Duchess

Chapter 4

     It took me almost an hour to get to the outskirts of the city from the countryside railways, and my side had not stopped bleeding since I began walking. If I didn't reach Virginia's house soon, I would die.
     The city of Stuttgart had been decimated by British and American air raids. Blackened apartment buildings and crumbling bricks littered across the streets could be found on every road I passed, people with vacant eyes milling about as though nothing had happened.
     If only they knew how lucky they were, compared to the Jews passing through the outskirts of their city.
     Arriving at Virginia Hall's dingy apartment, I leaned against the doorframe and knocked desperately.
     Nobody came to the door for a long time, and my heart began to race.
     I knocked again and someone said from inside in a voice barely above a whisper, "Who's there?"
     I racked my brain for one of my codenames that she would recognize that hadn't been compromised.  "Agathe Schneider."
     There was a small noise inside and I could hear her limp to the door cautiously. Her prosthetic leg could be heard dragging across the dirty hardwood floor.
     "Ginger?" I said softly, using her nickname, "It's Duchess."
     At that, she threw open the door and pulled me inside, checking behind me to make sure nobody saw us.
    "Hey, Dutch!" she exclaimed in a whisper, bringing me into her apartment, "I thought you were dead!"
     "I feel like it. I'm sorry to come here," I panted, "but I had nowhere else to go. Is it safe to speak English here?"
She helped me lay down and nodded, saying in English, "Don't apologize. You're hurt badly."
Pulling back my coat and dress, she gasped at the sight of my unattended wound.
"Are the spy hunters after you?" she said softly, reaching for the blanket to cover me as I shivered.
I nodded. "My boss at the newspaper didn't like having a girl on staff, so he started—" I sucked in a deep breath as she began wiping the cut with a wet rag, "—looking for a reason to fire me. He didn't find anything solid but once the Gestapo was on the case, they were able to piece it together pretty quickly. I'm quite certain they don't know I'm in Stuttgart."
She sensed my guilt in putting her in danger, and wiped a few strands hair from my forehead with a smile.
"Stop worrying. You did the right thing, Louisa. I'm thirty-seven years old with one leg...let them try to come after you without getting through me. Have you seen the papers?"
I furrowed my eyebrows and she went to the kitchen and returned with the very same newspaper I used to write for. An old photograph of me was on the bottom of the front page.

Enemy spy and fighter pilot Louisa Tallmadge, also known as Liesel Bonhoffe, the Duchess of the Allies, or Marie Gilbert, has been discovered by Gestapo forces in Munich. After a violent battle with German soldiers, she managed to escape after employing brutal tactics, killing two officers. Nazi officials state that she has a stab wound on her right side. She is considered armed and dangerous, and it is advised to shoot her on sight. Any information on the whereabouts of Tallmadge should be brought to the nearest Nazi Party office.

I looked up at Virginia with raised eyebrows.
"Brutal tactics?" she asked with a laugh.
     I shrugged and replied, "I gouged one man's eyes out. Self-defense, of course, but I admit that it was a little exhilarating."
     "Louisa!" she exclaimed, playfully hitting my arm and standing up, "Well, I suppose that if that's the case, you'll need a bit of a disguise, hmm? Didn't Major General Tallmadge always say he liked you with brown hair?"
     I gasped when she threw a bottle of hair dye to me and cried with a smile, "Brown again? Why couldn't the OSS pay for some gorgeous red locks for me sometime? I'm tired of brown hair! But I suppose it'll do. Thank you, Ginger."
     "Now," she said, pulling up a chair next to me, "before we talk beauty, let us work on this wound you've got here, shall we?"
    I unbuttoned my dress as far as it would go and pulled it back with shaking hands, groaning in pain as the bloody fabric unstuck from my skin.
     "This is bad, Dutch."
     "I know. Can you stitch it up?"
     Virginia looked at me with wide eyes and exclaimed, "No, Louisa! I can't-"
     "I'll talk you through it. It's easy- just like mending a dress. Please; I can't do it myself."
After a bit of convincing, she finally agreed to do as much of it as she could, but was obviously not excited about it.
"You're just going to need a needle and thread," I said breathlessly, "bandages of some sort, a match, and vinegar or wine or something."
She jumped up and raced around her apartment, grabbing each of the supplies and a few extras that she deemed necessary. I sat back and shut my eyes, trying to breathe to distract myself from the pain.
Coming back with a threaded needle and an unopened bottle of wine in her hand, she placed a dirty quilt beneath me so I didn't get blood all over the couch. "What do I do? Do you want to drink this?"
I smiled a little and took the bottle from her. "Of course not! Get ready to stitch me up," I said tightly as I opened the alcohol and poured it all over my stomach, crying out in agony as the chemicals cleaned the wound. Virginia took my hand and tried to comfort me.
"Okay," I gasped, "Stitch it up. You can do it, Virginia. Just ignore the blood and make the stitches tight, like we learned in Washington."
She scoffed, holding the needle as though it were poison. "Those medical training classes were a joke, and you know it, Lou."
Virginia was right. It was near the beginning for the war when the began to allow women into the OSS as anything more than secretaries, and they didn't care much about training us properly, assuming that we'd never actually go overseas. But here we were.
"It doesn't have to be great, Ginger; just good enough that I can survive until tomorrow."
She reluctantly began stitching, and I clutched one of the blankets desperately. I was in and out of consciousness the whole time, waking up for a few seconds in torturing pain and almost instantly passing out again. The amount of blood I'd lost was beginning to take its toll on me.
Weakness began to take over my body, and I drifted into a deep sleep, shaking uncontrollably.