Web of Discord

by Norman Russell

  ‘Like Miss Drake, I will not venture to sing, lest the servants come to see what is amiss. So here is my tribute to the moon, Baroness. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Number 14, the “Moonlight”.’

  As soon as Herr Bleibner began to play, Vanessa realized that he was a very talented amateur. His hands were strong and sinuous, with long, white fingers from which some of the nails were missing, a misfortune that had made Vanessa shudder when she had first become aware of it. Those maimed hands, though, had total control over the keyboard, and over the challenging subtleties of Beethoven’s music.

  As he played, Herr Bleibner seemed to become enrapt, closed in upon himself, noticing neither his audience nor the great silver moon hung in the sky over the North Sea. He played without music, and his lips moved silently from time to time, as though mouthing some incantation. The moonlight fell upon his chalk-white face, making it even more menacing than it had been in the full glare of gaslight. At one moment, near the plaintive final bars of the sonata, a single tear rolled down Herr Bleibner’s cheek. When he finished playing, and lifted his hands from the keys, both women remained silent, for silence was the tribute that his performance merited.

  In the chapel next morning, Vanessa plied her needle, and thought of this visit of hers to Baroness Felssen, at her fine modern house in Northumberland. It was Wednesday now, and she had been at Stonewick Hall since Saturday. The work had proved to be interesting and challenging, and the days were passing agreeably enough. Her hostess was charming and unaffected, a truly cultured woman with a mind of her own, and a talent for managing people. Colonel Kershaw had described her as dangerous, but to Vanessa she was simply a gracious and welcoming hostess.

  And Herr Bleibner? What was she to make of a man scarred by disfigurement, a man with tortured hands which spoke of some terrible past? His chief failing seemed to be an overmastering patriotism, which turned him into a fearless advocate of his native land, its culture, and its achievements. Was that a fault? He was also fearless in exposing the wickedness of the present governing powers in Russia.

  Last night, he had allowed the two women to glimpse something of his private inner torments in his performance of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. Was music his special refuge?

  Vanessa had been outlining some lilies embroidered on a pulpit-fall with a delicate green thread. She had reached the end of the first bobbin, and rummaged through her workbox for the second. It wasn’t there. She uttered a little sound of impatience, and rose from her chair. She would have to go back to her room and open her large sewing-case. She was settled comfortably in the chapel, where it was warm, light and quiet. Still, she couldn’t sit there all day without the means of completing her work.

  It was very pleasant outside in the grounds, and she loitered a little as she made her way through the trees towards the main path. She had almost reached the end of the little plantation surrounding the chapel when she heard a crashing of feet among the trees. She spun round, startled, and was just in time to see the figure of a heavy man in a grey coat plunge away into the shrubbery behind the chapel.

  Her heart beating rapidly, she hurried out of the trees on to the path. The house loomed up reassuringly above her, the French windows of the drawing-room opened invitingly. She scrambled up the sloping grass to the terrace, and turned round to face the way she had come. She fancied that she saw the flitting shapes of other men among the trees for a second or two, then all was silent. A nervous fancy? She stepped over the sill into the house.

  Her room was on the first floor, at the rear of the mansion. The ground floor appeared to be deserted, and she recalled how the servants at Stonewick Hall seemed trained to remain quite invisible until they were summoned by their mistress. She mounted the wide staircase, and came to the first floor.

  Colonel Kershaw had warned her not to poke or pry. She was simply to see and hear, and report to him on her return to London. But ahead of her, at the end of the white-panelled corridor, the door of Baroness Felssen’s bedroom stood invitingly open…. It would do no harm, surely, to take just a little peep inside? She tiptoed along the red and blue Turkey carpet, and crossed the threshold of the baroness’s room.

  It was a large, sunny chamber, with quietly tasteful furniture in light oak, apart from the bed, which was a voluptuous fantasy in William Morris style. A wide dressing table stood in the window. What expensive fittings the baroness had! Those silver-backed brushes would cost a fortune.

  Vanessa caught sight of her reflection in the dressing-table mirror, and shuddered. Somehow, her own image suggested an interloper, which, of course, was what she was. There was a fireplace in the room, hidden behind two beautiful Japanese screens. She stepped behind them, and stood in silence for a while. A marble clock ticked slowly on the mantelpiece, somehow emphasizing the quietness of the spacious room.

  On either side of the clock stood a photograph in a black ebony frame, with a crucifix rising from the top. One showed a pretty woman in court dress, a woman with frank and fearless eyes. A small plaque beneath the picture read: In Memoriam. Adelheid, Gräfin Czerny. The companion photograph was of a handsome man with a short, trimmed beard. He was wearing uniform, and sported the sash of a foreign order. His inscription read: Engelbert, Graf Czerny. Resurgam.

  Count and Countess Czemy…. Vanessa suddenly felt a nauseous fear hold her in thrall. She had no idea who Baroness Felssen was, but she was evidently an intimate of the woman whom Vanessa had known as Ottilie Seligmann, and of her husband, Count Czerny, who had met their deaths only months before in a frightful marine explosion off the coast of Scotland. Both of them had been closely involved in the complex secret affair known as the Hansa Protocol.

  As Vanessa stood motionless behind the screens, she became aware of the low murmur of voices. It came from somewhere beyond the room, but near enough to be heard from where she was standing. By a great effort of will she overcame her fear, and ventured out from behind the screens.

  A door on the far side of the room was open. It led into a small, high dressing-room, filled almost completely with a large mahogany wardrobe. Scarcely daring to breathe, Vanessa slipped quietly into the room. Directly to her right was the arched entrance to a long, narrow chamber, a sort of gallery filled with books. She could see the Baroness and Herr Bleibner sitting at a desk, with their backs towards her. A man she did not know was standing beside them, consulting a watch. She crouched against the lintel of the door, and listened to their conversation.

  ‘I assure you, Cathcart,’ Herr Bleibner was saying, ‘that there is plenty of time. I’ve given you the messages, and their translations into English and French. You have only to slip away and return to Newcastle, where your beloved engines await you. Send those cables at the times I’ve indicated, and that debt of yours will be cancelled within the week.’

  ‘Be sure to keep your side of the bargain, Mr Cathcart,’ said the Baroness. ‘If you fail us, you will find that we are fatal people to cross.’

  Vanessa had managed to position herself in such a way that she could see through the crack in the hinge side of the door. Cathcart was a nondescript fellow, a clerk, perhaps. He stood nervously, evidently waiting for orders of some kind.

  ‘By the end of this week,’ Herr Bleibner was saying, ‘the series of canards against the Russians will be complete. English public opinion will be so inflamed against them that when the little bombardment of Whitby takes place, the public here will be ready to do away with all the Russians in London.’

  ‘And as soon as the shelling is over,’ said Baroness Felssen, ‘the assault on Eastern Prussia will begin. Those joint atrocities will drive the British and the Prussians into each other’s arms.’

  ‘Whose side are you on, then?’ asked the man called Cathcart. There was a genuine bewilderment in his voice that cancelled out the offensive abruptness of his question.

  Baroness Felssen laughed.

  ‘Let us say, Cathcart, that we are on the side of the gods. Now go. And don’t fail us, if you value y
our own life.’

  Vanessa heard Cathcart walk away. Mercifully, his route did not take him back through the dressing-room. Baroness Felssen and Herr Bleibner had begun to talk to each other in rapid German. Vanessa saw Bleibner glance back towards the open door of the dressing-room, and felt another surge of fear. She began very gently to make her way back the way she had come. It would take her only a minute to reach the landing, and then she could hurry along to her own room, retrieve the bobbin of silk that she needed, and make her way quite boldly back to the chapel. She left the dressing-room, and re-entered Baroness Felssen’s bedroom.

  Herr Bleibner, his back pressed firmly against the outer door, his face transfixed by a ghastly smile, was waiting for her.

  ‘So, my pretty little spy,’ he said, ‘you thought that no one could see you as you crouched behind the door. But I have eyes that see everything, and I saw you clearly enough: you were reflected in my glasses.’

  ‘Colonel Kershaw—’

  ‘Colonel Kershaw is not here, my dear, so whatever he told you has no validity. We thought to send you back to him crammed full of pro-German sentiments. It was worth a try, and it showed him, in any case, that his flabby array of “secret servants” and “nobodies” is entirely known to us. Goodbye, Miss Drake. Poor, foolish child!’

  As he said these words, Vanessa saw a tear roll down his flaking cheek. At the same time, he drew what appeared to be a woman’s hatpin from behind the lapel of his morning coat.

  Vanessa Drake screamed, and not for the first time she was astonished at the volume of the noise that she made. Last time that she had screamed in that way, a door had been carried off its hinges, and she had been rescued from injury or worse. This time, though, nothing was going to happen….

  With an explosive rending of timber, the door behind Bleibner’s back was carried off its hinges, sending him sprawling into the room, and the raging figure of Jack Knollys hurled itself directly at the German. Vanessa had the sense to leap away from the struggling men, and to dart out on to the landing. She found it seemingly full of blue-uniformed soldiers.

  ‘It’s all right, miss,’ one of them said in rough accents, ‘you’re safe with the Northumberland Fusiliers.’

  Still trembling with fright, Vanessa looked back into the room. Bleibner was making a desperate effort to free himself from Jack Knollys’ furious grip. He was wasting his strength! Jack had saved her yet again. He was as strong as a lion, as fierce as a tiger, he was—

  Vanessa watched in horror as Knollys suddenly uttered a choking cry, dropped to his knees, and then collapsed with a sickening crash to the floor. She was just in time to see that Bleibner had escaped through the inner room, and that two soldiers were bending over Jack Knollys’ inert form, before she fainted.

  11

  War of Words

  Sir Charles Napier sat back in his chair at the head of the long polished table, listening to the clipped tones of Colonel von Hagen. He was alert not only to what the Prussian military attaché was saying, but also to the controlled anger behind his voice. Beside him, in a chair placed a little apart from the table, sat Colonel Kershaw.

  The military attachés and their secretaries had assembled only half an hour earlier, and after they had agreed on English as the language for this pourparler, Napier had called upon Colonel von Hagen to open the conversation. It was eight o’clock on the evening of 3 April, the earliest time that these three men and their regular secretaries had been able to attend.

  The Foreign Secretary’s meeting room, a grander place than his own office on the floor above, was illuminated by silk-shaded oil lamps, which created a soothing atmosphere, casting long shadows upward towards the dark oil-paintings on the panelled walls.

  ‘I have assured you, gentlemen,’ von Hagen was saying, ‘that the Kaiser and his government are anxious that peace should prevail. But peace at what price? We Germans are a patient people, but there are limits to that patience. I have made no secret of my priorities, which are centred on the health and progress of the German Reich. Well, now I see an approaching military threat, so bold and arrogant in its designs on German territory that it must be countered immediately.’

  Colonel von Hagen looked sufficiently arrogant himself, thought Napier. His moustache bristled with indignation, and the lamplight glinted off his monocle. He looked petulant and uncooperative, as though he was there under duress. His secretary, a bullet-headed young man with an unsmiling countenance, appeared as surly as his master.

  Monsieur Laplace, sitting opposite the German attaché, asked a question in the lazy, insolent way that he affected. Napier wondered about Laplace, the French attaché. He had the air of an artist rather than a diplomat, and had been a friend of Rimbaud. He’d gained his military expertise in North Africa. The French President didn’t like him much. Was Laplace aware of the secret treaty of non-intervention between France and Russia?

  ‘A masterly exposition, von Hagen,’ said the Frenchman, ‘but when are you coming to the point? What is this arrogant military threat? Surely you are not allowing yourself to be swayed by journalistic rumours? Your own country has often been seen – and felt – as a military threat.’

  Colonel von Hagen flushed red with anger.

  ‘You can sneer as much as you like, M. Laplace. You can choose, if that is your wish, to live your life permanently in 1870. I am not the only person here who suspects that your country has assured itself of a peaceful life during the next decade at the expense of other nations—’

  That’s torn, it, thought Napier. Now Laplace will stand on his dignity, such as it is. He could, if he wished, sit there silently, thinking his cynical republican thoughts, but Laplace would never be able to disguise his rooted dislike of the Germans. Von Hagen wouldn’t get away with it.

  ‘What are you implying, Colonel von Hagen? I can categorically deny that there has been any secret treaty between France and another power.’

  (Ah! So he does know about the secret treaty. That’s why he looked so damned complacent when he came in here tonight.)

  Colonel von Hagen smiled, and treated the Frenchman to a mock bow.

  ‘Deny what you like, monsieur,’ he said. ‘Pretence is part of our diplomatic art. Deny, by all means, that France did not enter into a secret negotiation with Russia on the eighth of May last, at Cannes. Let us lie to each other, by all means.’

  Von Hagen sat down, but not before glancing at Napier, whose face bore an incipient smile. Von Hagen’s secretary was gazing at his master adoringly. Laplace, white-faced, had seemingly forgotten all about the Prussian diplomat. He sat talking in low tones to his secretary.

  At the other end of the table, the Russian attaché, Major Count Menschikov, an elderly, balding man with a scarred face, slowly rose to his feet. He, too, was white with rage.

  ‘You, sir,’ he bellowed, in a voice that was disconcertingly young and powerful for a man of his years, ‘what are you implying about Russia? Russia is tired of German slanders, tired of German stories, and tired of German duplicity. You choose to insult M. Laplace, and he meets your arrogance with becoming silence. But you will not insult me, sir! Who is your secret ally here? Or needn’t I ask? What is this threat that forms the basis for your lie?’

  Von Hagen sprang to his feet, knocking over a water-glass in the process. His face had turned puce with anger.

  ‘A lie?’ he shrieked. ‘Why, if you wish to play with fire, Major Menschikov, be careful that you are not burnt! As for Prussia, her only ally, as always, is the Austrian Empire. But you, sir: deny your aggression if you will. Yes, let me hear you deny that Russia is creeping like a venomous snake down the shores of the Baltic, through the land of the Lithuanian people – the land that you have stolen from them – ready to strike at the northern coasts of Germany. Go on, deny it!’

  He’ll have a fit if he doesn’t stop, thought Napier, watching von Hagen, whose rant was developing into a scream. Let’s hope not. We can’t afford to lose him at this juncture.

&
nbsp; ‘I do deny it! I tell you, von Hagen, there is no truth whatever in these rumours. We have all heard them. They are not true. We have no troops moving down the Baltic. We have no engineers in Meshed. We have no designs on India. We have no designs on Canada. We have sunk no German ship. These things are canards. You are free tonight with accusations of lying, Colonel von Hagen. But I do not lie, and here is an interesting truth for you to ponder. If you Germans venture to set foot aggressively on Russian soil, you will be utterly annihilated.’

  Colonel Kershaw, who had been studying the carpet for the last few minutes, looked up sharply. Sir Charles Napier leaned forward in his chair. He’d learnt a great deal from this meeting. Von Hagen was a firebrand, a real Junker, quite happy to go to war if he had to. But he had heroically resisted revealing his knowledge of Russia’s secret weapon, knowledge which he had chosen to share earlier with Napier. Von Hagen, it seemed, was grudgingly convinced of England’s good faith.

  Laplace had been invited merely for form’s sake, but it had been he who had ignited the spark. Poor Count Menschikov, Napier knew, thought that the Germans and the English had long been plotting together against Russia. Menschikov had sensed the air of sympathy emanating from the French attaché; von Hagen had picked that up, with the odd sixth sense that was characteristic of him, thus adding fuel to his suspicions of both Russia and France.

  Why had Menschikov suddenly thrown diplomacy to the winds, and threatened Germany with annihilation? Because he wanted to shut von Hagen up, in case he started to blurt out a few inconvenient truths about the secret aerial boat Phoebus-Apollo. He would have known that both England and Germany knew about the project, but that France didn’t, even though there was a secret treaty between France and Russia.

  An altogether delightful diplomatic impasse.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Napier, ‘my purpose ‘in asking you to this pourparler was to take soundings, and to see where we should go from here. I want to thank you for speaking so fearlessly and frankly this evening. I wish now to make a proposal. It is clear that a very dangerous situation is developing. Relations between Russia and the German Empire are rapidly deteriorating. There is, too, much ill feeling against Russia in Britain since the assassination of Sir John Courteline. The matter has gone beyond the ambassadorial level. I therefore suggest that a conference be convened by the Great Powers, where all prevailing treaties can be examined, and misunderstandings cleared up.’