The Lost Prince (49 page)

“Inured,” she repeated, reflecting, “I suppose that is so.”

“Arnauld would say that he loved you.”

“And I him. That is not cold.”

There was a pause, then Eleanor spoke suddenly. “I believe that Arnauld is not dead,” she said. “That is why I have come to Vienna.”

Alma looked startled. “Oh my,” she said, surprised. “What on earth prompts you to think that?”

“I just know.”

“Enough to travel here from Boston,” Alma said. “And at a great deal of inconvenience and risk, I should think.”

“Yes,
inconvenience and risk
. I just believe he is not dead.”

“That would be something, would it not?”

“Something?”

“If they all came back, all the men we have neatly put away in their
graves. Just a curious thought, I guess,” she said almost wistfully, then snapped back. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to be perverse. Tell me, how on earth did you decide Arnauld is still alive? You have come so far.”

“I just have a strong intuition. There was so much confusion and I think he became swept up in it and is still alive out there somewhere.”

Alma looked more amused than perplexed. “Lost men coming back…” Again, she gave the idea some thought. “That adds a level of complexity.”

Eleanor smiled. “I think that is a more complex thought for you than for me.”

And this time Alma laughed, accepting the remark with a good-natured and respectful irony. “Imagine if all of them showed up in this room together.”

That made Eleanor laugh. Alma suddenly became serious. “I cannot share your optimism, I fear. I have heard too many grim details. But of course, I will do anything I can to assist you.”

“Of course, I too have heard the grim details, but I will press on with my search. I have indeed come a great distance, and inconvenienced my family. I could not rest comfortably back in Boston with what I suspected.”

Alma was suddenly caught in a reverie: “With so much loss, it is difficult to concentrate on just one. I do miss dear Arnauld terribly. He was my oldest and dearest friend, you know.”

“I know that.”

“And you have just visited his parents?”

“I have.”

“I am curious. Was there any mention of the circumstances of his birth?”

Suddenly in new and unexplored territory, Eleanor gave no indication of the startling contents of the letter she had just received in the box from Arnauld’s mother. “What do you know of that?” she said.

“Just a lingering curiosity,” Alma said. “I do not know any details, and I never approached Arnauld regarding them. In fact, the subject never arose. When we were very young, our parents were good friends, as you know, fellow artists from the old days, and Arnauld and I spent a good deal of time together. He was always very delicate and proper, and you know how Arnauld always carried himself with an air.”

“You don’t mean haughty,” Eleanor said.

“Oh, no, quite the opposite. Even when he was little, there was an air of shy elegance about his bearing. One that I found very appealing, even then. Father alluded a number of times to some mystery of his birth, his being adopted, and that gave my childish imagination enough evidence to imagine that he and I were royal twins separated at birth from our parents, the king and queen, and raised separately by commoners. But unfortunately Father died before I was old enough to ask anything significant.”

Eleanor remained noncommittal. “It will remain a mystery,” she said.

“I just wondered,” she said. “And I thought that his death might have stirred up something.”

Then she paused and without the slightest warning looked squarely at young Standish and just stared for a long moment as if suddenly seeing it all. “And your arrival with your son. To find him, the lost prince.” She looked up at Eleanor. “That is why you have brought your son all this way with you, is it not?”

Eleanor simply gazed quietly at Arnauld’s oldest childhood friend, this now-famous woman of the world, and nodded ever so slightly.

“His son,” Alma said, then repeated with barely more than a breath, “Arnauld’s son.”

TRIESTE

A
s soon as Eleanor realized that they would have to venture into the war zone, she knew she would have to leave Standish behind, a turn she had not really thought through when she decided to bring him on her journey. Eleanor had felt comfortable leaving young Standish in the company of Fräulein Tatlock as she went about her business in Vienna. The old Viennese loved the company of the child, but for a long absence, the demands would be different. Part of her regretted the impulse to bring him, even though there had been ample reasons to introduce him early to a city which she knew with prescience would later play an important role in his life.

Eleanor waited to make a decision. There was a great new energy in the Pension Tatlock. The infusion of fresh meat and vegetables and the well-prepared table had brought new guests, and all of them had included Eleanor’s young son in their dining ritual.

“I have made many new friends,” the boy insisted with enthusiasm.

At first, Eleanor had thought of taking him with her, but Fräulein Tatlock interceded. “Where you are traveling,” the genial old Viennese landlady said with great concern when she was alone with Eleanor, “it is not safe.” From the look on her face, Eleanor knew that she meant it was not safe for anyone, certainly not a headstrong young woman from Boston traveling more or less on her own. But sensing that there was not much she could do about the former, she added, “It is not safe for a young boy.”

“You need not worry about my traveling,” Eleanor replied to her host’s
admonition. “I will have Herr Jodl at my side always. He is very resourceful, and very protective.” Fräulein Tatlock had come to know Herr Jodl from his numerous visits for dinner, and a mutual respect had grown between the two, Eleanor noticed with pleasure.

Eleanor explained it all to Standish, leaving him with a long embrace and a cheery word about how he would be well cared for, an idea the boy absorbed without alarm.

“We will visit the zoo,” Fräulein Tatlock said with a smile.

“We will visit the zoo,” he repeated matter-of-factly. “And then every building.”

“Young Standish and I will have a grand time in your absence,” she said in front of the boy. “There is still much of the city to see, and there are many tasks around the pension that need attention.”

“I am going to help Fräulein Tatlock fix things,” Standish added helpfully, and nodded his agreement. “There is much to do,” he said with a tone that over the next trying days made her smile. Young Standish Burden was sounding very much like his mother.

If leaving Zurich and Dr. Jung had felt like the first leg of an adventure, leaving the relative comfort of Vienna now felt like approaching the threshold to a netherworld. They would take the train from the Südbahnhof south, in the direction of Trieste. “We do not know what we will find,” Jodl said. “Border issues are very uncertain, and the trains are erratic.” He shrugged with a sort of resignation. “But we will persevere. Because you have the rarity of an American passport, we will attract much attention but should be able to navigate uneventfully. Where we are going, there is much resentment of Austrians.” Eleanor did not know him well enough yet to deflect his seriousness with the good-natured observation that in the presence of a lady from Boston he would be well protected.

They sat across from each other in the compartment that would have been designated first class in the days before the war, when travelers had need for such isolation and comfort and before the glass in the door became cracked and the long gash had appeared in one of the backrests. The passage through the Alpine terrain was long, grim, and indeed uncertain, and the descent to the coastal plain, like the descent into the uncertainty Jung had predicted, brought with it a more bleak landscape and more
ragged collection of humanity. Railroads that had been totally taken over by the demands of the war were now suddenly abandoned to what few resources remained. The war had disrupted the rails, and now in the chaos of armistice and defeat, service was sporadic. Trains stood empty in boarded-up stations. Jodl sat stiffly in his place, aware of his position as interpreter and guide, but also as protector, the role that remained implicit only, but obvious always in his bearing.

“You will be a woman traveling friendless in a world like nothing you have seen before,” Jung had said with concern the evening before her departure.

“Most everyone on the trains will be soldiers trying to get home,” Herr Jodl said, “those fortunate enough to find passage.” Most of the soldiers from the empire, those not rounded up as prisoners of the Italians, were left to find their way on their own. “But we are heading into the war zone,” Jodl said, “not away from it. The railway stations will be crowded, but with those trying to find their way back from war.”

Herr Jodl’s first value as a companion came with his handling the irregularity of the train schedules. The train they were riding on would suddenly stop and leave them at a small station. Jodl would begin negotiating immediately and without fail would suddenly find another train for another section of the journey, in what seemed a chaotic business, so unlike Austrian trains of the past. His further value soon became apparent in the security he provided. Always, he let Eleanor pass before him, and always he brought up the rear. Her appearance as a woman traveling alone caused attention, but as soon as anyone approached in anything like a threatening manner, Jodl would step forward with his most severe countenance, and the threat would evaporate.

Once, he had gone to inquire within the stationmaster’s office and had left Eleanor alone on the platform. A group of soldiers, “provincial ruffians,” Jodl concluded later, approached and began pointing toward her, smiling and speaking in a guttural language completely unfamiliar to her. One of their number staggered further forward than the others, gesturing with his thumb and fingers and calling back to his friends, who seemed to be encouraging him. Eleanor made no eye contact and tried to calm her racing heart. The aggressive one was obviously addressing her, and his friends were obviously encouraging him further. Suddenly, just as he seemed about to reach out to her, her companion stepped out of the station
door and with a few quick strides was beside her. Realizing the significance of the former police officer’s presence, all stepped back save the one, the most brazen and drunken of the group.

At the first insult from the one obstinate soldier, a reference perhaps to the retired policeman wanting the pretty lady only for himself, Jodl said something in what Eleanor thought was the same Slavic language. The drunken man did not back away. “Why don’t you share your bounty?” was a sanitized version of what followed from the soldier, she learned later.

“Step back and retire,” Jodl snapped, and the man, heeding nothing of the warning in her protector’s German, took a fateful step forward, not back. Suddenly, with an alarming quickness his hand shot out and the retired policeman struck the young offender in the abdomen. As he doubled over with a sharp groan, the others began to step forward to protest, then, seeing the steely look in the attacker’s eyes, they thought better of it, pulled on their incapacitated friend, and retreated with hardly a word spoken.

Stunned by the abruptness of his action, Eleanor stared at her companion, about to voice an objection at the use of violence, then reconsidered, realizing in that moment that it was not she and her old-world civility that held sway here, but rather a whole new set of rules. They had entered a world the likes of which she had never experienced, a stark new world in which this retired policeman from Vienna displayed a startlingly sound command. Her new companion seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

“Thank you,” she said very simply, collecting herself.

“There will be a train for Trieste within the hour,” was all he said, then added, “I trust we shall have no more of
that
.”

The ancient Adriatic city of Trieste had an unnatural stillness about it as Eleanor and Jodl walked out into the street from the train station. Not long before the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s only seaport, Trieste now found its harbor virtually empty of ships. “This is difficult to imagine,” Jodl said. “This, the great port of the empire, has lost its hinterland,” he added.