by Sarah Rayne
I did not reply – there are some things that are not for sharing, Freide, and certainly not with those with whom one’s country is at war.
Iskander appeared to understand this – for all his arrogance and rebellious ways, he has a certain sensitivity. He said, ‘Mine are not nightmares filled with screams of agony as men choke in mud and blood in the trenches of France. Or of men who live for days with legs blown off or eyes shattered, and finally die amid the stench of their putrefying wounds in their nostrils. Those, I believe, are this young Englishman’s nightmares.’
I said, ‘What are your nightmares?’
‘I do not have any,’ he said, but something flickered behind his eyes. Then he made an impatient gesture, as if to push away these memories, and began to harangue me about the quality of the bedding on the men’s bunks. When I said the sheets were standard army issue, and the prisoners fortunate to even have sheets, he said, ‘God help the Prussian army.’
I was deeply affected by his description of the English boy’s nightmares, though. Perhaps I shall try to talk to him a little. It is not in my requirements to do so, but I feel great pity. War is a terrible business, Freide. I have sometimes questioned—
[Editor’s note: It appears that the rest of this sentence was heavily scored out, as if Hugbert feared to set down his thoughts about the war on paper.]
I acknowledge, though, that Iskander is right about the sheets, for I find they cause a troublesome irritation in areas which are difficult to reach with soothing ointment. You will forgive my referring to such parts of the anatomy, but we are affianced and should not have secrets.
Ever your devoted,
Hugbert.
Nell thought Hugbert sounded rather endearing. Perhaps it might be possible to track down a copy of his privately-printed letters. Would B.D. Bodkin be likely to help there?
Before she could talk herself out of this, Nell looked out last year’s correspondence with B.D., and was pleased to find an email address at the head of his letter about the Victorian aqua tints. She flipped on the laptop and typed a careful email to him, politely reminding him of their correspondence last year, and explaining that she was currently engaged in some research on the Great War and had found Fragments of Great War Treasures interesting and informative. The letters from the Holzminden officer, Hugbert, had been particularly intriguing, and she wondered if there was any possibility of obtaining a copy of the privately printed collection. Any information about the whereabouts of a copy, or even contact names or addresses that Mr Bodkin could provide, would be very greatly appreciated.
She read it over, thought it struck the right balance between friendliness and professionalism, and sent the email before she could think better of it, after which she closed the laptop and returned to the book. It would be nice if there was more from Hugbert, but it looked as if this particular section was ending.
There was more from him, but it was only a short note:
My very dearest Freide,
It is possible I shall not be able to write regularly after sending this, for I am ordered to special duties, and I will be leaving Holzminden tomorrow in company with Hauptfeldwebel Barth. I am not permitted to tell any details yet, but it is a result of dreadful tragic events that took place here three days ago. I must not say more, but I will tell you that I always knew Iskander would cause trouble, and the poor young Englishman—
[Editor’s note: The rest of this sentence was not readable, although we are unclear as to whether this is because Hugbert thought better of what he had written and crossed it out, or whether his letters were, after all, opened before reaching his fiancée, and this part was censored. Either way, he seems to be indicating that the two prisoners – the Russian, Alexei Iskander, and the unnamed Englishman – were at the root of what he calls tragic events in Holzminden.]
There has come a direct order from Hauptmann Niemeyer which I cannot disobey. The Hauptmann spoke to me most solemnly and earnestly, telling me what was wanted, then saluting my bravery.
I think I am singled out for this task in order that the Hauptmann can receive regular reports of our mission. It is known that I am a frequent correspondent with you, my liebling, and also with my parents, so I am thought able to write letters clearly and sensibly. I am to be accompanied by Hauptfeldwebel Barth, who is not very skilled with composition, although excellent when it comes to the frying of bratwurst, and we cannot all be accomplished at everything.
I should be glad if you will visit my parents as often as you can over the next few weeks. Your loving presence will help them not to worry. But of danger there is not very much, so you should not have concerns.
As always, your very devoted,
Hugbert
Seven
It was six o’clock. Nell locked the shop door, put the security shutters in place, and went across to the annexe behind the shop where she and Beth lived.
She put Bodkin aside and scanned the index of the first of the books lent by the bookseller. Would Holzminden be here? Yes, there was what looked like an entire chapter describing the camp, which had been opened in 1917 for British Officers. It had been a fairly small set-up, but had achieved a modest notoriety by being the scene of a successful escape – ten men out of twenty-nine escapees made it back to Britain – and also because several moderately well-known figures had been held there.
‘The escape was effected by means of the men digging beneath the camp to beyond the walls of the compound,’ wrote one of the contributors, and in somewhat school-masterish fashion went on to describe the means and methods employed by the men. Nell skimmed this; the details of the actual digging and the tunnel’s length, and the home-made bellows system for the air system would probably be of interest to serious students of such things, and they were certainly reminiscent of WWII legends and the films. John Mills being frightfully stiff-upper lip in Colditz, and Steve McQueen bouncing across the terrain on a motorbike amidst a hail of bullets. But they did not get her any nearer to the legendary Holzminden sketches or to the Gilmore family or even to Hugbert.
There was, however, some good primary source material. The Daily Sketch, it seemed, had called Holzminden ‘the worst camp in Germany’, castigating the commandant, Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer, as arrogant, vindictive, given to pilfering prisoners’ food parcels, and unpleasantly devoted to the curative powers of solitary confinement. Niemeyer, thought Nell, pleased to find this link. Hugbert’s commandant, whom he disliked, and who sent him on some kind of task.
As well as this, there was a lively account from an unnamed Russian war correspondent who appeared to have found himself incarcerated in Holzminden shortly after it was opened. He had apparently written a series of articles about the camp, several of which had been translated for the book. In one of the articles, the journalist described the Kommandant, Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer, as a devil, fierce as ten furies, clothed in a Prussian officer’s uniform, swinging the scaly horror of his folded tail as he regarded his hapless victims.
‘As for the camp itself, it was a stone-built, iron-hued devil’s citadel, akin to the evil ditches of Malebolge,’ he had added.
Nell, intrigued by the macabre but powerful imagery of the words, plundered the quotation books on her shelves, finally tracking the sources as Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost respectively. Could the journalist possibly be Hugbert’s arrogant Iskander who had known about the demons and the Ten Mile Stare, and had then in the same breath complained about inferior sheets and poor cooking? It was probably stretching coincidence a bit.
‘There must never be another war like the one that has just been fought and – mercifully – won,’ the journalist had written. ‘But if there should be, then the cruelties of the kind inflicted on prisoners in Holzminden must never be repeated.’
The next words seemed to jump off the page and smack into her eyes.
‘The sketches made while I was in Holzminden show some of the conditions of the camp very clearly—’
The sketches made in Holzminden … Nell stared at the words. Did that mean this unnamed journalist had been the legendary artist of the sketches? Or did it mean he had been there when the artist created them? The article continued:
—but they cannot convey the misery and the despair. Nor can they convey the madness that entered the souls of some of the men – many of them barely twenty years old, many of whom had witnessed the worst horrors of warfare already. There is something which has come to be called the Ten Mile Stare or even the Hundred Mile Stare, and it is a terrible thing to see. It’s not a wild or even a pain-filled look, more a heart-rending determination to look beyond the horrors – to focus on a faraway skyline or a landscape where the horrors have melted and there is only safe familiarity.
I met one young man at Holzminden for whom that safe familiarity was his home in England.
‘When the nightmares come,’ he said, ‘I try to see the tree-lined carriageway of my family’s home with the lamps burning in the windows at dusk. They would always light the lamps for me – for all of us. We would see them like beacons when we walked towards the house. It’s one of the things I try to remember.’
How immensely sad, thought Nell, closing the book.
She would have liked to be able to tell Michael what she had just read – to see his eyes take on the familiar absorption, and see him tilt his head in the characteristic attitude of intense listening, and to know he was instantly understanding the emotions the article churned up. It was good to remember he would be back the day after tomorrow. Nell would suggest he came to supper in Quire Court; she would cook a really nice meal and while they ate he would tell her about Fosse House, and she would tell him what she had found as contribution to his research. This was a very good thought.
She had not expected to hear back from B.D. Bodkin very quickly – she had not even known if she would hear from him at all – but when she checked her emails, he had sent a reply.
Dear Nell West,
I do indeed remember our association last year, and I’m glad I was able to help with the Victorian watercolours. The rather charming ‘Water Meadows’ sequence, as I recall.
This was unexpectedly friendly, and Nell, encouraged, read on.
I greatly enjoyed compiling and writing Fragments of Great War Treasures, which took me down some unexpected byways and highways. I didn’t read all of the privately printed letters you refer to, but I did have some brief contact with the family of the letter-writer – a nephew and niece, I think – to obtain permission to use the extracts.
I can therefore let you have the title and ISBN number of the collection. I recall I borrowed the book from the Bodleian, and there’s no reason to suppose they don’t still have a copy.
Kind regards and good luck with your research,
Bernard D. Bodkin
The ISBN number for the letters followed, together with the exact title of the letters, which was: The Letters of Hugbert Edreich, 1916–1918. Printing had been in 1955, by ‘Freide Edreich’, in ‘loving remembrance of a dear husband’. There was also a translator’s name, which Nell, who had a smattering of school German, but had not had to call on it for many years, was relieved to see. Altogether, this was very satisfactory, and it was surprisingly amiable of Bernard D. to be so helpful. Nell was prepared to forgive him for his preachy dogmatism over the Holzminden sketches.
Owen might be inclined to spare an hour to accompany her to the Bodleian to help track down Hugbert Edreich’s letters. It was the kind of research that would interest him, and he would be familiar with the loan system, which would make the task easier. But when Nell dialled his number it went to voicemail, so she left a message, explaining what was wanted.
As she put down the phone, she wondered how Michael’s research was going.
Michael had spent the first part of his day in feeling slightly guilty at spending so much time on the journal notes left by Alexei Iskander, because Iskander, entertaining though he might be, was not what Michael was here to research. Yes, but Iskander knew Leonora, said his mind. And Leonora is the link to the Palestrina Choir, and Liège is a link to the Great War. So it’s not straying too far off the path. Perhaps I’ll allow myself an hour to translate just a little more, then if it starts to seem like a cul-de-sac I’ll abandon it.
But he knew he would not abandon it, and after he had translated two more pages, he knew it was not a cul-de-sac.
‘It was the beginning of August when I reached Germany’s eastern border,’ wrote Iskander in his careless, erratic French, which Michael was finding increasingly easy to translate.
I had had an interesting journey – and a very useful one. There are a number of excellent hunting-grounds in the countries that lie between Russia and Belgium, and although the Kaiser’s Prussian soldiers were advancing steadily towards Belgium, I thought there was time for me to make a small detour into Vienna.
It was not exactly a small detour, if I am honest, but the railway service was proving to be admirable and everyone should see Vienna at least once. I saw it for the first time that summer, and I do feel it could easily become a spiritual home for me. It’s a city of culture and gracious living. The very cobblestones are soaked in music, and it’s as if the city thrums with the cadences of Mozart and Strauss and Schubert, and with all the romances and tragedies and triumphs of those gifted composers. Wonderful. The Viennese, as a race, are warm and welcoming; their hospitality is delightful, their women are beautiful, and to the traveller they offer the best they have in the way of food and wine. More to the point, Vienna has many great houses and palaces which are ideal for an enterprising thief. I found a number of small and valuable objects which, given a little sleight of hand, could be abstracted and sold most profitably. There are as many receivers in Vienna as there are in any city of the world, and after one or two abortive attempts, I found several.
Michael had had to guess at Iskander’s meaning in this last sentence, because the French–English dictionary did not give a translation for several of the words. But he was fairly sure Iskander was referring to fences.
I visited the concert halls of Vienna, too: Wiener Hofoper – the Court Opera – and the Golden Hall in the Musikverein, but there were simply too many people about for me to ply my trade there with any safety. So I allowed myself a holiday on those evenings, and bathed in the music, and relaxed in the company of a lady who was occupying a gilded box at a performance of The Marriage of Figaro, and who was amicably disposed towards the sharing of a quiet supper after the performance. This supper, taken in her apartment, was a very pleasurable experience. The rooms were rococo, the lady was voluptuous, the wine was luxurious, and when I say I relaxed in her company, I do not mean I was relaxed for the entire time. The English Bard has said that wine provoketh the desire but taketh away the performance, but that was never the case with me and certainly not on that evening, and perhaps Shakespeare was never privileged to enjoy Chateau Margaux anyway.
I should like it understood that I did not, on that occasion, ply my disreputable trade, although there were many beautiful and valuable objects in the rooms. But there are rules about these things, and I hope at heart I am still a gentleman. I left the rooms unplundered, the lady satisfied, and walked virtuously home through a rose and gold dawn, with the sun rising like a glowing jewel over the Schönbrunn Palace. (From which any readers of this journal who know Vienna will realize that the lady’s apartment was in the wealthy quarter of the city. Of course it was.)
It was the beginning of August – a hot and windless August – and Vienna was buzzing with the news that Germany had officially declared war on Russia and on France. This, though expected, was still chilling. But even in those early days it was becoming apparent that Germany had overreached and underestimated, and that in particular it had underestimated Belgium. The Kaiser, with his customary bombast and arrogance, now tried to negotiate a free escort through Belgium in order to invade France. Belgium refused, as any self-respecting country would; in fact Ki
ng Albert indignantly pointed out that Belgium was a country and not a road, at which the Kaiser flew into a rage and promptly ordered out his armies and told them to invade, and take, Belgium.
It was exactly as I had foretold – although I have to acknowledge a great many other people had foretold the same thing. But if ever a spur was needed to hasten a traveller’s footsteps, this was it. I bade farewell to the City of Music and Dreams, and resumed my journey to Belgium.
Not wanting to attract any notice, and aware of being in a country with whom my own was now at war, I abandoned the railways and resorted to more discreet methods of travel. It was less comfortable, but it was better to be uncomfortable and alive than to travel in luxury and end up spitted on the end of a German bayonet. Sometimes I walked, but usually I was able to get rides in horses and carts. It was not unpleasant to jog along the country lanes, perhaps with a farmer bound for market, or a tinker plying his wares.
I travelled for an entire two days with a small band of gypsies, sharing their supper when they made camp and joining in their music. They are interesting people, the Romanies, with vivid history and colourful traditions and wild passion-filled music. Also, their idea of food and drink is generous and their ladies very friendly. We parted company with regret and declarations of undying friendship, although, to be fair, that last may have been due to the quantities of wine consumed.
I reached the outlying districts of Germany in the late afternoon, and if I narrowed my eyes and concentrated I could make out the ancient city of Liége in the distance. Even from a distance I could see the silver strands of the Meuse River and the faint outlines of several of the twelve forts encircling the old city.
As I approached Liége I was aware of an unrest – it was a curious sensation, almost as if something, some invisible force, knew that a massive conflict lay in waiting. Rather as someone may suffer a headache just before a thunderstorm. I had no explanation for the feeling then and I do not have one now, but walking through the wooded areas between Germany and Belgium, listening for the marching feet of the invading armies, I felt as if something had been wrenched away from its roots, as if some natural force had become distorted and something dark and heavy was trickling into the world.