HS04 - Unholy Awakening (14 page)

‘Your cat is well,’ I said.

‘I hope you do not want him back?’ Helena put in. ‘The children are so fond of him, and he of them.’

He smiled, but he never took his eyes off me. ‘That’s not why I am here,’ he said. ‘I’m more concerned about what is happening in town.’

This news took me by surprise. ‘Our troubles interest you like the cases of those poor souls possessed by evil spirits in Italy, is that it?’

Lavedrine shrugged his shoulders. ‘A member of the
Camera Segreta
, a cardinal who is a treasured advisor to the Pope, defined me recently as a “scientist of the dark arts”. I am curious about what ever affects human affairs, Stiffeniis. Nothing is sacred, if it helps me solve a mystery. What I was about to say is that something out of the ordinary is happening here in Lotingen. A girl ends up at the bottom of a well with mortal wounds to her neck, and the people immediately start to talk of vampires.’ He held up his hands and he studied his nails. ‘Cases of vampirism have occasionally been reported in the eastern parts of France – two centuries ago in Puy-de-Dôme, for instance – but we have nothing to match the stories which are circulating here in Prussia.’

‘A vampire,’ I specified. ‘The people here believe that the creature carried the girl to the bottom of the well, there to gorge upon her blood. A similar attack has been made today on the jugular vein of Lars Merson, sexton and gravedigger. The victims now are two in number.’

‘God in Heaven!’ Helena stifled a cry, covering her mouth with her hands for fear of alarming the children, her eyes glistening with fright. ‘That’s why the soldiers came for you. Because of Merson. How did it happen, Hanno?’

I took a grim satisfaction in the thought that I had brought the shadows into the house. No candles could light them, no blazing hearth could warm them, no earrings of coral could conquer the power of terror. No French visitor could seduce our hearts with his facile charm and his evident self-satisfaction.

‘The body was found by the stream which runs inside the cemetery wall,’ I said. ‘His neck had been ripped wide open. Every drop of blood had been drained from his body, which was left upon—’

‘I heard something more, and would have mentioned it at a more…opportune moment,’ Lavedrine murmured, his tone dry and distant. ‘I was in the office of Colonel Claudet when a soldier came to report the news. The colonel is worried…’

‘I wonder why?’ I said, making no attempt to suppress my sarcasm. ‘The victims are Prussians, after all. And these are Prussian superstitions.’

Lavedrine sat forward and stared into my eyes. ‘Do not play the cynic with me,’ he said. ‘And don’t ask questions when you know the answers. Everything that happens in Prussia interests France. We are trying to maintain some order in this country of yours. The safety of our soldiers is of paramount importance.’

‘
Your
men are not in danger,’ I said.

‘Are you so sure?’ he asked. ‘Can we turn a blind eye if something out of the ordinary happens in Lotingen?’ He sat back more comfortably. ‘On the subject of strange events, I have some questions to put to you.’

Suddenly, the gloves were off. I saw the other side of Serge Lavedrine. No longer a welcome friend, he was now an unwelcome foe. Just like a vampire, I thought. He came into your home, and then he turned on you. A French officer, a high-ranking one, a man of power with influential friends, if he decided to question me about the case, I would have to answer him. I had been exposed before to his rapid changing of coats. He shifted from familiarity to command in a flash. Arrogance was only a short step away.

‘Merson helped you bury the girl in the cemetery,’ he said. ‘Glatigny told me. People believe that you have hidden a vampire there, and that Merson…’

Helena leaned across and placed her hand on mine. Her palm was damp; I could feel that she was trembling. Those earrings quivered from the lobes of her ears again, though she had not caused them to move this time. The blue vein in her temple was pulsing furiously, as it always did when she was afraid.

Lavedrine’s gaze shifted to Helena.

He must have seen how agitated she was. He clicked his tongue, as if to say that there was nothing to be afraid of, the way one might encourage a child while tying one end of a string to a tooth, and the other end to the door-knob. He sat forward, stretched out his hand towards her, but then withdrew it. Helena still held my hand. She would not be drawn. Nor would he presume too far. This I knew of him: he would never go beyond what was allowed.

‘Forgive me, Helena,’ he said quietly. ‘Hanno raised the matter, and it cannot be avoided.’ He turned to me once more. ‘Now, tell me, Hanno. Why on earth did you and Merson bury her in the town cemetery?’

I told him everything. The parents’ refusal to allow her to be buried in Krupeken. The need to bury Angela quickly. The need to put her in a place where she would not be found, where the corpse would decompose as soon as possible. The night spent digging.

‘She had been murdered, but the corpse would have been defiled. That is what happens to a suspected vampire in Prussia. We were acting for the best.’

‘And what do you make of the murder today?’

The discovery of Merson’s body, the wound so like the one that had killed the girl. The iron spike that had been driven through his heart. The ritual which had inspired it.

It all came out.

‘
Magia postuma
,’ Lavedrine repeated, eyes wide, eyebrows raised. ‘I have never heard of anything quite so…ferocious. Nowhere in the civilised world.’

‘The Empress of Austria issued an edict in 1755,’ I corrected him. ‘There had been outbreaks of vampirism in Moldavia and other places, cemeteries had been desecrated, tombs defiled, corpses had been treated in the same hideous manner as the rite performed on Lars Merson. The practice has never died out. When fear of the vampire takes hold of towns and villages, there is always someone who knows what must be done. They send for the gypsies, as a rule. The
magia postuma
is a childhood memory for any man who lives in Prussia.’

‘And any woman, too,’ Helena murmured. ‘A living memory…’

‘We are not so old,’ I reminded him.

‘Why must the heart be pierced, then?’

Helena answered him. ‘All the blood must be drained from it. Otherwise, the creature will not die. It will rise again to feed on the living. They feed on nothing else. Human blood gives them sustenance. Each person bitten must feed on others. It goes on, and on. They live forever…’

As I listened, I cursed myself for having spoken of Merson’s death. Helena had appeared, for a short time at least that evening, to be serene. Now, her voice was distant, melancholy, haunted by horror and uncertainty. Could I offer her no more than death and bloodshed? She had lost a child, and I spoke of nothing but murder.

‘Why use gypsies?’ he asked.

‘They know what is to be done, and are not afraid to do it…’

‘Did a gypsy drive the stake through Merson’s heart?’

I shook my head. ‘It was done by whoever found his dead body in the cemetery,’ I said. Obviously, I was thinking of Ulrich Meyer. The stonecutter knew where Merson’s tools were kept. I could have arrested the man, of course, but that would only complicate the case, not solve the murder. ‘That person evidently believed that Merson was not the victim of a killer, but of a vampire. He must have thought, when night came on, that Merson, too, would go out looking for human blood.’

Lavedrine nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘Did Merson know the girl in the well?’

‘Nothing has emerged. At least, for the moment.’

For an instant, I thought he was going to reproach me. ‘Have you formed any idea who the murderer may be?’ he asked instead.

My answer sounded weak to my own ears. ‘I am almost persuaded to believe that there really is a vampire. That is…’

Lavedrine ignored me. ‘I have a theory, Stiffeniis,’ he said, joining his hands, and touching his lower lip with the tips of his fingers. ‘There is always something true, some thing real, in situations which are so apparently bizarre.’

‘A
real
vampire?’ Helena quizzed.

‘Not in the literal sense, Helena.’ He waved his hand dismissively in the air. ‘During the
grande crainte
, as we call it in France, the peasants were terrified of ghosts, the walking dead, as they chose to call them. It was not a case of vampirism, but it was a general fear of the unknown. They were terrified of their own shadows, and everyone explained it away by speaking of superstition. I’ve always been convinced that there was more to it than that. Superstition is a cloak hiding some thing which is concrete. Someone saw something which was real, but it was mysterious, inexplicable, and it triggered a popular reaction, a communal terror. This was true in the cases of demonic possession which I witnessed in Rome. I saw a man vomit such a quantity of hair that it left me breathless. I knew there must be a rational explanation, but everyone around me was convinced that the man had been possessed by the Devil. A few days later, I made sense of the mystery. I caught him swallowing braids of hair which he had procured from God knows where. He had been summoned to appear that morning before a committee of exorcists. It was a case of controlled regurgitation. That man could swallow spoons and bring them up whenever he wanted to impress a crowd.’

‘Why play such a trick?’ asked Helena.

Lavedrine laughed lightly. ‘They’d given him bed and board in one of the finest rooms in the Vatican palace. They treated him with all the respect that such an unusual phenomenon could inspire. I, and two other men, know the truth, having witnessed his deceit, but hundreds, nay thousands, of people had seen something that they could not explain: they saw him vomiting human hair in what appeared to be a demonic trance. Do you think the priests would reveal the truth to the faithful? Would they expose themselves as fools who had been taken in by a trickster? Most Catholics remain convinced that there were many cases of demonic possession in Rome in the months of January and February. The number of people going to church tripled in the same period. So did the offerings in the collection plate.’

‘I have a similar theory,’ I said. ‘You did not allow me to finish what I was saying. Somebody wants to
persuade
us that there are vampires in Lotingen.’

‘Frightening the population on purpose?’ said Helena. ‘If that is the case, there may well be no connection between Merson and the girl, except for the fact that they have both been murdered by the same person.’

Lavedrine jumped up, clapped his hands together, and smiled brightly at me. ‘Hanno, you ought to enlist Helena’s help in your enquiry. Can we ever forget the role that she played in the Gottewald case? Your wife swims more easily through these murky waters than you or I. You should take her with you whenever you go to question witnesses. Especially the female ones.’

My hand rose to my throat, as if to squash an insect which had tried to nip me. I touched the spot where the lips of a female witness had left their mark.

The Frenchman was watching me closely.

‘Are you leaving, Lavedrine?’ I asked to hide my embarrassment.

‘This house, yes. At least for this evening,’ he said, gesturing with his hand for Helena to remain where she was. ‘But I will stay for some days yet in Lotingen.’

I went out into the hall with him.

He halted by the door, placed his hand on my shoulder, and smiled. It might have been a token of the warmest friendship. Instead, it was the prelude to an order. ‘Let me have a report of what’s been going on in Lotingen. By tomorrow. Is that all right?’

He was playing the French officer again. The authority to whom I must bow.

I nodded.

Suddenly, his hand shifted. Two fingers pulled at the stock of my collar, exposing the mark on my neck. If he had noticed my embarrassment before, he smiled at it now. Crow’s-feet of amusement formed at the corners of his eyes.

I pushed his hand away, and pulled my collar back into place.

‘Were you hiding that from Helena, or from me?’ he said.

I opened the door and let him out without another word.

Later that night, lying in bed, I pretended to sleep when Helena came into the room, having been to check that the children were settled and well. Beneath half-closed eyelids, I watched her as she sat down on the bed and unclipped the coral earrings, placing them carefully on the bedside table, between the copy of the Bible and the candlestick. She intended to wear them the next day as well, it seemed.

She blew out the candle, then slipped into bed beside me. I heard her breathing, but I could not shake those earrings from my thoughts. It was as if Lavedrine were present in the room.

Just like a vampire.

How many were there? Seventy? Eighty? A hundred?

A large crowd, by any count, and growing. It was still not eight o’clock, the town had not yet properly woken up for business, but the narrow lane was full of people, all of them rushing to see the spectacle.

A boy in rags had started the stampede.

He was standing on the cathedral corner, a stick in his hand, trousers cut short exposing dirty muscular calves, his feet hidden inside scraps of sheepskin that were tied around with twine. A skinny shepherd boy. He and I had reached the market square at more or less the moment that he began to shout. No-one could make out what he said at first, though the eyes that popped from his skull, and the spit that dribbled from his nose and mouth made an impression on everyone who saw him.

He took a deep gulp of air, then cried out more distinctly.

‘Down that way,’ he pointed. ‘Outside the cemetery. There’s soldiers. Frenchies. They’ve found something terrible.’

What it was, he did not say. He had said enough in any case. It was like throwing stones at pigeons. They took to the air. But unlike pigeons, they all went flying off in the direction he had indicated, and I was one of the number, my head filling with the worst imaginings. I joined the crowd, walking fast, then running down the slight hill that leads to the old cemetery, erstwhile kingdom of Lars Merson, now the domain of Ludo Mittner. People pushed and jostled, while the young men raced ahead, like rats in thrall to the Piper of Hamelin. The voices that I heard were muttered invocations to God, while any number of the women made the sign of the Cross. There were little children being pulled along by adults. No school for them that day. Some smiled, embracing freedom, while others cried for fear of the commotion. I went with the stream, less eager to arrive, fully expecting to find that the corpse of Angela Enke had been subjected to the same indignity as that inflicted on Lars Merson the day before. The sun was veiled by clouds, the restless air electric, promising rain before the morning was out.

I had left the house earlier than usual, intending to write the report that Lavedrine had imposed on me the previous evening. Catching sight of my office, I had taken the key from my pocket. I still held it clenched in my fist. Knutzen would not be there. His son was out of town that day, so there was no-one to tend to the pigs and fowl that they sold to the French. I had meant to take advantage of my secretary’s absence and work for an hour without distraction. I wanted to put the evidence and the testimony that I had collected into some sort of order.

Then that shepherd boy appeared, and all my plans evaporated.

There was not a single uniform on the streets. It could mean only one thing. The French knew of what had happened. But were they gathering at the cemetery, or had they been recalled to their barracks?

No sooner did I reach the cemetery wall than my question was answered. A wall of blue uniforms formed a dam to hold back the river of onlookers.

And there, finally, voices were raised.

‘Tell us what has happened.’

‘If there’s danger, we need to know…’

‘They won’t be happy ’til they’ve killed us all!’

I used my elbows, working my way forward through the crush, twisting this way and that until I came face to face with the barrier of armed French soldiers. ‘I am the Procurator of Lotingen,’ I said to one in French. ‘Let me through.’

At my back I heard my name being passed around. Many of the Lotingeners persisted in asking the soldiers what the fuss was all about, while others tried to convince the French soldiers to let me pass beyond the barrier.

The Frenchmen might have been selected on account of their faces, which were guaranteed to scare. They stared at us in silence, their ferocious expressions intensified by waxed moustaches and ragged beards like rooks’ nests. They bared tobacco-stained teeth, and jerked their bayonets to hold us back, as if we were wild animals bent on attacking them.

‘I am a magistrate of the king,’ I said again.

French eyes stared at me with the respect one might reserve for a fresh cow-pat found by chance in the middle of the street. Then, they looked elsewhere as someone made a move that seemed more menacing, and I was forgotten in the instant.

‘Let no-one through, soldiers!’

The order came from behind the phalanx of blue serge.

Was it possible,
that
voice in that place?

The people all round made such a noise, shouting at the soldiers, shouting to each other, that I might have been mistaken. The wind was stronger now, it moved the trees, and roared through the leaves. I stretched up on my toes to see above the hats and pom-poms of the soldiers.

And there I saw him.

I might mistake the voice, but I could not mistake the man. His height for one thing, and the eccentricity of the long black leather coat that he was wearing. The wind played with his silver curls and whipped his unbuttoned coat around his legs. Lavedrine was in the company of two French officers beneath the shaded canopy of trees which fronts the main gate to the cemetery. A little wood of ash, sycamore and beech. I raised my arm and waved my hand to attract his attention, but he turned away without seeing me, all of his interest concentrated on something which I could not see for the soldiers and the laurel shrubs which blocked my view. As I watched, Lavedrine bent low to examine something on the ground. He turned his head, said a few words over his shoulder to his companions. Had the officers not been dressed in French uniform, I might have thought that the ‘scientist of evil’ was searching innocently for mushrooms with his friends.

I cupped my hands, shouting through them like a speaking-trumpet, hoping to project my voice in his direction and overcome the rumbling of the crowd. ‘Colonel Lavedrine.’

The French soldier, who had snubbed me only a minute before, thrust his bayonet at my chest. The point quivered barely an inch or two from my heart. ‘Keep to your place, Prussian!’

‘My place is over there with Colonel Lavedrine,’ I replied angrily.

‘Do as he tells you, soldier. Let Procurator Stiffeniis through.’

While I was transfixed by the bayonet point, Lavedrine had come to my aid. We stared at each other, he on his side of the military barrier, I on mine. He looked as if he hadn’t slept, and maybe he had not. He was a man of sexual appetite, a frequenter of bordellos, as I recalled. Then again, perhaps he was truly shaken by the ‘terrible thing’ that he had seen that morning.

‘What’s this commotion about?’ I called to him.

‘Come over here,’ he shouted, making an impatient gesture with his hand. ‘Soldier, let him pass.’

I pushed forward, but the barrier refused to yield, the bayonet now held up to my face.

‘Are you deaf, man?’ Lavedrine stormed, his hand falling heavily on the shoulder of the soldier who was puzzling over which order to obey: keep all Prussians back, or let one through because he was a magistrate. ‘Stand aside!’

The man made a space, and I hurried through the gap in the French defence.

My own people saw it as a minor victory, and one or two let out triumphant cries.

‘This way,’ said Lavedrine, turning quickly, retracing his steps.

I asked myself again, what was he really doing in Lotingen? He had mentioned no official duties the night before, speaking only of vampirism with the natural curiosity which was his trademark. What ever I was about to see, I thought, I was the only Prussian who would see it. Had it not been for a shepherd boy, even I might not have been so privileged.

We kept to the edge of the lane. Under the shade of the overhanging trees, the weak sun made little impression. The two French officers that I had seen at a distance turned to face him. They saw me coming, too. Neither man said anything, but they could not hide their surprise.

‘This is Procurator Stiffeniis,’ Lavedrine informed them. ‘He represents the law in Lotingen.’ More stiffly, he added: ‘Take him forward, let him see what we have seen.’

Deference took the place of surprise on their faces. It was aimed at Lavedrine, of course. The two young adjutants hung on every word he spoke. With a nod that was at once a salute to him and an order for me to fall in and follow them, they stepped into the wood.

There was a small clearing, and we came to it obliquely. It faced the cemetery gate, which I could see from there with ease. With equal ease, any person coming out of the cemetery would have seen what was fixed to the trunk of the largest tree in the centre of the clearing. A stout rope had been strung on either side of a sturdy branch which was two or three feet higher than I am. Two nooses had been tied at either end of this short rope, and hanging from the nooses were the hands of a man, the wrists so limp that they must have been broken. His naked white arms and his shoulders were apparently untouched, though splashed with blood, which made what lay below seem all the more horrific.

I took a step closer.

The face was almost level with my own, but there was little of it left.

The eyes were two black holes. The ears were gone, and so was the nose. Huge gouges had been torn from the cheeks. The tongue had been pulled so fiercely before it gave that half of his gullet filled what remained of his mouth. Of the tongue it self there was no remaining trace. Shreds of flesh and muscle hung from the bones in streaks and tatters which were blackish red with coagulating gore. The chin was red-stained bone, the teeth and gums a clenched, naked grimace. Where the neck had been was a bloody knotted tangle of arteries and sinews.

I could go on, but what would be the use?

The body had been crucified, then flayed, then systematically ripped to pieces – from the face down to the knee-length boots. If any clothing there had been, it had been torn off. Indeed, there were scraps and strips of cloth caught up in the undergrowth and scattered on the ground. Below his twisted feet, there was a sodden muddy pool. His boots had sunk ankle-deep in it. So much blood had drained from the body that the earth could not absorb it all. As I examined the gaping crater where his stomach and his guts had been, I thought I saw impressions made by some thing sharp and pointed, which had caught and ripped along the bones of the ribcage and the pelvis.

‘Do you know him?’

Lavedrine shook me by the shoulder, and repeated the question.

‘I recognise the boots,’ I replied in a daze. I had seen those boots the evening before, while he sat on the table in his room, swinging his legs and telling me about his master who was dead. ‘His name was Ludo Mittner. This morning he…’ I caught my breath, and blew out loud. ‘Ludo should have taken the place of Lars Merson today as the new custodian of the cemetery.’

Lavedrine ran his hand through his hair. The curls rebelled, cascading over his forehead, shading his eyes. He looked towards the gates of the cemetery, brushing his troublesome locks aside. ‘Well, he was prevented from entering,’ he said.

‘Who found him?’ I asked.

Lavedrine turned and spoke to the officers.

My gaze was lost on the ravaged face of Ludo Mittner. I did not hear what was being said. I was trying to understand whether Ludo had been murdered in the same manner as the other two victims.

‘Not long after dawn, a patrol came by. Their attention was attracted by the baying of hounds. Their orders were to keep an eye on the cemetery during the night. I gather that there had been a riotous assembly…’

‘I was here last evening,’ I said distractedly.

I could guess what Ludo had been doing there so early. Merson’s job had fallen to him. He must have left his stinking cell in the Rectory Close while it was still night, eager to take up the position which was his by right without delay. I could see him hurrying to wards the cemetery.

‘What then?’ I asked. ‘After the soldiers found him.’

Lavedrine made a face. ‘The officer-in-charge, a corporal probably, would have carried the news to his superior officer. The officer-of-the-watch would have written a brief report, which was passed to Colonel Claudet. And he sent for me.’

I wondered what my position was. Could I speak to the soldiers and read the officer’s note in my capacity as the investigating magistrate? Or would I be refused in my capacity as a Prussian?

Perhaps Lavedrine understood what was passing through my mind. ‘The soldiers saw what we have seen,’ he said. ‘They may have noticed a good deal less. The officer-of-the-watch who wrote the note saw nothing at all. Claudet knows the bare facts, but not much else.’

‘Did anyone notice if the cemetery gates were locked?’ I asked.

Lavedrine bunched up his cheeks, let out a sigh of impotence, then directed my question at the two officers. They spoke together in whispers which sounded like the angry buzzing of bees above the quieter hum of the invisible crowd.

‘Colonel, tell your officers to hide nothing that they know or have seen,’ I appealed to Lavedrine. ‘Every detail is important. As you know, the investigation here in Lotingen is my responsibility.’ More coldly, I added: ‘That is, it was my responsibility until this morning.’

I spoke in French. I wanted the junior officers to understand what I had said. But Lavedrine answered me in guttural German. He wanted them to gauge the sharp ness of his reply, not the gist of what he said.

‘If this is your investigation, Stiffeniis, tell me what is happening in this cemetery. This is the second body that’s been found here.’

‘I need to know whether this man was killed before he entered the burial ground,’ I insisted, taking a step towards him, clenching my fists.

Lavedrine’s blue eyes peered into mine. ‘What will that establish?’

‘The sequence of events.’

He frowned and tapped his fist against his lips. ‘You don’t believe that he was killed by dogs, then?’

‘He was murdered first, then left to the dogs,’ I replied. ‘That is, the dogs probably chanced upon the body. There are packs of strays in Lotingen. My own house was attacked not long ago.’

I recalled the dogs outside my door, the violence with which the leader had thrown itself against the glass, the blood it left upon the window-pane. Had there been no glass, my own throat would have been at risk.