CHAPTER 13

EMERSLEBEN Back to School

The horses had settled to a regular trott, whilst the occupants of the coach were still shaking from the experience of a near catastrophe. It was left to each one's imagination to fill in the sequence, had the hold-up succeeded. Oma and Gerda, the oldest and the youngest,may not have been fully aware of the danger, as the events unfolded in quick succession, but for Mutter and Fräulein Lina it must have been terrifying, to watch the men coming closer and closer to the coach. The coach driver and I had to concentrate so hard on the robbers, that there did not seem to be any time to worry. Only after the danger had passed, in retrospect, it had caught up with us, and we were in shock for quite some time.

No one spoke, until almost two hours had passed. We had to cross the main road which went from Halberstadt straight to Magdeburg. From the other side we could see the village Emersleben, which we were heading for, nestling around the tall tower of the village church. The road went slightly down hill, and eventually another tower became visible in the distance. On top of it, like a halo, was the untidy structure of a stork's nest. I could see two young storks hopping up and down on their legs, while they were exercising their wings.

The coach entered the village from the south. There were no shops on that road, just the homes of people living there. On our right a stone wall meandered, surrounding a baroque church. In the church yard trees of varying sizes and shrubs separated the large area into smaller, more secluded ones where the graves were located. About fifty meters further down, a wrought-iron gate admitted our coach to an ancient yard. On our right was a duck pond, said to be the remnant of a moat. On our left, looking through a wrought-iron fence was the manor, which ended on the yard side in an arch way with four windows above it. Immediately attached to this structure was a square tower house, made of mortar and stones. It was four storeys high, and its roof line started where that of the manor ended. On the tip was the stork's nest, which I had already seen from afar. The tower house looked ancient, and I could well believe that it was, as people claimed, over one thousand years old.

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