Dagold was waiting for us when we landed in Coventry. It was nearly dark and we had more than an hour's drive ahead of us.
"Is Barry all right?" he asked immediately I'd stepped from the aeroplane.
"Weak, but coming around," I told him. "How about you and the others at the Hall?"
"Fortunately, the kleiner Graf was visiting Easthampton-Mares when the attack came, my Lord."
"Oh?" I hadn't heard this. I'd assumed that the boy had been asleep in his bed when Max was killed.
"Yes. Lord Molloy came up the day before to tell us of the intercepted radio broadcasts from the village to Berlin. He and I decided that the child should be out of harm's way if there was a move against the Schloß Petersholme."
"If he took Willi to Easthampton-Mares, what was Molloy doing at the Hall when the attack came then?" I asked.
"He returned, Lord Petersholme—the day that he was killed. He did not want to leave Fraü Alice and myself unprotected—" He paused and I nodded. "We set up sleeping arrangements for the three of us on the first floor and divided up guarding the landing between the two of us. He chose the first watch—" He looked down at his hands. "I should have been on watch, sir. I should have known that Horst would attack early."
"If you had, my aunt might have been killed—you and Max as well. You did all that you could do, Dagold."
"There were radio transmissions from the village?" Pettigrew demanded as he hopped from the wing of our two-seater trainer and grabbed our luggage from the cabin.
Dagold looked up, recognised the naval officer from his visit the day before when he brought Elizabeth and Philippe home, and looked to me for permission to speak.
"Go ahead, Dagold," I told him. "We're all in this together, it seems."
"That is what Lord Molloy said. They were picked up by the Royal Navy."
"Were they in code?" Pettigrew asked as he joined us.
"He didn't say," Jorsten answered as he led us to the car. "He said they reported that Wilhelm and I were here—and that his Lordship was in France."
"They were onto you from the first then, Petersholme," Pettigrew observed, naval college chummy now that he'd learnt we were both pilots. He'd been good enough to give me the controls outside Portsmouth and I'd flown us to Coventry.
"Lord Petersholme?" I looked up as I was opening the car door and met Dagold's gaze. "I searched the cottage of the two dead farmhands after the police were gone. There was no radio transmitter there. Nor was there one in any of the cottages. The police didn't find one, either."
"Who'd have sent the messages then?" I asked and slid across the seat to let Pettigrew follow me into the car. Jorsten opened the boot and deposited our bags there before coming around to the driver's door.
"If whoever it was reported on you and the operations of the Hall, they had to be pretty close, you know?" Pettigrew observed as Jorsten slid into the driver's seat.
"Yet there was no transmitter on his Lordship's farm," Dagold pointed out as he turned on the ignition.
"This Crooksall chap, the Englishman in on this caper, he was an undertaker up here in Coventry," I said slowly.
The enormity of the attack on the Hall was beginning to sink in—the attack and its aftermath. I shuddered. "There's someone else then," I mumbled as waves of shock crashed over me. "Someone still out there."
"Good God!" Pettigrew yelped, staring at me. "Do you think so?"
"I think that we must remain watchful, my Lord," Dagold said as he put the car in gear.
I wished that England was not at war. No, I corrected myself, not England yet—Petersholme. I'd hoped that Gisele being dead would be the end of it, but I now doubted it would. I suspected that things would get far worst before they could get better.
My brain was still racked by dark thoughts and what I could do to defend against them when our car started down the drive to the Hall. Any defence that I envisioned, however, was so blatantly defensive and weak that I rejected it out of hand. As we stopped before the entrance doors, it seemed as if Bellingham Hall stood defenceless against all the evils of the world.
Pettigrew and Jorsten had remained mercifully quiet as we drove through the darkened English countryside. I knew they were there for me. Their presence assured me of that. Their presence and the knowledge of what that meant reassured me, even as I found no practical way to defend myself or that which I was.
"Smile, my Lord," Dagold Jorsten said, turning off the car and facing me, "and think only happy thoughts. Your son needs the reassurance they will bring him."
"Willi!" I groaned. "Is he still awake, do you think?"
"It is only nineteen hundred, Lord Petersholme. The kleiner Graf will still be awake—and excited to be with you once again."
The entrance doors flew open at that moment and Willi was running towards the car. Aunt Alice came to stand in the doorway watching him.
"That boy," I said and looked through the window at the house that had held me and nurtured me my entire life. The fears that had threatened to smother me on the drive from Coventry fled before the lights shining from the open and welcoming doors of Bellingham Hall.
I stepped from the car and knelt. A bundle of flannelled pajamas and small dressing gown flew into my arms and I was holding Wilhelm Adshead in my arms. My son. My future. Petersholme assured. I grinned happily as Willi's arm went around my neck and pulled me to him. I felt indefinably better. I was home.
"You're finally home, Uncle Robert," he said against my ear. My cheek was covered with his slobbered kisses beginning to freeze. "I was so worried about you and Uncle Barry."
"Go ahead inside, sir," Jorsten said from behind me. "I'll bring everything in."
I nodded—and carried my son back into the house that had always been the centre of my being. Willi's face was plastered to mine, his arms held my neck tight.
Aunt Alice greeted me at the entrance, pecking my free cheek and smiling up at me as she patted Willi's bottom. Elizabeth put her arm around my waist and hugged me. Philippe nodded and smiled. Once we were all inside, she led us into the sitting room and sat us down before the fire.
Sitting in my lap, Willi looked around, his face first puzzled, then growing long as he took in who was in the sitting room with him. "Where's Uncle Barry?" he asked, a quiver in his voice.
"He was hurt there in France," I told him. "He's in hospital now, getting better."
He turned to look at me. "I told you not to go there," he said.
"I had to, Willi."
"You had to?" he demanded.
I hoped that his question wasn't the prelude of some tantrum. "When your King asks you to do something for your country, you don't have a choice," I explained.
"No matter how much you might get hurt?" he asked carefully.
"It makes no difference. It's your duty to do what you're asked."
He fell silent, his eyes studying my face's every feature.
"Whisky?" Jorsten asked.
I looked up and realised he still stood at the doors. "I'll have one. How about you, Pettigrew?" He nodded. I looked to Philippe who nodded his agreement as well.
"I'll take a glass of sherry," Aunt Alice said and I started. This was the woman who kept a watchful eye on every decanter in the house. If more than a jigger was gone in a night, she started watching me even more carefully than she watched the spirits.
"Are you all right?" I asked her.
"A bit tired, Robert," she said. "I haven't slept well since—"
Elizabeth moved closer to her and took her hand. "It's been trying for her, Robbie. This whole thing—"
"I know," I mumbled.
Willi adjusted his back where it laid comfortably against my chest. He took each of my hands and placed it around his chest. "Hold me, Uncle Robert," he said softly, his small body now turned towards the fire. "And don't ever let go," he added even more softly.
Aunt Alice wanted to know about Barry then, and I told her everything I knew. When I'd finished, she excused herself and left the room. I understood then.
Poor Miss Murray knew nothing about how her nephew was faring. I should have been the one to tell her. I should have gone to her immediately upon arrival and reassured her. Now that I thought about it, it did not sit well with me that my aunt was doing what I should have thought to do.
Around me conversation flowed and ebbed. Willi relaxed in my arms, seeming to grow heavier. Jorsten chuckled and I looked over at him.
"The youngest Petersholme has fallen asleep, my Lord," he said in explanation. "Would you like me to take him to bed?"
"No, I'll do it in a minute," I told him.
He nodded. "That is what the kleiner Graf wanted—to be held in his father's arms again."
"He'll have plenty of that," Alice said as she reentered the room.
"Probably not enough," I mumbled, rubbing my chin gently across the top of his head and relishing the touch of his hair on me. I looked back to Jorsten. "We'll need to go down to the cottages tomorrow morning," I told him, my thoughts returning to the dark fears that had held me on the drive from Coventry.
* * *
Sunday morning I was in my study early. I had not slept well, and calling my condolences to Earl Molloy left me even deeper in my funk than the night had.
His son had been my dearest friend for twenty years. We had grown up together—at Rugby, on visits to each other's homes during holidays, and, later, as students at university. Now, Max was dead. Killed defending my home. Another dear friend, Janus von Kys, was also dead. Killed helping me escape the insanity that was his Germany. Both were dead at the hand of or on the order of Gisele von Kys.
Gisele, too, was dead. I tried to convince myself that her death meant that no one else dear to me was threatened. I tried, but I failed.
I remembered the conversations that had swirled about Reichsführer Himmler's soiree at his home in Berlin. I remember the poor lad shot down at my very feet in the Berlin Bahnhof.
Gisele had indeed been insane—more than most. Her hatreds had dictated her actions. Her insanity, however, was not hers alone. It permeated the political party that ruled Germany, its leadership. Its very centre of authority.
I had displeased more of that leadership than just Gisele von Kys. Whilst young Willi and, even, Dagold had each in his own way unleashed her personal hatreds on me, I had also done things that would generate much more serious hatred from men with far more power than she ever had.
In Germany, I had helped Jews escape that country's racial laws. Not just any Jews, but rocket scientists—men who understood the power that German insanity sought to use against a still unsuspecting world. I had escaped myself and briefed men in two countries who could begin to build a defence against that power. And, because of me, three German spies and a senior member of the Nazi Party's military arm were dead.
I was not now safe, simply because Gisele von Kys was dead. Petersholme was not safe. Any more than England could be safe.
A knock at the door brought me out of my revelry. "Enter," I called, looking up to see d'Orléans winch as he pulled the door open. He stood back, holding his wounded arm, and Elizabeth entered.
I smiled at them both as they approached my desk. "Philippe has something to ask you, Robert," my cousin said.
The man's face flushed. "Monsieur le Baron—"
I held up my hand. "Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, I thought that we'd had this discussion before. It's deucedly difficult to be friends if you're going to insist on using titles."
"But—I—it seems so—so panache not to use them in this sort of situation, Robert."
I grinned. "Only to you, mon ami. Now, what sort of mess do you intend to ask that Elizabeth be allowed to get into?" I glanced at her as she gripped the arms of her chair at my seeming assumption that I could dictate her actions. I chuckled then. "Not that I have any authority over her, as you should have guessed by now."
"I—we—thought that my parents should have a chance to meet her and learn to know her as I have to come to do."
"In Larache?" I asked. He nodded.
I turned to Elizabeth. "It's probably past time to ask this, but I'd like to know what you intend to do about university?"
"I'll get my degree, of course, Robert," she retorted quickly. "I have no intention of being a useless woman, married or not."
"You'll—?" the Frenchman choked. I turned to study Philippe as he finally began to digest just what sort of woman he wanted to marry.
"I see," I said solemnly. I fought hard to prevent the smile threatening to envelop my face. "Perhaps it would be best if the two of you discussed your plans for this marriage privately." I paused for one beat and did not give myself time to worry that I was going to open the doors to a maelstorm. "Like the mature, rational adults you are," I continued, knowing full well that Elizabeth would find a way to get even with me for my words.
"Perhaps we should at that," d'Orléans answered, forcing the words through clenched teeth, his gaze never wavering from Elizabeth's face.
She studied me curiously until, slowly, she smiled. "Of course, you're right, Robert," she said finally and turned to the Comte de Paris. "I think we need to sit down in the library, Philippe."
I watched them leave the room and pass Dagold Jorsten without saying a word to him. I motioned him to enter as I allowed myself to wonder which reality would win the day—my cousin's adamant equality or Philippe's tradition of useless couriers and meaningless machinations along powerless corridors. And if they would even still be talking marriage by the time I returned from Easthampton-Mares on the morrow.
Dagold pulled the doors closed behind him and came across to my desk. "The farm manager has just sent word, my Lord."
"Oh?"
"He has just taken delivery of the gelden you ordered for the Kleiner Graf. He has placed it in the stables with your own horses."
I closed my eyes for a moment. I had forgotten Willi's present. I had even forgotten that there were only four more days to Christmas. Thank God for men who do what they've been told to do. "What did he say about it?" I asked.
Dagold grinned. "He said this was the finest piece of horseflesh that he'd ever laid eyes on, my Lord."
I nodded. All was well in Petersholme. At least this day. And I refused to allow whatever Berlin might cook up to take that away from me. This was Willi's first English Christmas and it was going to be perfect.
I frowned then. Barry. He was in hospital
I clenched my jaw. Willi's first Christmas with us was going to be perfect—as perfect as it could be without Barry there sharing it with us.
Copyright © 2006-2025 David MacMillan
First posted 2006
Updated 2 July 2025