Arcanum (7 page)

On top of the western ridge was the White Fortress, bright and shining against the green of the wood and the blue of the sky. On the eastern side, the White Tower, as dark as the other was bright. Everyone passing through – south to the mountain passes or north to the cities on the plains – was aware of those two authorities.

He looked from one monumental edifice to the other. It wasn’t by chance or accident of geography that the town had grown up under the walls of the fortress, rather than huddling close to the flanks of Goat Mountain. As much as the prince’s subjects feared their lord’s temporal power, the laws that they were made to live by were at least comprehensible by mortals.

Magical things – like unicorns – were wild, quixotic, barely understood. That was the hexmasters’ world, and poor Büber, who had always lived on the line between, had finally crossed over into it.

There were books about magic in the library, but no books of magic. Those were all carefully sequestered away and kept under lock, key, and far more arcane guards somewhere inside the ill-named White Tower.

An uninitiated man, even of Thaler’s standing, would never get to see what was written in those books: it gave him an odd feeling in his stomach, to know that they were denied to him, even though the thought of opening even the most elementary primer in magic made him sweat.

There might be a way around that prohibition, though. It was risky, and he wouldn’t take it yet. There were other avenues to be exhausted first.

This was better. He had started to plan, tentatively yes, but a solid course of action nevertheless. He breathed deeply, and caught the scent of pine on the wind. So: when he got back to the library, he would still have his duties to perform. His main work was overseeing the cataloguing and indexing of every book in the library, a task that had been barely started when he first entered the cool marble dome as a thin, pale youth, and that would still be incomplete when they carried him out feet first, however many years in the future that might be.

No one would be checking on him, though. He could, if he wanted, spend each and every day trawling the shelves for books of lore, the bestiaries and the philosophies, until he found his answer. He’d have to dig through the layers of manuscripts, and start with the very oldest. He would have to keep notes of his search – in code, perhaps. Yes, a code: a complex cipher, not one that could be solved with a moment’s glance.

Thaler took one last deep breath of the morning riverside air, and turned to go back the way he’d come: the alleys of the Old Town were such that the shortest way to the library was to take the long way around.

Walking back along the quay, he paused to let a carter nudge the wheels of his barrow towards the waiting warehouse. As his gaze followed the man’s broad back, he caught sight of a woman collecting an oilskin-wrapped bundle from a merchant.

He knew her, and guessed what she was now carrying, a heavy load caught up in both her arms and clutched to her chest. She was intending to go towards the Town Hall, away from where Thaler was, but she sensed she was being watched.

She turned quickly, curls of long dark hair escaping from her loose plait.

“Mr Thaler? Can you now
smell
books?”

She smiled and stopped. The weight she was carrying made it seem boorish to expect her to walk a single extra step towards him, so he went to her instead.

“Miss Morgenstern.” There was something else he should be saying. “Happy…”

“Purim, Mr Thaler. It starts on Friday.” She smiled at him. “Happy Purim indeed.”

“And this Purim? You build tents, yes?”

“That’s the Feast of Tabernacles, Mr Thaler. At Purim we get wildly, incoherently drunk and burn an effigy of the wicked Haman.” She smiled again, and hugged the bundle of books a little tighter. “The men do, at least.”

Thaler nodded with satisfaction. “Just like all
our
festivals, then. We’ll make good Wotan-worshippers of you Jews yet.”

“I think Father would have something to say about that.” She hefted the books again. They were clearly heavy. She looked down at them, then up at Thaler. “I’m sure he’d welcome you to our house later, if you wanted to pay a visit. He’s busy now organising the wood for the bonfire, and a hundred other things I’m sure.”

“Do you know …?”

She looked up at the sky with a little flick and shake of her head. “A copy of the works of Josephus, which I’m sure you already have, a part of Maimonides – I’m not sure which part, and I don’t think Father does either – and a Berber translation of a discourse on Greek geometry. Euclid? Or did he say of the school of Euclid? I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Mr Thaler.”

That a Jewess knew of Euclid, let alone carried one of his books in her arms, was odd enough. “Tell your father I may well drop by. I’d like to check his Maimonides against ours.”

“He’ll be delighted as always, if a little distracted. I have to go, or I’ll drop them on the way. Tell me, Mr Thaler, why do they have to make books so big?” She adjusted her load one last time and, before he had a chance to answer, started to stride up the quayside, her skirts flapping and snapping like a sail.

“The words, Miss Morgenstern,” Thaler replied. “It’s because of all the words.”

She didn’t wave to show that she’d heard, just carried on towards the bridge and the road that led off it, up the hill to the Old Market and Jews’ Alley where most of her kind lived. There was even room for a man as unorthodox – that was their word, not his – as Aaron Morgenstern.

So: no more delay. To work – the first books to find would be whatever the library carried of the Rabbi Maimonides, and then he’d see about Büber’s unicorn. The confusion he’d felt had gone like a mist burnt away by the rising sun. He set out, his footsteps over the cobbles almost energetic.

He hated winter, hated the cold and the dark and the damp. Even the library, bathed in perpetual light, seemed smaller and more joyless under a thick blanket of iron-hard snow. Everything was just more difficult.

And now it was spring. The Ostara festival had been earlier that week, an excuse for eating and drinking and being as merry as the Jews were planning to get for their Purim celebrations. Not that librarians were supposed to get drunk, though they sometimes did. Neither were they supposed to engage in the more earthy offerings of the goddess, though that, too, was sometimes honoured more in the breach. And they weren’t supposed to marry: their books were to be their wives, their fellow librarians their family.

It was mostly enough for Thaler. Only sometimes – as with the mention of Büber’s casual whoring – did it suddenly bite him hard. He kept himself insulated against the world for the most part, with an armour of leather binding, glued spines and black lettering.

Up Coin Street: windows were open, and the tap-tap of hammers and hiss of scalding steam drifted out from the workshops, bringing the smell of hot metal with it. Everyone seemed hard at work, except him. He felt ashamed, and started to hurry.

When it was done, and the guards had escorted Gerhard and a white-faced Felix back to the fortress, Büber stood in silent contemplation in front of the pressing pit, his teeth grazing at the scar-tissue of one of his finger stumps.

The crowd, which had gathered to hear Walter of Danzig’s bones crack, started to leave, and Reinhardt, who’d been in charge of the execution, waited for Büber to give the nod and start the business of raising the massive stone slab.

The sacred grove of ash trees was in the main square of the town, surrounded by tall houses in the same way that the grove surrounded the bleached, smoothed pole of the irminsul. Büber looked up at the pale, ancient trunk, crowned with thick iron nails that bled rust.

The pit was at the base of the irminsul itself. Long ago, their priest-princes had sacrificed captives to Wotan One-Eye by hanging them from the trees. More civilised times had decided that the gods didn’t need blood to keep the crops growing and the summer returning, and the pressing pit had been devised to execute criminals out of sight, if not out of hearing.

Quite how crushing a man’s breath from his body until his ribs snapped and his skull shattered counted as civilised escaped Büber. There were quicker, cleaner deaths to be had.

“Come on then, Captain.” He was weary of this already. “Let’s get it done.”

Reinhardt ordered his men to haul on the rope that passed through the block-and-tackle, and together they watched the stone winched, inch by inch, from the socket in the ground.

The Teuton had been spread-eagled and each limb tied to an inset iron ring. He’d been struggling and screaming and cursing, and it had taken strong men to hold him down. It would take only one to cut him free and remove him from the pit.

Büber pulled out the knife from his belt and went round each corner to saw through the cords, even as the stone carried on rising. As he stepped back, there was a sucking sound and a wet thud. That would be the Teuton’s head.

There was a drain, but that didn’t stop the flags that formed the floor of the pit from being stained almost black. It smelt of everything that had been in the man before the stone came down.

“It’ll need sluicing out,” said Büber, and when Reinhardt grimaced, he added plainly: “You want my job?”

“Thank you kindly, but no, Master Büber. The men’ll see to it.”

Büber unfolded the waxed canvas sheet next to the pit, and took hold of the Teuton’s arms. He gave a tug, and decided that the rest would probably follow. He stepped backwards, easing the body onto the sheet. It was so disarticulated as to appear boneless.

The face was the worst. Danzig looked almost, but not quite, unrecognisable. The chest was a forest of white bone splinters, and his stomach had burst. In contrast, the hands and feet were pristine. Büber used the toe of his boot to arrange the body, then folded the edges of the heavy cloth together. He knelt down and started to sew the shroud up with a bodkin and thick thread.

Reinhardt and his crew chocked the pressing stone up on blocks of timber, and started pouring buckets of water collected from a fountain into the pit. They had stiff-bristled brooms to attack the gore.

Büber looked up from his task occasionally, catching Reinhardt’s gaze. They wore the same expressions of grim-faced resignation. They had their orders, and they knew better than to disobey, even if some of the things they were told to do didn’t make sense, or were foul.

At some point, someone from the stables brought a horse for him, and the Teuton’s own. He wasn’t much of a rider. He could do it, but preferred his own two feet.

The smell made his own horse shy away, but the shaggy Teuton mount seemed less affected: perhaps where it came from had inured it to the stink of blood and shit.

“Give me a hand here,” said Büber, and he and Reinhardt lifted the sewn shroud across the Teuton’s saddle. Some leakage was inevitable, as his needlework wasn’t perfect. Reinhardt looked down at his surcoat. They both shrugged, and Büber tied the shroud on to the shuffling horse.

“Go carefully, huntmaster.”

“I’ve no intention of getting within a mile of the Teutons,” he said. “I’ll leave that to the Bavarians.”

“All the same, these things can come back and bite us little people on the arse.” Reinhardt gave up and wiped his hands clean of sticky liquid, of the whole business. “The prince knows best, I suppose.”

“Whether he does or doesn’t is no concern of mine,” said Büber. He fixed a lead to the Teuton horse’s bridle and fastened it to his saddle, then mounted up. He had a way to go: he’d be lucky to make the thirty old Roman miles from Juvavum to Simbach before it grew dark. “He’s the prince, and that’s the end of it.”

He rode down to the quayside and across the bridge, picking up the via that ran north. The river was on his left, the hill country to his right, and he hadn’t gone far before he met two men.

The first was on one side of the road, the second on the other, walking almost in the ditches of the via, but both were shouting out the same name. Through cupped hands, they called for Georg.

Büber’s horse drew level, passing between them. The man on the left turned to glance at Büber. Both of them were expecting just another traveller, and were surprised by the flare of mutual recognition.

“Peter?”

Büber looked again. It was Kelner. “Martin. What in the gods’ names are you doing?”

Kelner put his hand to his forehead and tightened his fingers across his temples. “My brother’s boy’s gone missing.” He looked around at the woods and the hills, and further away at the snow-covered mountaintops. “Can’t find him anywhere.”

The other man crossed the via and passed Kelner a water bottle. “The kid was looking after the pigs. The pigs were all there, but …” and he shrugged, “no Georg.”

It wasn’t his business, but Kelner was, if not a friend, certainly an acquaintance. Büber patted his horse’s neck and swung himself out of the saddle and onto the stone road.

“No reason for the lad to run off, I suppose?” Life could be rough-and-ready in th
e wilds. Children had to be taught to attend to their duties, sometimes with the back of a hand. Even Felix was beaten by the signore.

“My brother’s a good father,” said Kelner, “and Georg has never given him any real trouble. He’s no paragon, but you know, he’s a boy. It’s not like him to just disappear.”

“And the other kids?” Büber worried at one of his finger stumps.

“All accounted for. Peter, he’s only nine. He hasn’t run off with one of the other children, and he’s not out chasing girls: his balls haven’t dropped yet.” Kelner turned slowly again, aware that he should still be searching for his nephew. His gaze took in the Teuton horse and its load. “What in Midgard have you got there?”

“I’m a prince’s man, and I’m about my duties,” he said.

“That’s a body,” said Kelner’s kinsman. “Whose is it?”

“Some Teuton mercenary who pissed off Gerhard. He got pressed for his troubles.”

“But why have you got it?”

“Martin, I don’t have to explain myself to you, and I need to be on my way.” Büber put his hand on his saddle pommel, ready to remount. Kelner snagged the reins in his fist.