Good Night, Mr. Holmes (28 page)

Certainly diffident Jasper Higgenbottom shriveled in my memory as if baked by an African sun to insignificance; even dashing young Mr. Stanhope’s attractions blurred in the Prince’s presence.

The Czech composer, Mr. Dvořák, was a man more to my taste, once one understood the two fierce vertical frown lines separating his dark brows—marks of intensity rather than irascibility. As unprepossessing as the Prince was impressive, Mr. Dvořák’s warmth radiated from his features despite his rough-cut beard and hair. He delighted in practicing his charmingly mangled English upon me, perhaps sensing the patience of a nanny in my demeanor. He endlessly sang Irene’s praises—for her voice, her empathy in performance, her hard work in mastering both his music and his native tongue.

“Linguist born,” he would say, a finger shaking in emphasis. “And a tone, a... sound ... that would make a saint to cry.” He never mentioned her beauty.

Seeing Irene with the Prince gave me a greater sense of removal from her than I had felt when all of western Europe separated us. She had never been a woman to be overwhelmed by men, but in relation to the physically imposing Prince she seemed a porcelain fashion doll, albeit one with a mind of her own.

They made a splendid couple; that no one could deny. His massive, mustachioed blond good looks and habit of wearing dress uniform and Irene’s feminine dark beauty made them seem like a marzipan soldier paired with a milk chocolate ballerina. Even the Queen’s eyes followed them fondly, though Hortense and Bertrand remained aloof. And the Prince doted upon Irene, his admiration shouted in every gesture, whispered in each word addressed to her.

Once that spring, when an unseasonable snowfall had whipped Prague’s streets into froth, Irene hesitated to cross where carriage wheels had churned the melting snow into a grey mush. The Prince flung his silk-lined cloak over his shoulder and lifted her—cloak and muff and all. He carried her across the thoroughfare, vehicles jolting to a stop for their royal progress, his shiny black hessians spanning the puddles as if they were seven-league boots.

It was not a gesture I could fancy a country curate making—yet it thrilled me as melodrama moves an audience.

I began to see it—how Irene, having struggled so long on her own behalf, might relish success, might even relinquish somewhat her fierce independence to enjoy another’s solicitude. Yet I saw danger in it, on every side... danger in the unseen King’s decline, danger in the Duchess Hortense’s sour, sidelong looks, in Bertrand’s sulks, in the quick, fatherly frown Dvořák often cast at Irene when she was in the Prince’s company.

“I know the English,” he told me when I visited a rehearsal. “Have been many times in London. Five,” he toted proudly. “They like my ‘Spectre Bride’ and ‘Saint Ludmila.’ Your friend, she is American. Not like English, nor like Czech... not like German. I worry for her. She is too self-certain. These Americans know not the compromise we Europeans have make in our land, our language—for centuries. Old feelings stir. Politics. Pride. Not good for your friend to be here now.”

“Yet you invited her—”

“Yes, yes. For voice. For artistry. Not for”—Mr. Dvořák glanced at the Prince, whose unmistakable silhouette had darkened the doorway—”not for... danger.”

Mr. Dvořák’s awkward English expressed my innermost worries. I had missed Irene’s autumn performance in his
King and Collier,
a peasant opera, but that spring she sang
Saint Ludmila
in Prague, the part carried in Leeds the previous autumn by the contralto, Janet Patey.

I sat in the velvet-cushioned royal box on opening night, mother-of-pearl opera glasses, a gift from Irene, primed. The rest of the von Ormsteins were not present; the King’s illness forbade a too-public presence. Willie sat beside me, his resplendent evening dress garnished with a scarlet sash from shoulder to hip and burdened by a glittering corsage of medals. I barely spoke to him, letting myself sink into the music, as eager as he to watch for and listen to Irene.

She was magnificent, as was the sweep and pull of Dvořák’s melancholy music. It teased one like a tide, these notes from the heart of a landlocked composer. I found my own internal saltwater rising and glanced at the Prince. In the darkened opera house, his eye-whites glistened like wet pearls. His profile was rapt. I swallowed my own emotion and looked away. His tears made him human in my estimation, more than anything purposeful he could have done to win my favor. I vowed silently then to help Irene in any way I could, even if it led to an alliance I feared would invite tragedy.

“How was I?” Irene asked breathlessly after the opening night champagne had been consumed and we had returned to the castle and been divested of finery by our respective maids.

“Wonderful! They shall no longer speak of the ‘Divine Sarah’ but the ‘Sublime Irene.’ No, I am quite serious; I’ve never heard your voice so rich and resonant. It must be—”

“Yes?” Irene cocked her head wickedly.

“—Mr. Dvořák’s music.”

“A truly humble man for all his genius. These poor Czechs have been so downtrodden by their German masters that they return to their roots with incomparable zest. That is what you hear in Mr. Dvořák’s music, the ecstasy of finding himself, and finding fellowship with other patriots like himself.”

“Is it not difficult, Irene, to be part of the Czech national resurgence through your music, and yet live in the castle of their conquerors?”

“Oh, that... that is politics. Very old politics.” Irene’s dismissive gesture shook out the ringlets her dresser had spent an hour that afternoon impressing into her hair with a curling iron. “The last revolution here was in 1848—the same year France hiccoughed, politically speaking, and the Zone of Diamonds vanished. The Austrian Empire is wise now to restore some self-government to the people; it will avoid uprising.”

I sighed and kept silent. Irene reminded me of a Roman rider at the circus, each leg balanced on the back of a different steed, but she refused to see it. She had blithely permitted herself to bask in two irreconcilable seasons—the joyous spring of Czech cultural revival and the looming autumn of her Prince’s hereditary rulership. I wondered how much longer there would be kings in Bohemia, even those who were mere figureheads for the Emperor, Franz Josef, in Vienna.

“It is true,” Irene said after a moment, for she had been musing on matters quite different, “that this sojourn in Prague has deepened my musical experience quite unexpectedly. My ambitions, as you know, lie in the direction of grand opera and Vienna. Yet while here I have developed a fondness for the
lieder,
the simple love songs so beautifully done by Schumann, and Mr. Dvořák’s lusty peasant melodies. Somehow they lie closer to the heart than the spectacular arias of grand opera. But—once certain matters are settled, I must direct my attention to my operatic career again.”

“You do not expect to be Queen of Bohemia and still perform publicly?”

“Why not? Being a queen is one long engagement at performing publicly, save that it is in the service of duty. It should be quite a novelty and gain me a good deal of press. Besides, as you have pointed out, Bohemia is almost a storybook kingdom, like little Liechtenstein. Who will care what the Queen of it does or does not do? Royalty here is a mere formality. A charming... anachronism.”

I lifted the photograph of Irene and the Prince from her bedside table. It was mounted in a small, velvet-upholstered cabinet so it could be closed or displayed ajar, like an open book. I undid the tiny gold latch to regard it. The crown jewels of Bohemia—the crown itself—seemed dull in the photograph’s grey monotone, but Irene looked every inch a queen, every inch the match of the Crown Prince of Bohemia. I held the case out to her.

“If royalty were an anachronism, why did he give this to you in a case? Why do you keep it shut beside your bed so that the maid may not see it?”

She snatched the case from me and latched it. “Discretion. The Queen holds me in high regard, but the unlovely Hortense and the slovenly Bertrand do not. Willie asked me to keep it secret; only you know.”

“So with one hand he appears to give, while with the other he takes away.”

Irene shook her head and drew an Egyptian cigarette from a long, narrow tin box. She bent to a candle flame to light it, then straightened to exhale a veil of blue smoke.

“Time was when Bohemian royalty married into the greatest royal houses of Europe, but that was five hundred years ago. Willie is not under the same pressure. Even if he were, I could overcome it.”

That ended the discussion for Irene, if not me.

Yet, the next day, as if to prove her power, Irene conducted me on visits to the royal family quarters. The Queen’s suite was even more grandly gilded than Irene’s. She served us tea in wan china, her worry-worn face morose. What in the Prince was handsome became slightly coarse in her older, feminine features. I wished I could see the King to compare him to his Herculean son.

“How is his Majesty?” Irene inquired.

“Still failing and still undiagnosed by the doctors,” the Queen said.

“Have you ... tried any folk remedies?” Irene asked so casually that I perked my ears like a spaniel to catch her true meaning.

The Queen sighed and pressed a handkerchief that was more lace than linen to her mouth. “So Hortense has been urging. And Bertrand swears that the tonics he takes for hair growth have had a wonderful effect.”

“Indeed?” Irene arched an eyebrow at me while I searched for some significance in the fact.

From my observation, Bertrand’s shedding pate needed far more aid than whatever mythical fuzz he believed the hair tonic had bestowed. So I told Irene as we left the Queen and her tepid tea and rustled into another wing of the castle.

“But is it not as I told you?” she interrupted me. “Even the palace resorts to these herbal remedies. I find that fascinating.”

“Not so odd. You yourself have said that folkways linger here in Bohemia, as numerous as flowers in an alpine meadow, in fact. Even royalty is gullible.”

“Or clever.” Irene’s face grew harsh with concentration. “Diabolically clever.”

Our next call was paid upon the unhappy Hortense. Her suite of rooms faced south, so mullioned shadows criss-crossed thick Aubusson rugs that paled in the fierce sunlight. Despite the brightness, something soured in her chambers; an emanation from her soul, I fancied, which I envisioned as having a squint, for that was the sidelong, suspicious way she looked at us both and, apparently, life.

“The Queen, your mother, says your father continues to decline,” Irene murmured sympathetically.

Hortense, who had been sitting by the window doing stitchery, kicked a ball of wool aside, nearly striking a fat, low-legged little dog that waddled off as if used to her sudden tempers.

“The doctors can do nothing,” Hortense complained. “I have urged a return to a simple regime—herb teas and system-cleansing soups. Perhaps a stay at Marienbad.”

“Ah, the spa the Czechs call Mariánská Láznĕ, near the forest bordering Germany. Mud baths and mineral water, an excellent idea. The Prince of Wales has found it helpful.”

Irene’s approval lit a spark of life in Hortense’s pallid cheeks. If she were an advertisement for the efficacy of her herbs, the cause was lost.

‘Tell me, Miss Adler, do you find the lavender and licorice gargle I suggested useful?”

“Yes, thank you so much. I trill like a nightingale for hours after. Have you used it yourself?”

Hortense reached into a basket on the table to extract an apple, into whose red cheek she bit with yellowed protuberant teeth. The cores of the apple’s consumed brethren littered a Meissen plate, pips piled in a neat anthill near one edge.

“My voice is not my livelihood, Miss Adler. With my husband gone at the southern estates so much, I need not even raise it.”

Irene laughed far more than this feeble jest deserved as the Duchess dipped a handkerchief in a bottle of clear fluid and daubed her temples.

“For the headache,” the Duchess Hortense said. “Lily of the Valley distilled in white wine.”

“I should think the white wine would
give
one a headache,” I couldn’t help remarking.

The Duchess pinioned me with a disapproving stare. “It is Austrian wine,” she answered, as if such a vintage was invariably free of flaws. She finished her apple and deposited the core on the plate, but not before idly picking the pips free and pushing them with a fingernail into the rough pile.

When we had taken our farewells and were again in a deserted hallway Irene kept silent beyond her habit.

“What are you thinking?” I unwisely asked.

“Of how I could get into brother Bertie’s room to see his hair preparations.”

“Now that is clearly improper! Even dangerous. I forbid it!”

“Of course I shall not, then,” Irene said with mock meekness.

“Of course you will... Oh, Irene, you cannot behave in Prague Castle as if you still lived in Saffron Hill. If you are caught doing anything out of character here, it will end your influence with the Prince. He is a stickler for appearances.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. I also can guess what you’re contemplating. If the Prince found you in male dress, even as an excuse to investigate Bertrand’s room...!”

“Of course I shan’t storm Bertie’s room in pin-striped frockcoat,” Irene said impatiently. “If I can’t enter myself, I shall have to use another pair of legs. Perhaps his man.”

There the discussion ended. Two days later I found Irene in the castle’s huge and musty library. It was a fanciful chamber, a high-ceilinged tower with books and wrought-iron balconies strung around its perimeter like frills on the skirt of an evening gown.

Irene was seated under the curl of a wrought-iron spiral staircase, a small, much aged tome in her hands.

“Jaborandi,” she greeted me triumphantly.

“I beg your pardon? Is that Czech?”

“Too many vowels. No, it is what brother Bertrand puts upon the billiard ball he calls his head, but perhaps a fiendishly clever head at that.”

“Bertrand? Clever? Irene, tell me something I can credit.”