The Florian Signet

by John Burke

  ‘I can’t even remember the exact word he used. There are so many dialects around here, and so many mixtures. Of German and Czech, as you saw in Prague. Confusing for a stranger, I think. Within the Empire, what is Pressburg to we Austrians is known to the Hungarians as Pozsony, and to Czechs and Slovaks as Bratislava. And Winterberg, some miles up in the hills from here, is called Vimperk by the Bohemian peasantry.’ I had had enough, but he went on persuasively. ‘Think of the family which once ruled all this corner of our lands – the Vitkovci, who became Rozmberks of five different families, and then Rosenbergs . . . You will find all of us, people and places, have at least two names.’

  ‘I think I’ll make do with Jan Sieghart,’ I said.

  ‘It is my dearest wish that you should.’

  We went on up the stairs. At the top, resting his free hand on the balustrade, he looked down at the gleaming floor below and said, as an afterthought:

  ‘Even Kirchschlag has another, local name. The peasants call it Svetlik.’

  Chapter Ten

  The coincidence was too outrageous. My first reaction of sheer delight, concealed with a great effort from Jan, was short-lived. To find that instead of having to seek Svetlik by devious questioning I was being presented with it, I was actually here – it was too good to be true! And when I had sent Betka away and was alone in my room, I found a chill of disbelief seeping through. Indeed it was far too good to be true; or, if true, too great a coincidence to be safe.

  Jan made no reference to the subject while we dined, and I was not the one to risk bringing it up. When the Countess pleaded fatigue, I was glad of the excuse to go early to bed. Like her, I was tired; but I lay awake for half an hour or more bickering with myself. First I told myself that Jan had offhandedly mentioned Svetlik as one beauty spot among others, many weeks ago, and had been equally casual in mentioning it again this evening. It was no more remarkable than the name of, say, Salisbury cropping up three or four times in as many months when discussing tours of the picturesque in England. He knew nothing of my association with it. Then I began to concoct melodramatic plots involving secret liaisons between Count Florian and Jan, between the Countess and the Austrian gendarmerie, between dead Caroline and the recluse Michael.

  All I was left with, as I drowsed off at last, was a worrying coincidence.

  In the morning Jan conducted me ceremoniously around the castle. It was a more ornate château than Fasanenburg could ever have been: the family home of comfortable, well-appointed lordlings rather than a warrior fortress. True, there was a military note in the armoury, where muskets and old battleaxes shared the space with an array of kettledrums from campaigns which Jan could doubtless recite but refrained from inflicting on me. On one landing there was a painting of a battle which Jan told me represented the victory of the White Mountain, and a few steps down one of Marshal Radetzky at Custozza.

  Along a side passage I noticed the outlines of what must once have been a row of smaller pictures. Family portraits, surely? But Jan’s descent, from what he had told me, was not from an especially noble line; though the Siegharts must have done well to acquire, some time in the past, this substantial property. Perhaps he planned eventually to begin his own new series of family portraits.

  ‘Now I must show you our secret passages,’ he said, stopping with one hand on an inlaid panel.

  ‘I’d have been very disappointed if your castle had lacked such necessities.’

  He pushed gently, and the panel opened.

  Although I was diverted by the idea of real secret panels and real hidden chambers within the walls, the sight of the square of impenetrable darkness gave me pause. Then Jan took down a lantern, lit the wick, and stooped to enter the gap.

  ‘You will follow me?’ His voice was muffled.

  I stepped in after him.

  There was little room to move. The sides of the passage made it necessary to keep one’s elbows pressed to one’s sides, and at a sharp corner I had to squeeze myself round with a wrench of the hips that could not have been accomplished by any much plumper person. Ahead of me the light dipped suddenly, throwing Jan’s shadow back up on to the dusty ceiling. It continued to go down, and I found myself descending a narrow flight of steps.

  We seemed to go on forever, until I was sure we must end up in the dungeons. All at once there was a squeak of woodwork, and daylight shone in through another panel which Jan had pulled open.

  He went through and waited to help me over the sill.

  When I straightened up I found myself in a large box pew, looking down on the nave and altar of an ornate baroque chapel. After such an interminable descent I was prepared to believe that some eccentric had hewn the church out of solid rock, but through the clear upper panes of one window I could see a patch of hillside and a winding track leading into the trees. The building must somehow be stepped out from the lower castle wall, perhaps shared with the village.

  ‘The passage dates from the late seventeenth century,’ said Jan, contemplating the altar and deserted pews below, ‘when a Prince Archbishop had the estates for a time. He used it for two purposes. Come and see the other.’

  As I turned away I noticed that, while the interior as a whole was well cared for, one chapel was roped off by a heavy silken cord and did not appear to have been dusted for some considerable time. I paused, caught by the insignia on an arch above it.

  ‘Your friend the firefighter,’ said Jan, standing by the open panel and indicating that this time I should precede him. ‘St Florian again. As I told you, an everyday saint round here – much prayed to in times of drought and forest fires.’

  Entering the passage behind me, he heaved the stiff panel back into place. Then he held up the lantern so that I could see the lurch of steps to the right, round a near spiral and then on downwards, ever downwards. Once more in the lead, he resumed the descent, stopping at the worst curves to make sure that I was safe.

  This time we emerged in a damp, long, stoutly vaulted cellar. Great casks had been set in a line of alcoves like animals in stalls. Racks of bottles covered one end of the cellar. In one uncluttered section of wall was a grille not unlike the one through which I had peered at Fasanenburg’s inner courtyard. I approached it.

  Jan said: ‘The moat lies directly below.’

  ‘After the snows it doesn’t rise too high?’

  ‘It has been dry for a century. Until a few years ago there were bears kept in it.’

  I looked round at the mighty casks, and rapped one with my knuckles.

  ‘Not all full, surely?’

  ‘Not all. We cannot afford the Prince Archbishop’s style of living, I regret. One small part of his tithes filled this cellar and a score of others.’

  ‘But why the secret passage? Did his butler dig his own private entrance?’

  ‘On the contrary. It is related that the Archbishop, a man both devout and considerate to his fellows, did not wish to wake his servants either when going to chapel for private midnight devotions or when he felt thirsty in the early hours of the morning. We may also permit ourselves the conjecture that he preferred his staff not to know the exact proportions of his time spent on prayer and on drinking.’

  We made our way back, to my relief, not by the confined passage but by a wider flight of steps which brought us through a small yard to a pleasant gallery overlooking the valley.

  By standing close to the high window at the south end I could see the chapel spire and little belfry. But I had been wrong in supposing it would link castle and village. There was no village: nothing other than one squat building which might have been a cottage or simply a shed for storing tools and repair materials.

  I said idly: ‘The village is somewhere down there, below the bridge?’

  ‘The village?’

  ‘Svetlik.’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s two miles away. A pleasant ride along the valley. Hidden by the crook of the river at that point. The castle was built here to command the road and the ford, and then the b
ridge. But its original lord,’ said Jan, his lips so close to my ear that I could feel a warm drift of his breath, ‘liked to keep lesser folk at a distance. His servants were housed in the castle. His farmers and workmen and foresters stayed out of sight unless summoned to his presence.’

  ‘And it’s the same today?’

  ‘It suits both sides for it to remain so. Would it not suit you – to be mistress of such an establishment, without street noises or neighbours, with unspoilt countryside at your feet and few intruders under your feet?’

  ‘It could be lonely.’

  ‘Leonora, here you need never be lonely unless you so choose.’

  That evening, over a dish of carp served in dark sauce rich with grated gingerbread and onions, he described other places in the neighbourhood. The monastery of St Cyril, some miles to the north, was noted for its hospitality and its Gothic cloister. There was the Devil’s Lectern, a magnificent rock formation above the Devil’s Tarn; and of course we must visit the caves beyond the ridge, before snowfalls made sightseeing an ordeal rather than a pleasure.

  He was confiding in me, coaxing me, as he had so often done in Ely. And when he said at one stage, ‘An experience forming part of every civilized education,’ I recognized my father’s words and inflection, and we both laughed and even Countess Lomnica permitted herself a smile. Since leaving Fasanenburg she had become taut and ill at, ease again, but now felt the change of atmosphere and, ike myself, began insensibly to relax.

  It became so easy and leisurely that I risked a light, offhanded question:

  ‘This village, Svetlik. I could walk there tomorrow, to get a breath of air?’

  ‘So English,’ smiled Jan: ‘always walking, striding off, filling their lungs!’

  ‘It is a habit hard to break.’

  ‘When we first met in Carlsbad,’ the Countess recollected, ‘you were returning from a little constitutional, I think.’

  ‘Quite a long constitutional,’ I said.

  ‘Tomorrow might indeed be a good day for Svetlik,’ said Jan. ‘The snowfall has not been heavy. If you are to see it, let it be soon.’

  I waited, by no means as casual as I hoped I looked, for him to say that he would accompany me. Then what should I do: how should I shake him off?

  Instead, he said: ‘I would like to come with you. But I have been away too long, I think I must spend a day on the household. Perhaps the following day we choose somewhere more adventurous, and drive there together. You must choose. You have brought the appropriate volume of the late Herr Baedeker with you?’

  ‘Yes, I have, in fact.’

  Jan tilted his chair back and laughed, and the Countess looked pathetically pleased that there should be laughter, and joined in.

  ‘Also very English,’ he said. ‘Though I fancy his paragraphs on this district are inadequate. You will find more help from maps and other references in our library.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then, I shall come with you,’ said the Countess.

  My satisfaction evaporated. ‘But you won’t want to walk that far.’ It came out too quickly and rudely.

  ‘I have explored the Carlsbad paths many more times than you, my dear: and many another path. And I am not yet an old woman. It would not be correct for you to venture unaccompanied into unfamiliar countryside.’

  ‘But in a quiet place like this –’

  ‘Later, possibly. For your first time it is out of the question.’

  I had an odd, momentary impression that Jan was about to intervene on my behalf. Then he said: ‘Aunt Sophie is right, of course. But if you wish to commune alone with nature, you can ask her to walk a hundred yards behind.’

  We all smiled; and a footman stepped forward and replenished our glasses.

  I must make the best of it. It would, anyway, be easier to shake off Countess Lomnica on some pretext than it would have been with the observant Jan.

  *

  We were guided into Svetlik by a row of wayside shrines, eight of them, like a white stockade beside the road. A slope led up to a shingle-hung church and then fell away again down a long village street. Snow had been shovelled away from doorsteps, and a few hardy hens were exploring the gutters. A wagon carrying two dead bullocks, their heads dangling over the side, creaked along a lane towards a barn made of large, roughly planed timbers.

  The Countess stopped by two steps leading to a crowded graveyard and the church above it. She glanced at me as if debating how best to broach a request. It was going to be easier than I had dared to hope. I said: ‘Do you want some moments to yourself, in the church?’

  ‘You can occupy yourself for ten minutes, perhaps?’

  Since I was the one who had been more than willing to come the entire distance on my own, I thought this was rather a silly plea. But I was quick to reassure her. ‘We’re in no hurry. I’ll be happy strolling round the village until you’re ready. No hurry,’ I emphasized.

  ‘The chapel at the castle is not for me, I think. This will be better.’

  I watched her go into the church, and then I walked briskly down the village street.

  Outside a tavern, an old man sat on a bench. His hands were folded round a stick, its knob carved into the head of a man with a patch over one eye. His own eyes were half closed. When I passed, one eye seemed to flicker; but he remained resting on the stick, oblivious to the bite in the air.

  From a window choked with plants in a row of pots I heard the click and rattle of a weaver’s loom.

  And on the corner of a lane I heard the chink of what could only be a blacksmith’s forge.

  I looked back towards the church. A child skipped across the road; a man trudged from one door to another and disappeared; the old man outside the tavern sat with head down, unmoving.

  The anvil rang to a succession of steady, heavy blows. I braced myself and walked the twenty yards to the open doorway. There was a smell of hot charcoal and metal, and a lingering hint of scorched bone.

  The smith had shoulders like a cart-horse, and hands to match. His face was red and moist, with two grimy runnels down his cheeks. When he saw me he missed a beat and then, with a grunt, hammered violently for a few seconds, turning the iron until its glow faded to the faintest orange. After levering the charcoal into a fresh splutter of heat, he turned and waited for me to speak.

  I took the Florian signet ring from my waistband pocket and held it towards the radiance of the fire.

  ‘Ach, so.’ Then, with a heave of those great shoulders: ‘Bitte . . .?’

  In my slowest, most painstaking German I said: ‘I wish to be taken to Count Florian.’

  I was here at last. I could scarcely credit it. Now, surely, it could not take long.

  The smith’s heaviness seemed not only physical but mental. Resting the hammer head on the anvil, he leaned ponderously on the shaft.

  Then he shook his head. ‘I am Radek, the smith. You have made a mistake, you have come to the wrong place.’

  ‘You know the way to Count Florian.’

  ‘There is no Florian any more.’

  ‘You mean he has been captured again?’ This was too dreadful, though heaven knows I ought to have considered the possibility. ‘Not . . . dead?’

  ‘The family went. Twenty years ago they went.’

  ‘I know. But I know Count Anton Florian is still alive. And that you are one of his friends. As I am, also.’

  He was like a statue: a statue down whose brow and nose dripped a steady sweat. I wanted to clutch him and shake him and tell him how little time I had. He must speak. But if I had seized his arm I do not believe I could have moved it a fraction of an inch.

  At last he growled: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A messenger. He told me I must come to you and that you would know how to bring us together. He gave me this ring so that you would trust me.’ I turned the signet and flashed red sparks of reflected fire at him. ‘I am sure you know this ring.’

  ‘You will take him out of this country?’

  ‘I have
no idea if that is what he wants. All I have come to tell him is –’

  ‘It becomes too dangerous here. You are English, you find a way of taking him with you to your country until there is time for new plans. We will wait for him. But he must go now. You are his wife, you find him safety in England for a time.’

  ‘I am not his wife.’

  Suspicion welled up again. ‘You are not the Countess?’

  ‘I am her cousin. You must pass a message from me. Tell Count Florian –’

  ‘It is not for me to tell him. That is not my part.’

  ‘But we’ve got to tell somebody.’

  ‘You are not the Countess,’ he ruminated. ‘You try to make me say wrong things. It is a trap.’

  ‘I swear it is not.’

  ‘We were told . . .’ He was unwilling to go further; sorry he had even spoken this much.

  ‘You were told,’ I said, ‘that my cousin Caroline would present herself and the signet, and would then be passed on until she was safely reunited with her husband.’

  ‘You know it. But it was the Countess we expected, not a deputy.’

  ‘The Countess is dead.’

  A flash of purple danced through the tips of the little flames, and subsided. The smith stared into the heart of his fire. ‘How can this be?’

  ‘She is dead. I have come to tell her husband so.’

  ‘It is a long way to come. Where are you lodging?’

  ‘At the castle.’

  ‘The castle?’ The hammer lifted an inch or so and thudded back on the anvil. ‘You speak of Kirchschlag?’

  ‘I stay with friends –’

  ‘They are no friends of ours, at the castle. But they are friends of yours?’

  ‘It was the only way I could get back without drawing attention to myself. My mother was a personal friend of the Countess Lomnica – Herr Sieghart’s aunt. That is all there is to it.’

  ‘Sieghart? That is the name?’ He sucked his lower lip. ‘And an aunt – no, I know nothing of an aunt. But these families, there are so many of them, they share out our land, they . . .’ He stopped again, and again said: ‘It is a trap.’