Irene gazed raptly into this macabre space “Did you have time to investigate it?” she asked me eagerly.
“No,” I answered. “Did you hear me... call to you from within?”
“No, dear Nell; the stones must be admirably muffling. Just think, this clever mechanism must have been constructed centuries ago, with still nary a squeak despite fire and flood and damp and decay.”
“Just think,” I repeated unenthusiastically.
Godfrey chuckled, a sound that went over both our heads.
Irene ducked hers into the dark, then thrust the lantern within and swept it from side to side.
I gasped. No wonder I had felt marooned on a mere slice of solid ground! An earthen stairway led deeper into the dark. Had I taken a single step forward, I would have tumbled farther into the gloomy throat of darkness.
“We must investigate!” Irene moved into the chamber, taking the little bit of light she carried with her.
I hesitated, but Godfrey’s hand on my elbow both braced me and urged me forward.
“The worst is over, Nell,” he bent to say in my ear. “You should have the honor of exploring your find.”
I was hardly in any condition to decline honors, no matter how dubious. We three descended into the crypt, unaware of what awaited us below.
Chapter Twenty-nine
KING’S CASTLING
One of the most fascinating diversions during my life with the Nortons was to watch Irene attempt to conceal a yawn in company. Owing to her life as a diva, she could open her mouth to astounding dimensions. Irene yawned and sneezed as she sang, with head-thrown-back gusto.
Thus, when tempted to one of these vulgar necessities in public, she treated the onlooker to a battle royal between inclination, capacity, and self-discipline.
On this occasion, Irene interred her yawn in the corner of her breakfast napkin and marked its passing with a celebratory sip of strong black coffee.
We broke fast on the cusp of elevenses, so late had we three risen after our arduous night in the graveyard. Allegra possessed that capacity so taken for granted by the young of being able to sleep late and heavily. She found nothing odd in our stirring so tardily, and joined us at the hotel table like a vagrant ray of sunshine.
“Did you have a jolly adventure last night?” she asked, drinking her tea and milk; no pitch-black liquids for her.
“Jolly does not do it justice,” Godfrey observed, breaking apart a roll crammed with a tarry substance he had assured me was no more than prune filling.
“Amen,” said I, though the time for saying grace was long past “And ‘jolly’ is not a proper form of expression for a young lady.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks, Miss Huxleigh! I was merely asking.”
“We had a right jolly adventure,” Irene put in, “and will have an even jollier one tonight.”
“At the palace!” Allegra reminded herself, and us. “Oh, I do wish to go and see poor Clotilde.”
“She is ‘Queen Clotilde,’ and you shall go,” Irene said.
“I shall? To the reception? But I’m not invited.”
“Indeed you shall, but not to the reception. I have a greater assignment in mind for you.”
“Really? At the palace? And I shall see Clotilde?”
“All of that,” Irene said smugly, biting enthusiastically into a roll crawling with the vile seed of the poppy. “And—” She eyed me with mock meekness. “—you will be home before six and safe in your suite, as Miss Huxleigh would consider only fitting and proper for an unescorted young girl in gay old Prague.”
“Gay old Prague!” I added with what was not quite a snort. I may blurt on occasion, under stress, but I never snort.
“What is the plan for the evening?” Godfrey asked with a certain reluctance.
“We shall go together,” Irene said. “I as Lady Sherlock; you and Nell as yourselves.”
“What explains this sudden alliance?” he asked.
Irene blinked her daylight-gilded lashes until I thought she should swoon of supposed innocence. “We are all English.”
“We are all apparently English,” I put in, eating the plain bread and fruit I found the best items to order in Prague.
“I pass for such, do I not?” Irene asked. Her expression brooked no disagreement. Frankly, both Godfrey and I were too exhausted from our adventure of the previous evening to argue.
That is how Irene always got her way: she exhausted any opposition.
“What do we do today?” Godfrey asked sensibly. “Nothing.” Irene seemed most pleased with herself. “I have some... archival investigations to pursue in town.
Allegra will be well occupied when I explain her mission to the Palace this afternoon. So you and Nell may... rest.”
“Rest?” I demanded.
“You’ve had a trying night,” she said, her flexible voice an arpeggio of soothing sounds, “both of you darlings. Simply think on how to look splendid tonight—Lady Sherlock would not care to associate with... dowdy individuals—and I will do the rest.”
“That,” Godfrey said grimly, “is precisely what I am afraid of.”
“And I,” I added, “am not used to regarding myself as an ornamental object.”
“Please do so now, Nell,” Irene beseeched me with a warm glance. “It is more important than you know.”
“Nor am I an ornamental object,” Godfrey put in, an unspoken growl underlining his protest.
“Dear man,” Irene said, “sometimes we all must play such roles, and tonight is your grandest opportunity.”
She glanced from Godfrey to myself with the proud satisfaction of a puppet master eyeing her two most promising mannequins. “Tonight will be a most memorable evening, count upon it.”
That is the very difficulty, I thought as their conversation shifted into other matters. The previous night had already been memorable beyond belief and Irene refused to enlighten us on what she had expected, or made, of what we had found. I thought back on these astounding events.
We did not find the Golem beneath the tomb of Rabbi Loew, but we discovered a vast subterranean network of crude tunnels that snaked into a dozen different directions under the Old Town. Our lone lantern was not sufficient for exploring such a maze. We could not separate, for which I was sublimely grateful, nor could we lay bread crumbs—for we had none, although that struck me as the most suitable deployment for the products of Bohemian bakeries.
“Interesting,” Irene commented when we had emerged again into the blessed air surrounding the Jewish cemetery.
She was always dispensing such annoyingly cryptic assessments. “What do you make of it, Nell?”
I sputtered for a moment before I spoke. ‘The tunnels were dark, dirty, damp. The air was both warm, and chill. I would not send an earthworm on an errand to such a place!”
Godfrey laughed as if I had made the greatest witticism on earth; such a treasure. No wonder even the odious Tatyana coveted him.
“The tunnels are obviously old,” he speculated; “some defensive scheme of the ghetto against an attack. If the Golem was meant to hide in them, he would have to go bent double, for even I had to hunch over. An unwelcoming maze,” he added, “as Nell says.”
“Do you believe,” Irene asked, “that we stumbled onto something long hidden, or in more recent use?”
I shuddered and thrust my gloved hands into the side pockets of the detested bloomers. “Ancient. Evil. To be avoided.”
Godfrey extinguished the lantern and returned it to the black bag as he spoke. “Ancient, but useful in modern times. Impossible to say whether the tunnels have been used of late.”
“Oh, if only I had a map of the place!” In the dark, Irene’s voice burst into a bright firework of passion.
“No map would exist—ever,” Godfrey cautioned her. “That would be the entire reason for such a surreptitious network.”
“That may have been the original reason,” she said, “but—now the possibilities are divinely unlimited.”
<
br /> “So are the possibilities of us contracting an ague,” I reminded her. “May we return to the hotel and a bit of warmth?”
“Of course,” she agreed too readily.
We were already picking our way through the dark, topsy-turvy graveyard and back within earshot of mirth, merriment, and ardent liquors.
“The matters that await us tomorrow on Hradcany hill, my friends,” she added in a deep, foreboding voice reminiscent of the ancient gypsy woman’s, “are—may I say, far more grave?”
I personally did not see how an expedition to Prague Castle could be any more ghastly than the previous evening’s outing to the rabbi’s tomb and its underlying secrets.
On Irene’s orders, I attempted to dress as splendidly as I was capable of appearing.
“This is not a mere matter of vanity, Nell,” she instructed me in my chamber that afternoon. “When one mingles with the great and powerful, one must don whatever guise best suits.”
“I am merely a secretary to Godfrey,” I pointed out. “Surely no one will pay me any attention whatsoever, as is usual.”
She shook an admonitory finger in front of my nose so urgently that I am sure my poor eyes crossed to regard it.
“Nell, you must listen and obey, as no doubt you expected your charges to do years ago. You can rest assured that a good many people will be paying you attention tonight, as you put it, merely for the fact of who your friends are. You must wear the cherry velvet gown I found you at the Paris street fair. It is splendidly made and timeless in style.”
“I don’t think that I am a cherry-velvet person, Irene.”
“Tonight you must be. Don’t forget; I’ll be drawing the vast majority of the attention to myself, but you still have a part to play.”
“What of Godfrey?”
“I have advised him to wear simple black and white,” she said impishly.
“Men’s formal dress is always black and white. I meant, what part will he play?”
She sighed and stalked away. “One I do not like, but one that he has been cast in nevertheless.”
“And that is?”
She turned in a whirl of skirts and scowling brows. “Target.”
“Target? Of what? Not an air-rifle as Colonel Sebastian Moran used?”
“One can never be sure,” she added glumly, pacing again. “But it is more as target of Tatyana. Oh, how tiresome that I must pause to deal with this unexpected issue, when so many other crucial events unfold!”
“What crucial events?”
She swooped close in a crackle of taffeta skirts as if to confide in me, but merely patted my cheek.
“You will see, Nell, you will see. If—you dress properly for me. There’s a good girl....”
And off she went, like a rather well-gowned governess about her mysterious duties.
I had no one with whom to consult. Allegra was at the castle with the Queen. Why had I not been invited on such a mission? Godfrey was in the town, investigating the city’s subterranean blueprints. Even such an uninspired errand would have been more profitable than regarding the cherry velvet gown in my room and wondering what revelations awaited us at the castle that night.
Poor Godfrey! Caught between two formidable women. Poor Clotilde! Ignored by everyone but Allegra. Poor Irene! Forced to defend her husband while hampered by the guise of a fictitious person. Poor Penelope! Forced to gad about and know nothing. And lastly... poor Golem! The object of everyone’s search and no one’s sympathy. At least I would extend the poor hunted thing a modicum of pity. I had an absurd notion that the Golem was kept as much in the dark these days as... as I was.
If I thought the cherry velvet gown I wore that night a bit extravagant, the color faded to pearl pink next to the port-colored plush-velvet creation that floated down the hotel hall as Irene approached my door on Godfrey’s arm.
I had been unable to wait meekly in my room, and—on hearing a grandiose swish in the passage—I opened my door to peep out.
Irene’s gown had no sleeves, no neckline, merely a bodice as bare as a corset-top, like that of the notorious Madame X in Mr. Sargent’s portrait of that name. A swath of rose-purple tulle swathed one bare shoulder and draped the full skirts. Sweeping designs in jet and a red stone that glimmered ruby-bright encrusted the hem and bodice. The Tiffany corsage slashed across this bloody ground in a glory of diamond-studded fire: snowflakes lit by an ever-passing comet of stars.
Despite her immodest elegance, Irene only had eyes for me. “Nicely done, Nell! But, quickly: I must have you inside for a small adjustment... here. And there!”
In front of my mirror I watched my long-labored-over curls prodded lower on my forehead, higher on my crown, and looser over my neck and shoulders.
Irene tugged my neckline over the precipice of my shoulders.
I shrugged it back up.
She frowned and jerked it down, past repair.
“There! Do not fret. Hardly anyone will look at you with myself and Tatyana present, but it never hurts to be presentable... One never knows whom one might encounter.”
“Irene!” Godfrey waited discreetly in the hall, as he was so expert at doing. “You behave as if you were going to a duel with that woman, not unraveling the political conundrum as the Rothschilds desire.”
“You are right.” She called out, then allowed herself to lean against the sofa back for a moment’s rest. She lowered her voice so he could not hear us. “I have become diverted by another woman’s artificial ploys. For this Tatyana can have no real regard for Godfrey, can she, Nell?”
I licked my lips, a cue for Irene to pull open her black velvet reticule and produce a pomade that both moistened and colored them.
“Irene... she is strange, this woman. I do believe that she is dangerous.”
“Oh, I know that she is dangerous... but is Godfrey susceptible?”
‘‘You ask me? You know these things far better than I.”
Irene smiled, sadly. “I know these things in the abstract, down the street and across the wide world. As for my own neighborhood—we will see, Nell, what we see tonight. Much will be plain, and much still veiled. Keep watch, as I bid you before. Watch closely; much depends upon it”
“Can’t you say more? Can’t you be more specific? Irene, must you always play the sibyl?”
She shook her head, her black-dyed curls shifting into a gleaming torrent.
“I don’t know more, Nell,” she confessed, donning her white velvet gloves. “I am a mere impresario. I have set the orchestra in motion, all its many sections and instruments of different voice. Now I have no notion what tune it will play. I thrive on instinct, on panache, as does your despised acquaintance, Oscar Wilde. I throw bright balls into the air, in hopes that I will learn something from where they land. I am no Sherlock Holmes, my dear Nell; I am not so cold and calculating. So when circumstances conspire to threaten the center where my heart lies, I make a most unreliable compass. Watch for me tonight. Look for that which is not what it seems to be. See through the façades. Watch for the anomaly. Above all, protect Godfrey.”
“I? Irene, you must speak more plainly—”
“No time,” she said, pressing a white velvet fingertip to my lips.
I parted those lips to remind her of the colored pomade she had herself applied, but it was too late. A pale pink stain tinged the tip of her velvet-gloved finger.
The longer and farther abroad I traveled with Irene, the less I came to recognize myself. The figure I had glimpsed in my mirror tonight was a far cry from the timid dismissed drapery clerk Irene had rescued from the streets of London seven years before.
Yet no matter how I evolved, Irene was always ahead of me, as a comet outruns its dissipating tail. I could never glory in my modest transformations, for they were pale imitations of Irene’s mercurial self-manipulations.
Still, I set out that evening with Irene and Godfrey well satisfied that my new splendor should protect me from the moment I most dreaded, when the King of Bohemia wou
ld stare straight at me and declare: “It is she! The mousy woman who accompanied Irene Adler on her escape from Prague, Miss... What’s-her-name?”
Then he would frown and bellow, “That is such a patently ridiculous coiffure. Off with her head!”
At least Allegra was safe at the hotel; Irene had remained adamant to all her pleadings.
Our carriage ride up Hradcany hill was silent. Godfrey brooded in the opposite corner, gently slapping his white kid evening gloves against one loose fist. I could understand the Russian woman’s obsession; Godfrey gloomy was even more attractive than Godfrey at his charming best. His mental abstraction permitted one to admire the well-drawn lines of his dark hair and moustache, even his charcoal eyelashes over the dreamy pale silver eyes ordinarily so sharp and perceptive.
Irene, preening in the carriage until the last moment, shook her matching garnet bracelets down her gloves and admired the effect by the intermittent street lights.
Yet she watched her husband, as I did, with an odd mix of fondness and fear. Nothing makes one more protective of one’s possessions than the knowledge of another’s obsession with them.
We all dreaded the next encounter with Tatyana, but it couldn’t be helped. That was our mission in Bohemia: to face the facts, however fearsome, be it the Golem or a more contemporary monster in a monstrous fair guise.
I felt that the evening would prove to be momentous. I resolved to make as many notes as I dared in my dance case. I hardly needed worry about covering the sheet of thin white bone with the names of would-be escorts.
Once again we passed under the naked, straining bronze bodies of the gate’s guardian statuary. A struggle as dire would soon transpire within, but the conflict would be far more subtle, and perhaps more deadly.
After we had bustled in and been relieved of our outer garments, we stood with a knot of other guests awaiting our turn to be announced.
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