Chapter 2
Growing Up Grave Robbing

Hans and Knobbe were hunched at the fire pit outside their cave watching the sun go down. Knobbe scratched his bald spot.

“It’s over twelve years since you washed up,” he said. “Counting your baby time, that makes you thirteen or thereabouts. Think of it. You’re all of your fingers and some of your toes.” Knobbe had never been to school, but he knew how to count. At least up to twenty.

“How old are you?” Hans asked cautiously.

“Older than all the hairs in my nose. But don’t you go changing the subject.”

Hans closed his eyes. When Knobbe was fixed on a subject, he was like a vulture circling a dead rabbit. There was no distracting him till he’d picked the subject clean. But what exactly was the subject? Hans nervously traced the little birthmark on his shoulder, waiting for the grave robber’s thoughts to land.

Knobbe wormed a string of old squirrel meat from between his teeth. He stared at it gravely. “I’ve been a good father to you.” It was what Knobbe always said when he wanted something.

“Yes, Papa. If it weren’t for you I’d have been ripped apart by seagulls.” It was what Hans always said when he didn’t want to get smacked on the head.

“I spared you from foxes, too. And from the Necromancer,” Knobbe continued. “Oh yes, if it weren’t for the rope that tied you to my belt when you was an infant, his little minions, the Weevil gang, would have stolen you whilst I was digging up Herr Blooker’s grave. Your brains would’ve been ground up in the Necromancer’s skull pot with a little pumpkin seed and gopher dust. You’d have been turned into a spell for the devil.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“But most of all, I’ve given you honors,” Knobbe intoned. “Honors that lead to the greatest honor of all: initiation into the Grand Society of Grave Robbers.”

What will the honor be tonight? Hans shuddered.

When he was a child, the honors had been easy. Knobbe had hidden him behind stone slabs in various county churchyards while he dug holes in the ground. Hans’ honor was to make a birdcall if he heard someone coming. When Hans had realized there were people in the holes, Knobbe’d told him they were friends of his who’d had a tiring life and gone there to sleep. Hans’ new honor was the privilege of staying quiet so he wouldn’t wake them.

Hans had asked Knobbe why he dug up his friends if they wanted to sleep.

“It’s a game of hide-and-seek,” Knobbe’d replied. “They hide in the holes. My job is to find them. When I do, they give me their brass buttons.”

And other rewards besides buttons. Hans had discovered these by accident. He’d always wanted to see the inside of Knobbe’s bounty box—the chest in which he’d been washed ashore—but Knobbe had made it clear that it was off limits. Still, the chest held mysteries for Hans. Where had he come from? Who were his parents? Did they love him? Miss him? And the greatest mystery of all: Who was he? Who was he, really?

One day, Hans’ curiosity had gotten the better of him. While Knobbe was away, he’d opened the chest and stared in wonder at the carved crest on the inside of the lid. He’d run his fingers over the eagle spewing lightning bolts, the unicorns, the winds, the sun, and the strange words. Then he’d rummaged through Knobbe’s collection of rings, buckles, broaches, and snuffboxes to see if there were other carvings in the wood. At the bottom of the chest, he’d found a cloth bag. It was filled with gold teeth.

That’s when Knobbe’d returned. “What are you doing in my bounty box?”

“Nothing.”

Knobbe’d grabbed the chest and hugged it tighter than he’d ever hugged his son. “This bounty box holds presents promised me by my friends when they was alive. They’re things the dead owe me.”

“Even their gold teeth?”

“Especially their gold teeth. They’re all I have to remember them by.”

Once, Hans had suggested his father might sell these presents, especially the jewelry. With the money, they could dress in real clothes instead of burlap sacks, and have a house in town.

“A house in town means neighbors, and neighbors means questions,” Knobbe’d replied. “Best to keep to ourselves, selling the pretties one at a time as needs be. Besides”—and here he’d tapped his nose—“you wouldn’t want someone spotting their family’s rings on other people’s fingers, would you? Pretties must be kept till those who remember them are underground.”

“But Papa—”

Knobbe’d held up a hand. “There are things you’re too young to understand, my boy. Things you’ll know when you enter the Grand Society of Grave Robbers.”

As Hans grew into a wiry young man, the “little honors” his father bestowed on him had become more physical. After years of digging in the damp, stony earth, Knobbe’s right shoulder had ballooned like a pumpkin, while the bunions on his large, hairy feet bulged unto bursting. So Hans was obliged to carry shovels, ropes, and crowbars, and to dig down till he tapped a coffin. Then he’d scramble out of the hole, leaving Knobbe to deal with the dead.

Yet crawling in and out of graves was getting harder on the old man’s bones. Thus, tonight, Hans was not entirely surprised to hear his latest honor:

“In three nights’ time, there’ll be a new moon,” said Knobbe. “On that night, you shall rob your very first grave single-handed, and enter the Grand Society of Grave Robbers.”

Hans felt sick. Knobbe was blessed with a weak nose and a strong stomach; Hans was not. When the grave robber toiled in the holes, Hans closed his eyes and dreamed of daylight, birdsong, and the roar of the sea. He couldn’t condemn the man who’d saved his life and raised him since childhood. Yet the idea that in three days he’d be robbing a grave himself was unbearable.

Knobbe smacked Hans on the side of the head. “What’s the matter? I offer you the greatest honor of your life, and not a word of thanks?”

“I’m sorry, Papa.” From the corner of his eye, Hans saw a turkey vulture glide past the cliff edge and over the sea. It hovered, then swooped through the dusk toward the distant turrets on Castle Hill. Oh, to be a bird, to soar free, high above the earth, Hans thought. Oh, to be anywhere but here.

He rose unsteadily to his feet.

“What is it, boy?” Knobbe growled.

“It’s . . . I’m . . . It’s . . .” Hans swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. His arms circled limply at his sides.

“Spit it out.”

Hans could barely hear or think or breathe. It was as if he was underwater, drowning. His feet began to move, all on their own, one in front of the other.

“Where are you off to?”

Hans neither knew nor cared. He swayed to the crag beyond the fire pit and started to run, bounding out of the barrens and into the gathering night. On and on he ran, through Potter’s Field, past the churchyard, into the village, his bare feet pounding the cobblestones outside the baker’s, the blacksmith’s, the tinker’s, the tailor’s, and over the bridge by the mill. Back in the country, guided by starlight, he turned off the road, jumped over a ditch, and tore through fields and groves till he could run no more. He dropped to his knees by a stand of bulrushes at the foot of Castle Hill.

Hans froze. He’d crossed into the estate of the Count and Countess von Schwanenberg and of their daughter, Angela, the Little Countess. If he were caught, there’d be trouble. Yet Hans was powerless to move. He could only gaze up in wonder at the castle above him. From the barrens, it looked impressive. Here, so close, it seemed a miracle of God.

Hans lay on his side and imagined life within its gilded walls. How glorious it must be for even the lowliest of the lowliest servants. Maybe they had to empty chamber pots and clean out the stables, but at least they never had to rob graves.

Hans made a promise to the stars: “One day, I shall know who I am. From that day forth, I shall live in the light, breathe clean air, and never again have to crawl with the dead things.” Then his eyelids flickered shut and he drifted into a sleep far deeper and more troubled than the grave.