GUERNSEY - path to Heindl Cottage - Day of Roger Stoker's planned rendezvous/departure - Marion Nighten, at-present resident of the Island of Guernsey, had changed her plans. Originally she had thought to spend the better part of her day at the Nightwatch Windmill, bidding it farewell, readying it for its new tenant, perhaps leaving some notes on song selections or listing out technical issues she had at times come up against.

It proved a less than cheery task, especially amidst the many reminders of her self-declared mission as the Nightwatch here; the portentous echoes of her own imminent leaving, her mother's not dissimilar (though reviled by her daughter) stepping down from her own cause for like reasons. Every direction Marion's thoughts agreed to turn incited tension in her stomach and distress in her mind.

But it was such a fine day - the skies clear, the sea bright - for some reason, once exhausted from far-deeper subjects and wrestlings, they repeatedly turned toward Eva and the Heindls.

At first she wondered if she might be able to pay them a 'farewell' visit without giving away that she was, in fact, at doing just that.

Farewell. Her mind drifted back to the early morning, the large part of an hour extravagantly spent (for two freedom fighters) in one another's arms. He had still been asleep, his breath even, its pace intimately familiar to her now, when she took the ring that signified her wedding - their bond - from her own left finger and worked at enlarging its incomplete circumference so that it might now fit to his.

She found she was as loathe to part with it as nearly as she was to part with him. It was not much of a ring to begin with - far more of an improvised cuff - but she had worn it without removing it since their simple ceremony.

It had seemed right to her that Robin must safeguard it now, that it was something she could leave with him, her now carrying a much larger (or at least soon-to-grow-much-larger) memento of him within herself.

It was her battle to install it on his own left ring finger that recalled him to consciousness, though at first incompletely so.

"I hadn't meant to waken you," she apologized, her voice low and soft as though she might cozen him back into sleep.

"Am I to be a jewel thief now, as well?" he asked, though the simple band had no such jewels of which to boast. Even though he teased, he accepted it from her, his own fingers working to size it just right to grip the base of his pinkie, as it was clear to him even in his drowsy state it was never to agree to encircling any other of his digits. Much less his broken one.

Even on his smallest finger, it was not lost on her: the gap necessary for him to wear it had sizably widened from when her own finger had borne it.

"The distance now is greater," she told him, without explaining, oncoming sadness clogging her throat.

"Hush now, Wife," he told her, his own voice matching her quiet tones. "When I come to fetch you we'll have it closed up properly. Mended with the finest silver in all London. The present gap will be little more than a memory."

She had grabbed for his hand back, and kissed it and the ring as reverently as one might the Archbishop of Canterbury's.

There had been no returning to sleep after that.

She looked to her left hand now, unusually bare, its skin still divoted in the outline of the ring. More than one way for a person to be marked, she thought.

Before departing for the Heindl's she did burrow about a bit at the Nightwatch Windmill to locate and secure the second-to-last smallish barrel of pickles to present them as a gift. As she cradled it, sloshing about within her arms, she allowed herself some space to ponder babies. It had been Hilda, Eva's mother (according to family lore) who had first notified Lady Nighten that her long summer holiday on the island with her husband was to result in a future happy event. That happy event some six months after Hilda's prediction resulting in the birth (now at Lincoln Greene) of Marion herself.

At this remembrance, Marion's intent toward the Heindls quickly switched from that of a mere social call to one of medical import. If anyone could confirm her suspected condition, she quickly convinced herself, it would be the inexplicably prescient Hilda.

Entirely oblivious to the fact that the more conventional ways to approach the Heindl cottage were now being policed by German guards, Marion used the old dodge, approaching by the rear through the scraggly woods. It had always been the pathway friends and neighbors trod for paying calls, but this day she found herself more often than not relying solely upon memory, as it was remarkably overgrown and had obviously gone unused for sometime. In fact, it had always been the quickest route between Barnsdale and the Heindl's. It was clear it had been long weeks (if not months) since Eva had made her way via this footpath to visit the estate.

But of course it would now be Robin's man Allen Dale, driving for the Kommandant, that would be tasked with chauffeuring Eva to and from her Jerry lover. No simple task, that. The little-known mud track that left the main road to end at the Heindl's home was by most standards impassable by auto.

Marion was contemplating this complication when she happened upon a day-laborer at his work in one of the Heindl's few fields. It was easy enough to contain her surprise (though the Heindls had never been well-suited to afford hired-in help before). She saw nothing out-of-the-ordinary about the chap from the rear - certainly nothing particularly recognizable. She did not think Daniel could have grown so very much since last she saw him.

But there was something...irregular about the man's posture. Not in the way of a man working through an injury, really, but a general lack of stooping in the shoulders, as was like to overcome even the burliest and most robust of farmhands over time (and this man was hardly describable as burly). There was something rather noble in his bearing, as a young girl of a romantic bent reading Hardy might foolishly imagine Gabriel Oak to posses in his posture. Hardly the level of comportment, though, one expected to encounter in a peasant at working a field.

In her walking toward the laborer she must have made a sound to disturb him, as he turned to see who was there.

In that moment Marion froze, unable to tell if her disbelieving eyes - or his own gob-smacked countenance - would have better registered the shock of surprise both felt.

She did not notice dropping the pickle barrel, nor its breaking apart. Nor did she avert her eyes to watch the pickles' now-uncontained juices running across her feet and into her shoes before disappearing into the soft ground.

"My Lady Marion," Mitch Bonchurch choked out, his own feet refusing for the moment to move him nearer her.

"Alive," was all the sensible speech her tongue granted her, and that a half-gasp.

"But I - I am in France," he stuttered out, his voice an undertone. It offered little explanation.

"No," she disagreed, her voice matching his in its low volume.

"Marion! Cherie! Bonjour!"

They both heard Eva call, flying toward them from the direction of the nearby cottage, her arrival to Marion signifying the presence of Barnsdale's former ladies maid, her best friend on the islands - the Alderney Kommandant's favorite bit of girl. To Mitch, the person he most longed to protect in the world, his landlady - the woman he loved.

On the water between ALDERNEY and SARK - destination: Dixcart Hotel - What luck - what good fortune, Sark's Island Constable Paxton congratulated himself. He had been hiding himself (though he knew, not very expertly) nearby the Alderney docks for two long, desperate days since Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer had appropriated the emerald ring and sent him packing with a threat to detain him for both illegally departing Sark and for disembarking upon Alderney without the correct paperwork.

Two days without food, sweating out what little water there was left in him trying to wrack his brain and figure out how to depart the island as he had been instructed to do without the necessary assistance of appropriate paperwork.

And then finally, a moment of salvation: he had found the Kommandant's driver, the very man who had agreed and brought him. Of a certain, it was not the easiest thing in the world to broker a second deal with the man when his initial deal (a cut of the payout on the item he had expected to sell to Gisbonnhoffer) had fallen through.

Of course the chauffeur fellow knew nothing of the nature of that deal, nothing of the item in question - only that he, Paxton, had something of value with which to haggle.

But now, as there was no longer any reason to conceal anything, (and frankly, he had spoken to no other being in almost two days) Paxton eagerly told him all.

"Big as your thumb it were, too," he assured the Kommandant's man of the item's value - assured him of the great financial loss he had suffered due to the German Lieutenant's mistreatment of him. "And lush green as a Sarkese meadow in May."

Allen Dale could only hope that he received the news that Marion's ring had been found - (and even returned to Geis) despite its being located in entirely the wrong spot to corroborate her kidnapping story - with an appropriate expression of mild disinterest and 'what's in it for me'-ness. His actual mind was too busy swearing like the persistent chug of an oncoming freight train. His hands too busy hurrying the idiot sod Paxton into his launch. And his fingers trying to tick off the amount of time before they were landed, and him able to hike out to Le Moulin and get the windmill's now little-used mechanism running to alert Marion that she needed to lay low and make contact.

Any good grifter knows - can feel - the nearly imperceptible tension just before their lie is sussed out (not unlike the instant just before a fish bites on your line). Such tension now sang like unholy zither strings within his blood.

His stomach (usually by now on edge from casting off and embarking on the rough Channel waters) had tightened as it would when he felt the dice just about to teeter and settle counter to his own good. But this moment, this moment was far worse. Paxton's revelation seemed certainly to imply that shortly they were all about to experience whatever hell a man like Gisbonnhoffer could rain down upon them.

And worse than that? With Carter and Djak both still in-country (one hidden in plain sight), and Marion disenfranchised from everything that had once protected her, Allen Dale knew Unit 1192 and those they hoped to protect were not nearly prepared for what was surely to come.

GUERNSEY - Heindl Cottage - "Pregnant?" Eva asked, her voice devoid of shock, once she and Marion had stepped into the cottage. "What symptoms have you had?"

As she waited for Marion's expected reply, the former ladies maid set about removing Marion's shoes (wet and growing rank from the spilled pickle juice) and bringing a basin of water for her to soak her now-briny feet in.

"Eva - " Marion tried to stall her from such servile ministration. "You needn't see to this. We are no longer - " she meant to finish with 'mistress and servant', but Eva cut her off.

"We are friends, oui? Let me help, as a friend."

At this, Marion relaxed. It had been such a long time since she had felt comforted by the closeness of an actual friend. "What of the pickles?" she asked, knowing that in better times they would be left to rotten in the field. Knowing that in present times such behavior would never fly.

"Our man, Monsieur Miller, will see to them. They will be fine - and still make a lovely gift. Merci."

"Monsieur Miller?" Marion inquired, trying to remain detached about the topic, about the use of the name.

"Oh, la! Monsieur Miller, a 'gift' of the Kommandant's. Very rough when he first came to us. So wounded - and his mind! Sacre! Certainly his being here has been no gift to him. He has been told he is in France. I hope you did nothing to show him otherwise?"

"I can't think what," Marion lied. On the Occupied Islands, even friendship only went so far. Smoothly on the defense, she quickly skipped back to their original subject. "I have lost track, but I think it must be two months since I've bled. I am hungry all the time - I cannot stop thinking about food." She smiled. "Even, I think, I am at getting a little belly."

Eva looked at her guest intently and tried to read her face. "I do not think this possible child is Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer's."

Marion matched her look, and returned it to her. "And I do not think this Monsieur Miller has been much of a burden to you."

Eva did not disagree. She went through a secondary list of symptoms she had heard her mother put to any other women stopping by to confirm they were with child. As Marion slowly answered 'no' to each one, Eva's face grew ever more concerned. "I think - and I cannot yet tell if this is what you would wish to hear, or not, but I would tell you that you are not pregnant, Cherie. It is only that you have spent the last years living so well among Gisbonnhoffer and the others, continuing your lifestyle at Barnsdale that it has not touched you before this. The things you feel have only shown themselves in the last months since you left off living at the estate, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then I - and I think Mere - would diagnose you with hunger. You are now hungry all the time, you cannot stop thinking about food. Such is the case of many an islander at present. As for the belly you say you are growing?" She tilted her head to one side, then righted it. "It can be a side effect of this, of coming starvation. And poor nutrition coupled with the labor to which you have now become accustomed can stop a woman's courses."

Marion's mouth turned dry, though she could not have said whether from relief or on-coming disappointment. No wonder Eva could not sort her feelings on the matter. Neither could she. "Does Hilda have something? A potion or elixir? Something by which we might be sure? It is important that I be certain of it as soon as possible, one way or the other."

Clearly expecting just such a request, Eva reached into a high, locked cabinet where Hilda kept her many brews and remedies. "I have used this on many a cow in my day," she told Marion. "Mere has crafted it from une flleur local. You need only make water and mix several drops of this vial's contents with it. Should all turn black, you are with child. If nothing occurs, you are not." As she turned away from the cabinet and back to Marion, her eyebrow raised. "It is startling in its accuracy."

Marion accepted the vial and said nothing for awhile, as Eva busied herself finding a clean cloth for Marion's now soapily soaked (and hopefully better-smelling) feet.

At this time, Seth had managed to find his way back from his older cousins and into the cottage, where he set up a general hue and cry for some bread to be sliced for him.

Initially he was to Marion's back, and she could but hear the child.

Wanting, naturally, to catch a glimpse of Eva's youngest sibling (whom she had never yet laid eyes on), and (surely) Hilda Heindl's final child, she turned about in the chair, expecting to shortly be able to discuss with Eva which of the other children he best resembled, and how good looking a lad he must be, this child born brother to her friend while she, Marion (and Beau), had been off chasing ribbons, trophies, and engraved platters on the America Equestrian Circuit.

Marion had never been so thankful that Eva's back was turned, giving her a long moment in which to compose herself.

There, standing in the Heindl's more-hovel-than-proper-cottage, was her older brother Clem, aged four or five. Not that she could recall him at such a time personally as she had not yet been born. But rather, photographs of 'Handsome' Clem were not in short supply at any Nighten household. And in particular he had sat for a portrait with their father at just about this age, his dark hair perhaps longer - his dress far fancier and certainly not showing signs about the hem of any breed of dirt. His feet wrapped in shoes of softest leather. No, unless said portrait artist could see into the future, that likeness proved Seth Heindl to be the spitting image of a man who could only be his father.

She would say in that moment that she caught her breath. That she stopped breathing, but somehow the most exquisite of local Dgernesiais curses sprang to her mind and shortly from her lips. Not loud enough to disturb the child, who was giving her a quizzical look so like one her brother might that she did shortly find herself out of breath. But loud enough to catch and hold Eva's attention.

"Tchique?" Eva asked, never having seen said portrait of Master (now Lord) Nighten.

Still, with a degree of breathlessness, Marion replied, not taking her eyes from the child whose hair was so much darker than any of his supposed 'siblings'. "I would have lied, too." She kept her gaze level, letting it bounce between the now-obvious mother and child.

Small tears began to fall from Eva's eyes. Still, maintaining her composure, she spoke through them. "Cherie," she declared, clearly with all her heart, "I would have told you if it had been safe. I would that he could have met Sir Edward, could have known him. I see it is a disaster - on top of all others - but my Seth has been safe, here. No one knows his father for an English lord. Many know me for his mother (if with the Occupation they have bothered to remember such petty gossip from before). But it was such a short - and very private - summer. I do not think Master Clem and I were ever seen together."

Marion took the child's hand. He looked back at her curiously, but did not pull away. "I know someone who I very much think would like to see you," she told him, then lifted her eyes to Eva.

She did not bother to bring up the more complicated thoughts she was experiencing: that in his dementia it was unlikely Edward would ever have understood the child for his son's out-of-wedlock offspring and not simply for a young Clem, himself. That pre-war she herself could not even imagine what her own feelings on the situation of such an unspeakable-in-good-company occurrence would have been. That the former Lady Nighten might not take to the situation at all; her beloved, pedestalled son having complicated his charmed life by this fruit of such an indiscretion - and with her own ladies maid.

But now, here in the Heindl cottage, all she saw before her was a child; uncomplicated, charming in his miniature likeness to his father, whom she had not seen in almost five years. She saw in Seth life, precious in its every form. She saw hope for a future in the eyes of Eva, his mother. She saw love, and even family.

She saw no space for drawing room disapproval. It was all she could do to hold herself together upon having found such an impossible thing. She would do what she could to see this inopportune child had every possible chance, and Eva with him.

"I wish I had something left...of his, to give you," Marion said, reaching her free hand out to her friend. "We are family now, Eva. And always will be."

"You must know," announced Eva, having taken Marion's offered hand, "I have never wanted or schemed for anything of his, of yours, of the Nighten's. In Seth, I have all I could ask for." She smiled, wiping away what was left of her tears.

"And so you do not love him anymore?" Marion asked, knowing Eva well enough to see that she would not have embarked on such a relationship had she not at one point thought it love-based.

"It is nearly five years past," Eva shrugged. "I am no longer that young girl, spying on the master of the estate as he builds a boat. Tumbled by a warm heart and a striking smile." She looked hard at Marion, addressing the elephant ever in the room of their two lives. "I am now a hardened poule to the Kommandant, pursuing every possible preventative of which Mere knows to keep from ever carrying his child."

Marion's own face echoed Eva's hardness. "It would be wrong to judge you for what you have found you must subject yourself to so that you might protect your family. My family," she added, indicating Seth.

Here Eva cast her net wide, in hopes of learning something of Marion's own situation. "And yet I am led to believe that you are no longer subjecting yourself to it. At least not willingly, for some months. Yet here you are, asking if you are with child. Certainly not Herr Geis' child."

"No," agreed Marion, offering nothing further.

"Does he love you?" Eva asked, her narrowed eyes not referencing Gisbonnhoffer. "And you, him?"

It was impossible to answer with a straight face. "Idiotically so," Marion replied, unable to hold back a sigh.

"And a coming child would please him?"

"Ridiculously."

"And do you have...false illusions about one another? About the situation you are in?"

Marion shook her head.

Eva's brows raised with the question. "But you will say no more?"

"I will say that you were right that it was best not to tell me about your son," Marion said.

"Yes," Eva agreed, with a long look out the open door toward the small field beyond where Monsieur Miller had nearly finished gathering up all of the dropped pickles. "There are some things best kept to oneself in such uncertain times."

It was not long after that Seth, who had wandered outdoors with his bread during their tete-a-tete, set up a squall over something one of the other children had done or not done to his liking. Eva begged pardon, and went to see what the trouble was, while Marion gathered herself and made ready to return to Thornton's cottage and await Allen's arrival.

Near the doorway several unframed photos had been hung. As her eyes glanced over them she saw one of young Seth that had been taken within the year. Unable to leave a note outlining the secret that she was only pinching it to deliver to the child's father, she grabbed it off its tack and slid it into the ample pocket of the apron that had once been Mrs. Thornton's that she wore.

She realized that she had no immediate idea of how to find Mitch again. She could not see him on the visible horizon, had no way of knowing where he might be located on the Heindl patch at such a time of day.

She made her way leisurely toward the outhouse, thinking to stall as long as possible. Just before entering, he managed to catch her eye from where he was within the cowshed, its lean-to-like design of three walls and an open front allowing the back, full wall that faced the cottage to shield them and their reunion from any unintentionally interested eyes.

But with a family of so many, and potential German guards sniffing about from time to time, their meeting was of necessity limited in both its scope and length.

Marion grabbed for his forearms, gripping them hard as she spoke as quickly as possible, feeling him for real, hoping to hold his complete attention. "We have long thought you dead at the word of Gisbonnhoffer. Take heart: a man has arrived from SIS, and tonight we await the arrival off-shore Sark of his rendezvous sub."

Mitch's eyes flared like just-lit, crisp tinder at her words of contact with home.

"Get away from this place as soon as you can. If you cannot, in the next few days I will send someone to you."

"It is complicated," he began, attempting to illustrate his being torn over Eva's (and her family's) safety and his own.

"It is not complicated," Marion stressed, her eyes casting back at the cottage and knowing she had mere seconds before she'd best be gone. "Every moment you stay here you potentially compromise every man jack in your unit. La Salle, Djak. Me."

"Robin," he spoke the name she had not said.

"Get away," she repeated. "Stay clear of Barnsdale - and Thornton's cottage. They neither are safe any longer."

"This man, sent from home - how many may he take?"

"Two," Marion answered. "And Robin will not go."

"No, of course not," Mitch commiserated, fully understanding. "You?" he asked.

"I must do what I think right," she found was the only answer she could bring herself to give him.

Even from his customary position once-removed (ever at Robin's side), he knew her too well to miss out on seeing the near-flush of passion from her neck traveling up to her cheeks upon her declaration.

But she was quick to bury it, having learned far more command of herself and her visible reactions in the years she had spent on the islands.

Mitch had only started to notice the vanished grip of her hands digging desperately into his forearms when he realized she was gone.

As she reached the start of the cluster of trees on the edge of the Heindl's small field, Marion thought to herself that she had more explaining to do than she could ever have imagined upon her return home. To explain how she had become engaged to a Jerry officer, to lie about whose (likely) baby she carried. And to tell her brother that the mother of his unknown child was at playing an Island Kommandant's favorite strumpet - in part to protect the life and welfare of his young, bastard son.

Couple those concerns with her discovery of Mitch, imprisoned - but not - and her own necessary experiment with Hilda's flower potion, and she had more than enough food for thought to carry her well through her solo supper and the remaining wait for Allen Dale's arrival.

SARK - Dixcart Hotel - Wills handed Dale the money. It was easiest making contact with the unit's sole undercover member this way - under the pretence that it was owed him for some gambling debt or other. The Jerry officers in the hotel's common room did not even look up, so customary an exchange this was: Islander and Officer alike recompensing the Kommandant's driver for favors large and small, or the settling of outstanding gaming accounts.

Allen stopped Wills before Wills could get in announcing any of Allen's orders, sharing with him the need for speed in activating Le Moulin with all haste to signal Marion.

"And hurry the Cousins Jack," Allen used an old term for Cornish miners, "underground."

"How's that?" queried Wills, uncertain how Carter and Djak played so closely into Gisbonnhoffer's having discovered the ring.

"Trust me, Mate," Allen asked of him. "Sometimes a bloke just knows. And in this case something in me knows bad weather's on its way. Lady Marion knows their whereabouts. The mines are safer for them than the farm."

"You couldn't possibly think Marion - not after all this time..." a smile of confused doubt began on Wills' lips.

"I don't slander anyone, Wills-" Allen hissed at him, trying to keep his voice in check and at the same time his hands trying to hurry Wills on his way.

"Better safe than sorry," Wills finished for him with an outsized nod.

"Better safe than dead," Allen added under his breath, counting the tasks he had yet to perform (for both sides of the chessboard) before rendezvousing with Marion (at Robin's order) on Guernsey and ferrying her to Sark from where she would meet Stoker's sub, and then travel on to home.

GUERNSEY - Barnsdale roof - He knew that just beyond the door to the roof, Landser Thered stood inside the great house's attic at attention, waiting for his next order. He knew that the men First-Landser Ellingheim commanded were at nearly having completed the demolition task of Lady Marion's private room below (though without further discovery). He knew that tying up the time and talents of such men on this present course of action would irritate the Kommandant.

But he could not allow himself to kowtow to that any more than he could leave the southeast facing section of Barnsdale's roof before he found...whatever it was he had set out looking for.

The weather-aged spyglass never left his hand, though he rarely brought it up to sharpen his vision. He went over what he did know for the millionth time.

One, an engagement ring located NOT where it was said to have been lost by Marion while kidnapped. How did it travel to an entirely other corner of the small island?

Two, a mostly-immolated photograph concealed within the drapes and their lining in Marion's private rooms. Why hide such a thing unless it might, in someway, condemn either her - or the photograph's subject?

Three, contraband binoculars, which had apparently been left out upon the roof of Barnsdale since around the time Marion left the property. At what had they been for looking?

He did not count the crystal set found in the butler's pantry. He did not add the fact that Marion had lied to him, and had been married all the time she agreed to let him pursue her - and worse, even when she struck out at him, demeaned him, for the fact that he had concealed same from her.

His eyes again scoured the horizon. He looked to Sark, as Sark had given up the assumed-lost-forever ring, the token of his once sincere pledge.

His face felt gritty from lack of sleep, and an overdue need to shave. There, in the distance, lay his nemesis, in the form of a landmass - however miniature. Without (and even with) the spyglass he could distinguish little enough about it. The cliffs upon which it sat like a cake. Only a few very shallow rises in the lay of the land. And Le Moulin, the old windmill, which had done little enough work since the turn of the century. There were times the wind was strong enough to give what remained of its vanes a turn or two, but even he knew such random movements were not enough to engage its ancient grinding stone and coax it into productive laboring.

Wait. What was this? His eyes told him the wind was giving it a pounding even now. For the first time in three-quarters of an hour he raised the spyglass for a better look. He brought it down, then back up and looked again.

He felt the wind distinctly to one side of his face. His eyes would not lie: Sark's Le Moulin turned counter to the wind direction as felt, undeniably, upon his own skin.

The wind noticeably slackened. And yet Sark's windmill still turned. Counter to the prevailing direction. Here was a physical impossibility. Here was an instance of water flowing uphill. Here was a paradox that to him meant he had found what he was looking for, even if he did not yet know what it meant.

Rather than taking the long way around on the graveled flat of the roof, he found himself scuttling, undignified, over skylights and two rainwater-catching tanks to get to the opposite side of the roof as swiftly as possible. His feet and boots - even the buttons on his uniform coat - clunked and rang against the tin and glass during his slippery, tractionless scramble over objects without perceivable handholds.

He did not bother to right his vestments upon reaching his destination. There was no one else about to see when he fell into place, one knee biting harshly into unsmoothed gravel, him catching himself on the fancy crenellations that formed the edge of the roof with his elbows. Without thought to how it might look, he panted through open mouth.

The countryside of Guernsey stretched out before him. Though not perched upon a terribly high altitude, the Barnsdale roof afforded him all the view of it he needed.

There, near the estate's edge - nearer, in fact, as the crow flies, to Mr. Thornton's cottage - sat Barnsdale's own long fallow windmill. Old, forgotten, its wood perhaps too rotten even for burning.

He did not have to repeat his journey across the roof to check on Sark's Le Moulin, to see if it was still counter-turning. Some newborn sixth sense within him told him that it still was.

Windmills, he thought. There is my answer.

And he went, immediately, to go and retrieve it.

Thornton's Cottage - Allen Dale had arrived in plenty of time to get the job (and its several parts) done. He had not been there much beyond a moment when Marion announced that she had taken care of contacting and liaising with Joss Tyr over assuming the now-open position of Nightwatch.

This had taken him aback, as he had allotted time in their schedule to arrange such. He sat and let himself drink long and leisurely from Thornton's well instead, choosing to believe Lady Marion's relative silence a consequence of her dislike at being ordered (as he thought she must surely have been) to beat her retreat behind lines.

Without complaint she accepted a place in the Kommandant's boot (once they had hiked out to the road and the auto), and he had driven to town, and specifically to the pier.

He was familiar enough with a double cross to at this time least have his suspicions raised. It was too simple, herself too docile for his own comfort.

The pier and its outbuildings were bare of people, water traffic usually having considerably slackened by this time of early evening. He checked in, from inside the auto at the gatehouse - which for him now meant little more than a tap of the brake and a friendly wave - and they found themselves alone nearby his launch's slip, within the shed commandeered for the shelter of the Kommandant's car.

She exited the boot without comment.

"Look," he apprised her, having waited until he felt she needed added incentive to continue to go along with the plan, "Geis 's got your ring - that emerald. It was found up by La Moinerie. Found in such a way that even he has now surely deduced that you did not spend all your captivity in a sea cave - as you have told him. Which will call him to question everything he knows about that incident. Right down to whether Carter really did get free of the islands."

Her face, at most, registered mild surprise. "And where is he now?"

"At Barnsdale. Looking for you, no doubt."

There was a slight bite to the inside corner of her lip. "I cannot think of that at present."

"Cannot think? It is the last nail in your coffin, Pet. No better reason for you and the babe to make your exit tonight on Stoker's sub."

"No babe," she told him, and his eyes grew skeptical, but he registered no tell in her demeanor.

"False alarm," she declared, infusing her delivery of the fact with as much unimpeachable sincerity as possible. Her memory showed her again the vial of Hilda's that had failed - repeatedly - to change color and confirm her suspected condition. "You may go and ask Eva yourself. Visit her at home. You will find someone there, as did I, most anxious for your call."

His brow cocked, considering the possible meaning of her speech.

"Mitch lives," she watched him closely. "Rather, has been living. At Eva's."

Before she had finished the first sentence, his mind was already well-past formulating a plan.

Marion spoke again and set to interrupting it. So he cut her off, with far more dispatch and unvarnished rudeness than she ever usually encountered. "And why did you not share that the very moment I walked in to Thornton's cottage?"

"Mitch is in no immediate danger from Eva and the Heindls," she assured him. "He now knows where he is, and he may well have already found a way to freedom. I could not have you flying off with half-a-plan thinking, 'this is a rescue'. Not right now. Because it's not me we need to ship home, it's Carter. And that is what I intend to do." Her stance had become bold, lit (to his eye) with truth. No question she meant what she said, here.

"Well, it's lovely that that's your assessment, my lady," he spoke in breezy fashion, having expected a last-minute balk from her before she boarded the launch, "but that is not the plan. Nor is it my orders. And I follow Ox when it comes to orders, not his someday Countess-wifey."

"Too bad," Marion said, falsely commiserating, "because I," she felt the weight of the tire iron in her hand behind her, out of view, noted that he was positioned conveniently in front of the still-open boot. "Need. Your. Boat."

She saw the answer easily in his eye before he could speak. The refusal as it formed. Saw that it was not the sole answer she was in the mood to tolerate at this juncture. Her hand tightened 'round the makeshift weapon as she brought it up to his skull. A skull whose potential thickness she had unkindly mused upon many a day - to herself and at times to Robin. It did not feel thick to her now. As she completed the arc of the blow and Robin's man fell back into the boot, a look of wonderment and disbelief upon his face, his hand having not come up fast enough to throw off the knock-out blow entirely, the sensation that radiated up her arm was the feeling not that she had rung his bell, cleaned his clock - or any other in a line of metaphors for hand-to-hand violence, but that rather she had taken a whack at a particularly unripe, unyielding melon.

Conscientiously she checked for the dilation of his eyes, holding a heavy lid open with her hand and trying to see what she could in the dim light. His eyelashes proved so unexpectedly long they tickled at the knuckle of her thumb. She checked his breathing, which was quite steady. Looked for broken skin or bleeding - of which there was none. She had not, after all, swung with all her might.

Assured that he would live until she returned (she only, after all, needed a good head start and a couple of hours to accomplish both her task and the travel involved), she used one of Clem's old sailing knots to tie his hands and feet together with what rope she could find in the shed, and closed him in the car's boot as she herself scattered down the short pier to his launch, and onto Sark, and the man whose island rescue she was about to affect.

Nightwatch Windmill - He did not like woods - even the smallest of ones as he was forced to assay here. They were nothing like the woods of his home, but he had not cared for those disorienting forests, either. Several times he thought he had become turned about, had lost his way. But each time he stuck with it, and was finally rewarded in the end. Once in sight of the windmill, from habit he drew his Luger - uncertain of what he might find within, and having brought along no other soldier to companion him.

The structure no longer boasted a door of any kind, only an open entry point. What was left of the rottening, useless vanes had been tethered to prevent their moving, so there was no need for him to dodge them as they spun on his approach through the doorway. He took only the briefest moment to survey the ground level (what was left of it) and its impressive stone and horse-hitch. The stairs to the half-cellar (where in its better days ground and to-be ground grain would have been stored) moaned as though they would not agree to bear his weight in his descent. There was little hope of his sneaking up on anyone, were there Resistance present.

Once his head cleared the support beam - even in the meager daylight that came from behind him (the light that came through the missing sections of floor and roof) he could see plainly what was before him. Hoarded supplies of food and other necessities were stacked along the still-dependable stone walls of the cellar. A row of lanterns next to a can of now-trebly valuable oil. Jars of preserved food, at least four large barrels - likely of things equally preserved in such a manner - a pile of neatly folded blankets, and more (though not nearly as much as the space might easily hold).

He looked to the floor, noting lines of dust and discoloration that seemed to indicate that at one time far more barrels and crates had been housed here. More supplies. More illegal hoarding. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a seal on a nearby barrel. The seal and sign of Barnsdale. He could not say it surprised him.

So he had found a storehouse. Proof that Marion - he was certain, Marion - had disobeyed Occupation Code and hidden these items here. What she had been using them for in the interim he could not say for sure. During her tenure at Barnsdale certainly she had little enough need or use for such surplus.

Had she been at playing - what was the English nursery tale? - Robin Hood? - stealing from her own estate and distributing it among the island's needy?

It did sound of something she might do.

His attention to the floor showed him something else. A generous patch of now-burnished to brown red, just at the foot of the stairs. He was enough of a soldier to recognize it for blood. To determine that it had not been there a great length of time. He went down on one knee (the opposite one of the one he injured in the gravel on the roof) to better examine it, when he saw something of a small table, whatever was atop it covered with peasant-spun cloth. Bumpy and irregular-sized items sat interestingly underneath as they might under a covering blanket of snow. In two strides he had crossed to it and whisked off the cloth.

It was not, simply, another crystal set. He realized in that moment that he had half-expected it to be. Perhaps that was as close as his mind would agree to go toward what deep down he was realizing - was processing - as the truth.

A microphone with chrome too old and worn to still be considered shiny, its transmit button covered by the cable cording wrapped about it, waiting tidily to be unwound, laid and connected for the next broadcast.

A phonograph, under a second covering in an effort to prevent it from taking on dust.

With his gloveless hand he grabbed at the circular head, in which the swinging arm ended, and which held the needle. He brought his thumb up to the chip of diamond that would lay in the vinyls' circular groove and create the sound. He wanted to snap it off, sever the round, flat metal head, but found it would take more strength, more force, than was in his hand to do so. He pulled away from it, finding it had broken through the skin - and even slight callus - on the pad of his thumb. He stuck the small wounding into his mouth, sucking lightly at the blood that had showed there.

There was no proper chair, only another, shorter barrel with an all-too-thin quilt upon it. He let himself drop into it, and turning to his left sighted album after album of records. Without even looking at them, he rose, taking the stairs two at a time until he was again outdoors - until his eyes made out the rather-ingeniously-concealed antenna that made any other translation of what he had just found utterly implausible.

Back down he went again, this time taking each record out of its jacket, one-by-one. Poring over the song lists, trying to stop himself before enjoying the covers with photographs. Had he not been such a faithful student of the Nightwatch he would scarcely have recognized the artists' names. Jews, Negroes - almost all of them American entertainers banned by the Germans. So very few British. Several Germans - but nothing from this century - only long-dead composers. Once he had the heavy, fragile black disks in a single, large stack, he lifted and dropped the stack as one onto the floor at his feet. He raised a single, efficient jackboot, and stomped a single, efficient time.

The records - the lifeblood of the Nightwatch. Not enough to simply transmit news, to illegally pass on information about the Allies - the enemy. No, his people, him - he must be doubly-defied by the broadcasting of this sub-human art form.

Very well, the Nightwatch - Marion's Nightwatch - was now irreparable. Here - if only symbolically - she was under his boot. All of Guernsey and the other islands that had dared listen, dared tune in - subject to his dominance. And though they did not yet know it, he would be the breaking of them.

He found the notion stuck. Irreparable.

Yes. More of that.

...TBC...

A/N: You have my promise that before posting another chapter I will get current with replies to all of your generous and very much valued reviews. Thank you.