Matthias Bauer - Morbus Dei - The Sign of Aries

Gottendorf, Rohrau and Prukh were behind them now. They had been riding through fields and forests for miles, on difficult ground that was drenched and water-logged after yesterday’s storm.

It wasn’t until they had got to Traskirch that they started to make enquiries about the waggon convoy. No one knew anything about it. Johann could feel his tension rise as, one by one, the residents shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. Had von Binden been taken in by a scoundrel who had given him the wrong information? What if Gamelin was in fact heading along St. James’s Way towards Salzburg and getting further away from him by the second?

Johann’s heart began to pound.

What if Gamelin’s cover had been blown and the local population had made short shrift of him? And all the sick too? And if not, would Elisabeth be able to survive the journey anyway?

His horse snorted and he looked ahead. They were heading towards a wide road, running from north to south, known as the lower Way of St. James.

As they reached it, they spurred their horses and rode towards the midday sun.

Johann couldn’t believe his ears. He bent down from his horse and gave the farmer a soul-piercing look. ‘So no waggon expedition has passed through here in the last few days’, he said, in a deliberate tone. ‘You’re quite sure of that, are you?’

The farmer nodded as he gazed sullenly towards the burnt-out farmstead with the St. Andrews’s crosses on its gates.

You can’t buy truth, Abbot Bernardin used to say, but sometimes you can entice it out of hiding with a coin.

Johann took out a gulden from his money pouch and rolled it between his fingers. The man’s face lit up and to look at him anyone would think he had just seen a Marian apparition. He blew his nose with his hand and wiped it on his breeches, then he smoothed down his sparse hair.

‘Now that you mention it, sir,’ he said with sudden certainty, standing up as straight as he could with his poor back that was ruined from working in the fields, ‘a few waggons did pass through here. Three, if I’m not mistaken, two of them covered with tarpaulin and one with provisions, and a fine black carriage at the front. Lucky for you I remembered, isn’t it?’ The farmer stretched his hand tentatively towards Johann.

‘Yes, I’d say we’ve both been lucky there,’ replied Johann, swallowing his resentment and trying to hide his elation, which would have made the information even more costly.

He took another gulden out of his money pouch. The farmer stretched out his hand but Johann raised his right eyebrow and kept the coin out of reach.

‘Must be three days ago now, sir,’ the farmer went on, ‘four at most. They stayed overnight at the plague farm over there and set off again at dawn the next day in that direction.’ He pointed southwards as he stretched out his other hand.

Johann placed the gulden on his leathery palm. A hired mason would have to work four days for that sum.

‘God bless you,’ whispered the farmer, taking a step backwards and bowing his head, as if he were about to say another quick prayer to send Johann on his way.

Johann whistled and his comrades rode up. He nodded. ‘We’ve found them,’ he said, pointing southwards.

‘What are we waiting for then?’ said Hans, spurring his dun horse.

The prison waggon seemed to be jolting more than usual. Either the road had suddenly deteriorated or they had taken a different route, thought Elisabeth. Peering through a chink in the tarpaulin and noticing that the landscape had come closer and was passing more slowly, she judged it must be the latter.

That meant it would be harder for Johann to find her.

Elisabeth had been silent all day for she had been too tense and preoccupied with organizing her thoughts. She had now tied up most of the loose ends.

Gazing out at the dense mass of trees and bushes, she knew what she had to do.

She looked at Alain, who was dozing beside her.

‘Alain?’ she whispered.

No reply.

She poked him hard in the side.

‘Alain, are you awake?’

‘I am now,’ he replied, looking at her sleepily. His face darkened when he realised where he was. ‘Are we already in Versailles?’

‘Where?’ asked Elisabeth, bewildered.

‘What do you want?’

‘What have you got in your leather bag?’ she whispered, pointing to his belt and the dim outline of the bag.

Alain said nothing.

‘In your leather bag,’ repeated Elisabeth. ‘What’s inside it?’

Alain looked at his belt and pressed the bag. ‘Flints and bits of tinder. Why?’

Elisabeth smiled.

‘Are there tinder boxes in the waggon with the provisions too?’

Alain didn’t know what Elisabeth was driving at but it was clear she was not to be put off. ‘Of course there are’, he whispered. ‘Small ones under the leather hides; we always unload them first and load them last.’ Alain closed his eyes in the hope that Elisabeth would now leave him alone.

‘And what about the oil lamps that always swing overhead at night–are they kept there too?’

‘Yup,’ he replied, with a sigh and keeping his eyes closed.

‘Very good. Then we’ll take a chance.’

Alain muttered his agreement.

A few seconds later he opened his eyes wide. ‘Take a chance on what ?’

‘I’ll tell you tonight,’ whispered Elisabeth, secretively.

The valley was narrowing and the jagged cliffs towered up steeper now. The sun was struggling to peep through the gathering clouds.

General Lieutenant Gamelin pushed the curtain to one side and gazed out at the passing scenery.

How quickly it had changed, he thought. The gentle, rolling hills outside the gates of Vienna had all but vanished. The mountains were surrounded by thick fog but there was one solitary cone of rock with a mighty fortification on it, hovering menacingly out of the mist like a castle in the sky.

Gamelin closed the curtain and traced his finger across an exquisitely drawn map, which was lying with some other maps in a leather folder on his lap. He had been studying them in detail for days and had diligently marked the most important towns and crossroads.

The fortification he had just glimpsed in the fog was Burg Klamm vor Schottwien so he knew they had reached Semmering.

Gamelin laid the leather folder to one side and closed his eyes with satisfaction. Even the jolting of the carriage no longer bothered him, quite the contrary, every pothole, every bump brought him closer to his goal.

He had waited for this for so long! As he thought back over his career in the French army, images began to surface …

1665, an important year: at last he’d got a post as lieutenant in a cavalry regiment in southern France. Then came his next big chance: the Franco-Dutch War. He had served in Flanders and had proved as a volunteer in numerous campaigns that discipline and daring need not be mutually exclusive. Three years later he had been rewarded with a promotion to the rank of mestre de camp.

He stroked his well-groomed goatee with a smile.

In 1679 he had been appointed brigadier. Then a couple of years later came the big invasion of the Rhine Army, with him riding at its head. German place names flashed through his mind: Heilbronn, Knittlingen, Mannheim.

Then came Esslingen … and the parson’s daughter, a real sweetie, he recalled. He had never had much to do with women, liaisons were simply too awkward and got in the way, but the parson’s daughter had been something special.

What was her name again …? No matter.

Heidelberg in flames. Oppenheim in ruins. The destruction of Landskrone Castle. ‘Defortification of cities’ the generals had dubbed it, and he had enthusiastically helped with the campaign: the decimation of large areas of Kurpfalz and the destruction of towns in Württemberg and Baden and, with them, the livelihoods of the enemy population.