SARK - La Salle's Kitchen - "I could rightly have you clapped in irons, you know," Roger Stoker threatened levelly, grasping at any straw of which he could think to get Oxley in his boat, bound for England. His face twisted into a grimace not unlike those brought on by unexpected dyspepsia. "'Tis the usual punishment for disobeying a direct command - when 'flogging 'round the fleet' 's not practical." The muscles around his left eye hardened and he gave a sharp thump of his fist against the wooden trestle table, causing his empty stoneware cup to startle nosily in its mis-matched saucer. "Do not think," he exhaled strongly through his nose, "I could not persuade the others to help me do it - see you restrained and shipped home as ordered. Johnson, at least, I could count upon agreeing with me, and Reddy - quite possibly I could win over Reddy..." But his voice (and even his conviction in the matter) began to lose steam.

Unit 1192 had, at times disturbingly to the high command, ever been more loyal to each other - and most importantly to their commanding officer Oxley - than they had ever been to the brass in Home Office. They rather seemed to believe they served the King directly (even, perhaps, autonomously), and any bureaucrat or the like who got in the way of what they had well perceived their duty was, was, frankly, as much an impediment to them as the enemies which they fought with deadly (and stealthy) force. A conviction, while not convenient, that had nonetheless served them more than well - rather, outstandingly - when in the field, when self-dependent.

When returned home between missions it had, rather predictably, resulted in ill-timed insults and the occasional bout of fisticuffs - both in and out of uniform, with only Bonchurch among them, generally, willing to attempt to clean things up and smooth them over on behalf of the lot afterward with apologies and public mea culpas equal parts humility and contrition.

Good-natured contrariness bubbled up in Oxley's eyes. "Perhaps you'd best have those irons at the ready, then, Old Man, as it will hardly be the last directive I've ignored over these last months," Robin answered him, his challenge more friendly than antagonistic.

Realizing he should not have needed such a reminder, Stoker's mood pivoted instantly toward the sympathetic. "No one's to hold that against you, of course. You lot, out here without direction, without an outlined mission, only half-a-plan. If fear of an official reprimand's what's keeping you from returning with me -" he meant to finish with, 'you needn't fear it, but know every chap at MI-6 not only reveres what you've managed to do, but has nearly elevated you one and all to legendary status. The ones that know about 1192, that is.' But Robin cut him off.

"I've gotten married," he said, one finger drawing casually on the oilcloth's design, careless and meandering, as one might while wasting an afternoon at a sidewalk cafe.

"You've what?" Stoker's expression hardly knew what cast to take on.

Oxley's tongue came out to rub contemplatively at the point of an eyetooth. "Entered into a nuptial contract without the approval or assent of my direct superior."

Crikey, this was irregular. More so, even, that it was Robert Oxley sitting here telling him this. Though male, even Stoker knew of the man's next-door-to-caddish reputation pre-War. Certainly he had had no reason to expect this old dog to turn to new tricks whilst enduring an Occupation.

The horror and confusion on his face must've shown.

"It has been kept secret, though. Only Stephen, the Gypsy, the pilot Carter, and...my wife know of it." Here his tone had veered more toward apologetic.

"But it was solemnized and registered?"

Robin nodded. "In an unusual way, but, yes. And there have been other, smaller infractions."

"By all means, save them!" Stoker pled. "Save them for your debrief!" He slapped his own hand at his chest. "My heart cannot likely take many more. So it is this...wife who stands as the reason you will not return? Your dislike of being separated from her...?" Stoker began to work up a logical syllogism in his head involving the comparison of Robin's newlywed hesitance to that of any other serviceman's back at home.

But Robin answered him before his argument was fully constructed. "Yes," he said. "And no, not in the way you think. It is not that I fear being parted from her. It is that I now know I cannot live happily at present having her near." His face and tone had lost all pretence of joking or playfulness. "Stoke, she is going to have a child, and I need -"

Now it was Stoker's turn to interrupt him. "No," he said, denying his unasked question, though without great passion. "Military personnel only." He shook his head as if to get Robin's petition out of his ears like unwelcome water after a bathe in the sea. "I cannot even imagine the reception I might receive back at the rendezvous were I to have an expectant Islander girl with me in the place of you. I am not sure they would allow me - allow us - onboard." His mind hurt with the thought of it.

"No, Stoke." It was Robin's turn to shake his head. "That's it. She's not an Islander girl. And to look at her, you'd not know she was yet carrying a babe."

Stoker thought up the strongest statement he could make to once-and-for-all silence Robin on this unpleasant request. He slapped his hand to the table in hopes of giving it an air of finality. "I would not agree to take this woman, were you to convince me she were the very Nightwatch herself."

From where he had been leaning in to their discussion, Oxley gave himself a push away from the table, his chair sliding back about a foot from table's edge, and leaned back in his chair, as though he were ready to relax, possibly light an 'after-dinner' smoke. "I would very much appreciate it," he said, "if you ceased referring to my wife as 'this woman'."

Stoker let out his pent-up breath. He had never liked rowing with Oxley, no matter how pedestrian the subject. One always came out (whether justified or not) feeling like a spoiled sport. "Well I cannot very well address her as Vicountess Huntingdon, the Lady X, now can I? Or are we to again go over the details of your title being suspended at the moment in the interest of your government's necessary secrecy? You are, after all, a dead man. Dead men are not meant to run about the countryside marrying and producing heirs. It is, at best unseemly. If not perverse." He ended on what he thought a well-deserved huff.

"Very well," Stoker's articulated censure of his behavior did not seem to have dimmed Oxley's mood in the least. "You may consider her my widow, the Dowager Vicountess Huntingdon, a lady in her own right as well as in mine:" here his jaw slightly cocked, ready to enjoy the reveal. "The Lady Marion, born Nighten."

"By the...by the..." Stoker could think of nothing he knew strong enough to swear by. "Clem's sister. Trothed to a Jerry, we'd heard. So, not true, then."

"Oh, no," it seemed Robin had to disagree with even the most facile of his statements. "Most certainly true. Possibly she still is - engaged to the bugger, that is. Oh, and if you're at collecting Marion-based intelligence," Robin motioned with his finger as though he were instructing a stenographer what to put down, "she is, in point of fact, the very Nightwatch incarnate." He had, perhaps, never looked so pleased with himself.

Long minutes passed where Roger Stoker's brain attempted to right itself from where it had been set a-tilt.

Robin did not interfere by speaking further.

"You are the most monumental pain in my arse, you know," he finally said. "You will not come. I cannot easily make you, and here you go, putting forth (in the body of one person) Clem Nighten's sister, the daughter of one of our greatest statesmen of the present time, your with-child wife, and the Nightwatch herself." He let out a sigh. "I see in my very near future courts-martial for this." His eyes snapped back to Robin.

"Oh, it gets better, Stoke. She's been to the Alderney camps. Knows the appetites and proclivities of the officers stationed here. She's spent the long years since July '40 in the very belly of the beast. You and yours ask the right questions and there's no telling what you might find out from her."

"But will she go without you?" Stoker leapt to the immediate question at-hand. "Can you so convince her?"

"There will be no need for convincing," Robin promised him, "She will not go to please me, nor to save herself," here, a passion began to bloom in his voice. "She will go for the babe. She will go to safeguard the future."

Knowing far more than the average British citizen the hardships and deprivations the Islanders here daily faced, Stoker commiserated. "These islands are no place for birthing or growing children."

"They are no places for the weak, or the innocent," Robin agreed.

And with this, Stoker finally understood. "And so you will stay." He allowed himself the start of a circumspect smile.

"Yes," Oxley nodded slowly, a man who had of necessity long ago found himself parted from both weakness and innocence. "I will stay."

GUERNSEY - Barnsdale Estate - Had he slept? He could not be sure. Would he ever sleep again? The answer was even less certain. He wished for a moment that he had taken time upon arrival to review the grand house's maids, time to select one to help with the ever-tightening pressure that seemed to have his body in a vise.

All these people here were his, of course, to do with as he pleased, to serve him as he pleased. He did not doubt they may have been somewhat taken aback upon his arrival with such an unusual collection of soldiers, men who rarely saw light beyond Alderney's camps' barracks. Men who certainly had never visited here. But he knew they would best do the job. Sweeping the house, finding what might be hidden, ransacking - if necessary - secret spaces holding the answer he was looking for.

Not that he knew of a certain what that answer was. Only, that he felt strongly that it must be here, held within Marion's house, her home and sanctuary.

He had commanded they begin with the servants' quarters, where they had largely produced the usual contraband one might expect to find in such a place even in peacetime: some pornography among belongings in the men's hall, the odd piece of silver cutlery in the bureau of a girl known by all to enjoy the taking of things, but who never took them outside of the estate, nor tried to sell them.

It had been in the butler's pantry the most damning find occurred. A crystal set - an improvised radio receiver, exquisitely placed among items so everyday and beneath anyone's notice had it not been for the unannounced search performed by such seasoned professionals it would have likely gone unobserved in any of their lifetimes.

"Shall I arrange to have him taken away, Sir?" Ellingheim had asked, expecting swift punishment for the guilty party.

"Don't be ridiculous, First-Landser," Gisbonnhoffer had scolded him. "Without Clun," he named the estate's butler, whose booty the set clearly was, "who would run my household? Bring my tea? Speak to my cook? You?" he spat out. "Bring it here to me," he thought of the morning's coming Nightwatch broadcast, "and see that Clun receives the fright of his life for having concealed it."

'Here to me' of course meant Marion's rooms. Rooms in which he had not spent ever a great deal of time. Small snippets, of course, though mostly when she was absent. He had never noticed her bed concealed a small trundle. Never been able to take the time to smell each of the exotic soaps on hand in her oh-so-feminine lavatory. To run his bare hand along the porcelain edge of the claw-footed tub and imagine her sunken within it, only shoulders, pink from the water's heat, peeping out from the bubbles and bath salts he'd also located among her abandoned toiletries.

Her desk had been one of the first places he'd chosen to look. But beyond things within it that brought a feeling of wistful hope from within him, nothing seemed strange or out-of-the-ordinary.

After the bath, he'd turned his attention to the armoire, cattycorner of the bed. Still filled with her clothes, it proved too dark to see effectively into its depth. He began to empty it.

The ring that seemed - unless he were able to discover something to the contrary - to condemn her weighed heavily in the breast pocket of his shirt. His work here, and the emotional state it had put him into, sent his body's core temperature soaring, to the point he had removed his uniform coat and dropped his braces, unbuttoning the first four on his uniform shirt, revealing the standard-issue undershirt he wore beneath, the ring's weight pulling the starched shirtfront heavily to the side.

Dress after dress he pulled out on their padded, scented hangers, tossing them behind him onto the bed where his uniform coat had landed first. Then came the meticulously lined drawers of intimate garments mingled in with perfumed sachets, foundation wear and filmy, diaphanous nightgowns that one would swear were stitched by and for faery creatures with fingers nimble as water sprites in tales meant to charm kinder.

It became increasingly hard not to clutch at them for long moments, the unfamiliar softness of the fabric spilling through his hands like silken sand, rather than discard them onto the bed and into the growing heap of couture.

Finally, there was an end to it. The space was bare, open to him. He examined it closely, pressed for hidden compartments, places for concealment no matter how small. But all he was left with were five water marks on the wood deep in the back corner, a clear testament from their varying shapes that some previous owner or tenant of the house had used the cabinet for stowing his liquor quite differently than in its current role.

He felt exhausted, uncertain whether to allow himself relief that nothing had been found, or dread that he had simply not yet looked deep enough.

Though the bed did not look conventionally welcoming with its mound of clothing, some still upon their hangers, he allowed himself to sink down into it, among it, imagining that it embraced him, enfolded and accepted him. At first he lay upon it tentatively, flat upon his back, only his hands tactile-side to the fabrics he lay among. As his thoughts churned on, his doubts and misgivings on ebb, he turned upon his side as a lover might to come face-to-face with their partner. His exhaling breath blew across the fragile fabrics, waves rolling in upon an intimate shore.

Perhaps he fell asleep, perhaps he only fell into a deeper, more surreal trance. The pattern on the rooms' curtains began to waver and bleed into itself until he recalled a story - though not much of its specifics - told by the Kommandant of a man caught out by having concealed something in a hung tapestry. Before he could even fully process how he might best proceed with such a search, he was to the sturdy rod that crowned the picture window. His hands grasped their way up, along the rich French fabric toward the ceiling until they could no longer find purchase, and with a gnash of his teeth and a grunt that was more of a growl, he ripped the first panel in two, making it easy to see between the lining and decorative fabric that displayed in the room. Nothing.

Only growing more frustrated, he yanked the second curtain down and rent it in a similar fashion. This time, something.

He grabbed the object, paper in nature, and dashed over to the nearest table lamp so that he might study it more closely. He was not immediately sure what he had found. And even when he had puzzled it out, it neither served to easily vindicate nor to convict its owner.

The paper was photographic in nature, and had apparently at one time been far larger than its current size of two by three inches or so. But it was irregular in its dimension because it had (as the charred edged well-showed) been rescued from a fire. The chemicals from the photographic developing process had reacted to the intense heat, causing no small amount of bubbling and distortion. What was left was, in essence, the now incomplete photograph of someone's eyes. A man's. Try as he might, as much as they stared at him, their expression whimsical, care-free, Gisbonnhoffer could not wrest from his mind the feeling that they were recognizable. Not familiarly so, but certainly they were known to him, they were eyes he had encountered.

He continued to stare into them as he sat down hard upon the over-stuffed bedside chair. He noted a small tremble in his hand that held this new evidence.

Marion's husband, he thought. For who else could it be? A once-cherished photograph thrown in the fire upon some tiff - perhaps at their parting. Discarded and meant for destruction when a hand - Marion's hand - had reached to save what could yet be saved of it. Had she been wearing his emerald at the time? This ring now returned to his possession? Had one of her hands been reaching into danger's path to salvage a promise, even as her other wore the jeweled evidence of a new vow? To him?

Could he believe her so duplicitous?

Yes. With every passing moment he was trying to learn himself that he ought consider nothing, really, beyond her. Even so, lying to him about her feelings, about her romantic status was hardly a crime in which the Reich was interested. Personal betrayals they catalogued, in hopes of manipulating the transgressor in future, but they rarely punished.

And this man's eyes (he further studied on them) did not (or did they?) look of the disappeared flyer's. Eyes that seemed to laugh at him. Eyes that...eyes that unsettled him. Could this be the flyer in happier times? Could the grim - unbreakable even by die Sinnesschmerzmaschine - pilot Thomas Carter 2-2-6-5-4-8-3-2-3-6-Z have worn such an expression in pre-War times? For Marion, his wife? His lover?

Were he Marion's unknown husband would it then explain the emerald ring being on the opposite end of an island from where he had been led to believe she had lost it?

Gisbonnhoffer could hear the attachment of men he had brought with him now at work, distantly, now in the larder.

He needed time to think, space to breathe, somewhere less tainted with...Marion.

Heindl Cottage - Daniel Heindl look into the pot at the pitch he was in process of distilling for his mother and one of her various remedy cures. It was a mindless enough process, not requiring a great deal of his concentration or intellect. Simply, watch the pot that it doesn't boil at too high a temperature, mind the fire beneath that it stays where it was placed. 'And by all means, Boy' she would always, needlessly warn, 'keep it well away from the house and wee ones!'

The smell was not terrible (he rarely sat too close to the pot), but it did usually keep the others at a distance, and gave him some version of a room of his own, however temporarily.

He had spread out about him, upon the dry ground (he would not have risked them so had it been even slightly damp), what stood as his body of work. Sketches in various states of completion and showing various levels of competency in that craft. The penciled one of his father had grown so dim and inexact, the paper fragile from repeated erasings (he never could quite seem to capture the man, stopping when he believed he had, only to run across the drawing again and feel it was so wrong he must erase the bulk of it and start over new. Only recently he had decided that was the thing: the quality about this man, so elusive that even Mere - his own wife - could not capture him and hold him to her for long).

The one of Eva was a rarely seen moment of her introspective. He looked to one of his two most recent: Monsieur Miller, their enforced guest and labourer.

He well recalled the tenor of the moment as he was lining in Mitch's face, uncharacteristically clouded with anger, spitting out his disgust with Seth's father (though he had no idea whom he might be) for leaving Eva so, with such a burden - not only of a child, but in the grip of a judgmental society. How could the man feel no guilt? Mitch had bemoaned. No remorse in abandoning his own son - to say nothing of his son's mother?

Well, guilt. That was something not unfamiliar to Daniel. Though he said nothing of it (nor could he, unable to articulate understandable speech as a consequence of his deafness), he had lived with a deep guilt every day since the island's children had been evacuated in June of 1940.

The Heindl's place had been saved, their meager bag packed. Only Mere would stay behind.

It was but just prior to their departure that the news had come to them: leaving the island to seek shelter in England from the coming invasion force would offer protection for them, but only of a kind. They could find no guarantee that they five would be kept together. Only Eva and Seth would be similarly placed - if possible - due to his young age. And it had been made clear that once they landed he, Daniel, would be assuredly taken and placed in an 'appropriate' and 'discreet' facility for the deaf, blind, and otherwise socially outcast.

No one had asked him, in all the arguing and shouting and decision-making that went on that night between Mere and Eva. No one had consulted him to see if it was not a sacrifice he might be willing to make for the others. If it was even something he felt he minded. The notion was declared out of the question. It had been decided, without his input. As bad as separation from the others might be, they might as a family have endured that, but to have him treated as less than himself, as less than a person - hidden away and handled like something next door to Nature's mistake - this no Heindl would tolerate.

They would stay. Daniel would stay with them. The Nazis would be easier to fight - to withstand - as a family entire. He would go on to live as he always had: free (as free as any other Islander under Occupation Code), able-bodied (as he most-certainly was), expressing himself as he saw fit, among his kin.

And to suffer under the overlord's thumb. With thanks to Eva's certain charms, not as greatly as other Islanders, certainly. But privation and isolation found their ways into the Heindl cottage nonetheless, not to mention the unpleasant fact of life that was collaboration.

He looked over to the photograph of Seth he had borrowed from its place on the cottage wall. He was at trying to render his nephew upon what scanty paper he had left, using half-crumbling charred coals from when the pitch fire had been cool to the touch this morning. More now on the tips of his fingers than within his grip.

Knowing the child too well to think he might coax Seth to sit for him, he had resorted to copying the print. Actually, he thought it was going quite well. He wondered absently if there mightn't also be English schools that taught and housed not only the crippled, but also the gifted of the realm. Wondered how one might find one's way into acceptance at such an extraordinary place. He found it a curious - and daydream-worthy - thing to ponder.

Barnsdale Estate - He had chosen the roof. Not like the roofs of home, of the Schwarzwald; steeply slanted with their fancily carved eaves and soffits. Roofs no one could easily walk out upon.

He had actually had to hunt down Clun to get the key and gain access out upon it. This roof flat as the ground, gravel of some kind underfoot. The butler and proper key located, once out upon it he had found it a place of mild interest, wide enough in places to take a turn about, with what were probably several impressive views when the sun was up.

He positioned himself facing Southeast, where out upon the waters lay Sark, from whence that island's ridiculous, grasping constable had brought him the ring.

Gisbonnhoffer set both of his hands down upon the roof's broadly crenellated decoration, his elbows locked - planning to rest his weight upon them as he further meditated.

But one of his hands was prevented from locating a bare spot to sit. Something unknown was in the way.

Gisbonnhoffer's curious hands wrapped 'round the cool metal of a spyglass. Quickly he lit a match to inspect its age and condition. It was not old in its make, and was of a very good quality. However, its housing clearly showed that it had been left out - forgotten in the elements (including the salt sea breeze) for months.

His hand squeezed it tighter (mimicking the line his mouth had become). The match fell from his other fingers and extinguished. All such items: spyglasses and binoculars - anything that could be used for long-distance sightings of planes or ships - had been confiscated long ago. They had no place in the hands of Islanders under the occupation. More than several Islanders had been shot for concealing (and/or using) such volatile contraband.

Only those in service to the Reich were to be in possession of such.

Though he could make no better connection than this, he knew that he had found the thing (or at least the first in a collection of things) that he had come here for. Someone in the house had been using this ocular to view the distance, perhaps to count Luftwaffe overhead. Perhaps to track Reich ships moving between islands. It was no great leap to know that such information was valuable only if shared. That such information amounted to a death sentence. Following prolonged torture used to extract the names of contacts and fellow criminals.

"Ellingheim!" he shouted, realizing a level of control and power had returned to his voice. "Ellingheim!"

He began his descent of the stairs into the main house. "Down to the very studs of the walls I want her room - not a scrap of plaster or lath to be left upon them!" He roared.

He felt the briney roughness of the spyglass' metal housing against his palm. It felt of betrayal. "Strip it bare!" he demanded, though it was unlikely his words could be understood as far away as the kitchens. "The floors and ceilings as well!"

It was a strange sense of exhilaration that flooded him. Strange, but not unfamiliar.

...TBC...

Author's Note: If anyone is interested, I opened a forum here at fanfiction to discuss any of the stories in the 'Don't' series. You should be able to find it by searching under forums...TV...RobinHoodBBC...'Let's Discuss the Don't Series'. All are welcome.