The House of War and Witness

by Mike Carey

  So we rode on, worried that we had somehow lost our way, until we came at length to a village. And this village was yet another impossible thing, because our maps said there was nothing now between us and the border except fields and woodland.

  A few people – old people, mostly, and some children – came out to cheer us and throw flowers in our path. They seemed to be expecting us.

  What is this place? our captain asked.

  This is Puppendorf, they said. A strange name, since in Schönbrunner Deutsch it would mean a town full of dolls or puppets.

  And where is the border? The captain asked.

  They pointed. Over there, very close. You’ll know when you come to the river. But be careful. There are Austrian soldiers. A whole garrison of them, coming here to fight you.

  We didn’t know until then that the Austrians had intelligence of us. This was meant to be a surprise attack, after all. So our officers said we must find and engage this enemy, and not leave them intact at our backs.

  Finding them was not hard. At that moment they began a bombardment – as far as we could tell, a single piece of heavy ordnance aimed precisely in our direction. The balls fell first long and then short, but it could not be long before they found our range. And as if to make that clear, the church steeple exploded into fragments as it took a direct hit.

  Orders were given and we went on at the double march. We had not gone more than a mile before our scouts came on the Austrians, and the circumstances could not have been more in our favour. They were fording a river which appeared to have burst its banks, and every man jack of them was in the water. We went quickly from marching column into battle array – without a single spoken command being given, for we were hidden from the Austrians only by a hundred strides of sparse forest. All was done by gesture, and at the last by the swishing in the air of the captain’s sword.

  We came out of the trees and engaged.

  Oh dear God, we hit them like a hammer. I was not part of the cavalry charge, but the Schuetzen are the fastest and best of the infantry, and we were there to finish what our hussars and Natzmer-uhlans began.

  Chiefly that meant chasing down the stragglers, because the Austrians had mounted no defence at all. They had broken as soon as we hit them, and run in every direction. An officer was standing in the middle of the river, shouting orders at them, trying to bring them into a square, but even those who heard him were sodden and frozen and moving too slowly to be of any use. And then he was hit by a musket ball and went down in the deep water. If the shot did not kill him then the river did.

  It made me sad to see those soldiers fall. There was no courage in it, on either side, and no skill. Those who ran towards us ended up on the lances of our Tartars or ran full tilt into our musket fire. They could not even load before they were cut down. Those who tried to regain the further bank turned their broad backs to us and gave us even easier targets.

  After ten minutes of fighting, I saw not a single enemy who was still alive. I saw precious few who were dead, for that matter: the river took them away. And since the Mala Panev feeds the Oder and the Oder runs through Wroclaw, perhaps their arrival there a day or two later served as King Frederick’s declaration of war.

  38

  Late though it was, Libush was still awake. She’d contracted to meet Fingerlos earlier that evening, and the private was at her tent when Haas came to disturb them with news that Drozde was staging an impromptu and most unofficial puppet show for the sole benefit of Lieutenant Klaes’s men.

  So naturally, Libush attended too.

  She’d heard rumours of Drozde’s strange powers; her friend never talked of them, but she’d never denied them either. Libush watched the show with increasing alarm, but not with disbelief. There, after all, was the miraculous star in the sky above them, a sign of upheavals in the world below. If Drozde said the Prussians would attack the next day, and she had a plan to save their lives, Libush was inclined to trust her. And when she saw Lieutenant Klaes himself among the audience, she had no doubt at all.

  When the show ended and the men clustered around Drozde to be sent on some mysterious assignment, Libush went back to the camp to spread the word on her own account. And when, an hour later, Drozde came to her tent, Libush was waiting for her.

  Drozde stood in the opening with a most uncharacteristic air of hesitation. Libush, bursting with nervousness and curiosity, jumped up and pulled her inside.

  ‘I was at the show, Drozde, so I know what you have to tell me. I’ve told some of the others; if you’ve a plan to save us, we’ll help any way we can.’

  She gestured to her to sit on the bedroll. Drozde was slow to move, and sat down gingerly, as if it pained her. Libush saw with shock that there were tears in her eyes. She embraced her friend, and felt her wince.

  ‘You’re hurt. Let me see.’

  ‘No!’ Drozde held her back as she rose to fetch the candle. ‘There’ll be time for that later, Libush. Didn’t you say you wanted to help?’

  Libush nodded. ‘Whatever’s needed,’ she said, though something in Drozde’s look now was scaring her.

  ‘Here’s how it is, then. The Prussians come in the morning, early, after a night ride that will go down in history. They find our men as they’re getting ready to attack Narutsin. They kill all of them. Everyone that’s there.’

  Libush waited dumbly until Drozde went on.

  ‘If the women shut themselves in the house, they’ll be taken prisoner. The Prussians won’t harm them; I think they’ll let them be ransomed in a few months. That’s what Dame Osterhilis and the officers’ wives do. You could stay with them. You’ll be safe if you do, as long as you stay in the house. Or you could leave.’

  ‘Leave? And go where? How do we escape an army?’

  ‘You don’t, not exactly.’ Drozde leaned forward. Her face was white, and streaked with what Libush thought was blood. What had the girl been doing?

  ‘You go to Narutsin, Libush. And then we make Narutsin vanish.’

  Libush stared at her.

  But Drozde was serious. ‘What’s the boundary between us and Prussia?’ she pursued.

  ‘The …? The river, of course. The Mala Panev.’

  ‘We’re moving it. That is, we’re trying to. Tomorrow, when the soldiers have left, take Alis, take anyone who’ll go with you, and get to the village. Be careful when you cross the Drench. Listen out for three explosions, and when they come, stay well clear of the channel. That’s where the river will go.

  ‘If our plan works, by tomorrow night Narutsin will no longer exist. It’ll be a Prussian village on the far side of the Mala Panev. Puppendorf. And the mayor and his wife will make you welcome there. I’ve seen to it.’

  Libush gaped, then laughed. For a moment she was delighted with the plan. Then she remembered how many men would die by this same account, and was serious again.

  ‘Alis will come with us for sure, and Sarai. Ute and Lidmila and Kirsten, probably. I don’t know about Ottilie; she’ll want to stay with her sergeant.’

  ‘He won’t be a sergeant after tomorrow!’ Drozde’s voice was strained. ‘And if he’s still alive, her best chance of seeing him again is in the village. Tell her that.’

  Libush nodded. ‘Well, Alis and I are packed already. I’ll go round the others at first light tomorrow. Did you want some help moving your puppets?’

  Drozde did not answer at once. Libush had never seen her so pale. ‘I’d be grateful for it,’ she said at last. ‘Wait until the soldiers have gone; no-one will stop you then. But you’ll need a strong stomach.’

  Libush was not given to hysterics. She took in the sight of Molebacher’s body with no more than a sharp intake of breath, and asked no questions, for which Drozde was grateful. By daylight he was a spectacle as much pathetic as fearful. Drozde had crammed him into the meat closet, only just managing to shut the door on him: a temporary measure, but enough to avoid raising the alarm when the orderlies came in for bread in the morning. Now, with most o
f his uniform stained a dull red, he might have been any other carcass, slipped from its hook.

  Libush surveyed the great dead bulk in silence for a while. Then she let out a long sigh.

  ‘I did use to think one of you would do for the other,’ she said. They were talking in whispers, but her voice still seemed too loud to Drozde, echoing round the empty kitchen. ‘Didn’t think it would come out so bloody, though. Jesu, girl, I’m glad it’s him and not you.’

  It’s both of us, Drozde thought. But better this way round. She’d lain down to sleep in her own tent, half expecting not to wake, but her dreams had been full of her own dead face. ‘Almost the hardest thing,’ she had said: staying back here while the others carried out her plan; not knowing how it would work out or how many it would save. She’d keep alive to learn that, if she could. Her whole side burned, and she could not stop shaking, but she had walked here and she was still on her feet.

  ‘Help me lay him in the corner,’ she told Libush. ‘It doesn’t matter who finds him now. And then if you could help bring my trunk up, I’d be grateful.’

  The trunk was not too badly damaged to close, after all. She laid all the puppets carefully in their places and threw the props and the bolts of cloth in after them. There was room for her shawl and the three books she’d taken from the library: all her worldly goods. She let Libush carry it up the stairs for her. Molebacher’s cashbox was where he always kept it, at the bottom of the sack of potatoes. As an afterthought she took out the last two bottles of his good brandy: let the Prussians find their own.

  ‘One for you and one for me,’ she told Libush. ‘And this is for you as well – for you and Alis and Ottilie.’ She held out the cashbox.

  Libush looked more astonished than Drozde had ever seen her. ‘But that’s … You can’t …’ she said.

  And this was hard too. She placed the box firmly in Libush’s hands. ‘Take as many with you as you can,’ she said. ‘Be away from the Drench by sunset. And give Alis my love.’

  She watched as realisation came over Libush, and horror. But she had no more energy left for grief. ‘I’m staying here,’ she said. ‘I’m too weak to move far, and I’m damned if I’m going to die in the dust of the road like a dog.’

  She let Libush fuss over her a little, building up the fire and sitting her in Molebacher’s great armchair. The relief of being able to sit was so great that for a while she forgot the pain. She looked up a little later to find that the light had changed; shadows were gathering in the corners, and Libush had gone. She’d left a glass of the brandy at her elbow, though, and the bottle nearby: a good friend.

  The brandy burned in her guts and set little fires dancing in her chest. She took another swallow, and another. She’d never realised how quiet it could be here, without the voices of the ghosts; without Magda’s constant chatter.

  And where was Magda? The child wouldn’t willingly leave her alone; not in such extremity. She must be here somewhere. Drozde recalled the way the ghosts had drawn her aside after Agnese’s story, to hide her from the colonel and his soldiers. Like pulling her behind a curtain … She felt about for that other place now, summoning up the sense of it. Magda was there, standing by the table and holding out a hand as if to touch her. But two of the other ghosts held her back, granting Drozde these last few moments of quiet and solitude. One figure was herself, her arm around the little girl’s shoulders. The other was a man: smallish, clean cut and brown skinned. Even serious, as he was now, Hanslo’s face was as unguarded as Magda’s own.

  You wouldn’t trust me with him, would you! she chided her ghost self. You thought if I saw him I’d be distracted, not get the job done. You thought I’d turn soft.

  She glanced over at the mound of Molebacher in the corner.

  Maybe you were right.

  With an effort, she reached out to pour herself another glass of brandy. Not long now till sunset.

  They were all dead. All of them. He’d lost his command, his men, even his guns. And posterity would damn him for an incompetent. This last thought was the bitterest of all: Colonel August physically staggered as he forced himself back up the road, back towards Pokoj.

  He should have stayed and died with his men; of course he should. But there had been treachery here: there had been sedition and double-dealing, and by God he would see the miscreants suffer before he died. He would fasten Klaes to that whipping frame and thrash the cur himself. Or better, get Molebacher …

  He recalled suddenly that Molebacher had not been in the muster that morning. He had remarked on it as they marched off. Mole was a brisk man; a keen soldier, always in the front of the ranks where his commanding officer could see him. Yet there had been no sign of him today. Was he sick, perhaps? The possibility that the loyal sergeant might still be alive, back at the house, gave the colonel a spark of comfort. But then, how could he reveal to that brave, honest man the appalling scale of today’s betrayal and defeat?

  He had reached the walls of the grounds. He pushed through the first gap he came to, ignoring the damage to his uniform, and made straight for the house, shouldering through weeds and saplings. The campsite was as quiet as the grave: even the women seemed to have abandoned it. Like rats, he thought bitterly: they can tell before the men when the vessel is holed.

  Not all the women had gone. As he entered the house he heard subdued female voices from an upper room. Of course, his wife would never desert her post, and the other ladies, he was sure, would be loyal to their marital bonds. But he quailed at the thought of going to them. How could he tell them that three of them were now widows? What would Osterhilis think, when she learned the truth? That her husband, going confidently forth to cauterise a weak spot in their country’s defences, had instead laid his command wide open to annihilation, and the empire to invasion?

  Almost with relief he let his thoughts fall back into that track: the rout, and the treachery that had caused it. He need not confront the women just yet. First he would get to the bottom of what had happened here: discover who the traitors were and make them pay – for clearly, Klaes had not acted alone. There was a witness to the first stage of the plot, he remembered: the guard, Cunel, who had let Klaes and his men steal the powder. Cunel was even now in the lock-up on a charge of dereliction of duty. With new energy, now that a clear path of action was before him, August headed for the north wing and let himself into the makeshift cell.

  A querulous voice came from within as he opened the door.

  ‘Schottenberg, is that you? I’m starving – no-one’s brought me anything all day!’

  ‘Schottenberg,’ said August heavily, ‘is dead.’ He let the door slam shut behind him, shaking flakes of damp plaster from the walls. ‘As are you, if you fail to answer me to my satisfaction.’

  The mere sound of the colonel’s voice filled Cunel with such terror that for some minutes he was unable to answer at all. Then he babbled a stream of apologies and self-exculpations, and when August roared at him, lapsed into cowed silence. The colonel was forced to calm himself, to talk quietly and reasonably, before he could calm the man enough to get any sense out of him.

  They’d come in the night, a dozen men or more, and threatened him. He’d held them off, he had, until Lieutenant Klaes ordered him to stand down; but Lieutenant Klaes was an officer – and besides, was sticking him with a sword … Of the men, he’d recognised Toltz, Schneider and Kuppermann, maybe Haas as well. The others – well, there were so many of them, sir. And they’d tied him up and broken in the door and taken the three barrels of powder, and the horses too.

  All the men Cunel named had been absent from the morning’s roster. So August had his culprits to hang – assuming he could find them. And assuming he had a single man left to effect the capture, and could somehow get himself and his prisoners far enough away from the Prussians to hold a court martial.

  The private gave him one more piece of information. Talking among themselves as they hoisted the barrels, the men had mentioned the name Drozde. �
�Her with the puppets – you know, sir?’ Bizarre though it sounded, they spoke as if the woman had had some role in the plot, even instigated it. ‘Not that I’m saying that’s what happened, sir, only truly repeating what was said. But you know what the whores are like – they’ll take credit for anything. Or rather, I don’t mean that you know the whores, because of course you don’t, sir …’

  August cuffed him, and the man sat down heavily on his bedroll. ‘Enough prattling,’ the colonel said. ‘That’s all of it?’ Cunel nodded in hurt silence, and August turned and left him. The blow had relieved his spirits a little, but he doubted the man would receive any further punishment. Who did he have left to administer it?

  Drozde, though … Molebacher’s whore; the woman he had seen last night. Bloodied; looking and sounding somewhat crazed. What had become of Molebacher since then?

  He found himself almost running as he headed for the kitchen.

  At first sight the room was peaceful. There was a scent of brandy and something less pleasant; turning meat, perhaps. The fire was burning down, and the whore sat in front of it, seemingly in a drunken stupor. There was no sign of Molebacher. That was, until he looked around once more and spotted the bulky shadow in the corner.

  August crossed the room in two strides, but Molebacher was cold: he had been dead some time. And he’d been butchered. The gaping rents in his body were fearsome to see.

  The woman stirred at the colonel’s cry. She spoke to him without turning, her voice so slurred as to be barely comprehensible.

  ‘I hoped I’d see you. Did it work? Did the river move?’

  August could barely speak for shock and rage. It was true then, what Cunel had reported. Somehow this creature was the source of all of it: the betrayal and his disgrace. She was mad, of course; but that would not save her from punishment.