SARK - the countryside - To any observer it would have been hard to say which was at moving faster: Robin Oxley's mind, or his at-full-tilt feet.
Outside ReichKaptain's office - Wills Reddy had arrived as soon as he could manage to the office site of Sark's ReichKaptain, initially ready to take over any necessary pleading (and possible bribing) in the cause of the immediate release of Iain Johnson. It had been on his way there, to the island's north, that Wills had paused for only the shortest stop-in at the Dixcart, wanting to check if Allen had yet arrived on-island, wishing to tell him of John's being apprehended, and conversely hoping to carry news to Robin that Marion had been safely landed and smuggled onto Sark, shortly (as per the plan) to find herself bound for Heather's-Edge Heath and home, courtesy Roger Stoker and his MI-6-sent sub.
But it was not the undercover Dale whom Wills found there, but rather Dr. Battley - in broadest whispers all but shaking Wills' arm off whilst telling him the Alderney Kommandant's daughter was on-island and entreating him (as her doctor) for an audience with Alex La Salle. Fraulein Vaiser, Battley had confided, was at present not at all well - but her condition had not left her so close to being in touch with Death and the spirit world that she should know the inconsequential names of the random cousins of unremarkable tenants on Sark. Much less leave her asking him to arrange it so that she might speak to them.
Her request (which bore some level of desperation) had left Battley himself - a man determined to steer clear of such subterfuge, of even hinted disobedience to the Germans and their Occupation Code - more than merely shaken.
With frustrated disgust, knowing he could not immediately change course for Little Sark (the in-hiding Thomas Carter/Alex La Salle) and the mines, and not certain the request was anything more than a trap (whether the girl making it knew it or not), Wills again set out with an even greater determination to carry the news to Oxley, his superior officer, and free Robin to pursue this new development in whatever way he determined best.
Wills' reception by his fellows once arrived at the site of Lamberg's offices was (of necessity) a quiet one. From some distance away he had located the outlines of Robin and Stephen sitting among the waiting benches settled onto the hard-packed earth along the outside wall of the ReichKaptain's quarters, biding their time among the other islanders also waiting for an audience.
There had not been opportunity for much conversation - hushed greetings, mostly - before Robin asked, quite uneasily, if he had not seen or heard something of Allen. If Wills knew whether Allen had not yet landed back on the island.
Wills' mind was elsewhere, focusing on what he must try to relay to Robin about Fraulein Vaiser's appearance, and her interest in (and seeming knowledge of) Alex La Salle. Waiting until the others in line had re-adjusted their attention away from his arrival, Wills spoke. "Kommandant Vaiser's daughter has arrived unexpectedly at the Dixcart," he told them, holding his voice level and unremarkable in an effort to deflect any further attention from them - yet unable to shake the dramatic weight and inherent danger of the statement. "She is asking after Alex La Salle."
"What of Allen?" Robin asked, preoccupied, shaking his head as though to clear it. "What has he to say of this development?"
"Nothing," Wills answered, "directly, that is. Though she carries with her," his voice dropped into a lower, half-silent register, 'Pennsylvania six, five-thousand', so says the Doctor."
"And what does the Doctor think?" Stephen asked, a concerned crease in his forehead, though he did not know Robin's code word by name.
"That she is hysterical, in the throes of a nervous episode," Wills answered out of the corner of his mouth, taking up a stray stone within his hands, his thumb searching out its smoothness to rub. "He was of half a mind to sedate her, though he may likely have desired that if only to slow what he saw as her dangerous demands."
"But no trace of Dale?" Robin again questioned, his eyes still to the horizon. So reliably had he not taken his gaze from it, Wills began to wonder if Oxley even knew to which of his men he presently spoke.
Trying to ignore what appeared to be Robin's growing-more-narrow-by-the-moment tunnel vision regarding Dale's whereabouts, Wills asked leave to stay and negotiate with Stephen regarding John's release, freeing Robin to handle whatever mischief might or might not be up at the Dixcart. And likewise get to the bottom of what had prevented Dale from reappearing on the island with Marion in tow.
"Good man," Robin had said at Wills' suggestion. He spoke no further on his immediate intent (bound for the Dixcart or elsewhere), and before Wills or Stephen could reply, he was free in the wind.
the countryside - Robin Oxley could not logically think what to do, what action to take - where to command his attention next. It was too late in the day - darkness fast creeping - to expect the warning signal of Le Moulin to do Marion any good at this point. It had been a stretch to think it might reach her and alert her in the first place, now that she was no longer living at Barnsdale.
He was left with no way to contact Marion across this distance. And Allen had not arrived back. Perhaps the undercover member of the unit had not arrived on Guernsey, either. Perhaps Marion - Robin felt the myriad possibilities of the word repeating in his head, quiet as a whisper, fraught as an epitaph. Perhaps...perhaps...
It suggested circumstances too many to number. Of a certain too many against which to craft reliable plans.
Quite suddenly he knew himself for afraid. That singular emotion with which he had had not much interaction since his mother's death and the days that followed it. He had been so young then, a boy. He was a man now, finding that the maturity of fear was far worse. As a child life had held so many things over which he had no control, no responsibility. Fear and uncertainty had lurked in varying degrees everywhere. Follow that with a bachelor's life and a larger world over which he had almost no control - and allowed himself to have even less responsibility - and fear had retreated so far into the shadows - into his depths - one could pretend it had ceased to exist. But now, here - when he found himself nothing if not powerless - now it chose to overtake him. Fear, and panic in the wake of it. He had no tool with which to manage it. No Marion with which to temper it, it being the loss of Marion from which it sprung - Marion and the babe she carried. His child. And with that thought, another flash of his mother, of the child that had died with her. And again, for him, a raw dousing of fear.
In agitation his hand found its way into his pockets, feeling about for his tinder box, the few matches (a black market luxury) he carried about. They were neither of them his treasured cigarette case, neither a physical reminder of Marion, but for a renewed nervous hand - for now - they would have to do.
Outside ReichKaptain's office - The sunset earlier that evening had been a dull-enough one. Early darkness crept up around those Sarkese still at waiting for their moment with the ReichKaptain. Stephen felt Wills tense quite suddenly next to him upon the bench, and then stand, stock-still, as though turned to stone.
"What is it?" Stephen stood beside him to ask, a hand to Wills' shoulder, his own senses unable to locate anything in his surroundings out-of-the-ordinary. As his companion spoke, Stephen's ear caught on something both hard and incredulous - choked up - in the other man's tone.
"There has not been nearly enough time for Robin to make it to the Dixcart, Stephen," Wills informed the blind man at his side, knowing the other man knew this fact far better than did even he.
He took a moment to turn his head back toward his friend - though it was hard enough to face himself away from the color that now bloomed dangerously, portentously upon the horizon. Upon turning toward Stephen's face he could still see the bright blaze in the distance reflecting in the former rector's unseeing eyes.
"He's set fire to Le Moulin," Wills announced, his voice awash in disbelief at such an unexpected and risky act. "The flames are of such a height they will likely be seen all the way to France." He felt a twinge in his eyes, as though he were close enough to the distant fire's heat that they were affected by it. It was for Marion Robin had risked them all thus. Not for Allen, nor for John. For Marion.
Wills could only hope that Robin was even now well away from the signal he had lit. Away and approaching the Dixcart, his mind re-aligned to the unit's troubles, and at what was needed to solve them. And yet he was too familiar with both Oxley (and his own self) to suspect otherwise. Robin might carry on, might set himself back to performing an officer's duty - the tending of his men. He may well have, in this instance of insanity, gotten his consuming concern for Marion briefly out of his system.
But at what cost to the rest of them?
"What has he done?" Wills asked no one in particular, expecting no answer, fearing that in a similar situation he would have done the same - risked everything (himself, others) to warn the woman he now knew he loved - to warn Djak, to do anything within his power to ensure her safety. With no thought to the detriment of unmasking the others, robbing them of their sheltering cover.
The islanders among whom Stephen and he had been waiting now began to raise a murmur; the occasional exclamation rang out in surprise. They had seen it, too - the burning windmill. The occurrence, though dramatic, could hold no particular significance for them - other than the inherent dread anything out-of-the-ordinary birthed on an island years into an Occupation. Le Moulin burned, on a lightning-less night? What did it mean? they would wonder. What consequences would it hold for them?
"Pray for him, Wills," Stephen said, urgency in his instruction, his hand tightening its grip upon the other man's shoulder and upon his own stick. "For John, for Marion - pray. Pray for us all."
ALDERNEY - Treeton Camp - It was not a lengthy trip from the airfield to the Treeton Camp and Geis' office there, Marion knew from experience. But she was not taken to his office. No, she had been immediately sequestered here, within the interrogation hut, in one of its holding rooms.
Some amount of time (she could not well judge it) had passed before Geis again joined her. By now her gag had been removed, and when he entered she asked the sole question that she felt hanging heavily in the air between them. "Are you going to kill me, then?" Pretty well convinced she knew the answer, her eyes hardened a bit about the edges, but were devoid of wary uncertainty.
At her straightforward inquiry, his eyebrow flicked up. "There was a time," Geis answered her, his voice controlled, rational, almost (for him) chatty, "in which I would have said, 'no. I cannot kill you. You - and the memory of your sorry excuse for a father - I have been told, are too valuable as propaganda tools at present.'" He gave a smile, all traces of his coming-on hysteria at the airstrip gone. This was his turf, now. Had he not felt so supercharged with unmasking Marion (having finally sussed her out) - with capturing the Nightwatch - he would have felt relaxed. "Naturally that would have been as tools which could be wielded by the Reich. That - " his smile slid into a smirk, "I think all involved realize - that time has passed."
His voice dropped an octave in pitch, but retained its volume, retained its command. "NOW I will not kill you because you have become - or rather, you have the potential to become - both as Lady Marion and as the unmasked Nightwatch - a propaganda tool which might be effectively wielded by the opposition on these islands, by those who oppose the Reich." He gave his head a light shake. "And we must not have that."
Without asking permission, another man entered the room, and took his place at the lone table, toward which she was faced. She recognized him as the Kommandant's particular lackey, Underlieutenant Diefortner.
Unusually, Geis did not seem to visibly bristle as he always did when the man was in his presence. Instead, "See that she is stripped of her clothing," he threw the order over his shoulder to the man as he moved to depart. "Fine knickers and all."
He did not stay to oversee, nor did he take so much as a fraction of a moment to look at her and relish the shock she could not contain at such an unexpected command, bleeding onto her face.
When Gisbonnhoffer reached the open doorway he paused a moment, taking his gloves from his belt and pulling them on before reaching for the handle to close it.
The skin of his palms was dry now, his demeanor unagitated. He was committed to what was to come next.
His tone was that of a drawing room discussion. "Do you know why I went to war, Marion?" he asked her, again his voice detached, instructive - his eyes to the space beyond the room, his back to her. "To recover the Sudetenland. To rescue our stolen lands. That which belonged to us. To see my country whole again." He stopped short of rhetorically adding, 'is there not honor in that?'
Her reply was as caustic as the slaked lime employed at Treeton to speed the breakdown of the lifeless bodies of prisoners. "What do you want, Geis," she let her voice sit upon his first name, the name he had not so long ago begged her to call him, "to be lord of the dance?" It was now her turn to scoff. "War. There will always be war, be men willing to go to war, to make war - for whatever reason - as long as people like you revel in their own ignorant bigotry!"
Without granting her a reply, willing himself not to register any response to her demeaning of him, he spoke directly to Ellingheim, standing at attention just beyond the doorway. "Bring in the girl," Gisbonnhoffer coolly instructed the First Landser, and himself exited.
GUERNSEY - Barnsdale Estate - suite of the former Lady Nighten - "Brilliant!" whispered Allen Dale to himself as the vertigo continued to overcome him and any attempts to move, despite the fact he remained the embodiment of stillness, prone upon the fainting couch.
He did not care for lying about with his eyes closed, no matter the pain opening them caused. Closed eyes when he was not asleep felt too much of being blind, too much of the past. Of fears he had never overcome, only managed to subvert with the miraculous regaining of his sight.
But too long spent flat on his back with heavy lids, and sleep would come - whether he was ready for dreams or not.
He was too wet to be merely sweating. All around him there was far more shouting and disarray than would ever be allowed of the staff by Barnsdale's Mr. Clun. "We're hulled!" Mitch cried at the top of his lungs while Ox tried to get the Navigation Officer to focus long enough to tell him where the nearest landfall might be - whether they would be turning 'round to re-make for the French coast they had only so recently departed.
That was when he smelled the brine of fishing nets in the vessel's bottom, nets the unit had not taken time to remove in their hurried stealing of it. It was then he knew he was no longer at Barnsdale, that his mind had spirited him elsewhere. At John's urging, he and Royston worked to bail at top speed and attempt to keep them afloat long enough to land upon Channel Island shores - shores that Robin was reasonably sure Mitch, in his manic-state, had agreed they might actually be able to reach.
He heard the shot only just before he smelled its result; Royston went down, struck not by the enemy fire, but struck-through with a large splinter of their wooden boat the enemy fire had split off.
The night was moonless, and they were trapped in a desperate race they could not afford to lose with a lone Jerry patrol. Lone for now, but certain to welcome reinforcements at any moment.
It seemed no more than seconds later when he and John were tossing Royston overboard, into the water, soon themselves to follow. John first, and then...then he froze.
He had never known any particular fear of water or the ocean before. Not that he had had much experience with it - or swimming of any kind prior to their training, but certainly he had never feared it. He had swiftly become more than competent at the new skill. In fact, among the unit only Robin could outpace him when it came to laps at the base's pool.
Frozen, he felt the stickiness of Royston's blood where it had smeared upon his clothing, the dangerous, near-final listing of the hulled boat. He could only just make out the whites of John's eyes below him in the water, hear the sounds of Royston's agony at his wound being submerged in the Channel's salt.
What he could not see was any outline of the distant shore toward which they were meant to tow Royston. Toward which they were expected to swim. Black was the sea, black the shore; like jumping into one unseeable abyss, hoping to navigate towards another. Giving oneself over to sightlessness. To enveloping darkness.
He could not do it.
He heard Wills swearing at Robin nearby the wheelhouse, declaring him a fool for trying to continue piloting the now-limping-in-the-water boat any closer to shore. John's grunts rose up from over the side as he attempted to maneuver Royston on his own. And amidst all this all he could do was stand, awash in his own cowardice.
"We're not the bloody Hesperus, man," he heard Mitch's familiar voice hiss into his ear, followed by a surprisingly powerful shoulder being pitched into his back, knocking him from the deck and into the drink below, just before another enemy onslaught.
The coolness of the water, the engulfing sensation of it - despite his misgivings - brought animation back to his limbs, purpose to his movements. Shortly he had his share of Royston, and a belief borne of desperation that they would make it to landfall. His brain purposelessly brought up the fact that he did not even know the proper name of the island towards which the six of them strove.
Yet, for all he was worth, Allen Dale swam.
ALDERNEY - Treeton Camp - A dark-haired young woman was brought in, around about Marion's height and build, clearly one of the prisoners held here. Her eyes and posture showed that she had been here long enough to do as she was bidden without even so much as a spark of curiosity as to why - or as to what it might involve. When she was told to strip and swap her every garment with Marion, she did so, not even displaying a hungry interest in the clean, far-less-worn garments - including socks and underpinning - that she was being given and told to wear.
She spoke not a word, and once the exchange was done was taken from the room, not to appear again.
A soldier Marion did not recognize came in from without and spoke into the Underlieutenant's ear.
They exchanged hushed words she could not overhear, and the man grumbled something in reply, before taking Diefortner's place at the table, opening a case about the size of a typewriter and beginning to examine and review its peculiar, semi-mechanical contents.
Outside Treeton Interrogation Hut - "There has been an unexpected glitch, Sir," Diefortner told Gisbonnhoffer when he located him.
"I cannot think what," the lieutenant replied in cold assurance, displaying a level of irritation at Diefortner's inconvenient declaration. "First Landser Ellingheim has done an above-average job of finding in the girl a more than convincing look-alike for our prisoner."
"That may well be so," Diefortner readily agreed, "the hair color and body type are certainly very alike. However," and at this Geis knew the other man - though without his ubiquitous binder and pad for the night - was about to speak as though he were even now consulting it, "it would appear the girl initially arrived at Treeton under highly irregular circumstances. Her paperwork is vague, but we have discovered that she was brought here as the particular favorite of one of Herr Kommandant's more privileged officers. This favoritism accounts for her hair having escaped being shorn upon her arrival. Fortunate in helping match her looks to Lady Marion, but..."
"Brought from where?" Gisbonnhoffer asked, though without true curiosity, "And with the Kommandant's consent?"
"No, not with official consent. Certainly none of the papers show it as such." Diefortner knew Vaiser to be far too clever to allow such a paper trail to exist on matters of sketchy import, such as the transport and billeting of specific female prisoners by soldiers (even officers) who had selected them as particular favorites. "She was transferred here - highly unusually - from the Auschwitz camp, where he had been serving prior."
"I see," Gisbonnhoffer agreed to the impediment Diefortner presented. "I care little for thumbing my nose at another officer's illicit whore, you may as well know. But the Auschwitz camp - this does present an obstacle in the fact that she would be marked."
"Quite right, Sir," Diefortner worked to make it seem as though the Lieutenant had come to this conclusion entirely on his own, "All those interned after '41 in the Auschwitz camp have been - efficiently - tattooed and numbered."
"It is quite possible his transferring her here saved her life," Gisbonnhoffer added quietly, to himself. "Well, fix it, man," he encouraged Diefortner. "Remove the evidence, and we shall proceed."
Interrogation Hut - Geis had returned to the room. She had been left standing before the table, as if on trial by tribunal. In her own clothes no longer, the girl's slight, worn and fraying frock and smock were neither too large, nor too small for her. She had lost her knickers, though, and the girl had neither those nor socks to compensate her. The shoes were worn through the sole in places, caked with mud, and easily three-quarters of a size too small for her feet.
But none of these issues of wear compared to the smell, the fact that these garments had not been washed in recent memory. Sitting against her skin now they awoke an immediate desire to scratch away at every spot where they came into contact with her.
It was not long before Underlieutenant Diefortner returned. He carried something odd with him in his hand, which she saw was dripping. In the stark lighting she at first thought (for reasons she could not understand) that he held a cutlet of fresh liver - still bloodied.
He took whatever it was and laid it upon the table nearby the open case, beckoning in three guards who force-walked her over to a chair into which she was belted hand and foot. From this angle she could better see both the case's interior, and the hunk of not-liver. Though she had not seen its particular like before (and certainly never up-close) she could now discern that what she was looking at was a strip of freshly-cut flesh, displaying a series of numbers somehow showing - looking quite permanent - upon the skin. A tattoo.
From the case upon the table, Diefortner withdrew an implement that looked something of what she might have found in the office of her London dentist, and turned her own strapped-down arm - against its will - to its underside.
The pain was immediate upon (what she could only suppose was) the needle piercing her flesh. She willed herself not to cry out. Willed herself to study instead the cut skin lying on the table in front of him from which he meticulously copied the numbers. How much worse had that action - the carving of that pound of flesh - hurt the person (she assumed, the girl) who had endured it?
She came back into herself only to realize she had ceased breathing from the ongoing pain.
Breathe, she told herself, breathe you ninny. This is not the moment to break, not the moment to pass out in the face of your enemies.
She thought of Thomas Carter in the sky - free. She wished she had asked him specifically how long his voyage home might take. She thought of Stoker and Royston and the other men on the sub, also going home. Hoped to herself the two escapees had gotten on board safely despite the hail of gunfire, were even now being carried back to England.
She breathed. Diefortner completed his task upon her arm. The pain continued, but more manageably so.
She heard Geis' step behind her before he spoke. "You are now Reich prisoner Magda Blenheim," he said to her back. "Memorize the numbers upon your arm - from now on you will be known by them."
So that was his plan. "No," she told him, ice in the tone of her disagreement. "I was born the Lady Marion Nighten, daughter of Sir Edward, Lord Nighten - loyal to the Crown - and Lady Miranda Nighten of Lincoln Greene. My father sat in the House of Lords. Our family's distinguished history - our service to England - goes back to the twelfth century and the reign of Richard the Lionhearted. In addition to our country seat at Lincoln Greene we keep homes in Mayfair, and our estate upon the Channel Island of Guernsey." She could not see him, did not face him now, but that fact did not keep her eyes from flaming in outrage, though they had no face upon which to settle. "Along with my father, I crafted and wrote a monograph defending the mistreatment of Jews and others seen as inferior to the twisted German mind. Shortly after the Occupation began in '40, I became the Nightwatch, a voice for freedom and resistance of oppression. Despite having to entertain your repellent courtship and pursuit, in the midst of all this I found and married a man that loves me, and that I love. I have saved people from your kind, and lost others to it. Through my own actions I brought about both the original, and this night's current, escape of Flight Commander Thomas Carter, stranded on these islands for months, deep in hiding. I rendezvoused with a British sub off the coast and assisted in the return of not one, but two British agents to MI-6 where the stories they will tell will do nothing but damage your cause." She gave a short, stuttering laugh. "You? You do not know who I am. And I will not tell you my name now," she referenced the name and title she had received upon wedding Robin, "I will not give you even that inch of power over me." A smile of challenge crept onto her face.
But she found he would not rise to the challenge. "Given or not, I no longer need your complicity, 875692," he used only her numerals to address her. "And whether Lady Marion Nighten wed the eyes in this photograph - " He pulled out the charred clip of a photo he had found hidden between her bedroom drapes at Barnsdale, and for a moment she glimpsed the pre-War eyes of Robin before Geis let them slip onto the table and into the growing pool of blood from the girl's numbered flesh. "Or whether she was married to Flight Commander Thomas Carter, 2265483236Z, matters not at all to me now. The Lady Marion will never be seen again, the Nightwatch is dead - "
Marion turned her head around as far as she could (still being strapped into place), planning her further retort. But at Gisbonnhoffer's assertion the landser Ellingheim (far and away the more thuggish of Geis' men) entered the small room, dragging with him what it took her long moments to recognize (and then, primarily from his missing finger hands) was Joss Tyr. One of his eyes, previously so striking, was now opaque - occluded - its blindness (only that night come about) obvious.
"Calls himself the Whichman," Ellingheim reported to Gisbonnhoffer with a feral grin, as though they were both at enjoying themselves. "Quite proud of it. Couldn't wait to share that with us - even before we hooked him up to die maschine. Couldn't really get much else out of him once we did - didn't seem to have much effect on his mind, for all that it's broken him bodily."
It was true. The man once known as Count Werner von Himmel could not even stand on his own two feet. He looked of a rag doll, head lolling to the side, legs lacking in bones or other supportive structure.
Horrifyingly - as dreadful as were a corpse to part his lips and talk - Joss Tyr's mouth fell open and from his ravaged throat he began to speak. His face had the appearance of a porcelain Harlequin doll that had been smashed and inexpertly glued back together. His eerie stare was for none other present than Gisbonnhoffer himself.
"My prophecies for your superior are now ended," he announced, though he did not look as though he could summon breath enough to speak so, "fulfilled." If they still could, it was obvious his lips would have curled into a smile. "But I will not be so graceless as to let your...hospitality go unrepaid." A single eyebrow still retained the strength to arch. "Listen well," he began with his usual mantra, "for I do not like to repeat myself." He was well winded, his voice that of sandpaper on plaster. "And indeed, shall be given very little chance to do so, here. The Nightwatch," he began, "the Nightwatch having risen, and risen again, will outlive your thousand-year Reich. She will outlive the Gisbonnhoffer name. And," the word was a brick dropped to the floor, "she will outlive you." The 'you' came out as might a death rattle. At the conclusion of his prophecy, Tyr had not even energy enough to close his mouth, giving him the look of an automaton whose wound gearworks have run down, stopped in mid-action.
The smallest flicker of a flame ignited the corner of a stray paper on the table toward which Marion was faced, but it could not sustain, fizzling and quickly transforming into little more than a thin column of ineffectual black smoke, less impressive than that spiraling off a lit cigarette.
In the wake of Tyr's statement, the room did not stay silent long. Geis turned away from the self-confessed Whichman, ignoring him, and toward Diefortner. "The girl is dead? Her filthy remains disposed of?"
"All as we discussed," the Underlieutenant agreed, looking somewhat askance at his own hands, stained bloody from the deed.
Gisbonnhoffer turned back to Ellingheim and gave the ruthless First Landser a smile that comprised only the gritting of his back molars, that deep corner of his lips parting to show his enjoyment of what was to come next. "Then there is only this Whichman to be dealt with."
The lieutenant's slope of eyebrow made it quite apparent that he expected Diefortner to handle Joss Tyr in a similar fashion to that of the girl.
"G'won, then," Gisbonnhoffer goaded him, wanting Marion to stand as witness to the act.
With a hand she saw to be more than slightly shaky, Marion watched as Diefortner raised his firearm (for the second time that night) and buried a bullet deep into the forehead of the clearly already-dying Joss Tyr. Tyr slumped further forward, hitting the floor when Ellingheim relinquished his grip upon him.
"Clever...Herr Geis," Diefortner took an unusual (and for him, still barely keeping himself from visibly trembling) moment to praise Gisbonnhoffer. "For now you may report the Nightwatch found - in the person of the OberAdmiral's favorite - clearly placing the culpability into Prinzer's hands, rather than in having to reveal Lady Marion as the true culprit...and the blame, instead, yours. Well done. The Kommandant will be most impressed."
Geis walked a step toward Diefortner to meet the other man where, assuming the night's work done, he was moving away from the table he had occupied. To do this, he had to sidestep one of Tyr's lifeless arms.
Marion watched on as Geis brought one of his own long arms around the back of the other man, giving it what appeared to be an approving, fraternal slap.
"Yes," Geis agreed, "most impressed."
"But," Diefortner began to speak, just as his body began to take on an unsteady sway, "but I have...killed for you - " He lurched forward, and Marion then saw the knife buried in the Underlieutenant's back, buried up to its hilt - the true purpose of Geis' uncharacteristically chummy back-slap.
"Thought you might say that," Geis told Diefortner as the other man's body collapsed in a spasm of coughing shortly stilled by his death.
Boots clattered to the doorway, and Landser Thered raced in. "We heard gunshots, Sir," he addressed Gisbonnhoffer, his commanding officer.
"Yes," answered Geis rather dryly, looking almost conspiratorially to Ellingheim. "The Nightwatch has killed Underlieutenant Diefortner."
Surveying the two dead bodies on the room's floor, Thered seemed to take all of this in stride. "He is an officer," the man reaffirmed. "Will not reprisals then be levied against Islanders?"
"Yes, man," Geis replied. "I should think so. Starting tomorrow, I do not doubt." There was a decided lack of human regret in his tone for the twenty-five islanders he had just condemned in pinning the murder of an officer on Tyr. Wanting to ensure that Marion understood what her actions had brought about (as well as his personal power in the matter), he continued to drive the point home. "I daresay, with the fact that Tyr, here, was a former Todt officer turned by these Islanders to Resistance, why, I should not be at all surprised if the Kommandant rather felt it more appropriate to levy fifty lives against these two." He caught the response of bloodthirsty Ellingheim's greedy eye, but resisted the urge to catch Marion's.
"Before you are dismissed, Thered," Geis ordered the other man, cocking his neck as though to crack it, "This prisoner," he waved his hand at her as the Kommandant might - as though she hardly occupied the same room, the same psychic space, "is scheduled for off-island transport. You may escort her - with the aid of Ellingheim - to the docks. She will ship tonight."
At this, he glanced floorward, and may have been looking only at the toe of his boot - at its polish job - for all that she could tell. He left the room without referencing her or speaking to her again.
SARK - Dixcart Hotel - Eleri Vaiser did not have to try hard to fake at being sick. On Alderney her father's car (driven by a soldier unknown to her) had been diverted from the task of bringing her straight to the docks, stopping instead inside the barbed wire portion of the Treeton Camp. She knew Treeton to be the camp proctored by Herr Geis, but she had never before been left unattended while at it.
The soldier-chauffeur had gone to try and search out Underlieutenant Diefortner, whom her father expected to have a report from that evening. As the underlieutenant was proving slippery to find, he had set out on his own, well knowing how little anyone familiar with the Kommandant would wish to upset or disappoint him.
What caused her to get out of the car she could not immediately say. She was still outside the barracks area proper, but she let herself wander a bit (looking for a freshness of air so impossible to find in such a place) around a separate small hut of rooms. Not the offices, she knew. She had seen the offices, was familiar enough with them at this camp and several others laid out similarly.
In the evening's dark she could still see where barbed wire fencing created an area off-limits just behind (coming from each rear corner) this hut, making it impossible to walk a full circle around it. She walked over and up to where it forbade her from getting behind the hut, and felt the coming moment when one of the standard prison searchlights would scrape over this place.
Dependably the light trolled along the ground at a slow pace, looking for nothing specific, only doing its nightly duty. It came to the hut, crossed over her own back, throwing the area within the forbidding fencing into deep shadow.
Yet not deep enough for her to overlook what had in the darkness prior appeared nothing more than a pile of trash, a heap of unremarkable refuse.
It was neither. Sticking up at an awkward angle she saw the mangled hand - now absent its prosthetic - of what she could only recognize as Joss Tyr's. Her eyes tried to follow the incomplete appendage to verify his identity by seeing the rest of him to no avail. The body to which it was attached was twisted and bent from her view. Instead her gaze fell upon a brightly patterned headscarf she knew to be one that Marion had taken to wearing in the wake of her flight from Barnsdale and her new life at Thornton's. A frock she most particularly recognized as it was one that Allen Dale had stolen from among Marion's Barnsdale things to take to her the night of the windmill shooting. Eleri very vividly recalled having helped Marion into it as her wounding had impaired her ability to dress without assistance.
At these unexpected recognitions, her breath - the beat of her heart - escaped her.
Seconds where the light would continue to illuminate this corner were growing scant. Likely it was her own, unusual presence here that had caused it to linger as long as it had. Marion - what she could take for no one on earth but Lady Marion - underneath Tyr, her neck lying so that only half her face (though plenty of her hair) showed to allow her to be identified.
There was also a degree of blood, as she had been shot, which accounted for her desperately unsettling, enduring stillness. A chunk of skin was noticeably missing from the underside of her arm. Those arms Eleri thought once so graceful, so perfect in their knowing of how to hold themselves, how to comport themselves, to interact with others. Arms that knew their strength, the scope and possibility of their impressive reach.
In her distress, Eleri's palms tightened onto the pricks of the wire, her senses ignorant of the physical pain in doing so. The light passed, the inexactness of darkness re-accepted the two corpses, and she had not much longer to stand, horrified - stabbed through the heart - before her father's soldier-chauffeur found her, chivvied her back into the car and drove straightway for the docks, unaware of what she had seen, but in fear for his position if she were to mention he had left her for quite so long a time unchaperoned in such a place. (And without finding Diefortner, or his expected report, to return to the Kommandant.)
This, it came to her in a searing burst, those two bodies sickly entwined in gruesome death undismissable from her mind's-eye, this is what it meant to love someone, her heart told her, and her overrun brain and senses confirmed. Perhaps not romantically. Not as a lover. But as a person.
It did not take much in the way of acting to begin to retch and show signs of feeling faint when they were reasonably away from Alderney and nearer Sark. She felt sick of the world, sick of the people from which she was sired. Sick for every captive soul on her father's cursed island. Green with tears that would not fall.
And sick with herself, that it had taken Lady Marion's death - her murder - before she had begun to understand what the other woman had meant to her.
By the time she was brought into the Dixcart she was half-hysterical with it.
Channel Waters, bound for France - The air off the water raised gooseflesh upon what was exposed of Marion's skin, and in places where the prisoner's frock she wore was grown most thin (which was, actually, all over). It was a breeze which held none of the invigorating danger of having been out upon the water earlier that night. None of the same worry, the need to avoid carelessness. After all, the potential for escape was now nonexistent, portentless.
The shackles about her ankles, securing her to the boat - preventing her from jumping overboard - were an unnecessary reminder that within the space of short hours her entire station in life had completely altered. This morning she had been the Nightwatch, a wife, a mother-to-be. She had been Allen Dale's (if somewhat uneasily) one-time confidante - perhaps friend - someone he more-or-less trusted. The finder of one long-lost Mitch Bonchurch. This morning she had been Thomas Carter's soon-to-be savior.
Thomas Carter. Had he managed to do what she could not? Escape Gisbonnhoffer? Had their nothing-to-be-done-but-to-settle-for-it patch of a plan worked? Could he even now be in British-held air? Landed, even?
Thinking of flying, she thought of Amelia Earhart. It was '37 when she had disappeared. She thought of Earhart's on-board navigator, Noonan. He had disappeared - perished, little doubt of it - as well. One moment in the sky, the next - sunk, stranded - a ghost either way. Carter, also a pilot, had committed himself to the sky. She, Marion, had stayed earthbound - but they were no less partners in his escape. In this she so needed him to stay airborne. Needed to have him succeed - to have that triumph to hang her hat upon. If she could have that, perhaps she would accept crashing (so that he might not), accept colliding with the earth - could reconcile herself to having disappeared, to having become a ghost either way.
Perhaps this was the trade-off required. A life for a life. His to go on, hers to be...swallowed up.
Surely no one would know where she had gone, know what had become of her. Gisbonnhoffer had made it fairly clear he no longer would feel even the need to gloat over what he had brought about. The numbers on her arm stood in painful testament to the fact that any finding of her would be complicated by the fact that, per Jerry records, the Lady Marion Nighten was no longer locatable anywhere under their regime. And certainly that, that was to become the very quintessence of a ghost.
Her eyes again strayed over to where Le Moulin lit the Sarkese coast like an Irish bonfire - yet its flames far too high to jump for luck or otherwise. She knew it blazed for her, on account of her. Knew it was meant for her as surely as had Western-Union delivered a telegram and asked her to sign for it. Even, she could imagine the wildness of Robin's breath - his heart - when he had set it.
It told her everything. Everything that mattered: that he loved her. That he feared for her safety. That he would gladly risk his own safety - his own precious anonymity - for her. It was a very opposite send-off from the one she had received upon departing for America. He had had Mitch with him then, she recalled. Well - she could hope - he would have Mitch with him again, soon; reunited. And Mitch would do him a world of good. Allen, when found, would inform Robin there was no babe, Eva would, if asked, confirm it. For several moments her thoughts tumbled along, intent on reassuring herself the shock and surprise of her arrest and, for lack of a better word, kidnapping could (and would) easily be mitigated for Robin by those dependable few surrounding him.
But upon a calmer, more rational turning over of it, she knew it for prevarication, her mind trying to assure her of something she needed to believe. Spinning the equivalent of a faery story to avoid looking at the truth, hard as it was, of the matter.
She found herself thinking of the Nightwatch, of what records she had hoped Tyr might have played this night. Songs and news she now knew would never be broadcast, her - Mr. Thornton's - precious microphone silenced. No voice, no music. Among the songs she had selected for that night had been Fred Astaire, embarked upon a very different nighttime boat trip, this one on a Manhattan ferry. She had chosen it when she had expected to be joining Stoker on the sub. She had chosen it as her own message to Robin, whom she would have had to leave behind. She found that though the circumstances of her departure had dramatically altered, the sentiment she had wished to share with him had not. "Our romance won't end on a sorrowful note/Though by tomorrow you're gone/The song has ended, but as the songwriter wrote/The melody lingers on."
"They may take you from me/I'll miss your fond caress/But though they take you from me/I'll still possess...the way you wear your hat/the way you sing off-key."
It had not even been a full week after knowing Robin and the unit to be on the island (and amazingly alive) that she had found it necessary to remember something she had for so long wished to forget, that she had almost tricked herself into thinking she had forgotten. It had meant a trip to the Barnsdale attic and her trunks, there, among the dust that not even Clun's spit-spot staff could chase away for long. She had lit an oil lamp to take along in case the light proved too dim for her search. It had not been needed, though, her own dependable memory and the small windows that served to illuminate the space guiding her to what she sought.
There, within her smaller trunk - the one reserved for shorter trips (which, when she had come to check on Edward she had expected this would be), it had obediently lain inside its layers of tissue paper, beneath the glass of its frame. Why she had packed it (and she had done so without removing the tissue paper it had for some time worn where it had been relegated to being stored at the Mayfair house) she would not have liked to say.
It had been almost four years since it had been out of trunks and boxes, brought into the light of day. Four years since the frame's prop had been folded out, helping it to stand. She did not do so now without feeling something of pomp and ceremony. Something like five years thinking this portrait photograph was the last way in which she would ever see the man the London papers had designated Robert Oxley, Viscount Huntingdon, sole heir of his father, the Earl.
"The way we danced 'til three." Though the photograph was lovely, and well-done by a fashionable London studio, it was not the one that had run in the papers upon the notice of his death. That (and those of the other Six) was of the men in uniform, the Royal Army well aware of the at-the-time needed propaganda value of presenting young, handsome soldiers in uniform - dead soldiers. As she re-examined this picture of Robin, compared it to the man (now bearded) that she had so unexpectedly encountered the night of her engagement party and later at the Nightwatch windmill four days past, she heard a noise that told her she was not - as she had meant to be - alone.
"Marion!" There was a level of shock in her father's tone as he hissed through the half-darkness of the Guernsey afternoon. "Whatever are you doing up here? Why would you not have me bid Lewes search out whatever you had need of? Or ask Eva to do for you?"
His questions were entirely valid ones, she knew. But unlike the mind-muddled Sir Edward, she also knew her father's once-faithful valet Lewes had gone for a soldier shortly after the war began, and that Eva Heindl had ceased working as her ladies maid with the arrival of the Germans.
She waited a moment and held in a hasty (and possibly impatient) answer. Edward cast his eyes about the space. "I have forgotten," he confessed, "what was it we were looking for?"
This time, before she could formulate an answer - and one to throw him off her true intent, he spied the picture frame in her hands, recognized its subject. "Oh, Darling," he said, his voice awash in the softness of sympathy, "oh, Marion. You must - not that," his eyes were immediately shot through with hurt, "not still. You must let it go, Child. You must - you must...he is gone." He tried to infuse his voice with hope and vigor. "But life is not over for you. Life is - Life can still be - " His hand, slightly shaking as it would now more often than not, came up to her shoulder where she was seated, and sought to bring her comfort.
Despite now knowing Robin to be very much alive (having now distractingly, confusingly known it for the past four days), she could not help but be moved by her father's emotional appeal to her, his investment in Robin's death and loss on her behalf, and so it was with tear-filled eyes she returned his gaze.
"Yes," Edward agreed with himself, some of his distress falling away, "I must have your mother take down a letter to Huntingdon for me. It has been far too long since we heard from him. Far too long."
Marion let the tears in her eyes resolve back into their ducts. Were she to cry now it would be for the chronic confusion of time and place her father wandered about in, rather than the loss of life she now knew Robin had not suffered. "Recall, though, Father," she reminded Edward, "Sir Robert never seems to keep up with his post when he has gone to the country. That is all that is behind his absence, I am certain. He has left London for Kirk Leaves."
In agreement, her father began to mutter to himself.
"Go, now," she encouraged him, "it is nearly tea time. I will be down directly."
"Yes," he agreed, now absently. "Yes." Something in the wrinkles of his face for a moment hardened. "It is never easily done, Marion," he told her, "losing someone you love. Losing that...world you had made, inhabited together."
His statement, so unexpected, so thick with personal investment took her breath away, and even his back had disappeared back down the servants' stair before she had regained enough presence of mind to speak.
She turned her attention back to Robin's photograph, knowing what she had to do. She removed the glass globe from the oil lamp, walked over and found an old, empty metal ash can. Holding the photo - no longer in the frame - she placed its edge in the lamp's flame, and it easily ignited to the point it shortly had to be dropped down into the can to protect against the scalding her fingertips.
Determined to see her task through to the end, she stood over the ash can and watched it burn. Watched to make sure no trace of it was left.
"The way you changed my life."
The world they had inhabited together. She found she could not fully repudiate, eliminate that - wipe it from existence. She looked down into the old ash can, the flames she had lit both consumed the photographic paper and illuminated its subject. Little more than the eyes were now left. His eyes. His jolly, merry prankster's eyes. 'There is a secret in this photograph,' he had told her when he had gifted it, and she had half expected him to confess to some disappearing ink visible only when passed over candlelight. 'When you look in my eyes you will know,' he had confessed, 'as the man took the picture, I was sure to be thinking only of you.'
It was a ridiculous thing to do - to reach into an ash can to retrieve a paper already on fire, to salvage a pair of eyes that might never again look so when thinking of her. Those eyes from that world they had made, that they had inhabited together. How different now, on this island so far smaller than Britain. This life circumscribed by oppressors. It was a new world now, the eyes in this photograph - in the living flesh - dangerous even to think about. The spheres which he, Robin, and she, Marion, inhabited (as she had tried to impress upon him that night they danced at the Nightwatch) necessarily non-tangential.
Yes.
Losing someone you love. Never easily done.
Oddly - unexpectedly - the further the boat got from Channel shores, the closer to a French port, the more hopeful she became. It was a queer feeling to have, but there it was. The game - her life - had changed. She was to be free of Geis, liberated from that place drenched in his power and influence. Whatever came next was to be entirely other. More than a challenge, to be certain - but one that would bear no similarity to her past. The longstanding, stifling air of Occupation and the shadow-life she had had to maintain to protect herself and the Nightwatch was gone - blown away as by a strong weather-changing wind. Whatever cares Magda Blenheim had carried with her, whatever family connections or personal history, she had taken to her death.
In this Marion saw a blank slate before her, an unsettling freedom in both knowing herself a prisoner and also knowing herself to have no further need to hide. Her enemies could only kill her once, after all. They had stripped her now of everything external that meant anything to her, they had scarred her flesh with the identity they sought to impose upon her. But in the coming absence of everything familiar, everything about which she had understood and with which she had grappled, she found something of strength. The blank that Magda Blenheim was to her would become her.
She felt born.
Looking down at her arm, and the numbers there, even in the dark she noticed the tattoo still seeped. Knowing where she was headed, what she would face in such a camp; little food, unhygienic conditions, further privation, she dropped her arm over the boat's edge, down into the salt sea.
The sting of the burning her action brought on felt clean. It felt real and honest, and she found she had no tears to add to the sea's salt.
In the distance, Le Moulin burned - sure to be little more than ash and memories by dawn.
What was yet left of the Lady Marion Oxley, Vicountess Huntingdon, looked on, knowing the originator, the source of that desperate blaze to be her only true regret. Knowing that no one - German or other - could ever take that away from her.
- {{
EPILOGUE
Rural SCOTLAND - Louise La Salle had been called to the door by the farmer's wife to meet with a man she had never seen before in her life.
The look on the farmer's wife's face let her know quickly enough that she did not believe Louise unacquainted with the strapping sample of manhood on her doorstep, but she said nothing, and left the two of them alone quickly enough.
It was not that Ron Legg was out-of-place here in the North, certainly no more than he would be anywhere else, and in fact, here, far less so. It was his own nagging reservations about what he was about to do that left him feeling unbalanced and uncomfortable, not the undersized chairs nor the low ceilings in the simple cottage where he had found the refugee Roger Stoker had set him on the path of.
"Forgive me," Madame La Salle had asked him, a decidedly French lilt to her accent, no matter she was far from both that country and her island home. "I'm not sure I understand why you are here. You say you have a letter for me, and yet - no letter?"
"Right, yes, Ma'am," he agreed with her. "Mine is a strange errand. The letter in question remains in the possession of those overseeing the War Rooms, etcetera, in London. They would not allow me to bring it to you, and possibly would disapprove were they to know I was here, but in the time that it was in my possession, rest assured I had plenty of time to memorize and meditate upon it. It is from a man named Stephen, from best I could tell from the sloppily-rendered signature, on the Channel Island of Sark."
Her breath caught. "He is my husband. I have heard nothing from him in five years." Tears threatened to glut her throat as she tried to explain his penmanship. "He is blind."
"Aye, Ma'am?" At that, Legg gave a belly-rattling laugh. "Well, it explains things well enough," he agreed. "My apologies."
When the echoes of his hearty hoot had died away, he recited, "God bring this to you, God find you well. I remain, 'Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed...(for we walk by faith, not by sight).' Then there is a new paragraph: You fade not from my memory, nor from my future hopes. After that, the closure."
She knew she probably appeared shaken in the wake of the recited letter, but asked anyway, "and why should men in the War Rooms have any interest in this? A man writing to encourage his wife?"
"Ooo," he risked saying, "they've got dozens upon dozens down there convinced it's a code of some kind, working 'round the clock to decipher it. Others trying to place the references to Holy Scripture in the context of a numerical cryptogram or some such rot. Here, I've written it down for ye," he offered her a folded paper, "though it be not in his hand."
"Nor never was it," she informed him. "Other than his own name he has been able to handwrite little these many years past. It would have had to be scriven for him. Nonetheless, I pray God's particular blessing on those fingers for the favor of putting it to paper for him, and for yourself, Mr. Legg, in bringing it here. You have brought me great happiness during a time in which such can be ever harder to find. How beautiful are your feet, Monsieur - as are the feet of all those who bring good news!"
Legg looked into her face as she smiled across the parlor at him. She was a small little thing, dark-haired, bird-like. He did not doubt her very bones were hollow, airy. "There is one more for to add to your prayers," he told her. "The man who first carried the letter to me. He lost his life in the doing of it."
Before she could reply, Little Stephen had entered the room, bringing his jolly disposition with him.
"You've a boy, I see," Legg smiled at the little lad. "I've a lad meself. On my way to visit with him just now before hurrying south again.
"If you will leave your card," she urged him, "I should like to knit you something, perhaps send some jam down to London for you. A smallish thanks for what kindness you have done us."
"Not small at all ma'am," he gladly assured her, "and I should very much value it. But it seems best we keep our names separate at the moment - my superiors likely not to be pleased were they to learn I was here, and why. Let me give you my Mark's address at Kirk Leaves. Send the things you might have sent to me, to him. I am often away, and he will cherish whatever might come in the post."
And so it was settled.
ENGLAND - London, HQ British Secret Intelligence Service - No one could ever accuse the robust Clem Nighten of behaving in a poky manner - of keeping a slowcoach pace - but even so, his speed this day, this hour, far eclipsed the pace he usually set when navigating the various and seemingly endless subterranean corridors of MI-6.
At present he ran to chase after a man half a rumor, half a myth, and at least half of whom must be factually verifiable: a downed RAF pilot of Eagle Squadron, first held captive and then living hidden among the Channel Islands for the better part of a twelve-month.
It was not Clem's first attempt to break into the man's seemingly-endless briefings, ever on different levels, in different departments, always held at different times here within SIS. The classified, eyes-only papers he clutched to his chest within manila folders had several pages, much of which, even then, was blacked out, about a Jerry plot directly planned to kill the King, Jerry codename 'Sher Wut'. A plot (and its vital details) first brought to light by this man.
For Clem, the plot to kill the King, and the details of it, could jolly well wait. As far-fetched as the possibility might be, something in his gut told him this man knew something of Marion. May have even met her.
'Pipedreams' one of his school chums (now upper-level brass) had told him, before agreeing (for the sake of old times) to sign off on permission for Clem to attend the man's next debrief.
Nighten cared neither for the dismissive term, nor for the man's opinion (top brass or not) - he had been a booby when they were at school, and time, it would appear, had altered very little of him in the interim.
Reaching the designated room, he swung wide the thick, metal door which held no window through which those in the hall could view its contents.
A Yank (clear enough by the sound of his voice) sat across a standard issue metal table from several other men. Despite all appearances, it was not a hostile interrogation. Various tape machines and recording devices littered the space. Two girls from the stenography pool took rapid notes. The Yank looked up and away from the others upon his entrance, distracted, no doubt, by the opening of the door.
He gave Clem a piercing look. It lingered just long enough that Nighten knew. It was the look he would encounter among people who knew Marion, but whom he had never met. The silent acknowledgement that yes, there was a resemblance there, a certain similarity. A look of recognition.
It was then that he knew that his efforts to speak to this man, to learn what he could about his sister and father, had not been - would not be - in vain.
...to be concluded in Story 4 of the 'Don't' series, "'Til I Come Marchin' Home"...
Our Cast
Robert "Robin" Oxley, Viscount Huntingdon...Robin of Locksley, Earl of Huntingdon, aka the outlaw Robin Hood
The Lady Marion Nighten...Lady Marian of Knighton
Lieutenant, Herr Geis Gisbonnhoffer...Sir Guy of Gisborne
Island Kommandant Heinrik Vaiser...Vaisey, Sheriff of Nottingham
Sir Edward, Lord Nighten, former Parliamentarian...Sir Edward of Knighton, former Sheriff of Nottingham
The rest of the "Saintly Six" -
Mitch Bonchurch (born Mitch Miller), Navigation Officer...Much
William "Wills" Reddy, Communications Officer...Will Scarlet
Allen Dale, Reconnaissance and Acquisitions, alias Dale Allen, the Kommandant's driver...Allan-A-Dale
Richard Royston, Explosives...Royston "Roy" White
Iain "John" Johnson, Medic...Little John Little
Flight Commander Thomas Carter, aka Alexsei "Aliosha" Igorovich, Prince Komonoff...Carter, a knight Templar serving in the King's private guard from S2 "Get Carter!" and S2 "We Are Robin Hood". (His dead brother's name was Thomas).
Underlieutenant Diefortner...De Fourtnoy of S1 "Who Shot the Sheriff?" who briefly served as the Sheriff's Master-At-Arms
Gypsy Boy Djak/Seraina...D'Jaq/Saffiya, Saracen slave/captive who joined Robin Hood's gang in S1 "Turk Flu"
Anya Grigorovna...Annie, kitchen wench and (Heaven help her) mother of Gisborne's son, Seth, of S1 "Parent Hood"
Dick Giddons...Benedict Giddons, the Locksley flour thief who broke under torture and named Will and Luke Scarlet as his co-conspirators in S1 "Will You Tolerate This?"
Stephen "Blind" La Salle...Stephen, the widowed blind architect and (seemingly hermit) teacher of S2 "Booby and the Beast". Meant to stand as a re-rendering of both that BBC series character and the Hood legend's Friar Tuck (not the series' Tuck).
Eva Heindl...Eve of Bonchurch, of S1 "A Thing or Two About Loyalty"
Tom Thatcher...Tom-A-Dale, on-the-make brother of Allan-A-Dale, hanged erroneously for Robin Hood's man in S1 "Brothers in Arms"
(Current U.S. 5th Army Lieutenant Colonel) Fred Otto...the Booby; Count Friedrich Bertrand Otto von Wittelsbach, of the German duchy of Bavaria, of S2 "Booby and the Beast"
Lord Merton...Walter, Lord of Merton, noble conspirator and supporter of King Richard during Edward's plan to overthrow the Sheriff in S1 "A Clue: No", prior to that, a regular attendee of the Council of Nobles
Clem Nighten...Sir Clem of Knighton, an OC, Marian's older brother, as invented for my S2 finale (and going forward) band-aid fanfic, "Death Would Be Simpler to Deal With"
Jodderick, Bailiff of Guernsey...Joderic, bailiff of Nottingham in S1 "Who Shot the Sheriff?" [yes, Guernsey's highest civilian official even, to this day, wears the title, 'bailiff']
Roger Stoker, Intelligence officer previously assigned to the British 8th Army...Roger of Stoke, knight loyal to King Richard, sent with an important letter by Robin, doomed at the word of Allan-A-Dale in S2 "The Angel of Death"
OberAdmiral Jan Prinzer, highest ranking officer of the German Occupation force trying to overthrow King George's (Britain & the Crown's) control of the Channel Islands...Prince John, high-ranking member of the monarchy trying to overthrow King Richard's control of England, throughout the series
Mr. Thornton...Thornton of Locksley, faithful servant and (presumed) life-long friend of Robin Hood first introduced in S1 "Will You Tolerate This?"
Matthew, attache to the Bailiff...Matthew of Nettlestone, casualty of S1 "Who Shot the Sheriff?"
Mrs. Abby Rufford...Abbess of Rufford, fake member of the clergy working to thwart the Sheriff and rob Nottingham (and England) of its taxes in S1 "The Tax Man Cometh".
Laurence McLellan...Laurence McLellan, one-legged, doomed courier of a letter from the King, and the Sultan's best pigeon, Lardner, in S2 "Lardner's Ring". A man trying to deliver his message to the right house, but intercepted by the wrong person being at home there. It is over his dead body Robin so memorably proposes.
Louise La Salle...Alice Little, first seen in S1 "Sheriff Got Your Tongue?", who loves fish and takes in sewing, and has a son who does not know his father, about whom his father does not know.
Joss Tyr/Operation Todt Officer Count Werner von Himmel...The Fool of S2 "Lardner's Ring", fond of soothsaying and (at least when it is in his best interest) outlaws.
Elerinne Vaiser...Eleri of the necklace, who wishes to be married, and asks 'Lord' Gisborne first, before coming to her senses and having Robin perform the ceremony in S1 "Brothers In Arms".
Specialist Joseph...Joseph of S2 "The Angel of Death", with a knack for hurting people (and a desire to eliminate 'undesirables' from the world, starting with Nottingham).
ReichKaptain Lamburg...Lambert, of the black powder ledger, a man who discovers too late where his loyalties lie (and where his supposed friend's, Gisborne's, lie as well) in S1 "A Thing or Two About Loyalty".
Hilda Heindl...Matilda the midwife of S2 "Ducking and Diving"
Daniel Heindl...Daniel, hostage outlaw wannabe in the Sheriff's black diamond exchange of S2 "Child Hood".
Ginny Glasson...Lady Glasson, to whose relative safety Annie and Seth were sent at the end of S1 "Parent Hood".
Naval Commander Ron Legg...LeGrande [invert the name, 'Legg, Ron'] knight loyal to King Richard, dying in His service, a member of the King's Private Guard, who knows Robin and Much in S2 "Treasure of the Nation".
Mark Legg...Mark, blonde outlaw wannabe of S2 "Child Hood".
Lucky George...Lucky George, buyer of your peasant valuables and treasures so you can pay your taxes in S1 "Brothers In Arms".
Operation Todt Oberseer Jarl Derheim...The Earl of Durham, unseen buyer of brides from the Church in S1 "Show Me the Money".
Landser Thered...Michael the Red, Gisborne's champion in S1 "Turk Flu" archery contest for the Sheriff's silver arrow.
Island Constable Dunne of Guernsey...Treeton miner, Rowan's father in S1 "Turk Flu".
Island Constable Paxton of Sark...Paxton, a wool merchant, the gang's contact (revealed to have been turned by the Sheriff) in S2 "Treasure of the Nation".
Island Constable Rowan (of Guernsey)...Rowan, son of Dunne, out for revenge on Gisborne (mistakenly via Marian) for his father's death in S1 "Turk Flu".
Seth Heindl...the baby Seth, of S1 "Parent Hood", a child abandoned by his father.
First Landser Ellingheim...Ellingham, captain of the Sheriff's mercenaries in S2 "A Good Day to Die".
Auschwitz/Treeton Camp Prisoner Magda Blenheim...Serving Girl (she is not given a name in the credits), in S2 "Angel of Death". She agrees to trade clothes with Marian so that Marian may flee the castle to see the quarantine and alleged outbreak in Nottingham Town (said to be the Nightwatchman's doing) for herself.
Our Locations
The Channel Island of Guernsey, and in particular the Barnsdale estate...Knighton, Village and Hall (named so after Barnsdale Forest)
The Channel Island of Sark...Sherwood Forest
The Channel Island of Alderney...Nottingham
Kirk Leaves, the Earl of Huntingdon's English country home...Locksley Village & Manor (named so for the series' oft-acknowledged safety of Kirklees Abbey)
Treeton Camp, Channel Island of Alderney...Treeton Village and Mines, where D'Jaq was brought as slave labor in S1 "Turk Flu"
The Bertrand-Otto Stables and Farm of Nicholasville, Kentucky, USA...the German Duchy of Bavaria (named so for the Booby, 'Count Friedrich Bertrand Otto...'), but also meant (along with America) to stand in for the Holy Land/the Crusades, as this is where Marion goes to find glory (on the American Equestrian Circuit) and to prove herself (as series Robin - and yes, even Robin here - went for a soldier/knight)
Farm of Blind La Salle, Channel Island of Sark...Outlaws' Camp
Ripley Convent School...Ripley Convent, home of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in S2 "Get Carter!", where Marian tries (with Allan's helpful attacking of its Mother Superior) to convince Guy she is staying in the wake of Edward's death.
Lincoln Greene, the Nighten family English country estate...Lincoln Green, in the legends, usually the specific color dye and weave of the concealing green cloth worn by Sherwood outlaws. (Marion's London-based horse here is 'Greene's Sword', as in, coming from Lincoln Greene - but its name also hearkening back to a name used in legends for the forest; greensward.)
Grey Goose Gentlemen's Club of London, the Earl of Huntingdon's club...no, not THAT kind of club, named for the legend Robin Hood's usual 'grey goose shaft' - his arrows fletched with goose feathers.
The Tripp Club of London, Robin Oxley's club...for The Trip to Jerusalem Inn, referenced as merely 'the Trip' in all seasons, an actual place in actual Nottingham, now called, 'Ye Olde' Trip to Jerusalem Inn. Named after its claim to being the last stop for Crusaders before leaving town for Richard's holy war. [Have *you* been there? Betcha Glorious Clio has...]
The Argent Arrow...the silver arrow of Hood myth and legend, which here, Robin (and the Tripp Club) lose, in the form of the victor's cup at an annual cricket tournament.
Heather's-Edge Heath...Hathersage Heath from S2, "Treasure of the Nation", a collection of standing stones. The Channel Islands are known to have several collections of standing stones; ten cromlechs with two dolmens still surviving.
Other series place names have been substituted for inconsequential characters here and there, for example, the butlers Mr. Clun (Barnsdale) and Wadlowe (Kirk Leaves), Mrs. Trent of the NYC British Consulate (never seen, only referenced), Dr. Battley, the only physician on Sark (Battley Street in Nottingham being where the duplicitous Dr. Pitts is said by Thornton to now live in S1 "The Return of the King"), Sir Edward's former valet Lewes (Henry of Lewes from S2's "Ducking and Diving"), and Roger Stoker's mother-in-law Baroness Woodvale (a member of the Council of Nobles).
Other series words also appear in various forms...the word Nottingham becomes the Nord Ingham Boarding Stables (though Alderney remains a story stand-in for the actual place), The Fool of S2 "Lardner's Ring" becomes 'Joss Tyr'/(Jester), Marion proves preternaturally adept with a horse (as does series Robin with the bow), 'Saracen's Beau'/A (re-curved) Saracen Bow. The horse's sire and dam are 'Swallow Den'/(Saladin) and 'Cordelia Anne'/(Coeur-de-Lion).
Therefore, as series Robin gets his 'bow' (the superior expression of his particular talent) from the Crusades, so does this Marion get her 'Beau' from the same two 'adversaries', if you will.
Here, Gisbonnhoffer/Gisborne gives up his family, as he does his illegitimate son by Annie (S1 Parent Hood), Seth, in the series.
Here, Seth is 'given up' (though he is no longer Geis'/Guy's and Anya/Annie's child) by a father who does not know of his existence.
To say that the series' Sheriff of Nottingham's cabal of 'Black Knights' are represented here by the Nazis on Alderney, in their black uniforms, who are in particular S.S. is, frankly, too facile to be believed, but there you have it.
Any character not mentioned specifically here in the cast list is fully OC.
A word about Operation Pellinore...of course this was not an historically 'real' British Commando raid of the Islands (the others mentioned all did occur, and in fact, even more were planned - but abandoned, including a large one meant to wrest the islands out of German control entirely). Nineteen-forty-three was a busy year for British Commandos on the islands. Operation Huckabuck occurred February 27-28th of that year, with Hardtack 7 putting in at Sark's Pt. Terrible in December.
Pellinore is an Arthurian knight (his story varies slightly by which legend you might choose to privilege), but more importantly (in the storyline I prefer) he is a king who has misplaced his kingdom; lost it and can no longer find his way back to it. As Robin has lost (through his faked death) his to-be-inherited earldom, and is stranded, unable to return to England (his kingdom) along with the rest of Unit 1192, and as King George and the British Empire have lost the Channel Islands (their kingdom) to the Germans.
[*This 'Pellinore' has no relation to Lord of the Rings' Battle of Pelennor Fields (as that novel had not been published at the time)].
*Please see the author's ending note on Story 1, "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", regarding historical and geographical content, and the use of any unintentional anachronisms in this fictional work.
**Please note, Le Moulin, the (actual, real world) ancient windmill occupying the highest point on Sark (and indeed on all of Guernsey's multi-island bailiwick) had had its sails removed long before the German Occupation, and, perhaps more significantly, was historically never set ablaze, as Robin lights it so here in his despair.