by Anne Perry
“Did you know Max Niemann also?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“And Elissa von Leibnitz?”
“Naturally.” Was that a shadow in his voice or not? The priest was too used to hiding his feelings, keeping the perfect mask over his response to all manner of human passions and failings.
“And Hanna Jakob?” Monk persisted.
At last there was a change in Geissner’s eyes, in his mouth. It was slight, but an unmistakable sadness that also held regret, even guilt. Was it because she was dead, or more than that?
“How did she die?” Monk asked, expecting Geissner to tell him it could not have any connection with Elissa’s murder. But there was the slightest tightening in the muscles of his neck, a hesitation.
“It was during the uprising,” he answered. “But I imagine you know that already. Both she and Elissa were remarkably brave. I suppose Elissa was the more obvious heroine. She was the one who risked her life over and over again, first exhorting people to have the courage to fight for what they believed in, then going to the authorities quite openly, pleading for reform, for any yielding of the restrictions. Finally, when real violence erupted, she stood at the barricades like any of the men. In fact, she was frequently at the front, as if she felt no fear. She was far from being a stupid woman; she must have been aware of the dangers as well as anyone.”
He smiled, and there was a terrible sadness in him. When he spoke his voice was rough-edged, as if the pain still tore at him. “I remember once when a young man fell before the rifle fire, far out in front of the piled-up wagons, chairs and boxes that had been set across the street. It was Elissa who called out for them to climb to the top and hold the soldiers at bay while she ran out to try to save him, pull him back to where they could treat his wounds. The army were advancing towards them, about twenty hussars with rifles at the ready, even though they were reluctant to slaughter their own people.” He shrugged very slightly. “Of course, the army lived in barracks, and didn’t even know their neighbors. But it is still different from attacking foreigners who speak another language and are soldiers like yourself.”
Monk wondered for an instant, a flash there and then gone again, how many times Geissner had heard the confessions of soldiers, perhaps trying to justify to themselves the unarmed civilians they had shot, trying to live with the nightmares, make sense of duty and guilt. But he had no time to spare for that now. He needed to understand Kristian, and to know if he could have killed Elissa—or if Max Niemann could have. “Yes?” he said sharply.
Geissner smiled. “Kristian went to the top of the barricade and fired at the advancing soldiers,” he answered.
Monk was surprised, and perhaps saddened. “He didn’t try to stop Elissa from going?”
Geissner was watching him closely. “You don’t understand, Mr. Monk. It was a great cause. Austria labored under a highly repressive regime. For thirteen years before we had been effectively ruled by the aging Prince Metternich. He was conservative, reactionary, and used the vast civil service to stifle all reform. Intellectual life was suffocated by the secret police and their informers. Censorship stifled art and ideas. There was much to fight for.”
He sighed. “But as you know, the uprising was crushed, and most of our burden was left still upon us. But then we had hope. Kristian was the leader of his group. Personal feelings of love or tenderness had no place. Where is an army’s discipline if each man will make special allowances for a friend or a lover? It is dishonorable, but above all it is ineffective. How could anyone trust you, or believe that you, too, set the cause above life or safety? Kristian did as he should have done. So far as I know, he never failed to, even afterwards.” There was a catch in his voice, and again the moment of darkness in his eyes.
“Afterwards?” Monk said quickly, trying to retrieve and catch the nuance of something more.
Geissner took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “After Hanna’s death,” he said softly.
“Why do you say that? Did something change?” Monk’s voice fell into a charged silence.
“Yes.” Geissner did not look at him. “Something changed, one way or another, but . . . but I can tell you little of it. They all made their confessions, as good Catholics, but some troubles were spoken of, others lay deeper than words, I think deeper than their own understanding. Knowledge of such things sometimes comes slowly, if at all.”
Monk strained to keep his manner calm and the first leap of real hope from betraying him, and perhaps breaking the priest’s train of recollection. “What things?” he said gently.
“Regret for what was not done, for perceptions too late,” Geissner replied. “For seeing something ugly in others, and realizing that perhaps it was in yourself also.”
Monk felt warning like a prickling on the skin. He must speak slowly, indirectly. This man held confidences dearer than life. Even to ask that he break one would be an insult which would slash the understanding between them as with a sword.
“How did she die?” Monk asked instead.
Geissner looked up at him. “As well as fighting on the barricades, she was the one who took messages to other groups in different parts of the city. It was difficult, and became more and more dangerous. I don’t know if she was afraid. Naturally, I didn’t know her as I did the others. They were all Catholic, and she was Jewish.”
“Are there many Jews in Vienna?”
“Oh, yes. We have had Jews here for about a thousand years, but we have tolerated them only when it suited us. Twice we have driven them all out and confiscated their goods and property, of course, and burned at the stake those who remained. Although that is several hundred years ago now. We let them back in again when we needed their financial skills. Many of them have changed their names to make them sound more Christian, and hidden their faith. Some have even become Catholic, in self-defense.”
Monk searched Geissner’s face but could see nothing in it to betray his feelings, either about someone who denied his faith and converted to that of his persecutors, leaving his roots and his heritage behind, or about the society which drove him to do it in order to survive. Did Father Geissner feel any guilt in that? Or was his own faith such that it held every means acceptable to bring more people to what was for him the truth? Monk found the thought repellent. But then he was not Catholic, at least not as far as he knew. In fact, he was not anything at all. But was there any truth he felt so passionately—a truth of mind, an honor, courage, pity or any other virtue—that he strove to share it with others, to preserve and pass it on at any cost to himself? Shouldn’t there be? If he had any beliefs at all, were they not to be shared, strengthened, widened with all men?
Why was this occurring to him only now? He should surely have been conscious of the gap in his life, in his thought, where some kind of faith should have been.
He forced his mind from himself back to the present, and the need for justice. “How did Hanna Jakob die?” he said again.
If Geissner sensed the anger or the urgency in him there was nothing in his face to show it. “She was carrying a message of warning,” he replied. “She was captured by the army and tortured to tell them where part of Kristian’s group was and what they were planning. She would not reveal it, and she was killed.”
“Was she betrayed?” Monk asked harshly. He wanted both the possible answers, and neither. If she had been, it might somehow explain Elissa’s murder, and yet it would be so repellent, so hideous a sin in his mind, that for Hanna’s sake, he could hardly bear it. And even more for the sake of whoever had done it. Surely the brave, idealistic Elissa could not have soiled herself with such an act of jealousy?
“You know I cannot answer you with what I know from the confessional, Herr Monk,” Geissner said softly. “All that Hanna did was always a risk. She knew it, but she still went.”
“They still sent her!” Monk challenged, his voice catching in his throat. He had expected Geissner to deny even the possibility of betrayal, firmly and w
ith anger, and he had not. That was almost a confirmation in itself. Suddenly he was cold, shivery, sick inside.
“Yes.” Geissner went on, breathing softly, his eyes down, away from Monk’s. “It was important, and she was the best at finding her way through the back streets, especially of Leopoldstadt, the old Jewish quarter. Had she been able to get through and warn the others, she believed it would have saved their lives . . . at least until next time.”
“Believed?” Monk seized on the word. “Was it not true?”
“Someone else warned them also.” The answer was so quiet Monk barely caught it.
“So her death was unnecessary!” Monk found his fury choking him so he could not speak the sentence clearly.
Geissner looked up, his eyes pleading not to be asked, and yet to be understood, so Monk might share with him a terrible truth without his betraying anyone by speaking it aloud.
Monk stumbled towards it in growing horror. “She was in love with Kristian?” he said, repeating what Magda Beck had told him.
“Yes.” Geissner said only the one word.
“And could he have felt more deeply for her than only friendship and loyalty?” Monk asked him.
“He did not say so to me,” Geissner replied, gazing at Monk steadily.
Was that a deliberate omission, to imply that it had been so? For a long moment Monk allowed the silence to remain, and Geissner did not interrupt it. The certainty settled with Monk, heavy as stone.
“Did Elissa believe that he did?” Monk asked finally.
“Mr. Monk, you are asking questions I cannot answer.”
Why? Because he did not know, or because the confessional bound him? He had very carefully refrained from saying that he did not know. Or was that his way with English? Monk studied his face and saw pain in it, pity, and silence. What could he ask that Geissner could answer?
“You were there yourself?” he said. “With them at the barricades, and in the times before . . . and after?”
Geissner smiled, a wry twitch of the lips. “Yes, Mr. Monk, I was. Being a priest does not prevent me from believing in the greater freedom of my people. I did not hold a gun, but I carried messages, tried to argue and persuade, and I tended the troubled and the injured, and heard confession from those who had done physical harm to others in the cause they believed in.”
“And those who from their own passions had done things, or omitted them, which gravely harmed others?” Monk urged, this time directly looking into Geissner’s eyes.
“I know what you are asking me, Herr Monk,” Geissner said very quietly. “And you know that my oath as a priest prevents me from answering you. I would give a great deal to be able to help you learn the truth as to what happened to Elissa von Leibnitz. I grieve for her, for the bright flame that has been quenched. I grieve still more for Kristian. As I knew him, he was a man of remarkable inner courage, an honesty to look at himself and measure his failings against his dreams. He did not run away from truth, even when it hurt him profoundly.”
“You are speaking of Hanna’s death?” Monk said quickly.
Geissner blinked and drew in his breath slowly. “Do not misunderstand me, I am speaking of the regret he felt afterwards, the self-doubt he suffered because they had chosen Hanna for the errand. He came to believe that they had done so because she was Jewish, and therefore, in some way deeper than conscious thought, not entirely one of them. I don’t know if that was true, but he feared it was, and he was horrified with himself for it.”
“And the others? Elissa? Max?”
He shook his head. Fractionally. “No. That was the beginning of a subtle difference between them, a divergence of inner paths, but not outer. Kristian married Elissa. Max Niemann remained his friend. I think Kristian only ever spoke of it to me. I tell you because it reflects on the kind of man he was, and I believe will always be. It was that core of strength in him that Elissa saw, and loved.”
“And Hanna?” Monk asked. He was not certain how far he could push Geissner, but he could not leave it as it was. He was almost certain that Elissa had betrayed Hanna, but almost was not enough. “Was that what she loved in him, too, and trusted?”
Something shivered inside Geissner. “She was not my parishioner, Herr Monk. She did not confide such things in me.”
Monk chose his words very carefully. “Father, if someone had betrayed Hanna Jakob to the authorities, would they have expected that she would be tortured to death and yet keep silent? That seems a very terrible thing. Is there any alternative, other than that the people whose whereabouts she kept secret would have been killed?”
Geissner was silent for so long Monk thought he was not going to reply, then at last he spoke. “I think it would be possible that they had made provision that the people concerned were warned, and were safe, so that if Hanna should break, to save herself, she would not, in fact, have betrayed anyone, except in her own mind.” He bit his lip, as if the cruelty of it only just came fully to him as he spoke the words aloud and heard them. “It was a time of great passions, Herr Monk. Perhaps we should not judge people for acts committed then by the calmer and colder light of today, when we sit here comfortably talking together of things we know only partially.”
“And you cannot tell me if this thing even happened. Does anyone else know of it? Max Niemann, for example? Or Kristian himself?”
“No. There is no one you can ask, because no one else knows of it, and I cannot speak of it any further. I am sorry.” He lifted his chin a little. “But if you imagine it has to do with Elissa’s death, I believe you are wrong. I alone know what happened, and I have told no one.” A little smile touched his lips. “Nor does anyone else ever come to me with guesses, such as you have.”
Monk waited.
Geissner leaned forward a little. “Kristian’s guilt was for himself. He did not hold anyone else responsible. He understood not only what he had done in sending Hanna, but why. They did not. The difference was one of understanding, and he did not expect it of Elissa or of Max.” He looked at Monk with intensity. “One does not have to imagine people perfect in order to love them, Mr. Monk. Love acknowledges faults, weaknesses, even the need now and again for forgiveness where there is no repentance and no understanding of fault. We learn at different speeds. Elissa had many strengths, many virtues, and she was unflinchingly brave. I think she was the bravest woman I ever knew. I am truly sorry she is dead, but I cannot believe Kristian killed her, unless he has changed beyond all recognition from the man I knew.”
“I think he has,” Monk said slowly. “But to someone even less likely to have killed anyone at all . . . even a soldier of the Hapsburg army.”
“That does not surprise me.”
“What about Max Niemann?”
“Max? He was in love with Elissa. I am not telling you anything that is a confidence. It was no secret then, or now. He never married. I think no one could take her place in his mind. No other woman could be as brave, as beautiful, or as passionate in her ideals. She was so intensely alive that beside her anyone else would seem gray.”
“Did Hanna Jakob have family?”
Geissner looked surprised. “You think one of them might have traveled to London after all these years and exacted some kind of revenge?”
“I’m looking for anything,” Monk admitted.
“Her parents still live here, in Leopoldstadt. On Heinestrasse, I believe. You could ask.”
“Thank you.” Monk rose to his feet. “Thank you for your frankness, Father Geissner.”
Geissner stood also. “If there is anything I can do to help Kristian, please let me know. I shall pray for him, and say a mass for Elissa’s soul, and her abiding peace at last. There will be many who revere her memory and would wish to come. Godspeed to you, Herr Monk.”
Monk went out into the street, deep in troubled and painful thought.
In London, the trial of Kristian Beck continued, each day seeming worse than the last, and more damning. Mills was spending less time with hi
s witnesses for the prosecution, sensing that Pendreigh was desperate to stretch out the evidence.
Sitting in the seats reserved for the general public, not daring to look at Callandra in case she should read her growing sense of despair, Hester tried to tell herself that that was ridiculous. Mills could not know that Monk was in Vienna. He was amply experienced and intelligent enough to have read the signs that the defense had no case, no disproof, not even a serious doubt to raise that any jury would be obliged to consider. One did not need any more than observation of human nature to know that; an eye to see Pendreigh’s face, the concentration, the slightly exaggerated gestures as he strove to keep the jury’s attention, the increasing sharpness in his voice as his questions grew longer and more abstruse.
Mills had already called all the police and medical evidence, and Pendreigh had argued anything that was even remotely debatable, and several things that were not. Mills had called witnesses who said that Kristian had originally told the police he had been with patients at the time that Elissa and Sarah had been killed, then more witnesses to prove that he had lied.
Pendreigh had tried to show that it was an error, the mistake of a man hurrying from one sick person to another, preoccupied with suffering and the need to alleviate it.
Hester had looked at the faces of the jurors. For a moment she convinced herself she saw genuine doubt. She looked up to Kristian. He was so pale he appeared ghostly. Even the full curve of his cheek, the sensuous line of his lips, could not give his face life. He may have known that what Pendreigh said was true, but there was no hope in his eyes that the jury would believe it.
She could not look at Callandra. Perhaps it was cowardly of her, possibly it was a discretion not to intrude on what must be a double agony. No matter what courage she had, she could not deny the possibility—the probability—that Kristian would be found guilty, unless Monk returned with a miracle. Did she also now begin to wonder in her shivering, darkest fears if perhaps he was? Who could say what emotions had filled Kristian when he was faced with ruin, not only personally, but of all the good he could do for those who suffered poverty and disease, pain, loneliness and bereavement? He had done so much, and it would all come to an end if he were ruined by debt.
