Devotion(20)

‘Has she . . .?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

My brother stacked the logs against the wall then joined us by the fireside, sitting cross-legged. He smiled at Thea and smoothed his hair against his skull, then winced as a heavy groan issued from the bedroom.

Thea reached across me and tapped Matthias lightly on the arm. ‘Hanne just told me about Gottlob.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Matthias glanced at me, the gap in his teeth visible through his parted lips. ‘She didn’t know?’

I shook my head.

‘Our parents never talk about him either.’ He shrugged.

‘Do you want to?’ asked Thea.

‘What?’

‘Talk about him.’

My twin and I looked at each other.

‘How did he die?’ Thea prompted.

‘He fell from a horse,’ Matthias said. ‘Three years ago. He was seventeen and he was taking our horse –’

‘Otto,’ I interrupted.

‘– our horse Otto to Skampe. Hans Pasche found him.’

We were silent. Through the walls Anna Maria said something to my mother over and over again, her voice steady and soothing.

‘Papa blames himself, I think,’ Matthias said quietly.

I looked at him. ‘Really?’

Matthias nodded. ‘He once told me he wished he’d told Gottlob to hide as well.’

I was silent for a moment. ‘I always wondered if Mama felt responsible. She was the one who asked him to ride to Skampe.’

Thea looked confused. ‘Why did Gottlob need to hide?’

‘Something happened a few days before Gottlob’s accident,’ I explained. ‘It was when the soldiers were searching for Pastor Flügel.’

‘They knocked at our door,’ Matthias said. ‘Mama pushed Hanne and me out the back and told us to stay out of sight. We crawled into the rye field and hid there all day.’

‘Later, when Mama called us back inside, we saw that Gottlob had been beaten. When the soldiers had threatened to set the hayrick on fire, to drive out the pastor should he be hiding in there, Gottlob had picked up a pitchfork and the men had set upon him.’

‘Papa intervened,’ Matthias added. ‘They arrested him for disaffection, saying he’d armed his children against the Church’s representatives. When Papa asked how, they pointed to Gottlob’s pitchfork.’

Thea lifted a hand to her cheek.

‘They took Papa to Züllichau,’ I said. ‘That’s why Gottlob was riding Otto to Skampe. Mama sold the horse to a family there to raise the money to free Papa. But later that day Hans Pasche found Otto trotting back towards Kay, riderless.’

From the bedroom sounded a muffled scream. Matthias and I exchanged frightened looks.

‘What had happened?’ Thea whispered.

‘We never really found out,’ Matthias said softly. ‘Hans found Gottlob lying unconscious in the road a little further on. He rode Otto home and told Elder Pasche, who went with his wagon to retrieve Gottlob.’

I was quiet, remembering how, after Hans had told us what had happened, Mama had run out the door. When Elder Pasche returned, Mama was sitting on the floor of his wagon, Gottlob’s head in her lap. The bloodstain in her skirt had been a perfect circle.

Thea was watching me, eyes wide. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated.

Matthias nodded. He reached for the fire poker and turned it over in his hands.

I wiped my face with my skirt.

Another muffled cry came from the bedroom.

The poker dropped onto the hearth as Matthias rose suddenly and left the room.

Thea and I were quiet for a moment. The cry turned into a constant low groaning that made me feel sick in my stomach.

‘Now we’ll have a new brother,’ I murmured.

‘It’s a girl. Mama told me.’

‘She knows things, doesn’t she?’ I asked. ‘Anna Maria.’

Thea gave a small nod. ‘Sometimes. You know, before we moved to Kay, she told me something strange. I didn’t understand it until after we met in the fog.’

‘What?’ I asked. My face felt tight and warm. I pushed myself away from the fire, back into the darkness of the kitchen. ‘What did she say?’

‘She said I’d meet my ghost.’ Thea did not look at me. Her skin glowed in the firelight. ‘She says understanding comes to her in riddles, like that. Like poetry.’

‘Like when I hear the trees speak.’

‘It must be the way of mysteries.’

We fell into silence. Thea shuffled close to me and I felt her like a fire, warmer than anything flickering in the hearth. The groaning intensified, there was a low and guttural cry, then, seconds later, the wail of a newborn child. Thea looked at me, a smile spreading on her face, as footsteps sounded down the corridor and Anna Maria entered the room with the baby in her arms.

‘Hanne, hold your sister.’ Without waiting for my reply she gently placed the baby, crumpled and waxen and crying, in my arms and then, glancing at Thea with tight lips, returned to the bedroom.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked Thea. ‘Is it Mama?’

‘I’m sure she will be well,’ Thea said. ‘Try not to worry. No, don’t get up. My mother has been doing this since she was my age. Here,’ she said softly. ‘Give her your little finger to suck on.’