The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  I didn’t see my father again that night. The first we saw of him was the following morning. Tuesday was wandering around the kitchen, ineffectually trying to make some filter coffee for herself. I was chewing a muesli bar which I had found in the back of the kitchen cupboard and staring out of the window at the overgrown front garden. I was wondering what would happen if neither my father nor Tuesday ever got around to mowing the lawn, whether it would keep growing until the grass blocked out the light.

  The kitchen door opened and I turned in time to see my father stroll in, rubbing his hands and smiling that jaw-droppingly handsome smile, the one which had once led one of the assistant librarians at the history faculty to compare him to George Clooney. I caught Polly’s eye but neither of us dared react; we waited to see what there was to react to.

  My father waited until he had all our attention. Then he did that irresistible smile again. ‘Well,’ he said, and his tone was almost jovial, ‘how would you like to live in Germany?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When my father had made up his mind, there was no changing it. All the same, I tried. I would be taking my A levels in the next academic year; I could not imagine how we would reconcile that with moving to a remote part of rural Germany. Besides, I had friends in our hometown, I had a life. I had no intention of giving any of it up without a fight.

  My father was implacable. ‘You can do the German Abitur exam,’ he said. ‘You spent the whole of last summer in Germany, didn’t you? You can cope with the language.’

  This was perfectly true. Tuesday had a cousin who had married a German some ten years before. ‘Uncle Karl’, as we called him – although he was not really our uncle – had organized the trip for me. I had spent the holidays near Trier with some friends of his who owned an organic farm. The farm was the attraction, since I was hoping to study earth sciences, but my German had come on amazingly. I changed tack.

  ‘The syllabus will be different. I’ll never catch up, even if I can understand it.’

  ‘But you can perfect your German,’ said my father airily. ‘After a year, you’ll be completely fluent.’

  ‘What’s the point?’ I almost screamed. ‘I don’t want to read German at university! I want to be a scientist!’

  ‘Lin –’

  ‘Why can’t I stay here?’

  ‘Because you’re only seventeen. You need someone to look after you.’

  If I had not been so angry I would have laughed myself sick over that. Tuesday’s attempts at domestic duties were sporadic and inefficient; if I had not learned to cook beans on toast myself by the age of eight I would probably have starved by now. And my father was always too heavily involved in academic work to notice things like an empty fridge or children in too-small shoes.

  I tried to involve Polly in the fight but without success; in the face of my father’s eloquence and shifting arguments she was defenceless. Besides, she had much less to lose; she had already agreed a gap year with my father and Tuesday, and would be stuck in Baumgarten no longer than a couple of months before she left to spend the rest of the year in Italy with friends of Tuesday. It would not have been in Polly’s nature to backpack around India for a year or teach English in China; she was seemingly quite content to stay with someone Tuesday knew, and to study the arts, just as everyone in our family always did – everyone, it seemed, except me. I adored my gentle, non-combative sister, but she was useless as an ally in battle.

  In the end there was nothing to do but admit defeat. I stormed upstairs to my room and slammed the door shut with an almighty bang. I would have thrown a few things too, except for the sudden unpleasant realization that I was behaving exactly the way my father had the evening before. I put down the china rabbit I had been about to hurl against the wall and flung myself on to my bed.

  My woes, had I known it, flowed from a single document which sealed all our fates, as surely as if it had been a letter ordering our executions. What the writer could not have known, as he sat in his study some six hundred kilometres away, carefully inking the name Heinrich Mahlberg at the bottom of it, was that he was signing his own death warrant too. When he wrote my father’s name on the front of the envelope in his careful hand, he was firing a bullet that would bury itself in his own brain. Yet still he might have escaped, had his letter remained undisturbed in the lower strata of my father’s overflowing in-tray.

  The day my father stumped back from the history faculty filled with the righteous fury of one who has been denied his birthright, he had stormed into his study, kicked the filing cabinet and swept the mountain of papers on his desk on to the floor. It was only when he had calmed down a little that he noticed Herr Mahlberg’s letter, which had fluttered out from the scattered heap of documents and was lying open on the polished floorboards.

  To my father, this was a decisive moment, akin to the moment when an apple fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head or Archimedes leapt out of his bath and ran stark naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting ‘Eureka!’ He picked up the letter and read it through again several times. When Herr Mahlberg had written to him months before, telling him that he believed he knew where the lost glass of the Allerheiligen Abbey was to be found, my father had hardly taken him seriously. The Allerheiligen glass was a kind of Holy Grail to medievalists, a five-hundred-year-old masterpiece of stained glass whose history had ended in darkness. It was probably a wild-goose chase; bits of very inferior stained glass were always turning up here and there, and now and again some local historian or over-enthusiastic young research fellow would make a fool of himself with half-baked claims that it had come from the legendary abbey.

  Now, however, Herr Mahlberg’s letter appeared in the light of a lifeline. Let the university’s chosen candidate, the soon-to-be Professor Goodwin Lyle, enjoy his moment of triumph; my father would not be there to see it. If Herr Mahlberg’s claim had any truth in it, and my father were the first expert to see the glass, it would mean a well-needed boost to his career. If not, then he would return to the university after a suitable interval and quietly devote himself to making Professor Lyle’s life as difficult as possible.

  Against the persuasive lure of these ideas, it was impossible for me or Tuesday or Polly to dissuade my father from his chosen course. I stormed, Tuesday sulked and Polly simply looked quietly sad, but he was not to be swayed. The house was put up for rent, the tickets were bought and, shortly after Polly’s A-level results came in, we set off for Germany.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  If I were a believer in Fate I would have thought that our first introduction to a citizen of our new home – a dead one, lying so horribly still among the crushed grass and fallen apples – was an evil omen. But as we drove away from the orchard, it was my father’s unfeeling attitude towards the dead man which was occupying my thoughts – that, and the riddle of the broken glass.

  For a while we drove on in silence, punctuated by the occasional sniffle from Tuesday. Reuben had started to grizzle, with all the misery and frustration of an eighteen-month-old confined for hours to a car seat. Tuesday didn’t seem to notice, so Polly eventually hauled his baby cup out of his bag and offered it to him. I was determined not to say anything to Tuesday or my father. Furious thoughts were still racketing around my brain like wasps in a jam jar.

  Undeniably the old man was dead, and there was nothing we could have done for him; it was just as certain that we would have spent hours with the authorities, while Reuben howled and Tuesday had theatrical hysterics and I tried to translate for everyone with my imperfect German. It would have been grisly, that was true. But I couldn’t help fretting about what would happen if someone found out that we had discovered the body and failed to report it, and, even worse, I wondered what would happen if nobody else found the body at all. How long would it lie there, with the blood drying to dark brown on the grass and the cold flesh stiffening and eventually – horrible thought – starting to decompose? I imagined rain slanting down on to the still face, splashing into the sightl
ess eyes and filling the open mouth; I imagined days and weeks passing, and the flesh dropping from the bones. Tendrils of plants would grow up around it, perhaps even push their way up through the empty eye sockets and the terrible dent in the skull. I started to feel distinctly sick.

  ‘Can you stop the car?’ I croaked.

  ‘What?’ said my father distractedly.

  ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  The car swerved to the side of the road. I opened the door and just managed to stick my head out before the remains of the sandwiches finally came up.

  ‘Are you OK, Lin?’ I heard Polly say in an anxious voice.

  ‘No.’ Cautiously I lifted my head.

  ‘Why don’t you get out for a minute, Lin?’ I heard Tuesday say.

  I had a strong suspicion that she was more concerned about whether I would throw up again inside the car than about my health. I clambered out of the car, feeling a strong desire to get away from her and my father. I wondered whether the old man was still lying there alone in the orchard, or whether he was already surrounded by a group of wailing relatives, cradling his head and weeping on to his checked shirt.

  ‘What does that sign say?’ called my father from the front seat.

  I went over to it and had a look.

  ‘Niederburgheim.’

  ‘I’ve found it,’ Tuesday was saying as I climbed back into the car. Evidently she had recovered from the worst thing that had ever happened to her with admirable speed. She had a road map spread out in front of her and was poring over it, twisting a hank of yellow hair absent-mindedly with her fingers. ‘But there are at least three castles in this bit.’

  ‘We passed something with a tower,’ said Polly. ‘Back in the little town. It could have been a castle.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ said my father irritably, not seeing how his tone stung Polly.

  She caught my eye and looked away, but she said nothing. My father put the car into gear and we drove slowly back the way we had come.

  ‘There,’ said Polly suddenly as we passed a side street.

  My father reversed up and we all gazed down the street.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t you say it was in woodland?’ said Tuesday, running one lacquered fingernail ineffectually across the map.

  My father shrugged. ‘There’s plenty of woodland around here. Maybe Karl meant it was near woodland.’

  Winding down the window, Tuesday sniffed the air and said, ‘There’s certainly plenty of countryside around here.’

  As the car edged down the street we gazed open-mouthed at the castle. A massive stone wall rose straight out of a little moat crossed by a humpback bridge. Further on was a huge square tower topped with an onion-shaped dome tiled in grey slate. All the windows were framed by shutters painted in a red-and-white geometric design.

  Even with my mind still occupied with what we had seen in the orchard, I was impressed. The castle looked like something out of Grimms’ fairy tales. I couldn’t wait to send my friends a snap of it; they wouldn’t believe it.

  ‘Typical of the area and period,’ my father was saying in his best history-programme voice, but nobody was listening to him.

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Tuesday raptly.

  As soon as the car stopped we scrambled out, Polly carrying Ru in her arms.

  ‘Karl has excelled himself,’ my father said to Tuesday.

  We crossed the little stone bridge and stood at the iron gates, gazing into the courtyard beyond.

  ‘There’s a red carpet,’ said Polly in awe.

  We all stared at it. She was absolutely right; the place looked as though it had been decorated for the arrival of visiting dignitaries. The red carpet stretched from the gates to a little canopy covering the castle doors. It was lined on either side with enormous candles in heavy black ceramic holders, creating a rather funereal effect, as though the castle were awaiting the arrival of Count Dracula.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ said my father, but we had hardly taken a couple of steps across the red carpet when the castle door opened and a man stepped out.

  My first impression was of a tall, broad-shouldered figure clad entirely in black. Then I saw the flash of white at his throat and realized that he was a Roman Catholic priest wearing an old-fashioned soutane. As soon as he saw us he strode towards us in a brisk manner which hinted at unfriendliness. As he approached I was struck by a new impression; if he had not been so old (I thought he must be about thirty) he would have been incredibly handsome.

  Tuesday evidently thought so too, because she threw her shoulders back and began to toy with the strings of beads dangling down the front of her blouse.

  ‘Guten Abend. Was kann ich für Sie tun?’ said the priest to my father in a distinctly cold tone. He ignored Tuesday completely.

  Close up, he was almost impossibly good-looking, with a strong-featured face, sleek jet-black hair and bold dark eyes. I found myself staring at him as though mesmerized.

  ‘Ich bin…’ My father’s German suddenly dried up. He was more used to poring over academic texts than actually speaking the language. He looked around for me. ‘Lin?’

  Heart thumping, I stepped forward and found myself withering under the priest’s disapproving gaze.

  ‘This is my father, Dr Oliver Fox,’ I said in German.

  ‘Are you on the guest list?’

  ‘The guest list?’ I was thrown for a moment. ‘No – I don’t think so…’

  ‘The castle is not open to the public,’ said the priest.

  ‘No, we live here,’ I started to say, then changed it to, ‘We are going to live here.’

  ‘It’s not a holiday house,’ said the priest severely.

  ‘I know.’ I was floundering. ‘My uncle Karl booked it – he knows someone…’

  I dried up altogether, realizing that I did not know how to say on the forestry commission. The physical proximity of the priest was like looking into the sun – you could feel your brains beginning to boil. Even the German word for forest skittered away out of my grasp.

  ‘I think you have the wrong place,’ said the priest eventually.

  ‘What’s the castle called?’ I asked my father helplessly in English.

  ‘The Kreuzburg,’ he said.

  A flicker of interest crossed the priest’s face. ‘Die Kreuzburg?’ He looked at my father, as though reassessing him. Then he said very carefully, in slightly accented English, ‘You are the professor who is researching the Allerheiligen glass?’

  ‘Yes,’ said my father firmly in a now-we-are-getting-somewhere tone. I think he thought that the priest would stand back and hand him the keys to the castle. If so he was disappointed.

  ‘This is not the Kreuzburg,’ said the priest. ‘There is a –’ he thought carefully – ‘a funeral party here today.’

  ‘Well, can you tell us how to find the Kreuzburg?’ asked my father.

  He was audibly disappointed. I dared not look at Tuesday.

  ‘You have a map?’

  My father handed it over.

  ‘Here. You see?’ I watched the priest’s long slender hands with fascination as he turned the map over. ‘Here is Niederburgheim. There is a way through the woods – here – but I think it is closed, except for the Forstverwaltung, the forest workers. If you can’t go through here you will have to go here – and here – through this village.’

  Tuesday tried to peer round my father’s shoulder at the map. The point upon which the priest’s index finger was resting was a tiny square in the middle of a clump of green.

  ‘It’s really in the middle of the forest,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well,’ said my father heartily, as he folded up the map, ‘I suppose it will be perfect for walking, won’t it?’

  The priest looked at him seriously. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I cannot recommend it.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Despondently we climbed back into the car. Tuesday had the piqued expression of someone who i
s not used to being ignored. She did not look back as the car moved off, but I did. The priest had already disappeared into the castle.

  We left Niederburgheim, mercifully not passing the orchard, and drove out into countryside bounded with pine forests. Feeling tired and distinctly grubby, I stared out of the car window without really taking anything in. My mind kept sliding guiltily back to the priest, to the sleek black hair and dark eyes. I rubbed my face with something like irritation. You’ll never see him again, I told myself. And anyway, he’s old. I shifted uncomfortably in the confined space and sighed.

  It was very late in the afternoon when we finally reached the Kreuzburg. Ru, who had wailed and struggled for most of the journey from England, suddenly fell asleep two minutes before the car drew up outside the castle. We left him unconscious in his car seat and climbed out to look.

  ‘But it’s a ruin,’ said Tuesday.

  I could tell what she was thinking: Bring back the other castle. That was the one I wanted.

  ‘Not completely,’ said my father, but he looked crestfallen too.

  We gazed out over the lake. I think it had once been a neat moat encircling the castle walls, but it seemed to have leaked out into the surrounding land. Untidy tufts of vegetation clogged the water’s edge. The castle itself had an uncompromising squareness about it. It was ringed with massive rough-hewn stone walls, golden in the fading sunlight but still unromantically solid and heavy. At the north end rose a tall square tower. If my eyes were not deceiving me there was a young tree growing from the top of it. Everywhere the masonry was under siege from plants of all kinds. It did not look like a place where anyone could possibly live.