A Visible Darkness Part 22

'It wasn't the first time we've had fugitives,' the pastor explained. 'Most of them have no place to go. They are girls doing men's work, foreign conquerors watching over them like hawks. No law protects them inside the French camp.'

I thought of Edviga. The girl was tall, and strong. A woman doing the work of a man. The French were certainly watching her. Colonel les Halles was digging for the opportunity to punish and demean her. Foreign conquerors. Bylsma had summed up the situation well. But Edviga had spoken only of cabins that were cold and damp. How far did the French idea of punishment extend? Long ago, as every Prussian knows, the Teutonic Order punished amber theft with death by hanging on the seash.o.r.e.

'They said they were afraid for their lives,' the pastor continued.

'Did the French come looking for them here?' I insisted.

Pastor Bylsma shook his head.

'Perhaps they had no need to look, sir,' Gurten observed.

'I do not understand your argument,' I said to him.

'Maybe the French knew that the girls were here,' Gurten continued with a wry smile. 'The French may have sent them, commissioned them, so to speak, told them exactly what to steal.'

'How did those women know where the treasure was?' I asked.

Bylsma's cheeks began to colour. 'I . . . Well, that is, I got them to wash all the windows. Not just in the church. In here, as well.' He paused for a beat, looked away, and caught the eye of Gurten. 'Like I told you, Herr Gurten. They were very . . . well, it was very difficult to say no . . . diabolical, I suppose . . .'

Gurten stepped into Bylsma's shoes. 'They won his trust, sir. He let them come in here to wash the windows and dust off the books in Jakob Spener's library.'

Magda Ansbach swore that the amber-girls were a danger to celibate men. And chast.i.ty played no part in the rules that Spener had laid down for his followers. How easily might two handsome temptresses have played upon the weaknesses of a middle-aged priest like Bylsma? If the girls had come intent on theft and seduction, I did not doubt that they had succeeded in their ploy.

Were they Kati Rodendahl and Ilse Bruen?

'They stayed for two days only,' Bylsma mumbled on. 'They helped with meals, cleaned the church, worked in the kitchen. Then, suddenly they disappeared without a trace. I did not understand it then. But the next time I came to open up the relic-box, I found those pieces missing.'

He halted suddenly, as if the tale had robbed him of his energy.

'What could I do, sir? Could I tell the French? If the soldiers had seen the treasure, they'd have seized the rest of it. And then, some days ago, a girl was murdered down on Nordcopp sh.o.r.e. Another one died just yesterday.' He shook his head, and peered at me uncertainly. 'Could the victims be the same two girls who stayed here in the convent?'

'What names did your visitors give?'

'Annalise and Megrete, sir.'

'Those are not the names of the dead women,' I said.

'They may have given false ones,' Gurten quickly interposed.

'Can you describe them?' I asked.

The small man raised his shoulders, as if to suggest that he had not paid much attention. But his pale cheeks began to flush very red. 'Very tall girls, sir. Big, strong, healthy girls with callused hands. Working girls with long blonde hair . . . that is, I noticed the fact, though they were always wearing scarves.'

'You told me last night that they were both very beautiful, Herr Pastor.'

Gurten spoke as if to add a forgotten detail, but he sought my eyes out, and he held my gaze. He glanced at the priest, who was agitating his hands, rubbing them nervously together. He was clearly in a state of acute embarra.s.sment, thinking of his recent guests. I might have blushed myself, I thought, remembering Edviga as she sat beside me on the bed the night before.

'Can you describe the missing pieces of amber?' I asked the priest.

Bylsma bent his head very low over the reliquary. 'They didn't take the oldest pieces, the ones that are elaborately carved,' he said. 'They took three pieces only, but they were large ones, each containing an insect. Big, black bugs. The largest insects in the collection. The amber was the colour of gold, and incredibly beautiful.'

'And you've no idea where those women went afterwards?' I insisted.

Pastor Bylsma pressed his hand to his mouth and shook his head, but Gurten had an answer.

'They may have gone back where they came from,' he said. 'If that was the game, whoever sent them would have welcomed back the thieves with open arms. Until they'd laid their hands on what the girls had stolen, that is. At that point, they could be dispensed with.'

'If the French sent the girls to steal Spener's treasure,' I countered, seeing the holes in his argument, 'why content themselves with three pieces? They could have stormed in here with a troop of soldiers and seized the lot. Still, there is a way to settle the business,' I said, taking Kati Rodendahl's piece of amber out of my pocket. 'Pastor Bylsma, is this specimen one of the stolen pieces?'

Gurten's hand shot out. Instinctively, I closed my fist around it.

'I . . . I thought it was about to fall, sir,' Gurten said apologetically.

'Pastor Bylsma,' I said again, turning to him, indicating that he should open his palm and stretch it out. As he did so, I placed the nugget in his hand.

Gurten leant forward and peered at the amber.

'A wasp . . . a bee of some sort, sir,' he said. 'But absolutely enormous.'

If eyes had hands, I thought, that gaze of his would have carried the prize away.

Bylsma shook his head. 'The size is right, it's pretty enough,' he said, obviously caring little for amber that had not belonged to Jakob Spener, 'but this is not one of the pieces missing from the reliquary.'

'Where did you find a piece of that quality, sir?' Gurten asked.

I picked the amber up between my thumb and forefinger, and put it safely away in my pocket. 'On the body of the girl who was murdered three days ago,' I told him. 'The killer did not find it. If he was looking, that is.'

Bylsma made a rapid sign of the cross.

'Pastor Bylsma,' I said, 'I need your help, sir. Would you direct me to the office in Nordcopp where the amber-gatherers are recruited. I believe it is called the Round Fort.'

Edviga had mentioned the place the night before.

I intended to see it for myself.

19.

'IT'S OUT ALONG the coast road, going east, sir.'

Pastor Bylsma turned to me with an approving smile. 'You have chosen well, Herr Procurator,' he said. 'This a.s.sistant of yours knows the area better than many of the local inhabitants. No one goes to the Round Fort very much these days.'

'I went there with my father several times for the fur-trading,' Gurten explained.

Bylsma's words rang in my ears as we left the convent. Had I chosen Gurten, or had he chosen me? As for whether I would allow him to a.s.sist me in the investigation, the question was still unresolved in my own mind.

We left town by the South Gate, where four French soldiers were on guard.

'Had your fill of praying, then?' one of them barked at me.

I did not reply, as we hurried out onto the dusty Konigsberg turnpike. Johannes Gurten wore a stylish dark brown corduroy riding-jacket. An unstoppable fountain of news and information all morning, now he walked in brooding silence at my side. His eyes were fixed on the road, his brow was dark, and he had nothing at all to say for himself.

'Is something troubling you?' I asked him.

'The French, sir!' he said through gritted teeth. 'They care nothing for our traditions.'

'You'll have to get used to them if you hope to work for me,' I warned him.

'Our religion means nothing to them,' he burst out.

'The less they know about Jakob Spener and his treasure,' I replied, 'the better.'

Gurten stopped short and stared at me.

'Surely they must learn to respect Pietism?' he challenged.

I thought for a moment of sending him back to where he had come from. I had trouble enough with the French. I did not need a Prussian provocateur at my side to make matters worse.

'Listen to me,' I said sharply. 'I'm not employed to teach the French our history and traditions. Don't you understand my position? The French authorities ordered me to come here. I must give a good account of myself to them. There is a murderer in Nordcopp, and he will not be caught without their help. This is a criminal case. You said this morning that you chose me as your tutor. Let me offer you another choice. Stay here and help me, or take the next coach to Berlin. I'm sure they can still find a place for you in the offices of Otto von Rautigan!'

Gurten looked up sharply.

'I would not wish to make your task more onerous than it is, Herr Stiffeniis,' he said. 'But my heart ran away with my tongue. I can never forget that you were once the confidant of Herr Professor Kant. He recognised your qualities. Indeed, sir, I believe that he saw talents in you that no lesser man would ever have guessed at.'

He spread his hands wide as if to display the sincerity of his sentiments.

'That's why I wish to become a magistrate, sir. That is why I hoped to serve you, to learn from you what you had learnt from Professor Kant. Why, even now I feel as though he is listening to our conversation!'

I hoped that Kant was deaf to all living voices. As deaf as he was dead. My only wish was to cancel from my memory the days that I had spent in Konigsberg. I wanted to forget that Kant had ever chosen me to work at his side. Instead, Gurten threw the fact in my face, expecting me to boast proudly of all that I had learnt under the tutelage of the philosopher whom he admired without reserve. If I had one desire, one ardent wish that I did not dare confess-I hardly dared admit it to myself-it was that the French would extirpate the name of Immanuel Kant from the history of Prussia.

'You know much of me, Gurten,' I admitted. 'But I know nothing of you. If I do decide to tutor you, I would like to know more.'

The dark cloud s.h.i.+fted from the young man's face.

He chatted amiably, telling me stories from his family life, his schooling, and, most especially, his time at the University of Dresden. He had begun by studying medicine for a year or two, but then he had visited Konigsberg, paying homage at the tomb of Immanuel Kant. He had read a newspaper account of Immanuel Kant's last days-my name was mentioned in the article, he said-where much was made of our hunt for a murderer who was terrorising the city.

'As a consequence, I decided to change to jurisprudence,' he concluded. 'Just as you did, sir.'

What would Gurten have thought if he had known the real motive which had induced me to become a magistrate? Would he still have held me up as a paragon to admire and follow?

We did not have to walk very far, which was fortunate, given the persisting heat. The Round Fort was not a mile from Nordcopp. Before the French arrived, Pastor Bylsma said, the building had been used for centuries as a stronghold repository by the margraves of Marlbork. The aristocratic family had held the royal mandate for the amber working on that stretch of coast for generations, until the French invaders seized possession of their monopoly. Now, the Round Fort was a local labour station for the French administration. Each Monday morning, new girls were taken on to replace the ones who had run away of their own accord, often without collecting their pay, or to replace others who had decided to leave the employment for some reason known only to themselves, but with money due to them in their hands.

Naturally, I thought, Colonel les Halles would close the place at his earliest convenience.

'Byslma did not say that the place was falling down,' I observed, as we caught our first sight of the tower. Nor had he said how old the building was.

Thirty feet high, and almost twice as wide, the Round Fort squatted on the crown of the hill like a well-fitting hat. Its walls were a dense mosaic of grey and black stones set in a muted green overcoat of moss. Round and smooth, of every size from very large to very small, those stones had not come from the local seash.o.r.e. Somebody had gone to a deal of trouble to import the materials and build that stronghold. A crumbling curtain-wall on top of the fort was castellated to aid defence. Angled arrow-slits had been cut in the wall to allow the defenders to fire obliquely on anyone trying to undermine or storm it. I was impressed by the strategic position of the edifice.

Equally, I was impressed by something that Johannes Gurten had just said.

'Just think, sir, the Teutonic Order controlled the amber trade for several hundred years,' he said, his voice bubbling with ardour. 'Can you imagine the riches that must have pa.s.sed through their hands?'

'All gone,' I murmured. 'Mutatis mutandis.'

'Are you certain about that, sir?' Gurten challenged. 'Can six hundred years of valiant history be wiped out by a single battle, and a temporary subjection to a foreign power? Is Prussia dead? A man may wear his heart upon his sleeve, but he will hide his truest feelings deep within his soul if he is wise. We share that sentiment, I do believe. Professor Kant has shown that thought and action are not invariably consistent.'

He might have been waiting for me to agree with him.

When I said nothing, he added pa.s.sionately, 'Prussia is crushed, but for the moment only. The Prussian eagle will soar again.'

From the look of the Round Fort, I thought, Prussia had been crushed for Eternity.

We reached the top of the hill, and stopped before the entrance to catch our breath. A dry ditch ran around the building, twenty feet deep, and wider still. Access to the only door in the squat tower was provided by a narrow bridge constructed of the same heavy stone. As we walked across it, Johannes Gurten read out a date that was carved above the door. 'Thirteen hundred and two,' he intoned, as if the numbers were some magical code from the Kabbalah.

Above the arch, an ancient inscription had been recently chipped and chiselled at. Someone had tried to obliterate the Gothic lettering, though it had proved no easy matter to dent the granite slab so deeply set in the wall.

Teutonic Order 'Do you see, sir?' he said, pointing up. 'We cannot be so easily cancelled out.'

'If I were you,' I advised him, 'I'd be more guarded in my speech. We do not know who runs this place. Perhaps the French themselves. At the very least, they finance it. This is where they find replacement labour. A magistrate must listen first, and only judge when he has heard all sides of a case.'

If I sounded overly pedantic, I made no attempt to soften the lesson.

'Better a reprimand now than a year in a French labour camp,' I warned him.

'I'll watch what I say,' he promised with an apologetic smile.

His loose tongue was the best proof of his ingenuous nature, I thought to myself. Even so, I was not so foolish as to trust him entirely. Wouldn't a spy speak in the most enthusiastic terms of his nationalist sympathies if he wished to sound out my opinions on the same subject?

There was no need to knock on the squat fortified door. It hung loose from the upper hinge, and was so heavy that a team of labourers would have been required to set it straight again. The wood was leached grey with age, damp, and salty encrustations.

And so, with no undue hindrance, Gurten and I invaded and took the citadel.

The place appeared to be deserted.

'Is anybody here?' I called.

My voice echoed around the large circular stone chamber.

It was dark and chill, almost impossible to see the perimeter wall on the far side of the room. Motes of dust jigged and danced in the beam of sunlight coming in through the door. There was no other source of illumination.

I heard the sc.r.a.pe of a boot on the stone floor, then a man of middle height and great age stepped out of the shadows.

'What can I do for you, sirs?'