‘Hello, Jesper.’
I say nothing. I gawp back at Father Lekmann, suspicious.
‘How are you feeling?’
And I hadn’t had time to think about it until he asked. But come to think of it, I feel stiff and sore and tired. I shrug.
‘I need to have a quick look at you, Jesper, to check you’re OK after your fall.’
And I still don’t say anything.
‘That was a nasty fall you had, Jesper. Father Frei said that one of your legs and one of your arms was broken.’
I look down at my arm. It’s mended just the way it ought to be.
‘Can I check you over, Jesper?’
I shake my head.
‘You’ll make this much easier if you do as I ask. I won’t hurt you.’
And I stare back at him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘Well, in that case it shouldn’t take long. Could you lift your arms?’
Reluctantly I lift my arms like he asks and I watch his face as he looks surprised.
‘What about your fingers? Can you use them?’
I stare back at him cos I don’t know what he means.
‘Can you wiggle them?’
And of course I can, so I show him.
‘Your legs . . . Can you move them?’
I nod. I move them about under the covers.
‘Can you walk?’
And I can do that as well, can’t I? Of course I can. I walked to this room with Father Frei. I swing my legs out of bed and I stand up, and at first I feel kind of unsteady but then I just walk. One foot in front of the other. Exactly the way it’s meant to be.
The priest gawps at me, mouth slightly open, eyebrow raised, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. And I don’t know why. Why wouldn’t he believe what he’s seeing?
‘Quite amazing,’ he says quietly. ‘Could I have a look at your leg, Jesper? The one that broke . . .’
I roll the leg of my trousers up and the priest bends to look closely at it, at the lines of pink scar tissue that still criss-cross the skin, muttering to himself. I squizz down to see him extend a finger and touch my leg. And it makes me jump, makes me flinch and move my leg away from him.
And right away he squizzes up at my face, still kneeling down. ‘Is it painful?’ he says.
I shrug. ‘A little. It’s sore.’
He scratches his head. ‘Well, I have to say I’m confused. There seems to be nothing wrong with you, Jesper. Your body seems to have healed as good as new.’ He crosses himself. ‘Perhaps Father Frei is right. Perhaps this is a miracle.’
Carina
Just after the evening meal, I pass Father Liebling in the corridor outside my dormitory. He smiles momentarily as he sees me and then his head goes down and he carries on walking. But I have questions I know he’ll be able to answer, so I go after him.
As he becomes aware I’m following, he checks around the corridor before stopping to speak.
‘Father Liebling, there’s a rumour spreading about the disease Sabine died of. People say Jesper Hausmann brought it into the home. Is that true?’
Father Liebling doesn’t say anything straight away. He checks the corridor again, makes doubly sure we’re not being watched, before he takes a step backwards into the shadows. ‘Where did you hear this rumour, Carina?’
I shrug. ‘Sabine’s brother – Markus.’
Father Liebling sighs. ‘I thought you knew better than to trust the word of someone like Markus.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
Father Liebling nods. ‘As you know already, Carina, there does seem to be a new disease. But at present nobody knows where it originated.’
‘So could it be Jesper?’
Father Liebling shakes his head. ‘No. It couldn’t be Jesper. It wouldn’t add up. Sabine never met Jesper to my knowledge. And more importantly, she contracted and incubated the disease long before Jesper was even brought to St Jerome’s.’
‘So it came from somewhere else?’
Father Liebling nods. ‘It must have.’
‘So why has Jesper been locked away from everyone?’
‘That has nothing to do with the disease,’ he says. ‘Jesper’s being kept on his own to recover after what happened in the crypt.’
I nod. ‘Markus pushed him,’ I say. ‘He did it because of the rumour.’
Liebling nods. ‘I suspect you might be right, Carina.’
‘Then why is he still walking around the home? How come he hasn’t been punished?’
Liebling shrugs. ‘You’d have to ask Father Frei about that, Carina, although I wouldn’t advise it. Father Frei spoke with Markus yesterday evening. He’s convinced it was nothing more than an accident.’
I sigh. ‘So does anyone know where the disease came from then?’
‘No. And we’ll probably never find out. There are conspiracy theories of course.’
‘Really? Like what?’
Liebling shakes his head.
And as voices approach along the corridor, he walks off without answering me.
Tonight is one of those nights. I won’t sleep; I already know that. I’m too tired to walk the corridors. So instead I lie in my bed, amongst the shadows and everyone else’s sleep sounds, and I close my eyes and let thoughts come to me.
And this is the thought that comes first:
Me and Greta. In the kitchen at home. Greta’s fifteen and I’m seven. The low winter sun pours in through the kitchen window, where we’re making bread – Greta in charge and me helping. The table’s covered in bowls and spoons and cups and ingredients, but it’s an organised mess. The smell of wood burning in the stove fills the air. It’s the smell of home, the way life is meant to be.
Although I know that, even in this scene, life isn’t really like that. Because neither Mum nor Dad is there. It’s just me and Greta looking after the house. Well, Greta looking after the house, and me helping.
Someone else shuffles into the room. Even before I see her face, I know it’s Mum. She squints against the sunlight, takes small exhausting steps into the room and then lowers herself awkwardly into a chair near the table. She’s wearing her dressing gown. She looks like a bag of bones with a head.
‘Hey, Mum,’ Greta says. ‘How are you feeling?’
Mum smiles. ‘Better,’ she says. But I can tell from the stiff way she’s moving, the way her skin looks grey and sallow and clammy, that she’s not telling the truth.
She watches Greta and I set to work. ‘Are you making bread?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Why don’t you wash your hands and you can help us?’ Greta says.
But Mum shakes her head and sits where she is, looking drained and tired and weak.
I grab a cup from the table to start pouring out five cups of flour on to the table top. When I’ve finished, Greta takes the cup, measures out some oats, adds those to the flour and then a handful of caraway seeds. I make a little crater in the middle of the flour mixture with my fist, the way Mum taught me to.
‘Where’s your father?’ Mum says croakily.
‘Out,’ Greta says. ‘The men left in the middle of the night. Dad didn’t want to wake you.’
Mum frowns. She says nothing.
I take the lid off the pot with the sourdough mixture in it and pour some into the crater I’ve made in the flour. Greta adds sour milk and yoghurt.
Over on her chair, Mum coughs – a deep rasping cough that sounds like it’ll tear her in two. The coughing goes on and on, gradually getting weaker as she runs out of energy. She takes a few deep breaths, steadies herself and her eyes close for a few seconds, like she’s too tired to go on.
Greta catches me watching Mum, catches the scared look on my face. She smiles, trying to distract me. ‘Do you want to mix, Carina?’
I nod, rolling up my sleeves, and then I mix everything together, working the dough until it’s a sticky ball and my hands are covered in tendrils of bread mixture. Greta and Mum watch in
silence.
The sound of dogs barking outside the house shatters the peace in the kitchen. We all look up to the window. The dogs must have seen something.
‘Could be the men returning,’ Mum says.
Greta nods, then takes the dough, starts to divide it into smaller balls which she rolls out, ready for plaiting.
Sure enough, as we watch Greta work, watch how quickly and skilfully she gets the dough to do what she wants, the sound of hoofs approaches, then the snort of a horse outside in the road.
A minute later the door opens and Dad comes inside, looking tired.
‘Peter, you’re home,’ Mum says. ‘Are you OK? Are you hungry?’
Dad goes straight over to Mum, kisses her on the top of her head, running a hand through her straggly hair. ‘I’m OK. Hans is feeding the horses. How are you feeling?’ He gently places the palm of his hand on her forehead, feeling her temperature. He frowns.
‘I feel a bit better, I think,’ Mum says. But this time even she doesn’t sound like she believes it.
Dad goes over to the cupboard and gets a cup, takes it to the sink and tries the tap. He sighs when all he gets is a clunking sound.
‘The water supply’s off again,’ Greta says. ‘There’s a container by the back door.’
He sighs, nods and goes over to the container, pours himself a cup and drinks it down in one go before pouring another.
‘Where did you go?’ I ask.
‘Grubingen,’ he says without looking at any of us.
‘Why?’
‘New Dawn,’ he says. His voice sounds tired. ‘They’ve been clearing the surrounding villages. Last night they moved in on Grubingen itself. The Resistance tried to evacuate people.’
‘Did you succeed?’ Greta says.
Dad shrugs, staring out of the back window. And I can tell that he’s thinking, reliving what he’s just seen. ‘We got some people out in time. But New Dawn were quicker than we thought. We couldn’t stop them. They wiped the whole town out. Every man, woman and child they found – even the animals – slaughtered. We had to flee before they got us too.’
None of us says a word. Greta and I exchange a look. We both know it could be us next.
‘They’ve got everything,’ he says, still looking out at the land. ‘The power station and the water pumping station. The whole lot.’
No more electric, no more fresh water. It’s going to be even more of a struggle.
Dad goes over to a cupboard and searches it for food. There’s almost nothing there though. Our supplies are running out. Not much food is getting through at the moment, unless you know the right people. He takes out some smoked sausage and crackers and puts them in his bag.
Mum coughs again. Deep and hacking. It goes on and on and on. She bends double. The colour drains from her face. Dad looks at her. He takes the cup he drank from, goes to the back door and fills it from the container. He takes it to Mum, who is still bent over, her coughing getting weaker and weaker. She sips from the cup. Some of it dribbles down her chin.
‘You should lie down,’ Dad says. ‘You need rest.’
He helps her up and Greta and I rush over. I take Mum’s arm, feeling how frail and skeletal she’s become. We walk her back through to the bedroom, where the curtains are drawn and the room smells of illness. And no sooner is she on the bed than her eyes close and she’s sleeping, drawing shallow breaths.
We go out of the room in silence, each thinking the same thing.
‘Listen, girls,’ Dad says. ‘I’m going to have to go out again. We need to make the village secure. New Dawn will be here before long. It could be today or next week, but they’ll come and we need to be ready to resist them.’
‘Can we do anything to help?’ Greta asks.
Dad nods. ‘Look after your mother. Make sure she’s comfortable,’ he says. ‘And pack a bag. Pack one for your mother too. Just in case. We should be ready to leave if we need to. Greta, make sure the wagon’s ready.’
And even as I lie in bed at St Jerome’s, remembering, I start to feel the panic and the chaos welling up inside my chest and my head. I open my eyes, sit up, heart racing.
I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts. I can’t be.
I drag my tired limbs out of bed and I start walking.
Jesper
I’m taken from my room to Father Frei’s warm and comfortable office.
‘We have many children like you here, Jesper: children with no past; wild children abandoned in the forests, parentless; children who’ve had to learn to fend for themselves.’
I listen.
‘But you’re different, aren’t you?’
I say nothing.
‘You’re special.’
I shrug.
‘You are, Jesper. I’m convinced.’
I squizz down at my feet.
‘I believe we witnessed a miracle the other day in the crypt.’
There’s that word again. Miracle. Like in the Bible. He said it over and over on the night I fell.
‘I saw with my very own eyes. Your leg was broken, twisted, bloodied. And right before my eyes, it healed in a way that just isn’t possible.’
What else does he think is gonna happen to your body when you get hurt? That it should stay broken?
‘I would like to share your story, Jesper,’ he says, smiling at me. ‘Miracles are rare indeed. And yours will bring light and hope to millions of people in a time of hardship. Reading your story in the newspaper will help strengthen the faith of any who might be losing theirs.’
I say nothing. And after a few seconds Father Frei walks over to his desk. I hear him open a drawer. He takes something out. And when he comes back over I recognise it as a camera. I’ve seen them on The Screen.
‘For the newspapers,’ he says, and he holds the camera up and presses a button.
I just stand there.
‘Excellent,’ he says, gesturing to me to sit down on the chair facing his desk. So I do. He sits too. For a while he says nothing, just gawps at me. The clock ticks. The fire crackles and spits.
‘So tell me more about yourself, Jesper . . .’
But all that follows is silence, because I don’t know what to say, do I?
‘You told me you lived in a place all on your own. Did it have a name?’
And before I’ve even thought about what I’m doing, I’ve said, ‘My Place.’
Father Frei smiles. ‘My Place. Hmmm. And you’re certain you were kept alone?’
‘I wasn’t “kept” there; I lived there.’
‘Have you ever thought why, Jesper?’
I don’t understand, so I say nothing. And besides, The Voice wouldn’t want me telling him this information, would he?
‘It sounds like your upbringing was quite unique. It’s peculiar that you never saw another human but that there was always food for you.’
I say nothing. He knows too much.
‘Why do you think somebody went to the trouble of feeding you, clothing you, keeping you warm and safe?’
I shrug. The truth is, I never thought about that before.
Father Frei opens his desk drawer again. ‘When you were discovered in the woods, you had with you an electronic device,’ he says. And he places the broken remains of the scroll on the table.
‘Jesper, do you realise that this kind of technology is incredibly rare? Very few people have electricity in their houses, let alone anything like this.’
I shake my head. Although when I think of the buildings I saw in the forest, I suppose that makes sense.
‘Where did you get this device?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must do, Jesper.’
I shake my head.
‘What does the machine do?’
I shrug.
‘Can you show me what it does?’
‘No. It’s broken.’
For a few moments the office is silent. Then Father Frei clears his throat. ‘Whoever kept you in My Place must have been wealth
y, Jesper.’
I shrug. What does that mean?
‘They must have had a reason to keep you safe, to keep you away from the rest of the world.’
I say nothing.
The fire crackles. The clock ticks.
‘You must be intrigued, Jesper . . . You must wonder who kept you in that place, who let you free in the forest, aren’t you?’
I think of The Voice, of all the things he taught me, of how he talked to me when I was unhappy or unwell. I think of how he left me alone in the forest to fend for myself, how he gave me the scroll to guide my way.
I think of how he said he’d come and find me. Only he hasn’t, has he?
‘I know I want to find out,’ Father Frei says. ‘The newspaper article might help that to happen.’
For a while neither of us speaks.
‘When we find who kept you, Jesper, we can perhaps answer the question of why.’
I gawp back at him.
‘I have my suspicions though. You’re special, Jesper. You’re different. Clearly you’re important.’
The clock chimes half past the hour.
‘We must make sure we take the best care of you here,’ Father Frei says. ‘I’ll see to that personally.’
Blake
‘Things have become complicated,’ Henwood says, getting back into the car, holding a newspaper in his hands. He sits in the driver’s seat and lays the newspaper in the space between our seats so I can see. A picture of Boy 23 stares out from the front page. ‘He’s been taken in by priests near Manburg,’ Henwood says. ‘They think he’s some kind of miracle child.’
‘He’s safe though. And we know where he is. That’s something, isn’t it?’
Henwood sighs. ‘I suppose. Although our job would be much easier if he’d been eaten by wolves in the forest.’
I read the article as Henwood stares out of the windscreen.
‘I don’t think they have any real idea of who he is,’ I say.
‘They know the name you gave him – Jesper Hausmann.’
Boy 23 Page 12