The Anatomist's Dream (35 page)

The language man spoke a sentence in a mixture of Dutch, Norwegian, Italian, Welsh and French that none of them understood directly but got the gist of its true interpretation:
The journey always
takes longer than you think
,
but in so doing makes
its goal all the more worthwhile
.

Once they'd finally reached their destination the door creaked open without their ringing the ostentatious bell that hung like an overgrown pine-cone from the eaves. They were led in by two moleskin-clad foot-boys, red hats wobbling on their heads, bunches of iridescent feathers strapped to their hatbands by blue ribbons. Petitorri would have loved it, Philbert thought, all that swank and swagger. He wondered briefly where that man was now, what lies or otherwise he was spreading, for men like Petitorri did not lie down and take defeat without at least some spit and stand. But no time to think on the peacock any longer, for the moment they were in the door Philbert realised he was inside one of the most extraordinary places he had ever seen.

The room was huge, undivided and dark, all made of wood, from the panelling on floor and walls to the sparse furniture, the centrepiece being a massive table lined with knot-backed chairs and laid up with food and wine. Two great fireplaces were lit at either end of what could only be described adequately as a hall, each banked and correctly fuelled so the flames were bright and the smoke directed to all the various foodstuffs hanging from hooks inside the five foot width of each inglenook: haunches of meat, bunches of herbs, strings of sausages, tack bread, hams, the carcasses of hares, squirrels and rabbits, several necklaces of yellowing mushrooms and peppers, the grey curl of an ox's tongue.

The Great Magendie himself was sat at the left hand side of the room, a vast chair hiding his withered frame like a walnut within its shell, rough-hewn boards heavy and dark, crudely cut with acorns and leaves as if they'd been chiselled by woodsmen's children still practising their craft. The footsteps of his latest guests creaked on the floorboards as they crowded forward, ushered on by the red-hatted boys who introduced the visitors one by one, listing their various unusual attributes before urging them to sit at table and partake of what was there. And sit they did, and one by one were called forward by the hat-twirling boys to meet the Great Man himself, Maulwerf first, whose role was only to introduce the rest. The greatest surprise for Philbert was the couple from Peru. The so-called bearded lady was strange indeed, her face and arms felted over with long soft hair. The Great Magendie had her come to him, stroked her hair, asked her to show him her mouth, all of which she did, for apparently not only was she hairy all over her body but also had a second set of teeth set behind the first. None of this was so extraordinary to Philbert as when she returned from her examination and began to sing in her own language, the words unknown to any but herself and her husband and the man who understood twenty-six languages. But for Philbert it was utterly compelling, like streams running over moss, and he could have gone on listening to her for hours if her husband hadn't been summoned forward, at which point her singing ceased. He called himself the White Jester, an albino with a stock of jokes and anecdotes that would have made a stevedore blush. He took his place at the Great Magendie's feet, had his own face poked and prodded, his jokes ignored, a candle shone into his pink eyes before being summarily dismissed. In his place came the woman with all the hair pointing out the delicate ­intricacy of her braids, followed by Lita and Lorenzini doing a quick dance and turn, replaced – after a short silence from their host – by the language man, who didn't get farther than sixty ­seconds of his excellent routine before being repelled by a bored wave of the Great Magendie's hand. Philbert was the tail end of the exhibits, doomed – he'd already concluded – to be a huge disappointment after all the others had apparently failed to impress, completely aware that his paltry head was nothing in comparison. He came forward grudgingly, Maulwerf's hand at his back pushing him on.

‘Does your hat never move, boy?' the Great Magendie's voice splintered through the air, the first words he'd spoken since they'd arrived. Philbert took off his hat and moved closer to the tiny wrinkle of a man in his huge chair so as to be seen properly. A few months earlier he would have been intimidated by the strange room, the unexpected interrogation, the hard blinks of small windows glittering malevolently behind the man holed up in his chair, but not now. Philbert's small body was taut and hard, his head no longer seeming to pull him to one side with its weight but feeling instead as if it was just right, part of the ­balance between himself and the world in which he lived.

‘Well, my,' said the Great Magendie succinctly as he leaned forward to take his look. ‘I can see why you wear a hat.'

Philbert didn't blink but stared back at the sunken eyes of his interlocutor, saw the light of the nearby fire reflected in them beneath their hoods like the splash of sunlight on wood-hidden pools.

‘And what's your name, boy?' the Great Magendie asked.

‘Philbert,' he replied, the man laughing fit to burst.

‘Philbert! Oh but that's a good one!' he said once he'd calmed, poking hard at Philbert's taupe with his finger. ‘And what do you keep inside your head, nut boy?'

Philbert took a breath. He didn't like the way he was being looked at, and absolutely loathed the way Magendie had treated the rest of the Fair's Folk as if they were dogs begging for scraps at his table. He didn't like the karking timbre of his voice and certainly not the scratch of the man's nail upon his taupe and, before he'd thought the action through, Philbert pushed the man's hand roughly away, replaced his hat firmly back down upon his head and moved his face nose to nose with the vile Magendie.

‘You don't want to know,' Philbert said quietly, though not so quietly that everyone in the quiet hall couldn't hear it. ‘There are memories in here that span the world far more than your aqueduct will ever do, and violence enough to make your hair curl, if only you had hair enough to make the exercise worthwhile.'

Maulwerf was at his back, snatching at Philbert's arm but Philbert kept his footing, he and the Great Magendie staring hard into each other's eyes. And maybe the Great Magendie saw a shiver of those memories flickering across Philbert's face for it was he who pulled away.

‘Quite a boy,' he murmured, though not directly to Philbert. ‘I see I was right to save the least until last. If I had my hammer here I would take great pleasure in cracking open that skull of his, scatter his secrets to the wind.' He smiled, but it was not a good smile, then waved his arm, informed the company he was tired and they needed to go away and not come back. It took the bonny-hatted boys only moments to get everyone in order, shovel the long haired woman's hair back into her barrow, shove a few coins in Maulwerf's hand and then they were off and out, the moleskin boys barricading the doors behind them, Maulwerf leading them sternly back down the twisting steps between the impenetrable hedges of beech, his anger harsh within his chest at the way both he and his prize exhibits had been treated. Only Philbert – of all people – had stood up for them, and he silently applauded the boy. Undoubtedly the Great Magendie had achieved great things, but Maulwerf was disgusted by the privilege he obviously believed his status earned him. He was rather pleased therefore to overhear what the White Jester said to Philbert as they went back down the steps, proud of his protégé, despite their recent lack of communication.

‘Oh but well done, my fine young friend,' the White Jester exclaimed, slapping Philbert gently on the shoulder, ‘for standing up to that old curmudgeon. He's had me and my lady La Lanuga in there three times these last few days, pinching at us both, pulling her hair and teeth, seeing if my eyes will change colour. And never once,' he added, as if this was the worst of the Great Magendie's crimes, ‘has he ever laughed at any of my jokes.' He placed his paper-pale face right in front of Philbert's, his bright eyes pink and merry. ‘He might have built the greatest aqueduct anyone has ever seen since the Romans, but there's no doubting the man is an arse of the first order and you, my young lad, are the only person who had the courage to point it out. Hair indeed! And quite right!'

Maulwerf quivered in his velvet jacket. He no longer twirled his silver topped cane. It was obvious to him from that little exchange between Magendie and Philbert that Philbert was no longer some ingénue raked up by the travelling of his Fair. Something deep and dark had happened to Kwert and Philbert when they'd been away, and he meant to find out what that was.

37

The Christmas Factor

Winter ground on, a dog within the wheel of the seasons, bearing frost in its fur and a howling snarl of wind, the snow barely having time to settle on the frozen ground before it was snatched up again, a hound that would not loose the broke-backed rabbit – still squirming – from its hold. For several months, following the Great Magendie's Opening, Maulwerf's Fair toured the provinces of Schleswig-Holstein, a land in danger of losing its identity halfway here and halfway there, no one knowing whether they should make alliances with the Swedish or the Prussians or the Danish. They were not alone, uprisings and small revolutions going on all over Europe, but Lengerrborn had not been forgotten and men were on Philbert's tail.

Philbert didn't know what Kwert had told Maulwerf after their visit to Magendie, but he knew he'd said something, maybe everything. Maulwerf was certainly on his guard, but to his credit never mooted the notion that Philbert should leave, instead was of entirely the opposite demeanour, telling Philbert he was glad he was back, a sentiment spoken, but one of which Philbert was never entirely sure. He listened for every creep and crack of rumour that might tell him pursuers were on his tail, either from Lengerrborn or Bremen. But he heard nothing, and slowly came to the assumption that winter and snow had thrown them off his scent.

Philbert woke one night in that strange land of Schleswig-Holstein, teeth chattering with the cold, pushing his feet deeper into his squirrel-skin boots, snuggling closer under his covers into Kroonk's warm side. On his other flank lay Jimble and Jamble, surprise additions to the Kroonk family, engendered whilst Philbert had been away on his travels – a slip on Lorenzini's part, but a welcome one – a family of piglets it had never occurred to Philbert might ever have existed. These two, the only ones to survive from a poor litter, were lying snout to tail, a shiver of dream passing through first one and then the other, trotters twitching in harmony. All was quiet, only the snuffled coughs and grunts that he was used to coming from his neighbours' tents as they snored and sneezed the cold night through. Philbert was lying on his stomach, hand lifting the corner of his tent-flap to peer out into the night. Stretched out before him the land ran down to the sea, combed into straight lines by a bleak procession of knick-hedges, its white flatness broken only by the low rolls of distant dunes and the stark outlines of tumbled, dilapidated tombs left by the Angles many hundreds – maybe thousands – of years before. The water of the lake before the castle was frozen solid, covered with a multitude of Fair stalls; also frozen were its many offspring streams and feeders, no splish nor merry splash, only the hard cold crack and arthritic groans of ice to be heard. The moon shone down upon the land, the one a mirror to the other's pale unconcern, both glistening in the icy light as if the ceaseless murmurings of the distant sea had swept sudden and silent over the fields, flattening all below it, leaving a crystal lattice of salt to glitter in its place as it withdrew again, unseen.

Philbert turned his head, heard the pochards whistling on the brack-marsh, saw the outline of a small dark fox slink beside the reeds, scrawny herons hunched low on branches, ducks scrunching harder into their nests as the fox's scent came and went. The moon veiled its face within a cloud of ice then let fall one, two, three flakes of softest snow. Philbert put out his hand and caught a snowflake on his fingertip, put it to his mouth. He held out his hand again but soon withdrew it as the night ­suddenly filled with flurries and gusts, the wind beginning to swirl its cloaks of ermine between tent and stall. Behind them, Philbert saw the white-bricked walls of the castle standing solid between the shifting screens of snow. He could hear the champ and chafe of horse and cattle shifting lazily within those walls, safe in byre and barn and beside them, in the keepers' cotts, the keepers' kith and kin, goats and sheep, vying and jostling for the warmth of meagre fires that gently expired upon their cooling hearths.

And up there in his castle was the Aethling Rupert, shivering in his massive bed. He was a Glücksburg, distant descendant of the Danish Monarchy, aspirant to the thrones of Sweden, England and Prussia, if only he could prove his ancestral claims. He'd sent out a public proclamation in the preceding months stating what everyone knew already: that these were confusing times, the need greater now than ever to unite the disparate populations who lived within his lands; to cement this union, his proclamation announced, he was hosting the biggest Frost Fair Schleswig-Holstein had ever seen and everyone welcome: Prussians, Swedes, Danes, even the English if any were to hand – all of whom had been fighting and forming allegiances the one with the other and back again for the past thirty years. But Christmas was a time for peace, Rupert stated, and he was the man to provide it, by presenting the largest, most exciting and inclusive spectacle ever witnessed hereabouts. His aims were to increase his personal popularity, create alliances, strengthen the slippery hold he had on his family's lands and obscure titles and claims. In recent years the soil had begun to shift beneath his feet, as for so many in his position, and he needed the support of the good and the great, of powerful men and their merchant guilds. He had to know which way things were going, if the Danes or Prussians were thinking of invasion, the nature of the vacillations of the Swedish and English merchants, about where the loyalties of the people lay – to the north and Scandinavia or the German-speaking south – or if the tide was ripe for independence to win out after all.

For all these reasons Rupert, like Philbert, could not sleep easy that cold night and was standing huddled in an eiderdown by his window high up in the white walls of his castle, looking through the flurries of snow that were veiling land and lake. At the same moment he looked out, Philbert slipped back into his private warmth of pig and tent, leaving Rupert alone at his vigil, wondering what the next day would bring and how his Christmas Gift would play out, certain he'd advantage on his side: he had a castle, he had the brilliance of winter at his beck and call, he had an Ice Fair, for God's sake, with hairy women and dancing dwarfs.

Nothing
, thought the Atheling Rupert,
can possibly go wrong
,
and soon my
claims will be heard in the highest courts
. He stood a while longer before withdrawing back to his bed, heart racing with anticipation, but barely had he nodded back into sleep than dawn was scraping the night from the blue bones of the sky and the Fair and its folk began to wake, and a couple of hours later all was in full swing, shouts heard across the frozen lake and the fields that ran down to the sea.

‘Roll up! Roll up!
Kommen Sie, Meine Damen und Herren
, my fun-loving friends, my companions in curiosity! Do you seek the Strange and Peculiar? Do you long to be confronted with the most stupendous spectacles nature has to offer? Are you brave enough to enter my World of Wonders, my living Cabinet of Curiosities? Tents filled with Puzzles and Anomalies just waiting to be explored. Roll up! Roll up!'

It was Harlekin, Master of Ceremonies, marching across his makeshift stage, tolling his bell, shouting out his wares:

‘Come see the Strongest Boy in all the World, and the Elfin Lady; or how about the Fattest Woman in all the land? We also have the White Jester, an albino from Peru, and his wife the Dog-Faced Lady who sings like the summer we
'
ve all just lost. And we have a boy with a head like you've never seen before, who makes his pig dance like a Court of Ladies' maids. We have magicians to bamboozle you and soothsayers who will tell you your future, musicians to entertain your ears, actors to entertain your eyes. And if all that isn't enough, ladies and gentlemen, then come visit the Carneous Mole. Yes, the Carneous Mole! Here, in our very midst! Give him meat crawling with maggots, give him slugs, give him last year's donkey-chops. He will eat all before your very eyes! This Fair is a Box of Delights to be opened at your pleasure. Come and see it all, Ladies and Gentlemen, see it and believe it. For the Frost Fair is open!
Die Winterfreudenfest
is begun!'

Philbert would remember those words for many years to come, every nuance and shade of them, and all the people who were pouring in from every corner of Schleswig-Holstein. It was as if his whole life was a river beside which he walked, a river that kept the reflections of his memories true and clear no matter what disturbed the waters or how far along its banks he went. His head was a treasure trove of other people's stories, a bottle into which the ships of their lives could be folded and stowed, as if he were a whirlpool at the centre of his universe, sucking in everything about him.

The day wears on, the Frost Fair going great guns and, as the afternoon draws to a close, Harlekin leaps onto his stage and stands amidst the yellow smoke to reveal his play. The place is here, in Schleswig-Holstein, and the feeling is for rebellion, the people tugged between the Danish crown and the Prussians, not knowing which way to go, though either might end badly. Harlekin holds Hannah on one arm to represent the beauty of Schleswig, and an able lad – alas not Hermann – on the other for the delights of Holstein. He tells them they have Queen Dämpfdorf of Denmark and King Prügelbaaden from Prussia in the wings; these are Tingelburg and Tangelrichter, in disguise as usual: one spike-thin and warty in an aureole orange dress, the other with his boots too big and a helmet of iron pinned precariously upon an enormous wig.

‘If only these two young lovelies could be married they would be happy and there would be no tale, but “if only” never gave a story and you would not listen.' Harlekin wears black velvet, reminding Philbert of the Westphal man who ushered him, Kwert and Ullendorf into destruction. Philbert watches up front with Lita, just as they used to do; Oort, the strong-boy who can lift a donkey above his head, has taken a liking to Philbert and his pigs and is with them too. Harlekin stands centre stage with Hannah, her handsome beau at her side, cupping a hand to his ear as the ugly Queen comes in from the left and screams:

‘Give them to me, give them to me, I say! Give me, give me, give me!'

Harlekin cups his other hand to his other ear as the King enters stage right, preceded by his enormous wig.

‘What is that witch saying now?' he growls. ‘I've told you before, they are mine, all mine, and I will have them both!'

Harlekin moves further down the stage and lets out a huge sigh and many of the crowd sigh too, for they understand perfectly the analogy that is playing out upon the stage, and how the whim of politics is destroying people's lives without doing them the courtesy of letting them know why it is happening.

‘Always it is like this,' continues Harlekin sadly. ‘Those would-be lovers separated by others who want what they cannot have and, seeing harmony in the offing, must rip it apart.'

And so the crowd reacts: as the Queen comes in from one side and the King approaches from the other, they begin to boo and hiss; it doesn't stop the actors, for they've done all this before in other places to other audiences and have their part to play. They hook their fingers into their belts and stamp their boots and Hannah and her young man cower, as they must do in the face of tyranny. Harlekin turns against the audience and accuses them with his finger.

Just like Von Ebner
, Philbert thinks,
the spoon
that stirs the milk until it curdles
.

‘Is all you can do is boo?' Harlekin shouts. ‘Will you let this evil take place? Will you allow your daughters to be ravished and your sons humiliated? No? Did I hear you say?'

‘No, no, no, NO!' cries the audience. They are angry, their fists are raised.

‘Did I hear you?' provokes Harlekin. ‘Will you really let this happy union be dissolved before it has properly begun?'

‘NO, NO!' The audience have begun to stamp their feet, the men getting so worked up they're almost ready to storm the stage as if this was real, as if this was not a representation of what is happening to their country but taking place now, in front of their very eyes, and then comes a huge explosion that stops them in their tracks, and through the billowing clouds of purple sparks and green smoke Harlekin re-emerges waving a banner of red, white and blue – the self-declared insignia of the independent parliament of Schleswig-Holstein – his troupe of actors suddenly appearing behind him carrying prop-pitchforks and saucepans as they surround Hannah and her prince, grabbing the King and Queen by their arms and clamping them in chains, leading them off stage in abject and angry humili­ation. But the audience has already gone wild and Harlekin's voice is barely heard as he finishes off his tale of successful revolt and matrimony and the crowd whoop and stamp and clap their hands, throw their hats in the air, drowning out his shouts with their own songs, swinging their own home-made banners. It is the winter of 1847 going into 1848 and this is happening all over Europe. There are Ruperts everywhere who don't know which flag is safe to fly; but for Harlekin this is the cue to begin his troupe's singing and dancing and he waves Hannah back onto the stage and the music strikes up, dancing girls at the ready.