European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

by Theodora Goss

  “Not quite a million,” said Justine, smiling. She sniffed—a long, decided sniff. “Go, and I shall join you presently.”

  Mary followed Irene out into the hall. “Would you like me to tell you about our meeting with Dr. Freud this morning?”

  “Of course! But first, coffee, and I assure you that Frau Schmidt’s cakes are the best in Vienna. After this morning, I feel just like Diana—as though my stomach were an endless, empty abyss! I imagine she headed down to the kitchen as soon as you got back? That was very smart of her, and probably what the two of you should have done. So much of mental anguish is simply tiredness or hunger, I always think, although I would not say that to Sigmund!”

  JUSTINE: Was it necessary to mention my splotchy face, Catherine?

  CATHERINE: That’s how readers will know the story is true. You can’t avoid having a splotchy face when you cry. Unless you’re Beatrice, but I’m almost certain she doesn’t cry real tears. It’s probably some kind of sap!

  A few minutes later, they were sitting in the parlor again, just as they had the day before, and much in the same places, as though they had already become accustomed to these councils of war. Irene, their general, sat in the middle of the sofa. Diana sat on one side, with her legs crossed and her feet up on the cushions—in boots! Mary felt like kicking her, but that would have meant leaning across Irene and possibly kicking her instead. She rather suspected that Irene would kick back. Why was it that Diana always brought out her violent tendencies?

  Justine and Hannah were sitting in the two armchairs, and Greta was perched on what Irene had called a pouf, which seemed a remarkably silly name for a piece of furniture, but then it was a rather silly piece of furniture—a large, stiff cushion without a back. How was one supposed to balance on it? But Greta seemed to manage it perfectly well, leaning forward with her chin in her hands.

  On the low table between them was what might have been an Austrian lunch, but it made for a very un-English tea. Irene was finishing a cup of coffee. Justine and Diana had asked for coffee as well, but Mary would stick to her tea, thank you very much! She ate the last of a chocolate cake layered with apricot jam, with a thick layer of chocolate icing on top, that she had to admit was better than anything she could have had in England.

  MRS. POOLE: Well, I never! As though anything on the continent could be better than honest English cooking. I’ll take a treacle tart any day over some foreign folderol.

  MARY: No offense, Mrs. Poole, but I’ll take the folderol. It had chocolate and jam, you see.

  “What I want Diana to do,” said Irene, “is memorize the architectural map of the Maria-Teresa Krankenhaus. You’ll have only yourself to rely on in there, you know!” She frowned at Diana, as though trying impress on her the seriousness of the situation.

  “You think I don’t know that?” said Diana, contemptuously. She still had smears of chocolate on her chin.

  “If you’re caught, Sigmund may not be able to intervene,” Irene continued, as though Diana had not spoken. “So I want you to take the utmost precaution. Figure out whether there are guards on the third floor. If so, how many are there and what are their routines? If you can, make contact with Lucinda, tell her we’re coming to rescue her, and wait for Sigmund to discharge you. But if the third floor is heavily guarded, sit tight and don’t do anything foolish. Do you understand?”

  Diana just crossed her arms and looked obstinate. That was a danger sign—Mary knew it well. On the other hand, all signs from Diana were danger signs, and what other options did they have?

  “Meanwhile, Justine, Mary, and Greta will take turns watching from the room above the tavern. If something goes wrong, give a signal of some sort—wave a handkerchief out the window, for example. They will contact me, and I will contact Sigmund to get you out. Hannah and I will work on a plan to rescue Lucinda. Our best bet is probably blackmailing one of the guards. But that sort of information takes time to gather. We need to know who visits brothels, who is in debt for gambling on dog fights. Don’t worry,” she said as they all sat around the table, worrying. “We’ll figure it out. We always do. Right, girls?” This was to Hannah and Greta.

  “We always have before,” said Greta, dubiously. Hannah just nodded. They did not seem particularly confident about this adventure.

  “I’ve talked to Sigmund on the telephone. Tomorrow morning, I’ll drive Diana to his office—so dress like a hysterical teenage girl,” said Irene, looking pointedly at Diana.

  “How is that any different from an ordinary teenage girl?” asked Diana. She took the last slice of cake without asking if anyone else might want it.

  “It is an ordinary teenage girl.” Irene put her coffee cup down on the table. “But for you, it will be like playing a part. Just pretend to be anxious and frightened. Cry a little, if you can. Don’t go walking in there all cocky, or they’ll know something is wrong.”

  “Oh, I’m an excellent actress,” said Diana. “Mary won’t let me act, but you’ll see how convincing I can be!”

  “All right,” said Irene, giving her that doubtful look one always does give Diana. “Justine, I want you to get some sleep. I think you need it—the last few days have been an enormous strain on all of you, and I don’t want you, in particular, overtaxing yourself.”

  Justine nodded reluctantly. But Mary knew that if she overtired herself, she might have one of those fainting fits that were Justine’s single weakness—aside from her tender heart.

  JUSTINE: I don’t think a tender heart is a weakness. Compassion makes us human.

  CATHERINE: It is if someone else has to go into your studio to clear out the spiderwebs because you refuse to sweep them away for fear of harming a spider!

  JUSTINE: Who are we to value the large over the small, the powerful over the weak? A spider has as much right to exist as I do.

  MRS. POOLE: Not in this house, it doesn’t!

  “Mary, I want you to get some rest as well,” Irene continued. “But first, could you come walk with me in the park? Since we’ve arrived, you and I have had almost no time to get acquainted.”

  “Of course,” said Mary. Why her? Why her in particular, when Irene hadn’t had time to get acquainted with Justine or Diana either? She felt a little—nervous? Apprehensive. What did Irene want to talk to her about?

  After they had all risen and Hannah had taken away the remains of their un-tealike tea on a tray, she went back to the bedroom she shared with Diana to fetch her hat and gloves. Her afternoon dress would do, wouldn’t it? For a walk in the park, anyway. It was a gray merino wool, and she would take a shawl. Of course it looked like nothing at all next to what Irene had changed into for the afternoon, some sort of burgundy silk embroidered at the neck and hem that must be one of those Aesthetic dresses Beatrice was always talking about. Irene didn’t need a corset, with her figure. Really, she could have made an excellent advertisement for the benefits of Rational Dress.

  Before leaving the bedroom, Mary glanced at herself in the mirror over the washstand. Plain, plain, plain . . . not unattractive, certainly, but nothing special either. Well, at least she looked respectable, which was what mattered, or so Mrs. Poole had always told her.

  MRS. POOLE: Of course it is.

  BEATRICE: But Mary, what’s special about you is your expression. You’re so—alert and intelligent, as though you were always observing the life around you, evaluating it, understanding it. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you have no expression on your face, except perhaps the common anxiety of women looking at themselves in mirrors—we all have that, I think. So you don’t see what everyone else is seeing.

  MARY: You’re very kind, Bea, but I didn’t ask to be complimented. I can’t help that Catherine put those thoughts in my head. I’m not even sure I was thinking them at the time.

  CATHERINE: But you do think them, don’t you?

  “Ready?” asked Irene, who was waiting in the front hall. She had put on a hat with black feathers that curved down over the brim and almo
st touched her cheek, very elegant and probably very expensive. “Come into the garden, Mary, for the black bat, night, has flown, or whatever it was Lord Tennyson said. Something something something and the musk of the rose is blown—I don’t remember the rest. In my own way, I’m a good psychologist! I know that Justine needs sleep, and that you need to get out and walk around. Come to the park, and we’ll talk.”

  They walked down the front stairs to the courtyard, then through the arched front entrance where carriages could drive in and out. Once they were on Prinz-Eugen Strasse, Mary expected them to turn left or right, but instead Irene led her across the street to the long stone wall. In the wall was a recessed door. Irene took a key out of her purse.

  Where in the world were they going? When Irene saw Mary’s expression, she laughed her deep, melodious opera singer’s laugh. “Oh, my dear, you didn’t think I was taking you to an ordinary park, did you? Welcome to the Belvedere!”

  CHAPTER XI

  A Conversation with Irene

  To Mary’s left was a long, rectangular garden—not like Regent’s Park, with its perennial beds, but resembling a Turkish carpet, all flat swirls and curlicues of color made by bedded flowers carefully arranged around blue fountains. She thought it looked artificial, although the vista was magnificent. The garden sloped down, down, down to a stone building at its foot, over which she could see the city of Vienna with its rooftops rising up again, and behind them the green hills.

  And to her right—well, there was another stone building. It was a palace, enormous and . . . palatial. That was really the only word she could think of. If someone had asked her to define the word palace, she could have pointed to that—classical in style and as elegant as a seashell, if a seashell had a hundred rooms, shining white in the afternoon light. Although it was getting on toward evening—orange and pink were just beginning to touch the sky.

  “It’s . . . ,” she began.

  “Much too big, and terribly out of date—who would want to live in such a mausoleum?” Irene looked up at it critically.

  “Who does live in it?” asked Mary.

  “A friend of mine—well, friend is an elastic term, when you’re in my business. Let’s just say that we find our acquaintance mutually satisfactory. When I told Franz that I like to walk here in the evenings, he gave me the key so I would stop picking the lock, which set a bad example, he claimed. I’ve told him that he should move someplace he actually enjoys living and turn this pile into an art museum, open it up to the people of Vienna. Can you imagine how much it would help the artists of this city if they could hang their artwork in a place like that? Gustav and Koloman and Max . . . Well, they shall have to make their revolution without state patronage. They will make it nevertheless, believe me. But I didn’t bring you here to talk about art, Mary.”

  “What did you bring me here to talk about?” Was that too blunt? But then Irene was blunt—probably because she was American. One felt that bluntness would not be rude around her.

  “Let’s walk under the trees. I love seeing the sun set over Vienna, but the garden is nothing much to talk about. The Viennese, alas, have not taken to the English habit of informal plantings.”

  “I wondered about that. It seems so . . . flat. I was just thinking that it looks like a carpet.”

  “It’s meant to be admired, not walked in. You can only see it properly from the second-floor windows, and from there it’s quite impressive, although too precise for my taste. Come on, let’s stroll down the avenue. ‘Stroll’ is the right word for a place like this.” Irene took her arm. They walked in silence until they reached the shadow of the trees—chestnut trees, Mary thought, really rather elegant growing like this, in long rows. Then, Irene said, “How are you, Mary? That’s what I wanted to ask. Since you’ve gotten here, Diana’s been doing just fine—she’s in her element, excited at going into a madhouse and proud as a peacock. I’m just worried she’s going to try rescuing Lucinda Van Helsing by herself, for the glory of it. And Justine—she’s been despondent, depressed, which makes perfect sense. This is the closest she’s been to her home in a hundred years. She’s speaking the language of her childhood, tasting food she last ate as Justine Moritz. Of course it would bring up emotions and recollections. And reading that book—the way she’s responding is unfortunate, but perfectly natural. You, however . . .”

  Irene paused for a moment, and they walked on in silence. Now they had come to a small stone house surrounded by shrubs and wildflowers—the first informal planting Mary had seen in this place. It made her feel a little more at home. Irene smiled. “This used to be a menagerie. There was a lion here, if you can believe it—Prince Eugen himself would look down from the second-floor windows to admire his menagerie, with the lion at its center. Poor lion . . . I’m sure it would rather have been roaming an African savanna than living in splendid captivity. By the way, I’ve seen no sign that you’re still being followed by anyone from the Société des Alchimistes. Which tells us one of two things.”

  “What are those?” Mary was rather relieved that the conversation seemed to have moved away from her.

  “Either they’re not very good at this spying business, or so phenomenally good that I can’t detect their emissaries. To be honest, I suspect the former.”

  “Why is that?” Mary asked.

  “Because Waldman was clearly an amateur. He followed you on the ferry, then got on the same train from Calais, knowing you were unlikely to get out before Paris. It was, after all, the only stop where you could take a train farther east. Then he seized the chance of sharing a cabin with Justine. It was clearly a spur of the moment decision, and a bad one. Instead, he should have found a cabin farther down that train car and stayed in it with his friend, watching you from a distance rather than making contact. I’ve been wondering why he was stupid enough to use his own name, but at that point he could not have helped it—he had to use whatever was on his papers and luggage. I don’t think he was supposed to make contact with you at all. Someone—whoever sent him in the first place—is going to be very angry. But you haven’t answered my question. How are you, Mary?”

  How was she? Mary did not know what to say. That was the problem in a nutshell—she did not know. She shook her head and opened her mouth, as though about to answer, but no words came out.

  Irene waited. It occurred to Mary that if Irene Norton was really a spy, she was probably a very patient woman, like a spider in the middle of many webs. She was used to waiting.

  “Dr. Freud said he would like to see me again,” she said, finally.

  “I just bet he would!” Irene laughed. “He collects beetles of all sorts, and you resemble a gray beetle that seems ordinary, but shine a light on it and it begins to shimmer like an opal—blue and green, all cool colors for you, I think. You know, when all of you had just arrived here, I admired your self-control. Here you were in a strange country, determined to rescue a woman you didn’t know from a danger you didn’t understand, all because a friend had asked you to. You were tired from a long journey, yet there you were, coolly making plans. Then later I realized it wasn’t self-control at all—it’s simply the way you are, like Sherlock. He can’t help it either. When there’s a problem to be solved, he sits down and solves it: rationally, efficiently.”

  Mary opened her mouth to protest.

  “I don’t mean that you’re emotionless, my dear. I just mean that your emotions are, themselves, efficient, rational. Please don’t misunderstand me—I admire you very much and I would like to be your friend. But you remind me of Sherlock more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “I think that’s a compliment?” said Mary. “I mean, I find him dreadfully aggravating, sometimes. . . .”

  “Don’t we all!” said Irene. “But . . . and this is what I was trying to say before. Despite that cool, calm exterior, you seem to be in distress. Am I right?”

  “I think you’re probably usually right,” said Mary.

  “Well, yes, of course,” said Iren
e, with a smile that made it clear she was mocking herself rather than agreeing. “So what is it that’s distressing you? Do you even know?”

  And that was the whole problem—she didn’t, not really. “I’ve never been so far from home before.” But that wasn’t it. “I suppose the thing is, I’ve gotten used to a sort of order in my life, a routine. Oh, living with Diana and all the others has interrupted it—the last three months have been nowhere near as quiet as it used to be! And I’ve been glad of that, really I have.”

  “But the others—Diana, Justine, and the rest—they’ve been living in your house, with you as their leader. Don’t shake your head at me, Miss Jekyll! I know your club has no official leader, but you’re the unofficial one nevertheless. And here all your routines are disrupted, all your plans subject to revision. No wonder you feel as though the ground is slipping out from under you.”

  Mary walked on for a while in silence. Then she said, “I thought I wanted adventure.”