Chosen of the Valkyries

Chapter Thirty-Three

Berlin, Germany Prime

15 October 1985

Gudrun stood in front of the mirror and slowly disrobed, removing her clothing piece by piece until she was as naked as the day she was born.

She studied her body as dispassionately as she could, despite the churning morass of emotions that threatened to bubble up into her mind. It was a good body – both Konrad and Horst had said so – and she knew it was satisfactory. Her skin was pale, with barely a blemish; her long blonde hair hung down to brush against the tops of her breasts. She’d been lucky not to have darker skin or anything else that would have suggested that there had been a non-Aryan somewhere within the family tree. There had been a handful of girls who had been darker, she recalled all too well. They’d had papers proving that they met the standard definition of Aryan – no hint of non-Aryan blood for at least four generations – but it hadn’t been enough to keep them from becoming social outcasts. In hindsight, she admitted quietly, she’d treated them as cruelly as everyone else.

Because you didn’t want to be an outcast yourself, she told herself. It was safer to pick on the girls who were.

She cursed the younger person she’d been, then continued to scrutinize her body, her eyes trailing down her legs to her feet. Her arms were strong, but she was nowhere near as muscular as Horst or her father. She would never be, she knew, no matter how hard she exercised her body. Horst had warned her, bluntly, that girls needed to learn to fight dirty, if they wanted to fight at all. A man would almost certainly be stronger and faster than any woman. The only way to win was to fight dirty.

There was a knock at the door. “Gudrun,” her mother called. “It’s me.”

“Come in,” Gudrun said. There was no one else in the suite, but she still tensed when the door opened. “Did you bring the dress?”

“I did,” her mother said, briskly. “Did you have a quick shower?”

“I showered this morning,” Gudrun said, rather disdainfully. Water rationing was starting to bite, even in the Reichstag. A five-minute shower was nowhere near long enough to wash her hair. Some of the maids had even started cutting their hair short to make it easier to wash. “I don’t want to shower again.”

Her mother looked her up and down, then nodded. “You look very much like I did at your age,” she said, as she passed Gudrun her undergarments. “I was expecting shortly afterwards.”

Gudrun coloured. “I’m not expecting, mother,” she said. “Really.”

“You soon will be,” her mother predicted, bluntly. “A virile young man like yours? He’ll want to share your bed all the time.”

“Mother,” Gudrun said, cringing. “Please.”

Her mother gave her a droll look. She’d been remarkably informative after Gudrun had discussed Konrad with her, even though Gudrun still winced at the thought of her parents actually having sex. Gudrun knew she should be grateful that her mother was willing to tell her anything – what she’d learned in school hadn’t been particularly informative – but there were details she hadn’t wanted to know. Man-management was apparently a science all of its own in the Reich, with secrets passed down through successive generations of mothers and daughters. But she really hadn’t wanted to know about some of the problems her parents had faced.

Gudrun sighed, heavily. She was twenty years old. And yet, far too many of her old classmates from school were already married. They hadn’t gone to university, they hadn’t dreamed of an independent career… she’d looked them up, out of curiosity, and discovered that twenty-seven out of thirty girls had married within six months of leaving school. A number even had children of their own now, children who would be entering nursery school within two years. And of the remaining three, two of them were practically old maids.

Twenty years old and yet no husband, she thought, morbidly. Their parents will be pushing them to accept the first man who comes calling.

She pulled her undergarments on, then closed her eyes as her mother lowered the wedding dress over her head. Gudrun had been offered her mother’s old dress, one that had been in the family for five generations, but she’d declined, pointing out that it wasn’t a formal ceremony. Her mother hadn’t objected – Gudrun knew she was quietly planning a huge ceremony for after the war – yet the dress they’d selected in its place was whiter than Gudrun would have preferred. But then, white wedding dresses were often nothing more than polite fictions within the Reich.

“You look good,” her mother said, as she fussed around the dress, loosening some of the seams and tightening others. “Very like a bride on her way to the registry hall.”

“Oh good,” Gudrun said. She knew her mother wanted a formal ceremony, but that wasn’t going to happen until after the war. “That’s the look I was trying for.”

Her mother snorted.

Gudrun hid her amusement with an effort, then glanced at the door. Normally, it took at least a week to get a marriage certificate, but the flood of couples trying to get married had done the impossible and forced the bureaucrats to speed up the process. Horst and her father had flatly refused to allow her to go to the registry hall herself – there was too great a risk of being assassinated or kidnapped – and the register had, reluctantly, been escorted to the Reichstag. The wedding itself would be held in a small room on one of the lower levels…

“This is your last chance to back out,” her mother said. “Are you sure you want to marry him?”

“Yes,” Gudrun said.

She shook her head. Her mother’s words were just as much a polite fiction as the white wedding dress. A relationship that had come so far simply could not be cancelled and forgotten, not after both sets of parents had paid for the marriage certificate and what other pieces of paperwork were required. Maybe a girl who got cold feet could run, but it would be a major scandal and tongues would be wagging for years. Her family would probably disown her, just to make it clear that they didn’t condone her actions.

And if I was pregnant, she thought, I could never leave.

She looked at her mother, wondering if she dared ask a question that – on any other day – would probably get her slapped. But her mother had been open with her – disconcertingly open with her – after she’d started making her plans…

“Mother,” she said. “Do you ever regret marrying father?”

Her mother’s lips thinned, just for a second. “Marriage is… different to being a daughter,” she said, finally. “This morning, you are a daughter; tomorrow morning, you will be a wife.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Gudrun said.

“Marriage… is two people learning to live and work together,” her mother said. “It has its ups and downs. We have fought, sometimes quite badly, over everything from the household budget to your education. And yet… I have learned to be supportive of him and he has learned to be supportive of me. Gudrun… you’ll find you won’t truly know your husband until you have spent years with him, sharing his life.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t regret it. I have four lovely children and a husband who does his very best for them – and me. There are worse husbands out there, but few better ones. Your father is a good man.”

Gudrun cocked her head. “Even if he did have shouting matches with Kurt?”

“That’s what happens when a young boy grows into a man,” her mother said. “He starts clashing against the older man in the house.”

She smiled, rather tiredly. “The sooner Kurt gets married, the better.”

“I’ll see if I can find anyone who might be interested,” Gudrun said. “I owe him that much, I think.”

She finished dressing and checked her watch, then allowed her mother to lead her out of the door and down towards the wedding chamber. It was bare, save for a single desk placed at the rear of the room. A man stood behind it, wearing the drab uniform of a bureaucrat; he gave her a single look, then nodded to himself as she entered the room. There was nothing obviously wrong with her, Gudrun guessed. It would have been a different story if she’d had dark skin or anything else that marked her out as – perhaps – not being racially pure.

“Gudrun,” her father said, as he stepped into the chamber. He held a brown envelope in one hand. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, father,” Gudrun said.

She looked back as Horst entered the room, flanked by Kurt, Johan and Siegfried. Horst wore a simple Heer uniform without any rank badges, very unlike the black dress uniform he would have worn as an SS stormtrooper – as Konrad would have worn, if things had gone differently. She felt a sudden stab of guilt, as if she was betraying his memory, even though she knew it was absurd. Konrad wouldn’t have wanted her to spend the rest of her life alone, no matter what else happened. And yet…

Kurt and Johan wore their uniforms, she noted, while Siegfried wore a simple black suit that had been tailored to fit him. He hadn’t yet entered his final growth spurt, but he was already tall and muscular for his age. He’d thrown a colossal fit when his father had banned him from joining the boxing club and then sulked for days before finally subsiding. Gudrun hoped that he hadn’t said anything nasty to Horst. But then, Kurt would have walloped him if he had. Horst was alone, his family on the far side of the border. And there was no way to know if they were even alive.

“I love you,” she mouthed.

“I love you too,” Horst mouthed back.

Siegfried made gagging motions, which stopped abruptly when their father turned his gaze on him. Gudrun allowed herself a moment of relief, then looked at her father, wondering just what thoughts were going through his head. His little girl was getting married, leaving the family home for the last time. Gudrun hadn’t set foot in her home for nearly a month, now, but it hardly mattered. Her relationship with her father would never be the same again.

Her father cleared his throat. “Shall we begin?”

The register looked up at them as they approached the table. Up close, he had a bland featureless face that seemed completely unremarkable. His eyes flickered over Horst, then moved to Gudrun. Her father put the brown envelope on the desk; the register opened it with a knife, then pulled out the documents and checked them, one by one. Gudrun felt her heart beginning to race as time seemed to slow down, even though she knew it was an illusion. The slightest mistake with the paperwork would be enough to get the ceremony cancelled, at least until the mistake could be sorted out…

He’d have to be an idiot to say no now, she thought, with a flicker of amusement. Doesn’t he know who we are?

“Everything appears to be in order,” the register said, finally. He looked at Horst. “Your documentation is very limited.”

“That was covered when we obtained the marriage certificate,” Horst said, flatly. “The original copies of my documents – my file – are in the east.”

The register nodded. “Understood,” he said. “And now…”

He spoke casually, almost as if he were bored. “This ceremony will make you husband and wife in the eyes of the Reich,” he said. “From the moment you sign the documents and take the marriage certificate, you will be married, whatever ceremony you plan to hold afterwards.”

Gudrun nodded. This was it, the end of her life as a daughter, the start of her life as a wife…

“I must ask you both to swear, now, that you carry no taint of non-Aryan blood within you,” the register said. “Do you swear?”

“I swear,” Horst said.

Gudrun nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She had a pure-perfect record from the Race Classification Bureau, one she’d had written out for her when she started planning to marry Konrad. And there was a copy in front of the register. He knew they were both pureblood Germans. There was no need to demand a final oath in front of so many witnesses. And yet, there was no point in making a fuss.

“I swear,” she said, finally.

The register pulled three certificates out of a folder on his desk, their names and details already filled in. Gudrun took the first one and read it carefully, checking every last detail, before taking a pen and signing her name at the bottom. She passed it to Horst, then read and signed the remaining two certificates. Her father, her guardian, was the last person to sign his name. Without his signature, it wouldn’t be valid.

“You are now husband and wife,” the register said. His tone hadn’t changed at all. “I wish you both a long and happy marriage.”

Gudrun fought down the urge to giggle, then turned to Horst and lifted her lips, allowing him to kiss her gently. She heard Siegfried say something rude behind them, then grunt in pain, but she didn’t care. Horst held her for a long moment, then released her, his eyes shining with… something. They were married now. Their lives had just been bound together, for better or worse… her emotions were a mess. Part of her was tempted, far too tempted, just to start crying.

Her father paid the Registrar, then marched her family out of the room. Gudrun followed, holding Horst’s hand as they walked into the small dining room. There wasn’t much to eat – Gudrun was damned if she was feasting while much of the population was starving – but there were two bottles of expensive wine and some sweets from France. It wasn’t how she’d envisaged her wedding, when she’d thought about what she’d wanted as a young girl, yet the lack of ceremony didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were together.

She glanced up at him, then giggled as he started trying to feed her. Siegfried made even more rude noises, then quietened down as Kurt glared at him. Gudrun sighed, wondering what his problem was, before deciding it didn’t matter. Siegfried was already far too spoilt simply by being the youngest. Their parents weren’t quite as strict with him as they’d been with their older children.

“Don’t drink too much,” her father advised as he passed her a glass of wine. “You are already very emotional.”

Gudrun nodded. Now the ceremony was over, part of her had doubts. She had – technically – promised to obey Horst… and the law would back him up, if there was a dispute. And yet, she was damned if she was just submitting to him. Even her own mother, however quiet she might be in public, was hardly submissive in private. And yet… she took a sip of the wine, silently grateful that her mother had forbidden her from drinking more than a glass on special occasions. The boys could have their drinking contests, if they wished, but it wasn’t something she cared to allow herself. It was too dangerous.

She ate enough to keep herself going, then watched as her parents escorted her siblings out of the room. If there was one thing to be said for such a simple ceremony, it was that Horst and she were left alone within two hours of the wedding. A more complex ceremony would take far longer…

“Mrs Albrecht,” Horst said, quietly.

Gudrun nodded. She’d already determined that she would use her maiden name for her professional life, but she would be Mrs Albrecht in private. And yet, even acknowledging it made her feel strange. They were together now until one of them died. Divorce was practically unthinkable. If they had children, it would become completely impossible.

Horst rose and held out a hand. “Shall we go?”

“Yes,” Gudrun said. She stood and kissed him, as hard as she could. “Let’s go.”

“I trust you had a few words with Siegfried?”

“Kurt already gave him a lecture,” Herman said, as he stepped into the room he shared with his wife. Adelinde was already sitting on the bed, her blonde hair shining under the harsh electric light. “He’s quite protective of Gudrun.”

“He’ll have to be protective of someone else soon,” Adelinde said, curtly. She sounded annoyed. “And Siegfried needs to grow up.”

“He’s twelve,” Herman reminded her. “It’s going to be a while before he grows into a man.”

“I know,” Adelinde said. “But he’s too old not to know when he’s being rude.”

Herman nodded. His youngest son had always been a handful. Herman had had less time for him, while Johan had been four years older than Siegfried and Kurt had been in military training, depriving Siegfried of a true playmate or someone to look up to. And Gudrun had been a girl…

He sighed as he sat down next to his wife. He’d given his daughter away to a man she’d chosen, surrendering her to another man. It felt wrong, even though he’d known that Gudrun would eventually move out from the moment she was born. His daughter was no longer his little girl, but a grown woman. Their relationship would never be the same.

And if Horst tries to boss her around, he thought, I’ll…

He smiled in genuine wonderment. It was odd, but Gudrun – perhaps – was the only one of his children who really took after him. If Horst tried to boss her around, or beat her, Herman was sure he’d regret it very quickly – if he survived. Gudrun had brought down a government! A single man wouldn’t present a real problem…

Adelinde gave him a sharp look. “What’s so funny?”

“Gudrun is very like me,” Herman said. “And that’s odd.”

“Hah,” Adelinde said. She stuck out her tongue. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for a very long time.”