Want a quick taste of what's coming? Of course you do!
Excerpt from “Hour of the Bells”
A short story included in Fall of
Poppies
Beatrix
whisked around the showroom, feather duster in hand. Not a speck of dirt could
remain or Joseph would be disappointed. The hour struck noon. A chorus of
clocks whirred, their birds popping out from hiding to announce midday. Maidens
twirled in their frocks with braids down their backs, woodcutters clacked their
axes against pine, and the odd sawmill wheel spun in tune to the melody of a
nursery rhyme. Two dozen cuckoos warbled and dinged, each crafted with loving
detail by the same pair of hands—those with thick fingers and a steady grip.
Beatrix
paused in her cleaning. One clock chimed to its own rhythm, apart from the
others.
She could
turn them off—the tinkling melodies, the incessant clatter of pendulums,
wheels, and cogs, with the levers located near the weights—just as their
creator had done before bed each evening, but she could not bring herself to do
the same. To silence their music was to silence him, her husband, Joseph. The Great War had already done that;
ravaged his gentle nature, stolen his final breath, and silenced him forever.
In a
rush, Beatrix scurried from one clock to the next, assessing which needed
oiling. With the final stroke of twelve, she found the offending clock. Its
walnut face, less ornate than the others, had been her favorite, always. A
winter scene displayed a cluster of snow-topped evergreens; rabbits and fawns
danced in the drifts when the music began, and a scarlet cardinal dipped its
head and opened its beak to the beauty of the music. The animals’ simplicity appealed
to her now more than ever. With care, she removed the weights and pendulum, and
unscrewed the back of the clock. She was grateful she had watched her husband
tend to them so often. She could still see Joseph, blue eyes peering over his
spectacles, focused on a figurine as he painted detailing on the linden wood.
His patient hands had caressed the figures lovingly, as he had caressed her.
The
memory of him sliced her open. She laid her head on the table as black pain stole over her body, pooling in every
hidden pocket and filling her up until she could scarcely breathe.
“Give it
time,” her friend Adelaide had said, as she set a basket of jam and dried
sausages on the table; treasures in these times of rations, yet meager
condolence for what Beatrix had lost.
“Time?”
Beatrix had laughed, a hollow sound, and moved to the window overlooking the
grassy patch of yard. The Vosges mountains rose in the distance, lording over
the line between France and Germany along the battle front. Time’s passage
never escaped her—not for a moment. The clocks made sure of it. There weren’t
enough minutes, enough hours, to erase her loss.
As
quickly as the grief came, it fled. Though always powerful, its timing
perplexed her. Pain stole through the night, or erupted at unlikely moments,
until she feared its onslaught the way others feared death. Death felt easier,
somehow.
Beatrix
raised her head and pushed herself up from the table to finish her task. Joseph
would not want her to mourn, after two long years. He would want to see her
strength, her resilience, especially for their son. She pretended Adrien was
away at school, though he had enlisted, too. His enlistment had been her fault.
A vision of her son cutting barbed wire, sleeping in trenches, and pointing a
gun at another man reignited the pain and it began to pool again. She
suppressed the horrid thoughts quickly, and locked them away in a corner of her
mind.
With a
light touch she cleaned the clock’s bellows and dials, and anointed its oil
bath with a few glistening drops. Once satisfied with her work, she hung the
clock in its rightful place above the phonograph, where a disk waited patiently
on the spool. She spun the disk once and watched the printed words on its
center blur. Adrien had played Quand
Madelon over and over, belting out the patriotic lyrics in time with the
music. To him, it was a show of his support for his country. To Beatrix it had
been a siren, a warning her only son would soon join the fight. His father’s
death was the final push he had needed. The lure of patrimoine, of country, throbbed inside of him as it did in other
men. They talked of war as women spoke of tea sets and linens, yearned for it
as women yearned for children. Now, the war had seduced her Adrien. She stopped
the spinning disk and plucked it from its wheel, the urge to destroy it pulsing
in her hands.
She must
try to be more optimistic. Surely God would not take all she had left.
Reprinted Courtesy of HarperCollins
Publishers
Curious now? How do I pre-order it, you ask?
Fall of Poppies:
Stories of Love and the Great War
by Heather Webb, Hazel
Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer
Robson, Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland, Lauren Willig, Marci
Jefferson
William Morrow Trade Paperback; March
1, 2016; $14.99; ISBN: 9780062418548
Top voices in historical fiction
deliver an intensely moving collection of short stories about loss, longing,
and hope in the aftermath of World War I—featuring bestselling authors such as
Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited
by Heather Webb.
A squadron commander searches for
meaning in the tattered photo of a girl he’s never met…
A Belgian rebel hides from the world,
only to find herself nursing the enemy…
A young airman marries a stranger to
save her honor—and prays to survive long enough to love her…The peace treaty
signed on November 11, 1918, may herald the end of the Great War but for its
survivors, the smoke is only beginning to clear. Picking up the pieces of
shattered lives will take courage, resilience, and trust.
Within crumbled city walls and scarred
souls, war’s echoes linger. But when the fighting ceases, renewal begins…and
hope takes root in a fall of poppies.
Bon appétit, mes amis et mes amies. Keep reading!!
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