Chapter 9

Dear Anne,

Was it my influence that brought about the meeting between King Haakon and Herr Brauer? Or was I merely one of many voices? I can't say for sure, but however it was brought about, the two men are closeted alone together only a few yards away. Oh, to be a fly on that wall...

D aisy waited outside the school in Elverum, tucked into a corner of the building to avoid the wind. She didn't try to stay out of sight. Nobody paid much attention to a gray-haired lady of mature years. She was invisible unless she chose not to be. But now, invisibility suited her. She'd come directly from her phone call with Stockholm, leaving Miss Kristiansen in charge of Cleo. Heaven help the poor girl.

Though which girl she referred to varied by the minute.

As soon as she'd heard that His Majesty planned to meet with Herr Brauer, she'd made arrangements to be there—if not in the meeting, which proved impossible, then on hand to hear the outcome. Now two hours into her vigil, she began to think she could just as easily have waited somewhere warmer.

She stamped her numb feet in the snow drifted against the bricks. The German bombers had come and gone, targeting the artillery school on the edge of town, leaving behind rutted streets and pockmarked windowless buildings. A burned-out truck sat crumpled in the road. Glass littered the sidewalks, sparkling like ice.

The cold seeped up from her toes to her ankles. Sleet prickled her cheeks and speckled her coat. Still she waited. At last, a side door opened as two gentlemen emerged from the school. One pulled on his gloves. Another settled his hat more squarely on his balding head against the worsening weather. She didn't need to see the soldiers coming to attention, the gawking cadets on parade, to recognize him.

"Your Majesty." She crossed the schoolyard, the pain of warmth returning to her limbs making her hobble on pins and needles.

His guardsmen closed ranks against her, but he waved them away with an imperious hand. "Madam Minister, I am glad to see you well after last night's adventures."

"I could say the same, Your Majesty. You took an awful risk coming back here after the attack."

"Herr Brauer took the bigger risk. I have friends close by. He does not."

She'd heard a rumor that the German foreign minister had arrived in Elverum alone and blindfolded to meet the king. Whether that was true or not, there had certainly been a hint of cloak-and-dagger about the situation. The meeting had been one-on-one, no functionaries or clerks allowed, not even Crown Prince Olav by the king's side. Daisy had seen them all waiting as she had been, their faces furrowed and careworn, stubble graying their jawlines. After a bit, they'd drifted off to seek shelter out of the weather. She'd remained steadfast at her post. Her tenacity had paid off in this quick quiet interview with His Majesty before his staff hurried him away.

"Is Herr Brauer demanding that Norway surrender?" she asked. "I hope you mentioned to him the recent speech made by his Führer in which he stated that a nation bowing to violation without offering resistance does not deserve to live."

King Haakon ran a hand over his face. He'd grown older over the last days. His eyes had sunk within their sockets and his gaze was clouded by dark thoughts, but he remained straight as a poker, his shoulders wide as if he might carry the country on his back. "Are all Americans this pushy?"

"I like to think of us as determined and persistent, but pushy suits."

"It would seem you have prior knowledge of Germany's demands. Listening at keyholes, Mrs. Harriman?" His narrow face was sharp as a blade, his mustache drawn low over a mouth bitten with frustration. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the approach of men in dark hats and overcoats, others in uniform. Her time alone to make her government's case was limited.

"It's only a guess based on their recent actions in Denmark. Your brother King Christian capitulated to save his throne. I imagine Herr Brauer—and now Mr. Quisling in Oslo—hope that you will do the same."

His Majesty took a moment to answer. Daisy was wise enough not to fill the silence. "He has asked me to return to Oslo," he explained. "My family and my dynasty will be safe from harm so long as I dance to Hitler's tune."

"So long as you surrender," she persisted.

The cadets had long since dispersed, the streets emptying as afternoon dusk descended along with an icy sleet that hissed as it fell. Light escaped from a window here and there, arrows of gold against the blue snow, but a blackout thickened the already dense shadows. The men surrounded the king, jostling to exclude her, to push her from his path. She refused to be sidelined. She planted herself like a tree, unwilling to be ignored. "Have you made a decision as to what course you'll take?"

"If I have, do you think I would share it with you?"

A fair question, but one she'd anticipated. "Sir Cecil Dormer and the British have bolted for the safety of Sweden. Norway's friends are a bit on the lean side currently, but I count myself among them."

Her words obviously struck a chord. Why else had he not already signaled his guards to remove the obstreperous old lady in his way?

"Her Royal Highness admires you, Mrs. Harriman." His face softened at mention of his daughter-in-law. "M?rtha finds your candor refreshing and your ambition and energy qualities she would wish her own daughters to emulate. I'm less convinced."

Daisy didn't allow his skepticism to faze her. She'd been underestimated before. "It's my father's fault, Your Majesty. He was a man who should have had sons and reconciled himself to the lack by bringing up three girls in the exact same manner as he might three boys. It led to a certain freedom not always appreciated in this day and age."

"Your president is one that seems to appreciate it."

"Yes, but he's always been ahead of his time. A trait we share. I've sent word to Washington, and I'm currently compiling reports to be passed to the United States through our embassy in Stockholm. If you would just—"

"Do not take offense, Madam Minister, only I am not certain what you or the United States can do about this situation, no matter how many reports you send or how much you have the president's ear." He tipped his cap, the signal that his patience—and their conversation—was at an end. The soldiers took up position to either side of him as he prepared to head to his car.

"You'd be surprised at how much it takes to offend me, Your Majesty." Daisy hustled along beside them, unwilling to let him escape without offering a last word. "But I wouldn't count us Americans out completely. As you say, we're pushy. We might be of some use to you yet."

He settled himself into the back of the car that would take him to the safety of Nybergsund, a dot on the map that, for now, remained safe from attack. Stress dug grooves into his thin face, gray with fatigue. He sat hunched as if in pain, though his expression remained fired with grim determination. He had sought to keep his country at peace, but he was not bowed by the prospect of war.

Daisy watched as his car drove off, unsure whether she'd made her case or not. Twenty yards up, the car came to a stop. The king's window rolled down, and he beckoned her over. "Have you thought any more about my request?" he asked.

"Is the crown princess in Nybergsund?"

"For now, but they are bound for the border and then Stockholm."

"She won't leave you and the crown prince behind without a fight."

"No. She won't. But she will leave."

"O uch! That stings." Cleo practically leaped off the couch, every sore muscle screaming in protest. "Holy cow! It needs cleaning, not scouring. If I didn't know better, I'd say you're doing that on purpose."

Petra sat back with a barely concealed roll of her blue eyes. "Why would I hurt you on purpose, Miss Jaffray?"

"Oh, I don't know, let's see... because you don't like me? Because you think I'm a spoiled brat? Because you think I'm causing Aunt Daisy trouble by being here? Because you think I'm interested in your boyfriend? The reasons are positively endless."

"I'm not hurting you on purpose," Petra said, before adding in a not-so-quiet mutter under her breath, " dum jente . Now let me see to this burn before it becomes infected." After cleaning the scrape on Cleo's neck with soap and water, she slathered it in petroleum jelly.

Cleo gritted her teeth against the sting. Her head sloshed with an ache that sizzled down into her shoulders, and her smoke-singed throat hurt. "Beauty, brains, and now nursing skills—anything you can't do?"

"Make you be silent." Petra moved to the scrape on Cleo's shoulder.

"Did you just try to be funny?" Cleo squeaked around the sting of antiseptic. "You actually have a sense of humor? Who knew?"

Petra concentrated on stoppering the bottle, cutting a piece of gauze, searching for the surgical tape. So much for trying to be friendly. Cleo should have known better. The woman had Norwegian snow in her veins.

Outside, the farm where they were staying was alive with a growing number of refugees seeking shelter: families displaced by the bombs; businessmen caught on the road; men, young and old, some with rifles, some carrying only shovels and axes, but all determined to join the fight. She could hear their voices, the sound of engines, the squeak of boots across the spring snow. Was one of them Einar? No. He was away with those soldiers from the roadblock. She said a prayer for his safety, though she didn't really believe anyone was listening. Still, a little otherworldly help couldn't hurt.

"...can't believe he came back... pray it's not a trap..." Right outside the window, a man's deep voice, rounded o 's and flat a 's. American? British? Cleo's head hurt too much to decide.

"Same could be said of Brauer" came the answer, this voice decidedly British.

The competing voices swam into a buzzing drone like a hive of bees then faded farther into the background as sleep stole over her.

She dreamed of the German motorcyclist, his face and that of the soldier at the barricade merging and melting into one unnerving featureless mask. Why hadn't she pulled the trigger when she had the chance? Why hadn't she killed the man? He'd have killed her, and she just stood there, frozen. Unable to move. Was she a coward? Was she the weak little bird he'd accused her of being?

"I never thanked you properly for helping my grandmother get home." Petra's voice shocked Cleo awake, her joints pulled into place as she sat up.

Her eyes flew to the clock on the wall. Barely a few minutes had passed, but it felt like she'd dozed for hours. Her brain was mushy as if she'd drunk too much. "I wasn't using the ticket," she replied thickly. "No sense letting it go to waste."

Petra's lips pursed, digging deep grooves to either side of her mouth. "You do not make it easy to be kind, Miss Jaffray."

"Takes one to know one, Miss Kristiansen."

Petra's blue eyes flashed dangerously. "I do not think life is always a joke, if that is what you mean."

"Isn't it?" Cleo's lethargy clung like a wet blanket, and she was desperately thirsty. "Think about it. A week ago, your greatest worry was whether your boyfriend was flirting with me—he wasn't by the way. Today, we're fighting over our supply of boiled eggs and hoping the Nazis don't drop a bomb on us. If that's not completely absurd, I don't know what is. Believe me when I tell you, there's a fine line between comedy and tragedy."

"And you straddle it, pretending at one and scoffing at the other." Petra cleared away the antiseptics and gauze then boiled a kettle on the gas ring. Cleo would have asked for a cup of tea if she didn't think Petra would fling it at her.

"You never answered my question," Cleo ventured in an attempt to mend fences. "What do you have against me other than that I don't take life seriously?"

Hefting the typewriter case onto the table, Petra set it up along with paper, pens, and a pile of notepads. "Maybe it is because I have responsibilities and people who depend on me, and you are given every advantage, every privilege, and you toss them aside as if they are nothing. Toss your family... your fiancé... aside as if they are nothing. How can you do that?"

Years of practice. The flip remark hovered on the tip of Cleo's tongue. The tossed-off comment that would direct the conversation into safer channels. But the words tasted sour now. Petra's opinion pricked a tender spot, a part of herself Cleo avoided at all costs. The part that said it was better to be the one doing the leaving than the one being left.

"If it's Georgie Cliveden you're worried about, he married six months after I left him standing at the altar. His bride's father owns a tin plating concern in New Jersey, and she's his sole heir. Believe me, no hearts were broken there. In fact, I probably did him a favor."

Petra violently shuffled her papers. "You laugh and you joke as if it's all a game and yet, as you say, we are in the middle of a war with no idea what will happen next."

"That's the point. Not knowing what happens next. Not caring what happens next." Unconvinced, Petra continued to glare as if she might burn a hole through the table. Frankly, Cleo was feeling less sure about that line of reasoning herself, but she wasn't going to let Petra have the win. "Look, you're an ant and I'm a grasshopper and never the twain shall meet."

Obviously not the response Petra expected. Her face registered annoyance compounded by confusion, as if she was unsure whether Cleo was mocking her or not.

"You know... the fable," Cleo continued. "The ant is hardworking and practical while the grasshopper fritters and frolics and enjoys life."

"Isn't that the one where the grasshopper is starving when winter comes and begs the ant for help only to be turned away to die?"

"Well, old Aesop was a tough cookie. I prefer to imagine an alternative where the ant and the grasshopper become friends in the end and enjoy the long, hard winter on the ant's food and the grasshopper's cheer."

"Ridiculous. Why should they be friends? The ant does all the work, and the grasshopper does nothing."

"He brings joy."

Petra sniffed her dismissal of this nonsensical notion. "Where have you brought joy? To your mother? Your jilted fiancé? Your godmother? It seems to me you bring nothing but worry and trouble, Miss Jaffray."

She punctuated her statement by feeding a clean sheet of paper through the typewriter's rollers and settling into her work with a zip and a ding and a rattle of keys.

Conversation over, but not before Cleo felt the punch of Petra's criticisms like a fist to the chest, resentment burning hot behind her breastbone like a bad case of indigestion. And just like indigestion, the burn quickly faded, replaced by a sour, uncomfortable feeling of guilt that squirreled her stomach.

Tuning out the rattle of typewriter keys, Cleo stared out the window, watching the long silver shadows slide over the snowy hills, trying to excuse away her actions and coming up empty. For so long, she'd fought against others' expectations. When had she stopped expecting more of herself?

She pulled herself up on unsteady legs, suddenly desperate to be sick.

"Where do you think you're going?" Petra looked up from her spread of papers. "Mrs. Harriman said you were to stay here until she returned."

"Can't talk. Gotta puke."

Petra scrunched up her nose and turned back to her typing. ". . . grasshopper . . . ant . . . dum jente . . ."

Cleo dashed for the toilet, where she was splendidly and furiously sick.

Dear Anne,

I understand His Majesty's continued mistrust of our country's intentions and I sympathize with his plight. You know as well as I do that the current political climate in the United States means there's little hope for direct aid of any kind crossing the Atlantic. The president will need to find other, subtler, ways to assist and abet the war effort. If anyone can do it, it's that wily fox Roosevelt...

"W hat do you think happened at the meeting?" According to Miss Kristiansen, Cleo had slept most of the afternoon, but now she was restless, unable to relax, and pelting Daisy with incessant questions.

Daisy was equally unsettled as she turned over her conversation with the king, thinking of all the things she should have said.

"I'll wager His Majesty told Herr Brauer to piss off," Cleo answered her own question. She paused in her pacing to lean a hip against the table where Miss Kristiansen was typing up the latest coded cable to send on to Stockholm, the codebook in its borrowed dust jacket open for reference. Petra protected her work as best she could while simultaneously slamming each key as if she pulled a trigger. Cleo, oblivious, bent closer and pointed out a spelling error. Petra ripped the page out with a muttered curse and started over. Five minutes later, Cleo was back, this time with a cup of tea and a plate of cookies she left at Petra's elbow. Petra ate half and left the rest, which she pushed back across to Cleo. Daisy would never suggest it, but the two women reminded her of a pair of squabbling sisters. Sparring one minute and making up the next.

"I'm sure the German minister pressed every conceivable argument," Daisy pondered aloud. "I'm sure he spoke of the need to spare the Norwegian citizens any needless bloodshed that a protracted war would bring to the country. And I'm absolutely sure he pointed out the fact that the Germans have already taken a good chunk of the country with ease and will likely do the same with the rest."

"And then His Majesty told him to piss off," Cleo said.

Daisy couldn't help the smile.

Mr. Whitney banged into the cottage, declaring, "Ma'am, you have to hear this." He flipped on the radio, dialing it up and down through whistles and the hiss of static until...

"...The Germans have invaded the country with bombing and every other means of destruction. Germany has violated every right of a small nation wishing only to live in peace..."?

Petra's fingers stilled upon the keys. Cleo sat on the arm of the couch, her hand unconsciously touching the bandage on her forehead.

"...the people of Norway will strain every nerve in their effort to raise anew the liberty and independence which a foreign power has tried to crush with brute force..."

"That's done it," Mr. Whitney declared, snapping off the radio. "King Haakon's told the Jerries exactly where they can stuff their negotiated surrender. There goes the chance for any diplomatic solution."

Daisy felt the vice consul watching her as if to gauge her reac tion. So much work over the last twenty years wasted. The world was ripping itself apart despite the tireless efforts of countless diplomats and pacifists. Had it all been for naught?

"We are at war," Petra said softly.

"You've been at war since yesterday morning, my dear," Daisy said. "It's simply official now."

"What's your plan now, ma'am?" Mr. Whitney asked.

What was her plan? She ticked through a to-do list in her head before spreading out a map of Norway on the table. Obviously, their next stop would be Nybergsund, where the royal family and their government was hiding. The village was about sixteen miles from the Swedish border. Close enough for the crown princess to make a quick escape if she needed to, but would she? Would Sweden have them, if it came to that? It would be a precarious position for the neutral country, especially with this firsthand experience of how little Germany honored neutrality. And then what? German troops poured into Norway from the south and west. How on earth could His Majesty, with his scattered and outnumbered forces, ever hope to throw off such an organized incursion?

With British help? Perhaps. But Daisy wasn't convinced the British had the manpower or the willpower if circumstances proved difficult, which of course they would. Hitler had rolled over half of Europe without breaking a sweat while Chamberlain dithered and appeased and wrung his hands.

"Should I ready the car, ma'am? We could be in Nybergsund in a few hours if the roads are clear."

"Hear that?" Cleo stood at the window, but there was no vagueness in her gaze now. She was focused, her body taut. "Planes."

"We're safe enough here." The growling vibration knifed up Daisy's spine like nails, but she remained in her chair, judging distance and direction. "They'll be headed for Elverum again."

But the noise grew until the sound of the bombers shuddered along the floorboards and up into her calves. Outside, there were shouts and calls. Lights in the main house were switched off and curtains drawn. "Cleo, get away from the window. Petra, douse the lamp."

Daisy gritted her teeth and clutched her fountain pen until it snapped under her grip, ink spreading black and cold over her fingers. The ground shook with the concussive punch of exploding bombs. Moonlight was overtaken by an orange glow that turned the far woodland bright as a city. The blasts came closer in a chain of overlapping sound like ocean waves, rattling dishes, knocking prints from the walls. Papers slid to the floor along with an open drawer of pens, paper clips, and staples. Petra gathered them up, tossing them into the closest file box, when the whole house shook with a roar that pushed against Daisy's eardrums and punched her chest like a fist. A window blew out in a glittering spray of glass. She couldn't hear anything but a high ringing in her ears.

"Get out!" she shouted, her feigned indifference no use to her now.

"The codebook!" Petra shouted.

She shoved it in her coat pocket as Cleo dragged her toward the door ahead of Mr. Whitney, who lent Daisy an arm. This time she allowed it, grateful for his strength and angry at herself for being grateful.

The four of them followed the stream of panicked refugees into the woods. The shriek and whistle of bombs stuttered like a string of firecrackers, blowing holes in a nearby shed, taking out a row of parked trucks and a tractor, obliterating a far-off fence.

Behind them, a car swerved into the yard, tires sliding on the ice. A door was flung open, a man nearly toppling from the driver's seat. In the glow of the flames, his face was blade sharp and fierce.

"Well, look what the cat's dragged in," Cleo said, not even bothering to hide the shake in her voice. "Lieutenant Bayard."