They tried to prevent me entering the room. A butcher’s den. Doctor and nurse bloody to their elbows, and the bed crimson, rags soaked in blood across the floor, basins full of red water. Her nightgown soaked in it. I threw them out and would not let them touch her till morning, but sat by her side, her head cradled in my arms begging her to open her eyes. I promised everything, I swore everything, I prayed that I would go mad, and for a while I feel I might have done so cradling my dead love, my dead self in that bloody chamber.
Florian put aside another page with shaking fingers. ‘Oh, God, Father! What is this?’
VI.9
Pegel was seeing stars. Real stars. It had grown dark. He thought they were pretty. Sometimes he became so obsessed with the mathematics of their movements, the steady passage of the planets amongst them, that he forgot that they were also very shiny. After a while it occurred to him that this might not be the best use of his time, and he began to grope about him in the dark. He could see the shadow of the roof from which he had fallen. It was not far. The back of his head was very tender; he felt the place that hurt most. It was sticky with blood, and he realised he felt rather sick. What had he landed on? His vision swam a little. The woodpile? No, bundles of straw and twigs, with a frame of logs on top of it. His head had hit against part of the frame when he fell. He raised himself up. He was still a few feet off the ground. He slithered down from the heap as quickly as possible before stumbling away a few steps, sat down smartly as his ankle failed, then slithered away until he found his back against a wall. He was in an internal courtyard, stone walls on all sides, stone flags on the ground. He had been lucky to have had his fall broken. But what was this bonfire? He thought of the frame on top of it and struggled to get some sense out his pounding, spinning brain. Florian had said Kastner was his step-mother’s name. He tried to remember every detail about the murders Manzerotti had seen fit to tell him. Ritual. Some sort of revenge? A woman drowned, another with earth in her mouth. Every one of the circle in Maulberg bar Swann murdered. Swann … Wimpf had just accompanied another guest here. Christ! Jacob had a nasty suspicion that he’d just been saved by falling into Swann’s funeral pyre.
Krall returned to the palace in a grim state of mind, but satisfied that the deaths of Countess Dieth and Adolphus Glucke would be thought natural. Glucke’s servants were loyal to Maulberg, and the housekeeper had been firm in her agreement. ‘Can’t be how he’s remembered, can it, dying that way? If we say it’s a fever, people will remember the good of him.’
Krall found Swann’s chamber empty and then had a few minutes of conversation with Colonel Padfield that left his mind swimming. He made his way to the private parlour of the English, where he found Mr and Mrs Clode and Mr Graves in a state of some excitement and waiting for the return of Mr Crowther and Mrs Westerman. He was glad to see the young Englishman free and said so. They shook hands, then he shook his head over the mysteries behind these murders and wished aloud that he was able to tell Clode who had done him such harm. The English pounced on him with a flurry of information. He was so far flummoxed that he found himself lighting his pipe without asking Mrs Clode’s permission. Count Frenzel? A second wife? Blood rituals?
‘Where is Frenzel?’ he asked.
‘Returned to his estate, so Herr Kinkel tells us,’ Mr Graves said.
‘Strange,’ Krall said, and drew on his pipe. ‘I know he spends much time there, but the Duke is only married an hour. What of Swann? Where is he?’
‘He received an offer of sanctuary from Gotha,’ Rachel said.
‘Did he now?’ Krall folded his arms and tapped the stem of his pipe against his sleeve. ‘That got here awful quick.’
The door opened and Mrs Westerman and Mr Crowther appeared. There was colour in Mrs Westerman’s face, and Crowther looked a younger man than when they had first met.
‘Frenzel!’ Mrs Westerman said, and everyone started speaking at once.
Black years. Comfortless years. Years where my only company was her grave. I buried her with my own hands in my own grounds, refusing to share her even with God. The monster I would have burned, but little Christian begged me to lay the stillborn infant in the ground with her, and so I did. The household dwindled. I shut up the east wing, left all my expensive toys to rot and waited to die. For four years I waited in this tomb. Then she came. A common little trickster in a dark blue dress, but I realised that night that Antonia had chosen her. Florian, the things she knew! But then she would try to worm her way in between Antonia and me, saying things that were nonsense. The frustration then! Waiting for Antonia to speak. I did not understand, and in the darkness of my heart asked Antonia why she had chosen this sharp-eyed fool as her way of speaking to me? Then little Beatrice showed me her book, a scrap-book of images, designs, incantations copied in her schoolgirl hand, pages cut from Renaissance grimoires, and I understood. Antonia had been guiding her. I dreamed of my wife sitting over the little schemer by candlelight in the cave of some forgotten mage whispering to her when to turn the pages, what passages and diagrams to copy down. During her third week here I found the book of poisons. It was written in another hand, but she had added her little notes of explanation. I saw it all. Antonia had given me everything. Now I just needed to get rid of the girl. Again, she made it so simple for me. Antonia inspired her even to her death.
She told me Antonia wished to show me to a store of jewels on a waterfall near the borders of my little kingdom. As if Antonia would ever have been bothered with such paltry stuff, but I indulged her and she spent several days ‘preparing to do battle with the spirits’, to recover the treasure. She took me to the waterfall, lit a candle and bade me to be quiet while she summoned her angels to defend her. It was quite entertaining, the girl had learned how to put on a show. Her body went rigid, she tossed her head from side to side and muttered and croaked, calling on the names of the angelic hoards. There was no sense to her cries, her incantations were as like to call spirits to her as the wind. Then she lay still. After some minutes she seemed to awake, weak from her battles. I put out my hand to help her to her feet and enquired as to her health and well-being, all concern and kindness then. She leaned her small weight against me and said, in fading, faltering tones, she knew where the treasure was hid. And so she did. I was commanded to move some stones to one side at the base of the waterfall, and what a surprise! A little store of gems and jewellery. I was a little moved, I think, to see how she invested her small worth in me. Here was her ancient hoard of magical jewels, a handful of trifles, the sort of shoddy and overvalued nothings a Duchess might give to her maid in a moment of weakness. I can give a performance too. I was delighted, amazed by the miraculous wealth and its miraculous discovery. I got down on my knees in front of the little strumpet and told her she was my queen, my goddess, that I would settle on her at once a house for her own use in Oberbach, and that from this day forward I would be honoured to have her as my counsellor in all things. Dear girl, she shook her head, offered her jewels as a free gift, declared I was too generous, too kind, and as she trembled and dissembled I saw the hard shine of triumph in her eye. Her victory. She sat down on the stones I had just moved and turned away, as if overcome by her surprise at my generosity. But I knew she only turned from me to hide her delight. The first blow I struck fell just behind her right ear. She tried to stand, to turn, looked at me and for the first and only time her eyes seemed innocent. The second blow landed on her left temple and sent her sprawling on her front. The third blow might have been unnecessary. It was certainly conclusive. So then I gathered her book, the contents of her pockets, I tore open the linings of her clothes to find what else of value might have been hidden in them.