Captain Hiltern had of course sent someone with word to Sir Peter at the Schloss, but it was necessary for Grey to report personally to Sir Peter and von Namtzen when he returned at midday with the rescue party. After which, officers and men had flapped out of the place like a swarm of bats, the whole military apparatus moving like the armature of some great engine, creaking, groaning, but coming to life with amazing speed.
Which left Grey alone in the Schloss at sunset, blank in mind and body, with nothing further to do. There was no need for liaison; couriers were flitting to and from all the regiments, carrying orders. He had no duty to perform, no one to command, no one to serve.
He would ride out in the morning with Sir Peter Hicks, part of Sir Peter’s personal guard. But there was no need for him now; everyone was about his own business; Grey was forgotten.
He felt odd; not unwell, but as though objects and people near him were not quite real, not entirely firm to the touch. He should sleep, he knew—but could not, not with the whole world in flux around him, and a sense of urgency that hummed on his skin yet was unable to penetrate to the core of his mind.
Tom was talking to him; he made an effort to attend.
“Witch,” he repeated, awareness struggling to make itself known. “Witch. You mean Herr Blomberg still intends to hold his—ceremony?”
“Yes, me lord.” Tom was sponging Grey’s coat, frowning as he tried to remove a pitch stain from the skirt. “Ilse says he won’t rest until he’s cleared his mother’s name, and damned if the Austrians will stop him.”
Awareness burst through Grey’s fog like a pricked soap bubble.
“Christ! He doesn’t know!”
“About what, me lord?” Tom turned to look at him curiously, sponging cloth and vinegar in hand.
“The succubus. I must tell him—explain.” Even as he said it, though, he realized how little force such an explanation would have upon Herr Blomberg’s real problem. Sir Peter and Colonel Ruysdale might accept the truth; the townspeople would be much less likely to accept having been fooled—and by Austrians!
Grey knew enough about gossip and rumor to realize that no amount of explanation from him would be enough. Still less if that explanation were to be filtered through Herr Blomberg, whose bias in the matter was clear.
Even Tom was frowning doubtfully at him as he rapidly explained the matter. Superstition and sensation are always so much more appealing than truth and rationality. The words echoed as though spoken in his ear, with the same humorously rueful intonation with which his father had spoken them, many years before.
He rubbed a hand vigorously over his face, feeling himself come back to life. Perhaps he had one more task to complete, in his role as liaison.
“This witch, Tom—the woman who is to cast the runes, whatever in God’s name that might involve. Do you know where she is?”
“Oh, yes, me lord.” Tom had put down his cloth now, interested. “She’s here—in the Schloss, I mean. Locked up in the larder.”
“Locked up in the larder? Why?”
“Well, it has a good lock on the door, me lord, to keep the servants from—Oh, you mean why’s she locked up at all? Ilse says she didn’t want to come; dug in her heels entire, and wouldn’t hear of it. But Herr Blomberg wouldn’t hear of her not, and had her dragged up here, and locked up ’til this evening. He’s fetching up the town council, and the magistrate, and all the bigwigs he can lay hands on, Ilse says.”
“Take me to her.”
Tom’s mouth dropped open. He closed it with a snap and looked Grey up and down.
“Not like that. You’re not even shaved!”
“Precisely like this,” Grey assured him, tucking in the tails of his shirt. “Now.”
The game larder was locked, but as Grey had surmised, Ilse knew where the key was kept, and was not proof against Tom’s charm. The room itself was in an alcove behind the kitchens, and it was a simple matter to reach it without detection.
“You need not come further, Tom,” Grey said, low-voiced. “Give me the keys; if anyone finds me here, I’ll say I took them.”
Tom, who had taken the precaution of arming himself with a toasting fork, merely clutched the keys tighter in his other hand, and shook his head.
The door swung open silently on leather hinges. Someone had given the captive woman a candle; it lit the small space and cast fantastic shadows on the walls, from the hanging bodies of swans and pheasants, ducks and geese.
The drink had restored a sense of energy to Grey’s mind and body, but without quite removing the sense of unreality that had pervaded his consciousness. It was therefore with no real surprise that he saw the woman who turned toward him, and recognized the gypsy prostitute who had quarreled with Private Bodger a few hours before the soldier’s death.
She obviously recognized him, too, though she said nothing. Her eyes passed over him with cool scorn, and she turned away, evidently engrossed in some silent communion with a severed hog’s head that sat upon a china plate.
“Madam,” he said softly, as though his voice might rouse the dead fowl to sudden flight. “I would speak with you.”
She ignored him, and folded her hands elaborately behind her back. The light winked gold from the rings in her ears and the rings on her fingers—and Grey saw that one was a crude circlet, with the emblem of St. Orgevald’s protection.
He was overcome with a sudden sense of premonition, though he did not believe in premonition. He felt things in motion around him, things that he did not understand and could not control, things settling of themselves into an ordained and appointed position, like the revolving spheres of his father’s orrery—and he wished to protest this state of affairs, but could not.
“Me lord.” Tom’s hissed whisper shook him out of this momentary disorientation, and he glanced at the boy, eyebrows raised. Tom was staring at the woman, who was still turned away, but whose face was visible in profile.
“Hanna,” he said, nodding at the gypsy. “She looks like Hanna, Siggy’s nursemaid. You know, me lord, the one what disappeared?”
The woman had swung round abruptly at mention of Hanna’s name, and stood glaring at them both.
Grey felt the muscles of his back loosen, very slightly, as though some force had picked him up and held him. As though he, too, was one of the objects being moved, placed in the spot ordained for him.
“I have a proposition for you, madam,” he said calmly, and pulled a cask of salted fish out from beneath a shelf. He sat on it and, reaching out, pulled the door closed.
“I do not wish to hear anything you say, Schweinehund,” she said, very coldly. “As for you, piglet …” Her eyes darkened with no very pleasant light as she looked at Tom.
“You have failed,” Grey went on, ignoring this digression. “And you are in considerable danger. The Austrian plan is known; you can hear the soldiers preparing for battle, can’t you?” It was true; the sounds of drums and distant shouting, the shuffle of many marching feet, were audible even here, though muffled by the stone walls of the Schloss.
He smiled pleasantly at her, and his fingers touched the silver gorget that he had seized before leaving his room. It hung about his neck, over his half-buttoned shirt, the sign of an officer on duty.
“I offer you your life, and your freedom. In return …” He paused. She said nothing, but one straight black brow rose, slowly.
“I want a bit of justice,” he said. “I want to know how Private Bodger died. Bodger,” he repeated, seeing her look of incomprehension, and realizing that she had likely never known his name. “The English soldier who said you had cheated him.”
She sniffed contemptuously, but a crease of angry amusement lined the edge of her mouth.
“Him. God killed him. Or the devil, take your choice. Or, no—” The crease deepened, and she thrust out the hand with the ring on it, nearly in his face. “I think it was my saint. Do you believe in saints, pig-soldier?”
“No,” he said calmly. “What happened
?”
“He saw me, coming out of a tavern, and he followed me. I didn’t know he was there; he caught me in an alley, but I pulled away and ran into the churchyard. I thought he wouldn’t follow me there, but he did.”
Bodger had been both angry and aroused, insisting that he would take the satisfaction she had earlier denied him. She had kicked and struggled, but he was stronger than she.
“And then—” She shrugged. “Poof. He stops what he is doing, and makes a sound.”
“What sort of sound?”
“How should I know? Men make all kinds of sounds. Farting, groaning, belching … pff.” She bunched her fingers and flicked them sharply, disposing of men and all their doings with the gesture.
At any rate, Bodger had then dropped heavily to his knees, and still clinging to her dress, had fallen over. The gypsy had rapidly pried loose his fingers and run, thanking the intercession of St. Orgevald.
“Hmm.” A sudden weakness of the heart? An apoplexy? Keegan had said such a thing was possible—and there was no evidence to belie the gypsy’s statement. “Not like Private Koenig, then,” Grey said, watching carefully.
Her head jerked up and she stared hard at him, lips tight.
“Me lord,” said Tom softly behind him. “Hanna’s name is Koenig.”
“It is not!” the gypsy snapped. “It is Mulengro, as is mine!”
“First things first, if you please, madam,” Grey said, repressing the urge to stand up, as she leaned glowering over him. “Where is Hanna? And what is she to you? Sister, cousin, daughter …?”
“Sister,” she said, biting the word off like a thread. Her lips were tight as a seam, but Grey touched his gorget once again.
“Life,” he said. “And freedom.” He regarded her steadily, watching indecision play upon her features like the wavering shadows on the walls. She had no way of knowing how powerless he was; he could neither condemn nor release her—and nor would anyone else, all being caught up in the oncoming maelstrom of war.
In the end, he had his way, as he had known he would, and sat listening to her in a state that was neither trance nor dream; just a tranquil acceptance as the pieces fell before him, one upon one.
She was one of the women recruited by the Austrians to spread the rumors of the succubus—and had much enjoyed the spreading, judging from the way she licked her lower lip while telling of it. Her sister Hanna had been married to the soldier Koenig, but had rejected him, he being a faithless hound, like all men.
Bearing in mind the gossip regarding Siegfried’s paternity, Grey nodded thoughtfully, motioning to her with one hand to go on.
She did. Koenig had gone away with the army, but then had come back, and had had the audacity to visit the Schloss, trying to rekindle the flame with Hanna. Afraid that he might succeed in seducing her sister again—“She is weak, Hanna,” she said with a shrug, “she will trust men!”—she had gone to visit Koenig at night, planning to drug him with wine laced with opium, as she had done with the others.
“Only this time, a fatal dose, I suppose.” Grey had propped his elbow upon his crossed knee, hand under his chin. The tiredness had come back; it hovered near at hand, but was not yet clouding his mental processes.
“I meant it so, yes.” She uttered a short laugh. “But he knew the taste of opium. He threw it at me, and grabbed me by the throat.”
Whereupon she had drawn the dagger she always carried at her belt and stabbed at him—striking upward into his open mouth, and piercing his brain.
“You never saw so much blood in all your life,” the gypsy assured Grey, unconsciously echoing Herr Hückel.
“Oh, I rather think I have,” Grey said politely. His hand went to his own waist—but, of course, he had left his dagger with Franz. “But pray go on. The marks, as of an animal’s fangs?”
“A nail,” she said, and shrugged.
“So, was it him—Koenig, I mean—was it him tried to snatch little Siggy?” Tom, deeply absorbed in the revelations, could not keep himself from blurting out the question. He coughed and tried to fade back into the woodwork, but Grey indicated that this was a question which he himself found of some interest.
“It can’t have been; Koenig was already dead. But I assume that it was you the boy saw in his chamber?” What did this witch look like? he had asked. Like a witch, the child replied. Did she? She did not look like Grey’s conception of a witch—but what was that, save the fabrication of a limited imagination?
She was tall for a woman, dark, and her face mingled an odd sexuality with a strongly forbidding aspect—a combination that many men would find intriguing. Grey thought it was not something that would have struck Siggy, but something else about her evidently had.
She nodded. She was fingering her ring, he saw, and watching him with calculation, as though deciding whether to tell him a lie.
“I have seen the dowager princess’s medal,” he said politely. “Is she an Austrian, by birth? I assume that you and your sister are.”
The woman stared at him, and said something in her own tongue, which sounded highly uncomplimentary.
“And you think I am a witch!” she said, evidently translating the thought.
“No, I don’t,” Grey said. “But others do, and that is what brings us here. If you please, madam, let us conclude our business. I expect someone will shortly come for you.” The Schloss was at dinner; Tom had brought Grey a tray, which he was too tired to eat. No doubt the rune-casting would be the after-dinner entertainment, and he must make his desires clear before that.
“Well, then.” The gypsy regarded him, her awe at his perspicacity fading back into the usual derision. “It was your fault.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It was Princess Gertrude—the dowager. She saw Louisa—that slut”—she spat casually on the floor, almost without pausing, and went on—“making sheep’s eyes at you, and was afraid she meant to marry you. Louisa thought she would marry you and go to England, to be safe and rich. But if she did, she would take with her her son.”
“And the dowager did not wish to be parted from her grandson,” Grey said slowly. Whether the gossip was true or not, the old woman loved the boy.
The gypsy nodded. “So she arranged that we would take the boy—my sister and me. He would be safe with us, and after a time, when the Austrians had killed you all, we would bring him back.”
Hanna had gone down the ladder first, meaning to comfort Siggy if he woke in the rain. But Siggy had wakened too soon, and bollixed the scheme by running out of the room. Hanna had no choice but to flee when Grey had tipped the ladder over, leaving her sister to hide in the Schloss and make her way out at daybreak, with the help of the dowager.
“She is with our family,” the gypsy said, with another shrug. “Safe.”
“The ring,” Grey said, nodding at the gypsy’s circlet. “Do you serve the dowager? Is that what it means?”
So much confessed, the gypsy evidently felt now at ease. Casually, she pushed a platter of dead doves aside, and sat down upon the shelf, feet dangling.
“We are Rom,” she said, drawing herself up proudly. “The Rom serve no one. But we have known the Trauchtenbergs—the dowager’s family—for generations, and there is tradition between us. It was her great-grandfather who bought the child who guards the bridge—and that child was the younger brother of my own great-grandfather. The ring was given to my great-grandfather then, as a sign of the bargain.”
Grey heard Tom grunt slightly with confusion, but took no heed. The words struck him as forcibly as a blow, and he could not speak for a moment. The thing was too shocking. He took a deep breath, fighting the vision of Franz’s words—the small, round white skull, looking out at him from the hollow in the bridge.
Sounds of banging and clashing dishes from the scullery nearby brought him to himself, though, and he realized that time was growing short.
“Very well,” he said, as briskly as he could. “I want one last bit of justice, and our bargain is
made. Agathe Blomberg.”
“Old Agathe?” The gypsy laughed, and in spite of her missing tooth, he could see how attractive she could be. “How funny! How could they suppose such an old stick might be a demon of desire? A hag, yes, but a night hag?” She went off into peals of laughter, and Grey jumped to his feet, seizing her by the shoulder to silence her.
“Be quiet,” he said. “Someone will come.”
She stopped then, though she still snorted with amusement.
“So, then?”
“So, then,” he said firmly. “When you do your hocus-pocus—whatever it is they’ve brought you here to do—I wish you particularly to exonerate Agathe Blomberg. I don’t care what you say or how you do it—I leave that to your own devices, which I expect are considerable.”
She looked at him for a moment, looked down at his hand upon her shoulder, and shrugged it off.
“That’s all, is it?” she asked sarcastically.
“That’s all. Then you may go.”
“Oh, I may go? How kind.” She stood smiling at him, but not in a kindly way. It occurred to him quite suddenly that she had required no assurances from him, had not asked for so much as his word as a gentleman—though he supposed she would not have valued that, in any case.
She did not care, he realized, with a small shock. She had not told him anything for the sake of saving herself—she simply wasn’t afraid. Did she think the dowager would protect her, for the sake either of their ancient bond, or because of what she knew about the failed kidnapping?
Perhaps. Perhaps she had confidence in something else. And if she had, he chose not to consider what that might be. He rose from the cask of fish, and pushed it back under the shelves.
“Agathe Blomberg was a woman, too,” he said.
She rose, too, and stood looking at him, rubbing her ring with apparent thought.
The Lord John Series 4-Book Bundle Page 42