Iron Butterflies (6 page)

“There are far too many aware,” the Colonel snapped. “As for today—I have been sent with orders.”

“And those? Also are they verbal only? It is said that
His Highness has suffered new afflictions and must now write his wishes. Do, for your own sake, make sure of any orders, Colonel, lest you be forced to answer for your actions at a later period—to those not at all sympathetic with your methods.”

“The orders are from His Highness, you may take my word, or disregard that at your own peril.” His voice was smooth and cold. “The Countess is to remain in seclusion until he gives instructions otherwise. There are to be no more such imprudent actions as that of today.”

She glanced at him quickly and then away again.

“One will, of course, obey His Highness's commands. But when will Amelia be granted a meeting then?”

“That is His Highness's decision only,” the Colonel replied quellingly. “By your leave, ladies.” He sketched a bow which was hardly enough to express civility and was out of the door before the Gräfin could speak again. We heard now only the ring of his spurred boot heels on the floor of the hall without.

The Gräfin made a face. “Such a boor as he is! Or perhaps he wishes to show us how strong he thinks he may be against the day when the Elector can no longer protect him. What is Fenwick but an adventurer who sells his sword? Why does he believe he may stamp about ordering this and that as if we were conscripts on parade before him? Do not allow yourself to be disturbed by him, dear Amelia, he is not one of
us
, nor can he ever aspire to be more than he is today—a messenger. And soon he will be less—”

On her full underlip her pink tongue tip showed for an instant. I did not need much sensitivity to understand that strong emotions did abide under the Gräfin's doll-like surface and that some of these were concerned with Colonel Fenwick.

“It is strange—oh, do come and sit down here, my dear. You stand there so tall and straight-backed you also remind me now of the Colonel!” She patted the settee in invitation I thought better not to disregard. “Yes, it is strange that His Highness has not already
sent for you. If his health is as precarious as rumor tells us—and Konrad has heard some disturbing things— then it would seem he must desire to see you as soon as possible. I do not like this—someone may be making mischief!” She stared straight into my face as if trying to read some answer there. Undoubtedly she could well suspect, having found the Colonel with me alone, that I had learned more than her Baron had told her, and from perhaps a far more reliable source. When I said nothing, the Gräfin continued.

“
She
has been very much at the palace—the Princess Adelaide, bringing all those black-robed females to look down their crooked noses and squawk their pious prayers aloud like crows. She is not going to stay in her abbey nos—no, she pushes to see her father make due repentance for his sins, mainly those which affect her the most! I have never trusted her—ready to thrust that long nose of hers into all private affairs, mainly those which do
not
in the least concern her!” She spoke so hotly that I was sure the Gräfin had had her own difficulties with the Princess and still smarted from some passage at arms before or since that redoubtable female had entered the bosom of the church.

“But if it is she who is making trouble— No, there are plenty at court who will not take kindly to her meddling. If only His Highness would send for you and settle it all!

“He will—he must. Konrad is busy about the matter now—and he has influence. Yes, Konrad will have a solution.”

I noticed that she never mentioned the Gräf as one to be consulted in difficulties. But neither did I put any dependence on Konrad von Werthern. Never before had it been so necessary for me to consider my own words and acts with such care. The Colonel's suggested headache might become real, I decided, before this day was entirely over.

But now I sat and listened to the Gräfin's continued string of speculations—sometimes making as noncommital a comment as I could summon. Her various outlinings
of this peril or that, or some to-be-hoped-for resolution flowed steadily on. I tried to make myself attend to her words, hoping to sift out what might be of future benefit to me. Only I found my thoughts turning more and more to the action the Colonel had ordered me into that night.

He had never asked my agreement to his plan, he had simply stated that this was what I must do. Now I framed in my mind several very sharp and telling rebuttals to his arrogant assumption that I was under his orders. Those came too late, I was committed to the venture, though a sensible female would have retired to her chamber, locked her door, and stayed voluntary prisoner until morning. The trouble was that I was, in some ways, no longer a sensible female.

At last I interjected into the Gräfin's monologue my excuse of a headache, and then had some trouble extricating myself from an instant reaction of solicitude, though once within my chamber I was grateful for the suitable-for-an-invalid tray Truda brought, for I found myself most healthily hungry.

I did have in my wardrobe just such a cloak as the Colonel had mentioned. It was a shabby thing, faded in color to a uniform drabness, but I kept it for its excellent protection in bad weather.

How else did one dress to meet an unknown grandfather who was also a reigning monarch? My sober collection of half-mourning gowns seemed, as I examined them one by one, most inferior to such an occasion. That the court was used to elaborate toilets I knew. But—the fact that I was in mourning—that so the memory of my grandmother was ever in sight, as well as in my mind—perhaps that was the best move I could make now.

I chose a dress of cream white trimmed in black ribbons. The night was sultry and if I were to go muffled in a cloak, I did not want to smother. I sought my sewing bag and, using my embroidery scissors, I cut the stitches which held the high-necked guimpe in place. With that gone the dress appeared far more in
the formal fashion, though I felt very bare of neck and shoulder after I had hooked myself into the bodice. The iron necklace helped a little and its effect was startling—I looked someone very different from Miss Harrach of Wyllyses Hundred. I might not be clad in brilliant satin with an overflow of jewels, but I did have something— For the first time I realized that perhaps a pretty face was not the only thing to attract another's eyes.

I am not given to blushing, but now the direction in which my unruly thoughts had turned did bring color to my cheeks. I caught up the cloak and, with that across my lap, seated myself out of the range of the betraying mirror to wait.

Waiting, for me, has never been easy; now, in this room, it made me fidget. I kept feeling that I was under observation from some unseen source and I had to summon all my composure not to rise and pick up one of the candles, pull aside the curtains of the bed, peer into each and every pool of shadow to assure myself that I
was
entirely alone. I gave a start and a little cry when a scratching at the door announced Truda's long-awaited arrival.

She told me that the Gräf and the Gräfin were at dinner and most of the servants so busied with the serving of that that she could guide me out. We went down a smaller hall to a narrow staircase. There I had to keep close hold on the rail, so steep were the steps. There was another hall to traverse, then we came out a very small side door into what was plainly a corner of the stable yard.

There a figure loomed out of the dusk and held one hand into the limited beam of a single lantern—just long enough for me to see the Colonel's ring. Truda vanished before I followed the stranger among a number of smaller buildings, to pass through a second gate. Beyond that I was handed into a closed carriage, the curtains of which were tightly drawn.

It seemed to me that the drive was a long one, surely when I had gone with the Gräfin this afternoon we had
not made so many turns. I tried to guess from the sounds I could hear if we were cross the square of the market again, but those which reached me were so muffled they meant nothing. At long last the carriage came to a stop, the door opened, the steps were let down, and I was handed out.

Here there was not even a lantern to give a light. The moon was rising, but its rays did not reach into the shadows where we were. Another figure came from the dark, a hand was slipped beneath my right arm. I again was startled and gave a gasp which was answered by an angry whisper and there was no mistaking the note of authority in
that.

“Hold to me for guidance,” the Colonel ordered. “We cannot show any light here.”

I surrendered to him as we crossed a strip of pavement against which pressed a wall of darkened brush. There was another door waiting—slightly ajar—then I was inside where there was the odor of polish, a trace of tobacco smoke.

“Stairs here.” Again that authoritative whisper.

I had already discovered that by stubbing a toe somewhat painfully against the first one. We went slowly, I having to be confident that my guide would not allow me to stumble. We made a turn and now I sighted a faint glow above which gave me the power to press on a little faster.

So we reached a wide hall. Some distance away was a table on which sat a four-branched caldelabra all candles aflame. In the light of that stood a sentry. The man stared straight ahead—in his utter motionless stance he might have been one of the wooden toys much favored by small boys. He did not even blink as the Colonel, without a glance at him, opened the guarded door.

Within was a blaze of light, so sudden it dazzled me a little. My cloak was swept away from my shoulders, and I could be glad of that for the heat of the room was as great as if I had stepped directly onto a hearth before a roaring fire.

“The Countess von Harrach!” Colonel Fenwick's voice was hardly above the whisper he had used since our meeting below, yet it seemed to ring both in my head and in that stiflingly hot room.

My bedazzled eyes had adjusted. If I had thought that my bedchamber in the von Zreibruken house was large and imposing, this chamber was twice its size and certainly three times its peer in magnificence. Nor were the hangings here shabby and the furniture out of place.

I faced directly the great bed, tented with a crimson canopy now looped back. It was set on a two-slep dais, and between me and its foot was a carven, gilded railing, as if to further emphasize the importance of its occupant and the necessity that he be set apart from all inferiors.

Pillows had been heaped high to support that occupant, and, as I looked directly at him at last, the rest of the room vanished from my attention. Curiosity had brought me here, now something else, more urgent and important drew me forward of my own accord, until my hands rested on the top of the balustrade and my eyes saw only the man who was watching me in turn with such a burning, demanding gaze that I could not have broken that eye bond between us, even if I had wished.

Chapter 6

I
do not know what I had expected to see when I at last
confronted this man who had shamed my family, made my grandmother the formidable and stern woman she was. By sheer will I kept my horror to myself—or hoped that I did in that moment. My grandmother had met death her noble face unmarred, her carriage that of a triumphant queen. What I looked upon was the wreck of what must have been once a handsome and commanding man.

One side of his pale face was flaccid, the muscles so changed that the eyelid was drawn nearly shut, the mouth loose. From the corner of that dribbled moisture. He wore no nightcap and his hair, near the color of the pillows which supported him, was still abundant. The upper part of his body, muffled in a rich robe of crimson gallooned with gold, must once have been powerful; now his shrunken flesh and outthrust bones under that show of rich color would have given the lie to those who still thought him to be a force in the world—if it were not for his other eye with its piercing gaze.

Slowly, as if he must fight for every fraction of an inch, he raised his right hand from the spread of fur-bordered velvet lying as a coverlet across his inert body. Seeing that gesture made with such infinite struggle,
my first shrinking from him vanished. I found myself wanting to give him aid. Still I sensed that there was in him the same determination and need for independence which my grandmother had shown. He would use what he could of his ailing body to the end.

A hand tightened about my own arm. The Colonel drew me from the foot of that throne bed, urged me around the side, bringing me as close to my grandfather as the width of the bed would allow. I was facing still that living eye, for with the same slow force as had brought up his hand, so did he shift his head on the pillows so he might watch my advance.

His lips moved, arching apart a fraction on the living side of his face. His struggle to speak was manifest. But there came no sound. If that was a signal, the Colonel moved. He loosed his hold on me, laid on the bed a tablet of paper and placed carefully between the fingers of the up-raised hand a pen.

The hand jerked into position, and the pen moved, leaving behind a broken scrawl which ran crookedly. Once the hand had come to a rest the Colonel whipped away the tablet, tore free the upper page, and set the pad in place again. The page he held out to me, while that fiercely demanding eye blinked, releasing me from its imprisoning stare.

I could make out the words I discovered, distorted as the writing was. It was in English—perhaps he believed I could not understand any other language.

“Lydia—” I was not aware that I was reading the scrawl aloud. “Always—Lydia—no one else—oath I gave held me here—but always Lydia—”

I thought of the paper I had found about the necklace I now wore—of that name repeated on it with such force as to near penetrate the surface on which it had been written. I did not think that this was a lie. To my surprise I felt a smarting in my eyes, the rise of emotion.

Perhaps a cynic might say that what Elector Joachim now felt was different from his emotions during his
days of rule, that he had accepted his “duty” then philosophically and without fighting custom. A cynic could believe this, yes. But I, watching the effort which had written those words, meeting the stare of that one eye, had to believe.

He was writing again with the same painful effort. The Colonel took up the second sheet and passed it to me.

“What of son—my true son?”

I answered his question. “My father was killed, fighting for his country.”

The eye closed, once more the lips strove to work, to shape some word. Never did the stubborn determination leave that ruined face. He looked up at me again and I felt as if I were being weighed, measured. Then he wrote:

“Well done. You—Lydia—like Lydia—” The pen fell from his fingers and the Colonel quickly bent to set it back again. But he did not add to what he had written, not yet—instead he held that measuring look upon me, studying my face with such intensity that I felt as if my very mind was open to his reading, that he knew my every thought, good or bad, kind or petty. It was such an examination as I had never undergone before, nor would I have believed until that moment that a single eye could convey such meaning.

Perhaps because he was near to the end of existence there was given him at that moment some power of unspoken communication no one of us who was not bound by his fate could understand. Never afterward could I say how long I stood there, held by his survey of me. But I believed that I also learned something of which I was ever after sure. For all the circumstances, for all the anger I had felt for him, my grandfather had truly been worthy of the woman he had seemed to desert and repudiate. I would never know the barriers intrigue and duty had raised between them, but they were well matched in courage, in strength and—in love. Not perhaps what that word means to most—no, this was an emotion which had been deeper, stronger,
little of the body perhaps, but much of the mind and spirit.

For the third time he wrote and the message was passed to me, it was longer this time and he had to pause several times. There were beads of moisture on his forehead, the sense of concentration which radiated from him impressed me as much as had his gaze. He was forcing his body to obey his will in a passion of need.

“My blood—Lydia's. I had to know. Safe—make you safe—will make sure—safe—wait for plan—he will help—do not trust—”

The pen fell, he had sunk back in his cushions, that speaking eye closed. As the Colonel removed paper and pen I dared to move, leaning over the edge of the bed, I reached out and took that now lax hand into both of mine, wishing that clasp to make him understand that I knew the truth of what he had tried to tell me.

His flesh was cold, but the fingers did not remain flaccid, instead they tightened in mine with determination. Moved by an emotion I did not try to understand, I raised his hand to my lips and kissed it.

His eye opened, his lips writhed in a last attempt to speak. I read the frustration, the horror of his own helplessness.

“Grandfather,” I said softly. “I know—”

How I wished at that moment we had a day, a week, or perhaps even an hour— This was not the Elector lying here, it was Joachim von Harrach who had once found another life, perhaps far more peaceful and happy, in another land and another time.

“See,” I pointed to the necklace I wore. “She gave it to me—wanted me to know— In the end—now—she understands—everything.”

It was not my imagination, I felt his grip tighten even more in mine. Once more his gaze was demanding. He needed something and I thought I knew what it was.

“She told me to come,” I said slowly and distinctly. “She wanted this—for us to meet.”

His head moved a fraction in what could only be a nod. Then he turned a little away from me to look at the man by my side. The gaze he directed on the Colonel was a speaking one, even as had been that between us earlier, though what message he would convey by it I could not guess.

There was a sudden sound from the door. My grandfather's hand turned in mine, sought freedom. I laid it down on his breast. The Colonel's grip fell on my shoulder and he drew me back from the bed.

“Come!” His voice was a whisper. He drew me on toward a tall screen at the other side of the room. I was pushed behind this with little ceremony just as the outer door opened with some force.

A gray-haired man, wearing a coat which was not the usual servant's livery but which bore a crest on the shoulder, and a loop of gold cord bearing a medallion resting on his chest, slipped inside and glanced about the room. It seemed to me that he sent an extra searching glance in the direction of the screen and I was certain that he gave the slightest of nods before he turned back toward the door.

He crossed quickly then to the side of my grandfather's bed and took up the Elector's hand, setting his fingers to the pulse at the wrist with a professional ease, while the Elector turned his head back to face the door itself. There had been a perfunctory scratching there and now it opened with some force.

A lackey stood nimbly aside when there swept into the room, irritation expressed in her moon-round face, in the flurry of her veil and the swing of her ground-length gray skirt, a woman who carried herself with all the arrogance of one who has had to defer to very few during a long and well-provisioned life. She looked about now, not even giving a glance to the sick man, and demanded in a strident voice:

“Where is Krantz, where is Sister Katherine? And where is Luc? They were not to leave His Highness for any reason!”

I felt the pressure of the Colonel's hand which he
had not lifted from my shoulder even after we had gained this place of temporary concealment. However, I did not need that warning, for such I was sure he was attempting to convey. My heart was beating fast, but not with any fear, just excitement. That this was my half-aunt, the Abbess Adelaide, I had already guessed.

“Your Reverence.” The man at the bed placed the Elector's hand on the furred coverlet. He bowed with deference, but his jaw had a stubborn cast. “His Highness is not to be so disturbed for any reason. He himself issued orders that he wished to be alone—”

“
He
issued orders? How? Since the good God has seen fit to strike silent his tongue. And one can read anything in the scrawls which someone can urge him into writing! I demand—”

Her voice arose steadily, it was an unpleasant rasping voice and I conjectured that in the past she had often gotten her own way by a judicious use of it. Perhaps it was an inheritance from her mother, that much disliked Electress of uncertain temper and overwhelming arrogance.

For the first time there was a sound from the bed. Though he had struggled to speak to me, he had not uttered this croak which he now brought by some effort from his throat. The Abbess was silenced, she stared in amazement, then something which might have been a shadow of fear crossed her face. He mouthed that sound again, his hand was up—his finger pointed to the door behind her.

There issued a silent battle of wills, for the Elector did not try to speak again. However, it was manifest that he
was
in full control of his mind, if not his body, and that he
was
giving an order now—one which he determined she would obey. Perhaps she wished in turn to prove that she was at least able to stand up to him, for she did not move to withdraw. Then the man spoke sharply:

“Your Reverence, it is not well to excite His Highness. Your presence here is obviously not beneficial to him.”

Her mouth opened as if she would shout him into oblivion, then slowly closed again. The look with which she favored him was truly venomous. Without another word, nor a glance toward the man in the bed, she turned her back on the two of them and stumped heavily out of the room. In a flash that man was across the chamber in her wake and had closed the door firmly, standing with his back against it as if he half expected the Elector's daughter to think better of her retreat and strive to enter again.

The Colonel was also on the move, bringing me with him out of hiding. For the last time I heard that guttural sound from the bed. The Elector's hand was again pointing, not toward the door through which the Abbess bad gone, but to the left.

Colonel Fenwick nodded, stopped long enough to catch up the bundle of my cloak—which luckily the Abbess had not chanced to notice. I waited for a moment, longing for a little more time—maybe to touch again that cold hand. There was a need still in me to speak some reassuring word, to let him know—what—? I was not sure, but I felt that there was something which I might do to ease him if I could only be given a chance. But the Elector's eye was closed, his hand was again being held by his attendant, who did not even glance in our direction, while the Colonel had me again by the arm.

We passed behind another screen which matched its fellow across the room and my companion opened a door behind that. So we came into another room, near as large as the bedchamber but far less well lit. In fact there were only two small candles there.

Both sat on a table, and pulled up to that was a chair in which rested an elderly man. His hair was a mere circlet of white about the dome of a large head, but as he looked at us I saw a vast white mustache bristling outward from his upper lip. As the man back in the Elector's room he wore a badged coat.

Now he arose, getting up with some difficulty and having to pull on the edge of the table to gain his feet.
He did not look at the Colonel but rather studied me from under brows nearly as jutting and bristly as his mustache. Without a word he caught up the candles, one in each age-spotted hand, and limped closer. For a long moment he studied my face, and then gave so low a bow I feared his creaking joints might never allow him to straighten up again. Once he must have stood quite tall, but he was much bent now.

“Highborn.” It was plain he attempted to keep his voice to the faintest of whispers, but that task was near beyond his ability. “Welcome, welcome, Highness—” For the second time he bowed.

“Franzel,” the Colonel demanded his attention with a sharp tone, “we must be away—now!”

The old man started as if he had hardly been aware of my companion until he spoke.

“Away—” he repeated bemusedly as one in a dream.

The Colonel took him by the shoulder and gave him a shake, so that one candle he held dropped a gout of wax on the carpet.

“Wake up, man! Yes, away—by
his
orders—”

“The door, then, yea, certainly the door!” The old man looked like one throwing off a dream. One of the candles he replaced on the table. With the other in hand he moved, more quickly than I would have believed possible a moment earlier, to the wall beyond. With his free hand he ran fingers along a ridge of carving, a thick twist of vine and leaf. What trick he worked I could not see, for his back was now between me and the wall.

Within a second a panel slipped open and Franzel stood aside, offering his candle to the Colonel, who squeezed his tall frame through the door never meant for one of his inches. The old man beckoned and I followed. As I passed him Franzel once more bowed very low, as if I were a queen entering a throne room. I hesitated, the man I did not know, nor his relationship to my grandfather. It was only obvious that his good will was mine. So I murmured words of thanks before
I answered an impatient hiss from beyond and entered what lay beyond.