by Andre Norton
But work could no longer hold his interest with the panel of the secret passage before him, and a calendar on the desk shrieking the fact that this was the fourteenth and that the all important sixteenth was but two days away. Half-heartedly he attempted to copy one of the papers but, after spoiling three sheets and tearing the fourth badly when he pulled it out of the typewriter, he gave it up as a bad job and went to look out of the window which fronted a short street running into the Pala Horn.
Rein was very quiet that morning. Even the sellers of fruit and flowers who fearlessly invaded the Pala Horn shouting their wares were now nowhere to be seen. Michael Karl, thinking of the brew which he had been preparing the night before, didn't like that quiet. It savored too much of a lull before the storm.
For the first time since his coming to Rein he wanted to be out. He wanted to see the Cathedral Square, the markets, to walk the dark alleys of the Bargo, to be doing something. Ericson was off to see that strange ally and perhaps Prince, the Werewolf; Johann was busy pulling wool over the eyes of the Council, Lukrantz had his part to play with his newspapers, but Michael Karl had to sit and wait. And he began to realize that that was the hardest part of all.
The two hours that followed were the dullest that Michael Karl had ever known. He tried his copying again, he made a restless tour of the downstairs rooms, he even picked up his language studies, but nothing held his interest. The panel fascinated him and he was tempted to try it, but it refused to yield to his fingers and he guessed shrewdly that the American had locked it in some way to keep him out of mischief.
He was staring out of the window for the tenth time when Jan came fluttering in, his pudgy hands shaking in distress, with a wild-haired Lukrantz at his heels.
“Where is he?” demanded the editor.
“He's gone to meet the Werewolf,” answered Michael Karl, rightly thinking that Lukrantz meant the American.
“That is bad, bad.” The editor sank into a chair and looked up at Michael Karl with real distress in his face. “We must get word to him. Kellermann, whom we have depended upon, has betrayed the plan for the sixteenth. If we can't reach the mountain men we are finished.”
“It looks,” Michael Karl pulled open the upper desk drawer and took out the snub-nosed revolver which he had always seen there, “as if I'm going to want some yellow roses after all.”
Lukrantz sat and stared at him a bit stupidly.
“What do you want to tell Ericson?” asked Michael Karl as he loaded the revolver from a box of cartridges and filled his breeches pocket with the remainder.
“Just that Kellermann has betrayed us and that we need instructions. I wish Johann were here”—
“Speak of the devil,” announced a cool voice from the doorway. The tall Duke, lazy as ever, stood there.
Lukrantz was out of his chair and at the Duke's side in an instant. “Kellermann” — he began shrilly.
“Has gone over to Laupt,” finished the Duke for him. “Oh, yes, I heard all about it, and as there was no further use in my leaving the city to please Kafner I came back. And where are you going, Your Highness?” he asked sharply as Michael Karl started out of the door.
“To warn Ericson,” answered Michael Karl mistrusting the look the Duke gave him.
“I'm sorry, Your Highness, but I must insist that you are too valuable to play the role of messenger boy. We have several who can do that very nicely.”
“But I am going to do it.” Michael Karl didn't say that aloud. He had an idea that Prince or no Prince that was not the sort of thing he would care to say to the Duke. After all there was no use quarreling over the fact that he was going. Let them think that he had given up and was being a nice obedient boy.
With reluctance he answered, “All right. I am ready to do anything you wish me to.”
“It is most kind of Your Highness to accept matters in this manner. Though,” the Duke smiled, “from what I have heard you are not always so amiable. And now if you will excuse us, Your Highness. Lukrantz, the plans for the North”—
Johann led the editor towards the desk, and their voices trailed off into half whispers. Michael Karl stiffened. Treat him like a baby would they? Well!
He tiptoed upstairs and raided the American's room for a certain black leather coat. For May the mountains would be very cold. He transferred the loose shells into one of the large patch pockets on the coat and crammed his peaked chauffeur's cap into the other.
The library door was closed when he came downstairs, but some one spoke quite loudly as he passed it.
“Of course, he will try it, Lukrantz, but Benner is outside, and he won't get far.”
Michael Karl gave the door a low bow. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said softly, “I know now how not to go.”
He turned aside and pushed through the door which led to the service quarters. As he went down a narrow hall past a half-open door he caught a glimpse of Breck, his magnificent livery coat laid aside, polishing knives like any other lowly mortal while Jan was restlessly passing to and fro frowning over a printed list in his hand.
Certain tempting smells betrayed the kitchen, and a dampish, sudsy odor of the laundry. This was his chance. The laundry gave upon a square side yard where, upon the occasion, he had seen a thin sharp-faced woman wrestling with wet sheets and a slack line.
Michael Karl tried the door, and it swung open easily beneath his touch. The room was dimly lighted, and the outer door he was searching for stood ajar upon the stone paved court. He stopped to pull on the cap and fold the coat over his arm hoping to give a good imitation of a chauffeur on important business.
The stone-paved yard had a blue, painted door leading into the side street. Michael Karl's heart sank as he pushed at it; the thing was locked. But as he stepped to one side to see if he could climb the wall he saw tucked between two loose bricks the missing key. It took but a second to pull it out, unlock the door, and step into the street.
He locked the door behind him and tossed the key over the wall. When they found it lying there they would think that it had fallen out of its hiding place. Michael Karl pulled the peaked cap a little over one eye so that it set at the exact rakish angle demanded by young chauffeurs, and set off briskly down the deserted street. His adventuring had begun again.
This side street led into the Pala Horn, and a block away lay the Cathedral Square. The silvery chimes in the tall bell tower marked the hour of high noon as Michael Karl crossed the square to the avenue, which, if he had remembered Ericson's directions correctly, would lead him straight to the bridge of the flower market.
He shifted the leather coat from his right to his left arm so the revolver in the inner breast pocket would stop bumping against his side. The same recklessness which had betrayed him the night he left the Royal Train was urging him on.
Rein evidently went home for its dinner. All along the streets he could see the shop assistants, the prosperous merchants and the shoppers going home. Shop after shop was closed with a neat sign, the Morvanian “Out to Lunch,” he supposed, on the door.
Michael Karl walked a little faster. After all it would never do to reach the flower market and find the man with the shrubs gone.
With a sudden dip the avenue swung downwards to meet the old bridge. Like the day when he had first seen it, it was a mass of color. A whole basket of deep purple violets was framed in clumps of yellow daffodils and some pale pink rose-like flowers. The flower, girls were filling their wide aprons with tight little bunches of bright green ferns and quaint nosegays of their wares to hawk in the upper market place.
Walking slowly as if inspecting each dealer's flowers Michael Karl crossed the bridge until he came at last to the place he was seeking. Prickly shrubs uprooted, even a small tree or two, whose roots were carefully wrapped in sacking, hedged in a merry fellow who had a laugh and cheery greeting for every passer-by.
A stout, flabby-faced man was pricing a small tree and looking more than annoyed at the cripple's comments, each emphasiz
ed with a prod of his rubber-tipped cane. At last the customer pulled out his purse and carefully counted some coins into the young man's hand. He picked up his little tree and marched off looking very important while the cripple limped out into the street and busied himself with rearranging the shrubs to cover the gap left by the sapling.
Michael Karl swallowed uncertainly and stepped up to him.
“What can I do for you, friend?” asked the man cheerily, looking up at Michael Karl's approach.
“Have you any yellow roses?” Michael Karl saw the man's eyes widen, and he hesitated before he answered.
“They are not common at this season of the year.”
Michael Karl nodded. “It is true that yellow roses need the sun.”
“But then,” the man laughed gaily as if he were telling some amusing story, “the sun will rise on the sixteenth.”
“Very well.” Michael Karl waited. He was to obey the flower merchant's instructions, it seemed.
“A friend of mine may have some really yellow roses,” began the man thoughtfully; “if you wish you might try there. Go straight ahead until you come to the sign of the Four Horses and inquire there for Franz Ultmann. Ask him for roses.”
“Straight on?”
“Yes. Good hunting, friend.”
“Thank you,” and with a pleasant nod Michael Karl went on wondering just how large a cog in Ericson's machine was the flower merchant.
He was in the New Town now, and his way led him by the flapping Union Jack and the carved lions of the British Embassy and the cross-looking eagle and stars and stripes of its American neighbor. How long ago was it that he had claimed American citizenship? Maybe after the excitement was over he would make use of the passport which still lay in the drawer of his bedroom table.
The street curved around the river bank and he came upon what must have been, when it was built, a country inn. A sign of four wild-looking horses swung over the entrance to its courtyard which was now almost choked with a very large ox cart and a very small roadster. Close to the wall a draggled cock and two greedy hens hunted their dinner fearlessly among the hay upon which the unyoked oxen were making a meal. The sleepy dog by the door aroused himself to snap at an annoying fly as Michael Karl stepped over him.
The long low room of the inn parlor wasn't crowded. A brightly dressed farmer, the apparent owner of the ox cart, and one other customer were talking to the plump and pretty barmaid. The man at the bar turned away after a moment and smiled cheerily at Michael Karl.
“Hot, ain't it?” he asked, wiping the shining red spot above his scanty fringe of sandy hair with a handkerchief printed in a pattern of horses’ heads. He was a short, stocky man and the wide riding breeches and cloth gaiters he wore made him look very wide indeed.
“It certainly is.” Michael Karl agreed. The man seemed a friendly person. He stepped to the bar and spoke to the plump maid who was busily engaged in rubbing up the glasses.
“Where may I find Herr Franz Ultmann?” he inquired.
She looked at him, her eyes round with surprise. “That's him, there,” she pointed with a pudgy, none too clean, finger to the man in the gaiters. “Herr Ultmann,” she raised her voice to almost a shout though the man she addressed was no more than three feet away, endeavoring to light a very large and smelly pipe, “here's one that'll be a-lookin’ for ye.”
Michael Karl turned to Ultmann. “I've come to see about some yellow roses,” he said. “The man at the flower market said you might have some early ones.”
Franz Ultmann screwed up his eyes. “That I do. Will ye come and see ‘em, Lad? My car be outside. And here's somethin’ for that noo ribbon, m'dear.” He tossed the barmaid a coin and went out into the courtyard, followed by Michael Karl.
“'Tis funny how these yellow roses be,” he said, holding open the door of the very small roadster for Michael to enter. “They need the sun. I'm told that we'll be a-havin’ a very warm sun on the six- teenth. I'm head stable manager to Duke Johann, not that the Duke keeps up his stable very much since the war, but I raise my roses on the side, and a pretty thing I make out of it in a good season. But I did better in the days when the old king ruled. More goin’ and comin’ and the ladies bought from me. Especially yellow roses.
“D'ye ride, lad?” he interrupted himself to ask suddenly.
“Yes.”
“That is good. I'll show ye a couple o’ fillies that'll make ye long to get a let up on ‘em. It's a pity the Duke don't care for racin’ any more. In the old days his stables was one o’ the sights o’ the country, but now he's taken to cars like the rest o’ ‘em.”
“Does the Duke come out often?” Michael Karl had no desire to be caught by the Duke this late in the day.
Ultmann shook his head. “No, seems like he don't care for the country no more. He's a big man in Rein since the old king died. He was sort o’ out o’ favor before then; supported the Prince who ran off and married a foreigner, and the king sent him off to enjoy his estates. And from what I've heard tell, the Prince that the Duke liked was the best o’ the lot; he was the only one o’ ‘em all who dared to stand up to old Karl when he was in one o’ his tantrums. A regular old pepper pot, the king was.”
“Did you ever see the Prince?” asked Michael Karl. So the Duke had supported his father and had been exiled to his estates for doing so. Faith, he was learning more family history from this Ultmann than he would have ever learned from history books.
Ultmann shook his head regretfully. “I didn't come until after the king had packed him off abroad and sent all his friends, the Duke included, away from court. It was then that the Duke took to horses, and he sent to England for a man to manage his stables. That's when I came. Me father was a Morvanian what settled in England, and he was at the huntin’ stables of Lord Westingham. Brought me up right, he did, an’ learned me a good trade into the bargain. That's how I come here. And now, Lad, here we are.”
They turned off the main road onto a narrow, hedge-bordered drive, and Ultmann got out to open the five-barred gate before them. Some horses in a neighboring field trotted up to watch them curiously. Ultmann waved his hand toward them.
“They be beauties,” he said and grinned with pride when Michael Karl heartily agreed with him. “They always wants to see what a man be a-doin’, bad as children, they be.”
He climbed stiffly back into the car and drove through the open gate. Michael Karl volunteered to close it.
“That be right helpful of ye, Lad. I'm not so limber as I uster to be. Marthe will be right glad to see ye come in for dinner. She was remarkin’ this mornin’ that company was mighty few and far between for us.”
Michael Karl wondered who Marthe was. “But,” he said slowly, “I must see the roses.”
Ultmann favored Michael Karl with a slow closing of the left eye. “The roses will keep until after dinner, Lad. I'll be a-thinkin’ that ye won't find Marthe's cookin’ amiss.”
He steered the car around a bend in the road and into a farmyard. Some distance away from the haystack, the busy chickens and the pack of excited dogs which thrust themselves upon Ultmann, was a small, neat house with a hint of freshly laundered curtains at the windows and a budding rosebush by the door.
“The rose garden's on the other side,” Ultmann informed him, “an’ the stable's over there.” He pointed with the stem of his stubby pipe to the long gray building a field away from them.
“An’ here's Marthe, Lad.”
A small woman in the neatest of print dresses stepped out of the door to welcome them.
“Franz, ye're late agin,” she chided the man softly as he came up the paved walk.
“I had reason, m'dear. This lad has come about some yellow roses an’ he'd like some dinner too, I'll be a-thinkin’. Such dinners as ye have, Marthe, are treats such as even the old king never got in his life.”
The little lady dimpled and smiled at Michael Karl. “Ye'll come in an’ wash, both of ye, and then maybe I'll be a-findin’ somethin’ i
n the oven for ye.”
Ultmann led Michael Karl to a sunny bedroom and poured him a basin of cool water.
“The soap and towels be here, Lad.” He swung open the door in the lower part of the washstand.
“Thank you.” Michael Karl was already shedding his warm tunic and rolling up his shirt sleeves.
Washed and brushed as neatly as he could be without either comb or clothes brush he walked into the tiny parlor a few minutes later to find his hostess setting the last of a mammoth array of steaming dishes on a table. She smiled as he came in.
“Franz will be here directly. It is nice of ye to visit us. So far are we from town that we have few callers. Now, Franz,” she said to Ultmann as he came in, “the boy must stay with us awhile.”
Ultmann shook his head. “He is a-huntin’ yellow roses, Marthe,” he answered simply.
Marthe looked up with real fear in her eyes. “But,” she protested to Michael Karl, “ye're too young to—to—”
“Search for yellow roses?” Michael Karl supplied for her. “But then I've been hunting for them for some time. However, there are quite a few people,” he thought of the Duke, “who feel the same way you do about it.”
Ultmann sampled the soup before him. “Didn't I tell ye, Lad, that Marthe is the best cook in the country?”
Michael Karl looked up from his fast emptying plate. “I agree with you heartily.”
But the praise failed to bring a smile to Marthe's worried face. “I don't like it,” she murmured, still looking at Michael Karl.
He laughed. “I'll be back safe and sound, never fear, and the yellow roses with me, on the sixteenth.”
Marthe still was doubtful, nor did her face clear when Michael Karl finished his dinner and prepared to follow his guide to the last trail of the yellow roses.
Chapter X
Into The Mountains At Once