Hair rose on the back of Anna Maria’s neck. She breathed in sharply and, placing a hand over her heart, closed her eyes.
I paused, then asked the question again.
The Wend brought the tips of her fingers to her lips. ‘She’s not here,’ she murmured, and in that instant I heard the strange words again.
‘Ersurgant mortui, et ad me veniunt.’
A summoning from outside the cottage, from somewhere in the grey-green throat of bush beyond the village.
Anna Maria opened her eyes as I left the room. Before I stepped out the door, I saw her pick up her mallet and hold it to her chest, a shadow of a smile on her lips.
I could smell new-baked bread and frying bacon on the afternoon air, and as I hurried back onto the lane I saw it was coming from Gottfried Volkmann’s place. Gottfried himself was outside, standing next to a sign written in English, The German Arms, talking with a fellow with his back to me. I could see several men inside through the open window, smiling at a woman offering a coffee pot.
The door opened and Elizabeth Volkmann stuck her head out, waiting for a lull in the conversation to summon her father inside.
‘There’s a man with a question about the mail cart,’ she said. She had grown out of her baby face and looked like a thinner, quieter version of Henriette.
At that moment the man turned and my heart rose up into my throat. The man was Matthias. He was black-bearded now, stockier than I remembered, but his gap-toothed smile was the same. He held a baby in his arms and called out to a boy who suddenly ran from the front door of the Volkmanns’ place into the laneway, chasing a puppy. Wilhelm, I thought, looking at the baby, and then, heart in mouth, realised that, no, Wilhelm must be the child with the dog. Life had flown on, unstemmed: Wilhelm held the measure of seven or eight years in his body. I stared at him, overwhelmed by the way children kept time and the realisation that the baby in my brother’s arms was my niece or nephew.
I felt Thea’s call on me like a hand around my heart, but I wanted to see my brother. I could hardly believe it was him. I followed Matthias as he rounded the side of a small, wood-shingled house, Wilhelm and the dog running in front of him. And as I followed my brother into his garden, I saw two little boys, no more than four years old, collecting eggs and placing them carefully in a basket held by Augusta, and something broke in me, for the boys carried Matthias’s and Gottlob’s faces as I had known them in my own childhood. Dark-haired, small.
‘Papa, this one is broken,’ said one of the boys, lifting an egg.
‘Is it spoiled?’ Matthias asked.
The boy lifted the egg to his brother’s nose, laughed when he recoiled in disgust. ‘Can I throw it?’
My brother nodded, smiling at Augusta as the two boys turned and ran through the small orchard beyond the vegetable garden and fowl house. Wilhelm followed after them, the puppy at his heels.
You’re a papa now, I thought. Matthias, you are a father.
‘Shall I take her?’ Augusta asked, setting the basket of eggs on the ground and extending her arms for the baby.
My brother shook his head. ‘She’s sleeping.’
‘You’re soft on her,’ Augusta said.
Matthias carefully lowered himself down onto the grassy verge of the vegetable garden, tucking the swaddling around his daughter, still nestled in his elbow.
Augusta picked up the egg basket. ‘Call me if she cries,’ she said, and went into the cottage.
I sat down next to my brother and rested my chin on his shoulder, looking down at his daughter. He smelled the same as he always had, and for a moment we were almost children again, sitting outside in Kay. It was as though nothing had happened. We were both alive, undivided. ‘She’s beautiful,’ I said softly.
The baby wrinkled her nose, purled lips pouting as she blinked awake.
Matthias smiled at his daughter. I watched him lift a rough finger and gently trace the fine brown hair on her skull.
‘Hello, Esther,’ Matthias said softly. ‘It’s your papa.’
‘Esther,’ I whispered. The baby looked at me and smiled.
Matthias laughed. ‘Augusta!’ he called. ‘Augusta, come and see!’
‘What is it, Papa?’ Wilhelm jogged back from the orchard, dog in his arms.
Matthias extended a hand and Wilhelm went to him, leaning into my brother’s chest. ‘Look, she’s smiling,’ he said.
Wilhelm grinned. ‘What’s she looking at?’
Matthias placed a hand on the boy’s head. ‘Who knows,’ he replied softly. ‘Who knows.’