HS04 - Unholy Awakening (19 page)

The door closed with another click.

I stood for some minutes with my hand on my neck. There was no mirror in the room. Had Lavedrine really seen a mark there? Had it not faded away by now? I dressed quickly, changing my linen and my shirt, then set the lantern on a table by the narrow bed, sat down, and began to examine the papers that he had left behind. He had told me not to dismiss the idea of the vampire from my thoughts.

What did he mean by that? And could he be correct when he said that Grangé had not been the only victim of a murder in the cottage?

One thing that Lavedrine had said was clear. The description of the fatal wound to the dead man’s neck was too similar to the injuries suffered by the victims in Lotingen to be ignored. I closed my eyes and I recalled the horrid tearing at the necks of Lars Merson and Angela Enke.

There was something disquieting about all of the attacks.

How could someone strike the fatal blow before the chosen victim realised what was happening? How had the killer got so close, and why had the victims not tried to defend themselves? This was the stuff of legend, particularly those concerning Prussian vampires. The victim often recognised the killer, sometimes kissing him or her in a sign of welcome, failing to realise that the creature was interested in one thing only: sucking the life-blood from whomever had invited it to cross the threshold.

The doctor’s medical report was terse:
a fatal incision to the artery in the right side of the neck causing irreparable loss of blood
. But then the doctor had added a short note. Second Lieutenant Gaspard was known to him personally, he said.

Who
were
his particular friends?

I turned to the second report, and I found a partial answer to my question.

Lavedrine had added a signed note in his own hand in the left-hand margin:

He was a friend and fellow-lodger of Second Lieutenant Philippe Gaspard, the man who was murdered on the night of…

The two young officers had shared an apartment in town, and Lecompte had been attacked in the same manner, and in the same street, as his friend. The only difference was that Henri Lecompte had survived the violence, which had taken place two nights before the murder of Philippe Gaspard, and in the very same alley.

Was something illegal going on there, and had the two young men discovered it?

I turned to the final page of the sheaf, and I read that a third young officer had been registered as living in the same suite of apartments. Again, he was a second lieutenant. Again, he was a hussar. He had been reported missing a week or so before the other two were attacked. In his case, for some reason that was not clear to me, it was suspected that he had deserted his post and fled from Marienburg.

Sebastien Grangé, second lieutenant, Fourth Company, Eleventh Hussars…

If he had run away, Lavedrine and I would have been spared the sight of his corpse.

A trumpet reveille called me from my sleep.

I waited for an hour or more, but Lavedrine did not come. The night before, however, he had told me what he wanted me to do. I must go to the tavern on the other bank of the river, and question the land lord. I opened the door, intending to leave, and I found that a piece of bread and honey and a shot of cognac had been left on a wooden tray outside my door. This was a welcome surprise. I carried the tray inside the room, satisfied my hunger, then went in search of the main gate.

I passed from one courtyard to another.

Blacksmiths were shoeing cavalry chargers in one yard, saddle-makers were beating out leather in another, wheel-wrights and carpenters were making wagons here, while soldiers were marching and training everywhere else. No-one asked me my business, not even the sentries on the main gate, who were resting idly on their muskets. It was early morning, and the long day had hardly begun. They let me out of the fortress on the simple assurance that I was going to meet Colonel Lavedrine. Their lips hardly moved as they muttered a gruff, ‘
Va bien
.’

I passed from shade to muted light.

Inside the fortress, the high walls, soaring towers and covered walkways created deep shadows everywhere, a sort of permanent evening, while on the riverbank, the sky was a rippling sheet of mother-of-pearl, the sun still struggling to make its first appearance, but casting a shimmering, blinding light on everything. Without Lavedrine, I had no access to a carriage. Still, the thought of walking across the river and the bridge was not unpleasant, and in ten minutes or so, having passed a score of men who were smoking and fishing, I had reached the far bank. It was a mile or so to the tavern standing off the high road where Lavedrine and I had stopped the night before.

As I turned off the road at the Black Bull, I lingered for some moments.

The view across the river was impressive, the fortress in the distance, its red-brick walls and tiled roofs gleaming in the morning light. And despite the unkempt character of the countryside, the long grass, the trees and bushes, the looming bulk of the slaughter-house to the right, and the knowledge that the cottage lay beyond it, I could not help but feel a warm regard for my homeland. Even the fetid smell of the river was acceptable to me that day. And so was the appearance of the lonely tavern. It was more attractive in the light of day. It was made of wattle, the timbers grey with age, the plaster dirty white, but the moss-covered tiles of the roof and the lead bow-windows gave an impression of being welcoming. It was no more than fifty paces from the river, though it had seemed a longer walk the previous night in the dark. As I approached, I saw a board beside the entrance indicating that pies and cuts of meat would be available all day.

I pushed on the wooden door, and entered.

‘I hope you haven’t come to eat? We’re closed.’

The man who blocked my way was a mass of blubber, his hair an uncombed white tangle, the dark skin of his face and bare arms spotted pink and white, as if he was suffering from ringworm.

‘I’ve come to talk,’ I said. Frankly, having seen him, I would not have dared to eat a thing in the house. ‘I am a Prussian magistrate. My name is Hanno Stiffeniis. If you are the landlord, I must ask you some questions.’

‘Questions, sir? There’s none of them on the menu. Not today, as I said.’

I took a step forward, but he did not step back.

‘What do you know about the French officer whose corpse was discovered yester day in the little house down by the river?’ I asked him.

The landlord looked beyond my shoulder. ‘Are you alone, sir?’

‘What’s your name?’ I countered.

The man blinked. ‘It’s Voigt, sir. Wilhelm Voigt. Can I ask you a question in return?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. I had no desire to alienate him before we had begun.

He pulled a face and crossed his mottled arms, which were the size of hams. ‘Since when have Prussian magistrates been chasing men who kill the Frenchies? Shouldn’t we be trying to slaughter the whole damned lot of them?’

As he spoke, he stepped aside, waving me to come in. It was a tight passage. As I brushed against him, I realised that there was nothing recently washed about landlord Voigt. Neither his body nor his clothes had been touched by soap or water in a very long time. He smelled, indeed, like the River Nogat, especially those eddying bays and forgotten basins where every sort of putrefying filth can gather.

Had the French avoided the Black Bull for the sake of their noses?

The interior was perfectly suited to the owner. The atmosphere was mephitic, noxious, a compound of stale tobacco, stale ale and, of course, stale landlord. Did he keep the windows closed to keep his own smell in, or to avoid compounding it with the smells that the river might add to it?

I sat down at the nearest table, and I waved to Herr Voigt to sit on the other side of it. Then, I took my album from my shoulder-bag, laid it flat on the table-top, taking out the silver tube in which I carried my pencil. In the rush of departure, I had forgotten my
nécessaire
in Lotingen. Herr Voigt stared at what I was doing, then looked at me. He opened his mouth to say something, and I had to turn my head away. It was like sniffing at a pig’s bladder full of rancid grease and lard.

‘How long have you been at the Black Bull?’ I asked him.

He joined his hands together, pressed them against his nose, and leant across the table. I had to force myself to remain where I was, and neither pull back, nor pinch my nostrils tightly closed. ‘First, let me tell you about the tavern, sir. It’s been here since the slaughter-house was built. That’s more than a hundred years ago. My grandfather built that place, and he built this one, too, around the same time. My father took on the place when he came of age, and I took it over when my old man died. I’ve been here since the day that I was born.’

I made note of what he said.

‘How long ago was that, Herr Voigt?’

‘Fifty and seven years, sir. It was doing good business in all those years, but since the Frenchies came, it’s dropped off dead, more or less. They closed the slaughter-house, didn’t they? We’d be heaving here from dawn to dusk back in the old days. You wouldn’t think so now. There was farmers and their boys from the country, butchers and their lads coming out from town, housewives that liked to get in first and pay the lowest prices, old folks looking for hooves and tails and ears and giveaway bones. They was here because of the slaughter-house. They all came in for a drink or five. In them days, it wasn’t pies that we were selling, it was plates of fresh meat grilled over the fire down there.’

He nodded into the dim interior, where a girl was raking ashes from the grate.

‘Who are your customers now?’ I asked him, keeping my head low as I spoke, staring fixedly at my album on the table. When Voigt did not reply at once, I glanced up. ‘Well, sir?’ I prompted with my pencil.

Voigt was chewing on his fat bottom lip.

‘You’d do better to speak with me than with the French,’ I warned him. ‘Does it have something to do with the death of the Frenchman? They’ll find out soon enough, I tell you. They’ll come crashing through here like a slaughter-man’s hammer. You are lucky for the moment, Voigt. They sent me.’

He considered this prospect for some moments. ‘We’ve had bad luck these last few years, sir, but that damned officer coming out here to get himself murdered was the worst that’s happened yet,’ he said.

‘Just five minutes ago you were talking of butchering the whole French army,’ I reminded him.

He reared up suddenly like a bear, pushing his chair back noisily on the tiles, and marched across to the bar. He groaned as he ducked beneath the counter, grabbing two large earthenware mugs from a shelf and setting them beneath the tap of a large barrel.

‘It’s time for a warmer,’ he muttered, coming back a minute later, carrying the mugs which slopped and spilled over the brim as he rolled from side to side. He set them down on the table, one for himself, the other in front of me. ‘Marienburg’s best,’ he cried, as if it were a toast, and downed a huge gulp of the stuff. ‘Drink up, sir.’

I raised the mug towards my mouth, and sniffed.

It was as stale as last night’s piss. The reddish brown colour seemed to declare that it was beer, but it was flat and dank-looking. I had never smelled anything like it. Added to which, I had my doubts that those drinking-vessels had ever been rinsed. In the mean while, he had taken another gulp, and he fixed me with a smile of immense satisfaction. I might have been watching a Friesian cow enjoy a tankard of ale, and those white patches on his face reinforced the impression.

‘This is why they keep on coming here, sir,’ he said, tapping the side of the mug with his finger. ‘The customers, I mean. Of course, they come to do a bit of business, too. It’s better here than other places. At least, it was until that Frenchie went and got himself done in. They’ve been all over the place since yesterday morning. Who’s going to stop along the river if they see that lot marching up and down the bank armed to the teeth? I ask you! And now they’ve come, it won’t be easy to be rid of them. Nothing will be the same for quite some time.’

The beer had made him talkative, and I took a sip to fortify the atmosphere of camaraderie. I had some trouble swallowing, of course. It was like acid on my tongue. French soldiers would have thrown it back in his face, I am sure. And I found it hard to imagine any Prussian taking kindly to the stuff, even if he was dying of thirst. Yet men went there to drink, and, as Voigt said, to do business.

‘What type of business?’ I asked.

‘Meat,’ he said, and took another drink. ‘That’s always been our staple here. Not just the slaughtering, but the sale of meat. Here the prices are cheaper. A lot of it comes down the river by boat. Still mooing when it gets here. Once cattle get to town, once the French get their claws on them for the killing, it passes from hand to hand, and every time the price goes up. Here, you get a fair deal.’

They were smuggling meat, avoiding French taxation. I finished the note that I was writing. I did not see any connection with what had happened to Grangé. He could have had all the meat that he wanted in Marienburg fortress.

‘And so, the slaughter-house was closed…’

Voigt took another swig of ale, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. There was nothing forced or false about his pleasure. Might other local Prussians come for the ale, and no other reason? But as he caught my eye over the rim of his mug, I realised that there was something else he wished to tell me.

‘There’s other trade, as well,’ he said. ‘There’s the river, here’s the tavern. When it’s dark…it’s always dark at night down here…sometimes a boat stops by. Sometimes, like I said, it’s on the hoof. Other times, like I’m saying now, it could be…other things. Amber, for a start. Now, that’s a nice commodity for you. Small, doesn’t smell or make a noise, and worth a mint. The French have put a whacking load of tax on that, all the way along the coast from Königsberg down to Danzig. You’d be surprised how much of that gets through.’

I had a good idea, having recently investigated murders on the coast where amber was collected, stolen and smuggled, but I said nothing of that.

‘Was that what the Frenchman was doing here?’ I asked him.

‘Who’d have trusted him not to give the game away?’

‘Might he have been spying, then?’

Voigt shook his head. ‘If they wanted to close us down, sir, they would do it in force. One man? Now, it’s my belief…’

He said no more, staring at me suspiciously.

I put my elbow on the table and leant over it, hoping to say what I had to say before the fumes of ale and Voigt did for me. ‘Continue,’ was all that I could manage.

He came to meet me, and I was forced to breathe. I opened my lungs and took it in like a drowning man who hopes to hasten his own end. ‘When Frenchies go a-thieving,’ he said with a wink, ‘they call it the spoils of war. When they get billeted on us, they are instantly the masters in the house. They’d take a widow’s wedding ring, and boast of it to their pals. Each and every one of them is running a race to see who gets rich the quickest. They’ll ask you for your last penny in exchange for not robbing it. That’s the Frenchies for you!’

Voigt was telling me nothing that I had not heard a hundred times before. When the French invaded Lotingen after Jena, I had hidden out in the woods with Helena, Lotte and the children, expecting the worst. Many of our neighbours were in the same uncomfortable situation. Everyone had brought his most precious portable possessions. When the fighting was finished, and we returned home, French soldiers had installed themselves in our house. They had already sold off the greater part of our furniture. For food, they said, but we found many empty bottles of expensive wine which had been thrown into the long grass in the garden when we finally repossessed our home, and only then because the baby was barely two months old.

‘Sometimes, one of them gets his throat slit ’cos he’s said too much about his booty,’ Voigt continued. ‘It’s his mates that do it. No love’s lost between thieves, they say. There, that’s what I think happened in that cottage. That soldier was over here to do a bit of dirty business, and he was killed for it. By his mates, I mean. Something mighty precious, if you ask me. Maybe they argued over the transaction…Greed’s a curse, sir. In any case, the smell of blood has filled the air again in these parts. That’s my idea of what has happened.’

It was certainly possible. The cottage was close to town, yet far enough away, in Prussian territory. It could be easily reached by road, or by boat, and without being seen by the French or the Prussians. It might have seemed to Grangé the perfect place to meet with other conspirators and conduct their business.

Then again, if amber was at the heart of it, it was far enough from the coast to evade the surveillance of the French officials who rigorously controlled the amber trade. I knew the sort of greed and violence that amber could engender, especially among the French who were actively seeking the most precious specimens in the interests of science.