The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  There was a silence.

  ‘You make it sound as though she’d seen it,’ I said slowly.

  Michel looked at me. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘She’d seen it.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  There are a few times in life when you hear something or experience something so unexpected that for a moment you don’t know how to react. Reality seems to be unravelling as though it were a piece of knitting and someone had taken the end of the wool and pulled until the stitches slipped, one after another, dissolution running back and forth across the work, faster and faster…

  I sat opposite Michel at the dowdy little table with its plastic cloth and tatty beer mats, and stared at him with my mouth open, until I finally realized what I was doing and shut it.

  ‘She’d seen it?’ I managed to say.

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ Michel tilted his head in the direction of the door. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s here? Somewhere around here?’

  He nodded.

  Herr Mahlberg was right. I sat back in my chair and rubbed my face with my hands, as though there were some comfort in the familiar contours of my own features. A thought occurred to me. ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked at Michel, at the faded blue cotton shirt he was wearing, at the dark hair which fell over his forehead, the clear gaze of his good eye, and the crusted scabs on his knuckles, and wondered if I had ever really seen him before. Was it really possible that while I had been knocking fruitlessly on the door of Herr Mahlberg’s deserted house, and my father had been ploughing through books, writing letters, planning trips to Köln, Michel had known all along where the glass was, and had not only known but actually seen it?

  ‘You’re joking,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he replied shortly, and I could see that he really wasn’t.

  First I was stunned and then gradually I began to feel indignant. I leaned forward across the floral tablecloth.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I hissed, making a titanic effort not to shout.

  Michel leaned towards me. Now our heads were almost touching and he looked almost as nettled as I did.

  ‘And if I had? Your dad was going to try to make his fortune out of it, remember?’ He glared at me. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to know about it myself.’ Unconsciously he rubbed the scabbed knuckles of his right hand with his left. ‘My dad’ll go mad if he knows I’ve told one of you.’

  His words fell like a shadow across me. One of you. He thought of us, my family, as outsiders from whom the truth must be hidden at all costs. I was stung that he saw me merely as one of them.

  ‘Well, why did you tell me, then?’ I retorted resentfully.

  ‘You really want to know?’ snapped Michel back. ‘Because I’m sick of this – secrets and threats and this other crap. My dad thinks he knows something about my mother’s death and he doesn’t tell me until now… and when he does, it’s some rubbish about bad luck and curses. And anyway he…’ Michel scowled and looked away, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  He beat you up, I thought. That was why he was telling me. It was revenge. With a sudden thrill that was close to fear, I realized that this was my one chance. The iron will which had made Michel hide the truth from me was suddenly pliant, made molten in the searing furnace of his anger. If I didn’t get him to tell me now, it would be never.

  ‘Where is it?’ I demanded.

  ‘It’s here. Baumgarten, I mean.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a church.’

  Michel’s expression suddenly changed and I heard the reluctance in his tone. He was already thinking that he had said too much, but it was too late. I had to know the rest – I had to know where the glass was. At that moment I came close to understanding how my father felt about it – the rapacious, feverish need to know which seemed to consume him, to ride on his back like the monstrous Old Man of the Sea.

  ‘How can it be in a church?’ I said sharply. ‘Everyone would know where it was.’

  ‘Not this church. Nobody goes there.’

  ‘Well, where is it?’ I said, resisting the temptation to seize him by the collar of his shirt and shake him.

  Michel looked down at his hands. ‘I’m not sure I should tell you.’

  ‘What?’ I almost screamed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the dour-looking man turning to stare at us again. I balled my hands into fists in my lap, afraid that I would actually hit Michel in my frustration. ‘You can’t tell me it exists and then not tell me where it is!’ I hissed.

  ‘Lin – you do realize it might not be safe?’

  ‘What do you mean, it might not be safe? Is the church falling down?’ Another thought occurred to me. ‘You don’t believe all that stuff about Bonschariant, do you? Michel, it’s just a legend.’

  ‘I know that.’ Michel sounded offended. ‘It’s just… stuff happens. Look, there was this guy who was interested in local history – he’d never seen the glass but he was interested in it. He came over once and talked to Dad, but Dad almost threw him out of the house.’

  ‘What did he do then?’ I asked.

  ‘Do? He didn’t do anything. He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ I gaped at Michel. ‘What was his name? It wasn’t Mahlberg, was it?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ Michel looked at me with new interest. ‘Look, that’s not all. This guy Mahlberg, he mentioned old Werner…’

  I rubbed my face with my hands. I was beginning to feel bewildered trying to follow all of this.

  ‘Werner?’ I said faintly.

  ‘Yes, Dad’s uncle. He spent all his evenings in the Kneipe in Baumgarten, telling stories of the olden days to anyone who would listen. He knew everything there was to know about Baumgarten,’ said Michel, with a certain note of respect for this intellectual miracle in his voice. ‘I think he told Herr Mahlberg something. Maybe he just told him to talk to Dad, I don’t know. But the thing is, that was right before Werner died.’

  I looked at Michel, searching his face for any sign that he was making this up, trying to frighten me. He looked deadly serious.

  ‘What did he die of?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s just it. Nobody really knows. He had this bit of land over near Niederburgheim – he had a lot of fruit trees there. He was pretty old, Werner, but still did most of the work himself. They think maybe he had an accident and fell out of one of the apple trees, but they’re not sure.’

  I did my best not to let Michel see the shock on my face, but I was terribly afraid that I had paled.

  ‘Why aren’t they sure?’ I managed to say through lips that felt numb.

  ‘Well, he had this massive thump on the head. His skull was shattered. It looked more like someone had hit him over the head with something. That’s what Dad said anyway. He had to identify him.’

  ‘Was it your dad who found him?’

  Couldn’t Michel see that something was wrong? My voice sounded strange to my own ears, the voice of a hostage with a gun to her head, telling the negotiators that everything was fine, yes, everything was just fine.

  ‘No, it was some guy from Niederburgheim,’ said Michel. ‘He used to help Werner sometimes, and he’d gone to the orchard to tell him he couldn’t work that afternoon. I heard him telling Dad about it.’

  I was barely listening to Michel. I was thinking, He has a name. The man in the orchard has a name.

  ‘Are you OK?’ asked Michel suddenly.

  ‘Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?’ I said quickly. ‘Look, it’s terrible what happened to your dad’s uncle, but I didn’t know him or anything.’ I felt a hot little stab of guilt at that, but before Michel could notice anything I pressed on with, ‘Anyway, maybe he just fell out of the tree, like you said. Maybe it was just an accident.’

  ‘And maybe it wasn’t,’ Michel pointed out stubbornly. ‘Maybe it was because he knew where the glass was.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe it’s nothing. I mean, Dad’s OK.’

  I didn’t say anything. It w
as hard to imagine anyone making an attack on Michel Reinartz Senior as he strode around the woods armed with a shotgun and accompanied by his deranged dog. I recalled him marching me back to the trodden-down fence and warning me off his part of the forest with tales of rabid animals. Rabid animals which Michel claimed did not exist…

  ‘Michel,’ I said suddenly, ‘the church is in the forest, isn’t it?’

  Michel said nothing, but he could not conceal the reaction which flickered across his face.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ I said.

  ‘Lin, I’m still not sure I should show you,’ he said.

  ‘Look,’ I replied firmly, ‘if you don’t show me I’m going to go exploring myself.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Michel.

  ‘Then show me.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Michel, shaking his head. ‘I’ll have to think about it. And you can’t tell your father. No way.’ He looked at me fiercely, his good eye glowering. ‘You don’t know what you might be getting yourselves into.’

  ‘If the glass is really there, you can’t keep it hidden forever,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Why not? It’s been hidden for two hundred years.’

  ‘OK,’ I said reluctantly. ‘I promise I won’t tell my dad.’ Yet, I added silently. ‘All right?’

  Michel nodded, although he still looked uneasy.

  ‘So can we go and see the glass?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Then when?’

  Michel looked at me for a long moment. I suppose he concluded that I was not going to give up, because eventually he said, ‘Look, Dad sometimes goes down to Prüm to buy stuff for the farm, and Jörg goes with him. They’re out most of the day. Next time he goes, I’ll take you.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  When we came out of the Imbiss it was nine o’clock – well and truly too late for the start of the school day, but so early that my reappearance at the castle would have caused a hailstorm of questions. I imagined my father would already have a few words to say about having got up at the crack of dawn for nothing, and if either he or Tuesday caught a glimpse of Michel’s black eye there would be no end of fuss. Since the only other option was to spend the morning kicking our heels in Baumgarten, where any number of public-spirited local citizens would be only too ready to take an interest in two truants, one of them with a black eye, we decided to cut our losses and go to school.

  I arrived halfway through a double German lesson, where I delivered my excuses with an air of conviction that would have delighted even Schiller’s heart, had the playwright been present to hear me tell Frau Schäfer that Michel’s car had had a blowout on the road to Nordkirchen. All the same, I found myself wishing I had used another excuse; when I sat down next to Johanna she gave me the sort of look that would blister paint and then turned pointedly away.

  ‘Morgen,’ I said anyway, but I could feel the waves of resentment through the curtain of flame-red hair she presented to me. If she was hoping to get to me, she was wasting her time. As soon as I had hauled out my files and pens, she was forgotten, as was Schiller’s Don Carlos.

  It was just as well that Frau Schäfer did not call on me during that lesson. I doubt I would even have heard her. My body was in its seat, with its head up and an expression of perky interest on its face, but my mind was roaming the forest around the Kreuzburg, pursuing every path I had ever taken beneath the lowering cover of the trees, searching for any memory of a landmark or side path which might direct me to the hidden church. The thought of it was almost overwhelming. More than once I asked myself if Michel was really telling the truth, though I knew he was – I had read it in the savage tone of his voice and the curl of his clenched fists. He had paid his father back in the best way he knew, by telling me, the outsider, where the glass was.

  The thought of it was at once fabulous and terrifying. Death surrounded that glass, and had done so for its entire history, since the day when the servant had run from the newly glazed cloister screaming Murder! and the horrified monks had clustered around the bloody body of the girl. The abbot had claimed to believe that it was the work of the Devil. I thought that there was no need for the Devil to perform such work when there were human hands ready and willing.

  I turned my own hands over, studying them – the familiar lines, the ones which were supposed to map out your life, your loves and your death; the nail of the right index finger, which was torn down to the quick; the little scar on my left knuckle from a long-healed graze. What kind of work would I be undertaking if I went with Michel to the forest and saw the lost Allerheiligen glass with my own eyes – would it be for good or evil? I knew that a decision lay ahead of me, like an ominous mark on a map of a path as yet untrodden. The glass was not just a hidden treasure, the masterwork of a dead genius; it was not just an unimaginable amount of money, a million or more. For me personally it was dynamite. I could choose to show it to my father. If I did so, I would fulfil his wildest dreams of recognition, fame and fortune. I might also bring down on both our heads the wrath of whoever was trying to keep the glass hidden, a wrath which had already found murderous expression. Or I could say nothing, keep my promise to Michel, and carry the knowledge within me like an ungerminated seed, watching as our lives flowed onwards, knowing that I had had the power to change everything and had not used it.

  At the end of the lesson I didn’t bother to wait and see whether Johanna had snapped out of her bad mood; I was halfway down the corridor while she was still packing up her things. I had so much energy fizzing through me that I felt I would burst if I didn’t let off some steam, though there was little I could do about it. During breaks most people stood outside the building in little huddles, some of them smoking, although this was supposed to be forbidden on school premises. If I roamed about I would simply stand out like a macaque accidentally introduced to a colony of sloths. Instead I slumped against a wall, fidgeting.

  I was looking at my watch for the third time, thinking that if Michel was coming down for the break he was taking his time about it, when Father Engels walked past. As usual he was dressed all in black, and his handsome features were composed in a neutral expression. He looked like a beautiful statue come to life.

  I gazed at him with a feeling akin to guilt, my heart thumping so wildly that I really thought some of the others might hear it. My cheeks were burning. This is what love feels like, I thought. I was going to be a scientist one day; I was supposed to be objective about things. Love, I had read somewhere, was the product of chemicals in the brain, not the work of a fat little cherub with wings wielding a bow and arrow. But whoever had written that was wrong. If Cupid existed, he hadn’t just shot me down; he was standing there with his foot in the middle of my back, having a trophy photograph taken.

  I watched Father Engels walk up to the main doors and pull one of them open. If I carried on staring like this, people would notice. I knew this and yet there was nowhere else to look. An image was forming in my head, an image so bold that it almost took my breath away. I saw myself approaching Father Engels, carrying my new secret with me like a precious gift. I saw him listening to me as I explained myself, the gaze of those dark eyes on my face, those perfect brows drawn together in concentration.

  ‘Lin?’

  I realized that Father Engels had passed through the door and gone. Even though I turned to face the speaker, I could not stop my glance slipping momentarily back towards the doorway.

  ‘Michel,’ I said. I wondered how long he had been there, whether he had noticed me gazing after Father Engels. I summoned up a smile. ‘I didn’t notice you standing there.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When I let myself into the house, I was fully expecting my father to complain about my having hauled him out of bed for nothing that morning. In the event, I needn’t have worried: neither he nor Tuesday even looked up when I came in. They were poring over a large number of hardback books which were spread out on the pine table; the rem
ains of lunch – some bread and ham – had been displaced on to a chair. Ru was lying on his back on the overstuffed sofa, fast asleep. There was no sign of Polly.

  ‘I don’t know how you can look at these disgusting things, Oliver,’ Tuesday was saying.

  ‘They’re not disgusting,’ said my father equably. ‘You’re looking at them through modern eyes.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what you’d call this one,’ said Tuesday. ‘Boiling someone alive.’

  My father glanced at the page. ‘That’s St John the Evangelist. Actually, he died of old age. That’s just a torture scene.’

  ‘Just? See what I mean? It’s disgusting,’ said Tuesday, closing the book with a thump. She looked around and saw me. ‘Lin, there you are.’ She didn’t bother with the conventional greetings, but went straight for the attack. ‘Did you go with that Reinartz boy this morning?’

  I shrugged. ‘He came to pick me up.’

  ‘Lin, after what happened, I really don’t think it’s such a good idea –’ Tuesday began.

  To my relief my father interrupted her.

  ‘Come and look at this, Lin.’ He opened the book that Tuesday had slammed shut. ‘Your mother thinks it’s disgusting.’

  I didn’t bother to contradict him about Tuesday being my mother; my father didn’t want to understand. In fact it always made him furious when I argued about it. I went over to the table, glad to draw attention away from myself and where I had or hadn’t been.

  ‘What is it?’

  My father flipped the book over to show me the cover.