Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters [78]
So much for John. He was never around when you needed him.
The cat followed me down the garden path and along the alley. She stayed close at my heels while I canvassed the shops for wreaths. When I opened the car door, she flowed in and sat down in the passenger seat.
I have driven with cats before, or tried to; most of them like to get into cars, but they do not like to ride in cars. I reached across and rolled down the window on the passenger side, expecting Clara would hop out as soon as I started the engine. She didn’t budge, even when I backed out of the parking space and turned into the street leading to the highway.
The clouds darkened and sagged lower. The cat started to purr.
Well, I had wanted company. Clara wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but she was better than nothing. I hoped.
The main road into and out of Bad Steinbach wasn’t a four-lane superhighway; but it looked like an autobahn compared to the narrow lane into which Müller’s directions led me. It switched back and forth across the slopes of the Hexenhut, winding steadily upward between tall trees whose shadows turned the cloudy day to twilight dusk. I switched on my lights; the twisting of the road sent shadows darting, like sylvan monsters trying to elude the light. The cat kept purring. My skin started to crawl.
The old man had said, “You can’t miss it,” and he was right. Eventually I emerged from the trees onto a brief stretch of level ground—not the summit of the mountain, but a largish ledge, shaped like a half-moon and less than two acres in extent. The road skirted one side of it and then appeared to end, against the open sky. I cleverly deduced that there was a steep descent beyond.
I turned off the road and stopped the engine. In the silence the cat’s hoarse purring seemed uncannily loud.
Straight ahead the mountainside rose, forming a natural wall around the scattered graves. Tall trees marched up in stately parade; above and beyond, a wide swath of treeless white curved around the mountain’s flank and then swung away, out of sight—the ski slope from the summit of the Hexenhut. I had not realized it came so close to the church. I had never skied that stretch, actually, and even if I had, I would have had no reason to observe the church.
It wasn’t much. Perched uneasily on the edge of the drop, where the crumbled remains of a stone wall marked the far edge of the cemetery, it had neither age nor architectural distinction. Not even the usual onion dome, only a stubby broken tower. The windows were boarded up and snow had drifted against the walls.
I opened the car door. The silence was deafening. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see the ski lift or the ski lodge atop the mountain. It seemed impossible that less than a mile away there were people laughing and talking and drinking beer.
The place was like a black-and-white photograph; there was no color anywhere, only shades of gray. Nothing moved except the scudding clouds and the tree branches swaying gently in the wind.
Then I saw that I was not the only one to remember the dead at the season of the Redeemer’s birth. A few graves—a pitiful few—were blanketed and trimmed with boughs. The brave red bows and bright berries were like a snatch of song in a charnel house—or whistling in the dark?
I realized there were tears on my cheeks. Sheer terror, perhaps? I wiped them away with gloved hands, took a firmer grip on my wreaths, and set out across the snow.
The atmosphere was so thick I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the cat unerringly select the grave of her master and fling herself down on the mounded earth like the dog in that morose old Scottish story. (Greyfriars Bobby was the name, I think.) Of course, she did nothing of the sort. While I searched for Hoffman’s grave, she went wandering off in search of prey. But all the little mice and moles were tucked snug in their winter beds; when I finally reached my goal, Clara came to stand beside me.
It