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She remembered vividly. “Yes. But I had to leave the room.”
“Because you were diplomatic?”
“I’m afraid not. I was bursting with laughter.”
Suddenly all the lightness vanished out of his face, even from his eyes. “You’ll have to be more diplomatic now. Your life depends on it. Really! And not only yours, the lives of the people who help you.” He searched her face carefully. “If you’re telling me the truth, two men are dead already.”
“Three,” she corrected, her voice catching in her throat so it was barely a discernible word. “There was a man in Amalfi, too.”
He looked at her. “You didn’t mention that. Didn’t your friend on the train know about it?”
“Yes. I know! I know!” She could hear her own voice higher and sharper. She controlled it with difficulty. “He was dying when he told me he knew the man. It didn’t seem to be terribly important at the time. Nothing else did!”
He put his hands on her shoulders, very gently. “I’m sorry. I’m sorrier than I can say. But now we’ve got to do all we can to keep you safe. He would want that, wouldn’t he?”
She was too near tears to speak. She nodded, meeting his eyes for a moment. Then turning away, she began to walk forward again.
He caught up in a couple of steps. “We shouldn’t be out in the street longer than we have to be. You can trust most people here, but not everyone. Fear…” He stopped, his face touched with pain. He looked about Elena’s own age, perhaps a year or two older, but already there were deeply etched lines around his eyes and mouth. He was not handsome, but there was too much wit and understanding in him not to be attractive.
“Fear changes things,” he said, this time not looking at her, as he continued to walk. “Most of us think we know what we believe, and what we value, who we’ll defend. But when the Brownshirts come to your door, sometimes your courage disappears, your guts turn to water, and you tell them what they want to know. The best of us will lie to them and take the consequences on ourselves. But it’s altogether another thing when it’s your mother or your child that they’ll hurt. And they will. We know that from experience. You can see the guilt in some people’s eyes. They didn’t believe it because they didn’t want to. But they should have. I say that as fact, not to place blame. I don’t know what I would do if it were someone I loved who would be made to pay. Or anyone else at all, for that matter.”
She said nothing. It was not something to which any reply made sense. The thought was too overwhelming.
They walked two more blocks in silence, all the time Elena’s mind struggling to think honestly what she would do. If there were nothing that mattered more than herself, that was, in a way, the final defeat.
Jacob turned left, left again, then finally right, and stopped in front of a handsome family home. He ignored the front door and went along a narrow stone path to the back door, where he knocked.
It was opened after a moment by a middle-aged woman wearing a crisp white apron. As soon as she saw Jacob, she smiled. “Good afternoon, Mr. Jacob,” she said cheerfully. “Come in. Come in, Miss…”
“Miss Standish,” he introduced her. “Marta is a good friend,” he added to Elena, standing back to allow her in ahead of him.
Elena went inside and found herself in a large, warm kitchen with pleasant but unfamiliar smells. She could not help staring around. It was comfortable, domestic, someone’s home, made to be used and lived in. There was china all along the dresser shelves, pots and pans hanging from hooks on the wall, and clean laundry in a pile on a side table near another door. Washed vegetables stood on a bench near the sink, and there were bunches of dried herbs hanging from hooks above.
“Is Zillah at home?” Jacob asked, as soon as the outer door was closed.
“Yes. In the sitting room,” Marta replied. She glanced at Elena, a question in her eyes, but also concern. Did they have fugitives here often enough to recognize one on sight? Or did she emanate fear as profoundly as she felt it, and anyone could pick it up?
“Come,” Jacob told Elena, then said something to Marta very quickly, in a dialect Elena did not understand. It was a little like German, but unfamiliar.
She followed him across the hallway, and after a brief knock, into another comfortable room, lit by the afternoon sun.
A tall woman, dark-haired and a little thin, stood by the window. She turned as she heard Jacob. There was no fear in her face, only a quiet confidence, almost a serenity. She was not in the least fashionable—her clothes were dark and conservative—but there was a gentleness, a symmetry in her face that some might even have found beautiful.
“I’m sorry to catch you without warning,” Jacob said a little ruefully, “but I have a genuine fugitive. Elena, this is Zillah, Frau Hubermann. Elena Standish. She is English. She did not shoot Friedrich Scharnhorst, but some of the Brownshirts think she did. Or they want to think so. Could be they shot him themselves, but the truth will make no difference. She can’t go to the British Embassy, because they are likely the ones who made her look guilty. They were the only ones who even knew she was here. And she can’t go to the American Embassy, even though her mother is American, because that’s the next place they’d look.”
“Oh dear,” Zillah said with a rueful smile. She looked at Elena gently. “Are you all alone?”
“Yes. My…my friend who was going to warn the British Embassy about the assassination was murdered…on the train from Milan to Paris.” She said it as quickly as she could, to keep her voice very nearly steady. “He worked for British Intelligence. He told me before he died that Scharnhorst would be assassinated, and they would try to blame us, the British, to create an inte
rnational incident. I suppose if he had got here, they would have blamed him. The rifle is now in my hotel room. Which would have been his room, I think.” She stopped. She was talking too much. Did it all make any sense to this quiet woman standing in the sunlight?
“Scharnhorst’s death is probably the only good thing about it,” Jacob said bleakly. “Can hardly blame anyone for wanting that bastard dead. Although I would have done it more slowly.”
Zillah looked him up and down. “I suppose you didn’t, did you?” For an instant it was impossible to tell from her face if there was any seriousness behind the question.
“I’ve left a few odd things in other people’s bedrooms.” Jacob smiled with real amusement. “But no rifles.”
Zillah looked toward the ceiling for a moment, rolling her eyes, then turned to Elena. “You are welcome to stay here, until you decide what would be best for you,” she said quietly. She looked Elena over. “Perhaps a darker dress, something more like…”
