Blood Royal (11 page)

“The answer is ‘Yes’, my lady,” said Bell.

I heard her stifle a sob.

“It is far,” she said. “How – how soon will you be ready to leave?”

“We are ready now, my lady.”

She did not speak again, but turned to the steps, and I heard a door opened and the voice of Madame Dresden begin to utter a greeting and come to a sudden stop.

When I ventured to turn my head, the Countess’ arms were about her, and she was weeping like a child.

For the next thirty minutes I sat as though turned to stone, and Bell, beside me on the pavement, never once moved.

I do not wish to labour the matter or to give the Duke’s behaviour a colour it does not deserve. As her affianced husband, the man had a right to demand that, when they met or parted, the Grand Duchess should give him her lips. I think he was afraid to do so. Be that as it may, he did not. Had he asked and she objected, vile as he was, he could not, I think, have been blamed for insisting upon his right. But he did not ask. He preferred to commit a vulgar, common assault upon the peerless creature who was fighting to save his throne. And there I will leave the business, for even at this distance of time I cannot recall it with composure and, indeed, I think her tears and his laughter are commentary enough.

So I sat, still as an image, staring through the windscreen, with the sweat drying salt upon my face.

Johann and his works I had forgotten. I could only remember the shortcomings of Duke Paul. When I asked myself why the Grand Duchess was striving in his behalf, I felt as though I were dreaming some monstrous dream.

At last a maid came with a dressing-case, and a moment later the Grand Duchess entered the car.

The night was clear and cool, the ways were empty and the mountain air refreshed both body and soul. Once clear of Vigil, we went like the wind and in less than forty minutes we had come to the frontier bridge.

Bell showed a pass to the sentries, arms were presented and we rolled on to Austrian soil.

Five minutes later—

“Stop, please,” said the Grand Duchess. “I wish to sit in front.”

In silence the change was made, while I furtively hunched my shoulders and sunk my chin on my chest.

We had covered a mile in silence before the Grand Duchess spoke.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

Drive as I would, the dawn was at Anger before us, and the sun was touching the mountains as we entered the three-mile gorge at the head of which the castle had stood.

We had made the journey in silence, and the Grand Duchess sat so still that more than once I thought that she was asleep: but, if ever I turned to make sure, I found that her eyes were open, and these would greet my movement to show that she was awake.

The gorge made a lovely passage at any hour, but at break of day it was, I suppose, at its best, and I shall ever remember how sweet the foliage smelled and how grateful was the sound of the torrent by which we sped. Movement through air so cool was most refreshing, and when I uncovered my head to make the most of it, I noticed that the Grand Duchess had done the same.

If she was weary, she showed no sign of it: if she was apprehensive, none would have guessed the truth. Her great grey eyes were steady, her head was high, and a quiet, resolute look sat on her face. I cannot compare her beauty, for I have not the words, but I think that a poet would have sung of the wind in her blue-black hair and the quiver of her delicate nostrils and the curve of her exquisite mouth.

I had passed through the gorge four times, and I knew my way. There was a beechwood that marked the end of it and masked the natural circus from such as came up by the water, much as a screen in a theatre may mask the wings. Once a man rounded this wood, circus, meadows and castle lay full in his view, but, until he did so, there was nothing to indicate that the gorge did not run before him for another three miles.

When we came to the beechwood I brought the Rolls to rest.

As I stepped into the road—

“Will you wait here,” I said, “until I come back?”

Before I had finished the Grand Duchess was out of the car.

“No,” she said quietly. “If it were Maintenance—”

“I wish to God it were,” I said warmly, and meant what I said.

My fervour brought a smile to her lips, of which I was very glad.

“I will go on,” she said gently. “Follow me in five minutes, if you like: but not before.”

With that, she was gone down the road, and a moment later the beechwood hid her from view.

I threw off my coats, made my way to the torrent and bathed my head and hands in a lively pool. Bell had a towel ready and, ere the five minutes were past, I had made a rude enough toilet, but one that refreshed my senses and did my heart good. Then I bade Bell be ready to serve what breakfast he could in half an hour and left him sponging the windscreen which was littered with insect dead.

I have several times seen the waste which fire has committed and twice the horrid ruin it has made of a country house: but the havoc wrought at Anger was of another kind. I had read of the ravages of earthquakes and wars and storms, but I had never so much as conceived a destruction so absolute by any element and I cannot believe that Carthage was ever so blotted out.

Not a wall was standing more than ten feet from the ground, and the island which the castle had occupied was now a black mound of refuse, walled for the most part, like a dunghill, and smoking leisurely. At one point a wall had fallen outwards, and a mass of stones and rubble was damming the stream; and the trees around were horribly disfigured, for such as had not been burned had had their foliage scorched, and the broad belt of dead black branches and shrivelled leaves stood out very sharp and ugly against the living green.

For the rest, next to nothing was changed.

The water ran as clear and as stoutly, and a gay cascade was seething over the new-made dam: except for a black spot or so, the sward was as fresh and as blowing as when I had seen it before; and the bridge held up by leopards was there to usher who would venture to the ghastly holocaust that had been the Grand Duchess’ home.

At the verge of the meadows stood two ponies, fastened to pegs in the ground, and two oxen were couched beside them, regarding the world about them with comfortable eyes. By these my lady was standing, listening to the speech of a man who was clad as a groom, and surveying the desolation, with a hand to her throat.

I made my way over the turf to where she stood.

As I came up, she turned.

“The servants escaped, and the horses. Mercifully my great-aunt was not there. Karl says that petrol was pumped right over the battlements – literally pumped, through a hose. One of the drums they used is still in the bed of the stream. But they fired the stables first, and by the time he and Jacob had got the horses away whoever did it was gone. Jameson, the English butler, got out the maids. In less than two hours from the outbreak, it was as you see it now. Of course it was full of oak and there were beams in the walls. He says it was an absolute furnace: if it hadn’t begun to rain while the fire was raging, he thinks the woods would be black for half a mile.”

It was easy to picture the scene.

Six servants asleep in the castle, and only three of these men: the roar of the great waterfall, and the ceaseless fret of the torrent to smother irregular sounds: a malefactor up on the ramparts, which the trees overhung, and petrol pouring into the gallery and making its way down the stairs…

“Where are the horses?” I said.

“They are at Littai, a village four miles away. The servants are with them, and Karl will join them today. Perhaps you will take me there presently – now, if you’re not too tired. I mean, I’ve seen what I came to see, and it’s – well, it’s no good my staying here.”

The half-laugh, half-sob with which she said this would have bruised the hardest heart, and for the life of me I could not answer, but only nodded my head.

We passed across the meadows without a word.

As we came to the beechwood, she turned, to stand very still. And I stood still behind her, with my eyes on the ground.

I do not know how I knew it, but, as though she had told me, I knew that she was looking on the circus for the very last time and that, once she had rounded the beechwood, she would never come back…

Two minutes later we came into view of the car.

“Will you breakfast first?” I asked her. “I’m afraid we have nothing hot, but—”

“I am only thirsty,” she said. “And, if you will wait, I will bathe my face and hands.”

I carried her case to the water and set a cushion on the edge of the little pool. Then I sent Bell off in the Rolls, to turn her about, and mixed some brandy and soda against my lady’s return.

This she was loth to drink, but, after a little entreaty, she did as I asked.

I put on Rowley’s greatcoat and picked up his cap.

“Don’t wear those things,” she said quietly.

I hesitated, cap in hand.

“I think perhaps it’s better,” I said.

“I will not have you wear them,” she cried, stamping her foot.

I gave the garments to Bell and entered the car.

There was at Littai a farm which the Grand Duchess owned, and, though it was tenanted, the farmer was her faithful servant and glad to offer his mistress the best that he had. Her hunters stood deep in his straw and ate his corn, her servants fed at his table and lay beneath his roof. A pleasant parlour had been set aside for her coming, and Jameson had appeared in the doorway as we drove up. The place might have been her home. But it was not. Leonie, Grand Duchess of Riechtenburg, was homeless. Anger had not been insured, and there was not left of it one stone upon another.

And there I will leave the business, for there, in that humble homestead, she left it herself.

“Anger is dead,” she said quietly, within the hour. “Six hundred years ago they cut down the woods to build it, and now the woods will return and take it back. Nature is very forgiving. Nobody else would tend his enemy’s grave… And now I’m going to try and put it out of my mind. It’s rather like losing a dog – an old, faithful fellow that was so – so glad to see you whenever you’d been away.” Her voice had begun to tremble, but she shook the tears from her eyes and started up. “This is the way of folly. I will not speak of it again.”

Nor did she, that I know of. But her voice was big with weeping, and I left her to take her rest with a heavy heart.

At five of that afternoon I was sitting in the farmer’s orchard with a pipe in my mouth.

The long grass was cool and fragrant, an aged apple-tree made me a rest for my back, and the murmur of bees about their business and the trickle of a neighbouring rill would have had me asleep in an instant, but for the rest I had taken an hour before.

Compared with these simple conditions, might, majesty and dominion seemed to me treacherous stuff, and God knows to what flights of philosophy I might not have soared, but I heard a rustle behind me and, before I could move, the Grand Duchess sat down by my side.

“I have been very obedient,” she said. “I slept until half past three.”

“I am very glad,” said I.

“I think you are a good doctor,” she said. “My nerve has come back.”

“You never lost it,” said I.

I saw her fine chin go up.

“I am not given to tears,” she said coldly.

“You have the greatest heart that I have ever known.”

“Because I don’t know when I’m beaten? Never mind. How did you bring Grieg down?”

“He tried to kill Hanbury,” I said. “And I threw him out of a box.”

She knitted her brows.

“A box?”

“At
The Square of Carpet
.”

Slowly she turned, to look me full in the eyes.

“How did you come to be there?”

“Grieg set a trap,” said I. “And Hanbury and I walked in.”

“And you swore that you would be careful. You—”

“It was a trap,” I protested. “I never dreamed—”

“You are down enough upon others who break their word.”

“I took every care,” I said. “For one thing I had no idea that
The Square of Carpet
was the kind of place that it is. And Hanbury will tell you that—”

“Tell me yourself what happened.”

Shortly I related our adventure, while she sat looking into the sunlit distance, with her knees drawn up a little and her delicate fingers laced about her slim legs.

When I had finished—

“You must leave Vigil,” she said. “You are not safe there. Grieg was an instrument, but Johann’s the power behind. And this morning you saw what he does to people who get in his way.”

“I think
The Square of Carpet
was Grieg’s own show.”

“Directly, perhaps. But you’ve twisted Johann’s tail.”

“I’m going to,” said I violently. “He’ll curse the day he burned Anger before I’m through.”

Her head was round in an instant and a finger up to her lip.

“That’s not like you,” she said. “When you talk like that you scare me. What have you got in your mind?”

“Nothing,” I cried bitterly. “And there’s the rub. I’m brainless, powerless, useless. And that’s why I’m safe.”

“But you said—”

“I know, I know. I can’t help it. You see, he’s burned down your home.”

I had spoken without thinking. But, if that is a fault, it is not always a misfortune, and I cannot forget the light that my childish avowal brought into her glorious eyes or the exquisite smile that came to rest on her mouth.

“You are very downright,” she said, looking away. “And you have been – very kind.”

“You know I have not.” I cried. “You know—”

“I know I am very grateful,” she said gently, “and—” I heard her catch her breath “—and very honoured.”

I got to my feet somehow and stepped to the brink of the brook. It was, I know, ungallant, but I could not sit still beside her, for the blood was surging in my temples and the flame of her charm and beauty had entered into my soul. I stood for a moment, watching the flow of the water and gripping the stem of a sapling till the bark broke under my hand. Then a great fear came upon me that she would go, and I turned and went back to where she sat in the grass.

“I won’t leave Vigil,” I said.

She looked up quickly.

“Once you said you would do whatever I asked.”

“Then do not ask me to go – Leonie.”

She put a hand to her head.

“Don’t make it more hard for me,” she said. “I came to you here in this orchard to send you away, to make you promise that tomorrow you would leave Vigil – and not come back. You say you’re useless. Just think of what you’ve done… Time after time you’ve ridden Johann off. Take only our presence here. I
had
to visit Anger –
ça va sans dire
. If you hadn’t brought me, I must have gone by train. From Vigil to Anger by train takes the whole of one day, I should have been out of Vigil not for one day, but for three –
as Johann meant me to be
. As it is, tomorrow morning I shall be back in my seat. Well, that won’t amuse Johann… Grieg probably said he’d fix you, and Johann believed he would: now Grieg’s on his back, and you’re going as strong as before.”

“What can he do?” said I.

“Make certain of you,” she cried, clapping her hands to her eyes. “Blot you out – as Grieg nearly did. Your Minister will make inquiries, but what of that? England won’t go to war because you are – not to be found. You’ve seen that the man is ruthless, and that is why you must go. If anything happened to you…”

“Answer me one thing,” said I. “Is this the only reason why you wish me to go?”

She drooped her head and nodded.

“Will you swear that, Leonie?”

“Yes” – in a very low voice.

“I will not go,” I said quietly.

Then—

“But I will disappear.”

For a moment she stared at me. Then I saw understanding lighten her eyes.

“You mean?”

“I will disappear,” said I. “So will George Hanbury. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It was the obvious line.”

“And the servants?”

“Will enter your service. To touch your chauffeurs is more than Johann will dare.”

“When you say ‘disappear’—”

“We shall appear to have gone. Our rooms will be empty, our luggage will in fact have gone. Witnesses will declare that we took the Salzburg express. They will be perfectly right. We shall take it openly, and Vigil will see us no more. Only the servants will know better: they will always be able to find us within the hour.”