Under the Same Blue Sky (31 page)

“She said someone was coming, but I didn’t believe her. So
you
are that someone?”

“Yes, I am that someone. You can help Fräulein Renner prepare a small trunk for the baroness, just what she’ll need for the journey.”

Lotte cleared her throat. “I have my own packing to do. I’m going to Hannover. My daughter’s there.” I nudged the baron, indicating a traveling bag half open on the floor. A silver candelabrum peeked out. Silver candlesticks sat nearby. Lotte’s eyes followed ours boldly. “I haven’t been paid in a year. I can’t go to Hannover like a beggar. And I didn’t leave when the old baron died.”

“You’re leaving now. If I hadn’t come, would you have abandoned the baroness?”

Lotte stepped back from the frosty voice, but still hers rose. “All the others left. You don’t know what we’ve suffered here with the war, the Russians, the blockade, your brother’s debts, the old baron dying, and the baroness turning childish. Then it was just me and Minna, the kitchen maid, and her little bastard boy. Influenza got her yesterday. If I stay it’ll get me. Or the Poles will kill me. Have you heard? In one town, they nailed a German woman to a barn door and did what they wished to her. I
have
to leave.”

The baron sighed. “Lotte, take the silver. I’ll pay your wages. Just make us dinner and stay until we leave. Will you do that?” She nodded,
wiping her nose on a threadbare apron. The baron offered a linen handkerchief. She stroked the fine surface. “Keep it. But go help Fräulein Renner pack for the baroness.”

Lotte pocketed the handkerchief and backed away. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” She turned to her soup. And so I knew. We both knew. The baron’s voice rose. “Lotte, does the baroness have influenza?” She nodded. “When did it start?”

“Two days ago.”

“Is she coughing?” Nod. “What have you done for her?”

“I leave soup at the door. I can’t help her. The fever comes and you die. There’s no doctors left, even if there was money to pay one. Everyone’s dying. Everything’s ruined. I’m alone here.” The wide shoulders shook. Anger turned the baron’s face to white marble. When he took a step toward Lotte, she cowered.

I stepped between them, touching his sleeve. “Baron, let’s go to your mother.”

“Don’t!” Lotte cried. “You’ll catch it and give it to me and we’ll all die. The Allies bombed germs on us. They’ll—”

“Stop!” said the baron so sharply that her mouth snapped shut. “The fräulein and I were sick and recovered. We won’t get it again. We’ll tend the baroness since you’re unwilling.”

He spun on his heels and left the kitchen. I followed him up a curving staircase as massive as his in Dogwood, but cruder without Emil’s artistry. On the upper floor, coughing led us on, the same desperate fight for air we’d heard on the ship. We walked more slowly, not speaking. Our footsteps clattered. “There were Persian carpets here. This was my room,” the baron was saying, pointing to a closed door. “And this was Erich’s . . . There were Italian landscapes along this hall . . . my father’s study . . . his dressing room.” We turned a corner. Paneled walls
changed from walnut to oak. The coughs grew louder. “My mother’s quarters,” the baron recited, “her sitting room . . . her dressmaker’s workroom . . . her bedroom.” He knocked at a wide door.

A hoarse voice responded: “Lotte, is that you?” The baron’s grip on the handle loosened and tightened. He slowly pushed the door open. Sickroom smells rushed out at us: stale air and stale linens, sweat, dried blood, and somewhere a chamber pot. In a corner stood a large curtained bed. Around us, thickly carpeting the room, were decades of a noblewoman’s finery. We stepped gingerly through tangled mounds of Belgian lace, stacks of silks and furs, billowing heaps of evening gowns and day dresses, some from the last century with mutton sleeves, crinolines, and puffed bodices. Baskets held corsets and yellowing bustles. Here was a tower of open hatboxes spewing feathers. I saw a tea service and ponderous soup tureen, a bearskin rug, enameled beer steins, a French mantel clock, table linens, down comforters, shawls of lace and wool, gloves of every length, a jumble of ivory elephants in various sizes, toiletries and jewelry boxes piled like blocks. A terrarium under a glass dome. In a corner sat two large trunks, absurdly small for the mass around them.

The baron passed a hand over his forehead. “Lotte’s right. She’s like a child.”

“Lotte,” gasped a hoarse voice from the bed. “Where were you? You haven’t done the packing.” We waded through lace to the baroness.

“It’s Georg. I’ve come to take you to America.”

“Georg. At last.”

Yes, she was sick, wrinkled, and old, shrunken in foul, sweat-stained linens, with wiry strings of gray hair strewn across pillows. But still faintly visible was the beautiful young woman of the baron’s bezel ring: the elegant profile, high cheekbones, sculpted lips, and perfect chin.
She stretched a white hand to him. “Georg, you’ve come to take me away.”

He moved a spindly French boudoir chair to the bedside and sat down slowly, rubbing the thin armrests. Had he sat in that chair before? “Yes, we’re going to America.”

The baroness squinted through reddened eyes. “What a pretty young lady. Is she your American wife?”

He glanced at me. “Yes, this is Hazel.”

“I’m glad you finally—” A fit of coughing overtook her. The cloth she pressed to her mouth came away bloody. When the coughing ceased, she had forgotten me. I busied myself with sickroom services: opening windows to relieve the foul air, shoving the bloody cloths in a sack, and ripping linens for new ones.

“Lotte doesn’t come. She’s impossible. And that Minna—”

“Mother, I saw my grave. Lotte said there was a funeral.” He pointed to a black satin gown frosted with black lace as the bitterness of years came rushing out: “Did you wear that for me? Did you cry when people said what a promising young man Georg was, what a pity he died at sea? Exile wasn’t enough? You had to kill me?”

She writhed in the great bed, whimpering: “I’m sorry, Georg. I didn’t want to, but your father said it was the only way to keep people from talking when Erich inherited. And you were in America. You weren’t coming back.” She coughed, jerking up, and then collapsed against mounded pillows, gasping. “You don’t know how terrible it’s been. Lotte and I had to bury your father ourselves. We had to make a wooden headstone.
Wooden,
Georg. What will people think?”

“Nothing,” he said quietly. “They won’t think anything. There’s nobody left to think.”

I’d found a fresh nightgown and bed linens in the jumble. “Baron,
she might be more comfortable in these. Would you excuse us?” He did, bowing slightly to his mother as must have been his custom.

“You’ll find me in my father’s office,” he said, stepping around the elegant rubble.

I changed the nightgown, looking away from her shriveled body. Then I helped the baroness into a chair, remade her bed, and threw the old linens in a corner. Rummaging in her toiletries, I found lavender water to sprinkle on the bed.

“Ah, that’s good,” she whispered. “I’ve always loved lavender.” She was feverish. I filled a bowl with water, laid a wet cloth on her brow, and held the waving hand. No healing touch could reach her now. Death was near, hovering by the door. “That’s better,” she whispered, pulling her hand free. “Leave me, dear. Go to my son. I want to rest.”

A leak of light took me back to the old baron’s office, a chilling parent to the warm retreat in Dogwood. The baron sat at a massive desk before a stack of letters. “The baroness wanted to rest.”

He nodded. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to take the interrogation post.” He indicated a rush-bottom chair dwarfed by the desk. “Imagine being a child defending the various ways you offended the honor of the von Richthofens.”

I looked up at the baron, crowned in gaslight, with crossed spears and a coat of arms above him. “Intimidating,” I agreed.

“Of course. As are these creditors’ demands. In theory.” A smile lit his face, so broad it might have been borrowed from another man. “They can’t be paid. That’s the charm. Because I’m dead, you see? As are my father and brother. You won’t find my mother’s name on any title. So from whom can these creditors collect, assuming they survive this second war with influenza?” He picked up a bone-handled hunting knife that must have doubled as a letter opener.

The smile faded. “Strange. For years, I bided my time, alone and
then with Friedrich, waiting for Erich to come to ruin and my father to die or relent. We had plans for remaking this castle. So many plans. Now Friedrich’s gone and the Prussia I knew is gone. Mein Königsberg will fall to other hands. But I’ll take some treasure home. I helped my father acquire all this. Look.”

He brought me to a long table, astonishing even after all my time with him. Here was an illuminated Psalter from the court of Charlemagne, a silver buckle reportedly made for the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before his last Crusade, the elaborately worked helm of a Viking sword, a jewel-encrusted gauntlet, a Roman brooch set with sapphires, heavy signet rings of Renaissance princes, and a cup of ancient coins.

“How did all this survive?”

“Because my father hid it from Erich.”

“But not from you?”

“He trusted me not to gamble his treasures on a horse race. He was convinced that with age, Erich would become a model of sobriety and prudence. Then he’d reveal the secret.”

“Perhaps he hoped you’d come back.”

“Why, if he buried me? I was his art buyer and sometime hunting companion, nothing more.”

It was difficult to grasp the dark twists of a family that had buried a living, faithful son in favor of a wastrel. But was my baron so wholly despised? In the jumble of ancient coins, I spied a bright bronze disk of recent stamp and fished it out. “This is from 1882. It looks like a school medal.”

He dropped the gauntlet he’d been examining and reached for the disk, lightly touching the crossed pistols, silent for a long minute. “My marksmanship award from the academy.”

“He kept it with his treasures.”

“A minor gesture of affection, considering that he buried me.”

“Minor, perhaps, but real.”

“Yes, real.” He turned the disk over and over. Then he put it in his pocket and looked toward the sickroom. “She won’t make it to America, will she?”

“I don’t see how. She’s coughing blood. But you can speak with her.” He didn’t move. “She loves you.”

“In her way, yes.”

“Well then.” But he didn’t move. “I’ll go back with you, Baron, if you like.” He nodded.

The coughs had subsided. The baroness struggled to lift her head as we entered. “Tell me about America,” she whispered. “Will I like it?”

He reached for the brittle hand. “Mother, it’s just the same as Prussia, with farms and fields, the sea close by, and many forests. People speak German.”

She smiled. “That’s good. Where do you live?”

“In a castle just like this one.”

“We had a rose garden. Nobody takes care of it now.”

“Never mind. I have a rose garden, and kitchen gardens, and an apple orchard.” She smiled. “There’s a grand staircase, paintings, and a gallery of mirrors.”

“American food?”

“It’s exactly like ours: meatballs with herring and white sauce, potatoes,
faworki
.”

She lurched again, gagging. He held her. “
Faworki,
” she sputtered.

“Sauerkraut and good bread.”

“Lotte?”

“She’ll help you pack later. Rest now.” Her breaths gurgled slightly. The faintest blue tinged her lips and fingers. “I’ll stay here awhile, Hazel. Go have some soup.”

I found my way back to the kitchen. Lotte had set a simple table. “The baroness?”

“He’s with her. He’ll be down later.”

She put three beer bottles on the table. “Those are the last ones.” We were about to sit when the outside door creaked open. “Beasts,” she hissed. “Get back, fräulein.” She seized a poker and swung it over her head.

A child slipped in. I screamed as the poker whizzed past his ear, clattering on the floor. He couldn’t have been more than three years old, painfully thin, with a pinched face and enormous blue eyes. He stood so calmly as Lotte retrieved the poker that I ached to think what his little life had been. “It’s David, Minna’s boy. She had him by a Russian soldier. There were no other kitchen maids around, so the old baron had to hire her, even with the bastard.”

“Who cares for him now?”

“I feed him. Sometimes he goes away. Maybe he eats somewhere else.” Like a stray cat? I took bread and cheese from my knapsack, gave him some of my soup, and pulled a chair next to mine.

“And when you leave for Hannover, what happens to David?”

“I’ll—take him to the priest.” We’d passed the bombed church in town. If there was a priest there still, would he accept the child? Or would David be sent wandering in search of the last unbombed orphanage? A thin hand crept into a fold of my skirt and wrapped around my heart.
Don’t, don’t. Don’t raise your eyes like that to me.

From a bulge in his cloth jacket, he pulled a battered wooden horse, which he cradled in grubby hands. “It was Georg’s,” Lotte explained. “I found it in the nursery and gave it to him.”

“That was kind of you.”

“David is a good boy,” she admitted. “It’s too bad.”

Too bad that he’d die? No, David would
not
die in Prussia and he’d
join no mass of starving, homeless children slowly moving through Europe. I’ll take him, I decided suddenly. Then my certainty faltered. Could I? We’d been lucky so far, but no match for any band of soldiers or civilians. A child would slow us down. We couldn’t guarantee his safety. Once in America, suppose he longed for his old world, ruined as it was? Suppose he felt ripped from his land? I couldn’t go to Paris with an orphan boy in tow. Or could I? Well-meant choices in my past had come to pain. But if I did nothing now, this child would have no chance at all. Johannes and Katarina had not refused an unwanted, inconvenient child. The huge eyes fixed on me. He set aside the wooden horse and set a feather-light hand on my skirt. I took it in both of mine. And we were joined.