Another Scandal in Bohemia (12 page)

The click of shoes over shining marble echoed, then silenced. Irene drew away from the door, standing beside Godfrey and myself. The Three Musketeers, indeed; and now were we about to meet our manipulative Cardinal Richelieu?

The man in evening dress who entered was not tall, but he was elegant and commanded the attention. His features—as I would see later when I had studied the chateau portraiture—bore the stamp of his late father, Baron James, a Rothschild stamp that at least the French branch of the family had passed on and perfected: pointed chin, pointed nose, shrewd eyes, and remarkably humorous, well-arched eyebrows. Wrinkles above the good-natured brows imitated their inquisitive vault. Wrinkles ran from the corners of his eyes in merry little streams. His prominent girth promised a love of plenteous food and wine. Baron Alphonse was at once a man supremely sure of himself and equally willing to spend time making sure of the others around him.

“You will pardon,” he began, “the secrecy. I fear I have a rather melodramatic matter to discuss with you three tonight.”

Three! My heart quickened despite my resolve to remain cool in the face of such titled wealth.

“Perhaps we should begin with business and dine after,” he suggested, leading us from the white drawing room. The two men followed our party. Or did they contain and watch us?

Imagine my astonishment when our urbane host led us down a grand hall to a far less grand passage, and then to a narrow stairway... to the basements!

The Baron paused at the top of this unimpressive staircase. “Apologies to the ladies. Much of the basement area is unlovely, although some quite respectable suites lie down here, but it is essential that we meet in some security.” With that he descended, Godfrey following, Irene and I trailing after. Behind us came the two—what? Associates? Spies? Guards?

The Rothschild basements were the utter reverse of the showy palace above, as if that were a whited sepulcher reflected in an oily pool and only now showing its true colors: we traversed a vast network of dark corridors interlarded with pipes. Anonymous closed doors led off in every direction. I envisioned storage rooms, servants’ quarters, kitchens, pantries, root cellars, wine cellars and the like, and possibly crypts, dungeons, and torture chambers.

We shortly lost our sense of the way, although the occasional gaslight sconce kept us from total darkness. The Baron led on without slowing his steps, finally pausing before a dark oaken door.

“Ladies are forbidden this room, which is used exclusively after the hunt, but tonight I require it for our business. I apologize in advance for the odor of old tobacco.”

“You need not apologize, Baron,” Irene replied in an amused tone, “if you are willing to allow us to add the scent of new tobacco to your older vintage.”

“Us? You smoke yourself, Madame?”

“On occasion I even hunt, Baron.”

After a moment’s stalemate, the Baron nodded to his men. They stepped past us to flourish open the double doors.

We entered a huge chamber furnished with fur-draped divans. The lit gaslights winked like Roman Catholic vigil lights around the room, reflecting from the brown glass eyes of mounted heads—shaggy bear, sleek stags, and wicked boar.

Unlike Sarah Bernhardt’s exotic salon with its eccentric mix of animals living and dead, this room was hung heavy with generations of death, of slaughtered deer and boar by the hundreds, the thousands, falling hard to earth and being reborn again in macabre wall decorations.

I did not like the place, nor did Irene or Godfrey, for they were silent.

“Ferrières is a paradise for hunters,” the Baron said, mistaking our silence for stunned admiration. “We hunt only on Sundays, but such shoots we have—hundreds of partridge and pheasant and hares in a single afternoon.”

“Sunday was the day the Lord rested,” I choked out. “Could not His creatures also rest on that day?”

The Baron looked at me for the first time. “You are Christian, I understand, Miss Huxleigh, a formidable Christian. My faith does not keep Sunday.”

“The Creation was recorded in the Old Testament,” I retorted breathlessly.

The Baron’s humorous features relaxed. “You are right, and it was also recorded that mankind was given dominion over all the beasts of the earth.”

“Dominion, but not death in such numbers.”

“Men die in numbers as great in forgotten corners of the earth, some of them very near to us.”

“Women as well,” Irene said. “And children.”

The Baron nodded. “You touch upon the matter that has brought you to me.”

“Death?” Godfrey asked quickly.

“Possible death. Potential death. Please, be seated.”

We eyed the bestiary of surfaces to choose from. Godfrey shrugged and sat in a red velvet-upholstered chair formed from a thorny crown of antlers, against which his dark and light coloring and black and white garb appeared to great distinction. Irene sank upon a long-haired throw of creamy Mongolian goat hair that perfectly set off her blue-black gown. I found a stool of some unidentifiable hide and sat before I had long to study it.

The Baron moved to a massive desk formed of an exotic gnarled wood and sat behind it.

“I am accustomed,” he began, eyeing Godfrey principally, “to transacting business with men.”

“So are most men,” Irene put in a trifle tartly. “That is why they own most businesses.”

The Baron raised a soothing hand. I almost expected to see a frill of lace at the wrist, so graceful was his gesture.

“I am well aware of Madame’s distaste for custom,” he went on. “In this case, I welcome it. But the American-born perhaps do not understand our Old World order. The house of Rothschild is founded upon one man and his five sons, and I am proud to claim Mayer Amschel as my grandfather.”

“Did he and his wife have no daughters?” Irene inquired. The Baron nodded. “Five.”

“An equal number of sons and daughters? And what became of Mayer Amschel’s five daughters when his five sons began forging the links of the Rothschild financial empire?”

“They married and had children.”

"That is all?”

“They worked hard to maintain their families and lived to see their sons move into financial enterprises in England and France, far beyond the Frankfurt ghetto where Rothschilds began, and to see their daughters marry sons of Rothschilds.”

“But that,” said I without thinking, “is too close a relationship for marriage!”

“First cousins to first cousins,” the Baron admitted, “but by the third generation some foreign blood had strengthened the stock. Certainly all of us have proven to have a decent head for business.”

With this I could not argue; the Rothschilds were the uncrowned kings of European finance, and only tales of the American financiers like Jay Gould could rival their princely ways.

“You have not invited us here, Baron,” Godfrey put in, “to debate the Rothschild pedigree.”

The Baron’s face turned into a merry mask for several moments before audible laughter poured from his mouth and eyes as well “We are considered an international and rather intimidating family, but I confess that I find myself confounded by the united front you three present, with Madame Norton’s American verve, Miss Huxleigh’s British rectitude, and your own incisive Anglo-Saxon sang-froid, Monsieur.”

“I am a barrister, not a banker. I cannot afford to be anything other than cold-blooded,” Godfrey replied.

“Perhaps we can change that sad state of affairs,” the Baron suggested with a twinkle, nodding to the door.

The distinguished gentleman I had taken for more than a butler advanced with a trio of boxes on a silver tray. He presented each in turn; first to Godfrey, then to Irene.

Godfrey settled against his upright chair back with a decidedly Lucifer-like expression of satisfaction and a long, thin cigar between his fingers. The butler bent to light it, then moved on to Irene. From the smallest box, an exquisite thing of ruby enamel and sterling silver, she selected a small dark cigarette, which she installed in her own mother-of-pearl holder, extracted from her reticule.

While the skeptical Rothschild eyebrows remained quirked toward heaven, she accepted the butler’s lucifer and shortly exhaled an expert, stiletto-thin stream of smoke.

The servant disappeared and I forgot him utterly—until he was bowing before me with the silver tray... and a crystal bowl filled with wrapped hard candy.

My more innocent enjoyments had never before been catered to with such social thoughtfulness. I accepted one in a gold and crimson paper, making much of unwrapping it and popping it into my mouth. Only then did it occur to me that I had effectively silenced myself for some time. Unlike the disgusting cigarette, a sweet cannot be plucked from one’s mouth and held casually in the hand while speaking, to be reinstated later.

Still, the candy was flavored with strawberry and honey, and was very good.

The Baron had settled deeper into his chair with a cigar that matched Godfrey’s for length and was twice its circumference. Again the butler made the rounds, this time with four flutes of blond, bubbling champagne. My flute, I discovered when I hoisted it, was filled with sparkling mineral water.

The Baron’s uncannily apt hospitality made me regard him as a devil in disguise, and indeed, smoke seemed to swirl from his ears and mouth as he puffed away happily on his outsize cigar.

“You have made your point, Baron,” Irene said, removing her cigarette holder from her mouth and contemplating the bejeweled gold snake that twined the stem, while smoke curled up from the cigarette like a ghostly extension of the serpent’s tail. “You know a good deal about us, even to our personal habits.”

“Why not? We Rothschilds have the most efficient spy network in Europe.”

“Efficient, yes,” Godfrey agreed. “But with more demanding work to do than turn its efforts to such discoveries as that Miss Huxleigh neither smokes nor drinks.”

The Baron rose and strolled around his ornate desk, sitting on one comer and crossing his legs. Had Oscar Wilde tried such a posture he would have looked like an overbalanced Humpty Dumpty. Baron Alphonse looked at ease.

“At first I determined to speak only to you, Mr. Norton. Then, various reports indicated that Mrs. Norton would not respond well to being overlooked.” He bowed in Irene’s direction. “Indeed, she suited us far better than you. Then I became convinced that Miss Huxleigh’s participation was also necessary. You may not be a family, but you certainly amount to a force of three. I concluded that no one of you would be as effective as all three.”

“Effective at what?” I finally asked, having sucked the sweet to a small enough pellet to swallow. “Spying?” I said tartly.

The Baron raised an instructive forefinger. “Exactly, Miss Huxleigh. Only the English are so forthright. That no doubt accounts for the fact that my Uncle Nathanial in London has done better than any of us. You see, by scattering to the winds, each branch of the family Rothschild has developed its own character. Mine, as the French flavor in the recipe, is diplomatic and subtle, but you have boldly broached the heart of the matter. It would suit the Rothschild fortunes and family to have the three of you act as our eyes and ears. You travel on the fringe of certain circles and are admirably suited to learn things others less felicitously placed could not. With Mr. Norton’s entrée to matters legal and international, with Mrs. Norton’s ability to charm aristocrat and artiste alike, with your own invaluable gift for going unnoticed, you form a formidable syndicate, as it were, for gathering information crucial to not only Rothschild interests, but those of all civilized Europe.”

“Which are no doubt one and the same thing!” I responded indignantly, feeling a sweet, hard lump melting none too swiftly down my esophagus. I hiccoughed and was forced to sip water and be silent.

“What brought your attention to us?” Irene asked.

The Baron smiled and also withdrew his cigar to contemplate it. I wished I had done as much with my sweet, as I choked into my flute of sparkling water. I cannot imagine what possesses those afflicted with the smoking habit to make so many self-indulgent gestures with the objects of their obsession.

“Your intervention in the affairs of Alice Heine, the Duchess of Richelieu, now the future Princess of Monaco, thanks to your busy work.”

“Ah.” Irene had sat back to exhale the word in smoky satisfaction. Her gown’s silver trim glittered like smoke rings against the midnight-blue darkness she wore. “Alice is related to rivals of yours, the banking family of Heine.”

“Founded by Salomon Heine of Hamburg,” Godfrey added.

“You see? How quick you are, and with no warning. From sixteen groschen Salomon Heine became one of the wealthiest bankers in Germany. Mayer Amschel started with less, but there were more of us.”

“Why should we spy for you?” I demanded when I could breathe well enough to speak. I had framed the question from the high moral ground of demanding why he would think we could be persuaded to spy for
anyone.

“Perhaps because we have asked you first? Not sufficient reason for Miss Huxleigh, I see. Then I would argue that our ‘spying’ has often kept the topsy-turvy towers of European capitals upright. The Rothschild coffers have more than once opened to save a crown or a parliament. Money breeds best in peace, yet Europe has tottered on the brink of disastrous realignment and dissolution since the Corsican ran rough-shod over most of it.”

“The sad state of European politics has persisted for decades,” Godfrey said suspiciously. “That did not spur you to consider recruiting us now.”

“No. But a specific country troubles, and a certain crown lies uneasy, and an even more... individual matter has arisen, one that I could not dare speak of to most people. Perhaps it will be too much for you, as well.”

“What?” Irene demanded eagerly, drawn to the Baron’s bait as a snapping turtle is to a dragonfly.

The Baron spread his supple hands, the cigar leaving a train of smoke like a steam engine. “You know where we came from. The ghetto of Frankfurt. Twelve feet wide that home and haven and prison was, yet roomy enough to beget in, and die in, and be killed in. You have heard of the blood price?”