Ach, Else, liebes Elslein mein, Ach, Else, longed-for Elselein,Wie gern wr ich bei dir! How I long to be with thee!So sein zwei tiefe Wasser For so the deep mid shorelinesWohl zwischen dir und mir. Far sunders thee from me.

Das bringt mir groe Schmerzen, Which brings me deepest anguish,Herzallerliebster Gsell! Heart's all beloved friend!Und ich von ganzem Herzen And I, heart's eyes full open,Halt's fr gro Ungefll. Behold my fortune's end.

Hoff, Zeit wird es wohl enden, My hope, that time will end well,Hoff, Glck wird kommen drein, That good hap may be mine,Sich in all's Gut verwenden, That all will end in love's joy,Herzliebstes Elselein. My longed-for Elselein.

Es waren zwei Knigskinder,Die haben einander so lieb,Sie konnten zusammen nicht kommenDas Wasser war viel so tief

There were two king's children,Who loved each other soEach could not come to the otherFor the water that was too deep.

Copyright 2015 by Christopher ZehnderAll rights reserved

Prelude

ch Elslein And had it to end so? The gloaming, the flickering candle flame barely illuminating, its light trembling on the drawn and lifeless contours of her face. A

Had it to end so?Only a week since, she had been as she ever was quiet,

dutifully, and if not cheerfully, then carefully attentive. Mornings, as ever, found her early awake, giving no time to idleness, her day filled with rounds of activity; her evenings adorned with a conversation modest and pleasing. She had ever been an ornament of grace and wifely decorum.

And she had loved him. Of that he had been certain. Yes, he had been certain. She had joyed with him, and wept if but the slightest disgrace or sorrow attended him. She had been more than his wife, more than his bed companion; she had been his friend. He could unfold to her the secrets of his heart. She had been a haven from the world's tempests, a warm hearth room shielding from the storm wrack.

No more.The fever came. For hours, days maybe (he had lost sensibility

of time), she wandered in delirium, a burning devouring her from within. She knew him not. He was alone. Many the hours he sat by her bedside, praying the fires to abate, that she would look on him again.

But she opened not her eyes not until this gray evening of a short winters day. The sun was setting between clouds and the darkening outlines of buildings. She awoke. She gazed at him, as it were, from across a great distance. An impassable gulf lay between....

And she made the request and uttered the words.I have lain, she said, with him who is not my husband. I

have betrayed my first love.And he gave her what he knew he could not, should not, give.

Absolution. A few short words uttered on the borderlands of oblivion, meaning nothing.

Now all was done. She lay cold upon her pillow, and his heart sank, cold, into his breast.

* * *But, he noted, there was peace on her brow, a gentle almost-

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smile upon her lips. She went into death gently, greeting a doom that should not be his.

Ach Elslein....Ach liebes....Wie gern wr ich bei dir.

A gulf lay between them. It had lain between them, he now thought, for many a year. They had been strangers to one another, playing lovers, pretending husband and wife. Had their sweet discourse only hidden a forlorn bitterness? Had the union of their bodies left their souls wide asunder? She had lain with a man not her husband. She had betrayed....

* * *Ach! When had she betrayed him? Not in recent years, surely.

But when? In the first years of their marriage, when she had been soft and fair, desirable, and his, only his? Or in the years before their marriage. Had she another love? Had she longed, all these years, for another? Never.

But memory is a whore, alluring with deceits, a painted face masking decrepitude. He must think, must remember! Joy should not thus escape ones groping. Death should not be coupled with despair. Were her words, her confession, the ravings of disease? Or had their love indeed been a lie, a noble faade masking a hideous, filthy disorder?

His mind was a churning mass of confusion. Pulling at his hair, he rested his head on the bed next to what had been his wife.

It should not, must not, end so, he thought.* * *

He awoke. The moon, now risen full, cast its cold, pure light across the bed, where she lay. The candle had nearly burned down. The tempest had subsided. Sleep had calmed him. He rested back in his chair.

He knew, he had known, that she had not betrayed, that her words had not signified this. He had known this in their utterance. His raving had been pleasure. He had dallied with the strumpet despair, to

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flee despair. He looked back over the years. She had not betrayed him.But was that betrayal? Was it truly betrayal? If it were, what had

been these many years? Had that for which he had labored in sweat and, yes, in blood (shed in the secret of his closet) been a deception, a ruse? Had he deceived himself, and her? Had he betrayed his first love?

Had he betrayed her?The moonlight lay athwart her body, half illuminating her face,

revealing the lips he had kissed so many times, but not the eyes his fingers had shut in death. He felt a soft sorrow welling in his bosom; for the first time since she breathed her last, tears dampened his cheek. What man had he been? What had he done to her whom, he had thought, he loved above all creatures, whom he had loved only less than....

Had all that he lived for, for which he had broken (what he once he thought) the most solemn vows, been betrayal?

Else, he whisperedElse, my love?Her hand lay stiff and white in the moonlight on the dark

coverlet. Trembling, he took it in his. It was cold. He chaffed it in his hands, as he had on many a winters day (she had always been cold in winter). But it stayed cold, cold as winter. It would never warm again.

Else, he stammered. Else, must you forgive me? Else!She did not answer. Pressing his lips to the hand, he wept, his

warm tears wetting the frigid, unresponsive flesh.

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14

The Village

Chapter 1

t had been a gentler light that had trembled on his mothers hand, so many years before. He was a mere child then; his eyes followed the shaft of sunlight sifted through the leaves of the linden tree

outside her window. He watched the myriads of dust particles swarming in the pellucid stream that glanced on his mothers skin. The hand was strangely white; it looked cold. He feared to touch it.

IHe felt no sorrow, only confusion. Was this the hand (so

calloused but yet so warm) that had, only a few days since, taken his hand, to lead him by the gate of the hof, through the village, and into the meadows beyond? They had gone to gather berries and, he had thought, how much his mother herself looked like a berry, her cheeks red, her swelling belly like a ripened fruit. And when he asked her how it got there, she only smiled and shook her head. She had swallowed a seed, she told him.

They wandered through the meadow grass until they came to the place where the berries grew; tall, thorny, upright stalks of raspberries. He ate probably more than he put in the basket, but she did not scold him. A little closer to the wood, they found blueberries. Farther on were long trailing vines of marion berries. They filled their baskets full and rested, ate some cheese, washing it down with milk from a flask. She told him she would not go berry picking for some days, but that he could go with Inge, if he promised to bring her back some berries. He promised he would, then begged a story. She said they hadnt time, they must return. He threw his arms around her neck and kissed her on the cheek and then on the lips. She laughed and then shook her finger at him. She would not fall for his charms, she said. She would tell him a story some other time.

She never did.They returned to the village, but before going home, his

mother, as was her wont, visited the church that stood hard by the brook. It was a small, whitewashed building, an onion-shaped cupola, blue, rising above it, a cross surmounting the cupola. He always walked closer to his mother when they passed through the cemetery, with all those ancient stones, some rising crooked from the mold. Even in day

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he feared the dead men. Passing into the church, he knew he was safe from them, but then there were the saints, gazing down at one with a stern look, seeing through ones skin, into ones soul. Only the Mother of God he loved; he did not fear her. She was a mother, like his mother; she was holding the child Christ and gazing into his little face. He had gathered flowers in the meadow, and he placed them at her feet.

When he had prayed his Ave, his mother led him to Sankt Lorenz. They knelt to pray before the shrine, where a reliquary held a bone of the martyr. His mother prayed there often, but that day, she stayed longer than usual. And in her prayer she seemed to grow sad. When she turned to him, there were tears in her eyes.

I have brought you here this day, my son, that you might remember, she said to him. Nine years ago, I prayed to Sankt Lorenz that he would bring my baby healthy into the world. I prayed that I might live to nurse him and hold him in my arms. I told the good saint that I would pay any price for this boon. Any price. And I offered you, still hidden in my womb, to him.

She fell silent again. He watched the flames of the votive candles, flickering before the saints shrine. The saint looked down at them, at him, from above the altar; he was a stern old god. The boy feared Sankt Lorenz, though his mother loved him. Her work worn hands were again clasped in prayer, her lips moving inaudibly. After a few minutes she spoke again, her eyes still fixed on the saint.

I offered you to him, she said, as Anna did Samuel. You would serve him if he would render you to me for a short time. Only let me live and hold my child, and he shall be yours, I prayed.

Then turning to her son with tender glance, she said, and he heard my prayer.

They left the church. The strong sunlight, now verging to the west, dissipated the terror of holiness. He looked up at his mother, who stood, smiling down on him. And now I shall have another baby, she said. Isnt that gladsome? She was his mother again.

Sankt Lorenz shall protect this baby, too, she had said.As he stood dumbly by his mothers bedside, he did not think

about Sankt Lorenz or about the baby a brother, they told him squalling at the breast of the wet nurse. He thought only of his mother, who a few days before had been so warm and now lay so cold. He did

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not weep. He could not comprehend what lay before him. She was like the image of the stone knight, lying prone on a tomb, at the great church in Weissenbrcke, the church with the white-robed choir monks who chanted slowly and solemnly. The image of the stone knight mingled with that of his mother, lying on the bed, one hand resting upon the other on the coverlet, beads wound round her fingers. Her face looked so peaceful, as it ever had, only it seemed so cold.

He felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He was led from the room. Near the doorway stood his father, an unwonted expression on his face. The boy looked up at him, but the man said nothing, didnt seem to see him; the boy passed on. He heard the door to the room close behind him. His father had gone in.

It was then he heard that terrible sound. It came from behind the door. It was a deep, groaning, animal sound, inarticulate, yet horrible. He had heard such a sound before, when the calves were taken from their mothers; it was so deeply sad, so mournful. A sudden terror stabbed the child. Was that his father? The foundation and bulwark of his young life; an impersonal, yet assuring presence, like the good earth under ones feet. He felt as if he were falling into a dark, gaping hole, fingers grabbing at him, clutching at him. It was like so many of his nightmares, only with these he awoke with his mothers arms around him. But she lay cold on that bed, she would not come to him now and those sounds, those hideous groans....

He broke from the hand that sought to restrain him. He rushed down the staircase, into the hearth room. Faces were there, pale, with expressions of surprise and fear. He stood still for a moment in confusion and then burst from the room, through the doorway, into the courtyard.

Under the old linden tree, whose branches brushed his mothers window, by the old wooden bench at the base of its trunk, he burst into convulsive sobs. Mama! he choked. Mama!

But she did not come.Instead, he felt other arms around him, younger, thinner arms,

and heard the gentle voice, the voice of Inge, who was so much older than he; Inge, who had been like a second mother to him. Lorenz, my little love, she said through her own tears. Lorenz, do not weep, my love.

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Yet he did weep, he could not help it. But his sisters arms were a comfort in his childish sorrow.

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