The Anatomist's Dream (20 page)

‘Doesn't hurt to make a good first impression, Little Maus,' Kwert whispered urgently. ‘I think we're about to meet someone very important, and the only reason he's here at all is because of your head. So sit sharp, be polite, answer any questions you're asked exactly as you're asked them, and with any luck we'll be able to get back to the Fai –'

There was an eruption of noise and movement like a bottle of Herr Volstrecken's wine blowing its cork in an unguarded cellar, everyone shouting and trying to run, getting in each other's way, tables getting shoved and knocked, candles rolling to the floor, setting fire to spilled spirits and the cloaks and coats slung ­casually over chair backs. The loud commotion had begun at the Club's outer door but was soon moving towards the inner sanctum with every second, metal clanking as if the ropes of Helge's kitchen racks had been cut and all the copper pans sent crashing to the stone flags below. Philbert saw the newly come Professor Von Ebner rising above the crowd, his hat askew, then heard the sharp sizzle of an explosion, the man and his hat falling sideways to the floor. Ullendorf gasped, cried out in panic and then crouched down quickly as a barrage of soldiers pushed their way in, unmistakeable in their uniforms, barging through the central passageway, flinging men out of their way with wide sweeps of broadswords. Philbert heard pistol shots, smelled the newly discharged gunpowder that was rank in the air, dragged without warning from his seat as Kwert bundled him beneath the table. An awful moment then, when all Philbert heard was yelling and shouting, shots and more shots, horror when Ullendorf's large body fell onto the table above Philbert's head, the wood splintering and giving way, pinning Philbert to the ground. The noise was tremendous and confusing, the air filled with swirling smoke-dust and gloom as the candles were extinguished with the movement of burst tables and men, but Kwert did not lose his head and dragged Philbert out from beneath the broken Ullendorf and his broken table, everything lit now only by the flashes of the marauding soldiers' guns and the trickles of brandy caught to flame by the candles that had been tipped to the floor.

‘You've got to get out, Philbert!' Kwert spat into Philbert's ear. ‘You've got to get out. Go towards the kitchens just over to the right at the back. Keep yourself down to the floor and don't stop for anyone, don't speak to anyone, no matter what you see. Get yourself to Helge, but go now, Philbert, you have to go right now!'

And Philbert went. He'd been caught by the noose before and needed no persuading. He took time only to grab Kwert's knapsack from the seat and sling it over his shoulder, glancing back for one millisecond, seeing Kwert rolling Ullendorf out from beneath the broken table: hat gone, dark curls stained darker by his blood, fine coat ripped and torn. Then he was away, ­scampering down the short passageway as Kwert had directed, blood beating at his bones telling him to be gone. He reached the kitchens, saw the small window in the wall and was up and through it, catapulting himself out into the night where the clear air fell down on him like the breath of God. But even then he didn't stop. He clutched Kwert's bag close to his stomach and ran down the wet streets like a rat, ran until he had no more breath, until his body told his head that enough was enough, no more in him, time to stop.

The soldiers stamped their way through the Westphal Club as if they'd nothing left to do, which indeed they did not. Not that any of this was their idea. They'd known about the Westphal Club for years but it had never seemed a threat, just a load of local boffins going to drink in a place they thought was secret, but was about as secret as the fact that the sky is sometimes blue. The Schupo themselves, the men nominally in charge of keeping order in the town, drank in here themselves, finding it convivial, the one place in Lengerrborn where folk didn't stiffen at their arrival, where everyone was taken for what he was, everyone accepted, everyone as keen as they were to keep themselves to themselves. The Schupos therefore knew the place inside out, and were not happy to have been co-opted into the storming of the Westphal Club by outside soldiers despite the order from their direct superiors, and all on the one tip that one man, namely this Von Ebner, deemed an enemy of the state, a revolutionary who needed to be stopped, had arrived in Lengerrborn. The town's Schupos had colluded in this duty only because they were given no choice, the result being this raid, this massacre and mayhem, the apparent cutting down of ­revolutionary ringleaders from outside. But friends and family were friends and family, and a great many of Lengerrborn's own lost their lives in the tumult, and not many of the local Schupos were happy about that.

Philbert stood with his back against a wall. He breathed hard and was terribly afraid. The rain fell, runnelling off him, and he'd no idea of which direction to take. This wasn't the first time he had been alone, set adrift without oar or rudder, nor was it the first time he'd seen people shot by soldiers, but it was the first time he'd seen people he knew shot down in such close proximity and was appalled, having no idea whether Kwert or Ullendorf – or Ullendorf's friends – were still alive. There was nothing to do but get as far away as he could, and when he ran out of steam with blind running he walked, stumbling over wet and uneven cobbles, tears pricking at the backs of his eyes, focussing his mind on Helge and her kitchen, that oasis of warmth waiting for him in this bleakest, darkest of nights. But he'd no idea how to get there. The hill to The Anchorage was hidden from him and soon he was too tired to walk, too tired to think straight, and he slipped from the wall against which he'd put out his hand to brace himself, huddling into a crouch on the unknown street, the rain tip-toeing down the shop-window opposite him as he wished himself safe inside, behind its glass, cut off from the wet and the horrendous turn the world had taken against him. He didn't think it possible that he could have slept but he did, and when he opened his eyes again a sliver of dawn had begun to climb into the sky, just enough for the shadows behind the glass of the shop windows opposite to take form. He saw hams peppered and hanging, sausages black and curled and speckled with fat, dusted with white mould. They reminded him of dead things and Philbert retched and spat before hauling himself to standing, moving off slowly, ­following the gutters that ran along the edge of the street, ­tangling his feet in its muck. His throat was tight, his face aching with unspilled tears. All Philbert wanted was to curl up in that wide, white bed at Helge's, knowing Helge was down in her kitchen cooking up splendiferous wonders waiting to be piled onto plates, and that Kwert and Ullendorf were still in Ullendorf's study, watching the cells from Philbert's head growing wildly in their little dishes, wanted the solidity and warmth and companion­ship of Kroonk at his side, wanted Hermann to be alive again and be there to tell him that everything would all be alright.

The sun rose a fraction in the sky and Philbert's eye caught a patch of gold shivering in the gloom, a shine of brass, an edge of red, and he slowed down, stopped and took a couple of steps back. He held his sleeve against his nose to catch the drips and then slowly crossed the street he'd been walking down and was up against the window, hands a visor across his eyes as he tried to see more clearly what was inside. And what was inside was the Uhrmacher's clock with its six sides of glass, the very same one – or one the twin of it – that he'd seen on the stall of Zacharias Holzhauer at Dortmund, the man who was companion to the Turk. Philbert fingered Hermann's gold ring beneath his shirt that the Turk had delivered to him, and made a decision: no more running not knowing his direction. Against all the odds Philbert had seen something he recognised, and here he would stay, for if one of the Uhrmacher's clocks was really in that shop window then maybe the shop owner knew the Turk and would look kindly on him, tell him the way back to The Anchorage and Helge.

Philbert stood his vigil, unaware he'd fallen asleep in the shop's doorway until woken a half hour later by a hard kick, followed by the unpleasant sensation of wet fur rubbing against his face.

‘What you do here, boy? You not know it is 'gainst the law to go sleep in people's doors?
Geht
!
Gehen Sie
! Go way!'

Two more kicks had Philbert scrambling to his feet.

‘Ayiee! Your head look bad! You have been in fight I think. You find a doctor before it go bang.'

Philbert moved to one side as the girl with the big boots fumbled in her skirts for a key. She was a few years older than Philbert, maybe thirteen or so, wrapped in a cat-hair-covered shawl with a shabby looking tabby on one shoulder and a little ginger wrapped like a tiny stole about the back of her neck. Philbert blinked and took a few moments to gather himself.

‘I'm looking for the Clockmaker,' he said, his voice a little indistinct, his mouth desperate for a rinse of water, a rub of mint leaves, but he managed to catch the girl's attention by ­tapping at the glass behind which the clock sat shiny on its box. ‘Der Uhrmacher,' he tried again, ‘or the Turk.'

The key the girl was fiddling in the lock stopped, and she turned her dark eyes towards Philbert, taking in his wet and bedraggled appearance and the lump of his taupe.

‘The Turk?' Philbert repeated desperately. ‘Is he here? Or do you know where I can find him?'

It's an odd truism that coincidence doesn't exist for the young when it seems the natural way of things, the world fitting together like it should, and yet that same coincidence – when you're older and understand the odds against it – sends a shiver down your spine no matter how well explained by one fact or another, that it
'
s no coincidence at all, just a line of logic locking one part of your life to another. Like the fact that the Clock-maker and the Turk had storehouses up and down the Rhein, outposts peopled by subsets of their families from where they could collect or store their goods; like the fact that Ullendorf had heard of Philbert and sought him out and hadn't been in Finzeln by happenchance after all
,
that in fact he'd learned of Philbert right here in Lengerrborn where the Turk and the Clockmaker had one of their bases, even frequenting the Westphal Club where they'd mentioned Philbert's head.

Neither Philbert nor this girl with her cats knew any of this.

‘You know Abdal Bey?' the girl asked of Philbert, looking at him with a curiosity she'd previously lacked, seeing only then a raggedy boy taking a kip from the rain in her shop's doorway.

‘Eröglu Erivan Abdal Bey,' Philbert nodded enthusiastically, ‘and Zacharias Holzhauer, the clockmaker,' he added for good measure.

The girl looked the boy up and down. She didn't disguise the fact of her looking mostly at his head, for she could guess this was the boy in the tale told her by the Turk earlier that year about the man who'd chosen to take a dive off a bridge. Philbert was about to speak again, try to explain about the Westphal Club and what had happened, but the girl turned away.