The children made up the bed of rags and straw for Maria again, and she crept into it, shivering.

Once the family was installed in the kitchen—which alone was three or four times the size of the room they had been living in—he left them there, instructing Jakob to make up a fire with the plentiful firewood that was already there. Then he ran back and forth until he had brought all of the food that they had cached, and their old room was scoured bare of anything remotely useful, down to the smallest of rags.

Then he returned to the deserted house, locked the gate behind him, and joined the rest of his family in their new home.

Yes. Their home. For it had come to him, as he had seen this empty, echoing house, why should it go to waste? It had been untenanted for as long as he could remember. If that woman came back she could easily evict him and his family, but in the meantime, why should they not save the rent money and live here, where the garden and its bounty were easily accessible? Why not?

Maria was terrified at this new version of her husband, who had gone from stealing turnips to “stealing” an entire house . . . and truth to tell, he was not displeased with this. At least it stopped her from reproaching him.

The strange woman never returned to her house.

And Maria never forgave him.

1

GISELLE leaned out of the window of her room at the top of the tower and drank in all the spring fragrances being carried up to her on the breeze. Her room had the best view of any in the former abbey, and she often wondered who had been the tenant back when the complex had been inhabited by the Sisters of Saint Benedict. The abbess herself? Or perhaps it had been a room devoted to communal prayer?

Probably the abbess, she decided. It would have been a good place from which to keep an eye on the entire abbey. Mother said she had no idea why the abbey had been abandoned for so long, to the point where only the tower had been inhabitable when she had first taken it over, and only because the entire tower was built of stout stone. That had been long before Giselle had been born. By the time Mother brought her here as an infant, the tower had been completely renovated, all the other buildings had been reroofed with proper, strong tile, and the building attached to the tower itself, which had probably housed the nuns in their little cells, had been converted into spacious living quarters for Mother. Only the chapel remained in ruins. Mother never explained why she had not rebuilt the chapel, but then, why should she have? It wasn’t as if she and Giselle needed a church.