The House of War and Witness

by Mike Carey

  She glared at the young man until he let the second stone fall and turned away. In twos and threes, the Narutsiners began to leave. Klaes watched with sudden admiration: grieving and distraught as she was, the woman had authority. On an impulse, he went over to her and her husband. Beside him, the carpenter had regained his feet, though the old man was still shaking.

  ‘Meister Weichorek; madam,’ he said. ‘Your son is recovering. I’ll conduct you to him, if you wish.’

  She started as he addressed her, then gave him a look of freezing scorn.

  ‘You are kind to offer, Lieutenant. But I can find my own way.’

  Weichorek, in silence, took the arm of the carpenter, and the three of them left him without a backward glance.

  Drozde walked through the camp in a zigzag line, veering away from every solid object that came into her path. She had no idea where she was going, or why. Voices were ringing in her head. Each seemed hard-edged and angular, glancing off the other voices around it until her brain was full of sounds that lay over and across one another, jammed solid to block all thought.

  And yet the thoughts found their way through, soundless, in blood-red dribbles.

  ‘Drozde. Are you well?’ A hand came down on her shoulder, and in pulling away from it she got half-turned around. It was Taglitz. He took a step back, hurriedly, hands raised to show he meant no harm. ‘It was a brutal sight for a woman to see,’ he said. ‘I was just worried for you, that was all.’

  ‘Worried?’ Drozde repeated.

  ‘That you might be sick, or something. From the blood. Or that your emotions might get the better of you. If you want to sit down, my tent … it’s right here. Only a step away. And I’ve beer, to refresh you.’

  ‘You saw me in disputation with Sergeant Molebacher,’ Drozde translated, ‘and you thought it might be time to go to market.’

  Taglitz didn’t blush at being so quickly found out, but he looked sheepish. ‘If you want to go with another man, Drozde, you’ll have your pick. Of course you will. I know a pottle of beer won’t buy you. But sit with me anyway, until you feel a little better. I’ll lift your spirits one way or another, or chuck my flute in the stream.’

  ‘Fuck off, Tag,’ Drozde growled. ‘And take your flute with you. Touch me and I’ll gnaw your hand off.’

  She walked away from him, but Taglitz was not put off. He gave a strained laugh and continued to walk along beside her. ‘I’m only a private,’ he said. ‘Is that it? Or that I’m fond of my drink? For I can mend, if it’s that. Only let me show you. I can be a sober man and a good one when I put my shoulder to it.’

  ‘Be as sober as a judge,’ Drozde invited him. ‘But your bench is somewhere else.’ She headed for the house. The enlisted men knew they could not enter there – and unlike her they took that prohibition seriously. Now, of course, without Molebacher’s patronage, she was as likely to be whipped out of doors as they were. Even with those images fresh in her mind, the men’s backs like ploughed fields rucked and ruined, she didn’t care. She’d do damage to anyone who tried it.

  Taglitz fell back at last, his steps slowing. ‘Only tell me what I have to do,’ he shouted at her back. ‘I care for you, woman. Tell me how to have you.’

  She stopped and turned. ‘You want me?’ she demanded.

  Tag threw out his arms as though to summon her into his embrace. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Then kill Sergeant Molebacher.’

  The soldier’s eyes went wide with shock at this heresy. ‘Kill—? I can’t do that!’ he yelped.

  ‘Why not?’

  Tag looked comically puzzled. So many reasons. Which would he choose?

  ‘He’s too big for me.’

  ‘Then get some friends to join you in the enterprise. I’ll fuck you all.’

  She left him standing there, still calling after her. He wouldn’t do it, she knew. He might carry a musket, but he would never kill a brother soldier. He probably couldn’t kill at all without the smell of blood and cordite on the wind and the holy terror of a Prussian battle line, or a French or a Dutch or a Russian or a Turkish one, rushing down on him. He had cheered on the floggings, but that was something a man did because the men around him were doing it – which in the end was why men like Taglitz did anything. He could strike out in a quarrel when his blood was up, but he would never kill for his own advantage. And if he ever did go after Molebacher, he’d break on him like water on a rock. There was not enough harm in Taglitz to help her.

  She went down to her cellar room, and closed the door. She thought it would be some comfort to be among her puppets, and it was, but it was a foolish place to have come, after all. It would be the first place Molebacher would search for her, if he searched at all.

  She looked for a bolt, and there was a stout one, but it was on the outside of the door. The builders of the house had never envisaged somebody wanting to lock the cellar from the inside.

  She gripped the edge of the cupboard and pulled it away from the wall, leaning back to apply her full weight to the task. It was of solid wood and moved slowly, with a great deal of scraping and creaking and catching on the edges of the tiles, but gradually she was able to drag it across the room, an inch or two on this side and then an inch or two on that, until it blocked the door.

  She finished her work none too soon. She heard the rattle of the door handle, and a dull report as the door hit the back of the wardrobe.

  ‘Drozde?’ It was Molebacher’s voice, breathless and angry. She didn’t bother to answer him. It was obvious that she was there, and beyond that she had nothing to say.

  ‘Come out of that, you stupid bitch. I want to talk to you.’ The cupboard creaked as he set his weight to it. Drozde leaned hard against its back and dug her heels in. It slid a few inches, then held. Molebacher was much stronger than her, but he wasn’t able to push directly against the cupboard. All he could do was throw his weight against the door, which touched the cupboard at a shallow angle. She could hold him for a while.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Molebacher snarled. He kept his voice low, presumably because he was wary of being overheard and bringing onlookers to this dispute. She understood him, and it filled her with a sort of bleak disgust that she had known him so well and judged him so poorly. He always settled his scores.

  He stopped to get his breath back. Quickly Drozde looked around her. Some old timber in the corner of the room caught her gaze. She snatched up a baulk of wood, threw it aside as being too short, grabbed another. She wedged it against the door of the cupboard and jammed the other end between two flagstones.

  Once that bulwark was in place, she picked out another, stouter and longer. She could hear Molebacher grunting with effort as he pushed at the door again. The wedge she’d set in place began to bend, but before it could break Drozde slid the long plank between the cupboard and the further wall of the room. It was a tight fit, leaving only an inch or two of play at either end.

  She kicked away the wedge and the cupboard slid again at once, but not very far. It hit the plank, drove it into the opposite wall, and then stopped dead. As soon as Drozde could feel that it was held firm, she let go of it. Nothing would move the cupboard now.

  Molebacher was cursing at her from its other side. There were scratching sounds as he slid his hand around the partly opened door to explore what was blocking it. Drozde took her first makeshift wedge, which was now surplus to requirements, walked around the flank of the cupboard and peered into the crack between its front face and the door. It was dark, but she could just about see Molebacher’s fingers wriggling about in there.

  She swung the plank into the narrow gap and felt a solid impact. Molebacher wailed in anguish and the fingers withdrew.

  But he hadn’t gone away. ‘You dirty little whore!’ he whispered into the gap. ‘I’ll fucking starve you out. You’re mine. Do you hear me? You fuck me, and no one else.’

  Drozde put her own mouth to the gap. ‘I was never yours, Eustach,’ she said. She used his given name with deliberate
malice, knowing that he hated it. And she spoke much louder than him: if he wanted to keep their falling out quiet, that was reason enough for indiscretion.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘I was never yours. You were just a man I befriended for a while, because good food’s not cheap and I was hungry. I’m fine now. You can go your ways.’

  Molebacher made no answer, but the cupboard creaked and groaned like a ship in a gale as he threw his weight against it. The plank held.

  ‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ Drozde warned him. ‘You’re not a young man, Eustach. You must learn to take things easy.’

  She waited for another assault on the cupboard, but it didn’t come. For a while there was nothing to be heard apart from Molebacher’s ragged breathing. Then that ceased, too. Either he’d withdrawn himself or he wanted her to think that he had. She knew better than to put her head out and see. In his present mood, Molebacher would tear it from her shoulders.

  She sat down on her trunk, alone at last with her feelings. Apart from misery, she found she did not know what they were. She had hardly known Anton. His death was terrible, but he had never belonged to her in the way that Sergeant Molebacher thought Drozde belonged to him. What did his death mean? Nothing. Barely anything. Except that the quartermaster set more store than she did on the exclusivity of their relationship, even though he knew she’d been a whore before and would be a whore again after.

  But misery without meaning was enough, right then, to fill her. She put her face in her hands and began to sob.

  That was how Magda found her. The little girl put her arm, lighter than gossamer, around her friend’s shoulder and embraced her, issuing urgent pleas into the spaces left by Drozde’s in-breaths.

  ‘Don’t. Please don’t. Don’t be unhappy. We love you. Everybody here loves you. It’s all right. Nothing can hurt you. Everything is fine. I’m here. I’ll stay with you. You can have Amelie. She’s the best. The best kitten. You can stroke her whenever you want.’

  Eventually this constant stream of reassurance made Drozde laugh in spite of herself. The offerings were so slight, set against the torrent of her unhappiness, that they were ridiculous.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told the girl, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I’m all right, Magda. You can stop now.’

  Magda drew back to appraise her with earnest eyes. ‘You’re still unhappy,’ she said. ‘Tell me what the matter is.’

  ‘It’s …’ How to tell a child about death? But then, this was a dead child. Presumably she knew more about the subject than Drozde did. ‘A friend of mine was hurt. Very badly. He died of his hurts, and I couldn’t help him.’

  ‘Anton,’ Magda said.

  ‘What?’ Drozde raised her bleary eyes and stared at the ghost-child. ‘What did you say? What do you know about Hanslo?’

  ‘Everything,’ Magda said simply. ‘You always say anything less than that isn’t enough.’

  ‘That again!’ Drozde shivered, and shook her head. ‘Go away, Magda. Please. I don’t have time for this foolishness right now.’

  The girl threw her head back and laughed. ‘That’s what you always say when you don’t really understand something and you don’t want to ask about it!’

  Drozde stood. ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘If you want to make yourself useful, go outside and see if Molebacher is still waiting for me out there.’

  She pointed to the cupboard. ‘All right,’ Magda said at once, and walked through it.

  She was not gone for long. ‘Yes, he’s still there,’ she said. ‘He’s sitting on a folding chair at the top of the stairs. Off to the side a bit, so you wouldn’t see him until you got to the very top and stepped out. He’s all by himself. And there’s a pan on top of the stove that’s all boiled over and gone dry. I think it had soup in it. Red soup, like with beetroots or something.’

  ‘Borscht.’

  ‘Yes. That. He should take it off the fire, because the pan will be ruined.’

  And the officers will be waiting for their dinner and wondering what the world is coming to, Drozde thought. Molebacher would need to watch himself. He tended his camaraderie with Colonel August the way a gardener tends a fruit tree, and for the same reason – to increase the yield. But if Drozde knew one thing well it was the minds of men, and she could count on her fingers the number of missed meals a friendship like that would survive.

  Still, that was not for her to worry about. Molebacher’s fortunes were not hers, any more.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said to Magda. ‘We’ll let him wait a while, shall we? Perhaps he’ll fall asleep.’

  It would take more than that, though. The noise she’d make when she moved the cupboard away from the door would surely wake him, even if he were in his cups. And she had brought nothing with her to eat or to drink, so she was poorly placed to stand a siege.

  These troubling thoughts must have shown on her face. The ghost girl stroked her cheek, wide eyes beseeching her to be of stouter heart. ‘Shall I tell you a story?’ she asked.

  Drozde shook her head emphatically. ‘No more stories. This isn’t the time.’

  ‘It might be, if you knew what story I meant.’

  Drozde pretended not to hear. She stood and walked around a little, to ward off the chill. She’d never lingered in the little room for more than a few minutes before, so she hadn’t noticed how cold it was down here. A freezing draught was blowing in from somewhere – from under the door, perhaps. She folded up the canvas that made up the wings and backstage of her puppet theatre when she performed, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  It became clear to her that she wasn’t going anywhere. Not for a long while. Not until Molebacher had given up on his vigil or been called away to other duties. The man was tenacious, and wily. If anyone would watch a mousehole better than a cat, it was he.

  She turned to glance at Magda, sitting cross-legged on the floor and watching her in silence.

  ‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘Tell me a story.’

  Magda brightened at once. ‘I will,’ she said, clapping her hands. ‘I’ll tell you your favourite. How would that be?’

  ‘Which is my favourite?’

  ‘ “The Man Who Stole the Moon”.’

  ‘All right. Tell me that.’

  Magda patted the tiles beside her. ‘Then come and sit by me!’

  ‘It’s too cold down there,’ Drozde said. ‘I’ll sit on the trunk.’

  She set herself down, rearranging the canvas so it went under her as well as around her. It would do well enough. It kept off at least some of the chill, and protected her from being scratched by the nail-heads that stood proud of the trunk’s lid.

  ‘But you’re too high for me up there,’ Magda complained. She wriggled her skinny body a little, and somehow swam in the air as a fish swims in water, raising herself to a position about level with Drozde’s chest. Drozde was inured to the girl’s strangeness by now, but this made her shiver a little in spite of herself.

  Magda seated herself on the empty air as though it were a cushion, and turned to Drozde.

  ‘I tell it like Ermel told hers,’ she said. ‘Like it happened to someone else, because that’s how it feels to me now. I was Madigan then, and now I’m Magda. And when I was alive, Mr Stupendo was my favourite of all, but I hadn’t met you then, and it all changed so much after you came that nothing was the same any more. Are you sitting comfortably?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Drozde, say yes!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’ll begin.’

  Madigan loved Pokoj from the moment she arrived. For one thing, it was old. It had been an abbey in the Middle Ages, her guidebook said, and after that it had been a lot of other things too: an army barracks and a glass factory and a big house, and finally the Pokoj Heritage Site and Hotel, where Madigan was now staying. Madigan liked old things: they seemed more permanent to her than everything else, as if all the time they had been around already was useful preparation that w
ould help them to last out all the time to come.

  As soon as they had driven up the long gravel driveway and parked the car, Madigan climbed out and pressed her hands up against the building’s weathered stone walls. They felt cold against her skin. Madigan thought that they were full of secrets, and imagined underground passages and hidden rooms, like in the pyramids in Egypt, which were older even than Pokoj. She thought about how the hotel had been there before cars and planes and toaster ovens, and how it would still be there when everyone was gone, and the thought made her feel peaceful, like its name.

  In the huge reception hall, Madigan clattered slowly up and down the stairs, pretending that she was a great lady and everything in Pokoj belonged to her. But then she got tired, so she sat down on the bottom step to listen to her mom talking to the receptionist while she collected their keys. ‘We’re not staying long,’ she was saying. ‘Madigan has an appointment at the clinic in Stollenbet, so we’re only here while we sort a few last details out.’ She smiled and leaned across the counter, like she was telling a secret. ‘It’s the best in the world for her condition.’ And the receptionist frowned and nodded, and before they got into the lift she gave Madigan a lollipop.

  When they got to the room, Madigan’s parents started doing lots of things straight away. Her dad heaved the cases onto the bed, throwing clothes everywhere as he looked for his paperwork, and her mom snatched up the phone.

  ‘I’m going to call the consulate again, Nick,’ she said, jabbing at the buttons on the keypad.

  ‘OK.’ Madigan’s dad glanced at his watch. ‘It’s not quite five yet; you should get through. Shall I email the clinic?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to play a game first?’ Madigan cut in quickly. ‘I brought the frog one, and the one where you have to rhyme all the words’. She had to describe the games instead of giving them their proper names because mom and dad never knew what they were called. Her dad smiled at her and gave her a hug, but he shook his head. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, we can’t play today.’ Madigan wailed in dismay.