by Tom Harper
I picked up a file, resigned to another afternoon of thankless labour. Casting the metal form from the engraved copper plate had been easy, but I had not anticipated the fine accuracy that would be needed. If any letter stood even a hair’s breadth lower than the others it would hardly touch the page. The same amount too high and it would crush the paper with ink. As the letters were created by hammering a steel punch into the copper, it was all but impossible to make them a uniform height except by the most meticulous filing.
‘Where are the forms?’
Kaspar looked up. ‘In the bag?’
I looked in the bag that Kaspar had brought from Dritzehn’s house. Apart from a few lumps of cast-off lead, it was empty.
‘Perhaps you put them on the workbench.’
I rummaged through the debris of paper, tools, copper plates and miscast forms that littered the bench. I could not find them.
‘Are you sure you brought them back?’
He shrugged. ‘I thought so.’
This was when I hated working with Kaspar. If he did not care about something he thought nothing of ignoring it, and no rebuke could reach him.
‘You must have left them in the press.’
‘Perhaps I did,’ he agreed.
‘I told you to bring them back.’ Dritzhen had been on his sickbed a week now, and the house had become a thoroughfare for concerned family, prying friends and creditors who feared they might never see their money again. ‘If anybody sees them our secret is lost.’
‘I locked the door.’
I did not want to quarrel with Kaspar – we had already argued too much that year. I turned my back on him and looked out the barn door, breathing the December air to cool my temper.
A boy was standing in the yard. At first I thought he might be a vagabond or a thief but he did not run away when I stepped out of the barn to challenge him. I looked closer and realised I knew him, an errand boy of Hans Dunne. He looked as though he had run all the way from Strassburg.
‘Did Dunne send you?’ I called out the door.
He nodded. ‘He said to tell you Herr Dritzehn is dead.’
*
With its bowed-out walls and blunt gable, the house already looked like a coffin. The shutters were closed, and no light emerged from within. We stood on the doorstep a long time before a servant admitted us. Inside it stank of vinegar and resin where they had burned pine dust in the fires.
‘Go downstairs and rescue the forms,’ I told Kaspar. I handed him the key we used to lock the cellar. ‘Take the screws out as well.’ To reduce the effects of a single mistake, our latest innovation with this press was to divide the text into four separately cast strips, one for each paragraph, screwed together to make the plate.
‘Where will you go?’
‘To pay my last respects.’
I took a candle from the wall and climbed the creaking stairs. Shadows flitted across the walls. A dozen pairs of eyes fixed on me as I entered the room: mourners and servants gathered outside the bedroom door. All seemed united in some silent accusation. Most were clustered around a stout woman in a white veil – Dritzehn’s wife, now widow – and the man she clung to, his brother Jörg.
I removed my hat. ‘Frau Dritzehn, I have come to say how sorry-’
The moment she saw me she detached herself from the throng and flew at me.
‘You have done this,’ she shrieked. ‘You and your friend. He was a good man, an honest man, until you seduced him with your magic. If any good can come of this day, it is that you will no longer have a claim on him. When Andreas is buried you will give me back every penny he paid you.’
She rained down blows upon me. Her brother-in-law flung his arms around her and pulled her off me.
‘Go to your husband,’ he ordered her. ‘I will deal with this.’
He almost pushed her into the bedroom. Through the open door, I saw the dim shape of Dritzehn’s body lying flat on his bed under a shroud.
Jörg closed the door and gave me a crafty look. I had met him once or twice before in my visits to that house and never liked him. He was a small, hunched man with swollen cheeks and a stubby chin like a club foot.
‘She is hysterical,’ he said, no trace of sympathy. ‘Understandably. At times like this, business is better left with cooler heads.’
‘Your brother is dead,’ I answered. ‘Business can wait.’
‘I spoke to Andreas before he passed on. He told me of your venture, that his only regret dying now was that he would not live to see the vast riches he knew would come of it. He said that I should have his share of the partnership.’
‘If he said that then the disease must already have claimed his mind,’ I said. ‘But we can talk of this another day. I came here to mourn Andreas.’
It was true. I did not deny that I had played on his greed and encouraged him into ventures that would profit me more than him. But Dritzehn had been a merchant: he speculated as he saw fit. How he financed it was his affair. As one man to another, I mourned him.
‘I will go. I did not mean to upset his family in their hour of grief.’
‘You will upset me much more if you do not listen to me,’ Jörg warned. ‘I know how much money Andreas sank into your little scheme, though he could never tell me why you deserved it.’
‘Then you will never know. His money and his secrets stay in the partnership.’
‘Then I must take his place.’
‘I have a contract signed by him that in the event of his death his heirs will receive nothing until the venture is finished. Even then, he died owing me money.’ I could not believe I was having to say this before his corpse was cold.
‘Would you leave his wife destitute?’
‘She is your responsibility, not mine. She will only go destitute if you let her.’
‘Then I will go to the courts.’ Jörg had started shouting. ‘Whatever it is that you and Andreas kept so secret will be exposed to the whole city. You cannot keep me out.’
I met Kaspar outside. ‘Did you get the forms?’
He handed me a heavy bag. ‘I also took the screw out of the press. No one who sees it will guess what it was for.’
‘They may learn anyway. Dritzehn’s brother threatened to drag me through the courts.’
‘Let him. There are only four men alive who know the full secret. Saspach and Dunne will not betray us.’
I took little comfort from that. ‘We must get home. Jörg Dritzehn is wild for our art. I would not be surprised if he broke into our workshop to sniff it out.’
We borrowed a horse for Kaspar and rode back to St Argobast in the dark. All I remember of that ride is cold air and horse sweat. As soon as we arrived I stoked up the fire in the forge and lit all the lamps and candles I could find. With Drach’s help, I scoured the barn for every casting we had ever made: every form, every fragment of lead, any piece of metal with letters cast in it. I gathered them in an iron crucible and set it over the fire. The only ones I spared were the engraved copper plates. I wrapped them in a sack and buried them under a stone in the yard. They were too expensive to waste.
I added coals to the fire and coaxed it to a blazing heat. The forms began to soften. The tiny letters blurred and melted away, running down the face of the metal like tears.
‘Is this the end of our enterprise?’
I looked at Kaspar. Beads of sweat ran down his cheeks from standing too close to the fire. I jabbed a poker into the crucible to break up a stubborn lump of metal.
‘Even if we see off Jörg Dritzehn, what do we have? An art that does not work and a venture that has no capital, only debts. Ennelin, the mirrors, now Dritzehn: everything we attempt ends in disaster.’
I stared into the crucible and watched the last crumbs of metal dissolve into the slurry. I remembered Dritzehn’s widow. You have done this.
I glanced up. Drach was gone.
Panic overwhelmed me. Had he abandoned me? Had I driven him away with my failures? I left the forge and ran to the
barn.
Kaspar was there, bending over the press in the corner. I sagged against the door frame in relief. With his back to me, he extracted a copper plate and fixed it in a vice on the bench. He took a fine-toothed metal saw from a rack of tools on the wall.
‘I told you to gather all the plates so I could bury them.’
He didn’t look up. ‘This is not yours.’
I crossed the barn and looked closer. The lamps shone into the grooves cut into the surface, a herd of lions and bears incised in copper.
‘This was the plate for the ten of beasts.’ Drach lined up the saw blade on the edge of the plate and drew it slowly across the metal. Sparks flew.
‘What are you doing? There is no need to destroy these. This is your art.’
The saw bit. A jagged gash appeared in the copper.
‘I am not destroying it; I am remaking it. We will need more money to continue with your art. I can make more cards and sell them. It will not be much, but it may tide us through.’
‘But you told me half the plates were gone. And now you are breaking this one too.’
‘This card is the sum of all the others. He put his palms against the plate so that he masked off different portions of it. ‘Here is one, and two, and three… I can break it into its parts and combine them to make any number I like.’
I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him close to me. His body was warm against mine, a perfect fit. I loved him.
And in that moment, an angel began to sing inside me. What Kaspar had done with the card, I could do with the indulgences.
We would tear it up and start again.
LV
Strasbourg
On the dresser, the television played silent images of war and grief. Nick watched, hypnotised. The shock of Brother Jerome’s death left him numb.
He had to break the spell. He grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. ‘We need to leave.’
There was an unusual firmness in his voice, an urgency he’d never felt before. It snapped Emily out of her daze.
‘Where? There’s nowhere to go.’
‘Let’s start by getting out of here. The TV said the neighbours heard the shots this afternoon. Whoever did it was only a few hours behind us.’
‘Could they have followed us?’
‘Jerome was the one who suggested Strasbourg. He showed us the ex libris, told us the whole story of the Count of Lorraine. He must have guessed we’d come here. If he told them…’
They took the stairs down to the lobby, out into the street. He didn’t notice the black Audi parked opposite the hotel. The snow seemed to be coming down less heavily now, though there were still flakes whirling in the cones of light under the street lamps. Plenty had fallen already. They crunched deep footprints as they walked around the cathedral and down one of the side streets. Nick looked back but saw no one. The shops were shut, the workers gone home.
A few streets away, they found a small bistro that was open for dinner. It was only half full, but after the wintry solitude outside it felt cosy and welcoming, filled with candlelight and smoky smells of herbs, roasted meat and wine. They took a table behind a wooden pillar, hidden from the windows but with a view of the door, and ordered vin chaud and tartiflettes. In other circumstances it would have been a perfect romantic evening: candelight, hot wine, knees bumping under the small table. Now the intimacy just seemed another rebuke, a taunt from a world that had abandoned him.
He swirled his glass and stared at the dregs. ‘Atheldene was right. I don’t know what any of this means but it’s crazy.’
‘It means something to somebody,’ Emily countered. ‘If we weren’t on the right track, they wouldn’t keep trying to stop us.’
‘We’re not going to find Gillian.’ The words were bitter in his mouth. ‘All I’ve done is get people killed. Bret, Dr Haltung, now Brother Jerome.’
‘Brother Jerome was my fault,’ said Emily quietly. ‘If I hadn’t taken you there he’d never have been involved.’
‘If I hadn’t brought you here you’d never have been involved.’ Nick squeezed the stem of his wine glass, so hard he thought it would shatter.
He glanced up. Emily seemed not to have heard him; her face was fixed in an emotionless stare over his shoulder. He began to turn to follow, but she grabbed his hand and pulled him back.
‘Keep looking at me. There’s a man three tables behind you who’s been watching us for the last five minutes.’
Nick felt a familiar surge of dread. ‘What does he look like?’
‘Dark, heavy build. A crooked nose. Italian, maybe. He hasn’t taken off his coat since he came in.’
Nick flicked his eyes to the gilded mirror on the wall but couldn’t pick him out. His mind raced.
‘I’ve got an idea.’ His whole body was tensed, half expecting to feel a gun in his back any second. He locked his eyes on Emily’s to steady himself. ‘In a moment, we’ll have a blazing row. You’ll run off in tears to the bathroom. I’ll storm out the door. We’ll leave the bag on the table and see what he does.’
‘What if he comes after you?’
‘Then you come after him.’
‘And if he comes after me?’
‘Scream the place down. I’ll be right there.’ Nick gripped her wrist. ‘Are you ready?’
She nodded – then suddenly pushed back her chair and leaped to her feet.
‘How dare you say that?’ she shouted. Around the restaurant, the rattle of cutlery and conversation went still. Even Nick was shocked. ‘You don’t have a clue what I’m feeling.’
She looked wildly around, then threw up her hands and ran out to the toilets. Nick sat stunned for a moment, then pushed back his chair so that the bag hanging on the arm was clearly visible. He slammed a twenty-euro note down on the table and stalked to the exit, keeping his eyes glued to the floor.
Even before the door shut, he heard the scrape of a chair being hurriedly vacated. He ran along the well-trampled pavement to the nearest corner, ducked behind it and looked back.
Almost at once, the restaurant door banged open again. A thickset man in a long black coat strode out. The lantern over the door bathed him in yellow light. Nick glimpsed dark hair, dark skin, a boxer’s nose and his own backpack dangling from the man’s fist. There was something familiar about him – from the Belgian warehouse, perhaps? He looked briskly up and down the street, then pulled his keys out of his pocket. The man pressed whatever was in his hand. Orange lights blinked on a black Audi across the street. No snow had settled on the roof: it couldn’t have been there long. Nick tried to look inside, wondering if there was anyone else behind the dark windows.
The man crossed the street and opened the driver-side door. Nick made up his mind. The snow was silent underfoot. The man had his back to Nick and was fumbling with the backpack, perhaps making sure that the book was inside. He didn’t hear Nick coming until he was almost on top of him. Nick dropped his shoulder and drove his fists into the man’s stomach. All the anger, fear and frustration he’d endured in the last week released itself in that one moment of contact, a perfect spear of rage. The man doubled over; the keys fell out of his hand into the snow. Nick kicked them under the car, then kneed his adversary in the face. He grabbed for the bag.
But Nick was an amateur. The other man was a pro. Nick’s knee had unbalanced his opponent but not knocked him over. As Nick stretched out for the bag, the man’s big hand whipped out and closed around his arm. He twisted; Nick felt his arm almost torn off its elbow. His whole body was wrenched around. His feet skidded on the snow, lost their grip and slid from underneath him. The man threw him back onto the ground.
Nick gasped as the breath was forced out of him. Looming above, the man took a step back. For a split second Nick thought he might just turn and run. But he was only giving himself more space. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a pistol. It looked tiny in his hoof-like fist.
This was how it would end. Lying in the road, his blood melting into the snow
around him until it cooled and froze. He’d never know what had happened to Gillian, never understand why he’d come to this icy corner of France to die. He raged at the injustice of it.
With a scream, Emily flew out of the night and hurled herself against the man. She was too slight to have much effect, but she wrapped herself around his arm and dragged it down, away from Nick.
Nick sprang to his feet and grabbed for the gun. His hand closed around the cold barrel and clung on for his life. For a moment the three of them were caught in a heaving tangle of limbs and steel, swaying and staggering in the snow. Then something gave. Nick lost his balance; the next thing he knew his cheek was planted in the snow, pinned down by somebody on top of him.
‘Are you OK?’
Emily pushed herself off him and stood. Nick scrambled up after her. He still had the gun, holding it by its muzzle like a club. Where was their opponent?
Halfway down the street, a large shadow flitted across the snow under a street lamp. Nick looked around.
‘He’s still got the bag.’
‘Wait,’ Emily called. But Nick was already running. His feet crunched in the snow; his arms pumped so fast he barely noticed the weight of the gun. The man might be strong but he wasn’t quick on his feet. Nick had little trouble keeping him in sight as they sprinted along the empty streets. The black and white frames of the half-timbered houses were skeletal in the gloom, their shuttered windows blind to the frantic chase.
The man glanced over his shoulder, then ducked down an unlit side street. His heavy tracks were printed clearly in the snow – especially here, where few other feet had disturbed it. Nick followed, gaining. He glimpsed the black gleam of water below as he crossed a bridge and turned again.
The houses thinned, giving way to a strip of grass and trees. To his right, he saw a jumble of wooden battlements and turrets – a children’s playground. The chill air rasped in Nick’s lungs. But he could see his quarry clearly now, barely twenty yards ahead of him. He swallowed the pain and kept going.
Between the trees, Nick saw water on all sides. They must have come onto some sort of island in the river. Ahead, a row of high stone towers stood floodlit against the darkness where the island ended.
