The Anatomist's Dream (26 page)

26

Crossing Bridges

They left the island on the day of the May Fair, rowing across the lake at first light, someone waving to them from the ­opposite bank.

‘That'll be Fatzke,' informed Brother Langer. ‘He brings his pony cart to ride me into town.'

Also there were old Pastor Gruftgang, an old donkey at his side, and Kadia, in a cornflower blue dress, face smooth as an olive, eyes the gold-flecked brown of tench-backs fresh from the water. Fatzke grabbed at the boat line immediately they threw it ashore, shouting excitedly before they'd even landed.

‘Good news, my friends, oh but I have such good news! Schupo Ackersmann is alive and well! He's alive, but has gone quite mad! He's given up the Polizei and cashed in his pension. He keeps babbling about meeting angels, if you can believe it. Says the angel stayed his hand, stopped him from murdering all those prisoners and having their blood on his hands the rest of his life.'

Gruftgang came forward, splashing through the water, ­dragging at the keel of the boat to get it grounded.

‘An angel that looked like a boy,' he panted, looking from Philbert to Kwert and back again. ‘A boy with a head like a conch hidden in a hat of green . . .'

He grabbed Philbert out of the boat and hugged him hard as dodder to a tree. Fatzke started up again, displeased to have his narrative broken.

‘The Schupo says the poison was his Cup from Christ, purging him of evil,' he said, tying the boat to the oak tree. ‘And I was right there when he said it.
An angel
, says Ackersmann,
stopped my hand and took
my evil from me
. Well Schupo Ackersmann, I said, if it was poison you wanted, you should've come to me. I could've given you enough to kill every cat in Christendom.'

Gruftgang clapped heartily at Kwert's shoulders, making him wince with the pain.

‘It's a miracle!' Gruftgang added, taking up the tale, Fatzke popping up over his shoulder every now and then to say, ‘That's right! I was there! I saw it all!'

‘The angel,' Gruftgang went on, boring Philbert through with eyes like beetle larvae going at rotten wood, ‘told Schupo Ackersmann to build a shrine, and what a shrine!' His breath caught in his throat before going on with quiet reverence. ‘And the shrine is already there. It's St Lydia's. He's going to rebuild St Lydia's. Who could have foreseen such a blessing?' His voice was rising as if he were already standing at his lectern, red-pipped cheeks going in and out like bellows. ‘Says he is risen back to life, and called me to him.
Help me Gruftgang
, says he,
help me build
up the least of God's churches into glory
,
and
we will carve both our souls into lamps for the
light of God
. That's what he says.'

‘That's what he said, that's what he said!' piped up Fatzke, ‘I heard him myself, I was there, and that's what he said.'

‘Priest in my own church again,' whispered Gruftgang. ‘Whoever would have thought it? Ah, what a glorious blessing to have seen the Angel of the Lord.'

Kwert was frowning deeply, but Brother Langer clasped Fatzke in one big arm and Gruftgang in the other and led them off.

‘Sounds like we need a celebration!' Langer exclaimed. ‘Who's got brandy? It's a cold morning, never mind all the rowing. I knew something was up when Philbert told me you'd taken them through the shroudways, Gruftgang. You've not been down there for years.' He winked at Kwert, who followed the little procession shaking his head, glancing at Philbert as he went, not that the boy had taken any heed of this conversation. He was off a few yards up by the trees with Kadia, who was attempting to pin a bunch of bluebells to her shawl. He brought out the little ginger kitten.

‘You must have wondered where he went,' Philbert said, Kadia stopping her pinning and looking at him.

‘Ah,
hayvancik
, my little one. I think he runs away.' She put out a finger and tickled the kitten beneath his chin, Raspel purring loudly. ‘He is fatter, yes? In just these few weeks. I think you keep.'

She moved forward, picked up the kitten, opened the flap of Philbert's bag and pushed Raspel gently inside, a little whirl of ginger hair catching at the buckle. Philbert felt the animal settle, curling up for sleep as if this satchel was his home and Philbert his owner, and Kadia smiled at Philbert and Philbert smiled at Kadia, and they heard absolutely nothing of what the others were talking about until they piled into the cart and began moving off.

‘Of course I shall have to get the roof repaired and painted, and the sign. And the garden will have to be seen to. And pews!' Gruftgang was saying. ‘That'll be one of the first things needed. We can probably make do with benches at the start. The Schupo's already given orders to the carpenter. And I shall need somewhere for the choir. Ackersmann absolutely insists on a choir . . .'

He murmured on, but soon his eyes closed in reverie and no one liked to disturb him, so they sat there, happy in their seats, listening to the stones knocking together beneath the pony's hooves, Fatzke whistling tunelessly with every breath, Philbert watching the dragonflies shimmer and dart, the slender shadows of fish below the water. Herons lifted lazy wings as they disturbed them with their passing, reminding Philbert of what Kwert had once said, that if birds didn't fly in the sign of the cross they would plummet to the earth and die.

A long while passed as they travelled, broken suddenly by a shout from Brother Langer.

‘There it is! The Abbey! I can see the point of its spire! Ah, it still has a homely look about it. Every year, every year.'

The Abbey flitted in and out of sight between the trees until, rounding a bend, the woods all at once gave way to lesser banks of hedge and scrub sprawling an unruly mob down the brae. It took them all by surprise when the Abbey bells rang out a halting arpeggio, the lower notes slow to catch up with the higher, seeming to stay a little longer on the breeze.

‘Nine of the morning,' intoned Brother Langer, ‘official start of the Cloth Market.'

‘Not quite,' said Fatzke, looking at a small contraption he'd fished out of his pocket, ‘a little early, I should say. I wonder if your monks would be interested in a batch of these pretty things – ring-dials, they're called. Work just like sun-dials, only you can carry 'em around for your convenience.'

‘Not very convenient when it's cloudy,' declaimed Langer, ‘nor at night.'

‘Hopeless for telling how long your sermon's been going on,' dreamed Gruftgang, his mind still attached to St Lydia, like a ligger pulling at a pike.

‘Bah, Philistines the lot of you,' grumbled Fatzke to the Hermit, the Hesychast and the Priest, folding down the gnomon and snapping shut the lid.

The hill fell steeply away within its banks of yellow gorse and soon they reached the corner of the Market that lay just this edge of town. The great grey walls of the Abbey blocked the sun from the streets immediately beside them, a monk stepping out from a gate-turret to collect tolls from everyone passing into town. Sheaves of flyers held down by stones were stacked on his little booth, and he handed them one from each pile. Langer picked up the first and read out loud:

Brought
to you by PRUNKVOLL'S CIRCUS OF MARVELS
:

We Have
The JONGLEUR OF JOUBRILLE who can ­balance an onion on
the end of his nose and a chair upon his
chin
;

We Have, all the way from YELLOW CHINA
,
The
AMAZING ACROBATS
,
men so small and smooth they can toss
each other through the air like balls
;

We Have A
TROUPE OF DANCING DOGS who jig upon their hind legs
and are dressed in the latest fashions
,
and bow and
curtsey to one another in the politest of ways
.

‘I wouldn't pay a pea to see a bunch of dogs cavorting around a bone on a stick,' said Fatzke, still disgruntled by the non-­impression made by his ring-dials, of which he had a further fifty in his saddle-pack. ‘And as for men from China, why I saw them last year – they're nothing but a bunch of boys who've shaved their heads and painted their skins with dyers' broom. Now what I'd like to see is the jongleur balancing a boy on his nose, never mind an onion, that would be something to see alright.'

Brother Langer put that paper to the bottom and uncovered the next, which had a picture of a horse tapping at the ground with its foot, and read on.

ALL
THE WAY FROM LONDON
,
who would have believed it
,
A
HORSE THAT CAN COUNT!

All you have to do is
ask him a question and he will tap out the
answer with his hoof
!

What is the number of days
in a week
?
How many seasons a year
?

How many
full moons will there be this month
?
How many quarts
of ale before a man falls to the ground
?

All
these questions answered
,
and many more
!

‘Pfff!' snorted Fatzke, the pony turning its head in its trap as if to agree, or maybe to wonder what all the fuss was about – counting was easy: one, two, three, one, two, three. Simple – oats, hay, water; water, hay, oats. What more was there to life than that?

They turned the corner of the Abbey and were immediately confronted by a barrage of stalls and noise. Lined up against the walls were wooden trestles protected by awnings of myriad colours and patterns, and piled high up on the trestles were bolts of cloth. Men stood close by doffing their hats as people passed, deafening them with shouts describing their wares and the remarkable bargains on offer for the first morning of the Cloth Market. Men leaned in, fingering the corners of the cloths, asking about colours and cotton contents; wives bustled, saying ‘Not this one, let's try that one; this one has the warp all wrong, and look at that nap! And that colour! What are you thinking! Now that one over there . . .'

Their voices wove themselves together around the travellers, the cacophony rising in pitch as they closed upon a stall, fading again before they reached the next. On the other side of the street food-sellers were getting ready, frying potatoes and ­cutlets of lamb, setting chickens steaming on spits, strong smells rising from the
rippenspeer
– the smoky pork ribs people ate by the dozen dipped into this sauce or that, or smothered in salt and pepper. Brother Langer leapt down from the trap to take the lead, bringing them through a tall gate into the Abbey's grounds, where immediately the noise dropped in volume as he closed the gate, the walls holding it from them like the arm of a dam. Once inside the Abbey's courtyard they dismounted, the young monk ceasing his languorous pumping at the fountain and walking briskly towards them, smiling broadly.

‘Brother Langer! How good to see you!'

‘Brother Jaspis,' Langer replied warmly, taking the proffered cannikin from him and handing it to Fatzke. ‘Still here then, I see.'

‘Still here,' agreed Jaspis, ‘thanks be to God, and to you, Brother.'

Langer beamed at him. ‘I was helped as I helped you, as you will help another; thus the Light of God finds its way into the world.'

The monk in Brother Langer was re-emerging, and young Jaspis led him and his hangers-on to the guest-houses where they were to stay, apparently unconcerned by having to billet extra bodies besides the ones expected.

The Abbey had a calm about it despite the crowds outside, the stones seeming to sleep in the early morning light, ­murmuring gently as the bees came and went from between their nooks. Brother Langer departed with Brother Jaspis, and Kwert fell asleep the moment he laid himself out on a bed-roll. Kadia was eager to take a quick look at the cloth stalls and Fatzke took his pony and Gruftgang's donkey to the stables to be fed and watered and allowed to practise their mathematics in peace. Then there was only Philbert and Gruftgang sitting quietly on a bench outside the lean-to building the Abbey had for guests. Spread out before them was the infirmary garden, a purple cloud of ­fumitory smoking up the shins of its ancient walls, pushing past the leaves of speedwell and herb-robert that grew self-seeded through the paving stones. Gruftgang leant his bone of a back against the warm stone, his pipped cheeks sucking in and out as he breathed deeply, eyes closed. Philbert watched two rove beetles meet between his feet, their long bodies arched into scorpion-shapes, circling each other, waving their tails, then agreeing to pass on.

‘The Schupo told me more, you know,' Gruftgang suddenly came to life, though he stayed leaning against the wall, his eyes now open, gazing into the deepening blue of the sky. ‘Oh yes, he told me much more, that I haven't repeated to anyone.'

He turned then, and gently lifted the hat from Philbert's head, placing it down on Philbert's knees. ‘He saw quite clearly the hand of his deliverer, felt the Flame of God pass through him as he swallowed that wine you gave him.'

Philbert shuddered, looked around him, was stopped from leaping up by Gruftgang's hand steady upon his arm.

‘You've nothing to fear from me, lad, nor from him. The ­doctors say his visions are mere after-effects of the potassium-salts he ingested, but I know what he told me when he called me to him.'

Gruftgang looked at Philbert then, so hard Philbert couldn't look away.

‘He told me,' Gruftgang swallowed, had difficulty speaking the words, his gaze so intense it seemed almost to be burning somewhere deep inside Philbert's head.