A MOTHER, A WIFE ... A BARONESS

chapter 10

Funny whistles filled the small cabin of the train wagon as the seven children made their way to France.

A pair of brown, kind eyes stared at them with a sympathetic smile on his face. Those children truly were Georg's double, especially the older ones, Liesl had the same intensity of his eyes and Friedrich had his very same look.

Raphael's heart squeezed at the consciousness of what they were going through, so young and yet with such a heavy luggage of experience.

But there was one thing he felt beyond grateful about: they seemed to have liked him instantly.

"I've been told there's someone here greedy of chocolates ... and oh, I happen to have some right here" he had laughed some minutes earlier when he had magically made the candies appear on the palm of his hand

"How did you know?" Gretl had asked, adjusting herself back on her seat after recollecting the red wrapped chocolate

"Oh, I know everything about you all".

The fact that Raphael had said the same words Georg had told them before they separated, was helping them to understand that they had been left in good hands despite the very uneasy first encounter with the man who had had to struggle quite a lot to get the seven devastated children up on that train.

"The trip is still long children, perhaps you should get some rest" he was now suggesting, noticing the increasing frequency of their yawns

"But we can't sleep if mother doesn't kiss us goodnight" one of the little girls objected

"Martha!" Kurt elbowed her, being seated at her side

"Can't you tell us a bedtime story?" Brigitta made another request.

A spontaneous smile crossed Raphael's lips. Erwin, his grandson, used to ask the same question every night he would come to sleep at his house.

"Well, I don't think I'm that good at telling stories, but I can certainly try. Hum, let's see ..." he stroked his temple in a pensive way, "there once was a family of seven children with seven beautiful singing voices …".

He went on speaking for no more than five minutes, the poor children were absolutely exhausted, both physically and emotionally. But they had been so brave and courageous, it was making him as proud as if he were their real uncle, he already loved them fondly.

Raphael leant his head on the red velvet headrest and when his eyes fell closed, the image of seeing Maria and Georg walking through the Parisian crowded market flashed into his mind.

The way she had smiled at him when he told her the truth about her father, the little gestures and looks she and Georg exchanged when he had invited them for dinner, how in love he was with her and she with him - things he would never forget in his life.

He counted the hours to come back home next morning and wait for Georg's next call, he needed to tell him the children were safe and sound and needed to know about him and Maria, praying that only good news could be heard from his ears.

Poor things, he had always despised the Nazi and their regime but now that they were directly hurting the lives of someone so close to him, he knew the hate for them couldn't get any stronger.

Where did he even start?

Georg's watch marked a few minutes to 23, which meant that darkness wouldn't have worked on his side for much longer.

The last time he had seen the black car, it was speeding through the main street, probably without taking any turn for as much as he had been able to see.

Georg!

Maria's ripped open eyes petrified with fear flashed into his mind as a hunting nightmare.

It was the worse sight he had ever seen, perhaps not even Agathe's grave when he first saw it had left him so devastated. If they had thrown her into that car so violently, what could they be doing now? Now that she had no defence but her hopes, now that she was totally exposed to their likes.

His stomach twisted at the thought, sheer rage cursing through his veins as his mind kept focusing on her terrified face.

No, if he was to achieve anything he couldn't allow himself to mull over these thoughts. If a revenge was to come, his only alternative was to shake these images off his mind and focus on replacing them with Zeller and his men's regretting the day the thought of taking Maria as a hostage crossed their minds.

And in order to do so, the first thing he needed to do was to find out where she had been brought.

Dornbirn was a border city, quite an important one among the several that surrounded the border, and if Zeller was anywhere near to intelligent, he wouldn't certainly risk to lose his battle in a common place. He would have preferred a safer place, constantly supervised by his men and a base seemed to be the structure responding to each of those characteristics.

He had seen the one in Salzburg several times, it had been a school once and then had been evacuated and turned into the Nazi base as soon as their threat had begun. He had received word that usually prisoners were kept in the basement where the rooms were smaller, harder to reach and definitely more humid and run down to make up for the worse of prisons. The upper floor was instead devoted to commanders' offices and soldiers' cots while the eventual others were left empty and free for events of exception.

Georg tried again.

The last time I've seen the black car, it was speeding through the main street, probably without taking any turn.

Following this reasoning, there were high probabilities for the basement to be set somewhere along the mountain border, which was a positive sign. He could climb onto the hill and follow the street through the light of the streetlamps and there were no doubts he would have recognized the building once he would find it.

Yes, that was the plan he had to follow for the time being, before the sun could begin its raise and expose him to more potential danger.

Ten after twenty-three, his feet started to run through the humid grass after a quick check of his wristwatch.

The search had begun.

A slow, rhythmic sound of steel hitting steel echoed along the corridor, it made a noise frightening enough to cause one chills. It slowly approached closer and closer.

A stop.

Then a violent shaking of the bars, as it could have pulled them out of the concrete walls any minute.

The noise pounded into Maria's head like a jackhammer and her eyes were forced open.

It was still dark, but not as much as it had been through the night.

Night? She couldn't believe she had been sleeping through it.

She hadn't as a matter of fact, she had been tossing and turning on that hard surface restlessly, vainly trying to find a more comfortable position, the ache in her muscles reminding her of that as she awakened further.

A dim light came from an unknown source quite close to her, probably a door or a window open, she couldn't tell. All she could see was a soldier standing in front of her cell, holding one of the bars with a hand while the other worked the gun back into the holster. That was what had been hitting the bars a few minutes earlier.

The soldier's expression was serious and furrowed with disdain, almost as if she were the one taking captives and treating them so inhumanly. His face looked somewhat familiar too but before she could observe his features further to remember him, he had turned on his heels and walked away.

Maria's head was aching, so sensitive to perceive the least imperceptible sound as the most deafening noise. It felt that way when steps seemed to approach her again, this time not coming from the corridor at her side but from the one almost in front of her cell, probably a shorter one since the number of steps she heard was certainly inferior.

She tried to move herself into a seated position but being unable to lean onto anything, but it resulted in a fight between the force of gravity and that of her muscles, a fight that she eventually won before the soldier could set his eyes on her.

She wouldn't have given them the satisfaction of seeing her struggling.

"You're awake" a new voice spoke.

It sounded younger and fresher than the old and rough voices she had heard the previous day.

She had kept her eyes closed for a little while, hoping the whiling pain in her head would fade away, but when she opened them again, she found out it was not one of the soldiers. At least, not one fully devoted to the regime, she hoped.

It was Rolf.

She should be hating him for threatening the life of her husband but something deep inside of her told her that he wasn't as bad as he was trying to appear. He was just a bit older than Liesl so it seemed her eyes couldn't possibly see him as such a dangerous threat, he couldn't be like them.

"Do you care?" she asked, hoping to receive the reaction she expected

"Well, I-".

She did.

She knew the young boy couldn't find in himself a valid reason to treat people as the Nazi used to, especially considering that she was the people in this case. He couldn't have done this to someone so close to Liesl, even if they had nothing to do with each other anymore.

"I need to eat, Rolf … please" hers was a beg, sincere and honest as she could be.

The look in the boy's eyes seemed to soften at the sight of an almost in tears Maria, but just as he opened his mouth to speak, his iris darkened again, and his brows suddenly frowned as all the other soldiers used to do.

"You should have thought about it before" his tone raised in an attempt to cover the trembling in his voice

"I won't be of any help if you let me starve to death before I give you the information you need".

The expression on the boy's face changed again.

She had a point, and a correct one too.

She knew she had hopelessly affected him by then.

The room fell silent for some seconds and either of them dared to break the eye contact: if he did, it would show overtly that he had succumbed to her request, but if she did, she would risk losing every inch of credibility she had conquered out of him.

"Oh, Rolf, Rolf, how unpolite of you to treat our guest in such ways ...".

A voice emerged from the same corridor Rolf had walked.

It was Zeller, his swollen face sporting a devilish smile as he approached. His steps slow, cadenced, conscious of his actions. He was standing in front of the cell before she knew, and this forced her to drip the long-sustained eye contact with the young boy.

Zeller's thick fingers slid into the pocket at the back of his trousers and shortly afterwards pulled out a bunch of keys held together by a wide steel ring. He toyed with them for a little while, emitting a tremendous din for her head, until one single key was being held between the short thumb and the thick index.

"She's a Baroness …" he spoke as the key was positioned in front of the lock and shoved into it.

A couple of turns and some of the bars opened, revealing a tiny door. It was small enough for him to need to duck his head to enter her cell, and he certainly wasn't a tall man.

"… treat her accordingly" he finished his sentence.

His hands moved right in front of her face. A hand was wrapped around a glass, it was stained, as so was the water inside it, something similar to small specks of soil floated on the surface. The other hand instead, was holding a core of bread, covered in greenish white spots and probably tough as a rock.

Zeller had heard the request she had done to Rolf.

Now, that was a problem.

Now he knew what she wanted and would have used it by any possible means to force her to speak.

All she had to do was to hope, hope that he hadn't listened and had decided to give her some nourishment on his own … if that misery could be called nourishment at all …

"I won't accept anything from you" Maria firmly stated.

Her eyes withering on his, determined not to let him off the hook so easily.

But fate seemed to work against her as at that very moment, her stomach emitted a rumble loud enough to be heard by both men around her.

Zeller smiled, knowing that he had won indeed.

"Doesn't seem, my dear. And we won't need you anymore if we let you starve to death before you speak, am I wrong?".

God, how she hated that man.

She never knew she could hate someone as much as she was hating him and his stupid beliefs. If only her hands were untied, she could have gathered enough strength to punch through his face and make his nose bleed in no time.

"Now, open your mouth, be a good girl" he urged her, prodding the tough piece of bread to her mouth.

Maria's lips pursed tightly, her head tossing to the side to avoid his touch as he kept pressing her.

"If you don't open that mouth, I will!" he shouted, his pressing becoming harder, nearly bruising her lips with the rough bread crust.

Whines on discomfort began to escape her, her breath became frantic for how little air could get through her nose and after some hectic minutes of struggle, her lips were forced apart, and that piece of bread forcefully violated her mouth.

It was even tougher than she thought, she had to soak it in her spittle before a little piece could come off. It tasted like wet dirt as she chewed but the minute she swallowed it, she was compelled to display an expression of sheer bliss at the introduction of food into her stomach again.

She hated herself for that.

She wasn't supposed to take benefit out of it or, at least, she wasn't supposed to show it to them.

Without any sort of contemplation with her mind, her body forced her to bite that piece of bread with all the strength she could muster in her jaw, devouring it as if it were a dainty delicacy and soon, she found herself chewing and swallowing at a pace so quick that was almost making her choke.

Zeller brought the glass to her lips, aware that in her position she couldn't have prevented herself from drinking even if she wanted to refuse it with all her might.

She sipped the metal tasting water and almost emptied the glass in one gulp.

It was only when both the glass and the palm were empty that she became fully aware of what she had done.

How humiliating.

Their lurid eyes had been taking pleasure in watching her being betrayed by her own irrepressible needs, staring at her with the same amused and entertained expression as if she were a zoo's greatest attraction.

How utterly humiliating.

Her shoulders begun to sob, tears formed in the back of her eyes and before she had the time to realize, she had broken in a guilty and angry spell of tears, experiencing a mortification no people on earth should ever deserve to experience.

"You must rejoice, Baroness. I think we are starting to get along with each other. I'm a gentleman so I made the first step in giving you what you wanted, next time it will be you giving me what I want" Zeller remarked.

Maria refused to look up at him, her body overwhelmed by wave after wave of desperation, but she knew he was displaying that same disgusting, selfish, devilish grin on his mousy face when he slammed the little gate close.

Georg, please.

His loving face was the only thing to bring the slightest bit of comfort to her poor heart.

He needed to find her, he had to.

Quickly, before the worse could happen, before violence would come.

Author's Note: Hello everyone, welcome back to this fic and thank you for the time spent reading this chapter. It absolutely broke my heart to put Maria in such conditions but there will be more lightness as we'll follow the children's escape to France. Although I found interesting challenging myself with this one and I am really looking forward to read your reviews and I hope to see you next week with a new update!