CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ROSE
Rose sat alone. They had her in a room, a cell, and she had no idea how she’d got there. All she knew was that she was sitting on concrete, her back to a wall, and she was dripping wet. She’d only woken when they’d thrown a bucket of cold water over her as she’d been lying on the hard floor, the puddle of water spread around her. She was shivering, her entire body convulsing, but she’d done her best. She’d twirled her long hair up and managed to knot it in place, with a few pins that had still been hanging from her hair helping to keep it in place, so it wasn’t dripping down her back. But she’d decided to keep her clothes on instead of stripping off to dry. There was no point risking her clothes being taken if they weren’t on her body, because at least with them on she could dry out slowly and then stay warm. If she even lived that long.
Footsteps echoed out and she sat up straight, ready to look fear in the eye. They could scare her all they liked, but she wasn’t about to let them think they could get her to give anything away. Her only priority now was keeping her friends safe, and she would say nothing, nothing, to give their location or existence away. It would start to get dark again soon, she was certain of it, unless she’d been out for so long that she had lost an entire night.
‘Here she is,’ a man said in rough French, ‘our lovely new prisoner.’
She stared at the man as he walked into the cell, his smile verging on cruel. He was eating a slice of bread and she looked away from it. He was trying to tease her, trying to make her salivate so she’d beg him for food. Only he had no idea just how stubborn she could be.
‘You might be a fool, but you’re beautiful,’ he said, his accent thick. ‘We could still all have a lot of fun with you.’
Rose gulped but she defiantly stared back at him. Rape would be a fate far worse than death for her, but every Gestapo in the region could rape her and she still wouldn’t talk. Scream, yes. Cry, certainly. Vow to slaughter every last one of them? Until my dying breath. But she would not let them torture her into giving her secrets away.
‘Tell us who you work for,’ he said. ‘I want to know everything. We’ve already found the others, so you have nothing left worth hiding.’
She sat silently, her lips slightly parted, her breathing shallow. She didn’t believe him for a second. Who was he even pretending to have found?
‘We know where you came from and where you were going back to. It’s only a matter of time before we know everything.’
Still she didn’t say a word, but the hairs on her back slowly prickled as she thought of Hazel and Sophia being captured.
‘Stand up!’ he barked.
She glared at him but grudgingly did what he said. She would do whatever they asked, so long as they weren’t asking her to talk.
He strode closer, the bread long gone as he wound his arm back and pummelled his fist into her stomach.
‘Arrghh,’ she cried out, hating the pained noise that escaped from her throat.
‘Tell me what I need to know,’ he said in a low voice, stroking her hair as she tried to stand from her doubled-over position. ‘Then I can be gentle with you.’
She shook her head and he punched her again. Rose doubled back over, and he hit her a third time, slamming her back against the concrete wall. Tears escaped her eyes, as she cried out, yelping in pain.
He walked away then, striding from the cell and calling over his shoulder.
‘You will talk,’ he said. ‘I am good at making women talk. Eventually.’
‘Bastard!’ She spat out the word but it came out low, barely audible, her lungs screaming as they tried to work. She gasped for air as she listened to his footsteps echo away from her, struggling to breathe, struggling to move. Struggling to stay coherent.
They couldn’t know anything; it wasn’t possible. They might get close, but there was no way they could trace her back to the chateau.
Rose shut her eyes, willing sleep to find her to take away the pain. She’d expected Kurt, knew he’d be furious that she’d deceived him, but in a way she’d expected to be able to sweet-talk him. To play on the attraction he’d had to her, beg for forgiveness, give him a few titbits of information to get him to trust her, to make it look like she was wanting to be turned.
But her captor wasn’t Kurt. And that man? She was certain he’d taken great pleasure every time his fist had connected with her body.
The shaking had stopped. When, she didn’t know, but her body had finally warmed enough to stop convulsing from the cold, her clothes no longer wet to her skin. But her feet were still like icicles, and no amount of jumping up and down or flexing and wriggling her toes had helped.
Rose sat still, ears pricked. She’d had very little contact with anyone since her arrival, but she knew there must be others in cells nearby. It was so dark where she was, the only light an old lamp in the corner. And that was only ever turned on in the short time it took them to interrogate her.
Today would be worse. They’d thrown icy water on her, pretended that they knew everything about her friends when she was certain they didn’t, flexed a few tools that were supposed to terrify her into talking for fear of them being used on her. None of that had worked, of course, which meant that today she was certain they’d start doing dreadful things to her instead of merely threatening to.
She heard footsteps, soft at first but then becoming louder. It would no doubt be the same man, the one who made her feel sick just by looking at him. Her eye was swollen from having his fist slammed into her face so many times, and her jaw ached. But it wasn’t like she was being fed anything, so at least she’d been able to rest it.
‘Bonjour, my love.’ The thick German accent made her cringe, his words making her skin crawl. She knew that was exactly the reaction he wanted, but she could barely look at him when he flicked the light on and pushed open the cell door.
‘What, not even a “good morning”?’ he asked, speaking in German now.
She sighed and stood, not wanting to be curled into a ball in a submissive position with him standing over her. She kept her back straight and her expression neutral.
‘Good morning,’ she said in perfect German.
‘Ah! She has a voice!’ he said, his sarcasm not lost on her.
She waited to see what he would say to her next.
‘Are you hungry?’
Rose nodded. There was no point lying; anyone in her position would be starving hungry. She actually had no idea how long she’d been captive, but she was certain it was long enough for Hazel and Sophia to know that something had gone terribly wrong. She thought of their safety constantly, hoped they weren’t locked in a cell somewhere, or worse. And Sebastian. Would her brother and his lovely wife still be safe? She’d been fretting about them since her capture, too. Was he still alive? Were they both safe?
‘Tell me what the codes mean,’ he said plainly. ‘All you need to do is give me something, some piece of information, and I’ll have breakfast sent down to you.’
Rose thought for a moment, wondered whether she could tell him something trivial in exchange for something to eat. If she didn’t have something soon then her energy would diminish completely, and she needed to stay physically and mentally strong.
‘I know nothing of importance,’ she replied, deciding to stay standing so she didn’t feel so inferior beside him.
‘We know you are a courier,’ he said, spitting out the word. ‘You are transporting information and devices. That means you have information to give me. You are working for someone.’
She knew there was no point flatly denying her involvement in the Resistance movement. They’d caught her with evidence. She was guilty, and there was no getting around that fact.
‘I know nothing because I was paid to take those things,’ she said quietly. ‘I needed more money, so I said yes, and they told me I had to make it back or I wouldn’t be paid. I am guilty.’
He smiled as if he believed he’d been the one to push her into finally talking, as if his tactics had succeeded.
‘You see? So much easier when you talk.’ His laugh was sinister, or maybe she hated him so much that she was imagining the cruel undertones. ‘Perhaps we can be friends after all.’
Rose nodded, forcing a tight smile. ‘I would receive a package, but I never saw who was delivering it. My job was to leave it near a train station,’ she lied.
‘That is all?’ he asked.
Rose smiled. ‘Yes. I don’t want to get into trouble. I never meant to do anything wrong.’
‘I will get you something to eat. I am a man of my word,’ he announced as he turned around. ‘When you’re ready, you will tell me the rest.’
She watched him go, knew the second she saw him hesitate he was going to turn and say something else.
‘If you don’t tell me everything?’ he said in a low, quiet voice. ‘Then you will never eat again. I promise you that.’
Rose didn’t doubt him. He liked her being passive, and if she didn’t stay that way, she was certain her life would be short and miserable. She could die here, and no one would care. But she didn’t want this filthy Nazi to get the satisfaction of seeing her take her last breath.
He returned with a piece of bread, covered in dripping, and a chipped cup half-full of water. She took it gratefully.
‘Thank you,’ she said, eyeing the piece of bread, her mouth full of saliva as she anticipated her first bite. She didn’t care what it tasted like or how old it was; eating something, anything, would help her to stay alive.
Rose waited for him to leave before eating. Her stomach growled and groaned loudly in response, but she ate slowly. She chewed every tiny mouthful well and swallowed it down before pausing and taking another, wanting to feel full, knowing it might be the last thing she ate for some time. She sipped the water, too, a few little mouthfuls before finishing the piece of bread. She was still hungry, but it had taken the worst of the pains away and she knew it would give her more energy for whatever her captor had in store for her next.
She sat against the wall, the concrete so hard on her bottom that she felt as if her bones were protruding through her skin. Rose shut her eyes and willed sleep to find her, the cold seeping back through her body, chilling her right through as she imagined Peter’s smiling face, imagined how warm she’d feel in his arms, the strength of his embrace.
‘Get up!’
Rose was jolted awake by the rough voice, followed by something loud banging. She jumped up, bleary-eyed, realising she’d been asleep but not having any idea how long she’d been out.
‘Get up!’
There had to be others. If it was only her he wanted to rouse, then why wouldn’t he be standing in her cell?
Her door opened and she waited for instructions. A man pointed, one she hadn’t seen before, and she obeyed, walking out and standing still. She wanted desperately to glance back, but he was holding a gun and the last thing she needed was to be smacked with the butt of it again and suffer more injuries.
There were more footsteps and she wondered who was there, but still she didn’t look. Was she being taken out to be executed? She trembled at the thought even though she knew they wouldn’t kill her yet. They hadn’t tried hard enough to extract information from her; there was still so much they would do to her before they gave up on what she did or didn’t know. The Resistance had been too disruptive for them not to question her hard. Surely?
‘Walk!’ The command was shouted and she started to move. It didn’t take long before a guard pushed a door open and she stumbled out into the bright morning sunlight, the glare causing her to squint her eyes until it was like looking out from behind pinpricks.
But as her eyes adjusted and she was roughly shunted in the back, she realised what was happening. For whatever reason, they weren’t going to interrogate her any more here. The cattle car was waiting for them on the tracks, already full of others. Rose stepped forward and clambered up when she was told to, looking at another woman who looked hungrier and far sadder than she about their situation.
Her heart bled for them all, seeing the looks on their faces, the haunted gazes staring back at her. These women would have children. Husbands. Grandchildren even. Their pain was so much worse than hers would ever be. The men would have wives they were desperate to protect.
The door was shut with a bang, and Rose stood up, clinging on to the sides. As they were juddered and shuddered every which way, she bravely held her hand to her heart and looked at the others crowded in with her.
‘Have you heard the news?’ a young man murmured, just as Rose opened her mouth.
She shut it and shook her head. ‘What news?’
‘It’s happening. The Allies are coming, and soon.’
The smile on Rose’s face grew so big she couldn’t stop it. So it was true, it was happening. She didn’t care how he knew and she certainly didn’t ask questions, but it gave her a quiet hum in her chest, told her that perhaps all was not lost. ‘Join me,’ she said proudly, hand still on her heart. ‘We’ll sing “La Marseillaise” until our throats are hoarse and we cannot sing a breath longer.’
She started to sing their anthem, softly at first and then louder as her voice stopped quavering after so long being quiet. It didn’t take long before others joined her, and soon every prisoner was defiantly singing their song – their French song that would be like torture to the Germans’ ears.
‘France for ever!’ she yelled, before launching straight back into the anthem with all the gusto she could muster.
When her throat was hoarse from singing and the train began to slow, Rose felt some of her confidence start to fade. She looked around, wondered where they’d been taken and why. If the Germans were worried about an impending attack, why would they have brought them even closer to Normandy? Or perhaps they truly didn’t know where to expect it. Maybe all their codes and incorrect messages had worked after all!
‘Get out!’ The words were shouted as the side of the car slid open. It was another prison. She’d hoped for that and not a longer trip to a camp near Germany, even though she knew they were both merely different forms of evil.
A guard grabbed her hair, dragging her down and shoving her forward. Tears burnt in her eyes but she refused to shed them. She just had to stay alive long enough for the invasion to happen. If she survived that long, she might just make it back home alive.