by Mike Carey
It took some time for Klaes to find suitable rooms for the officers. By the time he had identified the four or five best upstairs, with the fewest holes in the walls and floors, the majority of the company had finished setting up their tents and were sitting around outside, leaning on their packs and dicing or playing cards. Klaes was gloomily overseeing his men as they swept floors and laid out pallets – he did not trust the remaining beds – when he heard his commanding officer’s voice over the buzz of conversation from outside.
‘Klaes! Where is the man?’
Klaes hurried to obey the summons. August had clearly recovered his temper: he greeted his lieutenant with some cordiality, strode past him into the house and, not seeming to notice the dank smell or the scrofulous walls, pronounced that it would do very well.
‘I have another job for you,’ he told Klaes. ‘The mayor has invited me to sup with him this evening. I had to decline, of course; my presence is required here to oversee the encampment. But we need to maintain good relations with these people. I’ve told him that my place at his table will be supplied by my lieutenant, a young man of great acuity who will be able to tell him all that is needed about our stay here. You’re to be there at seven.’
Klaes prided himself on his discipline: he did not show his dismay by so much as a twitch. He suspected that August saw it anyway.
‘Very well, Colonel,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and change my clothes.’
‘No need to wear dress uniform, anything like that.’ August gave a small snort of laughter. ‘But you might go on horseback; that should impress them.’
Klaes bowed and made to withdraw.
‘And while you’re there,’ August said before he could go, ‘find out what they’re hiding.’
‘Sir?’ said Klaes, taken aback.
‘There’s something going on here. The people are too sullen and the mayor too eager to please. You saw how they all hid in the church when we arrived: they have some secret they think they can keep from us, and that’s bad for morale.’
He did not say whose morale, Klaes thought. The colonel could well be right – he recalled the sideways glances between the old men and the unaccountable desertion of the town – but the thought of involving himself in the villagers’ petty intrigues filled him with such deep disgust that he risked a protest.
‘It’ll be some provincial matter, no doubt. Someone taking in someone else’s sheep, that went the wrong way on the mountains. This close to the border, sir—’
‘This close to the border,’ August repeated heavily. ‘And maybe ignoring the border, where it suits them. Treating the dispositions of Her Imperial Highness as though they were dainties at a meal, to pick and choose from. You think that a small matter, Lieutenant?’
Klaes was mortified. ‘Not at all, sir!’ he said, drawing himself to attention.
‘It’s really a matter of discipline,’ August said. ‘It may be some entirely trivial matter; most likely it is. But they think to conceal it from the officers of the empire, and that cannot be permitted. So you will find out their little secret, discreetly and by whatever means you choose, and report it to me. I’ll decide then what action is required.’
Klaes saluted. ‘Yes, Colonel.’
‘They must be made to understand that they cannot lie to us,’ August repeated. ‘See to it, Lieutenant.’
2
The gypsy girl Drozde (who in truth was neither a gypsy nor still a girl, but a travelling entertainer who had fallen in with the troop for want of something better) was enjoying herself for the first time in days. Her man among the soldiers, Quartermaster Sergeant Molebacher, was no doubt nettled by her absence from his side. He had been kept behind in the rear party, and she had taken the opportunity, while he was busy arranging supplies in the back of one of the carts, to slip away and seek out the company of pleasanter companions. Libush and Alis had both worked in the brothels of Legnica before taking up with the company, and their stories could surprise even Drozde. Her feet ached, and she suspected that Molebacher would have something to say to her when she saw him next, but still she was laughing.
‘And he stuck like that! They couldn’t get him out, front or back. We had to cut him out at the finish. It took, I swear, the whole night …’
‘You’re lying.’
‘No, I promise you. The sun was rising. If you’d only seen how fat he was …’
Libush’s voice faded into silence as the three women came through the last stand of trees and saw the house properly for the first time. It was huge, bigger than any building Drozde had seen up close before. It had been even larger once, she could see: there was a broken-down structure over to one side, like the ruins of a church. What sort of rich family keeps their own church and lets it fall down? she wondered. But most likely it had been damaged in one of the wars. There had clearly been a good deal of fighting around here. She could tell by all the ghosts.
She noticed them as soon as she passed through the house’s gates. They were everywhere – more than she’d ever seen in one place. She told herself it made no difference: she’d long ago learned how to ignore them, and it wasn’t as if they bothered her – or at least no more than flies in summer bothered her. Still, she couldn’t deny it was off-putting to see so many of them so densely clustered.
She turned away deliberately from the two grey figures she had just noticed hovering behind the spiny bushes lining the carriageway, and tried to put them out of her mind. She had enough to think about right now. The house was more than a little dilapidated: even from here she could see the sagging sections of roof, the gaping holes where windows had been. That meant damp and mould, not a good environment for her puppets. She could keep them in her tent, of course, but it would be cold and windy, and if the rain came back they’d be better off indoors. And anyway there was Molebacher to consider. If he wanted her in his bed every night, that was where she’d have to be.
The thought of Molebacher made her quicken her pace. His party was not far behind: they might be here before the day’s end, and there were things she needed to arrange before then. The first group of soldiers had already reached the house and were standing at an approximation of attention in the courtyard, receiving their orders from Lieutenant Tusimov. Drozde bid goodbye to Alis and Libush with a promise to find them again in the evening and left the gravel drive, trampling weeds and pulling her skirts in against the thistles to overtake the men in the rear of the column. There were some curious glances at her, but the men were used to Drozde’s quirks by now; besides, after a three-day march, small wonder if she was impatient to reach the end of it.
Tusimov dismissed most of the men to make camp in the grounds to the south of the house. They’d need an hour or more to clear the ground first, Drozde thought: she caught some disgruntled looks as they streamed past her. But a small party was also deputed to help the young lieutenant, Klaes, prepare the officers’ quarters. Excellent! They were headed by Sergeant Strumpfel, who was slow and elderly and would give her much less trouble than Tusimov if she were caught. Drozde joined the men unobtrusively on the far side from the lieutenant, and accompanied them through the mansion’s great wooden door.
It was gloomy inside, and as damp-smelling as she’d feared. Men’s voices came from overhead, and the sound of shifting furniture. Strumpfel halted his party in the great entrance hall and began to give ponderous instructions. Drozde quickly slipped away into the closest side passage and made her way along it, keeping to the wall and watching her feet. The kitchen would be at the back. They usually were.
It was so dark she had to feel her way much of the time. The walls were clammy and alive with a sort of buzzing. God alone knew what creatures infested them. But after listening intently for a while, Drozde decided that the sound was not in the walls; it was perhaps not even a sound, but more of a restlessness in the air around her. It made her skin prickle, as if she were being watched. More ghosts, she thought irritably. Though in fact ghosts rarely seemed to watch her. Some
times, it was true, groups of them would gather at the back of the audience at her puppet shows, although she could never understand why. Perhaps they were drawn to any crowd. With this exception, however, they usually paid her no attention at all. Even the ones she’d seen in her childhood, the ones she’d known when they were alive, had mostly seemed not to recognise her, and if they spoke to her said nothing that made much sense. It was one of the ways she’d learned to tell a ghost, even the most solid ones, from a living person: that inward look; the feeling that whatever occupied them, it was nothing she could see.
The wall fell away beneath her hand: a cross-corridor. At the same time the buzzing intensified until the air in the hallway seemed to crackle with an indefinable energy. An excitable ghost, or maybe more than one. Whatever it was, she hadn’t time for it now; the supply party might be arriving any time. She felt around for the opposite wall and pressed on, and the charge in the air abruptly subsided.
She found the kitchen at the back of the house as she had expected. It was a huge room, filthy and decked with cobwebs but clearly serviceable. Two half-glazed windows let in some light through their covering of dirt; through them Drozde glimpsed an overgrown garden and a well partially obscured by creeping ivy. The larder was wide and mercifully empty. There was copious shelving, a small but solid table and a monstrous fireplace. None of these details concerned Drozde overmuch, except perhaps the fireplace, but a spacious kitchen to work in would certainly sweeten Molebacher’s temper and so make her life pleasanter.
The only downside to the room in her eyes was the ghost stretched out across the middle of the floor, an issue which would not inconvenience Molebacher at all. Normally Drozde would not have minded either, but it was an ugly thing, no more now than a black stain, though it still held the vague contours of a man. Again and again it moved to cover the remnants of its face with one attenuated arm – the same movement of shame or shielding each time, like an echo that never faded. For some reason the sight of it disconcerted Drozde, and she gave it a wide berth.
But she found what she had been looking for, at last: a staircase in the corner of the kitchen led down to a storeroom, which was cool and relatively free from damp. A tall cupboard against one of its walls would make an ideal place to hang her larger puppets: it even had hooks at the top, and there was plenty of space beside it for her trunk. Molebacher was fat and hated unnecessary exercise. He would be in no hurry to spend time down there, and would be happy to depute any fetching and carrying up and down the stairs to her.
Humming to herself, Drozde went back up to inspect the nearby rooms, where Molebacher’s patronage would require her to spend much of her time. In his absence, she risked a whipping for wandering about here without leave, but she was not unduly worried. All the sounds of activity were from the rooms above, and even if one of Strumpfel’s men discovered her, she reckoned she could sweet-talk the old sergeant. Klaes was a trickier proposition, but although he was stiff and humourless the lieutenant had a painstakingly scrupulous air about him: she doubted he would order a woman to be beaten.
The next-door scullery was open to the outside where a back door had fallen in. There were puddles on the floor and orange mould on the walls. Beyond it was a large cupboard that had served as a game-hanging room; Drozde shut the door hastily, wincing at the smell. The rooms to the other side were more promising: a smaller kitchen with a bread oven, and a furniture store containing benches, more tables and a high-backed wooden chair with arms. She looked around with satisfaction. These would be Molebacher’s quarters: fair-sized, close to his domain and already furnished. The chair, with its generous seat, might have been made for him. And sharing his pallet in here would be more comfortable than lying on the stone floor of one of the kitchens – or in a tent, for that matter.
It was time to leave: she’d done all she could here for the time being. The passage outside seemed less forbidding now; perhaps her eyes had grown used to the darkness, but she found her way back without needing to feel the walls as she went. She paused as she reached the side corridor that had demanded her attention on the way in. It was silent now. Wasn’t it? She listened and thought she caught an echo of that strange buzzing.
A ghost was like a fly in the room, Drozde told herself. You couldn’t reason with it and you couldn’t get rid of it. Best just to ignore it and hope it went away on its own. But on the other hand …
No, she decided. If it’s in the house, I’ll run into it sooner or later. Might as well see what I’ll be living with.
This passage had a smoother floor and taller doors than the other. As she made her way down it she could still hear a faint trace of the disturbance from before, less a sound than a vibration in her head. It led her to a door about halfway down, rising sharply as she laid her hand on the handle.
The room inside seemed almost untouched by the decay of the rest of the house. It must once have been used for dancing: the floor was of closely laid wooden tiles, scuffed but undamaged, and in the middle of the far wall was a platform, its ornate and spindly railings still touched with gold, where musicians would have played. The silk tapestry wallpaper was discoloured and tattered, now, and the marble fireplace choked with dust. It was empty, but something about the quality of the air suggested to Drozde that it had been full only moments before. The shadows at the edges of the room seemed to squirm in the dim light. She closed the door carefully and walked away. She did not run. She was not a child any more, to start at shadows. But she could feel her heart beating uncomfortably fast as she gained the entrance hall and slipped out through the half-open door.
The sky was darkening with the threat of rain, and she was alone outside the house. From within she heard heavy boots on the marble floor and the voice of Colonel August shouting orders. She hastily moved away from the doorway. The men must be hurrying to finish making camp now, with Tusimov overseeing them. She should really head over there: Alis and Libush would be wondering what had become of her.
The wind had picked up with the onset of evening. Drozde pulled her shawl more tightly around herself and ran across the courtyard, suddenly aware of how tired she was. As she plunged into the weeds and thorns of the grounds, she heard something approaching from the road beyond: a low rumble which resolved into men’s voices, the clopping of hooves and the trundling of carts. The supply party had arrived.
3
Choosing his moment with care – the men of the detachment busy erecting their tents and pavilions, his wife no less engaged in the retrieval and sorting of her wardrobe – Colonel Jander August retired to a room with a serviceable table in it (it was a billiard table, but that didn’t trouble him) and wrote an entry in his journal.
The hour was perfect. The windows, thrown open, let in the slanting light of late afternoon, and the fresh scent of earth awoken by the rain which had just started to fall outside. The autumn sun was not profligate, but it was no miser. He needed neither candle nor fire as he set out ink and pens and blotting sheet, found the page, chose and fitted a nib.
With a profound sense of peace and rightness, he dipped the pen and began. He had no illusions in this. He knew that he wrote for his own posterity only, not for the future generations of humankind. But his own posterity was not a small thing: Augusts not yet born would know him through these pages, and his thoughts would become their thoughts. It was dizzying. It was, in a complex and bounded way, immortality.
In the business of empire, he wrote,
as in many other businesses, great care must be given to borderlands. A border is where the logic and cohesion of your endeavour will be tested. It is where, if there are loose threads, the processes of unravelling and wearing into holes will be seen to begin. Rome was sound at the centre but rotten at the edges, and so Rome fell. If our empire unravels, it will unravel from the east.
I have been set at the head of a small detachment – two hundred regular infantry, together with a hundred artillerymen who bring ordnance of every size up to the very largest. No
cavalry, alas, but that is because of the nature of our orders.
We are to fortify a section of the border and guard it with unceasing vigilance. Similar units are being stationed even now at intervals along this whole contested front of two hundred miles or more, in the first place to discourage the Prussian monarch from pressing his absurd claim to Silesia and in the second place, should he venture a foray across the Oder (or its tributary the Mala Panev, which marks the border where we are), to make him understand how costly any such adventure would be to him.
Is it an honour to be chosen for this assignment? No. It is not. My general does not think, and nor do I, and nor does any man of sense, that Prussia will presume. It would be as if a small, fierce dog should bite the tail of a lion. Of course, if circumstances changed and the lion was beset elsewhere by tigers or bears, then the dog might take his chances. But for the moment it is unlikely we will be too much troubled – and certainly not before the spring, for what fool would invade with all the worst of winter to come?
Still, I do not regard this posting as a waste of our time. Far from it. Given my remarks above on the subject of borders, you will easily understand that I interpret my role here more broadly than my official letters of commission would suggest.
If the centre is to hold, the extremities must be reinforced with pillars of stone and columns of men. While the Prussian hangs back and waits his moment, we must shore up the house of Habsburg, the seat of our archduchess, with stout timbers. And any timbers that are rotten we must cast into the fire.
The colonel sat back and read over what he had written. It started well, but this last section would not do at all. He had talked of pillars of stone in one sentence, but in the very next he had switched from stone to wood. And rotten timber wouldn’t burn well: if it were rotten on account of damp it would spit and sputter and resist the fire.