“Catholic, Protestant, Jewish—such nonsense,” Marianne responded when Elisabeth pointed this out. “These divisions have never caused anything but grief.” Apparently her own newfound religion existed outside of these lines.

Tonight was different, though. The vespers service was open to all and would feature the Ehrenheim orchestra, performing together for the first time in years. “They are quite good,” Marianne conceded. “The conductor studied in Berlin as a young man. No one thought he would come back.”

Even his mother, who never left the castle in the cold, bundled herself into an old fur coat of Marianne’s and walked down the moonlit hill with the rest of them. They made their way through the streets toward the church’s famous crooked steeple—a tall shingled spire built hundreds of years ago to point straight to the heavens but that, through some fault in its construction, instead curved slightly south. Like the German soul, Marianne joked. Aiming for heaven but stooped toward hell.

The whole town seemed to have turned out for the gathering, shuffling up the steps of the unheated church in their warmest coats and blankets, nodding greetings. Mostly women and children and the elderly, but some men now too, as Germany’s soldiers gradually came limping home from hospitals, enemy combatant camps, and wherever else.

Inside, the air was solemn but festive. People carried lanterns and tallow candles—a precious commodity these days—and the shadows of their flames leapt and danced across the rafters. They reminded Martin of an illustration from Frau Vortmuller’s Bible—the spirits of the damned burning in hell. Beneath the shadows, the faded frescoes on the walls were illuminated in bursts: the trailing robe of St. Paul; Jesus’s bare and bloodied legs; the stern, pinched face of an angel that Martin would have been terrified to encounter. There was a jagged hole in place of the rose window—shattered in the bombing—and outside the sky was dark and dotted with clear winter stars.

Then the service began—a wholly foreign experience for Martin, who had attended church only a few times in his life, and never a Catholic mass. It was full of chanting in Latin, the smell of incense, and unintelligible prayers. The stone floor and walls magnified the cold, and Martin’s breath froze as soon as he opened his mouth. Slowly, the priest climbed to his pulpit and spoke. He was old and his voice echoed confusingly. “For our celebration of the Feast of Christ the King. That it would be a time of reflection on our crucified Lord, and an opportunity for us to imitate his attitude of humility . . .”

People coughed and shifted in their seats. Martin glanced at his own family, if they could be called that. Marianne sat stick straight, brow furrowed, closely attending to each word. Beside her, Elisabeth cast her gaze around the congregation, taking stock of who was present. Katarina leaned against her sister for warmth. And Fritz, bending his head in apparent concentration, scratched a design into the rough fabric of his pants. The Grabarek boys, shoulder to shoulder, dark heads nearly identical, were an island unto themselves, passing something between them—a note? A pebble? It was impossible to tell. And Ania was as unreadable as always, her eyes on the minister but seeing something else inside her own head. Martin’s mother sat on his other side. Of them all, she seemed the most absorbed, gazing up into the bit of sky framed by the broken window, lips parted, eyes soft, like a woman coming face-to-face with a benevolent God. Martin reached over and took her hand. She startled, as if seeing him for the first time. But the smile that followed was like a flash of sun across a darkened field. And for once Martin felt sustained rather than terrified by his own capacity to bring her joy.