22

The Crypts of Leiberkuhn

The rain came down again, which was good, meaning they could draw their collars tight, hats down, scuttle along like everyone else trying to get where they’re going without getting too wet. They threaded their way through the narrow streets of Lengerrborn, Kwert going a little easier since Kadia had strapped his chest with a tight band of cloth to keep his ribs from moving too much. Still, they grated every now and then and they had to stop so that Kwert could catch his breath, overhearing the gossip going the rounds.

‘Did you hear about what happened at the gaol? They say a band of men in red came breaking in, slaughtering the Schupos and cutting their throats from ear to ear . . .’

‘No! Is that right? I heard there was a magician in with the prisoners and he put the Polizei to sleep with just a few waves of his hand.’

‘Don’t be silly, woman. Whoever heard of a magician getting arrested? It’s nonsense, I tell you. What happened was that the two Sergeants got blind drunk, and Captain Ackersmann tried to shoot all the prisoners by himself like he’d been told, and then shot himself in the foot, and those that were left legged it from the yard.’

‘Now then, that’s not right. Nobody heard shooting. But didn’t you hear about the boy? Had a head like a rotten pumpkin, all swollen and hairy. They say he brought in bread and wine, gifts for the Schupos, and poisoned the lot of them like cats in an alley.’

‘Gracious heavens, who’d have thought a boy could be so wicked!’

‘Oh dear me yes, boys have always been wicked. I should know. I’ve five of them at home and all they’re good for is stealing food from their mother’s mouth and whipping her when they come home drunk. No good lot are boys. Ah, that God had seen fit to give me a girl . . .’

‘They’ll hang ’em when they find ’em, that’s for sure, boys or no boys, throttle ’em till they’re black in the face and their legs kick their shoes right off their feet. Saw a man hanged in Hanover once, screamed like a rabbit he did, shouting out for his mama to forgive him. It was a grand spectacle, looking at that man, his legs all thrashing, eyes coming out his head so you thought they’d pop, tongue near pulled from its roots. Aye, that’s what they’ll do all right when they find ’em. They’ll hang ’em. That’s what happens when you murder Schupos. Always been so, always will.’

They hurried on as best they could, following Fatzke’s com­plicated directions, Philbert recalling them with ease, like they’d been tattooed inside his skull, and eventually arrived at a ­crumbling old church, its dedication board half splintered away by brown twines of ancient wisteria, all that was visible being some faded lettering and the outline of a painted shell.

‘This is the place,’ Philbert said, whispering, as he’d been whispering ever since they left the shop whenever he needed to urge Kwert on or tell him left or right. Kwert’s skin was the sickly green of sun-bleached leaves, and it was left to Philbert to push his way through the overgrown plants and lichens that hung in dirty ropes from the arch of the lych-gate. He beat his way past them and up the nettle-grown path to the porch, relieved to find the church door partially cracked open, its topmost hinge hanging loose from the frame. There was enough of a gap for Philbert to push Kwert on before him, straight into a miasma of cobwebs and the retreating tic-tic-tic of tiny feet ­skittering away beneath floorboards and walls. Kwert was ­terribly tired, but all the pews had been ripped out leaving only flat, greasy stone and tired earth scabbed over with liverworts and mould onto which Kwert sank in a wheezing heap.

‘Stay here,’ Philbert said, as if Kwert was going to do anything else. He looked around him at the broken font, the roof domed above him like an inverted bowl, the worm-riddled beams showering them with peels of paint and dust motes, enhanced here and there by minute flickers of gold – all that remained of the Protecting Hand of God, once a magnificent fresco vaulted over the congregation’s heads. He saw the stones marching up the nave and aisles all inscribed with illegible names and words, depictions of the tools of various trades, some with skulls and angels. A large wooden altar leant and wobbled on its legs of stone behind a sagging reredos, the ­baldacchino tattered and torn almost into nonexistence. Philbert saw the little door to the right of the altar leading into the ­sacristy, just as Fatzke said, so in he went. A small room lay beyond, empty but for a crude straw mattress, a bench, and a woodstove that was giving out a perceptible, if slight, quiver of heat. Philbert retreated hurriedly, helped Kwert in and onto the ­mattress he kicked a little closer to the fire. He then laid down the satchel, retrieving the package of food Kadia had given them, unwrapping it to find several pastries stuffed with ­crumbled cheese and olives, a few hard-boiled eggs, some lumps of rosewater jelly, chewy and sweet. Philbert managed to get Kwert to eat a little, worried at how thin and tired he looked, the large bruise stretching over his face like a tent, pinioned by bristles on cheeks and chin.

The effort of eating was too much for Kwert and soon he was asleep, his breathing relaxing, and for a while Philbert sat beside him, glad of the warmth of the wood burner, comforted by the scritch scratching of mice and beetles scurrying through secret chambers, reminding him of nights with Hermann. A few ­minutes later he caught a faint sound coming from the wall at his back. The noise was curiously familiar to Philbert, and he took off his brim-shorned hat and placed his ear against the stone, and there it was again. He couldn’t be certain, but it sounded so like the Wille Woo song Helge had taught him that he took a chance and rapped his knuckles against the stone in the rhythm of the song’s chorus, jumping back in fright to hear the rhythm repeated, the echo taking on a life of its own, carrying on the tune. He was so intent on listening that he near leapt from his skin when he heard a voice quietly intoning the first line of Helge’s song, feeling its mists and snow clamping itself around him as if he’d been snatched into the world of ghosts.

‘Im Nebelgeriesel, im tiefen Schnee . . .’

Philbert whirled around, and found a very thin man standing there in a patched and worn cassock, his neck sticking out of his habit like a cabbage stalk in winter, cheeks deep-pocked as if sunk with seeds.

‘So what have we here?’ the spectre said. ‘Someone coming uninvited into my home? Someone who brings supper and then eats it all before his host has time to arrive?’

Philbert got his breath back, realising he was dealing with a man of flesh and blood, a mouth filled with teeth that were blackened to their stumps and breath abominably offensive. Philbert lifted the flask and wordlessly handed it over to the stranger, who might have been as thin as a wraith but had a thirst no ghost ever could, slugging down a good few gulps before delicately wiping the rim, replacing the stopper and handing back the flask.

‘Well thank you, my boy. And do you have a name, this person who knows the songs of my childhood? And who is this?’ He pointed at Kwert. ‘He whose sleep is very sweet and which he has a right to, as Goethe’s Hatem said to the cupbearer.’

The man seemed to have taken no offence that Kwert was on his bed, and sat down cross-legged at its corner, Kwert stirring not an inch, Philbert finding his voice.

‘My name is Philbert, and this is Kwert. Fatzke sent us to find you.’

The man inclined his head. ‘Fatzke,’ he repeated slowly.

Philbert nodded.

‘And you’re in trouble?’

Philbert nodded again.

‘What kind of trouble?’

Philbert saw little need to hold back. Either the man would help them or denounce them, but either way he’d already ­calculated the man could be knocked over by a swift shove, so slight was his body weight, and Philbert had already marked out a couple of stones fallen from the walls that would help if he needed defence. So Philbert briefly told the tale of how they’d come to Ullendorf from the Fair, how Ullendorf had taken them to the Westphal Club, the soldiers choosing that night to raid the place, that many people were already dead – including Ullendorf, for Kwert had not been able to revive him after all – and that some had been taken away, others, like Helge, dis­appeared, the rest holed up in the gaol awaiting execution until the moment of dramatic escape.

‘Ah,’ the man breathed out a long sigh. ‘I’m deeply grieved to hear it, and most especially about the Ullendorfs. I taught them both in the village school along with Fatzke. And it’s Fatzke wants me to guide you through the crypts?’

‘It is,’ Philbert nodded.

‘And for some reason you’ve brought me a cat as a gift? In Lengerrborn?’

Philbert frowned, following the man’s gaze to his satchel, out of which the scrawny head of a ginger kitten was poking. The man plucked it up by the scruff, stretching its whiskers from its pink gums, Philbert quickly taking the kitten and placing it on his shoulder – just as Kadia had done – where it began a gentle purr, licking at Philbert’s hair with its rasp of a tongue.

‘I take it you’re Pastor Gruftgang?’ Philbert asked, relieved the man hadn’t snapped the kitten’s neck while he’d had the chance.

‘Oh my goodness,’ said the man, ‘but I haven’t heard that appellation in a long time. Pastor,’ he repeated. ‘It sounds good. But call me Amt Gruftgang. That’s how I’m known now: defrocked defender of the deconsecrated church of St Lydia-of-the-Dyers. My Lady St Lydia, first Philippi heathen to convert to the teachings of St Paul. The walls here were painted purple for the dye she sold – not that you’d know it now. Her sign is the snail shell into which shape the church was built. Lord! But how many sermons I used to give in my younger days on the value of her blessed signs and symbols,’ he went on, getting into the drift of those sermons, Philbert the first congregation he’d had for a long time. ‘The purple kingship of Christ, the snail to recall the soul trapped in the body and the sleep of death before resurrection. How proud I was to shout out the words of my blessed Lydia: if you have judged me to be faithful, come into my house and stay.’ Amt Gruftgang blinked away a tear and shook his head. ‘Long gone. Long gone. My sermons too Latin, Lengerrborn too Lutheran. The building too costly to upkeep. A pastor past his best, who talked too often of saints and ­miracles to people who’d witnessed neither for generations.’

‘But you stayed here?’ Philbert asked, the old pastor squeezing his throat to stop his tears of anger, frustration and regret after his tirade that had been oft in his head but never spoken out loud, not to another person.

‘I stayed,’ he said, ‘but oh, you should have seen the place back then. You could access the undercrofts from outside, before the wall collapsed. We’d gather on Our Lady’s Saint Day, tolled forward by the bell, all carrying our torches, singing out the verses of her Conversion.’ He gave Philbert a scratchy versions of these verses:

Et quaedam mulier nomine Lydia,

Purpuraria civitatis,

Thyatirenorum, Colens Deum, audivit.

‘Good days, good days,’ Amt Gruftgang said. ‘I’d lead them through the chambers built beneath the church, right into the middle, me chanting from The Windings of the Cochlea, a little book I had the joy to compile, telling how the chambers replicate St Lydia’s blessed snail shell, our wanderings through life’s spirals . . .’

Philbert twitched with relief when Kwert’s groans stopped Gruftgang’s lengthy reminiscences, ending by directing one last blessing at Kwert:

‘In Nomine Lydia purpuraria . . . may you be well again.’

The lamp Gruftgang had brought with him spluttered without warning and went out, leaving only the dim light from the stove for them to see by. The neglected building seemed to sigh of its own accord, jogged briefly into life by the old man’s fading memories, finished now, and the only thing left to do being to fold itself back into silence and fall into a dreamless sleep.