The Prince and the Nun

by Jacqueline George

  “It was certainly that. Almost as much of a surprise as hearing Therese von Falberg using a bad word just now. So, what are you going to do with them?”

  “I was going to ask Sergeant Grossner to show us how to use them. When he’s off duty, of course. Then we can go for walks on them, when the weather’s nice.”

  “Has she sent the right skis for that?”

  “I don’t know. The Sergeant said to ask for touring skis, so they should be right.”

  “You’re always surprising me, Therese. You’ve been planning this, haven’t you? Still, I don’t know about the walks. There are probably deserters and partisans in the forest. It might be dangerous.”

  “I don’t see why. If they don’t shoot at your patrols, I can’t imagine they’d shoot at us.”

  “I didn’t think they’d be stupid enough to shoot you. I suppose I could always come along to make sure you didn’t get into trouble. Let me speak to Grossner first; the weather’s nice this afternoon.” He turned to go, and Therese called after him.

  “Mefist, did she send the jackets and trousers too?”

  They came back from their first lesson tired and exhilarated. The girls rushed up the stairs, still wearing their boots. They were laughing and chattering like schoolgirls on a day trip. Their cheeks glowed red, their eyes shone, and they were a delight to be with. Mefist was waiting for her as she followed them up to the club.

  “My dear, you look delightful. How was it?”

  “Well, I think most of us found out that it’s not as easy as it looks. My legs are tired, and my back and shoulders, but it was good fun anyway. I have to admire Grossner. He’s very calm and completely immune to the girls’ charms. They were fluttering their eyelids at him, but he just kept sending them round again and again and shouting at them to do it properly. He’s a good teacher.”

  “Yes. Much better than me. I don’t have the patience. Come down to the library with me.”

  “The library? Why the library?”

  “Therese! Why do you always need to know everything in advance? Just come with me to the library and we’ll sit and chat in front of the fire.”

  “But I have to get dressed…”

  “You are dressed. Just take off your jacket. That’s it. Now pull your shirttails out, that’s fine. No shoes, those socks are good enough. Oh, alright, you can comb your hair, but nothing else. Let’s go!”

  “The General won’t mind, Mefist?” she asked as he hurried her along.

  “Mind? Why should he? It’s your castle, after all.”

  “But I’m not dressed…”

  “Oh, stop behaving like an old lady. Or I’ll tell everyone what you’re really like.”

  “Mefist…” she threatened, but they had reached the library. Sitting in front of the fire was the General, drinking tea and chattering to Jana and Rebecca.

  “Therese, my dear. You’ve got visitors. We couldn’t find you, so I’ve been keeping them company. Charming young ladies. Come and sit here.” He patted the arm of his chair, but something made her push between his legs and sit on his knee.

  “Rebecca, Jana. What a shame you didn’t come earlier. We were having a skiing lesson. You could’ve joined in. How has the General been treating you?”

  “Oh, he’s very kind, Mistress. He’s been taking care of us for ages.”

  “Kind? That’s good; I don’t think I’d trust him alone with young ladies like you normally. Isn’t that right, General?”

  “You always think the worst of me, Therese, my dear,” he said, pretending sadness.

  “Because you have a silver tongue. This old charmer has had a reputation for chasing ladies for the last fifty years.” And he’s still doing it, she might have added. “But we love him anyway. He’s like a father to the girls and me.”

  The girls were relaxed and happy. They had imagined that generals were fire-breathing dragons, not kindly old men who could find time to drink tea with chance visitors.

  “Therese, I had better get back to work. How are you going to send these young ladies home? I’d take them myself, but I don’t think it would help their reputations to be seen getting out of an officer’s car. Do you think you could go with them?”

  “Believe me, being seen with me would be even worse for their reputations.”

  “Really? I am surprised. Aren’t people strange? So, what are we going to do?”

  “Get Mefist to borrow a nun. That’ll solve the problem. Tell him to ask for Sister Alice or Sister Brenda. They won’t mind helping out.”

  “That’s the answer! There’s no one more respectable than a sister from Montebello. They have a remarkable reputation.”

  “General—” threatened Therese.

  “Now, my dear, move your charming dupka and let me go.” He took the girls’ hands. “Jana, Rebecca, I’m truly happy to have met you both. Come here whenever you can. Any time you visit Therese, I shall expect you to come to my office.”

  “Isn’t he nice?” said Rebecca, after he’d left. “He’s not at all what I expected.”

  “Yes, we’re very lucky, but you be careful! He’s a charming old devil and loves young girls. So how do you like our home?”

  They looked around the library. “It looks very grand,” said Jana. “I can’t imagine normal people living like this.”

  “Well, we don’t, really. No one lives like this anymore, not even the Count and his family. Times change, but it’s nice to see, isn’t it?”

  “Where did they take us when we came here before? I can’t recognize anything. I was too confused.”

  “Oh, you came to the club. That’s upstairs. It’s different now.”

  “Can we see?” asked Jana, and Rebecca wanted to return to the place as well.

  Therese was doubtful. “But your fathers—what would they say if we went upstairs?”

  “We won’t tell them,” said Jana.

  When they first emerged from the stairwell, they did not realize they had arrived. The place looked so different, so homely. This was the comfortable time before the evening meal when the girls were free to sing or relax or sew, as the fancy took them. Dorota had taken over one of the tables for her scrapbook. Hollywood fascinated her, and she was cutting and sticking treasures from magazines into her collection. Beside the fire, Maria carefully stitched black lace onto something light and frilly; opposite her, Meike had her nose in a novel. Helena quietly practised on the piano.

  “It’s lovely!” whispered Jana. “It’s so nice.”

  Their reaction surprised Therese. “I’d never thought of it that way. It’s just where we live, I suppose. Come and meet the girls. What would you like to drink? The girls will be having coffee or soda because they’re on duty soon. How about Tokay? I know you like that.”

  They liked each other. Therese left them chattering by the fire as if they had known each other for years.

  “It was very different from anything I had imagined,” said Rebecca as they went looking for Sister Alice. “It was homey and the girls were very, I don’t know, I suppose educated is the word I’m looking for.”

  “Yes, I thought they’d be just, you know, sluts,” added Jana. “Though I know that’s stupid because they were nuns not so long ago.”

  “Yes, and if you think it’s hard to believe,” said Therese, “what about me? Mother Superior to bordello madam in one little jump. I still wake up wondering which one I am.”

  “Can we come again?”

  “Of course. Come earlier and we can go skiing. Only bring trousers if you want to do that.”

  Chapter 29

  Therese woke early to knocking at her door. It was Timko with an urgent telephone call from Jana. Therese threw her dressing gown on and went to hear what Jana needed.

  She was crying on the telephone. “Julius is dead. SekPol shot him near the cemetery. He was going to the forest with some others. They didn’t want to work on the railway or go for a soldier.”

  “Who’s Julius?” she asked.

&nbs
p; “He was our friend. We went to school together. The policemen left him dead in the square with a notice around his neck.” She cried some more.

  The General called for Therese immediately after breakfast. “Sit down, my dear. Coffee’s coming. Now, you’ve heard the news, I’m sure.”

  “Yes. It’s awful.”

  “You once guaranteed that we would have partisans if we manufactured our own. After you said that to me, I’ve often thought about it, and worked against it. Only now, if we’re unlucky, that damn fool Drazevich has managed to do it all alone. He left the body lying in the square, you know. With a notice around his neck saying ‘Rubbish for collection.’ How could he be so stupid?”

  “General, I’m not sure he is stupid. I believe he knows exactly what he’s doing. I think he’s trying to take over. After all, if the valley stays quiet and honest, what need would we have of SekPol? He’s cocking a snook at you.”

  “Do you think so? Really?” The coffee arrived, and he stirred his cup absently. “You could be right. Thank you, my dear. Your pretty head does more than hold up your hair. What can we do about him?”

  “I don’t know what you can do about Drazevich. Can he just shoot people like that? Is it legal?”

  “Yes, my dear. There’s a curfew. It’s a military order, and the man was breaking it.”

  “I suppose you can’t go against SekPol without some very powerful friends, but you could have an enquiry or something, couldn’t you? Perhaps punish him for treating the body like that? It might slow him down a bit.”

  “We could do something, I suppose, but I don’t think it would have much of a result.”

  “Perhaps that’s less important than showing that you don’t just accept what happened. It’d give me something to tell the village, no matter what came out of it. Better still if you send for a couple of villagers to give statements. They’d go back and tell their friends that we’re not all like Drazevich up here.”

  “You’re right, of course. The Army wouldn’t lose anything by doing things correctly. I’m going to have to do some aggressive patrolling. Drazevich’s report says there was a group of men, probably avoiding conscription. I can’t just sit here while conscripts walk away past my front door. I’ve got my masters to answer to as well.”

  “What’s Drazevich doing now?”

  “I don’t know, but I know what he’s doing for the rest of the day. He’ll be leading his band of valiant but overweight policemen in the forest. If he’s going to make a lot of trouble for all of us, he can at least participate in sorting it out. Now, what can we do to calm down the village?”

  “It will be very difficult, unless you’re prepared to string Drazevich up in the square. Could you send Mefist to the parents and ask for permission to send a wreath? Even if they say no, at least it’s a gesture.”

  “Yes, I can do that. I couldn’t attend the funeral, not as General. The family would never accept it anyway; I know I wouldn’t. You’d better go now, my dear. I’ve got to tear a strip off Drazevich, and then we’ll start patrolling. Keep away from the forest until this is over.”

  The patrols came back in after dusk. The forest terrain was too dangerous for any more than standing patrols at night, and they would not help. Therese was eating soup and bread in the refectory when Mefist came in.

  “It’s been a wretched day. Drazevich must be the most unpopular person on earth tonight. I went down to see the boy’s parents, those poor people. They were so lost but still trying to be polite. I don’t know if they understood what I was saying to them. Then I had to spend the rest of the day standing over Drazevich. SekPol don’t have skis, you know. They’re more used to creeping around city cesspits, but they had to go out and guard the forest edge. The Army was meant to be flushing the partisans out, and the police were meant to shoot them when they broke into the open fields. Absolute rubbish, of course. Anyone in the forest would only have to retreat uphill and we’d never know they were there, but we have to look as if we’re doing something.

  “And I lost a man. Shot, right in front of me. I couldn’t believe it! The first casualty by enemy action we’ve taken since we got here. Tell me, would those men be hunters, do you think? What sort of rifles would they be carrying?”

  “I’m sure anyone living in the forest is a hunter. A lot of the local men go hunting, mostly legally, but there’s quite a few that can’t afford the licence. I don’t know what sort of rifles they carry, but they look very big and expensive. With telescopes on top.”

  “Well, that’s what they used. It was good shooting. The sniper must have been holed up in the edge of the forest. We don’t know how far away exactly, there is too much scrub around there, but it was a long shot. Just as the light was going. He must have waited until then so he could get away in the dark. Drazevich was shouting at his men, as usual for him, and he’d just turned on his heel to leave when the man he’d been shouting at was bowled over backwards. We all dived for cover. I got the men to put down some covering fire and we pulled the man in, but he was dead. No way to follow the sniper, not with good troops, let alone that bunch of fat incompetents.”

  “Do you think the sniper was trying to get Drazevich?”

  “You know, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Do you think they’d know who he is?”

  “Oh, the village knows Drazevich very well.”

  “Mmh. I think I’ll warn him. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. At least the little sneak will be sweating cold tomorrow.”

  “You’re going out again tomorrow?”

  “Oh, yes. We’ll be out tomorrow and probably the day after.”

  “Do be careful, Mefist. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll probably be with the police again and we’ll be very careful, and I certainly won’t stand anywhere near Drazevich.”

  Mikhail sent a girl up to her office next morning to ask permission to come up. He closed the door and brought out a note from his pocket. It was on a piece of paper torn from a schoolbook, written in round pencil letters. It was dirty with mud and charcoal.

  General Falk-Sokol, Imperial Army, OIC Montebello

  Your Honour,

  We would like to apologise to the family of the policeman killed yesterday. We were trying to hit the man responsible for Julius Ilkov’s death. However, we are prepared to let one death pay for the other. Your patrols are free to use the southern slopes of the forest, keeping at all times to the forest tracks. We guarantee the tracks will not be ambushed or mined. However, away from the tracks there is no guarantee of safety, and we will fight to defend our home.

  Yours respectfully,

  OIC Partisans,

  Krasna Dolina

  The note had come from the forest. Therese could imagine Rado or one of the others writing in the dark of a brush shelter, keeping close to the fire for light. The fact that the note had reached the castle so quickly and openly horrified her. Mikhail waited for a reply.

  “Don’t ever do this again, Mikhail!” she said in a low voice. “It’s too dangerous. Tell them everything has to be by word of mouth from now on. If you’d been caught with this, you’d be shot, but only after SekPol had got the names of all your friends out of you. Me, Maria, your granddaughter Tanya. It would be terrible!

  “Listen carefully; here’s the answer. Firstly, no more letters. Secondly, give me two peaceful days to talk to the General. Thirdly, don’t provoke the General. He’s a proud man and if he thinks it’s his duty to hunt partisans, he’ll do it until he drops dead. If Rado keeps quiet and behaves like a civilian who just wants to live and let live, then I think I can keep the General quiet. Have you got that?”

  “Think so, Ma’am. No letters, two peaceful days, and don’t provoke the General, live and let live like civilians.”

  “That’s it. Now, why did you come here?”

  “Why, to bring you the letter, Ma’am.”

  “No, Mikhail, you’ve always got to have a good reason to come and
see me. In case anyone asks. Now I think you were going to ask me if you could take two days off duty because your wife’s sick.”

  “But she’s–I see, Ma’am. Yes, Ma’am, two days off would be very handy.”

  “Very good, and they won’t come out of your pay. Now get along with you.”

  The General’s office was unnaturally quiet, as most of the men had joined the search. He waved her into the soft chairs and came to sit with her. “It’s a bad business, Therese. One man dead already, and it could be a lot more before this is all over. I wouldn’t mind proper fighting—at least you know where you stand and who your enemy is—but this guerrilla business, it’s very bad for morale. You can be shot at any time, but there’s never anyone there to shoot back at.”

  “General, can I talk to you in confidence?”

  “You mean like the confessional? Of course, my dear. I think I might enjoy listening to your sins.”

  “No, General, this is serious. I had a message this morning, from the forest.”

  “What! How did they get in?” The General was shocked by her news.

  “Never mind that,” she said firmly. “Let me give you the message.”

  “Very well. I’m listening, but I don’t know if I approve.”

  “General, they’ve sent apologies to the family of the man killed yesterday. They were trying to get Drazevich.”

  The General looked at her and started to turn red. He was about to explode at her but jumped to his feet and left the room. Therese sat in silence and waited.

  He still looked agitated when he returned. “Pardon me, my dear. That was inexcusable.”

  “Not at all, General, I understand perfectly.”

  “Look, Therese, I am part of the Imperial Army and proud of it. Have been all my life; I was born in a garrison hospital, you know. I will not tolerate anyone shooting at my men or my officers, even officers like Drazevich. If I get my hands on the man responsible, he’ll be brought before a tribunal and then taken out and shot. That’s final! You can tell them that!

  “Did they say anything else?”