Whisper on the Wind (4 page)

The headlines Isa had smuggled still lightened his heart—at least those he’d been able to glance at before handing them over to be wrapped with the other papers.
Allies Pound German Forces
;
Germany’s Loss Put at 300,000
;
British Smash 7 Miles of Foe’s Lines, Take 2,000 prisoners
. Those were the kind of headlines Belgians wanted to see! Not what the Germans printed every day, about sinking British warships and claiming victory at every turn.

The late afternoon sun shone brightly in the warm weather. Edward clutched the bundle beneath his arm. The train depot was a ten-minute walk, and he would barely make the drop time if he hoped to get this unexpected gift included in the current shipment.

Edward had never met the particular messenger he’d summoned through the fishmonger, and making his face known to yet another level in the various rings of communication was a risk. But it was one Edward couldn’t help taking, with the newspaper clips so recent and encouraging.

Though he increased his pace, he held back from a trot. Any civilian setting a quick stride, especially one with a parcel, was like a flag waving at the nearest German sentry, demanding notice.

Few civilians but dozens of German soldiers gathered on the station platform. Travelers’ identifications had to be checked, but Edward wasn’t crossing the gate, so he would be spared that. Then he spotted his target: a man in a worn dark suit, complete with a red-tipped umbrella and a kerchief sticking rakishly from the coat’s tattered breast pocket.

Edward approached the man casually and, without a hat to tip, bowed his head slightly, stopping nearby as if awaiting someone on the expected train. “Funny how it can rain in Louvain and stay dry in Aerschot, isn’t it?”

The man, who had started to turn away, stilled. “Yes, and all the while it pours in Brussels.”

They made the briefest eye contact before Edward turned away, going to a bench along the wall. He sat down, placing the fish beside him. A few moments later, as the train whistle sounded down the track, the other man sat.

Edward stood, leaving the fish behind.

The man took the wrapped fish and headed back to the edge of the platform just as the huge, black steam train came hissing to a halt. The news would find its proper way now, and with it, hope.

3

Verba volant, scripta manent—

Words pass, but writings remain. We seek in these pages to be the mirror of a people united against the FOREIGNER, to remind our fellow Belgians that though our homeland is gagged under its oppressors, we are not, nor will we ever be, defeated.

La Libre Belgique

“Wait here,” Edward whispered. “Do not move until I come out.”

Isa kept a retort to herself, offering only a nod. She was in the vestibule of either a home or a closed business—it was hard to tell which. He went inside the inner door and she looked around. Scant moonlight shone through a tiny square window that was framed with heavy wood and only large enough for a single pane of glass. The entryway was stark, clean, void of furniture or adornment.

Like all the buildings they’d passed, this one had been shuttered and dark. She only knew they were in Lower Town, a Brussels quarter unfamiliar to Isa. Edward had taken her down one sloping, narrow alleyway after another, until she was certain she’d never find her way out alone. Her family had always lived in Upper Town, whose streets were far easier to manage. From various spots along those fashionable avenues and boulevards she’d done little more than see the evening lights of Lower Town or, during the day, the rooftops nestled closely together. Most were tiled like those she’d seen in Spain; others were of tin, some of simple wood; and they were nearly all connected.

Now from within Lower Town she’d seen brick everywhere, closing in from all directions at twilight. Brick streets, brick buildings, brick steps leading to the little wooden doors that were tightly shut.

She leaned toward the inner door, straining to hear someone familiar, but the sounds were too quiet. Was this where Edward had been living since his family’s hotel had burned? Was Genny here, just on the other side of the door? and Jonah? Isa longed to go inside but didn’t dare. If it were only Edward’s family inside, surely he would have brought her in.

Eventually the sound of voices died away and Isa sank to the floor. Finally, snug in her trust that Edward had brought her somewhere safe, she fell asleep.

* * *

“You should have brought her inside. Look, she’s sleeping.”

“A hard bed won’t hurt her,” Edward said to the woman at his side. “She’s known nothing but the softest feather ticks most of her life. That’s all changed now that she was foolish enough to come back.”

“Bring her in and she can sleep upstairs. You shouldn’t leave now anyway. Curfew started two hours ago.”

“Our documents are good if we get stopped. We’ll say the trams were late from Louvain because of so many stops at checkpoints. It happens every day.”

“Oh, fine. Insulting the Germans for their policies will certainly endear you to them.” She stroked the side of his face. “It’ll be safer to stay. You know I’ll worry.”

Edward took her hand in his. “We’re not carrying anything now except perfectly forged identification papers, Rosalie. What could happen?”

She laughed softly, leaning closer. “Any number of things.”

“I’ll see you in a few days. Go back inside before I wake her.”

“I believe you worry more than I do. Are you so concerned about my safety? What does it matter if she sees me?”

“I told you, the fewer people who see a link between you and me, the better.”

“You don’t trust her, then?”

“She’s not much more than a child, but an impetuous one and entirely too talkative. It’s best for all of us not to exchange names or faces.”

“Why, she’s hardly a child, Edward!”

Edward glanced at Isa sleeping peacefully under a single beam of moonlight. Here was the girl Edward had known for years—and yet, she was different. The bones of her face were more defined, her neck somehow longer, her eyes larger. She was taller than the last time he’d seen her, yet she’d lost that gangly look. Perhaps because of the bulky peasant clothing. He realized he liked her better dressed in such a way; it removed her from the Isa he’d known, the one with the family so rich they hardly knew what to do with all that money.

Isa stirred and he turned from looking at her, all but pushing Rosalie back into her home. “Go inside, Rosalie. I’ll see you soon.” Then he closed the door.

By the time he faced Isa again, she’d scrambled to her feet, adjusting her clothing and slipping her cloak into place.

“Who was that?”

“No one you need to know.”

“But—” She stopped before finishing her own statement, staring at him, her mouth agape. “Edward! You—your face!”

“Oh.” He dared not go farther into the city without his Brussels identity firmly in place. Just having the disguise in place made him feel less like the Edward Kirkland, guilty of so many crimes against Germany, and more like the innocent man he portrayed himself to be. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Nicholas van Esbjörn, a fifty-year-old businessman of Danish lineage. I have lived in Brussels most of my adult life—twenty-five, no, thirty years. And you are my niece now, still Anna Feldson. I hope you learn to answer to that name if a soldier sees your papers and calls you that, Anna.”

“Oh, Edward.” She shook her head. “I would hardly know you.”

He knew Rosalie was the best. She had studied under the master himself, Lawrence Auber, the premier makeup artist at La Monnaie, the most famous opera house in Brussels—and, Brussels would argue, the best in all Europe. Perhaps it wasn’t such a stretch to make him look older than his years, since the Germans had starved and beaten the youth out of him shortly after their arrival. Even since his return, what little food he ate never had a chance to soften the rough edges of his bones. But with Rosalie’s artwork, his premature pallor now sported a line here and there, a touch of gray to his dark hair. Even his neck, if one looked close enough, was marred by new wrinkles that a man his real age of nearly twenty-three would not see for another score of years. He was, to look at him, past the age of a soldier on either side of the war.

“Better get used to it,” he said as he led her outside and down the cobbled path. “This is how I live when I’m in Brussels.”

“Where are we going?”

“To my mother.”

“Oh! At last!”

A twinge of old jealousy teased Edward, something he hadn’t felt since in knee pants. His mother, at least, would be happy to see Isa—happy but undoubtedly angry, too.

“But where, Edward?”

Edward slowed his pace when he noticed she barely kept up. “Right here in Brussels. Although,” he added with a glance, “not in your Upper Town. She’s with a Flemish woman along the Rue Haute in the Quartier des Marolles, not far below the German eye in the Palais de Justice.”

“The Germans are in the Palais de Justice?”

He laughed at her naiveté. “They’re everywhere, Isa.”

They walked for some time, staying away from major intersections and keeping to narrow alleys. Edward didn’t believe in unnecessary risk. He drew Isa with him to the shadows if he saw any of the Kaiser’s soldiers or heard the clop of horses pulling a cart.

After a while Edward stopped before one of the buildings. He’d been here often enough in the past year or more since gaining his freedom—such as it was—but still he had to count the doors from the corner, they were all so much alike. Nothing adorned the structure, neither flower boxes nor welcome mat, not even shutters at the windows. Though swept clean, this home was stark and plain. Like all the others.

Edward pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, then quietly let them into the small, dark parlor. The single common room in the house offered a sturdy, bare wood table, a cast-iron cookstove in the corner, and a freestanding cabinet laden with dishes. There was one bedroom on this level, belonging to Viole and her husband, an older Walloon couple who’d worked for Edward’s parents when they’d begun managing the Hotel Cerise. Edward’s mother and his brother, Jonah, used the two rooms upstairs. On the rare occasion Edward allowed himself to join them, he shared his younger brother’s quarters.

“Everyone is asleep. You can rest right here in the parlor.” He pointed toward a settee in front of the tall fireplace. “Come along, then; you can sleep a little before everyone rouses.”

“All right.”

He would have stepped past her, but she stopped him with a gentle touch to his arm. “Edward, wait. I wanted to—to thank you.”

He grimaced and would have turned away, but she still held his arm.

“No, Edward, please listen. Will you sit with me? Here on the settee?”

He was tired and wanted to go to bed but found that sitting was too tempting to pass up.

“I know you think I’ve made a mistake in coming back, but even if you’re right, what’s done is done and I’m
glad
I’m here. I’ve longed to be here since the moment my parents forced me to leave.” She sighed. “I was so young then, I didn’t have a choice.”

He wanted to tell her the passage of just over two years hardly counted toward aging her but didn’t.

“Do you remember those days, Edward, just before the Germans came?”

He shrugged. He’d rather not recall. Yawning, he stretched out his legs and leaned back.

Isa shifted too, but to his dismay she leaned into him the way she used to when they were children. “There was so much going on, so much confusion. Everyone thought we’d be left alone, our little Belgium.”

“As we should have been.”

“Everyone was full of confusion and fear. . . .”

“And now only fear.” He patted the hand that rested on his chest and for a moment felt every bit the age he was dressed to portray, so much older and wiser than this girl beside him.

“But none of us knew back then what would happen. We shouldn’t have left so quickly.”

“Why should your parents have stayed? Brussels was just a diversion for them, not a home.”

“But not for me. Brussels
is
my home.”

“So what? Do you think if you’d stayed you could have changed anything? Do you think you can change anything now? What good are you here, Isa?” She sat up with an open mouth, no doubt with a ready defense, but he raised a hand. “Let me answer my own question: None. None whatsoever. You’re worse than that—you’re a liability. Oh, there you go, with your eyes welling up and thinking I’ve insulted you. But be logical for once, will you? You’re getting older now. Do you think anybody wants to be noticed by a German soldier? Least of all a woman, which you’ll be someday.”

“I think I already—”

“I haven’t mentioned that we’re dependent on charity for nearly every meal. No one works because to do so would be to work for the Germans. There are so few crops because they would go to feed the soldiers first anyway—
German
soldiers. Even if we wanted to work, because of the blockades there aren’t any imports to keep our factories going, so what’s the use? Passive resistance to the German regime allows us plenty of time to do nothing—nothing except avoid their presence, stick to ourselves, and await the day of liberation. If that day ever comes!”

“Oh, Edward, it will! Once America joins this war—”

“I didn’t see any headlines about America wanting to be involved. If they haven’t joined in by now, why should they
ever
? How many of their ships do the Germans have to sink?”

Isa looked from Edward to the glowing embers in the fireplace, but only for a moment. She nestled back beside him. “So, you must have had other smuggled newspapers. And you’ve been able to read them.”

He had no intention of telling her how. He leaned back, closing his eyes. “Look, Isa, I’ve no wish to be harsh. But you don’t realize you’ve jeopardized your life by coming back.”

“I’ve come to help, Edward. Wait until you look inside my satchel.” He heard her stifle a yawn, which produced one in himself. He should go right up to bed this very moment.

But he was too comfortable to move.