Chapter Thirty #2
The bars were old, rusty. Not enough to so much as budge from their moorings, but the uneven surface scraped her bare skin, biting and ripping until she had to choke back a whimper of pain.
For a moment, she thought she’d be stuck there, hip wedged between the two bars.
Had she not lost so much weight since the start of the war, she had no doubt she would have been.
She had to angle down, straining her bad hip in a way that made it scream in protest. At last, though, at last she had her hips through.
Then her torso, slipping an arm through easily and then pushing that hand against the bars for leverage.
Never had she been so grateful for the lack of curves in certain places. Biting her lip to keep from whimpering at the now-searing pain, ignoring the blood she felt trickling down her legs from her hips, she pushed, squeezed, sucked in, and soon had her body through.
Now her head. She winced in anticipation. This was going to hurt—but not like death at the hands of the Nazis would.
She thought of Blaise. Of Elise. Of Maman. Of Marcel. And then bent her head toward freedom and apologized to her ears. The metal clawed at her neck, her jaw, but she snarled back and pushed harder.
Through—she was through!
Tears splashed onto her arms as she reached back into the cell for her clothes and quickly put them on. Her neck was on fire, her ribs and hips too, blood dripping here and there down her torn and scraped skin, but she was out of the cell.
The hall had only one door that she could see, so she stole toward it, shoes in hand but not on her feet—the wooden soles would be far too loud. Holding her breath, she pressed the latch.
It opened! The guard must not have seen the need to secure this door when she was locked in a cell. Praise the Lord for that oversight on his part.
Where to go? More dark hallways stretched left and right, and her eyes couldn’t see a difference between them.
Her ears, however, picked up the notes of a familiar melody. Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in C minor.
Marcel. It had to be Marcel, playing for her the song she’d played that first day in Paris. The one after which he’d told her to focus on what she’d done right, not what she’d gotten wrong.
Him—he was one thing she’d finally, eventually gotten right. And she wasn’t going to let him die in her place. Following the music, she found the stairs and started down.
She’d made it only to the first landing when the sound of voices, laughter, reached her.
Another door let out into the stairwell, and footsteps were clomping toward it.
She spun, hip protesting as she padded back up the stairs, plastering herself to the wall when the door opened and praying she was fully out of sight.
Praying, praying they were headed down and not up.
The door creaked through its arc, banged against the stone wall behind it. She held her breath as the laughing voices entered the stairwell, their words a tangle of German she could scarcely translate over the pounding of her pulse in her ears. She caught enough, though.
“Didn’t think I’d get to go to another concert until my next leave in Paris,” one was saying.
“Think he’s any good?”
“With the bruises and broken ribs Heines gave him?” Coarse laughter. “We’ll see.”
Zelie squeezed her eyes shut for a beat, wincing at the thought of someone beating Marcel—because that was obviously who they were talking about. Whose concert they were even now going toward.
The music was coming from below. Though ready to dart up more steps if she heard them turn her way, they must be heading down to wherever Marcel was playing.
They did, their footfalls soon fading as they turned past another landing. Softly, slowly, Zelie followed on her bare feet, careful to keep a flight between them. Pausing at each door, listening, waiting for more men to come out.
The trio must have been the stragglers. She encountered no one else in the stairwell.
When she reached the ground floor, she paused for a long moment at the door. She could hear music through it, but now that she was here, fear half choked her. Did she dare to slip through this door? Would they see her the moment she did?
A breath. A prayer. A tightness in her chest that didn’t say run but rather said go. She reached for the latch, pressing it slowly, easing the door open a centimeter at a time.
The hall beyond was dim, and the music was still a fair distance away. Good. She made space enough to glance through, but she saw no figures in the corridor beyond. Only the dull glint of far-off light on metal bars.
Cells. They lined both sides of the hallway—and she spotted knuckles gripping them on several.
They could be anyone, those prisoners. Or they could be her friends. Regardless, they were allies. She slipped through the space she’d made, eased the door closed again behind her, and then pressed her back against the wall for another long moment as she got a better gauge.
The light and music both were coming from the far end of the corridor, where a set of doors loomed beyond what looked like an intersecting hallway.
These were newer than the ancient bars she’d just slipped through, fitted with windows in the metal that let the light spill through.
Though she spotted several fixtures along the ceiling here, none of them were on, leaving the cells in gloom.
Gloom that couldn’t be dismal, not with that music coming through those doors.
She took a few steps, and the low light caught on the figures in the cells, bringing a surge of relief to her heart. Henri, Daviau, the two other policemen. They were all leaning into the bars, faces turned toward the music. Thank you, Lord.
Henri spotted her first, but she pressed a finger to her lips. Then pointed toward the doors. “Is that where all the guards are?” she asked in the quietest whisper.
Henri nodded. “Cafeteria. They all filed through here, laughing in German about the concert they were about to get from a top-notch pianist who’d be dead tomorrow. Spitting at us as they went. Zelie—their commandant. It’s that fellow Marcel knows. Von Eberstein.”
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe through the throat that clamped shut. For a moment, her vision blurred, spun, the world threatened to tilt.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t known he was potentially dangerous, this overseer who had a disconcerting tendency to show up without notice. That man Marcel had described as good-natured and smiling, but who wore a skull and crossbones on his uniform.
It was just . . . it was just that she’d thought—hoped, prayed, assumed—that he’d genuinely liked Marcel.
Her heart thudded, so forcefully she splayed a hand over her chest, wondering if they could hear it in there, over the music. And realized that was likely the problem.
Von Eberstein had liked Marcel. Had likely considered him a friend. Which meant, when her selfless beloved claimed to be the head of Alliance, that he would view it not just as an unfortunate truth but as a betrayal.
A very personal, very pointed betrayal. In his eyes, it would have gone beyond a Frenchman working against Germany—which was never a surprise to them, however much they tried to eliminate it. It would have been a friend betraying him.
She forced a swallow past her still-tight throat. That would explain the execution order. Especially if he wanted to keep Marcel from telling anyone else about the warnings he’d issued him, the warnings Marcel had murmured to her after his final trip to Paris.
They had to move—now, quickly. While he was distracted by that concert he’d always wanted. If he was the commandant, that meant he’d have keys. Likely on his person, but . . . surely there’d be a set in his office too.
She patted Henri’s fingers where they gripped the old, rough metal. “I’ll be back.”
Henri frowned and reached through the bars to snag her hand before she could stride away. “What happened to your neck? It’s bleeding. Ciel, Zelie, your skirt is soaked through too! What did they do to you?”
She tossed him a grin and pulled her hand free. “They made the mistake of putting a small woman in a cell meant to hold in a full-grown man.”
Her friend examined her face for a moment, clearly looking for the lie. But he’d see none, because there was none. So he grinned back. “They always do underestimate you.”
“And praise God for it.” With a nod to the gendarmes, she hurried down the hallway, pausing at the end, where the perpendicular corridor intersected it.
From far enough away that she was confident no one would see her in the darkness, she peered through the windows in the cafeteria doors. The room beyond was brightly lit, about two dozen chairs set up and filled with men in Nazi uniforms.
Two dozen men for six prisoners? She hadn’t seen any others—but then, the Nazis had only just rolled into town. No doubt they were simply the first six.
There, in the first row, she saw the officer’s uniform. The back of a head she’d seen only twice before. Von Eberstein. Even from here, she could see by his posture that he was entranced, focused fully upon something in front of him.
She had to shift a bit, come up on her toes.
Then she saw him. Marcel, at the piano in front of the chairs. Not an old, worn-out upright like she’d expected, but a baby grand, glossy and black. Where had that come from? He wore only an undershirt, stained red, and his black trousers. Even from here, she could see the bruising on his jaw.
Bruised, battered, quite possibly broken, yet still he played like an angel. Played for her, not them.
Giving her the perfect opportunity to try to save them all.