by Clio Gray
Kwert and Philbert watched him go, then mooched on towards the lake, picking their steps through the coolness of evening-closed anemones, a shiver of ghost-moths rising from the damp grass hovering and settling like clouds in a valley.
‘Let that be a lesson to you, Little Maus,’ Kwert said, ‘never to take strong drink. It addles the brain and does a man no good at all.’
Philbert smiled. This was no time to mention the quash Kwert brewed and drank so freely. But he did look back, saw Amt Gruftgang on his knees beside the entrance to the hidden passageway. Perhaps he was praying. Perhaps he’d dropped his candle or was looking for his wineskin. Either way, he raised his head and waved, watched his miracle walking away into the distance, big hat on his big head, ginger kitten on his shoulder, sniffing like a gourmet at the air.
What Amt Gruftgang chose to see in his two fugitives was anyone’s guess. Sometimes there just comes a time when believing a sign has come from God is preferable to any other alternative; and it was not an odd delusion, not for Amt Gruftgang given his years of solitude following the desertion of his flock. What was odd was that he was not alone in his delusion, as he would soon find out.
24
The Islet of Langer Hansnarrwurst
It didn’t take Kwert or Philbert long to forget about Gruftgang and his exclamations of signs and faith, for the green of the woods soon gave way to the edge of the lake, the wind sporadic but stronger now, wrinkling its dark waters with foam-flecked waves, the small islands dotted on its surface looking grim and far away. Once out of the shelter of the trees, gusty swirls of dust and grit plucked at their clothes, stung their skin and eyes. Raspel retreated back down Philbert’s arm and into the satchel, and Philbert pushed his hat down harder on his head. They found the skiff beneath the large holm oak swinging back and forth upon its weed-hugged rope in the recess of a small bay, the oars carelessly hidden in a nearby bush. Dark clouds had begun to race across the sky, dimming the last half hour of sun, and they were acutely aware of how little light they had left to them, how little time they might have to get from water to island. They struggled to thread the oars onto their pins, the skiff spinning in wild circles as Philbert dragged it into deeper water, Kwert’s ribs grating as he fought to get aboard without tipping the whole thing over. Philbert got himself onto the narrow, splintered seat while Kwert huddled at one end so that he could give directions. Then Philbert went at the oars with gusto, scooping a spray of water into the boat with one stroke, skimming the lake’s surface uselessly with the next. Happily, the wind broadsided them right, Philbert using the oars as rudders before beginning his rowing proper, getting into the rhythm of it, Kwert keeping the island in view, hoping it was the right one, signalling direction with weak waves of his arms.
By the time they scraped into the dark spray of the island’s shallows the wind was strong enough to heave Philbert off his feet as he stepped out to drag the skiff in. The slippery boulders shrugged off the noose of rope again and again, and Kwert had to get into the water to help haul the boat up a few yards of sharp shingle so they could get it high enough to loop the rope around a tree bole. The sun had given up completely, hidden behind a dark rolling of clouds and the effort of sliding and slipping in the mud was too much for Kwert. He collapsed on the slime of the strand-line, pulling his shivering body into a knot, his breath fast and thready, unable to speak, let alone move. Philbert tried his best to haul Kwert away from the water, but the muddy shingle sucked at his boots, and the rain was coming down hard on his back.
‘Kwert!’ Philbert shouted, hating to see the thin white shanks of Kwert’s legs as his tunic rode up, hating more the moaning of the branches above them in the rising roar of the wind. Kwert did not respond, and Philbert squinted through the beating rain and swirling leaves and thanked God he could see a faint, far-off glint of light somewhere up beyond the bank. He grabbed his satchel just as Raspel stuck out his rat-thin face and yowled, fur wettened into points, nose cold and clammy against Philbert’s hand as he shoved the kitten roughly back beneath the burlap. He started a mad scramble up the muddy path between the boulders heaving away from the bank, and from bank and boulders into the trees beyond. He had a vivid memory of the miserableness of Herr Groben’s barn, Huffelump’s mother lying in her filth, saw the outline of Kwert abandoned on the beach and hauled himself upwards however he could, grabbing at stumps and roots until he could stand and then run, and then off he hurtled through the growing storm until he could clearly see the outline of a shack and the warm light flickering from its rattling windows. He didn’t wait for niceties but hurled himself through the door and fell inside, breathing hard. And who was more startled of the two on this mud-wrung island in the middle of a lake in the middle of a storm was moot – the hermit, on seeing a small boy bowl through his door out of nowhere, hat gushing water, small ginger kitten shooting from his bag like a marble, running in ragged circles as it spat with damp and sneeze; or Philbert, finding a man round as a blown bladder, skirts hitched up about his knees, reed pipe in one hand, drum in the other, a line of tiny puppets wriggling on his bare toes. Either way, the door clattered behind Philbert and the man leapt up, dropping his instruments, startling the kitten which lunged at the little figures dancing at his feet.
‘Is it some kind of weasel?’ the man blinked, snatching at Raspel, missing, steadying himself against the wall as he surveyed his sudden visitors. ‘You seem rather wet,’ he began but was interrupted.
‘Kwert!’ Philbert shouted, as the wind thwacked the shack with such force that all the wall-boards creaked and the balding rug onto which Philbert had initially rolled began to rise as he got to his feet.
‘Come on!’ Philbert shouted, gesturing with his arm before running back out into the storm. The round man heard the desperation in the boy’s voice and followed, scrambling away down the path towards the lakeside, his large bare feet scattering puppets as he went, burying them in the mud. Kwert was lying just as Philbert had left him, though now a thin stream of water was building up about his body, which was acting as a dam for the wind pushing the water on, and it was covering his neck and part of his face.
‘Gracious me!’ exclaimed the large man as he leapt down the bank, expertly avoiding the boulders, immediately picking Kwert up, slinging him around his shoulders like a goatskin and stamping back up the hill, balancing himself on wide-straddled legs, the dark mud oozing between his naked toes, Philbert shivering and slipping on behind him.
They got back inside, barred the door, and at once the man stripped Kwert of his filthy, sodden clothes and couldn’t hide his shock when he saw the welter of bruise and batter on Kwert’s yellowing skin. The hermit said nothing. Instead he went to his bedchamber and took up a sheet, ripping it into lengths and dipping them into the cauldron that was hanging over the fire, wringing each one out, using them to gently wash away the worst of scab and grime. When he was done, he lifted Kwert onto his pallet, covered him with eiderdowns and blankets and then whistled. From the gloom at the farther end of the barn came two gleaming white goats who came up and nuzzled his hands like puppies, taking the bits of bread he held out to them before going, on his command, to Kwert and lying down contentedly, one either side of him, and went immediately to sleep.
‘Hansel and Gretel,’ said the hermit for explanation, looking around him to find the boy leaning against the door. ‘Over here, lad,’ he commanded. ‘Come on over to the fire. Best take your things off too, get them dried. I’ve more blankets, if not more goats.’ Philbert did as he was bid, stripping down to his underclothes, piling everything in a sodden mess.
‘Grandfather here looks very sick,’ the hermit went on, ‘so I’m going to make him some ginger and horseradish tea. You should have some too, warm you both up a bit.’
Philbert nodded and sat down by the fire, leaning against a sofa built from wooden pallets bolstered by sacks of hay and straw. The hermit set a small pot on the gridi
ron, stirred it, dropping in bits of this and bits of that, and the next time he looked over he saw the boy had slumped into a sleep so deep he didn’t stir a muscle even when the hermit, whose name was Langer Hansnarrwurst, gently took off the rest of his wet clothes and lifted the lad up, placing him on the sofa before covering him up.
Philbert woke naked, cosy and hungry, Raspel a warm bundle on his neck, tantalising smells of coffee, bacon and frying pancakes strong in the air. He looked up at the low roof heavy with beams pricked over with hooks, then shrugged off all his covers but the last, knotting the sheet about him and clambered to his feet. The hermit sat on a stool close to the fire, looking as big and round as the night before, but with slippers – instead of puppets – on his feet, that resembled birds’ nests: woven plant stems felted with wool. He was ladling out bowls of soup, hunks of rough bread squatting like soldiers on a low, hand-hewn table.
‘Well, well,’ Brother Langer said brightly, his big belly rolling like an ocean swell beneath his rough-spun habit. ‘So you’re awake. I’m afraid grandfather over there hasn’t come back to us yet.’
He nodded at Kwert, who was lying slack-mouthed and gaunt in his blankets by the fire, Langer having shifted his pallet – Kwert, goats and all – closer to the warmth. He motioned Philbert to sit, and Philbert went down on the floor next to Kwert, appalled at the rotten melon-skin blotchiness of his face. Philbert was uncertain and frightened; the sequence of events of the last thirty-six hours bewildering and confused. Brother Langer Hansnarrwurst was no more certain. He was a self-elected hermit, but denying his curiosity was not a part of his seclusion, and the arrival of these two waifs was tickling him. He had noticed the large growth on the boy’s head the second the lad removed his hat, and also the concern with which the boy regarded the old man, wondering how and why they had washed up on his island. But he was a wise man, was Langer Hansnarrwurst, and asked no questions. Instead he handed the lad a bowl of sorrel and fennel soup, big chunks of back-bacon breaking through its surface, a roll of pancake shoved in like a straw, and it intrigued him that the boy didn’t immediately dive in and eat, but instead pinched off a few bits of the pancake soaking in the soup, feeding them first to his little ginger kitten before taking any of it for himself.
‘Enough?’ asked Brother Langer when both kitten and boy had taken their fill.
‘Enough,’ Philbert repeated. ‘Thank you.’
‘Do you have names?’ Brother Langer asked.
‘I’m Philbert,’ Philbert whispered, ‘and that’s Kwert,’ unable to stop a couple of tears leaking from his eyes as he saw how pitiful Kwert was, how bereft of command, wanting nothing more than for Kwert to wake up, take charge and tell him what to do.
Langer shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t good with emotions or small boys, or people in general come to that, and he was unsure how to proceed.
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened to you and how you came here,’ he said after clearing his throat. ‘Here,’ he added. ‘Your clothes are quite dry now, so maybe you’d like to get dressed first?’
Philbert didn’t answer. He couldn’t take his eyes off Kwert, whose laboured breathing was as bad as when he’d got the glanders, but no Ullendorf to come to his rescue, for Ullendorf was dead. It felt like his whole life was made up of a series of disasters – small or otherwise – interspersed by short pockets of calm before the next one came along, each time growing in strength. It was only by pure chance or through the kindness of others that he’d got out of them at all. And now it was all happening again.
He blinked, and then spoke, giving Brother Langer an abbreviated version of leaving Staßburg, getting to Lengerrborn, the Westphal Club and the soldiers, the prison and the running; of Fatzke sending them to Amt Gruftgang and Amt Gruftgang taking them through the shroudways that led down to the lake. Considering the extraordinary nature of the tale, Brother Langer took it remarkably well, merely nodding his head here and there as Philbert talked. But when he mentioned St Lydia’s Langer frowned, looking closely at the boy brought to him by the storm that had blown out of nowhere and gone the same way back a few hours since.
‘It was Amt Gruftgang brought you through the crypts?’ he asked, Philbert nodding assent. ‘And so your story becomes both clearer and more obscure at the same time.’
Philbert was used to Fair people’s patter and absorbed the contradictory response without comment, but he did lift his eyes, looking properly at Brother Langer, noting he didn’t look quite right, though couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong. Brother Langer saw him looking.
‘We’re not a world away, you and I,’ he said. ‘You can probably see I’m not like most men, but I’m sure too from what you’ve said that you’ve seen many such as I, yourself included.’
Brother Langer brought his face from profile to full moon, and plain as day then, the two sides didn’t match, the left side out of sync with the right: one ear too high, one eye too low, one cheekbone far too flat. The recognition of these differences had Philbert feeling at home, as used to oddity as most were not and he smiled, Langer responding in kind.
‘You’ve told me your tale,’ Brother Langer said, ‘so let me tell you mine.’
Philbert shifted and got comfortable, eager to hear the story, Langer obliging.
‘I was always intended for the church,’ he said, ‘being the youngest son and without prospects, but glory, how I hated all that praying and kneeling, all that kneeling and praying. And being with other people with no privacy really bothered me. I hated it, the never being alone of it all. And so I ran away,’ Brother Langer spoke in a low voice, as if fearing he would be overheard. ‘Scaled the walls of the enclosure, scrambled down a scraggle of peach tree, legged it to the nearest village, hid out in a cowshed, begging for work on land that was already overrun with vagrants and unemployed labourers far stronger and older than I was.’
He stopped briefly to stir at the horseradish and ginger tea he had on the fire, pouring it out into small wooden cups with large spoonfuls of honey at their bases: one for Langer, one for Philbert, before going on.
‘I took to steeple-jacking and tiling,’ he said, ‘having a head for heights as very few do, training next as a tree-lopper and then a thatcher and then – and this, Philbert, you might find hard to believe – I went on to be a freelance funambulist with a passing fair . . .’
Philbert clapped his hands, couldn’t help it, this sudden swerve to the story dovetailing so much with his own.
‘Oh but you clap, Philbert,’ smiled Brother Langer, ex-steeplejack, ex-thatcher, ex-tree surgeon, ex-funambulist, ‘but that was my downfall, quite literally. I took a show where the wires had not been strung as taut as I’d briefed them to be, and I fell. I fell,’ he repeated, with a dramatic sweep of his arm, ‘broke both my legs and flattened half my skull, hence the way you see me now.’
A sympathetic and gratifying gasp from Philbert, just as Brother Langer would have cued it if he’d been directing the show.
‘But,’ he went on, lifting an admonishing finger, ‘that terrible accident was my salvation, because the fairs’ folk I was working with took me to the monks, to the very same Abbey – with the same old scraggly peach tree leaning against its walls – from which I’d escaped a few years previously. And God bless them,’ he added, ‘for they took me in as if I’d never left. Nursed me and cared for me and looked after me, and within the year they had me back at the praying, though kneeling was out, at least for a while. But the entertainment business is not lost from me, and still I carry on . . .’
Langer laughed softly, taking from his pocket some of the little felt puppets unsubsumed by the mud and storm of the night before, shrugging off one bird’s nest slipper and popping them onto his toes, wriggling a brief performance so ridiculous Philbert laughed out loud and long.
Brother Langer told Philbert others things that morning about his life, about the island, a
nd the more Philbert listened the more Philbert admired the big lopsided monk, enjoying the asymmetrical crinkle of his mouth when he spoke, the awkward way he moved, as if his skin was struggling to contain a bouncing ball; but more than that, Philbert admired the way Langer tended to Kwert, who two days later had still not woken, not that Langer gave up on him. He spent every spare minute coaxing sustenance and fluid into his patient, placing a small funnel into the side of his mouth and constantly drip, drip, dripping soup and ginger tea down Kwert’s gullet so he would not dry out, so that his body had enough fuel to heal, which – thanks to Brother Langer – it finally did.
25
A Great Good Still To Do
Kwert woke, weak as water from his long sleep, hardly able to raise his head above his blankets, Brother Langer seeing to all his bodily needs and waste excreta without comment, judgement or disgust. Never had folk like Philbert and Kwert been stranded upon his beach, but once there they became his primary concern, his only duty being to care for them until they were well enough to leave. The Öde Insel, as his island was called, was in the ownership and bailiwick of Langer’s Abbey and therefore as much a sanctuary for anyone pitched up within its gates.
He was an odd combination, Philbert came to understand, hermit on the one side, socialite the other; quiet as a mustard seed one moment, spilling out his life story like grain to a goose the next. All year round he was alone on his island, apart from sporadic visits by Gruftgang and occasionally Fatzke, and even more occasionally by strangers directed from the Abbey to seek his wisdom; until once a year – and once a year only – when he threw himself out into the world with the energy of a coiled snake Then he went down to the Cloth Market at the Abbey, putting puppets onto his toes to make the children laugh, collecting the annual stipend of food-stuffs to last out his solitude for the year that would follow.
