HS04 - Unholy Awakening (26 page)

When it served his purpose, Lavedrine treated me like a brother. If my presence made Massur uncomfortable, so much the better. It was the two of us against Massur. At the same time, I realised that a single word would reduce me in an instant to the ranks of a humble, conquered Prussian once again.

‘What’s a Prussian got to do with dead Frenchmen?’ hissed Massur.

Lavedrine rubbed his nose. ‘The dead in Marienburg are French officers. But other people have died in a similar manner in Lotingen, Prussian civilians. We believe that the killer is the same person, and we are looking for the motive.’

Massur’s black eyes stared fixedly at Lavedrine. The sky above was cloudy now, but any source of light must have been painful for him. That was why he had constructed that covered dais, I imagined. It was a dark cavern from which he could observe his men. Why did he not wear coloured glasses? The answer was obvious. Would he hide those reptilian orbs from the men that he hypnotised and menaced with them? His power lay in the evidence of his mutilations. Would any soldier dare to disobey him?

‘What connection can there be?’ Massur murmured. His head shifted a fraction, his eyes fixed on me. ‘What’s your opinion, Prussian magistrate?’

I placed myself at Lavedrine’s shoulder, advancing no further.

‘In Lotingen, the Prussians blame the killings on a vampire,’ I said. Like Lavedrine, I wanted to disconcert Massur.

‘Vampire?’ he said, breathing out the word in a sibilant hiss. ‘I don’t believe in those. Do you, Lavedrine? I’ve never worked out whether you do believe in the super natural, or whether you use it to scandalise others. And what about you, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis?’

I was caught in the crossfire between the two of them.

‘This is Prussia,’ I said. ‘The people here believe in vampires. I have seen the corpses in my hometown. Now, having seen a corpse in Marienburg, and spoken to a survivor, I know…’

‘What?’ Massur’s head jerked in my direction.

‘That they were killed in the same manner,’ I said emphatically. ‘I know what happens in Prussia when there is an outbreak of vampirism, Monsieur le Colonel. But in Marienburg, inside a French fortress, when a French soldier’s throat is ripped open, I am in…
terra incognita
.’

Lavedrine stepped up to Massur. ‘Forget the vampires, Jacques,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about those three officers, instead. Why did you send them back early? What had they done?’

‘Grangé, Gaspard, Lecompte.’ Massur pronounced the names slowly. He might have been spitting shards of glass off his tongue. ‘I heard what had happened to them. I cannot say that I am upset by the news.’

‘What did they do?’ Lavedrine insisted.

Massur looked down at the cobbles. ‘They were everything that an officer shouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘They were the dregs. Insubordinate, disrespectful, indolent. Cowardly hyenas ready to feed on what the lion leaves behind. A vile example to other men, officers of the worst sort. Do you need to hear more?’

‘Did you follow them to Marienburg and punish them?’

Massur’s lip curled. He let out a puff that may have been a laugh. ‘I haven’t been outside this house for the last three months. I did not murder them, if that is what you are thinking. I would have done, given half a chance. I could have run them ragged, or let the bayonet slip in combat, but they weren’t game for risks. They covered for each other, lied for one another. They were Bretons, and rich enough. The French army stinks of preferment these days…’ He shrugged his shoulders, and he glared at me. ‘I bet the Prussian army’s just the same. Ranks bought and sold like sausages and beer. Then, their masters wait for Jacques Massur to turn them into real soldiers. A dead fop is no damned use to any man. Those three were too far gone. They’d sold their souls, left their boot-marks on the shoulders of their fellows.’ He shook his head, and he spat. ‘Things are changing, Lavedrine. For us, and for the Empire. The
Grande Armée
is getting set to face an enemy that fights according to a different set of rules. Accept those rules, or you’ll go down. Spain was a lesson in pure terror, believe me. Lots of nations have learnt from them. No holds barred, that’s the new motto.
Guerrilla
is a very different thing from
guerra
.’ His gaze settled on me, then drifted back to Lavedrine. ‘We don’t need men to hold a square, or march in columns. We need to move like wolves in the woods at night. The Russian wolves are sharpening their claws out there on the steppe.’

His breathing came in fits, his one lung pumping like a bellows, as he gave emphasis to the words that poured from his mouth.

‘What did they do, Massur?’ Lavedrine’s voice was soft and gentle, as if he wished to calm the other man down. ‘You still haven’t told me.’

‘There was a Prussian family living here,’ he said, and he hesitated for a moment. ‘This house was theirs. We left them half of it, and I did my best to keep the two sides well apart. Most of the large houses have been requisitioned in this part of the country. Sometimes everyone manages to get along, but in other places there have been squabbles, problems. Deaths…General Layard was insistent on that point. He didn’t want any trouble. Only officers were sent to me for training. But then, those three arrived…I always line them up the minute they come, and I tell them straight: leave the Prussians in peace. Minimum contact. None at all, if possible.’

‘What happened, Massur?’

There was no mistaking Lavedrine’s tone of voice. It was an order.

‘Sebastien Grangé was fucking one of the Prussian women,’ the colonel said, his voice tense with rage. ‘I don’t know how he met her, where, or when, but he managed to dodge the guards. On more than one occasion. He left his quarters after lights-out, and the other two covered up for him.’

Lavedrine was silent for a moment. ‘Isn’t it what soldiers do?’ he said. ‘Isn’t it part of their informal training? They carry off the heart of one of the enemy, and even better if there’s a baby left behind.’

Massur’s eyes flashed with anger. Until that moment, he had seemed immune to Lavedrine’s provocations. This time, I thought Massur might physically attack him.

‘I am not here to teach men how to rape,’ he snapped.

Different thoughts went flashing through my mind.

‘Is rape what we are talking about?’ I asked.

Massur spoke to Lavedrine, ignoring me. ‘In a place like this, there isn’t much room for Romeo and Juliet. In any case, the rest of the company soon heard about it. They saw the way those three behaved on exercises. Their hearts weren’t it. They never listened. They didn’t try. Then, the others started taking the piss. There were arguments, fights. Someone would have ended up getting killed. I was told that they’d been boasting about it.’

‘About having a woman?’

Massur’s lip curled up in a sneer. ‘That was only half of it, Monsieur Procurator. Grangé claimed that he had found a way to lay his hands on cash by means of the girl. A fortune, it was said. Truth or lies, I’ve no idea.’

‘What happened to this woman?’ I asked. ‘Where is she now?’

‘She ran away. I cannot help you there,’ he said. ‘The serfs left soon afterwards, as well. There’s no-one…’ He made a loud clicking sound with his tongue, then called for his adjutant, a lieutenant named Lebrun. ‘There is one mad old hag who is still living down in the cellars in the west wing. God knows why! She won’t be shifted. Not ’til we decide to throw her out…’

My throat was dry, my voice cracked.

‘This young woman,’ I said. ‘Do you know her name? Or the name of the family that was living here?’

Massur looked at Lavedrine, and he shook his head.

‘It was not a good idea to bring a Prussian here,’ he said.

He turned to face me once again. ‘She was the only daughter of the owner of the Kirchenfeld estate. Her name was Emma Rimmele.’

‘We still call it the Prussian zone,’ said Lieutenant Lebrun.

We were skirting the banks of the moat, going around the house towards the gate on the other side.

‘Once the bedding arrives, we’ll occupy that part of the building, as well.’

He hesitated for a moment, then offered an opinion.

‘It’s all very well for officers and men to drill together under Colonel Massur,’ he said, ‘but you can’t mix ranks where lodgings are concerned. The troops are forced to sleep out under canvas. We need the space. We should have got rid of those Prussians from the start.’

The tents of the French soldiers were laid out to the south and east like a siege force. The French were closing in on the house from all sides. Beyond the encampment, at the foot of a slight rise cloaked in woods, I saw a cemetery and a chapel enclosed by an iron fence. I could see the damage that had been done there. Two or three crosses lacked their arms, a sculpted angel had lost its wings and head. I recalled what Emma had said, the anger in her voice.

Our family graveyard
…
Procurator Stiffeniis. They shoot at the crosses to calibrate their muskets.

I saw the proof of what she had told me. Emma had not lied to me. She had lived there, the French had come, and she had carried off her father and her mother’s coffin to Lotingen. With the family gone, there was no need to isolate the west wing. There was nothing to stop a lone French wolf going into the Prussian zone. All the lambs had fled. Indeed, I thought, the French had done what any man does when he takes possession of a house: they had crushed and killed every spider, mouse and rat. They had disinfested the house of Prussians, and driven off the Rimmele family like vermin. Only one Prussian remained. An
old
hag, as Massur had specified, a woman that no-one would care to rape.

I stopped walking, caught my breath, trying to control my anger. Lavedrine was walking ahead of me, but he stopped, turned to me, and asked, ‘Are you all right?’ He took a step or two in my direction, eyeing me as if he were a doctor, and I showed signs of some dangerous illness.

‘Quite well,’ I snapped, holding up my hand to keep him off.

‘Let’s speak with this witness, then get out of here,’ he murmured. ‘I dislike the place as much as you appear to do.’

After crossing a narrow wooden bridge, we entered by a low arch. The inner courtyard was dominated in the centre by a large stone well. Lebrun threw open a door on the left, and invited us to enter.

‘This was the Rimmele kitchen. It will be our new mess-hall,’ he announced.

I imagined taking his throat between my fingers and squeezing it until his face turned purple. Then, I looked around me. The room was large and almost bare. A long table beneath the windows, a wooden bench on either side of it. A stone sink, a water-jug and pump stood in the corner of the room. A small dresser was pushed up against the wall, a row of pewter beakers dangling from hooks. A huge stone fireplace occupied the entire end-wall.

It was similar in every respect to the Prior’s House in Lotingen.

If the Schuettler brothers had appeared, I would not have been surprised. Indeed, had I seen that room without seeing anything else, I might have guessed the name of the owner. I could imagine Emma Rimmele moving around that room, opening the dresser, taking out a jug of wine and two beakers. I saw myself sitting on one of the benches, while she perched on the table-top be side me. I could smell her skin, feel her breath on my cheek as she bent close. I felt the pressure of her lips on mine, the gentle pinch of teeth against my flesh…

‘There isn’t much to see.’

Lavedrine’s complaint echoed round the room.

The day the body of Angela Enke was found in the well, Emma had told me how she had come to Lotingen, and why she had rented the Prior’s House under the watchful eyes of the Schuettler brothers. The house was large, unmanageable, almost bare. It was, she said, almost identical to the house that they had left behind, the house that belonged to her father and his ancestors. She had chosen the Prior’s House to avoid pitching her father deeper into mental confusion.

Emma Rimmele had not lied to me.

‘Where is this woman?’ Lavedrine asked.

‘Below, monsieur.’ Lebrun pointed to a narrow door. ‘She barricaded herself down there when the family left. We hardly see her. We call her the Ancestral Ghost…’

Lavedrine cut him off in mid-sentence. ‘Has anyone questioned her?’

‘You’d have to catch her first.’

Lavedrine opened the door that Lebrun had indicated. A window-slit lit a tiny landing and the beginning of a narrow, stone staircase which spiralled down into dark ness. ‘Is there no way of calling for her to come up?’ he asked.

‘We’d have to drag her up by force, monsieur. If that’s what you want…’

‘We’ll go down together, Lavedrine,’ I said, stepping through the doorway. ‘The lieutenant can wait for us here.’

‘I’d never go down there,’ Lebrun replied. ‘Except on the colonel’s orders.’

‘And Massur did not give that order,’ Lavedrine growled back at him, and began to follow me down the stairs.

I thought I knew what was
down there
, as Lebrun had so mysteriously described it. These rooms are a common feature of many old Prussian country houses. There was such a place in my father’s house on the family estate in Ruisling. My brother, Stephan, and I had gone there once, and once had been enough. There was an unforgettable smell, and I made it out the instant that I stepped into the stairwell.

The staircase was lit by slits which were covered with iron gratings. They were intended to let in air rather than light. As we went down, the air grew colder, and that, of course, was what it was supposed to do. At last we stepped into a room which had been hacked out from the solid rock on which the foundations of the house were laid. The floor was a crazy-paving of broken tiles of different sizes, shapes and colours. Three low arches gave strength to the structure, and they had been picked out in a curve of carefully aligned red bricks, like the ones from which the outer walls of the dwelling were made. A lighted lantern was hanging from a hook beneath the central archway. The stone walls had been recently whitewashed, a clear sign that the room had been in use and that it was regularly maintained.

‘Is anyone there?’ Lavedrine called out in German.

There was no echo, and no reply.

Beyond the arch to the right there was a bed, a table and chair, a brown ceramic stove. I walked across, touched it with my hand, and found that it was still hot. ‘This is where she lives,’ I said, noting a narrow cupboard and a small chest of drawers against the wall.

As I turned towards Lavedrine, who had gone to explore at the other end of the cellar, I stopped short, and caught my breath. Above the arch, there was a fresco. The painting was faded but still distinct. It represented a coat of arms – a central shield, a knight’s helmet above, a laurel crown below. But it was the motif above it which held my gaze. I had seen it before – smaller, less precise, and in the form of a squiggle or a seal – on a document that I had found in the archive in Lotingen. There, it had been tiny, almost insignificant. Here, it was the single focal point of what I took to be the Rimmele coat of arms. It was the Greek letter
pi
, and, beneath the device, an elegant legend written in Italian ran from one end of the arch to the other:
Tre imperfettibile è degno archetipo di quella serie che svela, volgendo circolare, mirabile relazion
e. It was, I guessed, one of those ancient conundrums, a mathematical puzzle referring to the perfect number, three. Precisely what it might have signified was beyond me. And the fact that I had seen the same symbol reproduced in Lotingen on the wedding contract confused me all the more. Was it Erwin Rimmele’s personal cipher?

‘By all the gods!’ Lavedrine exclaimed from the far end of the room.

He was staring at three carcasses. Dangling on hooks suspended from the ceiling, the creatures were small and they had been expertly skinned. Two tiny tusks revealed that one was a young boar. In the middle was a more compact animal with short legs. The one on the right, judging from its long legs and graceful neck, was an immature deer. On the floor beneath each carcass was a pewter dish. Two of the bowls were full to the brim, while blood still dripped from the sliced throat of the deer.

Two more hooks hung empty, with waiting bowls beneath them.

‘What place is this?’ he whispered, touching the chain above the boar, which set the body spinning in the air.

‘This is the Blood Room,’ I said. ‘That’s what these cellars are called. In the country there’s one on every estate. Game is brought here to be killed and drained. The blood is collected, and used in making sausages, black puddings, that sort of thing.’ I pointed to a wooden trough containing large lumps of salt crystal. ‘Sometimes, it is called the Salt Room. As the meat begins to turn, the carcasses will be cut into pieces and stored in salt and herbs inside those barrels.’ A dozen barrels stood along the wall. ‘Salted meat could be used in times of siege, or in the worst days of the winter. This room was the pulsing heart of the house; this was the place where blood flowed.’

‘That one is a badger,’ Lavedrine said, pointing to the creature in the middle. ‘It reminds me of my home. Have you ever tasted
blarieur au sang
, Stiffeniis? The meat is surprisingly tasty.’

‘It is not merely a matter of food,’ I answered. ‘These rooms were a reminder of ancient times. So long as game was killed, so long as the blood flowed, it meant that the house would prosper. That’s why it is so cold and dry. To preserve the meat, but also to save the family living upstairs from the smell of it. Frederick the Great outlawed private slaughtering practices in the interests of modernity and hygiene. He ordained that state abattoirs be opened on the outskirts of every town. The cottage where Grangé died near the Black Bull was a butcher’s house.’

‘For once I agree with your King Frederick,’ Lavedrine muttered. ‘I prefer not to see what I am about to put into my stomach.’

I sniffed the meat. ‘These have been recently killed. Game takes on a stronger scent when it has been left for days or weeks.’

Lavedrine touched the edge of one of the bowls with his foot. The blood shifted as a solid lump, a sign that it had almost coagulated. ‘Someone has been ignoring the edict of Frederick the Great, as well as failing to pay French taxes.’

‘The more animal blood that flows, the more human life there will be,’ I said, thinking back to my childhood in Ruisling. ‘It means that the estate is thriving.’

‘This is what the vampire seeks,’ Lavedrine murmured. ‘Blood. Life. Vitality.’

He lost no opportunity to make a connection with what had happened in Lotingen. Things which were commonplace and normal to a Prussian took on a different meaning in the eyes of a Frenchman.

‘The person living in this cellar intends to keep the heart of the household pulsing,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Is that a fair assumption?’

I did not answer him. My thoughts flew off at a tangent.

‘You knew who this estate belonged to, didn’t you, Lavedrine? Before we even came here. Why else did you bring up the name of Emma Rimmele in the
longue paume
court this morning?’

He raised his hand and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I had no idea at all when I mentioned it,’ he replied. ‘You can believe me or not, as you wish.’

‘Were you not listening to Massur?’ I said. ‘Emma Rimmele is the victim in all of this. She was raped, and by a French officer…’

‘Raped?’ he sneered. ‘It is a word which covers a multitude of sins.’

‘Massur chose the word, not I, Lavedrine. That’s why Grangé came to this part of the house. That’s why he was sent away. I see rough hands which tear at flimsy female clothing. I hear cries of protest, while the object of his lust struggles to resist, screams silenced by the threat of worse to come unless she surrenders.’ I paused for a moment, holding his gaze. ‘This is rape. As Massur said, this is no place for Romeo and Juliet.’

Lavedrine was staring at me as if he saw me truly for the very first time. ‘God help you, Hanno Stiffeniis,’ he hissed, narrowing his eyes. ‘This is the fruit of
your
imagination. It is what you would have liked to…’

A door slammed.

‘What do you want?’ a voice cried in alarm.

A woman had entered the room, while we had been engaged. She stared at us in amazement, her right hand on her heart, her left hanging down at her side, holding a wild hare by the ears. The animal kicked and struggled, but it could not shake free. ‘Do you speak my language?’ she asked, her voice trembling with some emotion.

‘Speak to her, Stiffeniis,’ said Lavedrine in French. He bowed his head in the direction of the woman, then went to sit on the stairs by which we had descended to the room.

I was free to play the magistrate, it seemed. I told the woman who we were, but not the reason for our being there.

‘The Rimmeles sent you here, I suppose?’ she said.

‘The Rimmeles,’ I repeated vaguely.

That name was an order. She began to speak. Her name was Adele Beckmann. She had been born on the estate sixty-five years before. There was nothing of the mad woman about her, as Lieutenant Lebrun had insisted. She was a Prussian serf, faithful and loyal. Though freed by the French, she did not thank them for it. She wore clothes that women of her kind have worn for centuries: a long brown skirt, a white blouse expertly embroidered with flowers of different colours, a blood-red apron. Her clothes were clean and crisp, except for traces of mud which clung to the hem of her skirt and to the wooden clogs on her feet.

‘Frau…’

‘I am a widow,’ she corrected me.

‘Widow Beckmann, you are the only…’

‘Has something happened to the master, or to Emma?’ she asked. She must have clutched more tightly at the ears of the hare, for it began to kick out viciously with its long hind legs.

‘Nothing has happened to them,’ I replied.

Adele Beckmann’s green eyes studied me. Forty years ago, she had been beautiful. Now, her shapely face was wrinkled like a weathered rock.