HS02 - Days of Atonement (2 page)

‘We are in no danger,’ I reassured her, stepping close and taking her hand, which was cold and unresponsive to my touch. ‘There are armed patrols everywhere, and we will have a permit to stay out after the curfew. If we decide to go, that is.’

I kissed her gently on the forehead. She was thinner than before, though whether from the strain of childbirth, or the state of constant nervousness that had possessed her since the occupation, I could not tell. Dark shadows had etched themselves into hollow cavities in her cheeks. The broad brow, high cheekbones, and slender lips that constituted the essence of her beauty had shifted in their delicate relations, and a dark furrow appeared on either side of her mouth on the rare occasions when she chose to smile. Her eyes alone remained unaltered. They were large, intelligent, enquiring, defiant, the warm chocolate brown of chestnuts. My new son had inherited those eyes, and I was glad of that. I could only pray that one day Helena would recover the fullness of her beauty, and that those two worry-lines would fade away with the slow passage of time.

‘Are you suggesting that the French will save us from our fellow countrymen?’

I shook my head, and looked away. ‘I only meant to say that we have to begin again, my love. Dinner at the Dittersdorfs is as good a place to start as any. Of course there are dangers, but nothing untoward has ever happened here in Lotingen. I do not see why the situation should change this Saturday evening.’

I caressed her chin with my thumb and forefinger, and gazed into her eyes, determined to change the subject. ‘I was hoping that you would be more worried about what to wear.’

‘What?’ she echoed, knitting her dark eyebrows, glancing up.

‘Your gown was always a matter of great concern as the autumn season approached. There is fierce competition between the ladies, I believe.’

She smiled, timidly at first, her eyes glistening ever more brightly, like coals in the blacksmith’s forge when the boy works the bellows. That smile had conquered my heart at our very first meeting. Thank heavens! I thought. Count Dittersdorf was right to revive the old customs. The autumn feast was just the thing to mark a vital change for the better. My taste buds surged at the welcome vision of the honeyed side of pork that would dominate the table. As Helena smiled back, contemplating the prospect of the dinner—with feelings similar to my own running through her head, I imagined—the dark clefts on either side of her mouth seemed to fade away to nothing.

‘I shall wear the one I wore last year,’ she said quietly. It was a declaration of a sort, though I had no intuition of what was coming. ‘That pretty ballgown will serve as an emblem, Hanno. As if these past twelve months had never been. In my heart of hearts, the field of Jena will always be a gentle rolling plain, where birds sing and marigolds bloom in the spring. But that will be
our
little secret.’

The clock struck seven and Helena retired upstairs to feed the baby. I sat down by the fire, intending to read through the Court House proceedings, happily distracted by my wife’s soft voice in the room above. The lullaby she sang was one that I had known since the cradle.
Im zoologischen Garten
spoke of a family visit to a menagerie, something that I had never seen. One day, perhaps, I would take Helena and my children to Berlin on such an outing to see the exotic animals and wild beasts. Before going upstairs that night, I opened the window, as I always did, and stuck my head outside to check the weather. Nature had been as dour and unforgiving as the occupying French in the past two months. Cold, tumultuous winds had gusted down from the Arctic circle throughout the month of August, turning the melancholy green waters of our Baltic shore wild and black, sending huge white-capped waves crashing in upon the seashore. September fog had shrouded the flat countryside, the smell of salt impregnating every shrivelling ear of spelt and corn. Then, the worst had arrived: ice and frost, glazing the world like the sugar coating on a cake.

But that night, the wind had changed direction. The air was considerably warmer, heavy with damp. The unexpected thaw was a welcome sign for the days to come. The crows would have his eyes once the crust of ice encasing them dissolved away. Rats would venture out along the gallows arm, and shin down the rope with the careless skill of able seamen, ripping and tearing at the flesh and guts of Adolphus Braun-Hummel. Helena had not been to town since spring. If the weather continued mild, I thought gratefully, she might hear of it, but she would never need to see that sight.

A lance corporal in the
Alt-Larisch
battalion of royal Prussian grenadiers, Adolphus Braun-Hummel was just twenty-two years old when he was rounded up after the capitulation of the Erfurt garrison. In a fit of youthful passion, he had more recently attempted to stab a French prison guard with a spontoon. The unwieldy spear had been ripped from his hands in no time, but his intentions were clear. He had been court-martialled, found guilty in the course of fifteen minutes, and hanged within an hour. The French had stripped him of his black leather knee-boots and fine uniform before the execution. He had been stiffly swinging from the gallows for two weeks now, his regimental sash of blue-and-white silk tied to his wrist, the rest of his body naked, the sex and the buttocks frozen black, a warning to us all. Well, I thought with grim satisfaction, stretching my hand out into the night, feeling the warm caress of fine drizzle, he won’t be there much longer. The French would be obliged to cut the body down and have it hastily interred. If the sun should shine for an hour, the stench would settle like a miasma on the town before noon.

Yes, they would certainly cut him down.

I secured the parlour window, and prepared to go to bed with a lighter heart than I had felt for quite some time, hoping against hope that for a month or two, we might be spared the grim humiliation of another Prussian dangling from a hangman’s noose. If the corpse were removed before the feast, it might be easier for us all to sit down and share a meal with the French.

H
ELENA CAME SKIPPING
lightly down the staircase at a quarter to seven. A delicate shade of rose-pink greeted my eyes, and my thoughts flashed back to the last occasion when she had worn that gown. The night we had dined and danced at the home of Count Aldebrand and Countess Dittersdorf, the previous year. The final waltz, so to speak, before calamity fell upon the nation. The colour set off Helena’s pale complexion to perfection, and she had allowed herself to suffer Lotte’s hot irons in taming her hair. Those wild wiry locks had been miraculously transformed into a curtain of tightly bunched ringlets.

As she turned her bare shoulders to accept the heavy cloak that I held out, I closed my eyes, touched my lips to the crown of her head, and filled my lungs with the sweet, powdered perfume of her hair.

‘Nothing has really changed, my love,’ I murmured, almost drunk on the scent of honey and roses, happy that we had decided to go, glad beyond belief to see her looking so well.

The children were sleeping in their cots protected by their own dear Lotte;
Helena and I would be absent for a few hours, a short walk away, eating our share of roast pork and drinking ruby-coloured wine from the Dittersdorf cellar. Life in Lotingen would go on, as it had always done. What danger could there be that we had not already faced and overcome?

We left the house and took the gravel road in the direction of the mansion, which stood on a slight rise within visible distance of our gate. The cold had come on again—it was sharp, stinging. The moon was low, and there was still a trace of daylight in the sky on the western horizon, though the garden was dark. Curfew had been set for seven-thirty after recent skirmishes by roaming bands of starving rebels in the province, but I was not unduly concerned. The foreign troops were heavily concentrated around Lotingen, and together with the dinner invitation from Count Dittersdorf, there had been enclosed a late-night pass signed by Lieutenant Mutiez, the recently arrived officer of the guard. He was reputed to be a revolutionary gentleman of the new French breed, and I was expecting to meet him at the dinner table that evening.

Along the way, we were stopped on three separate occasions by Frenchmen on patrol. They emerged suddenly out of the woods, muskets at the ready, their bayonets fixed, demanding to see our papers. I felt Helena cling more tightly onto my arm as I told them who we were, and handed over the protective note. I felt reassured by this vigilant foreign presence, and I did not share my wife’s anxiety about the rebels.

My sympathies went out to the defeated remnants of our own poor army, of course, but I wanted everything to go off without a hitch that night.

The autumn feast promised a new lease on life.

 2 

T
HE RECEPTION ROOM
was hot and crowded.

It was a humiliating sight to see the white Prussian mess-jackets mingling with the dark blue field-coats of the French officers. But mingle they did. Ceremonial swords rattled, and scabbards sometimes clashed by accident, but no blade was bared. That scene had been repeated in every country conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte, which meant nine-tenths of Europe. ‘A necessary act of reconciliation,’ Count Dittersdorf had tritely called it when he informed me of his intention to invite the French.

I peered out through the tall glass doors of the long gallery which gave directly onto the terrace and the garden beyond. A sheet of solid ice had covered the flagstones during the afternoon, reflecting the dancing warmth of the hundreds of candles inside the house. At least
that
tradition had been respected. Whenever Count Dittersdorf spoke of the annual event, he used an expression that had become something of a formula and a joke in Lotingen: ‘You must gobble my roast pork before Jack Frost freezes your jaw.’ Walking to the house that evening, I realised that his prediction had been fulfilled: the ground crackled beneath our shoes, we might have been walking on eggshells. After the short thaw, winter had arrived with a vengeance.

Three or four waiters in the purple family livery moved among the assembly, offering a welcoming glass of seasoned
kabinett
to one and all, myself and my wife among them, while other retainers swiftly lowered one of the magnificent glass chandeliers and replaced the candles which were in imminent danger of dripping hot wax onto the heads of the assembled company.

‘Procurator and
Frau
Stiffeniis, what a pleasant surprise!’ Count Dittersdorf was the first of many Lotingeners to turn his kind concern on Helena that evening. ‘It is so good to see you up and about again, my dear. And looking so well. Now, tell me all about the baby!’

Before Helena could tell him very much, the dinner gong sounded, the double doors to the banqueting room were thrown open, and the whole company began to shift out of the reception hall, as if the smell of dinner
were irresistible. As indeed it was. I took my wife by the arm, waiting for the crush to disperse before we entered the crowded room. No place-names had been set, so we made our way to the bottom end of the long dining table, where four or five chairs still stood empty. I was not put out by this informality. Dittersdorf had let it be known that if a man found himself sitting next to a French officer, he should make the best of it, as the French would be obliged to do. ‘All friends together’ was the particularly unhappy turn of phrase that he had coined for the occasion. But there was a weakness to the scheme. The French officers were all men, and very young for the most part, bachelors, or single by force of circumstance. The women were Prussian without exception, and French compliments were lavish. It was a potential minefield.

Helena took the empty place next to Professor Krazman, a retired teacher with silvery grey hair who had once held the chair of Ancient Greek Philology at the University of Königsberg, and I made myself comfortable beside her. The cook went round with a huge tureen of soup on a cart with wheels, and still two places remained vacant at the foot of the table. I was raising the spoon to my lips to savour the mutton broth when the latecomers arrived. They were Frenchmen, one wearing a uniform, the other dressed in an ankle-length leather cape. As comments were made about the excellence of the soup and the toasted particles of bread floating on the surface—a refinement that had only recently come into fashion in Prussia—I cast a furtive eye on the new arrivals.