Dominic smiled as his heart sank. Home had never seemed so far away.
83
Dominic
Munich, Germany
April 1946
HIS RUCKSACK WAS A ROUGH SURFACE FOR SKETCHING, but Dominic had learned to draw on just about anything—the dirt, his knees, even the stock of his bolt-action rifle. His pencil worked quickly across the paper, pulling together the shape of a young woman. His unsuspecting model stood on the train platform in the crisp chill of the spring morning, the light behind her silhouetting her curves; the gentle slope of her hip in her long wool skirt, the flip of her hair at her chin.
Edith was chewing the inside of her lip again. She clutched a wooden clipboard in her arms, heedless of the cold that tugged at her wool jacket as she checked the shipping manifests for the hoard heading back to Poland. The line of freight cars seemed endless; it stretched into the distance, the sight of the boxy silhouettes still twisting Dominic’s stomach a little. Much as he had enjoyed working at the Central Collecting Point, he was not sorry to be leaving Munich. Hopefully, he was approaching his last stop in Europe.
He turned his pencil sideways a little in a grip Edith had taught him, adding light and shadow to the sketch. It was one of the last blank pages left in his sketchbook. The book contained dozens of copies of Lady with an Ermine, whom he had greeted privately early that morning. She was one of the very few things he would miss about Europe. She was not, however, the only lady he knew he would be missing, a thought that he pushed aside.
Instead, he thought of the letter from Sally that he kept tucked in his shirt pocket, close to his heart. The best thing about the end of the war so far was the mail running again. He had sent so many drawings to Sally, showing her his life in charcoal and paper; drawings of the men, the buildings, and mostly, the art. Tucking each of them neatly into an envelope, writing his home address on them and sending them back to America felt like perhaps home was real after all. Like it hadn’t just been a happy dream in the past that he’d woken up from into a chilly and inhospitable real world, where he was shunted from place to place on the whim of those in command.
He was pleased to be leaving Munich, but every part of him screamed that he was heading in the wrong direction. Instead of westward and home, this train was taking him east—to Poland, with a line of freight cars that would return the nation’s treasures. He knew from the frantic script and teardrop stains on the paper that Sally was suffering just as much as he was.
Dominic took one last look at the quick study he had made of Edith. He wanted to remember her like this: smart, efficient, naturally beautiful. He folded it and held it in one hand as he tucked the sketchbook neatly into his pack with the other.
Leaning against a wall in the shadows of the train station, he watched as workers carried the last few items once held at the former Nazi headquarters. They had spent days carefully packing up the paintings, sculptures, books, and manuscripts into padded crates and loading them tenderly into the train cars. All these were treasures that the Nazis had cruelly robbed Poland of; all of them were headed back home. Dominic wished he could be headed home, too.
It had been almost two years since he’d landed on the beach at Normandy. Cecilia would be running around by now. He had missed all that: her first words, her first steps, her development from tiny baby to a little human being with her own thoughts and ideas and expressions. With a pang, he realized he had never heard his almost three-year-old daughter speak. He closed his eyes tightly, remembering the words of Sally’s last letter to him.
Cecilia asked when Daddy was coming home yesterday, she had written. I can’t wait to have an answer for her.
Dominic looked up. The wind caught at Edith’s skirt, pressing it against her shapely figure; he allowed his eye to run down the curve of her hip. It was time to let her go, to leave her here in her homeland; she wanted life to return to normal just as much as he did. Major Estreicher approached her on the loading dock, carrying a manifest of his own. They consulted each other’s papers and nodded to each other. Dominic knew that that was his signal to go. Major Estreicher turned and beckoned to him, then headed to the train to give the go-ahead for departure.
Dominic checked around himself to ensure none of the pages had fallen out of his sketchbook and approached the train. Edith stood on the loading dock, the manifest hanging from her hand. Suddenly the look in her eyes was desolate as she watched him coming nearer. She stood forlorn and alone.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Cecilia will be in good hands. You can trust me.”
“I already trust you with Cecilia,” she said. “You saved her once. I know you will get her home.”
Dominic’s duffel bag had already been loaded on the train. He glanced west once before turning to Edith. For a few long moments, the two stood in awkward silence. At a loss for words, Dominic finally held out the folded sketch in his hand.
She took it from him, unfolded it, and studied it. She always had something to say about his sketches; for every compliment there was a balancing criticism, pushing him to do better. But not today. She smiled up at him with tears in the corners of her eyes, trapped by the soft prison of her lashes.
“It’s perfect,” she said.
She had been his friend in a dark time. But Dominic’s heart was yearning to be back home, to a girl who had been raising two babies without him, a girl who had been waiting patiently for years. He held out his hand to Edith and watched her smile turn sad.
“Travel safely, soldier,” she said. “I hope you get home to your wife and your daughters soon.” Then, Edith reached into the pocket of her coat and produced a small, brand-new pad of paper. “Here’s a little something to occupy you on the train,” she said. “You should keep drawing, you know.”
Dominic thought his voice would fail him if he spoke now. So he just nodded and smiled at Edith. Then he turned away, jumping up into the train as the whistle blew. As it rattled away down the track, the rhythmic clank and chuck of its pistons driving them ever farther, his last impression of Munich was of Edith’s silhouette on the train platform. She looked just as he had found her on a Bavarian hilltop all those months ago. All alone. Strong. And brave.
84
Cecilia
Verme Palace, outside Milan, Italy
October 1491
“ATTENTO. ATTENTO!”
From the second-floor window, Cecilia watched her mother wave a plump hand under the nose of a manservant who was loading a small crate into the back of a carriage. Her mother fanned herself, following the slinking youth back through the door of the palace, then heckled him again all the way back to the carriage. Her mother resembled a bothersome magpie, scolding and nipping at his heels as the poor man walked back and forth with Cecilia’s worldly goods.
Cecilia could only shake her head and chuckle at the sight.
Even though Cecilia was leaving the protection of Ludovico il Moro with much more than what she came with, from the high vantage point of her window, her worldly possessions seemed meager. There was a trunk full of dresses, a large box filled with hair adornments and jewels, another one with shoes of satin, leather, and velvet. A shawl made of fox. A small box of wooden toys and hand-sewn animals for Cesare.
Then, the surprise. On a crisp morning, her mother.