What Pastoris was saying clearly contradicted what les Halles had told me.
Did les Halles know what his men were up to?
Then another thought occurred to me.
Would the soldiers dare do anything unless les Halles gave the order? Might the death of Kati Rodendahl serve his purpose? Could he be trying to frighten the girls into running off, exploiting the murder to his own ends? He had told me himself that he would have no further use for the female amber-workers as soon as his engines were up and running.
‘Tell me what the soldiers said exactly.’
‘Said?’ Hans Pastoris grinned. ‘A figure of speech, sir, if you’ll pardon me. They don’t speak much German, we don’t speak much French, but we can mime all right. Then again, ounces are ounces, pounds are pounds. We may count in different languages, but the figures look the same on paper. Any fool can mime a female dead and naked.’
As he spoke, his stubby right forefinger slashed across his throat, his eyes rolled up in their sockets, then his hands formed two imaginary ample breasts. Then, he glanced at Hilde again.
‘She knew what they were on about. She got ears, she heard Kati’s name. The others would have told her if she hadn’t. I saw the fear in her eyes. In all their eyes! Who can blame them after what happened last time?’
‘Last time?’ I repeated.
He nodded. ‘Kati ain’t the first. She won’t be the last.’
‘Kati Rodendahl was murdered,’ I said.
‘So were the others.’
Grillet had spoken of amber disappearing, girls running off in the night. ‘Are you inventing tales, like the French, Herr Pastoris?’ I asked.
He shook his head.
‘Girls go missing all the time,’ he said. ‘It’s been that way down here for a good while, sir.’
‘The French know where those girls have gone,’ I said. ‘One of the soldiers told me that they may have run away with bands of smugglers. He said that most of them are bound for Russia.’
Pastoris smiled grimly. ‘I am mighty glad for them, then. But what about the bones, sir? What do the French have to say on that score? Skulls and bones found down along the shore, Herr Procurator. No one cares a fig about them. The French may say they’ve stolen amber, but that is what they always say! Call them thieves, and that’s the end of it. Since that new colonel arrived, they don’t fuss themselves no more about Prussian girls. He’s got orders. Machines, they say. He plans to do away with us all.’ Pastoris shrugged his shoulders. ‘They want our amber, but they don’t want
us
. And the cheaper it comes, the better. They’d kill off all girls to save a schilling. Would? Have done, if you ask me! Them two ruffians that came the other day, for instance.’
He stopped abruptly, aimed a sharp-eyed glance at me.
‘Do you know their names?’ I asked him.
Pastoris dug into his pocket, pulled out a notebook, waved it in the air. It was a vile-looking thing with a worm-eaten cover. He licked his thumb, began to leaf through the grimy pages. ‘They make me register every single thing,’ he complained. ‘Who brings the amber, who takes it away. That day they were Jacques Pillard and Robert Margiot.’
He turned the page to me. The names were written in a small neat hand, together with the amount of rough amber that they had brought: eight pounds net. The note was dated 13 August 1808.
Three days previously. The same evening they had taken five pounds and seven ounces of polished amber away with them.
‘They thought it funny, sir, the way that Hilde was weeping and slobbering.’
I thought, instead, that it would make a good argument to present to les Halles when I saw him next.
‘Let me ask you something,’ I said, putting my hand into my pocket. ‘What do you make of this?’
I opened my palm and showed him the amber that I had extracted from the corpse.
Pastoris plucked at it greedily, held it close to his whitish eyes. Then, he weighed it in his hand, and felt the surface with his fingers like a blind man.
‘Nicely buffed,’ he murmured. ‘This is amateur work, of course. The girls on the shore rub it down with pumice to take off the marine deposits. To give a buyer a rough idea of its potential. In the hands of an expert polisher, it would make a beautiful brooch, for instance. Then again, there’s something makes it far more valuable.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked, though I knew, as every Prussian must.
He held it up to the lamp. ‘Can you see that insect trapped inside? It’s big. A serious collector, someone interested in curiosities, would give his right arm for it, sir.’
‘Where would one find such a man?’
He raised his shoulders and his goitre bulged beneath his chin. ‘Nordcopp’s the place.’
‘Do the women go there?’
‘There and back in a spit and a cough,’ he replied. ‘One of the soldiers would let her in and out in exchange for a quick . . . I’m sure you can guess,’ he added with a smile that showed the gaps in his teeth, jabbing his right forefinger rapidly in and out of a hole that he formed with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
‘Who would she seek in Nordcopp?’ I pressed him.
He handed back the amber with a shrug of his shoulders.
‘She’d know exactly who to give it to.’
‘Who?’ I insisted again.
‘I cannot tell you who,’ he said. ‘Only where.’
Nordcopp was a forty-minute walk away, he said, along the same rutted carriage-track.
‘And while you’re there,’ he called after me, ‘be sure to try the fish soup. It’s as good as the amber, but a sight less dangerous.’
I thanked him for his help, and continued tramping on through the sand.
L
ONG BEFORE
I saw the place, my lungs got wind of it.
Fried fish, salt fish, fish boiled and baked. And everything in between, from fresh to foul. The air was more malodorous than the cattle-besmirched streets of Lotingen. There were flies as well, though not so many, nor so big as the ones that I had left behind me. But hunger rebels against such niceties, and I lengthened my stride towards Nordcopp.
This trading-post was known to the Ancients. I have since read up on the place. They considered it to be a sort of Mecca, where all the greatest craftsmen in the world came in search of amber for their workshops. A highway made of tree-trunks, the Amber Road, once stretched to the Mediterranean Sea in the south, and it was regularly tramped by Roman, Greek and Arab traders. Amber was a rich spring from which a mighty river flowed. A thousand streams branched off to every city in the known world. The Romans carved the amber into religious idols; the Greeks chose to fashion fertility
phalli
. In Italy the heirs of the Renaissance jewellers have long been famed for their tabernacles encrusted with amber and precious stones. In Catholic Danzig they still make rosary-beads to count off
Pater Nosters
, though amber Bible-covers are the pride of Protestant
Königsberg, where the Pietists hold sway. In Russia, Orthodox churches are panelled with it. And even in the Temple of Atheism, Paris, the sacred stuff is moulded into buckles and gaudy hairpins for harlots and ladies
à la mode
.
Everyone has always wanted amber, but nowadays the French want it most of all.
Napoleon subdued the rest of the continent, while we pleaded neutrality. But we had amber, so he invaded us. For a year or more, the supply of amber has flowed in one direction only. As I stood before the gates of Nordcopp, I knew that carts and ships packed with
succini prussici
, as amber was called in the Latin tongue, were travelling towards Paris at that very moment.
It might be the colour of honey. It might be red, like a blazing sunset. Straw-yellow, like wine. Or the deep, dark brown of mahogany. Whatever the hue, it was worth a small fortune. The stolen riches of Prussia would pay French soldiers’ wages while they fought in Spain, and provide them with firearms. Spain would soon be crushed by the power of amber. Then, when Napoleon was ready, he would turn his sights on his only ally, and our Prussian amber would conquer Tsar Alexander as well.
Nordcopp was far smaller than I had expected, but more full of people than I could have guessed. A crowd of men were pushing their way towards a wooden watch-tower. It was so ancient, it seemed about to topple and crush them all. I joined the throng, and began to thrust with equal determination. On either side, tables of baked fish, stuffed eels, trays of bread and cakes, jugs of ale, legs and wings of roasted chicken were being offered for sale, their virtues loudly proclaimed, as I shuffled towards the guardians of the citadel.
A group of French gendarmes were blocking the entrance, armed with muskets. One of them—a large, fat man with an oriental moustache—was staring hard at me. ‘Oi, you!’ he called, his bayonet flashing close to my nose. ‘Your face is new. What are you doing here?’
Before I could answer, the man began to provide answers for himself.
‘Amber, is it? Come from far off, too, I suppose.’
He hardly seemed interested as his face heaved close to mine. His uniform was smart enough, but his breath stank of half-digested fish, and my empty stomach rolled.
‘Where are you from, then?’
‘Königsberg,’ I said on impulse.
He nodded back. He did not ask my name, or demand to see my papers. New arrivals were pushing up against my back and they all seemed bent on entering the place as quickly as possible. All around me, I heard muttered complaints in German. No one moaned too loud, however. They did not intend to be held up by me, or by the guards.
‘A bit of business, a plate of fish soup, and I’ll be on my way,’ I said in French.
His heavy hand fell on my shoulder. ‘Don’t rush, monsieur. Enjoy yourself. Every coin you spend in a Prussian shop will help to pay French taxes. You’ll be body-searched on the way out, so make sure you get a receipt. And if you haven’t got a bill of sale, have some loose change handy in your pocket,’ he added with a wink.
I was tempted to pull the written order of General Malaport from my pocket, and wipe that smile off his face. Instead, I pushed on silently through the narrow entrance-gate as he lifted his bayonet and waved me on.
Was Pastoris correct? Were the French in Nordcopp a party to the illegal trade in amber? How would les Halles react if I returned that night and gave him a name with an acute accent on the final syllable, instead of the Prussian name that he seemed to expect?
Nordcopp had once been a fortified village. The wooden watch-tower above the entrance looked down on a maze of narrow by-ways, and I was quickly carried into the heart of this labyrinth. The wattle walls were ragged, worn with age, the grey timber frames of the houses rotten and pockmarked with shell-holes. Evidently, the French had bombarded the stronghold before they sent marauders in to secure it. It was the sort of rank-smelling medieval warren that had all but disappeared in Prussia. As the pride of the nation grew in the wake of reforms of the great King Frederick,
hovels like these had been flattened. I might have stepped back into a former time in history. The buildings were dark and low, the straw roofs barely higher than my shoulder, packed so close together that the traders and the open drains all ran stinking downhill in the same direction. On either side of this fetid alley, waist-high counters were loaded with jars and strung with beads, which gleamed and glistened in the half-light, like candles in a church.
We might have been pilgrims jostling our way from one chapel to the next in search of sacred relics or papal indulgences. Each man in that thrusting company had one thing only on his mind: amber. In the first alley, I counted seven tiny shops, like troglodytic holes in the wall. Each cave was crowded with men, heads bent low as they examined the merchandise on offer. Their muted voices were a constant buzz, broken suddenly by a loud exclamation, or a vile expletive, as a deal was made or rejected.
Two or three times I tried to enter a shop, hoping to see what was going on in there, but the backs seemed to stiffen, and elbows suddenly became dangerous weapons. I was forced to pull back on each occasion into the lane and swim with the tide, hoping to find a shop that was less furiously busy.
How should I go about asking questions without provoking suspicion?
It was dark and cramped inside those caverns, and I was ill-equipped for the part that I had chosen to play. Many of the men crushing up against the sellers’ tables held a tiny lamp in their hands to make the task of choosing easier. Thin beams of light flashed this way and that as each man cast around, frantically seeking what he was after. Many a customer had a magnifying-glass that he clamped to his eye by exerting the muscles in his cheek and brow.
They looked the part of professional amber-traders, whilst I did not.
I felt as out of place as any novice must.
It might be wise, I thought, to find some place where I could eat, and take more careful stock of my position. The smell of grilling
fish was overwhelming. Blue smoke swirled and drifted above the heads of the milling crowd. Was there a tavern or a chop-house nearby? Was that where they were all going? I followed the throng down another narrow alley without finding the place. Tavern? I had the impression that these people ate with their eyes, and that the object of their hunger was one thing, and one alone.
Like vultures, they seemed to feast and gorge on the sight of amber.
More than once I was obliged to stop while the man in front of me concluded his business with a dealer on the threshold of a shop, and money changed hands. On another occasion, I was brought to a sudden halt behind a man who began to piss against the wall. An obstinate seller continued to dangle a string of amber beads in front of his face, while he emptied his bladder. ‘By the Lord, Herr Franz!’ the merchant insisted. ‘Are they not the finest matching set of natural rarities you have ever seen?’
Franz thrust his member back in his pants, and grunted dismissively about them being rather too ‘natural’ for his taste. As he moved away, the salesman began to look around more keenly. He did not try his arts on me, but settled instead on the man behind me. ‘Just the job for you, Ludwig. Aren’t they perfection? Step inside, do, sir!’