‘Wait here. Her Royal Highness will be with you shortly.’
Casimir nodded, and the man withdrew. He took a step forward, his feet sinking deep into a luxurious carpet. Family pictures lined the walls: the queen in several poses, the late king, a crayon sketch of a smiling, adolescent Christina with her arms around the neck of a woman with a vaguely familiar face. Then, almost hidden behind a vase of flowers he saw a hinged miniature. On a whim, he picked it up and opened it out. It showed a young woman, perhaps aged no more than twenty, with dark ringlets worn in the fashionable beribboned style of the last generation. She was wearing a low-cut, lustrous gown, and around her neck on a length of black velvet ribbon was a diamond pendant in the shape of a many-rayed star.
Astrid. Oster. Regina.
The name was written, in the old fashioned way, in tiny gold letters in the top right-hand corner, and confirmed by the star pendant, with its visual pun on her name. The queen’s bold, black eyes stared out at Casimir across twenty-five years and made him blush. He had heard that King Frederik had destroyed all his wife’s portraits after her mysterious death, because he could not bear to be reminded of her. This one must have survived because it was so tiny, scarcely bigger than a locket. Curiously, Casimir looked from the miniature to the picture of the woman embracing Christina, and this time he immediately saw the family resemblance. While Christina’s blonde beauty did not recall her mother in the slightest, the other woman looked sufficiently like Queen Astrid to be identified as a sister or some other near relation.
Yet that did not explain his sense of recognition when he had first seen the crayon portrait. Christina’s companion—aunt?—had reminded him of someone else, but he did not know who it was. Suddenly, as he had on Friday night at the disastrous firework display, Casimir felt a strange sensation of something being closed off inside his head. He put the picture down and moved away from the table. The doorknob turned with a click behind him and the princess came, alone and unannounced, into the room.
She was wearing a grey silk wrap with deep sleeves and an embroidered train, a garment which Casimir guessed would have passed in a lesser mortal for a dressing gown. As yet, she was unmade-up, and her damp hair exuded clouds of an expensive floral perfume. Too late, Casimir remembered he was supposed to bow. The princess sat down and arranged the folds of her gown carefully around her feet. She looked him over coldly and said,
‘I hope this is urgent. My Aunt Paulina has had a stroke and is likely to die. She reared me, you know, after my mother died. I will be leaving for Osterfall within the hour, so you had better make this quick.’
‘It is urgent,’ said Casimir. ‘Circastes has come back. He’s got my father under his control.’ As he said it, his emotion and the ordeal of the previous night got the better of him. His voice cracked, and, to his utter humiliation he broke down in tears.
‘Calm down,’ said Christina sharply. ‘You’re not a child, to be crying like this.’
‘I can’t. I can’t help it.’
‘You can. You must. Casimir, if you don’t stop crying I shall send downstairs for some servants and have you beaten, and don’t think I don’t mean what I say because I do. Now, tell me what’s happened, slowly. And don’t leave anything out.’
She did not ask him to sit down. Sobered by her threats, Casimir pulled himself together. He told his story as simply and as calmly as he was able, detailing his mounting suspicions about Simeon’s disappearance and the queen’s forthcoming wedding and leaving out nothing except Joachim’s use of magic, and (since Tycho was clearly beyond saving) any directly incriminating mention of Ruth, Will and Annice. It left some holes in the account, but only small ones, and he hoped the princess would not notice. As he finished, he saw that she was frowning.
‘Do you believe me?’ he asked unhappily.
The princess did not immediately answer. ‘You have left something out,’ she said, ‘but nothing important, I think. Yes, Casimir, I believe you. I am just wondering what you think I can do. You see, your timing is exquisitely poor. It’s Christmas Day and I have to leave Starberg within the next couple of hours. Not only that, I cannot see how I can intervene without seriously compromising my own position.’
‘I thought,’ said Casimir hesitantly, ‘you might talk to Her Majesty.’
‘Out of the question. The queen is so thoroughly under the procurator’s thumb, she would go straight to him and tell him the entire story. It would be the excuse he’s been waiting for ever since my return to Starberg. You forget: I gave your father the firework warrant for the wedding. Any threat of sabotage and I will take the blame. There has to be another way.’ The princess appeared to consider. ‘It seems to me the best thing to do is to set some men searching for your father. Discreetly. I still have my supporters in the Queen’s Guard. I think something can be contrived.’
‘You won’t lock Simeon up, will you?’ asked Casimir unhappily. ‘It’s not him, you know. It’s Circastes who’s making him behave like this.’
The princess shook her head. ‘Of course I won’t lock him up. That would serve no purpose at all. But you must realise, Casimir, I’ll need time to do this. I will have to make some contacts—no, don’t argue with me. This is too big and complicated now, I have no choice. I can’t go tearing around the city like an ordinary person, and as I’ve said, it’s Christmas. There’s scarcely a person in this palace who isn’t preoccupied with my sister’s wretched ball.’ The princess had suddenly forgotten about her journey to Osterfall, but Casimir decided it would not be politic to remind her. She stood up and rang the bell. ‘Your father’s shop’s in Fish Lane, isn’t it? Near the cathedral? It won’t be safe for you to go back there. You’d better stay here, where Greitz’s leeches cannot find you. One of my men will find you a bed, since you haven’t slept. And perhaps some breakfast?’
Casimir nodded. The door opened and a young man in a red-slashed uniform came into the room. He smiled slightly at Casimir’s reaction and so did the princess.
‘Don’t worry, Casimir,’ said Christina. ‘There are many more men in the Queen’s Guard who are loyal to me than the procurator realises. You’ll be quite safe. Enjoy your breakfast and have a good rest. And thank you for coming to me. I promise, you won’t regret giving me your trust.’
This time, Casimir remembered to bow. The princess smiled at him. As he left the room he noted that her feet under the expensive wrap were bare, but was too exhausted to realise what this meant.
Casimir’s escort showed him up a tiny back staircase and delivered him to a small room with a shuttered window. It was more of a closet than anything else, its door hidden by ormolu tracings beside a fireplace. A bed had been built into the curved wall of the South Tower and furnished with clean sheets and blankets. There was a washstand with a jug and ewer, a carpet on the floor and an expensive porcelain chamberpot. All this filled the tiny space to overflowing and made it horribly claustrophobic, but Casimir’s first alarmed reaction, that here was another prison, was quickly dispelled when the guard handed him the key.
‘Take this,’ he said. ‘You can let yourself out if you have to, but it would be better if you kept the door locked. You can never predict the servants’ movements, especially when it’s as busy as it is today. I’ll light a fire next door so you should be reasonably warm. Would you like your breakfast now?’ Casimir nodded, and the man went away. He came back shortly afterwards with some tepid water for the washbasin and the promised breakfast on a tray. There was a chunk of bread, a small knobbly round of winter cheese and some underbrewed coffee without milk. Considering it was Christmas Day in a royal palace, Casimir thought they might have managed something better, but he did not think it wise to make a complaint.
He did manage to wait until the guard had left the room before he fell on the food and devoured it. The breakfast turned out to be rather better than he had expected, or perhaps it was just his hunger that made the plain bread and cheese taste so delicious. When he had finished, Casimir rins
ed the worst of the vomit out of his hair, took off his boots, and climbed into bed. In the moments before he fell asleep, he remembered the story of Queen Astrid and how she had hidden her lovers in a secret room in the South Tower. Perhaps there was truth in the old stories after all.
He slept soundly until late in the afternoon. The sound of rain drumming against the window finally pulled him from a net of dreams, and he lay for a moment under the covers, recollecting where he was. Then, in the middle of the red tapestry carpet, he saw a letter, folded neatly like a child’s paper boat. His first thought was that Princess Christina must have left it for him, his second, a confused realisation that he had not heard the door open, and that the key to the room was still in his pocket.
Casimir climbed out of bed and picked the letter up. The paper seemed to unfold of its own accord in his hand. There were just two words on it, in a black, familiar hand. Wren Alley. For a moment Casimir stared at the long-sloping A and wondered if there could be any mistake. Then the message faded on the page and disappeared. A faint magical scent pricked his nostrils, like the curl of smoke from an extinguished candle, and he knew he could not be wrong.
Casimir put the paper mechanically into his pocket. He pulled on his boots and buttoned his thin jacket up to the collar. Simeon needed him, and Wren Alley, wherever that was, was where he had to go. He unlocked the door of the closet and let himself out of the outer chamber. Casimir made his way downstairs into the main wing of the palace, where the preparations for the evening’s celebrations were reaching a frenzied culmination. The smell of rich cakes, roast goose and other delicacies floated up from the kitchens; marble fireplaces and dozens of portable stoves were being lit to bring the huge reception rooms to an acceptable temperature before the guests arrived. In the upper galleries small orchestras were tuning strings and hautboys, and in the grand ballroom a young man with green breeches and very long legs was dancing a caper, to the immense amusement of his fellow servants. Still in his black page’s uniform Casimir walked straight past them, through the door. Once outside, he crossed the River Court and passed swiftly through the sentry gate, headed for the river and Simeon’s hiding place.
A mental picture flashed into his head: muddy water, a broken down warehouse, a wooden house perched on stilts like an arthritic water bird. Wren Alley was in the slums on the other side of the River Ling. Casimir turned onto King Frederik’s elegant New Bridge, a royal masterpiece which contrived to be both more beautiful and less practical than the one it had replaced, and walked on briskly. On the opposite side a maze of tenements and lean-tos marked the beginning of the Watermen’s Quarter, better known in Starberg as the Thieves’ Margravate.
The houses were cobbled together from whatever materials were available, their walls sagged and were covered with mildew, and a foul smell rose from the pools of stagnant water which gathered between the broken cobbles. It was a fine place to avoid on a winter’s evening just on nightfall, for if they even knew what it was, nobody here was likely to be celebrating Christmas. But Casimir saw no one except a ragged child and an alley cat who ran away at the sight of him. At last he found the name, Wren Alley, written in black paint on a wall near a rundown watermen’s tavern. At the very end of the street, hard by a crumbling warehouse on the water’s edge, was the house he was looking for.
All its windows were boarded shut and a set of steps led up to a door which hung without a landing in the middle of the wall. By now it was almost dark and boneachingly cold; the wind blowing off the river was bitter and Casimir was wearing no topcoat, hat or gloves. He picked his way through mud and filth to climb the steps and banged on the door with his fist. After a few moments passed, Casimir knocked again. This time he heard someone moving around inside the house and, after what seemed an interminable delay, the door was cracked open by an old man with vague, rather watery brown eyes.
‘Yes?’
Casimir opened his mouth. Somehow, the words he’d meant to say had disappeared and he did not know how to respond. ‘Hello. I’m Casimir Runciman. Simeon’s son. He sent a message for me to meet him here.’
The old man’s expression was politely disinterested. ‘Come in, Casimir Runciman,’ he said. ‘We’ve been expecting you. You can sit down, if you like. Your father isn’t here, but we should have news of him directly.’
He stepped back and opened the door just wide enough for Casimir to squeeze through. He stood hesitantly just inside the threshold. Slowly, his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. The old man’s house was bigger than it had appeared from the street. They were standing in a large, rectangular room with a pitched roof and an upstairs gallery or sleeping loft at the opposite end; all the windows were shuttered tight against the winter cold and the only light came from a banked-down stove on the opposite wall. It was overfurnished and not even clean. The air smelled of dried herbs and urine, a trace of something very sweet, like flowers, and, overlying everything, a dead smell like a rat left forgotten in a trap. Casimir’s eyes were drawn to a long, paper-strewn table in the middle of the room. Surrounded by anatomical drawings and surgical instruments, an owl lay spread-eagled in a dissecting dish. Its legs and wings were secured by pins to the wax, its internal organs glistened in the firelight.
With its banked-down bed of coals, the stove looked more like a furnace than a domestic fireplace. A whitish vapour issued from a flask that hung tinkling over it. Somebody—a child, Casimir guessed—had been drawing on the floor in chalk and scuffed it out. Everywhere he looked there were books, immensely ancient books with their titles in foreign languages on the spine, bursting out of shelves and cupboards, lying open among the papers on the table. Bunches of dried leaves and roots hung overhead, together with other things, less readily recognisable. Casimir looked more closely and started. Hanging from the ceiling was a small stuffed crocodile, the identical twin of the one he had last seen hanging in their window.
‘Come and sit down, Casimir Runciman,’ said the old man again, and he pulled out a chair at the end of the table. Casimir sat down, and immediately reassuring explanations flooded his head. The chalk marks had been made by Simeon when he cast a spell to send the note to him at the palace. The crocodile was the one from Fish Lane; Simeon had placed a spell of recovery on it, magically calling it to him in his hiding place. As for all the books, why, they were Simeon’s too, bought from second-hand bookshops in Crossgarter Row. He remembered—or did he remember? A flash of red leaped out at him from amongst the jumbled papers on the table, a firework red, instantly familiar. Casimir lifted the pages. Lying underneath, clearly marked with the Runciman label, were a roman candle, a packet of squibs, and a rocket.
‘Let me get you some dinner.’
‘Thank you.’ Casimir waited until the old man was safely occupied at a dresser on the other side of the room, then picked up the roman candle and sniffed it. The gunpowder was fresh. According to its label it was part of a batch made in October. The squibs had been made in November, the rocket only last week. Casimir untwisted a screw of newspaper that was lying with the fireworks, tipped half a dozen small crackers out onto the table and smoothed out the wrapper. The newspaper was dated 20th December. Last Thursday. The day before the firework display at Ruth’s house when Circastes had come so unexpectedly back into their lives.
Casimir put the crackers into his pocket. Something about the presence of the fireworks made him feel deeply uneasy. He could not have said exactly what it was, but perhaps it was just the fact that they were there and Simeon was not. Apart from the fireworks, Casimir could see no sign that his father had even been here, and the old man made his flesh creep for reasons even less tangible. He was still fussing around the dresser, cutting bread and pouring something dark and pungent from an ugly pewter jug. Casimir looked around the room and saw that in one corner a curtain had been drawn across as if to hide something. He stood up and quietly tiptoed across the room.
The brass rings rattled slightly against the rod as he pulled the curtain aside. Ca
simir paused to check the old man had not heard, then slipped behind it. He found himself in a long narrow alcove, windowless, with a black wooden floor and walls. Its low ceiling, formed in part by the floor of the sleeping area upstairs, was charted with silver constellations, but the paintwork was crudely done and the whole was blackened with years of grease and candle smoke and permeated with an unpleasant fustiness. A single candle burned with an oily smoke, dripping stalactites of tallow down its holder. Casimir examined it briefly, noting the strange smell the tallow had, but it was too deeply embedded into its holder to be taken out, and he did not like to try and shift the heavy stand. Beside it, on a lectern shaped like a pair of emaciated hands, was a squat black book with fine parchment pages. Casimir flipped over a couple of leaves, but an unpleasant sluggish electricity seemed to hang around them and the writing was a strange jumble of letters and symbols he could not understand.
He turned from the book and felt his way past a jumble of chests, a boxful of earth, an apothecary’s cabinet containing who knew what medicaments. In the shadows at the other end of the alcove was a second set of curtains. They shrouded what appeared to be a couch or bed with somebody lying asleep on it, and Casimir’s first response was that he had intruded into someone’s bedroom. Then he realised that the sleeper’s posture was unnaturally still.
‘Simeon?’ The sleeping figure was small, too small, he hoped, to be his father, though it was hard to be sure. Quietly, Casimir approached the curtain and drew it back. A pall made of some dark, shiny material lay draped over the bed; the curtain fabric caught its folds as he pulled it back, and it began sliding inexorably towards him. Casimir grabbed at it. The material slipped through his fingers and then he saw what was lying underneath and the covers fell unnoticed to the floor.
Fireworks and Darkness Page 13