"I just got word from the guy who heard,
from the guy next door to me.
The girl he met just loves to pet,
and it fits you to a 'T'"

Time has passed since we last saw the seemingly-forgotten Roger Stoker in his cramped basement office at MI-6.

The year is now 1944, in the month of April. U.S. 5th Army Lieutenant Colonel Fred Otto has thus far managed to weather the dreadfully bloody and long-lasting siege of Italy's Monte Cassino unscathed. Well, mostly scathed. But still. It will not be until May 18th (in a siege that began in December) that the Allies will break through, and then advance onto the city of Rome by June fourth.

Throughout the early months of '44, it is the Russians who admirably (but at great price) have brought the principal pressure upon the German armies, the Russians who had for three months resisted savagely street by street, and house by house, finally overcoming their German attackers and taking back full possession of besieged Stalingrad on February second.

Allied bombers continue to hammer hard at Hitler's "Fortress Europe", and it has been decided that, rather than attempt invasion through the Pas de Calais region of France - directly opposite southern England - the highly, top-ranked security clearance planned attack will be set over the beaches of Normandy, to the east of the Cotentin peninsula, as the canny Germans have already heavily fortified the more logical and tactical landing in that Pas de Calais region.

Just as they have spent the lives and near-lives of countless slave laborers fortifying with concrete bunkers and the placement of landmines the Channel Islands, British Crown dependencies that Hitler is nearly fanatically obsessed with, feeling that with them he occupies part of Great Britain, ever-convinced that when the Reich's direct assault of Great Britain begins, it is from these humble islands that it will be launched.

His attention to and interest in the islands have distracted him, and lost him the further respect of more than one of his peers.

Such small dots of nothing, and so much energy expended upon them. Manpower, military might, munitions and armaments. But it is not only on der Fuehrer's mind that the Channel Islands now come to bear. It is the Allies, too, who, smartly seeing them as a location for a potential rear-attack by the enemy during their secret-until-the-day landing assault are at making the necessary plans to blockade the small bailiwicks, cutting off both their non-combatants and oppressed prisoners, and the Nazi overlords that occupy them. Very soon there will be no boats into, or out of the Islands. No planes without them running the risk of being immediately shot out of the sky. No further supplies from mainland France. No off-island communication. The deep privations experienced by regular, non-collaborating Island folk soon to be felt by the 'til-now high-living Germans stationed there.

Allied ships will sit and patrol, possibly within sight of the well-mined shores and beaches. The liberators, the good guys. Set to cause further pain and suffering. The Channel Islanders now twice scorned, twice let down. First, by their own Duke, the King of England, His Prime Minister and His Parliament. Soon, by the King's Own Royal Navy, at the behest of the Allied force meant to protect the Islands. Now where was the loyalty, where was the justice in that?

NORTHERN ENGLAND - Kirk Leaves, Country Estate of Sir Robert, Earl of Huntingdon - The Earl felt the peculiar warmth of the two small bodies to either side of him. Little Nan to his left, eight-year-old Perry to his right. Peculiar to him in its unintimidated intimacy. Peculiar that these two children would choose to partner him so at this time, this moment of grief and sadness rather than be out-of-doors with their school- and housemates.

He wondered to himself if he would not rather be out-of-doors as well, avoiding the fresh memories the morning's unfortunately-timed doctor call had brought about.

The chapel at Kirk Leaves was neither ornate nor large in its size. But it was always neatly and respectfully maintained. And it was within the manor proper, not set aside as its own building. It held six truncated pews, five-feet in length, made of local timber, an altar consecrated in the 1600s, and some Italian Renaissance religious objets d'art that Mrs. Oxley, the Countess Huntingdon, had acquired for the space while on their wedding trip those decades ago.

It was for Delia that the Earl had, for so many years, from time-to-time, frequented this holy nook. To reflect, to mourn, to...breathe in a place that spoke of the hope and promise of a one-day peace. A reconciliation.

Today he found himself trying very hard not to think of his beloved Delia as his eyes could not look away from the tiny, immobile bundle placed in front of the altar, wrapped only in the manor's softest blankets, as no casket had yet been crafted for it.

Of course, when Delia had been brought to the Kirk Leaves' chapel, their baby had accompanied her, lying as perfectly still as her mother, wrapped in Delia's arms. Neither to move again. Delia's eyes never to re-open, nevermore to twinkle and spark up at him.

He had never brought himself to name the child, as Delia had died without doing so. And without Delia he had found himself with little heart left to do much of anything.

Seeing this similar tiny bundle today his mind called to him that this child - its age, the age of its mother - might well have been that of his baby daughter's. Might well have been Delia's grandchild. Himself, today, perhaps a mourning grandfather.

He straightened and shook off the notion, but not without effort. "Nan, Perry," he whispered respectfully to the children in attendance with him. "Do go and find Mr. Wadlowe, and ask what news of Mrs. Nighten's husband coming up from London."

Like the good children they were, they set off to do just that.

Clem Nighten entered the chapel, the Earl having walked with him there now holding open one of the two doors for him to pass through, but clearly planning to leave him to his solitude once he did so.

He thought himself a coward. Surely Huntingdon thought him one as well, not to go directly to his wife's side, not race up the stairs and into the room as Walter Pidgeon might, sweep her into his arms and assure her all would soon be right.

"I was uncertain whom to notify," the Earl had told him in apology, as they exchanged muted greetings upon his arrival as the butler accepted his coat, hat and case.

"Yes," Clem had agreed, "Claire's parents have passed on. I should have thought to leave you her brother and sister-in-law's contact information."

The Earl had nodded, as though considering. "Knowing it might take you some time to manage the trains and so forth, I rang for Lady Nighten."

Clem was never sure what to think of the Earl's persistent use of his divorced mother's former married title, rather than the more-appropriate 'Lady Miranda'. Whether the Earl's mind simply refused to recall the change in her station, or whether it was simply his personal way of pretending that her divorcement from his closest of friends had not occurred.

"And so your mother is here, has been here - with her."

"Of course," Clem had heard himself echo hollowly. "That is good. Certainly that was the right thing."

"It was my own private physician in attendance," Nighten could tell the Earl meant this to assure him, "he has said that with rest and time she will pull through."

He had mumbled something vague though appropriate in reply.

And here he was in the chapel, hiding. Which was ridiculous. More delay? Was the overly long trip from Vauxhall Cross, with the necessary stop-over at the war rooms on King Charles Street not delay enough? What sort of man was he, who played at war day in day out - slept battle plans and took tea over top-secret tactical strategies - and yet was afraid to encounter his own wife in this, of all moments?

But Claire was...Claire was not strong. Any fortitude, any pluck she had ever displayed was mere artifice, a game, underneath of which she was so soft, so pliable, so...in need of sheltering. The loss of this child - on top of their other, earlier-in-the-carrying losses - would not shatter her like fine china, it would, more likely, dissolve her until she simply disappeared, drowned within herself.

She was not like his mother. But then, even his mother was no longer quite like herself. Something of her determination, her grit, seemed to have passed out of being at the prolonged separation from his father. It would be indiscernible, he did not doubt, to most. But he could not look to her for strength in this moment. He knew her too well, would see the chinks and cracks showing in the present-day woman, the strain - things she never would have revealed in the past. And finding a lack of strength in her would disassemble him into something less, even, than a man.

No, in this, he was to be alone. And in his aloneness was also the need for culling strength, resilience from somewhere else, so that he might have something, something to offer his wife, whom he could not delay attending upon forever.

He had never been of a particularly fervent religious bent, but he had never more regretted this lack until now. The space about him called out for supplication, for prayer and inward thoughts. His fist was all but grinding the back of the pew he had set it upon into sawdust.

It had not immediately, in all his tangled thoughts, occurred to him why the Earl had brought him here. But, now, as with clear eyes he surveyed the dark wood paneled chapel in which he was ensconced, a lightly pastel blanket - more at home on a bed than as an altar piece - caught his eye, and though something told him not to, his hand came away from the back of the pew, and he was propelled forward to view it.

Within the blanket, swathed like the Baby Jesus in a Christmas Pantomime, was a child. Oh Lord, he thought, his child. A tiny thing. Not so tiny as might not take breath, but tiny in the way of a newborn; precious in its miniature fingers, their transparent nails like a minnow's scales - an age of babies with which he had little experience.

He tried to recall the series of messages he had received on his way. Leaving Vauxhall (the message of Claire having gone into labour rendered as genteelly as possible): 'Come straightaway, Mrs. Nighten is in earnest.' At the war rooms, where he had no choice but to stop on his way out of London: 'baby girl delivered.'

And then, as he had been at switching trains further into traveling northward, he overheard a roving porter announcing that the telegraph station had a message for Clem Nighten - no, he could not recall its contents as clearly at the others. Not the wording, anyways, but it had informed him that his daughter, only recently come to earth, had returned to Heaven. And that, of course, he must still journey on to Kirk Leaves, no hope, no joy, nothing new to anticipate upon his arrival there. Only the same sadness, the same despair, now only deepened, inveterate.

As he stood by the altar (as though a man about to accept a Communion wafer), the pale skin of the baby was in a way so like his sister Marion's that he could not immediately believe the telegram had spoken truth. He reached for the child, never noticing that beyond the odd pheasant or other weekend-in-the-country catch one might acquire when shooting or riding, he had never touched anything dead.

The cloth of the blanket was soft against his skin, soft in comparison to the carved wood of the chapel, the austere pews. He marveled to see that the wee thing had perfectly formed eyelashes, brows like a light shading of pencil.

He let his finger trace a line on her face, imagined that her mouth pulled into a smile, a baby laugh at her father's gentle touch.

But of course there was no response.

He again found that he had no strength for this. The black curls about her head were too familiar. Too much a reminder of the one person whose strength, whose presence he so needed at this moment.

"Oh, Marion," he cried out, holding the child's body closer to him. "Oh, God! Tigs!" not sure to whom he directed his prayer. "I cannot do this. I - "

His great, athletic shoulders shook with weeping. All gregariousness that had ever been assigned to him in life had evaporated at that changing of trains like steam off a morning meadow. In his job, in his life, he had come to need - for nearly a decade now - to hold himself in at all times, to measure and parse out what was acceptable to be said, and to whom.

As he continued on in his lament to Marion, to God, in this he held himself in check no longer at all. His frame trembled with the release, his voice cracked and broke. He was a storm of despondency, no calm even where he stood within its very eye.

But in the wake of such a storm the child, his child, stirred not at all.

Nor ever would.

...TBC...