The slow-motion annexation of the Republic of Rothenia by the Third Reich kept Martin Tofts pinned down in Strelzen through the autumn of 1939, as Europe fell into war. Surrounded as the country was by the Reich and its occupied territories, the republic had no more hope of assistance if it resisted than had Poland. First the Vazsny government looked on helplessly as the province of Mittenheim was occupied by German troops to become the Reichsgau Mittenheim, and a fortnight later meekly surrendered when Hitler demanded the republic capitulate to his demands that it join ‘Greater Germany’.
Martin found himself chiefly chronicling for London the institution of the ‘Ruritanischer Reichsprotektorat’ in Rothenia. Another of the failures of the Vazsny government was in omitting to designate ministers to form a government in exile in London or Paris, to act as a conduit for information to the Allies and contest the legitimacy of any puppet regime in Rothenia.
German Rothenians found themselves offered citizenship of the German Reich, and when Martin (as Carol Corbichec) went to have his Rothenian papers renewed he found his blond looks conjured up a stamp on his identity card which classified him as ‘Germanizable’. So far as he could work out, the stamp entitled him to have sex with ethnic German women and marry them, which were not privileges Martin would be likely to exercise. Other than that, he was afraid it might also allow the Protektorat to draft him for military service.
Life on the Wejg remained quiet, though Martin found his usual resorts there circumscribed. But somehow the White Tree over on Postgasse evaded being shut down. The city authorities shuttered other homosexual clubs, but before the Protektorat was established the White Tree had quite a profile as a musical venue for German singers and entertainers, many of them female, so it had a useful commercial disguise. Martin took advantage of its facilities, not least the availability the club could offer for rapid and secret exits set up to counter the infrequent police raids in the days of the Republic. Martin noticed an increase in young male prostitutes in and around the club premises. Theo Ignacij for one used his new-found prosperity in patronising them. Martin not infrequently found unclothed boys lounging round his house, and often heard Theo getting his money’s worth from them up in his bedroom.
Martin was not therefore initially much surprised to find a very pretty but unknown blond youth one Sunday morning making tea in his kitchen, wearing nothing but a pair of white underpants. Being Martin, he did not resist the temptation to come up behind the boy and squeeze his small butt. But when the boy turned and offered his mouth for a kiss, he was momentarily stunned to recognise him.
‘Hugo!’ he hissed.
The boy went white. ‘Martin! Oh fuck!’
It was Hugo, the youngest son of the Prince of Tarlenheim, at whose house at Festenberh or Fürstenberg Martin had occasionally been a guest with Leo over the past decade.
‘Sit down, young man,’ Martin ordered with a degree of annoyance. This was a threat to his identity on which he had not calculated.
‘Please Martin! Don’t tell on me!’
‘First, Hugo. Forget the name Martin Tofts. I’m here as Carol Corbichec.’
‘Corbichec? That’s the name of your servant.’
Martin stared. Hugo, Count in Tarlenheim, was fast becoming a person of some interest. He sighed. ‘Don’t tell me, Waclaw spotted you as one of us, and he’s been up your pretty ass. You’re just his type.’
Hugo pouted at him in a way that Martin had not seen him do before, and which revealed his undisguised sexuality to the older man. ‘Well, Martin,’ the boy continued, ‘there’s not much fun to be had out in the forest of Zenda, and Waclaw was sooo masterful. I was seventeen and desperate for it. It was the last time Leo was out at Festenberh. Waclaw told me about the White Tree and other such places in Strelzen just after he took my virginity. It was my reason for studying at the Rudolfer. Papa wanted me to go to Oxford, since my English is quite good, but Strelzen is so much more attractive to me.
‘I met Theo at the White Tree and we like to have fun together. He prefers me to be on top, and it’s a nice change. You know.’ Then Hugo grinned, and in such a way that revealed to Martin that the boy might have potential for his purposes. It was a fearless sort of grin, just the sort of look which Hugo’s late queer kinsman, Count Oskar Maxim, might have used to seduce other men.
‘Does your family know?’
‘God no! It would break Papa’s heart to have another homo in the family. Great Uncle Oskar was one of our big family tragedies. But I’m a lot more careful than he was.’ The boy gave him a considering look. ‘So how come you’re going by the name of Corbichec?’
‘I’ll tell you Hugo, and after I do that I think you may be able to help not just me, but great Rothenia.’
Hugo nodded. ‘Good. It’s what I’ve been looking for since the seizure of Mittenheim by the Nazis.’
***
Martin decided that some of the gold coins that had travelled with him from London could go towards the purchase of a second-hand Wendel saloon. He amused himself teaching Theo how to drive it, and he allowed the boy the use of it, providing he paid for the fuel, no small item of expense as war got its grip on the Eastern European economies.
With Theo and Hugo as the core of his Strelzen cell, he slowly extended it. Hugo had many contacts across Strelzen society, both high and low, and Martin learned to value the boy’s input in deciding whom to recruit. He rather thought that Hugo had found something in the resistance work that answered a deep need in him that nothing else had to that date.
No members of his Strelzen resistance cells ever met Martin or knew his name, or for that matter learned the names of their fellows other than their immediate contact. He was codenamed ‘Diocletian’ if any name needed to be used. But by November Theo and he had enough human resources to begin their first operation, which indeed soon found them out.
The Protektorat of Ruritania had begun implementing racial laws against Rothenian Jews, with Jewish businesses closed and confiscated. News soon got around that Jews were disappearing. Police contacts told Martin that an SS-run camp had been set up at Volkstedt near Mittenheim for their reception. He already knew enough about the Reich and its policy towards its Jewish population to realise that this was not the simple ‘work camp’ local people were told it was.
Jewish families who had any resources were seeking to escape the Protektorat, though surrounded as it was by the Reich that was an increasingly difficult option. Others sought to hide and wait out the crisis.
One evening in the White Tree, Martin was discussing the possibilities with Hugo, who was vociferous on the need for some action, and was advocating one possible option.
‘My big sister Euphemia is eager to help, she’s a good girl.’ He laughed. ‘Has to be. She’s a Medelner nun.’
The name caused Martin to start. He knew a thing or two about Medeln abbey and its mysteries. ‘Tell me about Euphemia,’ he asked.
Hugo shrugged. ‘She was big friends with the old abbess, Maria Nativitata, our great aunt. It was no surprise to mutta and tatta when she went off to be a novice. She’s done well for herself since she took her vows. There’s a cell of Medeln nuns in a community at Festenberh, and the abbey sent her there to be its prioress last year. I think she’s prioress of the whole abbey now.’
Martin knew to ask one particularly important question of the boy. ‘Tell me Hugo, does your sister ever wear a particular brooch on her habit, silver and shaped like a death’s head?’
Hugo raised an eyebrow. ‘Funnily enough, she does. I noticed it when she returned to Festenberh as prioress. Is it a badge of her office?’
Martin shrugged. ‘You might say that,’ he said and added. ‘I’d like very much to meet her.’
‘Good. She has a plan we can help with.’
‘Tell me more,’ Martin responded.
‘I’d better leave it to her. We can drive down to Festenberh now you have your car. Believe me, it’ll be worth our while’
Martin set the date for the next Saturday. That evening he scribbled a note to Leo at Heilbrod. In light of their past experiences at Medeln, he knew that news of a Tarlenheim sister wearing a death’s head brooch would interest him considerably. They had unfinished business with the authorities at that mysterious abbey.
***
The priory of St Fenice at Festenberh was a large and comfortable brick house at the park gate of the palace. Built alongside it was a tall stone chapel building of the mid 19th century with a cote for four bells, one of which was ringing as Martin jangled the bell pull at the big green front door.
A lay sister in a brown habit answered the door, and smiled as she saw young Count Hugo at Martin’s side. ‘Come in excellency, and you sir. The lady prioress is in the parlour. This way!’
The parlour was a well-furnished room with an outlook on the road. The only hint that it was within a religious building were the portraits of solemn-looking nuns and prelates around the walls. Tea was offered and accepted, a ritual during which Martin scrutinised Hugo’s sister. She was a striking-looking woman, tall and as handsome as her brother, whom she closely resembled. But unlike Hugo, there was a certain decision and indeed hardness in her gaze.
‘I’m glad you could come, my dear Dr Tofts. And yes, Hugo has explained to me that you must be Herr Corbichec at the moment. He didn’t offer to explain why, but I think I may guess and so you may count on my discretion.
‘Now, you want to know how you may help me, and it’s in moving a large number of Jewish folk from the Judengasse area of the capital out to Husbrau. We may assume that in Strelzen as in Prague the Jewish population will soon be restricted to a designated ghetto area, before they are shipped off to camps where their fate will be uncertain. The Jewish community has long been aware of the danger threatening them. The Vazsny government may have been remiss in many things, but at least it made Jewish migration from Rothenia to safer countries easy for those who wanted to leave, and was even willing to offer travel grants to poorer Jews. As a result, Judengasse had lost half its population before the Wehrmacht occupied Strelzen.
‘But many remain for all sorts of reasons, though with the restrictions being piled on Jewish citizens in the Protektorat few can now have any hope of better times. Abbess Katherine has over the past six months created safe refuges across the Liberty of Our Lady of Medeln that will house, conceal and protect hundreds of Jewish families out in Husbrau. But time is short. The sooner the refugees are moved the harder they will be for the German authorities to track. At the moment, our associates have ways to move them unobserved from Judengasse and the Jewry, but it may not be for much longer. We are already shifting the more vulnerable families as opportunity permits. I understand from Hugo that you have means to do much more. Is this so?’
Martin smiled. This was the good fight. ‘Yes my lady. One of the things that my … er … organisation has found is that the police barracks of Strelzen is full of resentful officers, who loathe their Gestapo overlords. A large number of them now belong to our resistance cells, and they give us much privileged information. But they can do more and they will, and Abbess Katherine has just given them a way to save their honour and hurt the Reich.’
‘You will get the city police to spirit them away from danger? That’s not something we had thought possible in our wildest dreams. We will give you a list of families we wish to move, and soon. Can you take it from there?’
‘With pleasure, my lady. Would you ask the good abbess if I may visit Medeln soon to discuss her great work and any other enterprises she may have in mind?’
‘Of course, Dr Tofts. We know you and the prince are good friends of the abbey. Is Prince Leo in Rothenia?’
‘No, my lady. But I anticipate he’ll be at Ceresczhalsch very soon.’
***
Abbess Katherine of Medeln was King Maxim’s niece, the eldest daughter of Helena Elphberg-Rassendyll, who as princess of Rothenia before the Great War had married Archduke Ludwig Hapsburg. Katherine was thus the latest of many royal Elphberg ladies who had occupied the abbatial stall in that great abbey. She had only been a young nun when the chapter elected her as successor to the formidable Maria Nativitata, though her choice was a natural one. It asserted much that was traditional in what was a perilous and changing world.
Leo explained all this to Martin as they rode down from his house at Ceresczhalch to the town of Piotreshrad on the western bank of Lake Maresku, its waters grey and still on that dull and cloudy morning. He added, ‘I didn’t go to her installation, if I had and had seen the brooch on her robes we’d be better prepared for this meeting.’ He paused. ‘Did you fuck young Hugo?’
Martin was not offended by the pertness of the question. His past record did not allow him to be. ‘No. Not that he isn’t a very desirable boy. But his romantic life is already complicated enough between Theo Ignacij and Waclaw, and probably others at the White Tree and the University I don’t know about. The boy has the potential to be another Oskar Max if you ask me.’
Leo chuckled. ‘I doubt he’s got quite the lack of conscience that Oskar had in his day. I remember Hugo as a kindly and quiet youth. Grandfather told me that Oskar’s heart was untouched by anyone until he somehow unlocked it, and what a treasury of love he found within, a love that surpassed death, as we discovered. That was the man you met at Hentzau; did he seem like Hugo?’
‘God no! Scary and beautiful was what struck me. Though … there was a certain sad wisdom in what he had to say to me, which I think he deployed in your interest, as I recall. Er … do you think he might reappear in this crisis?’
Leo pulled up his mount, and shook his head and eventually said. ‘It’s possible, and I would not be unhappy were he to. It may be however that fate has other surprises in store for us. This land has so many deep secrets.’
The pair rode up from the town along the familiar road to Gus Underwood’s old home above the lake, now called the Murranbergerhof, as it had been till that week Pip and Kate Underwood’s home in Rothenia. Leo’s agents had just bought it off his cousin for a token price to hold in safekeeping during the war, so the house servants that morning were wearing red Thuringian livery coats. They offered a very warm welcome to Leo, who had grown up through his teenage years in that very house, and was much loved there. Several old retainers accompanied him down to the lakeside to lay flowers with Leo at the Classical tomb where his grandfather’s body presently lay alongside that of his life partner, the Baron Dönitz, in a tall sarcophagus set under a pillared leaden dome.
As all dispersed, Leo took Martin’s hand and led him to the shoreline where they sat together, looking out over the waters of Maresku lapping gently at the stoney beach below.
Martin squeezed his lover’s hand and gave a little laugh. He indicated a well-tended patch of grass next the monument, set with inscribed stones. ‘Look! The staff buried all Gus’s dogs next to their master when their time came. He’d have liked that.’
‘Yes indeed. Makes me think of where you and I should rest our bones when our time comes. I think it should be in the Thuringian mausoleum at Zenda, where my mother now lies. But sitting here, I feel I wouldn’t like to be separated from grandfather.’
Martin shrugged. ‘Then move him to Zenda and complete the family group. Anton Dönitz won’t mind, though your Thuringian relatives might. I suppose you’ll leave the dogs here?’
‘You can be cold-blooded on the subject of death, Martin dear. But then you’re an archeologist, and the aftermath of death is your trade. Time to move. I’m glad to have visited grandfather with you, but it is a risk for us to appear together even in Rothenia. Too many people know you, and there are some who might be tempted to trade that information with the occupiers. Had you heard that that man Ulrich Korngeibel has been appointed Reichsprotektor of Ruritania? He knows far too much about us. So let’s get back to the car and head to Medeln and hope Abbess Katherine is in a good mood.
***
Martin parked his Wendel on the verge outside the abbey’s medieval gatehouse. The weather had brightened as they motored across the north of Rothenia that afternoon. The valley of the Taveln was serene in golden sunlight, and the abbey road was empty, apart from a few village boys playing amongst the trees on the lane leading down to the river and the hamlet of Medelnbrücke.
Martin and Leo got out and stretched as the three boys strolled up to inspect the car. Leo, who had more patience with children, greeted them cheerily.
The tallest of the three, a handsome boy of about eleven years with rich and unfashionably long dark hair, responded with questions as to the make of the car and its speed, which Leo referred with a smile to Martin.
‘It’s a Wendel AX saloon, 1934 model, sonny. Zero to 75 k.p.h. in 30 seconds when straight off the production line.’
The child raised an eyebrow and asked if that was good.
‘Good enough for me, kid. But it’s not been maintained well enough to keep that sort of performance. No school today?’
The big lad looked momentarily shifty, but one of his friends, a smaller straw-haired urchin with an acute and cocky look about him replied. ‘Nah! Iss scarlet fever in the village. School’s shut. Two kids died already, only girls though.’
Martin grinned over at Leo. ‘And you thought I was cold-blooded on the subject of death.’
Leo looked discomfited. ‘I’m sure the lad was not being thoughtless.’
The third boy, a very pretty blond, intruded solicitously. ‘Willem only meant that none of our gang was affected. He’s not unkind by nature.’
Leo was looking round, and his attention was drawn to a tall black post with a crosspiece like a gallows erected opposite the abbey gatehouse. ‘Is this what it looks to be, Martin?’
The tall boy responded however. ‘That’s the abbey gibbet where they hanged executed criminals up in an iron cage till their bodies fell to pieces.’
Leo gave a look of disgust. ‘The ground underneath it might make for an interesting excavation, Martin dear. Are you interested in history, lad?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Sorta. Some bits of it.’
His friends laughed. ‘He means the old wars,’ the urchin replied for them. ‘He don’t like these modern wars, apart from the aeroplanes. We hates them Prussians. We’re soldiers of the Elphberg king.’
Leo smiled and solemnly declared. ‘I thank you in the king’s name.’
The three boys stared at him then with surprising courtesy, as one, they bowed low. Then they were running off down the lane towards the village, laughing and chattering.
Martin watched them run off. ‘An unusual encounter, Leo. Not the sort of boys we met at Medwardine.’
‘What? You mean they’re not posh, but working class?’
‘No. More that they seemed entirely unconstrained and free in their expression. But they’re country kids, who live for themselves amongst the fields and woods. I’m almost envious.’
‘Noble savages?’ Leo smiled. ‘An invention of the 18th century, dear.’
‘Enough of that, we now have an appointment with the 13th century, remember.’ Leading the way, Martin rang the bell pull at the wicket of the gate. It took a while for the ring to be answered. An apologetic lay sister promptly ushered them to the abbess’s lodging.
Abbess Katherine rose from behind her desk and made a bow to Leo. ‘Your royal highness, dear cousin, welcome back to Medeln. You’ll always be welcome here. I believe you made your first communion at our altar, is that right?’
‘Yes, abbess. Alongside my cousin Pip Underwood when we were living at Templerstadt. I had not long been a Catholic. I was brought up a Calvinist in Thuringia, but once in Rothenia, I readily conformed.’
‘We welcome you as a son of Ruric and a patron of our house, royal highness. Its doors are always open to you. Sister Euphemia tells me that you are anxious to assist our work of grace with the Jewish population of Strelzen. We are so grateful. I will have tea brought in, and perhaps we can get down to how this is to be organised. You appreciate it must be done soon.’
***
Following a long consultation with the abbess, Martin and Leo went down into the church to hear the office of compline. They remained in their seats at the head of the nave as the nuns filed out. They wandered into the choir aisles to revisit the scene of their dramatic confrontation with Aleister Crowley and his associates some ten years before. The shrine of St Fenice reared above them, six tall candles burning around it.
Leo pondered the scene. ‘Y’know Marty, I have a feeling that this place has more mysteries yet to be discovered. There is a … a weight to the air here, it can’t just be me who feels it.’
Martin smiled. ‘It might be incense, I suppose, but I give a lot of credence to your feelings, my prince. However if there’s more to be found it must be done by our material senses. Let’s wander these aisles. I never did do an architectural survey of this place. Our personal survival was more on my mind last time we were here.’
They paced the ambulatory and the north choir aisle. ‘Here’s something odd,’ Martin observed. ‘Three blocked doorways opening north. I think they are doorways. The lintels aren’t tall enough to have been part of an arcade. But I can’t imagine what they opened into. We need to check the external wall for further clues.’
‘We might ask the abbess,’ Leo responded. ‘She seems to know the history of her house.’
Martin sniffed. ‘Maybe. But there’s a crypt below us. We could see what its plan indicates. The stairs down into it are by here and … yes … the gate’s unlocked.’
At the foot of the curving, narrow stone stair they found a capacious crypt set on tall cylindical pillars. It was well enough lit by shafts and high-set lancets.
Martin indicated a blank wall blocking the crypt below the high altar. ‘Beyond that will be the relics of the church and the remains of St Fenice too, I imagine. And if you’re right, it recently also sheltered the Crown of Tassilo.’ He pondered the space before adding. ‘There are a series of chapels under the north choir aisle. Chantries I think. Let’s have a closer look.’
The chantry altars were well-fitted spaces. The oldest and best-furnished chapel commemorated a family called Wollherz; its founder, the Ritter Karl Wollherz, buried under a ledger stone set where the celebrant would stand. ‘Eighteenth-century,’ Martin observed. ‘Possibly a military family. There’s another member buried here by the wall, Colonel the Baron Sebastian Wollherz, who died after the Napoleonic Wars. And right next to him … good heavens! An English gentleman, a Mr Frederick Winslow, Bibliothecarius Regis Henrici Secundi.’
‘Librarian of King Henry II,’ translated Leo. ‘Have you ever heard of him?’
Martin sniggered. ‘Because he’s English? Oddly, I believe I have. He published what I think was the earliest travelogue of Ruritania in my native language, or any other language for that matter. I consulted it when we were researching sacred sites. The first edition goes right back to the 1770s. It’s commendably comprehensive. I wonder why he was buried here at Medeln? I suppose he may have been Catholic, though from what I recall of the book he was a graduate of Cambridge which means he would have been an Anglican as a youth.’
‘Maybe he married a Wollherz girl? Should be possible to find out.’
‘That’s a job for you Leo. My research time is very limited these days.’
Exploration of the choir crypt turned up nothing else, so Martin led the way back upstairs and out of the north transept to the north side churchyard. He and Leo stood and stared at the looming Romanesque choir. Finally Martin said, ‘There were structures once built up against the choir aise, three of them, hence the three doors opening north. What on earth might they have been? You’re Catholic, you tell me. I’ve never seen anything like them.’
‘We’ll have to ask the abbess. Do you think it’s important, Marty?’
Martin chuckled. ‘Only to my professional pride. I hate architectural mysteries, especially ecclesiastical ones. Come on. We’re expected by the abbess for supper.’
Posted 11 December 2024