Edith’s eyes ran over the last few items that were now held in Frank’s personal estate: a handful of valuable rugs and other decorative objects, several important paintings. Edith ran her finger across the first entry in the list: Da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine. She felt relieved that this picture, at least, remained in her care.
Meanwhile, Edith had been left idle. Frank’s old family estate hardly needed decorating. Brigitte had rumbled away in a car surrounded by armed soldiers, taking the younger children to visit family elsewhere in Bavaria. Only Norman and his father had been left behind. Norman, whose English was nearly as competent as Edith’s, eschewed her offer to work with him on his lessons.
What was a “lady conservator” to do? Edith bided her time, trying to make herself invisible in the lakeside estate, hoping that Frank would leave her alone. Edith had double-checked the lock on the bedroom door before allowing herself to slide the inventories out from the creaking bedsprings.
But now, the strange sound of an English-speaking radio announcer, wafting through her open window from another place in the house, lured Edith from the bed. She moved quietly toward the sound, her feet soft on the floor. She went to the window and opened its tall pane wider, looking out to the vast expanse of spring green, sweeping down to the lake and its waters sparkling in the afternoon sun.
Edith strained to make out the words. She leaned over the balcony and looked toward one of the windows below. Norman’s room. It stood directly below hers. Sometimes, she knew, like most teenage boys he liked to spend time alone where no one would bother him. But now, he was listening to the radio with his window open, the volume turned up loudly. He knew the family was gone and she was the only person here besides himself, his father, and the staff. Was he doing this purposefully so that she would hear what was being said?
Edith began to pay close attention to the words. It was British English, she felt sure of it. Edith looked up at the sky, a feeling of apprehension sweeping over her.
Hitler. Shot dead.
Had she heard that right?
The announcer was speaking quickly, but then she heard the word Munich and strained harder.
Munich. The Allies had already entered Munich. The Americans and the British were making their way through the streets of her hometown.
Edith’s heart beat heavy and hard against her chest. Papa. Troops were probably bombing left and right, soldiers making their way through the city, leaving bodies in their wake. If the Americans were anything like the German soldiers, there would be a lot of bloodshed.
She turned away from the balcony when she heard Norman closing his window. Had he opened it for her to hear?
She needed to leave, to get home now. But how? Frank would not let her go. She knew his whereabouts, and what he had been doing all these months. She might easily turn him in.
Edith scanned the landscape beyond the edges of the lake. Were there Allied troops out there? Would they destroy da Vinci’s Lady? Was there something she could do to save it? Edith’s mind raced. Should she stay, and tell the foreign forces everything she knew? She had spent the last years doing what was in her power to save priceless works of art, but now, she thought mostly about saving her own life. Besides, she could hardly trust that these foreign soldiers would treat her like anything but an enemy.
Edith folded the ragged pages of her inventories as flatly as she could, and tucked them into the waistband of her skirt, where they were barely hidden by her light jacket. She gently opened the bedroom door and tiptoed into the dark hallway.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she considered the location of a door to the outside where she was least likely to attract notice from the kitchen staff or from Frank’s armed guards who yawned and paced along the lakeside.
The door leading to the vegetable garden, she thought, tracing the side of the stair treads so that they would not creak as she descended. That one would allow her to duck into the trees along the wall that led to the main road.
But just as she turned onto the dark stair landing, Hans Frank appeared as if out of thin air. He stopped, grasping the handrail, and set his dark eyes on her. Instinctively, her hand flew to her waistband, then she froze.
“Where are you going, fräulein?”
68
Dominic
Neuhaus am Schliersee, Germany
May 1945
DOMINIC HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN THAT THERE WAS beauty in the world. Even the priceless beauty of the artworks he’d seen saved had been marred by damp and, at best, stuffed into a storehouse instead of displayed in a place where people might appreciate them.
But the Bavarian countryside thrown open before him was exhilarating, making him ache for a big sheet of paper that he could draw on with wild abandon. He would depict the incredible lines of it first; the long, sweeping, gentle curves of the green hills; the occasional view of sharp Alpine peaks in the distance, white-capped and blue-sided; the points of the conifers that clustered in the valleys. The sand-colored road that the convoy followed wound through the hills as naturally as if it had been scraped softly out of the grass by two giant fingers. And this late in spring, everything seemed to be blooming white and yellow on the flanks of the hills. Here and there, little lakes lay basking in the sun, like pieces of sky that had wandered from above and curled up to sleep in the hollows of the warm earth.
He was free to enjoy it, too. Helmet hooked over his knee, he allowed the warm breeze to push its fingers through his close-cropped black hair. He could hardly believe it was real. Only days ago, he’d been facing the horrors of Dachau and the gritty reality of bombed-out Munich. But the countryside south of the city felt like paradise. He was almost worried to look too closely in case his focus would shatter it like a dream. His rifle lay over his knees, his hands idle on the barrel.
There had been almost no fighting since they’d entered Munich. News of the Führer’s death and Berlin’s fall had spread through the country, sending the German army into disarray and making the German people ever bolder. The other news that had spread fast was that the American soldiers were friendly to civilians. People came crawling out of the hiding places that had gotten them through the awful shelling—barns, basements, and bomb shelters—to run behind the liberators, shouting in excited German and waving white rags. Kids quickly discovered that the American soldiers had small sugar rations, and they came begging, their eyes wide and mischievous. Many of the soldiers were fathers, and few could resist those hungry, eager eyes.
Dominic leaned back against the side of the Jeep as it trundled on. It was a blessed relief to be traveling through this sunlit countryside, enjoying a respite from the terror and desperation, but he still felt regret that he was not with the Monuments Men. Neuschwanstein Castle, not far from where they were now, had been captured by the Allies. Dominic had heard the news that inside the castle, the Monuments Men had discovered a hoard of art that, in quality and numbers, rivaled even the treasures they’d found at Siegen: sculptures by Rodin, Fragonard’s portraits, masterpieces by Vermeer. He wondered if he would ever see such stunning artworks as he’d found in Siegen again and felt a pang of regret that he still hadn’t set eyes on a da Vinci. If only he could have stayed with the Monuments Men long enough to have uncovered such an incredible find.
The convoy crested a little hill and Dominic looked down at a heart-lifting sight. Just ahead lay another of the mountain lakes that covered the countryside. A soft breeze ruffled its surface, making it the deepest blue he could imagine, creased like a luxurious swath of fabric. Waves of shifting grass interspersed with wildflowers rippled on either side of the road as the convoy continued toward the shimmering lake. The smells of spring rose all around them; crushed grass, sweet nectar, dust kicked up by the convoy, all with a sunbaked sweetness that made Dominic almost drowsy with contentment. If only Sally could see this.