by Mike Carey
So the next time he went to put his hand on my knee, I let him, and I smiled back. I asked him what it was like in Praha, and he told me. And you know, he had a nice voice, for all he was fat. I thought maybe I could come to like him. I didn’t let him do anything more that night, but I drank his wine and I got home late and uncertain on my feet. And in my mind, too.
When I came to the house next day he was different with me. All ‘sweetheart’ and ‘flower’, and giving me little pats and prods like I was a prize horse he’d just bought and he was checking on the bargain. And smiling at me out of the corner of his mouth as if we shared a secret. He’d come in while I was doing the sweeping and stand too close, looking at me with that little smile, and say, ‘You wouldn’t need to sweep floors in Praha.’
I let him take liberties. I did. It’s something I would undo if I could. He’d put his hands all over me, and his mouth too. I would take his big knobbly cock in my hand and hold on to it while he pushed and grunted, and clean up the mess afterwards. But I wouldn’t let him have me, although he often tried. He said it was no more than I’d done before, which was true, though I denied it – I wouldn’t talk of Bobik to him. But it wouldn’t have been right: Bobik was different. Petos said he’d expect more than that from me if we were to go to Praha. I said, you take me there, and we’ll see.
I don’t know if I’d have gone with him. I don’t even know if he truly meant to take me; maybe all the talk of Praha was just invention. First he was happy enough to have me listen to his stories and let him put his hands on me when he told them. Did I say he could speak like a gentleman, or like an actor on the stage? I used to shut my eyes and pretend I was already there. But after a while he would ask all the time for things I wouldn’t give, and then he began to like my company less. He’d get angry with me for small things; he’d box my ears for not hanging up his coat the right way, and shout at me if his soup was cold, though that was Birgitta’s doing and not mine. When I broke a glass once, he came at me with a strap. And when he’d paw at me he took to pinching and tweaking; biting too, when he was in the worst mood. He never touched my face. Rich though he was, he knew there might be trouble if I came home with a black eye. But some days my breasts and arms were bruised black and blue, and I could not make free with Bobik till the marks faded.
And one day, I’d gone in the kitchen to get some fruit for him, and Birgitta grabbed hold of my arm. When I shook her off, for it was sore, she had my sleeve up till she saw the marks there, and then she shook me and cried at me for all the world like my auntie would have done. She said I was not to stay here; I should leave right away and not come back. She even threatened to go to my aunt. Well, I talked her out of that. I had more than a florin saved up by then, and how would I make that much money back at the inn? And besides, I still believed that Petos might take me to Praha, even if I had to run away from him when I got there. I’d need money for that too. I told Birgitta that I would stay away from Petos, and not go alone to his room any more. I let her take him his fruit; he shouted at her but he didn’t hit her. None of those men could cook.
I got to thinking. And that Sunday, when I saw Bosilka as usual after church, she could see something was wrong and she asked me straight out. She knew a bit about Petos, but I never told her he hit me, though I knew she suspected. And when I finally told her (though not all of it) she took on worse than Birgitta. ‘He’ll never take you to Praha,’ she said. ‘You’re fooling yourself.’ She said a man who’d treat me like that wasn’t worth staying with.
Well, Bosilka was funny, like I said. She had some strange ideas. She’d ask the priest about God and the mayor about the laws, like it was important to her. But for all that, she had her head screwed on. She told me Bobik would wed me in a heartbeat, and if it was money I wanted, everyone knew that Matheus would leave him the inn one of these days. I said Bobik would never want me if he knew what I’d done with Petos, and she said he already knew it, most of it, or suspected at least. It would make no difference, she said, and maybe she was right at that.
I went back to the house. I served Petos his supper that night, and stood by while he crammed meat into his mouth till the juice ran down his chin, and dropped the bones on the floor without caring where they landed. I’d seen him do those things before, of course, but that night … Then he took hold of my backside, and smiled and called me his little whore. He was drunk and happy – he laughed when he said it, as though he’d made a joke. As I walked home I started to think what would happen if he did take me to the city. It would be a long journey there, just him and me together. And then when we got there I wouldn’t know anyone: who knew what kind of work I’d be able to find? A florin wouldn’t feed and house me for ever. It might be weeks before I could get away from him, or months. I thought, I can’t stay with him that long. And Praha suddenly felt a long way away.
The next day, when the boys came with the casks, Bobik was with them. I hadn’t seen him for a week because of the bruises, but this time I didn’t hide in the back kitchen. I waited till he came to the cellar steps, and when he put down the barrel to open the door, I went up to him and took his hand, and kissed him. He kissed me right back, I can tell you. I smiled at him and was going to tell him I was leaving the great house, that I’d take him if he still wanted me. But that moment Skutch trotted up with a barrel of his own, and Bobik had to drop my hand and go on downstairs. And when he came back up Skutch was still with him and he couldn’t do more than throw me a smile. So I lost my chance.
Birgitta had seen the whole thing, and she was glad. She asked me, would I leave now, and I said yes. If I wanted my last week’s pay I’d have to stay till Saturday. But that meant Petos again. It used to be Stannaert – he still paid Birgitta and the boys – but since the Praha business came up Petos had taken to paying me himself. He’d hold the money out of my reach and laugh, and make me give him a kiss before I could have it, things like that. I thought about it and decided it wasn’t worth it; I’d rather see the back of him now. Birgitta said, ‘Just go, then. I’ll tell him for you.’ But I’d got it into my head to tell Petos myself. It wasn’t to pay him out, or anything. I think I just wanted it to be certain.
He was in the old billiard room, which he’d made into his office. I think your officer here took over the same one. He’d got a mouldy old armchair in front of the fire; he was sitting in it when I told him, with a glass of brandy at his side. I remember he sat very still. And then he smiled – only it wasn’t quite a smile, just his mouth stretched, and he said, ‘Come here.’
I didn’t care to. I shook my head and said I’d go now. And he jumped up and ran at me. He got me by the arm and then by the neck, and started to batter me. I caught up the brandy glass and hit him with it; the glass broke and cut him, and he stepped back from me with blood on his cheek and the fire flaming up blue behind him where the brandy had gone. I said he’d better not come any closer. He might be richer than the mayor, I said, but if he harmed me then my friends and neighbours would harm him worse. And he smiled that not-smile again, the blood running down his face, and said he owned my neighbours. He owned everything in this shithole town, he said, and he’d take what was his by rights, starting with me.
I was scared. I still had the broken glass and I made to attack him with it, but he could see I was shaking. I screamed at him to leave me be, and then there was a banging on the door, and a man outside asking was everything in order? It was a private, one of the pigs with the wandering hands; I forget his name. He was stupid: he had the door open before Petos could finish ordering him to go away, and I almost got through it. But he wouldn’t let me past. And then Petos shouted at him to hold me, and that he’d caught me stealing. I slashed at both of them and yelled, but they got the glass away from me, and one of them put his fat hand over my mouth. I bit him – they were both bleeding – but I couldn’t get away; I couldn’t.
They dragged me up the stairs and locked me in Petos’s room. I remember the pig private looked startle
d when Petos told him where to put me, but he wasn’t quite stupid enough to ask questions. They threw me in the corner, and Petos sent the private away and stood over me, his face dark red and streaked on one side where I’d cut him. I thought he was going to batter me again, but he put his hand up to his face and stepped back. He called me whore, and this time he didn’t mean it as a jest. He said I’d stay there till I gave him what he wanted, till I’d beg him to take me, and he took his knife from the table and stroked it while he spoke. I don’t recall all the things he said; I didn’t answer. After a while he went out and turned the key behind him, and I heard him going down the passage calling for water. He took the knife with him.
As soon as he’d gone I went to the door, but it was stuck fast; I couldn’t move it. I got the window open and screamed from it till I was hoarse, but no-one came. Bobik was long gone by then, and Birgitta was deaf, though she’d never admit it. And then I heard him coming back, his heavy feet outside, and he was shouting what he’d do to me if I didn’t shut my mouth. There was nothing I could find to hit him with, and I wasn’t about to be beaten again if I could help it. I got my head and shoulders out of the window, and caught the sides of the sash to pull myself through. As he opened the door I had one foot on the sill. If I could have got a proper purchase and let myself drop, maybe I’d have managed; I think I could still have run. But he came at me with his fat hands grabbing and his face all twisted up like a demon. I started away from him, the sill broke beneath me and I fell.
From there on it’s hard for me to remember things in the right time. The falling was the worst – I won’t recall that for fear it takes me back there. It was my head I hit first, or else my arm. There was a crack like breaking a big bit of kindling, and then for a while I was just glad the falling had stopped. I think I was already dead when Petos reached me. He shook me up and down and I didn’t feel it: I think I was mostly watching from outside by then. He was shouting, and maybe crying. I’d shut my eyes tight while I was falling and it was still hard to see.
He dragged me round the side of the house and into the cellar. The men were all elsewhere or had got out of his way, though I heard Birgitta clattering pans in the kitchen next door. He put me over his shoulder to get down the steps, and laid me out on the floor while he moved the casks out of the way and dug a grave beneath them. I got a look at myself while he did that. Oh, I looked bad. One of my eyes was swollen so badly it looked like it could never open, and my mouth all torn and bloody, and that side of my face crushed in on itself like an eggshell. I prayed Bobik wouldn’t have to see me like that.
He put me in the ground and covered me up – it gave me a shudder when I saw the earth covering my face. While he was moving the casks on top of me Birgitta came to the door and asked what he was doing there. He shouted at her to be gone and shouldered her out of the way to get up the steps. But I saw her looking at the marks on his face, and wondering. I followed them up the stairs, but neither of them saw me.
He told Stannaert that I had stolen money from him and run away, knowing that Stannaert would spread it around the men. He went into his room and locked the door. But Birgitta went straight down to the cellar. She moved those casks, though they were heavy, and she found the grave. She never heard me shouting at her to leave well alone, for I feared it would give her an apoplexy if she found me. She scratched at the earth floor until she saw my foot sticking up. And then she stopped very still, and she covered my foot up again, and she prayed for a long while. She spoke to me, not looking where I was but at the grave. She said she was sorry she hadn’t saved me – she should have done more – but the murdering bastard butcher would suffer for it. And she got her things from the kitchen and left without a word to anyone. I left the cellar too; I don’t go back to that spot now.
So I heard what happened then by listening to other people. Matheus sent word to Petos that one of his casks was bad and a customer wanted his money back. And when Petos went down to check the consignment he found Matheus and Bobik waiting for him, and four or five others. They made him dig me up, and then they killed him. He cried, and swore he hadn’t meant to murder me, but what difference did that make? I was just as dead, and my poor Bobik had seen me in that state, for all my prayers. So they beat Petos with their fists, and stabbed him through and through with their knives. And then, seeing that he was still alive, if only a little, Matheus broached one of the casks, and two of the others stopped Petos from struggling while Bobik pushed his head down into it and held him there till he drowned. It wasn’t a nice way to go. But then again, neither was the falling.
They left Petos where he had left me till they could make a deeper grave for him behind the house. And they carried me upstairs, and told Stannaert and Skutch that their captain had done murder, and had deserted when it was found out. Matheus told them that they had a choice: they could leave the house and the town, them and their men. Or they could be taken up as confederates for killing me and hiding me from justice. By morning all of them had gone.
They put me in the churchyard with a fine stone over me; Matheus paid for it. I visit it sometimes when Silkie’s there, or Birgitta or my aunt; they tell me the news. Bobik goes there too, for a while: after my cousin Marisha gets him he visits less often. And that’s my story.
The girl gave another half-curtsy as she finished, looking sombre and for a moment or two actually older, as if she had lived to make use of the experience she had gained so hard. Then she smiled, and was carefree and mischievous once again.
‘It was good to tell you,’ she said. ‘Magda was right. But he – the schoolmaster – he can’t hear a thing, can he? You’ll have to tell him again.’
Drozde had to bite back a laugh at her description of Klaes. Dead or not, Agnese was a sharp observer: there was something school-teacherly about the lieutenant’s earnest look and his slightly stooped posture when he spoke to her, as if leaning forward to listen to a slow child. But she nodded seriously, and turned to Klaes. He had been peering intently in Agnese’s direction as if he could see something there – a movement in the air; some colour or shadow.
‘She’s finished telling,’ Drozde told him. ‘Petos was the captain of the militia here; he found out about the smuggling and took it over, with his men’s help. All that brandy was his. And he killed Agnese.’ She told him only the bare details of the girl’s flirtation with the captain, her life in the house and her death; they weren’t his concern. And she gave him no more names. ‘An old woman who worked in the kitchen discovered Agnese’s body and told her friends. They killed Petos in revenge and persuaded his men to desert. That’s the full story, Lieutenant. Does it answer your questions?’
Lieutenant Klaes found that it did. Though he was tempted to doubt his own sanity by this time, he didn’t doubt the story he’d just been told. Which meant, of course, that he was accepting as fact Drozde’s claim that she could talk to the dead. Indeed, he had felt their presence – had seemed to be on the brink of seeing them himself, a vast and silent audience to the dead girl’s voiceless discourse. The flummery of mountebanks was now his science.
‘The names,’ he said. ‘Please.’
‘Which names?’
‘The villagers who were involved in the smuggling. If I can bring them here for Colonel August to question them, he’ll have to accept that the rest of the villagers are innocent of any wrongdoing – that it was only this ring, this cabal, and that their crime was smuggling.’
Drozde turned to the air, and listened to it for a goodly while. When she was done, she looked to Klaes again. ‘She won’t give you the names. She wants to know how stupid you think she is. For every name she gives, a man will be hurt. And she’s right, Klaes. You were there! You saw what they did to those men. To that boy! You should be ashamed even to ask!’
‘That’s not …’ Klaes began, but there was no way to untangle this. He deplored the colonel’s actions, but he could not simply wish him away or remove his power over these people. The only way to cu
rb his worst excesses was to give him the truth and show him how small a thing he was pursuing.
But he could do that without the names. If the colonel were to see the barrels in the cellars, he would understand at last the reason for the villagers’ secrecy and for Petos’s death. He would order a full investigation, and some men would be arrested. But then it would be over.
Klaes made a gesture, waving aside his own objections even as he was making them. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘My thanks to the lady, and to you. You’ve given me the answers I needed, and from here I can do what’s needful by myself.’
He was about to leave, but Drozde caught him by the arm. ‘What’s needful?’ she said. ‘What does that mean, Klaes? You wouldn’t take any of this to August, would you? Knowing what he’ll do with it?’
‘I have to. It’s a matter of—’
‘It’s a matter of your conscience against men’s lives!’
‘No! Of choosing the path that leads to the least bloodshed.’
The gypsy shook her head, as though she were trying to explain to a madman why the sun is hot. ‘That’s not in your power to choose,’ she said. ‘Good God! Look what he did when you told him about the fight! Did you think then that you were avoiding bloodshed?’
Klaes’s rejoinder died in his throat. The truth was that he had not thought very much about consequences when he made his report – he had only done his duty as he saw it and then stepped back, as a soldier does. But see what terrible things it had led to! Drozde was right, he realised with a growing dismay. He had no power over what became of his words after they left his mouth – and he could not be at all sure that the colonel would restrict his response to the avenues a reasonable man would use.
