Lord John And The Hand Of Devils

Page 15

He leaned out, searching, but the bats had disappeared at once into the dark, swift about their hunting. It was no wonder that legends of succubi abounded, in a place so bat-haunted. The behavior of the creatures indeed seemed supernatural.
The bounds of the small chamber seemed at once intolerably confining. He could imagine himself some demon of the air, taking wing to haunt the dreams of a man, seize upon a sleeping body and ride it—could he fly as far as England? he wondered. Was the night long enough?
The trees at the edge of the garden tossed uneasily, stirred by the wind. The night itself seemed tormented by an autumn restlessness, the sense of things moving, changing, fermenting.
His blood was still hot, having now reached a sort of full, rolling boil, but there was no outlet for it. He did not know whether Stephan’s anger was on his own behalf—or Louisa’s. In neither case, though, could he make any open demonstration of feeling toward von Namtzen now; it was too dangerous. He was unsure of the German attitude toward sodomites, but felt it unlikely to be more forgiving than the English stance. Whether stolid Protestant morality or a wilder Catholic mysticism—he cast a brief look at the reliquary—neither was likely to have sympathy with his own predilections.
The mere contemplation of revelation and the loss of its possibility, though, had shown him something important.
Stephan von Namtzen both attracted and aroused him, but it was not because of his own undoubted physical qualities. It was, rather, the degree to which those qualities reminded Grey of James Fraser.
Von Namtzen was nearly the same height as Fraser, a powerful man with broad shoulders, long legs, and an instantly commanding presence. However, Stephan was heavier, more crudely constructed, and less graceful than the Scot. And while Stephan warmed Grey’s blood, the fact remained that the Hanoverian did not burn his heart like living flame.
He lay down finally upon his bed, and put out the candle. Lay watching the play of firelight on the walls, seeing not the flicker of wood flame, but the play of sun upon red hair, the sheen of sweat on a pale bronzed body …
A brief and brutal dose of Mr. Keegan’s remedy left him drained, if not yet peaceful. He lay staring upward into the shadows of the carved wooden ceiling, able at least to think once more.
The only conclusion of which he was sure was that he needed very much to talk to someone who had seen Koenig’s body.
Chapter 6
Hocus-Pocus
Finding Private Koenig’s last place of residence was simple. Thoroughly accustomed to having soldiers quartered upon them, Prussians sensibly built their houses with a separate chamber intended for the purpose. Indeed, the populace viewed such quartering not as an imposition, but as a windfall, since the soldiers not only paid for board and lodging and would often do chores such as fetching wood and water—but were also better protection against thieves than a large watchdog might be, without the expense.
Stephan’s records were of course impeccable; he could lay hands on any one of his men at a moment’s notice. And while he received Grey with extreme coldness, he granted the request without question, directing Grey to a house toward the western side of the town.
In fact, von Namtzen hesitated for a moment, clearly wondering whether duty obliged him to accompany Grey upon his errand, but Lance-Korporal Helwig appeared with a new difficulty—he averaged three per day—and Grey was left to carry out the errand on his own.
The house where Koenig had lodged was nothing out of the ordinary, so far as Grey could see. The owner of the house was rather remarkable, though, being a dwarf.
“Oh, the poor man! So much blood I have before not seen!”
Herr Hückel stood perhaps as high as Grey’s waist—a novel sensation, to look down so far to an adult conversant. Herr Hückel was nonetheless intelligent and coherent, which was also novel in Grey’s experience; most witnesses to violence tended to lose what wits they had and either to forget all details or to imagine impossible ones.
Herr Hückel, though, showed him willingly to the chamber where the death had occurred, and explained what he had himself seen.
“It was late, you see, sir, and my wife and I had gone to our bed. The soldiers were out—or at least we supposed so.” The soldiers had just received their pay, and most were busy losing it in taverns or brothels. The Hückels had heard no noises from the soldiers’ room, and thus assumed that all four of the soldiers quartered with them were absent on such business.
Somewhere in the small hours, though, the good folk had been awakened by terrible yells coming from the chamber. These were not produced by Private Koenig, but by one of his companions, who had returned in a state of advanced intoxication, and stumbled into a blood-soaked shambles.
“He lay here, sir. Just so?” Herr Hückel waved his hands to indicate the position the body had occupied at the far side of the cozy room. There was nothing there now, save irregular dark blotches that stained the wooden floor.
“Not even lye would get it out,” said Frau Hückel, who had come to the door of the room to watch. “And we had to burn the bedding.”
Rather to Grey’s surprise, she was not only of normal size, but quite pretty, with bright, soft hair peeking out from under her cap. She frowned at him in accusation.
“None of the soldiers will stay here now. They think the Nachtmahr will get them, too!” Clearly, this was Grey’s fault. He bowed apologetically.
“I regret that, madam,” he said. “Tell me, did you see the body?”
“No,” she said promptly, “but I saw the night hag.”
“Indeed,” Grey said, surprised. “Er … what did it—she—it look like?” He hoped he was not going to receive some form of Siggy’s logical but unhelpful description, Like a witch.
“Now, Margarethe,” said Herr Hückel, putting a warning hand up to his wife’s arm. “It might not have been—”
“Yes, it was!” She transferred the frown to her husband, but did not shake off his hand, instead putting her own over it, before returning her attention to Grey.
“It was an old woman, sir, with her white hair in braids. Her shawl slipped off in the wind, and I saw. There are two old women who live nearby, this is true—but one walks only with a stick, and the other does not walk at all. This … thing, she moved very quickly, hunched a little, but light on her feet.”
Herr Hückel was looking more and more uneasy as this description progressed, and opened his mouth to interrupt, but was not given the chance.
“I am sure it was old Agathe!” Frau Hückel said, her voice dropping to a portentous whisper. Herr Hückel shut his eyes with a grimace.
“Old Agathe?” Grey asked, incredulous. “Do you mean Frau Blomberg—the bürgermeister’s mother?”
Frau Hückel nodded, face fixed in grave certainty.
“Something must be done,” she declared. “Everyone is afraid at night—either to go out, or to stay in. Men whose wives will not watch over them as they sleep are falling asleep as they work, as they eat …”
Grey thought briefly of mentioning Mr. Keegan’s patent preventative, but dismissed the notion, instead turning to Herr Hückel to inquire for a close description of the state of the body.
“I am told that the throat was pierced, as with an animal’s teeth,” he said, at which Herr Hückel made a quick sign against evil and nodded, going a little pale. “Was the throat torn quite open—as though the man were attacked by a wolf? Or—” But Herr Hückel was already shaking his head.
“No, no! Only two marks—two holes. Like a snake’s fangs.” He poked two fingers into his own neck in illustration. “But so much blood!” He shuddered, glancing away from the marks on the floor-boards.
Grey had once seen a man bitten by a snake, when he was quite young—but there had been no blood that he recalled. Of course, the man had been bitten in the leg, too.
“Large holes, then?” Grey persisted, not liking to press the man to recall vividly unpleasant details, but determined to obtain as much information as possible.
With some effort, he established that the tooth marks had been sizable—perhaps a bit more than a quarter inch or so in diameter—and located on the front of Koenig’s throat, about halfway up. He made Hückel show him, repeatedly, after ascertaining that the body had shown no other wound when undressed for cleansing and burial.
He glanced at the walls of the room, which had been freshly whitewashed. Nonetheless, there was a large dark blotch showing faintly, down near the floor—probably where Koenig had rolled against the wall in his death throes.
He had hoped that a description of Koenig’s body would enable him to discover some connection between the two deaths—but the only similarity between the deaths of Koenig and Bodger appeared to be that both men were indeed dead, and both dead under impossible circumstances.
He thanked the Hückels and prepared to take his leave, only then realizing that Frau Hückel had resumed her train of thought and was speaking to him quite earnestly.
“… call a witch to cast the runes,” she said.
“I beg your pardon, madam?”
She drew in a breath of deep exasperation, but refrained from open rebuke.
“Herr Blomberg,” she repeated, giving Grey a hard look. “He will call a witch to cast the runes. Then we will discover the truth of everything!”
“He will do what?” Sir Peter squinted at Grey in disbelief. “Witches?”
“Only one, I believe, sir,” Grey assured Sir Peter. According to Frau Hückel, matters had been escalating in Gundwitz. The rumor that Herr Blomberg’s mother was custodian to the succubus was rampant in the town, and public opinion was in danger of overwhelming the little bürgermeister.
Herr Blomberg, however, was a stubborn man, and most devoted to his mother’s memory. He refused entirely to allow her coffin to be dug up and her body desecrated.
The only solution, which Herr Blomberg had declared out of desperation, seemed to be to discover the true identity and hiding place of the succubus. To this end, the bürgermeister had summoned a witch, who would cast runes—
“What are those?” Sir Peter asked, puzzled.
“I am not entirely sure, sir,” Grey admitted. “Some object for divination, I suppose.”
“Really?” Sir Peter rubbed his knuckles dubiously beneath a long, thin nose. “Sounds very fishy, what? This witch could say anything, couldn’t she?”
“I suppose Herr Blomberg expects that if he is paying for the … er … ceremony, the lady is perhaps more likely to say something favorable to his situation,” Grey suggested.
“Hmm. Still don’t like it,” Sir Peter said. “Don’t like it at all. Could be trouble, Grey, surely you see that?”
“I do not believe you can stop him, sir.”
“Perhaps not, perhaps not.” Sir Peter ruminated fiercely, brow crinkled under his wig. “Ah! Well, how’s this, then—you go round and fix it up, Grey. Tell Herr Blomberg he can have his mumbo jumbo, but he must do it here, at the Schloss. That way we can keep a lid on it, what, see there’s no untoward excitement?”
“Yes, sir,” Grey said, manfully suppressing a sigh, and went off to execute his orders.
By the time he reached his room to change for dinner, Grey felt dirty, irritable, and thoroughly out of sorts. It had taken most of the afternoon to track down Herr Blomberg and convince him to hold his—Christ, what was it? His rune-casting?—at the Schloss. Then he had run across the pest Helwig, and before he was able to escape, had been embroiled in an enormous controversy with a gang of mule drovers who claimed not to have been paid by the army.
This in turn had entailed a visit to two army camps, an inspection of thirty-four mules, trying interviews with both Sir Peter’s paymaster and von Namtzen’s—and involved a further cold interview with Stephan, who had behaved as though Grey were personally responsible for the entire affair, then turned his back, dismissing Grey in mid-sentence, as though unable to bear the sight of him.
He flung off his coat, sent Tom to fetch hot water, and irritably tugged off his stock, wishing he could hit someone.
A knock sounded on the door, and he froze, irritation vanishing upon the moment. What to do? Pretend he wasn’t in was the obvious course, in case it was Louisa in her sheer lawn shift or something worse. But if it were Stephan, come either to apologize or to demand further explanation?
The knock sounded again. It was a good, solid knock. Not what one would expect of a female—particularly not of a female intent on dalliance. Surely the princess would be more inclined to a discreet scratching?
The knock came again, peremptory, demanding. Taking an enormous breath and trying to still the thumping of his heart, Grey jerked the door open.
“I wish to speak to you,” said the dowager, and sailed into the room, not waiting for invitation.
“Oh,” said Grey, having lost all grasp of German on the spot. He closed the door, and turned to the old lady, instinctively tightening the sash of his banyan.
She ignored his mute gesture toward the chair, but stood in front of the fire, fixing him with a steely gaze. She was completely dressed, he saw, with a faint sense of relief. He really could not have borne the sight of the dowager en dishabille.
“I have come to ask you,” she said without preamble, “if you have intentions to marry Louisa.”
“I have not,” he said, his German returning with miraculous promptitude. “Nein.”
One sketchy gray brow twitched upward.
“Ja? That is not what she thinks.”