Page 41 of Hell to Pay
When my hand left stone and reached metal, I nearly cried with relief. I felt along the piece of iron fastening the door to the wall, and finally found the handle.
Bolted.I let go of the blanket, switched the flashlight to my left hand, shoved the heavy bolt back, and turned the handle.
It was smokier here, but it would be smoky everywhere, right? Everything was burning. I shut the door behind me but didn’t lock it. Locking it seemed dangerous, somehow. Instead, I put the key back into my pocket and started up the winding stone stair.
With every step, the smoke and heat increased. By the time I reached the top, I’d long since pulled the blanket over my nose and mouth and was coughing hard. I could still hear Father’s voice, though, in my head. “The latch on the other side isnormal, and easy to find even without a torch. 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.”I found it, hesitated, and cracked open the door.
The far side of the room was burning. The moment I opened the door, the flames roared toward me like a dragon, monstrous in their hunger for oxygen. I slammed the door shut again, but I could swear I felt the flames licking at it. It was like a nightmare in which the wolf is just outside and you can feel it scratching, scratching, and know it’s coming in. Except that this was no nightmare.
I had to force myself not to rush headlong down the stairs. I found myself repeating the incessant warning of Nanny, when I’d been small.Slow down. Do you want to fall? You know how much it’ll hurt. Slow down and have a care.
Down, and down, and down. The heat and smoke lessening, but still so heavy on my chest. Why had I opened the door? How could I have been so foolish?
At the bottom again, immeasurably grateful that I hadn’t locked the door. Slamming it shut behind me and leaning against it, breathing hard, coughing, shaking.
Dr. Becker’s voice. “Princess Marguerite?”
I tried to answer but merely coughed harder. I put my right hand on the wall and went around the long way to him, because I wanted to walk where my father had walked, to touch the wall where he had touched it. My entire body was shaking under the wet blanket, like the time I’d had the grippe so badly, I’d felt the pain in my bones. Dr. Becker had come then. He’d come, and he’d made me feel better.
I nearly stumbled over the children. I’d forgotten they were there. By the time I got to Dr. Becker again, all I could do was sink to the floor, the flashlight still gripped tightly in my right hand. He pulled the blanket off me, and I pulled up my knees, bowed my head, and coughed for minutes.
When I raised my head again, he handed me something in the dark. A cup. I drank from it. Water. It tasted as good as any water has ever tasted to anyone. He used a wet cloth to wipe my streaming eyes, my face, and when my breathing had quieted, asked, “What happened?” His tone was calm, like my father’s always was. How much would one need to have seen to respond to disaster so calmly?
“It was on fire,” I said. “The room up there. It was all on fire.” My voice shook, and my body did, too.
“We’ll have to try the other way out, then,” he said, still with that preternatural calm.
“Yes,” I said, and struggled to my feet. “Yes.”
He stood, too, and this time, I didn’t object. Around the wall again, to be met only by blocks of stone. Which one was the opening? I couldn’t remember, and the panic rose in me again. I had to clamp my mouth shut to keep from letting it out.
Focus,I told myself.One stone up from the bottom. It’s somewhere along here. Feel for the latch.“If you stay where you are,” I told Dr. Becker, “I can come back to you as a reference point, in case it’s back the other way.”
“We should have left something to mark the spot,” he said. “A bucket. Next time.”
It felt like ten minutes and was probably three, but I finally felt the indentation, pressed the latch, and felt theclick.
Press on those two stones now,I heard my father say.Put your back into it.
Nothing was on fire out here. I felt the relief of that for a split second, and then the smoke hit me.
“Quick,” I gasped. “Help me pull it shut.” Dr. Becker and I were both coughing by the time we managed it, and we looked at each other in the torchlight, dismayed.
“We’ll have to wait,” he said. “Until the smoke lessens.”
“Yes,” I said with relief. “We’ll wait.” Of course that waswhy Father hadn’t come! He couldn’t get through the fire and smoke either. He and Mother and the rest of them would be waiting too, eating the Wurst and cheese and bread, maybe drinking the beer. Frau Heffinger, I was sure, would be making a regularAbendessenof it, arranging slices on a tray just so, adding the mustard and pickle, and Frau Schultz, the housekeeper, would be pouring the beer into glasses, serving my parents first. I could see them now, sitting around the table, nobody talking much, because what was there to say? The others would have wondered mightily why I wasn’t with them. Whatever had Father told them? That he’d found someplace safer for me? That I’d run out into the night and perished? I wanted to laugh at the thought.
Here in our cellar, we had no beer, but I wasn’t hungry. It must be—what? Three o’clock in the morning? I couldn’t see my watch without the flashlight, and I didn’t want to know anyway. I’d wait, that was all. I’d wait, and in a few hours, when the fire had burned itself out, I’d find them, or Father would find me. And when Dr. Becker said, “Here, lie down and sleep. You’re exhausted,” I didn’t argue, even though I knew that he was giving me his pallet and would be sleeping on the stone floor with only a blanket for padding. I was too tired to object. Too tired to think. Too tired even to be afraid. I lay down on the pallet and fell instantly asleep.
20
THE WINDING STAIR
“Oma,” Alix said. “That’s awful.”
I relaxed my fingers on the handle of the teacup. I’d long since finished my tea, and had been unaware I was still holding it. “Yes,” I said. “It was indeed frightening. I wasn’t the most frightened person in Dresden that night, though. I was sheltered, and I believed my family was, too.”
“What happened next?” That wasn’t Ashleigh, or Ben, or anybody you’d expect. It was Dr. Bauer, the curator, who’d surely forgotten herself with that outburst.
