Jewels (36 page)

“Possible,” Sir Arthur said deliberately. “But not likely,” he added sadly. “By now we would have heard something from someone. Someone would have seen him in one of the prisoner-of-war camps. And if they know who he is at all, they’d be parading him all over. I think it’s most unlikely they don’t know who he is if they have him.”

“I see,” she said quietly. They talked to her for a little while longer, and then finally they all stood up, congratulating her again on her courage in France, and the fact that she and her son had come through it. “We lost a little girl,” she said in a small voice, “in May of this year…. William had never seen her.”

“We’re terribly sorry, Your Grace. We didn’t know….”

They ushered her back outside eventually, and restored Phillip to her, and then drove her ceremoniously to Whitfield. The dowager duchess was waiting for them there, and Sarah was amazed by how well she looked. She was thinner and very frail, but she was eighty-nine now. She was really quite remarkable, and she had even done whatever she could for the war effort around Whitfield.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said as she embraced Sarah, and then stood back a step, leaning on her cane to look at Phillip. She was wearing a bright-blue dress, the color of her eyes, and Sarah felt a wave of emotion wash over her, thinking of William. “What a beautiful young man. He looks a great deal like my husband.” She smiled. It was exactly what William had said when Phillip was born, that he looked so much like his father.

She took them both inside then, and fed Phillip a cup of tea and homemade shortbread cookies. He watched her in awe, but he seemed surprisingly at home with her. And afterwards, one of the servants took him outside to show him the horses and the stables while the dowager duchess chatted with Sarah. She knew she’d been to the Air Ministry that day and she was anxious to know what they’d said to her, but she wasn’t surprised that the news was disappointing. In fact, she was a great deal more philosophical about it than Sarah was, which surprised her.

“I don’t think we’ll really know what happened to him until after Germany falls, and I hope it does soon. I think there must be someone who knows, but for whatever reason they’re not talking.” On the other hand, he could have died hanging from a tree when he parachuted in, or been shot by a soldier who never knew who he was, and left him there to be buried by a farmer. There were a lot of ways he could have been killed, and fewer explanations for him being alive, Sarah realized now. She was beginning to realize that it was less than likely that her husband was still alive, and still she clung to some small shred of hope, particularly now that she was back in England. And much to her chagrin, she had just learned, when she called Jane, that Peter, her brother-in-law, had been killed at Kiska, in the Aleutians, and Jane sounded as devastated as Sarah was without William.

At Whitfield, William seemed so much a part of her life. Everything here reminded her of him. It touched her particularly the next day when her mother-in-law gave Phillip a pony for his birthday. He was so excited, and so happy. Sarah hadn’t really seen him smile like that since Lizzie died, and Joachim left. And here, Phillip was so much a part of his father’s world, and the life he had been born to. The child thrived just being there. And he told her adamantly that he wanted to stay, when she finally announced that they were going back to France in October.

“Can I take my pony back to France with us, Mama?” he asked, and Sarah shook her head. They were going back to France on another military flight, and there was no way she could transport a horse with them. And some of the Americans were still at the château, there was too much turmoil in their lives even to think about taking back a pony. And behind the turmoil, Sarah was beginning to feel real grief now over the loss of William. Coming back to Whitfield had made his absence more real, and she missed him more than ever.

“We’ll be back soon, sweetheart, and Grandmother will keep the pony for you here.” He was sad not to be bringing it back to France. It was amazing, though, to realize that all of this was going to be his one day. But it cut her to the quick when the servants began calling him Your Grace by the end of the trip. In their minds, William was gone, and Phillip was the duke now.

“I still believe we may hear something from him,” William’s mother said the night before Sarah left. “Don’t completely give up all hope of him,” she urged. “I shan’t.” And Sarah promised that she wouldn’t either, but in her heart of hearts, she was beginning to mourn now.

They went back to France the next day, and the War Office had arranged for transportation for her once she got there. Things seemed more orderly than when they’d left six weeks before, and everything was in order when they got back to the château. Emanuelle was in residence, and the colonel had kept his men in good control, and most of them had left now. Some of the men who used to work for her returned to do some gardening, and after their return, she began working on some of the
boiseries
again, and making repairs after years of neglect by the Germans. But thanks to Joachim’s vigilance they had actually done surprisingly little damage.

She thought of him frequently, but she had no way of knowing where or how he was. She worried about him at times. And she always prayed for him and William.

By Christmas that year, things were quiet at the château, and very lonely for Sarah. Everything was seemingly back to normal, but what wasn’t normal, of course, was the fact that the world was still at war. But the Allied forces were winning, and people thought now that it was almost over.

In the spring, the Allies marched on Berlin, and in May, at last, the fight in Europe was over Hitler had committed suicide, many of his officers had fled. Chaos reigned in Germany, terrible tales were coming out about atrocities committed in concentration camps, and still Sarah had no news of William or Joachim. She had no idea what had happened to either of them, or if they were still alive. She just went on living day by day, at the château, until the War Office called her.

“We have news for you, Your Grace,” the voice crackled across the line, and she found herself crying before they even told her what it was. Phillip stood in the château kitchen watching her, wondering why his mother was crying. “We believe we may have found our man … or … er … rather, your man. We liberated one of the prisoner-of-war camps only yesterday, and there were four unidentified soldiers in … er … rather poor condition…. I’m afraid he’s one of them, if it’s him … but he had no identification on him. But the officer in charge attended Sandhurst with him, and swears it’s him. We’re not sure yet, but we’re flying him back tonight. We’d like to fly you to London, if you can come.” If she could come? After no word of him for three years? Were they joking?

“I’ll be there. Can you arrange transport for me? I’ll come at once.”

“I don’t think we can get you out till tomorrow, Your Grace,” he said politely. “Things are a bit chaotic everywhere, what with the frightful mess in Berlin, and the Italians, and all that.” All of Europe was in chaos at the moment, but she was ready to swim the English Channel if she had to.

The War Office contacted the Americans in France again, and this time a jeep from the Allied Forces office in Paris came for her at the château, and she and Phillip were impatiently waiting. She hadn’t told him why they were going to London yet, she didn’t want to disappoint him if William wasn’t the man they’d found, but he was enchanted to be going to visit his grandmother anyway, and to see his horses. She was going to send him directly down to Whitfield to stay with her, and the War Office had a car and driver to take her to the hospital where the men they flew out of Germany would be staying. They had told her that all four men were desperately ill and some of them were severely wounded, but they hadn’t told her in what way, or what was wrong with William. She didn’t really care as long as he was alive, and he could be saved. And if he was alive at all, she vowed that she would do anything she could to save him.

The flight to the London airport went very smoothly, and the car to take Phillip to Whitfield was there waiting for them when they arrived, and they saluted Phillip decorously with full military honors and he loved it. And then they whisked Sarah off to Chelsea Royal Hospital, to see the men they had just flown in from Germany the night before, at midnight. She prayed that one of them was indeed William.

There was only one man who was even a remote possibility. He was approximately William’s height, but they said he had weighed approximately one hundred and thirty or forty pounds, his hair was white, and he seemed a great deal older than the Duke of Whitfield. Sarah said nothing as they described it all to her on the way to the hospital, and she was frighteningly silent as they took her upstairs, past wards of critically ill men, and busy doctors and nurses. With what had just happened in Germany, they had their hands full. Men were being flown in as fast as they could bring them in, and doctors were being called in from all over England.

They had put the man they thought was William in a small room by himself. And an orderly was standing in the room with him, to monitor his breathing. There was a tube going up his nose, and a respirator, and there was a multitude of machines and devices hovering over him, including an oxygen tent, which concealed him.

The orderly pulled back the flap a little bit so she could see him better to identify him, and the men from the War Office stood back at a discreet distance. The hospital was still waiting for dental charts from Bomber Command so that they could make a positive identification. But Sarah didn’t need dental charts to identify this man. He was barely recognizable, he was so thin, and he looked like his own father, but as she stepped closer to the bed, she reached out and touched his cheek. He had returned to her from the dead, and he didn’t stir now, but there was not a shred of doubt in her mind. It was William. She turned and looked at them then, and the look on her face told them everything, as the tears poured down her cheeks and theirs too.

“Thank God …” Sir Alan whispered, echoing Sarah’s feelings. She stood rooted to the spot, unable to take her eyes from him as she touched his face, and his hands, and lifted his fingers to her lips and kissed them. His hands had a waxy look to them, as did his face, and she could see that he was hovering near death, but she knew that they would do everything to save him. The orderly dropped the flap on the oxygen tent again, and a moment later two doctors and three sisters came in, and began doing assorted things, and then the doctors asked her to leave the room, which she did, with a last look at him. It was a miracle. She had lost Lizzie … but now they had found William. Perhaps God wasn’t as unkind as she had feared for a while. And she asked the men from the War Office before they left if they would arrange for her to call William’s mother at Whitfield. They organized it at once from the office of the head of the hospital, and the dowager duchess gave a gasp of relief at the other end of the phone, and then gave in to tears, as did Sarah.

“Thank God … the poor boy … how is he?”

“Not very well, Mother, I’m afraid. But he’ll be better soon” She hoped she wasn’t lying to her, because she wanted to believe it. But he hadn’t survived this long in order to die now. She just simply wouldn’t let him.

The men from the War Office left then, and the head of the hospital came to speak to her about William’s condition. He didn’t waste any words and went straight to the point with a serious expression.

“We don’t know if your husband will live, Your Grace. He has gangrene in both legs, extensive internal wounds, and he’s been ill for a long time. Years possibly. He had compound fractures of both legs that never healed. He’s probably had infections in both legs since he fell. We can’t save his legs, and we may not be able to save his life. You have to know that.” She knew it, but she refused to accept it. Now that he was back, she absolutely refused to lose him.

“You
have
to save his legs. He didn’t come this far in order for you to lose them.”

“We have no choice, or very little in any case. His legs will be of no use to him now anyway, the muscles and nerves are far too damaged, he’ll have to be in a wheelchair.”

“Fine, but let him have his legs in that wheelchair.”

“Your Grace, I’m not sure you understand … it’s a delicate balance … the gangrene …” She assured him that she understood perfectly, but begged him to at least try to save William’s legs, and looking exasperated, he promised her that they would do what they could, but she had to be realistic.

There were four operations in the next two weeks, and William barely survived each of them, but he did, although he had never regained consciousness once since he was flown to London. The first two operations were on his legs, the third to his spine, and the last one to make internal repairs to injuries that eventually might have killed him. And none of the specialists who worked on him could understand how he had made it. He was wracked with infection and disease, malnourished in the extreme, bones had been broken and never healed, and there were visible signs of torture. He had suffered everything and he had lived … but barely.

By the third week they had done all they could, and now all they could do was wait, to see if he regained consciousness, or remained in a coma, or simply died. No one could say now, and Sarah sat with him day after day, holding his hand, talking to him, willing him back to life, until she almost looked worse than he did. She was desperately thin and pale, and her eyes were almost glazed as she sat beside him and nursed him. One of the sisters came in and saw her one day, and shook her head quietly, and then said to her, “He can’t hear you, Your Grace. Don’t exhaust yourself.” She had brought Sarah a cup of tea, and Sarah had accepted it gratefully, but she still insisted that William could hear her.

They tried one last surgery on his spleen at the end of July, and then once again they waited, and Sarah nursed and talked and encouraged and kissed his fingers, and watched him, never leaving his bedside for a moment. They had put a cot in his room for her, and she had borrowed some of the sisters’ uniforms, and she sat there day after day, without giving up hope for an instant. The only time she ever left William’s side at all was when the dowager duchess brought Phillip to the hospital, to see his mother in the waiting room. He wasn’t allowed to go upstairs to see William, and in truth he would have been afraid to. He had been told how very ill he was, and the fact was that to Phillip, William was a stranger. In the years he might have remembered him, the child had never seen him. But Sarah was happy to see the child, she missed him terribly, and he missed her, but she didn’t feel she could leave William.