The Lightstep (36 page)

For the next ten days the Adelsheims kept to their house in the
Saint Emil quarter. There was no guard at their door (as there
were outside the houses of Jenz and Löhm, further down the
same street), but Lady Adelsheim resolutely acted as if she too
were under arrest. She kept to her study, morning and afternoon,
writing letters of petition to the Prince and the Countess on
behalf of her neighbours, on behalf of her cousin Canon Rother,
imprisoned in the citadel, and even for Doctor Sorge, who had
been caught by the frontier dragoons on the road to Nuremberg.
She also wrote more widely, to influential acquaintances in the
city and in neighbouring states, telling them that the supposed
threat to the city had been fabricated to allow the Prince to rule
like a dictator, and urging her readers to offer him no comfort.
Maria knew what the letters contained, because her mother read
them to her before sending them. She had never done such a
thing before.

'But what if the French truly are preparing to take the city?'
Maria ventured.

'Pish! It is lies. He lies about us and he lies about the French
too. It is all to win himself more power. He gulls the Ingolstadt
set with stories of invasion, so that they do not protest as he builds
up his strength. But soon he will move against them also. He is
devious. Do you know whom he has made jailor to my cousin?
That man Wéry – now
Colonel
Wéry indeed! Commander of the
citadel! And Gianovi is Governor of the city, I hear. Fanatics and
foreigners, you see. He can find so few honest Erzbergers to back
him.'

'Even so, is it wise? What if the Prince came to hear of what
you say?'

'I am not so stupid, child,' said Lady Adelsheim. 'Our own
people will carry these and will see that they arrive safely.'

Maria was in agony. However loyal the messenger, there were
risks to any message – as she knew well. And there was also the
danger that the next Ingolstadt canon that she addressed might
simply hand her letters over to the palace. Moreover, she remembered
her talk with the Prince in the Painted Room. She
remembered, very clearly, the hunted look in the man's eyes as he
had lifted the buff sheet of paper from Wetzlar. She did not think
he had been lying about the French. And if they came . . .

But if she were to say that, then in the eyes of her mother she
would have joined the Prince's party. It would mean another
quarrel. Perhaps, after all that had passed between them about
Albrecht, it would be the final one. And she knew this was why
Lady Adelsheim was subjecting her to these letters: it was to test
her loyalty, and to force her to choose her mother's side. For it
was not possible to listen to the things her mother had written
and yet remain neutral. If she did not oppose, she must acquiesce.
She did not want to do either. She wished only that none of this
was happening, and that she and her father and Anna at least were
all safely away at Adelsheim.

At nights she woke up in fear. And then she thought that her
mother was afraid too. But what mother feared was not
punishment or siege but the loss of control. The world would no
longer obey her, and she knew it. Under her wilful and confident
manner, she was becoming less certain. Perhaps that was another
reason why she called in Maria to hear what she had written and
confirm her in what she had to say.

Damn her!
Damn her!

But nothing seemed to come of the letters. Soldiers tramped
the streets, with their long muskets sloped at their shoulders. They
never stopped at the Adelsheims' doors. Maria watched them
pass, wondering where they had come from. Most of them would
indeed be honest Erzbergers, whatever Mother said. And soon
they might have to level those muskets, and fire on thousands and
thousands of oncoming Frenchmen. And their bodies would be
exposed to French fire. And what would become of them?

'Well,' said Lady Adelsheim, putting down a letter at breakfast. 'He
will take us. But what a fool he is!'

Franz, Anna and Maria looked up. Father went on burrowing
over his food as if nothing had been said.

'A fool, Mother?' said Maria warily.

'See for yourself, if you wish.'

It was from Effenpanz, the butterfly-collecting Count with
whom they had stayed in Bohemia when Erzberg had last been
threatened by French armies. The Count wrote, in his own
cramped hand, in reply to a letter Lady Adelsheim must have sent
him very soon after martial law had been declared.

Of course, it said, he would shelter his dear, brave cousins.
How much he admired them! What a noble thing it was to stand
firm in the face of threats from these terrible revolutionaries! He
only wished that the Emperor, so ill-advised by the spineless men
around him, would gather such courage as was shown by the city
of Erzberg. Surely with the example of Erzberg to inspire them,
the soldiers of the Empire would be irresistible. He himself was
now spending many hours a day in preparing his militia. But his
home would for ever be open to those who could make such a
courageous choice . . .

Anna was looking at her inquiringly. But instead of handing it
on, Maria lifted it to her eyes again. The thought of that distant,
peaceful Count leaving his butterflies to see his peasants in boots
and straps and muskets was very strange. He had no doubt where
the right lay. So little doubt, it seemed, that he could hardly have
read Lady Adelsheim's letter closely.

She wondered if he remembered to wear his wig on his
parades.

'I think we shall accept his invitation all the same,' said her
mother dryly. 'I no longer wish to weary myself with this town.'

Maria put the letter down slowly.

'Why, Mother?'

'Why?' repeated Lady Adelsheim sharply. 'I have said why.'

'Mother, if you weary of the city, perhaps you should go to
Adelsheim. I see no cause to go to Bohemia, unless we truly fear
invasion.'

'Maria, you are impertinent. To go to Effenpanz is merely
prudent. I will not debate it.'

He mother's tone was final, of course. It always was, especially
when there was something that might indeed be debated. Maria
felt her skin tremble slightly as she drew breath.

'I do not wish to go,' she said.

For a long moment Mother looked at her. They all looked at
her – Anna, Franz, Johann the footman, poised at Mother's
shoulder. Only Father muttered and chomped on over his food.

'What concern is it of yours?' said Lady Adelsheim. Her face
was very white.

Maria did not know. She had not thought. She had not
prepared for this moment. Yesterday, if she had been offered the
chance of leaving the town, she might have cried for joy. But . . .

'I believe Effenpanz misapprehends us,' she said.

'Why should that sway me in the slightest?'

'If we were indeed as he sees us, we would not flee to him at
all. We would remain here.'
We would face the siege,
she might have
said. But Mother had not yet admitted that there would be a
siege – although it was plain now that she believed it.

'There is no purpose in remaining here.'

'I am sure that there is as much and more as there has been
over the past fortnight.'

'Enough! Maria, this is scandalous! I cannot support this! You
will go to your room and remain there, at once. And there
you will make yourself ready to leave.'

'But I believe that Father would also wish to stay!' cried Maria.

Father made no sign.

'Maria! You may
not
presume to speak for your father. You are
at times a great disappointment to him and to me. No, it is
impossible. He will accompany me. Nor, much though I might
wish to abandon you, can I spare Anna to remain with you. Now
go to your room
at once!'

Seething, Maria trod the stairs. She was furious with her
mother, and with herself. How stupid – how
stupid –
to speak out
before she had thought what she would say. It had been stupid,
too, to invoke Father. Mother could not allow herself to lose
control of him. Of course not. Without him, what was she – except
for an over-educated woman with a sharp tongue? So Father
must go. So must Anna. They all must. Mother would drag them
all along with her, accessories to her existence. And Maria would
never be free of her, until at last Lady Adelsheim stirred herself to
bring about her daughter's marriage.

There is no purpose to us remaining here.
Was there not, now that
all her petitions had failed? But a terrible hour was coming for
the city. Everyone knew it. Even in Bohemia they knew it. Would
they flee now? Like lice that could not longer live on the body
that had fed them because it had become a corpse?

Mother was a louse. She was a louse, heavy with the blood she
had sucked, heavy with the things she had stolen! She had stolen
Father. She had stolen Albrecht. She had even stolen Michel
Wéry – or the man Maria had imagined him to be.

He
would stay – the flawed, twisted, brave man. He would face
the spirits of war that he had once summoned in Paris. From the
window of her room she could look south along the crags above
the river and up to the walls and angled bastion of the
fortifications around the Celesterburg. There, in the breach made
last autumn, a crowd of tiny figures were labouring, digging out
the rubble that had fallen into the ditch and dragging it, in
barrows towed by long ropes, up to the line of the wall again.
Things that looked like hurdles had been placed along the gap in
the wall. Slowly, painfully, the earth was being piled around them
to fill the defences in.

'I cannot help it,' she said, to the man she imagined was looking
down upon her. 'I cannot help it. I am her prisoner.'

'This will be your room from now on, your Excellency,' said
Wéry, lifting the lantern. 'Your servant will sleep here. There is a
sleeping chamber for you beyond that door. I regret that it is not
as convenient as the gatehouse, but it will be more sheltered from
cannon fire. You have my word that we will do everything in our
power to make you comfortable.'

Canon Rother-Konisrat peered around the slit-windowed,
narrow room in the south-east bastion.

'Your powers appear to be limited, Commander,' he sighed.
'Although I do not blame you.'

'There will be a guard at your door, to whom you may pass
requests at any time. Nothing in reason will be refused you. You
will continue to have the opportunity to walk the walls for half
an hour in the morning and again in the afternoon.'

'And what hour is it now?'

'It is just past ten of the clock.'

'I did not hear the bells.'

'The cathedral bells are being taken down, sir, to be placed in
hiding in case the city falls.'

1 see.

Wéry watched him moving around the narrow room like a
man in a dream. The Canon paused by the plain wooden chair
and ran his fingers over the back of it as if to assure himself that
it really was there.

'Did I see my colleague Steinau being brought in under guard
last night?' he asked suddenly.

'You did, sir.'

'So our Prince has now turned on the Ingolstadt set too. I
warned Steinau that he would. And what of our friend
Bergesrode?'

'He has been dismissed from his post, sir, for association with
the Ingolstadt clergy.'

'Arrested?'

'I believe not, sir.'

'The man shows some gratitude, in the end,' muttered the
Canon. 'Yet I cannot see how he strengthens himself by making
enemies of two-thirds of the Chapter. We have no sympathy with
the Republic. We have only a certain lack of sympathy with those
who wish to gather all power into their own hands. Was it thus
in Paris, Commander?'

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

'That the rulers, having seized power against one faction, then
persuade themselves they must remove
all
other actors from the
scene, in order that their power should be secure?'

Wéry swallowed uncomfortably. 'Sometimes, sir, yes it
was.'

Canon Rother smiled thinly at the chair back. 'You see,' he
said. 'Well, it seems I now have no part but to wait upon events.
Many more worthy than I have been persecuted for their faith. I
shall make their example my own. Is there such a thing as a Bible
in your citadel, Commander?'

A Bible? Wéry had no idea. After ten days in this neglected
fortress he was still reckoning the ratios of powder and shot to
cannon on his walls.

His mind was so full of many things now that siege loomed:
duties and manpower and stratagems and supplies; a hundred little
blows that could be struck, a thousand preparations to be made.
His thoughts consumed him all the time: at table, in the middle
of conversations, striding from place to place, and waking in the
night from dreams of the days to come. And deep beneath the
turbulence of his brain was the voice of the demon within him,
bellowing,
At last! The fight! At last!

'Sir,' he said. 'Your books will be brought across from the
gatehouse as soon as possible and I am sure . . .'

'Perhaps you would grant me the loan of one for the morning.
There will be one at least in the chapel.'

'Yes, sir,' said Wéry.

He was turning to go when the Canon, now peering through
the narrow slit of the window, spoke again. 'And how does our
Prince think he is going to deliver himself from this situation?'

'I believe he has a plan, sir.'

'I hope it is something other than to stand and be crushed.'

Maria walled herself in silence on the morning of their departure.
It was the only protest she could make.

She sat by herself with a stole around her, eyes on nothing,
waiting to be called. And when the time came to leave she
climbed tight-lipped into the second coach and took her place by
one window. Everyone knew she had been put in the second
coach because she was in disgrace. Franz was to travel with her,
but that was only because Lady Adelsheim could not endure the
way he would fidget on a journey.