So Kellerman led the old horse up the hill, and when he reached the castle, he simply ducked his head and handed the reins to Marianne. He was not a sentimental man. He had lost the movement of his right arm in the last war, and his wife to childbirth, and his only child to scarlet fever. He offered no parting words to his horse.

Marianne had pulled herself together while she waited. The men were starving, the horse was not hers to spare. Her own strange effort to connect her suffering to theirs had been foolish. These men had no room for the suffering of others. And why should they? They had seen God knows what in recent years. They were far from home. And many had no home to return to: their villages had been destroyed, their families killed, their countries swallowed whole by the Soviets.

Herr Kellerman handed her Gilda’s reins and she accepted.

But the horse sensed menace in the great pyre the men had built before the stable and resisted for possibly the first time in her life. She pulled backward and stamped her feet.

“It’s all right,” Marianne said, although obviously it was not. She tugged at the reins and Gilda stepped forward cautiously, then stopped and strained her neck to look back at Herr Kellerman, who had owned her for some twenty years. This was how she was to be repaid for her unquestioning service.

What sort of benediction could Marianne offer? Herr Kellerman was right to turn and leave. There was nothing to say. Gilda looked wild and stupid with fear now, reduced to her most animal self. They were all in the time of animals: the men, her own frightened children hiding in the cellar, Herr Kellerman’s horse. Marianne handed the burly man the reins.

“Don’t make her wait,” she said in Russian, thankful not to have to say it in her own language.

All night the fire crackled and spat. Sparks sprayed toward the sky. As the moon rose, the men began to sing—a rollicking, boisterous song with an unfamiliar rhythm and tone that drowned out the echo of the horse’s weird, horrible screams.

In the corner of the kitchen, Katarina and Elisabeth sat clutching each other, crying. Benita was a bundle of exposed nerves, sewing a hem into an old pair of Fritz’s pants so they might fit Martin, stitching, restitching, and then ripping the stitches out. Fritz stood at the window, watching, spellbound and horrified. Somehow Martin slept.

“The men will soon come looking for schnapps,” Ania said. She and Marianne exchanged a glance.

“Why don’t you sleep in the cellar tonight,” Marianne suggested to Benita and the girls. “We can bring down the pallets.”

And so it was decided—everyone would go down except for Marianne and the Grabareks, who would keep watch upstairs. Only Fritz protested, halfheartedly. Marianne could see that he was fighting back tears. For the first time in ages, she wanted to hug him to her and kiss his head—her little boy, Albrecht’s son—he was only eight years old. Instead she said, as gently as possible, “Go on with them, Fritz, there’s no point in staying up.”