More families joined as we passed through the busy outskirts of Züllichau, and as the breeze lifted, leaves nodding in hedgerows, I saw that we were attracting the attention of the district. Onlookers gathered by the roadside to stare. An old woman and her daughter, both holding squalling children, shouted out blessings and well wishes to my mother, who nodded, unsmiling. Two men rested against a rail, pointing and laughing to themselves. Girls my age unbended from seedlings in vegetable gardens, eyes squinting.
Papa and Uncle Ludwig stopped to load Mutter Scheck’s and Amalie’s trunks into our wagon when their handcart broke, and Elizabeth Radtke, whimpering and writhing against Magdalena, was handed up to Mama, whereupon she stopped crying to stare at Hermine, open-mouthed, until Hermine poked her in the ear. Mutter Scheck arranged herself between our luggage and cast an appraising eye over those who had joined us. There was now a thick and steady flow of people headed towards Tschicherzig.
‘Brethren from Rentschen and Nickern,’ she nodded, fussing at her nostrils with a handkerchief and briefly examining its contents. Matthias and I exchanged appalled looks.
‘Krummendorf, too, perhaps,’ murmured Amalie. She was walking next to me, puffy-eyed but no longer weeping.
I didn’t care. It could have been Sch?nborn or Rissen or Schwiebus or any other place in Kreis Züllichau; they were all the same in the black of their clothes, in their farmers’ shoulders, in the whispered arguments that could be heard in the dying notes of ‘Lasset die Kindlein zu mir kommen’ – the child’s shoe already lost, the forgotten water bag. They had been fined and harassed and driven from worship just as we had been. Hundreds of people with a growing thirst in their mouths, all destined to be packed into ships for some place we could not even picture in our minds. They were all fellow pilgrims and I did not care for any of them. Nowhere could I see Thea or her parents. I needed to see her. I needed to make certain that our prayer had bound us together. I needed to make sure that our faith had been rewarded.
The Oder River was glass, smooth and wide and bright under the unclouded sun, but the air was filled with crying.
Pastor Flügel had told elders from his various congregations to hire barges to take everyone to Hamburg, but there was some confusion as to how the families would be divided up, and it took hours before the names were announced and the trunks and luggage unpacked from the wagons and placed on board. Matthias and I sat against one of the wagon wheels as we waited, pulling splinters of painted wood from the spokes and jabbing each other in the arm.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Matthias. ‘You’re quiet.’
‘I haven’t seen her at all.’
‘Do you know if they let go of their lease?’
I stared at him. ‘I don’t know. Oh, I wish all the women would stop crying. They sound like cats.’
Matthias laughed, then winced as a sliver of wood pierced deep under his nail. ‘Verdammt.’
‘You’ll get an infection.’
‘It’s bleeding.’
‘Here.’ I picked up his thumb and, setting his nail between my teeth, tore it off to the quick.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’ll suck it out.’ I placed the edge of his thumb between my lips. ‘Ugh, your hands taste horrible.’ I sobered immediately, remembering Christiana’s words to me the night of the Federschleissen. I could see Christiana sitting with her sister Elizabeth sleeping on her lap. She was undoing the toddler’s braids and combing her fingers through the matted hair.
Mama stepped around the side of the wagon, surprising us. She stared at me.
Matthias spoke first. ‘I have a splinter.’
‘Not anymore.’ I picked the tiny piece of wood off my tongue and held it up to Mama.
‘Get up. It’s time to leave.’ She hesitated, as if about to say something more, then turned away.
Matthias helped me to my feet. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘I would have hated to die of a splinter before we got there.’
I shoved him away from me. The uneasiness that had come upon me at our mother’s look and Christiana’s remembered words continued as we waited for our turn to board. I was clumsy. I had dirty hands. If Mama did not approve of me biting my brother’s nail, I did not dare to think of what she would say if I told her what Thea had done. I suddenly felt hot and unhappy, as though I were a dry leaf waiting to be smoked by the Devil. As the flow of people pushed me down the bank to the gangway, I glanced down to the shallows and the thought that I might never touch soil again passed through me. I thought of Thea’s dream and felt as though she might be right, that something bad was coming for us, something we would not be able to escape, and the crying that had resumed all around me solidified my fear into certainty. Everywhere, loved ones riven. I stood there, unable to move, until Mutter Scheck gave me a sharp poke between the shoulder blades with her bony finger and I was forced forwards into my father’s waiting hands.