by Mike Carey
‘What’s wrong?’ Klaes asked her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m very well,’ Drozde muttered. ‘I only stumbled.’
‘Petos,’ the ghost murmured again. And then another word that might have been nigh. Or nine. Or mine.
‘But why then was Petos killed?’ Klaes asked now, seemingly of the empty air. ‘Did he catch them in the act? But if so, and if they murdered him to ensure his silence, what became of his command? There was only the one body buried in these grounds.’
‘Nymand,’ the ghost whimpered.
‘Isn’t his voice horrible!’ Magda said, her lips pursed with distaste. ‘Nobody likes him. That’s why he’s down here all by himself.’
‘One body?’ Drozde echoed. The smell of the spilled liquor had now joined the other smells freighting the air. She had not eaten or drunk since early that morning. It was hard to keep the voices she was hearing apart in her mind.
‘In the kitchen garden,’ Klaes said. ‘I found a corpse buried.’
‘That’s where they put him,’ Magda agreed. ‘In the end. After they were finished with him.’
‘Nymand,’ the ghost moaned, its restless hands swatting feebly at the air.
‘Who is Nymand?’ Drozde asked. ‘Was that his name?’
She knew at once that it was the wrong thing to say. She had responded to the wrong voice. Klaes turned to stare at her, the pupils of his eyes huge in the dim light of the candle.
‘What did you say?’ he demanded.
Drozde shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Yes. You asked me who Nymand was. But I didn’t call him Nymand, only Petos. Where have you heard that name?’
His expression was suspicious, belligerent. Drozde’s temper flared at the sight of it. She was done with subterfuge, and with fitting herself into the interstices of other people’s narrow sensibilities. She was done with this place too, she realised suddenly. She couldn’t stay at Pokoj, or with the company, after what had happened here. She had reached a crossroads, and must turn to right or left because the way that led straight on held nothing she could bear. ‘Here,’ she snapped. ‘I heard it here, Klaes.’
‘From who?’
She pointed at the shrivelled and ruined little thing that bobbed in the air beside her. ‘From him. Your dead man, whatever his name is. He’s here with us. Do you not see him? No, most likely you don’t. But he’s here, nonetheless. Shall I say hello for you? Ask him what he wants you to do with his mortal remains?’
Klaes stared where she was pointing. He stared long and hard, and his face grew troubled.
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s … I don’t know what that is. The light from our candles, making shadows.’
There was nothing to cast a shadow, but Drozde did not say this. She was astonished that Klaes had seen anything at all. ‘Believe what you like,’ she told him. ‘Nymand Petos – was that his name? – stands before you. What you found in the garden, buried among the beets and turnips, was only a part of him. This is the other part.’
‘His ghost?’ Klaes tried for a contemptuous laugh, but the pitch of it was off by half a note. ‘You tell me you can see his ghost?’
‘And others,’ Drozde said. ‘Why not? You think your eyesight’s so good you miss nothing? There are a thousand things you don’t see.’
‘While you …’
‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine,’ Drozde said. ‘I’m exactly like you, with just this one thing more.’
‘You’re not a bit like him!’ Magda exclaimed. Drozde could not keep herself from laughing at the girl’s scandalised tone, but she shook her head. ‘Not now, Magda. Let us talk.’
Klaes looked where she looked. ‘Another one?’ he demanded. His sarcasm was more successful this time, but only by a little.
‘Pay no mind to her. It’s Petos you came here for, I think?’
Klaes was like a man struggling in the toils of a dream and striving to awake. ‘But you never saw Petos,’ he said. ‘How would you even know him?’
‘He answers to his name.’
The lieutenant brought up his hands as though he cupped something, but dropped them again, shaking his head. ‘No. These things can’t be,’ he said. And then, with deep reluctance, ‘Ask him how he died.’
‘He wants to know how you died,’ Drozde told the pathetic little spectre, hooking a thumb in Klaes’s direction. ‘If you want someone to get the blame for it, he’s the man to tell.’
‘Nymand,’ the ghost whined in its stick-thin voice. ‘Nymand Petos.’
‘Is that all you can say?’ Drozde demanded impatiently.
‘Yes,’ Magda confirmed. ‘You won’t get any more out of him.’
‘Why not?’ Drozde asked. ‘Why is he different? Why is there so much … less of him than there is of you?’
‘He doesn’t tell the stories. We wouldn’t let him be with us, or talk to us, and he lost himself.’
‘So quickly? He can’t have been dead long.’
‘It’s like you lose money out of a pocket with a hole in it, you said. One coin falls out, and then another, and you don’t even hear them fall. But you can start the day rich and finish it poor. And all times—’
‘Turn into the same time. I know. But Magda, are you really saying that the stories make this much difference? The difference between staying yourself and turning into …’ she pointed with a thrust of her chin ‘… that?’
‘They do,’ Magda said. ‘They help us. They build us from the inside, like we’re adding more stones to a crumbly wall.’
‘Did I say that?’
Magda giggled. ‘Yes!’
Klaes was following her side of the conversation, his expression veering between unease and bafflement. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘What’s the man’s story? If you can talk to him, get me an answer.’
‘He can’t answer,’ Drozde said. She shrugged irritably. She would have preferred to have something solid to push into the face of Klaes’s scepticism, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was getting out of this place, past the threatening ramparts of Sergeant Molebacher and into the wide world. She’d be sorry to say goodbye to Magda, but there was only so much she could endure.
‘Of course he can’t,’ Klaes agreed.
‘But Agnese can,’ Magda piped up. ‘It’s her story too.’
‘Who is Agnese?’ Drozde asked her.
‘Enough!’ Klaes cried, exasperated. ‘Enough with this! Who are you talking to? There are no ghosts here, madam, and no …’ He faltered into silence in the middle of his complaint, his face going through a range of confused emotions. ‘Agnese …’ he said, with a much less certain emphasis. ‘Agnese was a friend of Bosilka Stefanu’s. She came to a bad end, Miss Stefanu said. Is she …?’ It was clear that it took him some effort to get the words out. ‘Is she here too?’
‘Is she?’ Drozde asked Magda.
The girl shook her head. ‘She never comes here. Not where he is.’ She glared at the dark smudge of air that was Nymand Petos. ‘She hates him worst out of everyone.’
‘But she is one of the ghosts of the house?’ Drozde persisted.
‘Yes. Of course she is. You’ve seen her lots of times.’
‘I don’t know everyone’s names yet.’ Drozde turned to Klaes. ‘If you come with me,’ she told him, ‘I think I can get you some answers for your questions.’
‘Come with you where?’ Klaes asked suspiciously.
‘Not far. Here in the house.’
The lieutenant hesitated for a moment, his mixed emotions visible on his face. To say yes meant accepting that Drozde’s version of what was happening here – ghosts included – had some merit in it. But whether he knew it or not, he’d crossed that line when he pressed her to interrogate Petos’s phantom on his behalf. Drozde waited him out, confident of what the outcome would be.
‘All right,’ Klaes said at last. ‘I’ll try anything at this point. But it doesn’t mean I believe you.’
‘Of course not,’ Drozde agreed,
throwing his own sarcasm back at him. She led the way back to the steps and up into her cellar room. How would she retrieve her trunk, she suddenly wondered. It was too heavy for her to carry it alone. ‘Can I bring my things?’ she asked Klaes.
‘Your things?’
She pointed to the trunk. ‘My puppets. And my theatre.’
‘I don’t understand. Why do you need them?’
She couldn’t say. Not with Magda at her side, hearing every word. ‘I don’t,’ she admitted. ‘I was just afraid that Molebacher might damage them to spite me.’
‘He’ll answer to me if he does,’ Klaes promised her. He threw out his arm in a sweep, gallantly allowing her to ascend the kitchen stairs before him. Stifling her misgivings, she did so.
Molebacher was exactly where she had thought he would be, watching the mouse hole again from his vantage point beside the door. He slid down off his stool and took a step towards her, his lips curled back to show his uneven teeth – but then stopped in his tracks when Lieutenant Klaes appeared at her elbow.
‘I believe I dismissed you, Sergeant,’ Klaes said grimly. His hand was on the hilt of his sword. Molebacher stared at it and said nothing.
‘Lead on, madam,’ Klaes said to Drozde. And she did. But she couldn’t resist taking a morsel of revenge. She turned to the nearer wall, where Molebacher’s tools hung gleaming on their hooks. There was Gertrude in pride of place at the head of the procession, her square blade so well polished that the candle flame danced within it like a winking eye.
Drozde spat, and her aim was true. Her spit landed at the nexus of blade and handle and began to trickle down.
Insolent, unhurried, she turned her back on the white-faced sergeant and walked out of the room. But the skin of her back prickled, and she expected at any moment to feel the bite of Gertrude’s sullied steel between her shoulder blades.
30
For the first time, Drozde opened the door of the ballroom to find no-one waiting for her. Empty, the room seemed larger than she remembered it; her voice and Klaes’s echoed off the peeling walls. The lieutenant seemed nervous, peering into the minstrels’ alcove as if some danger might be lurking there, but he came into the room docilely enough, and sat down on the spindly chair that Drozde found for him.
‘Now what?’ Drozde asked Magda, who had not left her side. Klaes started and turned to look attentively in the child’s direction, peering as if he might make out who Drozde was addressing if only he looked hard enough.
‘She’ll come now,’ the child said. ‘I called her, and she likes this room. Here she is. Hello, Agnese!’
There was a girl with her, appearing suddenly as if from a fold in the air. She was so vivid that for a moment Drozde could not see her as a ghost, and wondered where she had been hiding. She was dressed demurely in a high-necked grey dress, but her yellow hair escaped in tendrils from both sides of her cap, and her mouth quirked as if about to break into a laugh. She did not immediately acknowledge Drozde, but stood in front of the oblivious Klaes, peering into his face as if assuring herself that he could not see her. After a moment she nodded, turned to Drozde and made a little bob, the curtsy of a girl who had not been trained to deference.
‘Magda says I should tell you my story, Drozde,’ she began. ‘And I’d like that very, very much. Of course I would! But telling you and telling –’ she flicked a glance at Klaes ‘– other people aren’t the same thing at all. You’re from the same time I am, aren’t you? Silkie is alive where you are now, and Bobik; even Birgitta. I don’t want to give them any trouble.’
‘We won’t make trouble,’ Drozde assured her. ‘The lieutenant found out about the smuggling, but he isn’t going to tell his commander. He just wants to know what happened.’
The girl looked at Klaes narrowly. ‘If you say he won’t then I’ll take your word for it, Drozde,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think knowing this will help him very much. I’ll tell you anyway, though, since you ask me to, and you can pass it on if you see fit. Only make sure no harm comes of it, if you can – there’s been too many wicked things done already by men in those colours.’
She must have seen the heartfelt assent in Drozde’s face. ‘Well then,’ she said, and began her story.
Bobik always said, and so did my aunt, that I should not have gone for a maid at the big house, that I was mad to ever go there. And since the place has done for me in the long run, they were right, weren’t they? But if you knew me like Silkie did, you wouldn’t have said that I was mad.
When we were all younger, me and my friends used to talk about what we’d do when we were grown. Jana said she’d make fine dresses, and wear the best ones herself and sell the rest. Bosilka, she’s my best friend, said she’d be a master-carpenter like her dad; she was always funny. And most of the others, it was get a rich husband, a man with a hundred sheep, and have a silver necklace and eat meat every day. But not me. I wanted to go to the city. If a traveller came through when I was serving at the inn, I’d hang around at the table and listen to the talk. Sometimes he’d tell of Praha, or Brno, and it made me want to see them so much. Marble palaces, and theatres with gold and velvet on the walls. And whole rooms full of beautiful pictures, and ladies hung with diamonds just strolling through them. I wanted to be one of those ladies. If I had to marry a rich man to do it, well then. But it was the pictures I wanted, and the diamonds, not the man.
So when the militia moved into the big house and called for a maid, why wouldn’t I go? It was the grandest place for miles around – the only grand place really, for all it was falling down. We broke in there once, Silkie and me, when we were little, and it had marble statues and everything. It would be hard work, I knew that: there were rats and spiders everywhere, and the velvet curtains all rotten. But rotten or not, it was still a palace, with pictures, one or two, in golden frames that would shine if you only polished them. And they were paying a lot more than I could make pouring beer with my auntie and Risha.
Bobik wasn’t too happy about it. We were walking out: he wanted to call it courting, but I could do very well without that. He was a fine enough young man, Bobik, tall and straight and a hard worker, and his cousin Matheus kept the inn and was the richest man in town but only the mayor. But I didn’t have a mind for marriage then, so I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no. A lot of people didn’t like me going, now I think of it. There was more than one old biddy who said I was going the same way as my mama, who left the village when I was a baby. My auntie wouldn’t hear that, of course, though she was the one who called me mad. But Bosilka, who was always sweet, she kissed me and wished me luck. And Matheus was keen for me to go, because of the brandy he smuggled. He’d been keeping it in the cellar at the big house, you see, and when the militia turned up like that without warning, he didn’t have time to move it. I’d never seen him that worried before. He asked me to keep an eye open, see if anyone had been down there, and if not, I was to push something in front of the door to the storeroom, to keep it hidden until he could find a way to get inside the house himself.
Only when I got there, the militia had already found it out. The captain, Nymand Petos – God rot him! – he greeted me at the door, all smiles. I didn’t know then, of course, what he was like; he was fat and he smelled of tobacco, but he seemed well behaved. He called me ‘my dear’. And I was hardly inside the door when he asked me if anyone I knew was storing anything there.
Well, of course I made big eyes and asked him what he meant. He smiled some more, and said no matter. Then he told me to bring a broom when I came the next day.
There were twenty men staying in the house, twenty of them and Petos. Two were corporals, Stannaert and Skutch, but it was Petos kept them all in order. And he had to: some of them were pigs, with wandering hands far worse than what you’d find at the inn. It was a real problem in the early days, when I couldn’t tell them apart; later on I knew which ones to avoid.
My first problem was telling Matheus they knew about the brandy. Well, not
all of them, as it turned out, just Skutch, who’d found the room, and Stannaert. And Petos, of course. I never knew how Matheus sorted it out with him. There was some kind of meeting between all of them, and then the boys were bringing the casks to the house again as if nothing had happened, only now they had a military guard. Bobik came with them sometimes. The first time I saw him there I waved, and made to run over and kiss him, but he scowled and wouldn’t look at me. After that, when I knew he was coming, I went and stayed in the back kitchen with old Birgitta. He was still nice enough when he saw me in town, Bobik. It was only in the house that he wouldn’t give me the time of day. Of an evening we’d meet up sometimes and he was his old sweet self. That’s how I found out about the new brandy. But he made me promise not to tell anyone, and I never have until now.
Inside of a month they were dropping off more barrels than ever before. Bobik told me one night that the new stuff was coming up the river, all the way from France, he said. And Petos was running it all. He had Lukas the carter going every which way, a new load each day in a different direction. He left all the men’s training to Stannaert while he went off with the cart. In the evenings they’d all get drunk, and one night I heard him bragging that he had more money than the mayor. He said he was selling the Prussians their own brandy back to them.
I remember that night because that was the first time I let Petos touch me. I wasn’t meant to be there at all; I was supposed to go home when it got dark, and it was Birgitta’s job to serve them their wine of an evening. But she was old. So they’d offer me an extra grosch to do it instead, and sometimes I did. By that time it was mostly just greedy looks and crude talk: if one of them tried to put a hand on me I’d step away sharp and give him a glare; Petos too. Only that night he got to talking of what he’d do with his money. When his tour of duty was up, he said, he was off to Praha to open an inn of his own: a properly fancy place, in the centre of town among the theatres. He’d serve only lords and ladies, he said, and he talked about the rare stuff he’d give them to drink, and the music and dancing they’d have. He could talk fine, like a gentleman – it made you believe him. And then he said he’d need a pretty girl there to pour the wine for all those gentry, and he looked at me and smiled.