Circle of Shadows (7 page)

A gentleman was there to meet them, dressed magnificently in pink satin and with a small squadron of liveried footmen behind him. Two stepped forward and with the formalised movements of ballet dancers, they let down the steps of the coach and, as Harriet emerged, one, without looking at her, offered her his arm to help her descend. The footman’s wig was such a startling white she had to fight the impulse to reach out and touch it.

The cobbles looked as if they had only just been laid, so clean and neat they were. The man in pink satin introduced himself in slightly affected French as the Court Harbinger and requested the honour of showing them to their apartments. Harriet replied in as flowery a manner as she knew how. She glanced backwards at Michaels as the gentlemen took their turn at exchanging civilities. He winked at her and climbed down from the box, his leather bag over his shoulder. Her maid emerged from the other carriage and shot a look of such concentrated suspicion at one of the footmen, he blinked. Monsieur Clemme waved his hand and the liveried footmen swarmed over the luggage like scarlet ants attacking the picnic meats. Harriet realised she was being addressed by the magnificent Monsieur Clemme once more.

‘Mrs Clode is waiting for you in your rooms, madam.’ He bowed and offered his arm.

The servants of such a palace as Ulrichsberg naturally prided themselves on not being overly impressed by the rank and fame of visitors to the court. Monarchs, Lords and luminaries of the world of music and art passed through Ulrichsberg continually, but they watched the arrival of the Englishwoman and her companions with interest. A little knot of some of the more senior servants in the east wing had found it convenient to pause in their labours and watch as the carriage was unloaded and the gentry led away.

Mr Kinkel, head footman in the east wing, the cook to the servants’ hall and the housekeeper observed while their more junior fellows bustled round with baggage and band boxes in the swept yard. Mr Crowther, he that was some Lord or other in his own country but liked to pretend otherwise, was easy to identify. Thin as a rake with a long nose – and, Mr Kinkel suspected – a habit of looking down it. The younger man they thought perhaps a Prince of some sort. Handsome youth, still some years short of thirty and awkward as a newborn calf. He stumbled on the cobbles as Monsieur Clemme led them off. The maid remained rooted to the spot, obviously intending to keep her eye on the luggage. The likeness between Mrs Westerman and her pretty sister young Mrs Clode was easy to spot.

‘That poor little cabbage, marry a man and find him a murderer!’ Cook observed, preserving her reputation for great kindness to the unfortunate. ‘Lovely frock Mrs Westerman has on though. Green is such a blessing for red-heads. Isn’t it true her husband was murdered himself?’

‘Unlucky in love, that’s true enough. Covered in tragic blood, the pair of them.’ The housekeeper sighed. She was the romantic.

Mr Kinkel’s attention was distracted by the sight of a large muscular-looking man having a word with one of the under-footmen, then approaching his little group with a leather bag over his shoulder. He walked with rather more swagger than Kinkel thought appropriate to those in service. He wore no livery. Kinkel had seen the valets and secretaries of Kings cross the yard before him, but this great bearded fellow looked like none of those. Certainly not a valet in that coat, and his hands looked too broad and meaty to wield a pen.

As he came closer to them, Kinkel leaned towards the two women at his side and muttered to them. ‘The English have brought their tame bear with them. It is true what they say, an English person will not be separated from their pets!’ The ladies tittered. He was their satirist. The man stopped in front of them and to their collective shock spoke to them in their own dialect.

‘They’ve brought a friend with big fists and big ears, brother.’ With his free hand he slapped the pocket of his coat and made it jingle promisingly. ‘Now my preference is to sleep warm on my own bedroll and eat as the servants eat. Can you accommodate me?’

Kinkel shut his hanging jaw and managed a bow. ‘Naturally, whatever sir wishes. I am Mr Kinkel.’

‘Don’t “Sir” me. I am Michaels. As long as my friends are looked after, I’m a lamb and a generous friend. If they are spoken of without respect, then I am like to get a little riled. Do we understand each other?’

Mr Kinkel hesitated, then put out his hand. Michaels took it and grinned. His teeth looked very white and sharp. Was he a fox or bear? Mr Kinkel could not decide. ‘Can I ask how you come to speak our language so well, Mr Michaels?’

‘Mother was born on the border here, and wont to express herself very free in her native tongue. So I came to see my party travelled fast and safe. Now can I trouble you for a billet and hot water? The roads are nothing but dust and I can hardly breathe for the muck on me.’

Kinkel considered. He thought of himself as a clever man and pondered the problem at hand with a certain confidence. Service at the palace often threw up interesting problems of this nature. This Michaels was too large a creature, and his money clattered too nicely for Kinkel to think it appropriate to put him to sleep among the servants, but at the same time he could not see a man who wanted to sleep on his own bedroll wishing to stay in the luxurious surroundings of the guest suites. After a moment’s thought he smiled. ‘I think I have an idea where you might be comfortable, Mr Michaels, if you don’t mind being a little bit out of the way.’

‘Out of the way is fine with me, Mr Kinkel.’ With a significant glance at his companions, Kinkel put his hand on Michaels’s sleeve and guided him out of the courtyard.

By the time the sausage, bread and potatoes had been disposed of and their leavings carried away by a sweet-faced daughter of the house, Florian zu Frenzel was well on his way to being drunk. Jacob Pegel was giving a good impression of being so.

The tavern was popular with the middle-ranking students. The beer was strong and cheap, the food not bad at all, and it was clean enough for a man brought up in respectable comfort to feel at his ease. In other places a man might risk his wealth among a crowd of men who liked to gamble as deep as their courage would let them. In other dark corners, especially those nearest the river on the edge of the old town, he might risk his health with one of the whores who sashayed to and fro for business, or lose his pocketbook to the thieves and slut-masters who watched the drunken young gentlemen like wolves seeking out the injured deer in the herd.

To be fair Pegel had never seen Florian in that corner of town, and found he liked him for it. A serious devotion to cards or women might have made him easy to blackmail, but Pegel suspected the more earnest and serious the young man was, the closer he might lead him to his goal. Pegel suspected he would only get what was required from an idealist.

The beer had loosened their tongues, then smeared the talk from mathematics to the personal. Pegel began laying down his lies to build a friendship on like a mason settling his first cornerstone. There were ways to dance into intimacy with a boy such as Florian, like a mountain goat, but he needed to establish a solid base first.

‘There are some good men in Weimar,’ he said. ‘Good thinkers. I thought there was a chance of a place there, but no! Some squid who can barely add up got the job.’

‘Why?’

‘His father was a Baron, of course. He had the name, he had the grease …’ He rubbed his fingers together. ‘So, it’s “Sorry, Mr Pegel, maybe next year”. Bah! Perhaps I should go to England. They take a man there for his brains, not some bit of paper that proves no man in his family has done a day’s work in generations.’

‘My father is a Count.’

‘I’ll try not to hold it against you, but honestly, don’t you ever feel this … this rage against the system we live in? Good men ground down, the arrogance of the nobility while better men starve. Ah, forgive me. The beer is heating me up.’

Florian put a hand on Pegel’s sleeve. ‘You are not alone.’ Then in a lower tone, ‘You are not alone, brother.’

Pegel had his pocket-watch in his hand. There were no numbers on it, but a compass, set-square, radiant eye. He flicked it shut and thrust it into his pocket now it had done its work. He had bought it from a man in Strasbourg who had offered him some interesting stories of Leuchtenstadt for the chance to rant about his own misfortunes. Now Florian had seen it and assumed Pegel was a member of a masonic lodge. He had also confessed, by calling Pegel ‘brother’, that he was one himself. Easy. Pegel began to build. ‘I don’t know. There are good men in the fraternity, but in the Lodge in Weimar they seemed more interested in legends of Templars and Alchemy than in the truth of universal brotherhood. I am afraid I held out hopes …’ He turned away slightly and touched the corner of his eye as if wiping away a manly tear. He almost felt it. Germany had lost a fine actor when Pegel was trained as a code-breaker. When Jacob looked back, Florian’s eyes were sparkling in sympathy. God, it was too easy.

‘Do not give up hope! Some have taken a false path, a path of vanity and mysticism. But. There. Are. Others.’

Pegel began to worry that the boy was drunker than he had thought. The afternoon would not go as planned if he could not walk.

‘Air!’ He stood up and was dismayed to find the room swayed a little. ‘Come along, Your Graciness. I want you to show me this town. I have been here a day already and have hardly seen a thing.’

Florian looked up at him and gave a slightly fuddled nod, then lifted his hand to summon the girl.

After five minutes’ walk Florian and Pegel reached the embankment and rested against the stone wall, looking back the way they had come. The lapping tiles on the roofs on the half-timbered houses ran in wavelets up the hill towards the castle and cathedral, washing up the high, steeply pitched roofs. The slates were small and tightly packed enough to look like dragon scales. Neither spoke. Pegel glanced at his new friend out of the corner of his eye. He still seemed a little bleary, but he was awake.

‘Is that man staring at us, Mr Pegel?’

Jacob glanced in the direction Florian nodded. A tall man in a slightly old-fashioned brown frockcoat and dark breeches was standing at the east entrance to the little square. His wig was rather yellow. He seemed to notice that he was observed and crossed towards them before making a bow which both young men, a little unsteadily, returned.

‘May I enquire,’ he said in the voice of an educated man, ‘if I have the pleasure of addressing His Grace Lord Florian zu Frenzel?’

Florian nodded. ‘I am he. May I have the honour of learning who it is that enquires?’ he said, slurring only very slightly.

The man was perhaps in his late thirties or early forties and had a vigorous air to him. Solid. A gentleman with a modest estate, perhaps. ‘My name I cannot give you, Your Grace. I am come to Leuchtenstadt to give you a message. One which I hope you will carry to your friends. We do not want you here. Any of you. We do not like your ideas or your leaders. Disband and return to your proper studies.’ Florian seemed able to do nothing but look amazed. The man reached into his pocket and pulled from it a folded sheet of paper which he held out to Florian with another bow. Florian took it from him automatically. ‘This is a warning, Your Grace. Heed it or worse will follow.’ With that the man turned and walked away from them.

Pegel plucked the page from Florian’s hand and opened it out. It was a drawing of a cross with a rose at its centre.

‘What on earth was that about? Fellow must be a bit simple. Do you know him?’ He glanced up when Florian did not reply. He looked pale. Pegel looked down at the paper again and frowned. ‘Still, not that much of a warning, is it? A picture?’ A shadow fell across him and he looked up again to see a man twice the size of the last with the red face of a drinker and the blossomed nose of a fighter towering over him. The giant spoke. ‘That be more of the signature, gentlemen. This is the warning.’

He grabbed Florian by the collar with his right hand and slapped him across the face with his left. The boy’s head was twisted sharply sideways and the giant dropped him to the ground, drew back his boot and kicked Florian hard in the stomach. Florian groaned and curled into a ball and the man drew back his foot again. Pegel lowered his head and charged him, catching him while he still had one foot lifted and making him stagger away from his victim. Pegel lifted his fists and stared up into the man’s glowing face. Behind him he heard a retching noise as Florian tried to lift himself up. The giant let his arms hang at his side and lifted one eyebrow. Pegel clenched his fists more tightly and gave a tiny nod. The blow came from his left and he felt himself flying through the air. A star-burst of pain spread over his face and he found himself suddenly on his knees. The giant hesitated a moment. Someone emerged from a shopfront on the side of the square and yelled something Pegel could not quite hear through the thumping of blood in his head. The giant looked about him, then set off down the side-street at a lumbering run. Trying desperately not to faint, Pegel stumbled over to Florian. The shopkeeper who had shouted took a step or two towards them, looking a little uncertain. Jacob got his arm under Florian’s and hauled him to his feet. His right cheek was raw and red and it seemed he could not stand straight.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Pegel hissed, watching the shopkeeper, ‘before that man calls the bedales. My rooms are near here. We can recover there. Can you walk?’ Florian managed to nod. ‘Come on then.’

II.4

M
ONSIEUR CLEMME HAD THE
sense to do no more than open the door and then depart murmuring something about seeing to the disposal of their belongings. Harriet stepped into the large parlour in time to see her sister stand, but before she could form any impression of Rachel’s looks, the latter had thrown herself into her sister’s arms and buried her face in her neck.

‘Oh Harry, you came! Thank God!’ She stepped back and offered her hands to Crowther and then Graves. ‘Crowther, Graves – how glad I am to have you here.’

Her composure deserted her entirely and she burst into tears. The gentlemen examined the furnishings of the room, a great deal of gilding, while Harriet put her arm around her sister’s shoulders and gave her a handkerchief. She leaned her cheek against her hair, which was silk smooth. Rachel had been only fourteen years old when their father had died. Harriet had walked into the salon of the parsonage, and after four years of sailing with her husband around the world it had seemed small, and her own clothes and demeanour too grand for the modest little room. Then Rachel had hesitated, only for a moment, before running to embrace her sister, and Harriet had thought, Lord, another person to look after. It was months before she discovered that her modest, quiet little sister had been her father’s housekeeper and nurse, that Rachel’s trials might not have been as dramatic, bloody or adventurous as Harriet’s but she had faced them alone and withstood them bravely.