‘Henri wishes to buy a painting,’ said Albert.
‘That’s all?’ asked Otto.
‘It’s a very expensive painting,’ said Albert.
‘He asks us not to try and buy it, too, as he doesn’t want the price driven up.’
‘What painting is it?’ asked Lord Goldbaum.
‘He declines to say,’ answered Albert. ‘On account of his not wanting us to buy it.’
Otto rolled his eyes. ‘Well, there’s not much we can do in that case, is there?’
‘I want to see this week’s list of insurance policies and the major risks contracted,’ said Lord Goldbaum, resolutely turning the conversation back to business.
Clement wasn’t entirely without hope. His father had given him one last idea about how to raise the money. His family would be appalled by his plan. As he considered the risk, a familiar pleasure buzzed through him, as deep and rich as the finest burgundy in Lord Goldbaum’s cellar.
JEWISH POOR BOYS’ HOME, VIENNA, SEPTEMBER
Karl liked to read the newspapers. The print on the working man’s edition was only slightly smaller than that in the reading primers, and the stories were more colourful than those in the Torah. Tabloids were banned from the Poor Boys’ Home, but the rules were not enforced with any great rigour, and so long as he hid the latest Reichspost beneath his mattress, he was safe enough from discovery. As he read, Karl felt the world grow; it lit up and spread out beyond the sewer tunnels and reached above to the busy streets of Vienna, and then on again into the far reaches of the Empire. He read about peasants in Hungary who had reared a giant cow nearly two metres tall, and he saw photographs of the Crown Prince and even, once, a glimpse of his wife, who was usually never mentioned. He read about a ship the size of a palace striking an iceberg, and about men leaping overboard in their tailcoats, brandishing cigars as it sank. He pictured the vast Goldbaum Palace on Heugasse with lights shining in every window as it tipped onto its side and sank slowly beneath the pavement into the cold black tunnels below.
He studied the adverts in the Reichspost like an encyclopaedia of the world: there were pills to make your hair grow longer, and to stop it sprouting in unwanted places; powders to aid nervous digestion; mail-order knitting patterns for capes and caps; alongside columns with housekeeping advice for ladies. He had never been inside a real home and could only imagine these battalions of aproned housewives. On the paper packet of a cake that he’d bought for a penny was a picture of a round-cheeked woman with long plaits, rolling out pastry. He tore out the drawing and kept it under his mattress. He had no memories of his real mother, Jewish or not, but he liked to think of her as the woman in the picture, the sort of woman who would have scoured the Reichspost for recipes and tips. He liked to think of her baking vast and ringed Kugelhopf cakes while fat-kneed children played upon the hearth. In his imaginings, he always had brothers or sisters and was never alone.
The story in the newspapers that captivated him most was the murder of two Catholic girls on the banks of the Nyiregyhaza river. They had been found drowned, a month after they had disappeared from the home of their employer, a Jewish carpenter, Moses Samuels. Samuels was swiftly arrested and charged with their ritual murder – the corpses were pale, their blood apparently drained and used for the Passover bread. Samuels’s son was also arrested and given iced-water treatment until he confessed to his father’s crime. Karl was perplexed by the crime: he had tasted the Passover bread and the ritual did not involve blood. In fact, in his new experience as a Jew, he found those of the faith particularly averse to blood. The kosher meat they were served was bloodless and pale. He found himself considering the other possibility: that the carpenter was innocent and the girls had simply drowned; that the carpenter had been blamed because he was a Jew.
HAMPSHIRE, OCTOBER
At dawn the bees in Fontmell hive number three swarmed again. The gardener’s boy told the under-gardener, who knocked on the door to Miss Witherick’s cottage at ten to seven and informed her of the bad news. With misgivings, knowing it would spoil her mistress’s morning, Withers composed a note for Mrs Goldbaum and sent it up to Temple Court. Mrs Goldbaum must tell Mr Goldbaum, who would unquestionably be displeased.
Greta placed the note straight in the wastepaper basket. She wished Withers wasn’t always in such a hurry to send her bad news in these little early-morning notes. She suspected Withers disliked imparting anything unfortunate in person. She never sent her notes containing charming snippets – such as the first cyclamen erupting on the eastern lawn, or that an owl had moved into the hatching box. Those pieces of news she happily dispensed as she handed Greta out of the motor car, words tumbling in her enthusiasm. No, the blasted notes contained only these petty travails – slugs massacring the pansies, a mole tearing up the lawn. Greta was learning to dread the small white envelopes in the now-familiar cursive hand, propped up against the marmalade jar on her breakfast tray. She was particularly cross about the bees. Frankly, they were ungrateful. They’d been provided with every comfort and simply would not stay put. She wished that she did not read an omen into their restless discontent.
However, Greta’s ill temper could not survive the splendour of the garden. Withers accompanied her around the copse to the west of the lower walk, hands thrust deep into her breeches, a mackintosh thrown over her sweater, and pointed out a surprise of autumn crocuses lurking under a carpet of beech leaves, petals as white and smooth as polished mushroom caps. Withers, decided Greta, suited autumn. Her freckles were the colour of fallen leaves, and as profuse. She slipped a handful of glossy conkers into Greta’s coat pocket.
‘Ask Anna to put these in your closet, keeps away moths and spiders,’ said Enid.
‘Really?’
Enid shrugged and gave a quick lopsided smile. ‘Who knows? But aren’t they an enchanting colour?’
Greta agreed. She had vases of rowan berries and butcher’s broom placed in her rooms instead of hothouse flowers. Withers shared her view on treasures; Greta had once offered to show her the collections at Temple Court, but Withers had fobbed her off with polite regrets: she had too much weeding. Greta’s admiration for her increased immeasurably.
Before luncheon, Otto came to find his sister. Flushed from the cold air, Greta walked with him. The wind jostled the green from the willow trees, so the grass was thick with leaves that crackled like balls of paper. Otto was not a man who was comfortable out of doors. No matter how many times she reminded him, he inevitably wore the wrong shoes. Goodness knew how his poor valet managed to get them clean again afterwards. Albert, despite his many faults, always seemed more at ease outside. His restraint softened under a big sky. It took Greta a moment to realise that Otto was speaking to her.
‘I’m afraid I wasn’t listening. You’re being summoned to where?’ she asked, sitting down on a bench and watching a pair of ducks dabble half-heartedly in the pool among the thin whips of willow fronds.
‘Nyiregyhaza. It’s in the north-east of Hungary. You remember I told you about the trial there of that poor Jewish carpenter accused of murdering two Catholic girls.’
‘I can’t see what any of it has to do with you.’
‘I put up money for the defence of the carpenter. We can’t let a man be found guilty of ritual murder in our own country.’
‘Your country. You must remember I’m an Englishwoman now. The whole thing is so ghastly it almost makes me glad to be Austrian no longer.’
‘That might be so. But since I am still an Austrian, I’m going to do all I can. I shall fight superstition and prejudice with law and reason. They shan’t make me ashamed of my country.’
‘I applaud your sentiments, Otto. But why on earth are you being called as a witness?’
Otto sighed. ‘The prosecution is arguing that the case is part of a greater Jewish conspiracy. That old spectre of the Goldbaums and Jewish international banking. Or, as the trial lawyer has been saying, “The Hungarian nation is writhing in the octopus tentacles of th
e Jewish money kings.” I’m afraid that somehow they discovered that I’m paying for the defence, and that seems to add credence to their idiot fantasy.’
‘You can’t possibly go.’
‘No, of course I shan’t. They almost certainly know that I’m in England and there is no chance of it. I expect they shall use my non-appearance as further evidence of the conspiracy.’
‘Is the poor man going to hang?’
Otto shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The bodies of the two girls have been exhumed and a pathologist from Budapest concluded that death was from drowning – they appeared pale and bloodless from having been submerged in water for some time. There may have been a slow leakage of blood through cuts in the fingernails. They sliced their fingers on the bank as they tried to climb out of the river before they succumbed.’
‘How horrid,’ said Greta with a shudder. Otto never spared her any scientific detail, having more respect for the truth than for the supposed delicacy of ladies. Mostly she was glad. ‘None of it can help the dead girls. But I suppose we must believe that even a rustic jury will choose science over magic.’
‘We can hope. But they’ve listened to two months of the prosecution’s lurid accounts of ritual murder and financial conspiracies. They’ve read twisted phrases from the Talmud. They’ve even pointed to Lord Goldbaum’s refusal to insure the Titanic as evidence of his unnatural Semitic prescience.’
Greta cast a stone into the green pool, watching the ripples spill outwards long after the pebble had sunk. ‘It’s medievalism in the twentieth century. It makes me feel quite sick.’
Otto shredded a leaf between his fingers, dirtying his gloves.
‘I worry that if the carpenter is convicted, there will be more trials and not only in Austria–Hungary. There are already whisperings of arrests in Russia. This nonsense must be stopped.’
‘A little international outrage might help. Perhaps I could write a letter to the Times?’ suggested Greta.
‘What a good idea. Why don’t you discuss it with Albert?’
The water from the pools flowed over a small waterfall and down towards the river. Three miles from here the river met the sea and the tidal wash. The Nyiregyhaza river where the girls had drowned would be sloshing into another sea at the far reaches of another empire, but to Greta, sitting in the shade of the green willows, it seemed unnervingly close.
In the easy light of an autumn afternoon the stonework of Fontmell Abbey was honeyed, softened by the thick wrists of an ancient wisteria and the last pink rosettes of a rambling rose. The crowning thatch glowed bright gold like ripened corn, and it lent the ancient building a sense of newness and gloss. The house was near completion, and Greta found herself worrying more and more as to how she and Albert would manage when they lived there together, alone. They must meet one another at luncheon and dinner without the buffer of the rest of the family. The abbey would slip into a single wing of Temple Court, and their new bedrooms had been situated inconveniently close together by the well-meaning and modern-minded architect. Neither Greta nor Albert had the courage to ask for them to be repositioned.
Albert found her dawdling on the terrace, looking at the newly delivered terracotta pots waiting to be filled.
‘This is nothing like the other Goldbaum houses,’ said Greta. ‘It’s exactly what I wanted. But do you think that you shall like it?’
‘Do you ever greet a fellow with a simple “Good afternoon?”’ he asked, wearily.
‘Good afternoon, Albert. Do you think you shall like the house when you live in it? It is all done according to my taste rather than yours.’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered honestly. ‘I suppose we shall find out.’
Albert and Greta walked side-by-side along the stone path away from the house and down towards the lower gardens and the wilderness leading to the river. They fell into step, while preserving a small distance between one another. Greta slipped on a sodden beech leaf and Albert reached out to steady her, then hesitated. She regained her balance and he withdrew his arm without touching her. She asked his advice regarding her proposed letter to the Times objecting to the blood-libel trial. He listened patiently, before saying slowly, ‘Why don’t you ask one or two of your admirers to lend their names? Arthur Balfour would, I’m sure. And Mr Bernard Shaw informed me after luncheon that he admired my clever and attractive wife.’
‘Really? He told me that people in love ought never to marry. I found it oddly reassuring, although I’m not sure that was quite how he intended it. But if you think it might help, I shall write to him.’
As they ambled along the river bank they conversed politely on other matters pertaining to the family interest. Albert informed her that his father had decided the time had come for him to run for Parliament.
‘And I must campaign during the election?’ she asked.
‘A little. Appear at my side, here and there. Open the odd bazaar. Clap at my speeches, smile as though they are sensible.’
‘I’m sure they will be. But, Albert, are you quite sure you want to be an MP?’
‘My father believes it is important. The influence of the House of Lords is waning. He wants us to hold a seat in the Commons.’
‘Yes, I know what Lord Goldbaum thinks. But what do you think?’
‘It’s not too arduous. I shan’t need to attend Parliament all that often. Every few weeks ought to suffice. I have no ambition as to government.’
Greta frowned. ‘But they might have ambitions for you. A Goldbaum in the Treasury or the Foreign Office is always useful.’
Albert shrugged. ‘It’s my duty.’
Greta said nothing else. Sometimes she felt that duty was an excellent excuse for making no decisions regarding one’s own life.
Albert pointed to the distance. ‘The first of the oaks are here.’
He had insisted on the transplanting of forty large oaks mature enough for hairstreak butterflies to lay eggs in the bark crevices. Greta squinted into the cool sunshine and saw several vast carthorses hauling a trailer on which lay an oak tree, its roots stretching into the sky like a black, inverse canopy. A caravan of trees followed, some on trailers pulled by lumbering horses and others by steam tractors. The tractors were needed to haul the trees into the waiting holes, which had been carefully prepared so that the field was littered with vast muddy craters. To Greta’s eye, it resembled a desolate and pockmarked netherworld. She felt a little like Lady Macbeth watching Birnam Wood walk to Dunsinane, but she had vowed not to squabble with Albert. She dug her nails into her palms to stop herself from complaining.
‘By God, it’s quite something,’ said Albert quietly.
She glanced at him; he was mesmerised by the spectacle. This was the moment to impart bad news.
‘The bees have swarmed again,’ she said softly.
‘How unfortunate. It’s too cold for them. If we don’t find them quickly, they will die.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Greta, realising that Albert was not quite as distracted as she had hoped.
They watched as a steam tractor growled forward, clunking over the uneven ground, the tree jostling on the trailer, half-hidden in the manufactured mist, its branches and roots wavering frantically. It paused beside one of the deepest holes and a hydraulic lift was pumped by four men, the tree rose up and was then gently placed the right way up into the ground. A team of gardeners armed with spades moved in to fill up the earth around the tree with fresh soil.
Greta paused and then pointed to a dark clump of earth on the root system of one of the largest oaks. The soil appeared to be writhing and twisting in the air, forming some kind of black and oozing shape.
‘What is that?’ she asked, before realising. ‘It’s the bees!’ she said with a cry. ‘You must rescue them, Albert.’
Albert glanced at his wife, taken aback at this unexpected display of faith.
‘I’ll try,’ he said, and Greta looked at him with frank approval.
All work on the trees was paused to
avoid frightening the bees and making them swarm again. A boy was dispatched to Temple Court, and within half an hour Herzfeld arrived in the Wolseley. They unloaded a new hive warmed with hot bricks, as well as Albert’s gown, gloves and mask and assorted paraphernalia. Albert took a white sheet and laid it on the ground beneath the bees swarming in the tree roots, then donned his mask and long gloves. He clambered up onto the trailer and scaled the inverted tree, climbing up towards the roots until he was close enough to gently shake the bees from their resting place, so that they dropped onto the sheet below. When the sheet had turned black with bees, he jumped down and began to brush them into the hive with a broom. He moved slowly, quite unafraid as the bees coated his gloves, stroking them off into the hive. However, it was quite clear to Greta that he needed some help, for the hive kept rolling over and most of the bees missed, landing back on the sheet or flying up into the branch, which was once again growing thick with a dark fog of insects.
‘Do you have spare gloves and a mask?’ she asked Herzfeld.
‘Yes, but I’m not terribly good with bees. I’m more of a butterfly man. And bees sense fear.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ said Greta.
Suitably attired, she held the hive steady while Albert scooped in the bees. He held out his hand, and she saw that on the end of his gloved fingertip was a bee twice the length of any other and marked with a dab of white paint. Its dark furred stripes made Greta think of the tiger skin in the conservatory.
‘The queen,’ Albert said with reverence. ‘Once she’s in the hive, the others will follow.’
Within a quarter of an hour they were finished. Only a few stragglers remained. Albert turned the hive the right way up and signalled to Herzfeld, who, now that the bees were safely contained in the hive, hurried over.
‘Feed them with sugar syrup. Have the hive placed near one of the glasshouses for warmth. See if we can stop them swarming again,’ said Albert, removing his mask and gloves and shaking a stray bee from the carnation in his buttonhole, where it was hunting for pollen.
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