In the months since the Grabareks had arrived, life at the castle had become more comfortable and orderly. Frau Grabarek was a good cook. She knew how to turn coarse meal into palatable porridge, how to boil syrup from sugar beets, how to bargain shrewdly on the black market. She would return home from town with real wheat flour for baking, sugar, and even black tea. She was also more practical than Martin’s mother or Marianne: She made the boys chew spruce bark to ward off germs and mended the holes in Martin’s pockets and undershirts that no one else noticed. She thought to rub lanolin on Martin’s chapped cheeks, and when he developed a nagging cough, she made a poultice for his chest. She was a caretaker of regular, bodily needs. In this way, she reminded him of Frau Vortmuller from the Children’s Home, who sometimes he secretly missed.

The Grabarek boys, Anselm and Wolfgang, were even more silent than their mother, which was fine with Martin, who grew tired of Fritz’s endless chatter. And they knew real survival skills: how to find potatoes missed in the harvest, how to trap rabbits, how to lie.

And they knew how to split wood, which was important now that Herr Muller was gone.

Something bad had happened the night the Russians killed Herr Kellerman’s horse. Something so terrible no one even asked what it was. In the early morning, Herr Muller had appeared at the kitchen door carrying Martin’s mother. She was like a baby in his arms, with her own wrapped around his neck and her face buried in his chest. And she was covered in blood. It was everywhere—on her hair, blouse, even her face. Martin had never seen so much blood.

For a moment they had all stood and stared—the sight was too much to absorb—and then Marianne began to ask questions: What is this? Where have you been? Are you all right? Oh my Lord, good Lord, Mary, mother of God . . . And the girls began screaming and everything was chaos until Frau Grabarek sent the children back down to the cellar.

When she called them upstairs, Martin’s mother had been quarantined in her room, Herr Muller was gone, and there was no sign of the bloody clothes.

We must never speak of this, Marianne had said that night, and they were all too frightened to ask: About what? Even Elisabeth.

The next day the Russians left. One of them had disappeared. The leader came to the castle door to ask if they had seen him, and standing in the shadows, Martin heard Frau Grabarek say, Yes, actually; I couldn’t sleep and was looking out the window at midnight; I saw a man walk down the hill. Martin was the only one to overhear the exchange.

For the next few weeks the von Lingenfels children whispered about what had happened, but they fell silent in front of Martin, whom they seemed to regard with renewed pity. It was a pitiable thing, apparently, to be Benita’s son. Was the blood hers? And why had she been outside and not in the cellar? How had Herr Muller found her? These questions gnawed at Martin, but he did not ask them. The answers did not matter. Herr Muller had saved her. Martin was certain of this. So why had Marianne told him not to return?