SARK - La Salle's kitchen - Following Allen's direction without at all examining it, Robin walked toward the farmhouse kitchen to see what sort of delivery might have been left for him there.
Not a man to allow himself much energy directed toward the dangers and pitfalls of introspection (particularly not now, not when the war and the Occupation must needs keep him ever-vigilant, decisive, and without danger of swithering), he nonetheless allowed his physical body, at least, to complain of its harsh treatment over the sunless hours he had just spent.
He wanted sleep, and yet he wanted to return to Marion's side. He wanted food, and yet he wanted to have the chance to debrief his men on the night before. He wanted a moment - two moments - alone with his thoughts, to be able to give precedence to himself, and yet, such was not an officer's lot. Not a good officer's, anyway.
He passed through the doorless frame from the hallway into the kitchen. Before him was a space he (and he knew his men) had come to think of as a sort of sanctuary from their mission, from the war. The long, trestle table was no longer set for any meal (farm hours being from early to late, and the early breakfast now but a memory), but the oilcloth table covering was not entirely bare. There, midway between either end, sat a lone man. His face was long, but physically so - not due to any particular expression. His hair, black as jet, mostly. And, unlike the members of the Saintly Six - even La Salle - he was clean-shaven. He sat as perfectly here in this simple home as he might at Buckingham Palace itself, or, should his expertise be called for, Downing Street.
Roger Stoker pulled the sturdy stoneware cup 'of something hot' (he had not dared request further clarification) away from his lips, and placed it sedately into an unmatched saucer the Gypsy had supplied him with before going and taking up silent watch at the nearby kitchen window.
"It was the Tripp, you know, Old Bean," he said, completely casually, to the man who had just entered, surprised to see how well his friend looked - not only for a dead man, but also for a soldier stranded, cut off from his headquarters, for the better part of a year. "I'm sure you confused it for the Goose, or the Dog and Pony, but I lay your mind to rest: it was the Tripp Club at which we were to meet for drinks the Tuesday following your return from France." He could not hold in the sly smile growing across his face.
He had greeted the others, of course - even managing to exchange several moments with Dale before he had had to leave on assignment - but it was Oxley he had worried about - had wished to see - most. He knew him to be competent enough, but yet there was always that memory in the air, that 'used-to-be' of their lives before the war. He had recruited Oxley to the project personally, repeatedly asking him to join long before Robin had shown up and done just that. Stoker had no such pre-service connection with the other men. Oxley had brought in Bonchurch, the others had come to SIS through various avenues, believing various promises. And when the accident had come, and the brass in charge had decided to officially decease the entire six, it was Stoker they sent to sell Oxley on the idea, believing that if Oxley, the (obvious to all) leader of the unit would agree, he would charismatically persuade his fellows with him.
And it had not happened so dissimilarly.
So, Robin, his man. His responsibility. His (if things came out badly) tragic miscalculation. At the sight of Robin in this kitchen, he felt as though it were Christmas, or the days just after. Festive, with a mind to sing a tune, demand the barkeep pour another - pull a cracker and sing Auld Lang Syne. But he was a Briton, and hardly raised to such an overflow of emotion. So he simply said, "Instead of waiting for you, it was decided to pay you a little visit."
"Muhammad not coming to the mountain?" Robin managed to get out of his throat without croaking, so dry it had become upon sighting, of all people, old Stoke in Stephenﾒs kitchen.
Stoker looked down into his cup, noting whatever they had given him to drink did not even have leaves left in the bottom to pore over. "Oh, indeed," he agreed, with an exceedingly understated raise of a single eyebrow.
What silly men, Djak thought to herself from where she sat off to the side, able to overhear the two men's reunion while taking her silent turn at the watch. She knew enough from the others to know that this new man, Stoker, was from their government, their military, far away, and that Johnson and the others expected him to fetch them off the island, and away home. Knew that they had neither seen, nor had two-way communication with this Stoker in over a year's time, and that they were each and all exceptionally fond of him. So why, she addressed the space inside her head as though it were the two men to her back, why don't you Gadjo show it?
There should be singing, a dance between the two men - a celebration in which all the clan would join. Sacred kisses exchanged. And tears. There should be an offering of tears.
Robin looked at Stoker, feeling for once all the play go out of himself. He had no ready quip, no quick-wit answer to show his stiff upper lip.
His mind could only circle 'round Hamilton, and the lines of "I walked a mile with Pleasure/She chattered all the way/But left me none the wiser/For all she had to say/I walked a mile with Sorrow/and ne'er a word said she/But oh, the things I learned from her/when Sorrow walked with me!"
Upon the sight of this man that signaled home and safety, and order - and even, a chap higher up the chain of command to which to (relievingly after all this time) defer - something inside him broke, like an over-wound violin string. He felt surprised the 'ping!' of it could not be heard outside his corporeal form.
It must have shown on his face, for Stoker crossed the room and rounded the table's corner edge to him as though he saw a faint coming on in the sudden alteration of his features.
"God save the King," said Robin, as Stoker arrived to stand opposite him. There were a thousand things he ought to say, to do. A salute, at least, to give. But he could think of only one. His face crumpled in upon itself like used tissue paper.
"I have lost Mitch," he confessed, despair enveloping him.
And they fell upon each other.
From her perch near the window, not turning around, Djak smiled, satisfied.
ALDERNEY - Office of the Kommandant - "And how is our returned Prince Charming-gone-a-wooing?" Kommandant Vaiser lifted his head from paperwork he was currently approving. "Our little Geis-erella? Was his date last night all he thought it might be and more?"
Diefortner watched his superior closely to gauge what would best be his own response to such a question. It never did to say too much, or to prove too enthusiastic on any point without knowing which way the prevailing winds a la Vaiser were blowing. "First-Landser Ellingheim reports that the Lieutenant did not bring the Lady Marion back to Barnsdale with him," he shared. "There was some commotion during the psychic's performance, shortly after which they disappeared." He considered for a moment, and then chose to add, "it would appear they were making free with both your Guernsey car, and your driver."
Vaiser sighed with exaggerated disappointment. "If only I thought you meant that in a carnal way, Underlieutenant."
The Kommandant laid down the fountain pen with which he had been signing orders. "Like when you told me he had given her a horse, or burnt her barn...and I was so certain - so hopeful - you were making use of some new, English euphemisms I had yet to learn." He let his voice trail off wistfully, like a young girl musing on the dramatic travails of her favorite heroine and lover.
"You would prefer he use force, if necessary, with the woman?"
"I would prefer," and here Vaiser let every bit of nasty lodged in his being flood his tone, "he use force anyway. That rusty door to what I suppose one must imagine is Lady Marion's bower won't open on its own anytime soon. It must be kicked in." He gave a slight shiver, never having taken to Marion interpersonally, much less finding her - and what he read as frigidity - sexually attractive. "Makes you wonder about Gisbonnhoffer's mother, don't it?" he asked in hyper-confidante mode. "Ice in her veins - glacier in her girdle, no?"
"Shall I send for the Lieutenant's personal file again?" Diefortner asked, intuiting that the Kommandant would like to review the notes on Gisbonnhoffer's parentage.
Vaiser sniff-sneered. "The idiot coward should take her already. Nothing has been stopping him for months now, not since she was found. For a man who clearly seems to want the little scone-eater so much, he does dither enough. If he's not careful, Diefortner, I've a mind to order camphor slipped into his rations - take away the distraction if he can't," he bellowed, "conquer it."
He looked back to his adjutant, sing-song and instructive. "I meant that figuratively," his head bowed to one side, "of course. As in, 'do the deed, pillage, rape, ruin the girl, leave her good for nothing but the madhouse - lose interest and return to the damn-blasted war!'"
Diefortner kept his eyes on Vaiser, thinking to himself that the Kommandant appeared to wish to school him on things today. So he played along. "Camphor?" he asked, with an air of light confusion.
"Camphor, man. Camphor. Suppresses the sexual urge and all that rises from it. Encourages docility." At this he snorted. "We've certainly a healthy supply here from which to take."
Of course Diefortner, who had often enough filled out requisition forms for the substance, knew this. Knew it was given to each prisoner in his or her meager rations in order to have just such an effect. Knew that if it were consumed over a long enough period of time the women, at least, became permanently sterile. But he also knew there were days the Kommandant enjoyed educating others on such minutiae.
And today was turning out to be just such a day.
Treeton Camp Offices - "You say you brought this to me to sell?" Gisbonnhoffer barked at the island constable.
At this point in what he had meant to be gentlemanly bargaining, Sark's Constable Paxton was beginning to believe his bright idea to hitch a ride to Alderney with the Kommandant's driver this morning in order to bring the ring to a broader market had...possibly...been a bad idea.
"And that you found it on Sark - near Le Seigneurie?" The bark did not abate from his voice. Gisbonnhoffer raised the emerald ring between the tips of two of his fingers and turned it over in the late morning light that spilled from his office window. He took a moment to marvel at the tiny proportions of the band that held it all together. How small the circumference, how delicate a finger must needs be to even put it on without having it catch on a knuckle. It would barely sit, perched just even with the tip of his nail, on his own, smallest finger.
"Yes, Sir, Lieutenant, Sir. That is the way of it. Found by Philippe, what works for Sark's Dame near the great house. He never wanders far from there, if at all. It was Philippe as found it, so it had to be, as he said, La Seigneurie - near La Moinerie. Strange things, they say, work their ways up and out of the ground there." For some reason he felt the need to accentuate this. "Always have said it, since I were a child."
"And who else knows of it?"
"Only the ReichKaptain Lamburg, Sir. But he would have none of it. Wouldn't buy stolen goods, he says. 'Probably came from an Islander', he says. Ran me off." Paxton scoffed. "As if a Sarkese - excepting the Dame herself - had money for such a thing."
"Your ReichKaptain is correct, though, Paxton," Gisbonnhoffer made an attempt at smoothness. "This item does have an owner. Me." He made a deliberate motion of placing the ring into his breast pocket and buttoning the flap as if to further secure it there.
Paxton half-choked on his own saliva, his eyes growing large as he began to comprehend what was in the process of happening.
Gisbonnhoffer renewed his questioning. "This man goes nowhere near the sea caves by the harbor at La Creux? You are certain?"
"Never," Paxton shook his head with conviction. "Philippe is half-simple. Frightened of the water. He would never venture so far from his bed." He wanted to raise the question of payment, but the Lieutenant had left him no easy or smooth way to do so.
"Then you may go." Gisbonnhoffer told him, his face already showing signs of thinking on something far-removed from the room they shared, or the man in front of him.
"Perhaps..." Paxton attempted, "something of a finder's fee?" He tried out his best smile.
Brow furrowing as though a gnat were pestering him, Gisbonnhoffer jerked his chin toward the man who had brought him Marion's lost ring, and set his eyes toward the door. "Very well," he told the constable. "I shall refrain from incarcerating you for leaving Sark and coming here without the proper travel papers. If you leave immediately."
Paxton stood frozen in place. He had not arranged any passage back. He had no idea how to locate the Kommandant's driver who had ferried him here. But it seemed very urgent that he return to the port.
To hurry the clearly stunned man along, Gisbonnhoffer added a monotone, "You are welcome."
Once alone, Gisbonnhoffer felt for the outline of the ring through the fabric of his pocket, his fingers continually returning there even as he attempted to center his mind on the work of the day and the reviewing of typed reports: deaths, attempted insurrections, pounds of concrete mixed and poured, feet of bunkers dug, current prison hospital occupancy.
But his mind swirled with the question raised by the ring, and how it had come to be so very far away from where Marion said she had been taken by the flyer, Thomas Carter. How did spending her time while abducted in a Southern sea cave lead to this ring - something valuable enough that not even a simpleton could mistake it for other - ending up in the North? Within La Moinerie, the old monastery ruin?
He struggled to think of a way Marion might have been confused about where she had been taken over those several days of her kidnapping.
But his need to work logic into the matter, he quickly realized, was like driftwood caught in a whirlpool. Rudderless, out of its depth.
He knew he would not sleep that night.
...TBC...