Krabat Read online

  He turned, without a word of explanation, and they had to make their way back to the wood by the same path. Then they turned right, along a footpath that led them past the village of Schwarzkollm and joined a road on the other side of it, leading to the outskirts of the wood opposite.

  ‘It’s not far,’ said Tonda.

  By now the moon had risen, and was giving them light. They followed the road to the next bend, where a wooden cross as tall as a man stood in the shadow of the pines. It was plain and very weather-beaten, and it bore no inscription.

  ‘This is Baumel’s End,’ said Tonda. ‘Many years ago a man called Baumel lost his life here, while he was cutting wood, they say, though no one knows now exactly how it happened.’

  ‘What about us?’ asked Krabat. ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘We’re here because the Master says so,’ said Tonda. ‘All twelve of us have to spend the night before Easter out of doors, in couples, each couple at a spot where someone met with a violent death.’

  ‘And what do we do now?’ asked Krabat.

  ‘We light a fire,’ said Tonda. ‘Then we keep watch under this cross until dawn, and at the break of day we must mark each other with the sign.’

  They kept the fire low purposely, so as not to arouse any attention over in Schwarzkollm. Each wrapped in his blanket, they sat and kept watch under the wooden cross. Now and then Tonda asked the boy if he was cold, or told him to put a few of the dry branches they had picked up in the wood on the fire. As time went by, he was increasingly silent. Krabat tried to get a conversation going himself.

  ‘Tonda.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is the Black School always like that? With the Master reading something from the Book and then saying, ’ “Let’s see how much you remember …”?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tonda.

  ‘I don’t see how you can learn magic that way.’ ‘Well, you can,’ said Tonda.

  ‘Do you think I annoyed the Master because I wasn’t attending?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll do better in the future – I’ll make sure to notice everything! Do you think I’ll manage it?’ ‘Yes,’ said Tonda.

  He did not seem to want to talk to Krabat very much. He sat there upright, his back against the cross, gazing into the distance, past the village, to the moonlit moor, and after this conversation he said nothing else at all. When Krabat spoke his name softly, he did not reply; a dead man could not have been quieter or gazed more fixedly into space.

  As time went by, the boy began to feel there was something uncanny about the way Tonda was acting. He remembered hearing that some folk knew the art of ‘going out of themselves’, slipping out of the body like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, and leaving it behind, an empty shell, while their true selves went their own invisible way, on secret paths, to a secret goal. Had Tonda ‘gone out of himself’? Was it possible that while he sat here by the fire, he was really somewhere quite different?

  ‘I must keep awake,’ Krabat told himself.

  He propped himself first on his right elbow, then on his left; he made sure the fire kept burning steadily, he occupied himself breaking up the branches into handy lengths and arranging them in neat little piles. And so the hours went by. The stars passed over the sky, the shadows of the trees and houses moved away under the moon, slowly changing their shape.

  Quite suddenly, or so it seemed, Tonda came back to life. Leaning over to Krabat, he pointed to the countryside around them.

  ‘The bells – do you hear them?’

  The church bells had been silent since Maundy Thursday, now, as Easter came in, they began to ring again, all over the country. Their peals floated across the fields to Schwarzkollm from the nearby village churches, muffled, only a faint noise, like the humming of a swarm of bees – yet the moor, the village, the fields and the meadows were filled with the sound to the farthest rim of the hills.

  At almost the same moment as the distant bells rang out, a girl’s voice was raised in song in Schwarzkollm village. She was singing an old Easter hymn of rejoicing. Krabat knew the tune, he used to sing it in church himself as a child, but he felt as if he were hearing it for the first time.

  Christ is risen!

  Christ is risen!

  Hallelujah, hallelujah!

  Then a group of twelve or fifteen more girls joined in, singing the rest of the verse in chorus. The girl who led the choir began the next verse, and so they went on, first a solo, then all together, one hymn after another.

  Krabat had heard it all before; on the morning of Easter Day at home the girls used to go up and down the village street singing, from midnight until dawn. They walked close together, side by side, in groups of three or four, and one of them, he knew, would lead the singing, the one with the purest and sweetest voice of all. She walked in the front row and sang the solo part.

  The bells rang from afar, the girls sang, and Krabat, sitting by the fire under the wooden cross, held his breath. He listened and listened to the music coming from the village, as if spellbound.

  Tonda put a branch on the fire.

  ‘I loved a girl once,’ said he. ‘Vorshula was her name. She has been lying in the graveyard of Seidewinkel six months now; it was little luck I brought her. Krabat, remember that none of us at the mill brings a girl luck! I don’t know why that is, and I don’t want to alarm you, but Krabat, if ever you love a girl, beware of showing it! Take care the Master doesn’t find out, or Lyshko, who’s always carrying tales to him.’

  ‘Why – did the Master and Lyshko have anything to do with the death of the girl you loved?’ asked Krabat.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Tonda. ‘All I know is that Vorshula would be alive today if I had kept her name to myself, but I only found that out too late. But you, Krabat – you know now, and you know in time! If ever you love a girl, don’t tell her name in the mill! Let nothing in the world get it out of you! Tell no one, do you hear, no one! Not awake, nor in your sleep, or it will bring bad luck to both of you!’

  ‘Never fear!’ said Krabat. ‘I’ve no time for girls, and I can’t see myself changing my mind about that!’

  At daybreak the bells and the singing in the village fell silent. Tonda cut two splinters of wood from the cross with his knife. They put the splinters in the embers of their fire and charred the ends.

  ‘Do you know what a pentagram is?’ asked Tonda.

  ‘No,’ said Krabat.

  ‘Watch me, then.’

  With the tip of his finger Tonda drew a figure in the sand, a five-pointed star formed of five straight lines, each intersecting two others so that the whole figure could be drawn in a single movement.

  ‘This is the sign,’ said Tonda. ‘Now draw it yourself.’

  ‘It can’t be difficult,’ said the boy. ‘First you did this … then this … then this …’

  At his third attempt Krabat succeeded in drawing the pentagram in the sand correctly.

  ‘Good,’ said Tonda, putting one of the wooden splinters into his hand. ‘Now kneel by the fire, reach across the embers, and draw the sign on my forehead, and I’ll tell you what you have to say.’

  Krabat did as the head journeyman told him, and as they drew the pentagram on each other’s foreheads, he repeated the words slowly:

  I mark you, brother,

  with wood from the cross.

  I mark you

  with the sign of

  the Secret Brotherhood.

  Then they gave each other the Easter kiss on the left cheek, raked sand over their fire, scattered the remaining firewood, and set off for home.

  Tonda took the path through the fields again, skirting around the village. He was making for the wood, which was shrouded in morning mist, when they saw the outlines of shadowy figures appear before them in the half-light of dawn. The village girls were coming toward them, silently, in a long file, dark shawls around their heads and shoulders, and each with an earthen pitcher in her hand.

  ‘Come!’ said To
nda softly to Krabat. ‘They’ve been to draw the Easter water. We don’t want to frighten them.’

  They drew back into the shadow of the nearest hedge and let the girls go by.

  The Easter water, as Krabat knew, must be drawn from a spring before sunrise on Easter morning. It must be drawn in silence, and in silence it must be carried home, and if you washed in it you would have beauty and good luck for a whole year – or so the girls used to say.

  Moreover, if you carried the Easter water home to the village without ever looking around, you might meet your future lover – so the girls said, but who knew what to think of that?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Remember I Am the Master

  The Master had fixed a yoke outside the open door of the house, both ends were nailed to the door frame at shoulder height. As the men came back they had to pass under it, one by one, saying, ‘I bow beneath the yoke of the Secret Brotherhood.’

  The Master was waiting for them in the hall, and he gave each man a blow on the right cheek, with the words, ‘Remember you are my pupil!’ Then he struck them on the left cheek, adding, ‘Remember I am the Master!’ After that the men had to bow low to the miller three times, promising, ‘I will obey you in all things, Master, now and forever.’

  Tonda and Krabat met with the same reception. The boy did not yet realize that he was now the Master’s property, delivered up to him utterly, body and soul, for life or death. He joined the other men, who were standing at the end of the passage, as if they were waiting for their breakfast. They all had the sign of the pentagram drawn on their foreheads, like Tonda and Krabat.

  Petar and Lyshko were not back yet, but they soon appeared at the door, too, and after they had bowed under the yoke, taken their blows on the cheeks and made their promises, the mill began to go around.

  ‘To work!’ cried the Master to his men. ‘Off with you!’

  At that the miller’s men threw off their coats. They ran to the grinding room, rolling up their sleeves as they went, dragged up sacks of grain and set to work, while the Master kept them hard at it, shouting and gesticulating impatiently.

  ‘And this is supposed to be Easter Sunday!’ thought Krabat. ‘Not a wink of sleep all night, no breakfast – and we have to work twice as hard as usual!’

  Even Tonda ran out of breath at last and began to sweat. They were all sweating freely that morning; the perspiration dripped from their foreheads and temples, ran down their necks, poured down their backs so that their shirts were sticking to them.

  ‘How much longer is this going on?’ Krabat wondered.

  Whenever he looked, he saw set, grim faces. They were all grunting and groaning, hot and damp with perspiration as they were. And the pentagrams on their foreheads were blurring, dissolving in their sweat, and gradually disappearing.

  Then something quite unexpected happened. Krabat, shouldering a sack of wheat, was struggling up the steps to the bin floor. It took the very last of his strength and every scrap of will power he had. He was just about to stumble and collapse under his burden – when suddenly all his troubles were over. The pain in his legs was gone, his backache had disappeared, and his breathing came easily.

  ‘Tonda!’ he cried. ‘Look at this!’

  He was up on the bin floor with one bound, then, tipping the sack off his shoulder, he grabbed it by both ends, and before emptying it into the hopper he brandished it in the air with shouts of triumph, as easily as if it were full of feathers instead of grain.

  It was as if the miller’s men had been transformed by magic. They stretched their arms, laughed, and slapped their thighs. Even the sour-faced Kito was no exception.

  Krabat was hurrying off to the granary to fetch the next sack, but the head journeyman cried, ‘Stop! That’ll do!’ They let the wheat run through the mill, and then Tonda stopped the machinery. ‘That’s it for today!’ said he.

  With a final creak and clatter the mill wheel ran down, and they knocked the flour out of the meal bins.

  ‘And now to make merry, brothers!’ shouted Stashko.

  All of a sudden there were big pitchers of wine, and Juro was bringing in dishes of Easter cakes, sweet and golden brown, fried in lard and filled with curds or plum jam.

  ‘Fall to, brothers! Eat them up, and don’t forget the wine!’

  They ate and drank and made merry, and later Andrush began to sing, loud and boisterously. They washed down their cakes with red wine, and then formed a circle, linked arms, and stamped their feet in time to the song.

  The miller, he sits

  At the millhouse door,

  Clackety, clickety,

  Clack!

  Spies as fine a young fellow,

  As ever you saw,

  Clackety, clickety,

  As ever you saw!

  Clackety, clickety,

  Clack!

  The miller’s men sang the ‘Clackety, clickety’ in chorus; then Hanzo started the next verse, and so they went on, singing in turn and dancing in a ring, first to the right, then to the left, into the middle and out again.

  Krabat’s turn came last of all, since he was only the apprentice. He shut his eyes and sang the last verse of the song.

  This fine young fellow,

  No fool was he,

  Clackety, clickety,

  Clack!

  He struck the miller,

  Down on his knee,

  Clackety, clickety,

  Down on his knee!

  Clackety, clickety,

  Clack!

  They stopped dancing and fell to drinking again. Kubo, who was usually so quiet, took the boy aside and patted him on the back.

  ‘You have a good voice, Krabat. You ought to be singing in a choir!’ said he.

  ‘Who, me?’ asked Krabat. It was only now Kubo mentioned it that he realized he could sing again – in a deeper voice than before, to be sure, but a voice that was firm and clear. The rasp in his throat that had been bothering him since the beginning of last winter was quite gone.

  On Easter Monday the miller’s men went back to work as usual. Everything was back to normal – except that Krabat no longer had to toil so hard. He could easily do whatever the Master told him now. It seemed that the days when he dropped on to his bed half dead with exhaustion every evening were gone forever.

  Krabat was heartily thankful for it, and he could guess how it had happened. When he and Tonda were next alone together, he asked his friend.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Tonda. ‘So long as we carry the sign of the pentagram on our foreheads we have to work like slaves – until the moment when the last of us has washed it away in the sweat of his brow. In return, our work will be easy all the year, as long as we do it between dawn and dusk.’

  ‘What about other times?’ asked Krabat. ‘After dark, I mean.’

  ‘Not then,’ said Tonda. ‘We have to manage as best we can after dark! But set your mind at rest, Krabat. For one thing, we don’t have to leave our beds to work so very often, and for another, well, it’s bearable when it happens!’

  They never mentioned the night before Easter again, or Tonda’s grief for the girl he loved; they did not even allude to it. Yet Krabat thought he knew where Tonda had been while he sat by the fire like a dead man, staring into the distance. And whenever Krabat thought of Vorshula and her story, the singer of Schwarzkollm, the girl who led the choir, came into his mind – or rather her voice as he had heard it floating across the fields from the village at midnight. This seemed strange to him; he would have liked to forget that voice, yet he found it was impossible.

  Once a week, on Fridays, the miller’s men assembled outside the Black Room after supper, turned themselves into ravens – Krabat soon learned the trick of it – and settled on their perch. Every Friday the Master read them a passage from the Book of Necromancy; he read it three times in all, and they had to repeat it after him, though the Master himself did not care what or how much of it they remembered.

  Krabat was eager to memorize all
the Master taught them: storm spells and charms to make hail, the casting of magic bullets and the way to use them, invisibility, the art of going out of one’s body, and many other things. While he was working by day, and before he fell asleep at night, he repeated the instructions and the words of the spells from the Book over and over again, so as to stamp them on his memory.

  For by now Krabat had realized one thing: a man who knew the Art of Arts had power over other men, and to have power – as much as the Master had, if not more – struck him as a fine thing to aim for. It was to achieve that aim that he was studying and studying and studying.

  One night in the second week after Easter the miller’s men were called from their beds. The Master was standing at the attic door with a light in his hand.

  ‘There’s work to be done!’ he cried. ‘The Goodman is coming – hurry up, make haste!’

  In the rush Krabat could not find his shoes, so he followed the others out of the mill barefoot. There was a new moon; the night was so dark that the miller’s men could not see an inch in front of them. In the crush someone wearing wooden clogs trod on Krabat’s toes.

  ‘Hey!’ cried the boy. ‘Watch out, you clumsy oaf!’

  A hand was put over his mouth. ‘Ssh!’ Tonda whispered.

  Then Krabat realized that not one of the miller’s men had spoken a word since the Master woke them. And they did not utter a sound all the rest of that night, nor did Krabat himself.

  He could guess what kind of work lay ahead, and soon enough the stranger with the flickering plume in his hat came rattling up in his cart. The men fell upon it, tore off the dark canvas cover, and began dragging sacks into the mill – to the Dead Stones at the far end of the grinding room.

  Everything happened just as it had four weeks ago, when Krabat watched the others through the gable window, only this time the Master swung himself up by the stranger’s side on the box. Today it was he who cracked the whip, right above their heads, so that the men ducked as they felt it whistle past.