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that she could see the stars.
    "You were right, Henny," she said, leaning out to listen to the slow slurp of the water against the shore.
    "This is a lovely land."
    Images crowded in on her. The first sight of Sophie running down the steps towards her; Bennet's hand cupping the head of his beloved Shakespeare ... the house martins skimming in and out of the boathouse roof. But the image that stayed with her longest was that of the tortoise, rollerskating with abandonment across the grass.
    There was so much to do here--so terrifyingly much--but she knew that Marek, when he came, would help her. Which made Bennet's words when she had asked him who Marek was seem all the stranger.
    "That's a good question, Ellen," the headmaster had said. "You could say that he works here as a groundsman, and that would be true. Or that he teaches fencing to the older boys, and that would be true also, and that at the moment he is acting as chauffeur to Professor Steiner across the lake. But when you have said that, I don't know that you have said very much. I
    think," and he had turned to her with his friendly smile, "you will have to find out for yourself--and when you do I would be very interested to hear what you discover."
    They had driven for the best part of the day, leaving Hallendorf by the road over the pass and turning north east along the river. The mountains became foothills with vineyards clinging to their slopes; the well-kept fields and quiet villages were tended by people who asked only to be left alone.
    Now the forest began. In an hour they would be at the border.
    The forest suited Marek; he settled into it as into a familiar overcoat--a large man, broad-shouldered with thick, straight hair, blunt, irregular features and reflective eyes. The road was straight here, a woodcutters'
    road; his hands lay on the wheel almost without movement. The scents he had grown up with--resin, sawdust, leaf mould--came in through the open windows of the van.
    "The wind's from the south," he said.
    He'd always known where the wind came from: in Vienna, in Berlin, in New York in the narrow tunnels between the skyscrapers. Women had teased him about it, thought of it as a parlour trick.
    "Are you missing the beautiful Tamara?"' asked the man sitting beside him.
    The uncharacteristic banter came with an effort from Professor Steiner. He was twice Marek's age: a scholarly man with a face from a D@urer etching--the full grey beard, the wise, short-sighted blue eyes, the features worn by time and, in recent years, by grievous sorrow.
    Marek smiled. The relief of being away from the crazy school in which he had taken refuge made him feel almost light-hearted yet no emotion could be less appropriate. He had allowed an old man of delicate health and considerable eminence to accompany him on an adventure which was more than likely to end in disaster. What they faced was not the danger risked by those who pit themselves against mountains or the sea. There was no evil on the rock face or in a tempest, but the force within the men they were confronting in the hell that Nazi Germany had become was something other.
    "Could I once again ask you to wait for me this
    side of the checkpoint?"' Marek began.
    "I promise you--"'
    "No."
    The old man spoke quietly and with total authority. If anyone knew the risks they were taking it was this high-born Prussian whose family had been at the heart of German affairs for generations. Steiner had spent most of his life in Weimar, a town which seemed to stand for all that was finest in the country's history. Schiller had lived there, and Goethe--the squares and statues resounded with the names of the great. The shopkeepers could set their clocks by Professor Steiner's progress each day, his walking stick aloft behind his back, as he made his way to the university. Steiner's work on the folk music of Eastern Europe was renowned; scholars and disciples came from all over the world to learn from him; his lectures were