GUERNSEY - Marion Nighten had not yet begun to dress for bed, but she found herself drawn to her wardrobe nonetheless. How roomy it seemed now, how nice and orderly, and no longer hiding anything - since she had removed her stash of liquor away to the Nightwatch windmill. There she had stowed it among the rest of her things, waiting in secret until it might be needed - but no longer by her, no longer by the woman who had often felt the necessity to make use of it to get through a day - a night - during this enduring occupation.

What a significant event it had seemed, packing it up into a rucksack and carrying it far away from Barnsdale House. The glass bottles' clinking reminding her with each step what she was about to do - the hope she was about to agree to embrace. The hope for coming days that would require nothing to get through them but that which she carried already within her. The hope for coming nights, and for sleep that came naturally, and needed no hurrying along, no tonic to ensure fright-free, unmemorable dreams.

She did not say the words out loud, did not share (for who could she share such with?) the notion growing within her, the understanding that she was again, in love with Robin Oxley. That, perhaps, she had never truly been out of love with him.

She would not have often used the word giddy to describe herself, certainly would never have used it in the past years under Germany's thumb, but as she walked toward her bed to lay down for a moment (just like any twitterpated girl gazing at the emptiness that was her ceiling, filling it with thoughts of her beloved), she did notice she had to actively refrain from employing a waltzing gait.

The ceiling above her was blank, for all that it was elaborate in its moulding, but even in the scant cracks its plaster wore she could trace the lines of his face, the crinkle of his smile, the ridges of his now-hardened knuckles.

For the moment she was an idiot, and gave herself over to it - but not so much of an idiot that she allowed her thoughts to progress forward in time. No, she parsed out her happiness second by second, rationing it because she had no wish to send out something so newborn, so precious into what future she felt the world held. For her, for Robin, for lovers anywhere...

She had agreed (after much internal discussion) to let herself love like a lightning strike; instant, immediate and undeniable. Robin had, after all, died before - and under far less dire circumstances than they found themselves up against here. And the battle they fought, the siege they currently endured, the siege of all that was right and good, was, she still believed, destined to fail. And so she would love (as she fought) in the now. The present all that could be won, that could even be endured.

It was how she had parted herself from the liquor. If she refused to acknowledge tomorrow, and the next day, and what new horrors, what new injustices they might bring - if she focused entirely on the moment at hand - she could live, she could breathe. She could, love. And she could give up those bottles of insurance against coming days when her life, her breath, her love, might well all be at risk.

It was to just these thoughts she unintentionally fell asleep - hair done, lipstick on, still in her riding jodhpurs and matching blazer.

Marion woke - she did not know how much later - to the door of her bedroom being thrown open with a significant degree of force.

She had not disengaged any of the lights in the room when she had accidentally dozed, and so she was able to see that the man striding with sour determination into her private chamber was Geis. He moved so quickly her sleepy eyes struggled to track him.

A heartbeat and a half later and he was at her bedside, throwing the cozy floral chair by her bed stand onto its side and going down to one knee, where he grabbed the hair at the base of her neck (not much there, despite the weeks of it growing out since Carter's shearing of it) and forcefully set his hot mouth upon hers.

Her mind began seeing little explosions, desperate for any insight as to what was going on. In the interim since she had broken their engagement, though he had on occasion spent time at Barnsdale (according to the code of Occupation it was still, after all, his house), he had been aloof and reserved, and her quite glad of it.

She was not fool enough to believe that he was no longer interested in her, but she had come to expect that any renewing of his former affections toward her would come gradually, tentatively, even. This assault was neither.

She felt herself begin to struggle (as one might for air when being unexpectedly dunked) the longer the forcible kiss lasted. And as he was finally pulling away, his mouth twisted into more of a bite than an affectionate salute.

Her breath did not immediately return to her, and though she thought best to mask it, she was not immediately able to bury the shock and disgust in her eyes at his aggressive imposition.

"Do you hear that?" he asked her. His face was only just removed from hers, his hand in her hair twisted to keep her own head from moving in its place.

"What?" she managed. She knew her eyes showed uncertain fear.

"That kiss spoke volumes. A little voice," he told her, "saying, 'Marion has a secret'. Saying 'Marion likes to feel better than others, above them - though her crimes are no less grave. No less unforgivable'," he lingered on the word, "'than others'.'" His mouth came together in a grim line.

At this declaration he looked at her, as if he expected some response. Confused and distracted by the mounting pain of her scalp, she had none.

Using her hair, he jerked her out of the bed and thrust her toward the bedroom door (quite the opposite of what she had expected him to do next).

Apparently having heard the commotion, Eleri came winging down the hallway in her nightclothes. "What is it? Is something - ?"

"Landser Thered!" Geis bellowed, his tone as loud as his jarring footfall in jackboots, taking no care if he disturbed the sleeping household.

A landser appeared.

"The Kommandant's daughter is to remain indoors."

The landser sharply nodded his understanding, and began marching Eleri back to her room when the door of Edward's chamber also opened, and Lord Nighten's eye could be seen in the crack.

Marion tried, from her position in front of Geis, to nod comfortingly to her father, to try and convince him everything was alright, and encourage him to return to his bed.

"Thered!" Geis again bellowed, now over his shoulder to where the landser had gone with Eleri. "The old man, too. House arrest for him as well."

"Sir!" Thered crisply agreed, closing the door to Lady Nighten's suite with efficient dispatch, Eleri secured inside.

Without further speech, Geis herded Marion out of the house with many forcible proddings, and toward the open paddock area in front of the animal barn.

She had no clear idea of what was happening, of what was possibly about to take place. Although she had witnessed him in a high temper before, she had never been the inciting cause, or the object of it. And she had no concrete idea as to why this night would be any different.

When they were in sight of the barn she saw three other soldiers there, men she did not know, and a Guernsey constable, Dunne, whom she did. Though the blackout was to be in effect, they queerly each held fiery torches, the light of them multiplying as they reflected off the whitewashed stone of the barn's side.

Marion's Nightwatch-informed mind momentarily suggested to her that the side of the barn looked a great deal like similar locations she had heard about where Islanders would been taken by Germans to be executed.

Had Geis somehow - someway - deduced her Nightwatch alter ego? Had he worked out something of Robin and the stranded unit?

Mitch. Robin always said everyone broke. That no one could resist torture for long. Had Mitch broken? Given them up?

And was this moment, this surreal night - lit like a pagan revel, a satyr's ring for dancing in the forest - was this to be her final view of the world?

"Hold her," Geis demanded of the soldiers, and strode off into the shut-up barn, returning with a bridled Dovecote.

He held the reins of the gentle woken-from-sleep horse as he looked at Marion.

His voice came out more like himself, less rough, without shouting. "Have I not kept you and your father in fine nick?" he asked her, illustrating Barnsdale House to the back of her. "Have I not protected you? As in '41, when everyone not island-born, when all officers of the Great War - like your father - were deported...when reprisals at the rate of two for one were required for the Germans expelled from Persia? Did I not protect you then, when those people were sent away to camps in Germany? Not even allowed to stay on here, not at the Alderney camps? Did I not?"

"Yes," she agreed, her voice thready as a spectre's. "Yes! You have done all those things. And you have our gratitude!"

"But not your love?" he asked, not waiting for her reply. "Not your loyalty?"

Before she could answer his pistol was out and he had sunk the first bullet into the strong Percheron's flank.

Dovecote startled and yelled with the pain, the unexpected cruelty.

Marion's heart seized.

"I have had your fisherman killed," Geis informed her, as though bragging, another bullet now into the draft horse's haunch.

"Oh, please. Please!" Marion begged him, her heart beating irregularly, her mind and reasoning a-tilt. "Kill her! Be merciful!"

"No." He spoke flatly and without affect. "Not used to hearing that, you spoilt brat? I am through doing as you wish. Try that on for size. I will not kill her. Instead, you will watch as she endures the pain of her oncoming death. And if you look away, I will have you forcibly positioned so that you may not."

Her distraction, her total concentration on what had been done to her beloved pet was so intense that she failed to register the tears of frustration, of confusion and horror bursting from her eyes. "So you will kill me?" she questioned him. "For - " she cast about for what had so angered him. "For dissolving our engagement?"

The soldiers on either side of her held her by the arms, preventing her, even, from wiping her own face.

"No!" Geis shouted.

She saw the torch blaze reflected in his grown-wild eyes.

"You think you can humiliate a man like me and get away with it? That you can...smugly gloat as I allowed you to bring me low? That I cannot see through your sanctimonious charade, Lady Marion? You, in your high-and-mighty self-righteous tower are as compromised as I." He scoffed forcefully through his nose.

She pled with him. "I do not know what you are speaking about. I do not know what you want from me. Tell me," she promised. "I will give it you!"

He stepped toward her, putting his face close, and on level with hers. "Confess." He pulled away. "That you were married before. That you are likely still married." He raised his gloved hand and pointed his finger, accusingly, at her. "That you chose to punish and humiliate me for that which you are also guilty."

"No!" she denied it with as much force as she could muster, held there between his soldiers. "Never! Why would you think this? I am, and always have been, unmarried! This is madness!"

He turned to the side and buried a third and a fourth bullet into the horse, which, even in its labored breathing, screamed.

"Then I shall have Thered bring out your father. And we shall ask," his lopsided smirk grew up his jawline, "him."

Marion thought of her father. Of the fact he had not so long ago seen Robin. Of the undependability of his mind, of what he might say, or give away.

"No," she reneged on her immediately preceding denial, "You are right. I - I am discovered. Forgive me! It is true. I was married." She feared to say more, not sure what he expected her 'confession' to reveal.

Geis did not re-holster his pistol. She heard the armhole seams of her blazer tear from her struggling against the men tasked with restraining her. The buttons on its front long ago popped.

"And where is he now?" Geis continued his questioning. "This husband of yours? Whom I know to be a soldier?"

"He. I. We. I." She fell back on a version of the truth. "We quarreled." Her head dropped and she shook it from side to side. "We are - no longer together."

Geis let go of where he had pointlessly still kept his grip on the collapsed horse's reins. He stepped toward her, his face near enough to hers for a kiss. "So you have lied to me. How many other times?" He nearly spat the question. "About how many other things? The airman?"

"No," she told him. "No." She wished desperately she knew how better to convince him.

"What of the flier, Marion?" he demanded. "What of him? Did you lie about that, too? Perhaps he is your Islander husband? Perhaps your capture and torture a fraud? A sham? As is your falsely righteous indignation over my own marriage?"

Geis stopped his examination of her and cast his eyes from side-to-side in the open paddock where they stood. He re-holstered and stowed his pistol, gesturing to Constable Dunne to hand him one of the soldiers' torches where they had been thrust into the ground so that they could restrain her.

Geis took it in his hand, and before turning away, accused her. "How long have I been here? With you?"

Her eyes were now tearing from the closeness of the flame.

"Three years," he recalled to her. "Two winters. I have tended your estate. And yet, I have failed in all this to gain your respect? To deserve your loyalty?" He shook his head as if mystified.

He moved to the barn, closing the doors on first one end, waking through the barn's long row of stables to the opposite side and then closing the other, securing both with the drop-down planks from the outside.

For a moment nothing was apparent to Marion except that he had closed up the barn for the night.

And then from within, Gypsum began to bellow with fear. And the open tops of exterior stall doors began shortly to fill with firelight, ever increasing in its brightness as it was fed by the hay and straw stored within.

And the animals began to startle and shout from where they had been trapped inside.

And over it all it was as though someone had set the needle onto Verdi's great Requiem and its Dies irae. The declaration of judgment pounding through her head like as though she were being stoned. Each powerful note, each ringing choral shout a stone's impact upon her flesh. "Dies irae, dies illa," the choir would chant forbiddingly, "Dies irae, dies illa/Day of wrath, that dreadful day/the world will melt in ashes..."

She hardly noticed when Geis removed himself and strode away from where she remained in the grip of his soldiers, to watch the barn, and all life that was within it, burn.

Gisbonnhoffer walked with purpose, planning to get himself back to the house, collect his right-hand man of late, Thered, and depart this place. He had not gone too terribly far when a figure streaked into him from out of the small woods.

It proved to be a disheveled Sir Edward.

"Herr Geis!" the elderly man beseeched him, grabbing at his arm, trying to pull him with him, on his way clearly bound for the now-blazing barn. "Marion! The barn! We must, we must rescue her!"

Geis did not take the time to explain to the dementia-prone elder statesman that his daughter was not within the barn. That she was, in point of fact, in no present danger whatsoever. He only thrust the man's dubious grip from him, nearly knocking the semi-invalid down, and continued on his determined path back to the house, his car, and the harbor with its waiting launch to Alderney.

"Here," she heard Constable Dunne speak to the Germans. "Get her to a tree, and we shall tie her in view of it. Good enough for the Lieutenant's liking. I will then stay and watch her, and you may be about your other business."

The two soldiers looked to one another and agreed. And then, left.

"Help me," Marion petitioned Dunne once the other men had disappeared into the night. "Let me comfort her," she indicated the still dying Dovecote, nodding toward her with her head. "Or at least, kill her yourself. Help me. Let me into the barn. Let me attempt to rescue the others."

"Lady Marion," he told her, an unpleasant-to-see pragmatism in his expression, "I will not risk my life for horse nor barn. No matter how cheaply the Germans think of us Islanders. Now, you've come to no harm, here. And I mean to see you further kept from it. I will do as Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer ordered. And then I will see you safely back to the house."

Because Edward came at the barn through the moderate cover of the small woods, his arrival was not immediately apparent to Marion, nor to the soldiers at that time still tasked with watching her and the ever-growing conflagration. Sir Edward had the plank swing up and off its rest, and managed to pull the door wide.

A huge belch of smoke burst from out of the barn, the flames rising higher at the intake of new oxygen his venting of the blaze provided.

"Marion!" he wailed, and in the fire's light then she saw him, her screams at him to stop - that she was there, beyond the fire's danger, lost to him in the nearby noise of the inferno and the dying animals.

She thrust herself against the binding's grip, screaming for her father, tearing the inside of her throat in the process, great coughings coming from her lungs where they had begun gulping smoke as the wind changed.

Constable Dunne's posture spiked at recognizing that it was Sir Edward running into the flames. "It may be that I will not risk my life for livestock nor edifice, but Sir Edward is quite another matter," he told Marion, and took off for the blazing interior.

It was likely not a long time before he again came out, but the ensuing moments played like three lifetimes to her. She saw Constable Dunne exit the barn, something draped over his shoulder. At first she thought, foolishly, that it was Gypsum's saddle, until she realized it was the frail body of her father.

Dunne laid him on the grass, not far from Dovecote, and moved to slice Marion's ropes, and free her from the tree.

She was to her father's side before she even had time to discern if he were still breathing. He was. But only just.

"Marion," he spoke to her, his voice shallow, but his eyes bright with unaccustomed lucidity.

"Oh, Father," she said, not knowing how to explain to him what was going on, what was taking place here - what was shortly - it was obvious to her - about to take his life.

"I have seen Robin," he told her, and for a moment she feared she had imagined the understanding and comprehension in his face. "I do not know how he came to be here, nor how it is that he is not dead as we were told, but I thank God he is here to be with you. Even as I - even as I - "

"Shhh," she told him. "Do not try to speak."

"Do not try to speak?" he asked her, a shine of his old vim in his incredulity. "What sort of encouragement is that coming from a man's best speechwriter, eh? His political muse?"

She did not mean to, but she half-laughed. He sounded so much of himself - of his old, greatly-missed and mourned self.

"You are my Egeria," he said. "You must never doubt it." He reached about for her hand. "But even so, in this world - in what our world has become, I do not know you at all, do I? The things you have accomplished for us here. The care you have taken. The risks - "

"No," she wished to assure him. "I am myself. And, as always, yours."

He patted her hand. "There is much in my life I fear I should not have done. Especially in regards to you, my dearest girl. A girl, after all, needs her mother," he took a ragged breath. "But I could not take back my writings. Our monograph."

She did not have to ask which one.

"When you see her again, be kind." His eyes shone with the thought of his still-beloved wife. "And cultivate generosity towards her - if not on your own account, then on mine." He tried to nod, but his head only shook with tremor in the effort. "Yes?"

She nodded, not caring what she was agreeing to, only happy to hear him speak.

"I think. I think I have been a prisoner here, here in this place that I have loved since a child. A prisoner on this island, and, of my own mind. And though I know myself in this moment, and I know you - and your mother, and Clem to be in London - I am still a man in a world he no longer understands. Events have outpaced me," he tried to smile, "outstripped any perspicacity I might have saved for understanding them." His voice gained an unexpected infusion of vigor in his speech. "But I know; if I leave this world in your hands, for I had ever trained you for just such a task, if I must leave, and you must carry on - Marion, you must carry on. You are my greatest contribution, my best legacy. You will help see it put to right. Carry a little of me with you as you do it, yes?"

"Yes, Father, whatever you say."

"Is it alright?" he asked her, the vigor, the impassioned tone gone, "alright to close my eyes now? To sleep?"

"Yes, my darling," she encouraged him, though she would have given her own life's blood to keep his eyes open, clear, and upon her. "Sleep, now. Oh, sleep," she choked back a sob, cradling his head. "It is good to dream."

"My best dreams have always been saved for you, my sweet girl," and he closed his eyes with a shallow sigh, and breathed no more.

At some point Constable Dunne had left them like this, father and daughter, and took himself off from their vicinity so that they might have privacy in their final conversation.

It was he who came to her and let her know he thought they might return to the house now, wake some of the staff to come out for Sir Edward's remains.

"No," she told him, roughly, jerking her arm away from his comforting hand, the side of her face reddened in the light of the still-burning fire, the other side deeply enshadowed, chiaroscuro. "I will not return to that house as long as I live."

She knelt and kissed her father, sorry to leave him so, to leave him there, alone, and tore off into the woods, not caring if the Constable followed her in an attempt to enforce the curfew or not.

Come now, she told herself as she ran, come now, come now, come now. Things to do, things to do, lives to save. Lives to save, she chanted to herself, half-holding her breath, knowing that if the Nightwatch did not broadcast as expected further death could be the outcome.

And she knew she could not leave the reporting of the fire, and news of her father's death to the Germans, who would find some way to sully it - to use it to their own ends. She would not let them do so. She would fire the first volley. The people of Guernsey would know the truth.

Her relief upon reaching the windmill was total. She knew she would need something to steady herself, something to empower her to distance herself, if only for that hour, from what had just happened, and pull off a broadcast.

She recalled her liquor. She tried not to recall the foolish thoughts she had been indulging in earlier in the evening where its banishment was concerned.

She poured amounts into three glass jars at once, lined them up in front of herself, and half-saluting each, raised them one at a time before letting them pass, without truly swallowing, over her tongue.

"Dovecote. A gentle beauty," she announced to no one. Down.

"Gypsum. The originator of our present troubles," she referenced his throwing of her father, which had first brought her to the island, "but I loved you nonetheless, my lad." Down.

Her hand shook a little as she set down the second jar.

"Sir Edward, Lord Nighten," she said, perhaps somewhat louder, still to no one. "Defender of Right, Paragon of Good, the King's own man." She raised the third glass jar high as though a filled pub were present before her, and her standing drinks for them in memory of her father. "You were worth every moment - " She stalled out, her grip on the jar tightening. She thrust it to her mouth, and let its contents slip down, her hand still seized upon the drinking vessel. When she brought it away from her lips, faster than the excess could dribble onto her chin, she threw it, dashing it into the stone foundation of the mill, where its everyday thickness shattered with a dull clatter nothing at all like the crystal that should have been used in the saluting of such a man.

It was the hardest task to simply locate records with songs she thought she might play. Had her eyesight been less impaired perhaps it would have proven easier.

"God Save the King, Vive la France, and God Bless America. It's two o'clock...and welcome to the Nightwatch." She uncharacteristically found she had to clear her throat. "We begin with local news tonight, y'all," she spoke over the airwaves. "For those of you looking out tonight, you will see our top story, as earlier this evening the Jerries decided to torch the horse barn at the Barnsdale estate, destroying livestock, hay and straw, as well as rendering various farm implements useless - and (as we have grown to expect) robbing fuel-desperate Islanders of using the barn's structural wood in the heating of their homes. Additionally, it has been reported via reliable sources that Sir Edward, Lord Nighten, owner and resident of the estate, lost his life in the ensuing blaze while trying to rescue his daughter, whom he believed to have been trapped within. No information about services or his internment is available as of airtime."

When she finished she felt as though she had been at holding her breath under water for fifteen minutes.

She sat a moment and waited for her ears to pop. Like an automaton, glassy-eyes, disengaged, she spun record after record. Gave news updates twice, but before the end of the hour she was facedown, unconscious beside the mike, empty bottle on its side near her right hand.

Thirty minutes after the Nightwatch would usually have reliably concluded, the figure of a man stole down the steep stairway into the half-cellar of the windmill. When he caught sight of Marion passed out, her head down on the crate that held her microphone, his heart went out to her. The two glass jars and various bottles of liquor were still set out in easy distance of her reach. One bottle, drained of its contents, had capsized near her hand.

He stepped to the mike, certain to disengage the transmit button, then moved to lift the needle off the record where it had caught in a faulty groove, and had been at repeating (and broadcasting) the same phrase for over twenty minutes.

Despite his understandable worry at finding himself here, out past curfew, consorting with someone involved in clear resistance, he did not hurry himself to be about business so much that he could not stroke back her hair from her face, and pat it where it lay, there, behind her ear.

He squatted down to be on level with that ear.

"Lady Marion," he encouraged her. "Come now, we must be away. Come."

She opened her eyes slowly, recognizing the voice before fully recalling where she was or what had happened. She smelled quite a lot of liquor, not realizing it was on her own breath and in her own pores.

"Mr. Thornton?" she asked, as she might have done as a child, stopping by his cottage on one of her woodsy tramps to ask for a drink of water.

"Yes, Child," he assured her unfocussed eyes. "Come with me."

Without protest, she did.

...TBC...

A/N: With respect, further chapter updates will not be posted until 15 June at earliest. Thank you for your understanding.