A week later, Rose was hanging herbs to dry when she recognized the peasant woman standing in the courtyard as a neighbor of her parents. She stepped out of Frau Geruscha’s chambers and into the sunlight.
“Your mother bids you come home today.” The woman bowed her head, glancing up from beneath lowered lids. “She has an important matter to discuss with you.”
No doubt the “important matter” was another potential husband her mother wanted to foist on her. Although becoming an apprentice for the town healer improved Rose’s status, it didn’t benefit her family as would marriage to a wealthy burgher.
After asking Frau Geruscha’s permission, Rose trudged along the path outside the town wall, delving a short way into the forest to her father’s wattle-and-daub cottage. She opened the front door to the smell of peas and pork fat cooking over the fire.
“Rose!” her little sisters squealed. Before Rose’s eyes could adjust to the dimness of the room, one pair of sooty arms wrapped around her waist, the other around her knees. Rose squeezed her sisters tight.
Her mother straightened from bending over the pot. The hole in the center of the ceiling of the one-room house didn’t do much to draw out the smoke, and Rose’s eyes watered and burned.
“Rose, you will be reasonable, for once, when you hear of the wool merchant who wants to marry you.” Her mother fixed Rose with a hard look, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set.
“Who?”
“Peter Brunckhorst.”
Rose’s mouth fell open as she recalled the man, old enough to be her father, who had introduced himself to her one day in the street. He had stared at her face as if there were words stamped there that he was trying to read.
She spoke through clenched teeth. “I will not wed Peter Brunckhorst—”
“What?” Her mother clamped her fists on her hips, still gripping her ladle in one hand.
“—No matter how rich he is.” He only wanted a wife with a good strong back to birth a swarm of children. Soon after, he’d die of some old person’s disease—if she was fortunate.
“You ungrateful little wench! I ought to snatch every hair from your head.” Her mother shook both fists at her, as though imagining doing exactly that. “This is the best offer you could ever hope to get!”
The best offer I could ever hope to get. She thought of Peter Brunckhorst, his greasy black-and-white hair plastered to his head. Why was he the best she could ever hope to get? Because she was stupid? Mean? Lazy? Unworthy of being loved?
No. Because she was poor.
“Watch your sisters and brother,” her mother ordered, then stormed out of the house.
Rose spent the day with her six-and eight-year-old sisters and her brother, the baby of the family at five years old. “Rose, will you tell us a story?” Agathe asked. Rose stopped what she was doing, and her brother crawled into her lap while she told them a tale about twin princesses locked in a tower that was made entirely of sweets. They listened in rapt attention.
She hugged them and kissed their cheeks. She knew what it felt like to want attention and affection and not get it. She could remember trying to put her arms around her mother and being pushed aside.
“Get away,” her mother would say, “and let me get my work done.” Rose learned not to expect affection from her. Her father often patted her on the head and spoke a word or two of praise. But he became awkward with her when she turned thirteen and developed womanly curves.
Now that she was seventeen, she didn’t need affection—at least, she’d better not. She knew a few maidens who had needed it and ended up with child—and without a husband.
Her mother returned in the late afternoon with her straw-colored hair freshly braided. She refused to look at Rose, addressing the younger children instead.
Rose slipped out the door and ran with Wolfie at her heels to her favorite spot beneath a large beech tree at the top of a hill. She threw herself down on the lush grass, propped her back against the tree, and stared across the empty meadow. She would never please her mother. The memory of her angry face made Rose’s chest ache. But she rarely had to see her mother anymore, now that she spent most of her days and nights with Frau Geruscha at Hagenheim Castle.
Wolfie laid his head in her lap and gazed up at her with big, russet eyes. She rubbed behind his ears, finding the patch of extra-soft fur. Her heart swelled as she blinked back tears. At least Wolfie loved her.