A Brief History of Montmaray

by Michelle Cooper

  I followed her, more because I wanted the light back than because I thought I’d be any help in the search. The floor smoothed out again and I read the tomb inscriptions as we paced past them. King John the Third. John the Conqueror. Benedict. King Stephen. Yet another John …

  Wait a minute.

  “Veronica,” I said. “Was there a King Benedict?”

  “No, of course not,” she said, climbing on top of a tomb to shine the torch into the niche above it.

  I took a deep breath. “Then why is there a tomb here with his name on it?”

  Veronica whirled around and pointed the torch at the tomb I was indicating. “Of course,” she breathed. “Benedict will protect the House of FitzOsborne, now and for eternity!”

  We tugged at the lid and it slid back to reveal not bones or dust or ashes, but a square of black.

  “You,” Veronica said, beaming, “are a genius.”

  But the warm glow of pleasure at her praise rapidly cooled. The torchlight barely made a dent in the deep darkness below the rim of the tomb. I could hear a drip, drip, and worse, a rustling noise. Rats—no, bats—no, something even more repulsive…

  “I’ll go first,” said Veronica. “Then push that thing down to me and you follow once I’ve pulled it out of the way.”

  “But what if the tunnel’s blocked? And then someone closes off the lid and we get stuck down there and—”

  “Listen!” said Veronica, but my teeth were chattering so hard I could barely hear anything—not anything good, at least. “Put your hand down. Feel the fresh air? Smell the sea? This leads to the cliff. And think how close the chapel is to the curtain wall. Fifty yards, even less. You can walk across the courtyard in half a minute—we won’t be down there long. Look, it’s …” She had dropped to the bottom of the hole—there seemed to be some metal rungs hammered into the walls—and was crouched down, shining her torch ahead. “It’s perfectly… well, it’s a bit low, but …”

  If I thought any more about it, I’d never do it. I clenched my teeth, hauled the bundle of body up over the foot-high edge of the tomb, and shoved it over. Then, flinching at the thud as it hit the ground, I lowered myself down beside it.

  The tunnel was, as Veronica admitted, cramped. It was also damp, icy, and malodorous. The torchlight played crazily over the rough-hewn granite as we stumbled along at a crouch, scraping our elbows and knees raw. Something soft brushed against my face at one stage and I jerked my head away, smashing it into the roof of the tunnel. I felt wetness trickle down my forehead then, but I didn’t stop to wipe it away—I think I was afraid that if I halted, even for a second, I’d give in to the hysteria building up in my chest, fall down in a screaming heap, and never get out of there.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, the tunnel widened and split. One fork led off at an angle; the other continued, more or less in a straight line.

  “This one,” said Veronica, pointing to the right. I didn’t argue, even though I was terrified we’d end up wandering in a never-ending circle down here. But she was correct, as always—a few yards on, she came to an abrupt stop and I staggered, almost falling lengthwise over the bundle. I thrust my head forward and realized where we were.

  The tunnel mouth opened halfway up the west face of the cliff on which the castle was built. I peered downwards, careful not to lean out too far. A ledge, about a yard wide, lay below us. Veronica tested it with her foot, then crawled out onto it and felt for the edge.

  “It’ll hold us,” she said, and we dragged the bundle out and laid it on the rock. I’d been so anxious about our trip through the tunnel that I’d managed to put aside the thought that we’d been dragging along with us a person—a dead one, a murdered one. Now I was forced to think about it all over again. I hadn’t liked Hans at all, but he probably had a mother, a sister, maybe even a wife or fiancée, and they would never get to visit his grave or even know how he died. It wasn’t his fault that he’d ended up like this. My eyes filled with tears.

  Meanwhile, Veronica was undoing the rope and unwinding the blanket.

  “What are you doing?” I said, blinking hard.

  “We’re pretending he fell off a cliff, and he wouldn’t have done it tied up in a blanket,” she said. “Now give me that torch.”

  “You’re not throwing that away!” I yelped, snatching it back.

  “What if his body washes up without it?”

  “You said it wouldn’t! You said the sharks would eat it! Anyway, he could have dropped the torch somewhere! How are we going to get back without any light?” My voice sounded so high that I didn’t recognize it. Veronica looked ready to slap me, and it probably would have been a good idea.

  “He wore it strapped into that holder, it wouldn’t have fallen out!” she snapped. “And we can’t take it back to the castle—what if they find it? How do we explain why we have it?”

  “And what about the gun?” I cried. “Herr Rahn didn’t have it when I saw him.”

  Veronica frowned down at the body. “Well, he doesn’t seem to have it. Do you think Father took it off him? Or Rebecca did?”

  I shook my head. All at once, I was too exhausted to think about any of it anymore. I just wanted it to be over. I barely even flinched when Veronica hefted the top end of Hans’s poor unwrapped body and I saw the mess of blood and… other stuff coming out of his middle.

  “On the count of three,” said Veronica, and then we heaved him off the ledge. Halfway down, he slammed into a jagged bit of rock, and for a heart-stopping moment I thought he’d been impaled there—but he crashed on down the cliff face and landed in the ocean, the splash swallowed up by the crash of the waves. We stood there a moment without speaking. I remembered my dream of Isabella, and thought of George and all the other dead Montmaravians shifting about beneath the waves, reaching up their cold white arms towards Hans and pulling him down to the seabed.

  “He was trespassing,” Veronica reminded both of us after a while. “We told him not to.”

  “But he didn’t deserve to die,” I sniffed.

  “We didn’t kill him,” she said. “We couldn’t have done anything to save him. The only thing we did was bury him at sea, rather than let his family bury him.”

  There wasn’t much else to say after that. We threw the rope and the torch over the ledge, but Veronica wanted to take the blanket back and wash it or burn it or something—there was too great a chance it would float. Even leaving it in the tunnel seemed too risky.

  I don’t remember much of the crawl back up the tunnel. It must have been pitch-black, but I honestly don’t remember it. I do remember climbing back into Benedict’s tomb, up the metal rungs, and banging my knee against the lid as we slid it back in place.

  When we finally reached the chapel, Veronica took a candle from the altar and we made our way back to the kitchen, where Rebecca stood staring at us from the doorway of Uncle John’s room. I could well imagine what a sight we presented. Our elbows were raw; both of us had skinned knees; and when I gingerly touched the sore part of my head, my fingers came away stained crimson. But there were more important things to worry about just then than a bit of blood.

  “Where’s Henry?” I asked.

  “She came in a while ago, said the man had been wandering around on the other side of the Chasm,” whispered Rebecca hoarsely. “Then he seemed to go off towards the village. She went back up to the gatehouse.”

  “We’d better get her,” Veronica said, but I pointed out it would be better if we cleaned ourselves up first. There was the blanket to dispose of, too.

  In the end, we left Rebecca cutting the blanket into strips with the scissors while Veronica and I went up to the bathroom and tried to set ourselves right. I felt like Lady Macbeth, scrubbing and scrubbing at bloodstains that could never come out. It was only the knowledge that Henry was waiting for us to reassure her that stopped me from curling up on the floor in a whimpering pile. At this, I thought, Oh, this is what it must be like to be a grown-up. Which was not a pa
rticularly comforting thought—I would have given anything to return to innocent childhood at that moment. But one glance at Veronica’s grim countenance as she pulled a comb through her hair made me realize that the less of the burden I shouldered, the more she would have to bear—and she didn’t look as though she could carry much more.

  After that, we fetched Henry and assured her that the castle was safe, sneaked out to hide the bloodstained strips of blanket under a pile of straw in the henhouse until we could think of a better way of disposing of them, checked that Uncle John was still asleep, put Henry back in bed a second time after admitting that yes, I’d met Herr Rahn, but that I’d seen him off and everything was now fine—and then tried to fall asleep ourselves. I didn’t try very hard. I was afraid I’d see Isabella drifting towards me, staring at me with her dead, knowing eyes, tangling me up in her shroud, trying to tug me down to the depths of the sea where the dead German lay.

  So I sat up instead and wrote all this, and now the horizon is a thin band of silver. Soon I will get up and hide my journal in its secret cranny, and then I will have to face whatever horrors the new day brings.

  New Year’s Eve 1936

  I haven’t been able to write anything for two days—I’ve been too afraid to sneak this book out of its hiding place—but now the German soldiers have left. As with my last entry, I’m sticking to Kernetin in case this book falls into the wrong hands. It makes writing rather slow going—however, I’m determined to set down as detailed a record as I possibly can.

  Well, the day before yesterday—that was awful. Herr Rahn returned to the castle early in the morning and loitered apologetically under the gatehouse until Henry came out to feed the hens. She quickly summoned Veronica and me. Herr Brandt, his colleague, appeared to be missing, he explained to us. It was possible Herr Brandt had gone for a walk near the castle. Had we seen him?

  Veronica did all the talking, to my relief. No, she said, she had not seen anyone walking around here. When and where had Herr Rahn last seen him?

  At this, Herr Rahn caught my eye and blushed.

  “Yes, I’m aware of your midnight excursion,” Veronica said severely.

  Herr Rahn bowed his head and admitted he had left his colleague by the gatehouse the previous night. After meeting me, Herr Rahn had returned to the village, expecting Herr Brandt to follow—but Herr Brandt had not turned up.

  Veronica said that she wished Herr Rahn’s colleague had taken heed of her warning about approaching the castle—the mist could descend unexpectedly and the cliffs were slippery, steep, and terribly dangerous, even for those of us familiar with them. But perhaps Herr Brandt had taken their boat out?

  “No, no,” said Herr Rahn, his forehead now corrugated with worry.

  “We could have a search party,” Henry offered brightly. “We could take Carlos. He’s good at sniffing things out.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. Veronica managed to conceal her anxiety about this suggestion far better than I did (although, I realized later, the only evidence was hidden in the henhouse, with enough competing smells to confound even Carlos). Fortunately, Herr Rahn misinterpreted my expression and hastened to reassure me.

  “No, no, I am certain Herr Brandt is all right, but the cliffs—”

  “I think we should look around the rest of the island first, before worrying about the cliffs,” said Veronica firmly. “I expect he’s sprained his ankle or something and settled down to wait for help. We’ll meet you at the village in an hour to help you look.”

  Herr Rahn was so effusive in his gratitude that I felt quite miserable. It made it worse, somehow, that the dead man now had a complete name. I could just picture a Frau Brandt in a dirndl and cross-stitched apron, fretting about her faraway son.

  “If he did go wandering round the cliffs,” said Henry thoughtfully, leading the way back to the kitchen after Herr Rahn had departed, “he’d be dead now. He was so heavy and flat-footed—did you see him walking? And if he fell in the water—well, he doesn’t look like the sort who knows anything about currents or swimming, not the way he brought their boat into the wharf that day. He’d be drowned in a minute.”

  “Don’t,” I said shortly. I’d had only a few hours’ sleep and was in no mood to listen to Henry’s morbid ramblings. But the news was equally bad inside—it seemed Uncle John hadn’t woken at dawn, as he normally did, and was “laying funny.”

  “He’s breathing, isn’t he?” snapped Veronica when Rebecca came to report this.

  “He needs the doctor!” shouted Rebecca. “He’s not right!”

  “How can she tell?” wondered Henry aloud from the doorway. And when I joined her, I had to admit he looked pretty much the same as always, lying on his side, refusing to make eye contact or say a word. The only departure from his usual behavior was that he hadn’t yet seized a nearby object and hurled it in our direction.

  “Sit back down and eat your breakfast, both of you,” ordered Veronica, although I noticed she managed to swallow even less than me. Rebecca went up to the gatehouse to raise the doctor’s flag and the rest of us walked down to the village to take part in Herr Rahn’s pointless search. We investigated the coves, took him up to the viewing point near the memorial cross, and trained his binoculars on all the possible places Herr Brandt might have gone exploring. Herr Rahn explained he had already radioed his colleagues on his ship for help, but they would not be able to reach the island for a day or two.

  “They don’t have a doctor on board, do they?” asked Henry innocently. “Because our uncle’s been taken ill. We’ve just put up the doctor’s signal flag for him.”

  “Your … uncle?” said Herr Rahn, looking confused.

  “I’m sure he’ll be all right after some bed rest,” said Veronica hastily. She must have been imagining how Uncle John would react if a German doctor marched into his room. I certainly was. Just then, I had a horrible thought. Where was Benedict? Had Rebecca had the sense to clean the blood off it and put it back over the chimneypiece?

  “I did not know your uncle is living in the castle,” Herr Rahn was saying.

  “He’s quite old,” said Henry. “And a bit mad.”

  “Henry!” I said loudly. “Go and show Herr Rahn around the Great Pool. There might be footsteps in the mud if Herr Brandt slipped in. Veronica and I will search the bushes at the edge of the Green.”

  “But—” said Henry.

  “Please do as you’re told,” I said, fixing her with a glare, and she was astonished enough by this to obey at once. The moment they were out of earshot, I grabbed Veronica’s arm and asked if she knew what had happened to Benedict. Her eyes widened.

  “I told Rebecca to keep it out of sight,” she said. “She took it into his room and I hoped she’d… but I didn’t check. And I forgot all about it this morning. One of us had better go back and make certain.”

  “And get rid of that blanket,” I said.

  We looked at each other despairingly.

  “I’ll go,” I said. Veronica was better at talking to Herr Rahn than I was. I was terrified that at any moment I would blurt out the awful truth.

  I hurried back to the castle and was thankful I had. It turned out Rebecca had wiped Benedict clean on a rag, then shoved sword and rag under Uncle John’s bed. It was fortunate Uncle John wasn’t his usual self—I was able to slip into his room and retrieve both items without too much difficulty. Rebecca was no help. She hadn’t even done the breakfast dishes. Fuming at her uselessness, I poked the rag inside Vulcan; gave the sword a hasty polish; retrieved the scabbard, which had been flung under the piano; and hung both sword and scabbard over the chimney-piece in the Great Hall, cursing Rebecca all the while for making us keep the horrid thing sharpened all these years.

  Then I ran back outside to the henhouse to retrieve the strips of blanket we’d hidden in the straw. I thought of throwing them into the Chasm, but as Veronica had pointed out, it was all too possible they’d wash up in the firewood cave. Instead—gagging at the ste
nch of stale blood and bird droppings—I buried them in the kitchen garden beside the carrots. I had just enough time to wash my hands and brush some of the mud off my clothes before the others came down over the hill and across the drawbridge.

  “We’re just going to walk along the curtain wall, see if we can spot anything,” said Veronica.

  Poor Herr Rahn was quietly frantic by that stage. “I am very much afraid that … I said to him not to go near the cliffs, but … surely he must be found by now if …”

  Veronica and Henry led him up the ladder while I stayed below with Carlos. Their heads emerged a minute later above the parados and Herr Rahn sent me down a feeble smile. I had had enough at that; I hurried inside and shut myself in the upstairs bathroom for a good hard cry. Then, somehow, I managed to fall asleep on the bath mat. Veronica discovered me there half an hour later.

  “Well, he’s gone back to the village,” she said. “I gave him a quick look at the kitchen, but managed to talk him out of searching the whole house. I told him it was impossible anyone could get upstairs without us noticing and that the place wasn’t big enough to get lost in, but that we’d have a look anyway. His colleagues will be here tomorrow or the day after.” She sighed. “The important thing is to keep Henry away from them.”

  I blinked at her, feeling heavy-eyed and stupid. “What about Uncle John?” I asked.

  She sat down on the edge of the bath beside me. “We’ll just have to keep them away from him. I’ve no idea how. I’m certain they’ll want to question him, he’s the one supposed to be in charge here.”

  “We’ll just say he’s ill,” I said. “He is ill, isn’t he? If he stays quiet the way he’s been today, it should be all right.”