“What will she do, your poor Aunt Heide?”
“I think she will have to go looking for a spine,” said Lenka.
“You have contempt, then? No feelings for either?”
“No, none for anyone anymore.”
“What about me? Do you have any feelings for me?”
His eyes were glinting, the stare unflinching. Was he mocking her? The rapid unpinning of her life so far had left her scrabbling around for an identity, but here was a possible solution. A replacement life. But so personal, so very personal… She tried to form her thoughts. He’d had everything already planned, hadn’t he?
He smiled, reading her mind. “Correct, yes. All down to the finest detail, long before you arrived in Ingolstadt.”
She nodded. But he was implying a relationship. “I don’t know about any feelings. I only met you yesterday. And you are my tutor, a man twice my age!”
He swirled his glass of burgundy for a moment before lifting his gaze to hers. “I could visit your house tonight. Imagine!”
A stirring of deep excitement tingled inside her, but… she bit her lip… “Heinrich, who are you really? You say a banker, but—”
“Ah! Now, that I cannot say to someone outside of the Order. No member of der Orden der Schwarzen Sonne shall be revealed one to the other until they are sworn in.”
“And when will I be sworn in?”
“Patience, Lenka. I told you one year. Preparation is essential – this is not a commitment to be taken lightly. For one whole year every initiate must serve an apprenticeship, and that includes you. In your case, it is to learn languages and history in addition to perfecting your particular craft. This is so you can mix with the highest echelons of society, do you understand?”
She nodded.
“How can you expect to be of use to us if you have the wits of a peasant girl and the occult expertise of a fortune-teller?”
She dipped her head.
“Normally, this process is much shorter. We recruit from the most highly educated, the most skilful adepts, and those climbing into positions of enormous power and influence. Yet here we are taking the time to educate one of the lower orders such as yourself.”
A hot rush of blood shot up her neck, suffusing her face, and tears smarted in her eyes.
“So it will be one year of hard work before the final initiation process. This is not a school club or a child’s game – our ultimate aim is to disrupt the order of the entire civilised world as it stands. You can presently have no concept of how gravely serious this is. It could take ten years to effect the smallest changes, but that is okay because we have a hundred. Or more. A thousand, even.”
“A thousand? How can that be?”
She caught a glimpse then, a slip of words that revealed the startling splinter of illumination, another reality to this one. But just as quickly as the door had opened, it banged shut again, and the fog of confusion descended.
“A figure of speech,” he said, immediately lightening the tone. “We have decades if necessary, and decades are what it may take.”
“Yes, I see. Well, I hope I shall have fun before then – before I am enclosed in this terrible club of yours, with all its graveness.”
He held her gaze, and the strangest feeling of falling came over her.
“I think you will like the house I have chosen for you,” he said. “And the bedroom, it is… most restful. Come, let us drink to this – to Lenka and the start of her new life!”
“Thank you. To my new life!”
They clinked glasses in the university room neither would return to. By the following evening, the suite of rooms would be transformed into more conventional classrooms, and the visiting young lecturer known as Herr Blum would cease to exist.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Lodge was situated on the outskirts of Ingolstadt, on a salubrious tree-lined avenue. Devoid of windows with the grand front door permanently locked and chained, the building incited little interest, and most people walked by without a second glance. Shrubs obscured its lower half, and in the autumn of 1891, coppery leaves shimmered and danced in the sun on the pavement outside. A sparsely populated area predominantly used for offices and banks, it was particularly quiet in the evenings. As such, there was no one around to notice the elegant young woman dressed all in black, who alighted from a carriage on the drive at the side of the building, blindfolded with her hands tied.
Lenka, flanked by Aunt Sophia on one side and Heinrich on the other, was being guided towards the back door, shielded from unwanted curiosity by the body of the carriage. Heinrich knocked three times with a cane, and at the sound of bolts sliding back from inside, Sophia nodded curtly, retreating to the carriage. For now, her work was done.
Once inside with the door shut and bolted behind her, Lenka’s blindfold was removed. The room was small – an unlit vestibule or high-ceilinged porch with no windows. She indicated the binding around her wrists. “You can untie me? I will not run away. I do not see why—”
“Hush now. You must trust and obey. We have discussed how important this is, Lenka. Everyone entering der Orden der schwarzen Sonne must commit fully to the process. No more questions. Always questions.”
Indeed, she had been meticulously prepared for today’s initiation ceremony. Fully versed in Prussian and Hapsburg politics, royal dynasties and Serbian rebels, she now had the same vision as Heinrich, that of a whole new world. This was monumental – nothing would ever be the same again, and she fully accepted her role, aware of the vital secrecy at this delicate stage. These were the seeds being planted, seeds that would grow into something overwhelmingly and unstoppably powerful. Moreover, the identities of those involved were shortly to be revealed. Never had she been more excited or grateful. It had been a wonderful time and would now culminate in full membership.
Belonging to the Order had become increasingly important to her as the months passed – the desire to be one of them and move in the highest circles ever more attractive, necessary even, to her future self. It transpired that her great-grandmother had been a baroness and much revered at the Russian court before being ejected on catcalls of witchcraft. It was Lenka’s birthright to be among nobility, and no churchman was going to have her thrown out or he’d be sorry. This now was her place, her destiny, and it was right at the top – on the world stage. Olga had been stupid not to comply with the Order’s wishes – look how she had ended her days! But today, as for all initiates no matter how high their rank, humility and submission were necessary in order to bind with the others. Allied by the initiation, they stood strong and loyal, and there were no, not ever, not one, dissenters.
Today her courage, loyalty and trust were to be tested to the limit of endurance. She took a deep breath. Of course, she would fly through. It was just one day. One day. And afterwards, the best the world had to offer would be hers. Like marrying into royalty, she told herself… yes, exactly like that.
Her eyes adjusted quickly to the gloomy stone-walled chamber as the bolts to the outside world were shot home and a wooden bar slotted into place.
“We have been riding for hours,” she said to the masked man who had bent to remove her shoes. “This must be another city, not Ingolstadt?”
Beside her, Heinrich laughed. “My dear, we have simply been travelling in circles.”
On the right-hand wall was a large painting of an owl, on the left the same sigil that had been burned onto her wrist – a circle enclosing a pentagram, in the centre a black sun with black rays around it. But on this one, inscribed over the top in an arch, was the name ‘Der Orden der schwarzen Sonne’ underneath ‘Courage, Loyalty and Obedience’.