by Clio Gray
Enough for the slug-head and he retreated back out into the snow with the barrel of oil and took off the lid, poured the contents over the flag, soaking its lion and thistles, staining the green and the white, slicking the snow with dark rainbows beneath. His leader took the lamp and smashed the glass, held it directly to the canvas which took with a whoomph and a firm hold of flame.
‘You,’ Albert was pulled forward, ‘get that back up,’ and Albert heaved on the painter and hauled the burning flag high into the night sky, Rupert’s lion disappearing in a golden mane of flame. The wind carried the embers over the castle walls, pinpricked the sky with light, but the snow had begun to fall again, hiding it from anyone even if they’d been looking, which they were not. Damp black cinders drifted onto the shoulders of the mercenaries who brushed angrily at them, making the marks worse. Their leader looked up once more and grimaced as the burning flag was let go by the wind and collapsed against the mast with a dull flicker.
‘Get rid of them,’ he said as he trudged back to the trapdoor and let himself down. ‘And be quick about it. Time we were gone.’
Artus and Albert stood in the snow, blood beginning to cake on Artus’ chin and cheeks.
‘Please,’ said Albert, his fingers clutching at the bottom hem of his coat.
‘Don’t,’ said Artus, shaking his head, and no one knew whether he was begging for his life or trying to convince his cousin to be brave. It made no difference to the men who marched towards them. It made no difference to Albert and Artus as those men took out their daggers and slit the flagsmen’s windpipes one by one. It made no difference to the half-arsed burning of the flag above them, or the wind that whipped the last flames briefly into being before smothering them completely between fold and mast. It made no difference to Philbert and Oort, hidden beneath the pile of mouldering flags, who caught the scent of copper and iron that comes when hot fresh blood is leaving heart and home for the last time, spilling out onto the cold indifference of the snow.
Oort and Philbert listened as the men left, cursing and wiping their knives upon their trousers before slipping back down through the trapdoor from whence they came. As soon as he felt it safe Philbert sprang out of the booth to find that the last flicker of life had abandoned the flagsmen, who lay like slaughtered pigs. Philbert took it all in in a moment. He knew it would be futile to check for signs of life but was fighting furious, and as much as he was anxious about what he might find down below he swung himself straight down the trapdoor and went as fast as he could at the steps, cold hands reaching out to the dark walls, Oort lumbering on at his back, a soft whining coming from the strong-boy’s throat as he tried not to cry. Philbert got down the stone stairs fast as he was able in the darkness and pushed past the mildewed curtain to gain the rickety planks of the minstrel gallery from where he gazed down onto the great hall, utterly unprepared for what was there. His hands went to his mouth in useless supplication, for surely to God this could not be happening.
The Gift Box and its guests were well and truly unwrapped and undone, some skewered to their seats by lances, the shafts still wavering gently like dying pendulums; others had fallen forward into plates of food that still steamed softly, their necks neatly tied with wire garrottes tightened hard into their flesh. Yet more lay with their heads laid back upon the neck-rests of their chairs, sliced open like so many raw and fat-spotted salamis. Worst of all was Frau Fettleheim, whose great gut had been hacked from side to side, intestines sliding away from her open stomach, the grey-green glisten of them coiling and spilling over her outspread knees, blue eyes half-veiled by a final blink. Away to the wall, where the last few acts of the Fair had been taking their ease by the fire, was Alarico, the White Jester, spread-eagled on the ember-singed hearth-rug, arms flung wide, white skin bloomed with pink for the first time in his life as capillaries burst all over his body, his feet faintly moving as he tried to crawl over to La Chucha Lanuga who was sitting a few yards away upon her stool, head bowed low, the jewels in her dark hair winking in the firelight, the beads of her beard catching at the hasp of the knife that was buried deep within her chest. A horrid rasping came from the White Jester’s open mouth as he strained for one last sight of his wife, his wonderful Peruvian rose. The only other movement in the room came from the Atheling Rupert who was cradled in his throne, a sword plunged right through his belly into the grain of wood behind, Adam’s apple bobbing weakly beneath his pale skin, eyes upturned, gazing at the two white faces that had appeared between the gallery railings and bizarrely Rupert tried to shake his head, thinking they shouldn’t be there, the floor’s unsafe. I always meant to get it fixed . . .
It was the last thought in his head as his heart gave up the fight and ceased its beat, as did Alarico’s and, in the few moments it took Philbert and Oort to get from the gallery down the stairs and into the hall, both men, though warm, were gone. The stench of spilled blood and burst guts was so appalling and overpowering it was all Philbert could do not to vomit, and he needed to go. There was nothing he could do for any of these people, that much was plain. He grasped at Oort’s sleeve to get him on the move but the lad had stopped like a broken clock, too horror stricken by what he was seeing to turn away, barely taking in what was in front of him: a hall full of slaughtered men and women slumped around an enormous table scattered with the remnants of their half-eaten feast; people who’d been taken so completely by surprise they’d not even had the time to rise from their seats in protest or move their forks from their mouths, let alone fight off the disaster that had overtaken them.
Philbert had bigger worries on his mind as he started to run towards the service stairs that led to the kitchen shouting for Oort to follow, which he eventually did. The kitchen was deserted of people, if not of the food that had been left scattered randomly across every surface, but the moment Philbert flung open the door onto the cobblestones of the courtyard he went straight into another mess of bleeding bodies, though the vast proportion out here seemed at least alive enough to groan and swear, their women rushing around filling buckets from the pumps to wash out their wounds and bandage them up with whatever they could find.
Disaster was everywhere, no one understanding exactly what had happened, and certainly not why. Some things are simply too enormous to think about, and this was one of them. The uninjured concentrated on keeping the injured alive and breathing. They didn’t speak. They didn’t communicate the one with the other, they just got on with the task at hand. Philbert could hear from distant cries and shouts that the mercenaries had moved on from the castle to the Frost Fair, no one fit to lift a finger to help. This was the night of the wolf and the wolf had moved on, nothing they could do about it.
Not so Philbert, who took in the scene in the courtyard at a glance, and urged the folk there into action.
‘Get the drawbridge up!’ he shouted, ‘and get the portcullis down if you can,’ and it was a strange thing in that dark and bloody night, with the snow falling all around them, that the men and women held within the confines of the castle looked at the small boy in his large hat who was shouting out orders and did as they were commanded, indeed wondered why on earth they hadn’t thought to do it already themselves. There was a flurry of folk, mostly women, who went at it with gusto, following the boy and his large friend who were running and skidding for the drawbridge and then were over and across its back.
‘Get it done now!’ the boy shouted once he’d crossed, and the women went at the ropes, uncertain how to operate the pulleys but thanking the Lord that someone had had the sense to think of it, and soon enough up went the drawbridge and down went the portcullis, and away ran that boy from them into the white apparelled night.
39
Unwrapped and Undone
Rupert’s Christmas Box of the Frost Fair had been destroyed long before Philbert got to it. While half the men who’d been waiting in the trees went into the castle – their mission to bring down the bourgeoisie,
burgers and the pretender to the throne – the other half had orders to surround as much as they could of the Fair strung out across the frozen lake and clustered on its environs, to attack the moment the flag went up in flames. Their remit was simple: destroy the Fair and everyone in it, for somewhere at its heart lay the murderers of Lengerrborn and, as if that wasn’t enough, its acting troupe had been promulgating rebellion of the worst kind with their little plays and attitudes, taking their message up and down the land, pitting themselves against the interests of the great and the good and fostering ideas of independence in the minds of every Schleswig-Holsteiner who’d visited their pernicious performances ever since the Fair had crossed the Elbe.
The men whose task it was to destroy the Fair had little political inclination. Certainly they despised the fat inhabitants of the castle their comrades had just stormed under the guise of late-arriving guests, setting to murder with great satisfaction. The Fair’s folk held little fascination for these others, all of the ilk of men who got far more pleasure from upturning braziers than sitting happily beside them swapping tales, and within moments of the burning flag being hoisted – seen only because one of them carried a telescope and had been looking out for it – they were charging forward and throwing lighted brands onto makeshift shacks, laughing when the folk inside shrieked and ran, some of them burning far better than that wretched flag had ever done on the roof. They flattened anyone who got in their way, set as much of the camp to fire as would burn, took pot-shots at the people running away towards the dark edges of the forests, soon joined by their comrades from the castle, pumped up by the action, eager for more, made thirsty by murder and fight and all too soon breaking open beer kegs and stills once they were done, drinking until their knees began to give way beneath them, grabbing any women they could find by their hair and hauling them screaming over barrels while they fumbled to undo the buttons of their breeks. They threw small animals onto fires, barely bothering to cut their throats and bleed them dry. They stamped on possessions, denuded tents from their frames to provide a waterproof base for their antics, grabbed up paltry trinkets and stuffed them into pockets, garnered coins scattered in the snow from broken till-boxes, snatched up purses that lay abandoned open-eyed as they fell. All this was part and parcel of their pay.
Behind them the drawbridge had been raised, the wooden portcullis stuck at half-mast, its under-used cogs seizing for lack of oil, winch ropes frayed and tangled, but enough to keep the marauders out for the night, no way back into the castle even if they’d tried, and no more for Philbert and Oort once they’d crossed over. Oort’s eyes were wide as moons in the blank set of his face as he crouched beside Philbert on the edge of the lake. It was obvious there could be no approaching, that there was nothing they could do but watch as sheds, shacks and booths went up in flames, listen to the screams and cries and the loud booming of the attackers’ guns, see the dark sky lit up by explosions of gunpowder and the scatter of fires on which God knew what was burning.
Philbert closed his eyes, Oort shivering beside him, and there they stayed for an hour or more while the men held the Fair grounds fast and strong, drinking, singing and laughing until the snow began to fall without relent, at which point their leader, the man who’d been on the rooftop, called his men to order and took them away, led them stumbling off to regain their horses, filling their saddlebags with booty, throwing newly replenished wine-skins over their shoulders. By God, but they’d had a night of it, and away they went down the tracks filled to the brim with it, so that it would take some doing for any of them to melt back into the lives from which they’d come, returning a little richer, a lot crueller, more than ready to do it all again, if only someone would pay the price.
The moment they’d passed by the castle and gone off up the trail into the woods Philbert and Oort emerged from their hiding place. The fires the men had set were burning brightly, the greasy light and smoke twisting through the lazy swirl of snowflakes that had precipitated the men’s departure and would continue falling until dawn. They moved slowly, throats tight with the awful devastation. One of the first things Philbert saw was Jimble burning on his back in a fire sustained by the leaking fat from his body, skin blackened with soot and charcoal, gouged out in places where the men had dug for food with their knives. A few yards away lay Jamble, his own fire out, but he was rammed belly-through by a stake to hold him to the ground. His body was still twitching and alive and Oort couldn’t take it, went down on his knees beside the piglet, ripped out the stake and swiftly, quietly, snapped its neck, Oort keening and crying, unable to move further, anguish flowing through him like a river.
Philbert found Kwert beneath an overturned cart, curled into a ball, half-buried by the snow, skin so pale and cold Philbert assumed he must already be dead until he heard the small crepitation of Kwert’s fast-failing lungs.
‘Oort!’ Philbert shouted. ‘Oort! Come here and help!’
Oort didn’t move until Philbert shouted out his name three times more but at last he came over. Philbert had disinterred Kwert from his snow-hole and Oort scooped him up, following Philbert’s direction to take him inside the nearest tomb where at least they’d be out of the snow. Oort had always feared these dark, long-tunnelled cairns piled in rocky heaps all across this part of Schleswig-Holstein, but he was too distraught to recall it and went down on hands and knees and entered the neck of the tomb pulling Kwert in after him by his heels, Philbert at the other end keeping Kwert’s head free of the rocky ground. In this way they stumbled the ten yards to the little cavern at the centre of the mound, a small clearing in which the ancients had left their dead. And, like most tombs, it still had room for one or two more.
Philbert made Kwert as comfortable as he could and then went back outside to bring in wood and hot cinders to hastily make up a fire. It soon warmed the confined space, the stones sucking in the heat, making it the perfect place to wait out the rest of the night, but not before Philbert and Oort made several more forays into the desecrated campground. It was eerie to be the only living things moving around out there, for they found no one else alive, no animals, no people. Plenty of bodies, many of whom they turned over to check for breath, but the night was so cold those who hadn’t already bled out had frozen solid to the ice. The only encouraging sign was that there weren’t nearly as many dead as there could have been, and it was obvious from the tracks that had not already been covered by the snow that a great many people must have made it into the dense, dark forests that surrounded the landward side of the lake. They dragged in more firewood and a couple of blankets they found in amongst the broken carts and could do no more, retreating to the tomb, the snow falling thick and fast and the wind rising up to whip it with the sand from the dunes into maelstroms and eddies all along the shore.
Once safely inside, they cosied themselves around the fire, Philbert laying Kwert’s head on his lap, stroking his sparse hair, the grey stubble on his chin, feeling his pulse a feeble movement beneath his fingers. After almost an hour Kwert’s lips began to move, Philbert bending down his head down to hear him.
‘The others,’ he whispered.
‘It’s alright, Kwert,’ Philbert said, knowing full well that it wasn’t, at least not for some. ‘They made it to the forest,’ he said. ‘We’ll find them in the morning.’
Kwert made a brief movement of his head. ‘Kroonk,’ he whispered, and Philbert closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened to her and refused to do so now, forced that part of his mind to close down like a stone rolled over the mouth of a deep, dark hole.
‘Shall I read to you?’ Philbert asked, and again there was a small nod of Kwert’s head, and Philbert fumbled in his satchel for the little book of the Philocalia that had remained with him ever since they’d been on the hermit’s island, Kwert being unable to carry even that extra little piece of baggage on top of the weight of his own bones. Philbert laid it on the
ground beside the fire, flipping through the pages in an effort to find one with print bold enough to read. Some of the flyers from the Cloth Fair were still sandwiched between its pages after its soaking in the river, and Philbert lifted one up, smiling thinly as he recognised the words.
‘Brought to you by Prunkvoll’s Circus of Marvels,’ he said out loud. ‘All the way from London. Who would have believed it? A horse that can count . . .’
He turned the paper over and saw his own bad handwriting there, slowly deciphering the scrawls. ‘You are my nest of spheres, my prism of light, the heptagon of my days . . .’ Words Philbert was supposed to deliver from a dying man’s mouth to a woman who had almost certainly beaten him there. He stopped reading. The tragedy of it all struck him deeply, and not just this cryptic declaration of wasted love but the whole of it: the journey he’d taken from his home to the Fair, from the Fair to Ullendorf, from Ullendorf to the Westphal, from the Westphal to the prison, from the prison right to this tomb buried beneath the snow on the side of a frozen lake. If there’d ever been a point to it he didn’t know what it was; nothing but a promise broken, a flag hoisted then brought down again and burned. He couldn’t read another word. He closed the Philocalia, the three of them sitting in silence by the fire, waiting for the dawn.
40
New Dawn, New Day
Philbert was woken by Oort shaking him awake. He could hardly believe he’d slept at all but the moment he opened his eyes he knew something had changed.
‘It’s the Fair!’ Oort was saying excitedly. ‘I’ve just been out, and there’s loads of them coming out of the forest!’
And so they were. Philbert emerged from the eye of the tunnel and stood up, shading his eyes from the glare of the snow and by God he could see them too, and Oort was pushing up beside him, waving his arms wildly about his head and shouting.
