Chapter 13
The wind died sometime after midnight. Rachel woke, because of the sudden silence, she thought.
For a moment she lay still, frowning, unsure of what had disturbed her.
Her bedroom door left wide for the heat to penetrate, the embers in the hearth cast the living room in a dull red.
The rafters gave a soft settling creak, and then, she heard them - male voices, low, unfamiliar, and frighteningly close.
Her heart seemed to stop, then resumed, striking hard against her ribs.
She pushed herself upright in bed, straining to separate imagination from sound. She looked towards the window, seeing a sliver of moonlight silvering the edge of the sill, below the hem of the curtain. She held her breath, listening.
The voices came again. At first, she thought it was village men, come once again to lob stones at the walls of the cottage, the house of ‘that German’s fancy woman.
’ She heard the crunch of shingle under weighted boots, then the deliberate scrape of wood against wood – oars.
These were not locals. They were on the beach, and, for one wild second, hope soared in her chest. Oskar had come back, despite the distance, despite the patrols.
But then, her hope died as quickly as it had arisen; there were too many voices.
Then she caught a word embedded in a short, clipped command, unmistakeably German.
Her blood ran cold. What had once been a language that had thrilled and delighted her as Oskar read to her the love poetry of Goethe, now froze her in fear.
She slipped from the bed and crossed to the window.
Carefully, slowly, she lifted the edge of the curtain, just enough to see.
Lantern light moved along the curve of the shore below the cottage.
She counted four figures, two carrying hooded lamps, their glow swinging low and deliberately, cutting arcs across the rocks.
Another voice said something sharper; boots shifted and metal clinked faintly.
Her stomach turned to ice. Oskar - he had told them.
The thought slammed into her head with a force that shocked her. He had been suspected, questioned, and pressed. And to save himself, to save his standing, he had spoken, betrayed her; the evidence of it had just landed on her beach. Bile rose to the back of her throat.
The men began to move slowly up off the sand, towards the cottage.
She had seconds. Were they looking for her?
If they found her in the cottage, alone, they would question her.
What else would they do, these German military?
Search her? Torture her? Or worse? Or were they searching for a note?
She pulled a dark dress over her white cotton nightgown and snatched her coat and shawl from their pegs.
There was no time for shoes. She lifted the latch as silently as she could and slipped out into the cold, the air striking her like freezing water.
Instinctively, she made for the peat shed and dashed inside, her fingers scrabbling frantically below the back corner turve. But there was no note, and she flew back out.
The front of the peat shed opened towards the garden and vegetable plot, and beyond it, the low scrub that climbed the rise to the hills.
She sprinted across the garden, then began to climb, without looking back.
The ground bit into her bare feet; the frozen stones cut into her skin.
She scrambled upwards through the heather, her breath shallow, until she reached the darker fold of land above the cottage where enormous boulders lay scattered like sleeping beasts.
She crouched behind one and turned, pulling her loose, dark hair over her face and peeping through its tresses.
She saw one of the men gesturing towards the cottage, and she stopped breathing.
The group crossed the small stretch of ground quickly, their boots grinding on gravel.
The lantern beams lifted, striking the whitewashed walls and the darkened windows.
She heard a brief exchange, then the door swung inwards, and Rachel flinched as she watched them enter.
For several long, interminable seconds, there was nothing.
Then, movement inside - shadows against the thin curtains as the lantern’s glow strobed across the interior walls.
She heard what she thought was a chair overturn, and the scrape of the hearth poker being lifted, then set down.
A cupboard door opened and slammed. Drawers were pulled; the bed frame shifted.
And always, shouting, sounding angry and frustrated.
She pressed her forehead against the stone of the boulder and closed her eyes. This was what betrayal felt like - not shouting, nor accusation, but boots in her home in the middle of the night, and a terrifying, incomprehensible language.
The vision of Oskar’s face bent towards her the night he had visited flashed across her mind then, the quiet intensity in his voice coming back to her. “Listen to me. If anyone asks, if anyone ever asks, you have not seen me. You’ve heard nothing!”
Had all of it been calculation? Was this his plan all along? The thoughts hollowed her.
Below, a frustrated voice rose sharper, questioning. A cupboard door banged again, the sound carrying on the now-still night. One man stepped out and moved around the side of the house, testing the small window latch at the back.
They were not finding what they had expected, it seemed. Minutes stretched, and the lantern light moved more slowly, as if it were less certain. The man outside called towards the shore, and a reply came faintly from below.
Rachel swallowed hard, trying to think rationally.
If Oskar had betrayed her, surely he would have led them there, unless he could not bear it.
Unless he had already been removed, unless he had told them enough to send them and been kept aboard under guard.
The possibilities tangled, each worse than the last. His voice was not one she heard.
At length, the men regrouped in front of the cottage, talking.
One gestured to the peat shed, and they moved off towards it.
If they entered, they would see the stack, and the faint disturbances under the turve in the back corner where notes had once been hidden.
When the lantern light reached it, one of the men tried the door, which yielded.
Her heart thudding, Rachel pressed her hand against her mouth, watching two of the men enter the peat shed.
The lantern glow flared briefly inside, lighting the small square windows in a yellow wash.
A voice barked in German, sounding annoyed.
There was a pause, then she heard the sound of peat turves shifting. They were pulling the shed apart.
Terror surged through her, so sharp she thought she might cry out. Had she missed one of Oskar’s notes? Would they find it? Logic told her that there was nothing there, nothing now.
But would they know that? One man stepped back outside and called towards the shore.
Another figure emerged from the darkness below, a taller, broader shape.
For a split second, she thought it was Oskar, but this man moved differently.
They spoke in low tones, words that she could not fully hear.
The lantern shifted again, as they continued to search the shed.
Two of them came out, carrying armfuls of peat bricks which they dropped carelessly onto the ground.
Her mind raced. If Oskar had double-crossed her, he would have known where to tell them to look, the precise place, and they were rummaging blindly. But the thought brought no comfort, only deepening her confusion.
The men regrouped outside again. One gestured sharply towards the headland, another towards the far end of the beach.
They split into pairs and one moved outward, their lanterns swinging.
Rachel shrank lower against the rock as another pair climbed her slope, close enough that she could hear their breath, the muttered German words she could not fully decipher.
The lantern beam cut across the heather not twenty yards away.
She crouched, her head bent, her hair over her face, her dark skirts concealing the white cotton below.
She held herself completely still, and the light passed on.
Then they descended and searched the ground around the shed, but found nothing.
At last, after what felt like an eternity, the men reassembled, preparing to leave.
One disappeared back into the cottage, as if to take a final look around.
Another returned to the shed and kicked through the scattered peat with deliberate force.
Then they descended the short slope to the beach and disappeared from her sight.
Immobile, Rachel listened to the renewed scrape of the boat’s hull against the shingle, the low splash as it pushed off, and the diminishing rhythm of rowing.
Only when the sound had fully faded into the open water did she allow herself to breathe properly.
She remained where she was long after the night reclaimed its silence, shocked and stunned by what she believed Oskar had undoubtedly sent the men to do.
As first light cast its net across the land, at last, she forced herself to stand.
Her feet were numb, and she brushed off the frozen pebbles stuck to her soles as she slowly descended.
The wooden front door hung open before her, a black wound in the white wall, and she stepped across the threshold.
Inside the cottage, chaos reigned. Drawers lay open, her bedding was scattered, the table knocked askew, the cupboards emptied of their few possessions which now lay strewn on the floor.
The grate had been stirred, as if they expected hidden papers among the ash.
The pantry was ransacked, most of her food supply either gone, or dumped on the floor.
A wave of grief washed over her then; this had been her refuge. Now, it was marked, and contaminated by the enemy’s presence. She inhaled sharply at that thought then, her emotions whirling. This enemy shared the nationality and the language of her love.
They had found nothing - neither herself, nor anything of his, because there had been nothing to find.
Now, she wondered if he had always planned to protect himself by shipping his trunk ahead.
It’s safer for you this way, he had told her.
Now, she doubted his words. Safer for who, exactly? she thought.
The peat shed was worse. The moonlight through the tiny windows showed the stack half-toppled, the turves scattered into fragments.
Her thoughts whirled, returning to questions that had no answers.
Had he told them about his notes? Or had they somehow found out?
If he had sold her out, why had he not described the exact place? Why send them to search blindly?
Unless…unless he had refused to tell them more.
Perhaps the search party had been sent without his cooperation.
Perhaps this was a test. The thoughts flickered, fragile and still unbelievable.
Perhaps Oskar was now under suspicion because of her.
The idea struck her like a blow. If that were true, then the men had come not because he had betrayed her, but because he had not.
Had they found out about her, somehow? And what had they been looking for, if not her? Evidence that he had lived there?
She stood and went out, picking her way through the smashed peat turves, her eyes drifting out beyond the dark sweep of the loch, where she thought she could make out the faint shape of a vessel against the horizon.
A warship? His boat? Far too far now for him to row ashore, far too far for notes in peat stacks.
If he had not betrayed her, she wondered if he knew about the search party, if he knew that she had heard the boots, seen the lanterns, and heard his terrible, terrifying language.
And he would know what she must think. Her chest tensed, painfully.
If he had protected her by silence, she had repaid him by inviting the enemy. If he had betrayed her, she had loved a man who had used her. The two possibilities lay side by side in the darkness, indistinguishable.
Rachel returned to the cottage and stood amid the wreckage of her small home. And in a northern inlet, on a ship watched by his own empire, Oskar stood alone beneath suspicion - by his captain, and now, perhaps, by the only woman he had risked everything to protect.