SARK - La Salle's farmhouse - Early evening of Roger Stoker's planned rendezvous/departure - Robin Oxley finished the last of his farm-related chores and found himself, unsurprisingly, contemplating his coming farewell to Marion. Dale should arrive with her in the next hour, unless they two had run into trouble.
Behind him, in the distance, he knew Le Moulin continued in its counter-turning, and would do so until Marion set foot safely onto Sark, and he was satisfied that she had been apprised about Gisbonnhoffer's coming back into the possession of the ring of engagement he had given Marion, and the inherent danger that occurrence seemed to birth.
It had been a last-ditch effort, really, engaging the signal of Le Moulin. Though Marion was no longer at Barnsdale (its roof offering one of the best views of the ancient windmill) there were still various points along the eastern coast of Guernsey from which it could be seen. He could only hope that she had managed to catch sight of the warning signal. Or that she had laid low of her own instincts, keeping quiet and out of the way until traveling here - he found he almost thought 'home', connecting Sark (or at least La Salle's farmhouse in some way) with the notion of a base of operations, of a place of rest and belonging.
Their time to be together grew quite short. Soon enough he would be sending her truly home, away from here. And from this night on he would sleep in the knowledge that she was safe. Sleep, yes, but abandon the restfulness he had come to know since they had reconciled, wed, and set to living life (however sporadically) as one.
In a way (though he would refrain from mentioning it aloud) he was glad to have the secondary pressure (after the original impetus of the babe she carried) of Gisbonnhoffer having discovered the ring. Felicitously not a moment too soon, either. Just as Mr. Oxley was in need of a final, persuading force for Mrs., here it was. Marion, after all, he well knew, was not above jumping ship. The greater the number of reasons for her to retreat, the more comfortable he felt that she would behave sensibly, rationally, and as they had earlier decided.
He looked down to the cuff ring now on his smallest finger, praying that her early-morning promise to him that she would evacuate the islands with Stoker would prove more whole and lasting that the gapped jewelry that signified their greater vow.
His eyes came up and went immediately toward the horizon, and the promise it held that soon she would appear there.
He marveled at how a man in such a moment might say farewell.
At their first parting he had not known what would be its lengthy duration, and he had left her with no gently parting words - or any words - that he preferred to recall. Today, at this juncture, he found himself thinking that the Earl, actually, might best know what to say.
What to articulate, after all, when you know not when you might (if ever) see one another again? How to say what is needed without scaring your departing beloved into changing her mind?
Stretching out his arms he felt their strength, their solidness. It could be, in the end, they were all he might be able to offer her in that moment.
The wind coming off the sea stung at his eyes, and he considered whether (if he were going to have to struggle against it) if now were a good time to give into a brief blub. (Certainly losing it as he packed her off with Stoker would not do.)
He was still considering this when Stephen came out of the house at a near-trot, risking stumbling as he had left his stick indoors. Immediately Robin went to his side.
"Iain - John - has been detained," Stephen gasped to the commander of Unit 1192.
"There are Jerries at the house?" Robin jumped to conclude, "sent for you?" A wince took over his expression. Stoker had only just been smuggled away by Wills on his path toward the coast and the rendezvous point half an hour prior.
"No," Stephen caught his breath, one hand resting on Robin's supportive forearm. "The oldest Rufford boy has run to tell me. It is not known what has happened, but he is being held in the old jail - by the Island Constable. The Germans are not yet involved."
Robin agreed to relax only slightly at this news. "It will not be long before they are," he replied, grimly, and Stephen heard a scrape of his teeth following his conclusion.
"Of a certain," Stephen agreed, now able to straighten his posture. "Come with me," he patted Robin's arm, "to see the ReichKaptain. A little sorting on this end can only help mitigate what may occur on the other."
"Here, here," Robin agreed, aware with deepest regret that their cross-island trek to where ReichKaptain Lamburg kept his office would likely consume the time he had hoped to spend with Marion. And possibly longer. But there was no help for it - John was taken, and must be freed at any cost. It was no small blessing the Jerries had yet to become involved in the matter. Perhaps it would not take as long in the sorting as he feared it might.
Robin encouraged Stephen to return to the house and grab his stick before they set out, and for a moment he was left alone, the wind now to be his only message carrier as the house was empty and there no expedient process in place to get a message to those at the mines. "I'm comin' back, my love," he spoke into it, willing the sentiment to catch and stick, as did the Channel's salt that caught frequent rides upon its gusts.
John, of course, had to be sorted - and quickly - before any Jerries took an interest in him. There was nothing for it but to see to it. He would not allow himself space to imagine that the time needed in doing so would prevent him from returning in time to see Marion off.
GUERNSEY - St. Peter Port Docks - Kommandant's car shed - "You. Nincompoop bungler, bollixing up my evening - very possibly my morning, and, with what I would be tempted to call clever (did I not know it was wholly without intent and rather stemmed wholly from your unmistakably idiot-nature) machinations, my entire military career - long and distinguished though it has been - this revelation of yours may fell it entirely. I do not care for thoughts of the Russian Front, Herr Geis," the Kommandant railed to him (the board walls of the car shed no doubt trembling with every acid-filled word) giving equal weight to Geis' announcement that he had discovered Lady Marion to be the Nightwatch and to the notion that, as they stood over the boot of his motorcar, his still-out-cold chauffeur would likely be unable to provide his usual services.
The chilly calculation returned to his tone. "I care for such thoughts as little as do I for the becoming-ever-more-obvious fact that I am momentarily without a driver for the immediately foreseeable future."
Geis did not know what had prompted the Kommandant to inspect his own car's trunk. At times his commanding officer simply seemed to work on a network of instincts and excess senses where such things were concerned. In this case he had obviously been right in doing so.
They had found the man, Mr. Allen, bound wrist and ankle with negligible lengths of some old and brackish fishing rope.
The Kommandant raised his electric torch, illuminating the large, shadow-throwing knot grown unnaturally onto his driver's head. Neither German took any time to speculate about what might have landed the driver in such a predicament, though the possibilities were myriad: a gambling double-cross, an act opposing collaboration by one among the Resistance, simple robbery, jealous lover. With a man like Dale Allen, it would be hard to accurately speculate. The only thing for it would to be ask him directly when he came 'round.
At present, Vaiser's mood was best described as skillet-hot anger. He hopped about from foot to foot, his outrage taking in (and taking on) anything in his present line of sight. Geis had expected him to show dismay at the news of Marion's double life. Dismay, but ultimately pleasure. (The Nightwatch, after all, would now be finished.) Such an expectation had proven a great miscalculation.
"Do you like sun," Vaiser asked, a snap in his tone and delivery, "being on the water? The dependable arrival of supplies both necessary and utterly frivolous? Pretty girls? Fresh meat? Cigarettes? Hot running-water?" His eyes returned to the open trunk. "You may accept my guarantee that the Russian Front offers none of these things."
In such moments of Vaiser's beside-himself emotional overload, Geis Gisbonnhoffer knew not how best to placate his superior. As usual, he did not try, sticking solely with a respectful, possible-to-translate-as-sincere, "Sir."
"She didn't want you, Gisbonnhoffer." Vaiser switched tacks, knowing it too late to do any good, but still trying to counsel the younger, less-highly-ranked man. "She wanted her house, her comfort, her maintained standard of living." Exaggeratedly, he wagged his head, 'no'. "Never did want you. USED you. Funny part is," here he looked back up at his disgraced lieutenant, a piquant purse to his lips, "she's kept you well at bay from USING her." For a moment his spite-filled rant fell away from him. "Cunning, that. If she weren't so against my type, I might be tempted to try and turn her, lure her to my side."
He slammed the trunk lid shut, uninterested in whether it disturbed the injured man within (or perhaps hoping it might). With the slam, he seemed to change gears, waving Geis up toward the driver's door.
For a moment Geis nearly asked if they oughtn't move the chauffeur from the enclosed trunk and lay him across the rear seat, in consideration of his injury, but he held back the question when he could nearly hear the Kommandant's reply ringing in his mind, "I say, Gisbonnhoffer, as fond as I am of the man I've no interest in having his raffishly handsome face nestled in my lap as we drive down the road - however, if you desire such intimate time with him...I feel certain it can be arranged."
Realizing the Kommandant was expecting him - in the absence of anyone else available to drive - to take the wheel, Geis opened the door for Vaiser and walked to seat himself behind the wheel.
"The brat's mother," Vaiser was now on to an unrelated topic, "Lady Adalgisa, has taken it into her head that I ought host the...thing...for the occasional dinner at my manor on Alderney." He sighed and tsked loudly. "Take me 'round to your Barnsdale so that I might inform Fraulein Vaiser of such. While she sees my driver settled there for his (one would hope, swift) recovery, and dresses, I shall require several men to accompany me on a bit of reconnaissance nearby. You may await our return at your house, and then transport myself and the girl back here."
Again, he fell back on the reliable standby, "Sir." He tried not to grate his teeth. He did not care for being relegated to stand-in chauffeur. Not any day would he care for it. Much less on the day he had captured (well, perhaps not just yet, but surely unmasked) the Nightwatch. The day he had long dreamed about, the imagined moment that gave him chills and sensations beyond any fleshly pleasure he had yet experienced: informing his superior that he had done it. He had cracked the code, tracked the Reich's prey. The Nightwatch was his, was within his easy grasp. The object of his obsession (his double obsession, as he had found out) more real than she had ever been. Her capture and interrogation imminent. His reward - what prizes such an act of detection might attract to it - the closest it had been in years.
And yet, in the eyes of the Kommandant, the problematic factors of the deception his lieutenant had unspooled before him clouded over any excitement, or even satisfaction, in the reveal.
"And as for yourself, Gisbonnhoffer?" Vaiser, as was his way, took a hairpin turn back on to his prior topic, "I care not how you go about it, but I promise there will be none of the ballyhoo and back-slapping you may have envisioned upon the Nightwatch's arrest." He nearly spat as he continued. "We can hardly make a scene of it without revealing how simple-minded our officers have been, being duped for years by a mere girl - your one-time fiancee."
The atmosphere in the motorcar took on the smell of brimstone.
He did not wait; he waded in and took the chance offered him. "Should I not pursue her without delay?"
"And make sure, what?" Vaiser started at belittling him. "That she doesn't throw herself into the Channel to try and escape the island? You claim you have studied her for years, and yet you speak as though you know her not at all," he scoffed. "Lady Marion is too prideful to easily worry that she might be on the cusp of capture. Her behavior over the years shows she thinks herself far too smart and high-born to fall prey to any of our traps. I, for one, grant her a degree of foe-worthiness that she, until now, never has. As for the Nightwatch, she is as dependable as the cockcrow. You have found her home base. What more need you to do other than be there tonight to intercept her when she arrives to transmit?" He waved his hand as if dismissing the question of the nuts-and-bolts of her capture entirely. The matter-of-factness in his tone fell away, leaving nothing but hissing menace. "Your one order?" His eyes narrowed, his brow contracted. "Clean. This. Up."
Following Gisbonhoffer's obedient, 'sir', they rode in silence for long minutes, and it was not until they passed under the gated arch onto the Barnsdale estate that the Kommandant's voice could again be heard from over his shoulder.
"I never want to hear of it again. Of her again. I never even want to get the vague feeling you are thinking of her again. Enlist Diefortner's help. And keep in mind (as you will find out if you are not careful): there are things this world has to offer worse than simple death."
He had pulled the car up to the house, opened the rear car door, and heard Vaiser threaten further as he disembarked the car, nearly purring, "If you find your limited mind unable of call any up, ask Diefortner. I believe he has been at compiling a list."
It was a deliberate step Vaiser chose in ascending the steps up from the gravel to the entrance, and it was an equally deliberate snap of his fingers that set four soldiers (his men, Geis tried not, in that moment, to recall) to removing the still unconscious chauffeur from the boot of the car.
Heindl Cottage - Mitch Bonchurch knew it was not immediately unusual to find soldiers flanking the Heindl cottage. Of a certain they stopped by regularly enough in their irregularity to check on his presence, try to scare up something of fear within him.
At these times, generally, the Heindl children would know it best to scatter. Today they had behaved likewise. Hilda herself had been gone on foot to some far-flung place for the better part of the day, hunting for some rare island herb or another that bloomed only for six days a year.
Generally, Eva stayed with him, though. Her sweet face in those times often the only thing upon which he could fasten his eyes without being carried off in panic, thinking of the searing physical and mental torment the Jerries might quickly enough send him back to. Not merely torment, but now a life without Eva to bring him back from that certain brink. As she had done. As he knew - believed - she would do again without thought to behaving otherwise.
Why the Jerries had to choose tonight to check up on him - this night in which his insides were torn after a day of learning he was yet on Guernsey, seeing Marion - having been found! And knowing that it was his sworn duty to return to Robin and the unit with all haste. He should have gone by now, skipped out and been at arranging a passage to Sark, or at the least an overnight hiding place. But if he had, a contrary part of him said, what would now have become of Eva - of the family entire - when she could not produce him for the soldiers? Perhaps this was better: he would go tomorrow. That would leave possibly even as much as a month before the Jerries would return. Surely (even from 1192's base on Sark) he could come up with a solution to the Heindl (the Eva) quandary within that time - with the help of the other lads.
He heard Eva call out his name, and he stepped through the front doorway, ready - steeled - to confront his captors.
"So very nice to see you again, Mr. Miller," he heard in velvet-voice, before noticing the Kommandant pacing behind the chair in which Eva sat at the table. "And you, looking so hearty, so much more robust than upon our last meeting. I trust you have been enjoying your stay in France? I would have visited sooner, of course, but what with the present difficulty of travel and all, and such a backlog of work to be seen to...well, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me?"
Staggered and silenced by the man's appearance, Mitch said nothing. He felt his palms, and the nape of his neck begin to sweat.
"Can this be? Can it really be? You have nothing to say to me? Nothing, no news to share?" the Kommandant feigned shock, one hand splayed across his chest. "I who saved you from Joseph and my regrettably ham-handed Lieutenant? I cannot imagine such lack of reciprocity, of courtesy! What do they teach one at fishermen's school these days? Only Latin, then? Nothing of manners? Of deportment?"
It was such a reptilian-slick move the Kommandant hardly seemed to have shifted position at all, yet he had managed to pin Eva, now standing, to his side, and part her teeth with the snubbed barrel of his firearm.
Mitch, eyes to nothing but Eva - thoughts for nothing but Eva - saw her eyes grow round in response to having been taken, so shockingly, into such a hold.
Vaiser took a private moment to relish the unhidden affection he found in the Sarkese fisherman's eyes. Too easy, really. Just as he had expected. A little time with his best girl, Eva, and the sorry excuse for an Islander was sunk. Who or what wouldn't the man now sell out (and how quickly) on her behalf? Oh, but he felt her familiar curves against his side, the enamel of her teeth here and there in gritty contact with the pistol barrel.
Oh, this was quite fun. He ought to play at such pseudo peril more often. Jolly good time.
Her breath quickened, and he marveled with personal pride at what a good little actress she could be.
"Come now," Vaiser encouraged the fisherman, "out with it. Everything you know about the action planned for tonight."
At this command, Eva's eyes opened wider. Mitch saw her head move incrementally from side to side. His smitten and trusting heart took it to mean that she felt he mustn't put himself out on a limb for her. That he mustn't stop her from nobly giving her life to protect him, and whatever he might know.
How his soul ached at the sight of her, acting so bravely, so nobly. Sweat overran his brows and began to impede his vision. His mouth grew slack. He would have drooled from its corner had his tongue and throat not grown so unbearably dry. His mind showed him the Jerries' die maschine, recalled its pain and torment, reminded him he had not capitulated to it. He had, instead, let it break him to a point that he no longer could have capitulated to it - or the Germans' demands for information. Somewhere inside of himself, unconsciously, he had chosen insanity, eventual death - madness, even - rather than the betrayal of his fellows.
His heart double-skipped in its beat, the lack of those dependable, ever-present pumps giving him cause to think he might be experiencing cardiac arrest.
He had kept his secrets when there was only himself to sacrifice, only himself to lose. He had not known Eva. Not loved Eva.
He spoke quickly, his words almost slurred, sharing the only information - and that itself rather lean - he had. "There is. To be...a rendezvous with a British sub tonight on the Sarkese coast." His teeth chattered as though he were in Antarctic waters - as though he were one of Shackleton's doomed men, "I do not know where."
The Kommandant's eyes narrowed. All play (however perverse) fell away from him. "Coming ashore or taking away?"
"Taking!" Mitch shouted, his hands involuntarily raising in emphasis, so desperate was he to get the gun away from its position where it might do harm to Eva. "Taking away!"
Vaiser paused, a peculiar stillness settling upon him - a man rarely given to immobility - re-examining the fisherman's face. "I knew you were the one, my boy," he announced in a calm, sagacious tone. "I knew you were the very one to help me out in just such a pinch. But now the question, of course, is how to prevent you from running off and squealing to these fellows of yours, isn't it? Running. Let's see. Legs. Yes. Legs, useful in an escape." Vaiser gingerly withdrew the pistol from Eva's mouth, and fired it twice - both proving blanks - until he buried the third, live round deep into the bone of Mitch's thigh.
As Mitch lay on the cottage floor, trying not to writhe or whimper any more loudly than he was in response to the shocking pain, his eyes still unable to be taken off Eva, Vaiser grabbed her cheeks between the fingers and thumb of his free hand, and brought her mouth sloppily, disgustingly to his. He kissed her long, and embarrassingly intimately.
"Sancta simplicitas!" Vaiser declared, at what he took for Mitch's naivete, always willing to shove Mitch's nose into his unexpectedly-precocious-for-a-mere-fisherman's knowledge of Latin. "Not likely I'd go and sink a bullet into my best girl, is it? I don't much care for damaged goods, after all. Seen quite enough of those." He pulled a disgusted face. "Now you stay put," he waved the still-loaded pistol in Mitch's direction as he handed out orders. "I may well be calling again. And you," he waved it now in Eva's direction, where she stood without his assistance, her mouth and the skin about it appearing red and misused, "see to...things," he indicated the area where Mitch lay, flooded and flooding with blood from his wounding, "here, but do endeavor to be on time tonight - despite the temporary loss of my proper driver. You know how I can get when I am left too long stag at a party. One so hates to finish up with all the 'fun' before you even get there."
SARK - Abandoned Little Sark Mines - Thomas Carter had been more than a little taken aback at the unexpected, nervous, antsy arrival of Marion Nighten at the mine. It had been a busy enough day at this hideout; Johnson had come and gone, Djak had startlingly shown up - escorted here (surprisingly - clearly without Oxley's knowing) by Wills, who had shortly taken himself off somewhere on another task of the unit's.
Necessary farewells had been said to Royston, who had departed at the appointed time to rendezvous with the British agent who had already traveled cautiously toward the submarine rendezvous point.
It had been Carter's understanding that the Lady Marion was to have been brought, under the auspices of Allen Dale, to La Salle's farmhouse where she was to take her leave of Robin, and then make her own way down to what remianed of the standing stones on Heather's-Edge Heath and the narrow beach where they three island departees would await the sub's signal.
Certainly she had not been expected here.
At present, he was at finishing up a shave in what chipped sliver of looking glass they had brought to this place for such a purpose. His large side-chops had been so grown-out he had had to inaugurate the job with scissors before endeavoring to proceed. He was trying to rush so that they would not be delayed, but it had been some months since he had been properly shaved, and taking the necessary care was somewhat at odds with the essential need of speed. Thus far, he had not nicked himself.
"I've come to see you off home," she had said to him upon her arrival, once her eyes had grown fully accustomed to the low light belowground.
"That is a neat trick," he had answered casually, not sure what to make of her announcement. "However did you manage it?"
"Tire iron," she replied, without elaborating further.
His brain again made note that she had arrived alone - without her assigned escort of the man Dale.
"Grab what you need," she hurried him. "I do not think we've much in the way of time. I do not wish to arrive too early to the appointed spot, lest we be turned away or restrained by force, but we cannot risk missing our chance, either."
"Here, here," he agreed, and in a trice had applied what was left of his crumbling RAF uniform, socking away anything he could find that might prove useful in its various flap-covered pockets. He had (perhaps rudely) set in to shaving himself without asking permission. "And the child?" he inquired, "you have agreed to risk it?" It felt odd (and out-of-the-ordinary) for him to be asking after the life that might well be sacrificed in order to facilitate the saving of his own. It was not the sort of question he would have asked a year ago. Neither asked, nor pondered upon. Then, there had only been escape. There was, even now, space for little else. And yet, there was space.
"I agreed to Robin's wish for me to go when I thought there was a child," she confessed to him, bowing her head slightly. "I have since confirmed that there is not. There remains no reason to safeguard me more than any other member of the unit." Her gaze was steadily upon him, her pupils either wildly well-trained in the art of a lie, or no falseness to be found within her assertion.
"And Oxley knows this?" razor into the basin.
She cocked an eyebrow (though without annoyance), and answered. "He will as soon as you are safely away and I return to the farmhouse to inform him."
Carter slid the straight razor one last time over his freshly-revealed skin. Finished. "Then I agree. We have no time to lose. Shortly enough they will figure out why you have not arrived to bid your husband goodbye. Then we will find ourselves chased toward the rendezvous - and not just by Jerries we can have no scruples about wounding."
It was at this point Djak entered the crudely fashioned chamber, their conversation not lost on her in a hideout where any need for private conversations went against rather live acoustics.
"Rendezvous?" she asked, having heard the foreign-to-her word rather a lot over the last few hours. At the sight of Carter's startlingly clean-shaven jaw her expression showed she needed no further clarification.
Her instantly wary eyes went to Lady Marion, whose only response to her was to nod her head as if to say, 'yes. It is now time, he is going.'
"I will never see you again," Djak said to Carter, her eyes large, in tune with the darkness of the converted mineshaft about them. She said it as though she had never before truly considered it.
Carter had been at making certain the waist of his trousers and the banded waist of his uniform coat were in harmony. In response to her words, he lifted his head, so that he might look at her. "No," he agreed with her summation, "Probably not."
They stood a long space at the acknowledgement of this, silence (or what passes for silence in a converted mineshaft) hallowing the air about them.
Marion flicked a glance to Carter, her mind circling their limited timeframe, and took herself off and away to the base of the ascending stairs.
Djak did not notice. She had been taught not to fear endings, but also not to shy away from the emotions they inspired. "Then I will miss you," Djak said to him, with as much feeling and passion as she might have infused into a statement of love. "For the rest of my life."
Her gaze remained solemn, and keenly upon him, and he found he could not easily bear such examination. So he looked away. "You made a better boy, Djak," he said. He hoped, perhaps, such a statement (which he felt to be eminently true) might dismiss some of the sprung tension that had only moments ago entered the air. That it might make this parting easier to slough off. But of course (he guessed) this was not in harmony with the Romany way. Nor would this have been the Russian way, the way Prince Alexsei, son of Igor, Komonoff would have been expected to part with his brethren. That would have involved at least one long night of much vodka, tears - manly kisses - possibly, quoted poetry. "A better boy," he echoed himself.
As could be expected, her reply was astute to the point of nearly cutting him, it hewed so close to the true quandary at hand. "You only say that because you don't know what to do with me now."
Still, no matter her reliably intuitive insight, he stubbornly dissented. "I only say that because it's true."
Here an eyebrow flicked, as though he had initiated a challenge. A challenge worth pursuing. "Then you would stay if I..?" she began.
But here he knew he had to put a stop to it. "No," he answered honestly, and he saw in her expression that she, too, had known better. "I must go," he committed himself, leveling his glance at her and letting true sincerity seep into his words, "and you must live your life as who you really are."
For a moment, the mineshaft about them seemed slick with moisture, until he realized it was, instead, the tears pooling in her eyes as she answered him. "With you," she declared, though in a quiet, measured way, "I have always been who I really am."
Against the overall mood of the moment, at her words he felt himself crack into his seldom seen smile. "Then I, too," he promised - with no doubt he would keep faith with it, "will miss you, Djak. For the rest of my life."
"May it be a long one," she pronounced to him, as though in Gypsy blessing.
"And may yours be happy," he brought his hand up to her shoulder height, and rested it - as one might with a boy - upon her head. "And one day free."
Looking at her, there in her height below him, he had a spilt second in which he felt nearly moved to bring his hand down affectionately upon the side of her beardless face, in ghostlike whisper of a touch. Instead, his fingers balled into a fist, which seemed to signal some finality to him, and he turned, knowing she would not be the one to break the moment - and knowing that to safeguard the next step in his life, that he must.
It would come to often be how he thought of her, of Djak, there, her dusky skin in the darkened cave, yet something shining from her eyes, from her self, that seemed to illumine the cramped, close space and elevate it into something more important than a mere hideout or safe house. A luminosity that he had not correctly translated nor understood when first he encountered her (or it) in that hellish office cupboard of Gisbonnhoffer's, that similarly tight space of his Alderney getaway car's trunk - when the sunlight receded in a sea cave that had provided them temporary shelter from their pursuers.
Perhaps it had never, in those present moments, actually been there. Perhaps it was only in the memory that existed. He would often ponder if such incongruity made any difference.
Thomas Carter moved quickly past an improvised partition and toward the steps that would lead him toward Lady Marion, and what remained of the sun's light, his back necessarily turned to the pull of this other, far more elusive-in-the-understanding-of-it radiance.
GUERNSEY - Barnsdale Estate - The fog surrounding Allen Dale proved to be a thick one. Yet, rather than waking disoriented, his thoughts hazy and unconnected, finding himself upon his back he began to instantly spring forward and lunge for Marion, meaning with his every resource to prevent her from escaping with his launch and subverting the already-agreed-upon plan of action.
In this, he did not get far. It took little more than the necessary tension shooting into his shoulders for said spring to die before it could be brought about. The pain in his head, and extending even to his upper muscles (such as those in his shoulders and neck), prevented any movement that would portend immediate physical collapse (and likely further loss of consciousness).
It took a moment for his ears to snap-to, and his hearing to come fully back to him. His eyesight was still trying to settle into some approximation of adequate when, from the voices surrounding him, he was able to deduce that he was in the presence of Vaiser, Gisbonnhoffer, some flunky at Barnsdale, and - without her speaking, only recognizing her particular perfume - Fraulein Vaiser.
The realization that his eyesight appeared to be indefinitely compromised was enough to make any formerly blinded soldier well beyond uneasy.
He was on a couch. Not, as he would have expected, in the chauffeur's flat above the carriage house - the suitable place for one such as himself - but rather within the estate's house proper. As the colors of the room resolved about him, he recognized their scheme, the furniture from his nighttime ramblings and pinchings about the estate, and knew himself to be laid out upon the chaise that faced the fireplace in what had formerly been Lady Nighten's - and then Eleri's - suite of rooms.
Rather a posh address for a mere driver. In the background, Gisbonnhoffer and the Kommandant were engaged in rather rough (and for Gisbonnhoffer, undeniably petty-in-tone) conversation with one another. Their speech came to his ears like distant, rumbling thunder signaling a stronger storm soon to arrive.
Along the area of the outer side of his thigh, he could feel the skirts of Fraulein Vaiser as they pressed against him, her back to him, her facing the fireplace, seeming (at least) to listen attentively to what was taking place.
He tried to reach for her hand without moving any portion of his body beyond that of his arm, but after several grasping, sluggish attempts, he had yet to capture it, and he knew better than to stretch or have a go at re-positioning himself to make getting hold of it easier.
The color of the skin of her hand swam in and out of his vision where it rested next to the darker fabric of her frock's skirt. One moment it seemed quite close, the next as though it were located down some deep corridor.
He tried again, "Fraulii - " he managed from a throat that felt more of sandpaper than slick gullet. His hand fumbled, ineffectively, among the folds of her skirt until finally his clumsy fingers tapped into hers. Hers shivered for a moment, not expecting his touch, and then, in reflex, opened so that he might slip his into her grip.
She turned, her eyes wary as they skimmed the room behind the chaise he occupied. Reconciled to whatever she had seen, she dropped to a knee beside the fainting couch, bringing her face closer to his.
She did not let go of his hand, did not throw it away from hers. His skittish eyes reacted strongly to her moving nearer to him, and in refocusing, his brain shot pins of pain into his skull.
"They are gone," she told - almost assured - him. "You have been, in some way no one immediately understands, injured."
"Aye," he agreed, still huskily, no detail involved in his head's bashing in forgotten.
In the saying of it he did not realize it, but his hand tightened considerably about Eleri's own.
She nearly gave a 'yip' in response to the powerful pinch it gave her knuckles. "I am ordered to stay and see you well settled here," she told him, "before dressing to accompany my father to Alderney for an dinner this evening." Her face opened to him, curiosity and possible concern mixing in her expression. "Can you not say who has done this to you? Is it, as Herr Geis expects, a gambling debt gone unpaid? A moment in which you gave a German more cheek than was advisable?"
It hurt to will his eyes to focus too intently, but as was his way, he wished to see as deeply into hers as possible in that moment. It was a great risk he was about to take - though what other feasible option was left open to him he certainly could not see (no matter how improved his physical vision might become). He reminded himself; he had trusted this girl before. And he remained confident her loyalty to Lady Marion easily outweighed same to her father, or to her birth country.
Pointless of him to try and go over the Barnsdale staff in his head, play at deducing which of the domestics at present working in the house might or might not still be loyal to the Nighten family. No, it was to be Eleri, or it was him getting up off this couch, taking two shaky (though defiant) steps towards being a hero, and falling prey again to unconsciousness - if not death. So Eleri it would have to be.
"It were Lady Marion," he told her, pausing to lick his paper-dry lips and allow her a moment to react to the startling news.
The pupils of her eyes contracted at his announcement, but she did not vocally naysay him.
"And she must be found," he declared. "She has taken my launch and fled the island."
"Then how shall I ever find her?" came the perfectly reasonable question, rendered (surprisingly) in the low tones of a near-whisper. In this instance, one would hardly guess her for a tiro.
"I need water," he said. "Please."
He did not risk sending his eyes to track her as she crossed to retrieve it from a tray that had been brought, but his ears heard the unsteadiness of her hand as she raised the crystal carafe to the tall glass, the shaking as the two came together causing a tinkling not unlike that of cubed ice colliding in a summer drink.
She brought a footman's cloth back with her, and several moments were spent attempting to get the water into his mouth and down his throat, neither drowning him nor flooding his shirtfront in the process. And certainly not requiring him to do much in the way of moving or altering his position.
With that accomplished, he continued. "I do not say that you can find her. It is likely too much to hope for. She has taken it into her head to embark upon something singularly dangerous," he warned, "I cannot impress this upon you too greatly." He took a breath. No going back once he'd begun. "There is a hotel on Sark, the Dixcart. You must ask - for the man present the night Lady Marion was shot."
"How shall I get to Sark? To this hotel?" she asked, bewildered, her face puckering with worry. "It is Alderney to which my father has ordered me."
Had they been up for it, his eyes would likely have rolled with a degree of impatience, or at least fluttered. As it was, patience was among the only things at present he had to spare. "The Kommandant will surely send you home after your dinner - alone, as he will most likely remain at his manor and prepare for the late evening parties to come. You must fall ill when you are far enough away from Alderney - so that your escort will not simply return you there - and close enough that he might change his course to land on Sark. At the Dixcart, a Dr. Battley will be called to attend on you. When he arrives, tell him you must give a message to Alex La Salle. Now say it back to me."
"Sark, the Dixcart, Dr. Battley, a message for Alex La Salle."
"Good girl," he closed his eyes and risked a shallow nod of his head. Eyes still closed, he continued. "Do not mention Marion by name to anyone. Anyone. Someone will come to see you - "
"The man from the night of the shooting?"
"Possibly."
"Is he Alex La Salle?"
"No." He opened his eyes. "I cannot tell you his name."
She was looking at him intently, but did not protest his withholding from her.
"When the person arrives," he continued, "say, 'Pennsylvania six, five-thousand'. Tell them why I am not there myself. Tell them they must find Lady Marion. Tell them everything's gone pear-shaped."
Eleri mused on the code word he had given her, tried it on her tongue several times, consistently stumbling over the peculiar word 'Pennsylvania'.
Allen had let his eyes squint-up shut once he finished with his instructions. His grip on her hand loosened somewhat. His breathing, which had turned agitated as he had spoken returned to a more normal rhythm.
"Why can you not go yourself? Pass these things on?" Eleri asked, a frown folding upon her brow.
Perhaps it seemed a reasonable question - he had no mirror to see how capable of doing such he may or may not have looked.
"No, Hen," he assured her, his speech losing its former profluence. "I cannot. I could not stand long enough to find the door to this room, and may be I will not have it in me to live through this night." He let one eye wince. "A man knows when he's beat, and I'm not too proud to say it: bodily, I'm beat. Should I attempt to chase after her now it will be two rescues needing affected - not just the one."
He felt her bring the back of his hand (still in hers) up to her cheek. "I'm afraid," she told him.
And for a minute he thought she referred to the referenced possibly that he would not live to see the dawn, but before he could attempt to comfort her on that count, she clarified.
"What if I'm not able to do it? What if something goes wrong? I do not know if I am the kind of girl who can do such a thing."
It was an infrequent moment of publicly acknowledged self-doubt for her.
"Naw," he assured her (though his voice had grown thready), reminding himself not to couple the gesture of shaking his head with the words spoken. "You're just the very right sort. Who can say no to you, Ellie? You're strong inside, and willful - who more so than you? And what's more, when islanders look at you they see a Kommandant's daughter. They'll deny you nothing. There is no way you can fail," he told her, though he was not at all certain in that moment that he believed it himself. He thought he ought affect a smile as a capper to his pep talk, but thinking he might only (in the degree of pain he was in) render it gruesomely, he changed his mind, and hoped sincerity of facial expression might win the day.
He heard Eleri take in a very deep breath before rising from beside him.
"There is a footman just outside the door," she said, "should you call for him. Herr Geis has encouraged my father to send for Ginny Glasson to look in on you if she is not too occupied with Joss Tyr," she stalled a moment at this statement, recalling that they both knew that the psychic at present suffered from no real malady. "I will stop back once I am dressed, and you may quiz me on what I recall of what you have said."
She had replaced his hand upon his chest, and though she offered no physical comfort, no pats or caresses to him as she walked away, once at the door she stopped and turned back. "Don't die," she told him - as though he had a say in such matters. "Things here would be simply awful without you."
Well, it was sound advice, he thought, not dying. Certainly he would take it under advisement. He resumed the effortless task of lying immobile upon the chaise, 'Pennsylvania six, five-thousand' pounding on like an endless drum solo in his head.
SARK - Beach at Heather's-Edge Heath - Stoker/Legg rendezvous point - Marion was standing, still somewhat stunned by her last-moment exchange with Robin's man, Roger Stoker.
The night was for the most part clear, with only the occasional cloud coming between the moon and the Sarkese landscape. To her back lay the ancient stone circle that in better days had won this particular spot its appeal to off-islanders. To the South, the almost unseeable, un-navigable cove and the cavern offshoot that currently sheltered the launch she had stolen from Allen Dale.
It had been an awkward rendezvous with Stoker and Royston. They had been expecting her to be squired into their company by Allen, after all. Expected her to be ready to travel with them. And while Stoker seemed to recover from the shock that she was not going, but rather sending Carter, quickly enough (Royston only looking rather chary at such last-moment changes in plan), there was still something about him that seemed to treat her...with a bit too much - an odd word for it, but there you had it - enthusiasm.
It was not as if they had known one another at home. She was not even certain she had ever been introduced to him. Yet she felt his eyes follow her, settle on her with a sort of curiosity for the length of time they had needed to wait before getting the sub's return boat loaded with the men and out into the water.
Then again, maybe not quite curiosity. Possibly, pride (though it made little sense to her to bequeath such a feeling onto a total stranger).
It had been paramount that they kept any speech between the four of them to a minimum, as both the night air and the water would carry sound much more dangerously than during daylight hours. Even so, he had taken the chance to assure her that he would, 'be certain to let her brother know she was well.'
Royston had shortly returned to where they three were huddled as he had positioned himself where he might sight and respond to the sub's signaling that it had surfaced and was ready to retrieve them. He gave a terse nod, not risking his coarse (and usually hearty) voice in the betraying air.
She had shoved - without showing it to him or offering explanation - the photograph of young Seth into one of Thomas Carter's many uniform pockets. She brought her mouth up as close to his ear as possible and instructed him. "See when you arrive that my brother receives this." She felt the friction of his now closely shaved sideburn against her face as he nodded in agreement. A small enough task to perform in exchange for a ride home. For escape.
She knew the picture, once in Clem's hands, would need no further explanation. Just as she knew it was a piece of evidence, of such private evidence, that she would never have been able to appoint Roger Stoker to deliver it. No matter how he seemed to regard her in this moment.
All three brought their eyes to bear on Stoker, who then announced - in the quietest tones possible, "Bet it or regret it, Hoss," - as his way of saying it was time to launch the boat and climb aboard.
Even as her mind reeled at hearing the impossibly familiar line, she waded into the shallows to hold the prow of the boat (more umiak than Channel-suited vessel), so that the others might get in more easily. As it was Stoker who settled himself nearest her, she took the chance, knowing that if she didn't, she'd wonder about his knowing such a peculiar turn of phrase indefinitely.
"Why did you say that?" she asked, her voice lowered but intense. "Just now, about betting?"
The clouds were well clear of the moon, and when he smiled she saw the fond expression in both the whites of his eyes and his parted teeth. "Just something an unsuccessful riverboat gambler used to say to me," he told her, shrugging it off, and her heart nearly stopped at the thought of Freddy somewhere on the Continent. Somewhere this MI-6 officer had fallen in with him.
Which was why, in her reverie, she had not immediately returned to the cluster of rock behind which they had originally been hiding as the boat pulled slowly but steadily out onto the Channel waters, raising with every hump, every rise and fall of the waves on the in-bound tide.
As the three men retreated into the distance, she thought she could see moonlight cut across the cheekbone of Thomas Carter as he rowed, the dark coloring on his blonde hair deadening the possibility of it also catching and reflecting any giveaway of lunar shine.
When she first heard the rumble, she assumed it was merely distant thunder, announcing that a storm would shortly be on its way. She strained her eyes out into the choppy waters before her, beyond the small boat of three men laboring at tiller and oar - still cautious of engaging the motor - and tried to see the surfaced sub.
But alas, Royston's eyes exceeded her own in their hawkishness here. She could see nothing, and only in faith could believe it there - that link to home, that certain escape - at all.
Pop pop pop! she heard, a sound she could not even place right away. She saw a man's form fall from the boat, into the troubled waters, and willed herself not to gasp. Machine gun fire. What she had taken for thunder, the engine of a Jerry patrol - no, multiple Jerry patrol boats, converging with startling efficiency on this very spot.
Recognizing what was happening, she sprinted back to the cluster of rocks just before those patrols turned their high-powered searchlights to shore.
She panted with both exertion and fear as she looked out through a fortuitous crack in the stone. The searchlights gave the Jerries a better view of their quarry, but also gave her the same advantage. They were too far out for her to see who had fallen into the sea, but not yet close enough to depend fully upon the sub and what guns it might have to defend the small boat making its way toward them.
No longer worried about noise, nor intent on stealth, one of the two remaining men engaged the motor, and the boat (its load lighter, minus one) roared to life, racing out toward the deeper water and the protection of the sub, under heavy fire and pursuit by the Jerries.
Naturally, she wanted to see it through to the end, to know whether they would reach freedom, but her mind told her she'd best be running the short (but open-to-being-seen) section of beach from the beach's rock cluster to the narrow path that had led them here, while the Jerries had their searchlights pointed in the opposite direction. The Lady Marion Nighten could not afford to be caught on this beach tonight.
She was just turning herself away from the crack when she heard it...the slow, cautious drag of a body across the loose shale that comprised the narrow beach.
The pain of memory shot through her only-just-healing arm, that recent gift from Joss Tyr, reminding her that she was carrying no weapon with which to defend herself. In trembling anticipation of being found, she froze in place, waiting to see how the next moments of her life would play out, regretting that she had not had a chance to tell Robin how and why she had thrown over his plan for one of her own, mourning that it did not appear at all definite that any of the three men she had only just aided and abetted and wished farewell would reach England.
There was a flurry of shale as the man rounded the rocks (him still flat to the ground) and joined her. His breathing was ragged in the extreme, and there was a deep smell of seawater upon him. As he did not rise, risking herself, she went down on her knees.
"Carter! Carter?" she hissed at him, now recognizing him, in the moonlight red streaking down from his hairline onto his face and neck. He was soaked to the very bone, and she could hear him gurgling somewhat, trying to expectorate what excess seawater he had taken on in his desperate swim back to shore.
"Where are you hit?" she asked, her hands searching through his hair, trying to find the wound producing the blood. "Where are you hit?"
"Not," he was able to gulp after several long moments, and she realized that what she had mistaken for blood was only the unreliable hair dye of his that had an inconvenient habit of rinsing out in rain or water. Even now she saw where it had stained the collar and back of his RAF jacket.
"Have they gotten away?" she asked, hoping he had managed a better view of it than had she.
"Look and see," he encouraged her, himself interested in little but his own narrow escape from Jerry fire.
She stood, and did so. "The boat, I think, has arrived. The sub's guns are holding the patrols at bay. Why do they not dive?" she asked, frustrated with the submarine's inaction. "Why?"
When she turned back around, Carter had pulled himself up to standing. Well, leaning, more like, against one of the largest stones. "We must leave here, immediately," he told her, no hint of casual anywhere in his voice.
"Yes," she agreed. "And we must get you home."
He gave her a rather dubious look.
"No," she would have none of it. "The plan has not changed. Only the method of conveyance. I have Allen's boat. Not far from here. Tell me what you need, and I will do it."
His visible doubt somewhat lessened at her mention of a vehicle, he followed her off the beach, back to the track they had hiked to arrive at the Heath. Due to his swimming exertion, he necessarily followed several steps behind her brisk, determined pace. Beyond them, out upon the waters, the Jerry patrols still circled, looking for what they might find on the now empty surface of the Channel.
"Can you get me to an airfield?" Thomas Carter finally asked, when they had arrived at the cove that held Dale's launch.
"I know of one," Marion confessed, it requiring effort for her to do so in an even tone of voice. "If you do not mind traveling to Alderney." Knowing something of his prior time spent there, she searched his face - as best she could - in the darkness.
"We had best collect the uniform I buried, if we can re-locate the cave in which we hid. On Alderney - even out upon the waters tonight - such a bluff could only prove useful," he calculated.
Relocate the cave, she thought to herself, as she took the launch's wheel. Yes, that she could do. Certainly her time spent there had not been something she had been able to forget.
She threw a glance in Carter's direction, unable to read anything from the side of his face (all that she could see). What were those memories like for him? He spoke of them casually enough just now. Was it only a cave to him? One of a thousand other places he had been - in which he had hidden?
She shook the disturbing canyon of emotion and emotionlessness that both separated and yet bonded them out of her mind, as she had (because there was nothing else to do with it) the uncertain fate of the two other men. As she had the notion that Freddy had not managed to avoid the war, but was, most obviously, now out fighting it. And as she had shaken the tire iron blow to the man who usually piloted this vessel out of her mind as well.
There was room only in her mind for navigating by moonlight. For outrunning or outsmarting any further Jerry patrols. First, the cave of her kidnapping. Then, Alderney, the island of death.
The island of death - with an airfield.
...TBC...
A/N: To anyone still awaiting responses: All but non-existent internet connection since last update. Apologies.