The Noble Ladies' Orphanage

Chapter 25

Cook was right about springtime. The sun shone so warmly that Susana took Caspar outside to get some fresh air. She carried him through the cobblestone streets and let old ladies pinch his cheeks and run their age-bent fingers through his curls. Then she returned to Anna's house feeling refreshed and young again. Caspar grabbed a strand of Susana's long hair and put it in his drooly little mouth.

"Ow!" Susana said. She tried to extricate her hair from Caspar's tight little fist. He wanted the hair back, and he grabbed another strand.

"You would have loved to eat your mother's hair," Susana said to him, as she tried to hand him a rattle to distract him from her hair. "Mother's hair was thick and wavy. So pretty." Caspar looked at Susana with his baby eyes and seemed amused by her attention. Anna's house was rarely this quiet. One of the younger children wasn't feeling well, and Anna was upstairs, lying next to the sick child. Everyone else was out. Susana enjoyed the quiet time with her baby brother. Living at the Orphanage, she didn't have much solitude these days.

She smoothed back his wispy hair. It was almost getting long enough to hang in front of his eyes. "You poor thing," she said quietly. You missed out. You may never know what it's like to have two parents who adore you." He banged the rattle against his leg with a jerky movement and gave his sister a crooked smile. "I hope I can give you some of the advantages I've had," she said. "An education, at least."

The back door opened, and Peter walked into the room.

"I found this," Peter said, handing her a piece of paper. "I found it when I was cleaning out the carriage after I'd taken some Hapsburg fellows to the Margrave's Palace. I was suspicious of them because they also had a Czech man with them, who seemed to be struggling against them, and I thought about your Mr. Timko. I wondered if it was he."

"Filip? What made you think that?" Susana asked.

Peter put his hands on top of his head and looked at the low-beamed dark ceiling. "Well, for one, he looked respectable but poor."

"What did he look like?" Susana asked.

"He was slight with thin hair and round spectacles."

"That's him!" Susana said. "What were they doing with him?"

"I don't know," Peter said. "He was acting so sullen and stubborn. They asked him questions, and he just sat there like he didn't hear them at all. They were a little rough with him, but not so much that he could get hurt." Susana adjusted Caspar on her lap and started reading the paper.

Peter looked over her shoulder. "How can you read that?"

Susana ignored his question and kept reading. "I don't think this has anything to do with Filip," she said. "It says the Ottomans have invaded Hungary and the Margrave needs to send Hapsburg reinforcements east to fortify Moravia. Nothing about Filip."

Peter crossed the room and picked up a piece of bread from the table. He took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully. "That sounds like it could be serious."

"What? The Ottomans?" Susana asked. "I'm not worried. Nobody can conquer Brno. Remember the story about the Swedes?"

"Nobody can conquer Brno?" Peter said, before he took another bite. "It seems like the Hapsburgs have conquered us already. If they weren't here, your friend Filip wouldn't be treated like a prisoner."

"He's not really my friend, you know," Susana said. "He worked for my dad."

"Yeah, I know," Peter said. Anna came down the stairs holding the hand of a sleepy child.