Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Four

The force of the blast knocked Genevieve to her knees. The schloss shuddered like a dog shaking off water. The sound was apocalyptic. Her ears rang as she staggered to her feet and ran, closing her mind to what the blast meant—all the men in that room instantly dead. Screams, shouts, a terrible rushing roar—fire, that sound was fire—followed her.

The explosion roused Lillian, shook the stone wall from which she hung, filled the cold dank air with grit and smoke and a hideous burning smell that, in the aftermath of what she had endured, terrified her to her bone marrow. Limp, disfigured, despairing in mind and soul, she was in so much pain from what the Nazi torturer had done to her eye—her poor blinded, destroyed eye!—that the other pain, the searing agony of the burns to her face, her swollen, damaged mouth, her bruises and broken bones, was pushed into the background.

“We’re not finished, you and I,” Wagner had said when they’d brought her around from the faint she’d fallen into after he’d pressed that red-hot blade against her closed lid. It had burned through her flesh with the smell of scorching meat, while she screamed and did her best to fight the restraints that held her and then fainted. Restored to consciousness, she was aware enough to know that she was still manacled to the wall, aware enough to feel it when he grabbed her hair and tilted her face up so that he could examine his handiwork, aware enough to hear him. “I am interested to know what else you can tell me. And you still have one good eye.”

He’d released her hair then; her head had dropped to loll limply forward. Inwardly she’d seethed with hate even as, outwardly, fear wrung a shudder from her.

“I must go now,” Wagner told her. “But later I’ll return and we’ll continue. Enjoy what’s left of your sight while you can, Baroness.”

He’d gone. Still manacled to the wall, she’d succumbed to the terror and the pain and shivered and sobbed and sunk into the nightmare-filled semiconsciousness from which the blast roused her.

Now she lifted her head to the sounds of shouts and pounding feet. The watery, blurred vision in her one remaining eye allowed her glimpses of her captors running past the closed door of the room she was imprisoned in. The door had a glass window in the top, and though the figures beyond it were little more than shapes, she could tell they were gray male shapes—German soldiers.

At the sound of gunfire, Lillian tensed.

More shouts, screams, all against the backdrop of a series of muffled booms, a distant roaring. The swirling cloud of gray dust had settled, covering everything. The smell of burning, so terrifying to her now, was strong and growing stronger. The distant roar she could hear—what could that be but a huge and growing fire?

My God, will they leave me to burn alive?

Shaking to the point that the chains holding her rattled, she could feel the fear, corrosive as acid, surging in her throat.

“She’s not here!” The cry—a woman’s voice—cut through her growing panic. Her head lifted. She knew that voice. “Maman! Maman, where are you?”

Emmanuelle. A burst of adrenaline rocketed through her veins. She didn’t know how, but that was her daughter.

A terrible possibility assailed her. Had Wagner done as he’d threatened and found her child?

Her blood ran cold at the thought.

“Maman, if you can hear me, answer me!”

She knew the nuances of her daughter’s voice. That wasn’t how she would sound if she’d been captured or was being threatened. It was how she would sound if she was desperately seeking her mother.

“Here,” Lillian screamed, or tried to scream. Harsh and painful, her voice was no louder than a croak. She tried again, willing her body to rally, willing herself to find the strength to shout. “Here!”

It emerged no louder than a hoarse bark, no proof against stone walls and doors and all the outside noise of fire and chaos.

“Search the other cells. Hurry.” A man’s voice, unknown. He and Emmanuelle were farther down the hall, where the cells were, where she had been. They were looking for her. Emmanuelle worked for the SOE. Was it possible—had they come to rescue her? Her heart pounded with fear even as a tiny bud of hope began to blossom inside her.

“Here!” No louder than before. Would they think to look in this, which from the outside looked like a doctor’s examining room?

“Maman! Maman, can you hear me?”

“Here!” She dragged in lungfuls of air, never mind how much it hurt rasping past the still raw tissue of her mouth and throat. “Here!” There it was, a squawk more than a yell, but loud. “Here!”

A shape at the door. A woman.

The door burst open.

“Emmanuelle!” It emerged as a thankful sob as her heart soared and shook with love and gratitude and fear for her child and all manner of wild emotions. Her daughter came flying to her, Emmanuelle in a dark sweater and trousers with a pistol in one hand and a leather pouch in the other.

“Maman! Oh, Maman!”

Her daughter’s hand, a gentle, hesitant touch on the uninjured side of her face. Her expression, horrified, aghast.

Lillian’s heart stuttered with fear for her child. If she should be captured, if Wagner should get his hands on her as he had threatened... “You have to go. Leave me.”

“I’m not leaving you. We’re going to get you out of here.” Emmanuelle was already looking down, fumbling in her pouch. It was her stubborn voice. Lillian knew that one, too: there was no moving her when she sounded like that.

The worst news, the most important news, had to be told while she could tell it. “Your papa—they killed him.”

“I know. Maman, don’t talk.” She pulled something from her pouch—a skeleton key? “Save your strength.”

“You have found her?” Another woman rushed in after Emmanuelle. This one, middle-aged, plain faced, with braids pinned around her head, she didn’t know. She, too, carried a pistol and a different bag, a military rucksack. “I have a medical kit—what does she need?”

Lillian said, “Something for the pain.”

“I see.” The woman stopped in front of her, dragging the last word out as she took in her injuries with a single comprehensive look. Instead of registering horror or shock, she shook her head, muttered “Filthy Nazi pigs” and immediately delved into her rucksack. Emmanuelle, on her left, fit the key into the lock on that manacle. It opened with a creak. Her left hand suddenly free, her arm dropped like a felled tree and she sagged helplessly toward the floor. But that tiny bud of hope in her heart grew. My God, could they really save her?

To her surprise she found herself craving life with a feral fierceness.

“Berthe, catch her.” Emmanuelle pushed past the other woman to get to the second manacle. Berthe shoved a solid shoulder beneath Lillian’s armpit, holding her up. Lillian felt a prick and looked around to discover the needle of a syrette, a single-dose syringe of the type used to treat soldiers in the field, being plunged into her arm.

“Morphine,” Berthe told her in response to Lillian’s surprised look as she withdrew the syrette. “Just enough to treat the pain. You’ll stay awake.”

“Thank you.”

“Be quick!” A man—tall, lean, black haired—appeared in the doorway, his tone urgent. He held a rifle.

The second manacle fell away. Lillian would have fallen if Berthe hadn’t been holding on to her. Emmanuelle dropped to her knees, made quick work of the irons around her ankles.

A German voice: “Drop your weapon! Or I shoot!”

The man in the doorway whirled in response to the shouted command and fired.

“Let’s go.” He threw that at them as he disappeared from the doorway. She could hear him running—could hear gunfire in his wake.

Her daughter and Berthe already each had an arm around her.

“Wait. I need—” Desperate for a weapon of her own, prepared for a fight to the death and promising herself that she would not allow her daughter to be taken or herself to be captured again, Lillian lunged for and snatched up the yellow-handled knife from the table where Wagner had left it. Then she found herself being lifted almost off her feet as the other two grabbed her and took her with them toward the door. They emerged into the hall as a number of German soldiers, sidearms drawn, burst into view around a bend in the hallway.

Lillian’s heart lurched. The sound she made was a moan of horror.

The man jumped out of a doorway, mowing down the soldiers in front with a burst of gunfire. Screaming, the casualties fell. The survivors jumped back out of sight.

“Get out of here,” he yelled at the women.

“Quick! That way!” With the other two all but carrying her between them, they ran in the opposite direction.

The man was firing his weapon again as the soldiers tried another rush around the bend. Badly outnumbered, he still managed to hold them off.

The three of them reached the end of the hallway and ran across a large empty room into another hallway. With the help of terror or morphine, Lillian managed to provide at least minimal help. But she was slowing them down.

Berthe missed a step, looked back. “Can you manage her? I must go back and help M’sieur Max.”

“Yes. Yes, I’ve got her.” Emmanuelle’s arm clamped tighter around her waist as Berthe withdrew her support, whirled and, weapon at the ready, raced back toward the gunfire.

“Come on, Maman.” Lillian could feel her daughter’s tension, feel the tremendous effort she was putting forth.

Leave me, she almost said again as Emmanuelle dragged her on, but she knew her daughter wouldn’t.

Her legs felt wobbly. Her heart pounded so that she was afraid it would burst from her chest. Knowing that Emmanuelle’s fate was entwined with hers, Lillian summoned every last bit of strength she possessed. She was weak, but she couldn’t falter or Emmanuelle would be lost along with her. She reached down deep inside herself, praying for the will to keep going.

“You can do this.” The desperation in her daughter’s voice filled Lillian with fear. “Maman, did I tell you Genny is with me? She came with me to rescue you. She’s waiting for us. You have to run with me now, so we can get to Genny.”

“Genevra?” The rush of excitement that accompanied the instant image of her younger daughter, so lively and sweet with her black curls and dazzling smile, the heart-shaking news that she was here and waiting sent a burst of energy through her. There it was: the strength she needed. “She is here?”

“Yes,” Emmanuelle said.

“My God,” Lillian breathed, as it occurred to her that Wagner had them both, her two daughters, within his reach. If he caught them...

Terrified of the consequences if they didn’t get away, she ran on with her older daughter toward her long-lost youngest, knowing all their lives depended on her ability to find the strength.

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