The black nightdress I had fled in had been ruined by the time I got halfway home; I’d walked in it, slept in it, used it as a cloth to carry food once I’d found other clothes, mopped away sweat and mud, stemmed bloody scratches and torn it in half to wrap around my blistered feet in their clogs. It had been taken off me at some point when I’d been brought back to the palace, and burned, I assumed. I had nothing left, not even a scrap of lace. The last link to my Witch, gone.
My books and papers and walking gear had all been packed away as well, so I took myself up to the attic to hunt them out. Rafters arced above broken furniture, smoke-damaged paintings and the clutter of generations. For a moment I thought of the castle, of the seven trunks lined up from each of the men before me, and of my things still scattered throughout my room.
I found my old things thrown in to a crate haphazardly, books under water canteens and a knapsack. Beneath a too-small pair of walking boots, I found a doll my mother had given me, its porcelain face cracked and muddied.
I had forgotten about this gift. I was too old for dolls when I unwrapped it one Christmas Eve, and I hid my disappointment as my mother looked on in hope; it had only been another sign she didn’t know me. Now, all I saw was her love. She had tried. She had missed the mark, but still she had tried. That mattered. I carried the doll back to my room and did what I could to repair it. The dress could be washed and sewn up, but I wasn’t sure how to repair the crack in its face.
It was the height of summer, but I felt cold. It was the coldness of an empty room, a grate long-lacking a fire. I longed to walk again, to climb to the crest of the mountain and breathe large, touch soft leaves and coarse rocks, but I couldn’t find the energy to go. The forest reminded me of the Witch now, and if I climbed to a summit, I would only be looking for her valley.
So I went to my mother’s grave, doll tucked into my pocket. Weeds had grown across the stone casket and a winter’s worth of moss caked the lettering. I plucked wildflowers to lay by her head and tidied the creeping dandelions and grasses.
All the while I cleaned, I kept my back to the trees, and the memory of the Witch.
XXIII
In the approach to Klara’s wedding a July heatwave was in full force, bearing down on fields to wither crops, browning grass and drying up streams to a trickle. The church was to be dressed with flowers, but they were crisping in their beds, draining of colour before my stepmother had a chance to order them cut and arranged. There were hothouse flowers still in bloom, at least, watered and tended by her gardeners, and the menu was swiftly changed to a chilled soup, ices and sherbets swapped in for stewed fruit.
I welcomed it. The turn of the seasons was the only proof I had that the Witch still eked out the last of the golden thread. She would take another victim, I told myself. Another soul would feed the wheel now. The guilt that troubled my sleep was no more than I owed.
Klara grew more fretful; all of us were impatient and bad tempered from lack of sleep. The heat that made thinking foggy turned night time into a battle for at least a moment’s rest. I took to sleeping naked by the open window on a bed made up on the floor. I didn’t care any more if the maids came in and found me. Everyone knew me as Witch-touched now, tainted with the madness of seasons spent in the presence of magic. It would be no stranger that I slept naked than it would be if I began to howl at the moon.
But when we woke the week of the wedding, the heat had vanished. A pale sky, fuzzy with cirrostratus, looked over a world fresh with dew so cold it was almost frost. It wasn’t completely strange for July to turn cool, but there had been no break in the heat, no thunderstorm as we had all expected.
The crops that had struggled in the drought had no respite, freezing in the soil before any rain came. I watched the farmers’ carts roll into the market only half-full; negotiations over sacks of grain turned sharp, and water butts around the town were at low ebb.
I thought of the sudden snowstorm that final night in the castle, how time let slip its grasp on the seasons, and shivered.
I had seen Frau Hässler only once, when I shopped for new gloves for the wedding and passed at the far end of their street where it met the cathedral square. Her house was dark, shutters barred tight and no smoke at the chimney. A young woman, her blonde hair in a long braid down her back, stepped out from the dark of the cathedral, helping Frau Hässler, smaller and more bent over than before, across the threshold. For a moment, I considered going to her. Frieda had been right about everything. If I had listened to her, I could have saved myself so much pain. I owed Frau Hässler an apology. No – far more than that. But I didn’t want to see what my actions had done; I didn’t want to see how her grief had doubled. I asked amongst the servants later and found that her grandniece had taken her in after Frieda disappeared. Frau Hässler hadn’t spoken another word since.
The wedding rolled forward with guests arriving from all over the newly formed German Empire, Prussia in the north and Bavaria in the south, from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the East, Bohemia and Slavonia, and even one duke from Denmark whose lands had been swallowed up by the Empire and was keen to prove himself German.
I kept to the margins, knowing the best place for me was where no one had to notice me. A smart dress had been retrieved from storage and with a little tight lacing I still fit into it. Klara looked beautiful, as she always did, her shining chestnut hair pinned up with diamond stars in the style of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and her bridal gown was sewn from white silk embroidered with silver. I didn’t often envy my stepsisters, but I let myself sit with the feeling as the service continued, the thought of how it might feel to be loved so widely, to know everyone had come together for you.
I covered my eyes with my handkerchief.
It was a pleasant service, the church packed with guests from both sides of the match and at the wedding breakfast after it was easy to seem present while hovering at the edge of conversations. I drifted along the surface like a pond skater, smiling and making polite small talk, while any part that was trulymewas very far away.
I was brought back to myself when the crowd parted for a moment and I saw Klaus, tall and a little stooped over and talking animatedly to someone. My father’s secretary that he had hired instead of letting me help him.
Klaus spotted me too, and joined me.
‘Your Highness. I am glad to see you safely home. I am not sure I understand where it was you went – Witches are not a thing I believe we still have in Berlin,’ there was a note of amusement in his voice. ‘But it seems a good thing you have returned.’
‘Thank you. It is... pleasant to see you too.’
He was as I remembered. A little dishevelled, a little earnest. I assumed my father found him a useful aid if he was still here. I considered him again, a year older and my heart a year more battered. If I was to find a place here, then I could do worse than Klaus. Perhaps if my stepmother pressed me on my plans, I could mention his name. It would be marrying beneath my station, if I were any of her daughters, but I’m sure no one would mind me tidying myself away.
‘We were all so thrilled to learn someone had escaped that awful place in once piece!’ A woman had joined us, petite and pink and yellow, her blonde hair braided in a crown around her head and her cheeks rosy from wine. ‘Klaus, do introduce us.’
He pulled her to his side. She was short enough to tuck neatly under his arm, like they were a paired set. ‘May I introduce my wife, Maria?’
Of course. A wife. It had been a long time after all. ‘How do you do?’
She took my hand and curtseyed and I remembered I was the duke’s daughter still, someone to be deferred to and held at a distance.
I took all my sick, cold feelings and swallowed them. ‘Thank you. If you will excuse me,’ I said and slid away while I could still stay polite.
I made it all of ten paces before my stepmother swept me up with a sly smile and a firm hand on my shoulder.
