Was I marked out in some way? Everyone appeared to know everyone else, but I knew nobody. ‘Anything for me?’ was the phrase that I heard most frequently on the lips of the customers. They would stop for a moment by a doorway, look in over the heads of the men who had got there before them, then call out loudly to the shopkeeper: ‘Anything special, Harald? Anything lemon-coloured?’
I was quick to learn, or so I thought.
I stopped before a shop that seemed less crowded than the others. There were only three men inside. ‘Anything for me?’ I called out.
The seller raised his head. The purchasers turned around. They stared at me in a manner that, I am sure, was intended to be hostile.
They did not say a word. The looks that they exchanged were eloquent enough.
Who is this intruder?
I held their gaze for a moment, then quickly moved away, carrying my embarrassment off with me.
Halfway down the next alley, I stepped out of the surging flow to take a closer look at the sparkling array of goods on open display. Various lumps of amber and a jar full of beads like large beans were laid out on a plank of wood blocking the entrance to a tiny den. I leaned close, and I was greeted by a jab in the ribs from a man already positioned there. Voices from behind began to shout more loudly, ‘Get a move on!’
The owner looked up and flashed a winning smile at the man beside me.
‘Herr Gusmar! Welcome back, sir! Do come in.’
Was that the secret? Would traders only speak to men they knew, customers they had dealt with before? If that was the case, the best thing for me to do was search out the gendarmes, make my identity known to them, then question these people while slapping Malaport’s order in their faces. But what if the soldiers were in cahoots with the amber dealers?
‘Come with me, sir. The real thing. Prize goods only.’
The voice seemed to rise up from the earth, like shifting gravel. I looked down. She was not much taller than my daughter, Süzi. That is, she barely reached my waist. But this child’s hair was an artificial flaxen colour streaked with grey, as if she had dyed it badly. It was tied up in a thin tail at the nape of her neck, like a newborn kitten’s. Her voice was shrill and seemed to rattle in her throat. Her hand was small, but it clutched at my hand like a blacksmith’s vice, and refused to be shaken off. In the lobe of each ear, a bit of rough-cut amber shone.
The strangest little girl that I had ever seen.
The only female I had noticed in Nordcopp that morning.
Wearing a white gown with many strings attached, she might have been wrapped in swaddling clothes. Yet everything about her contradicted everything else. Do little girls have grey wrinkles? The lines ridged at the corners of her mouth, and hung in heavy
folds beneath her eyes, which were over-large, red-veined, rheumy like a grandmother’s.
‘They won’t sell
you
anything,’ she declared. ‘They can’t.’
There were people buying and selling amber everywhere in Nordcopp.
What did she mean?
I looked around for assistance, and was roughly pushed aside. I was creating a bottleneck. The cork threatened to explode as the pressure built up in the alleyway behind me.
‘Get a move on there!’ someone shouted violently.
‘Follow me,’ the child hissed. ‘Before you get yourself arrested.’
There was urgency in the voice, crushing strength in the fingers.
‘Call the French,’ another voice insisted. ‘They’ll move him on quick enough.’
‘Gendarmes! Gendarmes!’ the cry went up.
A French soldier appeared at the end of the alley, waving his bayonet in the air.
‘There’s amber here for everyone,’ he shouted. ‘Calm yourselves down!’
His execrable German caused a general laugh to go up.
‘We have to get off the street,’ the child insisted, tugging at my sleeve, charging forward towards the gendarme, brushing hard against the wall, barging people out of the way.
‘Well done, Erika!’ the gendarme called. ‘Caught another, have you?’
She skipped to the left without warning, pulling me after her, cutting through a narrow breach in a wall. Though limping heavily, she was extremely agile. Three pigs squealed in fright and skittered away to the corner. Underfoot the earth was mushy, the smell of filth unbearable. We were in the wreck of what had once been a house. Though the walls still stood, the roof had collapsed and left the building open to the sky.
I tried to free myself.
‘Let go of me!’ I shouted, but the demon child would not release my hand.
Grim tales of the countryside rang in my head, tales of wanderers
waylaid by beautiful maids, toothless crones, or smiling children, lured to their deaths in the name of Prussian hospitality.
‘Will you not leave go?’ I grabbed at her wrist, struggling to throw her off, as if she were the Devil himself. As I swung her around, she crashed against the wall, and I heard the rattle of her bones.
The pigs squealed, and ran away to the other corner.
The child breathed heavily, leaning back against the wall, looking up at me.
‘Near tore my arm off, you did,’ she complained. And yet, there was a hint of a smile on her lips. ‘My hands are as strong as an eagle’s claws. Did you feel the force, sir?’
‘What do you want from me?’ I looked at her intently, struggling to suppress a wave of revulsion. I was eager to get out of that foul pigpen.
‘You’re after amber,’ she said, panting after the tussle. ‘I heard you say so to the soldier on the gate.’
Had she spotted me so soon? Had she been following me?
‘This town is full of people selling amber,’ I replied.
‘They’ll never sell it to you,’ she answered quickly.
‘My money is as good as any man’s.’
‘I told you, sir,’ she said sternly, staring into my eyes. ‘The Nordcopp guild don’t ever deal with strangers. I can help you, though.’
Nothing in her manner was childish. Indeed, she spoke to me as if I were a child that had to be protected.
‘How can you help me?’
She kicked out at a pig that came too close. ‘I know where amber’s freely sold, sir.’ She looked at me coyly. ‘Is that all you’re looking for?’
Incredulity robbed me of speech. I had just been propositioned.
‘Amber is my only interest,’ I murmured in reply.
‘Ours is the very best,’ she said. ‘Our prices are the lowest. And if you’re hungry, why, we’ll sell you a bowl of fish soup, too.’ She jammed her hand up to her mouth and suppressed a girlish giggle. ‘I heard you tell that story to the guard.’
‘Amber that is not controlled by the French, or the guild?’ I asked. ‘You know the punishment for stealing amber . . .’
‘There’s profit here for everyone,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘The guild don’t care. Their own business is flourishing. And the French take a cut from everyone, legal or not. That gendarme knew where I was leading you. I’ll have to grease his palm before the day is out.’ She laughed shrilly. A harsh metallic sound. ‘He don’t care if you buy amber, or the little jewel between my legs.’
I had always thought of amber as something sacred, ancient, mysterious. A gift of God, a blessing on mankind. Instead, it seemed to affect the people on the coast in a way that was unwholesome. In Nordcopp every soul was blighted with evil intentions, or marked by their consequences. The corpse of Kati Rodendahl flashed before my eyes again. The face of Hilde, the woman who worked for Pastoris. The speech and manners of this child blotted out any presumption of innocence. Had all the females on the coast been seduced and ruined by amber?
‘Amber, sir?’ Her head tilted to one side, smiling, taunting. ‘The finest in Prussia! And the best fish, too. Don’t let the opportunity get away.’
‘Very well.’ I nodded, pulling my hand away as one of the pigs in the ruined building attempted to lick it.
I would never have found the entrance without her help. One wall of the pigsty appeared to have been struck by a shell. A narrow, jagged fissure, just wide enough to admit a man, had cracked the wall diagonally from top to bottom. We passed through, and into the yard of yet another house that had also lost its roof. Now it was home to hens and ducks and geese. Erika pushed a tattered canvas aside to reveal a gaping hole.
‘This way, sir,’ she said, and her hand reached out.
I hesitated for an instant, then took her hand in mine.
The bones were small, the skin hard, very dry, and crinkled like the bark of a tree. As I stepped into the dark cavity, that hand was all I had to guide me. It might have belonged to a woman who was a hundred years of age. Indeed, I shuddered, wondering whether she had been transformed by the darkness.
But her voice rang out and broke the spell: ‘Million of years ago,’ she said, ‘the Teutons dug this hole. If they were under siege in
Nordcopp, they’d sneak out this way, then attack their enemies from behind. The exit’s closed off now, of course, but we still use the storeroom underground.’
I did not care to guess what use they made of it.
It stank like a cess-pit, a reservoir where all the filth and carrion of Nordcopp had been collected and left to rot for centuries. It was blackest night down there, and I held on to her hand more tightly. Three or four times we altered course, veering left, then turning right. At every twist and change, my faith in Erika was severely tested. Was I out of my wits? No one knew where I was. Hans Pastoris might have guessed. But who would ask him? No one knew what I was doing there, not even the creature in whose hands I had placed my life. I was beneath the ground already. It was damp, cold, the musty air clogged my breathing. If I never surfaced again, who would know of it? Was I going stupidly to my tomb?
But then I sniffed a reassuring smell. Beyond the mouldy fetor of decay and physical corruption, something appetising flavoured the air.
‘Fish,’ I murmered. And as I spoke, my eyes began to make out a glow in the distance, a shimmer of light, which gave solidity and substance to the slick, damp walls of the tunnel. My ears strained too, catching the echoing rumble of far-off voices.
A shriek from Erika froze the blood in my veins.
Her high-pitched cry rose and fell like the wailing of a wolf.
Was it a signal?
If so, I was dead meat for any man who was armed and waiting to rob me.
She pushed on faster, pulling harder at my hand. I could follow, it seemed, or she would leave me behind. I tried to resist, digging in my heels, sliding on the slippery floor, but I could not stop myself. We were running headlong down a slope, I realised, for we burst into a dimly lit chamber, and the floor reared up in front of my face like a wall.
She turned to me, but did not say a word.
My breath came back in gasps.
We were in a stone vault, that had once been plastered. Now, it
was stained dark green and ugly brown with mould and damp. Lanterns hung at intervals around the walls, reflecting light on the faces of the people who turned to stare suspiciously at me. They sat at tables piled with lumps of what looked like glistening honey.
Or globules of blood which took in light, and gave off even more in a flashing, sparkling array.
T
HE AROMA OF
boiled fish was inviting.
A large copper cooking-pot dangled from a hook above a blazing fire. Another large pot stood by the side of the hearth. It was covered with a lid, as if it had just been removed from the flames.
I congratulated myself on my good fortune.
But what would a real amber merchant do to establish his credentials? Would I be able to persuade the people in that cellar to accept me as one of them, having failed to do so in the shops and streets of Nordcopp? And how might I steer the conversation towards the piece of amber that I had recovered from the corpse of Kati Rodendahl? How did a piece of amber find its way from the seashore to an underground cellar in Nordcopp where they also sold fish soup? That was what I wanted to know.
Seven or eight men were seated at rough trestle tables. Each one had a plate of soup, a lighted candle, and a small pile of amber on the table-top. They might have been playing some mysterious glass-bead game together while they ate, but it didn’t take much to see that each man was locked in his own private world, scrutinising the pieces laid out before him in mystical concentration. No one said a word. The trick seemed to be to take a nugget, hold it up to the
candle, peer at it intensely for a while, then set it down, and repeat the operation with the next piece. No man raised his spoon to his lips. Indeed, they did not seem to care if the fish went cold, or rotted on their plates. They were famished for amber and nothing else.
‘Have a seat, sir. I’ll only be a moment.’
Despite her hampering leg, Erika skipped quickly across the room towards a tall woman dressed in a soiled white apron. She was wearing a large red turban on her head. Waving a large cooking-ladle in the air, this woman was clearly the high priestess of the place. With one hand firmly planted on her hip, she watched the vestal approach with a welcoming smile, and they began to whisper together, the child stretching up on her tiptoes, the older women bending low to meet her.
I sat down at an empty table, and looked around me.
The fellow at the next table called out: ‘Can I have some more?’
Had I been mistaken? Were they there to eat, after all?
‘With you in a moment!’ the tall woman called back, turning to the fire.
She lifted the lid of the pot that was cooling on the hearth, dipped her ladle inside, and began to stir it around. The sound that this action produced said nothing good about the contents. She might have been stirring a saucepan full of pebbles as she made another large sweep with her ladle.
The customers looked up at the rattling sound.
‘I’ll have some, too,’ another man said.
Were they crabs, cockles, oysters, clams? My stomach felt like an empty cavern, and the air was rich with the smell of fish. ‘Can I have some, as well?’ I called, and my voice was louder and more urgent than I had intended.
Erika darted back with the easy grace of a maimed cat on the prowl, making a wide, lolloping sweep around the other tables before she reached mine, looking to see how each man was getting along.