I picked up the tray again as the door opened, and in came Frau Muller. I stood, frozen. She said nothing, but her eyes glittered with a sly triumph. Without a word she took the tray from me and waited for me to leave the room. “Wait in the hall,” she said, with a nasty edge to her voice, and disappeared in the gloom of the stairway.

I stood by the hall fire, crushed with misery. I nearly wept; the only thing that stopped me was the thought of the pleasure she’d take in my tears. After what seemed an age her footsteps came down the stairs again and I turned to face her.

But before she could speak, the main door of the castle was flung open, and Count Karlstein himself, the cold air swirling around him like an army of Visigoths, stood there on the threshold. The wind flung up cinders and ash from the hearth and made the lamplight flare and sink, and even the heavy, sagging tapestries stirred uneasily out from the walls before the count slammed the door, shutting out the wind. Frau Muller was at his side, speaking swiftly, pointing at me. He looked up and his eyes seemed to flicker, like the mountains in summer when a storm’s about to break, with enormous undischarged anger.

He took three swift strides, and raised the short stick in his hand to strike at me. I stepped back, but the blow caught me on my shoulder; even through my dress it stung fiercely, and I cried out in fear and scrambled away as he aimed another blow. It cut me across the neck, and I turned and ran. He was mad. He shouted at me—a stream of abuse that turned me cold to hear it—and flung something; I don’t know what it was, but it struck me in the back just before I reached the door to the servants’ quarters. It was hard and heavy, and the spot was tender for weeks afterward. I flung myself into the kitchen and sobbed and sobbed—and Frau Wenzel, instead of comforting me, turned away, her face tight and shut with fear, and clattered some buckets in the scullery.

And only a moment later the door was flung wide, and there stood Frau Muller, leaning forward and craning her neck at me, white with anger—except for a little broken vein that stretched like a thread of scarlet cotton up the side of her nose. I stared hard at that to avoid looking into her eyes, and she said, “Get your cloak and your bags, and go. Get out! Leave the castle immediately, and don’t come back!”

My head was reeling, but I managed to curtsy. I felt as if I was dreaming. She stood aside to let me pass, holding her skirt fastidiously out of the way.