“Well,” she said at last. “I am actually inclined to believe you.” She looked down at him for another long, cold moment. “And I am not an unreasonable woman, nor am I inclined to make your children suffer for your sins. It is clear that they will probably all starve without you to provide for them. I would not care to have the deaths of children on my conscience. Perhaps I can think of some way you can repay what you stole.”

He began to have faint hope. Perhaps . . . perhaps she would let him go? He looked up at her and clasped his hands under his chin, trying to look as prayerful and repentant as possible. “Anything!” he blurted.

But she was not finished. “A bargain, then. You owe me, Friedrich Schnittel. You owe me a very great deal. But I won’t have you thrown in prison. In fact, you can come here and gather what you need for your family every day, on condition that you repay me.”

“H—” he did not even manage to get all of the word how out before she interrupted him.

“You have—or will have—something I want, just as I have something you want. So, this is the bargain: you may continue to help yourself to this garden. I would prefer that you come at night, so that I don’t have other thieves coming to steal from me, and you might as well keep coming over the wall as well, since you are so good at it. Then, when your wife gives birth to this new child, you will give her to me.” He opened his mouth to object. She stared at him with her lips compressed into a thin line. “Don’t try to barter with me. It is this, or I set the dogs on you and have the police take what is left of you to prison. What will it be? Will you feed your eight children and your wife for the trivial price of a baby that is likely to die anyway?”

Well, what could he say? If he refused, what would Maria and the children do but starve? What good would it do him or them if he suddenly decided that selling the baby was wrong? “Very well . . .” he said, slowly.

She smiled, as if she had already known he would say as much. “Take what you have. Come back tomorrow night. I’ll even leave sacks for you.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and stalked back into the house, her dogs preceding her. They all went in via the kitchen door—which showed not so much as a hint of light—and she closed the door behind her, leaving him chilled and drenched with sweat on the cold earth of the garden.

It was not an easy birth.