She wrote to the landlord, saying she would leave at the end of December, then to Martha Midwinter, saying she could start work in the first week of January, provided they could give her lodging.

4

The train came out of a long tunnel into snowfields, whose pallor glowed under the night sky. There had been a blizzard when they entered the tunnel, but on this side no snow was falling. The country lay silent under its covering.

Lena looked through the window. The train slowed, then stopped at a halt. There was no sound. An old man sitting a few seats away from her stood up and pulled down the window, letting the cold rush in. There was no one else in the carriage.

On the platform she saw a man with a lantern. He wore a railwayman’s cap, but his face was covered by a scarf, his chin tucked down into the layers. Only his eyes were uncovered. Flakes of snow were caught by the furred glow of the platform light. The man with the lantern walked the length of the train. No one boarded and no one left. The buildings of the halt were unlit and closed up.

‘It’s getting worse,’ the old man said, speaking as though to someone far away.

‘The soldiers can’t help clear it,’ the railwayman called back. ‘This is the last train tonight.’

‘Need a fire inside.’

‘There’s no more coal.’

The old man raised the window. The railwayman was disappearing into the night, rolling as he walked.

Lena’s breath made fleeting statues in the air as she wrapped her coat round her. On the rack above her head was a bag of her belongings, tied with a cord.

The train heaved and jerked back, twice, then began to move. She smelled coal from the steam and smoke that drifted past. She dragged her sleeve down the window and touched the cold glass with her finger as the snowfields began again.

At the next halt, she climbed down from the train, crossed the platform and went through a gate. She looked into the darkness.

‘Are you Lena?’ It was a man whose face she couldn’t see beneath his hood and scarf. ‘For the Schloss?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on. Get in.’

He helped her into a carriage, threw her bag in after her and shut the door. He climbed onto a seat outside and called out to the horse. It was an old trap and the seat was hard, but she was under cover.

After a short drive they pulled off the road through some iron gates and Lena became aware of a large building with irregular lights in brackets on the outside walls and the occasional candle flickering in a higher window.

The man opened the door and took her bag. ‘Follow me.’

It was hard to see clearly by the light of the lamp ahead of her, but they seemed to be in some sort of cloister and then in a courtyard from which opened a smaller flagged area, a gate in a corner, bare wooden stairs, three flights, and then a door onto a room with a single bed and a washstand with an enamelled jug. There was a fire just alight in the grate and a half-full coal scuttle beside it. The man, who had still not told her his name, lit a candle on the bedside table.