Fireworks and Darkness

by Natalie Jane Prior

  It was only a ten-minute walk to the River Court, down wide, paved streets through the better part of town. The old king, Christina and Elsabetta’s father, had cleared the inner city in the early part of his reign, demolishing the slums and banishing their inhabitants to the other side of the river. Only a few old buildings had been allowed to remain, notably the university, the cathedral and the Undercroft. Casimir generally preferred not to pass its ugly bulk unless he had to, but today, he was in a hurry. The Undercroft was the headquarters of the Queen’s Guard, a squat, stone building originally built as a grain store. It had few windows and massive walls that had been extended, strengthened and reinforced several times. Only one door was visible, but there were reputedly many hidden ones, mostly underground and linked into a legendary network of tunnels that criss-crossed the city. Casimir did not know whether to believe in these tunnels, but many people did. According to popular legend, Queen Sophia’s brother, Nicholas, the first procurator, had been lured into one and murdered by angry partisans of a rival faction. The Queen’s Guard had risen in bloody revolt; there had been riots in the streets and for days the Ling had been filled with the corpses of those accused of supporting the murderers. Queen Sophia had let them do it, then appointed her younger brother Henry as procurator in Nicholas’s place. The Queen’s Guard had emerged from the disaster stronger than ever. Somehow or other, it always did.

  Casimir walked past the Undercroft on the other side of the street, and was not sorry when it disappeared behind him. He walked for a way along the river, taking a route through the Christmas markets and getting caught up in the throngs of well-dressed shoppers out to buy presents and the Christmas goose. Upmarket street stalls sold armfuls of greenery, hot potatoes, and nativity scenes in which the faces of the magi seemed to bear a disturbing resemblance to Circastes. This time last year he had been there himself, selling rockets off the back of a barrow. At last he reached the River Court with its black and yellow flags. A small crowd was gathered at the sentry box, and was being held back by two or three Household Guardsmen.

  ‘The queen’s going to the cathedral to listen to some new piece of music,’ explained a woman when Casimir asked what was happening. ‘They won’t let us through until her coach has passed by.’

  The crowd muttered and shuffled. A few people strained to see what was going on and one woman climbed upon her husband’s shoulders and sighted over the iron railings. At last there was a flurry of activity. A gate opened and two coaches drawn by bay horses and flanked by an impressive collection of outriders pulled out onto the carriageway and drove away.

  As the first coach passed, Casimir had a glancing view of a lace-edged hood at the window and underneath it a pale, female face with a long straight nose. That was all: his first and probably only glimpse of the woman whose forthcoming wedding had occupied almost all of his working life over the last six months, the woman for whom he had made the firework boy, and who had indirectly been the cause of his present dilemma. Queen Elsabetta was not nearly as pretty as her half-sister, Christina, but Casimir supposed she didn’t have to be. The queen hadn’t spent most of her life in exile because of a disgraced mother, and she hadn’t needed to fight for her position at court. Elsabetta was neither glamorous nor beautiful; her artistic interests were too highbrow to appeal to her ordinary subjects, and her rule was ineffectual. She was, in short, a splendid nonentity. If the queen died tomorrow, Casimir guessed, it would cause a stir, but probably nobody except the royal musicians would be bothered to see her go.

  The queen having left, the knot of people in front of him started moving towards the sentry box. Casimir showed his pass to the guard and, to his relief, was waved perfunctorily through. His arrival at the treasurer’s stables was met with similar indifference. One of the stablehands fetched him the storeroom key from the undergroom, and pointed him in the direction of some stairs.

  ‘Do you want a lantern?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Casimir went down the stairs into a sort of well. At the bottom some logs, sacks and a shovel were piled in the corner beside a door and when Casimir turned the key in the lock it opened onto what looked like a cellar. He stepped inside and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dimness. Sure enough, the mortars stood in front of him in mute rows like so many open mouths; behind them were stacks of fireworks, brought over from the shop during the last few weeks for storage. The room stank and with a sinking feeling Casimir realised it was from damp. The palace and all the surrounding buildings were built on fill. Nothing stood between them and the Ling except the River Court. After the last few days of almost constant rain, the river levels must have risen.

  Casimir wiped a hand over the nearest mortar. His fingers came away smeared with a rusty film; it looked as if they had been put away wet after Friday’s display and he guessed they would all need cleaning and greasing. Casimir counted them and was relieved to find none were missing; he turned to explore the rest of the cellar and shone his light over the old lumber and disused wine racks which lined the walls. The floor sloped down towards the river and was obviously damp. The more he saw, the more Casimir realised the recent rain had turned this cellar into the worst possible place to store fireworks. Even if the damp did not get into the well-caulked barrels full of rockets, the set pieces were wrapped only in canvas that would not be proof against the moisture in the air.

  Simeon was normally meticulous about such things. The fact that he had neither checked, nor realised what was happening here, was an ominous indicator of his state of mind. At the lowest point of the room was a wooden door, its timbers warped and twisted. Casimir gave it a push, but it was locked and the wood was still good enough to hold. He knelt and tried to peer underneath it. Though it was too dark to see he caught a draught, and a pungent whiff of river. Whatever cellar or space was on the other side must stretch under the River Court in front of the palace and go right down to the water’s edge below.

  There was nothing else he could do there. Casimir turned and went back to the stairs. On the way out, he picked up a waxed roll of catherine wheels. When he reached the safety of the carriageway he extracted one from the packet and tried to light it. As he had expected, it was blind as a beggar on the cathedral steps. It probably didn’t matter, since by the time of the wedding there was no saying where they might be, but the sheer waste irritated Casimir all the same. He wondered briefly what Simeon would say when he came back, and then suddenly it occurred to him that, of all the places in Starberg where his father might have spent the night, Ruth’s house was the most likely. Casimir put away the lantern, kicked the blind firework into the gutter, and headed across the tunnel to the treasurer’s residence.

  As it turned out, Ruth was entertaining friends.

  The treasurer’s door was opened by a girl called Lilias, whom Casimir knew quite well. In the early days of his father’s relationship with Ruth, before they opened the shop in Fish Lane, he had spent a lot of time hanging about the treasurer’s kitchen. Lilias worked there as a kitchen maid. She was friendly and funny and disposed to chat, and Casimir had quickly grown to like her. If she hadn’t been so fat he might even have fancied her, but things had never advanced that far. Later, when he’d heard she was seeing one of the stablehands, he’d been glad of this fact, and further along, when she’d dumped the stablehand for a junior footman, he’d congratulated himself on his escape. It was therefore extremely disconcerting that Lilias was so pleased to see him, and even more alarming that she insisted on pretending he had come to see her.

  ‘Casimir! You poor thing. We heard all about the accident. I’m so relieved you’re all right. Thank you so much for coming to tell me.’

  ‘It was nothing—’

  ‘And your poor hands, just look at them. It must have been terrible.’ To Casimir’s alarm, she immediately seized one of the poor hands in her own and started fondling it. Selfconsciously, he pulled it back and half wished he’d had the foresight to remove the bandages.


  ‘They’re almost better. Is Ruth home? The margravine, I mean.’ He had been going to ask if Simeon had stayed the night but decided it might not be tactful. Lilias smiled and he noticed she had dimples. And nice eyes, green ones…

  ‘She’s upstairs. With some friends. Do you want someone to show you up?’

  ‘No. No. Just tell me where it is and I’ll find it.’ Relief flooded through him as she rattled off some instructions, he had been afraid she would offer to take him up herself. But of course, she was kitchen staff and would not be allowed upstairs. Briefly, Casimir wondered whether Lilias was still involved with the footman. She had always been a terrible flirt, but all the same, it would be nice to know.

  ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ he said on impulse, and she smiled again and went back into the kitchen. Casimir was smitten by a pang of guilt. Before there could be a next time he would probably no longer be in Starberg.

  As at the palace, the treasurer’s servants had their own corridors for moving about the house, with doors hidden in walls so they could appear and disappear when summoned or dismissed. Ruth’s sitting room, Lilias had said, was off the second passage on the first floor, a particularly dark and narrow tunnel which made Casimir feel like a rat trapped in the wainscot. He found the door with difficulty, rapped, and listened at the jamb. A male voice called out in reply, and this stroke of luck—for he could not conceive of Ruth’s companion being anyone other than Simeon—sent caution and commonsense flying to the winds. Casimir turned the handle and opened the door.

  He realised his mistake immediately, but by then it was too late. Neither Ruth nor Simeon was in sight. It was not even a sitting room. Instead, a man in his late fifties was sitting alone at a small table, the remains of a splendid breakfast set before him. Casimir knew immediately who he was. He had seen Ruth’s father once or twice from a distance, though he had never spoken to him; he knew, too, that Simeon had once been introduced and that, following a violent argument, the two men now avoided each other. ‘He hates me,’ Simeon had said. ‘And he’s got a vicious temper. If he could bar me from his house, he would. But he knows Ruth will complain to Christina, and even he acknowledges Christina is someone it pays not to annoy.’ Now, as the treasurer put down his cup of chocolate, Casimir realised dismally that, in his case, Christina’s influence was going to be no protection at all.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the treasurer asked. ‘You’re Runciman’s son, aren’t you? I thought I recognised you. Where’s—?’ The expression that came out of his mouth was so foul and calculated that it was a few moments before Casimir realised he was actually referring to Simeon. He felt the colour drain out of his face. Hopefully, he lifted his packet of damp catherine wheels.

  ‘I don’t know where Simeon is. I’ve brought some fireworks. He asked me to meet him here.’

  ‘Then he is guilty of an impertinence. This house is not a rendezvous. You have no right to come into it without my permission and nor does he. What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Nothing. I told you. Simeon wanted me to deliver some fireworks. There’s a lot more in storage, under the stables, I’ve just been checking them.’ Casimir knew he was babbling, but he could see the carefully controlled anger building up in the treasurer’s expression. He was metering it out, like a length of slow match, and any moment he would reach the flashpoint. Then, unexpectedly, a door opened across the room and Ruth appeared.

  Her father turned in his chair. Casimir looked from one to the other of them. In that instant he saw the focus of the man’s anger shift, knew that Ruth had seen it too. She bowed to her father and said, ‘Casimir, you’ve come to the wrong room. Please go into my sitting room across the passage and let my father finish his breakfast.’ She held the door open and her eyes met his. ‘Now, please.’

  The dozen steps past the breakfast table were among the most difficult Casimir had ever taken. It was as if somebody had suddenly opened a window for him onto Ruth’s life and a blast of rancid air had come streaming out. He did not know which of them he wanted to get away from the most. As he went into the passageway he heard Ruth say, ‘Father, please. He’s only a boy, for God’s sake, he doesn’t mean any harm,’ and then the door closed, the slow match reached the powder keg, and the explosion went off in the room behind him.

  Casimir stood in the corridor. Never before had he had reason to feel grateful to Ruth. He could almost feel sorry for her, for he had never heard invective uttered with the finesse and fluency with which her father now delivered it. Casimir was accustomed to the casual obscenities of fairgrounds and street markets, where foul language was normal and meant nothing, but this was something different, for it was done with deliberation and, he suspected, enjoyment. It was horribly compelling, and for a few moments he listened, not from pleasure at Ruth’s suffering, but out of a sick necessity, as the treasurer turned his fury on his daughter, calling her every vile name imaginable, cutting her protests into tiny shreds, her remonstrations gradually becoming more and more feeble until she was virtually silent, and the only voice that was audible was her father’s. Casimir moved away. Across the passage, Ruth’s sitting room door was standing open, and, obeying her instructions for the first time in his life, he let himself inside and shut the door.

  In his imagination, Casimir had always thought of Ruth living in the utmost luxury. That impression, based on ignorance and prejudice, was scarcely supported by the small, shabby room in which he now found himself. A little fat dog with a fluffy coat looked up from a battered settle as Casimir entered, then closed its eyes and dropped its head again; there was a small low desk under the window, a coal fire and an empty coffee cup on the side table. But most of all, there were books, lots of books. They burst out of bookcases, sprawled in piles on the carpet, and lay promiscuously jumbled on every available flat surface. Casimir looked at some of the titles, but could not work out any logic to their owner’s reading tastes: there were books on politics, history and in foreign languages, plenty of poetry and fiction. Ruth seemed to read anything and everything she could lay her hands on, and for almost the first time Casimir was reluctantly obliged to admit a point of commonality between her and his father. If it ever came to a choice between buying a meal and a book, Casimir knew Simeon would choose the book every time.

  On the desk was a letter in his father’s beautiful, sloping black writing. An endearment, startlingly out of character, leaped off the page and sent a blush burning in Casimir’s cheeks; he hastily turned the letter over and then, hit by an impulse so strong and automatic he could not resist it, he folded it up and tucked it into the pocket of his leather overcoat. A moment later the door opened and Ruth came into the room. Her face was pink and upset, and Casimir could not be certain whether or not she was about to cry. He desperately hoped she was not, but whatever her father had said, she was apparently equal to it, for she merely sat down on the settle and heaved a deep breath. The dog climbed, whining, onto her lap and she stroked it absently. Then, to Casimir’s surprise, she said,

  ‘All right, Casimir, sit down.’

  Casimir was stunned. ‘Don’t you want me to leave?’

  His response seemed to return Ruth to something resembling her normal self. ‘Of course I don’t want you to leave,’ she snapped. ‘Would I have asked you to sit down if I did? You’ve got some explaining to do, Casimir Runciman. What are you here for? And don’t try and fob me off with any ridiculous story about delivering fireworks, because I know it isn’t true.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’ Casimir put the catherine wheels down on the side table next to the coffee cup. One slid out of the open end of the packet and fell onto the floor. ‘I’m looking for Simeon. I thought perhaps he was with you. They said downstairs you had somebody with you.’ ‘I did. My aunt and cousin have come up from the country for the Christmas ball. They’ve gone back to their rooms for breakfast. I haven’t seen Simeon since yesterday. Had you any particular reason for thinking he was here?’ Ruth waited for him to answer.
When he did not, she said, ‘Casimir, please. I’ve just lied through my teeth for you. I can’t tell you how what I’ve just said to my father is going to be taken out on me later. My life is difficult enough without this. Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?’

  ‘I’ve already given you one.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. You’ve told me you’re looking for Simeon. You haven’t told me why.’

  ‘There isn’t any why.’ It was a woefully inadequate answer. Casimir could not keep the stubborn note out of his voice. ‘After you quarrelled, Simeon went charging off. He didn’t come back last night, or this morning. I thought he must have followed you here, to make up.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t. And if he did, I can assure you, my father would never let him spend a night under this roof. You surely can’t have any trouble believing that.’ She added, ‘You don’t have to look so pleased about it.’

  ‘I’m not pleased about it.’

  ‘No. And that’s the problem, isn’t it, Casimir? You’ve never been pleased. Even now, when Simeon is missing and there is obviously something going horribly wrong, you won’t even permit me the privilege of being worried about him. Has it occurred to you I might have more influence than you give me credit for? That I might be able to help, if you only told me what was happening? No. Because the fact is, you don’t want me to help. You don’t even want me to know where Simeon is.’

  ‘You can’t help with this.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I do.’