The House of War and Witness

by Mike Carey

  He laughed uproariously, joined by Pabst and August. Dietmar seethed for a moment, then subsided and gave a reluctant chuckle. The ladies politely echoed him, Dame Feronika’s giggle sounding somewhat forced. Klaes tried to look entertained.

  ‘But in all seriousness,’ Tusimov said to Dietmar, still sounding anything but serious, ‘why such a great lady? What walls do we have here to blow down?’

  If Klaes had asked such a question, there would have been laughter at his naivety. But Dietmar nodded, acknowledging the point.

  ‘It’s to show them we mean business,’ he said, and tapped the side of his nose as if to say there were deeper reasons he could not reveal.

  August cut in impatiently. ‘Its purpose is to crush the enemy before they start,’ he said. ‘You were never in the Turkish campaign, Tusimov.’

  ‘Deployed too late,’ Tusimov said. Klaes thought he caught a note of satisfaction in the man’s tone; the Turkish defeats were still recent enough to sting.

  ‘It wasn’t pretty,’ August said. ‘Pabst, you remember the attack at Grocka?’

  ‘I’ll never forget it!’ Pabst assented.

  Molebacher, coming in with a small apple cake and a jug of cream, deposited both on the table with an unnecessary clatter and said, ‘Grocka, sirs? That was a hellhole and no mistake!’

  Usually such a brazen attempt at familiarity from a sergeant would be met with cold silence, if not an outright rebuke. But Molebacher too had served against the Turks. August turned towards him, his expression animated.

  ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘You were our quartermaster there too, Mole.’

  No-one but August was permitted to call Molebacher that. If one of the lieutenants tried it he would refuse to hear them. But now he nodded vigorously, drawing himself up a little straighter. ‘Not that there was much time for cooking, as I recall. I never saw such a shambles, if you’ll excuse the freedom, sir.’

  ‘We lost at Grocka because we were not sufficiently prepared,’ August said flatly. ‘That won’t happen this time. We saw there what well directed cannon fire can do. Now that power will be ours. So, Tusimov, if the Prussians show their truffle-hunting noses over this border, they’ll meet with Mathilde. And when our men fight they’ll be backed by God’s own fire!’

  August’s face was full of fervour, and it was mirrored in the expressions of the other officers and Sergeant Molebacher.

  ‘By God, we will!’ cried Dietmar. ‘A toast, gentlemen! May the Prussians get here fast – so we can drive them away even faster!’

  They all rose to acknowledge the toast. ‘Tails between their legs!’ Molebacher shouted, and he poured himself a glass of the table wine and downed it in a single gulp. August clapped him on the back.

  ‘Well spoken, Mole!’ he cried.

  Klaes could hear the drink in his commanding officer’s voice, and he was a little taken aback by it. This sort of jingoistic rapture came over his fellow officers with moderate frequency, and it was a sentiment of which August heartily approved. But the colonel had a certain reserve which set him apart from those under his command, and he did not often join in with their brazen rhetoric.

  The lieutenant shifted awkwardly in his seat. The atmosphere of celebration around the table did not sit well with him. It was all so thoughtless: the praising of big guns to high heaven, the talk of cold steel and hellfire. To men like Tusimov, Dietmar and August, it was what war meant. Klaes could not help but feel that there was more to it than that. But the whole table now was in a blaze of triumph, as if somewhere in the darkness outside the Prussians were already fleeing. Even the ladies were flushed and laughing, and the colonel was loudest of all. So Klaes raised his own glass, and joined in the cheering.

  10

  The following day, since the weather was still mild, Drozde decided to put up her theatre and give a performance.

  She’d already been asked a dozen times or more when the next show would be. It was a reasonable question. The company had just moved house in the middle of October, when it would normally have expected to be settling into winter quarters, and there was every expectation of fighting in the spring. Add to that the arrival of Lieutenant Dietmar, bringing with him not just the cannons but his new wife, and there was almost too much material to deal with. If Drozde didn’t perform all this, the news would grow stale, and her reputation for saying what was in everyone’s minds would be tarnished. Reputation was crucial. Of all the stories she told, the most important was the story that her stories were indispensable. Without that, she was just a grown woman who’d never put away her dolls.

  The site she chose was the ruins of the old abbey, which stood in the grounds in front of the house and slightly to one side of it, close to a pear orchard that was so overgrown that the weeds were as high as the trees. For the most part the ruins were now little more than the outlines of the abbey’s foundations. The nubs of stone that projected had been worn as smooth as glass. But one wall and part of another still stood, covered so thickly with ivy that they looked like some mad gardener had sculpted them out of the surrounding greenery. They made a natural windbreak, an effective backdrop and even a spotlight: through an arched window close to the ragged apex of the intact wall, pale sunlight spilled down onto the grass like the ghost of summer. That thought reminded Drozde of the other ghost, Gelbfisc, and the story he’d told her. This had been a place of power and influence once, only a few generations ago. Time buries everything, she thought, like an avalanche moving so slowly that you can’t even see it.

  She fetched her trunk from the storeroom below the kitchen, put it down on the grass in the shadow of the wall and began to unpack it. The theatre itself had suffered a little damage in transit, despite the trunk having been wedged in securely at the bottom of Molebacher’s cart, so she addressed herself first of all to that – knocking in a few more nails to secure a loose board and re-attaching the curtain where it had come away from the iron hoops that held it. Then there were the damaged puppets to consider. Some of them would require no more than a new coat of paint, but for the others she would have to go into the village and see if there was a carpenter who could sell her some wood. Good solid beech, seasoned and cut into cylinders, would be ideal. Using green wood, which would warp as it dried, would only mean doing the same work twice.

  For now Drozde set the three most damaged puppets aside. They were a soldier, a nobleman and the ruined coquette. She had plenty of soldiers to spare, and nobles didn’t figure in her sketches very often. The coquette had been her best one, though, and she’d been intending to use her for the new Dame Dietmar. The blonde hair was a good match, and the face – rendered grotesque now by its long scars – was one of the finest she’d ever painted.

  She made do, turning a little girl doll into a coquette by changing her clothes and repainting her eyes and lips. It’s only what happens in real life, she reflected with a mixture of amusement and chagrin.

  Private Taglitz wandered up while she was working. He stood over her for a while, watching in silence while Drozde pretended to be too absorbed in her preparations to notice him. ‘Will you need me?’ he asked at last. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sunlight shining over his shoulder.

  ‘That depends,’ she said.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether you plan to stay sober this time.’

  Taglitz squared his shoulders and thrust out his chin, aiming for a pugnacious look that his soft face couldn’t carry. Drozde noticed that his paletot overcoat, which he wore open despite the cold, had soup stains on it. The uniform was usually a good indicator with Taglitz – it went before the rest of him did. ‘A man’s got a right to a drink,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Yes, Tag, he has. He has a right to two drinks, or ten, or fifty. So long as he has them when he’s done with his work. If you can promise me you’ll be able to find the stops, you can pipe for me. Otherwise, I’ll get Drisch.’

  ‘And sing to drums?’ Taglitz was scornful.

  ‘Drums
can beat out a rhythm. I’d rather have no tune than the wrong tune.’

  Taglitz seemed to have run out of arguments. He folded his arms across his gaunt chest, as though he meant to wait her out. Drozde turned back to the little girl puppet and resumed the task of primping her into a siren.

  ‘All right,’ Tag said to her back. ‘I won’t drink until after.’

  ‘Then you shall have a grosch for your pains,’ Drozde said, like a mother promising a treat to her child. ‘And a pottle of beer when you’re done.’

  ‘A white grosch or a brown one?’ Taglitz demanded warily.

  She reached up and tapped one of the buttons on his greatcoat. ‘What are these made of?’

  Taglitz was bewildered. ‘Pewter.’

  ‘And your flute?’

  ‘I don’t know. Kupfernickel, I suppose.’

  ‘Right. There’s no silver about you, Tag. So don’t be pulling your hopes up higher than your socks. We’ll stick to brown groschen until you make colonel and I marry a duke.’

  ‘All right. But small beer or real beer?’

  ‘Real.’

  ‘The light or the dunkel?’

  ‘The dark.’

  ‘And when you say a pottle …’

  ‘A tankard, Taglitz! A thumb stein, with a handle and a lid to it! Bugger off and let me work!’

  She shooed him away, and he was happy enough to go, all smiles now that he’d won his point. A grosch wasn’t much for an hour’s work, Drozde knew, but Tag loved to play for her. And it would hurt his pride, besides, if she let him go. Especially if she let him go for the loud and sneeringly confident Drisch, a Lusation from the northern Berglands who exaggerated his already thick accent in the hope of getting people to pick fights with him.

  Drisch wasn’t a viable option in any case. He wasn’t the sort of man to do what he was told by a woman, and that was the sort of man Drozde needed as her accompanist. It mattered that he should have some sort of an ear for music, but it mattered a lot more that he should let the puppets be the centre of attention. The piper she’d had before she found Taglitz had played over her dialogue and killed some of the jokes. And he wouldn’t be told, so she’d had no choice but to send him packing.

  She decided on four o’clock for the performance, and went round the camp announcing it. She took her time and allowed herself to get drawn into conversations, because this was an important part of her preparation. In gossiping about stories they’d heard, and in asking Drozde whether she was going to refer to this piece of scandal or that outrageous rumour, the soldiers and their doxies helped to shape the entertainment they were about to see.

  Four o’clock was early, but Drozde was constrained by the sun, which would be down before five. She could play through twilight with the aid of torches, but in full dark too much nuance was lost.

  After she’d told the soldiers, she went up to the house and passed the word along to the officers too. Not directly, of course – she couldn’t knock on the doors of the lieutenants, and she’d be even less welcome to speak to their wives. What she could do was to tell Carla, the colonel’s lady’s maid, and to extend her usual invitation. Most likely the lieutenants would come, with or without their ladies, and Drozde worked up her material based on that assumption. If they didn’t appear, she just had that little bit more latitude with the bawdy parts. August usually stayed away, although he surprised her every now and then by putting in an appearance. He would stand rather than sit, and he never cracked a smile. Possibly he thought that he was showing solidarity with the men under his command, but actually his solemn church face cast a pall over proceedings that she had to work hard to dispel.

  After she’d finished her rounds she still had some time left before the performance was set to begin. She debated with herself whether she should walk into the village and try to find that carpenter. But the walk was a good three miles each way, and she couldn’t afford to be late. It was probably better to put it off until the next day.

  So she visited Molebacher instead, and ate with him. He was cooking pottage for the officers, his two big cauldrons bubbling side by side in the fireplace. Hulyek and Fast were with him, chopping onions and yellow turnips, while Standmeier moved between the pots and stirred them, sweat pouring from his face. All three of them studiously avoided looking in her direction.

  The meat in the pottage was beef, but for himself Molebacher had made a rabbit stew with carrots in a tin pannikin, tucking it in against the stones at the side of the fireplace to let it simmer slowly until it was done. He shared it with Drozde, and she listened to his complaints about the kitchen’s shortcomings. Too many draughts, too many doors, not enough surfaces for preparation, cracked flags on the floor and a ceiling that would certainly leak at the first rain. He didn’t need her to respond to this litany. Her role was to listen and shake her head while she ate her allotted portion of the stew.

  ‘What about the lords and ladies?’ she asked Molebacher when a suitable pause in his monologue presented itself. ‘Are they giving you a hard time?’

  She was always cautious about asking Molebacher for gossip, especially about the officers and their wives. His reactions to such questioning were unpredictable: often he would simply say nothing, but he had been known to forget to save her a portion of dinner when she pressed him too hard. Today, however, he seemed to be in a loquacious mood.

  ‘They’re fine,’ Molebacher said, shrugging his big shoulders. Then he amended that blanket endorsement. ‘The colonel’s fine. The others …’

  A pause. Drozde waited him out. If he had any specific stories to tell, they might find their way into the puppet show. Obviously she couldn’t say anything that actually criticised the officers, but she could dress up their foibles as satire and rely on their delight at being noticed outweighing their embarrassment at being named. Molebacher was usually the soul of discretion when it came to his betters – August permitted him a greater degree of familiarity than he allowed most of his lieutenants, and he wasn’t about to sacrifice that hard-won licence through incautious talk – but occasionally he let something slip.

  He did so now. ‘The new one …’ he said.

  ‘What, Dietmar’s lady?’

  ‘Yeah, her. She wants Lipisher torte.’

  Drozde arched an eyebrow. ‘Cake in brandy?’

  ‘With hazelnuts. And cream. Lots of cream. Well, I’m not going to go wandering around the woods gathering fucking nuts, am I? Dietmar says he’ll slip me a couple of cruitzers if I make her one. I’ll believe that when I see it. But if I don’t deliver and she goes whining to him about it, I’ll never hear the end of it.’

  ‘I’m going into the village tomorrow,’ Drozde offered. ‘I’ll see if I can find some hazelnuts there.’

  Molebacher didn’t thank her. Thanks weren’t in his repertoire. But he nodded as though he was pleased that she’d seen her way through to this obvious solution.

  ‘So,’ Drozde said, still fishing. ‘Pottage. With beef. Any chance you’ll tell me where the beef came from?’

  ‘Any chance you’ll keep your nose where it belongs?’ Molebacher countered. But he grinned as he said it. He loved to tell tales of his own resourcefulness, and since a large part of his job was legally sanctioned piracy he usually had plenty of stories to tell.

  ‘Those fields we passed on our way here,’ he said. ‘About ten miles back. With the big dairy herd. Did you notice Swivek and Rattenwend weren’t around yesterday? Yeah? Well I’d sent them back there, hadn’t I? They picked out seven or eight of the biggest cows and painted a letter M on their arses. Not in paint, obviously. I didn’t have any paint. It was blackjack gravy, from the barrel I made before we rolled out of Vostli. Then they went round to the farm and told the farmer they were looking for some stolen cattle belonging to Count von Molebacher and marked with his sign. Put the fear of God into the poor bastard. Serious business, stealing from the nobility. “All yours? Well let’s just take a little look, shall we? Oh dear oh dear.” And of course t
he man’s swearing blind that it’s a mistake, he’s owned the cows for years, they’re practically members of the family. “All right then,” says Swivek. “We’ll just take a couple, and show them to the count, and if he says they’re yours we’ll bring them right back.” Of course, by then he thinks he’s going to lose all the bloody animals, so he’s very happy to settle for a couple, and off they go.’

  Molebacher was laughing uproariously throughout this speech, hugely enjoying his own joke. Drozde smiled too, even though she didn’t really see how it was funny to rob a man of his livelihood.

  ‘Got the turnips from the next farm along,’ Molebacher added. ‘Nobody in sight, so just grabbed those and kept on walking. Plenty of meat to keep the brass and lace happy for a few days, and what’s left I can parcel up and sell off to the enlisted men. Fresh meat goes faster than anything.’

  Armies lived off the land, Drozde knew. What else were they going to do? The alternative – keeping them supplied from some distant point where provisions would first be stored and then doled out – had been tried, and it didn’t work. It was both expensive and fragile. As soon as your enemy waltzed across your supply line, you were well and truly buggered. Better to help yourself to what was around you – so long as you didn’t care who you antagonised or ruined. But this was an Austrian company on Silesian soil. Colonel August had been ordered to tread lightly where possible, and he’d passed the same order on to Molebacher. This was Molebacher’s way of squaring the circle.

  ‘I’m doing a performance,’ Drozde told him now. ‘Tonight.’

  Molebacher grunted but said nothing. Drozde wasn’t sure of his position on her shows. He never attended them and on the whole was inclined to dismiss her puppets, and indeed anything she did besides warming his bed, as profoundly unimportant. She suspected, however, that he enjoyed the social visibility she gave him, though he would never admit it. And he couldn’t argue with the money she was putting by from the shows, which was considerable.