Free The Seventh Child by Erik Valeur Page B

been part of a royal palace, the private apartment of a queen. Even though toy cars were strewn on the mahogany table by the window and small dolls with blond, red, and brown hair lay in the chairs, there was something ancient and proud about the room. It had a kind of emptiness you sense in halls that have been admired but not lived in for decades. Fine golden wallpaper decorated the walls, and on two deep, antique sofas were stacks of pillows of black-green silk, embroidered with rose-colored bouquets. Through the window was a view of a spacious green lawn and a narrow white beach. Between the yard and the beach was a wire fence with two gates, presumably to prevent the children from running into the water should an adult momentarily turn her attention elsewhere.
    “This was the private room of the former matron. She lived here for more than half a century,” Susanne Ingemann said. “We’ve left it the way it was.” Stepping back into the corridor, she said, “The office is at the end of the hallway, but there is nothing to see there.”
    The door was open to the office, and Nils glanced into the room. There was a large, empty birdcage on the windowsill.
    “We once kept three canaries,” she said, noticing where his attention was. “But they’ve been dead a long time. Let’s go downstairs and have a cup of tea.”
    The peasant is granted access to the very holiest of places , Nils thought. Maybe that had been a test run for the tour that would be given in a few days to the visiting luminaries. Except for Susanne, they hadn’t met a single person yet. Perhaps the children had been moved to another part of the house for the occasion. These vulnerable creatures, he gathered, were not to be disturbed by strangers.
    She gestured for them to take seats at a low coffee table in a vast room with two tall windows facing the lawn and the water. “During the war, the governesses had their hands full,” she said, taking a seat on a small sofa next to the window and offering them tea and cookies. “They were amazing. They took care of orphans as well as children whose parents were in trouble—and during the last years of the war, they worked closely with the Resistance. But perhaps you already know this.”
    They did, but for a second Nils could hear the pride in her voice, so he said nothing.
    “Magna rarely talks about this time.”
    “Magna?” To his surprise he heard his own voice articulate the question—in a single word.
    “Yes, Magna. Ms. Ladegaard. The children always called her Magna. I’m not sure why she doesn’t mention this era, perhaps she doesn’t want to be described as a hero, a rare characteristic today. She became the matron at Kongslund on May 13, 1948, exactly twelve years after the orphanage was founded, and that’s the date we’re celebrating Tuesday, her sixtieth anniversary. Although she retired a long time ago, she has meant everything to Kongslund.”
    She sounded strangely formal.
    After a moment of silence, Knud mumbled, “Let the little children come to me … ” His voice was still hoarse, and Susanne Ingemann blanched as though she found the phrase inappropriate.
    The reporter cleared his throat and then asked his first real question since they arrived. “Back in the forties and fifties, I gather there were many children put up for adoption?”
    “That’s correct,” Susanne Ingemann said in the voice of a teacher responding to an especially bright student.
    Nils grabbed his camera and snapped it on. Either he was imagining things, or their hostess had become suddenly more wary than she’d been during the tour.
    “That lasted into the sixties,” she said. “But today, very few Danish children are relinquished—and those who are, well, they live with us. These are children who cannot remain with their parents due to unique circumstances. Abuse … illness … I became matron in 1989, when Ms. Ladegaard retired.”
    “But back then,” Knud interrupted, “in the fifties