by John Burke
A dark shape which might have been a skeletal wintry bush moved although there was no wind.
It reared up between the trees on the far side of the glade, became a man, and walked towards me across the clearing.
This time I would neither surrender meekly nor run. I would fight – literally tooth and nail.
‘Miss Talbot, you have been caused much distress on my behalf,’ said Count Anton Florian.
*
We sat in a high-roofed cave deep within the rocks. The slanting tunnels of an old silver mine, abandoned long ago, had broken through into this vast chamber, and other fissures led on into a dark unknown. Two men sat cross-legged on a carpet of straw; two others perched on ledges in the rock, with tallow lanterns guttering beside them.
One man’s face I knew. He was the blacksmith from Svetlik.
Count Florian said: ‘The time had come when it was not safe for him to remain. Schendler would have left him untouched so long as there was a likelihood of your needing to visit him again. But once he was certain your mission was completed, or decided to cut the process short and torture the truth from you, he would also have arrested the smith.’
The men on the floor were prodding sacks into a little mound. Florian slipped off his leather coat and added it to the pile. He stood beside it and bowed to indicate that I should sit down.
His beard was fuller than it had been. In this light his eyes looked more strained than before; but he had lost none of his easy, natural authority. I could tell that he was impatient for me to speak. Still he wished me to be seated, and as comfortable as possible in these strange surroundings.
I had come so far to see him. Now it seemed such a little thing, to pull a few threads and take out the signet ring and hand it to him. When he took it from my fingers I had an instant of giddiness, as if the weight had been greater than I realized.
And I was sad. Too many things had happened. There had been too much suffering.
He held the ring in his palm, the signet uppermost. He was waiting.
I said: ‘Caroline is dead.’
He lowered himself to the ground near me, his head a few inches below mine. ‘This is true?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was told to me, but I hoped the message had been mangled in the transmission. I would believe it only from you.’
‘It is not a happy message for me to bring.’
His head bowed. I sensed that he had already accepted that he would never see Caroline again, but had allowed himself one spark of hope until I came to breathe on it or extinguish it. Now the ember faded to ash.
Quietly he asked: ‘How did she die?’
‘She . . . she was killed.’
He looked up again, and his face was terrible.
‘Killed?’
‘By Jan Sieghart – or Schendler, if that is the real name.’
‘This is not possible. How could Schendler know she was on her way to me? He intercepted her? You were with her, and he –’
‘He came to England,’ I said, ‘and he murdered her.’
I told him all that it was necessary for him to know. And I marvelled at myself. In all the time it had taken me to get here, I had not once rehearsed what I must and must not say to him. Now that he was close to me, tensely taking in my every word, I found that I was making swift alterations as I went along, evading some points and emphasizing others. Not one mention did I make of Caroline denying his very existence. He was left with the picture of a loyal wife who, up to the moment of her savage death, had given no clue as to his whereabouts to his enemy.
Florian heard me out in silence. When I had finished I could hear only the faint, steady dripping of water in some deep recess of the caverns.
Then he asked the question I had been dreading: ‘But what did my Carolina say, what did she say to you, when she heard I was still alive?’
There was a shuffle of footsteps down the tunnel through which I had been brought into the cave. The men on the floor sprang to their feet. Those on the ledges slid down to the ground.
Florian, too, was on his feet, moving soundlessly towards the entrance.
Two men came in, forcing a third between them. They wrenched him forward and began explaining to Florian in Czech. I understood not a word; but I sprang up and ran to them, and put my arms round Dominic.
‘My dearest . . .’
He was released, and stumbled forward, and we clung to each other.
Florian said: ‘Who is this?’
‘Dominic Warrington,’ I said.
‘Warrington. So.’
‘He came after me,’ I said, ‘when they began to suspect in England that Schendler was the murderer – and that I was in danger.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Florian looked from Dominic to me. His jaw thrust out; he gave his beard a peremptory tug. ‘So this,’ he said to me in German, ‘was my Carolina’s choice.’
Dominic began: ‘I thought at first I’d been set on by our friend from the castle, but . . .’
I did my best to effect a polite, everyday introduction. It was not easy in such circumstances, in such a setting. The two men bristled at each other like dogs sniffing and preparing for a set-to. I felt a pang of jealousy. Whatever Dominic might have suffered from Caroline, she had been beautiful and he had been her husband and sought pleasure with her. And for different reasons I saw a matching jealousy in Count Florian’s face.
Again he used German to me. ‘This man has recovered swiftly from Carolina’s death. Already he turns his affections to you.’
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Dominic.
Florian glowered at him a moment, then changed to English. ‘I hear of Carolina’s death. And that you were accused. You knew her, you know what happened. Why was it necessary she must be killed?’
‘That’s what we’ve kept asking ourselves.’
‘She was too faithful to die so. Faithful to what we once shared. She would not betray. It was so?’
Dominic and I exchanged a swift glance. Very gravely he said: ‘I’m sure you’re right, sir. She would have no part of his schemes. Whatever threats he may have uttered, to expose your existence as her first husband, to menace the security she had so recently achieved after so much unhappiness . . . whatever he may have said, she would not agree to lead him to you.’
‘And she would not hand over the signet,’ I said.
Florian nodded proudly. ‘My Carolina was loyal to the end.’ He held out his hand to me. ‘Like her cousin.’ But all at once he was back on the track I had hoped he would avoid. ‘How did the signet come back into your hands?’
I tried to cover my awkwardness by turning aside and brushing non-existent straw from my skirt. ‘She had left it in my safe keeping,’ I said, ‘until she was ready.’
‘I think she must have had some premonition,’ added Dominic. ‘She did not want it about her when she met Sieghart.’
‘Schendler,’ I said.
‘Schendler, then. It must have been that.’ I felt his mind reaching out for mine, but not by the faintest quirk of an eyebrow did he mock the attentive Florian. ‘I know she was disturbed that day. That’s why I went to Tempest Fen – too late.’
‘There are things we shall never know.’ Count Florian drew himself up. ‘But that she was strong to the end, that we do know.’
Dominic and I were mutely content that he should be left with his dream ended yet unimpaired.
I said: ‘What will you do now?’
‘There are battles to be won. I shall not turn back. It will all be lonelier than I had hoped, but I shall not falter.’
In Dominic’s eyes I caught a tinge of disapproval. He found the Count too flamboyant, too prone to dramatic gesture and high-flown passion. I was tempted to laugh and agree with him; but at the same time I had come to know this as a turbulent society in which gestures counted for a lot, in which old sores still ran, and conflict was nearer the surface and more infectious than in our own country. Some heritage of my mother’s blood
ran in my veins, tingling in sympathy, but never quite carrying me away.
Now Florian said: ‘It is time to see you safely out of Bohemia. And then I will deal with the assassin.’
‘You’re not going to try an all-out assault on Kirchschlag?’ said Dominic.
‘Such tactics are not for us. Not yet. We have been schooled in patience, in slow campaigning, in . . . what is your English word? . . . guile. He will not be safe. I shall reach him.’
There was neither day nor night within the caverns. We were told that evening had come on, and after the turmoil of the day, from my capture to my escape from Kirchschlag and the journey which had ended in these bowels of the rock, I found that easy to believe. I would not have been surprised to learn that it was already midnight.
‘It is not possible to set out at this hour,’ said Florian. ‘But in the morning I will take you to a small station on the Strakonitz line. And when you are safely gone, I shall resume work.’
In spite of my protests the men each contributed a coat to make a bed for me in a crevice of the rock, well to the back of the cave. The dripping of water sounded louder here, and for a while I felt that it would keep me awake. But after ten or fifteen minutes it became a rhythmic lullaby. I drifted away into sleep, while the men gathered in a little group under the flickering lights.
I wondered, with a drowsy giggle, if Dominic’s German – or even his Czech – would have improved by the morning.
When we set out in the frosty dawn, there was a spattering of snowflakes down through the trees, on our heads and shoulders and on the track ahead. The land shone. Trees were mantled in white with patches of darkest green showing through. We rode up a hillside and along the ridge, with a sparkling vale below and a tiny chapel on the far hill.
‘It’s a beautiful country,’ said Dominic. ‘Very beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ said Florian. ‘If only it were ours!’
We rode on and began the descent into a valley. There was a wider road below, and a mile away it crossed a railway line on the outskirts of a small town. The two men accompanying us fell back, keeping a watchful eye on a number of paths and trackways which intersected our route.
I looked back. I was glad to be leaving, yet felt that part of me would always be imprisoned here – not by Jan or his Imperial masters, but by the insidious spell of the mountainous countryside itself, its forests and hamlets and craggy castles and untold mysteries.
We slowed our pace as we rode into the station yard. The town looked a trim little place, and the private violence of isolated fortresses belonged to a different century. A train would come in, Dominic and I would board it, and everything after that would be modern and familiar and predictable.
‘You must change at Pilsen,’ Florian was saying. He could have been some bluff fenland host telling one which platform to seek at Cambridge or March. ‘There will be a train to Cheb – or Eger, as our Austrians call it and write it up. After that you will not long be on Austrian territory.’
He bought us our tickets and then dubiously studied our clothes.
‘You are none too well equipped for travelling. Perhaps we wait for the next train, and I find you a few necessities in the town?’
‘No,’ said Dominic. ‘We cross the border before we do any shopping.’
‘I think that is wise, yes.’
Again it could have been Cambridge, or March, or any large station or wayside halt in England. We waited for the train to come in; waited to break out in a fever of handshakes and farewells and good wishes. ‘And you will write, won’t you?’ Would anyone actually say that? If they did I was sure I would laugh; might dangerously give way to hysterics.
Far up the slope, beyond the town and black beneath a barrier of trees, I saw the sharp outline of a derelict building which might have been some small local factory. It made me think of those other, blackened ruins I had passed in Jan’s company.
It was a strange subject on which to make conversation. ‘Did you burn the village above St Cyril’s monastery?’ I asked.
Florian stared. Then he said: ‘Oh. So that is how it is told, yes?’
‘That is how it was told to me.’
‘It was burnt by the men of Kirchschlag because it was said to have sheltered nationalists. It was burnt when the village workers were in the fields. Only the women and children died – by accident, of course.’
I shuddered. Dominic edged a step closer and put his arm round me.
‘Not long,’ he said quietly. ‘Not long now.’
Florian lowered his eyes from the heights. ‘I see you love this woman.’
‘Yes.’
‘For that I do not blame you. It would be good to love one so beautiful, and so courageous. But so soon after Carolina is dead?’
Dominic stood his ground and made no reply.
Florian sighed. ‘So soon, and you feel free to love elsewhere. It is English, perhaps, it is something I do not know. For me it could not be. But I wish you well.’
For what Dominic said next I shall always love him. ‘I do not think I made Caroline happy. Her mind was always elsewhere.’
‘So. So, I see.’ There were tears in Anton Florian’s eyes, and he was not ashamed of them. ‘Always she thought of Bohemia and her true home. It is noble of you to tell me. Not every man would have admitted it.’
The two of them shook hands.
Slowly the train clanked in through the town and into the station.
Florian bent low over my hand and kissed it. ‘Without you I should never have been certain. Never quite certain. I am in your debt until I die.’
It was a fittingly extravagant note on which to part. Dominic helped me into a compartment with spring seats and polished wooden backs. He lowered the window and shook hands again with Florian, and I leaned out beside him.
A carriage rattled into the station yard, but no other passengers hurried across to join the train.
The young man with a peaked cap who had been standing on the shallow platform took a step forward and raised his baton. The train hissed, shrieked, and moved slowly off. The guard lowered his baton, flicked it under his arm, came to attention, and saluted.
Behind him, Anton Florian’s bearded face split into a broad smile; and he came to attention and imitated the salute.
I waved.
Florian stood proud and erect, as if posing for a farewell picture which we could carry away in our minds. A slightly smaller man emerged from the doorway behind him, and then another. I thought at first they were his two companions. But they dosed in suddenly, and he bent and twisted as if struck by a shaft of pain. The taller of the two men pinioned his arms, the other was brutally tugging him round towards the doorway. I knew this one, by his balance and the thrust of his leg, to be Jan.
The scene was abruptly chopped off by a bank above the railway cutting. The train let out a gush of steam, and gathered speed.
Chapter Fifteen
I said: ‘We’ve got to get off as soon as we can, and go back.’
‘I’ll go back. You’re staying on this train until you’re safely out of the country.’
The cutting became shallower, and we had a glimpse of sparkling meres, some with a film of ice. A church spire thrust up from the plain many miles away. There must be a town or a village somewhere along this route: somewhere that the train would stop so that we could get down.
It rumbled on, slow and bumpy, yet carrying us inexorably away from the captured Florian.
‘After all you’ve gone through for the man,’ said Dominic, ‘it could be said we owe him nothing. But . . .’
‘But?’
‘There’s something in the atmosphere of this confounded country. We’re caught in it. I can’t leave him to that cunning little swine.’
‘No. I didn’t think you could. He’s in danger now because he waited for me, brought you in, and felt it his duty to set us both safely on our way.’
We both shook to the unflagging beat of the wheels and the jolt of the
woodwork against our backs. Every second took us further away. Five or six more miles, and it would be futile to think of turning back.
The train slowed. Dominic leaned out, screwing up his eyes against smoke and a shower of grit.
‘Some farming family, by the looks of it.’ I had to lean closer to him before the words could be snatched away in the streamer of smoke. ‘They treat the trains as diligences about here, evidently.’
We clanked to a halt by a small wayside platform, little more than a few planks packed in with ragged stones. Dominic opened the door and jumped down. As he turned to close the door again, I set myself in the opening and leaned towards him.
‘No,’ he said, trying to hold me off. ‘I insist that you go on.’
‘I’ll not leave you. We’re both seeing this through to the end.’
‘Damn it, are you going to be as stubborn in –’
‘In everything,’ I assured him.
I sprang down into his arms. From the back of the train a guard shouted something and waved his arms. Dominic waved back and shouted cheerily in English. The man redoubled his protests, pointing ahead to show that we had still a long way to go. Again Dominic waved, I raised my hand, made a point of not understanding a word he was saying; and we walked away. The fact that we carried no baggage of any kind must have persuaded him that we were an eccentric English couple staying in some little country inn or pension, and that we knew our way well enough.
The train clanked forward again. We could hear its echoes in the rails and against the low hills for a long time.
It took us over an hour to get back to the little town from which we had started. We avoided the town and its station, and spent another forty or fifty minutes making our way over the steepening slopes, taking a wrong turning, stopping in near-despair at one baffling junction of forest trails.
‘I’m sure . . .’ I waved in one direction, unsure the moment I spoke.
Dominic pursed his lips. Then he pointed through the undergrowth at a pillar of rock, like a sentinel above a narrow defile.
‘I remember that. When they brought me in, I remember seeing it just before we reached the cave.’