The House by the Lake (12 page)

“How so?” Virginia said, sweeping into the conversation in a green silk dress that hugged her perfect figure. “Chocolate is always a good idea.”

Isabelle chuckled and popped the delicacy into her mouth. She took Max’s hand and led him across the room, toward the double doors that opened into the small dining room.

“You know, I think this is my favorite thing in the entire house,” she said, leaning in toward a tiny triptych on the small sideboard. The decorated panels illustrated the Christmas story, and the triptych was lit by a single candle in front of it.

“Wait until you see the church later today,” Max said. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, the backs of his fingers lingering on her face for a moment.

Later that afternoon, everyone had changed into their festive clothes, layered with fur coats and mittens, hats, and scarves against the freezing cold. A path through the snow had been cleared along the curved road so that the family and all the servants could walk to the village church. Isabelle had her gloved hand tucked warmly into Max’s. On her other side, Virginia chatted away with Didi and Jo, their high-spirited conversation ringing through the crisp, otherwise silent air.

“My parents are so happy that I’ve met you,” Max said, keeping his voice quiet against the other loud chatter.

Isabelle felt a warmth spread through her body. It didn’t matter how cold it was in the snow. She leaned in to rest her head on his shoulder and sensed that they were smiling at the same time.

Siegel’s main square was crowded with villagers. Darkness had fallen—it was nearly four o’clock—and some of them held lanterns. The villagers shook hands with Max, and when he introduced them to Isabelle, she understood the warmth behind their greetings perfectly well—even though they were speaking German and she could not decipher a word.

Max held Isabelle’s hand through the church service. She had to force herself to stop gazing around in awe. Lights blazed in the chapel. Christmas trees taken from the forests that very day decorated the little church. Pine scented the air, and a multitude of candles flickered and danced. The Christmas story was read aloud by a group of village children, who stood in front of the wooden Nativity scene.

Isabelle began to relax. Everything seemed to be perfect. Out here in the countryside, it was hard to imagine the soaring unemployment rates, the desperation of the people, their need to turn to someone like Hitler for strength. There wasn’t any hint of that right here, right now, and it was hard to marry the new Germany with these proud folk and their traditions of old. Isabelle forced herself to push these troubling thoughts aside, just for one day.

Once the service had ended and easy conversations had been exchanged between the locals and Max’s family, it was time to walk back to the Schloss.

“This is the best part of the day,” Max said. “When I was a child, it was magical.”

Every window in Schloss Siegel shone out into the darkness. The porch was lit up. The front door had been opened wide, and the servants were gathered in the entrance hall.

“Watch,” Max said. His eyes followed his father, who was making his way to the double doors that led to the salon. These were closed, and a hush fell over the crowd in the entrance hall.

Max’s father made a short speech in German. Isabelle looked up at Max, and he smiled at her, his eyes crinkling in that way that she loved.

There was a pause before the sound of hand bells pealed through the closed doors of the salon. The notes flew up and down as if in delicious anticipation of the next wave of magic that was about to envelope this day. Everyone stayed silent. When the rendition had finished, Max’s father stood still for a moment, then turned and threw open the double doors. Everyone was quiet for a second before gasps of delight took over, and the family and their guests entered the gorgeous room.

A magnificent Christmas tree glittered before them. Elsa, Max’s mother, had spent the afternoon with Nadja decorating the handsome spruce that nearly touched the tall ceiling. Cascades of silver hung from its branches, catching the light of the numerous white candles. Angels danced between gold, silver, red, and blue balls, their wings appearing to float in the candlelight. A star sat atop all of this.

Max’s mother went to the grand piano. A hush fell over the room as Elsa started to play “Stille Nacht,” and the guests sang along.

Then the chandeliers were turned on. The big table at the foot of the tree groaned with gifts. Two new bicycles were propped against the table, a shining sled stood at one end, and a pair of brand-new skis leaned against it.

A few hours later, Isabelle was not sure that she had ever had such a perfect evening in her life—let alone a Christmas like this one. The men had removed to the smoking room, and she found herself sitting next to Nadja in the salon. The other girl was staring at the tree, her brow furrowed.

Nadja did not seem to be the sort to place herself anywhere unless she had a purpose—and they had formed an uneasy truce in the last few days. Nadja, almost grudgingly, appeared to have accepted Isabelle. They had not had any long conversations, or even much talk, but at dinner the other night, Nadja had smiled at a comment Isabelle had made about Max. That had been enough. Isabelle had smiled back straightaway—and Nadja had not frowned.

“You know,” Nadja said, “I can’t understand Max.”

“Oh?”

“No. If Max is going to support Hitler, then why not just do it?”

“It’s not as simple as that, surely,” Isabelle said.

Nadja sat up. “Yes, it is.”

“But—” Were things so black and white?

“He’s scared,” Nadja insisted.

“I think he’s just been getting informed.” Isabelle chose her words with care.

Nadja looked at her with a new expression. “Maybe, but I think that fear and doubt are not helpful companions when one is facing inevitable change. You need to tackle it, head-on. He’ll have to take a stand.”

But when it came to Nazism, wasn’t doubt a useful companion? “Surely there are some exceptions to your rule.”

“Do you hold such principles in relation to Max? Do you hold back, Isabelle? Are you scared?” Nadja asked, her voice deadly quiet.

“It is hardly the same thing,” Isabelle said. She felt rattled. Max’s sister had gotten under her skin. Again. But she would hold her ground.

“I think, I do hope . . .” Her thoughts trailed off. What was she saying? She had to be careful. “I have faith that Max will do the right thing by his country,” she said in the end. She sounded too vague. It hadn’t been what she wanted to say. Suddenly Isabelle felt the enormity of the situation in which the German people found themselves.

“You are not clear, either,” Nadja said, but she sounded more matter-of-fact than anything else.

Something changed in Isabelle’s perception of Nadja. Perhaps her cold, clinical exterior masked real passion. Isabelle thought before she spoke.

“I know he wants to help make things better, Nadja. I know that he hates to see people suffering, and I know how much he wants prosperity for his country. But surely you can see that how this is achieved is the most important thing. There are ways of doing things that are not harmful.”

“Sometimes sacrifices have to be made,” Nadja said, her voice tinged with anger.

So Isabelle’s instincts had been right about Max’s sister. While Max thought things through, Nadja saw things in black and white.

“But don’t you think despicable acts are wrong under any circumstances?” Isabelle kept her voice so low that even were they the only two in the room, Nadja might still have had trouble hearing her.

But the other girl was listening. “It is impossible for you to understand. You are not German,” Nadja said.

Isabelle took in a breath. “Okay. I grant you that,” she said. “But I love your brother.”

Nadja flinched next to her. “Then you had best advise him to be careful,” Nadja said, her voice cold. “If anything were to happen to him, it would be insupportable for the family and the village.”

Suddenly Isabelle felt faint. And the room was too warm.

Virginia was sitting with a lively group of guests near the Christmas tree. Isabelle patted Nadja on the arm, told her that she was going to get something cool to drink, and headed across the room toward her friend.

Virginia seemed to take in Isabelle’s white face in one glance. She stood up. “Tired, darling?”

“I think I need to go upstairs,” Isabelle managed.

She had to sleep tonight.

When she placed her foot on the first step, the men came out of the smoking room, Max in the lead.

“Isabelle?” he called. “Darling?” But his voice became lost in a fog. Isabelle allowed Virginia to guide her.

“She’s tired,” Virginia said. The way she spoke English with an American accent sounded reassuring, confident. “It’s been a charming day. Thank you.”

“Go and rest, darling,” Max said, his voice intimate, close, in the way she loved.

“One step at a time, honey.” Virginia’s voice now. “None of us knows what’s going to happen, and the scary thing is that none of us can do a thing about it.”

Isabelle followed Virginia along the heated hallway to her bedroom. She’d tried so hard to keep the harsh realities of the world at bay today, but the world had a way of rushing in at the most inopportune moments—and she couldn’t help thinking about the countless people in this country whose hearts and minds must be torn apart by it all.

CHAPTER NINE

Schloss Siegel, 2010

Anna had two options, neither of them very promising. The first was to call Max and ask him if he could remember the exact location of his ring. Option two was to pull up the floorboards in his bedroom. Calling Max was out of the question; he would be asleep. For the millionth time, Anna kicked herself for not having pressed him for more details as to the precise hiding spot of the ring. As for option two—the house was not hers to destroy. It would take hours to remove a floor; doing so was clearly beyond her capabilities, anyway, and probably Wil’s too.

Wil was sifting through a cardboard box that he had brought back with him after the workmen had departed, having removed the layer of old linoleum, inspected the bare floor, and informed Wil and Anna that there was nothing wrong with it at all.

“Okay, Anna,” he said. “This is where we get professional.”

Anna looked up. “Oh?” she asked, unable to stop the smile that was forming on her lips. Wil looked so funny, frowning at tools as he pulled them out one by one. Anna had to bite her bottom lip to stop herself from giggling.

“I borrowed some things from a friend,” he said.

“Handy,” Anna quipped.

Wil pulled out a pair of protective gloves, a claw hammer, and a small black box.

“Scanner,” Wil said, looking impressed with his own words.

“What are you scanning?”

“We run it along the floor to check for pipes and cables, of course.” He grinned.

“Sorry. Of course we do.”

He brandished the claw hammer. “And this.”

“Right.”

“A utility bar,” Wil said, pulling one out of the box.

“I can see that you’re quite at home with this . . . stuff.” Anna’s lips twitched.

Wil stopped and looked at her. “I’m not entirely incompetent with a saw.”

Anna chuckled. “Of course you’re not, handyman. Where do we start?”

“Clearly you can see that I’ve brought all the tools, Anna. You have to be the brains.”

Anna had no idea. She scanned the floor. The boards offered no hint of where to start.

“Well,” she said. “If Max didn’t cut an obvious square out of the floor, which clearly he didn’t, then he would have hidden the ring at the easiest access point.”

“Brilliant,” Wil said. “You see, this is why you are here.” He leaned against the window, where he was framed against the curious old newspaper cuttings that half-covered the glass. The light from the top half highlighted his stunning features.

“So,” Anna said, trying to ignore his pose. He was hardly standing in such an alluring posture for her amusement, was he? They had work to do. Anna moved across the floor, her eyes scanning the boards. “We should begin with one of the shorter boards. See,” she said, stopping in the middle of the room. “Some of the boards are cut in half. You’d think Max would have chosen one of these.”

“You’d also think that the room would have been covered with a rug across its center. Let’s start with a floorboard near the edge of the room.”

Wil ran the scanner over the area around the short floorboard closest to where he stood. No sound came from the machine.

“I guess that means we can start. It does seem a shame to cut these beautiful wooden boards away, though.” Anna said. “And one more thing.”

Wil stopped, poised with the utility bar over the floorboards. “Just one?” he asked, his eyes looking wicked now.

Anna walked over to the window. What was going to happen once they found the ring—if they found it? Finding it might make Max feel better, but its discovery would not fix any of the problems in the village. The state of the place was not sitting well with her. But what could she do?

“Tell me,” he said.

“Perhaps it’s just because Max is in the hospital. Maybe that’s making it worse,” Anna said, half talking to herself. “Just go ahead. Sorry I stopped you.”

“No. Come on.”

Anna shook her head.

“What is it?”

Anna stared out at the forgotten garden. “It’s just that everything is so wrong. The Schloss can’t just stay here like this forever. It will decay. It won’t just be abandoned, it’ll become a . . .”

“Ruin,” Wil said, sounding close.

Anna nodded. “It’s not too late to save it now, but in a few years’ time, it might well be. And in a few years, Max probably won’t be here either. So . . .”

“Okay.” He put the utility bar down. “First, I know this is hard, but I wouldn’t advise you to waste your time trying to save the past—there’s nothing you can do. If anything could be done, my grandfather has already done it and failed. I saw it eat away at him. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

Anna let out a sigh. “I don’t think I can stand it.”

“Anna,” he said, “how about we just find this ring today? I’ll talk to you about the Schloss, if you like, later—but—you have to be realistic.”

Anna folded her arms around her body. What was there to say? Realistic was her middle name. What had gotten into her? She accepted things. That was what she did. And then she got on with her work. Why was she so agitated here, now? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t dealt with significant blows before in her life.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m just letting it get to me, that’s all,” she managed.

Wil caught her eye, then looked back at the floor. He levered the short floorboard up with the utility bar—it came away easily. Anna walked over to stand next to him. As she peered down at the dusty area under the floor, something strange happened. For some reason, another thought, another feeling, just as strong as the last one, flew into her mind.

This had been Max’s room.

How many secrets, how many memories lurked in the dusty narrow space under the floorboards? And how often had Max closed his eyes and dreamed about this very room in the last seventy years? He would never come back. Never see it again. He had lost his chance. The life he had planned and the life he had lived could hardly have been more different. And he had chosen not to come back. He had made that choice. Why? What, exactly, were his regrets?

How suddenly Max’s childhood life had disappeared. And yet look at all this! Look at this Schloss, steeped in history, a witness to it all. What could possibly have caused him to want to leave and never return, making him turn away from everything and everyone he knew? What had happened—and why?

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Anna said quietly. She turned back to face the room.

“I think we should just keep going.” Wil moved to another spot in the room, ran the scanner over the floor.

After he had done this several times, he sat back on his heels as if he were waiting for her to tell him what they should do next. One thing was for certain—she didn’t want to leave today without Max’s ring. But she was also aware that she was taking up Wil’s precious time.

“I don’t want to steal your entire day,” she said. Her words came out softer than she had intended—almost seeming to linger in the eerie space. It was the silence, the stillness, that seemed to catch things out in this old palace. Past sensations and feelings drifted like forgotten ghosts in the silent atmosphere.

Was it because Schloss Siegel was surrounded by whispering forest? Was it because the entire place was abandoned that there was this sense of something brewing in the air?

Anna couldn’t help but feel the old palace was waiting.

She had a terrible sense that the someone it waited for was her.

“You’re not taking up my time,” Wil said, shaking his head. “Let’s keep going.”

Anna nodded. “Okay, and thanks.”

“Oh, I’m in my element.” Wil grinned, pulling out his scanner yet again. Soon they were halfway around the room. They had set up a routine. He would open up a section of floor, and she would investigate what was underneath, looking for anything that might be hidden there.

The time seemed to whisk by. When the sun moved, it seemed to do so suddenly—causing shadows to stretch across the floor. Anna had become so absorbed in the task at hand, so involved, that nothing else seemed to matter. Fortunately, Wil seemed equally focused. He had not once complained about the time or the fact that it was looking more and more likely that either Max’s ring was so well hidden that they would never find it or someone had removed it already.

It was just after four o’clock in the afternoon when he sat back on his heels. “Anna,” he said softly.

She was crouched over the last place they had looked. Something had caught her eye as she was about to put the floorboards back in place, and she had begun poking around in the dirt. She had become used to the tingling hope that her fingers might hit upon something, maybe a little box, but once again, her hands clutched at nothing except gray dust.

Anna looked up when he spoke. She walked over to him without a word.

“You do this, Anna,” he said, moving away slightly so that she could lean in over the latest spot where he had removed the floor.

And there it was. A velvet box—velvet that must once have been a deep navy blue but was now faded with age and dust. The fabric was worn in places, threadbare down to the pale yet valiant old wood.

Anna reached in. Though her hands were steady, her insides shook, dancing to some old song that had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with Max and the girl he had loved.

Schloss Siegel, Christmas 1934

Max stood next to Isabelle the morning after Christmas as they served themselves from the silverware that held breakfast.

“What are your plans for today?” he asked.

Isabelle smiled. “Plans? Why, I think I’m free,” she laughed.

“What happened last night?” Max was so close that if she leaned her head a few inches it would rest on his shoulder.

She couldn’t tell him the truth about her unsettling conversation with Nadja. “Too much excitement, I suspect,” she said.

Max was quiet, and Isabelle knew that she hadn’t fooled him, but he changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I’ve been far too self-absorbed while you’ve been here. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Isabelle laughed. “I’m having a wonderful time.”

“I want to take you out on a sleigh ride this morning. Just the two of us. Sound all right?”

Isabelle felt as if he had offered to fly her to the French Riviera for cocktails. “Yes, sounds all right,” she said, not bothering to keep the smile from her lips.

An hour later, a maid helped her put those elephant trotters on her feet again, and she found herself clasping Max as they made their way out the front door to the sleigh that waited at the bottom of the front steps. It was silent outside, and the sun shone with a bright clarity that caused the snow-covered garden to gleam.

Once Isabelle was safely in the sleigh, covered with blankets, her hands warm in mittens, and Max right next to her, she found herself relaxing properly for the first time in days. The frozen white landscape was not only silent, but peaceful as well.

Max drove her through the park, around the frozen lake with its little snow-covered boat moored to a short jetty, past the orangeries, and into the forest, where a sleigh trail covered the path that Max said he walked or rode along in the summer.

It was easy to picture elves and imaginary creatures out here in the woods.

Max laughed out loud when Isabelle told him so. “You are so funny,” he said.

“Well, I’m not the first person to think that way, clearly.”

“No, I grant you that.” He brought the sleigh to a stop in a clearing. “I want to show you something,” he said. He helped her out of the sleigh and supported her elbow as he led her a few steps into the trees.

Once they were inside the forest, something became visible that could not be seen from the path. A small building rose up, seeming to grow out of the snow in all sorts of pretty shapes—a turret sat atop a round tower, and a small curved wooden front door with a smart black handle marked the entrance.

“Oh, you are joking,” Isabelle said, reaching her gloved hand out to touch the folly’s pale stone. “Now this really could be in the Brothers Grimm.”

“My grandfather built it,” he said. “For my grandmother, whom he adored all his life. She was English—they met in Paris.”

“Oh,” Isabelle said, turning to Max.

“And then he brought her back here, the following summer,” he said, running a hand across her soft cheek. “And he asked her to marry him, right then, no constraints.”

And no Hitler, Isabelle thought, but she pushed the intrusion away as if it weren’t real. If only it weren’t real, if only that was the thing that was a dream, not this.

Max leaned down then, his lips brushing hers so softly that Isabelle thought she might die if he stopped.

“We’d better get back,” he said after a few moments, not breaking the spell.

There would still be the delicious ride to the Schloss with him in the sleigh. The day wasn’t over, nor was the week.

“Cook will be ringing the gong for lunch,” Max said, pulling the top of her warm hat down so that it was covering her ears. “She gets cranky if anyone is late,” he added.

“That is fair enough.” Isabelle smiled. “One would hate to keep her waiting.”

“Only wish I could,” Max murmured, but he took her hand and led her back to the sleigh. “I wish we could have more time together,” he said.

“Well, neither of us is going anywhere for a little while yet,” Isabelle said as she climbed back into the sleigh.

Something passed across Max’s face, and a shadow from a heavy branch threw a jagged pattern across his body while he climbed back into the seat. But as they began to move, the shadow disappeared, and the light was clear again as they travelled along the well-worn path that led through the quiet forest full of still trees—and ice.