Water Song (5 page)

"You signed up to fight in order to get the uniform?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah, you right I did," he replied. "And now I've gone and lost it. Ain't that the sorriest story you ever heard of?"

She didn't believe him. Although he was making a joke of it, a subtle sadness now underlined his jaunty tone. What didn't he want to reveal? What did this story of wanting the uniform cover? "Why weren't you wearing your uniform in the well?" she asked.

"Stripped it off," he said with a new quietness. "The poison gas was all got up in the threads and it was burning my skin like fire."

He shut his eyes again and his brow furrowed unhappily. Emma could tell that he was experiencing the terrible attack once again in memory.

"Why were you in my well?" she asked.

"Hiding from the gas. I had only one thought, to get under the water and hide from the gas. I can always find water. It's a gift I have. I can hear it singing."

"Excuse me?" she questioned. Singing water?

He closed his eyes with his head back against his pillow. His voice was fading, and he seemed to have worn himself out with talking. "Yes, indeed. Water has a song just like anything else has. If you're able to hear it, you can always find water. Because water is one of the most beautiful things on the planet, its song is one of the most beautiful."

His eyes closed.

His voice seemed to drift.

"My mam always called me her frog. Maybe it's the frog part that lets me hear the water song."

Emma watched him sleep. What an odd person he was.

She got up and, standing before the dresser mirror, did her long hair up in a bun. In the bathroom, she slipped off her long white nightgown and changed into a white blouse and an ankle-length brown skirt. She slipped her feet into stockings that she rolled at the knee and heeled ankle boots.

When she came out of the bathroom, the stone-faced German colonel was standing in the center of the room facing her.

Jack wasn't really asleep, only half.

He was aware of Emma's voice in the room and a man's voice. He spoke with a German accent. He didn't like the hard tones of the German and Dutch languages. Even the Flemish, which was softer, had some of the guttural sounds. He heard it in some American dialects, too. Fortunately there was less of it in the liquid sounds of the Louisiana speech. Maybe it was the French influence. He didn't know. They kept talking as he drifted into a dream. ...

He was on a ship, mopping the deck. The sun was extremely bright, scorching his skin. The ship rocked steadily back and forth in a way that made his stomach queasy, which surprised him. He'd never experienced seasickness before. Thinking he might lose his breakfast there on the deck, he moved to the ship's railing--better to spill it into the roiling ocean below.

He saw a line etched out on the water. For a moment he thought of alligators moving below the surface out in the bayou.
Don't take your eyes off that line for a second,
he recalled his mother telling him.

He sensed someone beside him. It was Louie, his pal from the Waifs' Home, playing the trumpet sweet as could be. "Hey, Louie. I didn't know you were on this ship," he said. "They taught you real good there in the Home."

He looked back out at the ocean. It was filled with alligators now. He could see the spiny, scaly ridges of their backs coming toward the ship. "Louie, look, there's alligators out there," he said.

But when he turned back, Louie had changed into the young soldier who'd been in the trench beside him when the gas started to spread. Instead of Louie's sweet trumpet, he was blowing a bugle as he often did at dawn and dusk. "Those are not alligators," he asserted in his working-class English accent. "Those are torpedoes."

And then everything was blinding light. Debris flew past him as a blast knocked him off his feet and sent him hurtling through the air.

He fell from the air, tumbling around and around in a circle under the water, plummeting deeper and deeper. Other bodies floated in the water all around him.

From under the water, he heard Louie's trumpet playing all around him and he suddenly turned into a frog as one of the other men on the boat floated past 
him. He grabbed the man's wrist in his long frog fingers and tugged him upward as he swam fast for the surface.

Louie's trumpet became louder and lost its sweet tone. It became the kid's bugle again. And then even that changed to the sound of a boat's blaring horn.

He cleared the foaming surface and pulled the man up with him. Pieces of the shattered ship were everywhere. He hoisted the unconscious man onto a floating piece of door.

The rescue boat blaring its horn came to pick up the floating man, who was another deckhand like himself. But Jack knew that since he was a frog, it was his job to go back down to see who else he could bring to the surface. So down he went, once again.

Jack awoke from his dream with his sheets in a knot around his legs. He wondered if he'd been kicking as he swam in his dream; that famous super frog kick of his that won him every swimming contest. Funny that he'd dreamed of becoming a frog. Probably because he'd just been telling Emma how his mother called him her frog. His big sister Louisa had said that his raspy voice was a frog voice; she was so good to him otherwise that he didn't hold it against her.

So many memories had mixed together in his dream. It was odd, he thought, that he should dream about the U-boat attack on his ship when he'd gone out of his way not to mention it to Emma. It hadn't even been reported to the American public because the politicians in Washington were committed to
keeping America out of this Great War.

He hadn't told her about the explosion because he didn't want to think about it, much less talk about it. It had been the real reason, though, that he'd signed up.

He saw what a mess the British were in, what they were really up against. He had lived it now firsthand. Later, when he spent the time recovering in the British hospital, he heard more stories from the Western Front, awful, heartbreaking stories.

He couldn't sit by and do nothing to help. The day they released him from the hospital, he'd walked out and gone directly to sign up.

He laughed lightly to himself, wondering if she really believed he'd signed up to get the dowdy khaki uniform with its putty-colored heavy leggings and metal pie-pan helmet.

What a pretty girl she was, and so brave to climb down there and get him from the well. She had a prickly side, he could tell, but it only made him smile. He liked her fire. She was smart, too, reading the papers and all the way she did; speaking German and French so well. He admired intelligent people, often wished he'd spent more time in school.

He got up on his elbow and looked around. Where had she gone?

That colonel had better not be bothering her. He might be too weak to help her now but he intended to be better very soon.

The colonel, who told her his name was Colonel Hans Schiller, asked Emma to walk with him around the grounds of the estate. When she'd first encountered him she'd been in such a state of panic, intent on matching his arrogance so as not to seem intimidated. She'd been so focused on saying just the right things that she'd barely been able to take in his appearance at all.

But now she saw that he was much younger than she'd originally thought, somewhere in his twenties. Tall, blond, and with pale blue eyes, he would have been good-looking if she'd been able to forget he was the enemy.

She'd accompanied him out of her bedroom and down the hall to the main stairs leading into the grand foyer of the estate, amazed at the transformation in her home. The once echoing, empty building 
now bustled with German soldiers moving briskly in every direction. Cabbagy smells of meals filled the hallways. Descending the stairway, she saw that the ornate furniture of the elegant main living room had been pushed up against the walls to make space for the rows of soldiers' cots.

At the front entrance, Old Willem was mending a broken panel on the door and nodded to her unhappily as she went by. Emma assumed that he and Claudine had been pressed into service by the Germans.

Once outside, she and the colonel walked side by side without talking. Though overcast, the wet warmth of April hung in the air and a balmy breeze ruffled the loose fringes of her hair. Today there were no sounds of fighting or approaching planes. Emma's spirits lifted with the sheer relief of being outdoors after having been confined in her room for so long.

Not far from the well, Colonel Schiller stopped to gaze out over the fields. "The quiet is good, yes?" he commented in German.

"Very good," she agreed, also speaking in German.

He became lost in thought for a moment before he spoke again. "We should enjoy the quiet while it lasts. Your countrymen along with their French, Canadian, and Belgian allies will surely attempt to take this position from us at some point. It is too good a vantage point from which to see the advancing soldiers in the fields below. They cannot afford to let us keep it. They will try to fight us for this ridge."

His words frightened her. She'd seen what had 
happened to Ypres. If a village could be destroyed, so could the estate. "How close will they get?" she asked.

He grinned disdainfully. "Not close at all, if we are successful at defeating them down in the fields. I do not think you need to worry."

Emma felt keenly the uncomfortable divide this situation was causing in her loyalties. She should want the Allies to come very close and take The Ridge. If they controlled the area, she might even make it safely to the port at the French city of Calais, where she could get a boat across the English Channel and finally go home.

Yet she didn't want any harm to come to the estate, or to be in the middle of horrific missile fire and shooting as she had that day in Ypres. She never wanted to experience anything like that again.

"Tell me ... really ... why you were in that well," Colonel Schiller said, glancing into the well.

Emma looked up at him sharply. "I told you what happened."

"Why did he not simply go inside your lovely home?"

"He was out of his mind with pain and wasn't thinking clearly. Besides, he thought the water would soothe the burning." She was glad he'd been able to give her at least that much information.

"You do not seem to be on very close terms with your husband," he observed. "I see that the servant woman tends him. Should not a wife take care of her husband?"

"Claudine is more experienced at such things than I am," she replied. "I want Jack to have the best care, and she can give it."

"You are both quite young. When were you married?"

"Last year, in New Orleans," Emma said. "He's the son of a business associate of my father."

"The date?"

"July 6, 1914," she said, naming the date of her last birthday so she'd be sure to remember what she'd said. "Jack is a jazz musician. He plays the coronet."

"What is jazz?"

"It's a type of music, very big in America."

"You like this jazz?" he asked.

"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 eye 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.