Hans nodded.
I froze. I had never known Hans thought of me at all, let alone in such a serious manner. The thought of a husband had never filled me with hope or excitement as it did Christiana or Henriette. Rather, my feelings had invariably drifted between dread at belonging so completely to an adult world that promised only more curtailed freedoms, and a vague uneasiness at the prospect of a wedding and all that it would lead to. My thoughts flicked to Elder Radtke’s bull and the cows rolling their top lips back, the undignified rising on two legs, the jab with the pizzle.
‘Does that make you angry?’ asked Hans.
Matthias hesitated. ‘Papa would have liked that. He probably would have tried to arrange it.’
‘My father, too.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Matthias said. ‘You never said anything.’
‘You know, she once told me that she could hear water singing underground. We were kids. Nine, maybe. I started teasing her, and she said, “I’ll show you,” and she started digging. Of course, she didn’t find any water, she was just digging with her hands. But three years later Old Hermann came to divine for a new well and he stopped just where Hanne had said. Sweetest water you ever drank.’
I had no memory of such an incident.
Matthias smiled. ‘That sounds like her.’
‘The thought of her madly scratching at the soil with her nails, like some mad chicken, trying to prove me wrong . . .’
‘She did prove you wrong.’
Hans shrugged. ‘I know.’
‘Mm. Hanne and Hans. A mouthful.’
‘How about you?’
‘What do you mean?’ Matthias stretched, cricking his neck.
‘Any nice widows you have an eye on?’ Hans raised his eyebrows and my brother started laughing. ‘Maybe Mutter Scheck?’
Matthias picked up his pillow and belted Hans over the head with it.
‘Hey!’ Daniel raised his head. ‘Some of us are trying to sleep.’
Matthias and Hans settled themselves back into bed and soon, after a few fits of ribbing, sleep overwhelmed them.
I was wide awake. My fingers felt thick with blood, my knees jellied. The glow of the night watch’s pipe floated orange in the darkness. The night was unclouded, pitted with stars, moonlight pooling in soft echo on the weathered boards. I felt the cold air address my hot cheeks.
Hans, I thought. I might have been married to Hans.
Had my parents known? I agreed with Matthias: Papa would have approved of Hans. Both of my parents had given me an understanding of what they considered important for a successful marriage: faithfulness to God, strength and an ability to work hard. Practical skills. Property. Hans was the son of an elder, just as I was the daughter of one. He seemed strong enough. They would have liked me to marry someone from Kay. Someone they knew.
Hans shifted in his sleep and I looked down at his face, lit by the moon. Christiana had often mentioned that she thought him handsome and so I supposed it for fact. It was true that I liked the way the moonlight lay on his skin, the way it made shadows of the depression in his throat, the corners of his eyes, his temple.
He might have been my husband.
I leaned down over Hans until I could see the flicker of his eyelids, the hairs on his top lip. I pressed my mouth to his.
Nothing. I could sense the give of his lips, feel his breath exhale into my own, but nothing quickened within me and I knew instantly that I was deeply grateful in every coil of my gut that I was dead and would not have to marry him.
To be happy to be dead! What would I have wanted instead? What else could I have hoped for, if not marriage?
The answer came to me in a ghost-beat of my own blood.
I could not lie to such a witness of stars. The thought that I might have been married to Hans unnerved me because I had already given myself to another.
Thea.
I wanted Thea. I still wanted her.
The sudden understanding of that coursed through me and solidified into both shame and exhilaration.
This was what I had sensed in myself. This was what I had wanted.
It was an impossibility.
And yet, Thea had kissed me, and I had felt affirmation in my bones and blood and the wick of my soul had caught flame, had burned bright.
Yes, this. Yes, this.
I rose and made my way down the hatchway and into the bow. I found Thea’s berth. She was asleep, had tucked her hands up under her chin, and I felt my love for her rise up in me, filling me until I felt steady and sure and ballasted against the world.
It had been one thing to feel without understanding, but it was another to feel love and to know it for what it was.
‘Thea.’ I said her name for the solace of it. ‘Thea, better your face than the face of God. Better your love, better your grace.’
And I wondered if she loved me as I loved her.
I saw it then. The pillow overcover she had almost cast into the sea. In the light of the hatchway lamp, I saw that she had finished the Schlafe wohl. And when I picked it up, I saw that next to my initial she had added her own.
There was a time when I wandered in grief. I left the cupped palm of the new village and its familiarity because I felt myself betrayed. That time changed me. I saw things I would never have seen in my lifetime, had I lived. I saw things that I know my own parents will never see, that they may not, to this day, truly know about.
So much of what I encountered in those years was cold and broken. But sometimes I saw things that led to a deeper understanding of myself. Sometimes I stumbled across things that made bonfires of my heart.
I once encountered a love like mine. I had fled to the stringybark forest upon the ranges. It had not been by design. The Tiers, as I knew this place, surrounded the track that led, eventually, to the plains. At the time I was following any path that promised distance. The stringybarks were dense, the ground so steep in places it was impossible to walk down the hillside. A place of shadows, where foresters lived and cut lumber.