CHAPTER 21
IT WAS MY IDEA to keep our engagement a secret, at least until Luther returned and I could send word to my father.
“I suppose it would be more appropriate for me to ask him for your hand,” Jerome said during one of our daily strolls in the garden.
“My father gave up his authority to grant any kind of blessing the day he left me at the gate of Brehna.” I winced at the sound of my own bitterness. “Luther’s blessing carries a much greater weight. I’ll write to Father once that is secured.”
Throughout the rest of the summer, the Reichenbachs included me in accepting all sorts of invitations to neighboring homes. During those times, Jerome and I sought to avoid suspicion and graciously conversed with the person seated near us at table. We danced with different partners, holding each other only with our eyes at the turns. Rumors, we knew, spun rampant around us, but we gave no outward cause for suspicion of either his intent or my character.
We kept our plans from his parents, too, more at my insistence than his. Nothing seemed more fragile than this love, given only sporadic, stolen life. I likened it to a spider’s web, the thinnest filament stringing our moments together. Here in the garden, there in the shadows. Dancing and summer suppers. His mother’s great, bulging eyes tracked our every move, measuring the distance between us. She counted every word exchanged and visibly twitched at any inadvertent touch.
“Mother has to think that it is her idea.” We were standing in the dining hall of his home, listening to poor verse being recited by a poorer poet. Jerome’s whispers landed just behind my ear, and it took all my strength to stand upright. “Wait, and she’ll see you often enough, in my company. In our home and in the homes of our friends. And she’ll think —well, what a lovely young lady for my Jerome.”
I bit my lip not to laugh at the idea, and even that subtle of a response earned a withering glare. If anything, Frau Baumgartner was probably trying to decide just who had invited this lovely young lady into her home.
During the stretches of days when we did not see each other, Jerome wrote to me. Single pages, folded and set with his distinctive family seal. Elsa had made it clear that no messages were to be given over to anyone in the household without her knowledge, so she knew of the frequent deliveries. She did, however, allow my privacy in the business of opening and reading, which I conducted in the confines of my room.
My cherished Katharina . . .
My beloved K . . .
He wrote silly verses and intimate accounts of our time spent together. He posed questions for our next conversation and gave excuses for his prolonged absence, even though our days apart were never more than three in number.
Family obligations will keep me from darkening your step this evening. . . .
If I must blame a demon for keeping me abed, it is none other than the fourth glass of port our host forced upon me. . . .
Mother is hosting a banquet in Father’s honor, and has demanded my presence, along with an apparently select few from our social circle. . . .
This last one prompted the first chilly rift between my host family and me, as they, too, had been denied an invitation to the Baumgartners’ dinner. Mid-August, nearing summer’s end and Herr Baumgartner’s birthday, it was apparently an annual event, much anticipated, and socially imperative. This year, the summer of their remarkable hospitality, was the first in which the Reichenbachs had not attended.
I learned this at dinner, the day I received Jerome’s note, after conversationally inquiring what would prompt a banquet in Herr Baumgartner’s honor, and why we would just be hearing about it now.
“We’ve known about it for months,” Elsa said, her lips tight with civility. “Since before you arrived.”
“Then of course you should go.” I skimmed over Jerome’s words. “He says, regretfully, that I have not been extended an invitation, but surely you —”
“We’ve not.” Herr Reichenbach ripped the tiny leg from his quail and devoured it. He and Elsa exchanged a look, each warning the other, and then the meal resumed in silence.
After that, I specifically set about to break Elsa’s rule about correspondence. Ignoring the ungraciousness of my actions, I instructed Marina to intercept any messenger before he met up with the mistress of the house and to bring directly any letters addressed to me. In turn, I gave all of my responses to her, to be secreted away by any of the household servants sent out on errand. I only hoped that Jerome was taking similar precautions to keep the extent of our communication hidden from his parents.
It occurred to me that I was in quite the same situation as I’d been in Marienthrone, with whispers and messages and unspoken aspirations. Only Marina knew —with certainty —my love for Jerome and his for me. Others might have guessed and gossiped, but no one ever spoke of it aloud in my presence. In fact, a growing silence began to engulf me. Conversations halted when I entered a room. Evenings fell to long, quiet suppers where guests and travelers once crowded around the table.
Jerome’s visits became matters of awkward, unannounced calling. His invitation to supper was no longer unspoken or expected, and when he joined us, the conversation never ascended beyond cordiality. Just so, my own place in the house suffered a similar diminution.
“I’m sure it’s just the summer coming to an end,” Marina assured me one evening. She was brushing my hair, now grown to rest comfortably on my shoulders, the stroke of the bristles creating a soothing effect. “People have harvests to oversee and houses to prepare for winter. Saw it all the time at the Brummbär. Nothing like the short days and cold nights to make a family want to stay closer to home.”
“But that’s just it.” I failed to keep the petulance out of my reply. “I’ve been feeling —all this time —like I’m a part of the family. Maybe because I’ve never had family, but you have.”
“Yes, I have.” She set the brush down. “I’ve always felt that way here, too.”
“So you’ve sensed a change?”
“I would hate to seem ungrateful, miss.”
Despite the cautionary reply, her meaning was clear. “Do you think it’s because they don’t approve of my friendship with Herr Baumgartner?”
She was too late to stop the sassy smile at the word friendship, but I found myself smiling too, and the glass reflected a flush to my face.
“It’s not my place to say anything on that subject.” But she was hiding something, as obviously as if she held the unspoken words in her cheeks, which were now as pink as my own.
I twisted in my chair. “What is it, Marina?”
“Oh, miss. I’m not supposed to say anything yet.”
“Yet? About what?”
The flesh of her bosom was now patchy with red, her face florid. “I don’t know what it means, miss. And I’ve been arguing with myself all day, wondering where to find the greater sin.”
“Marina!”
She disappeared into the shadows of the room, beyond the scope of the candlelight, and came back with a folded, sealed paper.
“From Jerome?” I snatched it from her hand. “Why are you just now giving it to me?”
“It was given right to my hand from his house’s man. And I was told not to give it to you until past ten tonight.”
My heart raced at the mixture of excitement and fear in her demeanor, making me all the more anxious to open the letter. Holding it close to the candle’s flame, I noticed it lacked address and asked if she knew for sure it was intended for me. All of his other letters carried my name in a bold, clear script.
“It’s what the man said. That I was to hold it until ten o’clock tonight, then give it straight to you.”
I ran a blade beneath the seal and took comfort in the immediate recognition of his handwriting, though I had to bring my face closer to read the short message. Then, as if my racing pulse stole my power to comprehend, I read it again.
Meet me tonight, at midnight.
At the back wall of the garden.
~J
“What does it say?” Marina asked, as if she hadn’t read every word over my shoulder. If he’d written in Latin, she would have understood just as well, having spent so many afternoons under my tutelage. I ignored the question.
“What time is it?”
“About half past nine, close as I can guess.”
“Don’t guess. Go, check the clock.”
With unspoken enthusiasm and an obvious bounce to her step, she left the room, giving me a few minutes alone while she ran to the front hall and back.
I read the message three more times, holding it close enough to the candle to catch flame at its corner. I pinched it out with my fingers before the words themselves could be engulfed.
What could it mean? And why the extra pains of subterfuge in its delivery? I had more than a dozen missives, all wrapped together and tied with a scrap of ribbon. Why had he not crafted one of his eloquent pages, adding the invitation as a postscript? Surely he knew my privacy had not been violated, that his words always fell to my eyes alone.
These thoughts I pondered while keeping at bay the more obvious, and life-altering, question. Why was he summoning me at midnight? I dared not entertain the most thrilling of suppositions.
“Not quite ten.” Marina was breathless upon return from running the length of the house. “I passed Herr Reichenbach in the hall, but he’s already five cups in, so I’m sure the house will be abed by midnight.”
“As I might be.” I folded the letter and touched it again to the flame.
“Oh, now!” Marina snatched it from my hand, dropped it to the floor, and stomped it to ashes. “Do you mean to say you won’t meet him?” My look must have been withering, because she seemed to shrink a bit before my very eyes. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but see. Oh, Fräulein. Is it what I think it is?”
“And what do you think it is?”
“An elopement. It has to be.”
“Why? Why must it be an elopement?” Although part of me surged with relief that I wasn’t the only one to come up with such an interpretation.
“A secret meeting? Middle of the night? The two of you . . .”
“In love?”
I couldn’t hold on to another shred of austerity. “He has said he wants to marry me.”
“Of course he does! Why wouldn’t he?”
“But we’ve never talked about anything like this. Shouldn’t I have known? You can’t summon a woman to a marriage with a dozen hastily written words.”
“Well, maybe he’s coming to talk about it tonight. To make the plans with you.” Having settled herself on this truth, Marina giggled and bustled, lighting five more tapers to bring new light into the room. “Shall I pack your things?”
“No!” The thought of such a thing took on true absurdity at the suggestion. “Why would you take such satisfaction in this event —if, indeed, this is the event?”
“You don’t find it romantic, miss?”
“To a point, I suppose. But there’s something lacking, too, isn’t there?” I thought about Girt’s celebration, the minstrels and the dancing. Even Luther’s taking the stage to sing. I wanted such a party, all of my new friends gathered, wishing us well. I’d snuck off in the middle of the night once before, trembling with fear of discovery. Why should a marriage inspire such a secretive response?
“A handsome man, a lovely lady. What could be lacking?”
“God’s blessing.” I twisted the thin gold band on my finger. “And the presence of friends and family.”
She winked. “I’ll go with you if you like. Dance all the dances myself with whatever gentlemen are in attendance.” To demonstrate, she twirled with my best gown held to her breast. “Oh, I remember well the couples coming into the inn those late nights, all flushed with love. Rustling up a wedding supper in the dead of night. Sometimes nothing more than bread and cheese, but they’d treat it like a feast.”
“Still,” I said, determined not to get caught up in her fantasy, “there’s a mark of shame with the secrecy, isn’t there?”
“There can’t be any shame in loving someone, miss, so far as you’ve a right to.”
And therein lay the question: did I have a right to love Jerome? Could the status of my name ever truly stand in for the lowliness of my estate?
“Well, I suppose I should stay dressed, at least.”
“And take your cloak. What? It’s chilly outside. And maybe take a few hours’ rest. No worries that I won’t wake you.”
As if I could sleep, or even keep my eyes closed in prayer. A shaft of guilt shot through me, knowing this should have been my first response to the missive. Not a repeated study of the words, or a girlish conversation, or indulging in a volley of fantasy and doubt.
“Build us up a fire,” I said. “A small one, as we’ll keep the window open. Sit by it, and stay awake. I’ll be at my bedside, in prayer. Please, pray with me?”
“Of course, miss.” Already she’d set about to obey. “And to be clear, I’m to wake you? By, say, a quarter of the hour?”
I laughed. “What? You don’t think I’ll be able to stay awake during my own prayers?”
“Just in case, miss. I’ll keep my ears open for the chimes.”
I pulled the cushioned kneeling bench from beneath the bed and set myself upon it, my hands clasped before me on the quilted silk.
“Father in heaven, holy is your name,” I began aloud, lapsing into silence when I sensed Marina settled into herself by the fire. Your will, O Lord, is my desire. Above any other notion. If marriage is your will for me, I will gladly enter into it, and if you desire that I pledge my life to Jerome Baumgartner, I will do so happily. Not only in an act of obedience, as you well know, since my heart hides nothing from you.
Even in prayer I smiled and turned my face so Marina could not see.
And if it is not . . . oh, Father, we’ve only a few hours —just a speck in your time eternal —for me to have an answer. A sign to know your will. Make it clear, Lord. Speak plain.
My head swam with all the Scripture I’d memorized, but nothing suited. Only the prayer from the gospel of Matthew, with the instructions, After this manner, therefore, pray ye . . . , which I tailored to my need.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Lead me not into temptation. Deliver me from evil.
Thy will be done.
Thy will be done.
“Miss . . . Miss Katharina. Wake up.”
Marina’s hand was cool against my face, lifted from the coverlet and warm with sleep.
“Marina?”
She knelt beside me, filling my vision. “The clock just chimed midnight, miss. If you’ve a mind to go meet Herr Baumgartner, it’s time.”
I struggled up, my legs and back stiff from the position in which I’d slept. All the thoughts and confusion and prayer from the previous hours washed upon me, and I sat right back down on the bed.
“I need more time.”
“Well, there’s none to be had. He’s here.”
My eyes flew toward the door. Marina had extinguished all but one of the tapers, leaving the room dark enough to harbor any number of callers.
“In the garden,” she chided softly. “I saw a light at the top of the drive, blown out before I could see the rider. But I don’t think we’re expecting any other midnight visitors, are we?”
I envied the lightness of her tone, the irrepressible romantic.
“Come with me?”
“Only far enough to hand you over. Then I’ll wait here by the fire, so you can tell me everything.”
We opted to keep my hair unbound, loose around my face, but that was the only acknowledgment to the lateness of the hour. Otherwise, I was corseted and laced, dressed as fully as I would be were we meeting at high noon instead of midnight.
“And your cape?”
The garment, dangling empty in her hands, seemed presumptuous. Like I’d dressed with the intention of being swept away on the back of his horse.
“I’ll be back for it if I need it.”
Then we both collapsed into giggles, the likes of which would have brought the nuns storming from their cells. Once we’d reclaimed our senses, Marina took a stub of a taper, and we cast our shadows upon the walls, taking swift, sure steps through the cavernous great hall and the library, where the beveled glass doors opened onto the back courtyard.
“Shall I wait for you here, miss?”
“No, sweet girl.” Overcome, I kissed her round, soft cheek. “Go back to our room. Wait by the fire as we planned.”
“And if you don’t come back?”
“Then wake up Herr Reichenbach, and have him send out the dogs.”
Marina squeezed my hand, and I gave her the taper before opening the door to the night.
The moon was full, but stingy with its light, and I thanked God for a summer of strolls that trained my steps. I maneuvered along the winding path, conscious of the fading fragrance. What life would it have in winter, with snow piled on the hedges and crunching underfoot? Would I even be here to leave my tracks?
The back of the garden, he said. Past the fountain, and I wished he’d thought to meet me in a place that wouldn’t leave me to traverse the expanse alone. But then, it might be the last I’d ever be alone, and I knew he was waiting.
I turned the final corner and saw the light. Small, pinpointed within the lantern, and Jerome cast in its glow. He wasn’t watching for me; he wasn’t watching for anything. He stood at the back wall, faced away from the path, head bowed against his fists. In prayer, as I had been an hour before.
Thy will be done.
My steps were not enough, so I made a small sound. His name, whispered, knowing I wouldn’t have the courage to repeat it.
He turned, took three steps, and captured my hands, bringing them to his lips, saying, “You came.”
“I did.”
“Daring, isn’t it?” He seemed so pleased with himself, like we were childhood playmates.
“Alle, alle auch sind frei,” I said, softly sounding the rallying cry of a game of hide-and-seek, though neither of us were hidden.
“Does anybody know you’re here?”
“Only Marina.”
“I hope you weren’t frightened.”
Not until that moment had I thought to assign fear to the litany of emotions I experienced since reading his note. “Should I have been?”
“Midnight? In the garden? Alone? What will people think?”
“Right now, I’m more curious what you were thinking.”
“I was thinking, my love, that it has been too long since I’ve seen you, and I could not let another day pass without —” He punctuated his words with kisses to my cheeks, my neck, my lips. Tiny bits of starlight, and with each one it mattered less that I’d been lured away from any sense of moral safety.
“What will we say if someone comes?”
“I will spirit you into the bushes, and we will live in the shadows forever.”
I backed away, until I’d created enough distance between us that I could think beyond the glorious fantasy of a life lived like Adam and Eve, alone in a garden, hiding our sin. After all, I’d already lived a life in shadows; I’d risked too much to go back.
“Perhaps we should tell them.”
“Tell them? What do they not already know?”
“About your proposal?” I hated my uncertainty. “Our engagement.”
“Katharina . . .” He brought me to him again and silenced himself with a kiss. For the first time, I sensed something disingenuous in his affection, and when he pulled away, an unforeseen hint of alienation had crept into his eyes.
“Jerome, what’s happened?” A multitude of fears bound themselves together in that question. Where was the unfettered joy of the summer? The whirlwind of society and passion?
“Nothing has happened, my darling.”
“I don’t believe you. Something’s changed.”
“My feelings haven’t changed. I love you, and we’ll be married. Just as we planned.”
The memory of the laughter shared with Marina rang bitter in my ears, because without saying a word, he made it perfectly clear there would be no elopement that night. Even worse, sprung to life somewhere at my core, the fear that there’d never be one at all.
“But that’s just it.” I felt myself hanging on, both with my clutching grip on his sleeves, and to the anchoring presence he’d become. “We haven’t planned —”
“We will. We’ll tell everybody our intention to marry.”
Jerome’s voice had become such a part of me, I felt every word —those he said and those he didn’t. Here, I could tell, his sentence ended abruptly, broken off and fallen into a pit from which neither of us would wish to retrieve it. I knew I should leave the broken edge exposed, but I’d never been one to leave an unanswered question to languish. That I was only a woman, with no right to enforce his promises or demand accountability, never occurred to me. I knew what it meant to live with certainty, and without. Having taken such extreme measures to forge my own path, I could not simply sink beneath yet another veil of passivity.
“When, Jerome?”
“My first visit back.”
I stepped away, so that no part of me touched any part of him —not cloth, not flesh. “Back from where, exactly? I wasn’t aware that you were leaving.”
“I didn’t know myself. Not for certain, anyway.”
“Not for certain.” So somewhere, behind every embrace, every word, every letter, there’d been a possibility.
“I’ve yet to finish my studies. And while I’m still young enough, my parents —” he had the good graces to acknowledge my wince at the mention of his parents, but spared my dignity and continued as if the reaction was expected —“they, rather we, decided it would be best not to put it off for another term.”
“So you’re returning to Nuremberg?” I remembered the stories he’d told, the camaraderie with his fellow students. The stern dispositions of the instructors. We’d laughed at how ill-suited he was for the world of academia, and how he’d learned more from lurking outside the Reichenbach children’s schoolroom than he had from a near lifetime of studying Latin. My question was a silly one, harmlessly rhetorical, until I gave it edge. “Because there is a fine university here. Or is your mother planning to send you out of the country?”
I hated myself immediately, speaking to him like the fabled fishwife, when I had no right to the title of wife at all.
“I’m sorry.” I allowed the slightest touch of my hand to his. “That was hateful. You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“Don’t you see, darling? If I do this one thing for them, they’ll have nothing to hold over my head. I’ll be back in December. For all of Christmas, and we’ll make our announcement then.”
“December. That’s four months from now.” I knew better than anyone how drastically one’s allegiance could change in such a space of time.
“I’ll write to you. Faithfully. And you to me. Keep me abreast of all the neighborhood gossip.”
“There won’t be any gossip once you’ve left.”
He grinned. “There’d better not be.”
I allowed him once again to gather me up, my arms folded and crushed between us. Rather than lift my face for his kiss, I buried it in the soft, warm wool of his vest.
“When do you leave?” My lips scratched against the fabric.
“In a fortnight.”
“And until . . . will you be a visitor here? Shall I see you, or is this our good-bye?”
He held me closer and I knew my answer. We could hardly sit at a supper table, or walk in the garden, or look across a chessboard, knowing that each day was bringing us closer to the inevitable parting.
“I do love you, Katharina.”
“I know.”
“Luther might say that he orchestrated our meeting, but I know it was divine.”
I looked up, pleased to find his gaze waiting for me. “All things are orchestrated by God. Even those that bring sorrow.”
He cupped my face in his hands, forcing me to see him. “Don’t let this bring you sorrow, my love.”
His words came out with the barest puff of steam, reminding me of his warmth within. I forced a smile, and he touched his lips to my brow, the gesture making me feel like a child.
“Very well,” I said, strained with bravado. “No sorrow, then. Only faith. And hope that the time will pass quickly.”
“Before we’ve had a chance to blink.”