“It’s not unheard of,” I admitted, moving into the circle of his arm. “I’ll endeavor to overcome my qualms about doing it in a church. What’s a commandment or two compared to death by freezing?”
“Fornication,” said John precisely, “is not mentioned in the Ten Commandments.”
“That’s a relief.”
“In fact,” John went on, “if one analyzes the sexual regulations of the Old Testament, one finds that they are based on property rights rather than moral attitudes.”
“Is that right?” I pressed closer against the warmth of his body.
“Adultery is prohibited because a man’s wife belongs to him in the same sense as his horse and his ass and so on. The daughter belongs to the father, so sibling incest infringes on the old man’s territory.”
“But surely father-daughter relationships—”
“There’s no prohibition against that.” John added thoughtfully, “I checked.”
I started to laugh. “This is an incredible conversation. Would you consider me vulgar if I asked why you investigated that particular issue?”
“That is not only vulgar, it is repellent,” John said coldly. “Idle curiosity alone prompted my investigation. It’s my greatest weakness—but one never knows when a seemingly irrelevant bit of information may come in handy.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
He turned slightly and put his other arm around my shoulders, holding me close against him. His warm breath stirred my hair. After a moment he let out a long, tremulous sigh.
“God, I’m hungry,” he said.
John claimed he had not eaten since breakfast because he had been too busy playing bodyguard for me. I took that with a grain of salt, but I was moved by his plight. I was hungry, too.
“I don’t suppose you brought my backpack? Oh, you did—bless your heart.”
“I had no choice. It was attached to you like a misplaced pregnancy.” A tender and touching hope dawned on his face as he watched me rummage in the knapsack. “I could even eat that bulb.”
“No, you couldn’t. Daffodil bulbs are poisonous.”
“So they are. I’d forgot. Another example of seemingly useless information proving relevant.”
“Yes; one never knows when one might want to poison an acquaintance. Here.”
John studied the object dubiously. “What is it?”
“Gingerbread. Schmidt kept forcing it on me last night.”
“I loathe gingerbread. What’s that white on it?”
“I guess some of the tissue I wrapped—”
“Hand it over.”
I went on rummaging while he munched. His eyes widened as the pile of edibles mounted up. An apple, two-thirds of a fruit-and-nut chocolate bar (large size), more gingerbread, little packets of sugar (with pictures of Alpine scenes) and artificial sweetener, and two tea bags. I’m sure it was the tea that wrung an involuntary exclamation of admiration from John.
“O goddess! Lady of the Sycamores, Golden One, who gives food to the hungry and water to the thirsty—”
“It’s nothing,” I said modestly. “I thought I had…Oh, here it is. I’m afraid it’s a little stale, and some of the jelly seems to have oozed out…. If you can find a container, we might have a spot of tea.”
John surged to his feet. “There are a few broken flower pots in the sacristy. And God knows there is plenty of snow.”
I don’t think he got all the encrusted dirt out of the pots, but as he said philosophically, it gave a spurious look of strength to the tea. He was fascinated by my hoard.
“Are you clairvoyant, or do you always prepare for blizzards?”
“I always carry artificial sweetener. Not all restaurants have it.”
“Then why the sugar?”
“I can’t resist the pretty pictures on the packets. I’m making a collection.”
John nodded gravely. “Of course. And the apple—the chocolate—?”
“Doesn’t everybody carry things like that around?”
He dropped his head onto his raised knees, sputtering with helpless laughter.
“Have another piece of gingerbread,” I said hospitably.
Life never ceases to amaze me. In my wildest dreams or nightmares, I had never expected to spend Christmas Eve in an abandoned church with an unreformed and unrepentant thief, dining on stale gingerbread and muddy tea. And I certainly would not have expected to enjoy it.
We talked for hours, huddled in front of the little fire, wrapped in cobwebby curtains and sipping tepid tea. He kissed the crumbs from my lips and held me close, for warmth, but we didn’t dare lie down for fear we’d fall asleep and the fire would go out. It was as if two opposing armies had declared a temporary truce. He talked more easily than he had ever done, and I tried to avoid questions that would raise the barriers again. We talked about everything under the sun—even the weather.
“I’ve never seen anything like that moving wall of snow.”
“And you are from the wintry wastes of Minnesota.”
“Have you?”
“Once. That’s why the sight of it petrified me. It was in the so-called mountains of western Virginia.”
“What were you doing in Virginia?”
I slipped then, but instead of clamming up, he answered readily, “Visiting a friend. I do have a few, you know. I was only a few feet from the lodge—bringing in wood—when it hit, but for a few memorable moments I didn’t think I was going to make it back.”
And about abstruse academic subjects.
“Who is the Lady of the Sycamores?”
“Hathor, Egyptian goddess of love, beauty, and so on. I may have misquoted. My specialty is classics, not Egyptology.”
“Greats,” I said. “Isn’t that what you call it? You went down with a first in Greats?”
“Well, not exactly,” John said, amused. “It cannot be said that I went down from university, as the idiom has it; rather, I was pushed off the ladder of learning.”
“Far be it from me to ask why.”
“It wasn’t extortion or fraud, if that’s what you are implying. Just a little matter of a tutor arriving home before he was expected.”
“I’m sure there is an Old Testament parallel.”
“Oh, quite. Potiphar’s wife. I was very young and naïve. I didn’t take up a life of crime until after that,” John went on cheerfully. “Someday I must tell you about my first scam. I don’t believe I have ever equaled the sheer splendid lunacy of that concept. It didn’t come off, unfortunately, but I’m still immensely proud of it.”
And about his family.
“Is your mother’s name really Guinevere?”
“It really is.”
“I’d love to meet her.”
“You wouldn’t like her.” After another of those meaningful pauses in which he excelled, he added, “She wouldn’t like you either.”
But not about the gold of Troy.
We recited poetry and sang, to keep awake. I taught John all the words to Schmidt’s favorite Christmas carol, which he approved—“kitsch at its finest”—and he taught me the second part of the glorious duet in Bach’s Cantata 140, where the soprano’s “mein Freund ist mein” is echoed by the baritone’s “und ich bin dein.” My voice had suddenly descended from soprano to tenor during my last year in high school, so I took the baritone part and John sang soprano, both of us shifting octaves with reckless abandon. John was an excellent musician; I wondered whether he knew that my most secret, unfulfilled ambition was to be able to sing. He was kind enough to refrain from critical comment and I sang away with happy incompetence, no longer bothered by the ghostly responses from the rafters. “My friend is mine—and I am thine.”
“Isn’t that a little romantic for J. S. Bach?” I asked.
John was trying to play the oboe obbligato on a tissue-covered comb. He broke off long enough to remark, “Your theology is deficient, duckie. It’s not a love song, it’s all about the marriage of the faithful soul to Christ.”
“It sounds like a love song.”
“So it does,” John said agreeably. He returned to the comb.
I fell asleep in the middle of a long lecture on horticulture—I remember he waxed eloquent on the subject of double digging, a technique on whose details I am hazy, but which, he said, his mother insisted upon—and did not waken until he moved to put more wood on the fire. I rubbed my eyes. “Sorry. I’m so tired….”
“You’ve had a busy day. Why don’t you lie down?”
“The floor’s too cold,” I mumbled.
“Come here, then.”
He was still holding me when I woke again to find that the darkness had been replaced by gray gloom. At first I thought the bright yellow streaks across the floor were paint.
“Sunlight,” I muttered.
“It’s morning,” said John. “‘Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.’ Come on—be a big, brave girl—don’t topple over—”
I was so stiff I could hardly move. Stiff, cold, hungry…I looked up at him from under my hair. He had risen to his feet and was methodically flexing his arms, grimacing as he moved them.
“Did you sleep?” I asked.
“How could I? ‘my strength is as the strength of ten,’” John chanted, stamping his feet in cadence, “‘because my heart is pure.’”
The truce had lasted only one night, and the barriers were up again. I had expected it, but that didn’t keep me from resenting it. Silently I extended my hand; briskly he pulled me to my feet, turned me around, and gave me a hearty slap on the backside.
“Dusty,” he remarked. “Let’s have a look outside. At this moment, I’d trade you and the gold for a hot breakfast.”
I stood for a moment, stretching creaking muscles and looking around. The ruined building had been stripped of all portable objects, but even in its prime it had lacked the exuberant charm of the local Catholic churches. There was nothing to be seen except a bare floor littered with pieces of the fallen pews, bare stone walls, and boarded-up windows. Sunlight stretched long fingers through the cracks, and drifts of snow marked breaks in windows and roof. The fire had died to coals.
I pushed through the swinging doors and found myself in a narrow vestibule. The outer door was ajar, held open by a heap of drifted snow. John must have had to force it. No small feat, in that howling storm, with muscles already half frozen and my dead weight encumbering him. His footprints led up and over the drift. Shrugging into my jacket, I followed.
I had to shield my eyes with both hands. The world had changed overnight, into something so beautiful I forgot physical discomfort in sheer wonder. The sky overhead was a pure, cold blue, but behind the eastern mountains the bright shades of dawn framed the frosty peaks. The shadows on the white slopes were not gray but ravishing tints of pastel—pale rose, blue, lavender. The blanket of new snow dazzled like cold fire—swan-white, angel-white, glittering with billions of tiny sparkles.
My sunglasses were in the pocket of my jacket. After I put them on, I dared to open my eyes, and then I saw John. He was knee-deep in snow, even though he stood under the porch eaves where the snow was less deeply drifted. It undulated across the open courtyard in lovely dimpled dunes. My poor precious Audi was only an elephant-sized lump.
John stared dispiritedly at the scene, his hands shielding his eyes, and I decided this was not an appropriate moment to comment on the splendor of the view. “Where are your sunglasses?” I asked.
“In my car,” John said, snapping the words off like icicles.
“And your car is…”
“Halfway down the slippery slope beyond, under a foot of snow,” said John. “Were you aware that just over the hill the road drops straight down at a forty-five-degree angle?”
“Surely—” I began.
“I didn’t see the church until I had passed it. I had no idea where you were going. I’ve never driven this road before. I was going too fast—as were you—”
From across the valley came a far-off, elfin chiming of bells. “‘Oh sweet and far, from cliff and scar,’” I quoted. “Merry Christmas, John.”
“So what shall we do?” I asked brightly. We had gone back inside, and John was doggedly feeding the fire, as if he meant to settle down for a long stay. “You should put it out,” I went on. “We can’t leave—”
“That is the situation in a nutshell,” said John. “We can’t leave. Not unless you plan to spend the rest of the winter in a snowdrift between here and Bad Steinbach.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be a sissy. It’s a beautiful day and it can’t be more than a couple of miles—”
“Just a nice little downhill run on skis,” said John. “Unfortunately we don’t have any.”
“I do, actually. On top of the car. I never got a chance to use them. Hell of a vacation.”
His expression lightened briefly as he considered this new information, but it quickly closed down again. “The plows and the Ski Patrol will be out before long—”
“On Christmas Day?”
“Yes, I should think so. This is an emergency, and there are bound to be idiots like us who were caught in the storm.”
“We can’t just sit here and wait to be found.”
“Oh, do use your head,” John said crossly. “Even if we could dig one of the cars out, the road is impassible. I don’t fancy a two-mile hike through drifts that are up to my neck, either.”
“I could ski down and get help.”
“It’s too risky. If you got in trouble there’d be no one to bail you out. It doesn’t take long to freeze to death when you’re lying helpless with a broken leg.”
“Are you always like this in the morning?” I demanded.
“No, it’s just a performance I put on in order to discourage long-term relationships.”
“I can’t sit around here all day! I’ve got to get poor Tony out of the slammer—”
“Tony?”
“I walked out on him,” I admitted guiltily. “The killer set him up—one of the maids found him standing over Friedl’s freshly slaughtered body, and raised the alarm. He was surrounded by what looked like the beginning of a lynch mob when I left.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d lynch him,” John said coolly. “They’re very law-abiding in these parts, and Friedl didn’t inspire that variety of devoted affection.”
“Even so—”
“I’ll tell you what we could do.” John stroked his stubbly chin. “Start a fire outside—smoke signal.”
“On Frau Hoffman’s grave?” I asked.
He wasn’t abashed. “Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Just as well to have a look before you call the cops,” John went on. “If you’re wrong, you’ll look a bloody fool—Did you say yes?”
“I said okay. Same thing.”
We used scraps of the broken pews for shovels. The air was cold but utterly still; John had no trouble getting the fire started. It burned clear and bright until we piled pine boughs on it. As we worked, the chiming of distant Christmas bells made a macabre accompaniment. I hated what I was doing, even though I felt Hoffman wouldn’t mind.
In between hauling wood from the church, I tackled my buried car. Clearing the ski rack wasn’t difficult; there was only a foot of snow on top. On the lee side, away from the wind, a lonely fender protruded, and I was able to dig my way into the door. My emergency kit produced some dried fruit—“petrified” would be more accurate. I carried it to John, like a dog offering a bone, but this time he was not amused.
Smeared with smuts from the fire, his eyes sunken and shadowed, he continued to tend the flames while he chewed.
I sat down on a snowbank a little distance away and watched. The moment I had resolutely refused to consider was approaching. It would take hours of slow heat to soften the ground. We would need shovels, trowels. And then…
Neither of us had discussed what we intended to do if we found the gold. There was no need. John k
new what I would do.
I didn’t know what he would do. The trouble with John—one of the troubles with John—was that he wasn’t a cold-blooded villain. He wouldn’t kill to gain his prize. At least he wouldn’t kill me. I thought he was rather fond of me—as a person, I mean, not just as an enthusiastic lover. He might even have wavered, at odd moments, and toyed with the idea of letting me have the treasure. But I knew that when the time came, when the glittering thing was actually before him, there was a ninety-to-one chance that old habits would prevail over…call it friendship.
His lean cheeks were flushed with exercise and heat, but the underlying color was a pale gray. He was short on sleep and on food, burning calories like crazy—but it never occurred to me that I could defeat him in a hand-to-hand fight. Surreptitiously, my hand sneaked into my backpack. The gun was still there. Thank God I hadn’t dropped it in the snow.
I don’t know how long we were there. Sometimes John sat down by the fire to rest; sometimes I went inside to get more wood. The plume of smoke had been rising darkly for a long time before he came, schussing straight down the final slope between the trees and stopping in a spray of driven snow, skis almost touching in a perfect parallel. He wore ordinary ski clothing, but the face that looked out from under the hood of the parka was muzzled and fanged and dark with rank fur. In his right hand, instead of a pole, he carried one of the long pikes the Buttenmandeln had brandished.
I was bent over, adding wood to the fire when the apparition appeared, and it is a wonder I didn’t fall face down into the flames. As the snarling muzzle turned toward me, I went reeling back. Even John the imperturbable was taken off guard. He had been perched impiously on the tombstone; struggling to rise, he slipped and sat down with a splash, his back against the granite. And there he stayed, because the point of the pike was planted in the center of his chest.
I got the gun out. Don’t ask me how. I was pleased to see that my hands were dead steady as I sidled sideways, away from the smoke, to a spot from which I could get a clear sight.
My voice wasn’t as steady as my hands. “Drop it,” I squeaked. “Hände hoch—er—”
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