We crossed a small quadrangle and entered another old door. The lintels of the doors were so low I had to bend to get through them. But the place was comfortable and there was a relaxing air to it, as if some protective spell had been cast around it. Herr El asked if he could examine me. I agreed and we went into a small room next to the kitchen. It seemed to be set up as a surgery. Perhaps Herr El was the doctor to the White Rose. I imagined him treating gunshot wounds here. As he examined me, he commented on the expert nature of the beatings. "Those fellows know what to do. They can keep a fit man going for a long time, I'd imagine. You yourself, Count von Bek, were in surprisingly good condition. All that exercise with your sword seems to have paid dividends. I'd guess you'll heal in no time. But the men who did this were scientists!"
"Well," I said grimly, "they're passing their knowledge on to their fellow scientists in Hell now."
Herr El let out a long sigh. He dressed my wounds and bandaged me himself. He clearly had medical training. "You'll have to do your best with this. Ideally, you should rest, but there'll be little time for that after today. Do you know what's happening?"
"I understand that I'm being taken to a place of safety via some secret underground route," I said.
His smile was thin. "With luck," he said. He asked me to tell him all that I could remember. When I remarked how I had become possessed, how some hellish self had taken me over, he put a sympathetic hand on my arm. But he could not or would not reveal the mystery of it.
He gave me something to help me sleep. As far as I knew that sleep was dreamless and uninterrupted until I felt the young woman shaking me gently and heard her calling me to get up and have something to eat. There was a certain urgency in her voice which made me immediately alert. A quick shower, some ham and hard-boiled eggs, a bit of decent bread and butter, which reminded me suddenly how good ordinary food could be, and I was hurrying back to the garage where Bastable waited in the driving seat, the young woman beside him. She now carried her arrows in a basket and her bow had become a kind of staff. She had aged herself by about seventy years. Bastable wore his SS-style uniform and I was back in my country clothes, with a hat hiding my white hair and smoked glasses hiding my red eyes.
The young woman turned to me as I climbed into the Duesenberg. "We can deceive almost anyone but von Minct and Klosterheim. They suspect who we really are and do not underestimate us. Gaynor, as you call him, has a remarkable instinct. How he found us so quickly is impossible to understand, but his own car has already passed through Kassel and it's touch and go who'll reach our ultimate destination first." I asked her where that was. She named another picturesque town which possessed an authentic legend. "The town of Hameln, only a few miles from here. It's reached by an atrocious road."
Some might almost call it the most famous town in Germany. It was known throughout the world, and especially in England and America, for its association with rats, children and a harlequin piper.
Again we drove frequently without lights, doing everything we could to make sure that the car was not recognized. A less sturdy machine would have given up long since, but the American car was one of the best ever produced, as good as the finest Rolls-Royce or Mercedes and capable of even greater speeds. The thump of its engine, as it cruised at almost fifty miles an hour, was like the steady, even beat of a gigantic heart. Admiring the brash, optimistic romanticism of its styling, I wondered if America was to be our eventual destination, or if I was to learn to fight Hitler closer to home.
Crags and forests fled by in the moonlight. Monasteries and hamlets, churches and farms. Everything that was most enduring and individual about Germany. Yet this history, this folklore and mythology, was exactly what the Nazis had co-opted for themselves, identifying it with all that was least noble about Germans and Germany. A nation's real health can be measured, I sometimes think, by the degree in which it sentimentalizes experience.
At last we saw the Weser, a long dark scar of water in the distance, and on its banks the town of Hameln, with her solid old buildings of stone and timber, her "rat-catcher's house" and her Hochzeitshaus where Tilly is said to have garrisoned himself and his generals the night before they marched against Magdeburg. My own ancestor, my namesake, fought with Tilly on that occasion, to our family's shame.
We turned a tight corner in the road and without warning encountered our first roadblock. These were SA. Bastable knew if we were inspected, they would soon realize we were not what we seemed. We had to keep going. So I raised my arm in the Nazi salute as our car slowed, barked out a series of commands, referring to urgent business and escaped traitors while Bastable did his best to look like an SS driver. The confused storm troopers let us pass. I hoped they were not in regular communication with anyone else on our route.
With no way of bypassing Hameln, and I even doubted that an old bridge could take as large a car as ours across the Weser, we had no choice. Bastable slowed his speed, put on his cap and became stately. I was an honored civilian, perhaps with his mother. We reached the ferry without incident but it was obvious that nothing could take the weight of our car. Bastable drove the machine back to the nearest point to the bridge and led us over on foot. We had no weapons apart from the woman's bow and the black sword I held on my shoulder as I limped in the rear.
We crossed the bridge and soon Bastable was leading us along a footpath barely visible in the misty moonshine. I caught glimpses of the river, of the lights of Hameln, clumps of tall trees, banks of forest. Perhaps the distant headlamps of cars. We seemed to be pursued by a small army. Bastable increased his pace, and I was finding it difficult to keep up. He knew exactly where he was going but also was becoming increasingly anxious.
From somewhere we heard the roar of motor engines, the scream of Klaxons, and we knew that Gaynor and Klosterheim had anticipated our destination. Was there a route by road to where Bastable led us? Or would they have to follow us on foot? I panted some of these questions to Bastable.
He replied evenly. "They'll have split into two parties, is my guess. One coming from Hildesheim and the other from Detmold. They won't have our trouble with the river. But the roads are pretty bad and I don't know how good their cars are. If they get hold of a Dornier-Ford-Yates, for instance, we're outclassed. Those monsters will roll over anything. We're almost at the gorge now. We can just pray they haven't anticipated us. But Gaynor really can't be underestimated."
"You know him?"
"Not here," was Bastable's cryptic reply.
We were stumbling into a narrow gorge which appeared to have a dead end. I'd become suspicious. I thought for a moment that Bastable had brought us into a trap, but he cautioned us to silence and led us slowly along the side of the canyon, keeping to the blackest shadows. We had almost reached the sheer slab of granite which closed us in when from above and to the sides voices suddenly sounded. There was some confusion. Headlamps came on and went out again. A badly prepared trap.
"The sword!" Bastable shouted to me, flinging his body against the rock as the beams of flashlights sought us out. "Von Bek. You must strike with the sword."
I didn't know what he meant.
"Strike what?"
"This, man. This wall. This rock!"
We again heard the roar of engines. Suddenly powerful headlamps carved through the darkness. I heard Gaynor's voice, urging the car forward. But the driver was having difficulty. With an appalling scraping of gears, whining and coughing, the car rolled forward.