Another Scandal in Bohemia (20 page)

BOHEMIA BOUND

Our train
steamed out of the Gare du Nord station. Our first-class compartment housed an unlikely pair of adventurers, I wearing my somewhat lethal chatelaine beneath my traveling cape, Godfrey carrying his handsome new malacca cane with the clouded-amber head of a dragon.

Beside me sat the rich and oiled contours of Irene’s vanity case from Baron Rothschild. Godfrey insisted that the diamonds travel with us rather than with Irene and Allegra. Irene had rolled her eyes at this decree, but said nothing. I suspected that she trusted more to her revolver than to the security of any male escort, even if the escort were her own husband. I also suspect that she respected Godfrey’s common sense. Though neither spoke it, I did not look the sort of woman who would be concealing diamonds in her luggage; indeed, I did not look the sort of woman to be carrying a vanity case, though even a country mouse such as I might be allowed my plain toilet water and my discreet face powder.

Beyond the compartment window, Irene waved a kid-gloved farewell, her smiling features blurring behind frothy furbelows of steam and managing to look mysterious.

Beyond her loomed André’s dour face: long, sober, and indubitably French. At least Irene would travel home safe in male company, until beginning her own long journey eastward to Bohemia.

“How this reminds me of our recent trip to England,” I told my seat partner, who kept his nose pasted to the window for a last glimpse of his wife even as she seemed to glide away into the steam with our train’s motion. However stylish Godfrey’s new clothes, I felt with him the soft-slipper comfort I might have shared with the brother I had never had. Godfrey and I had worked together too long in the crowded Temple quarters for any exterior alteration to disturb our easy affinity.

“I trust that this mission will end less dramatically,” he said, referring to Quentin Stanhope’s final London contest with Colonel Sebastian Moran, of which I had been the only witness.

I bit my lip, reminded of that awful night’s headlong hansom race. It had ended on a bridge where two men fought to the death despite my presence, despite my pleas. We three had reason to believe that at least one man had survived that joint plunge into the swift, icy Thames. I hoped that the survivor was the one who wore my heart as a keepsake.

“And we will not have to cross water,” Godfrey added to reassure me. “At least no more than a river.”

“Oh, you are thinking of the Channel. I refuse to call it ‘the English Channel’. Nothing English could be so stomach-churning.”

“I am told that this will be a staid but tedious journey.”

“To say the least I have made it twice, coming and going.” I smiled. “But on this occasion I have gallant company and no worries of imminent pursuit”

“Even if you did harbor such concerns, worry not” He twisted the cane’s amber head to reveal a flash of polished steel.

“Your walking stick is a... sword?”

“Of sorts.”

“Pardon me, but what do you know of swords, Godfrey?”

“More than I knew a fortnight ago.”

I considered that declaration as the train chugged ponderously through the suburbs of Paris under skies as gray as Godfrey’s candid yet twinkling eyes.

“You have availed yourself of more than Baron Rothschild’s tailor!” I guessed suddenly.

“How astute you are, Nell, when you wish to be. In a word,
oui.”

“Oh, stop using that vile language! Between us, at least, we need not resort to slippery syllables that tie the tongue in knots my chatelaine scissors could not slice. I assure you, we shall hear a vastly more complex and incomprehensible set of syllables when we reach Bohemia.”

The dashing cane-top spun between Godfrey’s black-leather-gloved hands until the dragon’s ruddy head seemed to breathe smoke. “I welcome seeing that quaint little kingdom at last, Nell. After all, it has played a major role in Irene’s life. I first feared going to Bohemia because of the ghosts that haunt it—and her—but now I am eager to meet them. Do you find that strange?”

“No, Godfrey. You are quite right. A man must know his wife’s past as well as her pastimes, and in Bohemia is buried Irene’s operatic career as well as whatever foolish hopes of queenship she cherished. He did worship her, you know, that self-indulgent, aggravating, spoiled bully-boy of a King.”

“I know.” Godfrey gave his lethal cane a savage twist. “And he saw her perform leading roles in opera, as I never have. She must have made a splendid diva, and would have made an even more splendid queen in real life.”

“She is far happier now,” I confided. “Irene never relished for long being subject to anyone’s whims, be he a conductor or a crown prince and his court, though she may not admit that.”

“You think so, Nell? I have fancied these last weeks that Irene felt peculiarly compelled to return to Bohemia; that she would have found a way to accomplish this object no matter the turn of events, even without the convenient excuse of the Rothschild commission. I don’t know why, though I can speculate until I sicken myself with conjecture.”

"You fear the King of Bohemia more than Sherlock Holmes!” I said with sudden realization.

Godfrey smiled ruefully. “Sherlock Holmes is an eccentric, an original. He would have to be to become the world’s first consulting detective. Yet he cannot be too unlike me in his upbringing, or his bourgeois roots. And however brilliant, however his mind catches Irene’s imagination, his personal aspect is not especially impressive, from your description, Nell, which I take as Gospel. But the King... even you prattle in awe of his great height, his golden crown and hair, his damned imposing Germanic royal presence! I picture him as the hero of a Wagnerian opera, insufferable, but winning the maiden fair.” He looked down at the wooden floor of our compartment, which the elegant brass ferrule of his cane pierced like a stickpin. “I fear I am a David confronting a Goliath.”

“Then you cannot understand the depth of Irene’s disappointment, Godfrey, when the King revealed his true colors. I myself have never seen her so... shocked into utter paralysis. Only anger roused her from that frightening state. Anger saw us both safely out of Bohemia.”

"The other side of anger is passion.”

“I would not know,” I said slowly.

“Passion is often a two-faced emotion that does not endure,” he mused, “although it is most pleasing at the time. Yet there is nothing worse than unsatisfied passion, whether it call itself love, or loathing.”

“I would not know,” I repeated, although I felt a dim stir of resentment at having to confess this fact.

Godfrey glanced out the window again, distracted by his thoughts of Bohemia. I eyed his composed but troubled profile, for a moment reflecting that an English barrister confronting Bohemia’s ancient, aristocratic, and autocratic ruling class with a cane-sword was indeed a David dueling a broadsword-armed Goliath with a stickpin.

Of the many scenic delights found in journeying by rail through Belgium and Austria I have written before. The avid travel reader can consult a guide-book, if needed, of which great numbers abound.

Although I enjoyed pointing out sights to Godfrey—particularly the commendably upright telegraph poles alongside the railway (in France, the same poles lurch like drunken toothpicks)—neither he nor I were easy enough in mind to sit back and enjoy our lengthy excursion.

When our route required an overnight stopover at some railway hotel, I most appreciated Godfrey’s escort to and from the train, and his fluid French, which accomplished our purpose where English did not.

I had been too greatly distressed on my mission to rescue Irene and the return flight by rail to much remark the accommodation along the route. This time I noticed. I found the mattresses piled so high on the ancient bedsteads that one required a ladder to get into bed; despite such lofty ambition, and although I had no pretensions to princesshood, the mattresses seemed pea-infected. Perhaps I mean ‘flea.’ Certainly I was thankful for the sensible night-dress that covered me from chin to knuckles to toes, and a nightcap as well.

The common bathing areas were the subject of much embarrassed negotiation between persons of the opposite sex, or even those of the same persuasion who were unknown to each other.

By the second night, I wondered why on earth Godfrey and I should hurl ourselves like battered dice in a rattling wooden box to such an outpost as Prague on no more cause than a banker’s insecurity and Irene’s insatiable curiosity.

And the food at the hotel dining rooms left much to be desired, unless one is fond of lumpy soups with anonymous inhabitants, tough veal drenched in grease-laden breadcrumbs, and the inevitable vanilla ice accoutered with a wafer having much in common with cardboard. Apparently the French nation’s greatest rivals in abysmal cookery are the Germans.

It was over another uninspired dinner that I spied the odd gentleman. I believe the city was Cologne, or perhaps Frankfurt or even Nuremberg. From a train one city is much like another.

“Godfrey, that gentleman at the window table has been regarding us all evening.”

He managed to drop his napkin in a nonchalant manner that Irene would have applauded (and I would never have managed), then turn to look where I indicated.

“Ordinary enough chap,” Godfrey pronounced on drawing his chair back to the table and attacking his wiener-schnitzel with the gusto all men seem able to apply to even the most mediocre food.

“What of the blue-tinted glasses?”

“Eye trouble,” he suggested tersely before excavating a pile of sliced potatoes attired in a loathsome yellowish sauce.

I used my fork tines to push my potato mound to the rim of my plate. “I have seen him in the train stations as well.”

“He may be traveling to the same destination that we are.”

“Is that not suspicious?”

Godfrey stopped eating, reluctantly, to give my questions the full attention they deserved. “We are not the only persons with business in Prague, Nell. As for the gentleman’s regarding us, he probably has as little to occupy his mind on this trip as do you, which is why you noticed him in the first place.”

“He has a great amount of facial hair.”

Godfrey managed another discreet survey of the man under discussion. “So do German professors, Nell. That is precisely the species I think you have uncovered. Look at the thickness of the book that he has set beside his plate.”

Then why is he not reading it, instead of looking at us?”

“I don’t doubt that we are more interesting than it is.” A tone of exasperation had entered his voice, which I recognized from my own governess days when dealing with an unquenchable child. “Perhaps he is a Masher,” Godfrey added with sudden inspiration. “The only way to discourage his regard is to pay him no mind whatsoever.”

I sighed. If I was not to be suspicious of strangers, I would have nothing better to do than to attack the unattractive dinner. I bent my gaze and my fork back to my plate. Beets, I noted mournfully, a great quantity of beets leaking carmine liquid and—my fork withdrew from my mouth too late for me to do anything but chew and swallow despite myself—cold! Cold beets for dinner, can it be imagined? Prague, I reflected, had been a great mistake the first time as well.

Although Godfrey pooh-poohed my apprehensions all through that despicable dinner, when we rose to leave he turned to inspect the now-deserted dining room.

“The object of your speculation has left his book,” he noted, leading me past the table we had noted.

Godfrey paused to pick up the tome and riffle the gilt- edged pages. “A commonplace treatise on the city of Prague. I will return it to the gentleman in the morning.” The moment I opened my mouth to protest, he forestalled me. “We may learn something of the gentleman from his book.”

So he saw me to my door and retreated with the mislaid volume under one arm. I itched to peruse it, but dared not say so; lost property was not common goods.

The next morning, Godfrey arrived at my door to collect me at the pre-arranged time, cane in one hand, book in the other.

“Well?” I demanded.

“An ordinary travel guide. I will leave it with the concierge.”

But that reliable depository of lost articles and general information was of no help at all. She insisted that no gentleman answering to our description had recently resided at the hotel, even overnight.

We left burdened by the stranger’s book. Godfrey shrugged off the incident.

“If we spy the man again, he may have his book back.”

“If we spy the man again, he may
be
a spy!”

“For whom?”

“The forces in Prague that the Rothschilds fear, or even—”

“Yes, Nell?”

I lowered my voice. “The King.”

“He does employ spies, like any modern monarch,” Godfrey admitted, “but I doubt he would waste them on us. We have been troubled by no sign of the King’s interest since Irene and I left London six months ago.”

“True... except—” I was thinking of Irene’s and my accidental encounter with Queen Clotilde. Had it been mere happenstance, as it seemed? Could the unknowing Queen have been sent to the House of Worth to encounter Irene and lure her back to Prague and the King although Irene had dismissed the idea of such a plot? I was sorry to see Godfrey frowning at me worrisomely.