by John Burke
The setting was wrong. Her name did not belong here. She had been too much in my mind, and now I was hearing her name when it could not have been spoken.
I said: ‘Caroline? Caroline Talbot?’
‘To me, Carolina.’
‘She’s my cousin.’
He stared; and smiled; and began to laugh, with a laugh of pure joy which simply would not stop. He put out his hands, and I thought he was about to embrace me, or to take hold of me and throw me jubilantly into the air.
At last he cried: ‘She is safe. She returned safely to England.’
‘She’s in England, yes.’
‘I was sure she would be safe. I knew she would reach home.’
‘And she’s safely married now,’ I said.
‘But of course. Yes. Yes, I know.’
‘News travels fast out here. Who told you about it?’
‘Told me?’ He laughed, still exultant. ‘But who should tell me? I know she is married,’ he said: ‘I am her husband.’
Chapter Four
The rain stopped but the trees went on softly dripping. I felt solid ground about to move under my feet. It was spinning, it would go faster and faster until I was thrown off the earth and out into space.
A firm grip on my arm steadied me.
His face was close to mine: the pale, drawn face of a man recovering from long illness, or of one who spent too much time shut away indoors.
‘So you are the cousin,’ he said. ‘And your mother, she would be Aunt Milada?’
‘My mother’s name is Milada, yes.’
‘My poor friend Pavel heard it in Carlsbad, and at first we thought that possibly the girl she had brought with her . . .’ An intense longing burned in his eyes. ‘But no, that would have been too wonderful, for Carolina to have made her way back here. Pavel – I shall not forgive myself for letting him take the risk.’
‘Your friend is the one who tried to speak to me at Fasanenburg?’
‘He insisted it was safer for him to be the one. And walked into a trap. I shall not forgive myself.’
I freed myself from the pressure of his hand, and said: ‘Who are you?’
‘Carolina has not told you about me?’
‘Not a word.’
‘So loyal.’ His face crumpled into an attractive, adoring smile. ‘So very discreet.’
‘Over-discreet, in the circumstances,’ I said sharply; but he did not understand.
‘She was wise. A careless word, and things might have gone as badly for my colleagues as they did for me.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked him again.
He hesitated, sizing me up, and then said: ‘I believe you are to be trusted. And I must speak. There are things I must know.’ Instinctively he glanced over his shoulder, and then up at the sky. We were very exposed in the middle of the clearing, but when he gently indicated that we should follow a path downhill through the woods I fancied it was not renewed showers he feared.
‘I am Anton Florian,’ he said. ‘Count Anton Florian of Svetlik.’
We walked into a dark tunnel. For a few paces I had to fall behind, until we came to a wider path. I sought for words and, for want of something to say, called after him: ‘Your English is very good.’
‘I learn in Vienna. And much more from Carolina. She is not quick to learn German – but then, we have so little time together.’
I could still not grasp it. When we were side by side again I said: ‘But if Caroline . . . if what you say is true . . . why haven’t you been in touch with her?’
‘You know little of the problems in my country.’
Oh dear. Another political lecture? Anyone less likely than Caroline to be involved in Central European politics it was hard to imagine.
‘How could you have lost touch for so long?’
‘You have heard of the Spielberg prison?’
‘No.’
‘It must be fine to live in England, with a stretch of water and hundreds of miles between you and such things.’
‘You’ve been in prison?’
He was staring straight ahead, and in the gloom his face was paler than ever. ‘I should still be there if an unexpected ally had not found a way of releasing me.’
‘And while you were there . . .’
How was I to tell him? It was something I could not credit: that Caroline had married while she still had a husband living, that she had been able so conveniently to wipe him from her mind. And what crime of his had merited a prison sentence?
‘While I was in their hands,’ he said heavily, ‘others had to do my work for me.’
‘Your work?’
‘I think that you would not wish to know too much.’ He stopped and turned to me, and through his pallor the boyish smile returned. ‘But tell me about Carolina. How is she now, how does she live? That is what is important to me.’
I said: ‘I think you should know.’
‘Know? I must know everything.’
I nerved myself. ‘Caroline was married a week ago. Married again, I suppose I should say.’
‘No.’ The happiness froze on his face. ‘This is not possible.’
‘I’m afraid so. I don’t know when you married her, or how you came to lose touch – or how she lost touch, or however it all was. But I do know she became Mrs Dominic Warrington in Ely Cathedral last week.’
He let it sink in, as if it were a spatter of raindrops from above sinking into the shoulder of his jacket. Then he said:
‘You are sure of this?’
‘All too sure.’
‘But you were not there. You were in Carlsbad. That I know.’
‘We were invited to the ceremony, but couldn’t go. Nevertheless I am sure it took place. Unless’ – it had been a shameful daydream which I had hardly dared confide even to myself – ‘something went wrong at the last moment. And I can’t imagine why it should have done.’
He hammered his fist against a tree trunk. ‘No! This cannot be.’
‘You’re sure that Caroline . . . that your wedding . . .’
‘Sure? I am sure of everything about it.’ He laughed harshly. ‘The priest, he was a real priest. I was real, and Carolina was real.’
He strode away abruptly, stamping along the path as if I had all at once ceased to exist. I followed, until we came to a little knoll on which a roughly hewn timber arch had been set up, sheltering a log seat. He waited for me to sit down, while he remained standing.
‘Of course,’ he said tightly. ‘She thought I was dead. Poor Carolina.’
Wild hope stirred within me. When Caroline had been told of her mistake, and told that her first husband was still alive, there was only one course of action open to her.
But did I still want Dominic, after he had chosen her, after they had been, no matter how illegally, man and wife?
If only the news had come sooner!
I said: ‘But if she knew you were in prison, why should she assume you were dead and return to England without a word?’
‘Few men come out of Spielberg alive.’
It was an alien world. I did not belong here, and I did not see how Caroline could have belonged.
‘Married,’ said Count Florian. ‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Warrington. Dominic Warrington.’ It hurt me even to pronounce it.
Jealousy slowly flushed his face like a ravening fever. But he made an effort to be magnanimous. ‘I understand. A woman needs security, she is not to blame. She thought me dead. And everyone else still thinks so, and I wish them to go on thinking it.’
‘I’m afraid it’s all beyond me,’ I confessed.
He looked down, appraising me once more as if to confirm his earlier judgement. Then he asked bluntly:
‘How much is it safe to tell you?’
‘You may tell me as much as you choose,’ I flared up. ‘Or as little. I’m going home the day after tomorrow, I can make no use of it. And I doubt if I should wish to.’
‘If you are going to England, t
hen you will please take word of me to Carolina. Let her know I am still alive.’
I was glad to be sitting down. My knees felt very wobbly.
‘You will tell her,’ he went on, ‘and only her.’
‘I’m not in the habit of giving personal messages to the whole wide world.’
‘I am sorry, Miss Talbot.’ He lowered himself to the seat beside me. ‘Here we must always be watchful. It is necessary.’
‘I think the news will come as a shock to her.’
‘As reports of my death must have done, a year ago.’
We sat in silence for quite a few minutes. I thought of breaking the news to Caroline, and my knees went on feeling wobbly.
At last Count Florian said: ‘If you are to undertake this for me, I feel I owe you some explanation. It will help you to understand the need for secrecy – and to understand what Carolina means to me.’
I was about to assure him that I needed no confidences, that I would accept and deliver whatever message he chose to send and concern myself with no further details. But it would have been hypocrisy. I was dying to know more.
‘I am the last member of my family,’ he began, slowly and thoughtfully. ‘The responsibility is heavy. If I wish not to die, it is not for myself but because we must not be defeated. They must not be allowed to wipe us out utterly . . .’
Once he was launched, his fervour overcame his caution. He had decided that I was to be trusted; or, craving an audience after long silence and secrecy, could not restrain himself from pouring out his heart now that the first breach had been made in the dam.
*
Anton Florian came from one of the noblest old Bohemian families. Through two and a half centuries of Habsburg subjugation they never forgot their proud tradition, and preached freedom for the historic Czech lands sometimes covertly, sometimes with dangerous openness. In the great year of revolutions, 1848, Anton’s father had been among those delegates to the Slav Congress in Prague who had been harried by the authorities. Some were imprisoned, some fled to other lands. Count Ludvik Florian died in the bombardment of the city.
His widow and young son left the country. The Florian estates were sequestered; but when the Countess died of a broken heart, the boy was allowed to return, to be brought up by an uncle and aunt known to be loyal to the regime.
In spite of their restraining influence, other loyalties ran in young Anton’s blood. In the ferment of 1866 he formed a nationalist group and set up an outspoken printing press. This was utterly forbidden by the Imperial authorities.
‘And was still forbidden,’ Anton Florian told me grimly, ‘when our celestial Franz Josef began to make much talk of friendship to his Czech peoples. We were to be allowed to speak our own language – but not too loudly. It might even be taught in schools. But it must not be used to write what we really thought. Even a bishop’s pastoral letter must still be passed by the imperial censor. Did you know that?’
No, I did not know that.
‘Be good, they tell us, and you will be allowed a few concessions. We demand no concessions – we demand our historic rights!’
He throbbed with the intensity of his convictions. I could see how he would arouse the devotion of young followers and fill them with his own fire.
And I could imagine how Caroline had been captivated. Even as he told me what were meant to be basic, unvarnished facts his eyes were blazing with a passion which an impressionable, wayward girl might take to be personal rather than patriotic.
‘Their petty aristocrats fatten on our great estates. Where Bohemian families survive, it is only on sufferance. They must bow and scrape and mimic the Austrians. Yet what is this sublime Empire we are commanded to serve? A standing army of soldiers,’ rasped Count Florian, ‘a seated army of officials, a kneeling army of priests . . . and a creeping army of informers.’
He brooded for a moment, then put his hand confidingly on mine. ‘She was a great strength to me,’ he said. ‘Carolina, she gives me new strength. There is much she does not understand, but we are together and she gives me the courage to go on.’
I had to fit his picture of Caroline in with my own. We had long ago guessed that she had left her position as governess in a huff, but we had not known that she had been enthralled by a young rebel aristocrat. That much I could understand. But once wed, would she not have grown restive?
‘Our marriage was a secret until it was safe for me to live openly,’ said Anton Florian. ‘There were certain measures to be taken before our campaign could slacken.’
Behind his explanations I visualized the reality for Caroline. Marrying a glamorous Count was one thing; skulking in secrecy while he went about his subversive work would have been quite another.
‘There must be a period of consolidation. We decide to strike again when times are right. But first there must be one distribution of leaflets, to let our countrymen know how to keep the cause alive.’
Leaving Caroline in hiding he had plunged into one last risky exploit. It delivered him straight into the hands of the Austrian police.
And to Spielberg Castle.
‘Years ago they tell us there is no longer to be a prison on the Spielberg. It is to be only a garrison, and if there are cells they are for military offenders only. But in a land so full of uniforms, anyone who offends is an offender against the military. There is a place for him in that jail. The torturers have not retired.’ His fervour was unabated but now he stared into a past I could not share, and his voice shook. ‘A place stinking of its dead. All the Hungarians . . . the Poles, after Cracow . . . Italian Carbonari . . . and now our own patriots and so-called outlaws.’
Within a few weeks of his capture it was officially announced that Count Anton Florian had died in prison. The authorities did not wish him to be a living symbol for other rebels to admire.
‘But why,’ I ventured, ‘if they wanted you thought dead anyway . . .’ At once I regretted starting on such a monstrous question.
It did not seem to perturb him. ‘Why did they not kill me and settle all of it? They needed me for their enquiries. Who were my comrades: where could they be found?’ His brow furrowed as if branded by some searing iron. ‘I told them nothing.’
Caroline’s romantic interlude was ended. It must have been then that, believing her husband dead and scared for her own safety, she had returned to England and to her mother.
And had never breathed a word? Not even to Aunt Aurelia?
I thought of Aunt Aurelia’s arch remarks about Caroline’s experiences abroad. But they had been very vague and inconclusive: I could not believe that she would not have boasted, if she had known, of having briefly had a Count as a son-in-law.
Count Florian answered my doubts. ‘When my death was announced, good friends helped Carolina to leave the country. She is sworn to secrecy. But of course. They do not want her followed – do not want anyone to know who she is, else perhaps there are questions, there are people sent to ask her about the rest of the circle. When at last I am free, she has been gone a long time.’
His jailers had persuaded the outside world that he was dead. Now the jailers themselves were tricked into believing that he had really died. Official records were falsified by a secret supporter in the administration to show that he had died of pneumonia; another corpse was substituted for his supposed body; and he escaped across the Moravian countryside.
Since then he had been lying low, and had only recently made contact with a few of his old supporters. But when word came that people named Talbot were in Carlsbad, and that one of them was Caroline’s age, he was devoured by the craving to get in touch with his beloved wife again.
As firmly as I could, I said: ‘She’s somebody else’s wife now.’
‘But that is not possible.’ He was brisk and dismissive. ‘She makes the mistake, I forgive her. And she comes back to me.’
‘She may have other ideas.’
‘There are no other ideas. I am dead, they think, so I must not be seen, not too
soon. But she returns to me and we work together again. This is where I belong and so it is where my wife belongs.’
There was no arguing with him. I tried to warn him that circumstances might make it impossible for Caroline to get away. He hardly bothered to listen. When I clumsily hinted that Caroline might not even wish to return, or that her new husband would prevent her, he grew angry. She would come because it was right. I would tell her the truth and make her come.
‘If she doesn’t want to listen,’ I said, ‘she won’t.’
‘Ah, she is stubborn, yes.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘But you are strong. A very determined person.’
‘I? I’ve never seen myself in that light.’
‘Stronger than my Carolina, perhaps.’
‘Do you always make such sweeping judgements of people you’ve only just met?’
‘I have had to learn what instincts to trust. And what people to trust. Without that there is no survival for me, or for our cause.’ He got up from the bench and stood over me. ‘Stronger than my Carolina,’ he repeated. Then, with the most endearing smile and a frankness which was just as endearing: ‘But of course it is Carolina I love. And you must send her to me.’
He slid a signet ring from a finger of his left hand. The sun, breaking through the showery sky and the lattice of overhanging branches, struck a glint from it as he turned the engraved seal towards me.
It showed a man’s figure, appearing to stamp on three curling tendrils of grass and driving a spear down into them at the same time.
‘It is my family crest,’ he said. ‘The emblem of St Florian, patron saint of those who fight fire – who tread on the flames and extinguish them.’
He handed it to me. I studied it with respect, but wondered what significance it had for me.
‘Please, you take it to Carolina,’ he said. ‘It will prove that you tell her the truth. She will know it. And it will bring her to me.’
I made a last effort. ‘You mustn’t rely on her coming. And I can’t take your ring. If it were lost, if she doesn’t come and you never get it back –’
‘She will come. She will bring the signet with her, and show it to men who know where I am to be found. Many weeks may pass. That I know. But when she comes, she shows the ring to a man who will pass her on to another, so that we are sure of safety, and I am not again in the hands of our enemies before she can reach me.’