On the Night of the Seventh Moon

The children were allowed to stay up a little later than usual to see the fireworks.

“Providing,” said Frau Graben, ‘that as soon as they are over, there are no protests about going to bed. “

So when it was dark we went to the turret-room the children, myself and Frau Graben. Candles in sconces stood on either end of the mantel shelf and on the polished table was a small candelabrum. The effect was enchanting.

We ranged ourselves round the window and the display began.

It was taking place in the grounds of the ducal schloss, which was an excellent spot as it would be visible from almost every point. The children shrieked with excitement as the fireworks flashed across the sky and when the display was over there were groans of disappointment, but Frau Graben hustled them all away and as she did so she whispered to me:

“Stay here. I’ll join you later. There’s something I want to show you.”

So I stayed and, looking round the room, remembered the unhappy woman who was alleged to have thrown herself from the window and haunted the room ever since. In candle light it did seem eerie. I wondered how desolate one had to become before one took such a terrible step; I could imagine her feelings so acutely in those moments.

I felt a great desire to go to my comfortable room below; here I felt remote from the rest of the fortress, although only the spiral staircase separated us.

I turned away from the window and sat at the table. Footsteps were mounting the spiral staircase-two sets of footsteps. My heart began to beat wildly. I wasn’`t sure why. I sensed that something tremendous was about to happen. Frau Graben was with the children-she could hardly have bad time yet to see them in bed. There were just the two maids in the fortress. The steps were not light enough for those.

The door was thrown open. It was Frau Graben, beaming, her hair slightly ruffled, an unusual flush in her cheeks.

She said: “Here she is.”

And then I saw Maximilian.

I stood up, my hand touching the table for support. He came in; he stared at me unbelievingly. Then he said: “Lenchen! It can’t be!

Lenchen! “

I went forward; I was caught in his arms. I clung to him. I felt his lips on my brow and cheeks.

“Lenchen,” he repeated.

“Lenchen, it can’t be.”

I heard Frau Graben chuckle.

“There. I brought her for you, couldn’'t have my Lightning fretting, so I went and got her for you.”

Her laughter broke in on our wonder in each other and we were only vaguely aware of what she was saying. Then the door shut and we were alone.

I said: “I’m not dreaming, am I? I’m not dreaming?”

He had taken my face in his hands; his fingers caressed it as though he were tracing its contours.

“Where have you been, Lenchen, all this time?”

“I thought I should never see you again.”

“But you died?

You were in the lodge?

“The lodge had disappeared when I went back. Where had you gone? Why didn’`t you come for me?”

“I’m afraid you’ll disappear in a moment. I’ve dreamed of you so often. And then I wake to find my arms empty and you gone.

You were dead, they told me. You were in the lodge when it happened ..”

I shook my head. All I wanted for the moment was to cling to him.

Later we could talk.

“I can only think of one thing at the moment. You’re here with me.”

“We’re together. You’re alive, my darling Lenchen , .. alive and here. Never leave me again.”

I leave you. ” I laughed. I hadn’`t laughed like that for years abandoned, gay in love with life.

And for the moment there was nothing for us both but the joy of this blissful reunion. We were together; his arms were about me; his kisses on my lips . our bodies calling for each other. A hundred memories were back with me-they had never really left me, but before I had never dared look back at this perfect joy because to know that it had gone, to have that lingering doubt that it had ever existed, would have been unbearable.

But there was the mystery between us.

“Where have you been?” he was demanding.

“What happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon?” I had to know.

We sat side by side on the couch before us was the open window; the smell of burning bonfires was on the air; we could hear the shouts of the people far away in the town.

I said: “We must start from the beginning. I must know everything. Can you imagine what it is like to believe there is a possibility that you have lost six days of your life and three of them the happiest you have ever known? Oh, Maximilian, what happened to us? Start at the beginning. We met in the mist. You took me to your hunting lodge and I stayed a night there and you tried to come to my room but the door was locked and Hildegarde was there to protect me. That was real enough, I know. It is the next part. My cousin Ilse and her husband Ernst came to Oxford and brought me back to the Lokenwald.”

“She was not your cousin, Lenchen. Ernst was in my service. He had been an ambassador to the court of Klarenbock, the home of the Princess.”

“She whom they say is your wife. How can she be? / am your wife.”

“My Lenchen,” he cried fervently, ‘you are my wife. You . and you only. “

“We were married, were we not? It’s true. It must be true.”

He took my hands and looked at me earnestly.

“Yes,” he said, ‘it’s true. The people around me thought I was repeating the practices of my ancestors, which are sometimes carried out now, I fear. But it was not so in our case, Lenchen. We were truly married. You are indeed my wife. I am your husband. “

“I knew it was true. I would not believe otherwise. But tell me, my dearest husband. Tell me everything.”

“You came to the lodge and in the morning Hildegarde took you back to the Damenstift and that was the end of our little adventure-so I thought. It did not turn out as I intended for I saw that you were so young, a schoolgirl merely. It was not only Hildegarde who looked after you that night. But you had done something to me, aroused feelings I had not experienced before. And after you’d gone I continued to think of you and I wanted to see you again. Try to understand how things have been. Perhaps I have been overindulged, not refused often enough. You became an obsession with me. I thought of you constantly. I could not stop thinking of you. I talked of you to Ernst. As an older man of rich worldly experience, he wagered that if my affair with you had progressed as so many had before, I should have forgotten it in a few weeks. So we planned to, bring you out here that you and I might meet again.”

“And Ilse.

“She had married Ernst when he was ambassador to Klarenbock. She is the sister of the Princess but a natural sister, so that marriage with our ambassador was a good one for her. Ernst was ill; he needed medical advice and the best to be found was in London. He wagered me that he and Ilse would bring you back. And so they went to Oxford; they told this story of the relationship between Ilse and your mother and they brought you Out here. “

“A plot!” I cried.

He nodded.

“A not very original one.”

“I did not see through it.”

“Why should you? It was made easy by the fact that your mother was born here. But that I suppose is the pivot on which everything turns.

You had our forests and mountains in your blood. That I sensed from the moment we met. It drew us together. It was simple for Ilse to assume relationship. She could talk of the home life she had alleged she shared with your mother. Homes of the sort from which your mother would have come are very much alike. That part was easy. So you came, and then on the Night of the Seventh Moon . “