Another Scandal in Bohemia (47 page)

They were not so much dancing now, as embracing. The music seemed to accelerate, reaching fever pitch. I realized that the piece was one of those novelty waltzes whose tempo goes faster and faster.

I glanced at the conductor, who was looking over his shoulder at Tatyana, nodding and smiling. No doubt Madame had requested—and paid for—this particular piece of music for this very particular partner.

Despite keeping up with the time and the wild woman in his arms, Godfrey’s eyes darted around the room, no doubt seeking a plausible excuse for rescue.

But the other dancers, noticing the drama in their midst, now gave way. They drew back to the fringes of the dance floor, leaving the yoked couple in center stage.

How diabolical that woman was! Godfrey was caught in a whirlpool of music and motion. Though his feet never faltered, he was like a mechanical man, like a Golem in evening dress, put through his unwilling paces.

Tatyana’s right hand lifted from his shoulder again, despite the quickened turns, and thrust into her hair. She flung her hand back. Something small and bejeweled spun across the empty floor. A length of her fire-blond hair toppled, poured onto her shoulder like bleeding honey. Another turn, and it whipped loose behind her. Again and again her arm lifted, drawing out and discarding pins until her hair flew around in an ungovemed veil. Like Salome, she had more conventional veils to loose as well. The airy scarves upon her bodice drifted away one by one with the accelerating tempo.

I shall never forget that sight, a shocking symphony in black and white: Godfrey in his evening dress; Tatyana in her sober black gown except for her bare white arms, one lying along the black of Godfrey’s guiding arm, the other snaking over his shoulder, behind his neck. The music, frantic by now, had them spinning in dizzying circles. Tatyana’s blond hair whipped the air, her face, and Godfrey’s, and she was laughing, laughing wildly, with utter exultation in the dance.

Her arm twisted tighter around his neck, forcing Godfrey’s head toward hers. Her demonically laughing face drew nearer to his—she will kiss him... right here, before us all, before Irene. Oh, I cannot look—or... will she kill him?

Just when I thought that I must scream from sheer helplessness and horror, the music stopped. Godfrey, his face white though his cheeks were flushed, pulled the hateful pearls over his head and set Tatyana away from him. He did not push her, which would have been an act of violence that even such a woman did not merit of a gentleman.

He put his hands under her elbows, lifted her bodily, and set her a foot away from him, as one might move a mere mannequin.

I wanted to cheer. I had already seen Godfrey’s unexpected strength. One night I had stayed late in his and Irene’s rooms; he lifted both myself and the chair I sat in from the table to indicate that I should leave. I still am not sure why, although I begin to glimpse such imperative motivations.

Then I held my breath, as did all in the vast chamber. No gesture of renunciation could be more plain. What would the prideful woman do now?

A expression of wild exhilaration suffused her dissolute face. She had
liked
his swift assertion of independence. I realized why in an instant: as a former ballerina, she expected partners to handle her.

Tatyana threw back her disordered head and laughed ecstatically, backing away from Godfrey, her hand fumbling at her breast. In an opera, she would have seized a concealed dagger from her garb and stabbed herself, or him. But Tatyana was a dancer, not a diva, and she had recently enjoyed a most exhilarating romp.

She seized the glorious pearls with which she had bound Godfrey so briefly, and ripped them from her neck.

A shocked silence struck the room and everyone in it. Every eye fixed on the scattering black beads. Even Tatyana’s laughter died, and all that could be heard was the brittle click of falling pearls.

Only when the last one had stopped rolling did gentlemen rush to recover them, pecking about the floor like penguins turned into little red hens.

Godfrey and Tatyana stood frozen in the center of the floor, too fatigued to move, too exhausted and willful to end their dance-to-the-death. I finally thought to look for Irene, and found her, for once in her life, in the same state as I: too shocked to move.

We would not soon forget the evening’s public and private humiliations at Tatyana’s hands: Godfrey forced to dance to another woman’s will... Irene seeing that even her nearest and dearest may suffer for the reckless life she leads.

I facing the wrong assumption that I have always most feared, that, no matter what I do, I will be suspected of being what I am not, a wicked woman.

Chapter Thirty-one

A SLAP IN THE FACE

Into the
awful, awesome silence, came the sound of footsteps.

Measured, inexorable, the fall of heavy feet upon marble echoed. The entire company heard, and still did not move, did not turn to stare.

Here, all was bright, yet frozen into a tableau, as if we were all Worth fashion mannequins posed in an elegant setting. Yet I recalled the ponderous advance of the Golem down the darkest streets of Prague.

These oncoming footsteps were as rhythmic as a clock’s ticking, as mortality’s dread tread through the Masque of the Red Death. I was also reminded of Mr. Poe’s heedless aristocrats making merry, while all around them the poor, the old, and the ill succumbed to the plague that raged outside the castle, until Death joined their noble, yet ignoble, company in person.

As the steps drew nearer, drew even with me until I winced involuntarily at each firm footfall, I anticipated a tall, cadaverous figure bearing a scythe.

I was correct on one count only: the form that moved onto the deserted dance floor was tall, though far from emaciated, and wore a red military coat blazing with decorations.

I had been so caught up in this closet drama that I had forgotten the fourth person whose pride Tatyana had recently cast to the ground, like pearls hurled before swine, for the onlookers to judge and find wanting.

Wilhelm von Ormstein, his face the dull scarlet of utter rage, strode into the center of the floor, where Godfrey and Tatyana still stood.

He ignored the Russian woman (though one would think her disordered dress and hair would invite closer inspection), to pause before Godfrey. With the cessation of his steps, time resumed. The stirring of silks, satins, and stiff shirt fronts agitated the air. I see the scene in normal proportion again. We stand in Prague Castle, and its King is about to speak. What he says nearly unwinds time again and impresses new silence on the watchers.

“You, sir... banker.” He addressed Godfrey with curled lip. “You have overstepped the bounds of even a King’s hospitality. I would not ordinarily lower myself to deal with your ilk, but the offense is too deep to ignore. You have insulted my House; I will call you to account personally upon the field of honor.”

“How have I offended, Your Majesty?” Godfrey inquired, quite reasonably.

“Your... dancing offends me.”

Godfrey raised one eyebrow. “Isn’t that a trifling cause for a duel?”

“Not in this case.” The King whirled impetuously to face his guests, swaying on his feet. “Witnesses abound. You have violated my hospitality by your overfamiliar attentions to—to...” He whirled back again, to glance at Tatyana, but his fury was for the man before him. “—the Queen.” A gasp shook the crowd, not because of the nature of the charge, but because of its incongruity.

“I danced a set or two with Her Majesty early in the evening,” Godfrey pointed out. “Surely this is not what has angered Your Majesty.”

“That is exactly it! I take exception to your behavior. You have presumed beyond the limits of my endurance and I will have your h-h-hide for it.”

King Willie swayed again after this pronouncement, a victim of two green and poisonous potions: jealousy and the evening’s punch.

Or course the King’s challenge was transparent: what had maddened him was not Godfrey’s impeccable behavior toward Clotilde and even Tatyana, but the sight of his mistress’s wanton public seduction of another. However, he could hardly challenge Tatyana to a duel, so poor Godfrey must pay the price.

“No!” cried a woman’s voice.

I had no illusion that it was Irene’s, for the timbre was all wrong.

Queen Clotilde came rushing over to the trio, her slippers pattering over the burnished floor.

“No, Your Majesty! I assure you that Mr. Norton’s attentions were not only innocent, but most kind. There is no wrong to right.”

“I am the King,” Willie roared. “I know when my honor has been besmirched. Would I dirty my own hands with such a nonentity were the matter not serious?”

Clotilde was not to be intimidated. She drew herself up, looking quite regal for once. “Sire, that is true, but I am your Queen. If you do not trust my assessment, you taint my own honor.”

The King shook his head as if ridding himself of gnats. “Your honor will be restored when I have revenged it, as I will on the morrow.” He turned to Godfrey again, all righteous outrage, this King who could not trouble himself to court his own wife. “My seconds will call upon you at dawn with news of the site for our meeting. The choice of weapon is yours.”

“I cannot persuade Your Majesty that I have done nothing that merits offense?”

“No.”

“I cannot convince Your Majesty that the dignity of your title will suffer from a duel with a commoner—?”

“No. That is true, but I don’t care. All you can do is prove yourself the coward you are by leaving Prague before tomorrow’s sun comes up.”

Godfrey, as pale and composed as the King was florid and irate, nodded once. “Your seconds may call upon me at the Europa.”

“And what is to be the weapon of your destruction?” the King demanded with a sneer that did not become him.

Godfrey hesitated. I could guess his quandary. The King’s greater height and longer limbs would be to Godfrey’s disadvantage with a sword, not to mention the likelihood of the King’s having studied this art since childhood. On the other hand, the King’s heavier frame and thicker head from the night’s drinking would benefit Godfrey in such a contest.

Before the King could cast another charge of cowardice at Godfrey, a new voice entered the fray, and this one I recognized instantly despite its uncustomary accents of the Queen’s English.

“My fellow countryman,” the bogus Lady Sherlock suggested smoothly, stepping into the vacant space around the three, “is not accustomed to fighting duels. He must have until morning to decide on his weapon.”

“There is little to consider, Lady Sherlock.” The King barely honored Irene with a second glance. (This alone spoke to his sad deterioration since our last encounter; he should have least of sensed some past connection between them, or been struck by her present beauty.) “It must be pistol or sword. I assure you that I am accomplished at both.”

“Well, then—” Irene turned to Godfrey with a shrug. “—make it pistols, Mr. Norton, and the bad business will be soon done.”

I gasped, uncaring who heard me. Even a parson’s daughter like myself knows that pistols are far more deadly in such meetings. True, a sword has many more chances to mutilate an opponent before the affair is done, while a single pistol shot may pass by, but a bullet that flies home is more often fatal than a cut or a stab.

Godfrey hesitated for an instant longer, no doubt thinking the same thing. Irene’s expression was serene, calm, certain. She had spoken.

“Pistols,” he said, the choice causing a ripple of consternation to shake the previously silent onlookers. This duel would risk the deaths of both men.

Clotilde wailed and fled the scene, but Tatyana stood her ground as she had the entire time, watching the two men with the hungry eyes of a cat eyeing quarreling mice. One way or the other, her bloodlust or her ordinary lust would be satisfied.

“Will any stand up for you?” the King inquired in a tone that expected Godfrey to confess himself friendless.

I held my breath in anxiety that Irene would offer herself for the post, but she remained silent, for once.