Water Song (Once Upon a Time (Simon Pulse)) Page 5

  “Truthfully, I’m more of a ragtime girl, but jazz is the newest thing.”

  Colonel Schiller smiled a moment, and then his face grew serious. “Mrs. Sprat, since you speak both German and English, I have a proposal to make to you,” he said. “Once a week I will allow you to accompany your servant couple to the market to buy fresh food and anything else you require. In return, you will keep a sharp ear open for any talk you may hear of an Allied attack upon The Ridge.”

  “You want me to spy?” she asked in surprise.

  With a slight smile, he nodded. “Why not? It could prove quite exciting for you, and lucrative; not that such a thing would matter to a young woman of your class. But then again, times are changing. Spoils of war go to the victor, which will be Germany and Austria. The defeated will suffer many reversals of fortune. If you show talent at it, we could even send you to our spy academy in Antwerp. It’s run by a woman, you know, Elsbeth Schragmuller, a stern taskmaster but a brilliant spy. Have you heard of Margaretha Zelle?”

  Emma recalled the name. She’d read about her in a magazine the girls were passing around in school. “Mata Hari?” she asked, recalling the dancer’s stage name.

  “Yes. She is spying for us and doing quite well.”

  Now there’s a piece of information! she thought. She’d be sure to tell the Allies if she ever got the chance.

  “Perhaps you do not care for the payment,” the colonel went on. “If you bring me back useful information, I will instead consider allowing you and your husband to leave on a ship bound for America.”

  “You’d let us go?” Emma blurted excitedly.

  He nodded. “But only if you bring me back facts that are vital to defeating the Allies.”

  He wanted her to be a spy—a traitor to her own country! “If caught, I could be shot for such an offense!” she reminded him.

  “Or we could simply shoot you right now,” he pointed out coolly. “But if you are useful to us, we would be less inclined to do so.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  “It is something I would deeply regret having to do,” he added. “I hope you do not force my hand.”

  At dusk, Emma was once again curled up in her chair while Jack slept. She’d told Colonel Schiller that if she heard anything, she’d report it to him. It seemed like the safest thing to say when threatened with being shot.

  She had no intention of doing it, of course. To betray one’s own country—what could be lower?

  She tapped the arm of the chair thoughtfully. Might there be a way to turn the situation to her advantage; to appear to be providing information without actually doing so? She had to think about it more.

  If only there was some way to get out of here and over to the port at Dunkirk, she could tell the Allies everything she knew about the Germans: how many troops they had, how much ammunition she’d seen stacked in bags around the walls of the estate, how many trucks were parked by the front entrance. She could reveal to them that there was a spy school in Antwerp and that the dancer known as Mata Hari was spying for the Germans.

  The idea both thrilled and frightened her. Could she ever really have the nerve for such a thing? Sneaking out of the Hampshire School to meet Lloyd at night was the most daring thing she’d ever done before. And though the punishment would have been severe if she had been caught, no one would have shot her. Her big adventure with Lloyd now seemed laughably safe and inconsequential compared to her current predicament.

  Maybe she could bribe a soldier into letting her escape. But what did she have to offer? Colonel Schiller had confiscated her purse; apparently the idea had occurred to him, as well. He’d also taken her mother’s jewelry box, demanded the code to the safe, and even removed her mother’s furs.

  This was no doubt just the sort of emergency that her great-grandmother had been referring to when she’d said there was something in the locket to help her. If only she could get it back.

  Jack stirred in his sleep, mumbling what sounded like a warning to someone. He cried out, his agitation growing.

  Emma went to him as he began to thrash in the bed. “Wake up! You’re dreaming. Wake up!”

  His eyes opened, filled with panic. “I was in the well. It was fillin’ up with gas. I tried to climb out, but somebody sealed the top,” he told her, still agitated. “I was pushin’ an’ pushin’ but the lid wouldn’t budge.”

  “It was just a dream,” she assured him.

  He blinked at her hard, slowly coming fully awake. “You okay, sug?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “That colonel didn’t bother you?”

  “No.”

  “You tell me if he does, you hear?”

  As if he could do anything about it if she was in danger. He was so weak and injured, he could barely sit up in bed for long.

  “He told me that the dancer they call Mata Hari is a German spy,” she said as his eyes began to close again.

  “He told you that?” he murmured.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe he just wants you to think so,” he said, his eyes closed, his voice drifting.

  “Why would he want that?”

  “In case you might tell someone,” he said. “Maybe she’s an Allied spy and he wants the Allies to distrust her information.”

  “I never thought of that,” she admitted.

  “In this war, you always have to be thinking.” He turned his head and began to snore lightly.

  He’s right, she thought. Although he had little formal education, in so many ways he was smarter than she was. Maybe not smarter, really, but more aware of how the real world worked. He looked at things in ways she might not even consider because he had experienced life. Every time she talked to him she felt as if she learned something new, saw things from a different angle. She respected that.

  As she stood beside him, she recalled his story of winning the underwater swimming contest. Perhaps if he ever did get better, she might persuade him to go down into the well to search for the locket for her. Though his injuries were extensive, he did appear to be improving quite fast. And swimming underwater apparently came naturally to him. It wouldn’t be such a difficult thing to ask of him.

  Suddenly, she could hardly wait for him to get better.

  Several days later, on Saturday, Colonel Schiller sent for Emma shortly after breakfast. In his hand he held the small, blue beaded purse he had confiscated and handed it to her. “You will go with your servants to the market. While they shop for food, you will buy whatever you might require. Do not hesitate to linger … and to listen.”

  Tucking the purse into the cuff of her long-sleeved blouse, she nodded. “I understand,” she said.

  Putting on a lightweight dusty blue jacket and her matching hat with the band of violets just above the brim, she met Willem and Claudine in the front. Willem had brought around the horse-drawn wagon he liked to use on the estate. The huge Belgian draft horse with its chestnut coat and white blaze in the center of its broad head struck her as a creature that had walked out of another time period—one so much saner—and she was cheered by the sight of it. Claudine gestured for her to sit beside Willem in front, but Emma declined, happy to sit alone on bushels of hay in the wagon in back.

  Spring was once again in the air as she held her face up to the warming sun. She could hardly believe she was being allowed to go to the market. It made her long to be home and free again more intensely than ever. She could even stand putting in her last few months at the Hampshire School in order to graduate.

  Her mind began to race with possibilities. How hard could it be to slip away in the crowd at the market? She wouldn’t want Claudine and Willem to be blamed. Perhaps they might want to escape too. She wished she could speak to them.

  Her thoughts of escape were cut short when a German soldier, barrel-chested and expressionless, climbed into the back with her. He sat in the far corner of the wagon, his bayonet-tipped rifle slung over his shoulder, and didn’t make ey
e contact even for a second. Another soldier, similarly remote and intimidating, soon joined them.

  As the wagon moved forward, Emma pulled the purse from her sleeve. Did it contain enough to bribe them to let her escape? She counted out the money. It wasn’t a huge sum—but it was worth a try.

  The wagon hit a rut in the road, and she used the opportunity to thrust the money out onto the hay. Both soldiers looked down at it immediately. “It’s yours if you allow me to wander away while we are in the market,” she told them in German.

  A joyless smile came to the first soldier’s lips. “Do you think that is worth the price we would pay for letting you escape?” he snarled. “Pick it up and do not insult us further.”

  Flushing with humiliation, Emma gathered up her money and sat back in the corner. She needed something more valuable to barter for her freedom—she absolutely had to get that locket back.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Claudine’s Plan

  Jack awoke and looked up at Claudine, who was mopping his sweaty brow. “You were dreaming again,” she said in French that was heavily accented with her native Flemish. “What terrible dreams they must be to make you sweat so.”

  “You speak French?” he questioned, speaking with his own Louisiana version of the language that so many spoke in the French city of New Orleans. Although he wasn’t fluent like Emma, he spoke enough to understand and make himself understood.

  “I am learning more every day,” Claudine confided. “I want to help our cause, and to do that I must speak French or English but the English is too difficult. I need your help because you speak both French and English.”

  “Emma speaks both,” he pointed out.

  Claudine shook her head. “I don’t want to endanger her. She’s so young. Do not tell of this. It is best that she does not know. I have to tell you quickly before she comes in. Right now she is down in the stable helping Willem groom the horse. She has a fondness for horses.”

  “What can I do?”

  “They are bringing more supplies and ammunition here every day. They are preparing for something. When I go to market, Willem and I know people there who can pass that information on to the Allied armies across enemy lines. We need the information to be put in a code and in English. You are a soldier. Do you know what kind of codes the British would understand?”

  “I was delivering a coded message when I got caught in the gas attack,” he told her. “I know how the code worked.”

  “Very good. Then I can count on you?”

  “A hundred percent.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Promise

  One week later, Emma awoke to find Jack sitting up with his legs slung over the side of the four-poster bed. For the first time he looked strong enough to actually get out of bed and it appeared as though that was what he intended to attempt next. She wondered if he’d be strong enough.

  Standing, he crossed to the mirror above the dresser and inspected his image for the first time since he’d arrived, smoothing his wild black curls. His peeled skin was healing and the blisters on his lips, though papery and raw, were improving. The swelling of his eye area was almost, though not quite, gone.

  Emma decided he looked like a complete wild man. But, though she would never admit it, she found something attractive in the wildness—a thing raw and vibrant with energy. Considering that he had been half dead when she first encountered him, he now seemed more alive than anyone she’d ever known.

  Judging from the grin spreading across his face, he was pleased with what he saw. Turning to her, he pointed at his image in the mirror. “Who is that handsome devil?” he asked playfully. “I’d say he looks good enough to kiss. Want to try?”

  “Would you please stop it?” she exploded, all the more distressed by the request because he seemed to have realized she had been privately assessing his attractiveness. It unnerved her, this ability of his to intuit her thoughts. She refused to believe he could actually read her mind no matter how much it seemed to be the case. Nonetheless this power of his was uncanny and she didn’t like feeling he had any power over her. “Stop asking me for a kiss,” she insisted. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, let me tell you again—it is never going to happen!”

  “Ah, I guess you’re too fancy to kiss a guy like me,” he said lightly, “even though it would be so nice.”

  He was too impossible! He delighted in underlining the fact that he was uneducated and without refinement of any sort. When she mentioned even the most commonplace nicety, such as the fact that she missed having afternoon tea, he laughed his low, chortling chuckle, joking, “Ah, well, I wouldn’t know about any of that, sug. I’ll have to go ask the queen.”

  When he mocked her that way, it made her want to strangle him. It was as if he saw her as some upper-class twit, an image of herself that she did not want to hold, even for a moment.

  “I bet you don’t even know the queen’s name,” she’d challenged him one afternoon.

  “Queen Mary of Teck, wife of George the Fifth,” he answered correctly. “You sure do think I’m dumb, don’t you?”

  “I think you only say the things you do in order to make me angry because, to you, it’s some sort of amusement.”

  “That’s not so,” he disagreed. “I ask for a kiss because I want you to kiss me and show you like me a little.”

  “You don’t want a kiss at all,” she insisted. “You only say it because you think it’s funny to upset me.”

  “Your eyes do go wide with shock and alarm,” he admitted.

  “See! I knew it!”

  “But they’re such pretty eyes.”

  Even now she couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he was only making fun of her. “Why does it delight you so much to tease me?” she demanded.

  “Ah, come on, sug, don’t be that way,” he said now, settling back on the bed. “I’m only playin’. We’re stuck here together like this. I just want to be friends with you.”

  “Then you don’t really want me to kiss you?”

  “Yeah, I want a kiss!” he insisted emphatically. “But it could be a nice friendly kiss. It don’t have to be a kiss you’d read about in a romance novel.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never read one.”

  “But you get the gist of my meaning,” he insisted.

  She realized from the new energy that had come into his movements and his voice that he really was much stronger than he had been. He was probably even finally strong enough to go down into the well to search under the water for her locket.

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” she began in a new, conciliatory tone of voice. “You’re right. Under the circumstances, we should try to be friends. I enjoyed hearing about your boyhood. It’s so interesting that you’re able to hold your breath for so long. How did you come by that ability?”

  “I’ve always loved to swim,” he said. “My mam taught me when I was a baby, before I could even walk.”

  “I thought you were in a home for orphans.”

  “Not always. My daddy was never around, but my mam took good care of me before she passed on when I was ten. She taught me a lot.”

  “Like how to hold your breath under water?”

  That made him chuckle. “Naw. That just came to me natural. An old fisherman taught me how to pump the air up from the bottom of my lungs when … ah, never mind. You don’t want to hear it.”

  “I do,” she insisted. She was interested in anything that had to do with his ability to stay under water.

  “Why do you want to know about my breath-holding ability?” he asked, as if reading her mind yet again.

  “The day I found you in the well, I was searching for a locket I had thrown down there. I would very much like it back and I was wondering if—when you’re strong enough, of course—you could manage to retrieve it for me.”

  He studied her skeptically. “What’s so special about it?” he asked. “Got a picture of your boyfriend in there?”

  “My parents.”<
br />
  “Then why’d you throw it in the well?”

  “I forgot the picture was in there at the moment I threw it. I was angry about something else. I regretted it the instant I remembered that their picture was in the locket,” she replied.

  He nodded, studying her. “Why should I get it for you?”

  “I thought you wanted to be friends.”

  “If you’re my friend, then give me the friendly kiss I asked for,” he countered.

  “If you’re my friend, you’ll get the locket for me,” she said.

  “Uh-uh,” he said, shaking his head. “You first.”

  They stood for a moment looking at each other stubbornly, locked in a silent battle of wills.

  “Then we are obviously not meant to be friends,” she said, breaking the deadlock.

  He turned away from her and spoke without facing her. “If I were to get this locket for you,” he went on, his voice quiet and with intensity she had never heard there before, “would you then become my friend?”

  “Of course,” she agreed eagerly.

  “Don’t answer me so quick, sug,” he said, his voice still low and earnest. “Make sure you understand what I’m really asking. Would you become my dearest, most loyal soul companion?”

  This new seriousness in him frightened her. Why was this so important to him? “I could promise you that I would sincerely try,” she replied, “to be friends, that is. I can’t promise anything more than friendship.”

  “True friendship,” he pressed. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes! I promise!”

  A distant boom made her jump. “Another attack!” she gasped.

  “Calm yourself, sug,” he said. “It’s only thunder.”

  It rained all that night but on the next day, while Jack napped, Colonel Schiller opened the bedroom door and beckoned for Emma to join him in the hallway. “You heard nothing in the marketplace the other day?” he inquired, getting directly to his point.

  She hadn’t, but it might help her situation to have something to tell him. “I overheard some farmers saying that the Americans are secretly sending supplies to England.” Even though she was sure he already knew this, she wanted to seem compliant.