The Enemy's Daughter

One
The Celtic Sea, off the coast of Ireland
Friday, May 7, 1915

Marta leaned back against the ship’s railing as far as she could go without falling over the side. Knowing exactly how much she could stretch herself before toppling into the sea was a talent, she had told Papa when he had caught her doing it yesterday and scolded her. It was recklessness, he had replied, but he had spoken with a smile, which was how she had known he wasn’t angry. These days, she was never sure how he would react.Now she craned her neck, straining to see the ship’s four funnels. They looked like enormous red stripes against the blue sky. Aha! Yet again, only three of them were smoking.Ever since they left New York six days ago, only three of the funnels had been choking out smoke. That meant the men in the boiler room belowdecks weren’t putting coal into the fourth furnace, didn’t it? Was that furnace broken? If it was, it should have been fixed by now, for it hadn’t been used once during the journey, and the Lusitania was a luxury ship, where people expected and paid for the best service. Papa had said so, and he always told her the truth, even if it was scary.Marta thought of the board outside the dining room, where the ship’s daily bulletin was posted. The previous day’s mileage was typed at the bottom of the slip of paper. At supper on Monday night, four days ago, she had seen that the ship had traveled 501 miles the day before. All through the soup, and the braised ham, and the nuts and cheese, and finally the chocolate pudding, she had puzzled over the number. Captain Turner had said the ship was capable of twenty-­five knots. That was almost thirty miles an hour. There were twenty-­four hours in a day, which meant that the day before, Sunday, the ship should have traveled seven hundred miles.Instead, it had sailed nearly two hundred miles fewer.The crew was forcing the ship to travel slowly. She was sure of it. And it was a secret. She understood about secrets—­after all, she had been keeping a big one ever since she and Papa had boarded this ship, and that made her especially good at noticing when someone else was keeping one, too.But why was the crew making the ship go slowly?Frowning, she turned away from the railing. Up and down the promenade deck, children raced one another, laughing. Little girls in ruffled dresses and boys in shorts played with marbles or jacks. Stewardesses in gray or black gowns pushed babies in carriages.A boy with blond hair stood a few feet away. He had to be a teenager, maybe fifteen or sixteen, for he wore long trousers, not shorts, and there was the outline of a cigarette case in his jacket pocket.He was watching her.Marta froze. Had she done something wrong? Had he been able to tell that she wasn’t who she was pretending to be?No, that was impossible. She hadn’t spoken a word, so he hadn’t heard her accent, and she was wearing her American cousin’s white dress and blue sash, not her own green serge gown with its long skirts that Papa said would look foreign to the other passengers, who were mostly American, Canadian, English, or Irish. She had fixed her brown hair into two long braids that flowed down her back instead of twisting them around the crown of her head, as she did back home. Unless she talked, nobody should be able to guess she was German.The boy couldn’t have any idea about her real identity. She was still safe.“The funnels,” the boy said. He sounded English. “I’ve been noticing them, too.”He looked at her, clearly waiting for her to reply. Marta’s heart raced. If she stayed silent, she would appear rude. He might tell the other children or, even worse, his parents about the girl who had refused to speak to him. If she talked, she was less likely to appear unusual—­except then others would hear her accent.Whatever you do, don’t draw attention to yourself, Papa had whispered to her when they stood on the dock at Pier 54, waiting to board theLusitania.I won’t, she had promised, for she understood why they had to be inconspicuous. The instant anyone guessed they were German, they would be arrested and put in jail. Maybe forever.The boy was still looking at her. She had to say something.She thought of how her American cousin talked. Amelia had been born and raised in New York City, and she spoke so quickly that Marta had trouble keeping up with her. She stretched out the lettera, too.Well, so could Marta. She looked the boy in the eye and said as fast as she could, “Yeah, what about the funnels?”She must not have sounded strange, for he didn’t look surprised or worried. Instead, he shrugged. “My father said the crewmen have shut off one of the boiler rooms in an effort to conserve fuel.” He leaned closer, whispering, “But I think they’re going slowly on purpose to make us a target.”“A target for whom?” Marta asked.He tapped the side of his nose, indicating that it was a secret. “The Germans. They’ve stationed submarines around England and Ireland. And everyone knows we sailed into a war zone today. Captain Turner warned us about it, in the first-­class lounge after supper.”Marta glared at the boy. Her countrymen would never attack a civilian ship! Yes, Germany and Great Britain were at war, along with France, and Poland, and Russia, and Austria-­Hungary, and Serbia, and Japan, and so many countries that she couldn’t remember them all. They were battling over borders and treaties and politics and other things she didn’t understand.What she did understand, though, was that Germany was her homeland, and she would love and defend it always.“Germans would not hurt a ship filled with innocent people,” she snapped.The boy pulled a coin from his pocket and began tossing it up in the air and catching it. “Don’t be silly. Of course they would. And that’s exactly what England hopes they’ll do.”This boy was awful! Marta turned away from him. The English were greedy—­after all, they had dozens of colonies and were always trying to get more land and more people under their control. Papa said England was known as the empire where the sun never set, for it spanned the globe and it was always daylight somewhere in its territories. The English's greediness was part of the reason her country was at war with them, she knew. And, of course, England and France were allies, and France had been trying for years to weaken Germany, so naturally Germany couldn’t work with England. The reasons for the war went on and on, but whenever grown-­ups started talking about them, she stopped listening. Germany was her home, and England and France and Russia were Germany’s enemies, and that was all she needed to know.As far as she could see, the ocean stretched out, its surface glittering with sunlight. On the horizon, she glimpsed a green line. That must be Ireland! It couldn’t be long now until they arrived in England, less than a day perhaps, and then she and Papa would take a ship to Holland, and then a train to Germany, and then finally, finally be home in Berlin.“You didn’t ask why England wants the Germans to attack us,” the boy said from behind Marta.She didn’t reply. Let him decide she was rude. She didn’t care what he thought of her.“England wants America to join the war,” the boy continued. “If Germany attacks an English ship with American passengers, then America will definitely fight. And they’ll fight on the English side. So the crew’s making the ship go slowly, trying to provoke the Germans into bombing us.”She whirled around. The boy was leaning against the railing, flipping the coin. He caught it and grinned. “You’re obviously an American,” he said. “You know I’m right.”She had been about to call him a donkey—­which was her favorite insult—­but his words stopped her. He thought she was an American. She had fooled him.Her breath caught in her chest. She had hidden her German accent so well that the boy hadn’t guessed who she was. It felt like the time she had acted in a play at school and hadn’t combed her hair for a week so she could look as messy as the character Struwwelpeter. Mama had said it was as though Marta had vanished and been replaced by the little boy she’d been playing. Now Marta had done the same thing again—­inhabited a character so completely that she had tricked those surrounding her into believing that the character, not her, was real.All of her felt warm and golden, as though someone had lit a candle inside her. She was practically an actress!If she could convince the boy she was American, perhaps she could convince him how wrong he was about her country. “I do not think Germany would be so foolish,” she said, making sure to stretch out hera’s again like her cousin did. Maybe the boy wouldn’t notice if her accent didn’t sound quite right.He frowned. “What do you mean?”She chose her words with care—­she mustn’t attract attention.“Germany would not attack a civilian ship with American passengers,” she said slowly. “They must know that America would fight against them. And nobody wants to battle strong, powerful America.”For a moment, he didn’t reply. He caught the coin and placed it in his pocket. “Maybe,” he said at last. “But my father says people do all kinds of terrible things in war. He fought in the Boer War, in Africa, so he knows about these things.”“I see,” Marta said in her politest voice, although she didn’t agree, not at all. Terrible, she could understand—­everyone wanted to win and were willing to do anything to be the victor, weren’t they?But her people would never do something as horrible as attacking a ship filled with innocent people. Never.The boy tipped his hat at her. “Good day, miss.”“Good day.” She watched him walk off, thinking. A most satisfactory experience, her favorite teacher back home would say. No, Marta hadn’t changed his mind about the possibility of Germany attacking a civilian ship. But shehad successfully imitated an American.Wait until she told Papa! He would be so proud of her. For the entire journey, they’d had to hole up in their cabin, emerging only for meals and occasional walks on the promenade deck. In the second-­class dining saloon, they’d pointed at the menu to show the waiter what they wanted to eat, rather than speaking to him. Papa had said it was better to be thought of as eccentric or rude than to be suspected of being German. And try as he might, he could not get rid of his Berlin accent.Not speaking to other passengers was boring, but even worse was the fact that they couldn’t go to the ship’s library. Marta had peeked inside once and thought it was the most perfect room she had ever seen. Leather-­bound volumes were crammed tightly into the bookcases that lined the walls. There were at least a dozen upholstered chairs and sofas, just right for sinking into with a book. She could have spent the voyage in the library, without having to leave at all except to eat.Papa, though, had taken her hand and drawn her away from the room. “I am sorry,” he said when they had returned to their cabin. “We must keep our distance from others. You know that, Marta.”But now they didn’t have to stay away from the rest of the passengers! She could speak for both of them.Wouldn’t he be pleased! She’d tell him straightaway.Skirting groups of children playing marbles, she made her way down the deck. A wave hit the side of the ship, and the floor rolled under her feet. She had to grab the railing to catch her balance.When she looked up, she saw her father. He stood by the door leading to the promenade deck. He looked like the other male passengers in his dark suit and straw hat. The other men, though, were usually laughing, or talking, or smoking cigars, or clapping one another on the back. They always seemed happy.Not Papa. His expression was frightened.He must have seen her talking with the boy. Once she explained that she could act, though, she was certain the creases of worry would smooth out from his forehead. He would run his hand over the top of her hair, as he always did when she made him proud. “My little radish,” he would say. It was her favorite nickname, for Papa said radishes had tough skins but sweet seeds on the stems, and she was both tough and sweet, too.He would still scold her, though, for parents always felt they had to make a lesson out of everything.Quickly, she went to his side. “I am sorry,” she whispered.He gave her a small smile. “I know,” he whispered back. Then he took her hand and kissed it, which was how she knew she was forgiven.Together, they went inside and down a stairwell that took them deep into the ship, far away from passengers who might see them and wonder why this man and his daughter never spoke to anyone else. And as they hurried down the stairs, Marta began searching for the proper words to convince Papa that talking to the boy wasn’t dangerous, for she had discovered a wonderful secret about herself today.She was an actress.