23

Through Shroudways and Narrow Tunnels

Kwert was awake. He managed to push himself up on one elbow, looking around him in the dark. He made out Philbert leaning against the wall, eyes closed, and an old man sitting at the bottom of the filthy mattress, his back against the cooling stove. He’d no idea what time it was or how long they’d been here. He could hardly remember getting here at all, only the torture of movement, the fear of being discovered, the vague hope that help was at hand now they’d got to where Fatzke had directed them. He forced himself to sit, grimacing with the pain in his ribs. He knew that if he didn’t move soon he would never want to move again. He was thirsty, saw a flask on the floor and lifted it to his lips, but it was empty. He picked up the wineskin that was lying by the old man’s feet and took a sip, but Christ how it burned! Like drinking naphtha straight from the ground. His eyes watered, his cheeks puckered, but after a few moments he felt the strength of the spirit in his blood, his heart no longer slack but tight with a fast drumming that made him want to get to his feet and get on their way. He knew it wouldn’t last long, this feeling of betterment, and so he shook Philbert awake. Philbert was alert in a second, pleased to answer Kwert’s question that yes, he was ready to move, but was Kwert?

Kwert smiled. ‘It’s that dirty wine of our new friend over there. I don’t know what he puts in it but yes, I do feel stronger, though I fear it will only be a brief respite. But if we can get going now I think we should.’

Philbert was pleased Kwert was up and ready for the go, but worried by the colour of him, too vibrant, too red, as if the glanders where running through him all over again. But no time to waste. They took a few minutes to waken Amt Gruftgang, for he’d been drunk on the liquor of his own making, had been drunk almost from the moment he’d been defrocked and the church deconsecrated, two decades since. But once up he found candles that they lit from the woodstove, and soon were heading down the slimy steps leading to the undercrofts and the maze of crypts and corridors dug into the ground beneath the church.

It was dark and dank, room only for single file, Kwert and Philbert following Amt Gruftgang’s swaying candle and the tapping of his stick and the hollow sound of his voice as he slipped back into the past again, intoning the prayers of St Lydia as he led his congregation of two through the crypts. The ­tunnels were low and dark. Philbert held out a hand to the dripping stones, disturbed every now and then when, without warning, the walls would open up into a niche of mouldering bones and black-grown ferns that dripped a liquid too viscid to be plain water. He worried that the old priest was not only drunk but mad to boot, and leading them so deep into this labyrinth they would none of them ever get out again. Kwert was struggling to keep up. Whatever good the pastor’s home-brew had done was evidently wearing off. There was one comfort to be found down here in this subterranean meandering, and that was the little kitten that purred away like an engine at the back of Philbert’s neck and never seemed to stop.

On they went through the shroudways and narrow tunnels, the pastor’s pace erratic – sometimes fast, sometimes slow – until finally the tunnels became a little wider, the air less foetid, the darkness less profound, small intimations of true light appearing ahead between the lumbering, stumbling form of Gruftgang ahead; the whiskers of Raspel – as Philbert had chosen to call the kitten – began to twitch as the air became fresher. Then suddenly they were out, fighting a last battle with a curtain of spiny brambles, faces pale as limpets, eager for the light.

Never had the evening air been so glorious to Philbert. He might have been reborn. All around a faint rain drip-dripped through the branches of trees, heightening the sharp scents of pine and bay-willow, tinted by the sweetness of early blooming may-blossom and daffodils. Amt Gruftgang had sobered up considerably during the half hour it took to guide his wards through the mile or so of shroudways from the church to here, and pointed to a faint path rippling through the trees and un-flowered bluebells that would take them down to the lake.

‘There’ll be a boat moored under the large holm oak,’ he said. ‘Take it over to the island that lies just to the right of you, and there you’ll find the Hermit. He’ll shelter you for the night until you make your plans.’

Kwert clutched Gruftgang’s arm, his back creaking as he bent to kiss the fingers of the man who might just have saved their lives.

‘How can we ever repay you, my friend?’ Kwert said, swaying with every word, plainly having difficulty staying upright on his feet.

‘Pffht! It is nothing!’ Gruftgang’s halitosis was almost lost in the fresh evening air. He too seemed rejuvenated by the ­adventure, but what he’d done, Kwert knew, was not nothing by a long chalk. Caught giving fugitive murderers a helping hand would see his cabbage-stalk neck strung up in a rope, and no one to take care of St Lydia’s legacy then. But Gruftgang was at heart still a pastor, only wanting a flock to care for, and that was enough for him.

‘Perhaps, when you pass again,’ was all he said, ‘you will call in on old Gruftgang; bring him some decent food and brandy, some slices of venison, a haunch of wild boar, some apple sauce, some truffles . . . those old eggs of the earth.’

Philbert wanted to please this man who’d helped them so much, and the request seemed a small one.

‘I ate snails’ eggs once,’ he volunteered, misunderstanding the reference to earth eggs, ‘and will surely bring you some if I can,’ and then he took off his hat and swept it low to indicate how much he appreciated Gruftgang’s help.

Gruftgang, who had been about to turn back towards the tunnels, mindful of the falling night, looked at the young boy, seeing only now how unusual was the shape of his head.

‘You’ve . . . eaten snails’ eggs?’ he asked, uncertain he’d heard correctly, looking from the boy to Kwert for confirmation.

Kwert interposed before Philbert could say any more. ‘A custom, Amt Gruftgang, nothing more. No disrespect to your church or your saint. They’re said to bring wisdom to the foolish and youth to the old.’

Gruftgang’s thin face mottled, the pockmarks on his cheeks reddening as if there were raspberry pips just below the surface of his skin. He stood quite still. No movement at all, except for the rain dripping through the branches of the willows, releasing their soft scent of bay. Kwert looked anxiously at the old man, hoping to God Philbert hadn’t offended him. Then suddenly Gruftgang laughed and held out his hand, his nails black with the dirt of the winding tunnels through which they’d just passed.

‘Blessed Lady Lydia!’ he exclaimed. ‘But is it any wonder you were sent to me, for the egg is a world within a world as is the snail within its shell, and so it must follow that the egg of a snail is a world within a world within a world. And you, boy! You!’ His finger moved back and forth like an eye that cannot focus. ‘You now have all those worlds within your head! It’s a sign, the sign I’ve been waiting for all these years . . .’ He did turn then, almost running for the tunnel, laughing like a man possessed. ‘I must return at once. I must make my oblations, dedicate myself once more to the Blessed Lady whom I had almost forgotten but who this day has taken the shroud from my eyes!’

Kwert and Philbert watched him go, then mooched on towards the lake, picking their steps through the coolness of evening-closed anemones, a shiver of ghost-moths rising from the damp grass hovering and settling like clouds in a valley.

‘Let that be a lesson to you, Little Maus,’ Kwert said, ‘never to take strong drink. It addles the brain and does a man no good at all.’

Philbert smiled. This was no time to mention the quash Kwert brewed and drank so freely. But he did look back, saw Amt Gruftgang on his knees beside the entrance to the hidden ­passageway. Perhaps he was praying. Perhaps he’d dropped his candle or was looking for his wineskin. Either way, he raised his head and waved, watched his miracle walking away into the distance, big hat on his big head, ginger kitten on his shoulder, sniffing like a gourmet at the air.

What Amt Gruftgang chose to see in his two fugitives was anyone’s guess. Sometimes there just comes a time when believing a sign has come from God is preferable to any other alternative; and it was not an odd delusion, not for Amt Gruftgang given his years of solitude following the desertion of his flock. What was odd was that he was not alone in his delusion, as he would soon find out.