Castle Rouge (46 page)

“For more burrowing?”

“No, for climbing.” She glanced over at me finally. “Quentin is arranging an audience at Prague Castle.”

I rose and came in bare feet and nightgown to stand behind her.

A cablegram, somewhat crumpled, lay over the map of Prague.

“He cannot, will not come,” she announced without looking at me, her voice taut as a wirewalker’s line. “He does not say so, of course. He has a brother to convey the rejection.”

I leaned over to read the message since she didn’t seem inclined to stop me.

YOUR REQUEST IMPOSSIBLE. S. H. IS FULLY OCCUPIED HERE AND CANNOT LEAVE FOR ANY REASON. SURELY YOU HAVE SOME RELIABLE RESOURCES ON YOUR END. M. H.

“A rather biting refusal,” I commented.

“No doubt the affair that keeps ‘S.H.’ in London is reinvestigating the Jack the Ripper murders, which would not have happened without our discoveries in Paris. London is a cold trail.” She pushed the cablegram away. “But if Sherlock Holmes and his fuddy-duddy brother in the foreign office prefer to see his time wasted in Whitechapel…we shall indeed rely on our own resources here.” She flashed me a friendly glance. “You slept late. It is almost eleven, and we are expected at the castle by noon.”

“Goodness,” I said, gathering my clothes and scurrying for the washbasin. “At least I needn’t worry what to wear. It’s time for my checked coatdress again.”

“And time for demure women’s dress for me. The King and the Rothschild representatives expect extraordinary accomplishments from very ordinary-looking people. Quentin will meet us at the castle.”

“And Bram?” I asked from behind my curtain.

“He’s already off to Transylvania by train. He’s more comfortable in the wilderness, and I told him to investigate that suspicious castle to his heart’s content.”

I came from behind the curtain, tucking in my shirtwaist. “You’re getting rid of him! Is he no longer a suspect?”

“Entertaining as his gruelaced stories are, I suspect him of nothing more than what the majority of Englishmen commit: pallid marriages to passionless women and some equally pallid dallying in brothels. You saw many such men in such places. What did you conclude?”

“Much what you have.” I came to the desk. “It is why I have resolved not to marry. It seems such a bore for both parties and, unless there is some financial advantage in it, quite a waste of time. Besides, I don’t have the leisure for such nonsense. Speaking of time, unless you have more than dried spots of blood and nonsensical graffiti to offer, I’ll have to get back to London and the States.”

“Still thinking you might manage to glean something from Sherlock Holmes en route, Pink?”

“One never knows.”

“Marriage need not be the mockery you mention,” she added. “I’d determined not to do it myself once.”

“That would be my one regret in leaving before your mission is done: not meeting the remarkable Godfrey.”

“Oh, I think you’d regret not being in on catching the Ripper a lot more. Be honest, Pink! And you do not believe in Godfrey, to be utterly honest, although I appreciate your assumption that we shall find him.”

“Look, I’m sorry I can’t stay. But you’ve got Quentin now and good old Bram to do your bidding. I’ve got enough notes for a dozen stories to excuse my absence. I would appreciate your cabling me, though, if you do catch any legendary murderer.”

I bent down to snatch up the pen and scrawl the address of my New York rooms on the corner of the map.

“Come to the castle, Pink,” she cajoled me. “You may yet find that the chase is worth the time.”

Our hired carriage climbed the hill crowned with stone buildings and spires. Besides the huge bulk of Prague Castle, there were the towers of three major churches, the Archbishop’s Palace, and other famous buildings as well, a city unto itself.

Behind and below us the sturdy Charles Bridge with its ancient facing honor guard of thirty stone saints dwindled to a dull gray strut across the sparkling pewter waters of the Vltava River.

Prague’s red tile roofs surrounded the occasional blue-green copper roofs of churches like an incarnadine sea lapping at stately stones. I thought of the blood-dark drops dripping in the unseen tunnels, of Paris with its catacombs of tightly packed bones. It was as if the buildings and streets were only the skin of a city and the people that thronged them mere lice infesting the exterior while the city’s true heart throbbed within and below, in the graveyards and empty spaces beneath, where death deposited its souvenirs as if all the living souls swarming above eventually sifted into dust and drained into the hidden undercurrents below.

But one could not sell newspapers with such morbid fancies, so I took out my journal and began a description of my latest visit to a royal palace. They would gobble that up like oatmeal in Schenectady.

If one did not know the evils committed in the city after dark, this day was simply one of many in a Prague spring. The scent of flowers floated on the air like a bridal veil.

When we arrived, Quentin Stanhope sprung forward to open our carriage door like a Prince Charming dressed as a diplomat in tailed coat, striped pants, and vest.

My time in Europe was accustoming me to sweeping up to grand edifices like I owned them, whether they be cathedrals or castles. I was almost ready to pay a visit to millionaire’s row in Newport, Rhode Island!

I was not surprised when we were ushered into the same throne room we had visited before. The King was there, still very grand operaish in his gold-braided scarlet uniform, but the Queen was absent.

Clotilde’s vacancy allowed me to imagine Irene in her place. Really, she was born for the role of queen of something, except she was much too independent-minded to ever make a docile European queen, as I think every American woman is, or should be.

A dapper man in striped pants, morning coat, and monocle waited with the King.

“Come sit,” the King ordered as only kings can do, managing to sound both jovial and demanding.

We perched on various tapestry-covered sofas and chairs near the room’s sidewall. I almost felt we should be observing a ball in progress, with dancing figures swaying in a Viennese waltz over the inset marble floor, through the gleaming marble pillars, past the empty gilt-and-velvet throne.

First Quentin introduced the dapper gentlemen to the ladies, as he was known to the King and himself.

“May I present Baron B
ezová of Bohemia, who is most protective of the Rothschild interests in this quarter of the world.”

The Baron was in his well-fed fifties, with rosy cheeks and steel-serious blue eyes. The man’s affable smile pressed the gold-rimmed monocle deeper into his left cheek as he bowed to us.

I was fascinated! Would the small, clear, full moon of glass stay in place if he sneezed? Although the monocle looks like an affectation to us barefaced Americans, I did understand that many noblemen of Germanic and Anglo descent inherited monocular vision—clear as crystal in one eye and quite blind as a bat in the other, just as hemophilia also ran, excuse the expression, through some of the royal bloodlines of Europe.

“Miss—?”

“Pink,” Irene said decisively.

The Baron blinked, and I truly thought he’d lose his monocle. But neither smile nor eyeglass budged.

“She is a protegé of yours, Madame Norton?”

“An associate,” Irene said, smiling also.

“I must offer my sympathy on the mysterious disappearance of your former…associate, Miss Huxleigh.” His smile had vanished. “But, I have good news about your husband.”

“News!” Irene repeated, as if the word was foreign.

“Good!” Quentin repeated, for her benefit.

I felt a weight lifting off me like a heavy Persian lamb cape. I hadn’t realized until now that I’d feel like a dog leaving for home with Nell and Godfrey still unaccounted for.

“Indeed.” The Baron continued to bow and beam, but it seemed automatic, mere politeness. He bent to lift a small black case like a doctor’s bag onto the marble-inlaid table before the sofa. “These papers arrived by messenger yesterday from Transylvania. The transaction your husband was sent there to conduct, has been signed, sealed”—here he pointed an immaculate fingernail to the great wine-colored blob of wax imprinted with some intricate device—“and delivered, as you see. Count Lupescu has authorized the sale of his land for a price amenable to him and our own interests. You see your husband’s signature on the bottom paper, and the date, but two days ago.”

Irene leaned over the document, skimming tight paragraphs of tiny manuscript in three languages: English, German, and possibly…Transylvanian? That’s what they looked like to me, but Irene was now studying the two signatures at the bottom of the long parchment page.

“This one is Godfrey’s hand, his signature.”

“You see, Madame. Business is transacted. All is well. He will soon be home…or at least back in Prague.”

“When?” Irene demanded breathlessly.

“Well, when the train schedules allow.”

“There was no message from him with the document?”

“The document is message enough.”

“Not for me.”

The Baron’s smile, and monocle, drooped a bit. “Transylvania is a primitive country. Communications are not so swift or easy as in cosmopolitan cities like Prague. The paramount thing was to conduct the business and procure the document. This your husband has accomplished. Returning himself will be the easiest part of it, believe me. The Count, and all Transylvanians, are stubborn souls for having fought the Turk for centuries. To them we owe our sovereign security here. They are slow to relinquish anything that belongs to them…land, pride, knowledge about themselves. Mr. Norton has accomplished a difficult task. You should be proud.”

“I am proud, Baron. What I am not is reassured. My husband writes frequently when he travels and such communications suddenly ceased more than a fortnight ago.”

“Irene!” The King spoke for the first time. “You are not used to the slow pace of life in these backward countries. Even in Prague, we know we are not Vienna, or Warsaw, or Paris. And I understand that in America you are even faster-paced. Such impatient people, the Americans. How you slipped away from Prague and myself that time as if running from the very devil!” He almost shook an admonishing finger at her, smiling all the while. “You must allow for the tempo of the place. We are not
vivace
, we are
lento
.”

She looked from the King to the Baron. I saw her always straight spine stiffening even more with suspicion. No wonder! I was getting mighty curious myself.

I glanced at Quentin, who had become as still and watchful as a polecat. He caught my eye, and his look was not encouraging.

Irene, meanwhile, had all the lines. “You say I am simply to wait and see when Godfrey will return to Prague?”

“As we will,” the Baron assured her.

“Much could go wrong, if it hasn’t already.”

“The papers—”

“The papers merely prove that the Transylvanian Count was persuaded to sell his lands to the Rothschild interests. My husband’s signature could have been imitated. I doubt it was, but I find it most alarming that he sent no accompanying letter to anyone with this document. That is not the way a barrister conducts business. That is not the way Godfrey does things. He is a…devout letter writer. If not to me, then to you, his contact in Prague. You cannot tell me, either of you, that you do not find this sequence of events suspicious.”

They were silent.

“And what of Nell, of her disappearance from Paris?”

They both glanced at me without thinking, and in that glance came a terrible truth: that they thought she had replaced Nell with me, after all, and that one woman who served was as good as another. I felt it. Irene felt it. Quentin felt it. But our hosts did not.

I stewed in the indignation of being considered interchangeable. One woman who took notes or who took men to bed was as good as another. They were parts to be played, to be replaced when needed. That wonderful word which the British use—and I admit that the world, even I, has some use for the British now and again—says it all. Supernumeraries. Unknown, unnamed actors who play the nonspeaking roles in all the great dramas of history, expendable in battle and riot scenes, unimportant except for adding the impression of mass to the unreality of the scene. Bram Stoker knew these unsung nonentities well, having stuffed the stage of the Lyceum with them. But without them, you don’t have the making of an epic for the heroes to shine in.