A Visible Darkness Part 26

A lie may d.a.m.n one's soul, yet ease the suffering of someone else's.

'I placed it where you said. Beneath her tongue.'

'Thank G.o.d for that,' she said in a whisper.

Outside, the trumpet sounded. Muted cries were heard. Women crying to their neighbours to 'stand further off' or 'go more to the left.' The language was strong in tone, the vocabulary rich, but the racket soon died down, and the soothing flow of the waves lapping gently on the sh.o.r.e took its place.

'Kati and Ilse may have gone to Nordcopp,' I began. 'Some months ago.'

Edviga looked up sharply.

'Two girls took refuge in the Church of the Saviour. They stole amber relics from the sacristy when they left. Did all of the women know that there was precious amber in the church?'

Edviga shrugged her shoulders. 'There has always been chatter.'

'Did Kati and Ilse do the chattering?' I asked.

'We all tell tales,' she laughed carelessly, 'but we are a bunch of seasoned liars. Wh.o.r.es, thieves, and liars, as the French would say. And the folk in Nordcopp agree with them.' She was silent for a moment. 'The amber in Nordcopp church was not a fairy tale, then? And Kati had one of those pieces?'

'It was very similar,' I said. 'It is possible, therefore, that they might have known someone who was buying amber of that quality, whether found or stolen. I was hoping that you could tell me something more.'

'Why should I know anything?' she asked, rubbing her cheeks with her hands, causing those amber earrings to dance again.

'Because you knew Kati and Ilse. And if they did not steal from the church, who did? Are there only two victims, or are other girls missing, as well?'

She stared at me, but did not say a word.

'You told me that many girls had disappeared.'

'Last month, a soldier told me that a girl had run away to Rus sia.' She shrugged. 'Was it true? He said the Colonel would hang her if he caught her, but maybe that soldier was trying to scare me. They threaten us all the time. It's amber that they want, sir. I did not note that anyone was missing, but I know for sure that many other women have gone. Some came back, others didn't.'

I decided to come at the question in a different way.

'Where do you go, Edviga, when you leave the camp?'

'Nordcopp, sir,' she answered quickly. 'Sometimes further.'

'Carrying amber with insertions?'

'Those are rare,' was all that she would say.

'And dangerous, too,' I added.

'We all go out. Kati, Ilse, and all the others. Sometimes we go alone, sometimes we go together. Usually we come back for more. Is that what you want to know?'

'Did Ilse ever mention the Church of the Saviour when you were sharing the hut?'

'We don't speak much of where we go, or what we do. If you find a good piece, you don't breathe a word to anyone. And as for robbing the church, sir, who'd dare speak of that? We may be friends, but amber is amber.'

Should I believe her?

Edviga had taken risks to honour her dead friends. Did that not mean that she felt strong ties with her companions? And weren't those ties even stronger than her greed for amber? Or did she fear the ugly destiny that had befallen them; was she afraid to end her own days in the dark, cold depths of the Baltic Sea?

'The girls who robbed the church told Pastor Bylsma that their names were Annalise and Megrete. But I can find no record of those names in the camp register . . .'

'And so you thought that they were Ilse and Kati?' Edviga interrupted.

I nodded. 'Unless you know those girls by name. Annalise, Megrete. Have you ever heard of them?'

She was silent for a moment. 'Names don't mean a great deal here,' she said. 'I know the girls by sight, but only three or four by name. The camp is a sort of limbo, sir. In the real world, a name marks you out from others. Out there, you meet a person, and if you want to see him again, you give him your name. But here, what use are names? Why bother to learn them? Will I go looking for them, or they for me, when we get clear of this place?'

She was talking, but she had not told me much. Who did the girls sell amber to? Who might have stolen the amber from the church? Were Ilse and Kati Megrete and Annalise? Were there really two more victims than the French records showed?

Again, I changed tack.

'You say you go to Nordcopp to sell amber,' I began. 'Tell me, Edviga, how would you find a buyer? Or do you go to one person alone?'

'Me?' She was looking down at her hands. Strong, dark with the sun, they rested elegantly joined in her lap. She looked up, held my gaze, and an expression of amused curiosity lit her face. 'I go where the money is.'

'Would you tell the buyer what you do, where you work?'

'Never that!' she countered. 'Not until I know who I am talking to.' She tilted her face at me. 'I pretend to look for a bauble for a sister, say, who's getting married. Amber is cheaper here than in Konigsberg. That's why I've come, I'd say. If they see me again and again, they'd think that I am a regular customer. Instead, I sell it to the right person,' she said with convincing vivacity. 'But only when I'm sure it's safe.'

'What about Erika Linder? Erika knows you all . . .'

'Erika?' she said, and smiled, turning her head away. 'I've sold her things, of course. She is obsessed by amber more than anyone else in Nordcopp. She knows us all. She is attracted to the amber-girls. She clings to us, and wants to feel the strength in our arms and hands . . . You should see her, sir! I almost think that she is . . . well, that she is physically attracted to the amber-girls.'

This statement caused me to shiver.

'She's a strange little creature. Like the gnomes that roam the woods. She would not harm us, sir. She is in awe of us. We could snap her neck in an instant, if we wanted. She thinks that amber makes us beautiful. She thinks that it will make her beautiful and strong, as well, when she has gathered enough of it.'

'Do you know where she lives in Nordcopp?'

She seemed less reticent now. She laughed and shook her hair out. It fell upon her shoulders, taking on a strange blonde reddishness. In that instant, Edviga herself looked like a supernatural creature from some other world. 'I see her dwelling in an abandoned cellar like a bat,' she said, 'or nesting high in the trees with sparrowhawks. Or in a deep, dark hole dug by moles in the ground.'

'That is precisely where I met her,' I said with gravity.

Edviga laughed.

So, the girls could move about the town without being recognised, or challenged. And anyone who knew them would say nothing, so long as it suited them.

'What about the French in town?' I asked. 'Wouldn't they be on the look-out?'

Her eyes flashed wide. 'We pay them, sir.'

I swallowed hard. 'How do you pay them? Amber? Money?'

'One or both, or something else,' she replied without flinching. 'They let us in, they let us out again.'

I looked away. That thought disturbed me.

There was nothing feminine about the leather breeches and the heavy laced-up boots that Edviga was wearing. Instead, I imagined her in pink hessian pumps, a matching summer gown of fine silk muslin. And dangling from her ears, two sparkling baroque pearls in the place of those bits of amber.

It was a blinding vision.

'And yet,' she said, throwing a glance in my direction, 'if I had gone to Nordcopp church really seeking a safe refuge, I would have told the pastor who I was, and where I had come from. They know how difficult our lives can be. The French soldiers . . .'

She did not finish. What more was there to be explained?

'But if I went to steal from the church, I would give no name at all.'

Edviga stopped abruptly, and looked down. Was she trying to tell me something?

'What would you do?' I encouraged.

'I'd go about the business in a different way. To make sure no one there would be in a position to report the theft.'

'How would you do that?'

'There are things that no respectable priest wants the world to know.'

Gurten was right, then. Here was an explanation for the red cheeks of Pastor Bylsma. It explained the ease with which those amber relics had been taken from his charge. A diabolic sensuality emanated from those women, a sensuality no man could easily resist, according to Magda Ansbach. Not even a man of G.o.d, I thought.

'Is that what Ilse and Kati would have done?'

'It's what Megrete and Annalise have done,' she laughed. 'Whoever they may be.'

One pace forward, two steps back. She might have been toying with me. It was not the first time she had done so. Beyond her shoulder, I caught a glimpse of the women working in the sea. The grey water reached their armpits. They prodded beneath the waves, swept the surface with their nets. Stark black outlines against a uniform grey backdrop of the sky, the sun casting a weak, slanting light across the scene.

'How would you get in and out of the camp, Edviga?'

She clenched and unclenched her fingers, uncertain whether to answer me at all.

'We walk upon the water,' she said impulsively. 'What else?'

She seemed to enjoy the ease with which she could perplex me.

'Not like Jesus on the Sea of Galilee,' she said. 'We know the secrets of the coast. Out there, not far from the end of this enclosure, there is a level outcrop of solid rock. It's three feet wide, a few feet below the surface of the sea. There was an ancient harbour here, they say. It runs due east for a quarter of a mile.' She drew a line in the air with her finger. 'You can walk along that wall at night without the risk of drowning in the sea. At that end of the beach, there is a guard-post. You must watch and wait, take your chance when it comes. Sometimes you manage to slip through. But other times, they catch you, and you have to pay.'

The naked corpse of Kati Rodendahl had been found down there.

'You'd be soaked,' I said incredulously. 'How could you escape attention in that condition in Nordcopp? Quite apart from those clothes you are wearing. Anyone would guess where you come from, if . . .'

'We don't wear these,' she smiled demurely. 'We carry a dress and shoes in a bundle on our heads, the way a peasant woman carries a basket. Even in the winter. The water's not so cold as you might think. If the bundle falls into the water, the game's up, of course.' Suddenly, her face clouded over. 'Few of us can swim. One foot wrong, a wave that's bigger than most, and you'll be swimming in the dark for all Eternity.'

Had Kati Rodendahl lost her clothes in the sea? Had the killer met her naked on the beach? Ilse had been wearing a light summer gown when she reached the pigsty. Had she been carry ing a piece of amber hidden in her s.e.x, as Kati was?

'You took a great risk last night in such a storm,' I said softly.

'I had to,' she replied even more softly.

We were murmuring like lovers. My cheeks were hot. Just like Pastor Bylsma's.

'Why did you have to come?'

'I remembered something,' she said. 'Something Ilse spoke of. We were resting on the beach between one shift and the other. This was weeks ago, when we were sharing the same hut. She said she had received a strange proposal.'

'Regarding amber?'

Edviga shook her head vigorously. 'Regarding herself. Ilse said that someone wanted to draw her.'

'Draw her?' I echoed, astounded.

Edviga nodded, as if she found the idea equally surprising.

'Who was this artist?'

Edviga shrugged. 'She did not say, sir.'

'What did she say, then?'

'She said she'd met a man in Nordcopp. And that he had made a picture of her. I thought that she was mad to tell such a tale.'

'Did you see the picture?'

'No, I didn't. There, that's the trouble, sir. I didn't know if she was telling the truth. We are like the squid in the sea.' She laughed. 'They spit out a cloud of ink. We hide behind our storytelling.'

She pointed her finger at me, a.s.suming a stern att.i.tude. 'I do it better than most,' she added. 'But that was Ilse's story that day. The others made a mock of her because she took herself so seriously. Apart from one girl.'

'You?' I asked.

'Kati Rodendahl.'

I sat up straight, and bent towards her.

'You told me that you don't know names. You said you hardly know each other . . .'

'I knew those two. And then again, it's strange the things you have in your head, the things that you forget about. They pop up, just like that!' she said, and snapped her fingers. 'Yesterday, while working in the water, I was thinking back on things that you might want to hear. Things that you'd find useful, sir. That's when I remembered. We were on the beach, the three of us. Kati, Ilse and me, and Ilse told us that strange story. About the man who wished to draw her . . .'

Had Edviga dreamt it up, I asked myself, as an excuse to return to my cabin at dead of night? And what might have happened, I wondered, if I had been there, and not asleep on a hard wooden bench in Nordbarn?

'Why would Kati believe Ilse?'

'Kati said that he had drawn her already. And Ilse was jealous. She was even more jealous when Kati told her that he wanted to draw another girl, as well.' She slapped her hands down hard on her thighs. 'And guess who that girl was?'

'Who?'

'Me, sir!'