Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

“She was a healer,” said Lieselotte.

“She healed everything; she didn’t mind what it was. Cripples and grass snakes and people, and she never harmed a creature in her life.”

“Are those her children?”’ asked Sophie. “No, she was very young, only eighteen.

They’re her brothers and sisters. They were orphans; their parents died and she looked after them even though she wasn’t much older herself.”

The little peasant children in their dirndls and kerchiefs might have been Lieselotte’s own siblings, they looked so wholesome and so good. They were helping, trained to work as peasant children are: a small boy with yellow hair was tending goats higher up on the mountain; another, a girl, sat close to Aniella, stirring something in a wooden bowl; two more were forking hay into a barn and one-a frail child with long hair-leant adoringly over Aniella’s shoulder.

“Look, there’s her garden,” said Lieselotte. “These are the herbs she grew and the flowers. She knew exactly what to use for healing.”

Aniella’s garden, painted like a tea tray on the side of the mountain, was a miracle of husbandry. Rows of curly cabbages flecked in bright green paint, raspberry canes, small bushes which Lieselotte’s mother named for them. “Rosemary, fennel, St John’s Wort

…”

“But she loved the wild flowers too,” Lieselotte went on. “There’s a picture of her over there in the triptych holding a bunch of gentians and marguerites and edelweiss.”

But Sophie was already worried. No one became a saint for loving flowers and being good to their family. What dreadful fate lay in wait for this appealing girl? They had only to turn to the next painting to see. A vile knight on horseback, his face set in a conquering sneer, rode with his henchmen towards the mountain. You could almost hear the clattering of hoofs, the clash of lances.

“That’s Count Alexei von Hohenstift,” said Lieselotte. “He was a truly wicked knight and so were his followers, but when he saw Aniella he fell passionately in love with her and said she had to marry him. She wept and implored and begged him to leave her, but he said if she refused to be his bride he would kill every man and woman and child in the village and set it on fire.”

“Oh how awful,” said Sophie. “What did she do?”’

“Prayed, of course,” said Leon.

His irony was lost on these uncomplicated people.

“That’s right,” said Lieselotte.

“She went into that little grotto there; you can see it in the inset. It’s still there, halfway up the hill behind the castle. And an angel appeared to her and said she must prepare for her wedding and trust in God.”

In the next painting they could see that Aniella had obeyed. Helped by her brothers and sisters, down whose small faces there ran rows of perfectly painted tears, she was trying on her wedding dress while her friends put out trestle tables and food for the wedding feast-and even the salamander seemed to mourn.

“This is the one I like best though,” said Lieselotte, moving down the row.

The picture showed a flotilla of boats crossing the lake towards the church. In one boat were the musicians with their instruments, in another the guilds, in a third the school children in the care of nuns. And in the centre of the flotilla, in a boat beautifully draped and swagged, sat Aniella in her wedding dress with her brothers and sisters, carrying a bouquet of the alpine flowers she loved so well and not looking at all as though she was going to her doom.

“Because she trusted in God, you see,” said Lieselotte.

Sophie, who could not bear unhappy endings, who was waiting for the dismemberment, the breaking on the wheel, was biting her lip. “What happened?”’

“You can see. Aniella reached the church and as she stood at the altar the vile count tried to ride into the church with his henchmen-but the horse reared, it wouldn’t commit sacrilege-so he strode up the aisle and just as the priest started on the service Alexei stared at his bride and—”’ Lieselotte paused dramatically.

“Look!”

They leant over her shoulder. Aniella still stood there in her white dress with her bunch of flowers; but her face had become the hideous, wrinkled face of an old hag.

“God had made her into a dreadful old witch,” said Lieselotte. “Just in an instant. And the count screamed and drew out his sword and thrust it into Aniella’s heart-if you come closer you can see the blood.”

They could indeed see it. It streamed over Aniella’s dress as she fell to the ground, and over the children bending in anguish over their sister; it dripped from the count’s sword as he ran in terror from the church and spotted the carpet on the aisle.

“So she did die,” said Sophie. It was only what she had expected.

“No, it was all right. Because as soon as the count had gone she became young and beautiful again and she rose up and up and God took her to him and flowers came down from everywhere.”

The last picture showed Aniella, floating over the roof of the Hallendorf church, radiant and lovely, and the angels leaning out of heaven to take her in.

“She went to God,” said Lieselotte, and such was her satisfaction that Sophie had to be content.

“It’s a lovely story, Lieselotte,” said Ellen.

“It isn’t a story,” said Lieselotte. “It’s true.”

“What was it like?”’ asked Ursula that night. “It was nice,” said Sophie. “We heard about this saint-she was very horticultural and good. Like a cross between Heidi and Saint Francis of Assisi. Or a bit like a chicken… you know, those hens that hold out their wings and protect their chicks?”’ Sitting up in bed, Sophie stretched out her skinny arms. “She was a sheltering person.”

“Like Ellen,” said Janey.

“Yes,” said Sophie, “exactly like Ellen.”

“What happened to her?”’ asked Ursula. “She got killed.”

Ursula nodded. All the best people got killed: her mother and father, Geronimo… and Sitting Bull who had been betrayed and assassinated at Standing Rock.

Two doors down Ellen leant out of her window, looking out at the soft, expectant night. Below her the half-heard, half-felt murmur of the lake came as a counterpoint to her thoughts as she went back over the day.

After the service, Marek had taken them to the inn for coffee and cakes and then excused himself; he was going to meet Professor Steiner. Leaving the children to wander round the village, she had slipped back to the church. There was something she wanted to look at more carefully; the triptych in which Aniella was depicted holding a bunch of alpine flowers.

She was still examining the painting when she became aware of someone in a side chapel. A man who had put a coin in the offertory box and now lit a tall white candle which he placed with the other votive candles beneath the altar. For a moment he stood with bent head over the flame. Then he looked up, saw her-and came over, quite unembarrassed, to her side.

“Look,” she said, “I think I’ve found them.”

Following her pointing finger, Marek saw the tiny black fists of the orchids among the brilliant colours of primulas and saxifrage and gentians.

“Kohlröserl?”’

“Yes.” She was glad he had remembered. “So they were there then, up on the alp.”

“Which means that they might be there now. And if they are, then we can find them.”

It was absurd how pleased she had been by that “we”. But the happiness she had felt there in the church was shot through now with something else: puzzlement, anxiety…

For whom had this strong and self-sufficient man needed to light a candle? For what person-or what enterprise-did he need to evoke the gods?

Meierwitz, had he been present in the church, might have been surprised, but pleased nonetheless. No more than Marek would he seriously imagine that a minor Austrian saint of uncertain provenance (for Aniella’s sanctity had been disputed) would concern herself with one small Jew without a home or country… and one who didn’t even attend his own synagogue let alone a church.