He could be no other. The cross was the proof.
Ivy tipped her face to the clear blue sky. “Lord, help me see.”
She rounded a slight bend. A tree up ahead poked above the hedgerow. But something was wrong. Too much gray, lines that didn’t fit.
She passed the hedges lining the side road, and the sight cleared.
A man hung in the tree. Hung by the neck. His hands bound behind him.
Demyan Marchenko.
A cry birthed in her gut, convulsed her, spewed from her mouth. Guttural. Howling.
She didn’t need to take his pulse. The Germans—the brutes!—wouldn’t have left him unless certain he was dead.
“Ivy! Don’t look!” A male voice. A bicycle bore down on her.
A man in a brown Todt uniform—Gerrit van der Zee—scrambled off the bicycle, his long legs tangling in the frame. He kicked the bicycle aside, lurched toward her. “Don’t look, Ivy!”
“You!” The word quaked with fury, and she stumbled off her own bicycle and thrust a finger toward Demyan’s body. “You people did this.”
Gerrit took her by the shoulders and guided her back to the far side of the hedge.
She wanted to resist, but her feet felt numb, floppy.
“Please don’t look.” Behind the hedge, Gerrit turned her shoulders away from the body. “I came to cut him down, give him a decent burial. He was a good man.”
“I know.” She spat the words at him. “I knew him.”
Gerrit released her shoulders and removed his cap. Sweat darkened his hairline around his bright red cheeks. “You treated his gunshot wound.”
Ivy’s face stretched long. “How did you...?” If the Germans knew she had treated Demyan, she would be arrested, Joan, the helpers, maybe even Charlie and Fern.
Gerrit swiped his arm across his forehead and pulled a piece of paper from his trouser pocket. “Marchenko was carrying this when they captured him yesterday.”
The horse she’d drawn to cheer him up, and she held it in trembling hands.
“I knew it was yours,” Gerrit said. “Marchenko told the Germans he stole it from a farmhouse while stealing food. He was protecting you, protecting those who sheltered him. If the Germans discover you’re the artist and question you, tell them you give drawings to many of your patients and can’t remember who received this one. Take it home and burn it.”
Ivy’s gaze rose from the horse to Gerrit’s eyes, darkened to teal with concern, his mouth set hard. He—he was protecting her too.
Gerrit tucked in his lips and tapped the paper. “Please be careful who you give your drawings to.”
A groaning cry ripped through her, and she crumpled up the drawing. “This—my drawing could get people arrested. Killed. Stupid, frivolous, a waste of paper.”
“No.” Gerrit clamped his hand around her fist. “It’s not a waste. Your art brings joy. It brings light. It brings—hope. Don’t ever stop.”
Ivy couldn’t tear her gaze from the passionate conviction in his eyes, couldn’t tear her hand from the warm strength of his grip, couldn’t tear her mind from the truth—the truth!—that Gerrit van der Zee was far more than the uniform.
He closed his eyes and stepped away. “You should leave. Quickly. Schmeling—he certainly knows my intentions. He may send men after me. Go that way.” He waved to the northeast, back the way she’d come.
Gerrit glanced over her shoulder toward Demyan, and his face buckled.
“What will you do?” she asked. “How will you bury him?”
“I don’t know.” He stretched his long fingers before him and stared at them. “I have a knife to cut him down. I’ll dig with my hands if I must. I can’t leave him like that.”
With an intake of breath, Ivy pulled herself taller and became Dr. Picot once again. “Cut him down and stay with him. I’ll find a telephone and ring for an ambulance to collect the body. The people of Jersey won’t stand for this. They’ll make sure he has a proper burial.”
