by Mike Carey
‘There was no harm in the lad, he was just simple. Perhaps it was always there in him, and the falling from a tree had done no more than bring it out. Or perhaps that impact with the impacted soil of Girn Hoyter’s orchard had scrambled up his vital spirits past untangling.
‘Then there was an incident involving a sheepdog. The dog died, and Petos was accused. He was fourteen years old. He cried a great deal, and said he’d never hurt the dog, which was Otto Bibran’s sheepdog, Lightning. But Otto was furious. The dog was the last pup of his old bitch, Phye, and he treasured her more than she was worth. He would take no compensation, he said, but he would have the boy whipped out of town for her death.
‘Well, Petos was not whipped – I intervened, poured oil on the waters, brought the various parties to some sort of amity – but he was obliged to leave. The family sent him to Grünberg, where his mother still had kin. Kin on her mother’s side. Bledviks. They raised the lad,’ Weichorek said with a slow shake of his head, ‘as something between a serving boy and a pet. He slept in the hayloft, not in the house, and they didn’t take him to church with them on Sundays. A sorry state of affairs, but what could you do? My cousin’s cousin, Molinesz, is town clerk in Grünberg and he knew what was going on, but I had no voice that I could raise there.
‘Time passed. In Narutsin, Nymand Petos was all but forgotten. Then something awful and unprecedented happened – a wave of thefts that had the whole village gossiping and pointing fingers. First it was Gelen Stromajik’s ladle. Then a silver-gilt hair slide from Dame Dubin’s bedroom. And from my house, too, something was taken,’ Weichorek said. ‘A dollar – a hard dollar, I mean, not a rix-dollar – that was given to my son Jakusch on his first name day. It was a special pressing, with the face of Jakusch’s saint, James the Fisherman, alongside that of the emperor. He prized it highly, and it was a hard loss.’
Klaes began to suspect at last where this rambling story was going. ‘Was Miss Stefanu suspected?’ he asked.
‘That she was. She was the only one, you see, with a foot in all those three houses. Gelen Stromajik was her father’s sister. She was thick as thieves – pardon me, was close friends, I should say – with Dubin’s daughter, and always up there helping her collect eggs from the hens and the geese. And of course she worked for us.
‘So yes, she was suspected. And then she was accused. And when it was put to her, she admitted it.’
‘Admitted her guilt!’ Klaes exclaimed. He could not help himself.
‘Yes. To me. But not to the priest. When she was urged to make confession, she would not do it. She only wept and wondered what would become of her.’ Weichorek scratched his head again and then passed his hand across his brow. ‘It grieves me now to think on her distress,’ he said. ‘But once she had said it, of course I had to act on it. We have no constable here. I sent to Stollenbet, where there is a parish officer and a gaol. A cell, rather, for it’s only the one room in a Martello tower that was once a lookout against the border men. They came and took her, and locked her up. A date was set for her trial.’
Klaes tried to reconcile this image with the forthright and even fierce young woman he had met. It made a bad fit. ‘I find I cannot believe this,’ he said.
‘It troubled me too,’ the burgomaster admitted. ‘Especially that detail of her not making confession. I wondered if there was some other side to the affair that was hidden from me. And then, you know, once she’d been taken away and we were all examining our consciences, or counting our spoons as it might be, the most curious thing happened.
‘The thefts went on, just as before. One man lost a milking stool, spirited away from his barn between sundown and sun-up. Another a poker from the fireplace.’
‘These are not precious things,’ Klaes said.
‘No.’ Weichorek looked grim. ‘Nor was Dame Stromajik’s ladle. I might have thought of that before, but I didn’t. I didn’t even think of it then, to tell you the truth. I thought only of Bosilka’s innocence, and I made up my mind to go to Stollenbet and have the charges against her withdrawn before she came to trial. Only my wife, God bless her, thought that was a sign of undue partiality on my part. To be blunt, she thought I looked on Silkie with an improper affection, and wanted her home again for that reason. And while we argued the point back and forth, with more heat than sense, the snows fell. They fell thick, and they fell deep.
‘You would have thought a foot of snow on the ground and a wind you could shave your beard with would deter a thief from going abroad. And so they did, for two nights and three days. But on the third night we were all roused from our beds with great halloos and alarums. Jorg Stefanu came running into town to say that his workshop had been broken into in the night, and two of his hammers were gone.
‘A man’s tools are sacred things, but I suspect that had little to do with what happened next. One of the village lads, Tilde Shweven’s boy, points out that the thief has left his footprints in the snow. And then all the men are fetching up knives and cudgels and torches and talking themselves into a great fervour. They’ll catch this rascal and serve him properly for his tricks.
‘I tried to calm them. I pointed out that the tracks would keep until dawn, and that daylight would make their enterprise safer and surer, but it would not do. Off they ran into the dark, hunting like hounds but braying like donkeys. And soon enough the trail led them into the woods – and yes, there is someone running before them. They’ve roused up their quarry. So some yell at him to stop, while others throw their weapons at him as though bread knives and paring knives and chisels and awls were javelins.
‘He did not stop, naturally. He must have been afraid they would tear him to pieces. He ran on. Now he was out of sight among the trees, now they caught a glimpse again, and to make the story short they drove him before them all the way to Pokoj. In Pokoj he went to ground, and they lost him for a while. But only for a while. They found him in the first of the cellars, the one with the empty wine racks all along the wall and the broken table in the far corner.
‘The room stank of shit and sweat and rotten food, and they could see why. The thief had made himself a nest there behind the broken table, and stuffed it with blankets and curtains from the rooms above. He had evidently lived there for some weeks, in the most impoverished and degraded conditions. Someone – it was Bosilka, of course – had brought him clothes, and a slop bucket, and food. The food was scraps from my table. The bucket he hadn’t used. He’d just relieved himself against the walls, choosing a different spot each time.
‘I suppose I don’t need to tell you that it was the idiot boy, Petos. Only he was an idiot man now.
‘He had come back from Stollenbet to be close to his former friend, who he still loved. He had followed her, whenever he could, and watched her from a distance, filled with longing for her. Not a man’s longing, I think – just a child’s longing to be close to someone who’d loved him. All the things he’d taken were from places where she’d been. Which of course had led to her being accused and sent away. And she knew it was him, and took the guilt on herself in order to spare him.
‘They were all there. His odd little trophies, laid out in patterns that presumably meant something to him. But we couldn’t ask him by then. Some of those absurd weapons must have hit their mark after all, or else Petos wounded himself by running into trees and falling over rocks in the dark as he was pursued. He was dying, at any rate. From these injuries. From exhaustion. Who knows? From heartbreak, perhaps, since storytellers say a man can die from that. He must have thought Bosilka had abandoned him. That would have cut deep.’
Klaes opened his mouth to speak, but Weichorek raised a hand, indicating that he hadn’t yet reached his peroration.
‘We might have called a crowner to come and sit and answer all our questions. To tell us how he died and most likely to hold one of us, or all of us, to account for it. Perhaps that was the proper thing to do. But I didn’t see, Lieutenant, what good it would have served. Nobody had meant to harm
him. And it might be argued that the blow that killed him had come fifteen years before, when Bosilka pushed him and he slipped and fell from that tree. Certainly she blames herself for it, and will not be convinced that it was an accident. I brought her home. I told her what had happened. I advised her to forget. But then you and your men arrived in Pokoj, and to some of us here – saving your presence, in their eyes one authority is very much like another – it seemed that you might have come to call them to account for this sad business. So. Forgetting, at the moment, is not easy for her. For anyone.’
Weichorek sighed and shook his head again. He waved his hand, inviting Klaes to say what he had been about to say before. But Klaes had been going to ask about Bosilka’s imprisonment and how she had been delivered. With that question resolved, he found he had nothing else to say. The whole grotesque affair reflected well on nobody, and yet he was impressed both with Bosilka’s courage and with the generosity of her heart. He felt, too, that the burgomaster had probably made the right decision in a difficult situation. He hoped that he could persuade Colonel August to do the same.
He stood. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m answered. And I commend you, Meister Weichorek, for your frankness in this. While I can’t promise, I think it unlikely that we’ll need to speak any further on the matter.’ He paused, choosing his next words with care. ‘And it goes without saying that I’ll keep Miss Stefanu’s confidence. If I’m obliged to repeat any of what you’ve told me to my commander, I will take care that her name is not mentioned.’
‘I’m sure of it, Sergeant Klaes. I know I may rely on your discretion.’ Weichorek smiled in a way that might or might not be seen as conveying some hidden import. He also stood, and offered Klaes his hand. They clasped and shook solemnly, as though they were men of business concluding an agreement.
Then the burgomaster waved Klaes out of the drawing room, gave him good day, apologised for not offering him any refreshment, commended his good wishes to the colonel (‘A colonel, you say he is? That’s fine, now!’) and his wife, commented on the way the weather seemed to be turning and excused himself to attend to other business, in that order and without a pause. Klaes was left blinking in the hallway, bemused at the speed of his dismissal.
He was about to open the door and see himself out when Bosilka emerged from the closet, almost colliding with him in the narrow space.
‘You coat,’ she said, thrusting it at him.
‘Thank you,’ Klaes said. But he did not immediately take it. ‘Miss Stefanu, did you purposely omit to mention my arrival to Meister Weichorek?’
The girl bridled, then blushed. ‘I told him right away that you’d come!’ she exclaimed. ‘Almost right away. Very soon after. I do have other duties, you know. Hirschel is meant to be answering the door today, but he’s nowhere to be found. So everybody complains that I’m slow, when I’m up to my elbows in washing.’
‘I’m not complaining,’ Klaes assured her. ‘Only, I’d like you to know that you don’t have to be afraid of me. I wish you’d believe that. I’m not trying to work you harm.’
Bosilka’s mouth set into a tight line. ‘I believe that, Lieutenant Klaes.’
‘Thank you. I’m glad of it.’
‘But the harm may come, whether you work it or not.’
Klaes cast about for an adequate reply, but found nothing. He opened the front door instead, intending to depart before she could lambast him any further. He was turning towards Bosilka to take his leave when he noticed that her eyes had widened, a look of horror on her face. And then, as if underscoring her words, he heard shouts and cries from the street behind him, and the dull thud of flesh hitting flesh. Filled with foreboding, he turned and met a scene which gave him some taste of the harm Bosilka had in mind. And he swore in terms which no gentleman should ever use in a lady’s hearing.
20
Lieutenant Tusimov’s expedition had started off well enough, but it had not ended propitiously. Not at all.
The Glogau valley at this point was very wide and very shallow, its breadth greater than the elevations on either side. At its centre was the Mala Panev, a tributary of the Oder, which at certain times of the year was a considerable torrent. It lay peaceably enough within its banks now, but Lieutenant Tusimov noted how high those banks were. He decided he would make the river the westernmost point of their progress, since in any case it marked the legal boundary between Silesia and Prussia, where they had no business to be. Not, at least, until Frederick Hohenzollern made himself such an irritant to the empire that it became necessary to set his teeth on edge.
Until then they were peacekeepers and guardians, not warriors and angels of vengeance. Desirous though he was of glory, Tusimov was content to let it come to him in its own time. He would scruple to vex the Fates with the over-zealous prosecution of his duty, as though he were some questing knight of old.
He marched his unit through the village at a smart pace. He was tempted to order the double march at that point, but when he came to it there was no need. Once they came among the slovenly cottages and the gawking peasantry the men quickened the pace of their own volition, their clomping boots raising spume from the puddles and flecks of mud from the pressed earth. If there had been cobbles, they would have raised sparks.
There were a good few onlookers out on the main street. There were more still, Tusimov was certain, watching from behind sack curtains or through the cracks of doors. The faces that he saw wore a variety of expressions, mostly speculative or solemn. But a few scowled openly, as though the sight of the soldiers so emphatically treading down their thoroughfare were an affront of some kind.
Well, if it was an affront let them open wide and swallow it down. Tusimov considered that he and his men had more right to walk this street than those who merely lived in its vicinity. They, after all, were the guarantors of its continued existence. Dancer paused as they left the village, raising her tail to drop a sizeable load of manure into the centre of the street. As she trotted on, an old lady in a black dress that swept the ground came running out, sack in hand, to claim the prize. She carried no spade; she just scooped the shit into the sack with her bare hands.
From Narutsin they marched on westward and downward, along cart tracks whose ruts were deep enough for a man to step in up to his knees. It was slow going, but the general mood seemed to be good. And in due course they reached the river, where they paused so the men could refill canteens and eat a little dried meat from their trail rations. More than half of them lit pipes too, and since he hadn’t expressly forbidden it Tusimov was content to let it pass. There was something cheering about the grey clouds of their own making that soon hovered over their heads – a riposte to the larger and darker masses sitting on the peaks all around them.
After a decent interval they moved on, turning north now and keeping the river on their left hand. The ground was sodden and overgrown, the path merely notional in places, and Tusimov began to wish that he had taken a different route. He felt that he had better keep to it now, though. They would march to the head of the valley on this lower elevation, ascend the eastern slope via what was marked on the colonel’s maps as a wagon road, and so return to Pokoj along the flank of the mountain called Zielona Góra. The name (Green Hill) promised pleasant views. Better, at least, than their current surroundings, which were quickly becoming a morass.
Morale suffered accordingly, but it was nothing that wouldn’t mend as soon as the going got a little easier. Tusimov urged the men onward, staying in the van where they could all see him. After a while, and choosing his moment with care, he dismounted. Better they should see him slip and stumble in the mud than that they should view him as the sort of officer who made demands of them he wasn’t prepared to meet himself.
They slogged on like this for another hour. Tusimov kept his eyes peeled for a track that was further removed from the water, but the map showed nothing and nothing offered itself. Eventually he sent out scouts. They came back wet, discouraged and empty-handed.
Halfway up, the slope became so steep that their progress could no longer be called a march. It was a climb, and not an easy one. Dancer was doing her best, game old girl that she was, to pick her way through the scrub and furze and treacherous scree, but her own weight dragged her down two steps for every three she took, and it was only a matter of time before she fell and broke a leg.
‘I’m going down and around,’ Tusimov told Strumpfel. ‘I’ll meet you on the lee slope.’
‘Yes sir,’ Strumpfel said, loosening his grip on a clump of couch grass to essay a clumsy salute. Tusimov led Dancer back down the precipitous incline even more slowly than they had ascended it. The men watched him go, wordless and unhappy.
‘Stick to it, lads,’ he exhorted them as he passed. ‘Nearly there.’
Approached from the other side, the mountain held fewer pitfalls, but whoever had called it Zielona Góra was bloody colour blind. It was grey gravel and grey scrub all the way up to a crown that was bald and gaunt. He actually got there before the men, whose route had taken them around a spur a half-mile to the west and back again to what counted as the summit.
‘And there,’ Tusimov said, when everyone had struggled to the top and could see where he was pointing, ‘is Prussia. Like a boil on the arse of Europe.’ The men nearest him laughed despite their exhaustion, but he suspected it was only because they were in his line of sight. There was silence from behind him, which goaded him to further verbal flights. ‘The abscess of syphilis, no doubt,’ he suggested, raising his voice. ‘Morbus gallicus, my lads, the French disease. Young Frederick has turned Berlin into a brothel, after all. So who should wonder if he turns his country into a tart’s welt?’