HS02 - Days of Atonement Read online

  She was thinking back to our period of hiding from the French. We had seen many corpses then. But the body that Lavedrine and I had examined went far beyond anything that she had ever witnessed.

  ‘You’ll keep on searching, won’t you, Hanno?’ she urged, the plates forgotten on the table, as she came towards me. ‘That corpse may not be hers. Lavedrine said so. She may be in danger. I could help you both.’

  ‘There isn’t much to see,’ I whispered, for fear of waking the baby. ‘Bones for the most part. I doubt that they can tell us, or you, anything at all.’

  I believed that the corpse belonged to Sybille Gottewald. But Helena wanted to be certain. I saw the need in her eyes as she sank down beside me on the sofa, nestling her head against my shoulder, pressing her lips against my cheek.

  ‘I have to know,’ she moaned, imploring me to take her at her word and put her to the test. ‘I must help her, if she can still be saved. By any means.’

  I lay back comfortably in her warm embrace.

  By any means, my wife had said, setting off a chain of thought, unexpectedly suggesting a course of action to me.

  ‘You have helped her,’ I breathed, crushing my mouth against her curls.

  We sat in silent communion before the crackling fire.

  I listened to the baby’s breathing. I felt Helena’s head on my shoulder. Beyond the window, night lay like a black mantle over the town. It seemed to me as if the house, and all that it contained, was floating in a void. And that the sofa was the last safe place on the face of the earth.

  27

  ‘WHY DID YOU bury them, sir?’

  The question was not intended as an accusation, but that was how Count Dittersdorf took it. He jumped to his feet, red in the face, blocking out the meagre light that filtered in through the tiny window at his back.

  ‘How can you ask me that?’ he exploded. ‘Those children were Prussian, Hanno. They had no father to care for them. I could not leave the bodies one minute more in the hands of atheists. I knew what I had to do, and I did it.’

  ‘Without consulting me, sir? Without a word to Lavedrine?’

  He glared at me angrily. ‘What’s done is done,’ he said dismissively, pointing to the chair. ‘Let us waste no more time.’

  The French had requisitioned the district governor’s palace, but Aldebrand Dittersdorf’s sense of his own power was not diminished. All they had left him was a couple of chairs and his magnificent desk, which filled the tiny, dank closet where he had been relocated. Made of solid oak, it sprouted a Prussian eagle at each corner, his coat of arms in the centre. For generations, Dittersdorfs had signed and sealed the lives and the deaths of thousands of mortals who dwelt between the Wista and the Pasteka rivers. If the French really wanted to clip his wings, I thought, they should have burnt that desk.

  ‘Entrusting Biswanger with the task?’ I niggled.

  His heavy old face was a mask of wrinkled perplexity. ‘Of course!’ he snapped. ‘He is Prussian. He did a fair job, given the state those bodies were in.’

  He darted a fiery glance at me.

  ‘Has Lavedrine been complaining? I suppose he wanted the children tipped into a pit in the French fashion.’

  I shook my head, and looked disconsolately away.

  ‘Where are they buried, sir?’ I asked, unable to let it go.

  His eyes lit up. He puffed out his chest. ‘I arranged a grave for them in the children’s corner of the Pietist chapel-yard. No one else was present,’ he said. ‘Just myself, Biswanger, and the pastor.’

  As he spoke, he pushed a pile of papers across the desk towards me.

  ‘Here you are. Just as I promised. Everything I could find regarding Bruno Gottewald,’ he said. His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper. ‘The archive in Berlin is in French hands, of course, but they hold less than they believe. I’ll not tell you where this hoard is kept. It is better not to know.’ He placed his hand protectively on the wad of papers. ‘You’ll have to read them here. Tomorrow I must return them. Does Lavedrine know that you’ve come?’

  ‘He left town this morning,’ I assured him, holding back the truth. I did not intend to tell him that the Frenchman was investigating an aspect of Bruno Gottewald’s career that would never appear in those Prussian papers.

  ‘So much the better!’ he exclaimed, standing up, reaching for his overcoat. He squeezed himself awkwardly through the tight gap between the desk and the wall, placing a large key on the table. ‘Lock up when you go, then slip the key beneath the door. I have a duplicate.’

  ‘What if someone comes for you?’ I asked with surprise.

  ‘For me?’ He froze by the door, his expression a mixture of pain and amusement. ‘No one comes here, if he can avoid it. Mutiez came running the night the children were murdered, but only because his superiors were uncertain what to do. They were concerned for the consequences. They tell me as little as they can get away with. Why do you think they gave me such a tiny room?’ he smiled wanly. ‘They don’t want Prussians congregating. They know we are dangerous in threes and fours.’

  The door closed behind him with a click.

  I had just discovered a side to Dittersdorf that I had never suspected. I had always thought of him as a puppet in French hands, but clearly I had been mistaken. What secret channels had he tapped to get his hands on those documents? The night I returned from Kamenetz, I had had the sneaking impression that Dittersdorf wished to protect General Katowice from the French. Did he know other dangerous patriots as well? Were there other enclaves such as Kamenetz on Prussian soil?

  I moved around the desk, and sat down in his chair.

  There were four thick folders in the pile and I spread them out across the broad expanse of the desk. Prussian bureaucracy is not praised for nothing. Immediately, I was able to establish one important detail, and make some assumptions on the basis of it. Bruno Gottewald had enlisted in Spandau, then went on to serve in Marienburg, Königsberg, and, more recently, Kamenetz. In a career lasting twenty-six years, he had been solely under the command of General Juri Katowice.

  With the exception of the word ‘enlisted’, there was nothing unusual in this. The strength and vitality of our armed forces since the days of King Frederick II derives from the fact that military service in Prussia is universal, and it is feudal. This was the enduring power of the Junker landlord. I read the inscription again. Bruno Gottewald had enlisted. Men who joined the army freely in the last century were a tiny minority. Most of them were mercenaries and foreigners. What, then, was Bruno Gottewald’s precise civil status? If not a tied man, the son of a serf, what was he?

  I let this question dangle.

  The young Gottewald had bitten the king’s Schilling, and joined the regiment of General Katowice in Spandau fortress. Prussian regiments were known by the name of the commanding officer. Having joined the ‘Katowicers’, or any other line-regiment, a man would faithfully follow his commander. It was rare for an enlisted man to change regiment, sacrificing the reputation and privileges he had gained, though it was possible. Rather than leave his family behind, or carry them off to some godforsaken outpost in the East, following in the footsteps of his general, a man might sue for patronage from the incoming commander. But it was not considered a good career step. It revealed a lack of loyalty and esprit de corps. Especially for those enlisted men who hoped to win officer status, and progress to positions of authority.

  In a word, Gottewald had put his career first.

  I opened the Spandau folder, and took out the top sheet.

  In this, the year of God,—1781—, I, the undersigned, Gottewald Bruno, being free of obligation, birth and will, born on the—date unknown—, the birth being registered in the roll of the town/city/canton of—place not known—, on this day, July 22nd, before a recruiting-officer of His Majesty, King of all the Prussias, do solemnly swear, and avow—

  It was a copy of Gottewald’s signing-on articles. A scribe had filled in the form. The same secretarial hand had ma
de a note beneath the roll of his physical description to confirm that the applicant met the requirements for juvenile enlistment. Big, strong boy with facial hair, the crude description read. They had assumed from his size that he must be ten years old, or more. He was five feet five and one quarter inches of height—one inch over the regulation minimum for an enlisted soldier. He was to be engaged in the rank as a junior private for nine years (renewable). Bruno Gottewald had signed at the foot of the sheet with a symbol in the form of a heavy-handed two-barred cross: ‡.

  It was not an auspicious beginning to a military career. I went looking for the renewal contract, which he had signed nine years later at Marienburg. He was now identified as a second junior captain. He had been seconded to Staff with a particular responsibility for the general’s horses and saddles. Katowice had evidently entrusted his personal safety to the young man. I had seen the quality of the magnificient stallion that Katowice rode at Kamenetz. And in the intervening years, Bruno Gottewald had also learned to read. Or at least, to write. He had signed the renewal form for nine more years in a firm, legible hand. Gottewald Bruno. The boy had made unusually rapid progress.

  I skipped back to his record at Spandau fortress, and there, on the second page, was a note signed in September 1781, by Juri Katowice himself, recommending that the boy should be given careful instruction in the German tongue.

  I sat back.

  What language had the boy spoken when he was signed on? Was it something other than German? And what had he done to win the favour of the general in a few short months? I continued to look through the pages that followed, but I found no clue that might explain his remarkable success story. Rather the opposite. As I darted through the mass of reports, facts began to emerge that seemed to contradict the initial notion that I had formed of him as a young man with evident military talent and an impeccable record. He had been severely punished just one week after joining the regiment, and almost every week afterwards. Fifteen lashes—Monday. Gottewald had been whipped again a few days later, and the punishment had been more vicious. On the second occasion, he had been thrashed for gross insubordination to a gunnery officer: he spat at Corporal Litevski, calling him ‘a piece of shit from the arse of a Polish bitch’ before the assembled ranks. Young Bruno had been whipped for fighting with boys older than himself, and often senior in rank. In one instance, in 1782, he had caused serious injury. I read a medical report relating to a sixteen-year-old soldier: Heinrich Bruger sustained a broken nose and seven broken fingers. Three teeth were also removed, one of which had pierced his cheek. An appended note recorded that for this act of violence Bruno Gottewald had been given forty lashes—no pay August—seven days in the black hole—no food—no water.

  But punishment did not stop him. Having won another fight convincingly, he continued to maul and kick the loser into a state of bloody unconsciousness. For this offence he had been given thirty lashes with the cat on three successive days. If Gottewald still had a back afterwards, it must have been as scarred as a butcher’s chopping block. He had been beaten for every misdemeanour under the sun, but fighting with his barrack-room mates and insubordination were the principal causes.

  I sat back again, and rubbed my eyes.

  He ought to have been drummed out of the regiment. Dishonourably discharged at the very least. Any other man would have ended up in the salt mines. Instead, Katowice had promoted him twice in the eight years that he spent in Spandau. What had Gottewald done to merit such favour? He had been made up to junior lance corporal in 1782, then to second junior captain just three years later. The citation made for remarkable reading: . . . a true martinet, the report read. Gottewald commands those under him with remorseless rigour. In the past month, no trainee in his platoon has been reprimanded. Shows every sign of making a capable officer. Immediate promotion recommended. Pay increased to 7 thalers per month, plus liquor ration. The note was signed by General Katowice.

  A year later, on 22 July, 1786—again, a question mark was inserted next to his date of birth and land of origin—he had been sworn in as a regular adult member of his regiment. His rank was readjusted to lance corporal, and he was being paid at the rate of 10 thalers per month. By early 1792, shortly after the regiment moved to the fortress of Marienburg, General Katowice had appointed him staff sergeant. Gottewald could not have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old, but he had been taken directly under the wing of his commander. He was flying.

  Was this the sort of career Rochus Kelding might expect in Kamenetz? Juri Katowice seemed to have a penchant for young boys who displayed aggression and brutality, and were willing to put those qualities at their commanding officer’s disposal. Not a week before, Rochus had menaced my own throat with a bayonet. If I looked attentively in my shaving mirror, I could still see the impression that the blade had left. Yet that boy was still a private. Did this difference suggest that Bruno Gottewald had been a greater terror, a more fearsome boy soldier than Rochus Kelding? Or had he revealed some other talent that the general had admired, and decided to foster?

  Gottewald stayed in Marienburg with General Katowice for the next four years. There were a string of dull reports about the routine training of soldiers in that fortress. The ‘Katowicers’ were being reorganised as a frontline regiment after ten years in the Reserve at Spandau. There were endless listings of men, as the various companies and battalions were shuffled, balancing out their strengths and weaknesses. Gottewald’s name appeared regularly in the lists, but I turned a page, and there he was again, mentioned in relation to a specific assignment.

  On the 12th October, 1795, I read, a patrol was sent to the village of Korbern on a night-training exercise. Twenty-five men under the command of Third-Lieutenant Gottewald B., saddled and armed, returning to the fortress before dawn.

  Apart from registering the almost inevitable fact that Gottewald had been promoted yet again, nothing more was said about the composition of this patrol, nor about the aims or the goals that it had been set. The fact that armed men had been sent out of the fortress on horseback at night was something of a surprise, of course, but I knew little of military matters, and I supposed that that was what the exercise was all about. Horseriding at night, and bearing arms. Bruno Gottewald was an expert with horses. I moved on, distracted by a cutting from a court despatch which had been attached to the foot of the same page. I read it once, then read it again.

  Gottewald was mentioned nowhere in the text.

  Had a careless clerk in Marienburg slipped up? Instead of filing that note under some other letter, had it found its way by accident into Gottewald’s file? He had led his men on night patrol to a village called Korbern and the court despatch was about something that had happened at around the same time out in the countryside not far from there. Was that the cause of the error?

  I read it anyway.

  The decomposing bodies of two Jewish persons, a husband and wife, were discovered in the environs of Korbern in the canton of Marienburg on 20th October, I read. The couple appear to have been slain in their beds. The local constable reports that nothing was stolen. Vicious attacks on Jews have been widely reported throughout the length and breadth of the country in recent months . . .

  There was nothing new or startling in such news. Only God could know how the Jews managed to survive in the countryside, where thoughtless violence against them by their neighbours was the order of the day. Still, I felt an uncomfortable shiver as I read of the manner in which they had been murdered. Like the Gottewald children, their throats had been cut from ear to ear.

  I turned over the page, and carried on with my reading.

  The next mention of Gottewald was in an undated regimental memo which might well have referred back to the night-training exercise in Korbern. I am always pleased to hear that my orders have been carried out in every single detail. You will be rewarded. The note was signed by General Katowice.

  Which detail was the general referring to?

  Two months la
ter, I read on, Katowice had been despatched, together with his troops, to command the more troublesome fortress of Königsberg. Hardly another quarter passed—we were now in January 1796—before the general sent the following despatch to Berlin:

  In view of meritorious services in the line of duty, immediate promotion and increase of pay and pension has been recommended in the following cases:

  1. Aloysio Munz—1st company trumpet-major;

  2. Oswald Trieschkel—3rd company sergeant-at-arms;

  3. Bruno Gottewald—staff, 2nd lieutenant . . .

  I sat back and stretched out my arms, easing the cold ache in my shoulders.

  Outside, the cathedral clock struck again. It was three o’clock and I was only halfway through the mountain of documents. The winter sky was already growing dark, and I had to turn up the lamp.

  Königsberg . . .

  I must have seen Bruno Gottewald. I had probably met him! The regiment had moved to Königsberg, and they were still garrisoned there in February 1804, a year and month that I would never be able to forget. I had been called to the city to investigate a series of murders. Obliged to live inside the fortress, I had met General Katowice on a number of occasions. With the expert help of the aged Professor Kant, I had solved the crime, but . . .

  My mind flew back.

  While waiting for permission to examine a corpse which was being held in the castle, I had spoken to General Katowice. He had been attended by a group of junior officers. One of them must have been Gottewald. But which one? What did the man look like? How did he behave? I racked my brains, but could remember nothing that was useful.

  I shook these thoughts from my head, turned back to the folder, and continued to read the reports. The years that Gottewald had spent in Königsberg had been relatively uneventful, as the papers revealed. Still, he had been promoted again—to first lieutenant, that is, fifth or sixth in the order of command under General Katowice. His discourse with the general was established on a daily basis. If Katowice had an order to give, then it would come at first or second hand to Gottewald, and there was little reason to doubt that he would carry out his duties with admirable precision. But no details were available.