A Rather Curious Engagement (19 page)

“What island?” Jeremy asked.

The Count, lost in thought, seemed not to have heard him.

“The mistral came up!” said the Count, with a searching, far-away look, as if he were peering through a telescope of memory, and trying to bring the view into focus. “It fought us all the way! And I was so close, so close! To think that, after all this time, I found the Lion, only to lose it again! Do you believe in fate? An old beggar woman on that dock put a curse on us that night. I could swear Poseidon himself wanted to stop me! And what did he do with the Lion?”

He turned his bright blue eyes on me beseechingly. “Where is my Lion?” he asked in an endearing, childlike way. “Have you seen it? Where could it be?”

“What Lion?” I asked softly.

“You are a curious young lady, aren’t you?” he asked in amusement. “Are you a collector, too?” There it was again, the way his gaze would clear as if the world had come back into focus. When this happened, he seemed more sharp, energized, even more virile.

“I’m an art historian,” I said.

“Ah! That explains it. Then you will appreciate my treasures,” he said gleefully, as if glad to show them to someone who might comprehend their true value. Yet he was also like a little boy showing off his toys.

“Come, you will see,” said the Count, setting down his empty whisky glass. “You steer the ship, young man,” he said to Jeremy, gesturing to the back of his wing chair. Jeremy went over to it, mystified, then realized that there actually were handles at the back, almost like bicycle handles with brakes, so the upholstered chair was actually a very elaborate wheelchair.

The Count reached into another pocket and pulled out a big iron key, which he handed to me, and he directed us to steer him down a long corridor leading to a tower room. The heavy wooden door creaked complainingly when I shoved it open. It was quite dark inside. After fumbling about, I found an electric light switch, but even so, there was no overhead light. Instead, it activated numerous display lights within glass shelves from floor to ceiling all around the circular tower room, including some freestanding tables of glassed-in display cases, as in a museum. Everywhere you looked, lights were illuminating small metal figures of art.

Jeremy and I gazed about, dumbstruck, at what appeared to be a great copper zoo. The entire room was filled with a collection of strange medieval-looking cast-metal objects, each standing about a foot high, all different from each other yet somehow similar. It was a metallic bestiary of centaurs, horses, griffiths, dragons and other creatures.

“Oh!” I cried. “Aren’t they all amazing? What are they?”

“Aquamanilia,” said the Count, and I repeated it, rolling the syllables off my tongue,
Ah-kwa-man-eel-ee-ya
.

“They have been in my family for years,” the Count said proudly.

Jeremy and I moved from item to item. I kept exclaiming at each figure, saying, “Look! Here’s a knight on a horse, isn’t he excellent! And see this one, Jeremy. A unicorn. And this, a dragon with a snake on its back, riding it like a little jockey! And . . . whoops!” That last one was a bearded, moustachioed figure— labelled “Aristotle”—bent over on all fours with a voluptuous woman astride him. And right next to that was a wife spanking her husband with a ladle . . .

“Yes, well, humph,” Jeremy said, steering me away from the erotica shelf. (He didn’t, as he told me later, mind me looking at them, but he’d be damned if he’d let the old man watch me looking at them.)

I moved along to the other shelves, admiring the clever ingenuity and design of each metal figure. But as I looked at one big wall of shelves I realized a strange thing about these particular artifacts—so many were lions. Lions here, lions there. Lots and lots of lions.

That left only one display table, right in the center of the room, which appeared to be the seat of honor for a major piece in the collection. But there was nothing inside it.

“What is this for?” I asked.

The Count let out a heartbreaking cry of frustration. “For the greatest Lion of all!” he exclaimed. “The Beethoven Lion!”

I heard Jeremy’s sharp intake of breath. Whereas I hardly dared breathe at all, for fear of breaking the spell. Instead I listened, wide-eyed, as the Count continued fretfully, “He rightfully belonged to my family, centuries ago, but he was stolen away from my ancestors! My grandfather almost got it back, but then those thieves took it away again.”

I glanced at Jeremy, wondering how much of this was real, and how much was, perhaps, a fantasy in the Count’s mind from his childhood.

“Your grandfather?” Jeremy repeated.

“Yes, at the auction in Frankfurt,” the Count said. “Only to have it disappear yet again.”

I perked up. “Recently?” I asked.

“No, no, it was when Grandfather was a young man,” the Count said fretfully. Jeremy sighed lightly at this, but fortunately the Count didn’t hear it.

“All
his
life, Grandfather kept searching. Yet he never saw it again. But I—I—” the Count held out a hand, palm upward, fingers closed. “I went all the way to that abominable island! I got there first. I had it in the palm of my hand. Yes, I tell you, the Lion was mine!” He opened his fingers apart now, and said dramatically, “Yet, somehow it slipped through my fingers. He would have been the triumph of my family’s collection, restored at last.”

“The Beethoven Lion!” I murmured, entranced.

And then, I nearly jumped out of my skin when a deep voice came out from the darkness behind us, saying, “Father! What are you doing here at this hour of the night?”

There was a figure of a man in the hallway, and he was coming toward us rapidly. The Count looked suddenly like a naughty little boy, caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But as the man moved toward him, the Count tilted his head back and smiled at him affectionately.

“Kurt, I have some new friends today,” he said. “You must come and meet them. This is—” and he paused forgetfully.

“Penny Nichols,” I said quickly. “And Jeremy Laidley.”

“And this is my son, Kurt,” said the Count, then he said, “Good heavens, Kurt, stop scowling there in the dark. Come and say hello.”

Kurt stepped out of the shadows and expertly grabbed the handles of his father’s chair, turning it around to pilot him out of the room. “Pleased to meet you,” Kurt said.

I stared at him. It was the young German guy on the boat. Surely he knew who we were, yet his face did not betray that he’d ever seen us before.

“My boy is quite an adventurer,” the Count said proudly. “He studies the climate all around the world! He climbs high mountains and lives for months and months in the big trees, to make a study. He is very smart. But always he is far away. Except this summer when he has come to visit me.”

Kurt just said, “Let us go back now, Father. It’s too drafty in this room at night.”

Jeremy and I followed them back to the Count’s study, but I managed to mutter into Jeremy’s ear, “That’s the sad-looking German guy I told you about, who came to our cocktail party!” Jeremy had to think a moment to remember, then nodded.

“You must introduce these nice people to your mother,” the Count said happily. Kurt appeared visibly pained by this remark, and it was clear that his father’s condition deeply troubled him.

The Count looked up at me now. “Old age is a shipwreck,” he said plaintively. “Know who said that?” I shook my head.

“General Charles de Gaulle!” the Count said, and then laughed uproariously at a German Count quoting a hero of the French Resistance.

“Your supper awaits you, Papa,” Kurt said, as the butler arrived to wheel him away.

The Count, looking a bit dejected, bid us farewell in a sigh, “Ah, well,
adieu!
”

"I hope you will join me for bit of cold supper,” Kurt said in the easy way of a man accustomed to luxury in all its incarnations, both formal and relaxed. He led us down the dramatic wood staircase, across a brief landing, to a large, bright room on the right side of the castle, which he called “the master’s kitchen.”

“The cook will send it up from her kitchen,” Kurt continued. “I thought we’d be more comfortable here, rather than the dining hall, which is very big and very dark and a bit gloomy for a small party.”

“What do you think he wants from us?” I mumbled to Jeremy.

“The boat,” Jeremy mumbled back, as we followed him.

This master’s kitchen was really an informal family dining room, with a polished terracotta floor, sparkling white cabinets, a metal sink, a simple stove, and a narrow refrigerator. A big dining table took up most of the room, its surface made of individual squares of tile, each being a replica of a page from an antique botanical book, with colorful illustrations of fruits and flowers, all labelled with their Latin names.

A young servant girl in her early twenties, with a flat, round cheerful face and two long braids tightly plaited down her back, dressed in a blue-and-white-checked uniform and a spotless white apron, was taking plates and cutlery from the cabinets and laying them out on the table for us. The “cook’s kitchen”—where the real food preparation was done—was apparently downstairs in the basement, because very soon we heard a rumbling sound behind one of the cupboards, and when the servant opened the cupboard I saw that it had a dumbwaiter inside. The girl reached in and lifted a large platter with a silver dome. She staggered under the weight of the platter as she placed it on a sideboard, took off the cover, and carried the tray around to each of us. She served the men first.

“You were on the boat the night of our party,” Jeremy said. Kurt nodded without the slightest trace of guilt on his face.

“
Ja
, it’s true,” he said cheerfully. “I wanted to make sure that my father hadn’t left his little trinket behind on the boat. Night and day he asks me where it is, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went to take a look.”

“Why didn’t you introduce yourself and just ask us about it?” I said.

“I saw that you had your family and friends there,” Kurt said. “I did not wish to intrude on a family party.” He sighed. “My foolish sister should have checked before she sold the boat,” he said, sounding irritated. “She has taken over the family finances ever since father had his stroke; she’s like his secretary. Too efficient and too quick. She convinced him it was best to sell it, to help pay for his nurse and the medical expenses, which have been considerable. But father did not remember to tell my sister that he left his dearest treasure behind. If she’d known, of course, she would not have included it in the sale. Just a sentimental trinket, you understand, but—” Kurt sighed in a melancholy way, “he is
so
fond of it.”

When the girl with the tray came to my side, I nodded toward what I wanted from the platter of cold meats, sausages, and cheese as she held a serving spoon and fork expertly in one hand and made the selections for me, while still balancing the platter in her other arm. After she served us, the girl went back out and then returned with a tray of glass steins of beer for each of us. A little sandy-haired boy toddled in, carrying a basket of bread which he very seriously offered to each of us. I had to smile at him, but when I said, “Thank you very much,” he looked suddenly shy, and quickly bowed and hurried out of the room.

“He is the cook’s grandchild,” Kurt said tolerantly. “She cares for him when the mother is working in town. They are Polish, but the boy’s father is English. The young girl is his sister. They are very hardworking people.” We ate in silence for a moment. Then Kurt looked inquiringly at Jeremy, giving him an opening to broach the subject on everyone’s minds.

“Are you aware that someone stole the boat the night of our party, and ransacked it?” Jeremy demanded, watching Kurt’s face for his reaction.

Kurt was still unperturbed by the implication. “The marine gendarmes told me about it,” he said, calmly but sympathetically. “Well, they have to question everybody, don’t they? It’s the law. But of course, we had nothing to do with this, I assure you. I had planned to return and ask your permission to search the boat for the aquamanile.”

Hmm, I realized distractedly. Aquamanil-
ia
was the plural, meaning a bunch of them, as a general category; whereas aquamanil-
e
is for just one of them. “What are these things, actually?” I asked. “Bronze sculptures? From what period and country?”

Kurt turned his full attention to me in a charmingly accommodating way, as if delighted to have piqued my curiosity. “Oh, they date back to ancient times! They were made all through the Roman empire and the Dark Ages, too. Many of the later ones are of Germanic origin.”

“
Aqua
is water,” I mused aloud, “and
manile
—?”

“From the word for ’hands,’ ” Kurt said. “To wash your hands with. Or, to pour oil. They were used for religious rituals as well as for hand-washing at the table. You see, they are not mere sculptures. They are actually hollow metal vessels, with a spout—usually in the animal’s mouth—for pouring it out, and another hidden little hatch on top—usually in the animal’s head—to fill it with water or oil.”

“How amazing!” I said, at the thought that those finely detailed figures of fanciful and mythological animal shapes were actually functional objects, like a teakettle.

He added proudly that German workshops were important in the making of aquamanilia, because of their proximity to the mines that provided the copper alloy needed to create them, in a very complex process that involved many stages, not unlike an alchemist.

Jeremy had been patiently taking this all in, but now he spoke boldly. “What about the Beethoven Lion?” he asked. “That’s what your father is looking for, right?”

Kurt looked momentarily thrown, but he recovered. “Have you seen it?” he inquired. “Is it true the damned thing really exists, and that Father was not just—er—dreaming about it?”