The Templar Prophecy (28 page)

Hart shot Zirkeler's left foot. It was situated about eight inches from Amira's leg. Zirkeler had been about to tuck it in, but hadn't yet shifted his weight. Hart was a countryman by birth. He had shot game all his life. He knew that a shotgun spread starts tight and then expands later. At under seven feet, it is still tight as a drum.

Zirkeler screamed.

Hart sprinted towards him, reversing the .410 as he ran.

Zirkeler's hand holding the knife dropped briefly to one side.

Hart smashed the .410 stock into Udo's face. Then he felt something heavy land on his back. It was Effi.

The four of them – Effi, Zirkeler, Amira and Hart – rolled onto the floor in a bloody, tangled mass.

Hart tried to wrest the knife from Zirkeler's hand. Amira was flailing around like a rag doll between them.

Zirkeler was a stronger man than Hart, despite the wound
to his foot. Hart felt himself beginning to be turned over. He realized, to his horror, that Effi was doing some of the turning. Hart quickly overcame any scruples he might have about hitting a woman and struck backwards with his elbow. He heard Effi grunt. But still she held on.

Zirkeler took the opportunity to lunge at Hart with his knife. Hart twisted away from the blow. The point of the knife glanced off the collar of Hart's leather jacket and skidded past his neck. Effi cried out behind him. Hart felt something spray onto the back of his head.

Beneath him, Amira began to struggle for air.

Hart brought both his forearms down on Zirkeler's knife hand.

Zirkeler dropped the knife. He wriggled out from beneath Amira and dragged himself to his feet. He was still mobile. The stiff leather of his SS jackboot had taken the worst of the squirrel-gun blast.

Hart threw out an arm and gave Zirkeler's leg a glancing blow. Zirkeler fell with a crash against the upper edge of the stairs. He twisted round and made a grab for the Roth-Steyr, which had fallen out of Hart's pocket in the fracas. He thumbed back the rusty hammer – something that Hart had failed to do – and fired directly at Hart's face.

The pistol exploded. Zirkeler began to scream – a series of long, wet howls, like those a wolf will make just after he has killed. Zirkeler's face looked as though it had been encased in a red plastic bag.

Hart crab-walked backwards across the floor. His face
and torso were covered in Zirkeler's blood. Two of Zirkeler's severed fingers lay in his lap. Hart skittered them off as though they were still alive.

Zirkeler sat at the top of the stairs waving the stump of his pistol hand and screaming. The niveous glint of his teeth shone through the breech where his mouth should have been.

Hart dragged Amira away from where Effi lay. Effi's hands were twitching as if she were dreaming. Her upper body was surrounded by a widening pool of blood. Hart would remember later how beautiful her blood had seemed – pristine, like the surface of the lake in the moonlight a few hours earlier.

Effi appeared to be looking through him, her face framed by the blood as if in a surrealist painting. Hart caught himself wondering how a woman blessed with the features of an angel could be so evil? What trick of fate had triggered the aberration that had turned such beauty into madness?

He knelt beside Effi and pressed his finger deep into her carotid artery, where Zirkeler's knife had nicked her. It was the only way he knew to staunch arterial blood.

Effi's legs began to drum on the ground.

Hart began to cry. With one hand still on Effi's neck, he reached his other hand across her body and laid it gently across her stomach, like a blessing. He felt her hand briefly rest on his – like a child's hand will do when it is half asleep – and then fall away. Her lips moved. He pressed his head close to hers and listened for what she had to say.

‘I hated you,' she said. ‘I loved you.' And then, ‘I'm sorry.'

Hart caressed her hair with the back of his hand. ‘Take care of our child.'

He felt the pulse beneath his hand weaken and then stop. He looked up, his face contorted with grief.

Zirkeler was struggling to his feet, using the banister as a crutch. One eye was hanging on a thread down his cheek and one of his ears was missing. What was left of his mouth hung open inanely, as if he were about to ask a question but had forgotten his original point.

Hart stood up and strode towards Zirkeler. He could hear shouting from downstairs. The sound of approaching feet.

He slammed Zirkeler in the chest with both his hands.

Zirkeler threw his arms in the air and toppled backwards. His head struck the stairs about eight feet down. He did a reverse somersault, his legs flailing above him. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he lay still.

SIXTY-THREE

Hart was ordered to leave Amira's bedside at two in the afternoon, just fifteen minutes after the hasty departure of the lawyer her newspaper had sent down from Munich to check her copy for libel. Fräulein Eisenberger needed her rest, he was told. Her doctors also failed to understand why she persisted in speaking endlessly on her phone despite such objects being banned in the hospital. They were a danger to medical equipment. Didn't these English people know that? Neither did they understand why Fräulein Eisenberger kept relentlessly tapping at her computer whilst still visibly ill. Patients should be patients. Thinking for oneself under such circumstances was forbidden by decree.

In the end, one of Amira's doctors insisted that she be tranquillized by intravenous drip. She had a severe concussion, he told Hart, albeit with no internal bleeding. But a concussion nonetheless. The hospital did not wish to be sued by her newspaper because their patient had suffered
unnecessary swelling or traumatic brain injury. The publicity would be catastrophic.

For a few moments, standing forlornly outside the hospital gates, Hart did not know what to do with himself. The thought of Effi and their unborn child ate away at him like acid. What had constrained her to act the way she did? Had she been mesmerized by Zirkeler? Or was it she who had done the mesmerizing? The thought of the beautiful, vital woman he had known being buried in a casket six feet beneath the ground, with his child still inside her, was almost more than he could bear. How could she have brought this on herself? She had been given everything – only to throw it all away because of some insane sense of fidelity to a flawed and foregone history.

Hart hadn't dared confess his real name to the German police during the course of his six-hour interrogation. He had decided to continue using his Johannes von Hartelius alias until the publication of Amira's detailed piece about the LB triggered the case for his exoneration. The local Tegernsee police force, overwhelmed by the ramifications of the case, had requested to see his passport, had given it a cursory viewing, and then kept it. They would no doubt run it through Interpol eventually. But the hold-up bought Hart some precious time. With his luck, when the Germans did finally cross-check his identity, Scotland Yard would drop the murder case against him and open up a brand-new case involving the use of a false passport by a man masquerading as himself.

Finally, pretty much by default, Hart found himself boarding the Bad Wiessee ferry. He sat in the same place, on the same boat he'd shared with Amira the day before. But everything looked different now. Then, he'd fancied himself in love. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, the main emotion he had been experiencing had probably been lust, twinned with just a little vainglory. He was an Aries. A man-child. A mythologizer. He had welcomed Effi Rache's seduction of him as his due. No. That still didn't cover it. In the final analysis, he had seduced himself.

He disembarked at the Bad Wiessee terminus and started up the hill towards the Alpenruh. He hadn't been able to visit Frau Erlichmann in the direct aftermath of what had taken place at Haus Walküre, but, thanks to her grandson Thilo and his friends, he knew just how much he owed her. She had acted like his fairy godmother throughout. And as his conscience.

It was at her request that Thilo and his friends had gone, first to the factory, and then on to the house, where they had engaged in a pitched battle with Udo Zirkeler's private army. That had been the origin of the commotion he had heard coming from Effi's garden, and which had succeeded in drawing the last of Zirkeler's men from their hiding place. Now Zirkeler's ‘apostles' were locked up, and the factory sealed inside a cordon sanitaire.

Hart paused halfway up the Alpenruh hill. He was struggling for air. It was only then that he realized that he had not slept for thirty straight hours. He lingered for a moment by the
bridge, taking deep breaths, trying to regain his equilibrium. He looked across at Effi's house. It was surrounded by a small army of police vehicles. He recalled how innocent it had seemed at first viewing, surrounded by its lush cattle meadows and its wild bird cover. He remembered all the things that he had done in that house. The words he had said. The emotions he had felt. They all seemed so hollow now. As if someone else had been inhabiting his body and using his mind.

He glanced up towards the Alpenruh. A solitary figure was standing on the terrace, her face turned towards the afternoon sun. Frau Erlichmann. Hart raised his hand and waved at her, but she did not see him.

He continued up the track. When he was about fifteen feet away from where she was standing, she started. He called out and identified himself, and her face changed.

‘Ah. Baron. I didn't see you. I was enjoying the feel of the sun on my face.' Frau Erlichmann made an apologetic movement towards her eyes. ‘Come. Let us go inside and take some coffee. It is well past three o'clock. I have made a
mirabellenkuchen
. The plums come from that tree over there by the shelter.' She fluttered her hand, but it was plain to Hart that she could not make out the tree herself. ‘It is a good tree. It produces more and more mirabelles every year. Just like Pandora's box.' She laughed in delight at her own image. ‘I have covered the cake in walnut
streusel
. It is your favourite, if I remember?'

‘Yes. It is my favourite. That, and the marzipan kirsch
Stollen
you made when we first met. Thank you.'

Hart followed Frau Erlichmann into the
esszimmer
. The smell of the house enfolded him like the memory of a perfect past he had inherited from someone else and arrogated to himself. He caught the bittersweet smell of ground coffee. The odour of chopped walnuts, cinnamon and other spices. The scent of air-dried hams and salamis. The smell of beeswax furniture polish, and of the apple, cherry and cedar wood logs stacked inside the
Kachelofen
alcove in readiness for winter, and chosen specifically for the scent they would give off.

‘May I stay here for a few days, Frau Erlichmann? Just until Amira is well again and fit enough to travel? I am a little tired.'

‘You may stay as long as you like, Baron. My hotel is empty, as you know. And my maid has little enough to do. Are you and Fräulein Eisenberger going to be together again?'

‘It seems unlikely.'

‘I'm so sorry.'

‘Don't be. One makes one's own bed in this life. I seem to have contrived the apple-pie version for myself. I feel like a perfect fool.'

Frau Erlichmann didn't answer. Instead, she busied herself making their coffee. First she set the pot into boiling water. Then she fixed the filter in place and wet the grounds. Then, slowly, she dripped the parboiled water through the filter.

Hart watched her with a half smile on his face. He felt a sudden sense of freedom in her presence. A sense of infinite possibility. If she could lead her life, at close to ninety years of age, with such elegance and grace, surely he should be able to contrive something similar at the age of thirty-nine?

‘This cake is quite wonderful.'

‘Thank you, Baron.'

Hart sat back in his chair. He gazed around the room. At the endless rows of antlers on every wall. At the green-tiled
Kachelofen
with the neat piles of logs beside it in their dedicated alcove. He looked at the ancient pine floorboards, worn to burnished mahogany by a thousand feet. At the French windows leading out onto the terrace, with their dark green shutters folded neatly out of the way. At the waist-high panelling which strayed onto the windowsills and surrounds of each bow window, as if the carpenter who had made it could not bear to sign off on his work.

‘You can't possibly leave this place. It can't pass into other hands. It would be a tragedy.'

‘Everything changes, Baron. Nothing remains the same. We cling to the past at our peril.'

Hart nodded at her. But his thoughts were elsewhere.

Frau Erlichmann inclined her head towards him. She spoke gently, as if to a child. ‘What have they done with the Holy Lance?'

Hart reached down for the bag beside him. He pushed aside the cake plates and laid the Lance on the table between them. ‘I stole it. Just before I left Effi's house and confronted the police. I also stole my grandparents' photograph. I don't think anyone will care. The Viennese authorities think the Lance is a fake, anyway. They are convinced they have the real thing at the Hofburg Palace.'

Frau Erlichmann shook her head. ‘This is not a fake, Baron.
I can assure you of that. This is the real Lance.'

‘How can you be sure?'

‘Because the strip of vellum I translated for you leaves no room for doubt. It is in the form of a letter. Written by your ancestor, Johannes von Hartelius, to his direct descendants in the male line. I shall tell you why he did that in a minute. The letter is dated Boreas, 1198. Boreas is one of the Anemoi. He is the Greek God of the freezing north wind that heralds winter. He is called the Devouring One. He had snakes instead of feet, and he blew the winds out of his mouth through a conch shell. He could turn himself into a stallion and father colts. All that the mares he mated had to do was to turn their hindquarters towards where he blew, and they would be impregnated without the need for coition. He lived in Hyperborea. Which is the place beyond the north wind. A place of exile, Baron. A place beyond the pale.'

‘Why are you telling me this? What are you suggesting? That he was exiled?'

‘Be patient, Baron. Age teaches us patience.' Frau Erlichmann raised her magnifying glass and studied the strip of manuscript in front of her. ‘The ancients understood the importance of symbols. They expected their readers to be literate in such things. Not everything can be written down in black and white.'

Hart sat back in his chair. ‘I'm sorry. I am dog-tired. It makes me tetchy. Please continue. I want to hear what my ancestor has to tell me.'

Frau Erlichmann shook her head. ‘No. You will not want to hear this.'

‘Read it to me. Please.'

Frau Erlichmann remained silent for a long time. At one point Hart began to wonder if she had drifted off to sleep. But when he looked closer he could see her lips moving. He realized she was praying.

Finally she looked up at him. Her eyes were kind. The eyes of a mother. ‘The letter goes like this: “I, Johannes von Hartelius, Baron Sanct Quirinus, hereditary guardian of the Holy Lance, lawful husband of Adelaïde von Kronach, lawful father of Johannes, Paulus, Agathe and Ingrid von Hartelius, former Knight Templar, exonerated from his vows of chastity and obedience by Frederick VI of Swabia, youngest son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, acting lawfully in the name of his brother, Henry VI of Staufen, do dictate this letter on the day of my execution, to be placed inside the Holy Lance as a warning to all those who may come after me.”'

‘His execution?' Hart leant across the table. His face was pale with shock.

‘Yes, Baron. His execution.'

‘Why? What did he do?'

Frau Erlichmann addressed the manuscript again. ‘This explains it better than I can, I think. “Swayed by my unlawful love for Markgräfin Elfriede von Drachenhertz, intended lawful daughter of the king, and former lawful wife of Elfriede von Hohenstaufen, military governor of Carinthia, I turned against my king and misused the Holy Lance, which had been
placed in my care. In doing this, I refused to heed Horace's warning, passed down to me with the guardianship of the Lance.
Vir bonus est quis? Qui consulta patrum, qui leges iuraque servat –
He is truly a good man who observes the decree of his rulers and the laws and rights of his fellow citizens. Instead, I purposefully misunderstood the words Catullus handed down to all unvirtuous men –
Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua
. I thus deserve my fate. May God have mercy on my soul.”'

‘What does he mean, Frau Erlichmann? What is he saying?'

‘He is saying that “the vows that a woman makes to her fond lover ought to be written on the wind and in the swiftly flowing stream”.'

‘I do not understand.'

‘Oh, Baron. No man has ever understood this. What Catullus is saying is that a woman will tell her besotted lover whatever she thinks he wants to hear.'

Hart sat still for a long time, staring into his coffee cup. ‘Is there more?'

‘No. Need there be?'

Hart sighed. ‘What was the name of the woman who betrayed him?'

‘He betrayed himself, Baron. Your ancestor had only himself to blame.'

‘The name, Frau Erlichmann. Please tell me the name. I sometimes misunderstand your German pronunciation.'

‘Elfriede von Hohenstaufen.'

‘No. Tell me what her married name would have been.'

‘Markgräfin Elfriede von Drachenhertz.'

‘Elfriede Rache?'

Frau Erlichmann smiled. It was the serene smile of one who has seen everything, and who is content that their time should come. ‘Only you can decide that, Baron. Only you can know such a thing.'