Susan MacNeal - Princess Elizabeth's Spy

David swerved to avoid a large white sheep standing in the middle of the road, baa -ing to his woolly fellows still in the high grass. “Bad, huh? Well, the Old Man has a new girl now, a Marion something-or-other.…”

“I see,” Maggie said, trying not to let the hurt she felt show.

“Was it really that horrible?”

Maggie gave a delicate snort. “Worse. I may be a decent mathematician, but I’m terrible at anything physical. It was a living nightmare. Nonstop gym class.”

David, who was fair and slight and wore thick glasses with wire frames, nodded, understanding. “First off, you’re a brilliant mathematician. And second, people like you and me, well, we aren’t cut out for all that robust outdoorsy life anyway—thank goodness I found fencing. So, what now?”

“Good question.” Maggie shrugged. “Tomorrow I meet with Peter Frain. We’ll see what happens and go from there. Surely there must be something I can do.”

As they approached London, in the gray dimming light, Maggie could see smoke rising from the city, its acrid stink unmistakable. The skyline had changed as well; there were gaps where tall buildings had once proudly stood, like the smile of an aging prizefighter. London, as well as Bristol, Cardiff, Southampton, Liverpool, and Manchester, had been under attack from the Luftwaffe since the summer, in what Churchill had called the Battle of Britain. London had been bombed nearly every night since September.

Maggie was silent, both sickened and awed by the destruction that had happened since she’d left.

Across one building’s brick side was chalked, “There will always be an England!” Some of the letters had been blasted away, but it was still legible.

“Bloody Nazis,” Maggie said, taking it all in—the death, destruction, and defiance—as they drove closer and closer to the city.

David gave a grim smile. “Bloody Nazis.”

Back at David’s flat in Knightsbridge, Maggie was surprised. She expected girlish voices filling the air, but instead there was only gloom and thick silence.

“Where is everyone?” she called, her voice echoing as she put her suitcase down.

After the horrific events of last summer, Maggie and her flatmates Sarah, Charlotte (better known as Chuck), and the twins, Annabelle and Clarabelle, had moved in with David, who had a ridiculously large flat—originally a pied-à-terre his father had bought for business trips to London. David had taken it over after graduating from Oxford and beginning a job as private secretary to then M.P. Winston Churchill.

“Well, Sarah, as you know, is on tour.”

“Oh, of course, she’s dancing the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty. I’d forgotten.”

“Yes, Freddie Ashton still loves her.” The Sadler’s Wells Ballet was traveling across England, both to build morale nationwide and also because the bombing in London had become so horrific that it was difficult, if not downright dangerous, to continue to give nightly performances.

“The twins left their production of Rebecca and joined the Land Girls. They’re off farming somewhere in Scotland. And Chuck’s either working overnight shifts at hospital or off to Leeds to prepare for the wedding. I think she’s there now, actually.” Chuck was engaged to be married to Nigel, a RAF pilot and one of David’s best friends.

“So, for the moment, it’s just you and me?” Maggie said, unpinning her hat.

“More or less.” David looked at the grandfather clock. “Jumping Jupiter! I’ve got to run—needed back at the office, don’t you know.”

David turned to leave, then called back to Maggie, now shrouded in darkness, “You’ll be all right, then? There’s some tea in the cupboard and a bottle of decent Scotch. The Andersen’s still in the back garden—just in case. And don’t forget the blackout curtains, yes?”

“Thanks, David,” she said, with more enthusiasm than she felt. “Say hello to everyone at Number Ten for me. See you when you get back.”

When David left, Maggie took off her coat and hung it in the closet. David’s flat looked the same as it had when she’d left—Paul Follot art deco velvet sofas in deep blues, wood-paneled walls, polished herringbone floors punctuated with Chinese geometric-patterned rugs in golds and crimsons. The walls had originally been hung with oil paintings, landscapes and portraits by Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. Now they’d been rolled up and sent to David’s parents’ home in the country for safekeeping. Only the frames were left, now displaying comics and photos torn from Tatler, Britannia, and Tales of Wonder.

She picked up her suitcase and walked down the long hall to the bedroom she’d had for only a few days before she’d left for Arisaig in western Scotland, footsteps echoing. She put the case down and sat on the bed. The air in the room was stale and cold from being closed up for so long.

“Things have changed,” she whispered to herself in the murky darkness. “Of course they have—they always do.”

And how illogical of me to think otherwise.

Affected by the quiet, she went back to the parlor and went through a cabinet with David’s record collection, selecting a Vera Lynn album. She slid the hard black disk from its paper sheath and fitted it on the turntable. She turned the phonograph on, then carefully placed the needle in the groove. After a few crackles and pops, the music poured forth and, through the shadows, Lynn sang out:

“We’ll meet again

Don’t know where

Don’t know when

But I know we’ll meet again

Some sunny day.…”

They came in the night.

But this time it was real, not one of Alistair Tooke’s nightmares. He was in his bed in one of the narrow houses of the Great Park Village when he heard the knock. He looked over at his wife. Marta was also awake and clutching the sheet, drawing it up to her chin protectively.

“Probably just some sort of frost—and they’re worried about the roses,” he whispered in what he hoped was a reassuring way. Alistair Tooke was the Head Royal gardener at Windsor Castle and had worked there for more than twenty years, almost as long as he’d been married to Marta.

“Of course, dear,” Marta replied, her German accent barely noticeable after so many years, but he noticed she’d slipped out of bed and had started to get dressed.

From below, the knocking had turned into insistent banging. Alistair wrapped his flannel dressing gown around himself and made his way down the narrow, steep staircase.

“All right, all right!” he called as he made his way to the door. When he opened it, he was blinded by the bright flashlights shining in his face.

One man, older, with bushy gray eyebrows and thick lips, stepped forward with an air of importance. He was wearing the uniform of the British Home Guard. “We’ve come for Marta Kunst!” he bellowed. “Where is she?”

“My wife is Marta Tooke. We’ve been married for over thirty years.”

The man pushed past Tooke, into the hallway, and the rest, a group of four, followed. “Marta Kunst Tooke is charged with being an Enemy Alien under the Defense Act, B Registration.”

Alistair felt a prickle of fear run down his spine, but he wasn’t going to give the man the satisfaction of knowing it. “Yes, yes—we know that,” he said, running his hands through his thick white hair. “But her papers are all in order. And we work for the Royal Family!”

He could hear Marta making her way down the creaky narrow staircase. “I’m taking care of it,” he called to her. Still, she came, fully dressed in a heavy wool skirt and cabled cardigan.

“Marta Kunst,” the man said to the tiny older woman, “you have relatives in Germany. You’ve sent them chess moves, which our censors suspect to be code. You’ll be sent to a British prison camp until the authorities get to the bottom of it.”