by John Burke
Mr Warrington stepped in. Or, as Dominic told it, strode in. Within a few hours he scoured the city of London for all his business acquaintances in the Elbe and Danube barge and shipping concerns. None had heard of Jan Sieghart. But two of them knew of the Countess Lomnica, and one knew her well enough to swear to one crucial thing: she had had only one nephew, and he had died over a year earlier.
Who, then, was assuming that identity to coax me from England – and why?
‘We had another look at that Czech leaflet,’ said Dominic. ‘It was shown to one of my father’s friends. We’d thought Caroline must have brought it back from her trip a couple of years ago. But this friend said that one or two references proved it to be of much more recent date. So we began to think you must have brought it back, and for some reason passed it on to Caroline.’
‘I knew nothing about it,’ I protested. ‘I told the police –’
‘Yes. But nevertheless we wondered.’ Dominic straightened up and turned to look frankly at me. It was not the commanding, domineering gaze of Jan, but the fine blade of truth shining towards me. ‘Your father said he and your mother had been worried those last few days at Carlsbad. He felt you were hiding something from them, and that you went on hiding it after your return to Ely.’
‘Poor Papa.’
‘We thought . . .’
‘Yes?’
He smiled a sad but wonderfully affectionate smile. ‘Little Leonora. We thought you were too impressionable, that after being upset by . . . by my stupidity, and the news about Caroline and myself . . . you had fallen into some romantic nonsense with dangerous revolutionaries. And that one of them had come to England to take you back with him.’
‘But what for? It’s so wrong, so different from what really happened.’
‘How could we tell what had happened? I still don’t know. But I knew somebody had to come after you, and come quickly. Your mother told me all about Countess Lomnica – all that she knew – and about Fasanenburg. So I came. It had to be me, to undo at least part of the wrong I’ve done you.’
There was a choking of absurd happiness, and of a still unquenched fear, in my throat. I said shakily: ‘And you met Michael.’
‘How did you know about him? He gave me to understand he hadn’t been allowed to meet you.’
‘I saw him without his knowing it. But how did you get to him?’
In a gauche, swaggering, self-mocking manner which brought back all the Dominic I had known over the years, he told me of his arrival at Fasanenburg. They had not been expecting a visitor. Certainly not one who drove straight into the courtyard where Michael was exercising. Some oaf – it was Dominic’s description – tried to slam the door of the hired carriage and order it off the premises; whereupon Dominic got out and knocked him over. Then he and Michael had talked. Once they understood what they were talking about, they decided to be on their way at the best possible speed.
Comparing notes, at first with some reserve and then in an urgent fury, Michael had realized the price his mother had been forced to pay for his release. He confirmed that his cousin was dead, that the Countess no longer had a nephew; admitted he was being kept out of the way while she met some obligation brought on her by this release. ‘Release,’ said Dominic, ‘from a prison where he had been held for youthful misdemeanours – for spouting, as far as I could make out, of liberty and the lands of the crown of Wenceslas. It meant little to me. But I did not doubt his sincerity.’
Nor did I; and by now the subject was one with which I was more familiar than Dominic had been. I could see Michael as an impetuous young idealist, and his mother as the timid woman who loved him and disagreed with him, without agreeing with anyone else. It would not have been hard for a man of influence to offer her son’s freedom in exchange for a masquerade on her part, and conclude such a bargain. He was not a key figure among the potential rebels: but he could prove a useful pawn.
‘This I can see,’ said Dominic. ‘But why such subterfuges? Michael gathers that the authorities are intent on rounding up some old associates of a man called Florian, who died in prison. He was no part of that particular group, but he tells me everyone knew of it and respected it. What part could you play in this: why did they have to go to such lengths to bring you here?’
I wavered. He was telling me all he knew, and his honesty was more demoralizing than any threat which might have been uttered. Still I was loyal to the secret of it all. Loyal; or stubborn.
I said: ‘There was a message. I had a message for one of the group.’
‘But why you? Why should you have been approached, and when?’
‘There was a message given me in Carlsbad, to be passed on when I got back to England.’
‘To whom?’ He was afire now. I could scarcely blame him. The answers to tormenting questions were within his grasp.
I said: ‘To Caroline.’
‘But who would send a message to Caroline?’
I could hold out no longer. It had gone too far, the web was tangling around me, smothering me. If it was to be ripped away I owed him as much truth as he had offered me. We were close. There was nobody else but Dominic. There never had been. I said:
‘Her husband.’
‘No, I don’t think you understand. What I asked was –’
‘You asked who would wish to send a message to Caroline, and I have told you. It was her husband: Count Anton Florian.’
‘Florian? That’s the name of the leader, the one Michael told me is dead.’
‘He was alive when I met him in Carlsbad. Alive when you married Caroline. And he was her husband, and wanted her back, and wanted me to speak to her on his behalf.’
Then I told him everything.
*
Every now and then he shook his head, but did not interrupt. Twilight filtered into the hut and snow began to obscure the corners of the window. Once Dominic jerked out of his attentive trance and heaped more logs into the stove. I waited for him to finish and resume his seat on the bench.
As I spoke I knew we were both playing with different pieces of the same puzzle and fitting them together. The seditious leaflet; the mysterious Jan Sieghart who was not Jan Sieghart but perhaps a revolutionary and then, as the truth turned its face to the light, a counter-revolutionary in Imperial service; the treacheries and deceits of Caroline which turned back upon her like a scorpion on its own tail; the Countess, first a friend and now used unwillingly against me; the elusive Michael; a dead rebel leader who was no longer dead; the murderous husband now acquitted of murder; the ease with which I had been allowed to reach my rendezvous with Radek the smith; Jan’s need to capture Dominic so that I might be free to go on to the next stage and lead him ultimately to his prey: each fragment added substance to the pattern.
Still there remained a few unfilled gaps.
Dominic said: ‘Why, though, did Caroline have to be killed?’
‘Possibly she refused to help him find Florian, and he lost his temper.’ It seemed thin, and I was conscious of another flaw. ‘But I was given to understand that only Florian’s closest associates knew he was still alive. How could Jan know? Why should he want to get in touch with Caroline?’
‘You told him nothing about her and . . . her husband?’
‘Not a word. Somehow he must already have been on her trail when he used the Countess’s acquaintance with us as a useful introduction.’
We were still at a loss. But the details of the picture were coming into sharper relief. I said:
‘And because of all this you came after me.’
‘Somewhat late in the day,’ he said ruefully.
I leaned against him, and his arm went round me. He smelt of the outdoors, of pine and woodsmoke, and of the cold damp cloth of his cloak. His hand on my arm was strong, his shoulder comforting. I let my eyes close. He murmured my name. I tried to declare that we must not stay here, we ought to be moving, I ought to be looking for Florian. But I was lulled by the nearness of him: at peace, here in our is
olation. We stopped trying to talk and I lay in the crook of his arm and was lapped in the contentment of knowing there was no need for talk.
After a while he edged the bench back and eased me from within his arm so that I could rest my head against the wall. He went to the door and opened it to look out. Snow eddied boisterously in. When he closed the door again he had to shake himself like a big, powerful dog.
‘We can’t set out in that. We must wait until it stops.’
‘It might go on for hours. For days, even. I don’t know what sort of snowfall they have here each winter.’
‘We shall have to see.’
‘And Michael?’
Dominic frowned, his hand still on the latch of the door. ‘I would prefer him here with us. But he’s the best judge. He knows the country as we do not. He told me that after some of his recent lodgings he has few faults to find with that mine hut.’ Slowly and thoughtfully he came back beside me. ‘As soon as it clears you will come home with me.’
‘Not until –’
‘I’ve found you in time. You know now who the enemy is, and you mustn’t fall into his clutches again. We leave Bohemia by the fastest route.’
‘My trunks and clothes are in the castle.’
‘Your life is more precious than belongings. We will run no more risks. Michael will know the nearest railway station or the best road out of the country before Jan can track us down.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘It’s essential.’
‘I haven’t yet finished what I came here to do.’
‘Good God, you’re not proposing to wander about in the hope of still finding this Florian fellow? He’ll not be expecting you in this weather. Probably given up – miles away by now.’
‘I must return the signet and tell him his wife is dead.’
‘News must have reached him somehow.’
‘I must see him myself.’
‘Nora, you’ve no further responsibility in this matter. He wouldn’t expect you to run foolish risks –’
‘I think he would,’ I said. ‘And he’d be right.’
Dominic was startled. I must have presented a bristling, defiant appearance, for suddenly he smiled and shook his head and slid his arm round me again. ‘Nora. Oh, Nora.’
‘Don’t patronize me.’
‘I wasn’t. I was worshipping you.’ But his tone became stern. ‘You can’t possibly go on your own. If you insist on having one more attempt at reaching Florian, I must come with you. Both Michael and I will be with you.’
‘No.’
‘We’ll allow ourselves a few hours, no more. Michael must not be seen by anyone from Kirchschlag, for fear of the retribution which would fall upon his mother, but he’ll be as worthy a scout as we could hope to find.’
‘No. Florian or his men would be suspicious. It has to be me and only me, on my own.’
‘Then I’ll not let you go.’
‘You can wait here for me. A few hours – all right, I promise. I’m sure he’s out there, not far away. I’ll see him and come straight back here, and then we’ll leave.’
‘I’ll not let you go.’
Jan, for his own ends, had wanted me to find Florian. Dominic, for my own good, did not want me even to look for Florian. It was ironic; and exasperating.
But how could I argue with Dominic, now that we were together like this? There had been too many misunderstandings and too many heartaches in the past. I wanted to abandon myself to the sheer joy of his presence. It was an awkward, uncomfortable way of passing the hours, huddled as we were against the wall. My neck grew stiff. But I would not for the world have moved my head. It rested where it belonged, against Dominic’s shoulder. Once when I shifted an inch or two he kissed my brow. Then after a long silence he bent towards me and kissed my lips, and I clung to him for just as long a pulsating, ecstatic silence.
It was the strangest, most incredible lovers’ meeting.
‘Nora, my dearest Nora.’
There would be time for decisions in the morning. When the snow had stopped. Not now.
I must have drowsed. I was awakened by a fear that I was falling, that he had let me go and fled from me. Whimpering, I steadied myself on the bench. He was simply replenishing the fire. The glow from the base of the stove was our only light, and it served only to deepen the lines of tiredness in his face. He had come so far, so desperately. He must be near to collapse.
But now, for a while, we were both awake again. He half sat, half leaned there.
As a log shifted and spluttered, Dominic asked quietly: ‘What are you thinking, my love?’
I told myself I would not say it; and then that I must. ‘You . . . you must answer me. Perhaps it doesn’t matter any longer, yet I think I should know.’
‘Why I married Caroline?’
‘Yes,’ I said gratefully. ‘Why did you?’
‘If we were at home, in Wisbech or in Ely, I don’t know how I should begin to tell you. But here . . .’ We heard one of the horses shift, and we both thought of the bleak miles outside. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I can tell it to you as it really was, and pretend it happened somewhere else, to somebody else. For that is how it seems to me now.’
It was surely the most inappropriate of bedtime stories. Instead of a legend of wolves or giants or dryads of the black lake which would have sprung naturally from this setting, it was the story of a lonely young man and a predatory woman who demanded both security and vengeance. He knew nothing of the vengefulness until it was too late.
Dominic made no unchivalrous attempt to lay all blame on Caroline. Indeed, he went to the opposite extreme in making himself out a pitiably incompetent figure, with no excuse for his conduct. But I had known Caroline longer than he, and whatever he might have discovered about her nature in the intimacy of marriage, I had known all too much about it before and could envisage exactly how she would have behaved.
Until his father and brother were permanently established in London he had not realized just how lonely the Wisbech house would be. His mother’s death had robbed the household of much of its warmth; but under the devoted eye of Mrs Pettingill the men had continued to fare well enough. Alone, Dominic found that even Mrs Pettingill could not fill the emptiness of the place or drive out the haunting echoes. New responsibilities in the Wisbech office kept him busy all day and often late into the evening. It was when he got home that loneliness settled down on him.
‘I thought of you, Nora. I thought of you in the house, so that the rooms and passages all came to life again. And then . . .’
‘Then you ceased to think of me.’
‘I made myself stop thinking. What right had I to turn to you simply because I was lonely, and bored with myself, and growing maudlin about it?’
‘Every right,’ I said, ‘if you loved me.’
His fingers stroked my sleeve. ‘It seemed a shabby kind of offer that I’d be making. I would wait until I could be done with the worst of the problems, and come to terms with the house, and then speak. But then you went away, leaving me with Caroline. And when your letters started to come –’
‘Letters?’
‘She told me all your news, about the young men you met at balls and routs in Carlsbad. It sounded so fashionable, so lively. Not much like Wisbech! And you had grown so beautiful this last year or so, and looked so beautiful as you prepared to leave, that . . . well, I couldn’t blame you. Nor could I blame your young admirers. I still don’t.’
I said: ‘I sent Caroline a view card. One, and one only.’
‘One view card.’ It caused him no surprise.
‘And,’ I reminded him, ‘I wrote you a long letter. I don’t think there was anything in it about balls and parties or anything of the kind.’
‘Caroline commented how different it was from the letters she was receiving, and wondered why you chose to hide such things from me.’ He laughed mirthlessly.
It was all so obvious, seen from this distance, and inevitable. Caroline
praised me in my absence, in such a way as to make Dominic feel lonelier than ever. And she showed a flattering interest in his work. She knew a remarkable amount about it: and he was not to know the resentments that had given her this knowledge and then twisted it into such distorted form. She was attractive, they made a fine couple, she would banish the cobwebs of the past from his home. He found himself spending more and more time in her company – without, I suspected, having consciously made the arrangements himself – until Aunt Aurelia archly hinted that he really must not raise the poor girl’s expectations unless his intentions were serious. As for the haste in which the wedding was rushed through, that was somehow the work of Caroline and Aunt Aurelia – catching Dominic up and carrying him along, flattering him with Caroline’s eagerness, leaving him no time to look around and study the situation before all the decisions had been made.
‘I was a fool,’ he concluded. ‘I don’t deny it. But I’ve paid heavily for it. I dare not ask you now, I’ve no right to expect . . .’ Then he moved, sat upright, so that my head slid against his arm and he caught me and straightened me up. ‘No! That’s the mistake I made before – not daring, not thinking the time was right, not allowing myself to ask . . .’