The Grave Robber's Apprentice Read online

  THE

  GRAVE ROBBER’S

  APPRENTICE

  ALLAN STRATTON

  Dedication

  For Mom,

  who took me to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival when I was a kid

  And for Daniel, Louise, and Christine

  my loyal first readers and friends

  Epigraph

  All the world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players.

  They have their exits and their entrances,

  And one man in his time plays many parts.

  —William Shakespeare, As You Like It

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  ACT I - The “Little” Countess

  Chapter 1 - The Boy in the Wooden Chest

  Chapter 2 - Growing Up Grave Robbing

  Chapter 3 - The “Little” Countess

  Chapter 4 - Prisoners

  Chapter 5 - The Palace

  Chapter 6 - Digging Up Yorick

  Chapter 7 - The Midnight Visitor

  Chapter 8 - A Deadly Proposal

  Chapter 9 - A Glimmer of Hope

  Chapter 10 - The Dangerous Mission

  Chapter 11 - In the Necromancer’s Lair

  Chapter 12 - Buried Alive

  Chapter 13 - The Dead Awaken

  Chapter 14 - The Initiation

  Chapter 15 - The Haunted Castle

  Chapter 16 - The Road to Adventure

  ACT II - The Wolf King

  Chapter 17 - Unpleasant News

  Chapter 18 - The Road North

  Chapter 19 - The Bounty Box

  Chapter 20 - The Hunt

  Chapter 21 - The Great Forest

  Chapter 22 - Things that Go Bump in the Night

  Chapter 23 - The Wolf King

  Chapter 24 - Warriors of the Imagination

  ACT III - Peter the Hermit

  Chapter 25 - The Frozen Tomb

  Chapter 26 - Resting With the Dead

  Chapter 27 - Peter the Hermit

  Chapter 28 - Tall Tales

  Chapter 29 - The Forbidden Chapel

  Chapter 30 - An Astonishing Discovery

  Chapter 31 - Attack

  ACT IV - The Circus of Dancing Bears

  Chapter 32 - The Pandolinis

  Chapter 33 - To the Palace

  Chapter 34 - The Secret Passageway

  Chapter 35 - The Three Prophecies

  Chapter 36 - The Pandolini Transformatorium

  Chapter 37 - A Night at the Circus

  Chapter 38 - Escape of the Bambini

  Chapter 39 - Into the Dungeon

  Chapter 40 - The Great Escape

  ACT V - Johannes, Prince of Waldland

  Chapter 41 - The Lunatic Asylum

  Chapter 42 - At the Clearing

  Chapter 43 - High Stakes

  Chapter 44 - Two Prophecies Fulfilled

  Chapter 45 - A Fight to the Death

  Chapter 46 - Just Deserts

  Chapter 47 - All’s Well That Ends Well

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ACT I

  The “Little” Countess

  Chapter 1

  The Boy in the Wooden Chest

  Years ago, in the Archduchy of Waldland, on a night when the wind was strong and the waves were high, a boy washed ashore in a small wooden chest. The chest took refuge in a nest of boulders at the foot of a cliff. It swayed there for hours as the surf crashed on either side, threatening to sweep it away to be gobbled by the deep.

  The boy in the chest was a babe, scarce a year old. He wore a white linen cap and nightshirt, and was bundled tight in a fine woolen blanket. The sound of the waves was a comfort to him after the screams he’d heard before the chest had been sealed. Now, as the surf threatened to destroy him, the infant dreamed he was rocking in his crib.

  Meanwhile, up the coast, a stumpy man of lumps and bumps stuck his shovel in the sand and cursed to heaven. It was the grave robber, Knobbe the Bent.

  Knobbe plied his trade in County Schwanenberg, in the archduchy’s eastern reaches. Tonight, the raging wind had promised a shipwreck—two or three, God willing—so Knobbe had scrambled down the steep cliff path to the beach, hoping to plunder the bodies of the drowned. For hours, he’d prowled the coast, checking the spots where the tide deposited its gifts. He’d found nothing. Not a single corpse. Not even a skeleton dislodged from the seabed, its bony hands still covered in rings.

  Knobbe cursed and scratched behind his ear, dislodging a beetle from his matted hair. He began the trek home to his cave, but at the foot of the cliff path he stopped. What was that sparkling in the moonlight? His heart danced up his throat: It was an oak chest, bobbing in a cluster of boulders, the sides inlaid with teak, the lid studded with jewels!

  The grave robber dragged the chest to higher ground and pried off the lock with his shovel. Inside, he saw a rich woolen blanket wrapped around some hidden prize. He unspooled the wrapping, hoping to find treasure—perhaps a carved ostrich egg or an ivory horn encrusted with gold. Instead, he came face-to-face with the baby.

  Knobbe screamed in shock and tossed the baby in the air. It landed on the sand and started to wail.

  “Shut your yap,” the grave robber hollered. “It’s me what should be crying.”

  He consoled himself with small mercies. The blanket would keep him warm; the jewels on the chest could be pawned; and the chest itself could be used to stash loot. The baby was another matter. Maybe it could fetch a reward?

  Moonlight rippled off the waves and the wet limestone cliffs, revealing a carved crest on the inside of the lid: An eagle’s head spewed lightning bolts above two unicorns dancing on a bed of wreaths. Zephyrs blew from the left. The sun shone from the right. A few Latin words scooped the bottom.

  Knobbe grunted. The crest was not from the Archduchy of Waldland. The boy was from far away. There would be no reward. Best to leave him on the sand where he lay, then. After all, what good was a baby?

  The grave robber made a knapsack with the blanket, put the chest inside, and swung it over his shoulder. “Farewell,” he said to the infant.

  The boy had stopped crying. He looked up at Knobbe with big solemn eyes.

  “Don’t play your baby tricks on me,” Knobbe warned. “Your sort are all alike. Sneaky little schemers, out to make a fellow weak.”

  The infant crawled toward him.

  “Don’t come crawling to me, neither. If you want to beg, beg to them what locked you in that box and tossed you into the sea.”

  The infant continued his advance.

  Knobbe retreated. “Stay back! I’ll take my shovel to you!”

  The infant gurgled.

  “So I’m funny, am I? Good night to you then!” Knobbe horked a great gob, turned on his heel, and began the long climb home.

  Halfway up the cliff, he stopped, leaned against the rock face, thumped the ribs over his heart, and gasped for air. What would become of him when the years piled a weight on his shoulders more crushing than stone?

  It was then that a thought emerged, as a ghost ship out of the fog—a thought that caused the grave robber to look down at the tiny creature who’d wriggled his way to the base of the path.

  In no time, the brat will be walking, talking, Knobbe thought. He could be my lookout. A few years more, he’ll be able to dig and tunnel and cart my gear. Then, in my old age, he can tend me.

  He’d have to raise the lad, but what of that? A strip of weasel or rat meat would do for feed.

  Knobbe descended the cliff. The infan
t was laughing in wonder, now, at the glittering crabs that skittered from the rocks and sand holes to the sea.

  “You, boy, you’re mine,” the grave robber said. “From this day forth, you’re to obey me. Your name shall be Hans, a name as simple and unimportant as you yourself. Understood?”

  He hoisted the baby up by its armpits. On its right shoulder was a little birthmark shaped like an eagle. Damaged goods, oh well, who was he to complain? Knobbe plopped the boy into the chest, and hauled him up the cliff to his cave. He had himself a son. And the infant Hans had found a new life as the grave robber’s apprentice.

  Chapter 2

  Growing Up Grave Robbing

  Hans and Knobbe were hunched at the fire pit outside their cave watching the sun go down. Knobbe scratched his bald spot.

  “It’s over twelve years since you washed up,” he said. “Counting your baby time, that makes you thirteen or thereabouts. Think of it. You’re all of your fingers and some of your toes.” Knobbe had never been to school, but he knew how to count. At least up to twenty.

  “How old are you?” Hans asked cautiously.

  “Older than all the hairs in my nose. But don’t you go changing the subject.”

  Hans closed his eyes. When Knobbe was fixed on a subject, he was like a vulture circling a dead rabbit. There was no distracting him till he’d picked the subject clean. But what exactly was the subject? Hans nervously traced the little birthmark on his shoulder, waiting for the grave robber’s thoughts to land.

  Knobbe wormed a string of old squirrel meat from between his teeth. He stared at it gravely. “I’ve been a good father to you.” It was what Knobbe always said when he wanted something.

  “Yes, Papa. If it weren’t for you I’d have been ripped apart by seagulls.” It was what Hans always said when he didn’t want to get smacked on the head.

  “I spared you from foxes, too. And from the Necromancer,” Knobbe continued. “Oh yes, if it weren’t for the rope that tied you to my belt when you was an infant, his little minions, the Weevil gang, would have stolen you whilst I was digging up Herr Blooker’s grave. Your brains would’ve been ground up in the Necromancer’s skull pot with a little pumpkin seed and gopher dust. You’d have been turned into a spell for the devil.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “But most of all, I’ve given you honors,” Knobbe intoned. “Honors that lead to the greatest honor of all: initiation into the Grand Society of Grave Robbers.”

  What will the honor be tonight? Hans shuddered.

  When he was a child, the honors had been easy. Knobbe had hidden him behind stone slabs in various county churchyards while he dug holes in the ground. Hans’ honor was to make a birdcall if he heard someone coming. When Hans had realized there were people in the holes, Knobbe’d told him they were friends of his who’d had a tiring life and gone there to sleep. Hans’ new honor was the privilege of staying quiet so he wouldn’t wake them.

  Hans had asked Knobbe why he dug up his friends if they wanted to sleep.

  “It’s a game of hide-and-seek,” Knobbe’d replied. “They hide in the holes. My job is to find them. When I do, they give me their brass buttons.”

  And other rewards besides buttons. Hans had discovered these by accident. He’d always wanted to see the inside of Knobbe’s bounty box—the chest in which he’d been washed ashore—but Knobbe had made it clear that it was off limits. Still, the chest held mysteries for Hans. Where had he come from? Who were his parents? Did they love him? Miss him? And the greatest mystery of all: Who was he? Who was he, really?

  One day, Hans’ curiosity had gotten the better of him. While Knobbe was away, he’d opened the chest and stared in wonder at the carved crest on the inside of the lid. He’d run his fingers over the eagle spewing lightning bolts, the unicorns, the winds, the sun, and the strange words. Then he’d rummaged through Knobbe’s collection of rings, buckles, broaches, and snuffboxes to see if there were other carvings in the wood. At the bottom of the chest, he’d found a cloth bag. It was filled with gold teeth.

  That’s when Knobbe’d returned. “What are you doing in my bounty box?”

  “Nothing.”

  Knobbe’d grabbed the chest and hugged it tighter than he’d ever hugged his son. “This bounty box holds presents promised me by my friends when they was alive. They’re things the dead owe me.”

  “Even their gold teeth?”

  “Especially their gold teeth. They’re all I have to remember them by.”

  Once, Hans had suggested his father might sell these presents, especially the jewelry. With the money, they could dress in real clothes instead of burlap sacks, and have a house in town.

  “A house in town means neighbors, and neighbors means questions,” Knobbe’d replied. “Best to keep to ourselves, selling the pretties one at a time as needs be. Besides”—and here he’d tapped his nose—“you wouldn’t want someone spotting their family’s rings on other people’s fingers, would you? Pretties must be kept till those who remember them are underground.”

  “But Papa—”

  Knobbe’d held up a hand. “There are things you’re too young to understand, my boy. Things you’ll know when you enter the Grand Society of Grave Robbers.”

  As Hans grew into a wiry young man, the “little honors” his father bestowed on him had become more physical. After years of digging in the damp, stony earth, Knobbe’s right shoulder had ballooned like a pumpkin, while the bunions on his large, hairy feet bulged unto bursting. So Hans was obliged to carry shovels, ropes, and crowbars, and to dig down till he tapped a coffin. Then he’d scramble out of the hole, leaving Knobbe to deal with the dead.

  Yet crawling in and out of graves was getting harder on the old man’s bones. Thus, tonight, Hans was not entirely surprised to hear his latest honor:

  “In three nights’ time, there’ll be a new moon,” said Knobbe. “On that night, you shall rob your very first grave single-handed, and enter the Grand Society of Grave Robbers.”

  Hans felt sick. Knobbe was blessed with a weak nose and a strong stomach; Hans was not. When the grave robber toiled in the holes, Hans closed his eyes and dreamed of daylight, birdsong, and the roar of the sea. He couldn’t condemn the man who’d saved his life and raised him since childhood. Yet the idea that in three days he’d be robbing a grave himself was unbearable.

  Knobbe smacked Hans on the side of the head. “What’s the matter? I offer you the greatest honor of your life, and not a word of thanks?”

  “I’m sorry, Papa.” From the corner of his eye, Hans saw a turkey vulture glide past the cliff edge and over the sea. It hovered, then swooped through the dusk toward the distant turrets on Castle Hill. Oh, to be a bird, to soar free, high above the earth, Hans thought. Oh, to be anywhere but here.

  He rose unsteadily to his feet.

  “What is it, boy?” Knobbe growled.

  “It’s . . . I’m . . . It’s . . .” Hans swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. His arms circled limply at his sides.

  “Spit it out.”

  Hans could barely hear or think or breathe. It was as if he was underwater, drowning. His feet began to move, all on their own, one in front of the other.

  “Where are you off to?”

  Hans neither knew nor cared. He swayed to the crag beyond the fire pit and started to run, bounding out of the barrens and into the gathering night. On and on he ran, through Potter’s Field, past the churchyard, into the village, his bare feet pounding the cobblestones outside the baker’s, the blacksmith’s, the tinker’s, the tailor’s, and over the bridge by the mill. Back in the country, guided by starlight, he turned off the road, jumped over a ditch, and tore through fields and groves till he could run no more. He dropped to his knees by a stand of bulrushes at the foot of Castle Hill.

  Hans froze. He’d crossed into the estate of the Count and Countess von Schwanenberg and of their daughter, Angela, the Little Countess. If he were caught, there’d be trouble. Yet Hans was powerless to move. He could only
gaze up in wonder at the castle above him. From the barrens, it looked impressive. Here, so close, it seemed a miracle of God.

  Hans lay on his side and imagined life within its gilded walls. How glorious it must be for even the lowliest of the lowliest servants. Maybe they had to empty chamber pots and clean out the stables, but at least they never had to rob graves.

  Hans made a promise to the stars: “One day, I shall know who I am. From that day forth, I shall live in the light, breathe clean air, and never again have to crawl with the dead things.” Then his eyelids flickered shut and he drifted into a sleep far deeper and more troubled than the grave.

  Chapter 3

  The “Little” Countess

  “Prepare to die, Boy!” howled the Necromancer. “I’ll drain your blood to feed my ghouls!”

  The Boy hung from a hook on the back wall, his wooden head and limbs smudged with dirt and clay. A line of hideous creatures, suspended by strings, scraped toward him. Out of the dark a voice rang out: “Halt, O Specters of Hell! It is I, Angela Gabriela, Avenger of God!”

  The line of ghouls stopped in its tracks. The Necromancer trembled. Angela Gabriela was about to swoop in, wielding her Sword of Justice.

  Only she didn’t. She was distracted by a snore—a screechy snore as loud as a hog at market that echoed around the little turret theater.