He looked queerly at her. 'Do I know you? Were you one of the nurses?'
She shook her head.
A tic pulled at Chatterley's mouth. 'You're her. The elder?'
'An elder? Hardly. If I'd lived, I wouldn't even be dead yet. Probably.'
Chatterley would not thank her for his life and his dead legs. Like Barnes, he had a bitterness in his blood. He turned away, face to the moon. She had a touch of him also in her mind. From Barnes, she had only recent impressions, of Paris and his turning. From Chatterley, she had vivid pictures; a colliery wheel rising over a stretch of forest, a country house and grounds.
Kate was too tired even to feel any rejection. She could give nothing anyone wanted.
A pretty warm nurse fussed around Chatterley and Barnes. Neither showed interest.
'We've found you a cat, miss,' the nurse said to Kate.
Kate was too exhausted to fake a smile of gratitude. A cat would ease but not slake her red thirst. There would be little pain in a cat's life. She would drink without tasting agony.
'Thank you.' 'You're welcome, miss.'
The nurse did a tiny but perfect curtsey. She must have been a maid before the war. Kate noticed healed bites on her neck.
When warm, Kate had once been fed upon, by Mr Frank Harris, and she had died of it. Her memories were of turning, not of being food and drink for another. Now, she imagined she felt as the nurse must feel after letting her vampire lovers bleed her. She was empty.
'Someone to see you, miss ..."
Kate had been in sleepless reverie. In the fogs of the '80s, dodging Carpathian Guards, scattering leaflets ...
She stirred like a very old lady, bones creaking, limbs stiff. She could not turn in her chair, but she saw a shadowy reflection in the moonlit windows. A man in uniform stood with the nurse, leaning on a crutch.
The nurse wheeled her bath chair round. The visitor stepped into pale light. Kate felt a silver spasm in her heart.
'Miss Mouse,' Edwin said, 'you look like you've seen a ghost.'
29
Watching the Hawk
'There is nothing here,' Ewers said, tapping the folder of notes. 'Nothing at all.'
At Malinbois, a tiny room had been found for him, a cubic bubble in stone. He was issued with a desk and chair, paper and pens. Each night, he was required to sign a requisition form and exhibit a burned-down stub before he could receive a fresh candle.
Poe sat, collar loose. Ewers stood, bowed by the low ceiling.
'I had hoped for an opening chapter,' Ewers said sniffily, 'and a plan of the entire work.'
Poe had hoped for a great deal more. By now, he should have half-completed the slim book Dr Mabuse required of him.
'Have you enjoyed much opportunity to converse with the Baron?'
Ewers was surprised by the question. Unnerved by fliers, he avoided them.
'He is not communicative,' Poe elaborated.
If it were allowed, Ewers would have been angry.
'The Baron has not co-operated? Have you been denied interviews?'
'No, it's that... as you say, there is nothing there.'
When he looked at a blank sheaf of paper, Poe saw the grey- blue eyes of Manfred von Richthofen.
'You are purportedly noted for imagination. Where there is nothing, you must make something.'
This commission was proving damnable. Wonders and marvels were eternally out of reach.
'The Baron is, I should say, a cold man,' Poe ventured. 'His reserve is an obstacle to progress.'
'I'll tell Karnstein. Richthofen will be ordered to be forthcoming.'
4I doubt if orders will help. It is not that the Baron is unwilling but that he is unable. He is not much in the habit of thinking. I sense he wishes not to ponder the darks of his life. Perhaps this is how he has been able to survive. On an unexpressed level, he fears that if he looks down, he will fall ...'
'Alienist nonsense, Poe. The man's a hero. Heroes have stories. Find his story.'
Ewers stood straight to look down on Poe. As he left, he bumped his head on the lintel.
Poe was enough of a fixture at the castle to pass unnoticed in the hall where the fliers gathered to pass the hours of daylight. Perhaps he could find the Baron's life from his comrades. Each must have some story, some insight, which could colour the narrative.
'As recording officer, I must be strict with myself,' Hermann Goring declaimed. 'My victory is confirmed but I may not claim a kill. Ball did not die in the crash but at dawn. The British are sparing with details. It seems he was injured. The sunlight finished him off.'
'The kill should be mine,' claimed Lothar von Richthofen. 'If I had not crippled him in our earlier engagement, he'd have been safely home by sun-up.'
'Just be glad Ball is gone,' Erich von Stalhein said. 'He was a dangerous man. The skies are safer without him in them.'
Poe could not imagine the skies being dangerous for these creatures. In their shapeshifted forms, they were masters of the jungle of the air.
'I am afraid there is no confirmation of your kill yet either,' Goring told Stalhein. 'We have found the Snipe but the pilot's body escapes us.'
'Bigglesworth fell separately. I am satisfied our debt is cancelled.'
Pilots on both sides were ranked by their score. Some fliers affected indifference but Poe noted how attention revolved around Goring's chalked display of engagements, victories and kills. None of the fliers of JG1 could match Richthofen's line of cups, but all had impressive records.
'The Baron's bag is increased again,' Goring announced, not surprising anyone. 'Another useful victory. Captain Courtney.'
'What about the observer?' asked Theo von Kretschmar-Schuldorff.
'The British do not list him as lost.'
The intelligence officer was perturbed. The point of the dogfight, from Theo's point of view, had been to keep intelligence from the allies.
'He cannot have survived No Man's Land. Like Albert Ball, he must be dead.'
'You don't understand the British, Hermann. Too gentlemanly to lie, they omit information. Who was this observer?'
Goring shrugged. 'He is not listed as lost, therefore he is not listed.'
'If he made it home then they know all about you.'
'Nobody knows all about us,' Lothar commented.
Theo smoked furiously, thinking. 'Since they do not claim the observer as a survivor, the British may simply wish us to believe he passed on his intelligence, encouraging us to show our hand.'
'About time,' Stalhein said. 'We should be let loose.'
'Soon, soon ...' Theo said. 'It's a clever game, and requires a cool hand.'
'I passed over the wreck of the Baron's RE8,' Goring said. 'There could be no survivor. The British wish to pretend they know our secrets. Typical of them.'
Poe saw shapes in the smoke-streams around Theo. The officer was disappearing in literal clouds of thought. Poe tried to follow his reasoning. Pleased his old knack for conundra had not deserted him, he penetrated the mystery just as Theo solidified his own conclusion.
'No,' Theo decided. 'The observer survived the crash and returned. It is the only possible interpretation of the facts.'
The fliers were mystified.
'You've lost me, Theo,' Lothar said.
'The observer must have perished,' Goring insisted.
Theo allowed a smoke ring to escape his mouth and smiled. 'Poe, would you care to explain our reasoning to these schoolchildren?'
Poe was surprised Theo realised he too had seen the answer. Fliers hauled their chairs around, very like children waiting for a story.
'The key is the fate of Ball,' Poe stated. 'The British claim he did not die in the crash of his aeroplane but later, some way from the wreck, at dawn. In No Man's Land, between the lines, during a bombardment.'
Going snorted. 'This I have told you. It is in the record.'