Devotion(33)

song on the river


Blackbirds announced the dawn as fatigue finally pressed upon me. The room was still dark. I heard Papa’s heavy tread down the corridor, his knocking on the beams to wake Matthias in the loft, and thought again of Thea, of her mouth on mine.

I was awake. I was older than the sea.

Early morning light crept across the wall as we broke our fast in the bare kitchen, gathered around the table that Papa had built inside the room, too large to be removed. Papa was excited, talking of the journey ahead as a blessed adventure. I said nothing, hoping to sit unnoticed, unspoken to, so that I might let my thoughts wander back to the forest. At one point, Mama narrowed her eyes at me and pulled a pine needle from my hair. She pointed it at my face like a knife, like a question, but said nothing. I crammed bread into my mouth, pressed my hips against the table’s edge. I knew she could not guess at what I had done, what I was thinking about, but my cheeks coloured anyway.

Outside the morning was dew-heavy, cold and fresh. The lane through Kay was filled with village families, some with wagons to carry their trunks, others with handcarts. I could not see Thea and her parents, but the road was thick with people, and I guessed that they would join the end of the procession, their being so removed from the centre of the village.

‘This is it then,’ said Papa. He pulled Matthias and me to his side. ‘Today marks a new life. We cast off our chains and are freed from our suffering.’ He squeezed our shoulders. ‘“For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.”’ He breathed deeply. ‘We shall live as free men.’

We stood a moment in the bustle, watching as everyone said goodbye to those who had chosen to remain behind, who felt their bodies too frail for the journey or who had embroidered themselves too closely into Kay and could not bear to burst their stitches and leave, frayed and unattached. I watched as Magdalena Radtke threw her arms around her sparrow-boned mother. She cried silently, her whole body shaking. The old woman stood there, patiently bearing the weight of her hefty daughter, the lace fringe of her bonnet trembling under Magdalena’s sobs. ‘Go in God’s grace,’ she said. ‘I will see you in glory.’ The five Radtke children watched on from their wagon, faces twitching, until little Franz suddenly leaped over the side and ran to his grandmother, wrapping his arms around her legs and burying his face in her apron. The other children followed suit, and soon I could not see their grandmother at all, so enveloped was she in the clinging limbs of her family. Only Samuel Radtke watched on, reins in hand, digging at his front teeth with a thumbnail.

‘It’s time,’ he said eventually. No one paid him any attention.

Most of the women had tears in their eyes. Amalie Schultze was crying the hardest, tears dripping down her chin onto the red and bawling face of her baby niece. At the Pasches’ wedding I had overheard Henriette Volkmann tell Christiana in a giddy whisper that the baby was actually Amalie’s, born a bastard five villages over. ‘And how could her sister have had another baby eight months after her first?’ Henriette had muttered, chin cocked in disbelief. The thought had made me feel uncomfortable and hot. I watched as Amalie’s father gently prised the infant out of his daughter’s arms. Amalie wiped her eyes and stood quite still. She had stopped weeping. She stared at the swaddled baby then, suddenly, slapped herself across the cheek. I jumped. No one did anything. She slapped herself again, and then suddenly Mutter Scheck was there, her arm around Amalie, guiding her into the crowd where the first wagons had started to pull away into the lane.

‘Well, Heinrich. It’s time. Are you sure you want to take these little urchins with you?’ I felt a hand tug at my earlobe and turned to see Uncle Ludwig, my father’s younger brother, grinning at me, teeth clamped around his pipe. He had come from Harthe to help us travel. Papa had promised him our wagon for his efforts.

I rubbed my ear and did not return his smile. There was no sign of Thea or her parents, and I could not summon even false good humour.

‘Matthias,’ I murmured, grabbing my brother’s coat sleeve. ‘Thea is not here.’

Matthias looked about us. ‘Hold on,’ he said. Climbing the wooden spokes of the wagon wheel, he stood on the driver’s bench and scanned the crowd. He frowned, shaking his head. ‘Maybe they have already left?’

‘Matthias.’ Papa beckoned my brother down. His shirt was damp with sweat from hoisting our trunks into the wagon. ‘Let us sing a song of praise,’ he said. Taking a deep breath he began to sing ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ in a voice so loud I had to draw away. Heads turned. And then I heard Matthias reluctantly join his voice to my father’s, and beyond his thin and unsteady harmonies I heard other voices enter the silence. The hymn rose up into the air about us. It had been a long time since anyone had dared to worship so openly.


We walked to Tschicherzig as the morning softened into sun, leaving nothing behind but footprints and the trailing notes of hymn after hymn. Papa sat on the wagon next to Uncle Ludwig, singing in his deep, rich voice, smoke from Uncle’s pipe lifting behind. Matthias and I walked side by side, saving our breath for the journey. I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder every few minutes. Thea and her parents were nowhere to be seen, even as the crowd thinned out along the road.