He asked me to read to him more than anything else. I was thankful that papa had taught me to read, but for all truth it was for me to do all the papers that were due for a tradesman. Papa as much as I desire to say all good things about him was a man who if could avoid standing would do so and remain seated until the day of judgement arrived. Of course I never complained, it was far better than helping mama care for my sisters or cleaning around the house. You would be quite surprised by how messy girls can get, and we were no exception. We were girls nonetheless, who loved to find pretty feathers and rocks that would eventually find themselves scattered around the house forgotten.
I would have given up anything then to return to that life I had, waiting for papa and seeing him again. To have that feeling once more in my chest of seeing our ship, The Wolk, come near the port. Yet I would have to be content with the green hills and trees of the stone manor of master Faerber. I would never find it within me to name this place home. Home was Emden, home was papa.
We were outside one bright day, he sat on the ground with a feather on his fingers and a paper on his thighs. He had decided that we had been inside for far too long and that he needed to seek out any form of inspiration. Yet it was meaningless. He stared at that paper for almost half an hour, his eyes were truly saddened and his thin lips formed an even more lucid frown. I would have rather had the somber poet who constantly commanded orders and whispered to himself than the quiet man that sat beside me. He did not feel like Master Faerber but a stranger.
He eventually took the book away from my hands, and placed his paper and feather aside as well. I stared at his hands, they looked young. I remember being surprised by this, the man wrote so much I would have thought his hands depicted it. Yet they looked like marble, smooth and clear. The only thing the paper had written upon it I saw was his name. Axel. I thought to myself what would it feel like to call him by his Christian name? Sir Axel Faerber.
He lifted his gaze when he heard Steffi giggle as she ran across us. Sascha's keen eyes like a raven watched with a smile. A smile that almost startled me, she was capable of smiling! Those lines around her mouth did allow her to smile, though when she glanced at me she quickly frowned again. She returned to her knitting, and Steffi continued running around chasing a baby bird. The rest of the servants were planting flowers for the upcoming warmth. For some reason it had taken me a long time to notice that Sir Axel Faerber was the only man in the house. He had no brothers, or a father, or brother in laws, no man other than him. Yet he did not seem like a lonely man, he was at peace with a house filled with women. It was when his mind went quiet, that the true harm arose.
We both stared at Steffi, her blonde curls jumping high on her shoulders.
"She is my daughter."
My heart sunk to the ground beneath, I did not know why but it did. I stared at him, and then at her. Glancing between the two to the point my neck began to ache. How in God's holy name? and why would he keep his daughter as a servant I asked myself in those seconds until he began to chuckle.
"I only jest with you Bryony. I forget too many times how innocent you are, to believe an unmarried man to have a child? Greatest sin in those brown eyes of yours."
His chuckle made me almost sigh aloud, but I did not. I did not find it comedic, not as comedic as he did. If not I found myself feeling stupid, why did my heart feel like a ghostly hand had grasped it and squeezed it? Many men I knew had bastards, mainly with women who left the village afterward. No one looked at them the same way, they believed they were stupid and blind to have truly believed a lord would leave his life for a childish girl. It was more of our opinions that affected them than it was what the holy book said.
