“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. This is terrible. Has he run off, do you think? Deserted his post?”

“No, no. He’s a brave soldier. He wouldn’t do that.”

“Then we shall just keep looking, won’t we?”

“I looked everywhere.”

“Then we look everywhere twice. Come on.”

On their hands and knees, Elfriede and Johann dredge every inch of stone, every seam of floor and wall, until Elfriede’s fingers discover a small metal object wedged between the cushions on the chaise longue. Still too dark to see it properly, but Johann, clutching the figure, joyfully declares his missing private found.

“Now let’s return to your room, before Nurse finds out you’ve stolen away,” Elfriede says.

Already Johann’s rubbing his eyes. “I sleepy,” he tells her, losing his grammar to fatigue.

So Elfriede places her hands around his warm ribs and lifts him to her hip. “I’ll carry you.”

They emerge from the summerhouse to discover a fine pink light on the horizon, a smokiness in the air. Dawn steals over them. Elfriede turns her face so she breathes nothing but the scent of her son’s hair. Ahead, the schloss rises from the earth in shades of gray. A lamp illuminates the master’s bedroom, and Elfriede experiences a shudder of fear for the abandoned Gerhard, though not regret. If her husband’s died of fever during this past hour, she will never regret leaving him to die alone. Not when she’s saved a son, their son.

Because servants wake before dawn, the lights also burn on the third floor. Which is the nursery? Elfriede isn’t sure. She carries Johann up the steps to the terrace—he’s now asleep, his body slack against hers—and makes for the French door, still ajar, just as a woman flies outside in a blur of white nightgown.

“Oh! Oh! What have you done?” she cries.

Elfriede answers coolly. “I might ask the same of you, Nurse. How did my son come to be wandering alone outside at night?”

Nurse comes up straight and indignant. “He’s been very naughty. Now give him to me before you kill him, if you haven’t already.”

The woman holds out her arms. In the feeble light, Elfriede can’t see her face, but she knows the shape of that head, the shade of those blond braids. Johann stirs and lifts his head. “Nurse!” he cries, stretching his hands toward hers. “I found my private!”

“Have you, now,” Nurse says. She thrusts again with her outstretched arms. “Frau von Kleist. You must give him to me at once.”

“I don’t—”

“You must. Haven’t you hurt him enough already?”

Fury seizes Elfriede. The insolence! she thinks. I ought to dismiss her on the spot, I ought to slap her, how dare she.