at what he had stumbled over. It was the carcass of a dead Weimaraner. He saw the body of the other dog, closer to the clearing. He walked across to it, unconsciously silencing his footsteps. He didn’t need to know what the danger was to feel it. Hannah was still staring down at the first dog, aware of the unidentified threat in the darkness too. Stefan crouched down. There was a pool of vomit by the second dog’s mouth and there were several pieces of undigested meat.
‘They’ve been poisoned,’ he whispered.
‘He just went out to feed them. How could — ’
Stefan put his finger to her lips. She didn’t understand, but suddenly he did. He stood perfectly still. His hand moved down to hold her arm. They waited. The silence seemed as deep as it had moments earlier when they were kissing. There was the sound of an owl some way off. Then another one, much closer, more urgent, and the noise of wings and branches as it took off, unseen, disturbed and irritated, into the night sky.
‘We’ve got to tell them!’ She hissed the words. She knew what he was listening for now. He shook his head. He sensed it might already be too late. There was a sound, a short snap; dead wood under a foot. Then something that could have been feet moving through leaves. He crept forward slowly, closer to the clearing where the lodge stood. There was movement. Out from the trees, into the moonlight, stepped three men in the brown uniform of the SA. Stefan and Hannah saw Karl emerge from the lodge, sucking on his pipe. He walked straight towards the three men. He carried on past them into the woods, as if he didn’t see them. More stormtroopers were coming out from the dark trees now. They seemed less worried about the noise as they started to fan out around the front of the lodge. Two of them were holding guns.
Hannah took a pistol from her pocket.
Stefan was surprised. He didn’t know she was armed.
He shook his head, pushing the gun back into her coat. ‘Too many!’
She hesitated. Her instincts were to help the two men in the lodge.
‘Walk very slowly. As quietly as you can.’
For a moment she just stared, still looking towards the lodge. He pulled her away from the edge of the clearing, further into the trees. There was a shout, then a gunshot. More shouts. More gunshots from the direction of the lodge. A scream. Hannah stopped, looking back, too shocked to move.
‘Keep going!’
As they walked, they heard more shots. Then the bullets stopped.
There was laughter now, outside the lodge. The light from several torches was sweeping around the clearing, into the forest. Stefan and Hannah were still not far away. They had to go carefully. They couldn’t make a noise. An order barked out. ‘Shut the fuck up, you bastards!’ The stormtroopers were heading into the trees. The light of the torches went before them. ‘There’s two more somewhere!’ The moon disappeared behind a cloud. Then Hannah tripped. The cry was barely anything; she stifled it in her throat. But it was still a sound. The torches swept round towards them. As she scrambled up, Stefan dragged her forward. It was too late for silence.
Now they were just running. The moon appeared and disappeared through cloud, giving enough light to see for a few seconds before it was gone, and they were plunging blindly into the undergrowth again, crashing through branches. They had no idea where they were going. They stumbled and tripped, pulling each other up as they ran. But each time the moon reappeared, and they saw a gap through the trees to aim for, their pursuers saw them, and the torches focused in. The Nazis had their own problems with the inconstant moon, blundering and falling as they spread out behind the fugitives. But they were enjoying the hunt. They followed with a mix of curses and laughter. Stefan and Hannah smashed their way through branches and bushes, over a stream, through a clearing, back into thick forest.
Somehow they kept together. There was more cloud and less moonlight suddenly, but their eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The torchlight was too far away to catch their backs now. They halted, gasping for breath. The trees were thicker and more regimented here. They were on the edge of a forestry plantation. A narrow path seemed to open up to the right. The stormtroopers were calling out to each other behind them. Then the voices were still. They were listening, listening for movement from their quarry.
Stefan and Hannah plunged into the narrow gully between the walls of trees. It was darker than ever, but the path meant they were making less noise. They ran faster. Suddenly the ground below their feet was no longer there. They were falling. It wasn’t far, but in the split second before they hit the forest floor below, it was all they could do not to cry out. Somehow they didn’t. The ground knocked the breath out of their bodies. For a minute they lay still. Stefan reached out and found Hannah, lying next to him. She sat up. They filled their lungs with air as quietly as they could. The stormtroopers were near again, still crashing noisily through the undergrowth, still cursing and laughing. Two voices were very close. ‘Listen you arsehole!’ ‘I am fucking listening!’ ‘Hans, where are you?’ ‘Here!’ There was another voice, further away. ‘Where’s here?’ ‘I can’t hear the fuckers, can you?’ ‘They’re somewhere. Flush the bastards out!’ There was more crashing about, more cursing. But it was quieter now. The SA men were going the wrong way.
They didn’t move. They waited in silence for what felt like a long time, till they could hear nothing, till they were sure their pursuers had gone.
‘You all right, Hannah?’
‘I think so.’
As they stood up the cloud broke. The moon shone through. They had fallen down a low bank on to a broader track. There were piles of felled timber. The road wound away in both directions. They heard a voice again. It seemed much further off, behind them. They had to go the other way.
They began to walk, saying nothing. They kept to one side of the track, close to the line of trees, ready at the slightest sound to disappear into them again. The moon was still coming and going, but the track was wide enough for them to see without light now. They had been walking for half an hour when the road divided. There was nothing to tell them which way to go; they had no idea where they were in the first place. There was nowhere they were trying to get, except away. Hannah shrugged. Stefan’s guess was as good as hers. They took the left fork, for no good reason, and walked on for another mile. Then they heard something. They stopped. It was nothing that made them freeze with fear. There were no voices, at least not straight away. It was a deeper, richer sound, not identifiable but already strange. They moved on cautiously towards the noise. It was as they turned a sharp bend in the track, and it sloped rapidly and steeply downhill, that the sound took on real form. It was music. It was the sound of an orchestra in the night. The thick ranks of evergreens stopped. There was a fence and a gate. Beyond it the track wound through pale silver birches. The music was growing louder and clearer. There was a dim haze of light in the distance.
‘What is it?
Stefan listened for a moment, and then he laughed.
‘I’d say Wagner.
‘Whyever not?’ Hannah was laughing too. It was the release of fear.
He took her hand again. Now they could hear voices, singing. The lights were brighter, just a few at first, where the track emerged on to a small, metalled road. The air was full of music, and as the road turned again and the trees thinned, they could see the raked seats of the Forest Theatre. Nothing felt safer than being where there were people, lots of people. They walked towards the theatre and stood watching, where the trees came right up to the auditorium. They could even see part of the stage, where Hans Sachs was singing to the citizens of Nuremberg about the glory of Germany.
Then Stefan looked behind him again. He could hear something other than the music. There were different lights now, headlights, coming out of the forest. Hannah felt his grip tighten on her hand. She followed his eyes. They recognised the vehicle as it pulled on to the road. It was the pickup that had brought Johannes and Karl to the hunting lodge. It stopped. Three SA men leapt down. As the truck drove on they recognised the bearded man who was driving it. The three stormtroopers were walking towards the auditorium. Ahead the truck had stopped again and more brown shirts jumped off. Hannah and Stefan could see the rifles they carried. They were trapped. If they stayed where they were they would be found; if they tried to run they would be seen. The only option was the auditorium itself. They looked at each other, taking in their clothes and their dishevelled hair. Hannah shrugged. They both knew that the only chance was the crowd of opera-goers. They brushed off what dirt they could and slipped quietly into the theatre. They sat at the end of the first row they could find with empty seats. The final words of Hans Sachs rang out. ‘Ehrt eure deutschen Meister.’ Pay homage to your German masters. ‘Zerging’ in Dunst das heil’ge rom’sche Reich, uns bliebe gleich die heil’ge deutsche Kunst!’ If the Holy Roman Empire turns to
