‘All good, my boy?’ my master asked. I knew, if he was to keep talking of his family, I’d have to not draw attention, so I lay back down, rested my head on my front paws, whilst keeping my ears roundly open. My master carried on observing me until Frantz nodded.
‘Your mother and your father?’
‘Yes. I was—thirteen? Where we lived, the door of her bedroom was thick oak. There was a key as long as my hand, and she locked herself in with it, so I wouldn’t—so no one could—she would not have us even approach along the corridor. She wrote me notes and dropped them from the windows. Before she died, obviously.’ When Frantz went to my master, he jutted up his hand. ‘No, no, do not comfort me. There was nothing special in my loss. Everyone lost everyone. Besides it is so long ago now, when the world was younger.’
He shut the window and went to stoke the fire, secretly dashing the wetness from his eyes.
‘So, you were frightened of dying?’ asked Frantz. ‘That was your motivation.’
‘No, it was the science principally. Always science. I wanted to put my mark on that age, as all the others did. I wanted to be great too—but, yes, I had a fear. It was not small. But it wasn’t of dying myself, but of the pain I’d cause to those I’d leave?’ He had not meant the sentence to be a question. ‘Doubtless, it makes no sense, but I must have thought that when I have a family, my own kin—which I had longed for even as a young boy, for children are the heart of the world—I cannot leave them as my parents left me. I cannot die.’
Frantz looked into his empty glass and I sensed he was troubled by my master’s logic. In the silence came the sound of the dance at the lake. ‘And do you have your family?’ the priest said at last. ‘Your children?’
‘No,’ my master said in as grim a voice as he’d ever used. ‘That is the paradox. None. How could I have had children? When either I would have had to outlive them, or convert them too? The first unthinkable, the second fraught with danger and risk—what happened to my former companion, to the state of his mind, is proof of that. And the same would have applied to their mother, whoever she may have been. No, indeed, I had not thought it through properly.’ He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. ‘No children. No wife.’ He had such a look of desolation about him, his eyes so tightly squeezed together, I went over and sat by him, pressed against his leg.
‘Well, you have your four-legged companion at least.’
My master chuckled. ‘He is not my family.’ Frantz was about to apologize when my master said, ‘He is my soul. What am I without my champion? Just a box of notions and logics. You should get to your party.’
Frantz observed my master closely before replying. ‘Why is it you wished to speak to me tonight? I understand you needed to unburden secrets from your head, but did you have another purpose?’
My master gave it some thought, before shrugging. ‘If I did, I do not know what.’ The priest raised his brow and seemed to expect a weightier answer, but my master said, ‘Tell me something of your own relations. I have talked too much.’
‘Oh.’ The priest looked at the backs of his hands. ‘My mother still lives, as you know, in the rectory with me. But my brothers—more sad stories, what a pair we make on Christmas Eve—they were killed in the wars. Sebastien at Dirschau, Little Rudolfo at Grol. He was sixteen.’
‘Grol? I—Grol, really? You were the oldest?’
A nod. ‘Not fit for the army. My legs. So the future rests with me now.’
‘Grol, you say? This August past?’
‘Did you lose someone there yourself?’
My master shot me a look, thinking of Aramis no doubt, before saying. ‘Yes. I didn’t know him well. Your brother fought for the republic, the Protestants? On that side?’
‘He did, though they are all one to me. Do you understand better than I? For to me it seems we fight over nothing more than the details of how we should worship. It is wretched.’ He grew more passionate. ‘You must excuse me, but there can be no more desperate place to be cut from life, far from the fires of your home, in the mud and blood and din. Sixteen he was.’
My master threw his arms round Frantz and held on for such a long time, I thought Frantz might be embarrassed, but our companion seemed moved by it, and held on with equal tenderness.
‘May we come to the dance with you then?’ my master asked, finally letting go. ‘I shall not study after all, and a reel or two will shake away the melancholy.’ He laughed and clapped his new friend on the back.
* * *
The Christmas revels took place on a granite promontory at the edge of the water. The villagers, sphered in lantern light, danced and caroused. The silvered aurora stretched across the valley. The snow fell so delicately it looked as if the stars themselves were dropping from their places to our Earth, and the lake was a frozen serpentine of glass winding to a raven-blackness of mountains.
From the moment we arrived my master joined the dance, and as usual danced badly, forever tearing off in the wrong direction, bumping into everyone and apologizing. For some hours, in our cocoon in the hills, amidst the laughter and overlapping conversation, the play of fiddles and clack of bottles, all the sadness of the past months was put aside, and I felt newly invigorated—when all of a sudden my master stopped dancing.
He had such a surprised look on his face, my first thought was that Vilder had followed us after all, and that my master had spied him. He began pushing through people, just as he had at the frost fair in London. But this time, he was looking for someone, rather than running away from one. It was Frantz.
‘May I say something more, Father?’ my master panted, taking him to one side.
Frantz nodded, but had the slightly ruffled air of someone who’d been disturbed in their leisure ‘What is it?’
‘You asked me what was my purpose, for speaking to you. Purpose, that is the issue. The young man who camped outside Brunelleschi’s door—I no longer recognize him in myself. I’ve slipped somehow into an ordinary state, into automatic ways, the very thing I fought so hard to avoid. I’ve been going about everything wrong. I have skill, you see? As a physician, a chemyst and what you will. Great skill. My many years upon this earth has provided that.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Purpose is the thing.’ My master laughed, like a lunatic I fancied. I would have thought he was drunk, but I’d watched him and all he’d had was the cup of Rhenish at home. ‘There was purpose once, in my work, long ago, when we were—when I was creating and experimenting. But not for decades. Monster or not, my old associate told me as much, but only now do I realize it is true. It is your brothers and their like I should be helping.’
He noticed that Frantz’s smile had curdled a little and tried to bring his thoughts to a conclusion. ‘I just wanted to tell you: I shall give up my former existence and start anew. I shall do my duty. To the battlefield I shall go.’
Some of the townspeople came to lure him back to the revels—his energetic capering had brought him some celebrity. ‘I’m sorry, I should not have talked so long. You’ve been so kind to listen,’ he said to Frantz, patting my head as he went. I watched him start up a reel once more with new vigour. I had no real notion of what he intended to do, what he meant by ‘my duty,’ I was just content that he was happy again. He carried on dancing with the others until dawn.
Little did I know our new life had already been set in motion. That soon the bones of our former existence would be broken by war. And they’d heal, only to be broken again.
9
OPALHEIM
Westphalia, May 1815
A week passes, or more, and Sporco and I are locked inside Vilder’s carriage. For the first few days the vehicle climbs vertiginously, dropping at intervals, only to ascend again, higher and higher. The altitude, and the speed at which Braune tears round every bend is sickening enough, but with my wound, and the process of mending, I s
ink into a state of near hallucination. I’ve been struck by a bullet a handful of times in my life, all long ago, during the years my master and I trailed armies. I’d garner my strength to limp to a safe place, where I’d collapse, the battle a whirring dream around me. And afterwards, I woke, not happy to be alive—but almost the opposite: terrified of eternity.
Once we peak the mountains, we shoot down at nerve-shredding speed, Braune whipping the horses to the bone. We travel northwards still; I can tell by how light slithers across the floor. Maybe once or twice a day we’ll stop briefly. There are shouts to farriers, hurried rehorsing. Braune unlocks one of the doors, pistol in hand, checks we’re alive, slops down a bowl of water and a handful of scraps, before locking up and setting off again.
As we pass from the mountains on to the lowlands, the realm of Saxony I presume, the smells of the countryside change: alpine scents giving way to beech, privet, primrose and forest lichens. Many times, heralded by distant ditties of bugles and pipes, we pass tramping battalions, an army marching north. Through the scratched glass, we pass flickers of uniforms, muddy faces and blank eyes, until we speed away from the thump of feet.
I expect Sporco to be disturbed, at the least, by our change in circumstance, but he adapts to it well. Such is the nature of dogs, to trust. I wonder if he’s forgotten I told him Vilder was evil, or careless of it. In either case, I’m glad of it: whatever Vilder has in store, there’s no point in Sporco suffering fear until it happens. And besides, he’s fed well, kept comfortable and he’s aware of a purpose to what’s happening. He has no inherent need to understand it. And I’m at his side. We are ‘the pack,’ as he insists on calling us.
At dusk, after two weeks of travelling, we peel off the road and halt.
‘What’s happening?’ Sporco says, putting his paws on the ledge of the window.
Looking out, I can see a mansion, a medieval edifice perched on the crest of a hill. Above a portcullised arch, there’s a stone escutcheon emblazoned with the all too familiar insignia: three towers below a crescent moon. I had expected a larger building. It is only when Braune dismounts and shoulders open the iron barriers, do I realize it’s a gatehouse. From either side of it, boundary walls snake into the distance. It’s bleak terrain, crags and tors, thorny shrubs and wind-slanted firs.
We crunch through the arch and set off up the drive, almost immediately entering a wood: a crowded gloom of oak and elm, of squat trees and deformed shrubs. The path is overgrown and low-hanging boughs whip against the side of the coach. The woods go on and on, wheels jerking against ruts in the road. We leave the deciduous trees behind, the path straightens and we accelerate into a matrix of conifers, to an echo of hooves and flickering pins of evening light. We travel through it—for miles it seems—until the echo suddenly stops. Sporco’s ears lift.
We’ve come out into an expansive plain, as barren as the woods had been choked, a droughted prairie, vacuum-quiet, dusty earth, balding patches of heather and bull grass. An immense dried-up lake snakes to a palace in the distance. Even in the vanishing light, I can see it’s immense, its front an infinite blockade of brick stretched between three towers. On one side, the building sags, making the central tower lean in at an angle.
Braune unlocks our compartment and wrestles chains round our necks.
‘Here,’ says Vilder, snatching them from him and yanking us from the coach. He loops the tethers tight and crouches to study me, feeling my side where the flesh has all but mended. Sporco watches him, with a hopeful sway of the tail, before Vilder pulls us up the front steps into the hall. My heart races: there’s a trace of something clear, of my master, the barest atom of him, so elusive, it’s gone immediately. ‘De la Mare,’ Vilder shouts and his voice takes time to echo back to us. A life-sized portrait of Aramis looks down on us, more war-like than I remember him, on horseback and silver breast-plated. Sporco takes in the space, ears out and eyebrows lifted, excited by its dimensions, by the sheer height of the many columns of red marble and jasper. He’s tiny against them, and I recall that it was just a few weeks ago that he gingerly entered La Perla’s apartment and thought that was amazing.
‘De la Mare!’ Vilder calls again. When no one comes, he sets off, dragging us behind. Dust is thick on the ground and it’s whipped up into little clouds, making Sporco sneeze. We pass room after room of faded grandeur, uncared-for statues and paintings layered in dust. Hearing someone, Vilder stops at an open door. ‘De la Mare?’
‘Monsieur?’ comes a voice from within.
‘In God’s name! Have I not told you that this room is to be kept closed?’ He pauses on the threshold, hesitant about entering. It’s a chapel of the type that are common in palaces of this size. In a murk of stained glass, there are tombs, a pair of them, railed in on pedestals, life-size effigies of a man and a woman, palms pressed together, humans from faraway times, the medieval epoch.
A gaunt man patters from the gloom. ‘Désolé, monsieur. They’ve made a nest in the ceiling—’ He does a double take when he notices Sporco and I, but says nothing.
‘Did he come?’ Vilder asks.
‘You haven’t found him?’
‘If I had, would I be asking you?’
‘No one’s called, monsieur.’
Vilder hawks up a gobbet of phlegm and spits it on the floor. De la Mare, his retainer I presume, wears a crimson gabardine like a cardinal’s. ‘What’s made a nest?’ Vilder asks of him.
‘Bats. A thousand of them. They must have broken in there.’ He nods to an opening at the base of the far wall where a panel of stained glass has fallen out.
‘Deal with it as you must, but keep this door shut. Understand?’
‘Bien sûr.’
There are no niceties between these men. If anything, the servant—pallid, gaunt and unearthly—is even more unapproachable than the master. ‘Soldiers all the way here,’ says Vilder, ‘the roads choked with them. Why?’
‘You have not heard the news?’
‘What news?’
‘He has fled Elba. Bonaparte. He’s returned to Paris. Pronounced emperor, and so and so on.’ He holds his palms heavenwards. ‘La guerre recommence. The British come, the Austrians, all. A battle is imminent; in Belgium they say.’
‘I want you to write.’
‘Monsieur?’
‘To every king in Europe, every duke, every count, every last pox-ridden baronet, all. One of them will know where he hides. They must return him. To every general too, write. Tell them it is I, Vilder, from Opalheim. Offer them money, gold, whatever they ask for. Every general, mark you. Write to Napoleon too.’
‘Napoleon?’
‘He has fled from Elba, has he not?’ he says in sarcastic imitation.
‘Indeed but—I would not expect him to—’
‘Write! Tell them, to tell him, I have his dog. How absurd the phrase sounds, coming from my own mouth. Curse him.’ De la Mare is entirely bewildered. He puzzles a glance at us. ‘Dog, dog, dog,’ Vilder hisses, raising his palm to strike, but stopping short. ‘Have you never seen dogs before? Go, write, and show me a draft before you send it.’
De la Mare remains. ‘Sire, perhaps you must—?’
‘What?’
There’s a pause. De la Mare is almost too scared to speak. ‘Face the possibility that—’
‘That what?’ Vilder grimaces. I know they’re talking of my master, speaking of him as if he’s alive, and I listen intently.
‘How far could he go—’ De la Mare shrugs ‘—when he can barely put one leg before the other? Or speak, or hear? He has no sense who he is. So you must face the possibility—’
Vilder’s fists are pure knuckle against our chains. ‘That he’s dead? That is your suggestion? You know nothing about it.’ Before the other can reply Vilder slaps him across the ear. ‘If you had not let him roam free in the house, we would face nothing. I told you—’ He stops
himself from hitting De la Mare a second time, instead saying, ‘He’s as cunning as he’s dangerous. Well, if he returns, you shall learn your lesson. If he hunts you down and cuts your throat, you shall learn your lesson. The letters. Now!’
This time De la Mare goes. Vilder peers into the darkness of the chapel, pivoting his ear to the wet slap of bats, then turns on his heels. I’m newly agitated and confused as he drags us on through anterooms to a set of double doors, which he shoulders open. A little vestibule leads immediately to another pair in cast iron. He pushes us through them, into darkness, slams the doors behind us and bolts them three times.
The shock of my master’s smell is so overwhelming that my mind seems to curve and warp, like I’ve slipped through time.
I’ve found him, I think in that nonsensical moment, despite everything I’ve just heard. ‘I’m here, I’m here,’ I bark, certain they’ve made a mistake and that really he’s here. I set about the place, bouncing my nose along the surfaces: a fireplace with a furnace in it, long tables, countless piles of parchment, an old four-poster bed. I jump on it: straw mattress, hemp sheets, bolster, coverlet—all of them drenched in his smell. I roll on it all. ‘Here I am.’ I leap down, skirting the walls, nooks and recesses. ‘I’m here!’
‘We’re here!’ Sporco proclaims in agreement, following wherever I go.
Behind an arras, we find a tiny side room, a garderobe, with a stone toilet in the corner, but otherwise empty too.
I hurry back to the main room, which is as high as a cathedral. There’s a whispering gallery right at the top, but no stairs lead to it. I renew my hunt: furnace, paper piles, tables. I spring up on to one: bottles of ink, quills, brushes, the scent-print of his hand everywhere. Down, back to the bed, skirting the walls, the gardrobe. And where I go, Sporco comes too, yapping in delight. ‘Is he here? Where is he? I’m sure he’s here.’
After two more circuits my joy evaporates and is finally replaced by common sense. Of course he isn’t. The fact of my master’s smell but the absence of his person is pure physical pain. I’m losing him all over again. I’m back in the cathedral a hundred and twenty-seven years ago, circling the tiles below the fresco in vain, finding his scarf and nothing else.
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