Another Scandal in Bohemia (34 page)

Then, I found Godfrey’s and my assignment to learn more of the cryptic Tatyana distasteful. I disapproved of the woman to begin with. What need had we to deal with such a tawdry individual? The King would see Godfrey; indeed, he courted him. And why was I needed to escort

Godfrey to this lady’s lair? Godfrey could take care of himself. How ludicrous to pretend that I could offer Godfrey any kind of protection whatsoever.

Still, Irene thrived on being as mysterious as her ultimately successful rival for the King’s affections, or at least his attentions. I resolved to dress for the encounter in my most prudent and plain ensemble. This elusive Tatyana should know that she was dealing with an Englishwoman!

Godfrey and I set off at four-thirty on foot, the Belgrade Hotel being nearby. We set a smart pace, Godfrey flourishing his swashbuckling walking stick, I eager to get the business over with so I could return to hear Irene and Allegra’s true report, for of course Godfrey could not know about her adventures with the Queen, nor would he learn of her secret mission.

“I hope,” he commented as we went, “that your attire does not indicate your expectations of the outcome of this meeting. It would do magnificently for a funeral.”

“Men wear dull black all the time, and no one thinks them melancholy for it,” I pointed out.

“Men are dull most of the time,” he retorted. “No wonder they wear black.”

“You really think so? I confess that the thought has often crossed my mind.”

“Of course they are. They are encouraged to be so. Unless they are exceptions... like Quentin Stanhope. That native get-up of his was not black.”

“No.” I blushed, confused. “I imagine that Sherlock Holmes is not dull, although he wears citified black.”

“I never worried about his dullness,” said Godfrey, glowering. “Although, now that you mention the matter, I have decided what is wrong with the King of Bohemia, despite his gaudy uniforms.”

“Yes?”

“He is unforgivably dull.”

“Yes! Godfrey, you have put your finger upon it. I knew that there was a reason he was quite unsuited to Irene.”

He paused. “We are unanimous, then: you, I, and Sherlock Holmes. The King of Bohemia was—is—unworthy of her.”

“Why, yes, of course. That is no new revelation, Godfrey.”

“Ah,” he said, taking my arm to resume walking, “but I never saw for myself before. Even Sherlock Holmes had the better of me there.”

“And now that you have, do you feel the better for it?”

“I do.”

“Then it is worth this return trip to Bohemia, if you have resolved that one doubt.”

“You were not in favor of the journey.”

“No.”

“You do not approve of the sponsor.”

“... No.”

“You do not even wish to be walking with me to the Hotel Belgrade to interview La Belle Tatyana.”

“Decidedly not! And she is not beautiful. Not really. It’s all pose and gall.”

"You are saying that she’s not worthy to be Irene’s rival?”

“Yes!”

“Yet, at times, you like to see Irene confronted with one, don’t you?”

“Irene becomes... imperious.”

“But being imperious so becomes her.” His devil-may-care grin quickly faded into a slight frown. “I have been a bit boisterous in throwing the King back in her face. I was worried, I fear, abashed by his rank and reputation.... He is not what I thought.”

“He is not what she thought, once... and I must say that he has declined even more since we left Bohemia. At least in those days he never intended to flaunt a mistress before his wife-to-be. Now that Clotilde is Queen, he has no qualms in parading this Tatyana woman before her.”

“Clotilde is helpless, and the deed is done now.”

“What deed?”

“The marriage. He has Clotilde’s dowry, the alliance with her influential family, a royal road to a properly regal heir. He will have his cake and eat crackers, too. That is a flaw that kings share with common men.”

I kept silent. Everything Godfrey had said was absolute truth and made perfect sense. Only Irene and I—and poor, ignored, snubbed Clotilde—knew that the King was committing one incomprehensible error: he was not bothering to ensure a royal heir. Why?

Little time remained to ponder this puzzle. Godfrey and I had arrived at a Baroque facade in the Mala Strana that claimed to be the Hotel Belgrade.

Liveried men ushered us through gleaming leaded-glass doors. Godfrey’s inquiry with the concierge further directed us up a grand staircase so thickly carpeted in a frantic floral pattern that it was possible to lose one’s footing on the shallow stairs.

After two flights of gazing at this dizzying sight, especially with my pince-nez on, I had to be guided down the passage. The hall was not the narrow, functional tunnel of most hotels, but wide as a river and furnished with side chairs and paintings, like a palace.

At a carved, white-painted door on which a gilt number seven gleamed like a golden spike, Godfrey paused to knock. A maid in serviceable black topped with white organdy apron and cap admitted us. Beyond her lurked a sullen-looking individual in a crude, food-stained tunic, his eyes a queer, intense blue that sliced through one like ice-daggers of lethal, clear rock crystal.

We passed into a suite of luxurious rooms that could have been transported to Hradcany with no one the wiser. The maid took Godfrey’s top hat, gloves, and cane, although he watched her set the cane in an umbrella stand in the hall. Naturally, I kept all of my accouterments, though they were less deadly than his.

We were shown into a salon lit by crystal chandeliers and paraffin lamps. Wine-red brocade covered the divan and numerous large hassocks that flocked around the floor like over-upholstered sheep. What was not red in the room was emerald green, or gilt.

Clutter crowded and towered around every table. Rare artifacts winked from hither and yon, with enameled eggs sitting on the glazed tiles before the hearth and gleaming behind piles of gilt-edged books. Scarves of erratic design lay like snakeskins over tables and chair-backs. Furs tumbled off chair seats. Vases erupting like Vesuvius with lilies—tiger-lilies, tulip-lilies, calla lilies, sego lilies, even modest little lilies-of-no-name—staked a claim on every available surface, giving off no scent, yet contributing to an effect of hot-house enclosure.

Oil paintings burdened with wide gilt frames lined the walls, many depicting the ballet. Some were by the Frenchman Degas, whose messy little sketches I had seen in Paris.

Over a mantel bristling with gingerbread trinkets hung the largest and most surprising painting, a colorful study of some impossibly barbaric princess, half-dressed, and what little she wore mostly beads and veils. Who this figure represented I could not say. Salome? Messalina? Another debauched temptress of legend? Although her hair glimmered dark beneath a decadent web of veils and gold, I recognized the hard, haughty features as those of the self-proclaimed Tatyana.

The original of the painting soon swept in from another chamber, wafting a zephyr of cinnamon, roses, and delicate iris. We regarded her aghast.

Except for being pulled back at the temples by a beaded fillet, her hair hung ungovemed over her shoulders and back, in heavy, straight lengths. She wore a flowing, flame- colored brocade caftan edged everywhere with a narrow band of soft brown fur—foaming at the hem with each step, and banding wide, drooping medieval sleeves and the impertinent neckline that skimmed her bare shoulders. A huge topaz the color of peach brandy dangled in an elaborate setting against the corpse-pale whiteness of her breast

Compared to a Liberty silk, this gown was suited to the boudoir, not the sitting room, and certainly not to the presence of a member of the opposite sex. Some would argue with me, including Sarah Bernhardt and even Irene. Perhaps

I should say the toilette was not suited for the eyes of a stranger of the opposite sex.

Godfrey had practiced enough law to betray no shock at this unseemly sight. I maintained my professional expression of utter indifference, which some (such as Irene, and now Allegra) are so bold to describe as my “disapproving look.”

Tatyana bloomed in her exotic environment like the wildest of her tiger lilies and smiled.

“So kind of you to come at such an unreasonable hour, Mr. Norton,” she said in her fermented English accent. “Too late for a civil English tea; too early for a decadent Viennese supper. We will have Russian tea,” she added, nodding to a huge brass samovar where the maid stood poised, looking much too proper for this tea party.

I looked upward, expecting to see the figured folds of a massive tent, but spied only a coffered ceiling.

“And this is your secretary,” she added, eyeing me as we threaded our way through the flocks of furniture to the round table heaped with piles of rather raw-looking foodstuffs. “I realize that many men of... affairs travel with secretaries, but I have never known one to employ a woman. Such a thing is so improper in English circles, is it not?” She eyed me meticulously from bonnet-top to boot- tip. “Yet who could suspect Miss... Rucksleigh, is it?... of being other than completely proper?”

I know an insult even when I agree with—in fact, applaud—its import.

“No one in this room,” I answered, looking inquiringly at the bulbous samovar, which had the overblown, brassy presence of one of St. Petersburg’s onion-domes. The Russians, on the whole, cherish an obvious, vulgar appeal that is not in the least subtle. But no doubt they would argue with my opinion.

Tatyana nodded to the maid, who drew steaming cups of something in pewter mugs.

“Russian tea,” Tatyana taunted me... and Godfrey.
“Prosit."
She sipped, watching us over the crude brim, as if we were missionaries at a cannibal feast and she were imbibing blood. At least if she spilled any, it would not mar her incarnadine gown.

“Nine cheers to the Queen,” Godfrey replied.

“Santé,"
I offered in sour French whose accent was no more to be trusted than the sincerity of my sentiments.

I sipped cautiously, along with Godfrey. The drink was heated! A kind of mulled wine, only without wine... spiced, yet sweet as well, and punctuated by something strong and searing that reminded me of rubbing alcohol. I contained a cough while Godfrey raised his eyebrows and refrained from smacking his lips.

I set my mug upon the serving table and would drink no more.

Godfrey laughed. “You see why I break tradition. Miss Huxleigh is utterly dependable. I care not what others may think or say.”

Tatyana eyed him with growing respect as he continued to quaff the mysterious beverage. “Yet you are wed.”

When he looked surprised, she glanced at his left hand. “You wear a golden band.” Her disdainful tones made it sound like the ring through a bull’s nose.

Godfrey was unstirred. “True, on both counts.”

“Does not your wife, who is at home in—?”

“The French countryside.”

“In... France. Does she not chafe at the notion of your traveling with a spinster as a secretary?”

Now that the odious Tatyana had summarized my position, I blushed for myself. Or perhaps the flush came from my one sip of the forbidden beverage.

“My wife is a confident woman,” he replied, “and my work takes me often away. Perhaps she regards Miss Huxleigh as an ideal chaperon.”

“No doubt.” Tatyana prowled around the tea-table, at last selecting a toast round heaped with a shining black mountain of tiny beads.

I recognized thin slices of some rosy flesh, obviously cold, as were all the victuals, in contrast to the heated beverage. Other than a few pert sprigs of parsley, I could see nothing edible besides these unappetizing and slippery raw, iced foods of uncertain ancestry.

“You must forgive me if I do not understand the manners of the frigid West,” Tatyana said. “Where I have lived for most of my life, women are either Everything, or Nothing. That is, to a man they are either the bounds of his whole existence, his whole mind and heart and soul, or they are mere functionaries. A woman who is neither the potential object of passion nor an indifferent object of use is an exception.”

“I have always considered Miss Huxleigh to be an exception of the first water,” Godfrey replied promptly. “And I have always found women capable of more than two extremes, and far more interesting for that fact.”

She glanced again at him, her gaze not the usual, rapid consultation of his expression, but rather a summing up of his whole person, from head to toe, from outer aspect to inmost essence. She seemed determined that not a pinstripe in his trousers should go unnumbered, that not a hair on his clean-shaven chin should be unanticipated.

This distressed me in a nameless way that was even more worrisome. So hunters might eye prey from a distance before the chase was on.

“How have you become so exalted an emissary?” she asked then, crunching sharply on her bead-slathered toast. I was reminded of the Fee-fie-foe-fum giant grinding the bones of an Englishman.

“There is little exalted about the Rothschilds, other than their recent rank and great fortune,” Godfrey said in a tone of amusement that I would have found quite cutting. “Nor is there anything exalted about myself. I am an ordinary barrister who has some experience in international law. The facts about myself are that simple.”

“I disagree, Englishman.” Tatyana glowed before my eyes, visibly warming to this verbal fencing match. “Great fortune and international affairs are the stuff of exalted drama, infinite wealth, and much adventure, both remote and personal.”

“Barristers know nothing of adventure,” he said mildly, picking among the savage tidbits for something consumable.

She watched him eat as if she would taste him next. I had been forgotten, one of those nonessential functional women named “Nothing.”

If I found this realization bitter, I found it satisfying also. Irene had bid me watch and wait, not an ignoble role. Now I could watch, unwatched myself. Now I had become a piece of furniture that would be ignored. I did not extract my notebook and pencil. The matters I witnessed here required a more subtle record. I prayed that I would see—and remember—the germane parts. I slipped as silently as I could to a seat on a nearby hassock and joined myself to that which I was taken for—furniture.