“I ain’t quite clear about what you’re that upset about, really,” Wenzel said half an hour later after Harun had poured his heart out to the guard. Purely metaphorically speaking of course, he knew too much of anatomy to try and do it the hard way.

“If I get it right,” the little scruffy man continued, “you’ve got rid of all the suspects which I wouldn’t have liked to have committed the murder because they’re my pals and nice chaps all round. And you’re now on to some creep I don’t care tuppence about. A good day’s work, I’d have said.”

“But it is impossible for this man to have committed the murder,” Harun growled.

“So what?” came the guard’s cheerful response. “You were wrong before, weren’t you? Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’re again. And even if not, you could still try and nail it on him anyway.”

“I am not in the habit of applying carpenterial instruments on anybody, certainly not simply because it suits your fancy.”

“You can’t deny that it’s at least interesting to have a bit of a change. A week or two ago, you had four people, each of whom could have done the murder but none of whom had a reason. Now you’ve got one who couldn’t have done it but with plenty of reason to do it, if what you tell me of his activities is true. He had a reason – so that ought to help you in your reasoning, eh?”

“Spare me your simplistic word games, Wenzel.”

“Then how about some more difficult ones? You start.”

“Isn’t there any way he could have gotten out of the castle?”

“Nay.”

“Not through the embrasures?”

Wenzel looked at the rectangular opening in the wall beside him. It was about three inches wide. He turned his eyes on Harun. The look in them was enough.

“The gates?”

“Nay, Harun, on my oath.”

“Please, Wenzel. Adapt a somewhat more imaginative attitude. You possess a considerably more detailed knowledge of castles than I do. Is there not any other way?”

“Well…”

“Yes?!”

“If he could have somehow gotten through the locked doors on the roof…”

“Yes?”

“…then he could have tied a rope ladder to one of the crenels, could have climbed down past the guards on the outer wall, chatted to them for five minutes, asked them not to mention he had been there, gone down the rest of the way, murdered Lukas, climbed up again on the ladder the guards had been nice enough to leave hanging and gone to bed with the good feeling of a job well done.”

“Wenzel?”

“Aye, Harun?”

“I have often asked myself during the past weeks why anybody should murder. Why anybody should be tempted to end the life of a fellow human being by brute force.”

“And?”

“Now I know.”

They heard footsteps behind them. Slow, firm and yet humble footsteps.

“Sir Christian!” Harun hissed. “Quick! He must not find me! I am supposed to be with him in the Scriptorium.”

“Then why don’t you go?”

“I cannot! Where…?”

Wenzel shoved his friend into a small niche behind the portcullis, which was there to provide shelter for a guard on a rainy day. A moment later, the lord of Sevenport poked his head out of the door of the keep.

“Ah, Wenzel, it is you,” he called. “I am looking for Harun. Have you seen him by any chance?”

“Not recently, no, Milord,” Wenzel replied.

“A pity. I have such an interesting monograph on Genesis…”

Sir Christian retreated into the keep.

“He’s gone.”

“Thanks.”

Harun stepped out of his hiding place.

“What was all that about?” Wenzel wanted to know. “Why shouldn’t Sir Christian know where you are?”

“Because I have got to find the murderer, Wenzel. There are more important tasks than reading religious texts to a chronic illiterate, and finding a mortally dangerous fiend in human form is certainly one of them.”

“What’s the hurry? You weren’t in such a great rush to find the man before. You even had time to take a week-long trip to Danzig.”

“Yes. Ehm. Well…” Harun looked slightly uncomfortable. “Circumstances…have altered.”

Sometimes, Wenzel was disconcertingly sharp.

“You mean,” he said with a broad grin, “that earlier you were looking for a murderer outside the castle with its reassuringly solid gates, while now the murderer is probably sleeping under the same roof as you and ain’t likely to look kindly on any investigating? Why, he might even see his way to visiting a certain tower chamber one night, with a nice, big sword handy and…”

“No! There’s no logical reason at all why the steward should have the remotest conception of my activities. Even if he is the guilty person, which up until now seems absolutely impossible.”

“Well, then you have nothing to worry about.”

“Yes.”

“You are not in the slightest danger and can take all the time you want.”

“That is so.”

“Meaning that you can leave of your shurta-stuff till later and go to Sir Christian.”

“No!”

Wenzel allowed himself another grin. They seemed to have reached an increasingly enjoyable stage of the investigation.

“Wenzel, I have to go on with this. Until this is over, no one here can safely sleep in his bed.”

“I know I can’t. Tomorrow, I’m on night shift again.”

“Let me go up on the allure.”

“If I find out some day who’s responsible for dishing out these shifts, I’m going to get a good, hefty stick and…What did you say?”

“I mean the battlements.”

“I know what allure means, thanks so much! Why the hell do you want to go up there?”

“Perhaps Radulf found some way to get up unnoticed and over the wall, down from the crenels. I have to make sure.”

“Only guards are supposed to be up there. Do you have any idea what I’m in for if somebody catches you up there on my watch?”

“No.”

“Me neither, and I don’t want to find out.”

“Wenzel! I am looking for the murderer of your friend’s brother.”

The guard bit his lip.

“Blast you,” he blurted out finally. He turned to the narrow doorway through which the spiral staircase to the allure could be reached. Harun heard the promising jingle of keys. The guard turned again and thrust the door open.

“There! And don’t say I didn’t warn you: There’s nobody up there now, but if another guard comes and wants to go up there, I can’t prevent them. Understood?”

“Perfectly. Shukran.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Harun stepped on the staircase and with dignity slowly wandered up the steps, until he heard the door shut behind him and Wenzel could neither see nor hear him anymore. Then he jogged up the rest of the way as fast as his long robes would permit. No, there was indeed no logical reason to suppose Radulf knew of Harun’s activities. But perhaps…

He reached the top of the stairs and put the unpleasant ending this sentence might have out of his mind. Slowly he approached the crenels and peaked down on the village, hiding himself between the large stones. His heart leapt. It had been a wise decision to stay hidden. Down there, several peasants were standing in a group, in perfect view of the battlements. Also, groups of women, Harun was not exactly sure whether they were maids or washerwomen or a mixture of both, were frequently coming up to or down from the castle.

In this crouching – and, the scribe found, exceedingly tiring – position, he tried as best he could to examine the battlements for any signs of a man murderer having climbed over them a few weeks back. He saw a lot of moss, and, as he proceeded along the furrowed stone wall, he perceived a little worm who had made his home there in a hole stuffed with two autumn leaves. It was about half an inch wide. Harun calculated the probability of it having played any major role in the sinister proceedings of Lukas' death, and came to the conclusion that it could be deemed negligible.

The scribe turned his head this way and that. Ordinary battlements. Made of stone, and not looking very different from up here than from down in the yard. What had he expected? He did not know. But certainly something.

He retreated towards the steps, ducked away into the dark safety of the staircase, and straightened, sighing. Slowly, he went down the stairs, this time not because he feared Wenzel might be listening. What now? This excursion onto the battlements had not given him any new knowledge, apart perhaps from what a nethermost satanic depth of sore muscles one could get from crouching down too long.

No matter. He would continue. He had to continue. He had never thought about it up to this moment, but now that he did, he was getting surer and surer that the door of his tower room could not be locked from the inside…

*~*~*~*~*

Harun was tired and hungry. He had been running around the castle trying to avoid Sir Christian and looking for holes in the walls all day. He had done nothing but trying to find a way Radulf could have left the castle and committed the murder. In the end his efforts had been in vain. Worse than in vain, for Harun had to admit to himself that he had erred again. Radulf had to be innocent of any crime committed outside the castle on that fatal night. There had been and there still was no way out.

What a day! Not a single bite of food had gone past his lips. Because of his efforts, his normal routine had been upset as never before.

Now however, he felt the pressing urge to complete a daily routine which could not be avoided, or at least not without strenuous muscular exercises at one's rear end. Such he was not ready to perform in his current exhausted condition.

He turned and made for the castle lavatory. There he sat, brooding moodily, devoid of any sense of purpose. What was the sense of trying to continue and muddle in these things further? He obviously was not able of achieving anything. Five people he had suspected, and five people had been shown to be absolutely innocent. Radulf a murderer… laughable, really, when you thought about it. A quite nice man. And he had had wild imaginings of secret ways out of the castle…

A certain pressure in the region of his stomach suddenly disappeared. He sighed with relief. And then, from deep down, there he heard a splash.

And suddenly he knew.

*~*~*~*~*

Wenzel was woken out of his afternoon nap by a scribe hammering against his helmet.

“Open the gates! Wenzel! Open the gates, do you hear me? Open the gates!”

“W- what?”

“I know how he did it!”

“Which he of the five do you mean?”

“Radulf of course! You don’t seriously suppose one of the others had anything to do with it?”

Wenzel, with unusual tact for a man whose job was to hack other people to pieces with sharp bits of metal, refrained from making any comments.

“So you know it, do you? And how did he do it?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I thought you said…”

“Yesyesyes I know, but I don’t know yet in the sense of the word if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

“Will you just let me out? Please? I must corroborate a matter of paramount importance.”

“Why didn’t you say so right away?” the guard grumbled. “Of course if you have to cooperate something of thingy something, that’s something different.”

The side gate was opened and Harun hurried out. Luckily, just now, there was no one in the vicinity. Apart from not being very pleased to see the scribe, most people in the village would have been more than a little perplexed by what he now did. He scurried along the edge of the moat, bent forward, his short-sighted eyes glued to the ground, his arms outstretched so as not to loose what little balance he had left. Halfway along the eastern side of the moat he stopped, and bent further down.

What he looked at, though, was not all that interesting to look at, judged by most people’s standards. It was a round hole in the ground, such as would have been made by a pole driven into the damp ground.

“Of course,” he muttered to himself. “What other way could there be? Out there, and then pulled himself here and…”

He stopped and looked up at the castle.

“Yes.”

A minute later, Wenzel opened the side gate to frantic hammering.

“And?” he inquired. “Who was i…”

“Out of my way!” Harun said. “I must ascertain something.”

“I thought that’s what you just did!”

“Yes. Another something!”

With that, Harun strode up to the keep. He was so deeply immersed in his thoughts he did not notice the figure across the courtyard which had stopped in its tracks at his words, and now set about to follow him slowly.

The scribe’s steps led him up the tower staircase back to the lavatory. He could have thought of this earlier and saved himself an excessively exhausting march, he thought, as he struggled up the stairs, panting and, for the first time in years, sweating. Nevertheless, it had not been a fruitless expedition. The hole in the ground… how come nobody had noticed it? But then why should have anyone reason to notice it? After all, that was all that it was to anybody but him: a hole in the ground.

Holes… an hour ago he had searched in vain and found none. Now, they were sprouting up right and left. Holes in the ground, and holes in wood...

He opened the door to the windy little wooden cubicle – and stopped, looking at the round excision in the wooden boards. Was the hole wide enough? He should examine it. Definitely he should. If only it were another species of hole, one not as frequently in contact with the less aesthetic parts of human physique.

Ah, very well. Or rather not well, but what was to be done about it? He bent forward, careful not to touch any part of the object in question, his fingers tightly clamped on his long nose. The hole looked frighteningly large. Large enough for a man to pass through. The sheer fifty feet drop beneath the opening made Harun’s insides squirm. Even if the man that climbed through here was a murderer, he was definitely a very brave one.

The scribe straightened up again. Having just looked through the hole in the wooden seat, his next task seemed even more intimidating to him. He looked up to the old oak beams which supported the roof of the little room. Unfortunately, they were too high to reach from the ground. Harun took a deep breath and climbed onto the wooden seat.

‘Do not look down,’ he told himself. ‘What would you gain by looking down? The view is not particularly pleasant and the framing is best not mentioned at all. The object of your interest resides above your head.’

He looked up. The strongest of the oak beams was now right in front of his face. He could clearly see knotholes in the rough old wood – just as clearly as the few strands of hemp, caught on a splinter.

The door of the lavatory opened. Harun looked down – and froze.

He tried to smile.

“Oh…ehm…Ahlan, Sir. A…beautiful day, is it not?”

“Still working on your treatise, I perceive?” Radulf responded in a polite voice.

“Yes…. eh…no… to be honest, I have not been making much progress lately, it is very difficult, very difficult indeed, Sir…”

Harun climbed from his faecal rostrum and retreated to the wall.

“And how are you doing today, Sir, on this fine day, Sir?” he babbled while looking frantically right and left and for the first time really realizing the drawbacks of being in a small room with a big hole in the floor suspended fifty feet high in the air. Especially when there was a murderer in the room with you. “It is a very, very, very fine day, Sir, is it not, Sir?”

“It might yet become so,” Radulf agreed, stepping forward.

“I did not mean it like that!” Harun squeaked.

“Like what, scribe?”

“Like… like… nothing, of course you meant nothing, and I meant nothing, and you just came by accidentally. I’ll be gone, shall I?”

Radulf smiled sarcastically. “Really?”

He stepped towards the door and pushed it shut.

---------------------------------------------------

Poor Harun.... Will he get through this? ;)

Cheers

Robert