Whoever he told of what he had seen, the witch hunters would come to hear of it eventually. And when Brother-Captain Krieger learnt of Dieter’s confession, as it were, he would assume the worst. He would want to know why Dieter had been in the town’s garden of Morr at night for a start. Even if he told Krieger about the attack on the Four Seasons coach, and assuming that the two highwaymen had not disposed of the evidence already, there had been no survivors other than the black-hearted brigands themselves, to corroborate Dieter’s story. And if Krieger then discovered that Dieter had been back to Hangenholz, and that whilst he was there the apprentice’s father had died, such facts would only serve to fuel the fire of the brother-captain’s suspicions.
Dieter had seen how unreasonable the witch hunter had been and what he was capable of. It had only been thanks to Professor Theodrus’ intervention that Dieter had not been hauled away and tortured the first, and last, time he had met the psychotic Krieger. He did not think that the guild master’s favour would extend to saving the daemon apprentice’s neck a second time.
He could try leaving an anonymous tip-off with the Temple of Sigmar, but how many of those did they receive a day? And he couldn’t be certain which house it was that he had seen the grave robbers enter in Apothekar Allee. He would have to return there during the hours of daylight to confirm its location. And the thought of doing that filled him with trepidation. What if he had been seen that night? If he returned he might be spotted again and find himself reported to the witch hunters. Perhaps the grave robbers would have realised that they had been followed and would be on the lookout for him again.
However, the thought of returning to that strange house also filled him with a stomach-turning thrill of excitement. It was the same feeling he had unsettlingly enjoyed the night he had followed the corpse thieves through the mist-shrouded streets.
If he were to return to the house with the dead-eyed windows, he knew that his own insatiable curiosity would make him want to know more. And Morr only knew what Dieter might find if he dug too deep.
So, to begin with, Dieter did nothing. He told no one.
He returned to the physicians’ guild where little was said of the matters that had resulted in his absence from the guild for more than two weeks. Leopold showed some concern, lending Dieter his own notes so that he might catch up on at least some of what he had missed, but even his friend did not seem to know what to say in the face of the intense young man’s taciturn grief.
Dieter threw himself back into his studies with great gusto, determined to fulfil the vow he had made on leaving Hangenholz. He would learn all that he could about medicine, he would be the best. He had always preferred his own company to sharing that of others, and now he even distanced himself from those few people whom he had forged any bonds with before. He did little more than pass the time of day with Leopold when he saw him at the guild, and he no longer troubled the guild master himself.
The first day of summer and the feast day of Sigmar came and went with Dieter being almost totally unaware of the crowded streets, elaborate processions and banner-bedecked town houses, none coming close to the ostentation adorning of the grand Temple of Sigmar itself.
But no matter how deeply he immersed himself in his studies, Dieter could not get the memory of what he had seen out of his head. What a strange game it was that fate played. He would certainly not have chosen to be out during the hours of darkness, beyond the protection of the town walls.
He could not help wondering if he had stumbled upon the dealings of the infamous Corpse Taker. The ghoulish creature was supposedly responsible for numerous disappearances, possibly even deaths, and should be brought to justice. And if it was not the Corpse Taker, then there was another practitioner of the macabre and heretical hiding within Bögenhafen. Something needed to be done about the situation.
The longer it went on the worse it became, until Dieter had to tell someone else about what he had seen. He would go out of his mind if he did not. Worse than that, it was distracting him from his studies. He made the resolution there and then, as he was making a pretence of poring over Kerflach’s Agues and Maladies of the Reikland.
So it was that he found himself standing outside Professor Theodrus’ study, his knuckled fist raised ready to knock. But then something made him stay his hand.
Was this really what he wanted to do, a voice inside him asked? How kindly would Theodrus take to Dieter’s interruption, especially regarding their current “understanding”? And then there was the niggling reminder that the professor had already seemed to know a great deal about the Corpse Taker’s activities, a lot more than anybody else Dieter had encountered since he had come to Bögenhafen. More, it seemed, than even the witch hunters and he had been so assured in his protestations that Dieter was not the one the templars were hunting.
But he dared not tell Leopold either, not after how things had been left so inimically between them.
It was not until the twenty-eighth day of Sigmarzeit that Dieter went to Erich for advice. Even then, events did not turn out as he had planned.
Erich was at home for what as far as Dieter was concerned was the first time in three days. He was sitting at the table in their garret space with a familiar half-empty bottle of Reikland Hock uncorked in front of him, swilling the dregs around in his glass. His mangy ginger cat was sitting smugly on his lap having its ears fondled.
Emboldened by the glass of wine Erich had poured him, Dieter started to talk. And once he’d started, the words just poured out, and he found himself telling his friend everything… everything apart from how his pursuit of the grave robbers had given him a rush of excitement.
When he had finished Erich simply sat there, motionless in his chair, mouth agape and a stunned expression on his face. “Well, you’re a dark horse aren’t you, Herr Heydrich,” Erich said at last. “The black sheep of the family, eh? Well I don’t mind telling you, country boy, I didn’t think you had it in you. You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
In the course of a few minutes, Dieter had changed Erich’s opinion of him utterly.
“But what do you think I should do?” Dieter asked, his shoulders sagging. He was suddenly aware of how relieved he felt having unburdened himself.
Erich stood up, a strange expression on his face, as if he wasn’t really there in the attic room anymore. He began to pace across the garret. “Do?”
His eyes were distant as if trained on something inside his own mind rather than in the cold reality of the chill attic room. It might be Sigmarzeit and the weather steadily warming outside, but the topmost apartment of Frau Keeler’s lodging house was still as draughty as a stable and cold as an icehouse.
“Do?” Erich repeated.
“Yes,” Dieter said mournfully, hoping that Erich was going to solve his problem for him. “Should I report what I saw to the authorities? To the witch hunters?”
“Are you insane?” Erich suddenly turned on Dieter. “Have you forgotten what that bastard Krieger almost did to you the last time? You give him this to fuel his fire and he’ll string you up from the nearest lamppost!”
Dieter looked at the floor, downcast. Of course his roommate was right. Krieger would treat anything that Dieter tried to tell him as evidence that Dieter was guilty of, if not actually being the Corpse Taker himself, then at least being his accomplice.
“S-so what now? I go on like this, knowing what I know but not being able to put things right? I-I was not able to prevent my father’s death, but if I could help expose the Corpse Taker I might be able to preserve the lives of others.”
Erich looked at Dieter from beneath beetling brows. “How can you be so certain that whoever it is that lives at the house in Apothekar Allee is the Corpse Taker?”
Dieter looked at him. “I don’t. B-but what I am certain of is that I watched as two thieves dug up a corpse and then followed them as they brought it into the town, under cover of mist and darkness, to that self-same house.”
“
And what was it you told me that old duffer Theodrus said about there being unlicensed doktors—at least not ones licensed by the guild—practising secretly in Bögenhafen? Doktors with dangerously progressive ideas, Shallya forbid?”
“Yes,” Dieter admitted warily.
He recalled quite clearly what he had told Erich after his encounter with Anselm Fleischer at the Temple of Shallya, but he also recalled what had happened to Anselm Fleischer himself after allegedly apprenticing himself to a physician with progressive ideas.
“Couldn’t it simply be that the house belongs to one such doktor?”
“But you seem to be forgetting that I saw a human cadaver being delivered to the place.”
“Just think: how hard must it be for a scholar to get hold of a real human body to examine? And what if the study of that corpse was the only way to advance medical science? You certainly couldn’t get hold of a body by any conventional means that I’m aware of.”
“Anatomy is the preserve of barber-surgeons,” Dieter said, uncertainly.
“Listen to yourself,” Erich sneered. “You sound like Theodrus. I bet you wouldn’t be so down on barber-surgeons if you had St Salvus’ rot and the only cure was to have your arm lopped off. You’d want a man who knew his way around a body on the other end of the rusty scalpel then, I can tell you.”
Dieter inadvertently winced at the thought.
“You want to heal people, don’t you?” Erich suddenly challenged Dieter.
Dieter glowered at him. “Of course I do. You know that.”
“And you would do what you could to improve methods and cures so that you could save more people?”
“Yes.”
“What if the only way you could achieve that was to experiment on human corpses by dissecting them? Do you mean to tell me that you would give up your pursuit to cure the sick for fear of cutting up a few dead bodies?”
Dieter said nothing but fixed Erich with his intensely dark eyes, his mouth tight-lipped.
“Perhaps the occupant of the house in Apothekar Allee is just such a doktor,” Erich said, his voice dripping with reason. “Imagine what his work with the dead might mean for the living. Imagine what treatments might be discovered, what procedures developed. Imagine a cure for the red pox or manic moon fever. And you would deny all this because of the preconceived superstitions of a staid and out-dated association such as the guild of physicians?”
What if Erich were right, Dieter considered? If his suppositions were correct, then perhaps others would not have to go through what he had endured as a child after his mother died.
“So what are you suggesting?”
“Why don’t we find out for ourselves, before involving the bigoted brotherhood of Sigmar? Why don’t we go back to Apothekar Allee?”
It had been Erich’s idea to break into the house, as though they were a couple of common burglars, just as it had been his idea to go back to the house and have a look around. It had been a combination of three flagons of ale consumed at the Cutpurse’s Hands and an insatiable, almost obsessive, curiosity that had persuaded Dieter to join him. Erich’s natural charisma had also played a part. Dieter realised that he was surrounded by people he idolised and wanted to be more like. Theodrus was one, Leopold was one, and so was Erich.
The two apprentices waited until the salubrious tavern was on the verge of closing before leaving. Dieter chose their route through the night-muffled town, making it more circuitous than need be, keeping clear of the artisans’ quarter to make sure that in case they were seen, no one would suspect where they were heading.
The day had been overcast for much of the time, despite the months having matured to Sommerzeit now, but with the night the cloud cover was clearing. Mannslieb looked upon their endeavours with an impartial eye as they progressed through the town.
Having taken a wrong turning once or twice, after almost half an hour, the two found themselves at the end of a narrow alleyway that ran between tall, neglected and possibly even empty tenements. A sign fastened to the crumbling bricks of one of the buildings stated that they had at last found their way to Apothekar Allee.
“Come on, what are we waiting for?” Erich whispered, but even he had lost some of the enthusiasm that he had displayed earlier.
Neither of them felt particularly confident about their chosen course of action, but they had come this far. Just a few more steps and they would be at the house. What harm could that do? They advanced into the narrow street together and approached the dead-eyed house.
“There’s a plaque here,” Erich said in a harsh whisper. “Next to the door.”
“What does it say?” Dieter asked.
“I can’t make it out. Whatever name was written here has been scratched out.”
Dieter made no further comment, but the defaced plaque only served to add to his sense of unease.
The house was in an obvious state of decay and it was this fact that provided them with a way in. It was Erich who found the loose shutter and the rotten window behind it on the first floor. With both of them balancing on the roof of an abutting lean-to belonging to a neighbouring derelict house, the students were able to reach the window. It did not take much to force the latch, the wood of the casement splintering wetly around the rusted iron fitting.
“Come on,” Erich said, the moonlight reflecting madly from his eyes, “give me a leg up.”
Dieter was not entirely sure what is was that made him cup his hands for Erich to push his body up and in through the window, or what it was that meant he then allowed himself to be pulled inside too, rather than turn tail and flee right there and then. As he stood in the all but pitch-black room beyond, he tried to tell himself that it was merely alcohol-fuelled bravado and nothing more. To admit that it might be anything more than that was to invite an uncomfortable degree of introspection and mental self-exploration.
Inside, the property was as rundown as it appeared from the outside. The room they found themselves in was lacking any furniture whatsoever. The floorboards were bare, bristling with splinters; the walls damp, flaking plaster. Erich, recovering some of his former courage, led the way out of the room.
Beyond they found themselves on an equally bleak landing. A staircase ran both up to a floor above and downstairs, the banister staves broken or entirely missing in places. There was a musty smell of mildew in the air around them. It seemed as if no one had lived here for a very long time, and yet he had seen the two body snatchers admitted by a manservant of some description only last month.
Erich peered up the next flight of stairs to the darkness of the floor above. Satisfied that there was no danger likely to come from that direction, he looked cautiously over the edge of the banisters. Dieter did the same.
Light from a street lamp entering the building from outside through the slats of a shuttered window barely made the floor below visible to them. The passageway below was laid with interlocking tiles which might once have been black and white but which were now a uniform grey-brown, thanks to the layers of dirt that had been allowed to besmirch them.
Erich led the way forward, along the landing, keeping his back flat against the wall and as far from the staircase banisters as possible. Two other doors led off to rooms on this floor, one directly ahead and one to the left. The panels of the doors were scratched, their varnish peeling.
Any haze of alcohol had been cleared from the inquisitive apprentices’ minds by the adrenaline now racing round their bodies at the thought of exploring the sepulchral house. Erich stopped outside the first door. No light spilled from underneath it. Pressing himself close against the jamb, he turned the handle and pushed the door open. Hinges groaned in protest. Erich froze.
There was a noise like footsteps, but had it come from the alleyway beyond the window through which they had broken in, or from somewhere inside the house?
The two students waited for several long, anxious moments. Dieter had never felt so on edge, so exhilarated.
Hearing nothing else,
at long last Erich peered into the room. His jaw dropped open and he stepped inside. Dieter followed. Once they were both inside Erich pushed the door to again. Then he spoke for the first time since they had entered the deathly house.
“Will you look at this?” he whispered excitedly.
Dieter just stood agog, staring. One of the room’s windows was unshuttered and wan moonlight lit the chamber with its eerie, unearthly luminescence. In that light the layout and contents of the room could be seen quite clearly.
Rows of bookshelves covered every wall of the room. This had to be the owner’s private library. The only other piece of furniture in the room was an ink-stained, leather-topped writing desk but this appeared as old and neglected as the rest of the fabric of the house. Resting on its surface, rather disconcertingly, was a human skull.
Dieter suspected that the rarity of some of the books kept here could rival those of the physicians’ guild library itself. Dieter was in a state of rapture. Imagine what knowledge would be available here to one who wanted to improve his knowledge of the human body and all its ills, and improve his chances of healing that same assemblage of organs?
Dieter scanned the shelves, reading the spines of the volumes collected there. Some, like Hampfner’s Herbs of the Mootland and their Uses and the Tilean text known simply as the Medicina, he recognised. Others were entirely new to him. There was Nemilos’ Ars Immortalis and Burial Rites of the Unberogens.
Then there were other books whose titles were written in languages he didn’t understand and some using alphabets he didn’t even recognise. There was something labelled in a calligraphic script that Dieter believed was from the far away, mystical kingdom of Araby that lay across the sea beyond the lands of the Border Princes. And there weren’t just books; there were scrolls as well, and even, most curiously, a broken baked clay tablet covered in markings that looked like crude pictograms.
Dieter reached up and took an untitled volume down from a shelf.
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