‘Is her son with her?’ he asks.
‘He plays by her side.’
‘Praise be.’
The girl in blue is silent, listening. From the copse outside an owl calls, its rising voice like a lost question. The woman opposite shudders and continues with her prayers.
‘We hear you, madam. She says you have helped her before, and she asks your assistance again. Will you help her?’
‘With all my heart, and tell her … tell her I’m sorry.’
The girl in blue smiles so kindly, all her companions feel a little of their guilt, their worry roll off their shoulders and into the shadows.
‘She knows, and she thanks you.’
25 February 1784, Oberbach, Duchy of Maulberg
D
ISTRICT OFFICER BENEDICT VON KRALL
lowered his weight onto the stool with a grunt and lit his pipe, all the while watching the young Englishman sitting on the other side of the table. The man was leaning his head against the wall and staring blankly in front of him. The oil lamp sputtered and settled. He gave no sign of having heard Krall enter the room, but he seemed calm enough. Krall jerked his head and heard a shuffle as the guard retreated into the shadows a pace. The ties at the neck of the Englishman’s shirt were loose, showing the hollows around his throat and collarbone. Krall thought of a portrait he had seen once at the palace of a young man, similarly perfect in looks. The high cheekbones, large eyes, full mouth – a strange mix of the innocent and the sensuous. Here, tucked under the Town Hall of Oberbach with its rough plaster walls and earth floors, they could, like that youth caught on canvas, be from any age, any time. The lamp between them sputtered again and the darkness crossed the young man’s face like the wing of a crow, and away. The Englishman was twenty-five – twenty-six, perhaps. His smooth forehead was smeared with blood.
‘Why did you kill her, Mr Clode?’
No answer.
English felt like a forgotten taste on Krall’s tongue. The words were rusty with lack of use, but there they were, as soon as he called on them. For a moment he thought he caught the stink of the Thames at Black Wharf. He sniffed sharply and looked down. The Englishman’s hands lay on the table in front of him, his bandaged wrists uppermost with dark blooms showing, the wounds declaring themselves, as if he were offering them up, asking for some explanation, but then his face was turned away. Not a request for enlightenment then. More an appeal.
See what you have made me do
. The palms of his hands looked very white. Not the hands of a working man.
Krall had had thick dark hair once, had it when he spent his years in London, learning trade, learning the language till for a while it was as familiar as his mother tongue. That was long ago, before war and worry turned his hair grey and cut deep lines into his forehead, around his eyes and mouth. Then, during his ten years as District Officer in Oberbach, he’d heard enough stories to turn his grey hair white. Women who’d smothered their bastard children; men who had taken a life over a game of cards, or lashed out at a friend to find a moment later that hell had chosen them in that second and they were damned. Nothing quite like this though. He blew the smoke out of his nose, feeling old.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said more sharply. The floor and walls seemed to muffle his voice, steal it away from the air, so Krall brought his fist down hard on the wooden table, making the timbers dance.
It startled the younger man. He blinked and looked about the cellar as if seeing it for the first time. The cellar smelled of damp earth and wood-smoke. The air here still belonged to winter, as if the town were keeping some of the cold as a souvenir of the season passed.
The Englishman was still dressed in Carnival costume, in the chequered blue and yellow motley of the Fool. He seemed to notice this as Krall watched him, and rubbed the cotton with his fingers. His wooden mask lay on the table between them with its wide carved grin, a nose long and hooked like a beak.
‘There was a party.’
Krall blew out another lung-f of smoke. ‘Yes, there was a party. It is
Festennacht
, Carnival.’
The young man had a slight smile on his lips. He began to sing under his breath. ‘
Girl, come to my side, pretty as milk and blood
.’
Krall crossed his arms over his body. The singing scraped his nerves. He thought of the woman in white stretched out across the floor of the haberdasher’s back room. Her bloodshot eyes, open and amazed. The slice across the wrist. The pool of blood shed by the Englishman before Colonel Padfield had beaten down the locked door and rescued him. The open razor, slicked with it.
‘The woman,’ he said loudly, trying to drown out the tune. ‘Did you smother her? Did you smother her and then try to kill yourself?’ The young man was still mouthing the words of the folk tune. Krall leaned forward. ‘Listen to me!’
The young man flinched away. The song stopped.
‘There was blood,’ he said, and lifted his arms and wrapped them around his head as if fending off a beating. ‘A man …’
‘What man?’
‘Masked! He said he would help me. I did not feel … Things were wrong. I was frightened …’ He suddenly gasped and his eyes widened. For a moment it seemed to Krall there was some sense there. ‘Where is my wife?’ Suddenly the young man had thrown himself across the table and grabbed at the lapels of Krall’s coat. Krall heard a movement behind him and lifted his hand, telling the guard to keep back. The Englishman’s blue eyes were glittering, feverish, an inch from Krall’s own. ‘Where is my wife?’ There was a strange tang to his scent. Something floral.
‘Mrs Clode is safe,’ Krall said quietly. ‘Release me. Release me before the guard knocks you senseless.’
The intelligence behind the young man’s eyes seemed to fade. He looked at his fingers and gradually uncurled them, retreated to his stool. Krall exhaled, slowly. ‘The lady dressed in white, Mr Clode. You knew her, did you not? You met at court, in Ulrichsberg. Lady Martesen. You were found with her body. Did you smother her?’
‘There were fires everywhere.’
‘Torches. For the Fool’s Parade. Listen, Mr Clode. The lady in white.’
The prisoner looked up and met Krall’s gaze. Again, the District Officer sensed a struggle for understanding, for reason. The man’s lips began to move again. ‘What is it?’ Krall asked.
‘Water … water …’
‘You want water?’ Krall twisted in his chair to nod to the guard. The Englishman grasped at his throat.
‘I am drowning.’
‘No, Mr Clode.’ The Englishman stumbled upright, but at once his legs gave way. He spat onto the floor and hauled himself into a corner, retching and gasping. Krall watched him, frowning deeply, but making no movement. He had seen men drunk, he had seen them mad with grief or rage. He had not seen this. Had the horror of the killing simply snapped the prisoner’s mind? The man’s breathing evened out. He looked up at Krall from his corner. ‘Wake me. Please. I am dreaming. Wake me.’
The room became silent. Outside, Krall could hear singing – drunks banishing winter with schnapps and country songs of growth and fertility.
‘Why did you cut her wrist before you sliced your own?’
The young man held his hands at the sides of his head and began to rock back and forth. There was something unnerving about the movement, its insistent repetition. There was no sense in this. Krall sighed and stuck his pipe into the hanging pockets of his coat.
‘I cannot wake you, you are not dreaming.’ Krall stood up. ‘Mr Daniel Clode, in the name of the Duke of Maulberg I am arresting you for the murder of Her Grace Agatha Aralia Maria Martesen, Countess of Fraken-Lichtenberg.’ He turned to the guard behind him. ‘Get him out of that damn costume, and wash his face.’
The same evening, Leuchtenstadt, Maulberg
‘I do apologise for keeping you waiting, brothers!’ There was a scraping of chairs as two men in dark coats got to their feet. Herr Professor Dunktal closed the door behind him, pulled a signet ring from his pocket, then placed it on the third finger of his right hand. Turning back to his companions, he held it out. They bowed over his hand and kissed it with reverence. It was a small chamber, little more than a closet, so the three men found each other uncommonly close.
‘The arrangements are all in place?’ Herr Dunktal asked as he rubbed his hands together and blew on them. It was a cold night. He seemed cheerful though. His red, round cheeks were lifted with a broad smile. He was perhaps some ten years older than his companions, nearer to his fortieth year than his thirtieth, but his large eyes and smooth forehead, and those red apple cheeks that looked as if they’d been stolen from a peasant woman, gave him a youthful appearance. He would have been handsome were it not for his thin, long nose. Some of his students in the university Law Faculty revered him. The rest called him ‘The Beak’.
The two young men sharing this closet were of those that thought him a visionary. One of them brought his heels together and lifted his head. His chin was rather weak. ‘Yes, sir. The supplicant is in the second studio, working on his answers. The room is secure.’
Dunktal nodded. ‘His work so far?’
The second man handed him a sheaf of papers. Dunktal remained standing and read a few paragraphs at random. ‘“What would your response be if asked by a senior member of the organisation to perform an immoral act?” And he answers: “No senior member of the organisation would ask me to perform an immoral act. If it appeared immoral it would only be because I did not comprehend the reasoning. I should perform every act without hesitation, trusting in the superior knowledge and enlightenment of my seniors”.’ He smiled. ‘Very good. Is he sincere in this, Nickolaus?’
The man who had handed him the papers nodded. ‘Yes, sir. He is quite devoted.’ He hesitated. ‘But sir, nevertheless, are you sure it is correct to award him the next rank? He is still young, impulsive. More heart than head. I fear he might say more than he should if entrusted with our more …’
Dunktal patted him on the shoulder, then moved past him to open the door into the second studio. It was a larger room, almost entirely empty but for a writing desk and table at which sat a youth, blond and slight, with inks, papers and pen in front of him, and hanging on the wall above his desk an image of an owl, its talons holding open a book. He had heard Dunktal enter, and ceased to write, but according to his instructions, did not turn round. Dunktal allowed himself another small smile and withdrew again, continuing his conversation as if there had been no interruption.
‘It is not in our hands, brothers. Our superiors see this young man as quite a prize. He is rich. His father has become intimate with the Duke. You have done well, Nickolaus, to bring him so far, so quickly.’ He placed a fatherly hand on the young man’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘It has been noted. I was told to tell you. It has been noted.’
It was clear Nickolaus still had his doubts. Dunktal watched. It was another opportunity to see if the habits of secrecy and obedience so carefully trained into these men still held.
‘For the greater good, and by your command, sir.’
They held. ‘Quite right, my brother. We grow stronger every day.’
Four hours later the rooms were swept clean, the papers removed and the picture of the owl taken down. The place looked innocent once more. Nickolaus and his friend led the young man between them from the place. There was a shadow among the shadows on the opposite side of the street but they did not see it. When they had passed, the dark shifted and a rather nondescript youth with a snub nose emerged from the side street. It was a cold night to spend so long watching a locked door, but it had been worth it. He drove his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and followed.
Herr Benedict von Krall drew the cold air into his lungs. In the last ten years his duties as District Officer had rarely taken him to the palace of his sovereign, the Duke of Maulberg. He feared they would now. He visited once a year, as a rule, to report on the people under his jurisdiction. Sometimes, when violence was done it had been necessary to submit a supplementary report, and a recommendation to the Privy Council of sentence. In such a way the seasons had passed. His daughters were married, and would have made their mother proud, had she lived. The rivals in the Empire continued to growl and push, busy old Prussia weighing down on them from above, Austria attempting to embrace them from below, but for the last twenty years at least they had not shed each other’s blood. The people had grown used to peace. With his encouragement and that of the Mayor of Oberbach, his little town had started to do rather well in the linen trade. They had built a new Town Hall and begun to grow fat. But now this. Members of the court always attended the Shrove Tuesday Carnival in Oberbach. It made a change from their usual entertainments at the palace. Operas. Masked Balls. Krall spat on the hard ground. They had never set about murdering each other before on his patch. Perhaps he could bundle the hurt of it and carry it back to the court, and so defend his town from the shame and scandal.
Krall considered. A victim much respected at court, a killer who was English and a guest at the palace, yet in its way it seemed simple enough. An attempt at seduction, fuelled by the bacchanalia of Carnival, which turned to violence then an attempt at suicide. Where did the Englishman get the razor from? It was one sold by Kupfel’s in Karlstrasse back in Ulrichsberg. Pearl handle. Perhaps his new wife had bought it for him – but why would he bring it to Carnival? Krall growled softly to himself. It was as if he had a little demon locked in his own mind, always asking these wheedling questions. And why, the little demon continued, did Lady Martesen show no bruising? No clothing torn? Krall came out into the back yard of the Town Hall, then moved slowly along the path towards the main square, where he found His Excellency, Chancellor Swann, waiting for him.
‘This is a bad business, Krall,’ Swann said at once. ‘It was a pity Colonel Padfield found Mr Clode before he bled to death.’
‘Perhaps, Your Excellency.’ He realised the Chancellor was looking at him sideways, eyebrows raised, and cursed his questioning demon. ‘He’s in a strange state. Like a simpleton. Mad. Unless his mind clears, we may need to lock him away for good. We cannot behead an imbecile – even an English one.’