A Prince Without a Kingdom (12 page)

Andrei grabbed him from behind.

“Where’s your son?”

Moments later, Andrei had mounted a horse; attached to his belt was a wrench that weighed more than two pounds. He jumped over two gates before joining the path through the beech trees that led down to the lake. In the muddy ruts, he recognized the tracks made by the Silver Ghost. He coaxed his horse into a gallop again.

Reaching a rock where the path forked, he wavered. Ethel’s car must have taken one of these turnings in the night, but it was the spacing of the Rolls’s wheels that he recognized. Andrei took the left fork. His horse was becoming as nervous as he was. In under ten minutes, he was close enough to the lake to have a decent view of its shores strewn with rocks and gorse. He had never come this far before.

The path seemed to lead to a boathouse built close to the water’s edge. Andrei brought his horse to a halt when they were still a way off, in order to survey the premises.

So it was here that Nicholas had his trysts with Ethel: a hut on the shores of a lake. Andrei thought about those interminable days when they disappeared off together. Well, it wouldn’t happen anymore. He gripped the heavy wrench in his fist.

He noticed a few silver birch trees just behind the boathouse. They had already lost their leaves. And, behind the white curtain of their trunks, he could see the car. Andrei dismounted and patted the horse’s rump, so the animal understood to head home. It set off, turning back several times to check if it shouldn’t stay on a while, but it ended up trotting back in the direction of Everland.

Andrei hid the wrench behind his back and circled the building, keeping his distance. He flanked the hedge, without ever taking his eyes off the main door. A metallic noise could be heard from time to time, together with the sound of someone singing to himself. Nicholas was in there — no doubt about it.

Andrei approached the white Rolls.

It took him a long time to make any sense of what met his eyes. The car’s hood was open wide and the contents had been ripped out. All that was left was a gaping hole, through which Andrei could see the grass. Gasoline oozed over the metal bodywork, which had been butchered by an ax. The white paint of the Rolls was smeared with greasy black stains. And yet none of this was the result of an accident: the engine had been deliberately extracted, like the heart from a corpse in an anatomy lesson.

Andrei ran his finger over a piece of ripped-out tubing.

There was nothing left. Where had all the components of the engine gone? Henry Royce himself, pipe in mouth, would have fine-tuned them with a nail file in his Manchester workshops.

Andrei wasn’t trying to hide anymore. Fuming with rage, he launched his attack on the boathouse.

Just then, Nicholas opened the door.

“Andrei?”

His Russian adversary kept walking toward him across the grass.

“Stay where you are,” Nicholas told him calmly. “You’re not allowed in here.”

Andrei gripped the enormous wrench between his fingers.

“Wait.”

But Andrei had already raised an arm and brought down the first blow.

Nicholas fell against the door. The wrench had just missed his head, landing in the hollow of his shoulder instead.

“Stop!”

Andrei started kicking him.

“I’m going to kill you.”

From where he lay on the ground, Nicholas realized that his powers of persuasion wouldn’t be enough. He threw himself at Andrei’s legs and gripped them so tightly that the Russian lost his balance. They rolled over in the mud. Nicholas was much heavier than his enemy. He quickly gained the upper hand.

Andrei was putting everything into the fight. Nicholas managed to turn him around and apply his knees to the small of Andrei’s back. Then he grabbed hold of his opponent’s wrists, disarmed him, and twisted both his arms behind his back, thrusting his face into the ground.

“Stop, or I’ll break every bone in your body.”

Andrei gave a final surge of resistance before surrendering.

Nicholas waited a little. Then he stood, picking up the wrench, which he hurled as far as he could. It landed in the gray waters of Loch Ness.

He turned back to face Andrei, who was slowly catching his breath and muttering in Russian.

“You almost killed me,” said Nicholas, stretching as he stood over his opponent. Then he pulled open the door and walked into the boathouse. Andrei groaned and rolled over in the mud.

“You might as well come and take a look, since you’re here,” said Nicholas, popping his head around the door.

But Andrei remained on the ground for some time. Only his eyes moved. He had never liked fighting. Eventually, he hauled himself up by his elbows and then his hands, in an attempt to stand up. He wiped the mud from his face with his sleeve and limped after Nicholas.

As he entered the hut, Andrei gripped the door frame. He put his hand to his mouth and gasped something almost inaudible in Russian. Nicholas was backlit, with the light streaming in behind him through a window that gave onto Loch Ness.

“Here it is,” he declared.

There, in the middle of the large room, surrounded by a scaffolding of ladders, planks, and ropes, was a small airplane.

“I was the one who found it,” explained Nicholas. “It was in smithereens, buried in the hill over there.”

He gestured vaguely at the corner of the hut, but was in fact indicating the landscape beyond it.

“Miss Ethel’s had me working on it for four months now. We’d nearly finished our project when you caught us out. Nobody else knows what we’re doing.”

“Buried?” murmured Andrei.

“Yes, beneath the hill.”

He gestured again.

“Master Paul made the gardeners bury it in the middle of the night. I was still a kid. I remember seeing my father when he returned; it took him ten years to tell me where it was.”

Andrei was staring at the small two-seater biplane. Above and below the fuselage were its superposed wings, which seemed to be held in place by magic. Some parts of the plane were already painted white, but where the engine and propeller should have been, there was just a hole.

If Andrei understood correctly, this little plane was the only thing connecting Ethel and Peter’s son. The rest had been just his imagination.

“Master Paul mustn’t get wind of this,” said Nicholas. “He doesn’t even know that it’s always been Miss Ethel’s dream to find it, so that she could make it fly again. He doesn’t want anyone touching it.”

“Why?”

Nicholas put his hand on the flank of the plane, and the scaffolding creaked.

“Their parents died in this plane.”

Andrei felt his legs nearly give way. He went to sit down on a pile of wooden planks. How could something so light and handsome kill anyone?

“When I found it, the engine had disappeared,” Nicholas went on. “I don’t know where it went. They stopped building this kind of plane twenty years ago. I needed a seventy-horsepower engine. I’m sorry. . . .”

Andrei was thinking of the gutted Rolls waiting under the trees. Its engine lay here on the ground, in front of this white bird.

They didn’t notice Ethel until she appeared, soundlessly, beneath the plane.

“Miss Ethel . . .” Nicholas began.

She didn’t answer.

“Miss —”

“Peter and Scott told me.”

Andrei was staring at a spot on the floor. His face was still smeared with mud.

“I thought —” The Russian began to explain himself.

“I’d rather you kept quiet. Please leave.”

Andrei got up and walked over to the door, but Ethel called him back.

“Where are you going?”

“To the stables.”

“Why?”

Andrei turned around.

“To work.”

“No,” said Ethel flatly. “You haven’t understood: you’re leaving.”

Nicholas was watching Andrei.

“There are trains from Inverness,” Ethel went on, “boats from Fort William, and there might be work in Edinburgh. Who knows? Leave. That’s all I have to say.”

The chasm that was opening up in Andrei wasn’t discernible on his face. Instead, there was something resembling a smile on his lips.

The smile of people who are lost, reflected Nicholas, of people who put off believing what they’ve just been told. The smile of those standing before a collapsing house.

Nicholas thought Andrei was going to fall. He wanted to help prop him up.

“Don’t move,” Ethel ordered.

Nicholas stopped. He didn’t take his eyes off Andrei. He had already seen his father, Peter, smile like that once. It had been on the day when someone had come into their home to tell them that Lord and Lady B. H., Ethel’s parents, were dead.

Peter had always worked at Everland. He was born at Everland, just as his parents and grandparents had been before him. His son, Nick, had grown up there. And then one day somebody appeared, with a face as long as a bailiff’s, to announce that a tiny plane, a Blériot Experimental II, from the Royal Aircraft Factory, had crashed in Egypt. The lifeless bodies had been found next to each other on the sand. The man explained that the estate would be sold, that Paul and Ethel would be sent to a house in London, that it was all over.

That was when Nicholas had seen the smile of disbelief on his father’s lips.

He took another step toward Andrei.

“Don’t move, Nick. Let him go.”

Ethel had harbored doubts about Andrei from the first day. It was because of her suspicions that she had just burned all of Vango’s letters.

She couldn’t forgive Andrei for that.

“Leave,” she repeated.

In Andrei’s eyes, the last specks of dust could be seen settling on the collapsed house. They took a long while, and then he left.

On the road from Inverness that runs along the northern shores of Loch Ness, a horse and carriage were rattling along at top speed. Nobody could have imagined that the Princess of Albrac and her retinue were on board. The coachman himself had been surprised to encounter the kindly little old lady who had just stepped off the boat, clutching her handbag and holding out a large glass-jeweled ring for him to kiss. She was traveling with a young companion who appeared to be a close acquaintance of Ethel’s, because she fell into her arms on the dockside. The princess had been seasick throughout the crossing, with the result that her complexion, which was usually like the lilacs in Parisian gardens, had turned porridge colored.

The companion, on the other hand, looked rather more fresh faced after the journey. Her job was to accompany the princess for the boat crossing, and she was expecting to catch the same boat back. But she let herself be talked into spending a night at Everland Castle.

Ethel drove away from the port in her racing car, leaving the two female travelers to continue at their own pace in the carriage.

After a final bend, just above the lake, the princess made the horses stop for the fifth time. She rushed over to the grass, where she was violently sick.

“We’re nearly there,” the coachman said, trying to comfort her.

“Excellent. Everything’s simply marvelous; I won’t be a second,” croaked the princess.

“If you’d rather finish the journey on foot, I’ve just spotted someone from the castle coming to meet us. He could lend you an arm.”

“No, thank you; you’re very kind. It’s over now.”

The Princess of Albrac climbed back up into the vehicle, encumbered by her stiff, heavy dress. She lay down on the seat, using her handbag, which was stuffed with balls of yarn, as her pillow.

As soon as they had set out from Ullapool, her pretty companion had climbed onto the roof of the carriage, where she lay down and stared up at the gray sky. Likewise, she had spent the sea crossing on the tarpaulin of a lifeboat, which was tethered to the bridge.

She was agile and didn’t like to feel trapped.

Hence her nickname, the Cat.

The carriage continued on its way again, before slowing down when it passed a young man, walking in the opposite direction, with a violin case on his back.

“Is Miss Ethel there yet?” the coachman called out.

Head down, Andrei didn’t reply.

It was all over for him.

Lying on the roof, the Cat was watching two black clouds crossing each other’s paths without ever touching. If Andrei had answered, she would have turned around to take a look at him. She would have recognized his voice. But she was listening to the
clip-clop
of hooves, and to the gentle breeze blowing over the luggage. She had traveled so little that even the air in her lungs felt foreign to her.

Andrei was incapable of uttering a word. He felt like a man on death row. He was already picturing his family on board a train headed for the gulags in Siberia. As he passed by, he glanced inside the carriage. The curtain wasn’t drawn. He saw an old lady lying down, and she smiled at him. Was this the Princess of Albrac?

The coachman cracked his whip, and the sudden spurt of speed startled the Cat. She got up on her knees and stared at the road disappearing behind her. Dreamily scrunching up her eyes, she watched the figure of the young man heading off into the distance. The Cat batted away the idea that had just crossed her mind. No. It was too silly. Why here? Why him? But she didn’t take her eyes off the boy until he had vanished into the white haze of the road.