Spring 1868
Coal sat in a back pew of the Cathedral of Reims looking up at the morning light illuminating the arched ceiling so far above. If he squinted, he could imagine it was a mile high. The choir and orchestra, a couple of hundred strong, filled the immense space with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. A serendipity. He had been crossing the square on his way to . . . somewhere, and he’d heard the sound of singing. A pair of trumpets as he entered a side door, and then a thundering explosion of voices knocked him back on his heels, nearly stopping his heart.
It was an unlikely pairing, Beethoven and Reims Cathedral, and not one that would be happening in a year or two when the Germans and the French returned to their endless squabbling. Truly, Coal had never been able to understand; these beings who could make wars were also the ones who built this building and wrote this symphony.
“Who knows,” he murmured, “what it all means.”
• • •
November 6, 1918
Five days left
Tagging along with a dozen or so American soldiers, Doc and Adi marched into what remained of the city of Reims. Gershom hadn’t much liked the idea, but Doc said he needed to see the city again. And he liked the Yanks.
Before long they had a couple of children and a few tattered adults marching with them. It never ceased to amaze Adi to see people living in such desolation. So many windows had been blown out by the shelling that in the streets the broken glass came up to their ankles. It made a brittle whispering sound as they walked.
Just after noon they stood in the courtyard, gazing up at the heartbreaking ruin of the cathedral. Tears streaming down his cheeks, Doc stood staring, muttering curses under his breath.
The American colonel next to him raised his hand to shadow his eyes, as a delicate cloud of pink discharged from his chest. A crack of far-off gunfire, and the man fell straight back into the street.
That was how they found out that the reports of the German retreat from the city were incomplete.
The Americans spread out, trying to spot the sniper. Everyone scattered, taking cover wherever they could.
Adi grabbed the children by the hands and ran into the shadow of the cathedral. Doc and a private dragged the colonel in by the straps on his backpack.
Pushing the children behind her, she dropped her pack and pulled out a roll of bandage and tossed it to Doc. He was feeling around inside the wounded man’s tunic to judge the extent of the damage. The look on his face told her all she needed to know. He chucked the bandage back to her. Breaking off half of the colonel’s ID tag, Doc put it into the hand of a young private. The lad wiped tears away with the back of his hand and put the other half of the tag in his pocket.
Doc dropped down onto a block of stone next to Adi and the children, who were snugged in as close to the wall as they could manage. He took out his handkerchief and loudly blew his nose. He looked over at the children, a boy and a girl.
“Did you know,” Doc said to the boy who sat staring at the dead colonel, “most of the kings of France were crowned in this church?”
The child, no more than seven, tried to pay attention to the old man, but the dead soldier and the sound of artillery starting up distracted him. He held the girl’s hand, his little sister from the look of her. She was pushing at shards of blue stained glass from the blown-out church windows. They littered the ground like jewels.
Adi looked up behind her at the towering cathedral, or what was left of it. The Germans had been firing on it since the first months of the war. An error in aim, they asserted.
It was, even in this ravaged state, like nothing Adi had ever seen. Everywhere you looked, saints and angels and spires rose to heaven, held steady by huge stone buttresses arcing into the sky.
Gesturing to the little girl, Doc continued, as if they were a family on holiday.
“See the statue over there?” He pointed to the bronze figure on horseback just visible around the front of the church.
“That’s Joan of Arc. She and the Dauphin, who was about to be crowned Charles VII, walked right through the front doors of this place. In 1427. Right over there.”
“14 . . . 29,” stammered the girl.
Doc smiled. “I stand corrected.”
The air reverberated with the shriek of an artillery shell passing over the top of the cathedral. A young American soldier muttered to himself, “Six-inch howitzer.”
A building half a block to the south exploded.
Doc looked at Adi. “Get the boy!”
The boy’s arms tight around her neck, Adi ran across the cobblestones into a side street. Close behind, Doc, carrying the girl low in his arms, was already out of breath and wheezing. Even without his pack, he wasn’t going to keep this up for long.
“Over there,” said the boy, pointing to a pile of debris at the base of an elegant gray three-story building. Just above the pile of stone was a hole in the wall big enough to step through.
There was a large tarpaulin, hanging loosely over the break just inside the wall. Adi held it up for Doc and the girl. Outside they could hear shouts in German and boots running up the sidewalk.
The boy wriggled free of Adi’s arms and slid to the marble floor.
They were in a gallery of a museum, the walls covered with gold-framed paintings, three deep, down from the high ceiling. There were a few paintings on the floor and a few more hanging loose in their frames next to the hole in the wall, but other than that and a thick layer of dust over everything, the place was remarkably intact.
Shouting from outside.
The boy took Adi by the hand and pulled her down toward doors at the other end of the room. The girl tugged on Doc’s sleeve, but out of breath, he pushed her to follow Adi.
“Hide the kids,” he whispered, pulling his pistol from his holster.
Adi hesitated.
“Goux. Don’t argue.”
The girl said to her brother, “Not that way, they’ll see us.”
They ran to a small door directly across the room; clearly, it was not their first time here. Passing through, Adi looked back to see Doc hiding himself under the side of the hanging tarp. The boy pulled the door shut.
A short dark hallway and they came out another door on the other side. Before them a staircase curved up to the second floor.
They charged up. Back through the little door they’d come through—shots fired!
More yelling, running. A boot kicked open the door. The handle broke off and went skittering across the marble floor. It came to a stop at the bottom of the staircase.
In the silence, a young German soldier looked up at Adi and the kids at the top of the stairs.
Adi stared back. The man was holding a pistol but seemed uncertain about shooting. At the children, perhaps? Or maybe it just didn’t feel right to him to be killing people in a museum.
The little boy grabbed Adi’s sleeve and pulled her into the next gallery.
“No!” The girl shook her head, whispering, “We can’t get through that way!”
The boy looked up to Adi as the sound of boots on the marble stairs echoed off the arched ceiling.
Nothing for it. They kept going.
Most of the light in the long gallery was coming through one of the windows. An unexploded shell had smashed through the shutters and glass and embedded itself into the floor. As they ran through the gallery, startled pigeons flew up to the ceiling.
Some of the paintings had been removed from their frames, which leaned lonely against the walls. The floor was cluttered with packing crates. Adi grabbed up a crowbar as they turned the corner into a small gallery at the end. Sure enough, there was no exit. They were trapped.
Motioning for the children to get behind her around the corner, Adi held the crowbar high.
The sound of boots—and then nothing.
She took a quick peek out, sure she was going to be staring into the barrel of a gun. She heard a cough and then another, all the way at the other end of the gallery. She looked out again.
The soldier was sitting on a wooden crate staring at a painting on the wall. He took his helmet off and put it down next to him on the box. Another bout of coughing took him. Putting his pistol back into his holster he removed the cap from his canteen, took a swig. This settled his cough for a moment. Catching his breath, he tilted his head a little and gazed at the landscape.
What in the world? Adi leaned back into the small room. The children stared up at her. She raised her shoulders and shook her head. What were they to do now?
She looked up at the painting in front of her and considered the alternatives.
Was the soldier trying to trick them? It seemed bizarre. Did he think they’d gotten away? Wouldn’t he at least . . .
Distracted, Adi looked up again at the painting.
People being burned at the stake. Lots of them. She glanced down at the title on the frame.
Strasbourg Massacre 14 February 1349. She stared.
It didn’t come up very often, the question of whether Adi was allowed to laugh out loud. There’d been precious few occurrences these last years. The children stared open-mouthed at the young soldier, hopping up and down, a hand over his mouth, trying to restrain his laughter.
Adi didn’t need to look at the riddle. The last riddle. She knew it like she knew her name. Well, better than that; she wasn’t sure about her name sometimes.
“Not a word of it true and none of it new,
a morality play that caused some dismay,
because of the smells from the poisonous wells,
and the blood in the bread
from the children was bled
kindled an auto da fe
on Valentine’s day.”
Everything that had been discussed about the fourth riddle—it all came together.
Burning at the stake was what “auto da fe” came to mean during the Catholic Inquisition. Jews became the victims of this treatment because of the cretinous superstitions that they poisoned wells and baked bread containing the blood of Christian children. But no one—no one passing through the infirmary, at any rate—knew about this “Massacre.”
The 14th of February—Valentine’s Day!
In Strasbourg, France!
She had to go.
Taking the children by the hand, she walked out into the large room.
The soldier turned his head and looked over at them. Closer now, Adi could see how terribly gaunt he appeared. He took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket. In passible French, he asked Adi, “Have you got matches, mein herr?”
Adi shook her head.
“Ah, well,” he said, putting the pack back in his pocket. “So es geht.”
Yes, so it goes.
They walked past the young man, but he began to cough again and scarcely seemed to notice.
• • •
In the middle of the gallery where they’d come in, Doc sat on a round high-backed sofa, his dusty horizon-blue uniform distinct against the red velvet.
A few feet away, beside a pedestal supporting a sculpture of a man on a horse, a German soldier lay dead upon the floor.
Adi scanned the room. If there were others, they were gone now. She motioned for the children to follow close behind her.
Doc had taken off his silver medallion and chain and was pouring it absently from hand to hand. There was blood on his fingertips, and between his feet, blood dripping on the marble floor.
Adi sat next to him and carefully pulled aside the front of his greatcoat.
He allowed her to examine him for a moment. When it was clear to both of them that there was no stopping the flow of blood, he held her hands tightly for a moment, then sat back.
She wiped her tears.
Shivering, Doc pulled his coat tight up around him. “I’m sorry,” he said. His breath was short and his face had grown pale and worn.
“I should never . . . have let you stay. All this time.”
He took his glasses off and tried to straighten out the frames a little. He put them back upon his nose.
“I kept thinking the war had to end. Or at least, we’d find some safer place.”
He started coughing. He wiped at his mouth; his teeth were slick with blood. “Or, we’d just figure out that last damned riddle, and go.”
Adi remembered and held her hands up.
“What?” he said, raising his shaggy eyebrows.
• • •
The bullet had gone right through the map in Doc’s pocket, torn through it as surely as it had his chest.
“Damn,” he muttered, wincing as they pulled the precious map from his coat. Adi opened it up on his lap. The children gathered around. “Could be worse,” he said. There wasn’t much blood on it and the black rimmed bullet holes were mostly through Germany.
Adi tapped her finger on the city of Strasbourg. He squinted down at the map. “You sure?”
Adi nodded, trying to think of some way to explain.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, his eyelids fluttering. “As long as you know.”
Trying to trace his finger from the city of Dijon across the map to Strasbourg, his hand shook badly, so Adi did it for him.
There wasn’t much there at the intersection of the two lines just south of a town called Epinal.
“What does that say?” Doc squinted hard and read the small type there in the mountains. “Ah,” he said. “Gentiana Abbey. That’s good.”
His head fell back, just as it did when he dozed off in his chair. Adi watched him, as she had so many times in the past few years. After a second, Doc opened his eyes again and reached out his hand. “Here, take this.” He dropped the silver medallion and chain into her palm and squeezed her hands tightly when she tried to protest.
“No, no. Lisette would have wanted you to have it,” he said, closing his eyes. “Never made sense for me to be wearing it, anyway. Saint Margaret . . .” he whispered as he died, “she is, after all . . . the patron saint of young women.”