Free Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson Page B

man.’
    Magdalena had two younger brothers, twins often who were destined for the army. They had fallen behind at school and now had to be coached for the Cadet Corps.
    I’m taking care of all that, of course,’ said the butcher. ‘I regard it as a sacred trust.’
    He left us at the entrance to the Kreuzer Hof and we made our way through an archway into a sunless courtyard and up an outside staircase to the third floor. The smell of sauerkraut and drains accompanied us; on the dank, arcaded passage that ran right round the building, aproned women with crying children filled buckets at the communal taps.
    Frau Winter opened the door to us, mumuring a brave lie about it being the maid’s day off. The tiny parlour was spotless and every surface was covered with crocheted doilies or antimacassars or lace-fringed cloths. There were pictures of the Kaiser, of the murdered Empress Elisabeth – and one portrait of an army officer whose insignia I fortunately recognized.
    ‘Ah, the 3rd Light Cavalry! The corps that fought so magnificently at Koniggratz.’
    Frau Winter’s pale eyes lit up. ‘Yes. That’s my father. The boys are going to join his old regiment. They
have
to!’ In her voice I sensed her desperation, the endless fight against the poverty and squalor by which she was surrounded. No wonder Magdalena had felt obliged to marry a wealthy man.
    The twins now appeared, clicked their heels, bowed. With their cropped flaxen hair, light blue eyes and sturdy physique they were every recruiting officer’s dream.
    ‘Go and tell your sister that the ladies are here,’ Frau Winter ordered – and to the faint, unheeded sounds of inquiry from the taxidermist behind a door, we were led to Magdalena’s room.
    It was an extraordinary place. All the rooms were dark, for Frau Winter had placed the thickest netting between herself and the communal passage outside, but Magdalena’s room, which had only a small high window, was crepuscular. One felt as if one were in an aquarium or deep below the sea.
    ‘Oh!’ Nini beside me had given a little squeak, her hand touched mine for reassurance – and no wonder.
    All round the room – on the shelf above the bed, on the chest of drawers, on the small table, there stood glass jars and inside each of them something white and sinister appeared to float. Curled up embryos? Pickled organs? Had we strayed into some kind of mortuary?
    Then our eyes grew used to the gloom and we could see that they were figures made from wax: little doll-like models of martyrs and saints.
    ‘Do you like them?’ came a voice from the bed. ‘I made them myself.’
    Magdalena rose and stood before us in her dressing gown and I forgot the waxen puppets and simply stared. Both Herr Huber and Edith Sultzer had described Magdalena as beautiful, but nothing had prepared me for what I saw. The girl was tall and slender; her loose hair rippled to her knees, her curving eyes were the colour of lapis lazuli.
    ‘The ivory brocade you bought from Seligmann?’ whispered Nini.
    But I was ahead of Nini. I had already cut the brocade into panels floating down from the shoulders, drawn the back ones into a train… had wired the top of the bodice so that Magdalena’s throat came out of the cloth like a lily from the stem.
    Til show them to you,’ said Magdalena, and moving gracefully over to the chest of drawers, she took down one of the glass bottles and handed it to me. ‘That’s Saint Lucy; she’s one of my favourites.’
    The doll in her waxen grotto was holding in her pink-tipped hands a velvet cushion on which rested her gouged-out eyes.
    This one’s Saint Nepoumak,’ she went on. ‘He’s got the
    rope round his neck, ready to be thrown in the river. And the
    one next to him is Saint Katherine. She was broken on the
    wheel, that’s why she’s in two parts like that. Though she
    joined up later.’
    It was impossible to stop Magdalena as she moved tenderly among her friends: Saint Eulogius holding his