HS04 - Unholy Awakening (28 page)

Krebbe indicated three piles of leather-bound books, taking the one in the centre for himself, inviting Lavedrine and me to sit on either side of him. Had our hair been as white, and had we been as old as he, we might have been the modern male equivalent of the ancient
Moirae
, the Three Fates who superintend the birth, life and death of all men.

‘The question is?’ I reminded him.

‘Who is the vampire?’

‘Who, indeed!’ Lavedrine snapped.

‘I have found many interesting treatises,’ Krebbe continued. ‘Would you believe me if I said that one of the most informative was published sixty years ago in southern Italy by a Catholic bishop? Giuseppe Davanzati of Trani was a most refined scholar. Having heard tales of vampires in Austria and Moldavia, he set out to demonstrate by logic that such fears were the fruit of credulity. “A myth based on ignorance”, I quote him.’ He turned to Lavedrine and smiled approvingly. ‘In France you have Calmet’s
Dissertation sur les apparitions des anges, des demons et des esprits, et sur le revenant et les vampires
, which records cases which occurred in Germany. These are scholarly studies, of course, yet, the very same elements are found in the folklore of the Grimms, and the poetry of von Kleist. Davanzati says: “We should never deny merely for the sake of denying.” Like him, I began to ask myself whether there might be any truth in these folk tales. In the details, most particularly.’

‘Which details?’ I asked.

Krebbe rubbed his hands together and smiled.

‘Well, the vampire is not a monster, for example,’ he said. ‘No-one has ever spoken of them as being deformed. Monstrosity is the first mistake of the fantastic imagination. The vampire, on the other hand, retains the identity of the person who was living. Indeed, the people that he meets do not even realise that he is dead. The victims do not try to defend themselves. Historical reports reiterate the modality of attack. The victim is found alone. Generally there is an expression of surprise on his face. On his neck there is a bite mark, and death is the result of a severed artery.’

This was the news that Knutzen had sent to the villagers of Krupeken. If they saw Angela Enke, they should not be deceived into thinking that she was the same girl that they knew. They must run from her, keep her at a distance, avoid her at all costs.

‘And there’s more,’ Krebbe continued. ‘A decaying corpse – by its smell and its colour – warns us to keep well away. The vampire, instead, does not smell of death. Fresh blood invigorates it. It has heightened colour in the cheeks, its eyes may gleam, it appears to be invested with vital energy. Blood excites it, then nourishes it. There is no suggestion that it is not what it appears to be. There is no evident change in the physical aspect. Members of the family are easily taken in by this. Would a woman refuse to sleep with her spouse? Would a daughter deny a kiss to her father? The kiss becomes a suffocating weight, the embracing “lover” overwhelms the chosen victim with the indescribable physical force of the assault. The vampire does not aim to kill, but only to feed. The problem is, they feed until there is no blood left.’

‘Blood,’ I murmured.

The word seemed to inspire Krebbe to new heights. ‘Ah, you cannot imagine the amount of material I have collected on the subject. Leviticus defined blood as “the juice of life”, and Christ himself promised us new life by drinking His blood. The notion is that blood is life-giving. The vampire is irresistibly attracted by the smell of it. Then again, you’ll recall the passage from the
Odyssey
when Ulysses speaks to Tiresias?’

Lavedrine and I shook our heads like students who had not prepared for the lesson.

Krebbe continued unperturbed: ‘Ulysses descends into the Underworld in search of Tiresias, who is dead. He seeks information, but before Tiresias can speak, he needs to find energy. Life. Ulysses offers him a bowl of goat’s blood, which the seer drinks to the very last drop, and all the while, Ulysses fights off the other dead souls who want to drink from the same bowl.’ Herr Krebbe shivered visibly. ‘It is a horrid scene. Only Homer could have described it with such dramatic power.’

‘Marienburg and Lotingen?’ Lavedrine reminded him.

Krebbe seemed pleased with the question. ‘You are the living proof of what I have said, sir. Only the French can free us from a malediction which has cursed us for centuries. You do not take refuge in the supernatural. You want an explanation which resides in men.’

‘Are you saying that vampires are human?’ Lavedrine suggested.

Professor Krebbe nodded. ‘As ferocious as human beings can be,’ he said with gravity. ‘It is not the blood that they are after, naturally. But what they can obtain by means of the terror which spilled blood unleashes. This is true in every instance of vampirism that I have been able to study. The terror that they create is real.’

‘Real?’ I challenged him. ‘But you just said…’

‘That I believe in the power of the
legend
, Herr Stiffeniis. It leads unscrupulous men to do horrid things. You know of the edict of Empress Maria Theresa. Just try to imagine the problem that she had to face, continued and repeated outrages throughout her territories. The fact that the law is still in force is proof of the fact that “vampires” – I use quote marks! – still flourish.’

Krebbe took a deep breath.

‘The vampire is as powerful today as ever,’ he continued. ‘It has often been recalled from myth to life for some specific purpose. Every time it happens, the same wild terror of the walking dead is revived, the blood of the living is spilled, and the so-called “vampire” achieves what it set out to achieve.’

‘And what is that, sir?’ asked Lavedrine.

‘Strength. Influence. Riches. The elimination of a person, or many people, to obtain those things. Villages, towns and cities in thrall to lawlessness, the inhabitants reduced to the level of ravening beasts. Who looks for the true cause when a vampire is blamed for it? Logic gives way to ritual, sense to nonsense. The myth hides and covers every evil.’

‘So, who should we be looking for, Professor Krebbe?’ Lavedrine enquired. ‘And why would this particular vampire attack Frenchmen here in Marienburg, and Prussians twenty miles away in Lotingen?’

Krebbe rubbed his hands, shrugged his shoulders. ‘You must look for somebody who knows the terror that the word conjures up. Somebody who measures the effects that it has on the minds and hearts of simple people. Somebody who is trying to achieve something here, and something there. I know not what, precisely. At the end of his life, even the great Professor Kant addressed the problem.’

‘Kant?’ Lavedrine and I sang out in chorus.

Professor Krebbe regarded us with a show of amusement. ‘Wait here a moment,’ he said, standing up, making for a stack of boxes which lined one wall of his workshop. He worked his way like an adept through the papers in a box marked ‘Letters: J–K’, returning with a sheet of paper held between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. ‘This is one of my great treasures,’ he said. ‘A letter which I received from Immanuel Kant not long before he…Well, sirs, you may not know it, but his last years were…troubled. This may be one of the last lucid things that he ever wrote. It is dated 1793, and it was his…ah,
belated
response to a note of mine. Let me explain. The facts are as follows. In 1765, there was an outbreak of vampirism in a village near Königsberg. I was a student; I’d hardly begun to study the subject, but Professor Kant had a reputation as a man who was open to discussion on the most arcane and various of subjects. I had read a pamphlet written by him in reply to an enquiry from a young lady, asking for his opinion of Emanuel Swedenborg. You have probably never heard of him. He is long out of fashion. Swedenborg claimed to speak with souls of the dead. Well, Kant examined the matter, and he startled everyone by declaring an open mind on the subject: there was not sufficient evidence, he said, to allow a rational judgement. I wrote asking Kant for an opinion of vampires, but I did not get the answer that I was hoping for. He was too busy writing up his dissertation for the university – he had just applied for a post as magister – but he promised to reply when he had the time. And so he did. Thirty years later! Thirty years, can you believe it? It was as if a day or two had passed, as you will see from his letter.’

I was paralysed by this news, unable to move, incapable of stretching out my hand to receive Kant’s letter from the offering hand of Professor Krebbe.

Lavedrine was not so inhibited. ‘May I see it?’ he asked, taking the letter.

‘Please, sir, read it aloud,’ Krebbe enthused.

Lavedrine carried it over to the window, and did as he had been requested.

Lavedrine finished reading.

Without shifting his eyes from the page, he said: ‘Hanno, I don’t suppose you have any idea who Professor Kant might have met in 1793, have you? I wonder what they may have discussed to alter his philosophical vision so radically?’

With an effort, I managed to shake my head. I had met Kant in 1793. I had told him of my experience in Paris that year, and of what I had felt as I stood beneath the guillotine and saw the ease with which a human life could be snuffed out.

At last, words began to issue from my mouth. I surprised myself by how calm I sounded. ‘It does not greatly surprise me,’ I said. ‘Not really. I met Kant on a number of occasions. In the final years of his life, he spent a great deal of time in the dark place that he describes. Only he – and God, perhaps – knows what he saw there.’

I swallowed hard, and looked away.

At the dark heart of our hidden Self…

Shortly afterwards, we took leave of Professor Krebbe and ‘hell’ upstairs, and hurried down to ‘heaven’ below, where Frau Krebbe was holding the front door open in expectation of our immediate departure.

She seemed less friendly than when we had arrived. Indeed, she spoke German, and she sounded quite severe.

‘I have my opinion of what you were discussing up there,’ she said.

Clearly, she had been listening to our conversation with Professor Krebbe by means of the ‘ear-trumpet’ of the stairwell.

‘And what is that, ma’am?’ Lavedrine asked politely, humouring her.

She narrowed her eyes, and stared at him aggressively.

‘I don’t believe that words have only sound and meaning,’ she said. ‘Words wield power in this world. So long as the word continues to exist, so long as we repeat it, the vampire will come to answer the call. Strike it out of the dictionary, sirs! Dash it from your lips! That’s what you should do!’

We walked once more onto the riverbank.

Evening was coming on, the sun was very low and it was even brighter than before. The slanting rays cast a strange orange glow on the oily, slow-flowing surface of the water. The baked red bricks of the castle walls seemed to shimmer, as if they had just come fresh from the kiln. Window-panes glared like dancing flames. The roofs of the towers and bastions gleamed like burnished brass.

Lavedrine stood still for moment, observing the spectacle.

‘It looks as if a shower of blood has fallen on the city,’ he said.

I did not comment on his opinion. A greater sense of oppression weighed me down. There was more to it than the casual play of sunlight on bricks, blown glass and polished slate. The unnatural colours seemed to me to presage something ominous and menacing. I had to shade my eyes against the light, praying that the sun would quickly sink from sight, that night would come on soon, bringing darkness, restoring everything to dull normality.

‘Layard has some excellent bottles of Mosel in his cellar. We’ll…’

‘I am leaving, Lavedrine. I’m going home to Lotingen. Tonight,’ I said flatly. ‘I hope that you’ll not try to prevent me.’

He pulled up sharply, forcing me to do the same. His puzzled face loomed close to my own. ‘Have you seen anything to convince you that the investigation in Marienburg is over, for I have not.’

‘I should apologise,’ I interrupted him. ‘I was wrong, and you were right from the start. The murders in Lotingen
are
connected. The trail starts here in Marienburg, just as you said.’

He stared at me as if he wished to read my thoughts. ‘Why leave, in that case? Explain it to me, Hanno, if you will. What did I grasp from the start, and what have you failed to see until now?’

‘The killer is not one individual,’ I replied. ‘The cause of everything is the rivalry which exists between competing groups inside the French army. They are fighting over Emma Rimmele.
She
is the booty. With the help of his friends, Grangé believed that the prize was safe, but then a rival group decided to wrest it from them. They lured him out to that abandoned cottage on the other side of the river. There were no Frenchmen there, only Prussian smugglers and the like. It was the perfect spot for what they had in mind. Grangé was murdered, then the killers turned on his closest friends. Their group was soon wiped out.’

Lavedrine shook his head. ‘You convince yourself too easily,’ he said. ‘Why, in your opinion, did the struggle then shift to Lotingen?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ I protested. ‘Emma Rimmele is there. They know where she is hiding. All the rest follows on from that plain fact. The hunt goes on. It is the identity of the hunters which has changed.’

‘Is it really so simple?’ he replied brusquely. ‘Why kill the seamstress? Why murder the two men who worked in Lotingen cemetery? Why not go directly to Emma Rimmele and take whatever they were after? Why conjure up the myth of the vampire?’

He waved his hands in the air, gesticulating wildly, as if to convince me that what I was saying made no sense at all.

‘I do not know,’ I admitted. ‘I only know that I must go to Lotingen. There, at least, a life may be saved.’

‘Emma Rimmele,’ he murmured, raising his chin to the heavens, blowing out his lips, as if he were sick of hearing her name. ‘If she has been the victim of a rape, and if you are correct in believing her to be the obsession of a group of French officers, she’ll not allow a Frenchman to approach the house where she is living. She’ll be on her guard against them.’

‘Massur has trained those men to kill,’ I reminded him. Even so, there was some truth in what he had said. I recalled Emma’s terror when she spoke of the French. When Lavedrine called at the Prior’s House, she had been frightened at the thought of meeting him. That was why she had come to me, and appealed for my protection. That was why I had promised to help her.

‘They may have wished to isolate her,’ I said, ‘striking at anyone who had had any sort of contact with her. Angela Enke was a suspicious Prussian peasant girl, yet they broke through her defences. The two grave diggers were big, strong men, well able to defend themselves. Even so, they were murdered, too.’

‘How could any French man get close without provoking suspicion?’

‘Remember what Professor Krebbe says,’ I replied. ‘The vampire’s face does not alarm the victim. It may be familiar, even reassuring. It may seem harmless…’

We walked on in silence for some moments.

‘What strange thoughts are buzzing in your head?’ he asked me.

‘There is something that I have not told you,’ I admitted. ‘If you are to remain here, then perhaps you should know it.’

‘Tell me now,’ he said quietly.

Did he feel as I did? We seemed to be advancing through an unknown land where nothing was quite what it seemed. As soon as we turned in any particular direction, as soon as the perspective was altered, all certainty seemed to slip away, like shifting sand beneath our feet.

‘I spoke to the serving-girl at the Black Bull inn,’ I said.

He frowned and looked at me. ‘The girl who is in prison with her master?’

I nodded. ‘Her name is Elspeth. Elsie. She is young, very impressionable. I thought that her imagination had run away with her. She told me something that I did not take very seriously at the time, but now, well, after speaking to Krebbe, and having heard Lecompte’s account of the attack, I don’t know what to think. She told me that she had seen…well, a strange female presence, that’s how she described it. A shadow moving in the darkness down by the river. A woman or a girl near to the house where Grangé died. With blood on her hands. It reminded me…that is, it makes me think of the sketch Lecompte made on the wall of his room.’

‘Why did you not tell me this before, Stiffeniis?’

I shrugged. ‘The child was full of unbelievable stories. Wolves and snow, tales of…of people dying. Landlord Voigt dismissed every word she said as superstition. It was impossible to say what was real, he insisted, and what was not. I went there to see, of course, and the old slaughter-house made a dismal, sinister impression on me. But…well, that was not all. She told me that they still slaughter animals there.’

‘I thought the place was closed,’ he said.

‘It is,’ I replied. ‘But local Prussians continue to use it. They sacrifice animals, spilling blood to placate the evil spirits and other demonic creatures which are thought to dwell there.’

‘Evil spirits? Demonic creatures?’ Lavedrine’s lips rasped with exasperation. ‘Perhaps we ought to start believing in these
creatures
, Stiffeniis. Everybody else in Prussia seems to do so. What did you actually see when you entered there?’

His eyes lit up with interest.

‘It is a barn, more or less,’ I said. ‘There is an iron grille which covers a window, and from there I could see the cottage where the body of Grangé was found. On the ground beneath the window, there were footprints, and a bit of cloth. It was stained with blood, I think. There was even the rotting carcass of a dog…’

Lavedrine laughed aloud to himself. ‘Do you now believe that this mysterious female – this
creature
of Elsie’s imagination – is, somehow, real? Do you think that she was really hiding there, watching Grangé, waiting to take him by surprise? A woman? Have you changed your mind entirely? Not long ago, you seemed convinced of the guilt of French officers.’

I wiped my brow with my hand. I felt a sheen of sweat on my skin.

He stared into my face, while I looked fixedly at the river.

‘Elspeth may be what she seems, and nothing more,’ I conceded. ‘A young girl with a wild imagination. The sinister nature of the slaughter-house may have done the rest.’

‘Nevertheless, you heard Lecompte with your own ears,’ he added sharply. ‘He insisted that he had been attacked by a woman, the same odd creature he had drawn on the hospital wall, and which he attempted to describe for us.’ He ran his hands through his curls, as if they were a nuisance and he wished to root them out. ‘You should have told me this, Hanno,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Every detail adds to what we know, even the most improbable.’

We walked on in silence for a minute or more.

‘A mysterious female presence near the house,’ he murmured. ‘A mysterious female figure who attacked Lecompte.’ He laid his hand upon my arm. ‘Is it possible that two such different witnesses could imagine more or less the same thing?’

The sun burst over the turrets, sinking down behind the castle, throwing the towers and battlements into stark, black profile high above our heads, casting dark shadows on the riverbank where we were walking.

‘Layard has taken them all into custody,’ he said, measuring out his words. ‘We should question those people from the inn again, more carefully this time.’

‘We, Lavedrine?’ I said, turning off the river path towards the castle gate. ‘As I told you, I will be returning to Lotingen tonight.’

‘What about Elspeth?’ he protested. ‘Don’t you want to know about the dark female creature that she said she saw? Don’t you want to confront her story with what Lecompte has told us? We could bring them face to face, and see what comes of it.’

I faced up to him then.

‘I have a better idea,’ I challenged, appealing to his sense of irony. ‘Just think! We could take a serious look at the feuding in the ranks of the French army. We could play the rival officers off against each other, and make them confess to all their sins.’ I slowly shook my head. ‘Would Layard let you do it, Lavedrine? Would he allow you to hang out the dirty washing of the
Grande Armée
in public? Would he permit a Prussian magistrate to keep you company while you did it? That’s what you must do in Marienburg. Alone and without my help, I’m afraid. I will be in Lotingen. As I said, I will be attempting to save a life.’

I walked rapidly on ahead, while Lavedrine still lingered there.

‘Have you considered the other possibility?’ he called after me.

I slowed down, letting him catch up with me.

‘Which possibility are you talking of?’ I asked.

‘That Emma Rimmele came to Marienburg of her own free will to meet Sebastien Grangé. Adele Beckmann said that she was mourning for her mother. The French were already in the house. Yet Emma appeared to be happy.
Radiant
was the word that the serving-woman used. Whatever occurred between them, it had already taken place at Kirchenfeld. What if Emma Rimmele was in love with Sebastien Grangé? What if she followed him to Marienburg? Have you taken that possibility into consideration, Hanno Stiffeniis?’

I shook my head and walked on quickly, as if he were a bore and a nuisance from whom I wished to be free. I strode in through the castle gate, pointing over my shoulder with my thumb as one of the sentries stepped forward to prevent me from entering.

‘I’m with Colonel Lavedrine,’ I said, and I marched straight past the man.

‘You cannot reject a hypothesis because it offends you, Stiffeniis,’ I heard him calling at my back.

The sun sank entirely below the horizon in that instant.

I felt the towering heaviness of the fortress gate above my head, and I was relieved by the darkness of those walls. I hurried across the courtyard, making for the outside staircase which led up to the first floor where the officers were quartered.

I would collect my things from the room, then leave.

As I began to mount the steps, a soldier came running down.

‘Monsieur, I’ve been looking for you,’ he declared, stopping on the step above me. He glanced from me to Lavedrine, who was now on a slightly lower step. And there his gaze remained as if I had suddenly become transparent. ‘Colonel Lavedrine?’ he asked.

Lavedrine came bounding up the stairs, and stood at my side.

‘What is it?’ he asked, resting one hand on his thigh.

‘A woman arrived some time ago, monsieur. She was asking for you. General Layard gave orders to put her in the room at the far end of the corridor upstairs, and to let her wait there until you came.’

‘A woman? Did she give no name?’ he asked.

‘No, monsieur. She has come from Lotingen, it seems.’

I left them talking, climbing the steps two at a time in my hurry to reach the floor above. Was Emma Rimmele there alone, surrounded by French soldiers? Had she come to Marienburg alone, and without her father? The messenger had said nothing of an old man. Had she ventured unbidden into the wolf’s lair? Only some greater danger than the ones she had already faced could have brought her to do such a thing.

I raced in through the open door.

Lavedrine was breathing down my neck. I heard his boots ringing on the tiles.

Emma would be forced to face him, she would be subjected to his questions. She would be inhibited by his presence. She would certainly be frightened. I turned on him, fists clenched, as if to meet an assailant.

‘Let me talk to her first, Lavedrine. Alone.’

Lavedrine regarded me. His hands were on his hips, and he was shaking his head, looking at me as if I had lost my wits, a dangerous mad man that it was better not to confront. Nevertheless, he tried.

‘We need to talk, Stiffeniis. Before you meet…the lady.’

I stepped close to him.

‘Wait here,’ I said. ‘I’ll call for you to come when the time is right.’

My voice was hard, determined. There was no thing to discuss.

The expression on his face disturbed me. Was he amused by what he saw in me, or by the thought of finally meeting Emma Rimmele? There, I thought, that is what I must defend her from. The heartless irony of Serge Lavedrine was more devastating than any question he could throw at her.

I turned away, strode down the corridor, stood for an instant before the door and gently began to beat my knuckles against the wood. Without waiting to be called, I opened the door and stepped into the room.

It was larger than the one that I had been assigned, and more comfortable. A small fire had been lit. It was the only illumination in the chamber.

She was sitting on a chair, her feet resting on an iron bar which was set into the stone before the fire. Her pointed shoes were neatly aligned and close together, like those of an orderly, well-composed, self-possessed person. The play of the firelight made no impression at all on her black clothes, which were heavy, opaque. They held her body as tightly as a sheath, emphasising her slender arms, and the mass of her dark auburn curls, which fell like water from a fountain over her narrow shoulders. Pale hands were clasped in her lap, issuing from sleeves so tight they made her seem far thinner than she really was. As she turned to greet me, I saw the two red globes of coral dangling from the lobes of her ears like two bright cherries on either side of a dark leaf.