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for a few deep breaths before she followed the others to the stable.
    “Mein Gott!” Metzger exclaimed. “The horses…”
    The nearest horse appeared to be asleep, lying snugly on the hay with steam rising from its flank, but the steam buzzed and hovered like…
    The air outside was still as clean, invigorating and fresh as before but Earnestine felt herself choking. She closed her eyes, desperate to deny what she’d seen as she tried to keep herself from retching. Even so, her mind’s eye was fixated on an image of horses torn apart.
    The others had a quiet discussion in German, all hushed urgency and pointing. Pieter broke away to come over to Earnestine as the other two went back to the inn.
    “Fräulein, we have–”
    “They ate the horses!”
    “Come now.”
    “They ate the horses!!”
    “They killed the villagers and Schneider. I’ve known Schneider from when I was a boy. All these deaths, but you, the Great British, don’t care. After all, we’re only foreigners. But a horse gets served up on a plate with garlic and your whole nation goes insane – questions in Parliament, letters to the Times – you make me sick.”
    Kroll and Metzger returned with supplies and the three men set off down the road into some woods.
    The penny slowly dropped. That – words failed her – had just insulted the British. Of all the utterly dastardly foreign tricks. She’d have given him a piece of her mind if he hadn’t just walked away.
    Earnestine was alone in the courtyard.
    She wanted to go home: to read by the fire in their house in Kensington with Mama and Papa poring over their map collection, Georgina doing needlework and silly Charlotte re–enacting Rorke’s Drift with her dolls. They’d have a pot of Earl Grey and sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and later hot Cadbury’s cocoa essence while Uncle Jeremiah read them a story.
    That was it: she would give him a piece of her mind right now and put him straight by explaining that, untoten or no untoten, he could not simply kidnap a British subject without so much as a ‘by your leave’.
    She caught up with them: “Excuse me!?”
    They carried on walking.
    “Stop! At once!”
    “We need to keep moving,” Pieter said.
    He had actually contradicted her. He seemed to understand English and yet, with all the perversity possible, he refused to agree with her. Despite his sparkling blue eyes, this was intolerable, and she had to tell him so, at length; and if this didn’t elicit the correct response, she would repeat her points, enumerated, loud and clear with such careful pronunciation that even a boot boy would be able to follow them.
    “Perhaps you have forgotten that you kidnapped me, and I…”
    Instead of stopping, the men continued to walk away from her, gesticulating to each other and pointing down the snow covered valley. Earnestine didn’t know where they were going, and indeed she did not care.
    She stamped her foot.
    The Gardener’s Hand deigned to look at her: “You are marvellous,” he said.
    “I beg your pardon.”
    “When you are angry.”
    “I am not angry! I am British, I am never angry.”
    “If you say so.”
    “Look,” she said, adopting her patient tone – again. “I am a British Subject. You,” she pointed so that he wouldn’t confuse himself with someone else, “must take me to the British Embassy.”
    “I cannot take you to an embassy.”
    “Or Consulate. A Consulate would be quite acceptable in the circumstances.”
    “Neither. I cannot take you to a Consulate either.”
    “That’s almost a double negative. Look, I can see you’re not following me.”
    One of his compatriots shouted from ahead: “Ach, she is English, there is no arguing with them.”
    It was infuriating. The others knew English well enough when it suited them.
    “English, yes. So an English Embassy or Consulate would be acceptable. English and British, it’s the same thing,” she said, biting her lip because she knew that it absolutely