A Visible Darkness Part 23

I identified myself and Johannes Gurten-it was, I recall, the first occasion on which I chose to describe him as my a.s.sistant-then I asked the old man who he was.

'Benedikt Tanzig, Herr Procurator. At your ser vice.'

'And you are . . . ?'

'The archivist, sir. Now, I am more of a caretaker. Paid by the Margrave of Marlbork to maintain his fortress and his records. In the interests of neighbourliness, I also do the picking on a Monday for the French gentlemen. They're supposed to take on women for the amber workings,' he explained. Then, he sneered: 'I know what they should be looking for. In the way of fit women, if you know what I mean.'

I hid a smile by coughing into my hand. Herr Tanzig could not have been less than seventy years of age. Sans hair, sans teeth, sans who knew what else!

'When they bother to come,' he rumbled on. 'The girls, I mean, sir. There aren't so many these days looking for this sort of work. Won't be any before too long from what I be hearing.'

'How many girls were taken on by the French last Monday?' I asked him.

Tanzig raised his hand, crushed his gnarled fist to his bare gums, blew hard, and let out a curious popping sound. 'Not a one, sir,' he answered. 'And no one came up from the camp either. Usually they send an officer. No hiring officer, no hands to hire. There are always accidents, girls running off . . .'

'Or being murdered,' I put in.

He sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve. 'Makes no difference to them, does it?'

Clearly, he was talking about Colonel les Halles and his officers.

'Amber isn't what it used to be, Herr Procurator. I been here close on fifty years. There were men here then, as well. But the great King Frederick turned the country into a barracks. All men had to serve in the army. Which left the women in the water. When the margrave had the diggings, we'd have twenty, thirty, forty comely wenches lining up, depending on the season.'

'What difference does the season make?' Gurten had taken a step forward.

'Very few in winter, sir. Count 'em on one hand. Them's the desperate ones-work, or starve! Spring's the very best time. That's when the pick 'o the crop turn up in droves. Big, strong, healthy wenches, thighs like tree-trunks!' he exclaimed with a toothless leer. 'When harvesting comes around, that lot go off to do a bit of reaping out in the fields, sir. Get free ale, bread and cheese, and a lark about in the hay with the workmen. Them girls, they . . .'

'What about the summer?' I interrupted him. 'What happens when the weather's very hot, like it is today?'

'Generally good. But times are changing, sir,' he said, and rubbed his hands. 'As I told you, Monday last there wasn't one.'

'Which archives do you keep?' I enquired.

He made that popping sound again with his gums. 'Archives keeps themselves as a rule. In the old days,' he went on, 'we used to weigh and add the totals for all the amber that was being brought in daily. Herr Margrave had three collection centres down along the coast. Every night they'd bring it up here for safe-keeping. Six armed guards, there were. The round house is impregnable when the door . . . that is, when the door was locked! Now, the French make their own arrangements. Have to fix the door again once they're gone,' he said dismissively. 'I keep the paperwork here. Try to keep the place in order . . .'

'Can I see these records?' I interrupted brusquely.

Herr Tanzig sniffed, then shook his head. 'Without permission, sir, I couldn't do that,' he said.

'Permission from the French?' I queried.

'No, sir,' he chuckled quietly. 'Not them. They don't give a toss one way or the other. The margrave, sir. The Margrave of Marlbork, my master.'

'And where may he be found?' I asked. My patience was running thin. The French were bad enough, but this decrepit Prussian book-keeper was worse.

'I would not know precisely, sir,' he said. 'He may be on the Marlbork estate, that's twenty miles t'other side of Lotingen, or he may be off someplace else. It's more than a year since I had a reply to one of my despatches. You'll have to go . . .'

Gurten took a brisk step forward, and clasped hold of Tanzig's hand.

For a moment, I thought that he was about to ask my permission to whip the man. In the days of Frederick the Great, a superior official would often whip an underling, or order him to be whipped. Instead, he began to drop coins into Tanzig's palm. Having counted out five, he twisted the archivist by the wrist, and brought his shoulder low. He gazed down into the old man's face, and said: 'I hardly think we need to trouble the margrave, do you?'

Tanzig nodded, and Gurten let him go.

'Now,' he said, while the old man pocketed the coins and made a fuss of rubbing his wrist, 'I believe Herr Procurator Stiffeniis would like to visit this archive of yours without further delay.'

A stone staircase hidden in the deepest shadows curved up along the wall.

Herr Tanzig led us to the floor above without a word.

All was blinding light up there.

The circular room was slightly smaller than the one below on account of the dictates of military architecture. Sloping castle walls are harder to climb, and easier to defend, Leonardo da Vinci once declared, and no one had ever dared to challenge his wisdom. But the upstairs chamber had not been used as a military keep in a long time. Indeed, where once a round hole in the stone roof had let in rain-the only source of water in that barren land-the aperture had been domed with panes of gla.s.s to let in light alone. The sun shining strongly through it spread the pattern of the leaded window-frame like the legs of a spider which seemed to hold the room in its embrace.

I peered at the custom-made arrangement of ancient shelves and cubby-holes that had been constructed all around the walls. It might have been a pigeon-loft, but there were no pigeons. Each dusty hole was stuffed with a ledger or a bulging folder containing a sheaf of papers.

'How many ledgers are there?' I mused aloud. I looked around and began to calculate: from 1306 to the present day. That was 502 years. Multiply it by fifty-two . . . I began to multiply by fifty instead, thinking it was easier. Then I would add 1004 to my total.

'Twenty-six thousand, one hundred and four,' said Gurten instantly.

'Impossible!' I said, looking around me. There were certainly many hundreds of s.p.a.ces in the wooden honeycomb, perhaps a thousand books and bundles of paper, but hardly so many thousands. And some of the holes along the right-hand side were empty, still waiting to be used.

Benedikt Tanzig regarded us as if we were a pair of idiots.

'Keeping track of names and numbers is what my job is all about. When we're short of room,' he said, 'we take the oldest ones out and burn them. We . . . I'm the only one left here now. Every year I have a bonfire. Today's the day, as it happens. Feast of the Venerable Jakob Spener. My way of celebrating. I was about to make a start when you gentlemen arrived. An entire shelf will be going up in smoke very shortly.'

Would someone do the same thing to my own archive in Lotingen one day? Burn all the notes and drawings that I had made so carefully while preparing for the trials that had occupied my working days? The case in Konigsberg with Kant? Last year's investigation of the Gottewald family ma.s.sacre? All the other less memorable proceedings, including the one that I had left unresolved just a few days before in Lotingen?

'Which ones are you planning to burn?' I asked him.

Tanzig pointed to a stack of files and thick leather ledgers lying on a desk in the centre of the room beneath the skylight. '1700 to 1720,' he said. 'I'll rip the covers off, of course-all the leather goes back to the margrave's factor-but the paper is no use to anyone. Who wants to read the names and the dates of a million dead amber-workers?'

'A million?' I queried.

Tanzig turned to Gurten with a toothless smirk.

'You're the one that's good at counting,' he said. 'I'm asking you, sir. How many men, women and girls have pa.s.sed through them doors down there at the rate of . . . say, forty a week-averaging them out, of course, good times and bad times taken altogether-over a period of five hundred years?'

Gurten smiled and said: 'One million.'

'Exactly,' the archivist smiled back.

'But you do still have the recent records,' I insisted.

'Of course, sir.'

'Let's start with those,' I said.

'If I may make a suggestion, Herr Stiffeniis,' Gurten intervened, 'perhaps we ought to look at the records for the year 1805, that is, the year before the French arrived. Just for the sake of comparison.'

It was a sensible proposal. 'Herr Tanzig?' I said, turning to him.

'I have to warn you,' he replied. 'I shall be obliged to inform the margrave.'

'Do as you must,' I said.

Tanzig went across and took a ledger out from the stack. It was as large as a slab of black bread, but twice as thick, a heavy studded volume with dark brown leather covers. As he dropped it onto the desk, a storm of dust flew out from between the pages, dancing and floating in the sunlight. 'Here you are, sir. This one runs from 1804 'til the day that we were ousted. We used to keep the records proper back in them days. Without a birth certificate, no girl could be employed. Prussian law was strict . . .'

I opened the book near the middle, took out a sheaf of loose papers that divided the pages, and set them to one side on the desk. The top sheet was a fading copy of an edict. The t.i.tle caught my eye: Amber Edict & Convention-France & Prussia. Two paragraphs had been ringed in ink: Commercial amber, that is to say, amber of any quality, type or size [from the finest powder to the largest block], and for any general purpose [medicinal, chemical, decorative, etc.] will be consigned to the nearest French Office.

All amber of a scientific nature, that is to say, amber containing objects, animals, plants, or any other unusual 'insertion,' will be consigned to the Round Fort, in the person of Benedikt Tanzig, Archivist to the Margrave of Marlbork, who will despatch the said consignment to the Royal Scientific Society, Berlin, for immediate examination and cla.s.sification . . .

I had just such a piece of amber in my pocket. It had belonged to Kati Rodendahl. That is, I corrected myself, it belonged to the Royal Scientific Society, and it ought to have been consigned into the safe-keeping of Herr Tanzig.

'Do you send many pieces to Berlin?' I asked him, waving the edict in the air.

'Haven't seen one in the last uh . . . ten or twelve months,' he said. 'The other papers in that pile are official receipts for pieces sent, which I retain for the margrave's inspection. I have, of course, written to inform him that somebody is robbing him. That's his only income now from the coast. Today, of course, I'll add the thalers that your young a.s.sistant has given me.'

So, that's where the money would end up, I thought. Not in beer, or food, or a new pair of stockings, but, as tradition required, those coins would go to fill the coffers of the margrave of Marlbork, wherever he was surviving after the deluge that had swept away the remnants of ancient Prussia.

'Are you suggesting that the French are holding back amber?' Gurten asked. 'And that they are not respecting the agreement?'

''Tain't my job to suspect no one, sir,' Tanzig replied gruffly. 'Let the margrave suspect, if that's what he wants to do! Still, I reckon it is the French. They don't bring it here, which doesn't mean that they don't send it someplace else!'

Tanzig suspected the French. The French, of course, accused the Prussians of wholesale theft. Only the verb differentiated them: Prussians were not permitted the luxury of accusing anyone.

I turned my attention to the ledger, and began my search for Annalise and Megrete.

1. Anna Strudel, 26, of Ostroda, 24th April 18046th May 1806.

2. Mabel Bartold, 25, of Elbing, 24th April 18041st September 1804.

3. Krista Wiecwinski, 19, of Warsaw, 24th April 180411th June 1804lost a hand (compensation150 thalers).

4. Angeljka Cord, 30, of Lotingen . . .

I had lived in Lotingen for fifteen years, but I had never heard that name.

I picked up the separate bundle of papers and began to search through the leaves until I found the yellow registration certificate of Angeljka Cord. Born in the Roederstra.s.se district of our town in 1771, the girl had been raised inside a Pietist community for dest.i.tute female orphans. From this scant information, I guessed that she might have been the illegitimate daughter of a prost.i.tute. Where was she now, I wondered. Above, or below ground? The last recorded date of her existence was written in the ledger as 7th November 1807. She had worked on the coast for two and a half years, then left as suddenly as she had arrived.

'Is this your handwriting?' I asked the archivist, who had seated himself on the chair behind the desk.

He pulled a gla.s.s from his pocket, and lowered his nose until it grazed the page. 'It is,' he said, glancing up.

'I don't suppose you remember this girl?'

'Don't remember any of them precisely,' he said. 'They're here one minute, gone the next. They drift from place to place in search of work. She was in one piece when she left here, otherwise there'd be a note of injury. My records were a miracle of precision 'til the French took over. Date of arrival, date of departure . . .'

When had Edviga Lornerssen appeared in Nordcopp?

I ran my eyes over the pages ranging up and down the lists with my forefinger. Ostensibly, I was looking for the names Annalise and Megrete, but my finger jolted to a halt as I read the name Edviga. It was not the entry I was looking for, however. Edviga Brandt had arrived from Danzig in April 1806, and she had disappeared in June of the same year. Swept out to sea by a storm, the note read, as if that storm had come for her, and no one else.

What would Edviga Lornerssen make of that? A girl adrift in the after-life without a piece of amber to protect her.

'Can I see the records kept since the arrival of the French?' I asked.

Tanzig began to cough and splutter violently. He was laughing, I realised.

'The French don't bother with formality,' he said. 'If a girl looks fit, they take her on. If not, away with ye!'

'Surely you have a copy of their lists? For the margrave, I mean. Surely he would want to know the names of those who left the sh.o.r.e,' I said. 'And who was taken on to replace them.'

Herr Tanzig shook his head. 'None of my business, the Frenchmen said. I wrote to the margrave, of course . . .'

'So, there's no way of knowing who is working on the sh.o.r.e at present,' Gurten concluded.

'They may keep a roster down on the beach,' the old man replied.

I could verify that fact from personal knowledge. I had heard the roll being called before I went with Adam Ansbach to examine the corpse that he had found in his pigsty. I had been hoping that the Round Fort records would verify whether the girls that Pastor Bylsma accused of theft were registered as amber-gatherers. Now, I would need to check the French lists instead, and convince Colonel les Halles that it was not Prussian intrusion in French military affairs.

'What else can we do here, sir?' Gurten asked softly.

'Nothing,' I admitted.

Downstairs in the entrance hall, I was just about to leave when the archivist called me back. 'Herr Procurator,' he said, 'you asked me before if I remembered a particular girl.'

'Angeljka Cord,' I reminded him.

'That's right, sir. And I told you that I didn't. Well now, there is somebody who might know.'

I clutched at this straw. 'There is?'

'There is, indeed, sir. I may have mentioned it, in fact. She's been hanging around here, off and on, for a couple of years, I'd say. She pesters the girls when they're coming in. Or she chases after them on the way out.'

'She?' I asked, surprised.

Herr Tanzig began to chortle, as if he were seeing something very funny in his mind's eye. 'A strange little creature, sir. The contrast is quite hideous. Just imagine, all them big, fine strapping maids-beautiful, all of them-and this little imp in a skirt that skips and limps at their heels, telling them G.o.d knows what. If you could find her, sir, she might have a better memory for names than me. She'll know them. She speaks to every one without exception. She was hanging about outside last Monday, too, come to think of it. When no one came, she sat herself down on the bridge, dangling her legs over the ditch, and waited for a couple of hours. Next thing I looked, she must have realised n.o.body was coming, she'd taken off. I wouldn't be surprised if she comes back next Monday, though. Never misses a day, she doesn't.'

As Gurten and I began to retrace the dusty road to Nordcopp, the image of Erika Linder would not leave me alone.

Did Erika know what the Round Fort register could not tell me?

20.