About the Author

Karen Robards is the internationally bestselling author of over fifty novels, which have regularly appeared on the New York Times, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists, among others. She is the mother of three boys and lives with her family in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

You can find out more at www.karenrobards.com and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AuthorKarenRobards or follow her on Twitter @TheKarenRobards

Also by Karen Robards

The Black Swan of Paris

The Ultimatum

The Moscow Deception

The Fifth Doctrine

For a complete list of Karen’s books,
visit her website, www.karenrobards.com.

The Girl From Guernica

Karen Robards

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Karen Robards 2022

The right of Karen Robards to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover photograph background: Shutterstock.com

Period woman: Figurestock.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN 978 1 529 33838 6

Paperback ISBN 978 1 529 33841 6

eBook ISBN 978 1 529 33840 9

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

This book is dedicated with love to my three sons—

Peter, Christopher and Jack—

and to my beautiful new daughter-in-law, Delanor,

who married Peter and joined our family on March 7, 2020.

Praise for Karen Robards’s
The Black Swan of Paris

“Truly outstanding… Reminds us of the power of love, hope and courage.”

—Heather Morris, #1 bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“Everything you could ask for in the best historical fiction. A strong heroine to root for, a handsome and seductive spy, and a family secret that drives the plot at breakneck pace… This novel is Robards’s best yet!”

—Lisa Scottoline, #1 bestselling author of Eternal

“Boldly conceived and richly realized, Robards establishes herself in a single sweep at the forefront of World War II novels with an emotional and powerful tale.”

—Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris

“Beautifully written and completely absorbing… Tension, secrets, and loyalty drive this gorgeous book until the very last page and I was transfixed by each riveting moment.”

—Noelle Salazar, USA TODAY bestselling author of The Flight Girls

“An extraordinarily suspenseful, emotional read… Captivated me from the very first page to its breathtaking conclusion.”

—Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Warsaw Orphan

“Robards blends commendable attention to historical detail with intense realism and deep feeling. Historical fiction fans will be enthralled with this richly hewn novel.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An emotional tapestry of divided loyalties and love.”

—AARP

“A whirlwind story of love, loss, sacrifice, and war.”

—Booklist

CONTENTS

About the Author

Also by Karen Robards

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Praise for Karen Robards’s: The Black Swan of Paris

PART ONE: Guernica

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

PART TWO: Berlin

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

PART THREE:Peenemünde

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

PART FOUR: Fort Bliss

54

Author Note

Acknowledgements

PART ONE

Guernica

1

April 25, 1937

To laugh and dance and live in the teeth of whatever tragedies an uncaring fate threw in your path was the Basque way.

The stories Sibi’s mother told, stories handed down through generations of indomitable women, painted those defiant sufferers as heroes.

Sibi feared she was not the stuff of which such heroes were made.

She was hungry. Her feet hurt. And she was afraid. Of those things, afraid was the worst by far. She was so tired of being afraid.

A knot in her stomach. A tightness in her throat. A prickle of unease sliding over her skin. Familiar sensations all, which did not make their sudden onset feel any less dreadful. Sixteen-year-old Sibi—Sibil Francesca Helinger—pushed back a wayward strand of coffee-brown hair that had escaped from the heavy bun coiled at her nape and frowned out into the misty darkness enshrouding the Calle Fernando el Católico. Her pulse thrummed as she clung to the desperate hope that she was not seeing what she thought she was. Since the fighting had moved close enough so that the residents of this ancient village high in the western Pyrenees could actually hear gunfire in the surrounding hills, fear had become her all-too-frequent visitor. But this—this was different. This was because of something that was happening now, right before her eyes, in the wide, tree-lined street just beyond where she stood watching the regular weekly celebration on the night before market day.

Have we left it too late? The thought made her mouth go dry.

“I want a sweet.” Five-year-old Margrit’s restless movement beside her reclaimed her attention. Gripping the child’s hand tighter, Sibi cast an impatient glance down.

“There’s no money for a sweet.” Or anything else, Sibi could have added, but didn’t.

“But I want one.” Round blue eyes in a cherubic face surrounded by gold ringlets stared longingly at the squares of honey and almond turrón being hawked to the crowd by a woman bearing a tray of them. The yeasty aroma of the pastry made Sibi’s stomach growl. For the last few weeks, she and her mother had been rationing their diminishing resources by skipping the evening meal so that the younger ones could eat.

“Ask Mama to buy you one later.”

Margrit’s warm little fingers—which Sibi kept a secure hold on because, as angelic as the youngest of the four Helinger sisters looked, she wasn’t—twitched in hers. “She won’t. You know she won’t. She’ll say she doesn’t have any money, either.”

That was undoubtedly true. In fact, Sibi had only said it in hopes of placating her little sister until their mother returned. Thinking fast—Margrit had mostly outgrown tantrums, but not entirely—Sibi was just about to come out with an alternate suggestion when thirteen-year-old Luiza jumped in.

“You know we’re poor now, so stop being such a baby.” Cross because she hadn’t been permitted to go to the cinema with a group of her friends, Luiza spoke sharply. The thick, straight, butterscotch blond hair she’d chopped to chin length herself the night before—”Nobody has long hair anymore!” she’d wailed in the face of their mother’s horror—had already lost its grip on the rag curls she’d forced into it. She looked like she was wearing a thatch of broom straw on her head, but Sibi was far too good a sister, and far too preoccupied at the moment, to point that out.

“I don’t like being poor.” Margrit’s lower lip quivered.

“None of us do.”

“I specially don’t like—”

Luiza cut her off. “You’re whining. You know what Mama said about whining.”

“I am not…”

A match flared in the street. Tuning her sisters out, Sibi focused on what the brief incandescence revealed as it rose to light a cigarette—red tip glowing brightly—before arcing like a tiny shooting star to the ground. Sibi looked beyond the cigarette to the dark shape behind it. The dark shapes behind it. She wasn’t mistaken. Soldiers—their soldiers, the loyalist Republicans, their uniforms unmistakable—poured into the street from seemingly everywhere. And the numbers were increasing…

Her heartbeat quickened. Does no one else see?

Biting down on her lower lip, she glanced around. The crowd clapped and swayed to the rollicking music of the highly prized town band and ate and danced and played games and— She concluded that no one else did. The village leaders who were present appeared unaware: Father Esteban talked to the woman behind the refreshment table as she ladled out a bowl of spicy fish soup for him; His Honor the mayor played mus, the popular card game, with three friends; the Count of Arana, the town’s most prominent citizen, stood with his arms crossed and a stern gaze fixed on his fifteen-year-old daughter, Teresa, as she walked away from him with her hand tucked into the arm of… Emilio Aguire.

Sibi’s stomach gave an odd little flutter.

Watching them reminded her of just how much of an outsider she was here in this quaint small town with its red-roofed white houses and narrow cobbled streets. Emilio was her age, he was the handsomest boy in school and he had been kind to her. She had hoped… But no. To hope for anything where he was concerned was foolishness. She and her mother and sisters were only temporary residents. She worked as a part-time waitress and her mother had worked in a dress shop before being fired three weeks ago, when the shop owner’s husband had displayed too much interest in her. And that, of course, had immediately become a topic for much discussion among the town gossips whose gleeful suspicions that the former Marina Diaitz, now Helinger, who had come home with her children but without her husband, was a floozy were thus seemingly confirmed. All those factors combined to put them near the bottom of the social ladder in this place where the wealthy local aristocracy had been comfortably in place for generations, and they, with their German father, would have been outsiders, anyway. And Teresa was beautiful and rich and— Well, there it was, foolishness.

She had no time for foolishness.

Glancing at those in her own party—Luiza and Margrit, and their other sister Johanna, all bunched close around her, and their mother, Marina, dancing merrily with the baker Antonio Batzar beneath the colored lights strung above the makeshift dance floor in hopes of securing a scarce loaf of tomorrow morning’s fresh bread—Sibi felt her heartbeat quicken.

Intent on their own concerns, they appeared oblivious to anything else. As usual it was up to her, notorious as the family worrier, to think about what might happen, to catch and make sense of what the rest of them missed.

Tonight, it was that their soldiers, their last line of defense against the surging rebel Nationalists, appeared to be coming together en masse to slink like starving cats past the Sunday night festivities.

These were the same war-weary, battle-scarred troops that had been camped out in the forested peaks surrounding the town since they had fallen back after the savage attack on the neighboring village of Durango that had brought the nine-month-old civil war as close as its ancient churches and rambling streets. In the days since, thousands of panicking refugees had flooded the town. The warships of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, commander in chief of the rebel forces, had blockaded the Basque ports. Food had become scarce: along with bread, milk and meat were almost impossible to obtain. People were hungry, frightened. The war that had been safely on the other side of the country had changed direction so fast that the residents of these sleepy villages high above the Bay of Biscay had been caught unprepared. But unprepared or not, in a new and terrifying offensive the newspapers were calling the War of the North, the fighting was now rushing like a wave toward their front door.

The soldiers were all that stood between them and the enemy forces determined to destroy them. And the soldiers were leaving.

Sibi’s breathing quickened as she registered the numbers, so many, stretching out in a growing column that pushed through the less determined movements of the people coming and going from the festival like a boat through water. Looking toward the station plaza with its dim yellow lights, she saw a newly arrived train puffing smoke as it practically vibrated with eagerness to be gone again. Soldiers, dark shapes rendered unmistakable even at that distance because of their uniforms and the guns they carried on their backs, were already loading shipping crates and boxes aboard.

The train would hold only a fraction of the soldiers that were coming—but still they were coming. No, going.

The ones that weren’t heading toward the train station were turning toward the Renteria Bridge. Or, in other words, taking the road out of town.

We should have gone weeks ago.

She’d known it, felt it with every prudent instinct she possessed. Eleven months earlier, they’d traveled with their mother to this, the town of Marina’s birth, because Marina’s mother, their amona Elisabeta, was on her deathbed. At that time, the civil war had not yet begun, the journey had been safe, the area had been safe and the plan had been that they would be gone no longer than a month or two. Then to everyone’s surprise, Amona had lingered on until January.

After that there was the funeral, and then Amona’s belongings to dispose of and other matters to settle, which Sibi had known was only a small part of the story. In the meantime, the civil war had raged, with much fighting centered on Madrid and Guadalajara and Málaga in the south. Finally, alarmed as the war turned in their direction, Sibi had broached the theretofore largely avoided topic of leaving, of going home to Berlin and their father. Her mother had regarded her out of pained eyes that reproached her for bringing the sensitive subject up. But at least Mama had listened—then discussed it with the whole close-knit network of relatives and friends and neighbors who lived around them at the bottom of Calle San Juan in the Old Quarter, otherwise known as the poor end of the street in the poor end of town.

All had insisted that there was no hurry, that in this remote village that was revered as the cradle of the ancient Basque people, the seat of their cherished democracy, the home of the Sacred Oak that had served as a symbol of their freedom since the fourteenth century, they were safe.

Mola won’t dare attack here. Everyone was sure.

In the face of her mother’s silently pleading eyes, Sibi had abandoned the argument, praying that everyone was right. But she had worried.

As you always do, Mama had said. Which was true. But in this case, she felt she had good reason.

The forces under the command of the Nationalist General Emilio Mola, leader of the Northern Offensive, were known to be merciless.

As far back as July, at the very beginning of the uprising, he had announced that this war would be one of extermination against all who stood against him.

The Basques stood against him. And now he was heading in their direction.

“Look, that lady has mouchous.” Tugging on Sibi’s hand again, Margrit pointed toward a woman bearing the soft, almond-flavored cookies on a plate. “Can I have—”

“No.” Sibi’s tone was shorter than usual because her attention was focused on what was happening in the street beyond the fair.

With the soldiers gone, the town would be unprotected.

They would be unprotected.

Sibi could taste the fear now, sour in her mouth. Everybody knew the stories, even the ones that weren’t considered fit for the ears of young girls: the enemy burning whole villages, shooting soldiers even after they surrendered, carrying out mass executions, slaughtering entire families, violating women at will, raping and killing children and even nuns. In their push to wrest control of the country from the duly elected Republican government, it was said that the Nationalists stopped at nothing.

And now the White Terror, as it was called, might be coming for them.

The column of soldiers stretched out into the darkness farther even than she could see. It was growing, widening, filling the street.

She couldn’t stand it. She had to know what was happening.

“Here, hold on to Margrit.” Thrusting the little girl’s hand into Luiza’s, Sibi turned away.

“Mama said we should stay together.” Shy Jo, aged nine, clutched at Sibi’s coat. Feeling the tug on the worn-thin wool, Sibi checked and glanced at her. Jo’s black-framed glasses, too big because they were hand-me-downs from Luiza, slid precariously down her slender nose. Thick-lashed chocolate brown eyes in a square-jawed, high-cheekboned face that still retained some of its childish roundness, long coffee-colored braids tied up with scraps of red ribbon—except for the glasses and hairstyle, delicately-made Jo resembled Sibi to a remarkable degree. The difference was in their personalities: as the eldest, upon whose thin shoulders the cares of the family consistently fell, Sibi had never had the luxury of being shy or frail.

“Is something wrong?” Speaking at almost the same time as Jo, Luiza gave Sibi a wide-eyed look.

“I’ll be right back.” Without really answering either of them, Sibi freed her coat from Jo’s fingers and added a stern, “Be good,” To Margrit as the little girl, registering the change in minders, whined, “You’re hurting,” at Luiza and tugged experimentally at her hand.

“Stop it. Chiqueada.” With a shake of her head, Luiza muttered that last half under her breath.

“I am not spoiled.” Indignant at the charge, Margrit stamped her foot and tried harder to pull away.

“All of you, stay here.” It was an order, given as Sibi slipped away. Ducking beneath the linked arms of the lustily singing merrymakers behind her, she stepped into the street. The slide of her too-big shoes, handed down from her mother, against the blistered places at the backs of her heels made her grimace: it would be nice, one day, to once again have shoes that actually fit. The clap of her rope soles on the cobblestones, like the shuffling march of the soldiers in front of her, was lost beneath the exuberant wail of the accordions as the song reached its crescendo. Here, away from the warmth provided by the fires burning in barrels, the air was cold enough to make her shiver. It smelled of pine and cigarettes and the livestock that had been brought in to be sold at tomorrow’s market. Pulling her scarf up around her head, she hesitated, scanning the lines of men in hopes of spotting a friendly looking face.

So many. Along with the refugees, they had poured into the area by the thousands in recent days until it seemed as if every inch of space was clogged with them.

She’d hated their presence. But now…

A group of three came toward her, on the outside of the line and moving more slowly than the others, one man drooping as he was helped along by two of his fellows. Sick or wounded, she thought, and the thought was accompanied by a rush of hope that perhaps this was no more than an evacuation of the infirm. After all, the hospital was full to overflowing. Perhaps these men were being taken elsewhere for treatment.

“Excuse me…” Darting forward, she tugged on the arm of the outermost soldier, an officer, she thought from the five-pointed red star on his cap. Laden down by a pair of rucksacks and a collection of weapons slung over his shoulder, he had an arm around the injured man’s waist. “Can you tell me—where are you going?”

His eyes glinted black at her from beneath his beret. “We’re pulling back.”

Her pulse pounded in her ears. “But how can you leave us?” Fueled by fear, the question burst from her throat.

Another soldier, overhearing, answered. “We’re going no farther than the Cinturón de Hierro. What’s that, thirty-five kilometers away? No distance at all.”

The Cinturón de Hierro, or girdle of iron, was the massive wall of artillery and antiaircraft guns that had been set up around the nearby industrial capital of Bilbao. And yes, Bilbao was as close as he said. Still, as an attempt to reassure, his words had done anything but.

Their town stood squarely between Bilbao and the Nationalist Army.

“But what of us? What will we do?” She felt cold all over as she tried to calculate what the soldiers’ departure might mean for her family. Theirs was a household of women, of girls—they would be more at risk than most. If the enemy was coming, should they leave now, following the troops? Or should they go up into the hills and hide? Or—

“You’ll be in no danger once we are gone.” The soldier touched his cap to her and, quickening his step, walked on.

“How can you say that?” she called, but he was gone. She clasped her hands together in agitation as she glanced back down the street at the oncoming sea of men.

There had to be someone who could tell her more, provide advice, direction. She felt woefully inadequate to evaluate the situation on her own. Her effervescent mother could rarely be brought to face anything unpleasant at the best of times, and certainly going home to Berlin and their father, whose letters had made it increasingly clear how displeased he was growing with their absence, would be unpleasant for her, Sibi knew. Her parents’ marriage was not the happiest, and Marina was happy here in the town of her birth. But the thought of what might happen if they stayed made Sibi’s heart beat faster. And there were Luiza and Jo and Margrit to think of as well as herself.

We can’t stay here. We can’t.

“You heard him. We’re in no danger.” The speaker was Señora Rosen, the stout, middle-aged wife of the fire chief. Her tone was comfortably complacent.

Other voices joined the conversation as more people gathered around: neighbors, fellow townspeople.

“The soldiers are the target, you understand. Mola will pursue them, and leave us in peace.” The wealthy and important Señor Unceto, owner of the arms factory at the southern end of town, patted her arm. Around him, people nodded solemn agreement.

“How can you know?” Sibi turned toward him, but he was already talking to someone else and didn’t answer.

The street overflowed now with soldiers, while increasing numbers of onlookers formed a shifting line along the curb. A few were grim-faced, while more waved and smiled at the departing soldiers as if they were watching a parade. In the background, the music, the dancing and the festivities continued unabated. Excitement rather than dread hung in the air as the carnival atmosphere of the night before market day spilled out beyond the boundaries of the square.

Except for the exodus of the soldiers, all was continuing on as it always did. Surely if there was danger, there would be some—

“Sibi.” Margrit’s breathless cry brought Sibi’s head sharply around. It was followed a split second later by the full weight of Margrit’s small body crashing into her legs. “Sibi, come quick!”

Taking a staggering step back, she grabbed her sister’s shoulders to steady herself and looked down at the little girl. “What is it?”

Margrit’s eyes were round as coins. “It’s Jo! She’s in trouble.”

2

“Slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” They were on the far side of the square, rushing through the hive of activity surrounding the setting up of the stalls. As she spoke, Sibi planted her feet on the square’s last few meters of trampled grass, refusing to take another step despite Margrit’s frantic efforts at towing her along. The garbled explanation her sister was busy throwing at her over her shoulder made no sense, and Sibi was wary of letting Margrit pull her out into the rabbit warren of back streets and alleys behind the square, especially with so many strangers in town for market day. “Stop. Where is Jo?”

“The man got her! I told you!” Clearly frustrated at having been brought to a standstill, Margrit rounded on her. Her plump cheeks were flushed crimson and her blue eyes blazed with alarm. It was that rather than the determined tug Margrit gave to her hand that persuaded Sibi that, whatever this was, it was deadly serious.

“What man?”

Recognizing capitulation when she heard it, Margrit darted out into the street, dragging Sibi along behind her. “The mean man!”

They dodged through the chaos created by heavily loaded carts and livestock being driven toward holding pens and the general commotion in the crowded streets.

“Where is Luiza?” Whom she had counted on to keep the younger ones safe.

Margrit cast a guilty look back. “I, uh, kicked her, and then I ran toward Mama to see if she would buy me a sweet, but the dancing stopped and I couldn’t find her, and then Jo found me and— There.” Margrit slowed her headlong pace as she pointed to a run-down building. Two stories tall, white with a red tile roof like most of the town’s structures, this one had a cracked and dingy facade. A covered oxcart waited out front. It appeared to be unattended. “She’s in there!”

“Margrit, you have to—” Tell me exactly what happened, Sibi was about to say when she was interrupted by a wordless cry. They were almost at the building’s door, which was slightly ajar. Otherwise, with all that was going on around them, she never would have heard it.

Every cell in Sibi’s body froze: the cry came from Jo, and it was shrill with fear.

“Stay here,” she ordered Margrit fiercely, releasing her hand, but when she shoved through the door, Margrit—of course—was right behind her.

“Jo!” Sibi’s voice echoed through the building. A gray wedge of light from the open door kept it from being completely dark. A few chairs pushed to one side were the only furniture: otherwise the room was empty. The smell of damp combined with a pungent, ammonia-like odor made her nose wrinkle. A wavery yellow light at the top of a flight of stairs drew her eyes.

“Jo!”

“Up here!”

At the high-pitched fear in her sister’s voice, Sibi abandoned all thought of caution and raced up the stairs. Margrit scrambled after her.

Bursting out into what she saw from the light of a lantern placed on a crudely made wooden table near the top of the stairs was a large open space piled high with crates, Sibi stopped short at the sight of Jo in the grip of a hulking paysun. Her glance took in wide, stooped shoulders, a wild mass of grizzled hair and, as his head snapped around toward the new arrivals, a swooping mustache outlining a threatening snarl.

Jo’s eyes were huge with fright, her cheeks shone wet with tears and her mouth trembled. The man was roughly the size of the bullock out front, and he was holding Jo in front of him by both thin arms.

“Get your hands off her!” Fists clenched at her sides, Sibi stayed where she was by an exercise of pure will. Every instinct she possessed urged her to rush at the man, to try to pull Jo away. But how stupid would it be to put herself, too, within his reach?

“She let my animals go.” His eyes were small and vicious as they slid over Sibi. She knew what he was seeing: skinny and of no more than average height, she was all eyes and masses of hair. A whisper of a girl, no threat at all: she read the conclusion in his face. “She opened the cages. I caught her in the act.”

“He was going to k-kill them. Dogs. For meat!” Jo’s voice shook as she squirmed in an unavailing effort to free herself. Her glasses were in imminent danger of sliding off the end of her nose. In the too-big black coat that had once been Luiza’s, with one red ribbon missing and the braid it had tied unraveling, she looked as young as Margrit, and far more defenseless. “I heard him talking to some man who was going to sell the—the pieces at market! He said no one would know they weren’t rabbit—ow!”

“That’s a lie! You shut your mouth!” The man jerked Jo up on her tiptoes. Her glasses dropped to the straw. Sibi’s gaze automatically tracked them—glasses were difficult to obtain and expensive—before darting back to Jo’s terrified face.

“Stop it! Let her go.” Sibi strode toward the man like she was the one who was bullock-size before sanity prevailed, fortunately while she was still beyond his reach, and she stopped. At least his focus was on her now, and he was no longer shaking Jo.

“Sibi.” Jo’s eyes, shining with tears, met Sibi’s despairingly.

In response Sibi’s fists clenched so tightly that the sharp crescents of her nails dug painfully into her palms. Her little sisters’ faith in her was infinite, she knew. Their mother was warm and fun and beautiful and bright, like a fire they all gathered around for warmth. She told them stories and sang to them and loved them from the bottom of her heart, but it was to Sibi that the girls turned when things went wrong. Always she’d been there for them, a confidante and playmate as well as a protector, taking care of them as needed, letting them into her bed at night when their parents quarreled, shielding them from as much of the world’s harshness as she could.

With the blind faith of a younger sibling, Jo was counting on her now.

Sibi had never felt so helpless.

“You can’t sell dogs as meat. It’s against the law.” Sibi wasn’t sure that was true, but from his reaction—a threatening growl—she thought it might be. “If you don’t let her go, I’ll send my other sister here for the police.”

She dared not look around to check on Margrit even as she gestured in her direction, but a sound from behind her told her that she was still there. Sending the little girl running for help was the very last choice she wanted to have to make. There was so much that could go wrong with that that the mere idea was hair-raising. As for herself, she was not leaving Jo.

“Oh, you will, will you? That’s good. That’s good. They can lock this little emagaldu—” he gave Jo another shake “—up until she pays me the money I’m out for my animals.”

“Don’t you dare call her a whore. She’s nine years old!” Bouncing up and down on her toes with impotent distress as Jo burst into rattling sobs, Sibi thought of their empty pockets. “And we don’t have any money. Please, just let her go!”

His face contorted with anger. Roaring, “I want my money!” he jerked Jo up higher—she gave a frightened cry as her feet left the floor—and shoved his face close to hers. “If I don’t get it, maybe I’ll cut you up for meat.”

“You let my sister go!” Quick as a flash, Margrit hurtled past Sibi to throw herself against the man’s legs, sinking her teeth into his thigh with all the ferocity of which her five-year-old self was capable. Bellowing, he grabbed a handful of golden curls and yanked her head back. Riven with fear, abandoning all thought of caution in the face of disaster, Sibi threw herself into the fray before he could do anything else, only to be met with a sweeping blow that flung her, and Margrit with her, to the ground.

Landing hard, she didn’t move for a stunned instant. Then a possibility burst through the tide of panic surging through her. She stood and clapped a hand to her chest as she remembered what was there—the one thing of value she possessed. “Wait! I’ve got something—I can pay you!”

He stopped shaking a sobbing, trembling Jo to look at Sibi. “You have money?”

“I have…something.” Delving inside the collar of her coat and blouse, Sibi pulled out the necklace their grandmother had given her, as the oldest granddaughter, days before her death. “I have this.”

“What is it?” He watched suspiciously as she unclasped the necklace with unsteady hands. It was a pendant, a single stone on a delicate gold chain.

“Sibi, you can’t— Amona—” Jo squeaked in protest. Sibi stepped as close to him as she dared, the pendant dangling from her fingers. His eyes fastened on it greedily.

“It’s a ruby.” She held it up so he could see it better. The dark red stone was no larger than her little fingernail, but it gleamed enticingly in the lantern light. “It’s worth something.” He leaned close, peering at it—a mountain of a man, dwarfing her, reeking of the alcoholic drink Patxaran and stale sweat—and she thrust it at him, gritting her teeth against the urge to take a step back. “It’s all we have.”

Taking one hand off Jo, he snatched the necklace, looked at it hard, then shoved Jo to the ground. “Go. Before I change my mind.”

Galvanized, Jo scrambled toward the stairs. Catching sight of Jo’s glasses in the straw, Sibi snatched them up in passing as the three of them fled.

“What possessed you to do something like that?” Sibi said to Jo a short time later. Now that they’d dropped to a walk and caught their breath and the safety of the square was in sight, she was equal parts shaken and angry.

“It was all my fault,” Margrit said. Shivering, she pressed close against Sibi’s side.

Sibi’s grip on her sister’s hand was firm. “What did you do?” There was resignation in her tone.

Margrit hung her head. “While I was looking for Mama, I saw this little dog grab this big fish out of a tub by one of the stalls and run away with it. It was really funny, because the fish was bigger than the dog, and I followed it. Then Jo found me and she said I should come back but I said no, because I wanted to see where it was taking the fish. So Jo came with me, and we followed it until it ran into that building. There wasn’t anybody there, we didn’t think, and the door was open. We could hear lots of dogs barking, so we went in.” Margrit threw a quick, defensive look up at Sibi. “That part wasn’t just me, Jo wanted to go in, too.”

“I wanted to see what was wrong with the dogs,” Jo said.

Of course she did. “Go on,” Sibi said.

Margrit said, “The dog went up the stairs so we did, too. That’s when we saw the cages, and all the dogs. The little dog had left the fish on the floor and was using her teeth to try to open one of the cages. There were puppies in it, so I thought she might be a mother dog and they were her puppies. Then we heard somebody coming up the stairs and we hid. The mean man and another man came in and they talked about how they would cut them up and say they were rabbit meat and sell them at the market tomorrow. They went away again, and that’s when Jo started opening all the cages and letting the dogs out. I tried to help, but it was hard and I couldn’t get any open. Then we heard the man coming back and I hid again but Jo wouldn’t stop until all the dogs were out and he came upstairs and caught her. That’s when I ran for help.”

“I’m sorry about your necklace, Sibi,” Jo said.

“I’m sorry about it, too,” Margrit said.

“There you are, you brat!” The voice was Luiza’s, and they all looked toward it. She stood at the edge of the square near the amusement stalls, her fists planted on her hips as she glared at Margrit. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Her gaze shifted to Sibi. “She kicked me and ran away, and—”

“I already told her,” Margrit said, and stuck out her tongue.

“You—” Visibly seething, Luiza broke off whatever statement of loathing she was meaning to address to Margrit as her sisters reached her. To Sibi she said, “I’m never watching her again. Never, do you understand?”

Turning, she stomped away, but didn’t get far before breaking into a run. Sibi saw why: their mother, her quick step and lustrous black hair unmistakable even in the uncertain light, hurried their way.

“Mama!” Margrit exclaimed with delight. Pulling her hand from Sibi’s, she raced toward their mother, streaking past Luiza to reach her first.

“Here.” Sibi pulled Jo’s glasses from her pocket and passed them to her. Jo put them on. By that time they were close enough to their mother and sisters that Margrit’s voice carried clearly.

“…all the dogs. Every single one.” Margrit’s pride in what she was recounting to their mother was unmistakable.

“Holy Mary Mother of God.” Lifting her gaze from her youngest daughter, Marina fixed an appalled gaze on Jo as she and Sibi reached them. “Johanna Marie Helinger, you can’t have done such a thing!”

“I had to do it. They were so scared, and some of them were so little. See!”

Thrusting a hand into one of her coat’s two large pockets, Jo pulled out something not much bigger than her palm. It was black and…furry. It took Sibi a second to realize that what she was looking at was a very small puppy, its dark eyes blinking sleepily, its paws dangling free. Along with the rest of them, she watched in surprise as its head lifted and a tail about the size of her little finger began to wag.

“Is that one of those dogs?” Marina looked from the puppy to Jo in disbelief.

Jo gave a guilty nod. “She was in the last cage. She got her foot caught when she tried to jump out. She was just hanging there whimpering and I couldn’t leave her and the man was coming. By the time I got her free the man was there so I stuck her in my pocket so he wouldn’t see her. Then he started yelling and grabbed me.”

Casting her eyes heavenward, Marina shook her head. Then she frowned direly at her two youngest. “Never do such a thing again, either of you. Do you have any concept of how much danger you put yourselves in? Jo, set the puppy down. You know we can’t keep her. Our living situation is too unstable. And you four have school, and I—”

The bells of the Church of Santa María began to toll the hour, interrupting. The familiar deep resonance pealed out over the town, cutting through all the getting-ready-for market-day noise, echoing out into the hills: it was eight p.m.

“—have a job,” Marina continued when the tolling stopped, and broke into a wide smile. Sibi was struck by how beautiful their mother, with her delicately-boned face, flashing dark eyes and slender figure, really was. “Come, we have to go. I have to pick up my smock. Antonio’s offered me a job at his bakery, and I start tomorrow.”

“Antonio?” Sibi lifted her eyebrows, a little unsettled by the familiarity with which her mother had used the name, while Jo exclaimed, “That’s wonderful!” and Margrit said, “Will we get bread?”

“I’ve known him from childhood.” Marina bestowed a quelling look on Sibi. Then she smiled impishly at the others. “And yes, it’s a wonderful thing. And we will get bread.”

“And maybe some honey?” Margrit asked.

“You are such a little glutton,” Luiza said. “Mama, that’s what started the whole thing. She wanted a sweet.”

Marina sighed, shook her head and took Margrit by the hand. “Come on, girls. Jo, put the puppy down.”

“Mama, please, can’t we take her home with us? Just for tonight?” Jo begged as they all started walking.

Marina’s lips pursed. “All right, bring her. But it’s for tonight only. Tomorrow you have to find her a home.”

As they passed through the tall iron gates that opened into the crowded street, Marina looked at Sibi. Voice low, she said, “Stop frowning. You worry too much. My getting a job is good news.”

Except for the part where they shouldn’t be planning to stay here, and the new job and the excitement Marina was obviously feeling about it was going to make it even harder than Sibi had expected to persuade her mother that they needed to go. Marina had married and given birth to Sibi, her first child, at eighteen, and many times over the years Sibi had felt far older than her mother. This was one of those times. She thought of the soldiers leaving, of the war rushing toward them, of the gunfire in the hills of late and the makeshift air-raid shelters rigged up with sandbags and wooden support beams in the cellars of various buildings around town and what had happened in Durango, and her stomach tightened.

Antonio waited for them at the bakery, and ushered them inside, although it was closed to patrons until morning. Sibi had never paid much attention to him before. Now she did, and was moderately reassured: he was quite old, and plump, and unhandsome. But he was jolly, and seemed kind, and his attitude toward Marina was respectful.

A short time later they were back on the crowded street.

“See? I told you this job was a good thing.” With the black smock the baker had given her hung over her arm, Marina sent a sidelong smile toward Sibi as Sibi finished the last delectable bite of the etxeko bikotxa, a buttery pastry filled with black cherry jam, that the baker had given each of them.

They were nearly home, for which Sibi was thankful. She was cold, and tired, and, once again, afraid. They’d passed the firehouse; the big front door was open, which it never was at night, so she’d seen the firefighters readying the horse-drawn truck for possible emergency use. Grim-faced men carried supplies into the bomb shelters that had been erected in the wake of the attack on Durango. Packed full of soldiers, the train left the station at last with a salutary blast of its horn that made her shiver. The open fires and braziers of the refugees camping in any available space flickered orange through the darkness, not just in the village but in the surrounding hills, as well. The sight would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been for the implications.

Luiza and Jo walked in front of them, petting the puppy and talking about something that the street noise kept Sibi from overhearing. Margrit, her hand in her mother’s firm grip, was busy licking the jam out of her second square of cake, which she had acquired from Marina, who had given her own piece to her youngest.

With her sisters either too preoccupied or too far away to overhear, Sibi met her mother’s gaze full-on.

“The job is good. Or it would be good, except—” She took a deep breath. When she continued, her tone was urgent. “Mama, we have to leave. We can’t stay here any longer. It’s too dangerous. See all the soldiers in the streets? They’re evacuating to Bilbao. When they’re gone, the town will be unprotected.”

Marina’s smile died. “Where would we go? There’s fighting all around us.”

“We could go home.” Before her mother could say anything, could argue as Sibi saw from her expression she meant to do, she rushed on, desperate to get the words out. “We’d be safe. We wouldn’t have to worry about money all the time. We—”

“We can’t go home.” Marina’s lips had tightened.

“I know you and Papa have your differences, but—”

“Sibi, stop.” Marina made a quelling gesture. “It’s nothing to do with that. We’d be putting ourselves in far more danger if we tried to get through. Everyone—the relatives, the town elders, Father Esteban—say it is safest to stay here and let the war sweep past us. Which it will do.” Her stern expression faded. “Anyway, we can’t go anywhere right now. We don’t have the money.”

Sibi’s stomach knotted. “How much could it cost to take the train to Bilbao, where at least there are soldiers to protect us? We could sell something.”

“What? Your amona’s necklace was the only thing of real value we possessed. And we don’t have it anymore.”

Sibi was left momentarily speechless. If she’d thought of something else, done something else, to save Jo—

“Your locket.” She nodded at the silver locket Marina always wore. Engraved with the initials of her four daughters, it had a small photograph of her with her girls inside and rested just below the hollow of her throat. “We could sell that.”

Marina’s smile was wry as she touched the delicate oval. “You know how much it’s worth to me. But to anyone I might try to sell it to, it has no value. It’s not even real silver.”

“There has to be something—”

“I know we need to leave here,” Marina surprised her by saying. “But there’s time. We don’t have to solve all our problems tonight. And now that I have a job again, everything will be better. Just you wait and see.”