Nothing else is real. Nothing.'
Again, I was amused. I found his ideas worthless and foolish, entirely self-pitying. The logic of a weak man who arrogantly assumed himself stronger than he was. I had seen others like him. Their own failures became the failures of whole classes, governments, races or nations. The most picturesque were inclined to blame the entire universe for their own inability to be the heroes they imagined themselves to be. Self-pity translated into aggression is an unpredictable and unworthy force.
'Your self-esteem seems to rise in direct proportion to the decline of your self-respect,' I said.
As if from habit, he swung on me, raising his gloved fist. Then my eyes locked with his and he dropped his arm, turning away. 'Oh, cousin, you understand so little of mankind's capacity for cruelty,' he hissed. 'I trust you'll have no further experience of it. Just tell me where the sword and cup are hidden.'
'I know nothing of a cup and sword,' I said. 'Or its companion blade.' That was the closest I came to lying. I wanted to go no further than that. My own sense of honor demanded I stop.
Gaynor sighed, tapping his foot on the old boards. 'Where could you have hidden it? We found its case. No doubt where you left it for us. In that cellar. The first place we searched. I guessed you'd be naive enough to bury your treasures as deep as you could. A few taps on the wall and we found the cavity. But we had underestimated you. What did you do with that sword, cousin?'
I almost laughed aloud. Had someone else stolen Ravenbrand? Someone who held it in no particular value? No wonder the house was in such a condition.
Gaynor was like a wolf. His eyes continued to search the walls and crannies. He paced nervously as he talked.
'We know the sword's in the house. You didn't take it away. You didn't give it to your visitors. So where did you put it, cousin?'
'The last I saw Ravenbrand was in that case.'
He was disgusted. 'How can someone so idealistic be such athoroughgoing liar. Who else could have taken the sword from the case, cousin? We interrogated all the servants. Even old Reiter didn't confess until his confession was clearly meaningless. Which left you, cousin. Not up the chimneys. Not under the floorboards. Not in a secret panel or a cupboard. We know how to search these old places. Not in the attics or the eaves or the beams or the walls, as far as we can discover. We know your father lost the cup. We got that out of Reiter. He heard one name, 'Miggea.' Do you know that name? No? Would you like to see Reiter, by the way? It might take you a while to spot something about him that you recognize.'
Having nothing to gain from controlling my anger, I had the satisfaction of striking him one good blow on the ear, like a bad schoolboy.
'Be quiet, Gaynor. You sound as banal as a villain from a melodrama. Whatever you did to Reiter or do to me, I'm sure it's the foulest thing your fouler brain could invent.'
'Flattering me at this late stage is a little pointless.' He grumbled to himself as, rubbing his ear, he marched about the ruins of my study. He had become used to brutish power. He acted like a frustrated ape. He was trying to recover himself, but hardly knew how anymore.
At last he regained some poise. 'There are a couple of beds upstairs which are still all right. We'll sleep there. I'll let you consider your problem overnight. And then I'll cheerfully give you up to the mercies of Dachau.'
And so, in the bedroom where my mother had given birth to me and where she had eventually died, I slept, handcuffed to the bedpost with my worst enemy in the other bed. My dreams were all of pale landscapes over which ran the white hare who led me to a tall man, standing alone in a glade. A man who was my double. Whose crimson eyes stared into my crimson eyes and who murmured urgent words I could not hear. And I knew a terror deeper than anything I had so far experienced. For a moment I thought I saw the sword. And I awoke screaming.
Much to Gaynor's satisfaction.
'So you've come to your senses,' he said. He sat up in a bed covered with feminine linen. An incongruous sight. He jumped to the floor in his silk underwear and rang a bell. A few moments later, Gaynor's driver arrived with his uniform almost perfectly pressed. I was uncuffed and my own clothes were handed to me in a pillowcase. I did my best to look as smart as possible while Gaynor waited impatiently for his turn in the only surviving bathroom.
The driver served us bread and cheese on plates he had evidently cleaned himself. I saw rat droppings on the floor and recalled what I had to look forward to. Dachau. I ate the food. It might be my last.
'Is the sword somewhere in the grounds?' asked Gaynor. His manner had changed, had become eager.
I finished my cheese and smiled at him cheerfully. 'I have no idea where the sword is,' I said. I was lighthearted because I had no need to lie. 'It appears to have vanished on its own volition. Perhaps it followed the cup.'
My cousin was snarling as he stood up. His hand fell on the bolstered pistol at his belt, at which I laughed more heartily. 'What a charlatan you have become, Gaynor. Clearly you should be acting in films. Herr Pabst would snap you up if he could see you now. How can you know if I'm telling you the truth or not?'
'My orders are not to offer you any kind of public martyrdom.' His voice was so low, so furious, that I could hardly hear it. 'To make sure that you died quietly and well away from the public eye. It's the only thing, cousin, that makes me hold back from testing your grip on the truth myself. So you'll be returned to the pleasures of Sachsenburg and from there you'll be sent on to a real camp, where they know how to deal with vermin of your kind.'
Then he kicked me deliberately in the groin and slapped my face.
I was still handcuffed.
Gaynor's driver led me from my house and back into the car.
This time Gaynor sat me in front with the driver while he lounged, smoking and scowling, in the back. As far as I know, he never looked at me directly again.
His masters were no doubt beginning to think they had overestimated him. As he had me. I guessed that the sword had been saved by Herr El, 'Diana' and the White Rose Society and would be used by them against Hitler. My own death, my own silence, would not be wasted.
I made the best use I could of the journey and slept a little, ate all that was available, dozed again, so that we had driven back through the gates and were in the great black shadow of Sachsenburg Castle before I realized it.
Fritzi and Franzi were waiting for me. They came forward almost eagerly as I stepped from the car.
They were clearly pleased to see me home.
They had clubbed me to the ground, in fact, and were in the process of beating my skinny body black and blue before Gaynor's car had gone roaring back into the night. I heard a voice from a window above and then I was being dragged, almost insensibly, back to my cell where Hellander and Feldmann attempted to deal with the worst of my bruises as I lay in agony on a bunk, convinced that more than one bone had been broken.
The next morning they didn't come for me. They came for Feldmann. They understood how to test me. I was by no means sure I would not fail.
When Feldmann returned he no longer had any teeth. His mouth was a weeping red wound and one of his eyes seemed permanently closed.
'For God's sake.' He spoke indistinctly, every movement of his face painful. 'Don't tell them where that sword is.'
'Believe me,' I told him, 'I don't know where it is. But I wish with all my soul that I held it in my hands at this moment.'
Small comfort to Feldmann. They took him again in the morning, while he screamed at them for the cowards they were, and they brought him back in the afternoon. Ribs were broken. Several fingers. A foot. He was breathing with difficulty, as if something pressed on his lungs.
He told me not to give up. That they were not defeating us. They were not dividing us.
Both Hellander and I were weeping as we did our best to ease his pain. But they took him again for a third day. And that night, with nothing left of him that had not been tortured, inside and out, he died in our arms. When I looked into Hellander's eyes 1 saw that he was terrified. We knew exactly what they were doing. He guessed that
