Tangled Ashes (21 page)

He was halted in his questioning by Thérèse’s surprised expression.

“Something I said?” he asked.

“Not at all. I’m just wondering how many men would notice such subtle changes as coloring and . . . eyes.” There was little of her usual high-strung energy in the comment, as if Beck’s question had lulled her into a more human countenance.

“I was just wondering,” Beck said, hoping the birdlike woman wouldn’t read too much into his questions. “But since you don’t know any more than I do,” he said, “I’ll just get back to work.”

JULY 1944

T
HE MOOD IN
the manor was somber. While the nurses and aides tried to keep the expectant mothers comfortable and calm, there were meetings in the offices upstairs that lasted for hours. Though the SS tried to spare the residents from the drama in the news, Marie made it a point to keep her friend abreast of the biggest developments. They’d take long walks in the Japanese garden, their conversations muted by the waterfalls and foliage.

“Didier’s uncle is in the Resistance,” Marie said one July morning. “He says the Allies have landed in Normandy. Thousands and thousands of them.”

Elise, with just over two months to go before her due date, held her friend’s arm as they walked slowly down the shaded paths. “Are they coming this way?”

“They only landed a couple weeks ago, but . . . yes. Yes, I think
they are!” She couldn’t contain her excitement, though she knew the news would not be entirely welcome to her friend. “Elise, they’re fighting the Germans, liberating towns as they go, and they’re rolling toward Paris. Do you know what that means?”

Elise stopped and pressed a hand into her back. “All I care about right now is popping out this baby. . . .”

“Elise!”

“What?”

“Would you just—I don’t know—think beyond your baby for a minute?”

“And think about what?”

“Your country!”

Elise smiled. “I don’t want to think about my country,” she said. “Or about the Allies or Normandy or anything! I’ve got this child to bring into the world.”

“And then? Elise, this baby is only going to be yours for four or five days after you give birth. After that, it’s the Führer’s and you’re out of the manor. And then what?”

Elise never responded well when Marie tried to talk about life after the baby. Marie wondered whether she was having second thoughts about giving it up for adoption, now that she had spent the past months feeling it move inside her.

“I’m not talking about this,” Elise said. “Not today.”

The two girls strolled in silence for a few moments, each lost in thoughts of a future they couldn’t fathom. It was Marie who finally spoke.

“Elise . . .” She hesitated. In the months she’d spent keeping her friend company, she had tried to avoid reporting anything to her that might trouble her. She’d learned that lesson the hard way when she’d told Elise that her parents had moved to Brest to live with her grandparents, fearful that the situation in Lamorlaye would deteriorate if
a liberation movement were ever under way. It had taken days for Elise to get over the shock of the news, and when she’d finally come out of her depression, she’d been more militant than ever, vowing that her parents were dead to her anyway and that the only family she needed was Karl and his beloved Reich.

Marie had been selective ever since then in reporting the stories she heard in whispered conversations behind closed doors, afraid of sending her friend into another tailspin. But as news of an Allied invasion had started to spread over the radios and in the broad communication network of the Resistance, she’d wondered if her sensitivity had been misguided. Elise needed to know. If Paris was liberated, if the
boches
were sent running, what would become of her friend and the baby she carried?

“Elise,” Marie said again, with more conviction this time, “there are some things you need to understand—before you have the baby. Before the Allies get here. Before you and Karl make any more plans together. While you’ve been in the manor, the world has been falling apart. Because of your Hitler. And not just in Paris.”

“The Führer is fighting for us, Marie. For all of us.”

“But at what cost?”

“‘Strength lies not in defense, but in attack,’” she said with near reverence, her words a verbatim quote from the man whose folly had caused so much destruction.

Marie’s blood ran cold. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Elise.”

“I do,” Elise protested, her tone lighthearted and bright. “You’re forgetting that I spend much of the day reading.”

“But what you read isn’t the truth. It’s the
boches’
sugarcoated version of their crimes! It’s lies, Elise. Surely you realize that!”

“Oh, Marie. Always so dramatic.”

“Dramatic? Telling you that ‘bad things’ are happening is not
dramatic. But if I were to tell you the truth, if I were to tell you that thousands of people have been ripped away from their homes and sent to work camps in overloaded trains, never to be heard of again—that would be dramatic! Telling you that people right here in Lamorlaye, some of the families we’ve known forever, have been kicked out of their homes and forced to live on the streets because everyone is too scared to take them in? Telling you that there are torture chambers in Paris where members of the Resistance are put through hell just for the fun of it and long after they’ve confessed all they know? Or telling you that your precious Führer has said it’s okay to rape women and get them pregnant and keep them prisoner in places not much different from this one as long as it expands his Aryan race? That, Elise,” Marie concluded, breathless, “would be dramatic.”

Elise had stopped walking and was staring at her friend with mounting horror. “You’re lying,” she said.

“Elise, there are trains full of French men and women being sent to work camps, and no one knows where they really are. Francis’s father was taken just last week, and he’s not the first and surely won’t be the last. They don’t ask any questions—the men and women and children just get rounded up and carted off without any explanations.”

“Francis’s father?”

Marie nodded, letting the truth sink in. “Those stories you read aren’t true. Hitler isn’t making this world a better place. He isn’t building the foundation for better lives for all of us. People are starving right here in Lamorlaye. And they’re terrified. I can’t tell you how many of our friends huddle in the dark around their radios late at night listening to the BBC and praying—praying—that the Allies will get here soon. I’m sorry to tell you this, Elise, but the Führer who plans on stealing your baby has already stolen thousands of lives, and those weren’t given up voluntarily.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Elise asked, torn between denial
and horror, her voice a whisper. She placed a hand on her stomach in the protective gesture of a loving mother. “Why are you telling me this?” Her voice rose and broke. Tears flooded her eyes.

“I wasn’t going to,” Marie admitted, taking her friend’s hand and pressing it firmly. “I didn’t think the Nazis would ever leave, and I figured you’d find it easier to live with them if you didn’t know all they were doing. But now—now that the Allies have breached the beaches of Normandy and are dead set on making it to Paris? Elise, when the Germans are run out of town, you’ll need to know—you’ll need to understand that . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“That I’ll be considered one of them,” Elise said with monotone sadness.

“You might be,” Marie corrected, trying to remain positive for her friend’s sake, but fearing much worse.

Elise’s eyes widened, and she grasped Marie’s hand more tightly. “Marie!” she said, horror in her voice.

“Is it the baby?” Marie asked, glancing down to see if her friend’s water had broken.

“No—I mean, yes. I mean—” The tears that had been gathering in her eyes dropped onto her cheeks. It was in a nearly inaudible voice that she whispered, “My baby will be one of them too.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, each trying to conjure a solution, before hugging in a frightened, desperate way. Marie was the first to offer hope. “We’ll figure something out,” she said, her gaze determined. “If it comes to that—if the Allies get here and chase out the
boches
—we’ll figure it out.”

Elise nodded, her eyes still glazed with fear. “We’ll figure it out,” she parroted, dipping her fingers in one of the Japanese fountains and soothing her face with the cool water.

The girls walked back to the manor, hand in hand.

B
ECK STOOD NEXT TO
the gaping hole in the ballroom floor with dread in his gut. That which he had most feared had, as the saying went, come to pass. Jacques and his crew had torn up some of the floorboards in the far corner of the room, and what they’d found had thrown a wrench in any expectation Beck had had that the project would finish on time. Though the boards themselves were in fairly good shape, the plaster where the walls met the flooring had offered a subtle, nearly missed clue that all was not well underneath. In the space where the floorboards had once lain, Becker saw what he presumed to be a widespread condition. Some of the joists that sat on heavy beams were still in decent shape, but a majority of them were so eaten away with dry rot that they wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

“Can we save any of them?” Thérèse asked.

Beck shook his head, his lips pressed tight in frustration. “If
one’s infected, they all are. And that’s not counting the beams and the columns they rest on. We’ll have to check those, too. Worst-case scenario?” he said, rocking his head side to side and feeling something pop. “We get down there and find out the foundations are compromised. If there’s sitting water in the basement, we’re in big trouble.”

Fallon nodded. “So, lad. What do we do?”

Beck raised his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. “We probably reschedule your wife’s party,” he said. “Or at least move the venue to the dining rooms. I mean, we’ll get down there and figure out exactly where the problem lies, but . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t look good.”

The three of them stood there for a moment, each lost in thought. Beck subconsciously registered the intricate woodwork that bound the joists to each other with nothing more than wedges, pins, and dowels, each one perfectly cut to fit the giant puzzle hidden under the hardwood floors. The design mastery that had gone into it had been foiled by a microscopic organism that had slowly eaten the substance out of the wood and, most probably, started up the walls as well.

“What’s the next step?” Fallon asked.

“We get Jacques and his seven dwarfs into the cellars and figure out where the problem is. I thought we’d given them a good once-over before we started, but—” he looked out the window to situate the ballroom in reference to the rest of the structure—“I don’t think the cellars we explored extend this far. There might be a separate entrance somewhere, or a blocked one. Once we know what state the support columns are in, we’ll also know if we need to start from the foundation up. If we’re lucky, we’ll just have to rip out all the joists and flooring, plus a good portion of the floor-level plaster, and start from there.”

Thérèse was already moving toward the door. “I’ll get Jacques.”

The problem with nights at the castle was that they were completely still. In the two days of Jade’s absence, Beck had eaten all his meals alone, without the usual short exchanges with Jade that had until then accompanied their delivery. Sylvia and the children had come by every day, but Beck had found himself missing Jade’s presence in a nearly visceral way. And then, when the workers and Thérèse had gone home every evening, he’d found himself alone within the constantly creaking and settling halls of the castle. Those were the hardest hours. He’d known they would be and had braced himself for the inevitability of the cravings that would leave him holding his head and pounding walls with his fist, but even with full knowledge that the weaning would be torture, he’d been surprised.

On the first two nights, he’d taken to the woods again, his pounding feet imprinting the path with the ferocity of his determination. On the third night, his body too exhausted by resistance to run again, he tried to dull the ache with Internet searches that only served to accentuate the permeating sense of aloneness that made of his battle a very private hell. Every hour that passed was a new record, and every day without an outburst was his prize.

Beck was quickly finding out that raging headaches could be crippling. He medicated them with caffeine and the aspirin Thérèse had donated from her purse. He’d also learned that tremors couldn’t be suspended, not even if an urgent task required stable force. He’d hidden the affliction behind a semblance of teamwork and encouraged others to do the jobs he would normally have done himself.

He’d been practicing new skills on an oblivious Thérèse, sometimes stunning her into silence with questions about her work, her home, and her family. She’d been particularly taken aback when he’d said, “So, tell me about your parents,” during a grueling
conversation in which she’d assaulted him with so many details about the kitchen’s new appliances that he’d wanted to strangle her with his bare hands. After the question, though, she’d fallen silent—and Beck had thanked his lucky stars for Sylvia’s instructions to “get down on their level and ask them questions.”

He and Jacques had spent most of Monday afternoon exploring the musty space again, entering each of the small, arch-ceilinged cellars and looking for any passageways into the area beneath the ballroom. One cellar led into another, debris hampering their progress until they got to the southernmost room. There, Beck tried to gauge their position under the castle. He looked up. “You think that’s the ballroom above us?”

Jacques hadn’t answered. His eyes were on a pile of old bookshelves stacked against the far wall. “Help me move those,” he said.

Becker found it refreshing to have someone else giving orders for a change and moved quickly toward the other end of the room. They dispensed with the wood in record time and stood staring at the brick wall that spanned a rounded opening.

“My guess is that the ballroom is through there,” Jacques said, a pleased glint in his eye. “You want to get some hammers?”

They worked off some of their frustration tearing through the wall, and when the final fragments of red brick had been broken off, made their triumphant entrance into the cellar beneath the rotten joists. Beck was relieved to find that the floor was dry and the columns seemed solid enough to support the floor for at least another century or so. But there were watermarks on the rough walls that proved the space had not always been dry. “Any history of floods in this area? Does the river ever jump its banks?”

Jacques shrugged. “Not in my memory. But the castle’s been around for a couple hundred years and I haven’t.”

Beck shone his flashlight in a slow circle around the foundations. “Looks like it was about a foot deep at some point,” he said,
following the light beam. “There’s a good chance they built that brick wall to prevent any more flooding from reaching the rest of the basement.”

“Meanwhile, the damage was already done in here. You leave a foot of water sitting for however long it took for it to go down, and it’s prime conditions for dry rot.”

Though the discovery hadn’t solved the problem, it had at least relieved Beck’s mind. With the plaster-covered stone columns still in good shape, “all” that would have to be replaced were the supporting beams, the joists, the floorboards, and portions of the plaster on the walls. The work would have to cover the entire ballroom, and Becker was glad to hand the bulk of that job off to Jacques and his men with strict instructions to work as quickly as they could.

Now, as Beck sat at his computer distracting his mind with online research, he heard something in the basement that made his ears perk up. It wasn’t unusual for small noises to rise up through the floors, but they usually sounded like scurrying rodents or shifting floorboards. On this night, however, the sound was loud enough that it startled Beck and sent him to the basement for the second time that week.

He entered through the door just around the corner and down a couple steps from his office. As the basement wasn’t wired for lights, he carried in his hand his trusty flashlight, sweeping the floor with its beam as he went. The first room held nothing suspicious. Just the usual debris that had accumulated over years of use as a repository for unwanted items—wooden planks, broken flowerpots, an old length of rope. The next two rooms seemed equally undisturbed. Beck shone the flashlight into the corners of each room, and though a rat or two scurried through holes in the walls, there was nothing else moving there.

As Beck got to the final cellar that led to the space under the ballroom, he noticed that the stack of old bookshelves he and Jacques
had displaced Monday afternoon had fallen. They’d been propped up against the wall when the two men had left, but now they were scattered on the floor. He stepped into the dark and musty room ahead with a little less confidence in his gait, grabbing a two-by-four from the pile near the destroyed wall. There was nothing in the farthest cellar that hadn’t been there earlier. Beck stood in the doorway and shone the flashlight around, letting the beam alight on the rocks and pieces of timber that lay here and there on the floor, vestiges of the construction that had taken place so long ago. Nothing amiss. Nothing remotely interesting either. A little embarrassed by his eagerness to pursue ghosts through the château’s dungeons, he turned and retraced his steps, wondering if his newfound sobriety might be causing more hallucinations than the drinking had.

When Jade arrived at the castle the next day, Beck was in the kitchen. He’d made the coffee and generally cleaned up the mess he’d left there in the three days of her absence. The night before had been another rough one, starting with the basement expedition.

Beck wiped bread crumbs off the kitchen counter and tried not to let his nervousness disarm his most honorable intentions. He remembered what Jade had said during their heart-to-heart and wasn’t about to go against her wishes by dragging her into his battle for wholeness, but he also remembered what Sylvia had said. Her words had anchored themselves in his mind during those sleepless hours when he’d had to weigh oblivion against returning to the ranks of the living, and they had swayed him toward the courage the harder path required.
“We need to feel known, we need to feel loved, and we need to feel safe.”
He hadn’t felt any of those things in recent memory, and he wasn’t sure if they were in the stars for him, but the look on Jade’s face when he’d so ruthlessly disparaged her had
left him yearning to offer at least some of those things to her. The list of Becker’s altruistic élans in recent years was short indeed, but he didn’t question the impulse.

Jade arrived shortly before nine. She carried in her arms three full plastic bags from which baguettes, leeks, and rhubarb extended. If she was surprised to see Beck standing by the sink, she didn’t show it. “Sorry I’m a little late. I needed to wait for the stores to open. Are you hungry?”

“Just . . . cleaning up a little before you got here.” He cursed the nervousness that nearly made him stumble.

“No need to clean up on my account,” Jade said, emptying the bags and stowing the groceries. “It’s what I’m paid for, you know.”

“Are you feeling better?” The moment the words left his mouth, Beck wondered what had prompted him to say them. He’d wanted to shoot the breeze for a while and make a smooth segue into asking her about herself, but that plan had been shot to smithereens by his agitated state of mind. He knew the challenge he’d put before himself was not solely to blame for the jitters that had his brain working overtime. He knew that because the craving for a strong drink was increasing with every moment that passed.