The Lightstep (23 page)

He should think about doctors. They would be needed, if the
city were defended. How many were there? Half of them would
want to leave if they thought a siege was coming. So there
would have to be orders for the gate guards. That would be the
very first thing.

Where should they set up the hospitals?

He was climbing wearily to his feet when he heard a further
disturbance, this time from the New Bridge. More voices, another
crowd. For a moment he wondered if they had been drawn by
the shooting on the quays. But this hubbub was different.
It had a lively and strangely festive sound. As he listened,
a cheer broke out. Part of the crowd was crossing the New
Bridge. Others, lanterns in hand, were coming down the quayside
towards him. Faces appeared at windows. Questions were
called.

'It's peace!' someone in the crowd answered.

'Peace!' cried a man near Wéry. 'Hurrah!'

'Peace?' asked Wéry urgently. He seized one of the loudest
shouters by the arm. 'What's happened? Tell me what's
happened!'

'The French Count, sir. He went to the Chapter House while
they were meeting. He forced his way in through the doors. And
he walked up to His Highness on his throne, and went on his
knees. And they all thought he would beg to stay, sir. But he
begged that we should not fight for him. He said he would leave
the city, because he would not see blood spilled in a place that
had been so good to him!'

'His Highness wept, they say, and so did the Count . . .'

'Hurrah!'

'Damn me,' said a voice at his elbow. 'I would never have
thought d'Erles had it in him.'

It was Uhnen, emerged from the doctor's house. He was
carrying his purse in his hand, and had not stopped to lace it up.

'A surprise, certainly,' said Wéry hollowly.

'I suppose we will have to blow up the walls after all.'

'I suppose we will.'

And they would not loophole churches, dig up streets, set up
makeshift hospitals or commandeer doctors – not this time. The
Prince had surrendered.

At one or two places around the city, the bells of churches had
begun to ring.

Wéry felt a great sense of weariness opening inside him. He
did not want to think about the future. If he thought about it he
might find there was nothing there. War that became peace in a
burst of lanterns and cheering. What was real? Was any of it real?
He did not know any more.

'I've settled here,' said Uhnen, finally putting his purse away.
He sounded completely sober.

'The city justice next?'

'Not yet. It may be possible to buy off the man he's wounded.
But I think we'll leave that to Heiss. He can send his factor to the
Jewish elders in the morning.'

And so Heiss would be relieved of his sins. A sordid little act,
to clear a man of his conscience. Wéry sighed.

'Very well. Let's get along to the barracks, write your story
down, and then we can be finished with that, too.'

'What story?'

'What you were telling me in the coach.'

Von Uhnen hesitated.

'Forget about that,' he said. 'It was nothing.'

Wéry knew he should not be put off. But . . . he barely cared.
He had not come to Erzberg to write grubby little reports on
families he knew. In fact, he was no longer sure what he
had
come
here for.

'Let's go back anyway,' he said. 'There are still those bottles we
were going to share between us.'

'No. No thank you. I've finished for tonight.'

'Have you? I might have both then.'

On a mild November day Maria saw the Rhine.
It was a great, wide, grey river, flowing steadily northwards
at a pace little faster than a man might walk. It seemed to
move very gently, past flat fields of grass and plough land, past the
gentle slopes freckled with trees and dotted with villages, past
the purple, cloudlike shapes of the distant hills. It was a silent
weight of water, untroubled by all the tilling and felling, the
trading and bickering and blows of the humanity along its banks.
Half the history of Christendom had been written on its shores,
and it did not care.

On the far side, in a tumble of roofs and spires, was the city of
Mainz, once seat of the most exalted Archbishop and Prince-Elector
of the Empire, and Primate of all Germany. The six
towered, red sandstone cathedral rose above the buildings of the
upper town. The eastern towers were broken, and burned by fire.
Other churches and buildings were also ruined. The quays of the
waterfront were longer than those of Erzberg, but no more busy.
And lines of huge, brown earthworks were visible where the old
walls reached the river. Their great shapes dwarfed the buildings,
even the cathedral. Altogether the place looked, Maria thought,
like a crowd of sad and battered children huddling inside a giant's
overcoat. She said so to Anna, who sighed.

'When I was last here they had not built those things,' she said.
'And the roofs were all whole. And all the south side of the city
was a wonderful garden. Really it is such a shame that war should
spoil so many things.'

The coach halted. More earthworks, with great, angled
bastions, blocked the way ahead of them. There were soldiers on
the gates, wearing the white uniforms of the Empire. Maria
looked at them curiously, wondering if they were from some
Hapsburg dominion like Austria or Bohemia or Croatia, for she
knew that the Emperor had a garrison of his own troops in the
town. But they spoke with the accents of the Rhine, and when
they saw the seals of Erzberg on the passes they saluted without
hesitation. Presumably they were troops of the long-fled Elector
of Mainz; suffered to perform the gate-duties while the
Emperor's own soldiers lurked within.

And where was the Elector now? Gone – vanished away to
safer territories at the first coming of war. And the revolutionaries
of Mainz, who had flourished briefly under the French
occupation, were gone too. And all that was left were the soldiers,
and the people of the town, the ruins, and the vast fortifications.

The coach lurched onwards, over the bridge, over the great,
slow water. The bridge was built on boats that floated on the
stream. Anna said this was so that the central spans could be
removed and towed to the bank in the coldest weather, to prevent
them from being smashed by the great floes of ice that would
come drifting down the river. Maria's window looked downstream.
On one side was the bank they were leaving, where the
order of the Empire with all its intricate hierarchies still held. On
the other was the fortress city, and beyond it the territory held by
the French army. That land – she could see it clearly, fields, woods,
hills and the city – seemed no different to the eastern bank. And
yet there the hierarchies had been swept away. What did the
territories of Mainz, Trier, Palatine, Cologne and all the rest mean
now? What would become of all those years of history and self-understanding?
Surely it was wrong that they should be erased, as
though some monstrous teacher had wiped a slate clean! And yet
the great, grey river rolled north between the two shores, and
cared only for its search for the sea.

Their journey ended at an inn, in a crowded street where
beggar-children yammered at the coach-steps and tall, surly men
waded through them to lift down the baggage. The Adelsheim
footmen cried out sharply that the luggage must be kept in sight.
They had been armed with pistols for the journey, for fear of
bandits or French marauders. One of them drew his and
brandished it in the air.

'The poor people!' said Anna wearily, as she, Maria and the
maids struggled out of the crowd into the haven of the inn.

But the innkeeper was anxious to please, and bowed, waving
them into a low-ceilinged front room where tables were
set. There was a fire here, and sitting before it 'was a lean
gentleman in a wig, reading a newspaper. He looked up as they
came in.

'Well, well!' he cried softly. 'Cousin Poppenstahl, at last!'

'Ludi!'
shrieked Anna. She rushed forward to embrace him. He
had barely time to rise from his seat before she flung her arms
about him and jumped to kiss his cheek. Maria had never seen
her so excited. And she felt that, whatever her own reasons for
this adventure to the Rhine, it had been right to bring the two
cousins back together. Watching as the pair parted, she thought
there were even tears in Anna's eyes.

'Oh Ludi – let me look at you! You are so grey and your
cheeks sunk – you have not been ill?'

'I?' said the gentleman mildly. 'No, I do not believe I have.
Forgive me if I am not so young as I was six years ago.'

'Oh Ludi – no,
you
must forgive
me.
I am sure it has been a
hard time for you. But we have brought you wines and sweetmeats
and . . .'

'A wonderful range of cures for all ills indeed. But we should
not talk of it here. Let your fellows see it is all safely stowed. And
if we can whisk it past my French guests tomorrow, why, there
will be a dinner party at my house in the evening and we shall all
grow young again together.' His eyes went to Maria, and he
bowed.

'Oh – Maria,' said Anna, remembering her etiquette at last.
'This is my cousin, Ludwig Jürich. Ludwig, this is the Lady Maria
von Adelsheim, whose mother is so good as to let me be
governess to her family.'

'Lady Maria,' said the man. 'A humble gentleman of the Rhine
salutes you. And my house is yours, and all entertainment that I
may offer you will be yours for as long as you are pleased to be
with us.'

His speech, as he bent over her hand, was a model of polite
deference, as a country gentleman should offer to a lady of
superior rank. But then he straightened and looked down at her
gravely. His eyes were very deep. For a moment she felt very
young, and perhaps a little foolish, like a child with a guilty secret
to hide. Many thoughts dashed into her head at once. One of
them was that a gentleman should not stare at a lady of rank so.
Another was that he was wondering why someone like her
should have come to these distressed places. And yet another
was that he had already guessed everything that she was thinking.

What was it he knew, that was so important in Erzberg?

'Sir,' she heard her own voice say 'Your cousin is, in truth,
more of an aunt to me than she is a governess. Therefore I beg
that you treat me as one of your family too.'

'We shall be glad. And also I must offer my deepest
condolences to you on the loss of your brother. I did know him,
a little, and was grieved to hear that he was killed. I am sorry, too,
that it has been so long before I have had the opportunity to say
this to his sister.'

'Sir, you are good. And although it has been long, I feel the loss
is still fresh. Therefore any words of condolence are fresh too.
Indeed it is in some ways the memory of my brother that has
impelled me to come.'

It was the memory of her brother, and of his friend in the
barracks of Erzberg. But she would not say that yet.

The soldiers on the South Gate were Austrians and there were
many more than there had been at the bridgehead. They looked
closely at the papers, and asked questions of Cousin Ludwig, who
answered patiently. When the coach was allowed to pass, Cousin
Ludwig mounted his own horse and rode ahead with his groom.
After a few hundred paces they made the coach halt again.
Leaning out of her window Maria saw Cousin Ludwig take
something from his groom's hand and pin it onto his hat. It was
a green cockade. He unbuttoned his coat and flung it back, allowing
his green tunic to show. Then he rode ahead on his own, the
groom still signing for the coach to wait.

By a ramshackle set of buildings, a furlong ahead of them,
another party of soldiers waited. It was hard to tell the colour of
their uniforms. Most of them were wearing greatcoats and
blankets, and all were different browns and greys. A wisp of smoke
rose from where some of them were cooking in the open.

Maria looked at them curiously. She knew that any soldiers on
the road outside Mainz must be French. She saw Cousin Ludwig
ride up to them and dismount. He seemed to show some papers
of his own. After a while he and one of the soldiers went inside
a hut.

She waited.

At long last Cousin Ludwig reappeared, mounted and rode
back towards them. He spoke a few words to the coach driver,
handed his horse to the groom, and then climbed into the coach,
squeezing in to a corner beside the two maids. As the door
closed, the team began to walk forward.

'It would be better to keep back from the windows, I think,'
said Cousin Ludwig.

'Oh dear,' said Anna anxiously. 'Ought we not to draw the
curtains too?'

'No. Let them see that they may see in if they wish to.'

The coach jolted slowly on its way. Maria sat back as far as she
could. She was suddenly very aware of the frail shell of the coach body
around her, and aware too of Cousin Ludwig, sitting bolt
upright by the coach door with his face all false calm and his
fingers drumming lightly on his knee. No one said anything. The
rattle of the wheels and the clod of hooves were loud in her ears
and seemed to grow louder still. Beyond the window the grassy
roadside rolled slowly backwards. The hummocks and puddles
and bushes passed by, repeating and repeating themselves, meaning
nothing. Then, for a few seconds, she was looking at
something she could recognize: the remains of a formal avenue,
all felled and overgrown, running to a ruined pavilion by a weedy
pond. They were passing through the gardens of the vanished
Elector, now all smashed and half buried by war. The men who
had smashed and buried them were waiting for her on the road
ahead.

She was going to them, rolling slowly into their arms with her
coachful of hidden sweetmeats, her silks and purses, her friends
and herself! Nothing could stop her. Nothing could save her, if
she needed saving. Her hand lay on her lap, and she saw that her
knuckles were white. And she suddenly felt that she had been
sleepwalking for days, dreaming dreams of confidence and
courage, and had only woken at last when it was too late,
and there was no help, and no turning back.

How could this have happened to her?

And then, through the coach window, there was the grey weathered
wall of a building, and a man leaning against it. He was
bare-headed, moustached and bearded, small and dark-skinned.
Maria's heart bounced. She had a powerful impression of something
dwarfish, as if the soldier had not marched from France but
had crawled out with his fellows from legendary underworlds
beneath the Rhine. He was smoking a pipe as he watched the
coach pass by. His greatcoat was buttoned to his collar, but in
places the buttons were missing. He passed out of sight.

Now she could see other men, sitting and standing, looking
keenly at the windows. One of them seemed to see her. She
would have shrunk back, if there had been anywhere to shrink
to. A grin was spreading over his face as he was lost from view. A
voice called something. It was French, but no French that
Maria could understand. Someone laughed. But now the window
showed her only grassy hummocks again. And they were still
moving forward, deeper and deeper into the occupied Rhineland.

At last Cousin Ludwig sighed.

'That was well, then. The officer was a reasonable fellow.'

'Did you have to bribe him?' asked Anna.

'Of course. I would have paid him more if he could have
escorted us. It would have saved us trouble if we had met any
other soldiers. But unfortunately he could not leave his post.'

'Could he not have given us an escort anyway?'

'The men are not to be trusted without the officer.'

'They seemed so small!' murmured Maria, looking out of the
window as if she could still see them, unkempt and dwarfish,
lounging by the roadside.

Cousin Ludwig looked at her in some surprise. 'No smaller, I
think, than many a beggar or peasant in Erzberg, Lady Maria. You
may be used to your Prince's regiments, where men are – or were
– recruited for their height. But France has swept its street and
furrows for fighting men, and placed them under arms in tens of
thousands. And now France requires us to feed them. Alas, a
soldier's appetite does not diminish according to his stature!'

'So many of the barns are ruined,' observed Anna, looking
through the far window.

'Soldiers have great need of firewood,' said Cousin Ludwig.
'Surely you have seen the same on the other bank.'

'Yes, especially as we were passing Frankfurt. But not so many
as this.'

'They have been here longer. Yet it is better now than it was.
Last year they were following the farmers into the fields, digging
up the potatoes that had been planted for seed. So at the harvest
of course both farmer and soldier went hungry.'

'Senseless!'

'Quite so. The soldier, cold and starving, can think only of the
moment. And his superiors are little better. Did they take horses
and cattle in Adelsheim?'

'We were fortunate that they never came to Adelsheim,' said
Maria. 'But the last time they marched into Germany they took
many horses from the territories around Erzberg. Six hundred, I
believe.'

'Six hundred!' murmured Cousin Ludwig. Maria guessed he
must be more used to hearing figures in thousands. 'Well, I fear
that of those six hundred very few may now be alive. They gather
them in great herds and move them to places where they believe
they can use them. And then they discover that in those places
there is not enough hay to feed them. So they give them the
straw from the roofs of thatched houses for a few weeks, and after
that the animals begin to die. It is the same with the cattle. And
of course if any of the animals is diseased, the whole herd will
suffer – and all the land after that.'