Виктория Холт: On the Night of the Seventh Moon

My happy childhood was overshadowed only by the visits of aunts and later the need to go away to school. Then followed holidays and a return to the exciting city which never seemed to change-indeed, said my father, it had been the same for hundreds of years; that was its charm. What I remember from that time is the wonderful sense of security I felt. It had never occurred to me that anything could change. I should always take walks with my father and listen to his accounts of the days when he had been a student; and it was such a joy to listen because although he spoke of them with pride there was no regret. I loved to listen to him as he talked reverently of his days at Balliol; I felt I was as familiar with the college as he was; and I could clearly understand his absorption in the life as he planned to spend the rest of his days there. He would proudly tell me of the famous people who had studied there. My mother talked of her childhood and sang Lieder to me, fitting her own words to melodies from Schubert and Schumann which I loved. She made little sketches of the forest and they seemed to have a fairy-tale quality which has always haunted me; she would tell me stories of trolls and woodcutters and some of the old legends which had been handed down from pre-Christian days when people believed in the gods of the North such as Odin the All-Father, Thor with his hammer, and the beautiful Goddess Freya after whom Friday was named. I was enthralled by these stories.

Sometimes she would tell me about the Damenstift in the pine forest where she had been educated by nuns; she talked sometimes in German so that I became moderately conversant with that language, although never quite bilingual.

It was her dearest wish that I should be educated at that convent where she herself had been so happy.

“You will love it there,” she told me, ‘high up in the pine-clad mountains. The air will make you strong and healthy; in the summer mornings you will eat breakfast out of doors fresh milk and rye bread. It tastes good. The nuns will be kind to you. They will teach you to be happy and work hard. It is what I have always wanted for you. “

As my father always wanted what she wanted, I went to the Damenstift, and when I had recovered from my homesickness I began to enjoy it. I was soon under the spell of the forest, though I had in fact been so before I had set eyes on it; and as I was at that time the sort of girl who has few inhibitions I was able to accept the new life and my companions with no great difficulty. My mother had prepared me, so nothing seemed very strange. There were girls from all over Europe.

Six of them were English, including myself; there were just over a dozen French, and the rest were from the various little German states of which we were in the midst.

We mingled well. We spoke English and French as well as German; the simple life was good for us all; the discipline was intended to be stem, but of course there were those indulgent nuns who could be wheedled and we were quick to find them.

I was soon happy in the convent and I spent two contented years, passing even the vacations there, because it was too far and too expensive to return home. There were always six or seven of us who did this and some of the happiest times were when the others had left and we decorated the hall with firs from the forest and sang our carols, or decorated the chapel for Easter, or took picnics in the forest during the summer.

I had come to accept this new life; Oxford with its towers and spires seemed far away until that day when I heard that my mother was dangerously ill and I was to go home. Fortunately it was in the summer and Mr. and Mrs. Greville, friends of my father, who were travelling in Europe, collected me and took me home. My mother was dead when I arrived.

What a change I found. My father had aged by ten years; he was vague as though he could not drag himself away from a blissful past to face an intolerable present. The aunts had descended upon the household. At great self-sacrifice. Aunt Caroline told me, they had given up their comfortable cottage in Somerset to come and look after us. I was sixteen years old, time to stop wasting my time on a lot of foreign languages and habits which would be of no use to me; I should make myself useful in the home. They could find plenty for me to do there. Young girls should be able to cook and sew, keep a still room and perform other domestic tasks which she doubted were taught at outlandish foreign convents.

But Father roused himself from his apathy. It had been her wish that I should complete my education at the Damenstift and should stay there until I was eighteen years old.

So I went back and I often thought that if the aunts had had their way that strange adventure would never have taken place.

It happened two years after my mother’s death. I had forgotten so much of life in Oxford and only rarely did I think of walking down the Cornmarket to Folly Bridge and St. Aldate’s, of the castellated walls of colleges; of the hollow silence of the Cathedral and the fascination of the Murder of St. Thomas a Becket in stained glass in the east window. But the reality was the convent life, the secrets shared with girls as we lay in our cell-like dormitory where a thick stone buttress divided one cell from another.

And so there came that early autumn after which nothing would be the same again.

I was nearly eighteen perhaps young for my years. I was frivolous yet in a way dreamily romantic. I have no one but myself to blame for what happened.

The most gentle of the sisters was Maria. She should have been a mother of children; perhaps she would have been overindulgent, but how happy she would have been and would they! But she was a virgin nun and had to content herself with us.

She understood me more than any of the others. She knew that I did not wish to be wayward; I was high-spirited; I was impulsive; my sin was thoughtlessness rather than wilfulness. I know she had constantly explained this to the Mutter.

It was October-and we were enjoying an Indian summer, for the autumn was long coming that year. It was a pity to waste the golden days, said Schwester Maria, and she was going to choose twelve girls whose conduct warranted the privilege to accompany her on a picnic. We could take the wagonette and go up to the plateau; and there we would make a fire and boil a part of water and make coffee and Schwester Gretchen had said she would bake a few of her spiced cakes as a special treat.

She chose me to be among the favoured twelve rather in the hope that I might mend my ways than because of past good conduct, I was sure; but whatever the reason I was in the party on that fateful day. Schwester Maria drove the wagonette as I had seen her so many times before, looking like a big black crow in her flapping black robes, sitting there holding in the horse with a masterly touch which was surprising.

Poor old horse, he would have known the road blindfolded, so it did not really need very much skill to lead him there. During his lifetime, he must have taken the wagonette full of girls up to the plateau many times.

So we arrived; we made the fire (so useful for the girls to learn these things); we boiled the water, made the coffee and ate the spiced cakes. We washed the cups in the nearby stream and packed them away; we wandered around until Schwester Maria clapped her hands to call us to her. We were leaving in half an hour, she told us, and we must all assemble at that time. We knew what this meant. Schwester Maria was going to lean against the tree under which she was sitting and for half an hour take a well-earned nap.

And so she did while we wandered off, and the feeling of excitement which being in the pine forests always gave me began to creep over me.

In such a setting Hansel and Gretel were lost and came upon their gingerbread house; in such a wood the lost. babes had wandered to lie down and sleep and be covered by the leaves. Along the river, although we could not see them here, castles would appear to hang on the edge of the hillside-castles such as the one in which the Beauty slept for one hundred years before she was awakened by the kiss of a Prince.