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He’d been stunned, then, and even tonight his hand shook slightly as he felt inside his jacket for that same small velvet bag. “I have brought something for you,” he said to Isabelle. He held out the bag and she looked at him.
“I don’t need anything.”
“This is not anything. It’s diamonds.”
She echoed the word back at him, her dark eyes flashing disbelief. “But where would you get diamonds?”
“From a friend. He was given orders to bury them below the hotel, for safety. So they will be there when our Army comes back.” Again he touched her face, he couldn’t help himself. “Only, we won’t be coming back…”
“Don’t.”
“I said you must be brave. I do not plan to die, my love.” His smile was a promise. “I will come back when this is over. I will come back for you.”
He felt the longing in her kiss, and the dampness of her tears against his own skin, but when he opened his eyes she was smiling. He murmured something soft, in German, that she couldn’t understand, and closed his fingers over hers, around the velvet bag. “You keep these safe, for us,” he told her. “They are our future.”
Our future, he thought sadly, and he reached for her again…
The night was nearly over when he wound his way back through the tunnels. Six steps on, then left… this must be how the blind felt, he thought, with the darkness thick against his face and the sound of his own breathing harsh in that still space. It was a despairing sort of feeling. Fourteen steps… he put out his hand, trailing it along the dry and dusty stone, feeling for the iron ring of the door. His hand touched cloth instead.
Warm cloth, that breathed.
He felt the fingers groping at his throat, cutting off his choking gasp of surprise, but five years of army life had made his own reactions swift and automatic. This was no fellow soldier, standing sentry—the shirt he felt was soft, not stiff. Not a uniform. And the words of hate were hissed in French, not German. Deprived of breath, Hans moved from instinct. Up came his own hands, feeling, finding, then o
ne sharp twisting motion and a sickening crack. The fingers at his throat relaxed, fell away, and he breathed a painful breath.
This time he found the iron ring and wrenched the thick door open, letting in a singing rush of air. Beyond the door the road and roofs were silent. Nothing stirred. The sky was something less than black, a creeping grayness edging out the stars, but still he had to risk the torch to see the body at his feet. The yellow light touched a torn shirt, and brown long-fingered hands, and traveled upwards to the staring face.
Her face. Oh, God. Her brother’s face. She’d shown him once, a photograph. “You wouldn’t get along,” she’d said.
“Isabelle…” His hand jerked and the torch fell from it, shattering upon the ancient stone.
Chapter 14
Before me shower’d the rose in flakes;
behind I heard the puffd pursuer;
Beside me, Jim Whitaker bent his head to light a cigar, and the scrape of the match sounded loud in the quiet room.
Garland shifted in her seat, her eyes gleaming like the eyes of a satisfied cat. “Oooh, it’s just like something out of a movie. He really killed her brother? How exciting.”
It was not, I thought, the word I would have chosen. Not exciting. It was, as Madame Chamond had warned us, a story of great sadness. Of all the fighters of the French Resistance, why did it have to be Isabelle’s own brother who met Hans in that dark tunnel? Fate had a heartless sense of humor, sometimes. One death, I thought, and three lives ruined. So it had been with John and Isabelle, more than seven hundred years earlier, when young Arthur of Brittany’s murder had brought John’s great empire crashing to the ground. How many times had they relived those moments, John and Hans, and wished the deed undone?
Two men in separate centuries, both loving Isabelles, bound by a single destiny that sent its unrelenting echo down the years.
A tiny chill swept fleeting through the room, and Simon fidgeted, unable to stand the suspense. “So what happened?” he asked Madame Chamond. “What happened to Hans and Isabelle?”
“Ah, well, it was most difficult. A few days later came the liberation and everything was changed. Hans I think was killed, or captured, in the fighting, and Isabelle…”
Simon reacted sharply. “She killed herself? In our room?”
“No, not in your room,” said Monsieur Chamond, unable to mask his quick smile. “No, Isabelle drowned herself, did she not, in the river?” He looked to his wife for confirmation. “At least, that is what I have heard. No one has ever died in this hotel, not like that.”
Neil turned in his chair. “And what became of the diamonds?”
“No one knows,” said Christian quietly. It startled me a little, to hear the cadence of the German voice, so soon after surfacing from my imaginings. It was as if Hans himself had spoken to us.
“Diamonds…” Garland Whitaker breathed the word like a prayer. “Wherever did the Germans get diamonds from?”
