Chapter 12: The First In Line

The very beginning of March

He was a stranger in his own home after the last months, whether his escape for any given day or week was the twists and turns of Salzburg's roads and alleys or the rare moments he had turned to Vienna. Oh, the halls and corridors were still familiar: if a sudden downpour or a thunderstorm buried the villa ahead of spring and the household found itself plunged into darkness, Georg wouldn't need a candle or flashlight to find his way, one of the surprising newfangled tools brought in by the elderly household manager. The walls and carpets and floorboards were all the same—maybe a fresh crease in some of the runners in the far corners where the newest maid thought he wouldn't see—but the air was different.

Georg still kept to himself, mornings usually wasted in the master bedroom waiting for the children to finish their breakfast and set out on the road to school. On days like this, he waited out the hours in the library, unable to stand tossing and turning in the half empty bed. And whenever he passed the day in his study, the world was transformed when the afternoon arrived. There was no more snow for them to track through the foyer, dirt and twigs caught in their boots and marked across the shining tile and pristine grout crossing the floor from one hall to the other by the youngest, worse yet when it was on the large rug. No stamping of feet or shaking of coats and scarves, no complaints of the cold or damp. Now, it was just a mix of voices rising to the rafters until Frau Schmidt finally calmed them, ordering them to their rooms to change into clothes better suited for the household before they wandered to the schoolroom, likely grumbling the entire way as they toted their texts and notebooks along.

At least while they were the prisoners of their teachers, the house was suddenly opened to him, just as it had for months, even in those first days— No, he couldn't think of it, not here where the pain was still open and raw. Without her and the mere anticipation of seeing her to distract him, Georg had to rely on the tasks that had called him home nearly two weeks ago. It was the same as always when he endured a few days in his home, simply more than ever as the season prepared to change.

The gardener had further plans for what needed planting as March wore on—Georg nodded as the conversation turned the vines to prune and crowns to split—and what should to wait until the expected spring rains came and went.

With him at last back from Salzburg as the weather warmed, the chauffeur talked him through a litany of upkeeping tasks to be performed on the car, though after so many years removed from a submarine or destroyer and the worry over a moving part here or needed oil there, Georg hardly listened. As the list grew, he finally demanded the man's keys to the battered car used by the staff for errands, barking that the man could do whatever he needed with the other. He refused to be captive to his prison for a day longer than needed and really, the corner of the nearby city he haunted hardly needed an impressive vehicle.

Frau Schmidt spoke rather quickly about a delay with the governess, the main reason he had come home at all, something about the woman accepting a position with fewer children to tend to, that another had responded to accept the offer and would arrive shortly.

The groundskeeper walked him through the edge of the forest beyond the gardener's territory, his map of the grounds clutched in his gloved hand as he pointed here and there at the growing trees and vines he hoped to leave for another year; Georg just nodded, snapping his riding crop at the thistles clawing against his boots and scraping the clods of mud from the leather on the knobbly tree roots they passed. The household manager had a list of renovations to be done. Though there was plenty to do simply to prepare for summer and eventually autumn, the aging man still worried over cracks in the plaster of some of the far halls used by the staff, particularly those just beneath the beams of the uppermost floor. "It won't be good if we see another quake like the last one, sir," he said, pen in one hand, list of repairs in the other. "You remember how severe—"

"Yes, I do," Georg interrupted, the cloud of smoke that usually surrounded him in his study only growing as he let out a breath. "Quite well." The earth had last shaken during one of the final days Agathe had been confined to their bed as the wait for Gretl continued, neither of them certain if it was time to call Frau Meinl or if it was only the same pains that had teased her many times before, leaving her anxious for the newest child before he or she was ready. He would never forget it, any of it.

Their years together were written in the walls and grounds, the little moments here and there in a life etched into the paint and whitewashed wood. His wife guiding Friedrich through his first steps in that corner there, chubby little hands first caught around her fingers, then on the corner of an ornate table a few paces and finally nothing until he stumbled, his left knee red as he scraped it along the carpet, his then only son's frown vanishing as they both drew him to his feet to try to walk again. Marta shrieking in her arms, desperate for milk as Georg read the older children a German folk tale* from one of the books hidden on an upper shelf, pausing here and there to think how to smooth the hero's words before Agathe disappeared to feed their youngest. All thoughts of cleaning the man's language went with her as he reverted to the stories of the man he recalled from his own childhood, Friedrich and Louisa whispering those vulgar words between themselves for the rest of the afternoon even after their mother's mouth fell open, nearly scandalized at the coarseness. At least she had accepted his apology that evening happily, and Georg still wondered if it was that night he planted their last child in her belly. (He tried not to think about much after that, whether it was the baby they never met or the illness that had come with death in its stare.)

Wherever he looked, she was there: they were there, nearly fourteen years of happiness, both here—nestled between the mountains scraping at the clouds and green valleys lush with streams—and on the newly minted Italian coast listening to faint lapping of the ocean in distance. Bliss, even, one day after another of new touches and memories, the little whispered words that always seemed to pass between them, whether they brought a smile to her face—often drawn and tired as the line of children grew longer, even with a nurse to look after the youngest—or a blush raging across her cheeks, usually accompanied by a hand around her waist or an arm settled across her shoulder. ("You can't say that when they're so close, Georg!" she had chastised him more than once, only half-heartedly squirming from his touch.) Locking himself away from their children couldn't quite protect him from that as well.

He took another deep breath of smoke from his cigarette, his back pressed into the chair slats. Any farther and the front feet would leave the dark carpet, carving a deeper indent with the hind legs. Just like one of your children, Georg thought, the next dollop of ash dropping into the bronze ashtray on his desk as he scowled around the wrapped tobacco clenched in his lips. Not here, he reminded himself, instead pulling the telegram on the desk closer with the tip of a finger. Yellow and crinkled, just a few lines. It's been a month, won't you come to Vienna next week STOP You must be so unhappy around the villa STOP Elsa He pushed it away again.

It had scarcely been past ten this morning when it arrived, his breakfast sitting unhappily in his stomach as it occasionally did whenever he was about the villa; Georg considered himself lucky if his meals were only tasteless. Franz's knock on his study door was cautious as always, these days, though his hand was steady as he offered the folded note. "A telegram, sir," he had said after a brief nod, standing straight again and out of the suffocating grey cloud. "Just the one." The butler had learned to be specific after too many mornings and afternoons of several. Georg hadn't even needed to read past the first sentence to know whose name he would find at the end.

"You're too late," he muttered again, stabbing the smoldering cigarette end out before it had a chance to warm his fingers, though he didn't always feel it when they did. "Two weeks ago and you might have had a chance." Georg rubbed his palm across his face, the tobacco still clinging to his skin. "But I don't know if you can have the same hold you had on me in your bed, Elsa, if you ever had one at all."

Walking away from that girl—Maria—on Sunday a week gone had left him with such an unexpected ache. Longing, really. It was all so odd, if he really thought about it. I told you exactly what you are, darling, you're quite the lovely distraction. The fair hair escaping little from the knot behind her head little by little, finally cascading over her ears and shoulders in fresh waves, wafting every now and then if a breeze careened through the street or one of the other pedestrians walking past was a little too close. At least the latter were rare; Georg rather liked keeping her to himself, at least for the time. You're hardly here from Vienna, left everything and everyone behind from the sound of it, with no one here to look after you...

A scowl spread over his face, and he shoved his chair away from his desk and the last pile of bills to address. On his feet, he tossed Elsa's telegram onto the pile, turning back to the windows looking out over the grounds. I know you didn't say a thing about him, darling, not really, whomever he was in your old life. But I can suppose enough if I have to, and I don't think it's all that hard, remembering how you clung to me before we said farewell. God, her hands twisted into his coat—once, he was certain he felt her fingernail digging into his chest—her eyelashes fluttering as she struggled to keep her eyes open in the mid-afternoon sun as they darted from here to there, always away from him—and her lips parted, just enough that he saw the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

Through the pale drapes, across the fields and through the wiry trees dotting the grounds, everything was preparing to turn back to life. Whether blooms on the roses and shrubs mixed with the greener hedges, the grass preparing to transform from brown and limp to green and full of life, even the little buds on a few of those bushes the gardener had noted in their tour, his stained hands and filthy fingernails crumpling the paper in his hands. "It's all coming back, as I always knew it would," he muttered, his palm against the rippling glass to steady himself. "Everything—everyone but you."

Christ, it always came back to her, and Georg yanked the drapes shut against the sun, his hand drifting in to his right pocket as it so often did. He had managed to leave the whistle behind that Sunday—forced himself to, really—but the moment he had slammed the door to his flat closed, no concern for the neighbors he had never met as it shivered in its frame, he had rushed for his little table. Everything was as he had left it: the rough chair, the ashtray with his cigarette ends and mound of burnt rubbish, the flask of brandy and rarely washed glass, and the silver whistle laying in the middle. He had nearly been lost without it, at least without that girl to anchor him to the city, he was so accustomed to finding it twisted between his fingers wherever he was. It was a part of his routine each morning, dropping it into his pocket, as rote as dragging a comb through his hair, scrubbing his teeth, and throwing a clean shirt over his shoulders before he emerged to wander Salzburg's streets. Always going nowhere.

"Not that there's anywhere I can go," Georg said, the whistle spinning in his palm. "Nor any of us." Sometimes, returning to the villa, he understood it wasn't only his prison, but theirs as well. School or the schoolroom, the dining room or their bedrooms, coming and going from one little room to another. School clothes or attire fit for the evening meal. Routine, discipline, the same rhythm that had seen him rise from bed before the dawn or stand at his post well into the night whenever needed on ship or submarine. But whenever something broke through…

It had all shattered a few days earlier, at least for a few minutes. The mail had arrived right on time a few days earlier, Friday afternoon if his memory was correct. Franz had the mail as he always did, the letters addressed to him on the same small tray, any for the rest of the household already sorted out to be distributed later, probably in the evening when the day's tasks were completed. His own were a mix of the last bills for the month, account details—mostly banks in Vienna and Salzburg, one from an investment firm in England or Ireland; he had long ago given up keeping track of the nations squabbling on the British Isles—and finally one in long elegant handwriting, well-known and frequently sent. His fingers had trembled, slicing the top of the envelope back with the golden opener that always sat at the corner of his desk with his stationary, knowing the only words awaiting him, the time was so near. Sympathy, kindness, the tenderness he always expected from a mother. Not now, Georg had thought as he peeled the letters apart. For him, it was the same trite greeting, the politeness a gentlewoman would have for the man who had loved her daughter and fathered seven of her grandchildren. But tucked behind it—thicker, page after page folded together in an envelope all its own—Georg knew the words would be softer, as if she was desperate to wrap her aged arms and bejeweled fingers around each of those grandchildren.

His mother-in-law's letters sometimes arrived during his brief visits to the villa, but they were mostly relegated to the stack of correspondences that waited for him. But the letters for the children...those were almost immediately devoured by the eager brood. (Or so he assumed, they were never opened in front of him.) This past Friday, after he handed the envelope inscribed with every name back to Franz—Agathe's mother hadn't even left out little Gretl—it was only a few minutes before a faint rumble erupted from the bedrooms above, a few small feet running here and there, dulled voices rising with questions as Liesl no doubt read their grandmother's latest letter. Rather than send Franz or Frau Schmidt off with the command to reduce the din to something more tolerable, Georg instead busied himself with one cigarette after another, shoving the unfolded pages out of sight. Give them time, he had told himself, a fresh smear of grey breath marking the window for one of the maids to wipe away the following day. They'll understand themselves soon enough.

Her letter was still hidden in the top drawer of his desk, away from the bills and the correspondence that didn't sear him so deeply, still mostly unread. He had managed the first paragraph, filled with sentences like "Georg, I do hope you're well" and "I hope you'll consider visiting with the children over the summer, the house sometimes feels so empty" but nothing beyond that. He couldn't reach for it again to see what else his mother-in-law had written, could scarcely bear to imagine it even today after a few days and nights to steel himself for it. She hadn't meant it, Georg knew that, but...Not now, not when I have to remember it all so much more tomorrow, six months on.

The curves of the whistle danced through his fingers, twisting across the knuckles of his bare right hand. It was weeks ago, but he still hadn't slipped his wedding band back onto his ring finger, still hadn't quite asked himself why. Not after rinsing the blood from his palm nor inspecting the inside of the thin gold ring for any tiny fragments of glass after running it beneath water in the washroom that sat in the master quarters, just down a short corridor from his bedroom, banishing it to the back of the drawer in the table on his side of the bed in the master bedroom.His side...Georg let out a deep breath, shoving the whistle into his pocket again. "I think it will have to join you," he whispered, opening the drapes with his other hand, just enough to see a few cars on the road to and from Salzburg just through and beyond the trees and hedges. "It can't come with me, not anymore."

His talisman for years, his anchor these last few months. Now, it was only another dose of poison running through his veins. "Tomorrow," he whispered, another spin of the whistle between his fingers. "I can never stand tomorrow—and you must know that." His hand tightened, the links in the chain numbing the underside of his thumb's knuckle. "At least out there...I don't have to see you everywhere, waiting for it all."

At least in Salzburg, he had Maria to distract him, now. Even a month ago, for a few moments that day, he had been able to think of the approaching Sunday. Her blue eyes and defiant mouth, pale face that would likely be sun-kissed long before summer arrived...He bit his lip, eagerness churning in his stomach. A fool, really, walking away when her knees had probably been ready to give way if she hadn't clutched at his jacket, that relentless mouth stained with sweet milky coffee—

"Sir?" She vanished with all her loosened hair and drawn frame, just the cream-colored curtains before his eyes, hiding the afternoon sun still shining harshly over the western horizon as it dipped with the approaching evening. "Sir?"

"Yes?" Georg, turning slowly on the carpet behind his desk. It was just like that in the library, brought back from somewhere on the opposite side of the world, one of the little spoils of the navy, whether his own or his father's. But this one was a burning crimson red, white banners twisting from the edge to the center, gold tassels crumpled where they were crushed against the dark wooden paneling.

The butler was standing in the doorway, hands behind his back, vest fastened just above his waist as it always was, no jacket as he went about his duties throughout the day. As the years had gone on, just like Frau Schmidt, Franz had been a constant face in the household. His faintly lined face and greying hair appeared in response to every summons and melted into the back corridors whenever his duties were finished, any emotion long ago hidden. "She's arrived," he said softly.

Georg nodded, unwrapping his hand from the whistle in his pocket, half of the chain still dangling free. "Thank you," he said with a brief nod, shoving the remainder of the chain away. "Please show her in."

Franz took a step backward, into the empty foyer. "Of course. One moment."

At least she's here, Georg thought. That's more than can be said for the one Frau Schmidt preferred. Lifting his hand, he pushed the knot in his tie higher, right up against his throat and the starched white collar of his shirt. By now, I think anyone will be good enough. If I had known that, I wouldn't have come nearly so soon. And perhaps...Well, I think I could have asked anything of her that afternoon, the way she clung to me. He tugged one of his lapels closer to the column of shirt buttons rising along his breastbone, bringing the dark grey satin closer to its twin, both of them pressed and pristine against his charcoal linen coat. He closed his eyes, Maria's hand suddenly beneath his, fingers threatening to wrinkle—

"...here if you please, Frau Wimmer."

Georg's eyes snapped open and he pushed his shoulders back, his gaze newly focused on the door open to the foyer. To his freedom.

Georg remembered the slow rotation of governesses from his own childhood: young Italian and Slavic women—their German stilted no matter the months and years that passed—always with long dark hair pinned and knotted beneath a kerchief that shadowed tanned, unlined faces, clad in drab dresses that rustled wherever they went. But this, Frau...Georg had already lost her name, though it really hadn't been for him, he reminded himself as she walked toward him slowly. Her skin was wrinkled, hair grey with a few patches of dark brown or black, and silver spectacles set on her nose, the lenses large and round. No doubt cheap, he thought, taking a first stride around his desk as he clasped his hands together behind his back. Just like her dress as well, something dark green over leather boots, probably years old—certainly out of fashion, if it hadn't always been. No bags filled with tat and trinkets, though over her shoulder and past Franz, wiry at attention as always, he did see an unfamiliar shadow in the foyer, a dark patch against the coppery tile.

I suppose you'll have to do, he thought, the toe of his left shoe nearly catching on the bright rug as he took another step, though he righted himself before he even pitched forward. Just like you, Maria, he continued to himself, his fingers twisting against one another. If a lifetime of reacting without delay hadn't seen his hands around her tiny waist, her heavy coat unable to hide the little quivers—

"Sir?"

Georg cleared his throat, finally loosening his hands and waving the butler away. "Thank you, Franz," he murmured, another cough catching at the back of his throat, laden with the smell of the tobacco from his last cigarette. "If you will have Frau Schmidt call the older children downstairs, that will be all for the moment."

"Yes, Captain." He nodded, not lingering at the door, but leaving Georg with the new governess.

Truly desperate, Frau Schmidt, Georg thought, finally rounding his desk and tucking his hand behind his back once again, fingers shaking as they passed his pocket and that whistle, fairly burning—almost begging for him to seize it, and stay. Her gaze followed him as he took a few steps across the rug in front of his desk, turning back to her after a moment. "Good afternoon…" Oh really, what is your name?

"Frau Wimmer. Ida Wimmer," she said softly, her voice low and rough.

"Frau Wimmer," he repeated. "Thank you for coming, I do know it was on some short notice."

She nodded, her eyes darting here and there behind her glasses, from the dark wooden side tables against the wall with a glass carafe of brandy and several dusty snifters—the carafe an ornate twin of the cruder one on the battered table in his Salzburg flat's front room—to the handful of books on his mahogany desk beside the letters he still needed to address. "Yes, I had hoped to hear from—Frau Schmidt sooner, but I understand that another governess was unable to take the position."

"So I have been told, I expect Frau Schmidt knows more."

Her little exploration stopped, though she only nodded again. "Of course."

He took a deep breath, resting his backside against the very front of his desk as his palms caught the molding along the edge. "There are seven children in this household—"

"Her letter only mentioned five."

Now that same breath came up again as he stood straight and tugged the back hem of his jacket down, a few fresh paces taking him around the corner of his desk as his hands twitched again. God, another cigarette was just what he needed, something to calm his nerves and steady his limbs. "If you will let me finish?"

Her eyes fell to the carpet—the deep red broken where shoes had pushed the fibers aside, revealing the lighter core beneath the dye—a slight flush on her face. "Forgive me, sir."

"Captain, if you please."

Another nod, though she still didn't meet his gaze again. "Captain."

He turned to the window another time, curling one hand to a fist and pressing it to his mouth to stifle another cough. God, it was the worst sound, now. "There are seven children in this household. Your charges will be the five eldest; the two youngest have a nurse to look after them."

"Yes, Captain. May I ask?"

Georg tugged one of the curtains back. It was all so close, the world outside, almost in his grasp. The afternoon sunlight sliced through the tree branches, probably ready to coax those little buds into bloom, bringing the leaves along with them, new life waiting to be born. And somewhere, those little birds that always chirped their little songs in the morning. "I'm sure you adore them as well, Maria," he whispered.

"Captain?"

"What?" Georg pressed a finger to the glass, the bottom of the pane still a little chilly despite the sunshine. Just another day—two days, perhaps. Enough time to settle...I suppose her name doesn't matter all that much, at least to me.

"How have they been with their other governesses?"

There was the thundering, nearly a dozen shoes running about the floor above. Not long, now. His hand behind his back again, Georg finally turned around once more, his pace still measured and slow across the carpet, and his polished black shoe a little higher just where his toe had snagged the carpet a minute before. "I must confess, you will be the first."

Her hands, hanging at her sides, now clasped together at the front of her waist for a second. Wary, Georg assumed, his slow walk continuing her eyes dropped, one of her feet twisting and setting a few new wrinkles in the rug. "Oh, I didn't know."

"Frau Schmidt clearly told you very little in her haste," he said, stopping again at the front of his desk as the roar came nearer. God, he had to do this all over again. As the weeks—then months—had passed, the words had slipped from his mouth fewer and fewer times, almost as though they were buried in the graveyard with her, stripped bare just as her lovely face— No. "Their mother died several months ago—"

"I'm very sorry to hear—"

"And in the future"—his voice was louder, now, with the same tone that had echoed around the damp metal corridors as the floors sloped with a dive or ascension, a few beads of water rolling beneath his feet—"as I already asked you, you will allow me to finish before you respond."

Frau Wimmer nodded again, one hand pushing a handful of stray grey hairs from her wrinkled face, though she had to yank a few from the hinge beside her eye. "Yes, sir—Captain."

Georg coughed again, a rough knot caught in his throat as he blinked heavily, trying to ignore the wispiness at the edge of his vision. "She—" Another cough, and for a second, he thought he felt her fingers tangled with his, soft and warm—supple, worn with an indent from guitar strings— He shivered, his shoulders rolling farther backwards. "She died last autumn and unfortunately, I cannot be home to look after them right—for the time being." Christ, just the last week and a half had been more than any man could bear, seeing his beloved wife peering back at him out of five faces and pairs of eyes—six whenever Marta joined her older siblings—and hearing the faint lilt of her voice when his daughters spoke. All while in the darkest moment of the night, the faintest memory left him unable to breathe. "Frau Schmidt has been kind enough, keeping up with them, for the last months, but she has her responsibilities to the household itself."

Frau Wimmer scratched at her face for a second, then plucked a handkerchief from the band of her dress, perhaps tucked there after the ride along the dusty road from Salzburg to Aigen. She brushed it at her nose before wiping at one of her eyes. "I'm sorry whatever business can't wait—"

"Quite." With a step away from his desk—toward the door and the house outside of his own little sanctuary—Georg waved the new governess forward. She took two or three footsteps backwards before she turned, scurrying forward with a shuffle as he followed, tugging the study door closed with a slam. She almost jumped at the sound—or perhaps she was finally taking in her charges.

They were still dressed for the school day: the girls' hair tied back, probably with the silk ribbons they preferred, though Liesl occasionally tamed hers with one of Agathe's barrettes from her own childhood. Whenever she thought he wouldn't be around, Georg assumed. Some of their skirts were a little wrinkled, or perhaps just windswept after the walk home in the breeze, and both Friedrich and Kurt's long socks had a few smudges below the cuffs of their pants, perhaps some game between the two of them as they struggled to ignore their sisters. A gentle murmur was running between them, Brigitta and Louisa nestled next to their older sister, the younger girl peering up at her after staring at the unfamiliar woman right before them, the housekeeper who had followed them down from their rooms forgotten in the corner, hands knotted at the front of her waist where she occasionally tied apron strings. "What's happening—" "Father's never out—" "Who is she?" "I don't understand—"

"Quiet!" Georg snapped, a little louder than he meant, the words ringing as they bounced back from the white beams. Brigitta pushed herself closer to Liesl, the older girl's arm around her shoulder. "Straighten up for a moment! And at least have some order to you unlike some local hooligans."

Louisa's eyes widened. "But—"

"Liesl." She pushed her younger sister away, past Louisa, Kurt, and Friedrich. Beckoning at her eldest brother for a short second, she reached for Friedrich's hand without waiting for him to think, pulling him down the forming line toward her; Louisa and Kurt found their own places, though his youngest son was a little set back from his siblings and Louisa was twisting the ball of one foot on the ground, as though an itch she couldn't quite scratch was gnawing at her skin. "Again, Frau Wimmer," Georg said, his hands still behind his back as he began to pace in front of them, only half looking their way, "these are—my five eldest children."

"It's very nice to meet you." As Frau Wimmer smiled—or at least tried, perhaps realizing her task as Frau Schmidt's first choice must have done. His children glanced at one another, Friedrich leaning back and around, tugging on Kurt's arm until Georg cleared his throat yet again, and he straightened with a brief swipe at the back of his neck.

"Liesl, thirteen." He waved at the eldest, walking past her as flinched. Another man might have needed to see her eyes and nose to know her parentage after so many months away from his wife, pulling apart the empire rather than seeing her through her first pregnancy. There had never been a question in Georg's mind even if his daughter had been accustomed to her mother's lap before he ever laid eyes on her. "Friedrich, who will be eleven in a week or so." A long breath rushed through his nose, and his tie was suddenly far too tight, almost a noose around his neck. "Louisa, ten at the end of April. And then Kurt—eight—and Brigitta, seven."

Kurt slapped his sister's shoulder, sandy hair fluttering around his face as he turned to her for a moment. "You'll have to hunt her down in the library!" Quiet laughter flooded the room, though with the distant walls and ceiling, it might have been a whisper—and it all faded little by little as they looked back to him, smiles disappearing under his gaze.

"Frau Bauer is with the youngest—Marta and Gretl—though I don't suppose that you'll see them very often, except for her days off. They spend most of their day in the nursery."

"Captain—"

"They don't happen very often, and Liesl is quite good at helping whenever needed." She snapped toward him, her dark brows knitted together over her nose and bright blue eyes. You're mine, I know that, Liesl, you look it more than any of you. But I can't have you near me, not right now. No matter how she begged.

"I'm sure," Frau Wimmer said quietly, taking her first step toward the children, Brigitta taking one of her own back. "My eldest daughter was very helpful when the other children were younger."

"I'm glad to hear it." I hope never to hear about your children again. "Back to the schoolroom, you'll have plenty of time with Frau Wimmer tomorrow afternoon." They glanced amongst themselves, everyone looking to Liesl— "Now!"

The momentary order was broken, five pairs of feet suddenly scurrying across the carpet and tile—up the small set of stairs that led to the entry way—then up the longer flight to the family's private wing. To the nursery and the children's bedrooms, both set back from his along the carpeted corridor, their footsteps finally a dull roar again over the white wool as Frau Schmidt climbed the stairs slowly in their wake. One final time to see that they aren't wasting their afternoon hours?

Georg looked back at Frau Wimmer: her face was paler, her top teeth clenching her bottom lip. "I prefer my children to keep themselves occupied. Throughout the day, they are in school, but you will drill them in their lessons each afternoon when they arrive home, until it is time for them to get ready for dinner."

Another nod, this one a little smaller than the ones earlier. "Of course."

"When summer arrives—"

"Will—I apologize, Captain, I didn't mean to interrupt."

God, you women are all the same. "I accept, but you will please learn to hold your tongue." Another nod, and Georg made a mental note to have Frau Schmidt and Franz keep more of an eye on her than the new housemaid; that one at least knew how to be silent. "When summer arrives, you will tutor them in anything they require." Behind his back, his fingers were twitching once more. With the fresh silence, he might as well be in his study again, the heavy door bolted against the memories as the tobacco and brandy soothed every nerve. "Again, Liesl—even Friedrich, at least for some topics—can assist you with the younger children."

"Yes, sir."

"In general, you will see that they are occupied when they are not in school. Productively. I have no use for my children twiddling their thumbs or dreaming away their weekends and holidays."

"Yes, Captain."

He took a first few paces toward his study, the new governess twisting on her feet on her own little tile to follow him with her gaze. "I am sure whatever terms Frau Schmidt quoted to you are acceptable and that she has a schedule for you regarding days and hours off duty."

Frau Wimmer peeled her glasses from her face, wiping the lenses with the slightly wrinkled handkerchief she still clutched before returning them to her nose. "She did, Captain, they are quite generous—"

"And I am sure she will show you to your room once she is back from settling the children, if you will wait here. I look forward to you joining us at the dinner table tonight. She will give you the time."

"Of course."

O O O

Georg endured dinner at the head of the table—Liesl at one of his hands, Friedrich at the other—and Frau Wimmer at the foot, Marta within arm's reach of her. At least with a governess, the little girl's improving manner's could be placated if need be while Frau Bauer was called to collect her.

Over the first course of soup, after the last hours she had spent settling into her room, likely filling the dusty wardrobe with yet more frumpy dresses and stout boots, Frau Wimmer asked after the children's day. What they had studied in school, how long was the walk each morning and afternoon, were they reading any interesting books? She received an answer here and there, but the children were mostly as quiet as the last evening he had joined them, leaving the clink of cutlery and glasses to bounce against the paper-lined walls and side tables. You'll learn soon enough, Georg thought as he drained his small glass of red wine, steeling himself to refuse the offer of a second if Franz had the carafe in his hands when he returned. There was enough time for that later tonight.

With the plates and their remnants of fried veal and potatoes cleared and the water glasses refilled, small plates of chocolate cake with clean petite forks appeared for the children and their new governess alongside a small glass of dessert wine for Georg. Whenever there was an unexpected guest, the cook invariably baked the chocolate cake frequent visitors always hoped for. Agathe loved it too, he thought as he waved his own plate away, sending it back to the kitchen as he mostly did. And I think you would as well, Maria, if you think jam and bread is a treat.

When even those last plates were cleared and a curt farewell was snapped at the children—Marta told to hold Liesl's hand as she was returned to Frau Bauer for the night—he retreated to his study. As the children filed out, the same clatter of shoes breaking the delightful silence as earlier in the afternoon, he took Frau Wimmer aside for one last moment. The housekeeper would see to the children tonight and, while the elder were in school the following day, would give her details of the household's routines. She only nodded before climbing the stairs to the other wing of the house, leaving Georg alone before he closed the study door behind him.

The tobacco washed over him in a moment, a fresh glass of brandy clenched in his other hand as he sat back in his chair. The buttons of his suit hung open about his waist, and he loosened the knot of his tie, the noose at the base of his throat finally vanishing. He even opened one of the pearly buttons at the top of his shirt, a fresh waft of cool air against the very top of his chest. "I suppose that's all that's needed," he whispered around his cigarette. "If she's here to stop Frau Schmidt from going mad…" She really was his freedom.

His head falling against the top of his back, a little crack echoing in his left ear, Georg released a long breath. It almost felt he had held it for hours, since the withering middle-aged woman stepped through the front door. Another drag of smoke—his vision swimming as it flooded his blood—another cloud rising to the ceiling, dark paneling inlaid with pale rosettes camouflaged by the ashy grey. Free, he thought, eyes closing. You won't have to haunt me like you do now, Maria.

She had followed him through the final blocks to his flat, his satchel already packed with shirts and suits to be laundered, the handful of telegrams and letters he had received in Salzburg at the bottom, ready to be answered as the hours of hiding from his children stretched out into an eternity. Her thin body, every inch and dip no doubt minuscule—even what he had never properly seen with his own eyes—on display in his imagination. Pale skin unmarked apart from the bruises left by her little stumbles and falls, tiny curves shivering under his palms, her bare breasts caught in his fingers as her long locks of hair had been just before they said goodbye...Georg clenched his eyes, sitting straighter. Christ, his entire body was stiff, hard as rock as he remembered the smell of her skin, the soap mixed with the sugary coffee caught on her breath.

You told me I didn't have to stop, darling. I know what you were asking for—I suppose you understand that—but if I had listened to you...Now, a shudder coursed through every limb until he bit the end of his cigarette, her body splayed open for him for a brief second before he opened his eyes. "I'm sorry, love," he whispered, the weight settling across his chest again. "Not here, not now." Georg gulped half the brandy down, the alcohol searing his throat as it rushed over his tongue. "But she's nothing like you—and nothing like her." He downed the rest of the glass. "She's followed me almost since that first evening, and…" He caught a small burp behind a hand. "I don't think Elsa will follow me anywhere, not if it takes her from Vienna and her townhouse. But Maria...She would come with me anywhere, just like you."


Brigitta pulled her quilt closer to her chin, the wispy hairs that always escaped her braid through the night scratching at her cheek. Since Father had sent them off to bed after dinner was finished—Frau Schmidt reminding them their governess would look after them starting tomorrow afternoon—she had been curled in her bed despite the early hour. She didn't even remember the words she read as she turned the pages in her latest novel, one of the corners crushed into her face. Liesl and Louisa had talked for a few minutes, both brushing their hair before the housekeeper made her final rounds, but for once, talking to her sisters held no interest for her even as she couldn't sleep.

She didn't like her, Frau Wimmer, Brigitta knew that already. Not her dusty green dress, not her grey hair, not even her silly glasses. I'm sure she's nice, she thought as she turned onto her back, her stomach too tight and uneasy for her to lie on her front any longer. But I don't want her here. She'll ruin everything, I know she will.

All their lights were snuffed out, Frau Schmidt firmer than usual. "Your new governess won't remember running after you when you could just stand on your feet," she had said, collecting their books and Louisa's sketch paper rather than simply setting them on their bedside tables. "You'll have to listen to her, even if you don't always listen to me." Now rolling onto her right side, Brigitta shoved her hand beneath her chin, fingers caught in the wild ends of her plait. At least there's a little light left outside. It's so early to be so dark.

Louisa was already asleep, she knew by the slow sound of her breathing just a few feet away. She always does that, she thought, now twisting onto her other side, white cotton sheets tangling around her legs, almost knotted together with her long nightgown. I guess she's just like Father.

Brigitta squeezed her eyes shut, but the sliver of moonlight and little specks of the stars still peeked through, even halfway across the room. You're never here anymore, and now it's going to be even worse. Onto her other side again, her mattress creaking as she turned, opening her eyes to the grey shadows. Louisa's bed sat between hers and the door like it had since the day she left the nursery, her table and lamp little more than a pillar in the darkness, as still as one of the statues she remembered seeing around Salzburg a year ago. Or even one of those strange winged horses guarding the gate that led to the lake behind the house, stone animals they had climbed all over in the summer just a year ago! Why can't it all...Everything used to be so nice.

She sniffed, her nose suddenly stuffy as she wiped a tear from her eye and rolled over yet again. "Liesl?" Across the room, just a few feet from the window and its show of twinkling night lights, she heard her oldest sister stir. "Liesl?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you asleep?"

This time, the creak was far away, no doubt Liesl turning toward her. "Not anymore."

Brigitta threw her quilt aside, sitting up and pulling her nightgown down around her calves, her sheet crumpled against the blanket she'd slept beneath her entire life as she peeled it away. Pale pink and white, knitted long before she had been able to tell her mother she liked yellow and green more than pink. She scrubbed at her eye again. "Can I stay with you tonight?"

Liesl groaned. "You're just across the room."

Her feet were on the floor, a little shiver running down to the end of every toe. "Please?"

"You've never been scared of the dark—"

"I'm not!" Brigitta hissed, already padding across the room.

Liesl sighed, and just a foot or so away in the moonlight, Brigitta could just see her sliding to the far edge of her bed, pulling all her blankets back to leave half the pillow open, though it was crumpled where her head had lain. "All right, but just leave your book. I had a bruise the last time you brought one."

She dropped onto the mattress a little heavily, a fresh squeak breaking the quiet. "Not for weeks—and I don't have it anyway, you know that!"

Through the gloom, Brigitta saw her sister yawn, the outline of her pale face still shining even in the dim twilight breaking through the windowpanes. "It still hurt. But come on—and don't wake Louisa."

"She might want me to, Frau Schmidt missed one of her pencils on her pillow," Brigitta whispered, both of her feet and legs already shoved down beside her sister's.

"We should tell her!"

"But won't it be funny tomorrow?"

Sighing, Liesl tugged the quilt back over both of them, one arm around her shoulders as Brigitta moved closer, lifting her head from the pillow for a second to free her thick braid from beneath her face. "What is it?" she finally asked, twisting a finger in her own hair.

"Frau Wimmer," Brigitta whispered.

"Our new governess?" She nodded. "What about her?"

Brigitta pushed her face into the hollow of Liesl's neck, a few of her sister's stray hairs caught in her mouth and tasting of soap. "I don't want her to be here. I don't like her."

Liesl's hand ran along her back, just like her own did on the few times she had held Gretl when she was just a baby. "We've only just met her, and you'll probably like her once you know her."

"But I don't want to know her. I want her to go away."

The gentle soothing of her hand stopped and Liesl pulled her a little closer, almost knocking the breath from her chest. "You like Frau Schmidt that much more? You never like her when she takes away your books or tells us to stay in here."

Brigitta shook her head, more rocking it against Liesl's neck and shoulder, almost afraid to pull back. "No, but…"

"What?"

She finally looked up, Liesl's face clearer despite just the dim light from beneath the door. "Father will never come home now."

"Shh. He will. He's home often enough right now."

Brigitta snapped her eyes shut again, her face crushed back into Liesl's nightgown. "But how can you know?"

"It's still his home too, Bri."

"He never acts like it is."

"He knows it is." Liesl kissed her cheek, tossing the heavy braid away from them both. "All your going to do right now is upset yourself. Go to sleep."


Georg's lower back was stiff and an itch was growing between his shoulder blades despite the high count of the sheets. His eyes still closed, he sat up, one arm twisted around for his freshly cut fingernails to scratch at his skin. He rolled his shoulders upward, a gentle crack coming from his spine. As he open his eyes, he had to blink heavily, a few dried tears caught in the corners, half-smeared across his vision.

It's always so quiet, he thought, tossing aside the sheet and comforter, the embroidery across the satin fine and delicate. Though all the bedding for the master quarters changed with the seasons—already, the thicker woolen sheets for winter were packed with the heavy quilt in mothballs to await the next autumn and even thinner cotton would take the place of these sheets when summer raged at its highest—Agathe had insisted on changing it all every two or three years. "You're not on one of your ships anymore," she had said the first time, perhaps eighteen months into their marriage. "No indeed," he murmured, turning his head over his shoulder, his hand already reaching back to the empty place behind him.

Georg couldn't stop himself: his palm craved her, any part of her. The smooth skin of her face, the faint violet stripes lining her stomach and the side of her hips after so many babies, the locks of her dark chestnut hair tangled in his fingers— Her eyes fluttered beneath her blond lashes, only half-open as he caught a handful of pale— He gulped down a deep breath, sudden and harsh. Not here, Maria, not here. You've already infested my study, but not here.

Georg twisted away, his feet flat on the carpet tossed across the dark wooden floorboards. He tossed an unruly lock of his own hair from his face, running it back into the rest with his left hand as he shivered and stood. The late winter breeze from the far window wasn't strong, but against his bare chest, it was enough to raise goose pimples and harden his nipples beneath the coarse hair over his skin. God, where was his dressing gown? "Right where you left it this morning," he said, his feet padding across the woven panels quietly. There wasn't anyone around to move it, after all.

It lay across the chair Agathe had loved so much, tucked into the corner of their bedroom next to the scratched and stained crib that had never needed to leave their room. She had passed countless evenings and nights with a blanket tucked around her legs, a baby in her arms as she nursed hungry mouths and soothed unhappy cries. And then there were the happy afternoons with a skein of yarn in her lap and knitting needles in her hands as the two of them whiled away the hours they stole for themselves, talking and laughing as they loved to. The last two sets of stockings—born from the pair of needles while she sat with the girls as they coughed and shivered in their drenched beds—Georg had never worn, but simply shoved to the back of the bureau with his underclothes and socks. There hadn't even been time to stuff them with the same mothballs as the winter bedclothes.

He threw the blue silk robe over his shoulders, quickly knotting the sash after he tightened his pajama trousers around his waist. "You would probably worry over me, love," he whispered, the last few feet between him and the window that looked over the back grounds of the villa vanishing. "Just how you did all those months I was gone when you should have worried about yourself and Liesl." He wrapped a hand around the thick wooden sill, the carving dipping beneath his palm as it stretched on along the window from one carved edge to the other, some leaf he didn't know pressing into his palm. "Though you didn't know it would be Liesl, did you? I suppose we both believed she would be a young man like Friedrich."

God, everything in his chest was tight, something almost choking him as he peered up at the sky. With the lights throughout the villa either extinguished or dimmed and both Salzburg and Aigen's meager lights a little too far off in the distance, nothing quite drowned out the stars. There wasn't even a cloud drifting along in the wind, just the black velvety night ready to swallow him completely. Georg nearly felt the sea swelling beneath him, his body nestled in the chilly waves, wondering where they would take him next. "At least I always knew then where I was going." Now, not even the moon was much help, just a fattening crescent dancing over the top of the western horizon.

His mouth was dry, his second hand curling around the sill as well, a few rough shards of wood digging at his palm. What I would give for a brandy, he thought, shaking the slivers away before they lodged themselves. Or a cigarette. But Agathe had always insisted on them staying in his study when nighttime arrived. "I like you better without them, here."

I never could resist what you wanted, Georg thought, shoving a loose sleeve up his arm, the cuff at the wrist far too wide to do anything but hang just around the top of his hand. But more and more often on his infrequent visits to the villa, the wrinkled packet of cigarettes remained in his pocket, fished out of his jacket the next morning—shoved into his new coat for the day and snatched back out the moment he set foot in his study once the children

Somewhere outside, a bird shrieked, across the lake by the distant echo. From the other corner of the grounds, another answered. An owl or hawk, perhaps a falcon, eyes probably blown wide in the sliver of moonlight, the stars hardly adding a speck to the ground. Looking for your next meal, I suppose, Georg thought as he rubbed his face. You're always searching for that. I don't even know what I'm looking for, these days.

His eyes darted back to the west, to Salzburg, to her. The road from Aigen twisted around a bend here and there, a pile of pebbles and dust sometimes rising along the shoulder, but mostly ran straight, just crossed now and then by another lane or path eroded by generations of worn boots and wagon wheels. Its own little web, obscured for humans but no doubt still visible to that owl when the trees and hedges and flowers bloomed bright and fresh in the late spring and summer.

"Fresh," he muttered, his fingers grazing his mouth. God, it would have been lovely, just the briefest touch of hers. "What are you doing now, Maria? Too late for your guitar—probably too late for you to even have whatever light they gave you burning if you're still awake." Just a year ago, Georg wouldn't have recognized the street where they had parted ways, probably no more than a block or two from wherever she called home. It wasn't even flats lining those streets, but boarding houses instead, filled with rooms smaller than the bedroom in his flat only a few blocks farther on. "Whatever it is, why do I think you have every happy little moment from the life you left in Vienna surrounding you?"

Georg turned around, the silk dressing gown swirling around his cotton trousers, his eyes back on the bed across from him. One side tousled—sheets and quilt thrown to the side, a hollow in the pillow from the last week of restless nights—the other pristine. Untouched but for when the chambermaids changed the bedding during his visits to the villa, the silken pillows almost smelled of dust, sweat...He shuddered as he closed his eyes. It wasn't the sweaty sheen of lovemaking glistening beyond his sight, but the damp of fever and chills, shivers and death—

"Not anymore," he hissed, spinning back to the window, eyes still clenched shut. His breathing was already louder in his ears and Georg leaned forward, his forearms catching on the sill as he folded his hands together. He let them go shallower, slower, and for a moment, he thought he heard the lake moving with the faint breeze. "As restless as the sea, perhaps. But at least the sea can wander here and there." After all, where did the Adriatic give way and the Mediterranean begin? He had never known just when he was no longer where he had been, only that some mark on a map declared it was suddenly so.

He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, an unexpected yawn rising in his throat. Christ, what time was it? His watch lay beside his cuff links and that engraved whistle on the top of the bureau across the room—simple enough—but whether it was hands ticking by atop a white face lined with numbers and ticks or a compass and sextant to measure the stars, it was all the same. The evening giving way to another morning: screeching raptors vanquished by chirping songbirds, glittering stars and the waxing moon replaced by harsh rays of sunshine bursting over the eastern horizon. "I suppose you'll see it as well, darling—"

Georg bit his tongue as he threw himself from the window, his calloused bare heel snagging on the creamy carpet in his haste to turn around. "I know, love, I can't say that here, not…" Not yet. Passing the bureau, he snatched the whistle away, no longer pushing aside a necklace or earrings leftover from the day, they had all been packed away long ago. But he couldn't stand to even touch it, instead dropping it into his dressing gown pocket, a deep shuddering breath as the weight finally hit the bottom seam.

Another few steps, this time around to the empty half of his bed. Peering down, the quilt suddenly wasn't quite so neatly drawn up to the lacy sham, and the pillows beneath weren't so perfectly piled. He could almost see the outline of her body: the curve of her breasts, her widened waist, curled hands nestled beneath her chin as her long dark hair draped over her shoulder, the braid knotted with an old ribbon she refused to replace. "There's no need!"

Reaching out a hand—almost shaking—Georg clenched his eyes shut, waiting for her warm creamy skin beneath his fingers, her fine nose giving way to her lips, bitten and swollen when she chewed at them through the night, the nearness to her memory so tantalizing, the only fleeting happiness in the whole of the villa. I know you won't be there, he thought, a film spreading across his eyes as his lids rose, but just once more—

He hardly noticed anything beneath the sheets, the dips and falls of her body were so slight. And then, loosened and wild, pale blond hair half covering her face, a few strands stuck to her pink lips. Now, blue eyes beneath long fair lashes, a slight bump in her nose right beneath them. "Georg? What are—"

"Goddammit!" Georg shouted, no longer caring about the time, how far down the hall his vulgar words would echo, whether or not one of the little girls would wake with the noise, shrieking and crying for their nurse. Never you anymore, he thought with a sigh, a heavy blink clearing the cloud over his vision—and her from his bedroom. His arms across his chest, he sank into his wife's place, a palm pressed to one of his eyes. There's not a moment's peace anymore, not even here. But perhaps he should have expected it, their bedroom a sickroom for the last weeks as she struggled against the fever and coughs.

He loosened the sash around his waist, a little breeze from the window just catching his skin, the dark curls on his chest not enough to hold the chill back. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," he muttered, "a late winter night." Perhaps morning.

His hand drifted to the ornate table just beside her pillow, the fabric and form beneath still untouched despite the tricks of his eyes. It must still be here, he thought, the drawer beneath the polished mahogany and beech creaking as he tugged it out, one of the wheels jumping against some bump in the slide. I need to know, my love, I can't stand not knowing anymore. Tomorrow or now, it's half a year. Isn't that long enough for you to keep your thoughts to yourself?

The drawer was half empty atop the wrinkled, faded paper lining the bottom of the wood, a few scratches here and there from when her sleepy hand was a little too harsh searching for something. A little pearl brooch she always loved, the white seeds set atop a few gold stems bound with a silver hoop; he had pressed into her hand without a word when even standing with her on the opposite side of a ballroom from her guardian was forbidden, let alone offering a little gift that hoped for something more. A pen, the nib stained by the ink that had stood still and unused for months, probably dried at the fine tip. A few flower petals, long ago withered after they were swept from the top of the table after the daily change, the blossoms one of the last things that brought a smile to her lips.

Lips. Swollen and red from his, or stained with that sweet milky coffee—

He seized the thin diary from the top of the stack, close to half a dozen piled throughout those last months and years, just paper and thoughts caught between plain black or brown covers; anything fancier had gone to the girls. Georg had never leafed through them, even as he struggled to sleep before finally running from it all, as though her own private world had disappeared with her. But that final little notebook, with her memories and words of those last weeks...He couldn't resist it any longer, needing to know more than her happiness as the girls' strength grew even while her own dwindled; her worries that their coughing wasn't quite gone as her own tongue swelled with the marks; the distance she kept from him as she tended to their daughters and how feebly she clutched at his hand in what they didn't know were the true final hours.

It fell open between his palms, the binding cracked even though she had scarcely made it through the first third, her hand had grown so heavy whenever she went to scribble a single word. As the paper turned under his fingers—a year ago spring giving way to summer—the elegant script he remembered from their initial letters transformed. As July wore on, delicate loops gave way to words that were slanted and untidy, dashed off with haste. When August began, her penmanship grew boxy, the blank pages covered with lines that wandered here and there, her hand and arm unable to remain steady unless the nurse held her elbow still, her face covered as Agathe's had never been.

Georg turned another page, his elbow propped on his thigh and almost sliding forward along his silk dressing gown. Some of the words might as well have been another language unto themselves, something he had never learned, would never decipher. Another page, the characters larger—square—almost childlike as he remembered watching her scrape the pen against the dense paper. A few specks of the page that followed gleamed through, like she had broken through with the nib, her hand was so heavy. One more—the reverse of that last, with only blank paper following.

"I told him again to love them for me. I don't know if he's listening."

"Christ," Georg whispered, slamming his wife's diary closed, almost throwing it back into the drawer. His hand dove into his pocket, back to his talisman, ready to release another rush of venom into his veins. Even with the just the light from the opposite side of their—the—bed, the steel gleamed, silvery and white glints almost blinding him as turned it round, the chain dangling in the air. "It's all you could think about, wasn't it, your children." He clenched his hand, the first few links nearly cutting at his skin. "You have to love them—"

"And you can keep them for all I care!" Georg flung it into the drawer, a dull thud and clatter as the steel bounced on the wood along the bottom, over that brooch and pen and stack of diaries, finally smashing into the back. He threw her final notebook after it, slamming the drawer so hard, the lamp that was an unlit twin to his own slid back against the wall, the sconce almost crushed against the washed plaster. "Maybe their love alone was enough for you, but it won't be for me."

O O O

Georg rose the next morning before dawn, showering without even waiting for the water to warm in the pipes. If he closed his eyes—didn't breathe deeply and take in a breath of crisp soap and shampoo powder while the water finally turned tepid—he almost thought he was on a ship again, just waiting for a gentle wave to test his sea legs. He toweled the worst of the damp from his hair, though he didn't stop to comb it. Another white shirt—tie—black suit—shining leather shoes, Georg didn't really need to look for anything as he dressed. It was all the same, here, had been for years. Just that whistle in his pocket and a hat on top of his head, at first a little off to the side of his head—but he straightened it as he felt the band atop his ear. Not anymore.

His black suitcase was empty—he had intended to pack this evening—so Georg left it in the large closest that branched off from the master bedroom. Even with only the clothes on his back, there were enough suits hanging in the wardrobe of his Salzburg flat for the next week or so until he sent anything soiled or wrinkled to be laundered. And there were more than enough banknotes in his wallet and pocket if he had to pay a visit to a tailor in one of the nicer corners of the city.

Pulling his bedroom door closed softly, the electric lights along the whitewashed walls were still burning low, a little too early for one of the maids to have turned them to their full strength. It was perhaps later than some households, given so many children. They weren't that far away, Georg knew, pausing after a few steps down the center of the hallway. The youngest two with their nurse, Gretl perhaps ready to waken Frau Bauer with the whines of a toddler and Marta tossing and turning with a disheveled animal wrapped in her arms— No, he told himself, the next few steps giving way to a quicker pace before he could even think about their older brothers and sisters, the gentle curve of the stairwell and its shining banister rising so quickly, it might have been a dream.

The soles of his shoes didn't quite touch the steps, Georg took them so fast, almost sliding from one to another. I can't stay any longer, he thought, at last at the landing that separated the family's wing of the house from the stairs leading to the staff's. A few more steps through the empty hall took him to his study, the first sounds of the kitchen drifting along with the first hints of onions and carrots melting together, preparations already being laid for the midday meal.

In his study, snapping on the overhead light, all Georg bothered to gather were the keys to the household car, set aside from the larger ring when he handed over the keys to his own. There wasn't any else to do, before he finally disappeared into the early morning. No note for the staff; he had come and gone with no notice so many times, it was probably no longer a conversation in the evening when all the work was done. There would be no surprise at his absence, despite his stated intentions and the new members of the household. No final instructions; even the newest and youngest in his employee would yield to Frau Schmidt and Franz. They would have to learn on their own how Frau Wimmer fared in a household with no master.

Georg pushed the curtains aside a final time for another glance out into the darkness of the western horizon. Even if his study gazed out over the opposite end of the earth, nothing would be breaking through the darkness quite yet. Not the faintest drop of dawn, not the wispiest cloud flitting along on the March breeze. Staid, still, never quite moving anymore. "Is it the same for you?" he murmured, the curtain falling closed as he pulled his hand away, the harsh light shining against the folds of fine cotton. "I can't imagine it is, Maria, no matter the time." If he closed his eyes, only for a moment...

It was another lifetime, really, that first journey back from the southern hemisphere over oceans and past coasts he had only read about in books. Just a few months from now, but all those years ago. The older hands—common sailors and lieutenants and captains alike, though it was mostly the wizened men of no title he remembered from that voyage—were all waiting for them, those strange bright lights dancing across the horizon. "Only in the winter down here," one of them had whispered to him, Georg's hands hurting and almost numb in the strange frigid breeze in mid-June, his jaw slack in almost childlike wonder. Wild and untamed as they jumped and shifted from a strange green to flat gold, broken only by the dark rigging running down from the top of the masts. Gleaming bright and tempting as they snapped to and fro, if he could only reach out and catch one…

His palm fell against the glass again through the gap in the drapes, the chill bringing him back from the half-rotten deck atop the rolling ocean. Open again, he flicked his eyes to the west, along that road he would drive back to Salzburg in that ancient battered car and her, his life here left behind for...Later, Georg thought, a faint yawn breaking from his lips. Will yours be stained with that milky coffee again? I hope so, because you'll be entirely too much to resist, then, and I don't think I can or want to any longer. I think you'll distract me quite nicely.


* Thinking of Till Eulenspiegel, though my memory is that he is more of a Germany Germanic folk hero. Still running with it.

A/N: If you've made it this far, thank you for taking a few (?) minutes of your time to read my story, I know it's long and your time is limited.