The Keep. Part 14

"I thought that would occur to you before too long," Woermann said, following at a slower pace.

As they reached the courtyard, Woermann thought he heard the faint sound of a woman's voice coming from the cellar. He could not understand the words, but her distress was evident. The sounds became louder, shriller. The woman was shouting in anger and fear.

He ran over to the cellar entry. The professor's daughter was there-he remembered now that her name was Magda-and she was wedged into the angle formed by the steps and the wall. Her sweater had been torn open, so had the blouse and other garments beneath it, all pulled down over one shoulder, exposing the white globe of a breast. An einsatzkommando had his face buried against that breast while she kicked and raged and beat her fists ineffectively against him.

Woermann recoiled for an instant at the sight, then he was racing down the steps. So intent was the soldier on Magda's breast that he did not seem to hear Woermann's approach. Clenching his teeth, Woermann kicked the soldier in the right flank with all the force he could muster. It felt good-good to hurt one of these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. With difficulty he resisted the urge to go on kicking him.

The SS trooper grunted with pain and reared up, ready to charge at whoever had struck the blow. When he saw that he faced an officer, it was still apparent in his eyes that he was debating whether or not to lash out anyway.

For a few heartbeats, Woermann almost wished the private would do just that. He waited for the slightest sign of a forward rush, his hand ready to draw his Luger. He would never have imagined himself capable of shooting another German soldier, but something inside him hungered to kill this man, to strike out through him at everything that was wrong with the Fatherland, the army, his career.

The soldier backed off. Woermann felt himself relax.

What was happening to him? He had never hated before. He had killed in battle, at long range and face to face, but never with hatred. It was an uncomfortable, disorienting sensation, as if a stranger had taken up residence unbidden in his home and he could not find a way to make him leave.

As the soldier stood and straightened his black uniform, Woermann glanced at Magda. She had her clothes closed and rearranged, and was rising from a crouch on the steps. Without a hint of warning, she spun and slapped the palm of her hand across her tormentor's face with stinging force, rocking his head back and sending him reeling off the bottom step in surprise. Only an outflung hand against the stone wall prevented him from going over onto his back.

She spat something in Romanian, her tone and facial expression conveying whatever meaning her words did not, and walked past Woermann, retrieving her half-spilled waterpot as she moved.

It required all of Woermann's Prussian reserve to keep from applauding her. Instead, he turned back to the soldier who was plainly torn between standing at attention in the presence of an officer, and taking reprisal on the girl.

Girl ... why did he think of her as a girl? She was perhaps a dozen years younger than he, but easily a decade older than his son, Kurt, and he considered Kurt a man. Perhaps it was because of a certain unsullied freshness about her, a certain innocence. Something there that was precious, to be preserved, protected.

"What's your name, soldier?"

"Private Leeb, sir. Einsatzkommandos."

"Is it customary for you to attempt rape while on duty?"

No reply.

"Was what I just saw part of your a.s.signed duties here in the cellar?"

"She's only a Jew, sir."

The man's tone implied that this particular fact was sufficient explanation for anything he might have done to her.

"You did not answer my question, soldier!" His temper was nearing the breaking point. "Was attempted rape part of your duty here?"

"No, sir." The reply was as reluctant as it was defiant.

Woermann stepped down and s.n.a.t.c.hed Private Leeb's Schmeisser from his shoulder. "You are confined to quarters, Private-"

"But sir!"

Woermann noted that the plea was not directed to him but to someone above and behind him. He did not have to turn and look to know who it was, so he continued speaking without missing a beat.

"-for deserting your post. Sergeant Oster will decide on a suitable disciplinary action for you"-he paused and looked up to the head of the stairs, directly into Kaempffer's eyes-"unless, of course, the major has a particular punishment in mind."

It was technically within Kaempffer's rights to interfere at this point, since their commands were separate and they answered to different authority; and Kaempffer was here at the behest of the High Command to which all the uniformed forces must ultimately answer. He was also the senior officer. But Kaempffer could do nothing here. To let Private Leeb off would be to condone desertion of an a.s.signed post. No officer could allow that. Kaempffer was trapped. Woermann knew it and intended to take full advantage.

The major spoke stiffly. "Take him away, Sergeant. I will deal with him later."

Woermann tossed the Schmeisser to Oster, who marched the crestfallen einsatzkommando up the stairs.

"In the future," Kaempffer said acidly when the sergeant and the private were out of earshot, "you will not discipline or give orders to my men. They are not under your command, they are under mine!" mine!"

Woermann started up the stairs. When he came abreast of Kaempffer, he wheeled on him. "Then keep them on their leashes!" "Then keep them on their leashes!"

The major paled, startled by the unexpected outburst.

"Listen, Herr Herr SS officer," Woermann continued, letting all his anger and disgust rise to the surface, "and listen well. I don't know what I can say to get this through to you. I'd try reason but I think you're immune to it. So I'll try to appeal to your instinct for self-preservation-we both know how well developed that is. Think: n.o.body died last night. And the only thing different about last night from all the other nights was the presence of the two Jews from Bucharest. There SS officer," Woermann continued, letting all his anger and disgust rise to the surface, "and listen well. I don't know what I can say to get this through to you. I'd try reason but I think you're immune to it. So I'll try to appeal to your instinct for self-preservation-we both know how well developed that is. Think: n.o.body died last night. And the only thing different about last night from all the other nights was the presence of the two Jews from Bucharest. There has has to be a connection. Therefore, if for no other reason than the chance that they may be able to come up with an answer to the killings and a way to stop them, you must keep your animals away from them!" to be a connection. Therefore, if for no other reason than the chance that they may be able to come up with an answer to the killings and a way to stop them, you must keep your animals away from them!"

He did not wait for a reply, fearing he might try to throttle Kaempffer if he did not move away immediately. He turned and walked toward the watchtower. After a few steps, he heard Kaempffer begin to follow him. He went to the door of the first-level suite, knocked, but did not wait for a reply before entering. Courtesy was one thing, but he intended to maintain an indisputable position of authority in the eyes of these two civilians.

The professor merely glared at the two Germans as they entered. He was alone in the front room, sipping at water in a tin cup, still seated in his wheelchair before the book-laden table, just as they had left him the night before. Woermann wondered if he had moved at all during the night. His gaze strayed to the books, then darted away. He remembered the excerpt he had seen in one of them last night... about preparing sacrifices for some deity whose name was an unp.r.o.nounceable string of consonants. He shuddered even now at the memory of what was to be sacrificed, and of how it was prepared. How anyone could sit and read that and not get sick...

He scanned the rest of the room. The girl wasn't there-probably in the back. This room seemed smaller than his own, two stories up ... maybe it was just an impression created by the clutter of the books and the luggage.

"Is this morning an example of what we must face to get drinking water?" the waxy masked old man said through his tiny mouth, his voice dry, scaly. "Is my daughter to be a.s.saulted every time she leaves the room?"

"That has been taken care of," Woermann told him. "The man will be punished." He stared at Kaempffer, who had sauntered to the other side of the room. "I can a.s.sure you it will not happen again."

"I hope not," Cuza replied. "It is difficult enough trying to find any useful information in these texts under the best conditions. But to labor under the threat of physical abuse at any moment... the mind rebels."

"It had better not not rebel, Jew!" Kaempffer said. "It had better do as it is told!" rebel, Jew!" Kaempffer said. "It had better do as it is told!"

"It's just that it's impossible for me to concentrate on these texts when I'm worried about my daughter's safety. That should not be too hard to grasp."

Woermann sensed that the professor was aiming an appeal at him but he was not sure what it was.

"It's unavoidable, I'm afraid," he told the old man. "She is the only woman on what is essentially an army base. I don't like it any more than you. A woman doesn't belong here. Unless..." A thought struck him. He glanced at Kaempffer. "We'll put her up in the inn. She could take a couple of the books with her and study them on her own, and come back to confer with her father."

"Out of the question!" Kaempffer said. "She stays here where we can keep an eye on her." He approached Cuza at the table. "Right now I'm interested in what you learned last night that kept us all alive!"

"I don't understand..."

"No one died last night," Woermann said. He watched for reaction in the old man's face; it was difficult, perhaps impossible, to discern a change of expression in that tight, immobile skin. But he thought he saw the eyes widen almost imperceptibly in surprise.

"Magda!" he called. "Come here!"

The door to the rear room opened and the girl appeared. She looked composed after the incident on the cellar steps, but he saw that her hand trembled as it rested on the doorframe.

"Yes, Papa?"

"There were no deaths last night!" Cuza said. "It must have been one of those incantations I was reading!"

"Last night?" the girl's expression betrayed an instant of confusion, and something else: a fleeting horror at the mention of last night. She locked eyes with her father and a signal seemed to pa.s.s between them, perhaps the tiniest nod from the old man, then her face lit up.

"Wonderful! I wonder which incantation?"

Incantation? Woermann thought. He would have laughed at this conversation last Monday. Woermann thought. He would have laughed at this conversation last Monday.

It smacked of a belief in spells and black magic. But now ...he would accept anything that got them all through the night alive. Anything.

"Let me see this incantation," Kaempffer said, interest lighting his eyes.

"Certainly." Cuza pulled over a weighty tome. "This is De Vermis Mysteriis De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn. It's in Latin." He glanced up. "Do you read Latin, Major?" by Ludwig Prinn. It's in Latin." He glanced up. "Do you read Latin, Major?"

A tightening of the lips was Kaempffer's only reply.

"A shame," the professor said. "Then I shall translate for-"

"You're lying to me, aren't you, Jew?" Kaempffer said softly.

But Cuza was not to be intimidated, and Woermann had to admire him for his courage. "The answer is here!" he cried, pointing to the pile of books before him. "Last night proves it. I still don't know what haunts the keep, but with a little time, a little peace, and fewer interruptions, I'm sure I can find out. Now, good day, gentlemen!"

He adjusted his thick gla.s.ses and pulled the book closer. Woermann hid a smile at Kaempffer's impotent rage and spoke before the major could do anything rash.

"I think it would be in our best interests to leave the professor to the task he was brought here for, don't you, Major?"

Kaempffer clasped his hands behind him and strode through the door. Woermann took one last look at the professor and his daughter before following. They were hiding something, those two. Whether about the keep itself or the murderous ent.i.ty that stalked its corridors at night, he could not say. And right now it really didn't matter. As long as no more of his men died in the night, they were welcome to their secret. He was not sure he ever wanted to know. But should the deaths begin again, he would demand a full accounting.

Professor Cuza pushed the book away from him as soon as the door closed behind the captain. He rubbed the fingers of his hands one at a time, each in turn.

Mornings were the worst. That was when everything hurt, especially the hands. Each knuckle was like a rusted hinge on the door to an abandoned woodshed, protesting with pain and noise at the slightest disturbance, fiercely resisting any change in position. But it wasn't just his hands. All his joints hurt. Awakening, rising, and getting into the wheelchair that circ.u.mscribed his life was a chorus of agony from the hips, the knees, the wrists, the elbows, and the shoulders. Only by midmorning, after two separate doses of aspirin and perhaps some codeine when he had it, did the pain in his inflamed connective tissues subside to a tolerable level. He no longer thought of his body as flesh and blood; he saw it as a piece of clockwork that had been left out in the rain and was now irreparably damaged.

Then there was the dry mouth which never let up. The doctors had told him it was "not uncommon for scleroderma patients to experience a marked decrease in the volume of salivary secretions." They said it so matter-of-factly, but there was nothing matter-of-fact about living with a tongue that always tasted like plaster of Paris. He tried to keep some water at hand at all times; if he didn't sip occasionally his voice began to sound like old shoes dragging across a sandy floor.

Swallowing, too, was a ch.o.r.e. Even the water had trouble going down. And food-he had to chew everything until his jaw muscles cramped and then hope it wouldn't get stuck halfway to his stomach.

It was no way to live, and he had more than once considered putting an end to the whole charade. But he had never made the attempt. Possibly because he lacked the courage; possibly because he still possessed enough courage to face life on whatever terms he was offered. He wasn't sure which.

"You all right, Papa?"

He looked up at Magda. She stood near the fireplace with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, s.h.i.+vering. It wasn't from the cold. He knew she had been badly shaken by their visitor last night and had hardly slept. Neither had he. But then to be a.s.saulted not thirty feet from her sleeping quarters...

Savages! What he would give to see them all dead-not just the ones here, but every stinking n.a.z.i who stepped outside his border! And those still inside the German border as well. He wished for a way to exterminate them before they could exterminate him. But what could he do? A crippled scholar who looked half again his real age, who could not even defend his own daughter-what could he do?

Nothing. He wanted to scream, to break something, to bring down the walls as Samson had done. He wanted to cry. He cried too easily of late, despite his lack of tears. That wasn't manly. But then, he wasn't much of a man anymore.

"I'm fine, Magda," he said. "No better, no worse than usual. It's you that worries me. This is no place for you-no place for any woman."

She sighed. "I know. But there's no way to leave here until they let us."

"Always the devoted daughter," he said, feeling a burst of warmth for her. Magda was loving and loyal, strong-willed yet dutiful. He wondered what he had ever done to deserve her. "I wasn't talking about us. us. I was talking about I was talking about you. you. I want you to leave the keep as soon as it's dark." I want you to leave the keep as soon as it's dark."

"I'm not too good at scaling walls, Papa." Her smile was wan. "And I've no intention of trying to seduce the guard at the gate. I wouldn't know how."

"The escape route lies right below our feet. Remember?"

Her eyes widened. "Oh, yes. I'd forgotten about that!"

"How could you forget? You found it."

It had happened on their last trip to the pa.s.s. He had still been able to get about on his own then but had needed two canes to bolster the failing strength in his legs. Unable to go himself, he had sent Magda down into the gorge in search of a cornerstone at the base of the keep, or perhaps a stone with an inscription on it... anything to give him a clue as to the builders of the keep. There had been no inscription. But Magda had come across a large, flat stone in the wall at the very base of the watchtower; it had moved when she leaned against it. It was hinged on the left and perfectly balanced. Sunlight pouring through the opening had revealed a set of stairs leading upward.

Over his protests she had insisted on exploring the base of the tower in the hope that some old records might have been left within. All she found was a long, steep, winding set of stairs that ended in a seemingly blind niche in the ceiling of the base. But it was not a blind end-the niche was in the very wall that divided the two rooms they now occupied. Within it, Magda discovered another perfectly balanced stone, scored to look like the smaller rectangular blocks that made up the rest of the wall, which swung open into the larger of the two rooms, permitting secret ingress and egress from the bottom suite of the tower.

Cuza had attached no significance to the stairway then-a castle or keep always had a hidden escape route. Now he saw it as Magda's stairway to freedom.

"I want you to take the stairs down to the bottom as soon as it is dark, let yourself out into the gorge, and start walking east. When you get to the Danube, follow it to the Black Sea, and from there to Turkey or-"

"Without you?"

"Of course without me!"

"Put it out of your mind, Papa! Where you you stay, stay, I I stay." stay."

"Magda, I'm commanding you as your father to obey me!"

"Don't! I will not desert you. I couldn't live with myself if I did!"

As much as he appreciated the sentiment, it did nothing to lessen his frustration. It was clear that the commanding approach was not going to work this time. He decided to plead. Over the years he had become adept at getting his way with her. By one method or another, by browbeating or twisting her up with guilt, he could usually make her accede to whatever he desired. Sometimes he did not like himself for the way he dominated her life, but she was his daughter, and he, her father. And he had needed her. Yet now that it was time to cut her free so she could save herself, she would not go.

"Please, Magda. As one last favor to a dying old man who would go smiling to his grave if he knew you were safe from the n.a.z.is."

"And me knowing I left you among them? Never!"

"Please listen to me! You can take the Al Azif Al Azif with you. It's bulky I know, but it's probably the last surviving copy in any language. There isn't a country in the world where you couldn't sell it for enough money to keep you comfortable for life." with you. It's bulky I know, but it's probably the last surviving copy in any language. There isn't a country in the world where you couldn't sell it for enough money to keep you comfortable for life."

"No, Papa," she said with a determination in her voice that he could not recall ever hearing before.

She turned away and walked into the rear room, closing the door behind her.

I've taught her too well, he thought. I've bound her so tightly to me I cannot push her away even for her own good. Is that why she never married? Because of me?

Cuza rubbed his itching eyes with cotton-gloved fingers, thinking back over the years. Ever since p.u.b.erty Magda had been a constant object of male attention. Something in her appealed to different sorts of men in different ways; she rarely left one untouched. She probably would have been married and a mother a number of times over by now-and he, a grandfather-if her mother had not died so suddenly eleven years ago. Magda, only twenty then, had changed, taking on the roles of his companion, secretary, a.s.sociate, and now nurse. The men about soon found her remote. Magda gradually built up a sh.e.l.l of self-absorption. Cuza knew every weak spot in that sh.e.l.l-and could pierce it at will. To all others she was immune.

But there were more pressing concerns at the moment. Magda faced a very short future unless she escaped the keep. Beyond that, there was the apparition they had encountered last night. Cuza was sure it would return with the pa.s.sing of the day, and he did not want Magda here when it did. There had been something in its eyes that had caused fear to grip his heart like an icy fist. Such an unspeakable hunger there ... he wanted Magda far away tonight.

But more than anything else he wanted to stay here by himself and wait for it to return. This was the moment of a lifetime-a dozen lifetimes! To actually come face to face with a myth, with a creature that had been used for centuries to frighten children. Adults, too. To doc.u.ment its existence! He had to speak to this thing again ... induce it to answer. He had to learn which of the myths surrounding it were true and which, false.

The mere thought of the meeting made his heart race with excitement and antic.i.p.ation. Strangely, he did not feel terribly threatened by the creature. He knew its language and had even communicated with it last night. It had understood and had left them unharmed. He sensed the possibility of a common ground between them, a place for a meeting of minds. He certainly did not wish to stop it or harm it-Theodor Cuza was not an enemy of anything that reduced the ranks of the German Army.