“Ils vont nous tuer …” she wailed. “They will kill us. We will all be dead.”
“Don’t be silly,” Sarah said, trying to sound stern, and hoping the girl wouldn’t see how badly her own hands were shaking. “They’re not going to do anything to us. We’re women. And they probably won’t come here. Emanuelle, be sensible … calm down….” But she didn’t believe her own words as she said them. William had been right. She should have left France, but now it was too late. She had been so busy taking care of Phillip that she hadn’t seen the warning signs, and she could hardly make a dash for the South now, as the Windsors clearly had. She wouldn’t have gotten far with her baby in her arms, and she was seven months pregnant.
“Madame, what will we do?” Emanuelle asked, still feeling that she owed it to her to protect her. She had promised William.
“Absolutely nothing,” Sarah said quietly. “If they come here, we have nothing to hide, nothing to give them. All we have is what we’ve grown in the garden. We have no silver, no jewels.” She suddenly remembered the emerald bracelet William had given her for Christmas, and the few things she’d brought with her, like her engagement ring and the first Christmas gifts William had bought her in Paris. But she could hide those things, there weren’t many, and if she had to, she would give them up to save their lives. “We have nothing they want, Emanuelle. We are two women alone here, with a baby.” But nonetheless, she took one of William’s guns to bed with her that night, and slept with the baby in the bed next to her, and the gun under her pillow. She hid the jewelry under the floorboards in the baby’s room, and then nailed them down again expertly, and spread the Aubusson rug on top carefully.
Nothing happened for the next four days. She had just decided that they were as safe as they had been before, when a convoy of jeeps appeared, coming down the grande allée, and a flock of German soldiers in uniform jumped out of the jeeps and ran toward her. Two of the soldiers pointed guns at her and signalled to her to put her hands up, but she couldn’t because she was holding Phillip. She knew that Emanuelle was clearing away the breakfast things in the kitchen, and she prayed that she wouldn’t panic when she saw them.
They shouted at her to move, and she stood where they wanted her to but she tried to appear unruffled as she clung to Phillip with shaking hands, and spoke to them in English.
“What can I do to help you?” she asked quietly and with great dignity, trying to give her best imitation of William’s aristocratic and commanding demeanor.
They rattled at her in German for a little while, and then another soldier of obviously superior rank spoke to her. He had angry eyes, and a nasty little mouth, but Sarah tried to force herself not to notice.
“You are English?”
“American.” That seemed to stump him for a while, and he rattled on with the others in German, before speaking to her again.
“Who owns this house? This land? The farm?”
“I do.” She spoke firmly for all to hear, “I am the Duchess of Whitfield.”
More chattering, more German, more consultation. He waved her aside with the gun again. “We will go inside now.”
She nodded her agreement, and they went into the house, and as they did, she heard a scream from the kitchen. They had obviously startled Emanuelle, and two of the soldiers brought her out at gunpoint. She was crying as she ran toward Sarah, and Sarah put an arm around her and held her. They were both shaking as they stood, but nothing on Sarah’s face would have told them she was frightened. She was the portrait of a duchess.
A group of soldiers stood guarding them, as the others reconnoitered inside. And then they returned as a fresh line of jeeps came up the driveway. The first soldier in command came back to her then and asked her where her husband was. She told him he was away, and he showed her that he had found the gun she had concealed under her pillow. Sarah looked unimpressed and continued to watch them. And as she stood, a tall, thin officer emerged from one of the recently arrived jeeps and walked toward them. The man currency in charge spoke to him, showed him the gun, and waved at the women as he made his explanations, and then waved toward the house, obviously explaining what he had found there She also heard him say the word “Amerikaner.”
“You are American?” The new officer asked, in very clipped British tones, with only the faintest hint of German. He clearly spoke excellent English, and he looked very distinguished.
“I am. I am the Duchess of Whitfield.”
“Your husband is British?” he asked quietly, his eyes looking deep into hers. In another place, another time, she would have thought him handsome. And they probably would have met at a party. But this was not. It was war, and they both kept their distance.
“Yes, my husband is British” was all she answered.
“I see.” There was a long pause as he looked at her, and he was not indifferent to what he saw of her belly. “I regret to inform you, Your Grace,” he addressed her very politely, “that we must requisition your home. We will be bringing troops here.”
She felt a wave of shock and anger rip through her, but nothing showed as she nodded.
“I … I see …” Tears filled her eyes. She didn’t know what to say to him. They were taking her home, the house she had worked so hard on. And what if they never got it back again? If she lost it, or they destroyed it? “I…” She stumbled over the words, and he looked around him for a moment.
“Is there … a smaller house? A cottage? Somewhere where you and your family could reside, while we stay here?” She thought of the stables, but they were too large, and he would want them as barracks for his men as well, and then she thought of the caretaker’s cottage where Emanuelle lived and she had first stayed with William. It was certainly adequate for her, Emanuelle, Phillip, and the new baby.
“Yes, there is,” she said bleakly.
“May I invite you to stay there?” He bowed with Prussian dignity, and his eyes were gentle and apologetic. “I am very sorry to… to ask you to move now—” he glanced at the child that was to be born in August—“but I am afraid we are bringing a great many troops here.”
“I understand.” She tried to sound dignified, like a duchess, but suddenly she felt like a twenty-three-year-old girl, and she was very frightened.
“Do you feel that you would be able to move the necessary things by this evening?” he asked politely, and she nodded. She didn’t have that much there, mostly work clothes, and a few suits and dresses, and William didn’t have much there either. They had worked so hard, they hadn’t brought all their things over yet from England.
She couldn’t believe what she was doing as she packed their clothes, and a few other personal things as well. She didn’t have time to rescue her jewelry from under the floorboards, but she knew it was safe there. She put her clothes and William’s and the baby’s into valises, and Emanuelle helped her pack up all the kitchen things, and some food, and soap, and all their sheets and towels. It was more work than she thought, and the baby cried all day, as though he sensed that something terrible had happened. It was almost six o’clock when Emanuelle took the last load of things to the cottage, her own things were already there, and Sarah stood in her bedroom for the last time, the room where Phillip had been born, and their second child had been conceived, the room she had shared with William. It seemed a sacrilege to give it to them now, but she had no choice, and as she stood in the room, looking around hopelessly, one of the soldiers arrived, one she hadn’t seen, and urged her out of the room at gunpoint.
“Schnell!” he told her. Quickly! She went down the stairs with as much dignity as she could, but there were tears rolling down her cheeks, and at the bottom of the stairs, the soldier poked her belly with the point of his rifle, and there was a sudden roar, the voice of a man who could strike fear in a moment. The soldier jumped a mile and stepped backwards like lightning, as the commandant approached them. It was the same man who had spoken to her in excellent English that morning. And now he raged at his soldier in a voice that was so icy and so controlled that the man visibly trembled, and then he turned and bowed apologetically to Sarah before running from the building. The commandant looked at her unhappily, deeply upset by what had just happened. And in spite of her efforts to appear nonplussed, he could see that she was shaking.