30

For the first time, Drozde opened the door of the ballroom to find no one waiting for her. Empty, the room seemed larger than she remembered it; her voice and Klaes’s echoed off the peeling walls. The lieutenant seemed nervous, peering into the minstrels’ alcove as if some danger might be lurking there, but he came into the room docilely enough, and sat down on the spindly chair that Drozde found for him.

“Now what?” Drozde asked Magda, who had not left her side. Klaes started and turned to look attentively in the child’s direction, peering as if he might make out who Drozde was addressing if only he looked hard enough.

“She’ll come now,” the child said. “I called her, and she likes this room. Here she is. Hello, Agnese!”

There was a girl with her, appearing suddenly as if from a fold in the air. She was so vivid that for a moment Drozde could not see her as a ghost, and wondered where she had been hiding. She was dressed demurely in a high-necked grey dress, but her yellow hair escaped in tendrils from both sides of her cap, and her mouth quirked as if about to break into a laugh. She did not immediately acknowledge Drozde, but stood in front of the oblivious Klaes, peering into his face as if assuring herself that he could not see her. After a moment she nodded, turned to Drozde and made a little bob, the curtsy of a girl who had not been trained to deference.

“Magda says I should tell you my story, Drozde,” she began. “And I’d like that very, very much. Of course I would! But telling you and telling—” she flicked a glance at Klaes “—other people aren’t the same thing at all. You’re from the same time I am, aren’t you? Silkie is alive where you are now, and Bobik; even Birgitta. I don’t want to give them any trouble.”

“We won’t make trouble,” Drozde assured her. “The lieutenant found out about the smuggling, but he isn’t going to tell his commander. He just wants to know what happened.”

The girl looked at Klaes narrowly. “If you say he won’t then I’ll take your word for it, Drozde,” she said, “but I don’t think knowing this will help him very much. I’ll tell you anyway, though, since you ask me to, and you can pass it on if you see fit. Only make sure no harm comes of it, if you can—there’s been too many wicked things done already by men in those colours.”

She must have seen the heartfelt assent in Drozde’s face. “Well then,” she said, and began her story.

Bobik always said, and so did my aunt, that I should not have gone for a maid at the big house, that I was mad to ever go there. And since the place has done for me in the long run, they were right, weren’t they? But if you knew me like Silkie did, you wouldn’t have said that I was mad.

When we were all younger, me and my friends used to talk about what we’d do when we were grown. Jana said she’d make fine dresses, and wear the best ones herself and sell the rest. Bosilka, she’s my best friend, said she’d be a master-carpenter like her dad; she was always funny. And most of the others, it was get a rich husband, a man with a hundred sheep, and have a silver necklace and eat meat every day. But not me. I wanted to go to the city. If a traveller came through when I was serving at the inn, I’d hang around at the table and listen to the talk. Sometimes he’d tell of Praha, or Brno, and it made me want to see them so much. Marble palaces, and theatres with gold and velvet on the walls. And whole rooms full of beautiful pictures, and ladies hung with diamonds just strolling through them. I wanted to be one of those ladies. If I had to marry a rich man to do it, well then. But it was the pictures I wanted, and the diamonds, not the man.

So when the militia moved into the big house and called for a maid, why wouldn’t I go? It was the grandest place for miles around—the only grand place really, for all it was falling down. We broke in there once, Silkie and me, when we were little, and it had marble statues and everything. It would be hard work, I knew that: there were rats and spiders everywhere, and the velvet curtains all rotten. But rotten or not, it was still a palace, with pictures, one or two, in golden frames that would shine if you only polished them. And they were paying a lot more than I could make pouring beer with my auntie and Risha.

Bobik wasn’t too happy about it. We were walking out: he wanted to call it courting, but I could do very well without that. He was a fine enough young man, Bobik, tall and straight and a hard worker, and his cousin Matheus kept the inn and was the richest man in town but only the mayor. But I didn’t have a mind for marriage then, so I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no. A lot of people didn’t like me going, now I think of it. There was more than one old biddy who said I was going the same way as my mama, who left the village when I was a baby. My auntie wouldn’t hear that, of course, though she was the one who called me mad. But Bosilka, who was always sweet, she kissed me and wished me luck. And Matheus was keen for me to go, because of the brandy he smuggled. He’d been keeping it in the cellar at the big house, you see, and when the militia turned up like that without warning, he didn’t have time to move it. I’d never seen him that worried before. He asked me to keep an eye open, see if anyone had been down there, and if not, I was to push something in front of the door to the storeroom, to keep it hidden until he could find a way to get inside the house himself.

Only when I got there, the militia had already found it out. The captain, Nymand Petos—God rot him!—he greeted me at the door, all smiles. I didn’t know then, of course, what he was like; he was fat and he smelled of tobacco, but he seemed well-behaved. He called me “my dear.” And I was hardly inside the door when he asked me if anyone I knew was storing anything there.

Well, of course I made big eyes and asked him what he meant. He smiled some more, and said no matter. Then he told me to bring a broom when I came the next day.

There were twenty men staying in the house, twenty of them and Petos. Two were corporals, Stannaert and Skutch, but it was Petos kept them all in order. And he had to: some of them were pigs, with wandering hands far worse than what you’d find at the inn. It was a real problem in the early days, when I couldn’t tell them apart; later on I knew which ones to avoid.

My first problem was telling Matheus they knew about the brandy. Well, not all of them, as it turned out, just Skutch, who’d found the room, and Stannaert. And Petos, of course. I never knew how Matheus sorted it out with him. There was some kind of meeting between all of them, and then the boys were bringing the casks to the house again as if nothing had happened, only now they had a military guard. Bobik came with them sometimes. The first time I saw him there I waved, and made to run over and kiss him, but he scowled and wouldn’t look at me. After that, when I knew he was coming, I went and stayed in the back kitchen with old Birgitta. He was still nice enough when he saw me in town, Bobik. It was only in the house that he wouldn’t give me the time of day. Of an evening we’d meet up sometimes and he was his old sweet self. That’s how I found out about the new brandy. But he made me promise not to tell anyone, and I never have until now.

Inside of a month they were dropping off more barrels than ever before. Bobik told me one night that the new stuff was coming up the river, all the way from France, he said. And Petos was running it all. He had Lukas the carter going every which way, a new load each day in a different direction. He left all the men’s training to Stannaert while he went off with the cart. In the evenings they’d all get drunk, and one night I heard him bragging that he had more money than the mayor. He said he was selling the Prussians their own brandy back to them.

I remember that night because that was the first time I let Petos touch me. I wasn’t meant to be there at all; I was supposed to go home when it got dark, and it was Birgitta’s job to serve them their wine of an evening. But she was old. So they’d offer me an extra grosch to do it instead, and sometimes I did. By that time it was mostly just greedy looks and crude talk: if one of them tried to put a hand on me I’d step away sharp and give him a glare; Petos too. Only that night he got to talking of what he’d do with his money. When his tour of duty was up, he said, he was off to Praha to open an inn of his own: a properly fancy place, in the centre of town among the theatres. He’d serve only lords and ladies, he said, and he talked about the rare stuff he’d give them to drink, and the music and dancing they’d have. He could talk fine, like a gentleman—it made you believe him. And then he said he’d need a pretty girl there to pour the wine for all those gentry, and he looked at me and smiled.

So the next time he went to put his hand on my knee, I let him, and I smiled back. I asked him what it was like in Praha, and he told me. And you know, he had a nice voice, for all he was fat. I thought maybe I could come to like him. I didn’t let him do anything more that night, but I drank his wine and I got home late and uncertain on my feet. And in my mind, too.

When I came to the house next day he was different with me. All “sweetheart” and “flower,” and giving me little pats and prods like I was a prize horse he’d just bought and he was checking on the bargain. And smiling at me out of the corner of his mouth as if we shared a secret. He’d come in while I was doing the sweeping and stand too close, looking at me with that little smile, and say, “You wouldn’t need to sweep floors in Praha.”

I let him take liberties. I did. It’s something I would undo if I could. He’d put his hands all over me, and his mouth too. I would take his big knobbly cock in my hand and hold on to it while he pushed and grunted, and clean up the mess afterwards. But I wouldn’t let him have me, although he often tried. He said it was no more than I’d done before, which was true, though I denied it—I wouldn’t talk of Bobik to him. But it wouldn’t have been right: Bobik was different. Petos said he’d expect more than that from me if we were to go to Praha. I said, you take me there, and we’ll see.

I don’t know if I’d have gone with him. I don’t even know if he truly meant to take me; maybe all the talk of Praha was just invention. First he was happy enough to have me listen to his stories and let him put his hands on me when he told them. Did I say he could speak like a gentleman, or like an actor on the stage? I used to shut my eyes and pretend I was already there. But after a while he would ask all the time for things I wouldn’t give, and then he began to like my company less. He’d get angry with me for small things; he’d box my ears for not hanging up his coat the right way, and shout at me if his soup was cold, though that was Birgitta’s doing and not mine. When I broke a glass once, he came at me with a strap. And when he’d paw at me he took to pinching and tweaking; biting too, when he was in the worst mood. He never touched my face. Rich though he was, he knew there might be trouble if I came home with a black eye. But some days my breasts and arms were bruised black and blue, and I could not make free with Bobik till the marks faded.

And one day, I’d gone in the kitchen to get some fruit for him, and Birgitta grabbed hold of my arm. When I shook her off, for it was sore, she had my sleeve up till she saw the marks there, and then she shook me and cried at me for all the world like my auntie would have done. She said I was not to stay here; I should leave right away and not come back. She even threatened to go to my aunt. Well, I talked her out of that. I had more than a florin saved up by then, and how would I make that much money back at the inn? And besides, I still believed that Petos might take me to Praha, even if I had to run away from him when I got there. I’d need money for that too. I told Birgitta that I would stay away from Petos, and not go alone to his room any more. I let her take him his fruit; he shouted at her but he didn’t hit her. None of those men could cook.

I got to thinking. And that Sunday, when I saw Bosilka as usual after church, she could see something was wrong and she asked me straight out. She knew a bit about Petos, but I never told her he hit me, though I knew she suspected. And when I finally told her (though not all of it) she took on worse than Birgitta. “He’ll never take you to Praha,” she said. “You’re fooling yourself.” She said a man who’d treat me like that wasn’t worth staying with.

Well, Bosilka was funny, like I said. She had some strange ideas. She’d ask the priest about God and the mayor about the laws, like it was important to her. But for all that, she had her head screwed on. She told me Bobik would wed me in a heartbeat, and if it was money I wanted, everyone knew that Matheus would leave him the inn one of these days. I said Bobik would never want me if he knew what I’d done with Petos, and she said he already knew it, most of it, or suspected at least. It would make no difference, she said, and maybe she was right at that.

I went back to the house. I served Petos his supper that night, and stood by while he crammed meat into his mouth till the juice ran down his chin, and dropped the bones on the floor without caring where they landed. I’d seen him do those things before, of course, but that night . . . Then he took hold of my backside, and smiled and called me his little whore. He was drunk and happy—he laughed when he said it, as though he’d made a joke. As I walked home I started to think what would happen if he did take me to the city. It would be a long journey there, just him and me together. And then when we got there I wouldn’t know anyone: who knew what kind of work I’d be able to find? A florin wouldn’t feed and house me forever. It might be weeks before I could get away from him, or months. I thought, I can’t stay with him that long. And Praha suddenly felt a long way away.

The next day, when the boys came with the casks, Bobik was with them. I hadn’t seen him for a week because of the bruises, but this time I didn’t hide in the back kitchen. I waited till he came to the cellar steps, and when he put down the barrel to open the door, I went up to him and took his hand, and kissed him. He kissed me right back, I can tell you. I smiled at him and was going to tell him I was leaving the great house, that I’d take him if he still wanted me. But that moment Skutch trotted up with a barrel of his own, and Bobik had to drop my hand and go on downstairs. And when he came back up Skutch was still with him and he couldn’t do more than throw me a smile. So I lost my chance.

Birgitta had seen the whole thing, and she was glad. She asked me, would I leave now, and I said yes. If I wanted my last week’s pay I’d have to stay till Saturday. But that meant Petos again. It used to be Stannaert—he still paid Birgitta and the boys—but since the Praha business came up Petos had taken to paying me himself. He’d hold the money out of my reach and laugh, and make me give him a kiss before I could have it, things like that. I thought about it and decided it wasn’t worth it; I’d rather see the back of him now. Birgitta said, “Just go, then. I’ll tell him for you.” But I’d got it into my head to tell Petos myself. It wasn’t to pay him out, or anything. I think I just wanted it to be certain.

He was in the old billiard room, which he’d made into his office. I think your officer here took over the same one. He’d got a mouldy old armchair in front of the fire; he was sitting in it when I told him, with a glass of brandy at his side. I remember he sat very still. And then he smiled—only it wasn’t quite a smile, just his mouth stretched, and he said, “Come here.”

I didn’t care to. I shook my head and said I’d go now. And he jumped up and ran at me. He got me by the arm and then by the neck, and started to batter me. I caught up the brandy glass and hit him with it; the glass broke and cut him, and he stepped back from me with blood on his cheek and the fire flaming up blue behind him where the brandy had gone. I said he’d better not come any closer. He might be richer than the mayor, I said, but if he harmed me then my friends and neighbours would harm him worse. And he smiled that not-smile again, the blood running down his face, and said he owned my neighbours. He owned everything in this shithole town, he said, and he’d take what was his by rights, starting with me.

I was scared. I still had the broken glass and I made to attack him with it, but he could see I was shaking. I screamed at him to leave me be, and then there was a banging on the door, and a man outside asking was everything in order? It was a private, one of the pigs with the wandering hands; I forget his name. He was stupid: he had the door open before Petos could finish ordering him to go away, and I almost got through it. But he wouldn’t let me past. And then Petos shouted at him to hold me, and that he’d caught me stealing. I slashed at both of them and yelled, but they got the glass away from me, and one of them put his fat hand over my mouth. I bit him—they were both bleeding—but I couldn’t get away; I couldn’t.

They dragged me up the stairs and locked me in Petos’s room. I remember the pig private looked startled when Petos told him where to put me, but he wasn’t quite stupid enough to ask questions. They threw me in the corner, and Petos sent the private away and stood over me, his face dark red and streaked on one side where I’d cut him. I thought he was going to batter me again, but he put his hand up to his face and stepped back. He called me whore, and this time he didn’t mean it as a jest. He said I’d stay there till I gave him what he wanted, till I’d beg him to take me, and he took his knife from the table and stroked it while he spoke. I don’t recall all the things he said; I didn’t answer. After a while he went out and turned the key behind him, and I heard him going down the passage calling for water. He took the knife with him.

As soon as he’d gone I went to the door, but it was stuck fast; I couldn’t move it. I got the window open and screamed from it till I was hoarse, but no one came. Bobik was long gone by then, and Birgitta was deaf, though she’d never admit it. And then I heard him coming back, his heavy feet outside, and he was shouting what he’d do to me if I didn’t shut my mouth. There was nothing I could find to hit him with, and I wasn’t about to be beaten again if I could help it. I got my head and shoulders out of the window, and caught the sides of the sash to pull myself through. As he opened the door I had one foot on the sill. If I could have got a proper purchase and let myself drop, maybe I’d have managed; I think I could still have run. But he came at me with his fat hands grabbing and his face all twisted up like a demon. I started away from him, the sill broke beneath me and I fell.

From there on it’s hard for me to remember things in the right time. The falling was the worst—I won’t recall that for fear it takes me back there. It was my head I hit first, or else my arm. There was a crack like breaking a big bit of kindling, and then for a while I was just glad the falling had stopped. I think I was already dead when Petos reached me. He shook me up and down and I didn’t feel it: I think I was mostly watching from outside by then. He was shouting, and maybe crying. I’d shut my eyes tight while I was falling and it was still hard to see.

He dragged me round the side of the house and into the cellar. The men were all elsewhere or had got out of his way, though I heard Birgitta clattering pans in the kitchen next door. He put me over his shoulder to get down the steps, and laid me out on the floor while he moved the casks out of the way and dug a grave beneath them. I got a look at myself while he did that. Oh, I looked bad. One of my eyes was swollen so badly it looked like it could never open, and my mouth all torn and bloody, and that side of my face crushed in on itself like an eggshell. I prayed Bobik wouldn’t have to see me like that.

He put me in the ground and covered me up—it gave me a shudder when I saw the earth covering my face. While he was moving the casks on top of me Birgitta came to the door and asked what he was doing there. He shouted at her to be gone and shouldered her out of the way to get up the steps. But I saw her looking at the marks on his face, and wondering. I followed them up the stairs, but neither of them saw me.

He told Stannaert that I had stolen money from him and run away, knowing that Stannaert would spread it around the men. He went into his room and locked the door. But Birgitta went straight down to the cellar. She moved those casks, though they were heavy, and she found the grave. She never heard me shouting at her to leave well alone, for I feared it would give her an apoplexy if she found me. She scratched at the earth floor until she saw my foot sticking up. And then she stopped very still, and she covered my foot up again, and she prayed for a long while. She spoke to me, not looking where I was but at the grave. She said she was sorry she hadn’t saved me—she should have done more—but the murdering bastard butcher would suffer for it. And she got her things from the kitchen and left without a word to anyone. I left the cellar too; I don’t go back to that spot now.

So I heard what happened then by listening to other people. Matheus sent word to Petos that one of his casks was bad and a customer wanted his money back. And when Petos went down to check the consignment he found Matheus and Bobik waiting for him, and four or five others. They made him dig me up, and then they killed him. He cried, and swore he hadn’t meant to murder me, but what difference did that make? I was just as dead, and my poor Bobik had seen me in that state, for all my prayers. So they beat Petos with their fists, and stabbed him through and through with their knives. And then, seeing that he was still alive, if only a little, Matheus broached one of the casks, and two of the others stopped Petos from struggling while Bobik pushed his head down into it and held him there till he drowned. It wasn’t a nice way to go. But then again, neither was the falling.

They left Petos where he had left me till they could make a deeper grave for him behind the house. And they carried me upstairs, and told Stannaert and Skutch that their captain had done murder, and had deserted when it was found out. Matheus told them that they had a choice: they could leave the house and the town, them and their men. Or they could be taken up as confederates for killing me and hiding me from justice. By morning all of them had gone.

They put me in the churchyard with a fine stone over me; Matheus paid for it. I visit it sometimes when Silkie’s there, or Birgitta or my aunt; they tell me the news. Bobik goes there too, for a while: after my cousin Marisha gets him he visits less often. And that’s my story.

The girl gave another half-curtsy as she finished, looking sombre and, for a moment or two, actually older, as if she had lived to make use of the experience she had gained so hard. Then she smiled, and was carefree and mischievous once again.

“It was good to tell you,” she said. “Magda was right. But he—the schoolmaster—he can’t hear a thing, can he? You’ll have to tell him again.”

Drozde had to bite back a laugh at her description of Klaes. Dead or not, Agnese was a sharp observer: there was something schoolteacherly about the lieutenant’s earnest look and his slightly stooped posture when he spoke to her, as if leaning forward to listen to a slow child. But she nodded seriously, and turned to Klaes. He had been peering intently in Agnese’s direction as if he could see something there—a movement in the air; some colour or shadow.

“She’s finished telling,” Drozde told him. “Petos was the captain of the militia here; he found out about the smuggling and took it over, with his men’s help. All that brandy was his. And he killed Agnese.” She told him only the bare details of the girl’s flirtation with the captain, her life in the house and her death; they weren’t his concern. And she gave him no more names. “An old woman who worked in the kitchen discovered Agnese’s body and told her friends. They killed Petos in revenge and persuaded his men to desert. That’s the full story, Lieutenant. Does it answer your questions?”

Lieutenant Klaes found that it did. Though he was tempted to doubt his own sanity by this time, he didn’t doubt the story he’d just been told. Which meant, of course, that he was accepting as fact Drozde’s claim that she could talk to the dead. Indeed, he had felt their presence—had seemed to be on the brink of seeing them himself, a vast and silent audience to the dead girl’s voiceless discourse. The flummery of mountebanks was now his science.

“The names,” he said. “Please.”

“Which names?”

“The villagers who were involved in the smuggling. If I can bring them here for Colonel August to question them, he’ll have to accept that the rest of the villagers are innocent of any wrongdoing—that it was only this ring, this cabal, and that their crime was smuggling.”

Drozde turned to the air, and listened to it for a goodly while. When she was done, she looked to Klaes again. “She won’t give you the names. She wants to know how stupid you think she is. For every name she gives, a man will be hurt. And she’s right, Klaes. You were there! You saw what they did to those men. To that boy! You should be ashamed even to ask!”

“That’s not . . .” Klaes began, but there was no way to untangle this. He deplored the colonel’s actions, but he could not simply wish him away or remove his power over these people. The only way to curb his worst excesses was to give him the truth and show him how small a thing he was pursuing.

But he could do that without the names. If the colonel were to see the barrels in the cellars, he would understand at last the reason for the villagers’ secrecy and for Petos’s death. He would order a full investigation, and some men would be arrested. But then it would be over.

Klaes made a gesture, waving aside his own objections even as he was making them. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “My thanks to the lady, and to you. You’ve given me the answers I needed, and from here I can do what’s needful by myself.”

He was about to leave, but Drozde caught him by the arm. “What’s needful?” she said. “What does that mean, Klaes? You wouldn’t take any of this to August, would you? Knowing what he’ll do with it?”

“I have to. It’s a matter of—”

“It’s a matter of your conscience against men’s lives!”

“No! Of choosing the path that leads to the least bloodshed.”

The gypsy shook her head, as though she were trying to explain to a madman why the sun is hot. “That’s not in your power to choose,” she said. “Good God! Look what he did when you told him about the fight! Did you think then that you were avoiding bloodshed?”

Klaes’s rejoinder died in his throat. The truth was that he had not thought very much about consequences when he made his report—he had only done his duty as he saw it and then stepped back, as a soldier does. But see what terrible things it had led to! Drozde was right, he realised with a growing dismay. He had no power over what became of his words after they left his mouth—and he could not be at all sure that the colonel would restrict his response to the avenues a reasonable man would use.

Not realising that he was already convinced, Drozde continued to hector him. “Isn’t there enough blood on your hands already? Are you so very determined to go looking for more?”

He tried to pacify her. “Madam. Drozde. Your argument is a strong one.”

“Then listen to it, you idiot, and don’t seek to make this sorry situation even worse!”

“I promise you, I won’t.”

She slowed in the middle of her tirade, the wind squarely gone from her sails. “You won’t?”

“No. I’ll keep your . . . your friend’s confidence, and say nothing of what we found.”

He bowed formally to her, and took his leave. But as he approached the door of the room it was occluded by a familiar figure. It was Sergeant Molebacher, his hateful bulk filling the space.

Klaes drew his sword at once and advanced. There seemed to be no shaking the man, but he had been provoked beyond patience and he was determined to try what the flat of a sword would do.

“Here, sir,” Molebacher said. “And by’r’lady, I think he means to kill me!”

The sergeant stepped hastily aside, allowing a small troop of soldiers to walk by him into the room. August followed after, glaring at Klaes like a devil in a pantomime.

“Colonel.” Klaes acknowledged his commander with a smart salute.

“Take his weapons,” August said. “And bind his hands.”

So bizarre and inexplicable were these words to Klaes that for a moment he thought they were addressed to him—that he was being ordered to disarm and arrest the sergeant. Only for a moment, though. Then his sword was snatched from his grasp and strong hands seized his arms. He felt his wrists dragged together and a rough cord of some kind wrapped around them.

”Colonel August!” he protested. “What . . . what does this mean? Why are you doing this?” He looked around, thinking that Drozde might intervene, but Drozde was nowhere to be seen. Apart from himself and the other soldiers, the ballroom was empty.

“What does it mean?” The colonel threw his words back at him with grim distaste. “It means you’re exposed for what you are, Lieutenant. I was deceived in you, but you were the worse deceived. Imagining that Sergeant Molebacher here would join you in such an enterprise!”

“I’ve done nothing!” Klaes protested. But the words sounded weak even to him, mined from within by the promise he’d just made to Drozde. He had conspired—in the interests of peace. But surely August could not have heard that. “I don’t understand you.”

The colonel strode up to him, visibly shaking with indignation. “What, nothing? So you didn’t find the body? Petos’s body? And then hide it again?”

“I—I—yes.” Klaes was too astonished to deny it. “Buried it again, yes. But not to hide it. I only wanted to wait until I had more information to present to you.”

“Very good,” August said, nodding in mock approval to Molebacher. The sergeant rolled his eyes. “More information, yes. Of course. And then when you found the barrels in the cellar, what was your reason for silence then? Was your investigation still not concluded?”

Klaes gasped aloud—which could only sound like an admission of guilt. It had been less than an hour before! Molebacher must have gone down the stairs as soon as they departed the kitchen, and found everything just as they’d left it. And then he must have gone directly to the colonel. But still, Klaes was uncertain what he was being accused of. “I would certainly have told you,” he said. But the lieutenant was a fastidious man, and therefore hesitated before laying any further weight on top of such a blatant falsehood.

August shook his head in utter contempt. “You would have told me? But it was Molebacher you went to next—to ask for his help in selling on all that brandy, on behalf of those who left it there.”

“No! Sir, I did not!”

“To sell contraband,” the colonel insisted, “and then to apply the profits to—say it, Mole. It sticks in my teeth.”

“Weapons, sir.” Molebacher delivered the word almost negligently. He had advanced into the room and was casting his gaze into its shadowed corners. Clearly he had expected Drozde to be here, too, and was surprised by her absence.

“Weapons?” Klaes’s tone hovered between horror and exasperation.

“For Narutsin.” Sergeant Molebacher spat on the floor.

“For Narutsin.” August looked to the soldiers who were holding Klaes, as though he were pleading a case in court and they were the jury. “I swear before God, Klaes, I never mistook you for a proper soldier, but it hurts me to find out you’re a traitor.”

“But this is nonsense!” Klaes yelled—and was silenced by a ringing slap from the colonel.

August’s face was thrust belligerently into Klaes’s own. “Even if there were no evidence,” he hissed. “If it were only your word against Mole’s, and no weight else on either side, a single word from him would outweigh all the simpering speeches you ever made. But we have the corpse. We have the brandy. And we have you, Klaes. We have you. For just so long as it takes to read out a charge and hang you by the neck. Take him away.”

These last words to the soldiers, who half-dragged and half-carried Klaes out of the room.

Looking wildly back over his shoulder, Klaes saw Sergeant Molebacher’s face—stern and solemn like the face of a preacher, but with a gleam in his eye that spoke louder than any words could have done. Shame me in front of my men? Beat me out of my own kitchen? Keep my doxy from me? Well I’ve the last laugh on you.

To all of these events, Drozde was a silent witness. She could not help it.

As soon as Molebacher stood aside and August’s soldiers marched into the room, she felt a hand slip into hers. And then another, on the other side. And then more and more, laid on her arms, her shoulders, her sides and hips.

A gentle but insistent tugging from all these ghostly presences took her from her place and yet at the same time left her standing exactly where she was. A sort of curtain fell across her face, compounded of time and distance, tasting of dry dust at the back of the throat.

When Molebacher walked right in front of her and looked through her, she knew that she could not be seen. When he spat, his spittle hit the wooden tiles right at her feet.

The ghosts had saved her by drawing her a little way into their own place—which was this place, and yet was not this place at all.

She looked down at Magda, standing at her right hand, and nodded her thanks. The girl smiled and planted an immaterial kiss on her wrist, as though to reassure her in the face of this new calamity.

Then she looked to her left to thank the other ghost who was there. She expected to see Agnese, but it was not Agnese.

It was herself.

Drozde was looking into her own face.

The ghost-Drozde wore an urgent frown, and raised a finger to her pursed lips, advising silence. But Drozde could not have uttered a sound if she had tried.

In an instant, every riddle was solved and every question answered. Of course the ghosts of Pokoj knew her well. She had been here—and would be here—for all eternity.

She was going to die here and join them.

She let go of their hands and ran blindly, endlessly, through the terrible stillness.