Missing

1. Of Honour and Duty

Erzingen, Germany — Monday 10 May 1915

After a harrowing week and a half crossing the Black Forest, David, Maria and Rachel arrived in Erzingen, a town just short of the border between Germany and the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen. Rachel was delighted that her aunt, Tante Bethia, still had the metzgerei at the edge of town.

Though there had been no contact in nearly ten years, the family ties were deep, and Bethia welcomed them without question. She put on tea and sliced her award-winning hams and sausages, and they sat eating and chatting. Bethia's husband, Aaron, had passed away the previous September, and she was trying to sell the family slaughterhouse, the ham and sausage-making business, and the delicatessen shop-front. At sixty-six, she found them too much to run on her own.

As Rachel and Maria caught up on family, David learned more about Bethia's businesses and what might be possible with them. They brought wine up from the cellar, replenished the food platters and continued talking late into the evening. 

Shortly after the clock had cuckooed ten, Bethia stood. "I must go prepare your rooms, make your beds, get towels ..."

"I'll come with you." Maria rose to join her. "Four hands will make it much easier."

They finished a quarter-hour later and rejoined Rachel and David, who were in a deep discussion. "We'll continue this later," Rachel said as David rose when the ladies entered the room.

"You come from a formal background," Bethia said. "A very polite one, obviously. We rarely see that here anymore."

"Mamère is French, from Castelnaudary, east of Toulouse. Her father was a baron, but the hereditary peerage system had changed so much with the Revolution, with Napoleon, Louis the Eighteenth ... He did nothing with the title. He had no sons, so it died with him. In an equal world, my mother would be a baroness, and she raised us strictly, properly and politely."

"I sensed a nobility about you when Maria introduced us," Rachel said. "It's even more obvious now with our discussions."

"Your father, where is he from?" Maria asked.

"His family was from Galway, Ireland. They had fled the potato famine in the 1840s for Canada, and as the country expanded, they continued moving west, finally stopping on the banks of the Columbia River, surrounded by mountains. They were the first settlers in the area."

"So how did he meet your mother, a French woman way out there?"

"On a train in the Rockies. I've never dug into the story, and they've never shared much of it. All I know is that they became friends when they were snowbound in a blizzard west of Banff. They spent four days on the train over Christmas waiting to be dug out."

His eyes widened, and he looked around, smiling. "I now understand what he meant when he told me they found creative ways to stay warm. That's where I started; I was born nine months later."

"So you're part restless Irishman, part French baroness, and part mountain blizzard. What a wonderfully wild and noble combination." Maria looked at him, then at her mother with a wide grin. "He followed me home, Mama. Can I keep him?"

"He's the one who has to decide that, Sweetheart," Rachel said in a serious tone. "You simply have to make him want to come back."

"Come back?" She shook her head. "What do you mean, come back?"

"Sweetheart, he has responsibilities – responsibilities that reach far beyond here. He's a soldier sworn to the King to defend against German aggression. He has to continue the fight. As easy and pleasant as it would be, and as much as he wants to, he cannot stop here. His integrity and his character won't allow him to. He's deeply in love with you, but he's honour-bound. We've just spent the past half-hour discussing it."

Maria began to sag like a rag doll losing its stuffing. David moved up behind her wilting form and wrapped his arms around her, gently kissing her neck and shoulder, whispering, "I love you."

Tears streamed down her face as she trembled, trying to hold her composure. She twisted in David's arms, buried her face in his chest, and let the sobs deepen, allowing the convulsions to shake her body, doing nothing to muffle the sounds of her crying. She tightened her grip around him. Then tighter.

He stroked her back and murmured, "I love you, Maria. More deeply than I imagined possible. Neither duty nor war can change that."

She nodded against his chest and, in a low, hesitant voice, asked, "When will you leave?"

"I don't know." He paused. "Not yet. First we must help Bethia. I need to understand her business before the buyers come on Wednesday. Then there's the wine to bottle, the vineyard to see, and Aaron's Sauschwänzlebahn dossier to study. I still need to strengthen my German. I've much to do here first."

Maria let out a small, unsteady sigh. "But after that? When?"

He held her more tightly. "Sooner than either of us wants."

They were quiet for a moment before he gently unwrapped his arms, took her hand, and said, "Come. Show me what you and Tante have arranged for us."