Spear of Destiny Read online

  An hour later, Ethan and Ilona had eaten their fill; but Sarah remained motionless in front of the fire. She needed help, but Ethan doubted he had the capacity to give the sort of help she needed.

  There were four bunks in the sleeping room. With Ilona’s help, Ethan managed to get Sarah into bed. She was still shivering, despite the heat she’d taken from the fire, and they covered her in blankets, leaving one each for themselves.

  ‘I’ll talk in the morning, Ethan,’ Ilona said. ‘Then I’ll go in to Sancraiu. I don’t think we should move Sarah yet.’

  So it began. Ilona’s visits to Sancraiu for news and supplies became regular. While she was away, Ethan would remain with Sarah in the hut, talking to her, stimulating her return to the real world. She had suffered something vicious, and her mind’s efforts were focused on the act of forgetting. She had been taken away from all her realities, and if it had been for only a short time, the trauma had been intense. All that seemed between her and a breakdown was her inner resilience. Ethan wished he had known her better, that his had been a familiar voice. Ilona brought English books from home, and Ethan read to Sarah at every opportunity: Dickens, Austen, long stretches of PG Wodehouse. Sometimes, when he read the Wodehouse, she would laugh.

  Time passed like water slipping beneath ice. There seemed to be no movement in things – in the forest, the sky, the frostbitten ground. They thought of the castle every day, and wanted to be as far from it as possible, but there was no chance of escape until Sarah recovered from her ordeal. Someone was seen in Sancraiu asking questions about outsiders, a man and a woman. He received no honest answers. But Ilona said it was only a matter of time.

  In the meantime, Ethan made a call on Ilona’s mobile phone. He asked Lindita to send another false passport made out in Sarah’s name, and complete with Romanian entry stamps. Lindita promised to post it in a day or two. Ethan took a photograph of Sarah, using Ilona’s digital camera; the picture showed a woman suddenly older, unsmiling, torn somehow, almost broken. Ilona used her home computer to transmit the image directly to Lindita in Gloucester.

  Time passed like snow drifting down from unspent clouds, through darkness and light. Ethan spent each day with Sarah, talking or reading, and at times watching in silence. When she slept, which was often, she had nightmares. He would stay by her side, holding her hands and whispering.

  Slowly, she came round. She would always be scarred, he could see that, but day by day she was recovering her wits. He began to wish he was her lover, not her friend, so intense had his feelings become for her. But he recoiled from the temptation of love so long as she was traumatised, even as he stroked the back of her hand or drew a lock of hair away from her forehead.

  A week passed, then a second. Ilona brought back news that Egon Aehrenthal had turned up in Sancraiu with a group of his men, asking questions. No one had given him the answers he was looking for. Ilona may have spent time in the big city, but back in Sancraiu, she was still one of the townspeople.

  ‘We must get you away from here,’ she said. ‘It’s only a matter of time before he stumbles on you both. There are some people who distill illegal whiskey out here in the forest. They sometimes head over to a cabana when it gets very cold, or if supplies run out. If they find you and they know Aehrenthal is looking for you, they’ll be up at Castel Lup before you’ve had breakfast.’

  By then, Sarah had started to make a fair recovery, though Ethan didn’t think she was ready to be moved. Her mood was labile, shifting by the hour, sometimes by the minute. She had panic attacks, reliving the terror of being snatched, then anger at having been raped, then general despondency, then elation at her rescue. She spoke with Ethan often, though not in her blackest moments. When she was silent and would give nothing up, he talked to her. He spoke of anything and nothing, old family stories that once in a while would make her laugh, or anecdotes of his police work. He steered clear of serious crime, of murder and rape and muggings, but found plenty to entertain. He told her of the man he’d stopped when he was still in uniform, a man of about forty, on the edge of the city, singing to a horse. She laughed at that one, and he held her hand. She looked at him, and there was a smile on her face. But it took only moments before she reverted to her troubled self.

  One day, coming out of an uneasy sleep during which she had whimpered more than usual, Sarah opened her eyes wide and, catching sight of Ethan, she spoke quite clearly, but in a low voice.

  ‘There’s great danger. All of us, great danger. Must stop him. Stop all of them.’

  Within seconds, she fell asleep again. Later, when she woke and grew fully conscious, she remembered nothing of what she’d said, and Ethan did not press her. But her eyes were troubled, and Ethan sensed that a fragment of memory remained behind them. She knew something, he was sure of it, something that posed a threat to ‘all of us’, whoever that included.

  It happened again some days later. Great danger, great harm, an ancient evil, marchers on a high place, banners, boots polished to perfection. This time she spoke at greater length, only to fall asleep again. Perhaps, thought Ethan, it was nothing more than words out of delirium. But he sensed her fear, and it seemed real to him.

  That night, he heard her call loudly from her bed, and dashed across to help. She was calling in a tremulous voice, as if beset by wolves or stinging insects. He caught her right hand and held it tightly, wishing her asleep again; but this time she stayed awake.

  ‘Put the light on, Ethan.’

  He found an oil lamp and fumbled with matches until the wick caught. As he replaced the glass, a pale whitewash of light brought the little wooden room into view. Sarah was sitting up in bed now. Her forehead was covered in sweat, her hair lay bedraggled and lifeless across her cheeks. He pulled it back and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her hands were shaking. Again, he took one hand in his and held it until she began to grow calm. How he wished he could take her in his arms and hold her until the terrors died.

  ‘We have to talk, Ethan.’ She seemed suddenly more clear-eyed than he was. There was real consciousness in her gaze, not the blur he’d been looking at all this time.

  ‘Go on. I’m listening.’

  And in the immeasurable stillness of the forest her soft voice spelt out to him the outlines of a horror she could only dimly see.

  ‘Don’t underestimate Aehrenthal,’ she said. ‘He may surround himself with thugs, but he’s not a thug. When he thought I’d been softened up enough, he came to visit me. He didn’t rape me or hit me or threaten me in any way. He just talked. Mostly, he talked about himself. He’s a clever man, but he never went to university, so he seems to think I’m some sort of marvel. He knows a lot about me, he’s done his homework. And he told me why he kidnapped me.’

  She took a deep breath. He could feel the tremor in her hand, and squeezed more tightly.

  ‘He’s convinced I know how to find this place in Libya where Great-Granddad found the relics. It seems he’s not content with getting hold of them, but wants to see where they were found. I think he knows there’s something else there, something more valuable than the relics.’

  ‘The tombs.’

  She nodded.

  ‘He asked about tombs, but I just said I knew nothing.’

  ‘It would be the greatest antiquities find in history. He probably doesn’t even guess just how much is out there. It would certainly make his name if he could lead an expedition to Wardabaha.’

  Her eyes widened and she shook her head.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘It’s not about that. He’s not doing this to make his name or even to make the kind of money he guesses he could make. It’s the other way round: he became an antiquarian because he thought it might lead him to all this.’

  ‘To make a lot of money.’

  She said nothing for several moments. He thought she was growing tired and decided to leave her to fall asleep.

  ‘Ethan, he’s the head of some sort of Nazi organisation. They have followers here in Romania,
in Hungary, in Austria and Germany. A lot of followers. And a lot of allies, mostly right-wing Christian groups. He told me about them, said the relics would be in safe hands, and that I could trust the place in Libya with them too.’

  He looked at her blankly.

  ‘I don’t get it. What has any of this to do with Nazis?’ But even as he asked the question, he remembered the photographs he’d seen at the Wolf’s Lair.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘But they’ve been hunting for the relics for years, he told me.’

  In Ethan’s mind, a memory stirred. He stared into the flames. Something about Himmler and the Lance of Longinus. The Nazis had been tracking it down. The Lance of Power. The Spear of Destiny. All occult nonsense, of course, he thought. But occult nonsense could inspire men to great deeds. Great deeds and evil deeds.

  When he looked round, Sarah had fallen asleep again.

  18

  Children of the Night

  Afterwards, he could not say how it happened. He had done his best not to encourage it.

  Some sort of change came over her, overnight, or so it seemed. Since her rescue, Sarah had been overcome by lassitude. She had stayed in bed relentlessly, as though driving herself inwards, searching for some complete escape, to run to a place where neither men nor wolves could reach her. But now, the tiredness began to lift. She went to sleep one night in that mood of withdrawal, and woke in the morning ready to pull herself from bed.

  Her legs were still weak. Ethan helped her to walk the few yards from the bedroom to the fireplace in the larger room. As he made to lower her into a chair, she kissed him lightly on the forehead, hesitated momentarily, then pulled his head down and placed her lips full on his.

  Shocked and entranced, he drew back, letting her drop onto the chair.

  She laughed.

  ‘It’s all right, Ethan, I won’t eat you. Unless, of course, you’re the sort of man who panics when a woman kisses him.’

  ‘But why…?’

  ‘To thank you for coming all the way out here to rescue me. Knight in shining armour stuff. And to say I think I’m making progress. It may take me years to put this all behind me, perhaps I’ll never recover properly, but I’m starting to feel a bit more confident. And because I like you.’

  He was about to ask her more about how she felt, when the door was flung open. A rapid gust of cold wind rushed in, followed by a frantic-looking Ilona. She slammed the door behind her.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ she gasped. She’d been running, and was out of breath. ‘Get your things on, we must be out of here in the next two minutes.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ethan was already looking for the coat Ilona had brought for Sarah. Ilona was helping Sarah to her feet.

  ‘Not now. Move.’

  At that moment, a sound echoed behind her voice: the baying call of a wolf. The cry was answered from far off by a second howl, then a third. For half a minute, their voices joined together, creating a moaning, pulsating chorus that rose and dipped in that uncanny music wolves intone.

  They stumbled out, hurried along by Ilona. Ethan could sense her fear. The wolves? Or something else?

  They quickened their pace, always conscious of how little strength there was in Sarah. Ethan held her tightly, taking her weight, guiding her path. They stumbled through snow, then withered undergrowth, then entered the trees, dodging between their trunks, their steps taking them further and further down the mountainside. Ilona led the way, at once urgent and careful, knowing Sarah might not have the strength to make it through the thickets of brambles that crisscrossed the forest floor.

  After they had made some progress, Ilona looked back to see Sarah sitting on the ground while Ethan tried to pick her up.

  ‘Hold back,’ he said to Ilona. ‘She can’t go a step further. Look at her. She’s still very ill.’

  ‘If she stays here, Ethan, she will die. Take my word for it. She’s got to make it down to Sancraiu. I have a car waiting, she can stay inside after that. But she can’t stay here.’

  ‘Why the sudden panic?’

  ‘Because Egon Aehrenthal has come back. He has found a bunch of local hunters and paid them well. They need money in winter, and most of them are the sort of men who will do anything, whether they are paid or not. Some have trained wolves that they use to hunt for bears or wild boar. Of course, sometimes they are paid to hunt for wolves.

  ‘They’re out there now, scouring the forest. They started this morning, some beating from top down, others from bottom up. We have to find a way out past them. If we can get to my car, I’ll take you out of here. There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  Ethan bent down to help Sarah back on her feet.

  ‘Sarah, I know this is hard, but we can’t let Aehrenthal get his hands on you again. He’ll kill you this time. He’ll have his wolves tear you to pieces. You have to try.’

  He made her stand up, less gentle now, knowing the need for speed. He let her weight fall on him again, but less fully, lest she impede his progress. She cried out in pain, and at that moment another wolf howled. A harsh man’s voice rang out among the trees and was answered by a second man somewhere off to their right. Ilona knew the men would carry guns, and the wolves had teeth, teeth that could crush bone.

  They came to a small clearing. Here, the ground was covered in a thick counterpane of perfect snow. As they entered the open space, the trees on the other side parted and a man in the clothes of a hunter stepped through. He was followed by a second man who led a wolf on a short chain. The wolf snarled as it caught sight of strangers.

  Ethan thought quickly, then turned to Ilona.

  ‘Tell them that I will pay them ten times as much as Aehrenthal is paying.’

  Ilona translated this for the hunters. As she did so, she slipped the glove from her right hand and slipped the hand into her pocket.

  The men did not react. They were thickset men with heavy moustaches and long hair tied back in ponytails. On their backs, they wore thick sheepskin coats, and in their hands they carried hunting guns, old guns polished to a fine blue patina and loaded with quarter-inch-diameter steel shot.

  The man with the wolf brought the animal forward and spoke curtly to Ilona. She translated for Ethan.

  ‘He wants me to leave, to go back Sancraiu. Either that or he says he will kill me and you.’

  ‘Then leave,’ said Ethan. ‘You’ve done your part and more. The rest has nothing to do with you. It’s my business.’

  Ilona sighed.

  ‘Take a close look at the two men,’ she said.

  He didn’t know what she meant at first, but glanced nevertheless at the man nearest him. It took moments to see what she was referring to. He turned his eyes on the second man. The same thing. Each man had a long scar on his left cheek. The scars were whiter than the white cheeks of the men.

  ‘They belong to the Arrow Cross,’ she whispered. ‘It’s an old Hungarian fascist society. Aehrenthal is the head of the Transylvanian chapter. He initiates them by giving them a sabre scar. These are his men.’

  ‘But if they…’

  She shook her head fiercely.

  ‘Not now.’

  She turned back to the man who had offered her a way out.

  ‘They’re yours,’ she said in Hungarian. ‘Do what you like with them. Take your time.’

  She walked towards them, as though to pass that way out of the clearing and so on to Sancraiu. But as she reached the man with the wolf, she took her hand from her pocket. It held a tiny canister. She aimed at the wolf, spraying it in the eyes, then, before its handler could react, sprayed him too. The effect was instantaneous. The wolf howled in pain, the man screamed and dropped the leash, whereupon the wolf ran howling out of the clearing. Two more steps brought Ilona to the second hunter, who was standing as if rooted to the spot, unable to understand what had just happened to his companion and the animal. She sprayed him as well. Ethan went across to where the two men were crouching in agony. He t
ook their guns and slung them over his shoulder.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Pepper spray,’ Ilona said. ‘Now we get out of here.’

  19

  The Falling of Snow and the Shimmering of the Sun

  Putna

  Bucovina

  They reached the monastery between compline and vespers, in a time of silence. The monks had returned to their cells, the priests were preparing for the artoklasia service that would follow vespers that evening. Ilona led them through darkness to the candlelit church where it stood at the heart of a great complex made up of turreted buildings sheltering behind the high monastery wall. This was Putna, the gem in the crown of Romania’s monastic foundations. For long centuries, the voices of the monks had intoned the liturgy from hour to hour throughout the day, in summer and winter alike, beneath the falling of snow and the shimmering of the sun.

  The monk priest was waiting for them in an archway near the great iconostasis. Most of the candles had been extinguished, and the priest, dressed from head to foot in black, was hidden in shadow at first, while the clouds of incense that still filled the church swirled like the breath of dragons all about him. He watched them coming and, though they were expected, he felt his heart shake. He knew why they had come. For so many years he had anticipated this moment and feared it. So much depended on what happened now. More lives than he dared think of, innocent and guilty alike; Christian churches everywhere, perhaps all religions. How could he really know? He stepped from the shadows.

  He held out his hand, and Ilona went forward and bent her head to kiss it. When she looked up, she saw again the kindly features that had struck her at their first meeting one week earlier. The long white beard gave him something of the appearance of a western Santa Claus, but there was, she noticed, a look on his face that might have provoked tears in susceptible children.