May 1942
It began as a glow in the night sky, a faint flicker barely visible in the swirling, low clouds and pelting rain. Stephen Elliot saw it as he shut the door behind him and made for his automobile. Marston Hall sat on a hill, with a commanding view of the valley and the flight path of the aircraft. Elliot shielded his eyes from the spitting rain and watched the flames on their descent, calculating exactly where metal would meet ground.
In his surgery, John Bodkin heard the growl of the engine. Instinctively, he looked up, as if to gauge the distance, but quickly returned to finish stitching a farmer’s arm. A nasty cut, but clean enough.
Agnes Day, who had received the message that her assistance was needed, risked a look skyward as she pedaled toward the doctor’s surgery. The aircraft was close enough to make out the burning portside engine. German, probably. She shuddered, fearful of a sudden crash, of bombs and death, of Germans in their midst, of torn bodies and shrieking men demanding care.
She’d had enough of that in London.
Sir Richard Seaton had been checking on the horses. As he shut the barn door, he followed the arc of light, little more than an indistinct glimmer from where he stood. Still, he knew it was dangerous. His eyes flitted across Seaton Manor, looking for telltale lines of illumination at the edges of blackout curtains. Nothing. Though the building was as dark and quiet as the Norfolk countryside, worry gnawed at him.
Inside the aircraft—a Heinkel He 111 bomber—flames shot sporadically into the cockpit as the pilot struggled with the controls. Screams pierced the air, louder even than the roar of the engines. The dorsal gunner was badly wounded. The two other gunners had patched him up as best they could before the pilot ordered them to bail out. The navigator was moaning, his head lolling as he held his belly. Wind whistled through the shattered canopy as the pilot tried to ignore the blood pooling in his boot. All he wanted was to find a patch of ground before it found him. They’d never make it back across the North Sea. A night landing in a storm was their only hope.
On the ground below, there was no hint of the agonies they suffered.
Alfred Bunch held the blackout curtain open for his wife, Mildred, as they left the pub. The wind nearly took his cap, and he pulled it on tight as he cocked his head to find the source of the droning sound growing ever closer. Mildred pointed and asked if the light was a shooting star, but Alfred gauged it as something more sinister. They hurried, watching over their shoulders as the glow dropped lower and seemed to follow them.
Father Noel Tanner, at his evening prayers, heard the crippled aircraft overhead. He sighed, said
amen, rose, and reached for his boots. The living and the dead might be in need of what comfort he could give.
David Archer huddled at the foot of an oak, his hands pressed over his ears to shut out the blaring noise of death. It haunted him, even in the grove of trees perched on a hilltop overlooking the chalk cliffs and the sea. He came here at night for the quiet, the quiet that had never settled over the blasted ground of no-man’s-land in the last war. Now, his silent refuge was shattered; the burning aircraft dropped from the sky and drew his gaze as the space between hurtling metal and hard ground narrowed into nothingness.
Archer pressed his face against the oak, and rubbed his cheek on the rough bark, the warm blood soothing in the darkness.
Throughout the village, eyes turned skyward at the sound. A child asked if she should make a wish, but was shushed and told to get back in bed. The war had come to Slewford, and everyone who eyed the crippled bomber hoped it would keep on going. Out to sea or back to Germany, if need be, but away from here.
Graham Cheatwood stood at his third-floor bedroom window. He watched Stephen Elliot stop and gaze at the sky, then drive away. He searched for what the man had been looking at and spotted it. A voice beckoned him to come back to bed, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
He picked up the telephone and barked out an order. Then he threw on his uniform and watched the slow descent of the aircraft as it vanished behind a hilltop close to the cliffs above the sea. Then, there was nothing but the motionless reflection of flames in the fog.
Chapter One November 1944 Angelika stood at the top of the stairs, her mouth set in a tight-lipped grimace. Dull, gray light filtered in from a large window behind her as slivers of rain beat against the glass. Next to her, Agnes Day placed her hand on Angelika’s elbow.
“No,” Angelika said in little more than a whisper. “I must do this.”
Agnes nodded, took a half step back, and clasped her hands in front of her pale-blue nurse’s uniform. She gave Angelika the briefest smile of encouragement.
“This is too soon,” Kaz muttered, staring up at his sister. “And there are too many of us. It is bound to make her nervous. Step back, Billy.”
“Stop worrying, Piotr,” Angelika said. “I like the audience. If I fall, you will all cushion my landing.”
“Don’t you dare talk of falling, deary,” Mrs. Rutledge said, shaking her finger. “Just come down so I can get myself back to work. Dinner won’t cook itself, mind you.”
Mrs. Rutledge spoke her words sharply, but I saw a quiver in her lips as she finished. She was worried. We all were.
“Very well,” Angelika said, holding on to the banister with one hand as she stepped off on her good leg, leaving all her weight on her right leg, where her calf was swathed in bandages. She wavered for a second, and Agnes reached out but caught herself, allowing Angelika to navigate the steep staircase on her own.
Which was how she wanted it.
“This is foolish, Baron,” whispered Dr. John Bodkin from behind us. “There’s no need.”
“Angelika feels she must do it,” Kaz said, not looking back at the local MD. “Which is need enough for me.”
Angelika brought her injured leg down to meet her good one. She let go of the banister and took a deep breath. One step down, twenty to go.
She put her good foot on the next step, then brought down the other, her hand trailing on the polished wooden banister. It was a slow process, and I wondered if she might give up and retreat to her bedroom, where she’d been recovering from surgeries under the watchful eye of Agnes Day.
Proper surgeries, the kind that healed wounds instead of inflicted them.
Angelika was recovering from a Nazi concentration camp and brutal medical experiments. Recovering from dangerous resistance activities with the Polish Home Army.
Recovering from the loss of her family.
Angelika had survived all that, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when she took the next two steps, one after the other, leaving the hesitancy of an invalid behind. Two more, then she rested for a moment, puffed breath from her cheeks, and let go of the banister. She descended the stairs, hands swishing at her sides, ruffling the fabric of the vibrant red dress she’d selected for her debut.
Mrs. Rutledge pressed a handkerchief to her cheeks, wiping away tears. Agnes rushed down the stairs and put her arm across Angelika’s shoulder, pulling her close. Angelika beamed and took the left hand offered by Sir Richard Seaton.
“Congratulations, Angelika,” Sir Richard said, squeezing her hand and grinning broadly. His right sleeve was pinned up; the arm was a casualty of a naval battle in the last war. He had pure white hair and a neatly trimmed beard—there was something nautical about him even on dry land. “You’ve done well.”
“I owe it to all of you,” Angelika said, scanning the assembly. “But especially Mr. Hamilton.”
“My pleasure, Miss Kazimierz,” Ian Hamilton said, taking her hand in his. His fingers were long and supple, perfect for the delicate handling of a surgeon’s blade. He had a hawklike face and graying hair slicked back from a widow’s peak. “I had no doubt you would recuperate quickly.”
“I only hope you do not move too quickly in this recovery,” Dr. Bodkin said, avoiding Hamilton’s gaze. “Rest is your friend, not exertion.”
“Come, come, Bodkin,” Sir Richard said. “You are cautious by nature, I know, but at least admit Hamilton’s surgery was the right thing to do.” There was an edge to Sir Richard’s words, a barely hidden harshness that led me to wonder what grudge there might have been between the two men. Slewford was a small village, and as the only doctor, Bodkin was sure to have crossed paths with Sir Richard and his family.
“Surgery was needed, indeed,” Bodkin said, watching as Hamilton spoke softly with Angelika and kneeled to gently check the bandages on her calf. “And I am in your debt, Sir Richard, for taking Agnes on as her nurse.”
Bodkin stood straight, arms behind his back and his chin jutting forward, as if acknowledging this debt cost him more than he wished to show.
“Not at all,” Sir Richard said, looking relieved at the chance to let the undercurrent of tension fade away. “It worked out well for all. We needed the help, Mrs. Rutledge and I, as well as Angelika.”
“It’s done wonders for Agnes,” Bodkin said as the others headed for the sitting room.
“How so?” I asked. I’d only been at Seaton Manor for two days, and although I’d heard Sir Richard had arranged nursing care for Angelika, I knew next to nothing about Agnes Day, other than that she and Angelika had grown close.
“Agnes is from Slewford,” Bodkin said, brushing back his thick gray hair. He stood tall and looked firm, probably from bicycling around Slewford to visit his patients. “She went off to London for her nurse’s training at St. Matthew’s Hospital in Shoreditch. That was in 1939. Just a child, she was. She worked during the Blitz, saw the worst of it, horrible things. Then she joined the Royal Army Nursing Corps.”
“And witnessed the horrors of war in France and Holland,” Sir Richard said. “It was time for her to come home.”
“She was shattered,” Bodkin said. “In spirit.” The two men glanced at each other, briefly nodding in agreement, and moved off to join the others. Whatever divided them, they shared similar feelings about Agnes Day.
I stood at the edge of the group, watching Kaz hover over his sister while Bodkin and Hamilton continued to spar over the benefits of rest versus physical activity. I caught Agnes rolling her eyes once, but I couldn’t tell which side of the debate she came down on. She didn’t say much but kept a careful watch over Angelika while the medical terms flew.
I couldn’t imagine what Agnes and other nurses like her had endured. The German bombs falling on London every night overloaded the hospitals, which were often struck themselves. Going from tending injured civilians to treating wounded soldiers was nothing more than trading one level of hell for another.
Copyright © 2023 by James R. Benn. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
