She turned her shoulder to me, pen scratching across notecard like a sharp-beaked bird pecking away at the bark of a tree.
I was too afraid of my stepmother to ignore her admonishment. I was all too aware that as my stepsisters left, there would be less and less of a bulwark between us. My future lay in her hands and she was little motivated to treat it with care.
My sisters joined us shortly after, and I made a point of standing with Klara at the piano to turn the pages for her, and pouring tea. When Klara tired, I took over; after one sonata, my stepmother held up her hand with a pained expression and said, ‘That’s enough now. My migraine is bad as it is.’
So I found my embroidery and brought it to sit beside Johanna instead and listen to her discuss names for the baby as she knitted miniature clothes. I stitched the conical bonnet of an inkcap mushroom in fawn-grey silk; a cluster nestled in the rotting crook of an alder branch, a plume of ferns framing growth and decay.
Johanna looked over my shoulder and wrinkled her nose. ‘Whatever have you donethatfor?’
I looked at my delicate stitches, the rough texture of the tree bark and the velvety fungi. ‘I like it.’
Klara and my stepmother had turned to us, all eyes on my embroidery. Johanna’s expression wavered between confusion and concern. ‘But what use is it? What is it for?’
I had no answer.
Johanna lost interest in me and Klara brought a stack of sheet music out from its box. ‘Did you hear about Jenna Vettel?’
‘The poor girl who fell through the ice?’ said my stepmother.
I stitched in silence and let the conversation flow around me.
‘Drowning must be such an awful way to go. All silent and alone beneath the surface where no one can hear you.’ She picked up a Chopin sonata. ‘Better than the Witch, though, I suppose.’
Johanna stopped, one needle through a stitch purlwise. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t talk about her.’
‘Oh don’t be so superstitious, Jo. It’s not like she’d want any of us. You’re not a man, are you.’ Klara shivered.
Johanna crossed herself. ‘I don’t know why she has to come here. Aren’t there people where she is?’
My stepmother spoke for the first time. ‘And why does the Duke bring Bismark here? This is our capital. She wants to make an impression.’
I thought about this. I had never considered that the Witch could take people from some hamlet near her castle, but of course she wouldn’t. She would have no legend if she didn’t come as she did, to strike where we should feel safest.
She wanted us afraid.
Klara cut in, ‘What do you think happens to them? Does she kill them straightaway?’
‘That is quite enough of that.’ My stepmother clapped her hands together. ‘Practise your Schubert, Klara. We will hold a recital for the conference guests.’
I looked to my needlework but my mind was full with thoughts of the Witch. The embroidered mushrooms spread over the rotting log; without realising I had stitched tiny woodlice crawling around the edges, a hundred legs and bodies roiling like a tideline.
b
An old woman was found frozen to death in her bed the day Bismark arrived. The clouds gathered around the mountaintops were dark grey and angry. Winter meant to do us harm.
A phalanx of carriages drove through the city gates and up to the Summer Palace. Wherever I turned there was another minister with his valet and his briefcases, another room with its doors swinging shut on another private conversation. My father moved between them all, smiling and clasping hands in greeting, only the small flicker of the muscle in his jaw betraying any tension, while my stepmother paced the halls and corridors of the palace like a general as she oversaw the installation of an army of staff and visitors.
In his busy-ness my father had forgotten what else this date meant, and I had not the courage to remind him.
I would commemorate the anniversary of my mother’s death alone.
It was hard to wake the next morning when dawn still washed out the sky; the ceramic stoves kept our apartments warm, but too long sitting still and my fingers would become stiff, my toes numb in their boots. A sharp frost had turned the stony pathways icy slick and the lake had nearly frozen over; each day, men tested the edges to see whether it would bear the weight of skaters.
I dressed slowly, anxious to make the right choice with each garment. The furs had been taken down from storage while I was out one day, my stepsisters shaking off the dust and mothballs and divvying them up without me. I had come home to find myself left with a pine green old-fashioned cloak designed to fit over the bell-like crinolines of my mother’s youth. With only a bustle to fill it out I had been fair drowning in wool, but I liked the way the cloth billowed around me like a cocoon of my own. Klara had nearly made herself sick laughing at the old-fashioned figure I cut. In her sleek mink coat, vented at the back to accommodate her bustle and frogged from neck to ankle, she had looked like something from a fashion plate.
On this day I was pleased to have the old furs, something my mother would have recognised. It made me feel closer to her in some small, meaningless way.
I swapped my elastic-sided Garibaldi boots for a pair of battered Balmorals and was ready to set off, swathed in scarf and hat against the frost.
