by Mike Carey
Drozde knew that she would in all probability get nothing more from Ermel, but still she persisted. ‘Can you try?’ she asked her.
Ermel frowned in concentration, staring beyond Drozde as if trying to sort her memories in her own mind. At length she said, ‘It was on the day after the comet, I know that. A star with a long tail, over in the northern sky. A beautiful thing, it was, and we only saw it that one night. Our captain said it was a sign of victory, but there were others feared it meant death. For me, I thought of Max and Kristof, looking at it the same time I was, and I hoped they were together, and thinking of me.’ She resurfaced from her memories and smiled shyly at Drozde. ‘So that might help you find out a time.’
For a moment Drozde was tempted to observe that dying seemed to addle the wits. A star with a tail was all very well, but had none of the ghosts ever come across an almanac? When they did not deliberately evade Drozde’s questions, they seemed hopelessly confused by them. Thea had been similarly uncertain about time, she remembered: although the woman could recall the story of her life in minute detail, she had said that it only took three days to get to Pokoj from Leipzig, which was clearly absurd. But Ermel had answered her as well as she could, she told herself. There was no justice in blaming her for the attempt, and for all her uncertainty about times and dates, she and the rest of them understood more than did most spirits.
Their eyes were on her now, waiting for her to ask for another story or to conclude the night’s proceedings. So she swallowed her irritation and thanked them all for a pleasant evening, laying her questions and frustrations aside for the time being.
But some hours later, when full night had fallen over the camp and she lay awake while Molebacher snored beside her, she thought of Ermel’s story and what it had told her. If the dead girl had spoken true, and her confusion about some aspects of her tale did not call the whole into question, then the Mala Panev was a barrier already breached before, and Pokoj a fortress long since fallen. That knowledge was troubling to her, for all that no-one seriously expected war to come. Drozde shivered in the dark, and drew more of the blankets over herself. His cradle rocked by fine brandy, Molebacher neither knew nor cared.
22
When he and Tusimov delivered the unpleasant news to Colonel August in his quarters, Lieutenant Klaes was surprised at his commander’s reaction. He was hoping for calm, but feared a great explosion of anger. Instead August nodded with what seemed like a sort of grim satisfaction.
‘I knew there would be some such eruption,’ he said. ‘A good officer must be a reader of men, Klaes,’ he said, turning a condescending eye on him. ‘That was why I set you on to watch these people. I knew they were not all they should be – that there was some deformity in their lives, or their loyalties, or both. If anything, I’m pleased this has come to a head so quickly. We’ll deal with it, and then they’ll know where they stand with me. They will know it very clearly indeed.’
August delivered this speech with considerable relish, and Klaes could see that the news he’d brought had slotted like a polished stone into some mental mosaic the colonel was building. He viewed this with distaste. His own weakness was for suspending judgement rather than rushing towards it. Yet he had enough awareness of that fact to realise that August’s way, for a leader of men, was probably more productive of results.
‘Tusimov, dismiss,’ the colonel said. Tusimov saluted with visible relief and left the room. It looked like Klaes was going to have the honour of cleaning up this mess by himself, which was hardly fair, he reflected bitterly, given that his only crime had been to see it take place. But of course, as the only officer present at the time, he was in the unique position of both knowing the details and having the required authority to act on them.
‘It’s too dark now to pursue this any further tonight,’ August told him. ‘Take a squad of ten and go into the village at first light to arrest the ringleaders. You’ll know them by sight, I suppose?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Bring them here then, and put them under guard. We’ll try this matter out and put them to their punishment in the morning. That will be all.’
‘One last thing, sir,’ Klaes cut in hurriedly. He had not forgotten his conversation with the burgomaster, and wanted to report it before it got lost in the wake of the day’s more dramatic events. ‘It concerns the other matter you entrusted to me. The question of whether the villagers were trying to conceal something from you. I think I have determined—’
August waved him aside impatiently. ‘Later, Klaes. If it doesn’t bear directly on the issue at hand, then it can wait. Surely you can see that it’s of scant importance now that there’s been open, demonstrable riot.’
Klaes was dismissed before he could say another word, but when he was halfway down the corridor Colonel August came to the door and called him back. ‘Molebacher,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘Sergeant Molebacher, Klaes. He’s the man you want on a delicate matter like this. They look at his bulk and they’re subdued, you see? Beaten before they start. Before they even think of starting. No offence to you, but you don’t look much like a bruiser – and your role in this current matter bears that out. Where you stood and looked, Mole would have acted. So take him with you, and tell him to assemble the rest of the detail. Bring along a few of his burly kitchen boys, perhaps. They’ll take no nonsense.’
The door slammed to, leaving Klaes to digest this insult by himself. Had he been another kind of man he might have uttered some sort of oath, or at least let his chagrin show on his face. As it was, he turned away with no discernible change in his expression or his movements.
Early the next morning he went to the kitchen, where Sergeant Molebacher was not immediately to be found. Klaes would have been content to leave him in that condition, but unfortunately the most perfunctory of searches turned him up. He was sitting behind the house, close to the open kitchen door, smoking a pipe of tobacco and enjoying the wintry sunlight. His boots were unlaced, the tops pulled as far apart as they’d go, and every second button of his uniform jacket was unfastened – the furthest a man could go towards undoing it without collecting a charge.
Klaes told the sergeant curtly to choose ten men of proven reliability and meet him at the gates. ‘For what?’ Molebacher demanded. ‘Begging your pardon, sir.’
‘Special duties,’ Klaes said. ‘That’s all you need to know.’ But he could hardly order the man to assemble a detail without telling him what its brief was. ‘We’re going into Narutsin to arrest the villagers who fought with Lieutenant Tusimov’s men yesterday. Colonel August seems to think you’re the man for the job.’
At the colonel’s name Molebacher’s whole demeanour changed. He came quickly to his feet, brushing tobacco ash from his sleeves and trousers, and hurried off without even troubling to lace up his boots.
Ten minutes later he appeared at the gates with a ragged column of men behind him. Klaes took one look at them and shook his head. ‘Not these,’ he said.
Molebacher bridled. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, you told me to make my own choices.’
‘And that was my mistake. Dismiss, you men.’
Complaining at the very limit of audibility, Sergeant Molebacher’s chosen dispersed. They were not all thugs – or at least not all immediately identifiable as such – but Klaes’s knowledge of the faces he did recognise gave him no confidence whatsoever in the rest. He didn’t want to start a second street fight while arresting the perpetrators from the first.
He reeled off some names from his own company. Toltz and Schneider. Egger. Haas. Langbrun. Nestroy and Fingerlos. Kuppermann. All good men who could be relied on to do what they were told and not to go beyond that without good reason.
Molebacher went away and returned with a sour face and the new detail. He had added, without being asked, Swivek and Rattenwend – two of those kitchen boys the colonel had mentioned, whose chief virtue seemed to lie in being able to keep pace with the
ir sergeant when he drank and to peel potatoes without cutting off too many of their own fingers.
‘At the single,’ Klaes said, and they set off. He allowed no time for questions to be asked and nobody raised any. Presumably Molebacher had told them what their business was in Narutsin, and they kept their excitement in check.
In the village, everyone they passed – man, woman or child – stopped what they were doing to watch them go by, their faces turning almost imperceptibly like the heads of flowers following the passage of the sun.
At the mayor’s house Bosilka answered the door to Klaes’s knock. Seeing a column of armed men outside, she stared at them dumbly for a moment – but rallied, ignoring them to favour Klaes with the grimmest of curtsies. ‘Yes?’ she said at last. ‘Can I help you?’
‘My compliments to Meister Weichorek,’ Klaes said. His voice sounded absurd in his own ears, but there was no escaping these strange formalities – at least, not without descending to something more brutal and uncivilised. ‘I need to speak with him about yesterday evening’s disturbance. I’m happy to attend him. Or it might be he prefers to come and speak to me here. I’ll take as little of his time as I can.’
‘You can wait out here,’ Bosilka decided, without even consulting her master. She slammed the door, which stayed shut for some minutes. Klaes did not turn, but heard his men stirring restively behind him. The insult had not gone unnoticed, and they’d taken it (no doubt correctly) as a snub aimed at all of them. The men Molebacher had selected first would probably already have been looking for some heads to punch.
The door opened again, and Meister Weichorek stepped out. ‘Lieutenant Klaes,’ he said, civilly and with an attempt at a smile. ‘It’s good to see you again. Is there something further I can do to help the regiment settle in?’
‘No, sir,’ Klaes said. ‘It’s not for that I’m come.’
‘No,’ Weichorek agreed. ‘I knew that, really.’
‘The miscreants from the fight yesterday. Do you know their whereabouts?’
Weichorek shrugged unhappily. ‘I know the whereabouts of mine. Presumably you know where yours are.’
Klaes knew he should not let that pass – not with Sergeant Molebacher and the others all listening at his back. Too late, he wished he’d had them wait back at the mayor’s useless gateposts. ‘This is a serious matter,’ he said. ‘Soldiers of the archduchess were assaulted in a public street. It’s a miracle nobody was killed.’
‘Aye,’ Weichorek agreed. ‘We’ve that to be grateful for, at least.’
‘And now there has to be a reckoning. I’d like the men of Narutsin to line up in the street. You will arrange it. And then I’ll pick out from them the faces I recognise from the incident.’
‘I took their names,’ Weichorek said.
Klaes stood on his dignity. The man had brought this on himself. ‘Nonetheless. I would rather put my trust in my own memory than your list. See to it, please.’
He turned on his heel and led his men back out onto the street. He knew that Weichorek hadn’t moved because the dry wood of the porch would have creaked loud enough to be heard. He wondered with a sort of terror what he would do if the burgomaster simply disregarded the brusque command and went back indoors. This was what happened if you allowed yourself to be provoked. You stepped outside your limits, and placed yourself in positions that you were then forced to defend, however precarious they were.
But Weichorek moved at last. He walked out past them into the street, and began the process of knocking on each door in turn for a brief, urgent conversation with the householder inside.
Klaes was surprised, and outfaced. He’d expected Bosilka to be sent, but clearly Weichorek had decided not to hide behind his servants in delivering this unhappy news. Perversely, that generosity of spirit shamed and angered him. It seemed almost as though the mayor was purposefully scoring a point at his expense.
He turned to Molebacher. ‘There are more houses than this,’ he said. ‘Go around the outskirts of the village. Make sure no-one is missed.’
Molebacher stared at him for a long, strained moment, then executed a louche and grudging salute. ‘You heard the lieutenant,’ he roared, much louder than was necessary in the uneasy stillness of the village. ‘Let’s roust these goat-fuckers from their unsavoury liaisons. Step to it.’
The ten soldiers snapped to attention, roused by the magical authority of the sergeant’s hectoring voice, and marched away in his wake – leaving Klaes alone in the village street, feeling more foolish and more exposed than ever.
To complete his misery, Bosilka came out of the mayor’s house now, her outdoor coat loose on her shoulders, and walked briskly by him.
She spat on the ground as she passed. On the ground, and – just a little – on the toe of Klaes’s boot.
Oh, I’ll make sure no-one’s missed, Sergeant Molebacher said to Lieutenant Klaes in the privacy of his own mind. I’ll do everything I’m told to do, and step dainty as a maid, and never say a single word to contradict you. But you’ll be sorry you showed me up in front of my own people, you whey-faced bastard. That you will.
The fringes of the village were an unruly sprawl of fields and barns and dwelling places and middens. There were not, in truth, very many houses, but such as there were were widely spread and in some cases only to be reached by trudging across muddy pastures or wrestling with wire-latched gates. Molebacher split his detail into four and sent them to the four cardinal points of the compass, taking cold north for himself along with Swivek and Rattenwend.
The first dwelling they came to was a farmhouse. There were two men there, a father and a son, but the father was so old and decrepit Molebacher took it upon himself to tell him to stay put. It seemed vanishingly unlikely that he’d been involved in the brawl. He looked as though a gentle poke in the ribs would send him to meet his maker.
At the second house they found a widow and her extensive brood. There were three sons who all seemed quite likely, but Molebacher was certain from the tension of their bodies and the furtive glances they exchanged that there was more to discover here. He had Swivek and Rattenwend conduct a search, and in due course they dragged in a fourth lad who they’d found hiding under his bed.
‘Do you love your old mum?’ Molebacher asked this newcomer.
The boy gave him a surly nod.
‘Well you go on out and join that line in the main street, then. Because if I go out there and I don’t see your face front and centre, I’m going to give you a brother.’
He paused just long enough to be sure the threat had sunk in. Then he gathered Swivek and Rattenwend to him with a jerk of his head and they left.
There was one more house, set deep in the trees. A young woman ran past them as they headed towards it. It was the girl who’d answered the door at the mayor’s house, gone to warn her own menfolk, no doubt, about what was happening. Molebacher and his men kept to their own unhurried pace. Let her roust the pigeons if she wanted to; there was nowhere to hide in these clapboard shitholes, and the sergeant was confident of his ability to see through any subterfuge.
The house, when they got to it, turned out to be a carpenter’s shop – marked as such by the hammer hung up under the eaves. They ignored the front door and walked around to the rear, where they had seen the girl go. There was a door there which was unlocked. They stepped inside without knocking.
They found themselves in a narrow, cluttered storeroom, just as a man in his fifties entered through another door on the far side of the room. The carpenter, evidently, or else the carpenter’s man, for he had an apron on with a square rule protruding from its pocket. The girl who had passed them in the lane lowered at his elbow.
‘What’s this, then?’ the carpenter asked.
‘Speak as you’re spoken to,’ Rattenwend countered. The carpenter’s tone had been mild enough; it was the girl’s scowl that moved Rattenwend to belligerence.
‘Are there any other men besides you biding here?’ Molebacher demande
d. ‘Say true, now, or it will go hard with you.’
‘I’ve my Bible to teach me to speak true,’ the carpenter said, ‘without your prompting. Yes, there’s one other. Anton Hanslo, my indentured man.’
‘And where’s he?’
‘He’s cutting wood,’ the girl said.
‘Fetch him then,’ Molebacher ordered.
The girl made a tutting sound of contempt and annoyance. ‘He could be a mile or more into the woods. Fetch him yourself, if you can find him.’
Molebacher considered. There was no reason to believe the girl was lying. But she had gone to some effort to get to the house before them. It might have been to give this Hanslo the word that he should go to ground.
‘Have a look around,’ he told Swivek and Rattenwend. ‘Make sure there’s no-one else here.’
‘This is my shop!’ the carpenter protested. They ignored him, shouldering him aside as they passed. The place had an upper floor – a loft of some kind, reached by a ladder. Swivek climbed up there, and Rattenwend went into the yard, where there was a small outbuilding. Probably a chicken coop, but there was plenty of room for a man to hide in a chicken coop.
Molebacher went into the workshop, which was small and tidy. He cast a quick look around – enough to satisfy himself that there was nobody crouching in a corner or behind the workbench. Then he turned to leave.
But his eye was caught by a shelf on which a group of wooden carvings stood. They were nicely done, and he thought at once of stealing them. The carpenter would keep his mouth shut, if he knew what was good for him, and they’d fetch a pretty penny at some market. Drozde could sell them on for him. Not here in Narutsin, of course, but as soon as they moved on …
Drozde.
Perhaps it was only because she was uppermost in his mind that he recognised her so quickly. There she was at the end of the shelf, a puppet like one of the woman’s own making, dangling like a prisoner in a gibbet. Except that there was a flirtatious smile on her painted face, and her wooden body was naked, leaning forward from the hip as if to begin a dance.