Chapter 17
THEY SAW NO ONE on the river the next day. No merchant sloops, no farmers’ barges. Once they came past a punt moored on a jetty, but there were no people. When Johanna had come with Father to Lurezia, the river had been quite busy with merchants and other vessels. On that trip, there had been people crossing the river in small boats, people riding horses on the banks, people fishing. This time, it was as if the country had died.
Towards the end of the day, they arrived at the fork where the Rede River joined the Saar River. Both rivers were wide, softly churning expanses of water, and the Rede River especially was brown with the extra water from molten snow. The country on the left-hand bank would now be Estland, that on the right still Saarland. Past the Rede River, the left-
