And don’t you even want to know how I’ve fared? asks Agneta. You and me and me and you—how long has it been? You don’t even know whether I’m still alive, little son.
“I don’t even want to know,” says Tyll.
You betrayed him as I did. You don’t need to be angry with me. You called him a servant of the devil as I did. A warlock as I did. What I said, you said too.
She’s right again, says Claus.
“Maybe if we find the pickax after all,” Matthias says with a groan. “Maybe we can loosen it with the pickax.”
Alive or dead, you attach too much weight to the difference, says Claus. There are so many chambers in between. So many dusty corners in which you are no longer the one and not yet the other. So many dreams from which you can no longer awake. I’ve seen a cauldron of blood, boiling over hot flames, and the shadows dance around it, and when the Great Black One points to one of them, but he does so only every thousand years, then there’s no end to the shrieking, then he dips his head into the blood and drinks, and you know, that was still far from hell, it was not even the entrance to it yet. I’ve seen places where the souls burn like torches, only hotter and brighter and for eternity, and they never stop screaming, because their pain never stops, and still this is not it. You think that you have an inkling, my son, but you don’t have the slightest inkling. To be confined in a shaft is almost like death, you think, war is almost hell, but the truth is that anything, anything is better, it’s better down here, it’s better out there in a bloody ditch, it’s better in the torture chair. So don’t let go, stay alive.
Tyll can’t help laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” asks Korff.
“Well, then divulge a spell to me,” says Tyll. “You were not a good sorcerer, but perhaps you’ve learned more.”
Who are you talking to? asks Pirmin. There’s no ghost here except me.
Another explosion. Then there’s a crack and a boom. Matthias lets out a howl. Part of the ceiling must have collapsed.
Pray, says Iron Kurt. I was the first to go, now it’s Matthias’s turn.
Tyll squats down. He hears Korff shouting, but Matthias no longer responds. Something tickles his cheek, his neck, his shoulder, it feels like a spider, but there are no insects here, so it must be blood. He feels around and finds a wound on his forehead, beginning up by his hair and going down to the root of his nose. It is very soft to the touch, and the trickle of blood keeps growing. But he feels nothing.
“God have mercy on me,” says Korff. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy. Holy Ghost. I killed a comrade for his boots. Mine had holes in them, he was fast asleep, it was in the camp at Munich, what should I have done, I do need boots! So I struck. I strangled him, he opened his eyes, but he couldn’t scream. I just needed some boots. And he had a medallion that wards off bullets, I needed that too, thanks to the medallion I have never been hit. It didn’t help him against strangling.”
“Do I look like a priest?” asks Tyll. “You can confess to your grandmother, leave me alone.”
“Dear Lord Jesus,” says Korff. “In Braunschweig I freed a woman from the stake, a witch. It was early in the morning, she was supposed to burn at noon. She was very young. I was passing. No one saw it, because it was still dark. I cut through the fetters, said: Quickly, run with me! She did it, she was so grateful, and then I took her as often as I wanted to, and I wanted to often, and then I slit her throat and buried her.”
“I forgive you. This very day you will be with me in paradise.”
Another explosion.
“Why are you laughing?” asks Korff.
“Because you will not get into paradise, not today and not later either. Not even Satan will touch a gallows bird like you. And I’m also laughing because I’m not going to die.”
“Yes, you are,” says Korff. “I didn’t want to believe it, but we’re never getting out. It’s all over for Korff.”
Another bang. Again everything shakes. Tyll holds his hands over his head as if that could do any good.
“Perhaps it’s all over for Korff. But not for me. I’m not going to die today.”
He takes a leap as if he were standing on the rope. His leg hurts, but he stands firmly on his feet. A stone falls on his shoulder. More blood runs down his cheek. Again there is a crash, again stones fall. “And I’m not going to die tomorrow or any other day. I don’t want to! I’m not doing it, do you hear?”
Korff doesn’t respond, but perhaps he can still hear.
So Tyll shouts: “I’m not doing it, I’m leaving now, I don’t like it here anymore.”
A bang, a trembling. Another stone falls and grazes his shoulder.
“I’m leaving now. This is what I’ve always done. When things get tight, I leave. I’m not going to die here. I’m not going to die today. I’m not going to die!”
Westphalia
I
She still walked erect as in the past. Her back almost always hurt, but she didn’t let it show and held the cane on which she had to prop herself up as if it were a fashionable accessory. She still resembled the paintings from long ago; indeed, enough of her beauty remained to fluster people who unexpectedly found themselves in her presence—as now, when she threw back her fur hood and looked around the anteroom with a firm gaze. At the arranged signal her lady’s maid behind her announced that Her Majesty the Queen of Bohemia wished to speak with the imperial ambassador.
She saw the lackeys casting glances at each other. Apparently the spies had failed this time, no one was prepared for her arrival. She had left her house at The Hague under a false name; her pass, issued by the States General of the United Dutch Provinces, identified her as Madame de Cournouailles. In the company of only the coachman and her lady’s maid she had traveled east through Bentheim, Oldenzaal, and Ibbenbüren, over fallow fields and through villages destroyed by fire, cleared forests, the never-changing landscapes of the war. There were no inns, so they had spent the nights in the coach, stretched out on the bench, which was dangerous, yet neither wolves nor marauders had taken an interest in the small coach of an old queen. And so they had reached the road from Münster to Osnabrück unmolested.
Immediately everything had been different. The meadows grew high. The houses had intact roofs. A stream turned the wheel of a mill. There were guard huts on the roadside, well-fed men with halberds standing outside them. The neutral zone. Here there was no war.
Outside the walls of Osnabrück a guard had come up to the coach window and had asked what their desire was. Wordlessly, Fräulein von Quadt, her lady’s maid, had handed him the pass, and without great interest he had looked at it and waved them on. The very first citizen on the roadside, a tidily dressed man with a well-trimmed beard, had shown them the way to the quarters of the imperial ambassador. There the coachman had lifted her and her lady’s maid out of the coach, carried them over the mucky ground, and put them down in front of the portal, their clothing unscathed. Two halberdiers had opened the doors for them. With an assurance as if she had rights over this household—according to ceremony established throughout Europe, even a visiting monarch was the master of the household everywhere—she had entered the antechamber, and her lady’s maid had demanded the ambassador.
The lackeys whispered and gave each other signs. Liz knew that she had to take advantage of the surprise. The thought must not form in any of these heads that it would be possible to turn her away.
She had not made a royal appearance in a long time. When you lived in a small house and were visited by no one but merchants trying to settle their bills, you didn’t often have the opportunity. But she was the grandniece of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, the granddaughter of Mary, Queen of Scots, the daughter of James, the ruler of both kingdoms, and she had been trained since childhood in how a queen was to stand, to walk, and to look. This too was a craft, and once you’d learned it, you never forgot it.