on Dwight’s chest and ordered Jennings to bring the first aid kit. He tore through it, finding aspirin, bandages, but nothing that would help. Clara watched anxiously from the corner, thinking of the nutmeg. She hadn’t intended for anything serious to happen.

  “We have to prop his feet up,” Reynolds said, rolling a blanket. “Go on, get another.”

  Jennings stumbled to his bed, reached for his own blanket and dropped it, holding his stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” Clara asked.

  He shook his head. Sweat moistened his face.

  Reynolds called to him with irritation, then noticed him leaning against the wall. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m feeling . . .” Jennings tugged at his tie, breathing hard, then peeled off his tunic and dropped it on the floor. He was sweating badly. He staggered along the wall and rushed out of the back door into the snow.

  “Help him,” Reynolds told her, pointing at Dwight. He went outside after Jennings.

  Quickly, Clara put on her coat and felt in the pockets of the tunic Jennings had thrown on the floor. The keys to the truck were not in the first, but her fingers closed around them in the second. She touched Dwight’s shoulder, and his eyes fluttered open.

  “Tell the captain there’s a map. I’ll surrender, but I have to do something first. He can come and find me. Tell him that.”

  Dwight didn’t answer, didn’t appear to understand what she was saying. She hesitated, not knowing what she might do for him, but Reynolds would be back any moment. “I’m sorry.”

  SHE PAUSED IN the snow outside the front door. Faintly, the voices of Reynolds and Jennings floated to her from behind the cabin. She swung into the cab of the truck, and after several tries, it roared to life. She was reversing toward the snowy track when she saw Reynolds dashing around the cabin. She had no choice but to keep reversing as he ran directly toward her in the light of the front headlamps, slipping, recovering, shouting at her. Afraid of veering off into a ditch or a tree, she split her attention between the side-view mirror and the windshield, which fogged in her quick breaths. She was focused on the land behind her when she heard a crack-crack, and the splinter of glass. A gunshot—she saw Reynolds still running, but slower, arm extended, trying to aim again. The windshield was all right, but only one headlight now cast its beam over the snow.

  She braked slowly, and then struggled to turn the truck. Reynolds had stopped, panting hard but still aiming. She knew he was shooting for a tire, and that would be the end of her. As she gently revved the engine, she saw out of the passenger window that Reynolds was now very close, had decided to reach the truck himself rather than shoot again. She changed gear, hit the accelerator, and he was obscured in exhaust. The next time she looked in the mirror, he was farther away, and then farther, until he vanished in the dark.

  The road continued down a gentle slope, and then forked, and it was here that she guessed from the complete blackness on either side that these hills fell away into deep valleys. The darkness dismayed her, the lack of signs or other buildings. She tried to remember the land from her journey to the cabin, but she had been in the back and had seen very little. To orient herself, she drove slowly, looking for a sign of any kind. She found some at a junction, but for towns or villages that meant nothing to her. For now, she wanted to avoid peo
ple, and drove almost blindly through the hills.

  When she reached another junction, she followed a sign that felt as though it might be the right way, since she had little else to go on. She was feeling horribly drowsy, the effects of the whisky she had drunk, and perhaps a little of the nutmeg too. She rolled down the window for a while and let the cold air snap her awake.

  Even if she could get Willy out, she didn’t know what she could offer him in the real world that was any better than the delusional one he’d created for himself underground. It was no great honor to be connected to the Falkenbergs anymore. Only the Bergers and people like them believed that. At the thought of the people living in Elisa’s cellar, Clara wondered if they were the solution, at least temporarily. If she told them Willy was Theodor’s son and her brother, they would take him in out of loyalty to the family. Willy could live in his own home—his cellar at least—and stay with them until . . . what? But then, she wasn’t sure Willy could live in a normal family, with other children, after what he had gone through.

  Cold and quite awake again, she rolled the window back up. Willy was too damaged to live with Jakob’s family either, even if she could convince him to take her brother in. She couldn’t place such a risk in Jakob’s home.

  Lights were glowing and twinkling in the distance. The road was too long to double back and look for another route, and so she continued, rolling slowly into what looked like a town. It was more civilization than she’d seen in days—rows of houses along a street slick with stamped snow and ice. There were candles or lanterns in many of the windows, and here and there, people walked the pavements. She gasped with fear when she saw that some were British soldiers in groups, or with a girl on their arm. As she passed, a few waved at her and called, “Happy Christmas!”

  She reached a central square with a church, lit up, and a bright building on the corner she assumed was a pub or restaurant, people stumbling in and out, smoke pouring from the chimney. A soldier in a greatcoat waved her down, and she had no choice but to stop.

  “Where are you off to?” he asked. Silver tinsel hung from the lapel of his coat.

  She hadn’t thought of what she’d say if she was caught. But she remembered that she too was in army clothing, driving an army truck, and realized she was about to add impersonating Allied personnel to her other crimes. It was a small thing in comparison.

  She exaggerated the English accent of her mother and said, “I’m to drive this thing from Minden back to Essen of all places, tonight of all nights. And no map. I got lost. I’m probably nowhere near, am I?”

  He laughed. “You’re in the Sauerland, lass. Where’s your orders?”

  “Don’t have any.”

  He sobered a little, walked the length of the truck, took some time looking in the back, then circled to her window again. “It’s empty, and one of your lights is out.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re driving an empty vehicle on Christmas night and you don’t have any orders. Sorry, but that sounds like a load of—” He seemed to change his mind about his language. “Right, what’s your name?”

  “Anne Heath,” she said without hesitation.

  “You’re going to have to come down out of there while I call this in, Miss Heath.”

  He opened the door for her and she allowed him to help her out of the cab. The cold instantly cut into her, and she held her coat closed at the collar, trying to think of how to talk her way out of this. It seemed the sort of thing Jakob could do, and she thought of what it would be like if he was at the end of her journey. Maybe that was a story the soldier would believe.

  “All right, sir. I wasn’t quite ordered to drive to Essen. I had that idea on my own. It’s Christmas, you see, and I haven’t seen my fella in months. I thought I could drive the truck—nobody would miss it—and pop down to surprise him. Just for tonight. I was going to take it back.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jakob,” she said in the English way.

  The soldier stared hard at her, and then a smile played on the corners of his mouth. “I’ll regret this, but what the hell. It’s Christmas. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men, eh? Wait here.”

  He vanished into the pub while she stamped her feet in the snow. If he radioed someone in Minden after all, she would be arrested on the spot. The soldier returned, crossing the snow with brisk steps. “Here you are.” He spread a map in front of her and pointed out where they were, and what roads she would have to find to get her back to the Ruhr area and eventually to Essen. “It’ll be tricky in the dark, but love finds a way, eh?”

  “You’re an angel, mate.” She kissed him on the cold cheek, and he beamed.

  “You tell your Jakob what a lucky man he is.” He helped her back into the truck. “And remember. I never saw you, eh?”

  The map spread out on the bench beside her, she started the engine.

  26

  Jakob didn’t like it when Willy sat so close to the Christmas tree. The edges of the tin stars hanging from it reminded him of teeth, of knives, of the jagged edge of pain. He couldn’t see the bump on Willy’s head, but it was there, under the kid’s hair. He winced when he rubbed the place with the flat of his hand. Willy hadn’t managed to give himself a concussion, or at least show any signs of it, yet Jakob had watched him walk to see if he wavered, served him up a can of ham to see if he could eat, sat up as he slept fitfully on his bed to see if the kid might sneak in the night to his tree, take down one of the stars, and use it on his own throat.

  “You thought about my proposal, kid? Coming out with Gertrud and staying for a while at my house?”

  Willy hadn’t slept for long. He got up and went to the curtain. Jakob felt disoriented suddenly, as if time had shifted and they were back to when he first came down here.

  “What is it?”

  Willy shushed him. Jakob recognized his taut body, the sense of anticipation and caution. He joined Willy at the entrance to the tunnel. There was nothing to see in the lantern hanging from the wall and no sound.

  “Someone coming?” Jakob whispered.

  After an anxious glance at Gertrud, Willy stepped into the tunnel. Jakob followed him, not liking this situation at all. Willy wasn’t acting as he would have before, the firm steps of a soldier on patrol, a guard doing his duty. He crept along the tunnel wall, eyes bulging. He still wore his tunic, but unbuttoned, black stains on the sleeves, his shirt half hanging out of his sagging trousers. He’d left his beloved steel helmet in the camp. And strangest of all, he’d left his belt with holster and pistol. Jakob considered fetching the gun himself, but he was not going to be the one to endanger them all by discharging it inside the mine.

  Outside the room that contained marmalade and honey, Willy stiffened. He was listening, intense, as though he could hear frequencies beyond Jakob’s capacities. All Jakob could hear was their nervous breathing and a ringing in his ears that came from inside his own head, a reaction to the deep silence of the mine. They waited, both of them straining to listen. Cold drops of sweat began to gather at Jakob’s hairline and the back of his neck, an old reaction from the war, a sign of danger, a warning.

  He grasped Willy’s arm and tried to pull him away, back into the tunnel. Willy shook him off and, in a fit of recklessness, rushed into the next corridor.

  “Willy?” The voice, vaguely familiar, reached Jakob weakly, as if the man had spoken from a high mountain, one of the odd effects of how sound traveled in the tunnels. Jakob crept along the wall and then looked cautiously around the corner.

  The man was hugging a package in his arms as he stood half blocking the lantern on the wall behind him. His gaze was fixed on Willy, who had stopped close by, slightly crouched in surprise or fear, Jakob wasn’t sure.

  “Willy, I’ve been calling for you. I thought you’d gone.” The light caught more of his face, and Jakob recognized the man he had met at Anne Heath’s Christmas party.

  Jakob immediately slid back into his own corridor so he wouldn�
�t be seen. The alarm inside him was blaring now, pushing the sweat from his pores, winding up his muscles. All along, Willy had been waiting for someone to come back to the mine for him. If it was that man—Max Hecht, was it?—likely Clara’s old lover, who’d known the kid was down here, Jakob just might have to break a bone or two in the bastard. No decent human being would leave a boy here for two years, even a kid as stubborn and difficult as Willy.

  Slowly, silently, Jakob put out the lantern in his corridor. He backtracked quietly to the next and darkened that lantern too. Then he slid along the tunnels again, and peeked into the corridor where Max was talking to the boy.

  “It’s for you,” Max was saying, holding out the package. “It’s Christmas.” He took a step toward Willy, who scrambled back. “There’s nothing to be scared of. My wife made it for you.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Look.” Max peeled away the colorful paper aside and pulled out a dark red knitted cloth. “It’s a scarf. We thought you’d like something warm and homemade.” He tossed the paper aside and shook out the scarf, displaying it to Willy. “Go on. It’s yours.”

  “Thank you, but I said I don’t want it.”

  “Well, what do you want, then?” When Willy said nothing, Max went on, reining in his tone. “Willy. You need to stop the nonsense and come with me. If you’d come out the last time I was here, you’d be opening presents and eating sweets with my family right now.”

  It was a variation of the promises Jakob had used to try to lure the kid out of the mine. He was ashamed to hear Max Hecht using the same arguments.

  Willy was scratching his shirt where his heart was. “Do you know what happened to my mother?”

  “She’s still missing,” Max said. “No news since the last time. But people are still looking for her. Once she’s found, she’ll be glad you’re safe with me.”