‘There is nothing to be said to the dead,’ the ghost admonished.
‘I had to let you know what I felt,’ Frederick persisted. ‘I had to tell you I have never stopped loving you. I know you had to marry Rutger, I know it was the right thing for you. I have never begrudged that decision and I have always been indebted to him for what he did. Both for you and for me.’ The priest turned his face towards the sanctuary. ‘I have placed Johan in the mausoleum of the templars, the most sacred place in the garden. He will be at peace there. Your body will rest there as well. I won’t let them take you away.’
The wisp shifted once more, at once seeming to swell and diminish. ‘You should not have called me. Johan and Rudi are waiting. They beckon to me. You should let me go to them.’
Frederick shook his head, tears in his eyes. ‘Every time I saw you, every time I saw Johan, I thought of what could have been. I like to think that I could have made you happy. I want to think I would have been a good father to Johan.’
‘He belongs to Rudi,’ the ghost spoke. ‘He is waiting with his father. You must let me go.’
The priest slumped away from the table, the magnitude of the ghost’s statement twisting in his gut like a knife. All these years, he had believed Johan to be his own. He had never dared speak of the matter with Rutger, had never pressed the point with Aysha. He had always believed it was for the best if Johan never knew. It had been a privation of the soul, to look on in silence, but his quiet suffering had given Frederick the strength to go on. Now that his pain was revealed to be a lie, all that was left was a terrible emptiness.
Through the melancholy of his mind, an alarm began to flash. Frederick stared hard at the ghost’s formless face. It was the second time she had spoken of Rutger waiting for her. But his brother was alive. He couldn’t be waiting…
‘Why do you speak of Rutger as one of the dead?’ Frederick demanded, horrified anger contorting his face. ‘My brother is alive! He is alive!’
‘Rudi waits for me with Johan. They beckon to me.’
Terror filled Frederick’s heart. He had left Rutger only the night before, when his brother had helped him bring the bodies to the temple. It was impossible that the plague had struck the merchant down in so short a time. Rutger was all the family he had left now.
‘How is it that my brother waits in the realm of Morr?’ Frederick demanded.
The wisp wavered. For an instant the eyes of Aysha gleamed from the flickering shape, imploring the priest to relent. Frederick squeezed his hand into a fist, sending more of his blood dribbling to the floor, strengthening the black magic he had evoked.
‘Rudi went to seek justice for our son,’ the ghost answered. ‘Havemann was ready for him.’
Frederick’s body sagged as the ghost’s words pressed upon him. The corpse-candles sputtered and died. As they winked out one by one, the ghostly wisp drained back into the body laid out upon the table.
‘The line has been crossed,’ the spectral voice whispered. ‘Sympathies of spirit and mentality have flung open the gate that can never be closed again.’
The priest didn’t even notice the apparition’s retreat. He was thinking of his brother.
And the man who had murdered him.
Middenheim
Ulriczeit, 1111
Night once more cast its sinister pall over the roof of the Ulricsberg, the clean light of Mannslieb warring against the ugly glow of Morrslieb for domination. The watchfires upon the walls of Middenheim stood stark against the black sky, clearly marking the locations of gatehouses and guardtowers. Smaller lights, flickering as they passed behind the battlements, revealed the lanterns of patrolling sentries.
From the Graf’s private hunting preserve, the little garden forest called the Ostwald, Mandred studied the revolving patrols. The prince crouched beneath the boughs of a snow-covered fir tree, waiting for the token Othmar had described, the beckon that would summon the smugglers to the wall.
‘You said we were going to get more men,’ Othmar whispered at the boy’s ear. Unlike Franz, the Reiklander was managing to refrain from invoking Mandred’s title. The fact that the prince had stubbornly refused to inform his father of this venture had grated against the knight’s sense of duty and it was hard for him to keep a touch of resentment out of his voice.
‘We aren’t sure they’re going to be there,’ Mandred whispered back. ‘We can get help later if we need it.’
Franz rubbed his calloused hand across his bald head, sweeping away the snow that had settled on his scalp. Anything touching his head made the knight uncomfortable — snow, rain, hats, even his own hair had been sacrificed to his sensitivity. At moments of stress or when his mind was anxious, that was when his scalp was at its most irritable.
‘I don’t like this, your grace,’ Franz coughed. ‘It might be wiser to tell the Graf what is going on.’
Mandred shot his bodyguard a stern look. It was enough of an irritation to have the Reiklander questioning his plan; he didn’t need one of his own subjects voicing doubts.
The prince was about to call Franz to task when a sudden change in the pattern of the lantern on the wall above the Sudgarten drew his attention. Instead of continuing along the regular route, the light suddenly came to a stop. Up and down it rose as the sentry holding it signalled to someone in the city below. The gesture was repeated thrice, then the light went out. If someone didn’t know what they were looking for, there was little chance of noticing the irregularity.
‘Looks like your friends will be heading for the wall,’ Mandred told Othmar. ‘You said they used ladders to climb up to the battlements?’
The Reiklander nodded. ‘That is how they brought us down from the wall,’ he said. ‘It stands to reason that would be how they got up there.’
Mandred stepped out from the cover of the fir, knocking snow from its branches. ‘Let’s see if the ladders are there. Then I’ll know better how to proceed.’ The look Othmar gave him made it plain to the prince that he still thought the Graf should be informed and more men sent to deal with the smugglers. Mandred felt a twinge of regret that he had to deceive the knight. In the little time he had known Othmar, he had been impressed by the man’s integrity. He rationalised the deceit by reminding himself that there were bigger things at risk than a single knight’s pride. The lives of countless unfortunates down in the shantytown were what was really at stake.
The three men crept through the garden forest, picking their way into the hedgerows and flower beds of the Sudgarten. Vast swathes of the park had already been ripped apart, cleared of trees and shrubs, getting the ground ready for the plough once the spring thaw came. The torn-up earth made Mandred think of a battlefield, the piled dirt evoking images of earthworks, the deep furrows resembling jagged trenches. It was a resemblance that made the prince uneasy. Middenheim was his home. The thought that war might soon be battering at its gates was not a pleasant one.
The bells were tolling in the temple of Shallya, the closest of Middenheim’s temples to the Sudgarten. There were no priestesses left in the temple; they had all taken Graf Gunthar at his word and left the city to tend the sick down in the shantytown. Only a single deacon had remained behind to maintain the temple and ring the bell, to remind the people of Middenheim that even without her priestesses, the goddess was still with them.
Such was the clamour of the bells that Mandred didn’t hear Othmar when the knight called to him. The Reiklander had to grab his arm to get his attention. He followed Othmar’s hand as the knight gestured towards the wall. As he had promised, a pair of tall ladders were leaning against the barrier. They were peculiar looking constructions, made of a soft white pine and with strangely spaced rungs. It took Mandred a few moments to realise what they were — trellises from the ruined park. The smugglers had scavenged them from the debris and lashed them together with ropes to create their ladders. It was an ingenious idea. When they were finished they could simply cut the trellises from one another and dump them back with the other debris from the park. No need to worry about dragging the things to and fro, the trellises would be waiting for them on the junk pile the next time they were needed.