Circle of Shadows (44 page)

Her despair was complete. But she would not let the man leave until he had given up the last, briefest, most incomplete memories of her child. Such was her hunger to hear his name, even the story of his illness and death was longed for. He and the teacher had said their prayers together, and he said that if he did not recover he would join his father in heaven and wait for his mama there. She covered her face when she was told that, and I saw the man look at her with wondering eyes. He thought, of course, that she was a whore and would be spending eternity in hell for her sins. I wonder if he told the child that before he blew out the candle and left him? By morning her son was dead
.

The pains came upon her the next day, far too soon. Four and twenty hours after they began the accoucheur came to me again, less sanguine, more severe. I did not let him speak, but went to her at once, past the tutting maids, the outraged nurse. She was whiter than the linen on which she lay, her hair loose about her and soaked in her sweat. The light in her eyes was too bright. She used all her strength to speak to me. She took my hand, she swore her love and she begged me to make her doctors save the monster that was killing her. My last words to her, and hers to me were of love. In the antechamber I told the doctor to destroy the child if there was any chance that doing so would save her
.

It was probably dead already. The cord was wrapped around the neck, but it would not go alone. Cheated of its own life it took hers. The nurse lied to her, she said. Told her as she bled out her last that she had a healthy child and needed only to rest. The woman meant to comfort me with a vision of my darling going happily to her rest. A fiction. My wife was no fool. She knew she had brought forth death and it had fed on her. This is what they did. Those little schemers, those poisonous diplomats with their lies, their slanders. They killed her son, they killed her daughter, they killed her
.

They tried to prevent me entering the room. A butcher’s den. Doctor and nurse bloody to their elbows, and the bed crimson, rags soaked in blood across the floor, basins full of red water. Her nightgown soaked in it. I threw them out and would not let them touch her till morning, but sat by her side, her head cradled in my arms begging her to open her eyes. I promised everything, I swore everything, I prayed that I would go mad, and for a while I feel I might have done so cradling my dead love, my dead self in that bloody chamber
.

Florian put aside another page with shaking fingers. ‘Oh, God, Father! What is this?’

P
EGEL WAS SEEING STARS
. Real stars. It had grown dark. He thought they were pretty. Sometimes he became so obsessed with the mathematics of their movements, the steady passage of the planets amongst them, that he forgot that they were also very shiny. After a while it occurred to him that this might not be the best use of his time, and he began to grope about him in the dark. He could see the shadow of the roof from which he had fallen. It was not far. The back of his head was very tender; he felt the place that hurt most. It was sticky with blood, and he realised he felt rather sick. What had he landed on? His vision swam a little. The woodpile? No, bundles of straw and twigs, with a frame of logs on top of it. His head had hit against part of the frame when he fell. He raised himself up. He was still a few feet off the ground. He slithered down from the heap as quickly as possible before stumbling away a few steps, sat down smartly as his ankle failed, then slithered away until he found his back against a wall. He was in an internal courtyard, stone walls on all sides, stone flags on the ground. He had been lucky to have had his fall broken. But what was this bonfire? He thought of the frame on top of it and struggled to get some sense out his pounding, spinning brain. Florian had said Kastner was his step-mother’s name. He tried to remember every detail about the murders Manzerotti had seen fit to tell him. Ritual. Some sort of revenge? A woman drowned, another with earth in her mouth. Every one of the circle in Maulberg bar Swann murdered.
Swann
… Wimpf had just accompanied another guest here. Christ! Jacob had a nasty suspicion that he’d just been saved by falling into Swann’s funeral pyre.

Krall returned to the palace in a grim state of mind, but satisfied that the deaths of Countess Dieth and Adolphus Glucke would be thought natural. Glucke’s servants were loyal to Maulberg, and the housekeeper had been firm in her agreement. ‘Can’t be how he’s remembered, can it, dying that way? If we say it’s a fever, people will remember the good of him.’

Krall found Swann’s chamber empty and then had a few minutes of conversation with Colonel Padfield that left his mind swimming. He made his way to the private parlour of the English, where he found Mr and Mrs Clode and Mr Graves in a state of some excitement and waiting for the return of Mr Crowther and Mrs Westerman. He was glad to see the young Englishman free and said so. They shook hands, then he shook his head over the mysteries behind these murders and wished aloud that he was able to tell Clode who had done him such harm. The English pounced on him with a flurry of information. He was so far flummoxed that he found himself lighting his pipe without asking Mrs Clode’s permission. Count Frenzel? A second wife? Blood rituals?

‘Where is Frenzel?’ he asked.

‘Returned to his estate, so Herr Kinkel tells us,’ Mr Graves said.

‘Strange,’ Krall said, and drew on his pipe. ‘I know he spends much time there, but the Duke is only married an hour. What of Swann? Where is he?’

‘He received an offer of sanctuary from Gotha,’ Rachel said.

‘Did he now?’ Krall folded his arms and tapped the stem of his pipe against his sleeve. ‘That got here awful quick.’

The door opened and Mrs Westerman and Mr Crowther appeared. There was colour in Mrs Westerman’s face, and Crowther looked a younger man than when they had first met.

‘Frenzel!’ Mrs Westerman said, and everyone started speaking at once.

Black years. Comfortless years. Years where my only company was her grave. I buried her with my own hands in my own grounds, refusing to share her even with God. The monster I would have burned, but little Christian begged me to lay the stillborn infant in the ground with her, and so I did. The household dwindled. I shut up the east wing, left all my expensive toys to rot and waited to die. For four years I waited in this tomb. Then
she
came. A common little trickster in a dark blue dress, but I realised that night that Antonia had chosen her. Florian, the things she knew! But then she would try to worm her way in between Antonia and me, saying things that were nonsense. The frustration then! Waiting for Antonia to speak. I did not understand, and in the darkness of my heart asked Antonia why she had chosen this sharp-eyed fool as her way of speaking to me? Then little Beatrice showed me her book, a scrap-book of images, designs, incantations copied in her schoolgirl hand, pages cut from Renaissance grimoires, and I understood. Antonia had been guiding her. I dreamed of my wife sitting over the little schemer by candlelight in the cave of some forgotten mage whispering to her when to turn the pages, what passages and diagrams to copy down. During her third week here I found the book of poisons. It was written in another hand, but she had added her little notes of explanation. I saw it all. Antonia had given me everything. Now I just needed to get rid of the girl. Again, she made it so simple for me. Antonia inspired her even to her death
.

She told me Antonia wished to show me to a store of jewels on a waterfall near the borders of my little kingdom. As if Antonia would ever have been bothered with such paltry stuff, but I indulged her and she spent several days ‘preparing to do battle with the spirits’, to recover the treasure. She took me to the waterfall, lit a candle and bade me to be quiet while she summoned her angels to defend her. It was quite entertaining, the girl had learned how to put on a show. Her body went rigid, she tossed her head from side to side and muttered and croaked, calling on the names of the angelic hoards. There was no sense to her cries, her incantations were as like to call spirits to her as the wind. Then she lay still. After some minutes she seemed to awake, weak from her battles. I put out my hand to help her to her feet and enquired as to her health and well-being, all concern and kindness then. She leaned her small weight against me and said, in fading, faltering tones, she knew where the treasure was hid. And so she did. I was commanded to move some stones to one side at the base of the waterfall, and what a surprise! A little store of gems and jewellery. I was a little moved, I think, to see how she invested her small worth in me. Here was her ancient hoard of magical jewels, a handful of trifles, the sort of shoddy and overvalued nothings a Duchess might give to her maid in a moment of weakness. I can give a performance too. I was delighted, amazed by the miraculous wealth and its miraculous discovery. I got down on my knees in front of the little strumpet and told her she was my queen, my goddess, that I would settle on her at once a house for her own use in Oberbach, and that from this day forward I would be honoured to have her as my counsellor in all things. Dear girl, she shook her head, offered her jewels as a free gift, declared I was too generous, too kind, and as she trembled and dissembled I saw the hard shine of triumph in her eye. Her victory. She sat down on the stones I had just moved and turned away, as if overcome by her surprise at my generosity. But I knew she only turned from me to hide her delight. The first blow I struck fell just behind her right ear. She tried to stand, to turn, looked at me and for the first and only time her eyes seemed innocent. The second blow landed on her left temple and sent her sprawling on her front. The third blow might have been unnecessary. It was certainly conclusive. So then I gathered her book, the contents of her pockets, I tore open the linings of her clothes to find what else of value might have been hidden in them
.

Antonia was guiding me then, my boy, for it was in the lining of her cloak I found the dried herbs and matter folded in paper and sealed which I discovered I needed for the drugs. Then, when my search was complete, I dug her a grave. It was her suggestion I carried a spade with me on our little excursion, in case the treasure to which the spirits led her was underground. I rested a little, packed up what I had taken from her body, then threw her jewels into the stream
.

Harriet found Manzerotti at the centre of a large group of rather amazed young women. It took some time before he could extricate himself.

‘Come to toast the happy bride and groom, Mrs Westerman? Clode is released, the conspirators are under guard, the fountains flow with wine, and good cheer abounds.’

She unfolded the paper in her hand. ‘This is the portrait of Antonia Kastner, the woman slandered by the Minervals. It is also the model for the walking automaton the Al-Saids were asked to build.’ He nodded but said nothing. ‘The model had a Seal of Solomon painted on its torso. A brass vessel with the same seal was commissioned from Julius, and there was a space left in the body large enough to accommodate it.’

Manzerotti was very still for a moment, then he took her by the elbow and led her to a quieter part of the room. ‘The blood … I did not realise I could still be shocked. How exciting. Do you know who is trying to reclaim her from the dead?’

‘I believe I do. It is one of the Knights Imperial with a position at court. We wish to ride out at once and place him into Krall’s custody, but Colonel Padfield will not give up any of his men.’

‘I see. He has a point, my dear. Sending troops into lands not under his rule would be a serious breach of etiquette. You wish me to use my influence with the Duke? It would be a great deal better to wait until the morning. The lawyers can draw up a few Warrants Extraordinary and cover them with seals and Latin phrases. They are very particular about such things. This man will be just as mad then.’ He looked at the portrait again. ‘Fascinating.’

‘I overheard Pegel ask you to give him time to get his friend away to his father’s house. That friend was Count Frenzel’s son.’

‘Yes?’ Manzerotti frowned.

‘This is a portrait of Antonia Kastner. She was Count Frenzel’s second wife.’

‘I see.’ He folded up the picture and returned it to her. ‘That boy is a trial. Come then, to the Colonel – and Mrs Westerman?’ She looked up at him. ‘Thank you.’

T
HE DOORS THAT LED
from the courtyard were unlocked. Pegel chose one at random and began moving quietly through the corridors. The place was a warren; it seemed full of sudden dead ends, branching passageways. Pegel began to feel, with a rising sense of panic, that the building was a living thing, laughing at him. When he had climbed out of the bedroom, his intention had been to ride off indignantly into the night, but then there was that fire and the name of Kastner. He could not leave Florian here alone with his mad father. He thought about it, but he couldn’t. If he could find the room where Florian was, perhaps he could pick the lock. Florian would know where to search for guns in this place. Or a way out would be a start. This corridor looked familiar … Pegel fought down his nerves and nausea and stumbled on till he found himself on some sort of gallery looking down and into a room on the opposite side of another courtyard. He saw the Count cross the window. He was dancing with a young woman and smiling at her. The look on his face was one of such intense happiness, Pegel felt his heart contract. The old glass made it hard to see her face, but she seemed to be smiling, too, the jewels flashing around her neck. The grace of her movement was clear though, as she nodded, turned, took Frenzel’s hand. But Florian said his step-mother had died. A door opened behind him and Pegel pushed himself into the shadows, holding his breath. It was Florian, his hands tied behind him. Christian was standing behind him with a pistol aimed at the small of his back.

‘Christian, listen to me! Antonia was a kind woman, a good woman – she would never want this! He is quite mad! For God’s sake, man, stop now. I shall do everything in my power to help you.’