Page 126 of Hell to Pay
“It isn’t such a big secret,” I said. “Nothing so terrible. I’m a princess, that’s all, although the monarchy has of course been abolished, so what does it matter? But yes, I’m the Princess of Saxony. My parents were the King and Queen, and my mother was a princess in her own right. The Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, which is now partially in Denmark, as it, too, no longer exists as it was. My real name is, as you see on myKennkarte, very long.”
“Marguerite Anastasia Alexandrina von Sachsen,” Joe read aloud.
“Yes,” I said. “And the friends I spoke of who died with my parents were our servants. And you see—” I was shaking again, but this time, Joe didn’t hold me. “That’s why I can’t return to Saxony, to the Russian Zone. Before they died, my parents gave me two urgent instructions. One, to save the Beckers, and two, to leave Saxony and not to return. So—” I raised both hands in a shrug. “I must make my own way now. And before you say anything, there are two things more. Ihave over seven hundred American dollars in a tin under my floorboard, and I must get it back today and hide it again. I trust Frau Adelberg, but Herr Adelberg … who knows?”
“You may hide it here, of course,” Dr. Muller said. “We’ll find a place. Alas, I have many loose floorboards.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“But—” Joe didn’t seem to know how to go on.
“But if I have money,” I said, “why have I taken your gifts? Why have I not replaced my clothing? I tried to pay you for the gifts, remember? And there’s almost nothing to buy in the shops, that’s why. I’ve purchased the fuel oil and wheat flour and other things we’ve needed on the black market, and your Military Intelligence won’t like hearing about that, either. We’ve been warmer than most, and we’ve eaten, but there’s no housing to be had, is there? No warm coats, no boots, and no dresses. There’s not even much food available, especially now, in winter. I can hardly ride out to the farms and buy vegetables under the table in December. Meat and cheese and eggs, yes, I can still find a bit of, if I can get there. In that way, I’m much luckier than most. But when it snows …” I shrugged. “I can’t push a wheelbarrow five miles in the snow. Not with my condition.”
“Your condition?” Dr. Müller asked.
“I’m a carrier of hemophilia,” I said. “From my mother’s side.” Another breath. “From Queen Victoria. Of England.”
“Wait,” Joe said. “Wait.”
“My grandmother,” I said, “was cousin to the Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, who was also a carrier. You may have heard about that.”
“You can’t be,” Joe said.
“Yes,” I said. “I can. My home was theResidenzschlossin Dresden, which burned in the bombing together with my family’s church, theHofkirche.My father refused to fly the swastika at the Palace, that was true, but he escaped imprisonmentfor years because hewasthe King of Saxony. The title has been abolished, but the people don’t forget, and apparently Hitler judged it politically inadvisable to move against him. He was also a war hero terribly disfigured by his service, as you know, but he was eventually summoned by the Gestapo all the same. The night of the bombing was to have been his last night with us before being taken for questioning. He would otherwise almost certainly have been executed, and my mother and I sent to a concentration camp.”
Joe didn’t ask any of the things I expected. He asked, “What was he accused of?”
“Of being part of the plot against Hitler, for one thing. Operation Valkyrie.”
“The assassination attempt,” Joe said. “Von Stauffenberg.”
“Yes. Another aristocrat. Another Catholic. My father also hid Jews, as you know, and I suspect he did more as well. So to the Nazis, you see, I was very unreliable indeed. To the Russians, I would also be a prize—a prize to say they’d sent to Siberia, since I’m sure they’ve already confiscated all our precious objects and artworks. They aren’t very fond of royalty, and I’m too well known in Dresden. The Americans, the rumor says, may try to repatriate Germans back to their native states. I’m not the only one to have fled the Russians, and everyone knows the Americans have the most food. I can’t afford to go back, and if I tell them who I am, they may try to make me. And there’s something else, too.”
“Somethingelse,”Joe said. “Besides your name and your parentage and your age. Sixteen. My God. What have I done?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, losing patience. “You’ve kissed me a few times, and you’re only twenty. My mother was married at eighteen to a man of thirty, and she’d barely met him before the ceremony. I told you, royalty is different.”
“Ah,” Dr. Müller said again. “One understands your strength of character a bit better now, perhaps.”
“Or my arrogance.” I meant it as a joke. It fell a bit flat. “I was raised to be a princess, yes, and that doesn’t … it doesn’t seem to leave, even when the palace and all that goes with it are gone. And those dollars I have? I sold an heirloom.” I took two photos out of my pocket and set them on the table. The one I’d already showed him and his captain, of my parents’ wedding day, and the one of my grandparents. “My grandmother, wearing the emerald parure that Napoleon gave Josephine at their wedding. And my mother wearing the same thing. The brooch you see here—” I put my finger on it—“is what I sold.”
“Wait,” Joe said.
I didn’t. I felt in the coat lining again and pulled out two more items. A small purple velvet pouch, which I opened into my hand before setting the contents on the table. “The earrings.” Then I spread out the second thing. “The necklace. The tiara, I couldn’t take, as I couldn’t hide it well enough, and its discovery would have endangered me. The brooch was worth thousands—how many, I don’t know—but I sold it to an Army officer in Munich for nine hundred dollars. Before I did, I tried to sell it on the black market, and cut an American soldier across the face with my knife when he tried to steal it from me. Something else that I imagine will come up. I’m afraid I’m a poor liar. Your captain, I’m sure, suspects much of this.”
“He told me,” Joe said slowly, “that I didn’t have the whole story.” He was still staring at the necklace. Even in the dim light of December, the rich gold glowed against the battered wood of the table, and the jewels were as out of place as a cow in church.
“The gold is twenty-two carats,” I said. “The emeralds are nearly priceless, especially the center one.” Nearly an inch long and almost as wide at the bottom, but even the emeralds that formed the centers of the daisy-chain necklace were thesize of my thumbnail, and the diamonds were extraordinary. “I have this, but I can’t sell it. Who could I find who could afford to give me even a tenth of its worth? I have enough money anyway, as I said, just nothing to spend it on. I can’t even buy a ticket on a ship with it, for who wants a German émigré now? As for marrying me, even before you knew of my age and parentage, how could you suggest such a thing? If my parents would have balked at my marrying you—a non-Catholic, a commoner, and an American, none of which matters to me, but would surely have mattered to them—what would your parents think about you marryingme?A Gentile, and a German? Maybe even worse, one who probably wouldn’t even be able to give you a child, for fear of losing it? I could never have said yes to that. It feels too bad to lose one’s family. How could I have hurt you like that?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to have a clue what there wastosay, so I went on. “I had a silly idea, at the beginning, of appealing to the King and Queen in England and seeking their help to emigrate, but if the Royal Family didn’t help the Tsar and Tsarina and their children, why would they help me, when our family connection is less close and my need less dire?”
“Wait, what?” Joe asked. “What do the Romanovs have to do with it?”
“Do you really want to know?” I asked. “Is that the most important question right now?”
“Well, yes,” he said, “I really want to know. I’m trying to figure out what to think here.”
I sighed. “Here’s the story, then. My mother told me, for she remembered it. When the Romanov family were being held in that cellar in Siberia and things had begun to look very black, the Tsarina wrote in desperation to her cousin the King, begging for asylum. The King and Queen refused, although they must have known what it would mean; theRussian aristocracy was being slaughtered wholesale by then, at least those who hadn’t managed to flee the country. But the Tsarina was German by birth, like me, and the Great War was still being fought. How could the King remind the English people of his German connections at such a delicate moment? He also feared that the presence of the Romanovs would ignite anti-monarchist feeling in England—the Russian royals were, after all, tyrants.” I shrugged. “You can see how it was. Royals must be practical, for ruling is political always. So the King refused asylum, and the family were shot. As for a yet more distant relation, after a war in which the Germans inflicted so much harm on the English? No, that’s clearly not an option. I could go to my cousins here in Bavaria, but …” I spread my hands. “What I told your captain was true. They didn’t serve in theWehrmacht,because Hitler didn’t trust them enough for that. Many did serve, however, in the SS, which, oddly, was allowed to accept them. There’s an heir to the Wittelsbach dynasty who was mentioned in connection with me now and again before the war, but he’s not going to want me now, not with my father’s unreliability and my medical condition. I have no desire to marry or even be housed by any SS or Nazi, no matter what they say now about their participation. In any case, I’m not interested in living on anyone’s charity. So here we are again, at the question of working for the Americans with such a background. If you think I can tell your captain all this and have it work out, though … perhaps?”
