HS04 - Unholy Awakening (10 page)

‘She wants to keep Anders away!’

Helena ran for the house, crushing scattered grain and salt beneath her feet, skipping over the tub of water which was blocking the doorway. As she ran up the stairs, her shawl and bonnet fell behind her. I picked them up as they cascaded into the hall, then carried them through to the kitchen.

Lotte was standing by the pump.

In her hands she held a rag, which she was wringing dry. She stared at me for a moment, then nodded. ‘There’s new cider, Herr Procurator, and fresh-baked flat cake. The children had an early supper. They’re up above, playing.’

I said nothing of the clacking bones outside the windows. Helena would warn her not to frighten the children with her country superstitions. It would serve no purpose to tell the maid off twice. I sat down at the kitchen table, poured a little cider into a clay cup, broke off and ate a piece of the cake, then another, and drank the cider down.

Above my head, I heard the sound of Helena’s voice. She was speaking sharply to Manni, my only surviving son, now seven years of age, who was speaking sharply back to her.

Then Helena’s footsteps rattled down the stairway.

I retired to my study. I had a number of important things to do. I had to finish off the sketches in my album, notably the one that I had drawn from memory, showing the disposition of the corpse at the bottom of the well, and make final adjustments to the picture that I had made in the chapel of rest illustrating the wounds to Angela Enke’s neck. I wrote up my notes, remembering the conversations I had had with the Schuettler brothers, with the family of the dead girl, and with the girl who had spoken to me about the victim at the School of Stitches. I would need to present a full report for the French at the earliest possible moment. Colonel Claudet would be expecting it. And I still needed to write an account of what had passed between myself and Emma Rimmele. That is, an account of what had been said between us.

How much should I include? Should I mention the turn her father had taken at the cemetery that morning? The strange things he had said when I accompanied them home? The oddity of the mourning dress that Emma Rimmele wore? The fact that it was made of cast-offs, and that she was short of money?

I was very perplexed, and sure of one thing only.

I would say nothing of the mark upon my neck. I had checked in the mirror, and seen that it had almost faded. The sharp pinch of her teeth was little more than a pink impression like a birth-mark on my own fair skin.

It was growing dark. I could have lit a lamp, of course, but I had a better idea. Overwhelmed by tiredness, I stretched out on the sofa, and fell fast asleep. And there I lay for quite some time, until a loud knock came at the front door. I jumped up from the sofa, stepped out into the hall and found that the door had been opened. Lotte was standing there, crumpling her apron in her fists, staring dumbfounded at two French soldiers who had taken off their caps, and appeared to be eyeing her up and down.

‘Procurator Stiffeniis?’ said one of the men with a smart salute. He wore two stripes on his green sleeve, while the other man wore a red cockade on his jacket, and no sign of rank.

‘Can I help you?’ I asked.

I spoke in French, and they replied in the same tongue.

Helena had appeared from the parlour door, lingering there, watching.

‘You must come with us, sir. Orders of Major Glatigny.’

‘What does the major want?’ I asked.

‘Something has happened,’ he said glancing at from me to Lotte to Helena. ‘That is…there is something he would like you to see, Monsieur Magistrate. A coach is waiting at the gate.’

‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked the corporal.

When I heard the reply, I reached at once for my jacket and my hat.

‘The Prussian cemetery, monsieur.’

I followed them out of the house without saying a word, and with only one thought in my mind. Had the mob discovered the grave of Angela Enke? Had they tried to dig her up?

As I closed the gate, I looked back to the house.

Lotte was standing by the front door, peering through the crack. Helena was in the parlour. She had moved the curtain aside, and was looking out at me. Looking up, I saw Manni and Süzi at the nursery window.

I waved to the children.

As I held their gaze, I noticed the eaves above the nursery window. And above the other window, too. The tinkling amulets of chicken bones and hens’ claws were gone. My waving hand froze in mid-air. Helena had removed the defences that Lotte had set around the house. She had said nothing to me, nor had she complained to Lotte.

What did it mean?

Had Helena dispensed with Lotte’s charms because she thought them childish?

Or was she hoping that the baby might return?

The corpse was lying on a flat rock.

An iron spike was poking skywards from his heart.

His head lolled back, rolling and shifting in the stream which runs inside the cemetery wall. He might have been shaking his head, trying to deny what had happened to him. His body looked as though it had been laid out on an altar, the chest offered up for the sacrifice. Only the high-priest was missing.

The scene was lit by two lamps. The first belonged to Ulrich Meyer, stone-cutter. Meyer was squatting on the ground, his back against a tree-trunk, his pale face cupped in the palms of his hands, mouth gaping open, as if he had just brought up the yellow mess that stained his apron. Joseph Meyer, his son, held the second lantern. Wide-eyed shock was written on the boy’s face. He might have been a deer which had spotted the hunter, waiting for the musket-shot.

A small crowd was peering over the boundary wall on the far side of the stream. They were mute for the moment, almost invisible as dusk came on. They seemed to be watching, waiting for something to happen. On my way in through the main gate, I had ordered the French corporal-of-the-watch to let no-one enter on any account.

‘Monsieur?’ the man had bristled.

Clearly, he resented being given orders by a Prussian, especially one who was telling him to stand guard over a local cemetery as if it were a French munitions dump, and without the blessing of his superior officer.

‘If there is a riot tonight, as there was last night,’ I warned him, ‘General Malaport will have your name in my report.’

The threat brought him into line. He ordered his troops to draw the bayonets from their scabbards and screw them to the muzzles of their muskets, while I shouted over to the crowd, telling them to stay well back if they did not wish to be stabbed or shot.

‘What is happening in this town, monsieur?’ the corporal growled. ‘What the devil has got into them?’

‘Ask Major Glatigny to come to me the instant he arrives,’ I said.

I turned sharp right inside the gate, following the stream for thirty or forty paces. I spoke to Ulrich Meyer for a minute, confirming only that it was he who had made the discovery, then I scrambled down the bank of the stream towards the body. I had taken the lantern from the apprentice son, holding it in one hand, using the other to steady myself. I stepped down into the water and felt the cold as it seeped over the top of my boots. The stream was almost knee-deep at that spot.

I held the light above the body.

I had seen iron spikes of the same sort in the sexton’s office the night before, never expecting to find one driven through the sexton’s heart. Lars Merson’s cassock had been ripped open, his chest was bare, shining dully in the lamplight.

They had tried three times before they struck the heart.

Two gaping holes, and that protruding spike. One blow had shattered the sternum and broken into the cavity of his chest, exposing bones and other things that I could not name. Another attempt had been made too far to the right; the iron point had skidded side ways, ripping and tearing crazily through the ribcage. Shattered bones poked out through torn and mangled flesh. And then there was the final attempt to nail him to that rock. The spike had pierced his heart, but the most notable fact was how little blood all these wounds had provoked.

The blows had defiled the corpse, but they had not killed him.

I rested the lantern on the bank, then lifted his head from the water with both my hands, turning it to the right to examine his neck. The skin was puckered white around the wounds. There were two small punctures to the jugular vein, and longer rips below, where the instrument that had caused the fatal wounds had been roughly torn away. If not already dead, Merson must have fainted from the shock of the attack. His blood had flowed into the stream and been swept away. That was the cause of death – the wound to the neck. Angela Enke had died in the same manner. The spike through Merson’s heart had come afterwards.

‘Who found him?’ I asked out loud, unable to look away.

‘Me, Herr Stiffeniis. I found the body, sir.’

The face of Ulrich Meyer was paler than the face of Merson. He was standing stiffly on the riverbank, his boots hidden in the grass. He had no intention of stepping into the water, it seemed, though I noticed that his trousers were wet below the knees.

‘Come here, Herr Meyer,’ I ordered. ‘Take a closer look.’

Meyer took a deep rasping breath before he splashed into the stream. He was shivering visibly as he stood beside me.

‘What were you doing here?’ I asked him.

He had come to deliver kerbing stones, and finished tombstones. ‘The cemetery gates were open,’ he said. ‘I drove straight in with the cart. I saw no sign of Merson, but it didn’t really matter. I had work to do, and knew what was to be done. I left the tomb stones in the office, then I worked over yonder for an hour or so on the tomb of the Böhm family.’

‘Who did you see inside the cemetery?’

‘Women,’ he said.

‘What were they doing?’

He shrugged and shook his head, as if the answer were obvious. ‘Tidying up, sir. Planting winter bulbs, I think. A girl was working there by a grave,’ he nodded over his shoulder. ‘The other one was some way further off.’

‘And you saw no-one else?’

Herr Meyer shook his head. ‘No-one, sir. And no sign of Merson. When he comes, he comes, I thought. Me and Joseph left the finished slabs in side the sexton’s office. The door was open. Then we got on with the kerbing.’ He pointed off in a different direction. ‘When we’d finished doing that – perhaps an hour later – we went to look for him.’

‘And were the women busy all that time?’

‘I’ve no idea, sir,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see them again. I went to sit outside the office, and I sent Joseph to look for Merson. I wanted to be paid and get off home…’

‘How long was Joseph absent?’

Meyer shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea, sir. Ten minutes. Maybe more. I must have dozed off. Next thing, Joseph came back. He woke me up.’

‘And what did he say?’ I asked.

‘He couldn’t find Merson anywhere, sir. That was…worrying.’

‘Worrying?’ I repeated, rubbing my brow with the back of my hand.

‘You know what Merson’s like, Herr Stiffeniis. Dawn to dusk, he’s here and nowhere else. If he’d had to go somewhere, he’d have left that lad of his behind. What’s his name? Ludo? Lars Merson never leaves the cemetery unattended.’

I knew that he was right. Having buried the girl in secret last night, Lars Merson would never have wandered very far away from the spot. Indeed, his presence might have been too constant, too obvious, I told myself, especially if somebody had been watching him.

‘In the end we went to look for him.’ He pressed his fist against his chest as if the spike had been driven through his own heart. ‘I saw him first. I must have shouted. Then, Joseph saw him, too.’ He bent his head and examined the stain on his apron. ‘That was when I was sick, sir.’

‘And the body was in the water?’

He nodded, but he did not speak.

‘On his back upon that rock?’

Meyer glanced sideways at the corpse for an instant.

‘He ain’t moved an inch, sir.’

‘And there was no-one down here by the water?’

‘No-one, sir. Not then, at any rate.’ He glanced in the direction of the murmuring crowd. ‘God knows where that lot came from.’

‘What did you do, having found him?’ I asked.

‘Well, I was…put out, sir. I mean to say, just look at him! His neck, those holes, that…Like one of
them
, sir. Just like the girl they found the other day out Krupeken way.’ As he spoke, his voice sank to a whisper, as if he feared that the corpse might hear him. ‘I sent young Joseph running off to town to call the guards.’

And the guards had come to my house. The French had passed the problem on to me, and washed their hands of it. I studied Merson’s face. His eyes were half-shut, his mouth gaped open. Had he been gasping for air while the blood flowed out of the wounds in his neck? Did the killer know what Merson and I had done together the night before? Was that why he had been murdered? Had he tried to defend himself with the spike? Or – my own heart clenched at the thought – had someone brought it there for no other purpose, having found the body, having seen the telltale wound that had caused his death, than to drive it through his heart?

In every treatise regarding vampirism, there is a description of what is to be done. There are only two ways to placate the monster’s thirst for blood. I remembered reading an account which had been written by a Magyar scholar of the seventeenth century. A metal pin, a crucifix, or a wooden stake must be driven into the creature’s heart. Or else, the head must be cut off from the body, and buried somewhere separately.

There have been many outbreaks of vampirism in Prussia, even in recent times. Fear drives people on a rampage. Burial grounds and funeral crypts are invaded, tombs opened, the dead removed from coffins, stakes and sticks driven through the heart of any corpse that does not look dead enough. Attempts had been made to stop such outrages, notably the edict issued by Maria Theresa of Austria in 1755, which had been widely adopted at the time in all the German states. The Empress had punished such crimes with death, but the practice had never been eradicated.

And there, before my eyes, was the evidence.

Lotingen was occupied by the French, Enlightened Reason held sway over the darker forces of Religion, yet someone had performed the
magia postuma
that very afternoon, and on that very spot.

My mind drifted back to Merson’s office the night before. The girl’s dead body lying on the table, the sexton’s tools hanging on the wall. Had the killer taken the spike from there before he planted it in the gravedigger’s breast?

What was the point?

The murderer had struck Merson’s throat in the light of day, and seen him bleed to death. He knew that Merson was no vampire. Why perform the
magia postuma
, in that case? Clearly, there had been two separate attacks on Merson. The first had killed him; the second was meant to…

‘You left new stones at the sexton’s office, you say?’

‘That’s right, Herr Stiffeniis. Merson wants them there. When he’s ready, he puts them up. Now, Ludo will have to decide, I suppose.’

‘Which graves were the new ones meant for?’ For an instant I was divided between my duties as a magistrate, and my duty as a husband and father. Was the memorial stone for Anders ready? ‘Do you remember the names?’

Ulrich Meyer shook his head. ‘I don’t read them, sir. I just…well, I just copy the letters off the papers, sir.’

Was he unable to read? I asked myself. Was that the cause of his hesitation? I put the question aside, concentrating on the case before me. Ulrich Meyer knew the cemetery and Merson’s workshop well. He must have been there hundreds of times. He had seen the iron stakes and bars that were hanging on the wall. I glanced once more at his apron. I could see the stains of vomit, but I saw no traces of blood. Then again, when that iron spike was hammered into Merson’s chest, there must have been very little blood left in the body.

‘You described the wounds, Herr Meyer,’ I said, ‘but you’ve said nothing of the stake that’s poking from his chest.’

‘What is there to say, sir?’ Meyer objected.

‘You didn’t say you saw it.’

‘Which doesn’t mean I didn’t see it,’ he protested again. ‘I didn’t describe it, because there’s nothing to describe. Anyone can see what’s happened here. Everyone knows what it means. They should have done the same to that creature out in Krupeken!’

‘Very good, Herr Meyer,’ I said, cutting him short, stepping out of the water, and struggling up the bank. ‘Let’s see what your son can add to what you have told me.’

The stone-cutter came scuttling after me. Was he afraid of remaining alone with the corpse, or was he fearful of what the boy might say?

‘You wait here,’ I said, and I took some steps to separate myself from him. Then, I called to Joseph Meyer. ‘Come over here. I wish to speak with you.’

The boy’s eyes were huge with fright, his body rigid, his long arms stiffly aligned at his sides. Like an insect which freezes for fear of being eaten by a predator.

‘How old are you?’ I asked. This simple question seemed to disquiet him all the more.

‘Twelve years old, sir.’ His eyes were liquid mercury, never fixed or still. They glanced at me, they glanced away, they tried, but failed, to catch the eye of his father, but most of all they flashed in the direction of the stream and the body lying dead on the rock.

‘I saw what my father saw,’ he said before I had had the chance to ask him any thing. ‘But I was not so close, sir. He told me to stand well back.’

‘How far away was that?’

‘Ten paces, sir. A little more, or less.’

‘And what exactly did you see from there?’

Joseph Meyer said what seemed obvious. ‘I saw the blood, sir.’

‘Blood?’ I echoed. ‘Where did you see this blood?’

Again, he tried and failed to catch a glimpse of his father. ‘Why, sir, it was here, sir,’ he said and touched the side of his neck. ‘And here,’ he added, patting his hand against his chest.

‘How much blood did you see on the dead man’s chest?’

Joseph glanced again towards the body, which was nothing more than a dark shape now, a silhouette against the rippling stream. ‘I…I cannot say exactly, sir.’

‘A little, or a lot?’ I insisted.

The lad looked to be in pain. He pursed his mouth, half-closed his eyes, rolled his head about on his neck, searching for the face of Ulrich Meyer in the thickening gloom.

‘A…a lot,’ he managed to decide at last.

Joseph Meyer had not seen the body. There was hardly any blood to see. The stream had carried off the blood which flowed from Merson’s neck; the spike through his heart had produced next to no blood at all. Joseph was telling me what he had been told to tell me, or what he thought his father expected of him. I had spoken of wounds. A wound in the neck, another in the chest. Wounds produce blood. Had Ulrich Meyer sent his son away while he did what remained to be done, believing that a boy so young should not see such things, and would not be capable of keeping them to himself? Why else would a child of twelve be lying?