The String Diaries

by Stephen Lloyd Jones

  Erna delved into her skirts and withdrew a handful of coins. As she tried to press them on him, he flung her arm away, suddenly furious. Coins tumbled from her fingers. Crying out, she knelt in the dirt to gather them up.

  ‘Do you think I need your peasant charity?’ he snarled. ‘How do they know? How do you know they’re coming for me?’

  She snatched up the scattered coins. ‘Jakab, please. Please just trust me. Take the money. It’s not a trick, I swear to you. After everything we had, do you think I could betray you? Do you think that badly of me?’ She sobbed. ‘You have no time. They’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘Balázs Lukács! Balázs Jakab!’

  At the sound of his given name, Jakab leaped away from her. The condensation in the air was even thicker now, a shifting veil that roiled around them, obscuring their surroundings and making it impossible to tell from which direction the voice came. Moisture clung to Jakab’s coat, licked at his face and cheeks and hair.

  ‘Balázs Lukács! Balázs Jakab!’

  A male voice, jarringly effeminate. Jakab sensed the scorn in its challenge. He heard the accompanying bray of a horse. Twisting on the balls of his feet, he faced the track leading from the boat shed to the main road.

  A shadow moved inside the mist. It darkened, coalescing into a horse and rider. The horseman wore a black wide-brimmed hat and a leather overcoat spattered with mud. His mount, an enormous grey stallion, blew steam from its nostrils and clattered great iron-shod hooves on the pebbles.

  Raising his head, the rider examined Jakab with eyes that were cold yellow pools. Flecks of ivory and malachite sailed upon them. His skin had the pallor of a forest fungus and his albino hair was oiled and scraped into a ponytail. When he smiled, his face folded into cracks like the bark of a tree. Little humanity resided in his expression.

  Fear erupted in Jakab, emptying his lungs and wicking the moisture from his throat. His feet anchored themselves to the ground. He knew who this man was, what he was, even though he had never met him.

  The Főnök’s Merénylő.

  Every seat of power had a creature like this: a beast sent to complete the distasteful assignments, the unpleasant tasks that were nonetheless vital to the maintenance of that power. The workload of this particular specimen seemed to have corrupted its very flesh.

  ‘And here, then, Balázs,’ the Merénylő began, in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, ‘we arrive at the end of your road. You led us a merry dance.’

  Jakab searched his surroundings, muscles twitching, mouth as dry as sawdust. Scrubland lay to his left, the boat shed and its wooden jetty to his right. More scrub on the far side of the ruined building, leading north along the shore towards Gyenesdiás. At his back, the rippling waters of the lake, quickly surrendering to mist.

  Erna still knelt before him. She stared up at the rider, her mouth hanging open in dismay.

  Jakab motioned to her. ‘Get up.’ Then, when she didn’t respond, more urgently: ‘Erna, get up. Now.’

  Perhaps she detected the anxiety in his voice, his concern for her, because she scrabbled to her feet, backing away from the rider.

  ‘Touching.’ The Merénylő chuckled. He pulled a silk handkerchief from the pocket of his coat and dabbed at his upper lip. ‘I take it you haven’t raped this one yet then, Balázs.’

  The scrub to his left provided the most promising escape route. The undergrowth was thick, tangled, and while he could pick his way through, a horse and rider would have more difficulty. He only needed twenty yards of distance before the mist swallowed him up. If he could just let Erna know his intention; he would not abandon her here with the Főnök’s assassin.

  A crack sounded from the scrub, a dead branch snapping, just beyond the patch of ground he had been contemplating. As the bank of mist drifted and thinned, Jakab caught sight of a second rider navigating through the bracken towards him.

  The newcomer looked up and grinned. His teeth were brown and rotten, his eyes flat. No hosszú élet, this one. Although from the look of him, almost as dangerous.

  The Merénylő eased his heels into the grey’s flanks and the animal took a step towards Jakab, its hooves clacking and scraping on the wet stones. ‘You want to run. I understand that. I do believe you almost found the courage just then, until cowardice unmanned you.’ The flecks of ivory in the assassin’s eyes had faded, but his smile remained. ‘I’m not going to stop you, Jakab. Not right away. This has been a long race. Far too long, and far too dull, most of the time. Let’s make a little sport of it, shall we, now we’re at its conclusion? We both know how this ends. I drag you kicking and screaming and bucking and biting all the way back to Buda, and whatever’s left of you once we arrive we’ll string up, eviscerate, boil, shred and feed to the wolves. How do you like the sound of that?’

  ‘Erna. Erna!’ A new voice, frantic and disembodied, broke through the mist.

  Erna moaned, dropping her head. ‘Hans, no. Why did you come?’

  Out of the pillowy white crashed a young man. He was taller and slimmer than Jakab. Handsome, had his face not been pale and his eyes wide with panic. He skidded to a halt a few yards from the Merénylő, glanced at the riders, at Erna, and finally at Jakab. In his hands he clutched an axe, and now he beckoned with it. ‘Erna, come here. Come away.’

  Jakab put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t move.’

  Hans turned to the Merénylő, his expression accusatory. ‘What is this? You said we would be safe. You said we could trust you.’

  The hosszú élet assassin never took his mocking eyes from Jakab’s face. ‘What I said, woodsman, was that if you both stayed out of the way, you would not see any of us again. Yet here we are and I find first your wife and now you. I must say I hardly describe that as staying out of the way. Do you? Besides, I don’t believe I’ve done anything to risk the safety of either your wife or your good self. I’m simply sitting here, on my horse, passing the time of day with a rapist and murderer who doesn’t know he’s dead yet. Why don’t you go into town and spend some of that coin with which we so graciously rewarded you?’ The Merénylő’s grin widened, but it never reached his eyes. They burned like twin suns, penetrating Jakab’s mind, anticipating him, deriding him.

  Jakab felt as if someone had battered him with an iron bar. Blood drained from his stomach. Tightening his grip on Erna’s shoulder, he whispered, ‘You sold me to them?’

  She shook her head, trying to shrug off his hand. ‘Jakab, no. That’s not how it happened. Don’t listen to him. He—’

  ‘You thought you’d exchange me for a few pitiful handfuls of coin?’

  The rush of emotion unbalanced him, his initial outrage eclipsed by an all-consuming grief. How could she have done this? Out of all the people he had ever known, to be betrayed by her . . . it was too shocking, too devastating, to contain in a single thought. He had thought she loved him, truly loved him, yet all this time she had been capable of betrayal as callous as this.

  And what next? After all this was done, with him no doubt bound hand and foot and dragged through the mud behind the Merénylő’s horse, what was her plan? To return to her life shared with the simpleton standing beside the hosszú élet assassin? To return to her baby and her blood money and her snug little life?

  Moving almost without conscious thought, as if his body acted of its own volition, his free hand dropped to his belt. His fingers slid along it, ducked inside and pulled the knife from its sheath inside his trousers. As he lifted the weapon in an arc around the front of Erna’s body, he caught a reflection of her lips in the polished steel of its blade: lips he had waited five years to kiss; lips that had laughed with him, that had talked of future plans with him, that had once caressed his skin.

  When Jakab placed the knife against her throat she screamed and thrashed, until the point pricked her flesh and she stilled.

  Hans yell
ed, terror in his eyes. He lifted a foot, placed it back down. ‘Please! Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. I’m begging you.’

  Looking to his right, the only direction he could go, Jakab checked the wooden jetty. Its planks were stained black from the damp air. He sidestepped towards it, pulling Erna along with him. A single bead of blood appeared at her throat. It rolled down her neck.

  ‘Well, this is interesting,’ the Merénylő announced. ‘Bizarre, yet interesting nonetheless. I have to admit I hadn’t expected you to do that.’

  The jetty was right behind him now. Jakab backed on to it, dragging Erna after him.

  To his left, the second rider emerged from the scrub, guiding his mount over brambles. The man unsheathed a rapier and brought his horse to a halt, waiting for instructions.

  Jakab continued to back down the slippery planks of the jetty.

  The Merénylő reached down. When he straightened he was holding a crossbow, a bolt sitting in the channel before the cocked and latched bow. ‘You know, Jakab, I think that’s far enough. I mean, what can you possibly do next? My grubby associate here is hungry, and he becomes tiresome on an empty stomach. There’s a place in town that serves the most delectable spiced sausage, and I’ve promised him his fill once we’ve finished here. And we are finished here, Jakab. There’s nowhere left to go.’

  Erna’s husband dropped his axe. He regarded each of them in turn, eyes pleading.

  Erna took a breath, and Jakab felt her press herself against him. She leaned back, her voice low and calm. ‘Jakab, listen to me. If you do nothing else for the rest of your life, just listen now. You’ve got this wrong. All of it. When you found me a few days ago, I went home and told Hans what had happened. I’ll admit that. But that’s all I did. Hans already knew about you, had known about you for years. My God, you were the reason he found it so difficult to court me in the first place. I thought for so long you were coming back that I—’

  ‘I did come back,’ he hissed.

  ‘Five years later, Jakab. Five years. Maybe a blink of an eye for you but not for me. I thought you were dead. I swear it. A few years ago your people came back, asking questions. I told them nothing – there was nothing to tell – but they explained how we could contact them if you returned.’

  ‘And when I showed up, the money was just too much of a temptation.’

  ‘No! That’s just it. I told Hans I had to see you one last time, to talk to you. To say goodbye. At first he agreed. But then he contacted them, Jakab. I didn’t know. He was scared and he contacted them. He was scared of you, of the hosszú életek. Scared he might lose me.

  ‘Jakab, please listen. Hans is a good man. A wonderful man. He loves me and he loves our son, provides for us well. He was just doing what he thought he had to do to protect his family. I’m telling you the truth, Jakab. Five years ago I was in love with you so utterly I thought I might go mad from it. Our time may have passed but I still love you. I always will. I could never betray you. Not for money, not for anything.’

  She looked over her shoulder and when Jakab met her eyes he felt himself floundering in the honesty of her gaze. She was telling the truth. Everything had happened exactly as she had described it; he suddenly had no doubt. At the realisation that she had not sold his freedom, had even risked her safety to give him a chance to escape, his emotions churned anew.

  He had never had a chance of winning her back. She was too faithful for that. Even though she had moved on, had married and started to raise a family, her love for him had never deteriorated into bitterness. Even now, she was trying to protect him.

  His vision blurred – tears of despair, that he would never have the opportunity to share her life. After everything, after all he had done to be here, the cruelty of it was too much to face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he choked, voice cracking with the strain. ‘I mean it. I want you to know that. But if I can’t have you like this—’

  ‘Oh, how long do we have to wait, Balázs?’ The Merénylő shook his head. ‘There are two of us on horse. You’re on foot. Cut the girl’s throat if you must. So what? It’s the same unhappy ending for you whether you kill this fellow’s wife or not. Did I tell you I’m hungry? I don’t think I’ve eaten since last night.’

  Even in his agony, Jakab noticed the way Erna’s husband reacted to the Merénylő’s words. The man’s eyes widened in outrage. Bending to the earth, he retrieved his axe.

  Even though Hans stood just outside the Merénylő’s field of vision, Jakab did not doubt that the assassin knew exactly where he was positioned. What the Merénylő might not have anticipated was how his casual dismissal of Erna’s life had affected her husband. Hans lifted the axe, rested the haft on his shoulder, and took a silent step closer to the assassin’s horse. Then he switched his attention to Jakab.

  Jakab returned the stare with loathing. How could this man, this lowly woodsman, have won Erna’s heart? He might have laughed had it not been so tragic. He had sacrificed five years, had taken his own brother’s life, and had returned to Keszthely, prepared to take Erna away with him and lead a far more basic existence than he would have otherwise accepted. In the meantime, this low-bred peasant had happened along and stolen everything Jakab had worked for; worse, he had polluted her with his seed so that she had spawned his child.

  Jakab inched his fingers around the handle of the knife, switching his grip. The weapon was Austrian-made, fashioned from a single piece of forged steel, and was balanced so that it could be thrown from either end. He had spent so many hours sharpening its blade he preferred to throw it from the handle. Far less chance of cutting himself that way.

  While he could not change the fact that Erna was in love with Hans, he was damned if he was going to stand by and let that peasant imbecile steal his rightful place with her. He studied Hans’s face, his long nose, angular jaw and large, frightened eyes. Such an easy face to remember; such an easy face to become. If Jakab had not been caught by the Főnök’s man, things could still have worked out. He watched the woodsman take another step nearer the assassin, fingers flexing on the axe.

  The Merénylő shifted in his saddle and turned his attention to Hans. ‘My boy, please don’t even think of involving yourself in—’

  Jakab pulled Erna to his left, drew back his hand and threw the knife. Even as the blade left his fingers he realised he had misread the assassin’s focus. The Merénylő was moving before his eyes found the blade’s trajectory. He threw himself back in his saddle as the weapon whickered towards him.

  The assassin rolled in a fluid arc, the blade spinning through the space he had just vacated. Rising back up in the saddle, he raised the crossbow as Hans lunged for the reins of the horse.

  Jakab watched, paralysed, as the Merénylő pulled the crossbow trigger. He heard a thwick as the sinew bowstring contracted, picked up the bolt and accelerated it down the stock. He felt the impact of the projectile before the pain, the force of it knocking him back a step.

  Hans was screaming. The Merénylő dropped the crossbow to the ground and drew the sword sheathed at his waist. The second rider shouted, kicking his heels into the flanks of his mount.

  Concentrate on the pain, Jakab urged himself. Grit your teeth and explore its edges. Force the wound to pucker and kiss. Knit the flesh back together.

  He hoped the bolt had not lodged in his body. It would make this far more difficult.

  Hans loosed a second wrenching scream, swung his axe and buried the bit deep in the Merénylő’s spine. The assassin’s eyes bulged.

  Erna issued an alien keening.

  There’s no pain. None at all.

  Jakab turned. The crossbow bolt had buried itself inside Erna’s head, entering her skull just below her right eye. Her cheekbone had imploded from the impact, giving the side of her face an obscene concave look. Her eye was a blood-filled mess, leaking fluid down her cheek.

 
Only the end of the bolt remained visible. Jakab saw wooden flights attached to its shaft. Erna’s jaw dropped open and a mindless clacking sound escaped her lips. She bucked and spasmed, her teeth snapping at the air, and as he released her she pitched forward on to the slimy planks of the jetty. When he saw the bolt’s iron head protruding from the curve of her skull, and the remains of her beautiful mind and her memories dripping from its spike, Jakab felt his diaphragm contract and then he was loosing his own wretched scream that ricocheted inside his head, a tortured sound that would never stop, could never stop.

  Hans yanked the axehead out of the Merénylő’s spine and the Főnök’s man slid from the saddle, his face hitting the ground with a slap. The woodsman stepped over the body, hefted the axe above his head and brought it down a second time. This time the blade sliced through the soft flesh of the assassin’s neck and sheared through his vertebrae. Hans let go of the handle, staggered, collapsed to his knees. He raised both hands over his head.

  Jakab forced himself to look at Erna, forced himself to retain every awful detail. He had walked away from the hosszú életek willingly, yet they had followed, sending his brother after him. After forcing him to kill Jani, they had sent this vile creature slumped before him.

  And now the Merénylő was dead too. But not before he had succeeded in ending Jakab’s life. Perhaps not by stealing his last breath, but he had taken something just as valuable.

  It was over. He could not think of what to do.

  It was over.

  Everything.

  Jakab let out the breath in his lungs, hearing its hiss as it passed his lips. An expunging, an outpouring. He lifted his arms until they pointed away from his body, outstretched. A ruinous calm settled upon him.

  Nothing left at all now.

  He gave the remaining rider a defeated, sickened smile. And then he allowed his body to fall backwards. Momentum took him. He felt an icy shock as he hit the water. The surface of the lake parted, and then it accepted him, coldness flooding him as he sank beneath, drifting, a funereal roaring in his ears.