HS04 - Unholy Awakening

Did I read this aphorism in a book? Did someone recite it for me? Or was it an invention of my own making? I don’t remember any more. So much happened during the two months when the epidemic was raging, that it was hard to be precise about anything. The fever carried off a third of the population of Lotingen. Like the rude cry of a hungry crow, those words echoed in my head whenever I saw the first signs of illness on faces that I knew and loved.

Lotte burst into the kitchen one morning, eyes wide with fright. The baby was in a dreadful sweat, she said. His eyes were open, but little Anders was unable to wake. Hour after hour we sat beside his cot, Helena and I, while Lotte kept the house and watched for signs of illness in the other children.

The doctor came and went, shaking his head. ‘Nervous fever’ was his diagnosis. He could offer no prognosis. The child was in the ‘slow’ phase, only time would tell what the out come would be.

Anders responded to no-one. Not even to his mother. The fever was raging, it continued to rise while his pulse grew weaker. Within two days his face had altered beyond recognition. His once-blue eyes sank deep inside his skull, losing their colour and freshness. His pupils became opaque at last, his gaze fixed. Each bone in his body grew more pronounced. He had been a chubby baby, but now he was a rasping skeleton. His breathing was irregular, some times racing, at other times almost absent. He seemed to slowly fade away. ‘Consumed’ was the word I would have used, if only I had had the courage to pronounce it. The illness seemed to eat the baby up, and, when it had had its fill, his breathing stopped.

Fear took the place of every other emotion.

Fear for my wife, fear for my children, fear for our friends and neighbours.

…
the price we pay for crime
.

The phrase rang like a death-knell in my head. But what was the crime we were paying for? And who had committed it? The baby had been too young to sin, yet he had paid with his life. Nor were we the only parents to have lost a child. The fever carried off individuals of every age – from the youngest to the very oldest. Was Lotingen to blame, then? Had the town been condemned to pay for sins unknown and unconfessed?

We buried the baby on the second Thursday of July.

A week later, the worst of the epidemic was over.

But the crime, whatever it might have been, had not been paid in full. Fear persisted, death still knocked occasionally, it would not set us free. I was alarmed by every little upset. Nor could Helena be cured of it. And then, I heard the noise which would come to epitomise my fear that summer, though it had nothing to do with death, or with dying.

A long, low, whooping howl.

I was in my bed, but I was not asleep. I had been half-awake for a long time, lying still, trying not to disturb Helena. My wife needed sleep and the restoration of her spirits after the bereavement. All was quiet in the house, and in the garden, too, but then I heard that noise. I shifted my foot beneath the sheet, searching for the foot of Helena. Her skin was warm and soft; she did not respond to my touch. She was fast asleep. No dream had frightened her that night, or driven her from our bed.

I laid my head flat upon the pillow, straining to hear.

All was silent and still.

Had one of the children made that noise?

I drew the sheet aside, slipped down off the high bed, and made my way barefoot onto the landing. I felt a choking in my throat, as if I could neither swallow nor breathe. Had one of the children caught the fever? They had seen their baby brother die, while they had been spared. Had the nightmare struck again? I would not wake Helena before I was absolutely certain.

I opened the nursery door. A glance was sufficient. All three were sleeping peacefully in their beds beneath the shaded nightlight. And it was in that instant that I heard the low, rumbling howl again. It was coming from the garden, not the mouths of my children. Nor from any human mouth.

I closed the door, darted down the staircase, keeping close to the wall, avoiding the third stair which cracks like a musket being fired.

In the entrance hall, I froze.

On either side of the stout oak door, there is a narrow honeycomb of tiny glass octagons set in a lead frame. I pressed up close to the honeycomb window, staring out.

There were five dogs in the garden.

Almost invisible in the dark, except for the shining red lights of their eyes, they were no more than a yard from my front door.

Seeing me, they bared their fangs and began to growl.

I had heard one voice before. Now, it was a chorus.

Wild dogs had taken possession of my garden, laid siege to my house. If hungry, why had they ignored the compost-heap on the kitchen side of the house? I had seen Lotte drop the remains of a boiled chicken out there that afternoon. Had something else drawn them to my front door? The gleaming panes of glass, perhaps? I had forgotten to close and lock the shutters.

Were they trying to enter?

As I pressed my nose to the glass, I could see the dogs more clearly. They leapt forward, snarling, saliva dripping from their tongues. Their fangs were yellow, pointed. The growl became a howl, as they jostled for position in front of the window. They were not afraid of me. They might have been baiting me, daring me to open the door and let them in.

My thoughts flew back to the epidemic.

Packs of stray dogs had been reported at the time. At first, the idea had been dismissed as nonsense. When we are subject to an enemy that we cannot see, we find an object which is evident to every man. All hate turns upon that object, all of our energy is consumed in condemning it. The fever was invisible, deadly; stray dogs were a visible threat. They could be shot. Then, Hans Hube was killed. Up at dawn to quarter a calf; they found the butcher’s body several hours later. The doctor had been hard put to say which bones were his, and which belonged to the slaughtered calf.

These thoughts were dashed from my mind in an instant.

One of the dogs leapt at the window, breaking a pane of glass.

I jumped back, suppressing a cry that would have awakened the whole house. I had seen the dog rear back, but had not expected the attack which followed. Only the lead frame had repulsed it. I had never seen such aggression. A hungry hound is abject, eager to please. It will carry a pheasant to the hunter and accept a biscuit as a reward. This animal, instead, was bold. Savage. Its snout caught the moon light as it smashed the glass. A spraying black fan of blood was torn from its nose, splattering and dripping on the remaining panes of glass.

The dog fell back, denied.

A moment later, it was charging for the gate. And in its wake the other dogs careered. It was as if the house had withstood the test. The dogs had tried to enter, and they had failed. Colliding in a pack at the narrow exit of the garden gate, they yelped and snapped among themselves, forming some predestined order of withdrawal.

In a matter of seconds, the danger was over.

A cloud passed from the face of the moon, silver light fell on the grass, dark shadows loomed from overhanging trees and bushes. The garden was empty, though I heard them in the distance howling, the sound diminishing as they charged away.

I stood there, unable to move or think until I heard them no more.

Nothing moved inside the house. Helena, Lotte and the children had slept through it. Suddenly, a gasp erupted from my throat. Sweat dripped from my forehead and ran down my back in rivulets, despite the night-time chill.

The dogs had returned to Lotingen.

When the fever was at its height, they had been drawn to town by the all-pervading smell of death. I stood guard by the broken window for quite some time, ears straining to catch the slightest sound, the smallest hint that the beasts had returned.

My bare feet ached with the cold.

Had the dogs smelt death that night in Lotingen?

Chapter 2

Winter would come early, everyone hoped.

There is nothing better than a cold snap to dispel foul summer air and ward off the perils of fever. Instead, the first week of September brought an Indian summer. The 7th was a Wednesday, the sun shone, the sky was sketchy blue. Clouds were massing on the horizon like an army clothed in grey, uncertain whether to engage the enemy that day, or wait until the morrow.

Gudjøn Knutzen came shambling into my office. He was minus his collar, and pig sty mud encrusted his boots. The news my secretary brought in – along with the smell of mulch – was as bland and inoffensive as the weather.

‘I met one of the Schuettler brothers, Herr Procurator,’ he began. ‘He’d just stepped off the canal bank, and was in a bit of a puff. He asked me if I’d tell you some thing, sir. He had to get back home, and he told me that he would wait for you there.’

I put down my pen, and dried the ink.

‘Wait for me where?’ I asked.

Knutzen stepped close to my desk, and my stomach rolled over.

Carbolic crystals…

I sat as far back in my seat as I could manage. Since the height of the epidemic, Knutzen, and many another citizen, had taken to carrying little sacks of the desiccated chemicals around in their pockets. The penetrating odour was supposed to protect the carrier against infection. It certainly protected them from closer human contact with those like myself, whose eyes begin to smart profusely in the presence of the stuff.

‘At the Prior’s House, sir,’ Knutzen replied, frowning thoughtfully. ‘Have you got a cold, sir? Your eyes are watering like a broken pump. He asked if you would be so kind as to take a walk out that way.’

I wiped my eyes. ‘Did he say why?’

Knutzen sniffed loudly. ‘He did not, Herr Stiffeniis. Only that there was some thing there that you would wish to see.’

‘He didn’t tell you what it was?’

Knutzen shook his head.

Ten minutes later, I was striding out along the left bank of the Cut with Knutzen at my side, heading towards the Prior’s House, which lies no more than a mile outside the western limit of the town. Knutzen held his peace for once, and I was grateful of it. No news of his potbellied pig. It had not littered, evidently. No complaints about the French requisitioning of his apples and plums. I set a good pace. Knutzen matched me in rhythm, and outdid me in vigour.

Halfway there, the sun was suddenly cancelled out as a cloud cast its vast shadow over the land. The evergreen woods were instantly tinged an opaque grey, the taller trees seemed stark and skeletal, having begun that week to lose their leaves. The fields, which had been recently harvested, changed in a flash from gleaming gold to dark russet brown. Sun or shade, the rippling waters of the canal were always black. The water erupted in a splash as a sizeable, silver-blue pike leapt out of the shallows, chasing sprats, or cannibalising its pickerel in the gluttony of autumn.

The ruined profile of the Prior’s House stood out against the flat horizon.

Originally a Benedictine monastery, the church and cloister had both been demolished. The suppression dated back to the days of Luther, and only the dormitory wing had survived. Now, it was a ruin, too. Frederick the Great had requisitioned the building half a century before as a staging-post where troops on the march from Danzig to Königsberg could eat, sleep and smoke. And they had done just that, until one officer fell asleep, replete with food and wine, his pipe still burning, and the dormitory was burnt to the ground. Only the outer walls still stood, together with the Prior’s House, which had been built four hundred years or more ago to house the head of the community.

Plovers whooped, and whimbrels whistled from the stubbly fields.

Two figures appeared in miniature on the gravel path ahead of us. One of them raised a hand in our direction.

‘Gurt Schuettler,’ Knutzen announced. ‘And brother.’

‘What’s the brother’s name?’

‘No idea, sir. I’ve never been in his company. He’ll not speak to any man, except his brother.’

The Schuettlers were as indistinguishable as twins. Both the same height – that is, below the level of my shoulder – they wore peasant-smocks which were grey and stiff with age and dirt. Their feet were encased in brown woollen socks and heavy wooden pattens. Matching baggy corduroy trousers were bundled tightly to their legs below the knee with twine cross-bindings. They were both on the downward slope of life, each year showing itself in a wrinkle, scar or mole.

‘Gurt Schuettler?’

‘And brother,’ the man announced, stepping up to me, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

The other man looked away.

‘What…’ I said, then paused. I had been about to insist on knowing the other man’s name. Then again, I thought this was not an investigation. For the moment, it was nothing more than a formal presentation, a polite exchanging of names. ‘My secretary tells me that you wish to show me some thing, Schuettler.’ I spread my arms wide, and affected a smile. ‘Well, here I am.’

Gurt Schuettler took a step closer, as if he felt the urge to confide.

I took a half-step backwards, assaulted by the heady brew of sweat that the man and his clothes gave off.

‘I…I don’t know how to put it, sir. Then again, you’ll judge for yourself.’

He turned away and began to walk towards a gate which gave access to the house and whatever else was contained inside the boundary walls. As he marched off, his silent brother fell into step at his side. Knutzen made to follow them.

‘Where are you going?’ I called, reluctant to join the party without some preliminary explanation.

Gurt Schuettler did not turn around. Nor did he halt. He pointed ahead, and called back over his shoulder. ‘To the sunken garden, sir. And the dry well. That’s where we are going.’

The boundary wall was long and high. The garden and the land must be extensive. And then there was the house itself. Peeping over the brick wall, I could see the top half of four mullioned windows and a mossy red-tiled roof. The dwelling appeared to be a sort of stately manor in the rustic style. It was three or four times grander than my own small house on the other side of Lotingen.

The brothers stopped by the gate, waiting for Knutzen and myself.

‘Do you live alone here? You and your brother, I mean,’ I asked.

‘Not at the moment, sir,’ Gurt Schuettler replied. ‘A gentleman and a lady have come to stay. Recently arrived in town, I do believe. Been here a week. Rented the house from Lawyer Wellbach. He administers the estate on behalf of the Bishop of Lotingen. I am just the caretaker of the property.’

The gate was fifteen hands high, and almost as wide, divided in the centre, and closed by a latch. There was no lock to secure the gate, I noticed. Gurt Schuettler opened the right half of the gate, then went ahead, taking three broad stone steps down into what was evidently the sunken garden. I came next, and Knutzen followed on my heels. The silent brother trailed behind.

The garden was a large green square with well-kept borders full of flowers and shrubs. A gravel path like the one beside the canal ran close around the four walls and in a diagonal cross which intersected in the centre of the garden. At the meeting-point was a waist-high wall, built in a circle of rustic stone, surmounted by a cross-tree and a pulley. A wooden bucket black with age was resting on the ground beside it, while a partially rotted wooden cover had been thrown aside to reveal the well-shaft which was the centrepiece of the garden.

A woman was standing at the well.

White hands resting on the wall, she was staring down into the darkness.

All that I could see of her was a billowing black cloak and a hood of the same hue. She did not turn as we crunched over the gravel. It was as if she had not heard us. Her attention was focused on what lay inside the well.

‘Mistress,’ Gurt Schuettler called, as we approached her.

The woman turned her head. She looked to be no more than thirty years old. I am tall, but she was not much shorter. Her well-formed face was pale, her lips a muted and natural red. Curving eyebrows traced the line of her broad and handsome brow. Beneath, her eyes were brown like roasted hazelnuts. The pupils glinted as she watched our coming, raising her hands, throwing back her hood to reveal a mass of dark brown hair which fell in riotous curls upon her shoulders. Her aquiline nose, though prominent, was graceful, lending strength and purposefulness to a face which was immensely feminine.

‘I am no man’s mistress, sir,’ she replied, her voice gentler than I expected. It was the cultured voice of a person who had lived in town. She was not rudely reprimanding the old man’s mistake, but she was correcting it, and playfully, too, as if she had done so quite a number of times already.

Schuettler pointed at me. ‘Here’s the judge,’ he announced.

For the sake of clarity, I, too, was obliged to correct him. ‘I am a legal procurator. Hanno Stiffeniis,’ I said, bowing slightly in the woman’s direction. ‘I am the magistrate of Lotingen. What is your name, ma’am?’

‘Rimmele,’ she said, rolling the m’s, then rolling them again. ‘Emma Rimmele.’

Her eyes glanced into mine, glanced away, glanced back again. She turned once more to peer down into the well. There was something feverish in her look. In some odd way, it reminded me of the look of Anders on the night that he had died. In his agony, his eyes had come to life again. Liquid, mercurial, darting here and there, never fixed or still for more than an instant. She was afraid, I could see it clearly. But what was she afraid of?

‘Here we are, sir.’ Schuettler tapped the ancient wooden bucket with the side of his boot to attract my attention.

I glanced at the bucket, then at him.

The wood was rotten, the iron hoops were rusty. The vessel was of no use for carrying water, or anything else. It seemed to serve no more than an ornamental purpose, as if to say that a well without a bucket was no well at all.

Gurt Schuettler swept up the bucket, and he held it out for me to see.

I took a step forward, and peered into the bottom of the container. In the first instant, I did not recognise the thing for what it was. It might have been some small misshapen creature. The larva of some insect. Had he brought me all that way to show me some peculiar freak of nature?

‘It is human, sir,’ he explained. ‘A tooth.’

Schuettler’s voice and opinion took me by surprise.

I looked more closely. It was certainly a tooth. Bits of nerve and dried blood clung to the roots, which protruded as three stubby prongs of unequal length.

‘Jus’ like this one here,’ Schuettler grunted, setting down the bucket.

He stood up, and I found myself peering into a gaping black hole. He was pulling at the side of his mouth with his left forefinger, exposing his own teeth, pointing with the filthy cracked nail of his right forefinger to a gap in the lower row of rotten, tobacco-stained tombstones.

‘Wisdom tooth is what they calls it,’ he gurgled.

He removed his finger, closed his mouth and stared at me.

‘Whose tooth is it?’ I asked him. ‘Not yours, Herr Schuettler. Nor your brother’s, I take it?’

Both men shook their heads.

I turned to the lady. ‘I hardly think that it is yours, ma’am?’

‘That is the point, Herr Procurator,’ she said. ‘We have no idea who that tooth may belong to. Nor can we guess what it is doing in the bucket.’

There was nothing horrifying in the spectacle, but it was certainly odd. And Emma Rimmele was right. How had it come to find its way into the bucket?

She was standing at my shoulder, peering down at the tooth.

‘Might it belong to your husband?’ I asked her.

A vein throbbed in her temple. ‘I am not married,’ she replied.

‘So the gentleman…’

‘My father, sir. No barber has been to pull a tooth from his mouth. And even if he had, my father could not walk so far as the well. Those three steps,’ she said, pointing to the porch with its flat pediment and two slender columns, ‘would quite defeat him. Herr Schuettler is correct. If it belongs to no-one here, then who does it belong to?’

I glanced into the bucket. ‘Could it be a joke of some sort?’

There was no trace of amusement in the laugh which answered this suggestion.

‘A joke, Herr Procurator? A threat, more like.’

‘A threat, ma’am? A tooth in a bucket? What sort of a threat is that? If Schuettler had not found it, it might have gone undiscovered.’ I turned to Schuettler, asking him: ‘How did you come to find it?’

He rubbed his chin before he answered. ‘It was not here yesterday,’ he said. ‘We was gathering up the dead leaves from the garden with a rake in the afternoon. I moved the bucket twice to make the going easier. It was empty then. And as you can see, sir, someone has removed the cover from the well, too. No body’s done such a thing these last five years.’

A short way from the well, the cover was lying on the grass.

I dropped down on one knee and examined it. The wood was black and rotten like the bucket, though stouter in its manufacture, five boards welded together by means of three cross-pieces, trimmed to form a circular lid which would have rested on the well-shaft.

‘Why would anyone remove the cover?’ I asked.

‘That’s the mystery,’ said Schuettler. ‘This well has not been used since they dug the canal, which was all of fifty years ago, sir. The well dried up very shortly afterwards.’

While he was speaking, I had placed my hands on the stone rim, and was looking down into the darkness. Emma Rimmele was doing the same thing on the other side. At the same instant, we both looked up. She held my gaze for some moments, as if she wanted to say something, but did not dare. Was she thinking what I had begun to think?

‘Someone pulled it out of someone’s mouth, sir,’ Schuettler said.

‘You think that there is…something down there.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Schuettler seconded quickly. ‘That’s why I called for you.’

I was silent for a moment.

‘What could this “something” be, do you think?’

The old man’s face was brown and weather-beaten. White lines appeared as his expression changed. ‘I…I cannot say, sir,’ he replied hesitantly.