Another Scandal in Bohemia (43 page)

Something crushed me to bone and blood. “Oh, darling Nell! You have done it! I knew that there was some mystery to this monument! How dare you vanish like that and frighten us—”

Irene’s voice; was she dead, too, then? And what did they mean, frighten
them?”

“Hush, Irene; she’s terrified.”

Someone large clasped me in an encompassing embrace, as I did not recall but suspect my father had done when I was quite young and frightened of something. A sense of security dropped over me like Casanova’s cage cover. Oddly, I began trembling at that moment when I felt myself finally rescued.

Godfrey kept an arm around me, but I saw his hand thrust the warm glow of the lantern toward the other dark figure. He lifted his cane top into the light and then twisted it.

The amber knob fell apart in his hands, but, undismayed, he tilted the cane toward it. A moment afterwards something clinked on my teeth and a bolt of wet stinging fire washed into my mouth and down my throat

Sputtering and swallowing, I struggled to express my outrage.

“This is an abomination! Must I be drowned as well as incarcerated?”

A stinging warmth burned my chest like a poultice. Then I found that I could breathe without gasping, and speak without pausing.

“Irene! Godfrey! Where have you been? What are you doing?” I cannot say whether it was freedom or Godfrey’s liquorish application, but I was myself again, and fully indignant.

Godfrey laughed as he screwed on the cane-top again. “Brandy is for heroes, said Ben Jonson, and you have certainly merited your ration.”

Irene’s hands grabbed my shoulders as she crowed, “You are inspired, Nell! How on earth did you discover the mechanism to the secret entrance when Godfrey and I have been crawling around this cursed monument to no avail?”

“I would not call it ‘cursed,’ ” I said first, coughing as genteelly as I could. Ben Jonson’s heroes must have come equipped with iron esophagi.

“A mere expression,” Irene interjected with customary impatience. “Godfrey was able to use his sword-tip—what a most accommodating cane he carries!—to find a break in the seam, but how does the door open without forcing? I am afraid that in the excitement Godfrey neglected to keep the portal from closing again.”

I turned to look behind me, the lantern’s dazzle lighting every stone cemented into monument. I studied an apparently impervious wall, all of a piece. How annoying to have to admit that I had literally stumbled upon this wonder! Drawing my gloves on again in order to gain thinking time—and the night air was chill—I looked this particular surface up and down and still saw nothing.

Then I remembered my flailing hands, and ran my fingers over the decorative sills and down toward the monument’s bottom, pressing hard. On the swell of an acanthus leaf, the stones separated with hardly a sound and swung inward upon a darkness so palpable that I recoiled. The cool, close air of a crypt hushed into my face. Thank God I stood outside of it now, and had other air to breathe!

Irene gazed raptly into this macabre space “Did you have time to investigate it?” she asked me eagerly.

“No,” I answered. “Did you hear me... call to you from within?”

“No, dear Nell; the stones must be admirably muffling. Just think, this clever mechanism must have been constructed centuries ago, with still nary a squeak despite fire and flood and damp and decay.”

“Just think,” I repeated unenthusiastically.

Godfrey chuckled, a sound that went over both our heads.

Irene ducked hers into the dark, then thrust the lantern within and swept it from side to side.

I gasped. No wonder I had felt marooned on a mere slice of solid ground! An earthen stairway led deeper into the dark. Had I taken a single step forward, I would have tumbled farther into the gloomy throat of darkness.

“We must investigate!” Irene moved into the chamber, taking the little bit of light she carried with her.

I hesitated, but Godfrey’s hand on my elbow both braced me and urged me forward.

“The worst is over, Nell,” he bent to say in my ear. “You should have the honor of exploring your find.”

I was hardly in any condition to decline honors, no matter how dubious. We three descended into the crypt, unaware of what awaited us below.

Chapter Twenty-nine

KING’S CASTLING

One of
the most fascinating diversions during my life with the Nortons was to watch Irene attempt to conceal a yawn in company. Owing to her life as a diva, she could open her mouth to astounding dimensions. Irene yawned and sneezed as she sang, with head-thrown-back gusto.

Thus, when tempted to one of these vulgar necessities in public, she treated the onlooker to a battle royal between inclination, capacity, and self-discipline.

On this occasion, Irene interred her yawn in the corner of her breakfast napkin and marked its passing with a celebratory sip of strong black coffee.

We broke fast on the cusp of elevenses, so late had we three risen after our arduous night in the graveyard. Allegra possessed that capacity so taken for granted by the young of being able to sleep late and heavily. She found nothing odd in our stirring so tardily, and joined us at the hotel table like a vagrant ray of sunshine.

“Did you have a jolly adventure last night?” she asked, drinking her tea and milk; no pitch-black liquids for her.

“Jolly does not do it justice,” Godfrey observed, breaking apart a roll crammed with a tarry substance he had assured me was no more than prune filling.

“Amen,” said I, though the time for saying grace was long past “And ‘jolly’ is not a proper form of expression for a young lady.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks, Miss Huxleigh! I was merely asking.”

“We had a right jolly adventure,” Irene put in, “and will have an even jollier one tonight.”

“At the palace!” Allegra reminded herself, and us. “Oh, I do wish to go and see poor Clotilde.”

“She is ‘Queen Clotilde,’ and you shall go,” Irene said.

“I shall? To the reception? But I’m not invited.”

“Indeed you shall, but not to the reception. I have a greater assignment in mind for you.”

“Really? At the palace? And I shall see Clotilde?”

“All of that,” Irene said smugly, biting enthusiastically into a roll crawling with the vile seed of the poppy. “And—” She eyed me with mock meekness. “—you will be home before six and safe in your suite, as Miss Huxleigh would consider only fitting and proper for an unescorted young girl in gay old Prague.”

“Gay old Prague!” I added with what was not quite a snort. I may blurt on occasion, under stress, but I never snort.

“What is the plan for the evening?” Godfrey asked with a certain reluctance.

“We shall go together,” Irene said. “I as Lady Sherlock; you and Nell as yourselves.”

“What explains this sudden alliance?” he asked.

Irene blinked her daylight-gilded lashes until I thought she should swoon of supposed innocence. “We are all English.”

“We are all
apparently
English,” I put in, eating the plain bread and fruit I found the best items to order in Prague.

“I pass for such, do I not?” Irene asked. Her expression brooked no disagreement. Frankly, both Godfrey and I were too exhausted from our adventure of the previous evening to argue.

That is how Irene always got her way: she exhausted any opposition.

“What do we do today?” Godfrey asked sensibly. “Nothing.” Irene seemed most pleased with herself. “I have some... archival investigations to pursue in town.

Allegra will be well occupied when I explain her mission to the Palace this afternoon. So you and Nell may... rest.”

“Rest?” I demanded.

“You’ve had a trying night,” she said, her flexible voice an arpeggio of soothing sounds, “both of you darlings. Simply think on how to look splendid tonight—Lady Sherlock would not care to associate with... dowdy individuals—and I will do the rest.”

“That,” Godfrey said grimly, “is precisely what I am afraid of.”

“And I,” I added, “am not used to regarding myself as an ornamental object.”

“Please do so now, Nell,” Irene beseeched me with a warm glance. “It is more important than you know.”

“Nor am I an ornamental object,” Godfrey put in, an unspoken growl underlining his protest.

“Dear man,” Irene said, “sometimes we all must play such roles, and tonight is your grandest opportunity.”

She glanced from Godfrey to myself with the proud satisfaction of a puppet master eyeing her two most promising mannequins. “Tonight will be a most memorable evening, count upon it.”

That is the very difficulty, I thought as their conversation shifted into other matters. The previous night had already been memorable beyond belief and Irene refused to enlighten us on what she had expected, or made, of what we had found. I thought back on these astounding events.

We did not find the Golem beneath the tomb of Rabbi Loew, but we discovered a vast subterranean network of crude tunnels that snaked into a dozen different directions under the Old Town. Our lone lantern was not sufficient for exploring such a maze. We could not separate, for which I was sublimely grateful, nor could we lay bread crumbs—for we had none, although that struck me as the most suitable deployment for the products of Bohemian bakeries.

“Interesting,” Irene commented when we had emerged again into the blessed air surrounding the Jewish cemetery.

She was always dispensing such annoyingly cryptic assessments. “What do you make of it, Nell?”

I sputtered for a moment before I spoke. ‘The tunnels were dark, dirty, damp. The air was both warm, and chill. I would not send an earthworm on an errand to such a place!”

Godfrey laughed as if I had made the greatest witticism on earth; such a treasure. No wonder even the odious Tatyana coveted him.

“The tunnels are obviously old,” he speculated; “some defensive scheme of the ghetto against an attack. If the Golem was meant to hide in them, he would have to go bent double, for even I had to hunch over. An unwelcoming maze,” he added, “as Nell says.”

“Do you believe,” Irene asked, “that we stumbled onto something long hidden, or in more recent use?”

I shuddered and thrust my gloved hands into the side pockets of the detested bloomers. “Ancient. Evil. To be avoided.”

Godfrey extinguished the lantern and returned it to the black bag as he spoke. “Ancient, but useful in modern times. Impossible to say whether the tunnels have been used of late.”

“Oh, if only I had a map of the place!” In the dark, Irene’s voice burst into a bright firework of passion.

“No map would exist—ever,” Godfrey cautioned her. “That would be the entire reason for such a surreptitious network.”

“That may have been the original reason,” she said, “but—now the possibilities are divinely unlimited.”

“So are the possibilities of us contracting an ague,” I reminded her. “May we return to the hotel and a bit of warmth?”

“Of course,” she agreed too readily.

We were already picking our way through the dark, topsy-turvy graveyard and back within earshot of mirth, merriment, and ardent liquors.

“The matters that await us tomorrow on Hradcany hill, my friends,” she added in a deep, foreboding voice reminiscent of the ancient gypsy woman’s, “are—may I say, far more grave?”

I personally did not see how an expedition to Prague Castle could be any more ghastly than the previous evening’s outing to the rabbi’s tomb and its underlying secrets.

On Irene’s orders, I attempted to dress as splendidly as I was capable of appearing.

“This is not a mere matter of vanity, Nell,” she instructed me in my chamber that afternoon. “When one mingles with the great and powerful, one must don whatever guise best suits.”

“I am merely a secretary to Godfrey,” I pointed out. “Surely no one will pay me any attention whatsoever, as is usual.”

She shook an admonitory finger in front of my nose so urgently that I am sure my poor eyes crossed to regard it.

“Nell, you must listen and obey, as no doubt you expected your charges to do years ago. You can rest assured that a good many people will be paying you attention tonight, as you put it, merely for the fact of who your friends are. You must wear the cherry velvet gown I found you at the Paris street fair. It is splendidly made and timeless in style.”