But now, watching the dawn bring the hulking outlines of Wawel Castle into focus outside the train window for the second time in three months, Edith felt anything but proud. She felt dirty instead, soiled by her conscription into the effort of stripping personal belongings from their rightful owners and putting them into the hands of an evil man. Her heart sank.
What could she do? She could not afford to question or seem to defy the orders of Governor Frank, not if she valued her life. That much was clear. He had already been responsible for the death of scores of people; Edith imagined that he might consider her dispensable, too, in the end.
Edith thought of her father, and of Manfred, working quietly behind the scenes to turn the course of events in the last war. Surely there must be a way to stop this seemingly insane stripping of art across Europe. Who would help her? Surely Kai Mühlmann had the right connections and a seemingly genuine care for art, but she could never ask for his help. He had already made it clear to her that she was only to follow orders if she wanted to return home alive.
Resisters in the countryside. How could Edith find them? And where?
The train slowed into Kraków station, its whistle exhaling like a long-suffering sigh. Edith stood. On the train platform, a sheaf of newspaper lay discarded, wadded into a battered ball. Edith watched it skirt and skip among the icy drifts, until it finally fell lifeless into the pit where the train wheels creaked to a stop.
37
Cecilia
Milan, Italy
December 1490
AFTER HER PERFORMANCE FOR THE LATEST GATHERING of guests, Ludovico held Cecilia tightly to him as they watched wavering patterns on the ceiling above the bed, made by shifting waters in a small pool in the gardens below her private chambers.
“You have become more than the woman you once seemed, a woman who might help me legitimize my position in the face of those who oppose me.”
Cecilia propped herself up on her elbows to look into the black wells of Ludovico’s eyes. “Well, I did inform you that I wanted to rule this castle.” He buried his face in her neck then and ran his palm over her budding midsection. She wondered if he knew that this was why she worked so hard on her poetry and her vocal practice, why she had learned how to smile perfectly, and how to hold herself as a courtly lady. She wanted to be the woman of the castle and had known she needed to prove herself as valuable. And if she were to believe his words, then she was doing exactly as she had hoped. Surely, Ludovico saw how valuable she was now.
But in her mind, Cecilia began to count the nights that he came to her, realizing that, in spite of his apparent admiration, their trysts were becoming less frequent. Sometimes it was as if he was insatiable to her and she had learned how to take her own pleasures from him. But he was coming for her less and less often and it had frightened her. On the nights when she lay alone in her bed, those words he’d spoken—of how important she was becoming to him and to his court—seemed like a dream. She began to wonder what else she could do to keep herself in the good graces of this man whose whims cast the form of her fate.
38
Edith
Kraków, Poland
December 1939
AS EDITH STEPPED INTO THE VAST COURTYARD OF WAWEL Castle, she searched her mind for what else she could do to protect herself against this man whose whims seemed to cast the form of her fate.
Though she had spent time inside two fine Polish palaces in recent months, nothing prepared Edith for the massive scale of Hans Frank’s official headquarters at Wawel. A dozen SS soldiers marched her into the giant courtyard, with three stories of symmetrical arches open to the gray sky. It reminded Edith of one of the Italian Renaissance palaces that she had studied at university. Against the tremendous, flapping flags with Nazi swastikas, the freezing rain had transformed into small snowflakes, which drifted into icy puddles on the great stones. Men with machine guns stood stationed under the arches, looking down into the courtyard as she marched forward with the soldiers, up a wide, stone staircase.
The men accompanied her through a dizzying maze of corridors and courtyards, wending up broad, stone staircases. She let one of the young men carry her bag of belongings, but she insisted on carrying the portrait of Lady with an Ermine herself, gripping the leather strap on the wooden crate with a gloved hand.
Incongruously, at the top of the stairs she passed three children playing with marbles in the hallway, rolling them back and forth and delighting in the pretty colors they cast on the ground in the icy light. She admired their matching ensembles, green and gold lederhosen with yellow shirts underneath. Their curly blond hair made it almost impossible for her to know who was a boy and who was a girl. The older two, who looked close to the same age, passed the transparent spheres back to the younger one, a beautiful, clear-faced girl of about four years old.
Edith followed the men down the hall until the soldier in front of her stopped at a tall wooden door, undoubtedly the private offices of the governor-general. On either side stood an armed guard, as still as tin soldiers. The man in the front of Edith’s group extended his hand in salute, and one of the tin soldiers sprang to life, opening the door so that Edith could enter.
Behind a desk that seemed many times too large for its purpose, Edith recognized the now familiar, hawklike profile of Hans Frank in the dim light. At the sound of the door, Governor Frank raised his head and set his black eyes on her. He stood.
“Fräulein Becker,” he boomed, and he spread his arms wide as if he expected her to embrace him. She did not want to move too close. She only hoped she could hold her tongue long enough to make it back home safely. Edith nodded curtly. She noted that he was no longer looking at her, but that his eyes rested on the wooden crate in her hands.
“Please,” he said after a moment, “call me Hans. We are fellow Bavarians in a strange land, after all. Besides, I have a feeling that we will be seeing a lot of each other, so all the better to dispense with the formalities up front, don’t you agree?”
Edith nodded curtly again but refused to repeat his first name.
“I was about to make myself a drink,” he said. “What can I offer you?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
Hans shook his head and looked directly at her. “Polish vodka is surprisingly palatable. But I suppose that, after such a journey, you might prefer coffee instead.” Frank gestured to one of the soldiers standing near the door. “Have Renate bring Miss Becker a coffee.” The soldier clicked his heels and exited.
Frank went to the bar cart near the window and began to pour clear liquid out of a decanter. He glanced again at the crate.
“I am eager to see her again,” he said. To Edith’s dismay, Frank grasped the leather handle from Edith’s hand. He placed the crate on his desk. “Open it,” he said to one of the soldiers standing at the door. The man sprang into action.
“I understand that you are an expert in Italian Renaissance works of art, Fräulein Becker?”
“I have worked to restore the work of artists of many eras and places,” she said. “Memling, Friedrich, many others.”
He swallowed nearly all his Polish vodka in one swig and then looked at her directly. “Then I see that we have many interests in common. And that you have a good eye.”