‘Where have you been?’ asked Papa.
‘At the river,’ I mumbled.
Mama pushed her chair back, the legs squealing against the boards, and pulled out the wildflowers Thea had threaded in my hair. She flung them onto the fire.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Elize said something’s happened.’
‘Elize saw you like this?’
I glanced at Matthias, expecting a look of amusement or solidarity, but he was staring at his hands, face blank.
‘Papa? What is it?’
‘Consent has been given.’ My father suddenly gave a great, gasping sob. ‘Consent has been given!’
I stood still, not understanding. Hermine began to cry in her cradle on the ground, but it was as though Mama could not hear her. She sank back into her chair.
Papa looked at me and I saw that his good eye was wet with tears. His smile was broad and pained. ‘Praise God, we shall be free, Hanne,’ he said. ‘We are free to leave.’
I watched as Mama slowly reached for the wrapped rye loaf on the table and held it, as though suddenly bewildered as to what it was there for, what purpose it served. ‘It is Russia then?’ she asked, voice soft.
Papa shook his head.
‘America?’
He reached across the table and took up Mama’s free hand. ‘A colony where we might make a new life of our own design. Where we may worship freely.’
My voice was a crack in the wall. ‘What place?’
‘The colony of South Australia.’
Matthias and I stared at each other, mouths open. We had been moulded in the crucible of our village and its allotments, the forest and the river. I had a sudden fear that if we were to leave our home, I would become formless, shapeless.
‘Where is that?’ my brother asked.
Hermine’s crying pitched higher. Mama withdrew her hand from Papa’s and picked her up off the floor.
‘It is not so far, Matthias,’ said Papa. ‘Pastor Flügel writes that the journey will take six months.’
‘Six months,’ Mama murmured. Hermine arched against her, wriggling.
Papa leaned back in his chair. ‘God will be with us.’
Mama unbuttoned her blouse and set Hermine to a dark nipple.
‘How will we pay for passage?’ asked Matthias. He had gone pale. Papa opened his mouth to speak, but my brother continued in a low voice. ‘Last time they told us we had permission to leave, you sold nearly everything.’
‘Not everything.’
Matthias shook his head. ‘Papa, look what happened to the Eichenwalds. What if the King changes his mind again?’
‘It will not happen. Matthias, God has rewarded us for our faith, our patience. Our suffering! We will be issued passports.’
Mama prised Hermine off one breast and turned her to the other, saying nothing. Her chest was mapped with blue veins. I tried not to stare at them.
‘How will we pay for passage?’ I asked.
‘Pastor Flügel has made an agreement with a gentleman in London. He has taken pity on our plight. His agent speaks German; it is all being arranged.’
‘He will lend us the money?’ Mama asked.
Papa turned to her. ‘Johanne, this is our chance. This is the Lord’s work.’
Matthias had not moved. I was trembling. Hermine spluttered at my mother’s breast as Papa rose and fetched his Bible.
My father’s reading that night was so long I grew numb in my seat. Such was his joy, which ever manifested in praise of God. He exalted in the scripture, intoning the words at us as though he were painting us with grace.
After prayers, Papa seized his bread and cheese and ate noisily, breathing heavily from his nose in relief from hunger. I could not eat. Neither, I saw, could Matthias. His voice, when he finally spoke again, was empty of feeling. ‘So, then. We are going.’
Papa wiped his mouth. ‘Praise God.’
‘And what of our things here?’ I asked.
Papa shook his head, swallowing loudly. ‘Tools, we will take. What may fit in a trunk. Maybe two trunks. Everything else, we will sell.’
I looked around the small room. There was little to sell, only the table and its humble offering of crockery, the breadknife whittled thin from years of use. Six hard chairs, the polish on the seats suffering from years of shuffling bottoms. I tried to tally what else might be scraped together from the kitchen and bedrooms. Nothing of true value really; nothing that others would want. Mama’s white tablecloth embroidered with red thread. The dried, pressed myrtle crown from her wedding beneath my dead grandmother’s needlework proclaiming, ‘He who keeps you does not slumber.’