Without another word, he ran in the direction of the commanding officer. Edith opened the door and put one foot on the ground.
The Polish insurgents who had fired at their car were now lined up on the side of the road, most of them on their knees. Those who refused to kneel were shot first. She watched the men fall, holding in her shock.
She scanned the line. There were eleven men lined up there, two of them already on the ground dead, shot through the forehead. Had they escaped from the encampment? Were they trying to rescue prisoners? The men in the encampment had looked helpless. And these men were little more than walking corpses, their eyes sunken, their bodies skeletal, their clothes ragged and covered in ash, anger and desperation in their eyes.
Edith waited and watched, unmoving, trying to keep her eyes from the line of men about to be executed. She heard the German soldiers yelling at the insurgents. None of the men responded. They were on the ground, their hands behind their heads, their eyes down. None of them looked up, though Edith could hear the soldiers demanding that they do so. She heard the soldiers laughing at the Polish men, hurling vile insults.
One of the soldiers paced back and forth in front of the nine men. Some noise to the left made Edith turn and look. Two more German soldiers approached, a struggling Pole between them. They were gripping his arms and shoved him toward the line of his countrymen. He stumbled a bit, kicking up some dust. He spun around and tried to tackle the soldier who had shoved him and was immediately shot by the other one.
Edith closed her eyes. She heard the Pole hit the ground.
“Stop it!” Edith screamed, but her voice seemed lost in the chaos.
Without another warning, the soldier who had almost been tackled walked down the line of insurgents, shooting each one in the head.
“Stop—please!” Edith had to turn her head away. The insurgents didn’t look like they were physically strong enough to pose any threat to the German soldiers. They were executed as if they were animals. Each one who dared to look straight ahead or into the eyes of the German soldiers had hatred embedded deeply there, easy to detect, though it was mixed with the familiar look of desperation.
Edith retched. Her Heinrich. Was he among those shooting these helpless, sick, poor people?
Edith looked down at her hands, balling them up into fists. Was she any different from these men with guns? After all, she was aiding in the looting of homes all across Poland and the rest of Europe. The men jumped back into the armored car. Edith felt dirty, not wanting to sit beside any of them.
“There is more fire ahead, sir,” another soldier told the driver. “Turn around. The insurgents may have planted mines in the road. You have to go back.”
Edith felt the driver turn the car around sharply, tires lurching in the ruts in the road, and they headed back to the quiet estate.
During the ride, Edith’s ears rang with the aftershock of the gunfire, and she was filled with horror. She kept thinking about what Kai Mühlmann had told her: that Heinrich would not be the same man when he returned. What kind of man would he be? What kind of man could stand in front of those helpless prisoners, look them in the eye, and execute them? And what kind of woman would she be, if she were lucky enough to make it out of this situation alive?
46
Cecilia
Milan, Italy
May 1491
WHAT KIND OF WOMAN WOULD SHE BE, CECILIA THOUGHT as the midwife ran her palms over Cecilia’s bulging midsection, if she were lucky enough to make it out of this situation alive?
Cecilia studied the fading, colored faces painted in the vaults above her bed, waiting. The midwife was a gray-haired, serious-looking woman with cold, smooth hands. She worked slowly, reading her body as if Cecilia had potential as a racehorse: poking, prodding, listening, watching for signs.
Even if she did survive the birth, Cecilia thought, surely her days in the ducal palace were numbered anyway, unless she continued to defend the position she had earned, continued to prove her worth to Ludovico. And if she were sent away instead, what then? Perhaps none of it mattered in the end. Every few days she saw a little blood. At first, she had waited and wished it away. But when it only continued, she had finally confided in Lucrezia, and the midwife had appeared.
Finally, the midwife stood and regarded Cecilia with a lined brow. “The next few weeks are the most critical,” she said. “You have already seen blood. If you see it again, you must stay in bed. You must not get up for any reason. Understood?”
Cecilia nodded, thinking of her vocal practice in preparation for the next string of events planned in the castle. “And how do I make sure that the birth goes . . . as planned?”
But the midwife only pursed her lips. “I do not want to tell you a lie, my lady. No two births are the same. There is no guaranteed outcome. Ultimately, nature will take its course; I am only an instrument. Another midwife might give you false assurances, but I only tell the truth.” The woman studied Cecilia’s face for a long moment, then gave her leg a squeeze, a small gesture that Cecilia knew was unearned. “Have your girl call for me when the time comes.”
47
Edith
Outside Puławy, Poland
January 1941
AFTER HER HARSH FORAY INTO THE MIDDLE OF CONFLICT, Edith was more determined than ever to exercise what little control she had in putting things right. She spent her days cataloging objects, duplicating her ledger, doing her best not to dwell on the fact that she had lost hope that she would find Heinrich in that desolate country beyond the walls of the estate.
As time wore on, the faces in the country estate changed. Men appeared, then disappeared. Those who remained looked as if all the life had been sucked out of them. It was no wonder that the men looked gaunt and dark. The newspapers had not reported it yet, but Edith knew from the rumblings of the soldiers in the palace that Hitler had invaded Russia. The Russians were no longer allies; they were enemies. And the estate was not far distant from the Russian border. Now, in addition to fighting a tough band of Polish insurgents, there were also Russian threats, the soldiers had told her.
After witnessing the roadside shooting, Edith did her best to stay to herself on the lower level, to drown out the worries about the hellish devastation that she knew stretched for miles around her in all directions. She could not function if she stopped to wonder how many camps there were, if there were any towns left standing, how many Polish families’ homes had been emptied of their contents, how many people were packed into cattle cars. All she could do, she thought, was to record everything she saw, everything that passed through her hands, until she could figure out what to do with it that might make a difference.
Edith tore out a blank page from the back of her ledger and began to copy the details of a small oil painting.
Subject: Landscape with shepherds
Artist: 17th-century Dutch, possibly a follower of van Ruysdael
Support: Walnut panel, .32 meters by .63. Equal members joined on the horizontal. Signs of damage from boring insects, no longer active.
Ground: White, very thin. Broken in places, probably during transport.
Paint: Oil, thinly applied with translucent film and pencil drawing barely visible underneath.
Cradle: Low, pine. Warped. Broken upper corners . . .
Destination: Shipped to the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, via train, Manifest #3467