Elisabeth shrugged. “Still. He won’t be getting paid for his work.”

“Right now, if you hadn’t noticed,” Marianne said, “no one is getting paid for their work. And certainly coming here to cut down trees once a week will be a pleasant relief from the internment camp, which seems to be an impossible place.” There were rumors of men dying in such installations, barren fields with no shelter and no shade from the sun, of men sleeping in holes they dug out. Though Marianne did not trust most rumors the Ehrenheimers circulated.

She turned to her son. “Fritz, sit like a man and stop fidgeting.”

“Did he kill many people in the war?” Katarina asked in a hushed voice. “Is that why he is a prisoner?”

Marianne looked at this daughter: dark haired, plain faced, and thoughtful. Always slow and deliberate in her reactions. So much like Albrecht. “I don’t know, love.” She sighed. “Lots of people are prisoners. Even boys your own age who don’t know one end of a rifle from the other. I don’t know what Herr Muller did.”

“Something bad anyway,” Elisabeth grumbled.

“Oh, Elisabeth, really,” Marianne snapped. “I didn’t ask for his help. But now we have it. He will cut wood to help us get through the winter, and for that you should be thankful.”

In the silence that followed, she mulled over her own words. Is that how it works? she could hear Albrecht asking. Personal gain trumps moral decision?

Yes. No. What was the difference between the man working here at the castle or for the Americans? Either way he was a prisoner. Connie would have supported her view, wouldn’t he?

She doled out the last of the soup.

“Probably he had a Luger anyway,” Fritz offered. “Do you think he still has it?”

“No,” Marianne said firmly. “No Germans can carry arms. Now, could we sit and eat our supper in peace?” She turned to Martin, who had remained quiet through all of this. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

After dinner, Marianne climbed the stairs to see Benita.

She had moved her to a cot in the warren of servants’ rooms above the kitchen, where they all slept. These were the best rooms in the castle now. During the cold months, they would be warmed by the fire from the giant oven below. The formerly grand bedroom suites at the front of the castle were chilly and dim, littered with the hacked-up remains of ancient curtained beds. Marianne had been appalled to discover this when she arrived. Who would have chopped apart such antiques? In the great hall too the grand piano was mangled, its keyboard stripped of ivory, its wires splayed like a giant spider. Possibly the Nazis had done this; for a short time, before the end of the war, an SS unit had taken up residence in Burg Lingenfels. One corner of the courtyard was still stacked with their empty tins of meat and cherries and white asparagus. But it was also possible that the citizens of Ehrenheim were responsible for the destruction. In the last days of war, after the Nazis had left, many of the townspeople had holed up in the empty castle to hide from the approaching Americans, who they believed would rape and murder them. And Marianne would not put such destruction past the Ehrenheimers. They were an insular bunch, all married to one another’s cousins and uncles and brothers, and locked into the mind-set of medieval serfdom in which the castle folk were their oppressors. They had all been ardent Nazis, as far as she could tell. And to them, Marianne and her children were the family of a traitor, a man who had tried to kill their beloved Führer, in addition to being born von Lingenfels.