Page 27 of Hell to Pay
“Wait, what?” Ashleigh asked. “Refugees? Why were they there? I thought Dresden was, like, at the edge. I mean, Czechoslovakia’s right next door, isn’t it?”
“Ethnic Germans,” I said, “fleeing Czechoslovakia, Poland,Ukraine … many countries. In some cases, Hitler had first depopulated those areas, sending their inhabitants to concentration camps.”
“Karma bites,” Ashleigh said.
“Indeed it does,” I said. “So, yes, there were hundreds of thousands of refugees, all of them cold, hungry, and thirsty. I can’t emphasize enough how badly the conditions of daily life were deteriorating by that point. There wasn’t enough food in the city for those already there, and no possible facilities to house that many people. Most of them were sheltered in and under the railway station without even adequate toilet facilities—the shock it was to see an old man dropping his trousers right there on the tracks and squatting to do his business! What else could they do, though? So there they were, inadequately protected, and the railway station was one of the sites hardest hit. After the bombing, when my father and I went outside to check …” I had to stop. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen, and the people were running. Rushing to the river, trying to find safety. The stones were hot underfoot, and the sandstone walls as well. The palace was burning. Everything was burning. There was a tower of fire that— And there were bodies. We’d been sheltered from the war, despite feeling like we were in the midst of it. We’d heard about the devastating bombings of Hamburg, Lübeck, Berlin … so many cities, but we hadn’tknown.Now, the war had come to us.”
“What did you do?” Alix asked.
“We tried to save what we could in the palace, for there was no telling how much would burn before the fire stopped, with nobody to put it out. We took practical things, and some sentimental things, too. Clothes, food, photos, things like that. My parents and I, and the servants, too, all grabbing everything we could as fast as we could do it. The servants’ rooms burned first, I’m afraid, as they were at the top of the house, and it distressed them greatly that they could save nothing butwhat they’d brought down to the cellar with them. After that—well, what could we do? The roof was breached, and there was no safety outside. The heat, the smoke, the ash … terrible. We had a large, well-built cellar, though, and we had food and drink—we even had the beer barrel, as that was kept in the cellar—so my father decided we would sit out the night there, and perhaps by morning, the fires would have burned themselves out. So we went back down, but first …” I paused. This was the hardest part to say.
“First,” I managed to continue, “my father gave me an assignment. It saved my life, but it cost him his.”
13
HIDING PLACES
The others had all gone downstairs, and I was about to follow them from the kitchens with my bulging rucksack and the bag of precious flour when Father said, “Marguerite.”
One word, but with a tone so full of meaning, I trembled. He was going to tell me the truth. I could feel it, and part of me—most of me—didn’t want to hear it.
“Yes, Father?”
“I have something I need you to do for me.” His eye so intent on me.
“I’ll do anything,” I said. “At least I’ll do my best to.”
His face softened. “I know you will. You’re young and small, but you’re strong and intelligent, too. Remember that. You’re afraid right now, I know. I’m afraid, too. That’s where the courage and the strength lie—in pushing past the fear. Listen, then. There’s another way down to the old cellar, the deep cellar.”
“I thought that was closed off years ago,” I said. “Because it was dangerous.”
“No,” he said. “Come with me.”
I followed him through the kitchens, then along passagesfilling with smoke and choking ash that burned my eyes, to the hundred-meter length of the Long Corridor. The cases to either side of us held the palace’s armaments collection, and I hurried past hundreds of rifles and pistols, swords and shields, and thought,And yet nobody has taken these away from Father. They probably don’t even know they’re here.
Father’s stride was long, and I nearly had to run to keep up with him. At last, he turned into an unprepossessing room near the end of the corridor, an office of sorts for the cataloging of the collection. He aimed his flashlight at a bookcase, then crouched and reached along the lowest shelf. “People look for things at eye level,” he told me. “They may look up, but they almost never think of checking lower down.” Aclick,and the bookcase opened an inch. He pushed it open, and we were met by a rush of cool air. I hadn’t realized how hot and smoky it was until I felt that fresh air on my face.
“The stairs spiral,” Father said. “I’ll go first, but you need your own flashlight. Leave the flour here.”
He waited for me to take off the rucksack and fumble around in it. It seemed to take forever to find the flashlight, and he said, “When you feel yourself panicking and hurrying, stop and take a breath, then proceed with deliberation. Haste kills.”
It worked, or I finally looked in the right place for the flashlight, for I pulled it out and switched it on, then stepped through the door behind Father. He said, “The latch on the other side is normal, you see, and easy to find even without a light. Up the stairs, one hand on the wall, and when the stairs end, you feel for the latch, which will be exactly where you expect it, and no need for panic.”
“Yes,” I said. “But what?—”
“Not now,” he said. “Follow me.”
Down we went. Down, and down, and down the steep, narrow, endlessly winding steps into what felt like the bowelsof the earth. There had been prison cells down here in the past, I vaguely knew, though no true dungeon. I’d been told it was unsafe, that the tunnels had caved in, but I saw no indication of that.
We came to the bottom at last, nothing more than a landing with a door at the end. Father said, “Locked,” and pulled out a key. It was a huge old thing, and the locking mechanism was equally large, requiring some strength to release the bolt that extended deep into the door frame. The door itself must have been five inches thick and who knows how heavy, probably made of oak and hardened with age. We pushed it open together, and Father stepped through behind me, said, “It bolts from the inside without the key,” and shoved the huge bolt home.
I said again, “What—” Which was when I heard the vibration. “What is it?” I asked. It wasn’t a noise, or not exactly. It was a feeling. “Is it the fire? The others?—”
“Your mother knows where we are,” Father said. “And that’s another bombing raid. We’re being attacked again, it seems.” Still sounding so dreadfully calm.
“What?” I asked. “Why? It’s ruined already! It’s all?—”
“There’s no point in asking why,” Father said, “not in the moment. In the moment, we act.”
