by Simon Morden
“Gods,” breathed Prauss. “The dwarves have been busy.”
“Had been busy,” said Thaler. “We must be the first people – the first men at least – to see this in centuries.”
“And yet, Mr Thaler, this has been under our feet the whole time.” Ullmann wandered by, almost in a daze. “Those steps lead to the fortress. Imagine opening a door and finding yourself in the Great Hall.”
“More likely to find yourself behind some forgotten door in the prince’s wine cellar.” Thaler’s breath condensed in clouds around him. He called Emser and Schussig back from their explorations: the cavern was bigger than the library, judging from the distant dwindling of their lanterns, and it took a while for them to return.
“What is it, Thaler?” Emser was impatient to get back to the wonders he’d found.
“As phenomenal as all this is, we still lack the basic ingredient: water.” Thaler rattled his lantern in the direction of the wheels. “Somewhere up ahead must be the source we seek. We cannot give a full report to the prince until we find it.”
Schussig glanced behind him at the pipes and pumps. “The mayor never said, Mr Thaler, but I think it’s time you told us why we’re here.” He raised his light so that it reflected off his damp, bald head.
“To see if we can restart the water supply,” said Thaler, but he realised his explanation was lacking. These were intelligent men, and they’d already noted his single-minded urgency.
“Go on,” prompted Emser.
Thaler sighed. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, and yet … “There’s only one hexmaster left. Eckhardt’s his name. He’s promised to bring the magic back – but at a cost.”
“There are so many questions there,” said Prauss, “I barely know where to begin.”
Schussig moved his lantern closer to Thaler. Such a little light in the vast darkness, yet it burnt so bright. “Why not start with this one hexmaster business: what happened to all the others?”
“They’re all dead. The novices’ house was empty as far as we could tell, but we found bodies at the adepts’ house. The White Tower?” Thaler shivered, not just from the cold. “I think Eckhardt killed them all himself. He’s all that’s left of the Order, but it’s not like we can go to anyone else.”
“You said there was a cost,” said Emser, pulling at his beard. “Something more than half the palatinate’s taxes?”
“Yes.” Thaler’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He wants sacrifices.”
“You mean, like goats and cows?” asked Ullmann in all innocence.
“No. Like you, Mr Ullmann.”
“No one would ever—” he started, but Prauss had got the measure of it.
“Yes they would. As long as it wasn’t them, or their friends or family. Gods, that’s …” Prauss shrugged. “Not a decision I’d want to make. We’ve lived for so long with magic, there are some – no, almost everyone – who can’t imagine life without it.”
“Precisely, Mr Prauss. Though the price is very high, there’ll be plenty who’ll be willing for other people to pay it.” Thaler stamped his foot, and the sound echoed away. “I will not have it. I stand to benefit as much as the next man, but I will not countenance the idea of feeding my neighbours to that monster – and Eckhardt’s talking about one or two a day. If we have running water, like we did before, we make it easier for the prince to turn him down.”
Ullmann spoke into the silence. “The young prince isn’t thinking about agreeing to the master’s demands, is he, Mr Thaler?”
“I don’t think so. That he gave me permission to mount this investigation is a sign he’s looking for alternatives. If you ask me again in a week, when there are hungry and thirsty mobs on the dark streets looking for people to send up Goat Mountain, I might have to give you a different answer.”
Thaler straightened himself and regarded the small group, dominated by the space they were in, the machinery that filled it, and the enormity of their task.
“That, gentlemen, is why I’m in such a hurry.” He paused and asked: “Who’s with me?”
To a man, they answered yes.
“Good. To the source, then.” Thaler lifted his lantern high. “Wherever that may be.”
35
The banging on the door – did no one just knock these days? – had finally woken her father up. And to stop him from going out onto the street and learning for himself what she’d done, Sophia had had to tell him herself.
“Oy,” was all he said. They were at the bottom of the stairs. He looked at the door, shaking with the impact of many fists, and turned aside towards the kitchen.
She followed him, at a loss to know what else to do.
“Close the door,” he said, and the hammering became a faint but annoying rattle. “Sit down.”
“Can’t I get you something to eat?”
“Sit,” he growled, and she took her usual seat at the side of the table, with the fire to her right.
Aaron Morgenstern rubbed his bloodshot eyes and scratched his fingers through his thinning hair. Then he drummed the tabletop and pushed on an empty bowl until it tipped. He let it go and watched it fall back.
“You need to eat,” she said. “There’s bread, and some of that soft cheese you like.”
“Quiet, daughter. I’m thinking.” He didn’t look at her, just kept on poking the bowl and seeing how it rolled onto its base.
She sat there, suffering, listening to the rattle of pottery on wood. When she could stand it no longer, she snatched it away and forced him to turn her way. “What am I going to do?”
“Who’s outside?” he asked.
“I don’t know. The rabbi, probably, and the rest of the Beth Din.”
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know!” She considered throwing the bowl at the wall, but it was a good bowl and enough things had been broken already that morning. “My head on a spear, probably. How could I have been so stupid?”
“It’s not how I brought you up,” her father conceded. “You should know not to trust the Germans.”
“But it was Frederik Thaler, father. He’s sat, just where you are now, eating our food and drinking our wine. He’s a good man.” She leant across the table and placed the bowl as far away from her as she could. “He didn’t tell me what he was planning to do.”
“And you didn’t ask.” Morgenstern’s face flushed with blood. “There’s more you’re not telling me, too. I looked for you at the Megillah, and I couldn’t see you.”
It wasn’t getting any better for her.
“I was in the White Fortress, with the prince.” Now it was her turn not to make eye contact. She studied the shelves on the wall, the dust on the panes in the window, the grain of the wood table.
Her father ran his thumb and forefinger down his beard, all the way to the end.
“You were in the White Fortress?”
“Yes.”
“With the prince?”
“Yes.”
“And who else?”
“The mayor and Mr Thaler. They were talking to the chamberlain, Mr Trommler, and the prince’s man, Master Allegretti.” She was now looking at her hands in her lap. “I was supposed to give my testimony to them.”
“Testimony?” Her father’s breaths were slow and deliberate. “Regarding what you saw on Goat Mountain?”
“Yes, Father. Exactly that.”
“You could have been killed. You still might be, and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.”
“The prince won’t let me die.” Her head came up, and she chased away a tear. “He won’t.”
Aaron Morgenstern gripped the edge of the table and dragged in a huge lungful of air.
“Why would the prince care anything about a Jewish girl twice his age?”
Why indeed. But she knew he’d help her, just as she’d helped him.
“Because he’s someone I can trust. I didn’t get to give my testimony along with the mayor and Mr Thaler. I gave it to the prince.”
“Wait: you were alone with the prince, who was also alone?”
“He’s just a boy. A boy who’s lost his mother, his father and everything he could ever count on.” Her chin stiffened. “I know a little of what that’s like.”
Morgenstern smashed his fist onto the table. “He’s the German Prince of Carinthia and don’t you forget it. This is a catastrophe. Goat Mountain, the fortress, the mikveh: all of it.” Then he echoed her own words to Thaler. “How could you do this to me?”
She should be weeping uncontrollably. All that came out was the occasional single tear. “There’s more.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Morgenstern pushed himself away from the table, and was confronted by the closed door. “This would never have happened if your mother was still alive.”
“But she’s not, is she? You brought me up: I am exactly how you wanted me to be.”
“So you’re blaming me now?” He addressed the door.
“I’m blaming you for making me educated, headstrong and unmarried at twenty-four. Who else is responsible for that?”
“Mensch, such an ungrateful girl.”
She was on her feet, and yelling. “Would you rather I was some stupid milch-cow? Who’d take care of you? Who’d do all the Sabbath preparations? Who’d cook kosher for you? Who’d run all your errands? It’s not like the widows have been lining up at the doorstep to take you on.”
“No, we have Rabbi Cohen and the elders instead, but they’re not here to marry either of us.” Morgenstern listened to the continued hammering on the front door, and sat back down at the kitchen table with a grunt. “This isn’t solving anything.”
She moved around and sat next to him. She took his hands in hers and squeezed. “I’m sorry.”
“The mikveh’s ruined, you say.” Morgenstern slid one hand out and rested it on hers.
“They went in through the wall with iron bars. Mr Thaler said they’d repair it, but it’ll need blessing, and whatever else. They had the prince’s authority: I couldn’t have stopped them, even if I wanted to.”
“Peace, little one. They used you unthinkingly, which is what I’ll say to that bunch of ravens on our doorstep. You, however, need to fly like a dove, at least until everything is as it was.” He drummed on the table again. “You’ve an aunt in Halstadt.”
“Halstadt? It’s no more than a shtetl.” The thought of village life, with all its crudities, didn’t exactly fill her with joy.
“Like you can afford to be so picky. I’m not the one who led the Germans to the mikveh.” Morgenstern glared at his daughter. “I’m trying to help.”
“That doesn’t get me out of the house.” Even if she appeared at the door, bags packed, ready to leave and prepared never to return, it wasn’t going to save her. She had to be gone without anyone knowing.
“Don’t worry about that. You go and get some things together: I’ll see to the other.” He shooed her out, and she had to pass the front door again. They were still banging, but at least their noise masked whatever sounds she might make.
All the same, even while she was concentrating on collecting together enough clothes to last her, but not so many that she couldn’t carry, she could hear strange thuds and scrapes coming from the back room. It was where her father kept his books: on a series of heavy wooden shelves around the walls, only because it was unlikely that the middle of the floor could have taken the weight of so much paper.
Sophia took what she’d placed on the bed and halved it. She sincerely hoped he wasn’t going to expect her to carry books, too. In fact, she’d refuse. She wrapped up in the bed blanket what she’d decided to take and tied it tight with two belts. When she stepped back to examine it, it was both depressingly small and alarmingly heavy.
It would have to do. She heaved it from the bed, and walked lopsided to the back room. She barged the door and found several piles of books, an empty bookcase shoved to one side and a hole in the plaster wall. But no father.
She crossed the floor and, crouching down, put her head through the hole. “Father?”
The reply was distant and indistinct. “Come down.”
She crawled in on her hands and knees, dragging her bundle behind her, and found herself in a narrow passage that went the whole length of the wall. There were books here, too: wrapped in soft skins and lined up like a hidden army. A lantern hung from a nail above a hole in the floor: the top of a ladder poked through.
Shouldering her load, she started down. There was an intermediate landing, and another ladder. At the bottom was her father, tapping at the stiff bolts of a door she never knew existed. She looked up at where she’d just come from.
“Are we behind the kitchen?”
“Mostly.” Morgenstern used more vigour on the bolt, hitting it with a fist-sized piece of stone.
“So where does this lead?”
“Rowlock Alley.” He glanced around at her. “Why do you think we live in this house, rather than any other house?”
“Father! Those books upstairs…”
“Hush. A man’s got to make a living, and times can be hard, especially with the library’s interference.” The first bolt gave, and he started on the second.
She put her luggage down and took the rock from him. “You obviously haven’t used this way for ages.”
“No, but it’s always been here, just in case. I never thought I’d be smuggling my own daughter out through it.” He drew his sleeve across his forehead. “Needs must.”
It was quicker for her. She soon shot the other two bolts, and all that remained was to heave off the thick wooden bar that fitted snugly behind the door in two iron hangers.
“As soon as you’re outside, down to the quay and across the bridge: take the road to Wolfgangsee, past Ischl.”
“I know the way, and I can always ask if I’m not sure.” She gave him the rock, and picked up the blanket by the straps. “I don’t want to run away. I want to stay and explain what’s going on. I haven’t even told you everything yet, and you need to know.”
“There’s no time, Sophia.” Morgenstern lifted the latch with difficulty and pulled hard. The door opened a crack and caught jarringly on the step. He went to push his fingers into the opening, but she put her hand against the door.
“No. You have to hear this. You have to tell the Beth Din, because I know them: they won’t listen to me. We met a hexmaster,” she said, “probably the last hexmaster because he seems to have killed all the others. He offered the mayor and Mr Thaler the chance to bring the magic back.”
Her father eyed her cautiously. “Go on.”
“Necromancy. Human sacrifice. And when he said it, he looked straight at me.” She pulled the door open herself, and dim light from the narrow alley filtered in. “If the Germans want their magic badly enough, then that’s what’s going to happen.”
“What did Messinger say?”
“He didn’t say anything to the master then. But we all went together to tell the prince what the offer was, and since the prince has given permission to Mr Thaler to try and get the water flowing again, then I imagine they don’t want to accept. But,” she continued, as she bent down to take hold of the blanket, “that doesn’t mean they won’t. And it won’t be Germans they’re sending up to the White Tower.”
“No,” said her father sourly, “I don’t suppose it will.”
“Get rid of those books. Especially if they’re from the library. Give them back to Mr Thaler, or just throw them in the river.”
“Sophia!” He clutched at his chest as if he’d been run through the heart.
“I don’t care. Just do it. I’ll send word when I’m safe. Now get this door shut.” She leant forward and kissed her father on the top of his head, then stepped out into the alley. There was no one around, and she spun away, hefting her bundle on her back. The door slammed shut behind her, and the bolts began to grind into position. She walked to the end of the alleyway, where it faced out onto the river, and looked for a moment at all the tied-u
p barges, their crews idling away their time on deck.
They were staying, she was running away. She couldn’t remain in Juvavum: certainly not in her house, that much was obvious, and no one else would take her in. Going to some distant relative’s house deep in an alpine valley where no one would hear of her transgressions was – for a time – a good solution.
Yet it still felt wrong. Yes, she’d followed Thaler up Goat Mountain, but good had come of that. Yes, she’d gone to the fortress and ended up with a dagger at her throat, but she’d talked to the prince, and more. Yes, she’d taken Thaler to the mikveh, but she hadn’t known what they were going to do.
What, exactly, was she running from?
Other people. Other people who didn’t respect her or think her worthwhile anyway, something they made abundantly clear every time they addressed her.
Where was she running to?
A community that was even more conservative than the one she was leaving, and that would look on her educated, book-reading ways and unmarried status even more severely than her neighbours already did: they were a whole new group of people she’d inevitably disappoint.
As choices went, neither was particularly palatable.
Then, as she stared into the distance at blue-white mountains, she heard a shout which was unremarkable on a busy quayside, except that it contained her name.
She looked around so fast, her neck clicked.
Coming down the quayside from the direction of the Witches’ Bridge, was the rabbi and the rest of the Beth Din, their black hats and coats instantly recognisable. They weren’t outside her house any more: they were here.
She started walking away from them, and the four men quickened their pace. After a few steps, she started to run, and after a moment’s hesitation, so did they.
None of them were dressed for a prolonged chase. She was carrying a heavy, lopsided bundle that banged against her legs; they were hampered by their long coat-tails and the broad-brimmed hats they had to hold in place.
If she dropped her load, she’d get so far ahead of them they’d give up. But then what? She’d have nothing save what she stood in.