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“Was she betrayed?” Monk asked harshly. He wanted both the possible answers, and neither. If she had been, it might somehow explain Elissa’s murder, and yet it would be so repellent, so hideous a sin in his mind, that for Hanna’s sake, he could hardly bear it. And even more for the sake of whoever had done it. Surely the brave, idealistic Elissa could not have soiled herself with such an act of jealousy?
“You know I cannot answer you with what I know from the confessional, Herr Monk,” Geissner said softly. “All that Hanna did was always a risk. She knew it, but she still went.”
“They still sent her!” Monk challenged, his voice catching in his throat. He had expected Geissner to deny even the possibility of betrayal, firmly and with anger, and he had not. That was almost a confirmation in itself. Suddenly he was cold, shivery, sick inside.
“Yes.” Geissner went on, breathing softly, his eyes down, away from Monk’s. “It was important, and she was the best at finding her way through the back streets, especially of Leopoldstadt, the old Jewish quarter. Had she been able to get through and warn the others, she believed it would have saved their lives. . at least until next time.”
“Believed?” Monk seized on the word. “Was it not true?”
“Someone else warned them also.” The answer was so quiet Monk barely caught it.
“So her death was unnecessary!” Monk found his fury choking him so he could not speak the sentence clearly.
Geissner looked up, his eyes pleading not to be asked, and yet to be understood, so Monk might share with him a terrible truth without his betraying anyone by speaking it aloud.
Monk stumbled towards it in growing horror. “She was in love with Kristian?” he said, repeating what Magda Beck had told him.
“Yes.” Geissner said only the one word.
“And could he have felt more deeply for her than only friendship and loyalty?” Monk asked him.
“He did not say so to me,” Geissner replied, gazing at Monk steadily.
Was that a deliberate omission, to imply that it had been so? For a long moment Monk allowed the silence to remain, and Geissner did not interrupt it. The certainty settled with Monk, heavy as stone.
“Did Elissa believe that he did?” Monk asked finally.
“Mr. Monk, you are asking questions I cannot answer.”
Why? Because he did not know, or because the confessional bound him? He had very carefully refrained from saying that he did not know. Or was that his way with English? Monk studied his face and saw pain in it, pity, and silence. What could he ask that Geissner could answer?
“You were there yourself?” he said. “With them at the barricades, and in the times before. . and after?”
Geissner smiled, a wry twitch of the lips. “Yes, Mr. Monk, I was. Being a priest does not prevent me from believing in the greater freedom of my people. I did not hold a gun, but I carried messages, tried to argue and persuade, and I tended the troubled and the injured, and heard confession from those who had done physical harm to others in the cause they believed in.”
“And those who from their own passions had done things, or omitted them, which gravely harmed others?” Monk urged, this time directly looking into Geissner’s eyes.
“I know what you are asking me, Herr Monk,” G
eissner said very quietly. “And you know that my oath as a priest prevents me from answering you. I would give a great deal to be able to help you learn the truth as to what happened to Elissa von Leibnitz. I grieve for her, for the bright flame that has been quenched. I grieve still more for Kristian. As I knew him, he was a man of remarkable inner courage, an honesty to look at himself and measure his failings against his dreams. He did not run away from truth, even when it hurt him profoundly.”
“You are speaking of Hanna’s death?” Monk said quickly.
Geissner blinked and drew in his breath slowly. “Do not misunderstand me, I am speaking of the regret he felt afterwards, the self-doubt he suffered because they had chosen Hanna for the errand. He came to believe that they had done so because she was Jewish, and therefore, in some way deeper than conscious thought, not entirely one of them. I don’t know if that was true, but he feared it was, and he was horrified with himself for it.”
“And the others? Elissa? Max?”
He shook his head. Fractionally. “No. That was the beginning of a subtle difference between them, a divergence of inner paths, but not outer. Kristian married Elissa. Max Niemann remained his friend. I think Kristian only ever spoke of it to me. I tell you because it reflects on the kind of man he was, and I believe will always be. It was that core of strength in him that Elissa saw, and loved.”
“And Hanna?” Monk asked. He was not certain how far he could push Geissner, but he could not leave it as it was. He was almost certain that Elissa had betrayed Hanna, but almost was not enough. “Was that what she loved in him, too, and trusted?”
Something shivered inside Geissner. “She was not my parishioner, Herr Monk. She did not confide such things in me.”
Monk chose his words very carefully. “Father, if someone had betrayed Hanna Jakob to the authorities, would they have expected that she would be tortured to death and yet keep silent? That seems a very terrible thing. Is there any alternative, other than that the people whose whereabouts she kept secret would have been killed?”
Geissner was silent for so long Monk thought he was not going to reply, then at last he spoke. “I think it would be possible that they had made provision that the people concerned were warned, and were safe, so that if Hanna should break, to save herself, she would not, in fact, have betrayed anyone, except in her own mind.” He bit his lip, as if the cruelty of it only just came fully to him as he spoke the words aloud and heard them. “It was a time of great passions, Herr Monk. Perhaps we should not judge people for acts committed then by the calmer and colder light of today, when we sit here comfortably talking together of things we know only partially.”
“And you cannot tell me if this thing even happened. Does anyone else know of it? Max Niemann, for example? Or Kristian himself?”
