Devotion(25)

I looked around the small room. There was little to sell, only the table and its humble offering of crockery, the breadknife whittled thin from years of use. Six hard chairs, the polish on the seats suffering from years of shuffling bottoms. I tried to tally what else might be scraped together from the kitchen and bedrooms. Nothing of true value really; nothing that others would want. Mama’s white tablecloth embroidered with red thread. The dried, pressed myrtle crown from her wedding beneath my dead grandmother’s needlework proclaiming, ‘He who keeps you does not slumber.’

I sat in silence, filled with a growing sense of panic. The door was open to the night. Insects knocked themselves senseless against the hot glass of the lamp.

A colony, I thought. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a place so different from Kay. It was like trying to imagine a new colour. Six months on a ship. I had never seen the ocean before. My stomach turned to water at the thought of it.

‘Will Pastor Flügel come with us?’ Matthias’s voice was querulous, oddly high-pitched.

‘Yes, he will join us from England, although he mentions in his letter that he may be on another ship. We are waiting to hear from all the families of his congregations to learn how many will be needed. You saw for yourself how the news was received at the Pasches’. Not everyone is willing to leave, despite the freedom promised them. They lack confidence; they have the faith of Thomas.’

It was then that my heart dropped. I had assumed the whole forest congregation would leave. It had not occurred to me that some might wish to remain, even after so many years of oppression.

‘Did Herr Eichenwald and his family say they will come?’ I asked.

Papa scratched his beard. ‘All the elders and their families agreed at once to leave. The Volkmanns and Pfeiffers, also. The Eichenwalds are undecided.’

A terror drove down my spine that lifted me from my seat without conscious thought. My fingers hummed, and I was conscious of swaying, of needing to grip the back of my chair to prevent myself from falling to the floor. Faces turned in my direction. Their features swam together in the low light. The sound of insects hitting the lamp’s glass was intolerable.

‘Hanne?’

‘Excuse me,’ I muttered. My feet pulled me to the back door and out into the evening and its cool wonder of air. I stumbled to the orchard and sank down at the base of the walnut tree, its gnarled trunk against my back.

I did not cry. I could not cry. The air rushed in and out of me, but I could not catch a breath of it. I was aware of my dress, still damp and clinging to my body, of Matthias coming out the door and crouching beside me, his hands on my shoulders, wrapping my shawl about me, telling me to breathe when I could not. In time, I stilled; I slowed enough to hear the words he kept whispering to me.

‘All will be well,’ he was saying. ‘All will be well.’





restlessness


It was several days before I was able to walk to the forest and meet with Thea. My hours were not my own and I was forced to wait until an opportunity arose. Eventually there came a morning when Matthias and Papa were busy and Mama had left for a nearby town to sell some of our possessions, taking Hermine with her. As soon as she left, I struck out across the allotments towards the Eichenwalds’ cottage, under a summer sky purring with heat.

Thea appeared as I pushed through their front gate, her arms bare to the elbows and sticky with dough. In that moment, about to learn if we would be parted, the sight of her pared me down to nothing more than heartbeat and hope. I could have fallen on my knees.

She nodded at me, face sombre. ‘I’ll wash. Wait there.’

As I waited, I worked myself up into even greater distress. Thea would remain here in Kay, her family’s cottage still issuing its steady stream of smoke, and I would be buried in the bowels of a ship intent on taking me as far away from her as possible. I would be a stranger in a strange land, trapped in an even smaller circle of villagers who knew me too well. I would disappear and Thea would find another friend. I sat down on the grass, trying not to cry. The image of her arm in arm with another girl, someone not so tall, someone greedy for her confidences, burned through me, so that when Thea came out blinking in the sunlight, she recoiled at my expression.

She pulled me up from the sweet-smelling grass and pushed back my headscarf, the better to see my face.

‘Please, please tell me you are coming too. Please, Thea.’ The words hooked on a whimper.

Thea looked back at the cottage. ‘Let’s go to the river,’ she murmured.

I followed her to the water, unwilling to take my eyes from the back of her head. Thea’s braids had loosened, and strands of hair brushed against the collar of her blouse. The tops of her ears glowed pink in the sun.

I was memorising her already.

We reached the river, high against the banks, streaked with current, and I sat next to Thea on a log thick with moss. It was damp from the night’s rain and I could feel moisture seeping through my skirts, but I did not move.

Her eyes were round. Solemn.

‘I need to know,’ I said. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Hanne . . . I don’t know.’

I brought a hand to my chest and rubbed at the soft depression at my throat. I felt as though I might choke. ‘I don’t want to go if you aren’t coming.’

Thea picked at the moss on the trunk, flinging it into the water. ‘I heard my parents talking about it when they thought I was asleep.’