All God's Children (31 page)

At the same time, she could not get Josef or her uncle’s message out of her mind. How could she not have known? How could it possibly be true? Perhaps it was Uncle Franz who had been fooled. Perhaps somehow he’d been led to believe that Josef had betrayed them when all along…

She hunched her shoulders and shoved her hands deeper inside her coat pockets, feeling all the while the soft leather of the gloves that Josef had given her clinging to her fingers and hands. It was almost as if Josef himself were touching her, linking his fingers with hers as he so often had these last weeks. She should have given him the opportunity to explain. She should have trusted her love for him—and his for her.

Oh, Josef, what am I to do?

Then she saw the church, its spire half-gone and one wall of what had once been the sanctuary reduced to rubble where the bombs had struck. She climbed over piles of brick and stone until she reached what had been the interior. Rows of pews covered in dust faced an altar that sagged badly on one side.

Beth made her way to a far corner of the church and sat down in one of the pews. She closed her eyes and opened her heart as she settled into the tradition of silent waiting that was the very heart of her faith.

Eventually she slept, and when she woke just before dawn, she realized that someone had been there, for she was now curled onto the pew and covered with a rough blanket. Panicked, she sat up and felt for her purse. It was still there, worn bandolier-style across her body. She checked to be sure that her papers and the small amount of cash she had were still inside. Her knit hat had come off in the night, and her hair lay in damp clumps around her face and shoulders.

Kneeling in front of what remained of the altar was an old woman wearing a babushka with her head bowed. Four small candles burned on the steps to the altar. As quietly as possible, Beth folded the blanket and laid it over the back of the pew. Then she removed her mittens and gloves and combed through her hair with her fingers. Shaking with the morning cold, she pulled her hair over one shoulder and braided it, then used a length of string she found on the church floor to tie off the plait. Her hat was sodden and would be useless to keep her warm so she stuffed it into her pocket.

She slid to the end of the pew and considered her escape route. If she left the way she’d come, she was bound to make a racket climbing back over the rubble. But the other way led deeper into the interior of the church, and who knew what awaited her there?

“Gut geschlafen
, Fräulein?” The woman in the front row was coming toward her. She was short and stocky and dressed in a man’s heavy coat, galoshes that flopped around her ankles, and a wool scarf.

Beth’s mind raced with possibilities. She glanced around, half expecting to see the familiar brown shirts of a team of storm troopers come to take her away. “I—did you bring the blanket?” she asked even as she edged closer to the aisle that was opposite the path the woman was taking to reach her.

“I did. My name is Helga, and you are?”

“Beth—Elizabeth.” Beth had ascertained that there was a corridor just behind her and hoped that it might lead to an exit and escape.

Helga sighed heavily. “Please do not run from me. I am far too old and far too fat to chase after you.”

“You are with the…”

“I am with no one. Not the government. Not the underground. Not the church. I am quite alone in this world, and it would appear you are as well.”

“I have a family—an uncle and aunt in Eglofs—and if I could just…”

“You are a long way from Eglofs, my dear.” She pulled something from the bag she carried over one arm and held it out to Beth. “Eat something.”

Josef had been carrying the knapsack of food when she’d run from him, so it had been several hours since she’d last eaten. As Beth accepted the hard roll that Helga offered her, the woman sighed and pulled a second roll from the bag, plopped down on the nearest pew, and took a bite. “So here we are.”

“Where is your family, Helga?” Beth was not used to addressing a stranger by her given name, but then the woman had offered no other information.

“Dead,” she said. “My husband in the last war and now all three sons in Stalingrad. Every morning I light a candle for each of them.”

“You live nearby?”

“I live here.” She nodded toward the recesses of the small church that Beth had considered her escape route. “If you want to stay until you can figure out your next move, I don’t mind.”

“I don’t know this area. How far is the train station from here?”

Helga laughed. “Not far, but being a fugitive as I suspect you are, that’s the last place you want to go. Don’t you have any friends you can contact?”

Beth could not have been more surprised when the words that came from her mouth were, “My friends have either been arrested or—like me—are trying to escape.”

The woman studied her more closely and then nodded. “That business at the university the other day? Those are your friends?”

Beth thought of denying the woman’s assumption, but how could she? These were indeed her friends. “Ja.”

Helga clicked her tongue as she shook her head. “Those children are no different than my children,” she murmured more to herself than to Beth. “All of them fighting for what they thought would be best for Germany. You can be sure that the authorities will make an example of them.”

“They’ll be sent to Dachau?”

Helga’s laugh was guttural and completely without humor. “They’ll sentence them to death like they did that American woman and her husband. They like to make the most of the flashy stories like this one.”

Josef
.

Beth was on her feet at once. “I have to go. Thank you so much for your kindness—the blanket, the roll.”

Helga waved off her gratitude. “Going to get yourself arrested, are you? And what good will that do?”

“I’m going to try and save a friend. His parents live in this area.” She gave Helga the address and asked for directions.

“He’s Gestapo—Detlef Buch,” Helga whispered as if to merely state the fact placed them in more danger.

“I know that, but his son is not. And I have to believe that Josef’s mother will do anything to protect her child and that even his father…”

Helga nodded and stood. “Come on,” she said, leading the way through what was left of the church to the street. Once there she gave Beth the directions she needed to reach the Buch home. “I hope this young man’s mother has more luck saving him than I did saving my boys,” she said. “You tell her that I said that enough of our brave boys have died for this senseless war. You tell her….” She broke down and sobbed, but when Beth would have stayed to console her, Helga pushed her away. “Go. You have work to do and not much time to do it.”

    CHAPTER 17    

S
he was too late.

When the servant answered the door, she saw the way he hesitated and glanced toward the stairs before greeting her. “Fräulein Bridgewater,” he intoned. “May I help you?”

His tone and expression were funereal, and Beth felt her heart lurch into a gallop of panic. “Josef?”

“Who is it, Gustav?” Frau Buch’s voice trembled with fear as she came to the door. “Oh, Beth, my dear, come in. Come in.”

Beth did not miss the way that Gustav glanced uneasily toward the street as he opened the door just wide enough for her to enter. The aura inside the grand house was so very different than it had been the night she had come for dinner. Even though the late-morning sun streamed through a series of large windows, the feeling was one of solemnity that bordered on grimness. Josef’s mother looked as if she had not slept in days. Her eyes were swollen with the aftermath of crying, and her hair was a wild bird’s nest around her face.

“Did you hear? Do you know anything? Anything at all that can save him?”

The woman peered closely at Beth as if expecting to find answers by simply looking into her eyes.

Beth turned to Gustav because it was evident that Josef’s mother was on the verge of a complete breakdown. “What has happened?”

“He was arrested last night.” The servant did not have to call Josef by name.

“Where have they taken him?”

“Headquarters,” Gustav replied. “Herr Buch has gone there to see—”

“And they’ll arrest him as well,” Frau Buch moaned as she sank onto one of the carpeted steps leading up to the main floor. “What are we to do?”

Somewhere in the bowels of the house, a telephone jangled. Gustav left to answer it. Beth sat on the step next to Josef’s mother and put her arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Surely…”

Frau Buch looked at her. “Don’t you understand? He was one of them—those students arrested day before yesterday. They are to be tried today.” She edged back from Beth. “You knew. You
know.”

Gustav returned, carrying Frau Buch’s coat, hat, and gloves. “That was Herr Buch’s secretary. He is sending a car for you, and I told him of Fräulein Beth’s arrival. He said that she should come as well.”

“Josef?”

“Herr Buch has retained the services of an attorney—a trusted friend of the family. Josef will not be tried with the others.” Gustav held the coat for her, and once she put it on, he handed her the hat and gloves. “But…”

Both women gave the servant their full attention.

“What?”

“He will be tried.”

They all turned at the sound of a car arriving. Gustav held the car door for them while the driver kept the engine running. “Hurry,” Frau Buch murmured when he started slowly down the drive.

“I have an idea,” Beth said in a low voice. She saw the driver watching her in the rearview mirror and cupped her hand to prevent him from seeing her lips. “Please, Frau Buch, when we arrive let me speak with your husband privately.”

“You foolish girl,” Frau Buch hissed. “We have no idea if my husband…”

“But he sent the car,” Beth reminded her.

“Did he?” The wild-eyed look Frau Buch gave her struck terror in Beth’s heart. Josef’s mother was nearly hysterical with fear.

There was little to be gained by trying to reason with her, so Beth leaned back and stared out the window as she searched her brain for some way she might save Josef. She was completely spent. This is what Germany had become—a nation of people afraid of their own neighbors, terrorized by their government, and nearly hysterical with having to face a future they could not imagine. She closed her eyes and willed herself to shut out everything and everyone for the duration of the ride.

After reading Franz’s message, Josef had been so intent on finding Beth that he’d done the one thing he should have known would be the worst thing he could possibly do. He had gone to the railway station.

The place had been relatively quiet—making it feel even more ominous than if there had been hundreds of people around. He checked the timetable for departures to Eglofs, having realized that Franz had been trying to deceive him in saying the family had gone to Lenggries. The last train for the day had already left, and there was no sign of Beth. He was about to continue his search when someone tapped his shoulder.

“Sergeant Josef Buch?”

If the SS agent had addressed him as “Herr Doktor” he might have had the wits to deny his identity, but his military training was ingrained, and so he turned expecting to see someone from his former unit.