by Clio Gray
‘No! Is that right? I heard there was a magician in with the prisoners and he put the Polizei to sleep with just a few waves of his hand.’
‘Don’t be silly, woman. Whoever heard of a magician getting arrested? It’s nonsense, I tell you. What happened was that the two Sergeants got blind drunk, and Captain Ackersmann tried to shoot all the prisoners by himself like he’d been told, and then shot himself in the foot, and those that were left legged it from the yard.’
‘Now then, that’s not right. Nobody heard shooting. But didn’t you hear about the boy? Had a head like a rotten pumpkin, all swollen and hairy. They say he brought in bread and wine, gifts for the Schupos, and poisoned the lot of them like cats in an alley.’
‘Gracious heavens, who’d have thought a boy could be so wicked!’
‘Oh dear me yes, boys have always been wicked. I should know. I’ve five of them at home and all they’re good for is stealing food from their mother’s mouth and whipping her when they come home drunk. No good lot are boys. Ah, that God had seen fit to give me a girl . . .’
‘They’ll hang ’em when they find ’em, that’s for sure, boys or no boys, throttle ’em till they’re black in the face and their legs kick their shoes right off their feet. Saw a man hanged in Hanover once, screamed like a rabbit he did, shouting out for his mama to forgive him. It was a grand spectacle, looking at that man, his legs all thrashing, eyes coming out his head so you thought they’d pop, tongue near pulled from its roots. Aye, that’s what they’ll do all right when they find ’em. They’ll hang ’em. That’s what happens when you murder Schupos. Always been so, always will.’
They hurried on as best they could, following Fatzke’s complicated directions, Philbert recalling them with ease, like they’d been tattooed inside his skull, and eventually arrived at a crumbling old church, its dedication board half splintered away by brown twines of ancient wisteria, all that was visible being some faded lettering and the outline of a painted shell.
‘This is the place,’ Philbert said, whispering, as he’d been whispering ever since they left the shop whenever he needed to urge Kwert on or tell him left or right. Kwert’s skin was the sickly green of sun-bleached leaves, and it was left to Philbert to push his way through the overgrown plants and lichens that hung in dirty ropes from the arch of the lych-gate. He beat his way past them and up the nettle-grown path to the porch, relieved to find the church door partially cracked open, its topmost hinge hanging loose from the frame. There was enough of a gap for Philbert to push Kwert on before him, straight into a miasma of cobwebs and the retreating tic-tic-tic of tiny feet skittering away beneath floorboards and walls. Kwert was terribly tired, but all the pews had been ripped out leaving only flat, greasy stone and tired earth scabbed over with liverworts and mould onto which Kwert sank in a wheezing heap.
‘Stay here,’ Philbert said, as if Kwert was going to do anything else. He looked around him at the broken font, the roof domed above him like an inverted bowl, the worm-riddled beams showering them with peels of paint and dust motes, enhanced here and there by minute flickers of gold – all that remained of the Protecting Hand of God, once a magnificent fresco vaulted over the congregation’s heads. He saw the stones marching up the nave and aisles all inscribed with illegible names and words, depictions of the tools of various trades, some with skulls and angels. A large wooden altar leant and wobbled on its legs of stone behind a sagging reredos, the baldacchino tattered and torn almost into nonexistence. Philbert saw the little door to the right of the altar leading into the sacristy, just as Fatzke said, so in he went. A small room lay beyond, empty but for a crude straw mattress, a bench, and a woodstove that was giving out a perceptible, if slight, quiver of heat. Philbert retreated hurriedly, helped Kwert in and onto the mattress he kicked a little closer to the fire. He then laid down the satchel, retrieving the package of food Kadia had given them, unwrapping it to find several pastries stuffed with crumbled cheese and olives, a few hard-boiled eggs, some lumps of rosewater jelly, chewy and sweet. Philbert managed to get Kwert to eat a little, worried at how thin and tired he looked, the large bruise stretching over his face like a tent, pinioned by bristles on cheeks and chin.
The effort of eating was too much for Kwert and soon he was asleep, his breathing relaxing, and for a while Philbert sat beside him, glad of the warmth of the wood burner, comforted by the scritch scratching of mice and beetles scurrying through secret chambers, reminding him of nights with Hermann. A few minutes later he caught a faint sound coming from the wall at his back. The noise was curiously familiar to Philbert, and he took off his brim-shorned hat and placed his ear against the stone, and there it was again. He couldn’t be certain, but it sounded so like the Wille Woo song Helge had taught him that he took a chance and rapped his knuckles against the stone in the rhythm of the song’s chorus, jumping back in fright to hear the rhythm repeated, the echo taking on a life of its own, carrying on the tune. He was so intent on listening that he near leapt from his skin when he heard a voice quietly intoning the first line of Helge’s song, feeling its mists and snow clamping itself around him as if he’d been snatched into the world of ghosts.
‘Im Nebelgeriesel, im tiefen Schnee . . .’
Philbert whirled around, and found a very thin man standing there in a patched and worn cassock, his neck sticking out of his habit like a cabbage stalk in winter, cheeks deep-pocked as if sunk with seeds.
‘So what have we here?’ the spectre said. ‘Someone coming uninvited into my home? Someone who brings supper and then eats it all before his host has time to arrive?’
Philbert got his breath back, realising he was dealing with a man of flesh and blood, a mouth filled with teeth that were blackened to their stumps and breath abominably offensive. Philbert lifted the flask and wordlessly handed it over to the stranger, who might have been as thin as a wraith but had a thirst no ghost ever could, slugging down a good few gulps before delicately wiping the rim, replacing the stopper and handing back the flask.
‘Well thank you, my boy. And do you have a name, this person who knows the songs of my childhood? And who is this?’ He pointed at Kwert. ‘He whose sleep is very sweet and which he has a right to, as Goethe’s Hatem said to the cupbearer.’
The man seemed to have taken no offence that Kwert was on his bed, and sat down cross-legged at its corner, Kwert stirring not an inch, Philbert finding his voice.
‘My name is Philbert, and this is Kwert. Fatzke sent us to find you.’
The man inclined his head. ‘Fatzke,’ he repeated slowly.
Philbert nodded.
‘And you’re in trouble?’
Philbert nodded again.
‘What kind of trouble?’
Philbert saw little need to hold back. Either the man would help them or denounce them, but either way he’d already calculated the man could be knocked over by a swift shove, so slight was his body weight, and Philbert had already marked out a couple of stones fallen from the walls that would help if he needed defence. So Philbert briefly told the tale of how they’d come to Ullendorf from the Fair, how Ullendorf had taken them to the Westphal Club, the soldiers choosing that night to raid the place, that many people were already dead – including Ullendorf, for Kwert had not been able to revive him after all – and that some had been taken away, others, like Helge, disappeared, the rest holed up in the gaol awaiting execution until the moment of dramatic escape.
‘Ah,’ the man breathed out a long sigh. ‘I’m deeply grieved to hear it, and most especially about the Ullendorfs. I taught them both in the village school along with Fatzke. And it’s Fatzke wants me to guide you through the crypts?’
‘It is,’ Philbert nodded.
‘And for some reason you’ve brought me a cat as a gift? In Lengerrborn?’
Philbert frowned, following the man’s gaze to his satchel, out of which the scrawny head of a ginger kitten was po
king. The man plucked it up by the scruff, stretching its whiskers from its pink gums, Philbert quickly taking the kitten and placing it on his shoulder – just as Kadia had done – where it began a gentle purr, licking at Philbert’s hair with its rasp of a tongue.
‘I take it you’re Pastor Gruftgang?’ Philbert asked, relieved the man hadn’t snapped the kitten’s neck while he’d had the chance.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said the man, ‘but I haven’t heard that appellation in a long time. Pastor,’ he repeated. ‘It sounds good. But call me Amt Gruftgang. That’s how I’m known now: defrocked defender of the deconsecrated church of St Lydia-of-the-Dyers. My Lady St Lydia, first Philippi heathen to convert to the teachings of St Paul. The walls here were painted purple for the dye she sold – not that you’d know it now. Her sign is the snail shell into which shape the church was built. Lord! But how many sermons I used to give in my younger days on the value of her blessed signs and symbols,’ he went on, getting into the drift of those sermons, Philbert the first congregation he’d had for a long time. ‘The purple kingship of Christ, the snail to recall the soul trapped in the body and the sleep of death before resurrection. How proud I was to shout out the words of my blessed Lydia: if you have judged me to be faithful, come into my house and stay.’ Amt Gruftgang blinked away a tear and shook his head. ‘Long gone. Long gone. My sermons too Latin, Lengerrborn too Lutheran. The building too costly to upkeep. A pastor past his best, who talked too often of saints and miracles to people who’d witnessed neither for generations.’
‘But you stayed here?’ Philbert asked, the old pastor squeezing his throat to stop his tears of anger, frustration and regret after his tirade that had been oft in his head but never spoken out loud, not to another person.
‘I stayed,’ he said, ‘but oh, you should have seen the place back then. You could access the undercrofts from outside, before the wall collapsed. We’d gather on Our Lady’s Saint Day, tolled forward by the bell, all carrying our torches, singing out the verses of her Conversion.’ He gave Philbert a scratchy versions of these verses:
Et quaedam mulier nomine Lydia,
Purpuraria civitatis,
Thyatirenorum, Colens Deum, audivit.
‘Good days, good days,’ Amt Gruftgang said. ‘I’d lead them through the chambers built beneath the church, right into the middle, me chanting from The Windings of the Cochlea, a little book I had the joy to compile, telling how the chambers replicate St Lydia’s blessed snail shell, our wanderings through life’s spirals . . .’
Philbert twitched with relief when Kwert’s groans stopped Gruftgang’s lengthy reminiscences, ending by directing one last blessing at Kwert:
‘In Nomine Lydia purpuraria . . . may you be well again.’
The lamp Gruftgang had brought with him spluttered without warning and went out, leaving only the dim light from the stove for them to see by. The neglected building seemed to sigh of its own accord, jogged briefly into life by the old man’s fading memories, finished now, and the only thing left to do being to fold itself back into silence and fall into a dreamless sleep.
23
Through Shroudways and Narrow Tunnels
Kwert was awake. He managed to push himself up on one elbow, looking around him in the dark. He made out Philbert leaning against the wall, eyes closed, and an old man sitting at the bottom of the filthy mattress, his back against the cooling stove. He’d no idea what time it was or how long they’d been here. He could hardly remember getting here at all, only the torture of movement, the fear of being discovered, the vague hope that help was at hand now they’d got to where Fatzke had directed them. He forced himself to sit, grimacing with the pain in his ribs. He knew that if he didn’t move soon he would never want to move again. He was thirsty, saw a flask on the floor and lifted it to his lips, but it was empty. He picked up the wineskin that was lying by the old man’s feet and took a sip, but Christ how it burned! Like drinking naphtha straight from the ground. His eyes watered, his cheeks puckered, but after a few moments he felt the strength of the spirit in his blood, his heart no longer slack but tight with a fast drumming that made him want to get to his feet and get on their way. He knew it wouldn’t last long, this feeling of betterment, and so he shook Philbert awake. Philbert was alert in a second, pleased to answer Kwert’s question that yes, he was ready to move, but was Kwert?
Kwert smiled. ‘It’s that dirty wine of our new friend over there. I don’t know what he puts in it but yes, I do feel stronger, though I fear it will only be a brief respite. But if we can get going now I think we should.’
Philbert was pleased Kwert was up and ready for the go, but worried by the colour of him, too vibrant, too red, as if the glanders where running through him all over again. But no time to waste. They took a few minutes to waken Amt Gruftgang, for he’d been drunk on the liquor of his own making, had been drunk almost from the moment he’d been defrocked and the church deconsecrated, two decades since. But once up he found candles that they lit from the woodstove, and soon were heading down the slimy steps leading to the undercrofts and the maze of crypts and corridors dug into the ground beneath the church.
It was dark and dank, room only for single file, Kwert and Philbert following Amt Gruftgang’s swaying candle and the tapping of his stick and the hollow sound of his voice as he slipped back into the past again, intoning the prayers of St Lydia as he led his congregation of two through the crypts. The tunnels were low and dark. Philbert held out a hand to the dripping stones, disturbed every now and then when, without warning, the walls would open up into a niche of mouldering bones and black-grown ferns that dripped a liquid too viscid to be plain water. He worried that the old priest was not only drunk but mad to boot, and leading them so deep into this labyrinth they would none of them ever get out again. Kwert was struggling to keep up. Whatever good the pastor’s home-brew had done was evidently wearing off. There was one comfort to be found down here in this subterranean meandering, and that was the little kitten that purred away like an engine at the back of Philbert’s neck and never seemed to stop.
On they went through the shroudways and narrow tunnels, the pastor’s pace erratic – sometimes fast, sometimes slow – until finally the tunnels became a little wider, the air less foetid, the darkness less profound, small intimations of true light appearing ahead between the lumbering, stumbling form of Gruftgang ahead; the whiskers of Raspel – as Philbert had chosen to call the kitten – began to twitch as the air became fresher. Then suddenly they were out, fighting a last battle with a curtain of spiny brambles, faces pale as limpets, eager for the light.
Never had the evening air been so glorious to Philbert. He might have been reborn. All around a faint rain drip-dripped through the branches of trees, heightening the sharp scents of pine and bay-willow, tinted by the sweetness of early blooming may-blossom and daffodils. Amt Gruftgang had sobered up considerably during the half hour it took to guide his wards through the mile or so of shroudways from the church to here, and pointed to a faint path rippling through the trees and un-flowered bluebells that would take them down to the lake.
‘There’ll be a boat moored under the large holm oak,’ he said. ‘Take it over to the island that lies just to the right of you, and there you’ll find the Hermit. He’ll shelter you for the night until you make your plans.’
Kwert clutched Gruftgang’s arm, his back creaking as he bent to kiss the fingers of the man who might just have saved their lives.
‘How can we ever repay you, my friend?’ Kwert said, swaying with every word, plainly having difficulty staying upright on his feet.
‘Pffht! It is nothing!’ Gruftgang’s halitosis was almost lost in the fresh evening air. He too seemed rejuvenated by the adventure, but what he’d done, Kwert knew, was not nothing by a long chalk. Caught giving fugitive murderers a helping hand would see his cabbage-stalk neck strung up in a rope, and no one to take care of St Lydia’s legacy
then. But Gruftgang was at heart still a pastor, only wanting a flock to care for, and that was enough for him.
‘Perhaps, when you pass again,’ was all he said, ‘you will call in on old Gruftgang; bring him some decent food and brandy, some slices of venison, a haunch of wild boar, some apple sauce, some truffles . . . those old eggs of the earth.’
Philbert wanted to please this man who’d helped them so much, and the request seemed a small one.
‘I ate snails’ eggs once,’ he volunteered, misunderstanding the reference to earth eggs, ‘and will surely bring you some if I can,’ and then he took off his hat and swept it low to indicate how much he appreciated Gruftgang’s help.
Gruftgang, who had been about to turn back towards the tunnels, mindful of the falling night, looked at the young boy, seeing only now how unusual was the shape of his head.
‘You’ve . . . eaten snails’ eggs?’ he asked, uncertain he’d heard correctly, looking from the boy to Kwert for confirmation.
Kwert interposed before Philbert could say any more. ‘A custom, Amt Gruftgang, nothing more. No disrespect to your church or your saint. They’re said to bring wisdom to the foolish and youth to the old.’
Gruftgang’s thin face mottled, the pockmarks on his cheeks reddening as if there were raspberry pips just below the surface of his skin. He stood quite still. No movement at all, except for the rain dripping through the branches of the willows, releasing their soft scent of bay. Kwert looked anxiously at the old man, hoping to God Philbert hadn’t offended him. Then suddenly Gruftgang laughed and held out his hand, his nails black with the dirt of the winding tunnels through which they’d just passed.
‘Blessed Lady Lydia!’ he exclaimed. ‘But is it any wonder you were sent to me, for the egg is a world within a world as is the snail within its shell, and so it must follow that the egg of a snail is a world within a world within a world. And you, boy! You!’ His finger moved back and forth like an eye that cannot focus. ‘You now have all those worlds within your head! It’s a sign, the sign I’ve been waiting for all these years . . .’ He did turn then, almost running for the tunnel, laughing like a man possessed. ‘I must return at once. I must make my oblations, dedicate myself once more to the Blessed Lady whom I had almost forgotten but who this day has taken the shroud from my eyes!’
