The House of War and Witness

by Mike Carey

  ‘One night when I was scrubbing the pans, he came up to me and put his hands around my waist. I pushed him away. I know, I know –’ Alis waved her hand as if expecting Drozde to interject. ‘– I’d no reason to be choosy. But I’d never liked the way he looked at me. His eyes were too blank, like there was nothing behind them. He left me alone after that, and I thought no more about it. But about a week later, he’d set me to frying potato cakes, and the pot of hot oil slipped off the trivet and fell on me.’

  Here Alis paused, and slowly began rolling down her left stocking.

  ‘It was only my leg was hurt, thank Christ,’ she said, her voice trembling a little. ‘I’d never have worked again, else. But it was bad enough.’

  Her leg, from knee to calf, was a hectic, feverish red. The skin was mottled, with a strange sheen on it as if it had melted and reformed again. Drozde felt her gorge rise at the sight, and tried hard not to recoil from her friend.

  ‘I should have warned you. For a long time I tried to put it from my mind. I told myself I’d just been clumsy, that I must have knocked it somehow. But that trivet had never been unstable before, and the day I was burned it was wobbling around like someone had taken a hammer to it. It was him. I know it was.

  ‘We all of us love you, Drozde, you know that.’ Alis’s voice was barely more than a whisper now. ‘Please be careful.’

  There was a long pause after she had finished speaking. For an endless moment Drozde felt almost compelled to silence, as if to speak would be to acknowledge what Alis had said as true, wrenching it into the here-and-now from the fireside tale of violence and vengeance to which it seemed rightfully to belong. But fear would do her no good, she knew, and the longer she sat frozen, the worse Alis would feel. So she collected herself and, with an immense effort, smiled at her friend.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Alis,’ she said. ‘If I didn’t know a thing or two about handling Molebacher, do you think I’d still be here?’

  She wished that she felt as sure as she sounded.

  When Drozde entered Molebacher’s kitchen some three-quarters of an hour later, she came prepared. After Alis had left her she had sat in her tent a long while, and she had thought. Now was a time, if ever there had been one, where the sergeant would require careful handling. Everything must be planned, and thoroughly. Drozde found that it helped her to quash a rapidly mounting sense of panic if she imagined the interview to come as a puppet show.

  First, the fanfare. Drozde picked her moment carefully, waiting until she had seen all the orderlies dispatched on various errands before making her entrance. Molebacher wouldn’t tolerate her making a scene with other people watching, and a scene was exactly what she needed right now. Her opening gambit needed to be surprising enough that he would take notice and listen to her without interrupting. Lose the stage, and she lost the battle. Molebacher would be expecting fear and deference, she guessed, so she went for anger instead. She marched into the kitchen, her eyes blazing. She had undone her hair so that it flew out behind her as she walked and swept across her face in tangled curls. The effect was unladylike, wild even, but not unpleasant.

  ‘Where the fuck—’ Molebacher began. She cut him off.

  ‘Where do you think?’ she growled. ‘You gave me that stinking work, and then expected me to come creeping back to your bed? I wasn’t fit to lie with pigs after what you put me through!’

  As she had hoped, Molebacher had no reply to this. He stared at Drozde, and she could see that he was thrown by her rage. But she couldn’t stop yet.

  ‘If you thought I was going to come to you last night, you had another thing coming,’ she continued, her voice rising. ‘I had a good mind to never come to your bed again, Molebacher, do you know that? I had a good mind to leave!’

  She paused as if to catch her breath, her chest heaving. Molebacher’s face remained impassive, but she noticed his eyes following the rise and fall of her breasts. She knew then that he was ready to come around, if she could only offer him a way to do so without losing face. She had to tread carefully here: push Molebacher too hard, even in a direction he was going already, and he would likely thwart you just for spite. She waited. After what seemed like an age, he spoke.

  ‘But here you are,’ he pointed out. Right on cue.

  This was where things got really tricky. Drozde knew the line that she was treading, and it was a dangerous one. She couldn’t subdue Molebacher with threats, and if she slipped into deference and apologies then he would almost certainly beat her. He did not respect weakness and would give it no quarter. She held his gaze, allowing the moment to stretch out until the silence hung thick and heavy in the room like a pall of smoke.

  ‘Here I am,’ she agreed, and her eyes said, Of course I came back. I couldn’t resist you.

  The quartermaster breathed in, and Drozde saw his chest swell, almost imperceptibly, as he took in what she had said, and what her eyes had spoken. For a man like Molebacher, ownership came a poor second to mastery. He would never beat Drozde into submission if she could convince him that her submission was given willingly, pulled from her by a power in him that she could not withstand and did not wish to. In that moment she knew that she had pulled it off, that Molebacher thought he saw, after his long, slow siege of her, a white flag above the battlements. She was torn between self-disgust at the cravenness of the lie and pride at its success. On the whole, she reflected, it was one of her better performances. And then it was over. Molebacher shrugged massively, and returned to chopping vegetables.

  ‘And running your mouth off like a common trull already,’ he observed, as if nothing more than words had passed between them. ‘I’ve got better things to do than listen to your whining.’

  ‘Much better things,’ Drozde agreed. ‘If we go next door we’ll be undisturbed. We could go and do some of them there.’

  She led the way, and Molebacher lumbered after. Even then it was hard work, reconciling him, but she had a gift and a will for it.

  The face of the carpenter kept drifting to the forefront of her mind as she worked. It did no harm.

  19

  Klaes knocked on the big solid front door of the burgomaster’s house. Then waited a while and knocked again. There was no knocker: he was obliged to rap with the edge of a coin taken from his pocket.

  It was Bosilka who answered, which he might have anticipated but had not. He was outfaced for a moment, as she struggled and failed to hide her dismay on seeing him.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘I need to speak with your master.’

  ‘He’s not in.’

  ‘Then I’ll wait,’ said Klaes.

  A serving maid can’t easily bar her master’s door, unless to gypsies and mendicants. With extreme reluctance, Bosilka stepped aside and allowed him in. ‘May I take your coat?’ she mumbled, her gaze darting away from his every time their eyes threatened to meet. ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Well … me,’ Klaes said. ‘Lieutenant Klaes. I’ve eaten at his table, Miss Stefanu. It’s not necessary for me to present a card.’

  ‘No. Sorry. I meant … what shall I say the matter is?’

  ‘The matter is private.’ Klaes took off his greatcoat and handed it to her. She held it draped over her two arms, which made her look like Mary cradling the body of Christ in a pietà. Klaes suppressed the irreverent thought.

  ‘Private. Yes. Very well.’ Bosilka pointed to a door off to her left. ‘You’d best wait in the closet then. He’ll come and get you when he’s ready for you. Or I will. Most likely he will. I’m busy with the wash.’

  She turned away, seeming angry and unhappy. ‘Miss Stefanu,’ Klaes said quickly. ‘Wait.’

  She stopped. ‘What?’

  ‘My being here. I won’t … That is … I have no intention of implicating you.’

  Bosilka gave him a cold look. ‘I don’t know what that means, Lieutenant Klaes. Is it a quotidian sort of thing?’

  She didn’t wait for an answer b
ut strode off, leaving him surprised and chagrined once again at how easily she’d given him the hip and thrown him. A woman like that, he thought sourly, had better not marry. Her husband would kill either her or himself before the year was out.

  He went into the closet, a room even narrower than its name suggested. There was a chair with a misericord, a rack hung with the family’s winter coats and a great many jars of home-made preserves. A tiny window, made even smaller by the heavy wooden frame on which its shutter hung, allowed some light to dribble down the nearer wall. The overall effect – apart from the preserves – was of an eremite’s cell.

  Inactivity stretches time and deceives expectation. It felt like a long while that Lieutenant Klaes stood at the window and waited. On the misericord there was a single book. He picked it up and read the title: Tausch’s Gazetteer and Almanac of Country Matters Mostly, MDCCXXXII.

  He set it down again.

  He had already decided on the course he was going to take, but he rehearsed the words in his mind several times over while he waited; honing his delivery, anticipating possible objections, making the performance watertight.

  The door opened at last, and the burgomaster ushered him out of his confinement with a shooing gesture, like a farmer herding sheep. ‘This is a fine to-do!’ he exclaimed. ‘Nobody told me you were here, Corporal Klaes. I only noticed your coat on the table as I came through the hall, and asked whose it was.’

  ‘It’s no matter,’ Klaes said. He thought, I’m amazed she didn’t lock me in. Or bid me wait on the roof.

  They went through into the drawing room where the family had received him the day the detachment took up residence at Pokoj. The chairs had been pushed back against the walls, but Weichorek set out two of them directly facing one another as though he expected this to be an interrogation of some sort. ‘Ease you,’ he said, gesturing Klaes to sit.

  Klaes did so. The burgomaster took up his place opposite, not bothering to sweep the tails of his jacket out from under his descending backside. No wonder they looked like the folds of a sack.

  ‘Now,’ he said briskly, ‘what brings you here?’

  ‘A matter of some seriousness,’ Klaes said, making his tone match the words. ‘And some delicacy, too. In the normal course of things, it would require me to make a formal report, but I would rather not involve my commander if it is possible for me to deal with it myself.’

  Weichorek looked concerned – or perhaps he was merely puzzled. ‘A matter …’

  ‘I have heard,’ Klaes told him, ‘about Petos.’

  For some moments the burgomaster did not speak. He merely regarded Klaes with the same air of troubled innocence. Klaes was content to let the silence continue for as long as it would. He had searched the cellar at Pokoj and found nothing incriminating or even interesting there – only the trunk and personal effects of the gypsy woman, Drozde. So he had decided to adopt another strategy, which was to extort information by seeming to possess it. And for that it was necessary to allow the other man to speak as much as possible while he himself said little but implied much.

  ‘Petos,’ Weichorek repeated at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ Weichorek nodded. ‘And if I may ask, Captain, who was it told you about this?

  Could they not even keep his rank straight in their minds for two minutes? Klaes began to correct the error, but stopped himself. ‘The source does not matter. Only the facts in the case.’

  ‘Ah. It was Bosilka, then.’

  Klaes started. How in the world had Weichorek jumped to that conclusion? Because he’d been seen talking to the girl? Were rumours so quick, and so current? ‘I have no remit to give a name,’ he said, striving to maintain a calm, impassive, card player’s face. ‘But I can tell you that it was not Miss Stefanu.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘A countryman of yours.’ Klaes was aware that he should remain silent – let the burgomaster bring words and revelations to him. But he was obliged now to lay a false trail. He didn’t want Bosilka to suffer as a result of his subterfuge. ‘The man was in his cups. He spoke indiscreetly, and though I did not intentionally listen, I was compelled to overhear.’

  ‘Ah,’ the burgomaster said again. ‘So that’s how it was? And where did all this take place, Sergeant? If I’m permitted to ask? I didn’t know you men of the company were drinking in town with us. Certainly I’ve not yet seen you in Kolchek’s parlour – that’s our posthouse, and our inn, for want of anything better. Though if ten men sit there at the same time, half of them have their legs out of doors.’ Weichorek laughed uproariously at this image, and Klaes gave a tight smile.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I have not, and the men in my command have not, drunk in the village. The colonel does not approve it.’ When spoken, these words sounded evasive to Klaes, and pusillanimous. ‘And I,’ he added. ‘I do not approve it either.’

  ‘In Stollenbet then. The Sign of the Tartar.’

  This guessing game could serve for nothing save to erode Klaes’s position. ‘I have said I will not name my informant,’ he said. ‘He did not, in any case, mean to speak to me, and I would be sorry if his loose tongue brought him into censure.’

  ‘Yes,’ the burgomaster agreed. ‘That would be sad.’ He threw out his arms in a shrug. ‘Well, this is an awkward thing, Lieutenant, and it somewhat gravels me how to continue.’

  ‘I too,’ Klaes said. ‘But I thought I would consult with you before I resolved upon how to proceed.’

  ‘With me? Why with me?’ The man was looking at him shrewdly now, and Klaes had to work hard to keep from looking away – which would be a virtual admission that his candour was only a facade.

  ‘Well,’ Klaes said, ‘with your knowledge of the local people and their situation, I felt you might have your own opinion as to what needs to be done.’

  ‘Does anything need to be done?’

  ‘Perhaps not. But I should like to hear your thoughts all the same.’

  The burgomaster sighed, and scratched his head in a pantomime of deep rumination. ‘My thoughts. Well, of course. Why not? But I don’t know yet, my dear Klaes, what it is you’ve been told.’

  The shift from his rank to his name was interesting, Klaes thought – and frankly something of a relief. The request for circumstantial detail was less so. ‘I believe I have most of the facts in my possession,’ he said.

  ‘Such as?’

  Klaes found himself thinking back to that shooing gesture that the burgomaster had used to get him out of the closet and into the drawing room. Now, as then, he felt somewhat like a sheep being penned. ‘I know about the cellar,’ he said. And then, taking a further gamble, ‘The cellar at Pokoj, I mean.’

  Weichorek grimaced. ‘That’s far from the worst of it,’ he said. ‘But I ask again. It was not from Bosilka that you heard all this?’

  ‘No!’ Klaes exclaimed. ‘Why from Bosilka? I have barely said good day to Bosilka. And what is this to her?’

  ‘It concerns her,’ the burgomaster said, calm in the face of Klaes’s slightly over-emphatic denial. ‘Not closely, perhaps, and not as one might assume, but it concerns her. And some aspects of it … well, they touch on her honour, Captain. They do. I feel, to some degree, as if I’m being asked to share confidences that are not my own to dispose of. You see? I’m sure you’re a man of discretion, but still …’

  Her honour? This sounded like a murky business, and Klaes was sorry all over again that Colonel August had obliged him to try to fathom it. It distressed him, too, to discover that Bosilka Stefanu’s honour was compromised. He had himself thought unworthy things of her as recently as two days ago, but after their encounter in the forest he had come to have a better opinion of her. It was not that she had brained him with a rock, it was that she had acknowledged the attack afterwards and stood ready to take the consequences. He admired that. And if he now found her to be mixed up in some tawdry scandal, it would force him to withdraw that recently bestowed respect.

  �
�Before I speak any further,’ Weichorek said, ‘I need your assurance that what I say will not go beyond this room.’

  ‘I can’t make that promise, Meister Weichorek,’ Klaes said scrupulously. ‘I wish I could, but I cannot. My overriding responsibility is to my commander, Colonel August.’

  ‘What, a colonel command a captain?’

  ‘I’m not a captain, I’m a lieutenant. And a colonel commanding a lieutenant – or a captain, for that matter – is the normal order of things. Even if I were a rittmeister’ – he used the Schönbrunner word – ‘Colonel August would still be three full ranks above me.’

  Weichorek waved the correction aside with just a touch of asperity. ‘I’m not trying to make you party to a conspiracy,’ he said. ‘Obviously, if you need to report this to your major –’

  ‘My colonel.’

  ‘– to your colonel, then you’ll do so. But I’d be desirous, in that case, of having your undertaking to omit the names of any third parties who might be hurt by it, do you see? Not to restrain your hand against the guilty, but to protect the innocent.’

  ‘That I will vouchsafe to do,’ Klaes said. ‘With all my heart.’

  ‘Then I’ll fill in the gaps for you,’ Weichorek said, slapping the table. ‘For the devil thrives on secrets, does he not?’

  ‘Petos – Nymand Ilya Petos, son of Jan Petos and Saska Lubisch, who was Sandra’s daughter, from Grünberg, that married Lion Tchalk –’

  ‘I think, if third parties are to be protected,’ Klaes interjected hastily, ‘you should be less categorical about names and places.’

  ‘– was Bosilka’s cousin. He was born in Narutsin, and grew up here. A quiet boy, always, and some said a strange one. But Bosilka pushed him out of a tree one day, when they were both seven years old, and after that the strangeness was more in evidence. It was in the course of a game, not in spite. But then, there it was. If only our motives counted, there’d hardly be any sin at all, would there? After that Petos would be found in the middle of the night, standing stock still in someone’s field, or their barn, or even on one occasion in their bedroom.