shook the quiet widower’s hand and patted Johann’s and Martin’s heads, while Lothar and Karl stood around listlessly, showing little emotion—as if it had been some distant relative who’d passed away. Margarethe and her father had also attended but remained at the back. Johann was relieved that Ludwig hadn’t come. He thought he might have struck down Margarethe’s brother with a stone right there at the cemetery.
The priest said a brief prayer as the casket was lowered into the grave. Then Johann’s mother was nothing but a memory.
The end had come fast. Apparently his mother had called for Johann in her last few hours and coughed up much blood. She’d wanted to tell him something important, it seemed. When little Martin had left to fetch the barber, she’d died, all alone. In the grief-stricken commotion, no one had asked why Johann had returned from the monastery with torn, bloody trousers, his body covered in welts. His father had merely given him an angry look.
He gave him the same look now at the funeral. “Why weren’t you by her side?” he whispered at Johann. “You were supposed to look after her, not that stupid cripple brother of yours. Instead you’re God knows where, getting into fights. This is your fault alone!”
Johann said nothing. His face was puffy and red from all the tears he’d cried the night before. He knew his father was being unfair, but he felt guilty nonetheless. If he’d only returned sooner from the monastery! Father Antonius’s medicine might have saved his mother’s life. He didn’t tell his father what happened at Gallows Hill; the farmer probably wouldn’t have believed Johann, anyhow. Instead, when he wasn’t at Latin School with Father Bernhard, which brought him some distraction, he spent the following days roaming the woods, vineyards, and hills around Knittlingen on his own. He barely saw Margarethe during that time, and if he did, Ludwig was always nearby, casting dark glances at him and quickly pulling his sister along. Johann wrote letters to her in their secret code, but she didn’t reply.
As days became weeks his wounds healed, but the pain inside remained. The pain and a quiet longing for revenge. He would never forget what happened at Gallows Hill. His mother was gone, forever! He felt terribly alone in the world. Little Martin clung to him more than ever, as if afraid his beloved brother would leave him just like their mother had.
Every night Johann stood by the small, crooked cross in the graveyard. He prayed to and railed against God at the same time, asking countless questions without ever receiving an answer.
Summer came to an end and fall arrived with fog, wind, and rain. The grain harvest was in, and next up was the grape harvest. People began to look forward to the next Saints Simon and Jude Fair—the highlight of their year. The wheel of life kept turning.
Every hand was needed for the grape harvest, so there was no school. Day after day, rain or shine, Johann stood side by side with the other Knittlingen boys and girls on the slopes of the vineyards, picking grapes, throwing them into the basket strapped to his back, and carrying his load to one of the three Keltern—the buildings housing the wine presses—at the prefecture. It was hard work, and Johann’s back ached as if he’d been whipped, but he still went to his mother’s grave every evening with a fresh bundle of flowers.
When he arrived home one particularly foggy evening, his father was sitting at the kitchen table, a half-empty mug of wine in front of him. Jörg Gerlach’s red face told Johann that his father had had a fair bit to drink, like so often in recent weeks. People were saying it was because he grieved for his beloved (if somewhat strange) wife, but Johann knew better. His father was a drunkard, always had been. And now that his mother was no more, there was no one left to restrain him.
“I told the father that you won’t return to Latin School after the grape harvest,” Gerlach said to his son. His eyes looked glassy and red; his face was doughy like a dumpling.
Johann staggered backward as if he’d walked into a wall. “But—why?”
“What they teach you there is useless. And the school’s far too expensive. Why d’you need to learn all that nonsense when all you’re going to do in life is muck out stables?”
“So that’s what you’ve got planned for me, is it?” Johann glowered