The Blood Lance (53 page)
June 15, 2008.
At the base of the Wilder Kaiser, Kate and Ethan found the grove of trees where Otto Rahn's body had been discovered in the late winter of 1939. They studied the dark face of the mountain rising up vertically over them with the practised eyes of rock climbers. Ethan pointed to the ledge from which prisoners of war had been thrown in earlier times. It would have been a three or four second plunge. He decided that was just enough time for the man's prayers and regrets to strangle in his throat - unless he was at peace with God.
Ethan wanted to believe that a person could win his way to grace no matter the sins of his past, but his own experience left him less than confident that it was so. Good intentions seemed only to take one so far. In the end, he thought, the things we do define what we are, despite our regrets and sorrows. Otto Rahn had served in two different SS concentration camps. That was one time too many for him to plead ignorance about what was happening. He might have suffered doubt in the cause he served, might even have been spiritually crippled by what he had seen, but so long as he stood with Himmler he was a part of the most hated regime in history, and all the worst for him that he was a Jew.
Was he really something of a Percival awakening in a wasteland, as his daughter wanted to believe? Or had they found out what he was and chased him down when he ran? Knowing that life is rarely pure, Ethan thought there must have been many reasons for Otto Rahn to break his oath and resign from the Order of the Skull - some noble, some self-serving. That was not what mattered. What mattered came afterwards.
Two weeks might not seem like much in a lifetime, but it was all Rahn had left and he must have known it. In that desperate and lonely time the forgotten romantic in him must have imagined that he joined the sublime company of those doomed and heroic troubadour knights he had celebrated when he was still a free man with a beautiful soul. And if it were so, if he really became a knight of the Blood Lance, if only for an hour or two, then surely he had died with them as well.
'It belongs to him now,' Ethan whispered. He gave the relic a gentle toss, and together he and Kate watched the thing tumble across the black earth and settle at last in a patch of wildflowers.
The Cathars have always provided fertile ground for the imagination, but they did indeed perish by the hundreds of thousands during the early decades of the thirteenth century. Their notion of courtly love was revolutionary and far reaching. As to the nature of their heresy, opinion is divided, but their image of the Blood Lance seems at some point during the conflict to have replaced the Vatican's Roman Cross as the unifying symbol of their sublime faith.
The Lance of Antioch, which is much discussed in this novel, is universally credited with saving the army of the first crusade. That event almost certainly inspired the legend that an army carrying it into battle could never be defeated.
The life of Otto Rahn has not yet been thoroughly researched. Nevertheless, I have tried to follow the precise outlines of the last decade of his life. He held numerous jobs before and after the publication of
The Crusade Against the Grail
, the oddest being a failed business venture in France as a hotel owner, though no one can say where he got the money for it. Rahn was labouring in obscurity in Paris when Heinrich Himmler contacted him anonymously with a note offering lavish praise of his book and cash to travel to Berlin for a meeting. Himmler subsequently spoke with Rahn and ultimately recruited him into the SS, where he became a trusted member of Himmler's inner circle. For a season Rahn was golden - the toast of Berlin - his book becoming an overnight bestseller in Germany some three years after its first appearance.
The accounts of Otto Rahn's final years reflect a personality sinking rapidly into conflict and disillusionment. They include carefully veiled references to drunkenness, profligacy, and numerous ill-advised remarks against those in authority. His death at the Wilder Kaiser was noted in the newspapers at the time, but there is no subsequent mention of his funeral, and as far as anyone can tell Rahn's body, recovered by SS officers, was never returned to his family. It was only discovered after the war that Rahn had resigned his commission a fortnight before his death. It is left for us to imagine why Himmler chose to wait until after the report of Rahn's death before he personally signed and stamped the letter, signifying his acceptance of the resignation.
Dieter and Elise Bachman, and of course all the characters in the contemporary story, are products of the author's imagination. For more on
The Blood Lance
visit my website at:
www.craigsmithnovels.ch
I am grateful to Harriet McNeal, Burdette Palmberg, my wife Martha Ineichen Smith, and my mother Shirley Underwood for reading an early draft of this novel. Their unique perspectives and unfailing encouragement helped me enormously during the rewriting process. I also want to recognise my old friends Matthew Jockers and Britta Luehr, Matt for helping over the rocky parts of the story, Britta for showing me Hamburg. Many thanks also to those who over the years have so generously shared their resources when I needed them most: Herbert Ineichen, Doug and Maria Smith, Don Jennermann, and Rick Williams.
I want finally to give special thanks to my editor Ed Handyside and to my agent Jeffrey Simmons. Without their hard work and unflinching faith this book could not have been made.
CRAIG SMITH lives with his wife, Martha, in Lucerne, Switzerland. A former university professor, he holds a doctorate in philosophy from the university of Southern Illinois. His first novel, published in the UK as
Silent She Sleeps
and in the US as
The Whisper of Leaves,
won bronze medal in the mystery category of ForeWord magazine's Book of the Year Awards.
The Painted Messiah
, the first of his novels to chronicle the exploits of T.K. Malloy, was first published by Myrmidon in 2007 and is available in both hardback and paperback editions.