Prologue
Spring is bursting like a song through the city, a symphony of beauty and renewal amidst the devastation wreaked by war. In Mirabellgarten, outside the magnificent palace, the flowerbeds are a riot of daisies and wallflowers, pansies and forget-me-nots.
The magnolia trees in Marktplatz Square froth with silken-petaled flowers, and the Salzach River, flowing down from the snow-capped Kitzbühel Alps through meadows studded with the white stars of narcissi, burbles joyfully through the city.
The river’s blue-green waters are untroubled by the broken bridges that gape above it, shattered reminders of the Allied bombs that destroyed them along with the dome of the cathedral, yet thankfully left much else unscathed.
High above the city, by the ancient ochre buildings of Nonnberg Abbey, a woman skulks in the shadows as the dawn sun creeps over the blue-misted mountains of the Salzkammergut and spreads long, golden fingers of buttery light over the indigo peaks that ring Salzburg like a giant’s jagged crown.
In her arms a baby stirs and lets out a small, mewling cry, the sound far too weak for a hungry infant.
She draws the blanket up around the child’s face, rocking her as she whispers for her to hush.
It has taken her nearly a week to arrive at this point, and she is filthy, exhausted, and starving.
It would have been far easier to give the child to the relevant authorities that now swarm the cities and towns from here to Hamburg, officious and efficient, or even to leave the creature where it had been born mere weeks ago, in pain and suffering, into a world that seems broken beyond repair.
But she made a promise, and so she is here, her body bruised and aching, her arms cradling this scrap of humanity that has somehow, impossibly, managed to survive.
High above, the clock in the baroque dome that crowns the abbey begins to chime six o’clock. Soon the nuns will be assembling for prime, their voices rising as one as they recite the ancient words in a ritual that has remained unchanged by time, by war.
The baby cries again, and the woman knows she can wait no longer.
As reluctantly as she accepted this burden, she is now loath to let it go.
This tiny child is the only thing that anchors her to another human being, to a reality other than wandering the world, one of the many lost to war—homeless, nameless, alone.
She cradles the infant to her chest as she remembers the child’s mother’s fingers clasped in her own, cold and bony, ragged nails digging into skin, eyes lit with the dregs of her strength as it seeped away into the dirty straw.
“Please… promise me… for the sake of my child…”
What else could she have done but given her vow?
“There is a clockmaker on Getreidegasse… a painted sign above it with a sprig of edelweiss… take the baby there… but if no one is there, then take it to the abbey. The nuns are kind there. They will know what to do. Swear to me…”
And so here she is, with this tiny bundle, who nobody still living wants, clutched in her arms. She went to the shop on Getreidegasse, and it was boarded shut.
So she came here, up to the abbey, to give them her offering.
There is no way she can provide for the child; she must leave her here.
The last chime of the clock fades into the dawn silence, a remnant of the echo reverberating through the narrow courtyard as shreds of mist begin to evaporate under the rising sun.
Steeling herself, the woman moves forward, the baby cradled in one arm, an old crate held in the other.
She found the crate outside a grocer’s in a fetid alleyway off Kaigasse, its damp, half-rotten slats as humble a crib as that for the holy child to whom the nuns raise their voices.
She puts the crate on the doorstep of the abbey, and then gently places the baby inside, tucking the dirty blanket, given to her by a Red Cross worker in Munich, carefully around her tiny, wizened face.
She tucks the little knitted flower, the edelweiss, into the blanket; the baby’s mother gave it to her, a keepsake she’d managed to hold on to.
Perhaps the nuns will know and understand.
She stoops to kiss the baby’s pale cheek before she lifts the heavy door knocker and lets it fall once, twice, three times, each reverberation in time to the thud of her heart.
She hears footsteps, quiet and unhurried on the ancient stones, and she retreats to the shadows, hiding behind a pillar, daring to peek around it because she must see this through.
The door opens with a long, protesting creak and a nun steps out, glancing around in untroubled curiosity before, with a start, she notices the crate at her feet.
She is young, this nun; her face is a smooth, placid oval underneath her white wimple, and her body is slender, as are the hands that reach for the crate.
A look of wonder flashes across her face as she takes the baby into her arms.
The woman watches as the nun cradles the baby against her body; despite her vocation she seems to know how to hold a child, drawing it instinctively towards her, one hand caressing the tiny, fragile head. A smile curves her lips as tenderness suffuses her face.
It is enough. She has made good on her promise; there is nothing more for her here. Silently, her heart and body both aching, the woman slips away as the sun rises high above the city, filling it with its light.