Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  I would witness so many battles in the ensuing decades, I forget sometimes what an unnatural jolt the first one gave me, what a violent overturning of my worldview. In truth, it was not so much a battle—as a massacre. Magdeburg was a walled town bastioned on a hill at the edge of the Elbe River. When we arrived and set up shelter, at a slight remove from the main army camp, we could see a siege had been taking place for months. The land all around was gutted with trench-works and the platoons that droned back and forth through them were so filthy and mud-soaked, it appeared as if the earth itself was in constant motion. The bridgeworks across the river had already been taken and every hour more soldiers—in the red uniforms of the Catholic League—poured into the valley. From our vantage point, we could see into the town. Bands of local militia were on guard, but mostly it was strange for not being strange, the inhabitants moving about as on any day.

  There came one morning a dream-like rumble and reinforcements from our side, regiments of them, swept over the mount, until the entire plain was a lake of red, winking with ten thousand iron pikes. For a few moments, I might have thought it looked beautiful, before the first cannon exploded, a missile whistled forth and the town’s ramparts shook. Another detonation followed, then dozens more at once, tarry smoke licking through the valley until eventually the walls of the gateway crumbled and the doors gave way. There was an operatic cheer and the army poured into the town. It was clear straight away its defending army would stand no chance.

  ‘Good grief, good grief,’ my master panted, fretting back and forth, dodging imaginary bullets, not knowing whether to go with them or turn on his heels and run away. In the end both of us stood gaping, as we might at an accident on a turnpike, mesmerized by the unfolding horror. The original soldiers, the ones who’d been sieging for months, crazy from drink and mad for blood, were the most savage, rampaging the streets, cutting the throats of burghers even as they held up their arms to surrender. The smashing of glass as cuirassiers plunged lances through shop windows mixed with a bedlam of screams, war cries, muskets popping, cannon discharging—all whilst the childish rhythms of timbales and drums played along. By noon, fires blazed all over the city and the smell of burning flesh bled into the palls of sulphur and grapeshot. Women, their clothes torn from them, were marched out and pushed on to carts like pigs, whilst captured troops of the town’s doomed militia were pinned down one at a time and burning pitch poured into their throats. Twice my master turned to a tree and vomited. The looting and the burning went on and on, and by evening Magdeburg was a wasteland. Tons of blistered corpses were brought out and thrown into heaps until they dammed the river.

  My master fell down on his knees in despair. I pressed against him, but he could not stop shaking. We watched soldiers carry up crates of loot to their superiors. Those officers, unscathed and dirtless, eating treats and sipping wine from little glasses, heedless of the noise of execution, picked through them like bric-a-brac at a market. When my master’s breathing settled, I presumed we’d leave that hellish valley—how I longed to be back in our Carpathian village, or anywhere but there—but to my surprise he straightened his pack and set off.

  ‘No!’ I barked, blocking his way, appalled by the notion of him entering the fray.

  ‘You stay out of harm’s way,’ he replied, pushing me on to my haunches. ‘I’ll be careful, I promise.’

  ‘No!’ I nipped at his ankles.

  ‘What was it he said on Christmas Eve? Our young priest? There can be no more desperate place to be cut from life, far from the fires of your home.’ And he went this time, declaring something about duty, down to the river, the yellow emblem of the serpent and the rod on his back.

  I followed at a distance, to make sure he was not mistaken for an antagonist and captured—though what I’d have done I had no idea. In any case, he was cautious enough to keep well away from outright danger, going to the place where bodies had been left on the bank. He searched through them until he came across a human that must have been still alive. He took off his pack and talked to him—I heard only a faint murmur—before retrieving the phial of jyhr and applying drops both to his lips and the place he was cut. He waited with him until the man had the strength to half sit up. It was at that moment that my fear waned a touch and a bristle of pride went through my fur. At court he had always been considerate, always hurrying to help people—servants, courtiers, kings, he made no distinction—be it small gestures, like penning a letter for someone who could not write, or acting as a peacemaker between warring factions—or graver issues, such as the time he spent a night on a roof at the Louvre Palace in Paris, persuading the wayward son of a countess not throw himself off. He set an example to me, which I strove to emulate. However, in Magdeburg his kindness was of a new and entirely special class that made me almost breathless in admiration.

  He worked through the night, searching for the living and helping where he could, with whatever medicine he thought best. That first time I wondered what exactly he would be able to achieve. By the time of our third battle, I understood the extent of it: if a wound was clean and not too much blood had been lost, he could mend it, he would use his distilled jyhr if he thought it appropriate, but if the trauma was great, he could only ease the pain before death.

  He returned to me just before dawn. ‘You see? I am in one piece.’ He knelt to kiss the top of my head. ‘And I have these too, though I can’t recall if you’re keen.’ He lay a handful of wild strawberries before me. ‘As long as the fruit grows we shall be sane, shall we not?’

  With his new resolve and focus he’d already changed since the night of his confession to Frantz, but battle pushed the alteration much further. I had never thought of my master as vain, but in the coming months and years any trace of self-admiration left him. He lost interest in material things too, as well as shedding all excess weight. He became both hard and humble. He became, in short, a crusader, and to an extent I began to understand why the cuirassier we’d met at our first camp had been unsociable. That is what war does after all. But my master was also more tactile. He would hug me as he went to sleep and hold on all night. He was attentive, asking me questions he never usually did: ‘How are you faring my boy?’ ‘Do you need to rest a while?’ ‘Shall we stop for water? There is a canal there. Is the ground too sharp underfoot?’

  Five months after the siege at Magdeburg, we found ourselves carried to Breitenfeld, where the two factions of the war—the Thirty Years War, as my master much later referred to it—faced each other either side of a vast plain. Summer was beginning to wane and northerly winds carried with them an unseasonal bite. We were on the other side by then—‘with the Protestants now,’ as he referred to the brown-and-blue-uniformed battalions. I had noted already how armies have distinct personalities. This one was plain and no-nonsense, whilst the Catholic League that faced us was showier, their outfits frilled with ornaments, curling red feathers in their helmets. It made sense that the effete and precocious Aramis had belonged to that side. Seeing them, stretched out from one end of the valley to the other like a giant braid of gold and red, I was struck again by how beautiful armies could be—until the fighting starts.

  The beginning of that battle was signalled by the sudden whining of artillery shells and eruptions of earth. In no time everything was pandemonium again, though now on an unimaginable scale: the land shook, swathes of horses were cut down, sergeants shouted, cannons jumped back in fugs of black smoke, and there was the sleet of grapeshot, the deafening batter of lances, charges and counter-charges, caracoles, missiles devastating whole squares of soldiers, limbs setting off through the air and pikes falling back to gore their own sides. My master went to a hospital tent, but he’d been so taken by surprise he was tongue-tied and was shouted away by the field doctors. It wasn’t until the worst was over, when each side had been decimated, burnt to the earth and battle flags captured by the winning party—ours it turned out, but I wouldn’t have known—that he m
ustered the strength to take out his bottle and go forth with a lantern, his hair flapping in the wind, the yellow symbol on his back, picking through the carnage, the rucked earth and heaped bodies, through the stench of burning hair and salt-meat fetor, to offer aid to those most in need. Men caught up their last scraps of breath and he dosed drops on to their lips or to their wounds, chatting with them all the while: ‘What is your name?’ ‘Do you have a sweetheart?’ ‘How brave you have been.’ ‘Calm now, it is over.’

  Only when he’d done as much as he could, did he take me behind a barricade to rest. There, where no one could see him but I, his eyes became livid and he cried. Eventually he opened his coat and drew back his shirt to a deep gash in his abdomen and a puzzle of pale entrails. He’d been shot.

  ‘You are a kind soul, you are, my champion,’ he said as I whined and panted, whilst gently pawing his side. ‘But it is not as serious as it looks.’ The lesion hissed as it continued to cauterize itself, and he covered it again and buttoned his coat. It healed quickly, as all his wounds did, and in a couple of days it was the barest filament.

  And such was the nature of our crusade, our mission, or what you will. My master and I followed armies, blue, green, red and grey ones, criss-crossing the continent. We took no particular side, but went where we felt the need was greatest. Europe was so fraught with conflict—there were so many battles I was amazed I’d spent the first thirty years of my life ignorant of them. He grew accustomed to the processes of war, soon found his way into hospital tents, first as an orderly, then a surgeon, until he was leading teams of army medics with his expertise and even reimagining the way field hospitals worked. Although the liquid jyhr, which he diluted ten parts to one, was his most precious medicine, he used it prudently and in secret.

  I was often frightened, forever dirty and exhausted, but I believed in our purpose too. In time I forgot where it had arisen from—my master’s distress over Aramis’s death, the conversation on Christmas Eve, the priest’s lost brothers and the vows my master had made—and began to believe that war was necessary, important—noble even. Why else would people kill each other with such decency and skill? Why else would soldiers wear uniforms, buttons gleaming, shoes polished like shellac? Battles of course grew jagged and messy, but the lead-up, the deployment, the training, the sacred hierarchy of command was impressive. Only orchestras of musicians, I would discover, had the same admirable ability to tie many humans together in a single purpose.

  It wasn’t until much later, in the first years of my vigil in Venice, seeing how little time people truly had, that I began to fully realize the absurdity of war, and how unforgiveable it was that the human race—that species of fearless magicians, of enchanters, that creates melodies to break and mend hearts, that builds palaces, cathedrals and cities, that governs even the sky and sea—is bent on war, on brute force and on its own destruction. I realized too, painfully so, in my exile beside the cathedral steps, how futile my master’s vocation had really been. He must have known he could only ever be in one place at one time, that he could ever only save a finite number of lives, that so many others would die on battlefields that he would never reach. And yet he carried on.

  Every few years, his supply of jyhr would run out. To manufacture more he would seek work at court again, at whatever palace or noble house was close at hand. Of course, as far as his employers were concerned, he was a chemyst, physician, apothecary, astronomer, what you will. But his true rationale was to have all the correct facilities—security, assistance, ingredients—to distil the monochrome tincture and carry it to the battlefield.

  After our first seven years of service, and being at that time attached to the French army, we found employment at the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a day’s ride west of Paris. ‘The giant French Fancy,’ as my master called it. ‘They can’t quite decide if it’s a fortress or a playground.’ It was a whimsical construction of medieval towers and bold baroque facades with terraces descending to gardens of almost mathematical strictness. Inside it was monstrously sumptuous—as was the French way at that time—and as busy as an ants’ nest—with intrigues and vanities. My master was surprised to find an entire team of doctors already installed. ‘The queen has lost four heirs already,’ one of them whispered to him by way of explanation. ‘Stillborn. They’ll take no more chances.’

  My master found it hard to settle down. With his appreciation for luxury gone, he seemed bemused by the palace and its occupants. Especially as it was the era of exuberance, of grand hair, heeled shoes, exaggerated cuffs, coloured stockings and everywhere—attached to elbows, knees and ankles—bows and fussy spills of ribbons. He was also much jumpier there, always checking over his shoulder, worried about Vilder turning up. ‘Might a man have come looking for me?’ I often heard him ask servants and their masters alike. ‘He would have been wearing a wig, long like this.’

  For my part, though I tried not to show it too much, I was happy to be on solid ground again, warm, well fed and in a suite of rooms that was one of the finest I’d know. I’d developed—not unusually for my species—a sense of beauty, a taste for proportion, quality and colour. As the din and memory of battle ebbed away, I spent hours peering from our windows, entranced by the deer that sometimes would come and press their noses to the glass: gentle, courteous animals. I was fascinated too by the elaborate ceremonies of the household, in particular the levee, the rising ritual, when courtiers gravely filled into the royal bedchamber to watch the king throw back his covers, be washed, combed and shaved. Often—and I don’t know why, but it always sets my tail wagging with amusement—he would shit in front of everyone, into a gilded china bowl. One of his entourage would then convey it away with haughty solemnity, as if rare jewels had been passed out of his backside.

  My master became a hero within the household—reluctantly, for he sought fame even less than luxury—when he helped deliver the queen of her first living child. ‘Louis Dieudonné, they call it, the God-given.’ When the infant was barely a week old, he sat for his first portrait, dressed in ermine robes, a miniature sceptre and orb put into its hands. (It’s incredible to think I would meet that baby forty years on, in his dream palace at Versailles, a man of such dangerous gravity as to make me freeze.)

  It was an incident at the Chateau Saint-Germain, at the christening celebration of the new prince, that had the most brutal effect on me, incredibly so, after all the bloodshed I’d witnessed. The whole court was gathered, a gossipy multitude of chess pieces on the black-and-white marble floor. The double doors stretched open and the excited chattering gave way to a hiss of silk, as everyone bowed, and the king entered with his baby held stiffly out like a sacred relic, the queen a step behind. As they ascended the dais and sat, there came a squeal from outside, a diabolical sound, and something heavy cracked against the window. More squealing, shrill and sharp. A fawn skittered into the room, clods of flesh torn from its flank. Revulsion rumbled through the court, as tipsily the animal tried to breach the wall of dresses. A white mastiff barrelled after, blood moustached, caught it by its leg, pinned it to the floor and set about the flesh once more, tearing off tissue and muscle to the white of its spine. The splitting yelps of the fawn chorused with human screams. I tried to intercept, but my master held me back.

  No one dared exit for the king seemed to want to watch the massacre—and the infant too. His baby eyes widened with fascination. I thought the fawn would cough up its lungs. I caught its pleading stare, pupils like little stones of terror. Then the mastiff must have cut into its neck as a spurt of crimson javelined the air, speckling blood against a lady’s skirt. The animal went limp as blood pumped and pumped into a slick shinier even than the floor. Perhaps my memory plays tricks, but I’m sure the infant smiled in appreciation, before the room returned to the ceremony.

  That night, the king, queen and their court dined in splendour. Salvers were put down and domes whipped off to reveal piles of meat, of venison in particula
r. I glowered at the courtiers, furious, unable to put from my mind the pleading expression of the fawn. I could not comprehend how they could all have forgotten it so quickly. I slunk into the kitchens and watched, cold-eyed, as dead pigs were hauled stiff on to counter tops and their heads sawn off. The flavour of blood hung in the air like rusted tin. That morning, I’d passed by the pig-pen behind the kitchen garden. There were eight or so creatures scoffing from a trough, whilst one slept on its own, its snout resting contentedly on the gate. Bull grasses tickled his flank and scents of sweet bay, lovage and sorrel carried from the walled garden. The gate would be opened in due course, a swineherd would come in and tattle with his young, perhaps stroke their ears, even as he decided whose throat he would cut first. For the first time I wanted to be back on the battlefield: there at least men died hot-blooded, for a cause they believed in, the risks mutually agreed. There at least was the possibility of nobility—but the slaying of innocent animals was barbarian.

  Soon enough we returned to our crusade, forty more years of it before the afternoon of sweet smoke in Venice, four decades of marches, campaigns and battles—Nördlingen, Breda, Arras, Groningen, Maastricht, Saint-Denis, Vienna—the continent tearing itself apart, fixing and breaking, fixing and breaking. Just one thing was different: after our stay in the court at Saint-Germain, I made a vow that I have kept ever since.

  Let humans be savages, if they must, but I’ll not kill a creature, not for food, or for any reason. Not ever.

  11

  FALSE BLOOD

  Opalheim, Westphalia, June 1815

  Every waking hour I rack my brain of ways to break out of the chamber, the old ballroom that Vilder has locked us in, but return to the same conclusion: the windows are impenetrable, the gallery too high to reach, and there are no exits other than the door we came through, which is still locked. As for my master, only one thing is sure: he was here, quite possibly for more than a century. The rest is conjecture: it is likely he was in Venice, for I felt him in the city, but how he got there and where he went after I can only guess.