C. Werner - Dead Winter

‘Ernst was pretty bad,’ Konreid interjected. ‘If not for Grau, he would have died.’

‘Grau is who gave us the medicine and herbs for Aldinger,’ Othmar said.

‘Then we all owe him a great debt,’ Erich declared.

Othmar shook his head grimly. ‘The good doktor doesn’t seem too keen on our gratitude. In fact, he’s pretty eager to clear out of Altdorf. Says he will as soon as Ernst is out of danger.’

Konreid shot the other knight a look of disapproval. ‘I think it is the talk not the company that bothers him.’

‘What do you mean?’ Erich asked.

‘You know the Kaiserjaeger captured the Grand Master,’ Othmar said. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The Emperor has ordered his execution. They’re keeping him in the Imperial Courthouse.’

‘Tell him the rest,’ Konreid prompted.

Othmar’s face split in a broad smile. ‘Prince Sigdan has a plan.

‘We’re going to rescue the Grand Master!’

Bylorhof

Ulriczeit, 1111

A white shroud was wound about the little body when Frederick van Hal next set foot in his brother’s house. The priest placed a black rose upon Johan’s breast, a ritual intended to protect the young spirit from daemons and witches until the departed soul could be guided into the keeping of Morr. It was an expensive gesture; black roses were always rare and the plague had driven demand for them to unprecedented levels. They could only be used once. The flower would be burned when Frederick conducted Johan’s last rites, the boy’s spirit freed with the smoke, freed to be gathered by the ravens of Morr.

Frederick looked up from the body of his nephew, staring at the parents who survived him. Rutger’s face was a piteous display of anguished guilt, the face of a father who blamed himself for not doing enough. The pain carved upon the man’s features would never be erased, it was a brand he would carry with him always, a token of the black spot in his heart.

Aysha had an even more tragic appearance. Her pretty features were collected and refined, her lips pursed in a staid expression. She might be patiently listening to the latest of Guildmaster Patrascu’s long-winded speeches, or watching her husband haggle with a shepherd over the quality of his wool. There was no emotion in her face, only a terrible resignation. Frederick shuddered when he looked at her eyes, for the emptiness he saw there was so absolute there wasn’t even a place for sorrow. The eyes of a corpse had more life in them.

‘Thank you for coming, Frederick,’ Rutger said, each word quivering as it left him.

‘How could I not come?’ the priest said. He placed a hand upon the grieving father’s shoulder. ‘I would not leave him for the corpse collectors, to be dumped into their cart like a slab of meat. While it is in my power, Johan will have all the dignity a van Hal deserves.’

‘And when the time comes, will you do the same for us?’ Aysha’s voice was as careful and precise as the rigid poise of her face.

Frederick bowed his hooded head. He didn’t want to discuss such things. He had just lost one member of his family. He didn’t want to talk about losing the others. Rutger and Aysha were all he had now. He didn’t want to think about them being gone.

Yet he knew he must. He knew they must. The Black Plague was merciless and rapacious, a prowling wolf that glutted itself not with a single victim but with an entire household. Where the plague struck once, it soon reared its monstrous face again.

Frederick placed his hand upon Johan’s head, feeling the cold flesh of the boy through the shroud. For all of Dr Havemann’s vaunted knowledge and skill, the plague doktor had failed to save his patient. The barbaric treatments Johan had suffered had been for nothing.

A hideous suspicion suddenly flashed through the priest’s mind. His hand tightened about the shroud. His intense gaze swept across Rutger and Aysha. In their pain, they would have accepted whatever Havemann told them. Even if they doubted, they wouldn’t know what to look for.

Before he could question his action, Frederick ripped the shroud from Johan’s body. Aysha shrieked, her composure broken at last. Rutger wailed in disbelief, lunging at his brother. The priest held him back with one hand while pointing at the corpse with the other. ‘Look!’ he snarled.

Rutger peered past the priest, staring down with uncomprehending eyes at the pale, unmarked skin of his dead son. In his grief, his mind would not make the connection Frederick wanted him to see. He turned an imploring gaze upon the priest, beseeching him without words.

‘There are no marks,’ Frederick declared, raising the rigid arm to expose the armpit, rolling the head from side to side to emphasise the smooth, unblemished skin. ‘The stains of the Black Plague are not here. I have seen enough of it to know the traces it leaves behind.’ The priest’s speech faltered, dropping to a sorrowful whisper. ‘Whatever sickness Johan contracted, it wasn’t the plague.’

Rutger bit his knuckles to silence the moan of horror that rose from his throat. Aysha said nothing. She was again the imperturbable wife, her face like a wooden mask, her eyes empty as a puppet’s. Turning upon her heel, she sedately withdrew from the room. A few moments later, her footsteps could be heard mounting the stairs.

Rutger waited until the sound of Aysha’s steps faded along the upper hall, then he leaned close to his brother. The merchant’s jaw was set in an expression of grim determination. ‘How did my son die?’

Frederick shook his head. It could do no good to tell Rutger. There was only pain in that knowledge, and Rutger had been hurt enough. Ignoring the question, he pulled the shroud close over Johan’s body and started to fold the dead hands over the breast once more.

Rutger clasped Frederick’s hand, crushing it in a maddened grip. ‘How did my son die?’ he repeated.

‘Don’t ask me that,’ Frederick told him, trying to pull away.

‘How did my son die?’

Frederick’s heart sickened as he heard the frantic appeal in his brother’s voice. Perhaps not knowing would be a damnation as terrible as the truth. But he doubted it.

‘Too much blood was leeched from Johan,’ the priest said. ‘There wasn’t enough left to sustain him.’

Rutger twisted away, falling to his knees and being noisily sick, every fragment of his being revolted by what he had learned. And what it meant.

Never in all his life had Frederick felt more ashamed for being right. Even when he’d uncovered the patron’s deceitful bookkeeping back in Marienburg, an incident that had precipitated his exodus from Westerland, being right had never filled him with such regret. He’d said the plague doktor was a charlatan and a scavenger. Now Rutger understood that the priest had been right.

‘Havemann killed him,’ Rutger muttered, repeating it over and over, his voice rising from a hollow whisper to a vicious snarl.

Frederick listened to his brother’s outburst with the deepest concern. He groped through the corridors of his mind for something, anything, to say to him that might ease the pain and guilt he felt. But for all his education, for the thousands of books he had studied, for the dozens of secret rites and esoteric rituals he had learned, there was nothing to be said. Some grief was too well-fed to be appeased. Like a winter storm, it was something that had to be endured, not avoided.

A crash from upstairs stirred Rutger from his anguish. He lifted his face upwards, staring at the ceiling for a moment, a look of bewilderment on his face. Then what little colour was left in his features drained away and a groan of soul-stricken despair shuddered from the merchant’s lips. ‘She knows,’ he gasped. Rutger turned and glared at the priest. ‘Don’t you understand — she knows!’