by Sarah Rayne
‘This is like old times,’ said Nell, curling her feet under her and accepting the drink. ‘Are these papers going to provide any answers, though?’
‘I don’t know. I only read the first sentence, then I tripped over Wilberforce to reach the phone to tell you,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t know if this will give any more answers. But I think it’s our last shot.’
‘You didn’t say who wrote it when you phoned,’ said Nell. ‘But I’m assuming it’s Leonora.’
‘I expected it to be Leonora,’ said Michael. ‘But it isn’t. It’s Iskander.’
He flattened out the papers, put one arm round Nell, and they began to read.
It’s a tradition for writers from my country to pour out their souls in an orgy of confession and a raging tempest of dark angst and weltschmerz, not to mention the beating of breasts and rending of garments. I am perfectly happy to immerse myself in weltschmerz, but I am not inclined to be penitent, and if anyone’s garments are to be rent they will not be mine.
It may be vain to believe someone, somewhere, at some time, will want to read what I have written, but although I do not admit to many faults, I do admit to some, and vanity is probably one of them, so I will believe it.
I have decided to write this in English. I learned a good deal of the language while in Holzminden and also on my travels, and I’m rather proud of my skills. And since this deals with events in this English house it seems appropriate.
It was the very young owner of this house who caused me to come here. Stephen Gilmore. A gentle soul, Stephen. He believed entering the conflict between his country and Germany to be noble and inspirational. Like thousands of other eager, idealistic young men, he went off to war, to the sound of cheering crowds, with flags waving and military bands playing, seeing only victory and glory. No one had warned them about the horrors and the despairs and the nightmares lying in wait.
I saw the nightmares, but I saw them from a distance, reporting for my newspapers. Like those stylish and disdainful reporters at the Crimean War, I sat on a safe hillside or in a field, partaking of smoked salmon and Chablis, exchanging languid observations with other newspaper men and writing about the theatres of war – theatres as bloody as anything ever dredged up from the pit of the Grand Guignol.
But bodies were shattered, eyes and limbs were splintered. And minds cracked.
When I met Stephen Gilmore in the prison camp at Holzminden where I had been ignominiously taken after being captured at Verdun, at first I thought him weak. Later I came to understand he was far from weak: he had fought his nightmares and his demons and he still fought them. A weak man would have given in to them. Stephen had not.
My reasons for escaping from Holzminden were not entirely altruistic. I genuinely wanted to get Stephen out of the camp, but I wanted to escape for myself, as well. I wanted to rejoin Leonora.
Leonora. She was like no lady I have ever met before or since. She was seventeen, convent-bred, small-boned and fragile with one leg slightly askew so that she limped when walking. She had a rather sallow skin, dark hair and eyes, and no one would ever have called her a beauty. But the moment I saw her I knew that even though I might live a dozen lives, and even though worlds might burn and mad Prussian emperors storm across continents, I would never feel the same about anyone ever again.
Astonishingly, the convent years had not quenched Leonora’s natural joie de vivre. Despite her sheltered life and the nuns’ teaching, she took to the life of burgling as smoothly as silk. She took to love-making with the same delight as well. In my defence, I did try to fight that temptation, but one night, somewhere on the borders of Holland, Leonora metamorphosed from obedient waif into beckoning sprite. Like the fantasy play Love in a Dutch Garden, which I saw at the beginning of the war, a harlequin moon lay against midnight skies, and violet twilight enveloped the old rose gardens of a wayside inn. Nightingales even sang outside our windows. And no man is an angel all the time, and certainly not in such a setting. On that night, like Scaramel in the play, I was tempted and I yielded.
Afterwards, with the Kaiser’s crazed stranglehold tightening on Europe, I left Leonora in Holland, in a comfortable, safe guest house with comfortable, safe people, and made my way back into Germany to gather more material for war articles.
If only I had not done so.
I have to be honest and say the first escape attempt from Holzminden was never intended to include Stephen Gilmore. I thought his mind was too fragile for him to cope and for me to trust him. But somehow he became involved, and it was as easy to abstract two German officers’ uniforms for the attempt as one. And he was Leonora’s cousin … So I took the risk.
On my own I might have succeeded. I might have talked my way through the guards – my German was very good by then – but Stephen, fearful and damaged, drew attention to our ploy, and found himself surrounded by armed guards. In desperate panic, he snatched a gun from them, although God alone knows how he managed that, and retreated into the gatehouse.
It was certain he would have been shot – all the camps had orders to fire on escaping prisoners – and the guards were already taking aim. From where I stood, held by two of them (but not very firmly), the only thing I could think of was to create a diversion. No one seemed to have realized that I, too, had a gun – a Luger pistol which had been with the stolen German uniform, and which was more or less hidden in the belt. There are times in life when you have to take risks, and I took one then. I fired the pistol, not particularly aiming at anyone. The fact that it hit one of the senior officers – actually the camp commandant’s repulsive brother – was unintentional and disastrous. Everyone assumed that Stephen, cornered and panic-stricken, still in possession of the gun, had fired the shot. No one noticed when I kicked the Luger into a corner of the courtyard, because everyone was running around shouting orders. The commandant flew into a rage, I was hauled off to the cells, Stephen was dragged out of the gatehouse, and we were both sentenced to death – I for the escape attempt and impersonating a German officer, and Stephen for the same crime, along with the attempted murder of Heinrich Niemeyer.
To have confessed I had fired that shot at Heinrich would not have made matters any better. We would still have been executed. That was when I knew I had to get Stephen out of Holzminden and back to England.
Somehow I did it. I drugged some of the guards and bribed the others (there are times when having been a successful burglar is very useful), and we got out. I am not providing any more details, because I intend to write my memoirs, and I am not giving away the facts here. Suffice it to say we escaped, and I got both of us into Holland, to where Leonora was living.
I do not feel it to be any part of this statement to describe my reunion with Leonora; I shall say only it was a night to make the gods sing and the poets weep with joy.
The next day, by fair means and foul, by hedge and by stile, and despite the vagaries of the ferry system, the three of us reached England and this house.
We should have been safe here. How could I know that Karl Niemeyer – as mean and brutal a man as ever walked God’s earth – would send his men to hunt us down all the way to Norfolk and Fosse House?
Michael leaned back for a moment, then turned to look at Nell.
‘I think we’re about to find out what happened,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’
‘Yes. I met Iskander while I was chasing Hugbert,’ she said. ‘And I rather like him. He was a rogue, wasn’t he, but he had quite a lot of – well, of what he’d probably call honourable feelings. Let’s go on.’
‘Onwards and upwards,’ said Michael, turning to the next page.
We had almost a week of relative peace at Fosse House. Stephen prowled around the rooms, occasionally venturing into the gardens, I made a start on my memoirs, using the library as my study, and between times Leonora and I—
Well, there is a walled garden here, and it is like a secret garden from a children’s fairy story. Each afternoon Leonora and I went
into that garden, and there was only the scent of the apples from the old trees overhead, and the feel of the soft moss beneath. No one disturbed us. No one knew we were there. We did not care that it was a cold English autumn – we hardly noticed.
When I met Stephen in the camp in Germany, he talked about wanting to see again the lamps burning in the windows of his home. It was an image he clung to. Tonight, in the drawing room at the front of Fosse House, I have lit those lamps for Leonora.
Earlier this afternoon I took a long walk. Stephen thought I was exploring the area, but of course I was reconnoitring the terrain. There aren’t many large houses hereabouts, but there are some, and the coffers needed replenishing if Leonora and I were to make any kind of living—
I returned to Fosse House two hours ago. Twilight was falling – it’s an odd kind of light, the English twilight. Smoky and strange. Walking up the drive, I had the feeling that something was near to me – something friendly and inquisitive, and that if I knew how or where to look, I should see it. Writing this, I’ve had the same feeling – as if there’s something (someone?) wanting to see into the room, curious about what I’m writing.
As I came along the drive I liked thinking how Leonora would be waiting for me – and Stephen too, of course – and how we would make a meal for ourselves in the big old kitchen, and then eat it in the dining room with the windows overlooking the gardens. I am perfectly prepared to eat in a kitchen, in fact I have had some extremely pleasant encounters in kitchens, but if there is a comfortable dining room, with a polished table and silver cutlery, I will choose that every time. Even if it means helping with the washing up afterwards.
Approaching the house, I became aware of something wrong. At first it was only a feeling, but then it was more definite. Sounds. Movements. They were confused at first, but gradually they coalesced into stealthy footsteps and low murmuring voices. Then, clearly and sharply, a voice called Leonora’s name, and the desperation and anguish in the voice cut through the dusk like a sword. I stopped, listening intently, and when the cry came a second time I knew it was from the gardens behind the house. I ran forward, making for the narrow path at the house’s side. It’s almost enclosed by trees and shrubs, and rather dark and narrow.
The shouts came again, and I recognized the voice as Stephen’s, although I could no longer tell what he was saying. He had gone along the tunnel path, and he was at the back of the house, staring across the dark gardens. I followed his line of vision and saw the blurred figure of a female running towards the walled garden. There was a faint screech of sound as the gate was opened, and she ran through it. And then— I can’t exactly say she vanished, which would be absurd, but she seemed to somehow melt into the darkness.
Stephen went after her at once, going through the iron gate, calling out as he did so.
‘Leonora …’ The name lay on the air, as fragile and insubstantial as silver filigree.
That was when the shadows in the walled garden reared up and were suddenly and frighteningly no longer shadows but men. Even from where I stood I could see who they were. Niemeyer’s men.
It was instantly obvious what had happened. Karl Niemeyer had sent his men after us – in his vindictive, selfish determination to be revenged for his brother’s shooting he had ignored the war and had sent soldiers to England, purely to recapture one man. Heaven knows how long they had been out there, but they had trapped Stephen in the walled garden. I edged closer, considering and discarding half a dozen plans. If there had only been two soldiers I might have risked a surprise attack and hoped to get Stephen away, but there were four, all armed. I tiptoed closer to get a clearer view and recognized two of the soldiers from Holzminden. The fat and essentially stupid Hauptfeldwebel Barth, and a younger man called Hugbert Edreich. Seeing Edreich gave me a glimmer of hope, because he had been a kindly and unexpectedly sensitive gaoler in the camp, always trying to help, certainly sympathetic to the likes of Stephen.
The two soldiers whom I did not know had taken Stephen’s arms, and they were dragging him against an ivy-covered wall. He was struggling, shouting to them to let him go, calling for Leonora again.
‘Leonora,’ he cried. ‘Please – oh, please …’
Edreich was looking about him, almost as if he might be seeking some way of preventing what was about to happen, but the other three soldiers were already raising their rifles. Then – and this is the part that grips at my vitals like steel fingers – they fixed the bayonets to the rifles’ muzzles. It seemed Hauptfeldwebel Barth intended to carry out Niemeyer’s orders to the last tortuous letter. Bayoneting. That had been the brutal sentence on Stephen, and I could not believe they would do it. But they were already tying him to a tree trunk, binding him tightly with a length of rope. He was sobbing and struggling, and I tensed my muscles, ready to bound forward. But it was already too late. The soldiers lined up, the bayonets tilted, and the order was rapped out. The men ran at the imprisoned figure. I heard the clash of bayonets, and I heard someone shouting. Then a single gunshot rang out.
The shocking thing – the thing that will remain with me all my life – was that the soldiers seemed not have heard the gunshot, and they continued with their grisly work. But Stephen was already dead. He had sagged against the tree, and something that was black in the moonlight ran down his face from his forehead.
From where I stood, I saw Hugbert Edreich very quietly and stealthily put a pistol back into the holder at his belt.
And now I am writing this in the long drawing-room of Fosse House, and my mind is scalded with the pity of it, and with pain and remorse. But within the anguish that I did not save Stephen is one tiny shred of comfort. He did not have to suffer the agony of being bayoneted. That single gunshot fired by Hugbert Edreich was done as an act of mercy – I know it was, I know it as surely as if Edreich had told me so. At the end, unable to save him, he gave Stephen a quick, clean death.
But even now I can spare only a small part of my mind for Stephen, for Leonora is filling my thoughts. I have no idea where she is. What I do know, though, is that the indistinct figure I saw running into the walled garden – the figure Stephen called to and followed – was not Leonora. It could not have been. Leonora could not run so swiftly and smoothly. She had a club foot, and she could not run at all …
Nell pushed away the remaining pages and went, almost blindly, to stand at the window, not looking at Michael, not looking at anything. When Michael went to her she turned away from him – the first time she had ever done so. She was not crying, but there was a dreadful blankness in her eyes, and Michael waited, not wanting to intrude, understanding that she was struggling with a deep, confused emotion.
At last, Nell looked at him. In a tight, desperate voice, she said, ‘The figure they saw— The figure Stephen followed into the walled garden— Iskander was right to say it wasn’t Leonora. What was it Booth Gilmore said about time bleeding backwards?’
‘That’s just a mad theory,’ said Michael uneasily.
‘But it’s not, is it? Because I was the figure they saw. Stephen followed me into the walled garden – he thought I was Leonora. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have been caught. He wouldn’t have died. I led him there – I led him straight into the hands of those murderers.’
Michael said, very forcefully, ‘Yes, he would have died – that was inevitable. The soldiers wouldn’t have waited very long, you know. When night fell, they would have broken into the house and dragged him out. It’s what they tried to do the first time, only they saw—’ He stopped, the words of Hugbert Edreich’s letter in his mind.
I saw him open the curtains in a downstairs room and look out, Hugbert had written. There was a lamp shining in the room, and we all saw him … But who had they seen? thought Michael. I was the one who opened the curtains to look out of that window … There was a lamp shining from the desk behind me …
He thought he might tell Nell about this later, but for the moment, he said, ‘My dear love, you don’t believe tha
t stuff about time bleeding backwards any more than I do. Stephen was never going to get away from those men – it was nothing to do with what you did or didn’t do. And it might sound weird, but I’m inclined to be glad that Hugbert Edreich had the – the guts and the humanity to do what he did.’
This time when he put out his hand, Nell came into his arms, and clung to him. She was still not crying, but her eyes were dark and blurred with emotion. Michael felt something twist at his heart. ‘I can’t bear seeing you like this,’ he said.
‘Drama queen,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘Sorry. I think I’m glad Hugbert did it, too. I suppose he saw it was impossible to fight the other three soldiers – they were armed. But he wanted to save Stephen from the bayoneting.’ She thought for a moment then, in a voice much more like her normal one, said, ‘It even gives some logic to what Hugbert’s wife said. She said he never spoke of what happened that night— But he had those nightmares, when he dreamed he was walking towards the house. When he thought Stephen came out to meet him. That was his guilt, wasn’t it?’
‘I think,’ said Michael, ‘that Hugbert came to reasonable terms with his guilt. He had done what he genuinely believed was the right thing. Let’s think he had a fairly happy life – or as happy as any of us can expect.’
‘You’re getting awfully philosophical, aren’t you? Shall we finish Iskander’s statement?’
‘Can you cope with it?’
‘I can’t cope with not knowing how it ends. Yes, of course we’ll finish it.’
‘In that case I’ll make us some coffee,’ said Michael, heading for the kitchen. ‘I don’t know if Iskander’s got any more revelations, but I think I’ll keep a clear head, just in case.’
The coffee brought a note of normality to the unreality and the horror of Iskander’s account. Michael set the cups down on a low table and turned up the heating. Wilberforce, with the air of one who had been waiting patiently for this, padded across to the electric fire and lay down in front of it.