The Roses
Sidonie had just set the roses in their pitcher on the carven stand in the oriel window when one of the maids downstairs screeched, “He’s here, he’s here!” and suddenly everyone in the house was thumping either up or down stairs trying to get to a window or a door. Sidonie herself was knocked sideways by her mother’s ample skirts as the woman crowded into the oriel window to get a view of the town square.
“Mother!” Sidonie huffed, but Frau von Neubeuern paid her no mind, leaving her daughter to eye the sightline between her carefully placed bouquet of roses and the streets that Graf Leopold would shortly be riding up, now intersected by a positively enormous lace wimple.
“This is your chance, Sidonie dear!” the burgermeister’s wife sang out as she craned her neck to this side and that, angling to catch sight of the graf. “Men are eager to marry when they make it home safe and sound from war, thanks be to God.”
“I know,” Sidonie wailed, “and you’re ruining it! Do you know how much I paid for these roses? I traded those gloves stitched with the seed pearls to Markus so he would bring them back from Muenchen for me–in mid-winter no less. And now all the graf will see of them is your big, fat head!”
Frau von Neubeuern jumped back from the window as if the glass had stung her. She whirled, seized Sidonie’s hand, and yanked her toward the stairs. “Of course, my dear, and so you must be right in the door waving to him when he rides by. Come now. Hurry!” Sidonie snatched up her skirts to avoid tumbling down the steps as her mother dragged her down them and shoved through the servants to deposit her on the front stoop. Just in time: with a thunderous ringing of hooves and clanging of arms and snapping of banners, the graf’s detachment rode into view. Sidonie felt her mother smack her between the shoulder blades, and as if she were a marionette, her arm flew up in the air and flailed as her mother shrieked, “Graf Leopold, Graf Leopold! God save you sir!”
The graf, astride his great silver stallion Gletscher, his beard tucked down into his fur cowl, lifted a weary gauntleted hand as he passed his burgermeister’s house–without the slightest glance in Sidonie’s direction.
The Rookery 