The Skin Map be-1 Page 7

  “Be that as it may, we dare not rush headlong into a rescue,” replied Sir Henry. “Alea iacta est.”

  “Sir?” wondered Kit.

  “The die has been cast.”

  “No kidding,” said Kit.

  PART TWO

  The Macau Tattau

  CHAPTER 7

  In Which Wilhelmina Lands on Her Feet

  Stinging rain and a savage blast of wind left Wilhelmina standing in a muddy puddle gasping for breath. Wet to the skin, she smeared the water from her eyes with the back of her hand and looked around-instantly closing her eyes again: an instinctive reaction, the rational mind’s desperate attempt to maintain coherence in the face of a displacement so severe as to shatter reality to smithereens.

  London had vanished.

  In place of the lively, thrusting metropolitan conurbation was an empty rural wilderness of damp brown fields under low autumnal skies. In that briefest of glimpses, she had seen enough to know that whatever had happened to her threatened not only her perception of herself in the world, but sanity itself. In the grip of such a devastating shock, she did what anyone would do: she opened her mouth and screamed.

  She put her head back and wailed, opening her soul to the sky, broadcasting her terror to the four winds. She screamed and kept on screaming until black spots danced before her eyes, and then she screamed again-loud, ragged, ugly bursts that rent the air and made her red in the face. When she could scream no more, she clenched her fists and stamped her feet, her boots splashing up mud from the trackway until, forces spent at last, she crumpled, subsiding into whimpers and moans, shedding tears for her fractured world.

  Some part of her mind maintained a stubborn detachment, refusing to yield to the madness. Eventually, this practical awareness asserted itself, saying in effect: Get a grip, girl. You’ve had a nasty shock. Okay. So, what are you going to do about it? Sit all day in the mud and throw a tantrum like a two-year-old? It’s cold out here; you’ll freeze to death. Drag your wits together, and take charge!

  Shaking water from her hands, she got to her knees and, placing a palm against her soggy bottom, looked around. Her quick survey confirmed that she was on a simple one-track lane in the midst of a bleak countryside of tended fields, and that she was very much alone. “Kit?” she called, but heard only the lonely call of a low-flying crow.

  He’s toast, she thought, rising unsteadily to her feet. I’ll murder him in tiny little pieces. “Kit!” she shouted-and then it hit her: a rising wave of nausea that left her heaving in the middle of the trackway. She vomited once, then again, and felt better for it. Wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket, she made her way toward a field marker she could see a few hundred yards along.

  As she walked, she told herself that something very weird had happened and that whatever the explanation, it was all her loser boyfriend’s fault. The thought did not comfort her as much as she might have hoped, nor did imagining what she would do to him when she caught up with him again. The enormous strangeness of her undreamed-of situation at once dwarfed and engulfed all other concerns.

  People did not go jumping from one place to another with nothing in between. It simply did not happen. She was sure Kit had been up to something, but she had never-not even for a nanosecond-imagined that he might have been telling some loopy version of the truth. And yet, here she was in the middle of nowhere-plucked off the teeming streets of overpopulated London and dropped in a lonely country lane-more or less as Kit had said. So this must be Cornwall. Or Devon.

  She reached the marker stone and paused. There was nothing more to be seen except gently undulating hills-some wooded, some in grazing land-and ploughed fields stretching in every direction. She had no choice but to continue on until she reached a farmhouse or village where she could beg the use of a phone to call a taxi. Wrapping her arms around her, she plodded on and in a little while saw one of those old-fashioned wooden signposts with fingers pointing various directions. Her heart leapt at the sight. She picked up her pace and hurried on, soon to learn that the sign marked a significant road paved with square, hand-set stones.

  She strode to the sign and paused to read it. The faded writing was in two languages, neither of which she recognized: Cornish, she decided, and something else. Gaelic, maybe? Or, were those two the same thing? In any case, the nearest place indicated on the greyed and weathered signpost was twelve something. Miles, probably. Or kilometres. She hoped it was kilometres.

  Determined to put the unsettling strangeness of her predicament behind her and find the nearest human habitation, she stepped onto the road and began walking with purpose. After perhaps two or three miles or whatever-they-were, she heard a sound behind her-a slow, steady creak-clack-creak-clack. Turning around, she saw a horse-drawn wagon trundling along the road towards her. Obviously, a farmer, Mina thought. She hurried to meet the wagon, intent on hitching a ride to wherever he was going.

  As the vehicle drew nearer, she realised that it was not, as she had first imagined, a simple field conveyance, but a much more substantial vehicle: a large, high-sided affair with a cloth top drawn over curved hoops to form a round tentlike covering. The wagon was pulled by not one but two rangy, long-eared mules, and sitting on the driver’s bench was a very plump man in a baggy cloth hat. She stopped and allowed the vehicle to meet her, whereupon it slowed and rolled to a halt.

  “Hiya!” she called, putting on a chirpy voice in the fledgling hope that her damp and bedraggled appearance might be overlooked.

  “Guten Tag,” came the reply, which sent Wilhelmina instantly back to her childhood and her German grandmother’s kitchen.

  The unexpected oddity of encountering a Deutschsprachigen on the road only served to deepen her already fathomless confusion. Bereft of speech, she could only stare at the man.

  Thinking, perhaps, that she had not understood, the stranger smiled and repeated his greeting.

  “Guten Tag,” Mina replied. Grasping for her long-disused German, she said, “Ich freue mich, Sie kennen zu lernen.” The words felt lumpy and wooden in her mouth, and her tongue resisted making them. “Sprechen Sie Englisch?”

  “Es tut mir Leid, Fraulein. Nein,” answered the man. He eyed her curiously, taking in her odd clothes and short hair, then squirmed in his seat and searched both ways down the road. “Sind Sie alleine hier?”

  It took her a moment, but the words came winging back to her as if from a very great distance. He’s asking if I am alone out here, she thought. “Ja,” she answered. “Alleine.”

  The fat man nodded, then spouted a longish sentence that again sent Wilhelmina right back to the German she had learned as a child-the long-outdated language of her grandmother, who had learned it from her immigrant grandmother, and much different from the Hochdeutsch Mina had studied in school. Nevertheless, she worked it out that he was offering her a ride to the next town. She accepted on the spot. The traveller put down the reins and stood, leaned over, and indicated the iron step ring projecting from the base of the wagon bed behind the front wheel, then reached down his hand. She placed a muddy boot on the step and accepted the offered hand, and was pulled effortlessly up and onto the wooden seat. As soon as she had settled on the bench, the man picked up the reins and gave them a snap. “Hu! ” he called; the wagon gave a jolt, the wheels creaked, and the mules resumed their languid clip-clop pace.

  They proceeded in silence, rocking over the uneven road. Now and then, she stole a glance at the driver of the wagon. Her companion was a well-upholstered man of indeterminate age, with a mild, pleasant demeanour. His clothes were clean and tidy, but so very basic as to be nondescript-consisting of a plain wool jacket of dark green over a rough but clean linen shirt and spacious breeches of heavy dark hopsacking. His shoes were sturdy ankle-high boots, well crafted, but scuffed and worn and badly in need of a shine. The plump fellow presented an altogether unremarkable appearance-save for his face: smooth, pink as a baby’s, round, even-featured, with pale blue eyes beneath pale eyebrows, and ample
cheeks that glowed in the brisk autumn breeze beneath the fine haze of a thin, stubbly blond beard.

  It was that sweet-natured face that made him, she decided, for the countenance with which he faced the world wore an expression of benign cheerfulness-as if all that met his gaze amused and delighted, as if the world and everything in it existed only for his pleasure. He seemed to exude goodwill.

  Finally, Wilhelmina cleared her throat and said, “Ich spreche ein biss-chen Deutsch, ja?”

  The man looked at her and smiled. “Sehr gut, Fraulein.”

  “Thank you for stopping for me,” she said. “Ich bin Wilhelmina.” My name is Wilhelmina.

  “A good name,” replied the man, his own accent broad but light. “I, too, have a name,” he announced proudly. “I am Englebert Stifflebeam.” Lifting a plump hand, he raised his shapeless hat and made a comical little bow from the waist.

  The old-fashioned gesture touched her strangely and made her smile. “I am happy to meet you, Herr Stifflebeam.”

  “Please! Please, Herr Stifflebeam is my father. I am simply Etzel.”

  “Etzel it is.”

  “You know,” he confided cheerfully, “I almost did not stop for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I thought you were a man.” He indicated her strange clothes and short hair. He smiled and shrugged. “But then I said to myself-think, Etzel, maybe this is how they are dressing in Bohemia. You have never been out of Munchen, so how do you know what they do in Bohemia?”

  Mina heard the word Bohemia and wondered at it. She had to think a moment to phrase the next question in German, then said, “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you come to be in Cornwall?”

  He gave her a strange look. “Bless me, Fraulein, but I have never been to England. This Cornwall is in England, oder?”

  “But we are in Cornwall now,” she informed him. “This is Cornwall.”

  He put back his head and laughed; it was a full and happy sound. “Young people must have their jokes, I suppose. No, we are not in England, Fraulein. We are in Bohemia as you surely must know,” he told her, then added by way of explanation: “We are on the road that leads to Prague.”

  “Prague?”

  Englebert regarded her with a look of pitying concern. “Ja, I think so.” He nodded slowly. “At least, this is what the signs tell me.” He examined her again for a moment, then said, “Could it be that you are lost, Fraulein?”

  “Jawohl,” she sighed, slumping back in her seat. “Most definitely, lost.” The desperate strangeness of her plight came crashing in upon her with renewed vengeance. First London had disappeared, and now Cornwall. What next? Tears of fear and frustration welled up in her large dark eyes. She thought, What in God’s name is happening to me?

  “There, there, Schnuckel. Not to worry,” said her podgy companion as if reading her mind. “Etzel will take good care of you. There is nothing to fear.” He reached behind the seat back and produced a heavy woollen blanket, which he passed to her. “Here, your clothes are wet and it is getting cold. Wrap yourself in this. You will feel better, ja?”

  Accepting the blanket, she brushed at the tears with the heels of her hands. Schnuckel-it was what her grandmother had always called her, the same grandmother, in fact, whose German she spoke and whose name she bore. “Vielen Dank.” She sniffed, gathering the travel robe around her. As the warmth began to seep into her, she did feel a little better for his reassurance. Keep it together, girl, she told herself. You’ve got to keep a clear head. Think!

  Her first thought was that without a doubt her current predicament was all her low rat of a boyfriend’s fault. All that talk about laying lines, or whatever it was, and crossing thresholds into other worlds and all that malarkey. It was so… she searched for a word. Impossible. So utterly impossible. No rational and sane person would have, could have believed him.

  Yet, here she was.

  But where was that?

  “Excuse me, Herr Stifflebeam-”

  “Etzel,” he corrected her with a smile.

  “Excuse me, Etzel,” she said, “but where are we exactly?”

  “Well, now,” he said, sucking his teeth as he considered, “we are a little way from the village of Hodyn in the province of Bohemia, which is part of the great empire of Austria.” He gave her a sideways glance. “Where did you think we might be, if I may ask?”

  “I hardly know,” she replied. At least she was growing more comfortable with the language as, like a rusty pump that only required priming, the words began to flow more easily. “I was travelling with someone who has gone missing. There was a storm, you see, and I seem to have become a little confused.”

  Englebert greeted this explanation with placid acceptance. “Travel can be very confusing, I find. And yes, the storm-it was very strong, ja?”

  “Jawohl!” she agreed. You have no idea.

  They continued along in silence. Mina gazed out at the drab countryside, all brown and grey beneath dark October skies-if it was still October; she assumed it was, but couldn’t be sure. The fields were small, and neatly kept behind their stone and wicker fences. Wooded hills clothed in the gold and brown of autumn rose to either side of the cobbled road and, here and there, she saw small slat-board houses, weathered grey, with shake shingles covered with moss, and whitewashed houses with low thatched roofs. It all looked so very old-timey…

  “What is the time?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, what year?”

  “It is the thirtieth year of Emperor Rudolf ’s reign,” answered Etzel promptly. He seemed to sense that the confusion surrounding his hitchhiking companion encompassed not only place but time as well. “It is the Year of Our Lord 1606.”

  “I see.” Wilhelmina’s brow lowered. It was bad enough when she had imagined she was in Cornwall. This was worse. But if anything was to be done about it, she failed to see what it might be. Don’t panic, she told herself. Something will come to you. Until then, you’ve got no choice but to roll with it.

  “Are you hungry?” asked Etzel.

  “A little,” Mina admitted.

  “I myself am always hungry,” he proclaimed, as if it was a singular achievement. “Behind the seat you will find a Tasche, ja?”

  Mina swivelled around in the seat, parted the cloth that covered the wagon and formed an entrance to the wagon box, and saw barrels and casks and large bags of what looked like flour, or maybe sugar. “Do you see it?”

  “Here it is!” She spied a lumpy hopsack bag and snatched it up.

  Placing it in her lap, she loosened the drawstring and folded down the sides to reveal half a loaf of heavy dark bread, a muslin-wrapped wedge of cheese, a scrag end of sausage, three small apples, and a crockery flask of something that appeared to be wine.

  “Take whatever you wish,” Etzel invited. He reached over and broke off a chunk of bread. “Like so, ja?”

  Mina followed his example, broke off some bread, and popped it into her mouth. It was chewy and flavoured with caraway-just like her mother and grandmother used to make. “All those barrels and bags in the back,” she said, speaking around a second mouthful. “Are you a travelling salesman?”

  “Nein, Fraulein,” he replied, helping himself to an apple. “Try some cheese,” he urged. “To tell the truth, I have never before travelled outside Bavaria.”

  “You are Bavarian?”

  “Ja, I am from Rosenheim. It is a small town not far from Munchen. You will not have heard of it.” He raised the apple to his lips, nipping it neatly in half in a single bite. “Do you like the bread?”

  “Yes, very-it is delicious,” she replied.

  “I made it,” Etzel confessed, a touch of shyness shading his tone. “I am a baker.”

  “Really?” wondered Wilhelmina. “What a coincidence-I am a baker too.”

  Etzel turned on his seat and regarded her, his blue eyes wide with surprise above his chubby pink cheeks. “There is no such thing as coincidence, Fraulein. I do not believe so. This,” he announced grandly, “i
s a most fortuitous meeting.”

  “Fortuitous?” She puzzled over the word. “Fate, you mean?”

  “Fate!” He said it as if the word itself was sour. His round cheerful face scrunched up in thought. “It is…” He paused, then declared with a shout of triumph, “Providence! Ja, it is Providence that has brought us together. You see, I am a baker who is in need of a helper.” He placed a hand on his chest. “And you are a baker in need of a friend, I think-and perhaps more, ja?”

  It was, Mina had to admit, true.

  He then revealed the reason for his trip to Prague. “Times are hard in Bavaria just now-all over Germany, too, I think. Very difficult. In Rosenheim I am a baker with my father and brother, but there is not enough business to support all of us anymore. My brother, Albrecht, has a family, ja, and what little trade we have, he needs it more than I do. I am second-born,” he said sadly, “and I have no wife, no children.” He paused, nodding to himself as if confirming that this was, in fact, the case. “Last month we sat down together the three of us and after many beers we made a plan. So! They are sending me to Prague to see if I can start a new business there.”

  “Well, I hope it works out for you.”

  “Werks aus?” The meaning escaped him. “Arbeitet aus, klappen?”

  “Ah, gelang-succeeds, I mean.”

  He nodded. “Do you know what they are saying?”

  “No,” Mina admitted, liking his gentle manner. “What are they saying?”

  “They are saying that in Prague just now, the streets are paved with gold.” He laughed. “I believe no such thing, of course. It is just a way of saying that things are better there.” He offered an amiable shrug. “I don’t say so myself. I only know things cannot be worse than they are in Rosenheim.” He nodded. “Things must be better there.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.