Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych)

by Ian Tregillis

  The shed’s single entrance faced the center of the Reichsbehörde campus, like most of the facilities that bordered the training field. They had arrived in the rear. Marsh pressed himself against the cold bricks and inched toward the corner. But Gretel waved him back.

  “Wait here,” she whispered. Then she disappeared around the corner into the semicircle of light cast by the lamp above the shed door.

  A breeze caught Marsh’s breath, pulling it into long silvery streamers that drifted past the edge of the shed and into the moonlight. He backed away, one carefully measured footstep at a time, lest his breath give him away. The breeze snaked tendrils through the buttonholes of Pabst’s coat. He tried not to shiver. And wondered how long Gretel would make him wait this time.

  Around the corner, footsteps approached from the direction of the farmhouse. Marsh tensed, and listened.

  “Good evening. How was your dinner?”

  “I got your note,” said Klaus. “It’s cold outside. So why am I here?”

  “I need you to do something for me,” she said.

  Klaus might have sighed—Marsh couldn’t hear him well enough to know—but the man didn’t miss a beat. “Why am I stealing a battery for you? You’re already wearing one.”

  “Not one battery. Two. And it’s a surprise.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Do you remember what I told you in England?”

  “You said I need to trust you. That what you’re doing is vital.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is part of that.”

  “Yes.”

  Nothing happened for several moments. The silence was Klaus’s way of mulling things over. Did he really believe he’d stand up to her? Klaus wasn’t capable of resisting his sister. As aggrieved as he felt at times, he was, in the end, devoted to Gretel. He always would be.

  “If I do this, will you tell me what it’s for?”

  “No. But you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Will I get in trouble?”

  “No more than I will.”

  A few footsteps, then Klaus fell silent again. This silence lasted a bit longer than the previous one. Gretel broke it a minute or so later.

  “Thank you, Klaus.”

  “I’m going to bed.” His footsteps receded into the night.

  Gretel rejoined Marsh behind the shed. She carried a battery in each hand. Patchy clouds scudded across the dark sky, blocking the moon. Marsh couldn’t read the gauges.

  They waited before setting off again, this time toward the farmhouse. The door to the servants’ entrance creaked, then thudded, when Klaus entered. Gretel led Marsh to the main entrance.

  Shifting moonlight coaxed a pale glow from the stained glass window on the landing. The swastika banners inside the window cast soft ruby light upon the gilded balustrades. It waxed in brightness as another cloud bank cleared the moon. Marsh looked away, to better preserve his night vision. They headed for the kitchen. He turned to tell her to look for sweets, but she went straight to the walk-in larder without his prompting.

  Marsh searched the rest of the kitchen while Gretel rummaged in the larder. The faint aroma of baked trout wafted from the ovens. A sliced lemon lay atop a saucer on one of the butcher-block tables in the center of the kitchen. It reminded him of Will.

  I’ve been away so long. Is he still alive? Has he visited Liv? What must they think of me? What of Milkweed? What does the old man think? Can I ever make this right with any of them? Will Agnes know me, if I ever see her again?

  He packed the worry and wistfulness aside before they crippled him. He checked the cabinets and the iceboxes, but didn’t find anything that was likely to garner Kammler’s cooperation. Not unless the poor fellow enjoyed calf liver, which appeared to be on the menu for the doctor’s dinner tomorrow.

  But he did find a nearly empty sack of flour. Marsh dumped the flour into the rubbish bin, rolled up the cloth sack, and tucked it into his belt.

  Gretel emerged from the larder with a paper bag in one hand. She held something lustrous and white in her lips. She plucked the stick from her mouth, offered it to him.

  “Peppermint?” she whispered. He declined.

  Back to the entryway. Marsh took care to step at the edges of the stairs, where they were less likely to creak. Although it felt like six days had passed since he’d returned to the farm, and even though each tick of the clock meant another opportunity for things to turn sour, he suppressed his impatience and the temptation to take them two at a time. That would have put more stress on the boards and, thus, might have been louder. He crouched in the shadows beneath the rosette window.

  Gretel followed. Straight up the middle. Sounded like a bloody rhino.

  Marsh turned for the flight that led to the top floor, which housed von Westarp’s sanctuary. But Gretel entered the corridor that led to her quarters, and those of the doctor’s other “children.”

  “Not yet,” he whispered. “I’m paying a visit to the doctor first.”

  Gretel shook her head. “We need Kammler.”

  “I can’t bloody well pinch the doctor’s journals with Kammler in tow. Your stepbrother isn’t particularly quiet, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Her eyes were darker than the surrounding shadows. “You weren’t ordered to take his journals.”

  “I’m not leaving here without them.”

  Silence fell. A faint click echoed across the landing, louder than a gunshot in the quiet farmhouse. Gretel closed her eyes.

  Something about this wasn’t sitting well. Even by her standards, Gretel was acting oddly. But he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. When he tried, it slipped away, like the name of an old acquaintance who bumps into you at a Tube stop. And since when did she entertain suggestions?

  She opened her eyes. “Kammler first. And hurry.”

  *

  I killed the headlamps once I blew into the outskirts of Coventry. Last thing I wanted was to make it easier for the Luftwaffe to find the damn place. I didn’t slow down until I nearly embedded a postbox into the grille of Stephenson’s car. And so I prowled through sprawling Coventry by the light of a full moon.

  I’d never been here before, and hadn’t realized the extent of my task. Liv had left an address in Stoke Aldermoor, which I reckoned to be part of the residential ring around the city. But I knew little more than that. And Coventry was a damn sight larger than Williton.

  I had no hope of finding her address on my own. Had to find somebody who knew the city. Probably a succession of somebodies. That meant either stopping at a pub or flagging down an ARP warden. But, just like a copper, neither was there when I needed it.

  Moonlight shone on the corrugated metal roof of a long, tall building that loomed over the street. Factory or warehouse, I reckoned. No sounds of industrial machinery greeted me when I lowered the window. But the fence, the sandbag revetments, and the army sentries suggested either an aircraft factory or a munitions plant. It wasn’t the only shadow factory I passed.

  Coventry’s industrial base would provide Gretel a convenient excuse.

  Factories meant men thirsty for a drink. There had to be a pub in the area. But damned if I could find it. I chose another street at random, wending toward the city’s medieval heart.

  Sod it all, I decided. Let the wardens come to me.

  I leaned on the horn.

  *

  Kammler recoiled from Gretel when she woke him. But he let out a cry—half squeal, half grunt—when he finally recognized Marsh.

  “Shhh!” Marsh snatched the peppermint stick from Gretel’s mouth and waved it under Kammler’s nose. The large man took it in his fist, shoved it in his mouth. He rubbed his head on Marsh’s arm, chewing and drooling. The candy didn’t silence him, but it did reduce the volume of his utterances to a low murmur.

  A sour milk odor wafted from Kammler. The room smelled of peppermint and shit. Kammler had soiled his sheets.

  Kammler slept in his underclothes. The
re wasn’t time to dress him fully, much less to clean him. Gretel fetched his empty battery harness from its hook behind the door. Kammler again recoiled from her. She shot a look at Marsh.

  Marsh whispered in his ear. “Easy, son. I’m glad you remember me. I was gone for a time, but I thought about you quite a lot while I was away.” He did his best to keep up the soothing patter while Gretel buckled the harness around Kammler’s waist. Marsh eased a battery into place. He endured a rib-bruising embrace from Kammler when he fished around for the man’s wires. They’d worked their way down the back of his nightshirt. Poor fellow had been sleeping on them. The bare copper connectors were damp, though whether with sweat or urine, Marsh couldn’t tell. He ran a fold of the cloth flour sack over the connectors to give them a cursory drying, then plugged them into the battery at Kammler’s waist.

  The large man shuddered. “T-t-t! G-g-g-guh…”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Marsh whispered. “You insisted on getting him first, so you keep him quiet.”

  She waved another sweet before Kammler’s face. And nearly lost a finger when he chomped at it. But she didn’t flinch.

  “Stay here,” said Marsh. “I have to do something.”

  He crept into the corridor and shut Kammler’s door. In moments he was back inside the room they’d assigned him, the one Gretel had said once belonged to a man named Rudolf. Silver moonlight streamed through the window. Marsh pulled the cot away from the wall that separated this room from Gretel’s. He felt along the floor for the loose segment of trim, pulled it aside, reached into the hollow.

  The rag was still there. Still stiff with what he hoped was a Twin’s menstrual blood.

  With Kammler in tow, Marsh and Gretel crept past the other occupied rooms—Heike snored—to the servants’ stair. The width of the stair forced them to go single file. Marsh went first. Behind Gretel, Kammler emitted a low whimper that grew in pitch and volume as Marsh ascended. The only way to mollify him was to send Gretel up first, followed by Marsh, then Kammler. In that order, they climbed to von Westarp’s study. Gretel opened the door. Marsh gave Kammler another peppermint stick, then handed him back to Gretel.

  Shadows and moonlight bleached all but the slightest suggestion of color from the doctor’s inner sanctum. Marsh crept through a chiaroscuro warren. Past the bookshelves, past the gramophone, through eddies of chalk dust swirled up by his footsteps. He approached the doctor’s desk. Toward the empty-eyed leer of a child’s skull. Toward the glimmer of polished steel rivets.

  A wet click rattled on the floorboards behind him. “K-k-k-buh-bbbb!” Kammler squealed and clapped.

  Marsh wheeled, crouched, froze. His thudding heart smashed against his breastbone, chiseling for escape. Long seconds passed while he watched the door to the doctor’s bedroom. Gretel snatched something from the floor and pushed it back into Kammler’s mouth. If she saw the dirty look he shot her, she showed no sign.

  His breath came out in a long, ragged exhalation. His hands shook. He leaned against the desk until his jackhammer heart didn’t threaten to pulverize his ribs to so much gravel.

  He traced the wires from the skull-cum-paperweight. The doctor used them as a bookmark, Marsh recalled. His fingers traced cool copper to the soft leather of a blotter, past the sharp facets of a glass inkwell, across the slick oiliness of polished wood. He brushed a fountain pen, sent it rolling across the desk to clatter on the floor. He searched the entire desktop by touch, feeling for the roughness of paper, the contours of embossed leather, the filigreed brass of corner clips. But the wires ended on a bare desk. No journal.

  Tipping the skull back with one hand, he slid his fingers under the dead child’s teeth. When he’d been here before, the skull had rested on a pile of journals. But not tonight.

  Drawers rasped open when he rifled the desk. With dark-adapted eyes he glimpsed stationery; rubber stamps; paper clips; calipers; a magnifying glass; multiple file folders; an empty saltcellar; a cracked sugar bowl inscribed with gradations and imperial volume measurements; a medal inlaid with opals and diamonds. No journals.

  God, where were they? Marsh reconsidered the jumble on the bookshelves. The true hopelessness of his self-appointed task washed over him. He didn’t have time to search the entire room. The moon was already lower in the west than he liked. They had to finish this.

  The journals would have been such a boon … But it would take an hour to search the shelves in the dark.

  Click. The ceiling fixture erupted with electric light, banishing the shadows. Marsh winced from the flare of pain in his eyes.

  Marsh hissed, “Kill that bloody light!”

  Behind him, von Westarp said, “I’ll do no such thing.”

  *

  I flashed the headlamps a few times, too, for good measure. It worked. ARP wardens swarmed to me like picnic ants to an open jam pot.

  The first was a pudgy fellow who came trotting up the street, huffing and wheezing, a hand holding the forage cap to his head. He looked to be in his late sixties. “Oy!” he managed, before doubling over to catch his breath. “You can’t … do … that…”

  He trailed off, still a dozen yards from where I leaned against the Mulliner. Brilliant. Poor bastard was likely to kick before I could get directions out of him.

  I reached inside, flicked the lights a couple more times. Gave the horn another blast, too.

  The second warden came running around the corner at a good clip. “You! Kill those bloody lights now!”

  Much better. Young fellow, this one. It surprised me to see somebody so young and healthy working for the local Air Raid Precautions. Ought to have joined up. But as he approached, swaggering with righteous indignation, moonlight shone on the gray hair at his temples, and I realized he had to be in his mid-forties. Not so young. But younger than me. Young enough to remind me what it had been like to sprint without my knee giving out, to raise my voice without the inevitable agony from the wreckage of my throat.

  Came right up to me, this one. “What the hell is wrong with you? Might was well be signaling the Luftwaffe, what?”

  “Stoke Aldermoor,” I said. “How do I get there?”

  That brought him up short. “What?”

  Behind us, the pudgy warden had caught enough breath to stagger over. “What?”

  I grabbed the younger warden by the collar of his oversized coat. The wool scratched at my knuckles like tiny ineffectual hands scrabbling for release. “Stoke Aldermoor! I need directions!”

  Guess the moonlight gave him a glimpse of my face, because he blanched. But he shoved me back, hard enough to knock me against the old man’s car. Strong chap. “You broke the blackout regs for this? Are you barmy?”

  I pulled Liv’s address from my pocket, waved it in his face. “Can you tell me or not? It’s life and death, man!”

  “I don’t care if the Prime Minister sent you, mate. You’re breaking the regs. That could mean life or death for everybody in the city.”

  He tried to snatch the paper from my hand. I ducked under his arm, sidestepped, pulled his arm through the rest of the arc to overbalance him. He toppled facedown in the street. I knelt on him, locked his other arm behind his back, clamped my free hand on the back of his head.

  “Stoke Aldermoor,” I growled. “Now.”

  Something scuffled off to my left. I turned just in time to turn the kick into a glancing blow. Fat coward. Rage boiled up from deep within me. Unfocused anger had been my companion for so long that it had long ago become part of the background noise of my daily life.

  I remembered the first man to speak to me after Liv and I arrived at the ruins of Williton. He spoke with compassion and reason, told me there was nothing I could do. He dared to suggest I stop digging in the rubble with my bare, bloody hands. Dared to suggest I abandon the search for my infant daughter. So I shattered his jaw with a brick. There were times during the long, dark years after the war when I wondered what became of him. Usually late at night, when I lay in bed alone, Liv having taken a l
over just to avoid sleeping under the same roof as our son. Most natural thing in the world, questioning the path of your life at times like that. But there had been just as many times, in earlier days, when I remembered how good it felt, how right, to give the grief a violent outlet.

  I released the armlock on the younger warden and leapt on his colleague. Fat man went down fast. It felt a bit like kicking a puppy, but I didn’t care. All I needed was one miserable question answered, but these tossers wouldn’t help me. I needed to find Liv, but their obstinacy was killing her. I couldn’t lose Agnes again. I wouldn’t.

  The younger warden tried to pull me off him. He got an arm under my shoulder, jammed his thumb and forefinger against my windpipe. His other hand clamped down on the back of my neck, as I’d done to him.

  “What’s so bloody important about Stoke Aldermoor?”

  I broke free. “I’m trying to save my family!”

  “From what, for chrisssakes? There isn’t—”

  But the rest of his protest was lost in the banshee wail of air-raid sirens. Doors opened all around us as people ran for shelter in their nightclothes. I pointed at the sky. Over the earthshaking chatter of ack-acks, I screamed, “From that!”

  *

  Von Westarp stood in the doorway that opened on the main staircase. He wore a tattered silk dressing gown. Its colors had faded long ago; when he moved, the wispy sleeves and hem waved like cobwebs. He might have been a sepulchral visitation, a revenant spirit. No shortage of those at the farm. In one hand, the doctor held a white porcelain plate stacked high with pieces of blackened toast; his other held one of the missing journals. He’d been reading it.

  Bloody fucking hell.

  He must have gone down to the kitchen for a midnight snack while they were dealing with Kammler. He’d come up the front stairs while Gretel and Kammler held the servants’ stair. Speaking of whom—

  Gretel and Kammler were not in evidence. Had she foreseen the doctor’s interruption and slipped out to give Marsh surprise reinforcements? Or had she sold him out again? She was overdue for a short, intense conversation.

  Von Westarp said, “I knew you were a problem the moment my daughter brought you home.”