I lifted my face, felt the snow settle on it. I knew what she meant. ‘Holy,’ I replied. ‘It sounds holy.’
We stood and let the snow cover our lips and gather in the corners of our eyes. It pealed down around us like the ringing of bells, and we were anointed together, blessed over and over.
Back then, I thought my loneliness came from being too much in the house, in feeling an obligation to become someone I knew I was not. After all this time, I know that I was lonely not just because I wanted to be seen and understood, but because I also wanted to offer understanding.
To find a home for the love within me.
I knew what it was like to feel strange and solitary. How well I was placed, then, to befriend the friendless. My heart was ready to be unfolded and afflicted.
‘Did you thank Frau Eichenwald for the salve?’ my mother asked that night, as she set out a cold supper.
‘Yes,’ I said, looking up as my brother came into the kitchen, face still damp from the washbasin. He sank into a chair. ‘Do you want milk?’ I asked him.
‘What are they like then?’ asked Matthias, accepting the pitcher from me. ‘I saw you walking up to the cottage with the new girl.’
‘Thea,’ I said.
He looked at me over the edge of his glass as he drank. ‘You like her?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Matthias, wipe your mouth,’ Mama muttered.
Matthias pretended he couldn’t hear her. ‘You seem different.’
‘Different how?’ I asked.
‘Wipe your mouth.’ Mama threw a cloth at him and it landed on his head.
Matthias left it there, grinning at me, milk on his lip. ‘Happier,’ he said as Mama snatched the cloth off his hair and began scrubbing his mouth herself.
Papa stepped into the room and sat down at the head of the table. ‘Don’t baby him, Johanne,’ he muttered.
Matthias laughed as Mama threw her hands into the air.
‘Hanne was just telling me about the Eichenwalds,’ my brother said, refilling his glass. ‘She likes their daughter.’
Papa nodded. ‘Herr Eichenwald is passionate in his disavowal of a common service book. We spoke about the changes to sacramental rites after service yesterday.’
‘Frau Eichenwald invited me to dinner,’ I said, as Mama sat down, setting a plate filled with smoked ham on the table.
‘When?’
‘Next Sunday.’
Mama reached for my father’s plate and began piling it with meat and cheese. ‘I don’t think so, Hanne.’
‘Why not?’
‘Their ways are different from ours.’
‘Friedrich Eichenwald is as ardent for Christ as we are,’ Papa said. He held Mama’s eye as she handed him his meal. ‘You can spare her, can’t you, Mutter?’
The following weekend I trudged through the weather to the forester’s cottage, arriving windblown and short of breath. Thea threw open the door as soon as I raised my hand to knock and quickly ushered me inside.
‘You have to tell Mama what you told me,’ she said immediately, pulling out a chair for me at their table, already set for the midday meal. I could smell garlic and frying onions. ‘About the world singing to you.’
Anna Maria turned from where she was kneeling by the fireplace, a black kettle steaming over the embers. ‘It seems you have a gift, Hanne.’ She rose and kissed me on the cheek in welcome, her face flushed from the heat of the fire.
I fought the urge to rub my cheek. I was unused to affection. ‘I don’t know if it’s a gift,’ I stammered. ‘My mother thinks it is childish.’
Anna Maria exchanged a swift look with her daughter. Thea gently pushed me into the chair and then sat in the one next to it, tucking her legs under her. I waited for Anna Maria to correct her as my mother would have done, to sigh and ask that she sit properly, but the Wend didn’t seem to mind.
‘What does it sound like today?’ Thea asked.
I hesitated, looking to the Wend who stood, a half-smile on her face, waiting for me to speak. ‘Well, the cold . . . the cold sounds like a gasping. Like a voice singing on the in-breath. And the trees are saying things through gritted teeth.’ I looked at the empty plate in front of me. ‘It changes.’
Anna Maria sat down opposite me and, placing her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands. ‘Do you ever hear them talk to you? Plants, I mean.’
I nodded. ‘Sometimes I can make out words. Not very often.’ I glanced sideways to Thea. ‘I don’t really talk about it.’
The Wend’s gaze was unrelenting. I felt as though my skin would lift from my body. ‘You don’t have to tell us what you hear,’ she said, eyes not moving from my face, ‘if it is not for us to know.’
‘I would like to know,’ Thea said, leaning over the table and helping herself to a slice of bread.
Anna Maria pushed the plate out of the reach of her daughter. ‘Wait for grace.’
Thea peered towards the door. ‘Where’s Papa?’
‘He’ll be in when he’s ready. You can wait. Tell us about yourself, Hanne. Have you always lived in Kay?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, I was born here.’
‘And are most families Lutherans of the old faith?’
‘Most. Some families do not attend our services. They keep to themselves.’ I accepted a glass of water from Thea and took a sip. ‘I think they go to the Union church in Skampe.’
‘But they don’t report the rest of us? Surely they know we are not Evangelisch.’
I carefully set the glass back on the table. ‘When the soldiers first came, lots of people believed Herr Pfitzer was responsible. He lives in the last house on the western side of the village. They thought he was the one who wrote to the commissioner and informed him about Pastor Flügel.’ I glanced at Thea, cleared my throat. ‘Our congregation does not speak to him or his daughters.’
‘The girls with the dimples?’ asked Thea, prodding her own cheek. ‘The littlest has a harelip.’
‘Oh, no, those are the Volkmann sisters. Henriette, Elizabeth and Karoline. Karoline has the harelip. They would have been at worship in the forest, but they were unwell, I think.’
Anna Maria nodded. ‘Tell me, who is the woman with the’ – she paused and then assumed a look of rigid severity and tapped herself on the chest – ‘with the large bust? Dark hair.’
‘The woman who kept looking at us during services?’ Thea asked her.
Anna Maria nodded.
‘I think you mean Magdalena Radtke. She has five children. A daughter our age and four younger. Elder Radtke’s parents live with them too.’
Anna Maria raised her eyebrows. ‘I meant to introduce myself, but she left very quickly.’
For a moment I wondered if Anna Maria knew of the rumours discussed at the Federschleissen. I pictured Christiana’s face as we cleaned, the whispered ‘Hexe’.
‘What’s her daughter’s name? The one our age?’ Thea was asking.
‘Christiana,’ I muttered.
‘What is she like?’
The room suddenly felt very warm. I could feel sweat prickle across my brow and undid the shawl I had tucked into my skirt.
‘You don’t like her,’ Thea said quietly, narrowing her eyes at me.
I laughed, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t say that.’