Aimee climbed up and stood on the heavy guard rail. She gripped the wooden frame above her head, the frame that had held the bells. If she slipped she’d fall twenty metres to the stone floor below. She swayed. ‘If I fall then we’ll save Silver Hand a bullet,’ she murmured. ‘If I fall, make sure you escape.’

As the girl pushed at the tiles they gave way easily and soon there was a hole large enough for her to see the grey clouds scudding across a stormy sky. One tile gave way too easily and she swayed forward. She pushed herself backwards and whirled her arms as she felt herself toppling.

Aimee fell.

As she waited to plummet she wondered if it would hurt or if her world would turn dark in an instant. The song drifted into her mind, ‘For me the angels sing-a-ling-a-ling,’ and she knew she’d be seeing those angels soon.

Then Marius grabbed her ankles. She hung off the rail like a trapeze artist she’d seen at a circus in the years before the war. Her pigtail hung down like a little bell rope. When she opened her eyes the world was upside down.

Aimee’s legs ached where they were pressed against the rail. The German boy steadied himself. He began to haul her up. Now he was able to grip her knees. The rough rails burned the back of her legs as he hauled her over and at last she fell on to the safe floor.

Marius wheezed like a rusted hinge. After a few minutes he was able to rise to his knees. ‘Thank you,’ Aimee said quietly. ‘You saved my life.’

‘So that Silver Hand can shoot you,’ Marius said quietly.

‘He won’t. We’re going to escape.’

Marius shook his head. ‘We can climb on to the spire but we can’t get down to the ground. We can’t fly and we don’t have a ladder.’

Aimee gave a sly smile. ‘And next you’ll tell me we don’t even have a rope.’

‘We don’t even have a rope,’ he echoed.

Aimee’s smile became a wide grin. ‘No, Marius. What is your German word for a simpleton? Dummkopf? Because we have two ropes. The ones they used to ring the bells. They reach all the way to the ground. We put one out of the hole in the roof and climb down it.’

Marius turned red. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Dummkopf,’ Aimee teased, and reached out into the void to grab the rope. First she clung on to it as she made the hole in the steeple wider. Then she told Marius to pass their packs, which she threw into the graveyard far below. She gripped the edge of the gap in the roof and pulled herself up. ‘Pass me the rope,’ she ordered.