“We will turn a lot of heads when we arrive with Tagili in tow, so exercise extreme caution. I need hardly remind you he is not in our pocket. He may be operating outside the scope of the Tsarists. He wants a quick profit and will sell to the highest bidder. He has our offer, but he intends to entertain others. Tonight’s situation is fraught with danger. Isn’t that so, Sir Thomas?”
The question bore the barb of rebuke, but Sir Thomas showed no sign of discomfort, except for raising and steadying his nodding head. Truth to tell, he saw little change in the international landscape since the Congress of Vienna. Any political turmoil Britain suffered because of his lack of vigilance, he considered a paltry expense compared to the wealth of pleasure diplomatic jaunts provided. In his opinion his country’s political machinations, win, lose, or draw, if one could tell the difference, changed nothing.
Sir Thomas joined this Austrian expedition not to serve the King, but for the spring shooting and fishing in the Hartz Mountains. When told that his route ran through Vienna, he accepted with alacrity, anticipating sport of a different kind. “Quite so, Your Excellency,” he replied to the ambassador’s dig.
“Pay particular attention to our hostess,” the ambassador continued. “If there’s any jiggery-pokery in the wind tonight, she’ll be at the heart of it.”
Again, the ambassador’s stern gaze and unspoken condemnation rested on Sir Thomas. Unfairly perhaps, the ambassador considered the lord’s behavior, specifically when confronting a certain kind of woman, a principal reason that the Crown had no foothold in some important German seaports.
Perhaps Sir Thomas had let the ball drop ocassionally, but he maintained his desire to participate in the game. The evening before him held out the prospect of a tantalizing reunion. Young Jennie! Curiosity about her development during the seven years since their last encounter consumed Sir Thomas Bellingham. He took one last drink and wondered vaguely if Vogl would be there.
“Vot Ya,” Pyotr Dmitrivitch Tagili sighed and adjusted his green sash studded with medals he had manufactured himself—a costume piece, to be sure. He needed it to provide sufficient cachet to his imposture. He felt it was sufficient. Not bad for an itinerant clerk who, until a few weeks prior, had been staring at his last kopek.
Tagili, the son of a serf, was an opportunist. At the age of five he taught himself to cipher by studying papers left on a writing table by the land-owner’s son and parlayed this ability into ways to spare himself from field work.
From his perch behind desks, Tagili developed a shrewd understanding of others’ careless ignorance and relied on it to make his way in the world. For forty-two years he bluffed his way around the Tsar’s dominion and beyond, serving various landowners and their offspring in various capacities, always willing to change his allegiance to whoever offered him the most reward. This policy enabled Tagili to see large swaths of society but had also brought him his share of vicissitudes. He knew destitution as well as times of relative comfort.
This time he hoped to arrive in the realm of the well-to-do with the wherewithal to remain there permanently. He had no master to assuage, no associate to circumvent. He stood alone in his assumed stature of exclusive representative of vast mineral rights.
Five weeks earlier, he had been transcribing accounts in a dingy office in Cherdyn. Among the papers that passed through his hands was a geological report mentioning the discovery of vast deposits of a mineral thought “very rare.” Tagili pocketed the report (along with a tidy portion of the payroll funds he was asked to register) and, as far as his mining company was concerned, disappeared.
He didn’t fully understand the value of his holdings, but he knew where to take them—Vienna. He had observed first hand just how much one could accomplish there.
As soon as he arrived in the city, Tagili sought out old associates. He stopped searching the minute he found out that Princess Eugénie was still active. He went straight to her new address, and, though he left no card, had no formal means of introduction, he was given instructions regarding when and how he would be admitted. Eugénie remembered him.
He marveled at how well the “princess” (now Countess) had fared since the mad days of the Congress of Vienna. Tagili then had been a virtually anonymous attaché with a large military delegation from his homeland hoping to recover something after the downfall of the hated Bonaparte. Because of his access to certain strategic calculations, the princess approached him, and the two soon discovered a sort of spiritual kinship as they casually outmaneuvered aristocrats who had power to wield, but lacked the brains to wield it.
In her he found an ally both powerful and cunning. They were never personally close—their business relationship depended on keeping their association secret. Further intimacy had been hindered by a language barrier, among other things—but from the princess, Tagili learned a smattering of German and witnessed first hand the difference between someone like him, who schemed merely to remain alive, and someone who schemed her way into the highest ranks.
Thus it was straight to Eugénie that Tagili came with his stolen maps and unsigned contracts featuring the word “platinum.” It was she who directed him to the British—the people least likely to question his authority as a Russian negotiator. All Tagili had to do was keep to himself and hide behind his limited knowledge of English. The plan was working perfectly.
If all went well at the gathering, Countess Eugénie would snare a buyer for his papers, and arrange for him to receive the first installment of the proceeds. He would then be a wealthy man. By the time his fraud was discovered, Tagili, a talented escape artist in his way, would be long gone.
He had no illusions. However much he benefited from the evening’s machinations, Eugénie stood to gain exponentially more. Perhaps before he left Vienna, he could persuade her to grant him a larger percentage of the proceeds. Time would tell. Now he needed to join his British host-captors and travel to the soirée. Making sure that the latch of his third-storey window had not been repaired since he dismantled it that morning, Tagili left his room, accepted the two elegant military attachés waiting to escort him, and descended the stairs.
Eugenie von Nuelinger stood at the top of the main staircase surveying the field of the evening’s upcoming battles. The wheels had been set in motion. All is ready, she assured herself. The tasteful mansion is immaculate, inside and out. The rooms to be employed are properly decorated; the right food and wines are plentifully supplied. Everyone important would soon be there. She had prepared an appropriately elegant soirée. It was time for it to provide her with her next victory.
The reflection in the mirror nodded approval. All was prepared for either a delightful evening of conviviality and music or potentially, the hostess’s final tribunal.
The fall of Eugénie von Neulinger would cause pain no doubt. Arguably, her friends would bear the loss better than her enemies. Love her or hate her, Eugénie excited the passions, provoking people to act. Her past provocations led people to folly or worse, humiliation. Friends, such as Vogl, had kept their sanity by keeping their distance. More vital passions such as the desire for revenge kept her enemies alive.
But there must be a limit to her influence. The shameful acts currently in motion might have strayed beyond all bounds. If so, they must be stopped. Yet, such a venture is risky and the night is young. All might yet be well.
All props are in place: the furniture, the food, the drink, the metaphorical Sword of Damocles. Eugénie might recognize it, might ignore it, might avoid it, or might bring its wrath down upon her.
A gloved hand at the door, A deep breath. An acknowledgement that the countess’s fate rests in her own hands. Let the festivities commence!
Chapter Nine
With understated pageantry the soirée began. How different from 1815. During the Congress of Vienna, ostentation bespoke power. The new decade’s game was to show just enough—a bracelet, a necklace, a jewel on a watch-fob—to prove one understood aristocracy. No longer was it appropriat
e to outdo the hosts in dress or bearing. In the uncertain times of 1815, today’s prince became tomorrow’s outcast. One made one’s way by capturing the attention of others. By 1822, order prevailed and demanded respect. The art of social survival was to come close to one’s hosts without threatening the existing social hierarchy.
In this regard at least, the von Neulingers put their guests at ease. Georg in uniform looked as dashing as anyone in the room, and Eugénie, a great natural beauty still, even without excessive adornment, dazzled. Their son Heinrich, although too young to boast many badges of success, stood tall with his father and step-mother. The pearl stick-pin in his cravat provided a perfect touch of superiority over other men of his generation.
Vogl’s early arrival caused little concern. By rights he should have arrived after the insignificant guests, the clerks and similar petty bourgeois and their wives, upon whose happiness the harmonious functioning of the government depended. Vogl ranked among the city’s most celebrated artists. He belonged in the next wave, with merchants and ministers, before the full-blooded aristocrats. These arrived whenever they chose and often timed their arrivals to be as disruptive as possible.
This evening, however, not even a prince of the blood dared arrive more than forty-five minutes after his invited time, not because of the count’s name or rank, or because the line of his ancestors was venerably long, but because Georg von Neulinger served Baron Hager. Hager guaranteed the maintenance of public order. He performed with such skillful and dedicated ruthlessness that he was the most feared man in Vienna. His network of spies, real and rumored, was so powerful that people avoided Hager’s attention at all costs. The merest breath of disloyalty to his wishes entailed grave consequences. Hager liked all things to run on time. Though Hager himself had no plans to attend, his minions were everywhere.
In any event, Eugénie covered Vogl’s potential affront to etiquette by introducing him as “a dear family friend.” Such a sop-to-the-gossips made little difference. The place of artists was the one article in the prevailing social code that was not completely ossified. Unestablished performers like Schubert were treated like servants, but established personages like Vogl were in great demand. They were entitled to large audiences pre-gathered anywhere they were invited.
Foregoing his right to an audience, Vogl stood next to Heinrich von Neulinger, exchanging unheard pleasantries with a procession of the city’s most prominent denizens, and a handful of foreign guests. Vogl accepted this fatiguing chore happily, welcoming the opportunity to learn who was ascending and who was plummeting through Viennese society.
Most of the guests knew Vogl, at least by sight. Some even numbered among his friends. Almost all members of the minor orders visited the theater occasionally, and Vogl had maintained a virtually constant presence on the boards for more than a decade. Ministers and aristocrats, to the chagrin of some of them, knew Vogl because of their acquaintance with the countess. Indeed, Vogl was surprised that some of the guests ventured to appear at all. Straight-faced, Vogl received at least three of Eugénie’s reputed former lovers, accompanied by their apparently unsuspecting, or perhaps merely complaisant, wives. Eugénie’s value as a social ally remained inestimable.
Some of the guests were true enemies. Countess Zdenka Merlinbeck for one. Her ascendance to social prominence followed a trajectory similar to Eugénie’s, albeit usually in her shadow. Merlinbeck once wielded significant power in the Austrian foreign office, power that reached its zenith when Eugénie befriended him. He married Zdenka only after Eugénie cast him off, just before Georg von Neulinger wrested the job with Baron Hager from Merlinbeck’s grasp. Now Merlinbeck, well out of the limelight, showed his demotion in his bearing. Von Neulinger maintained his military posture; Merlinbeck looked jowly. Georg spoke with increased authority; Merlinbeck became an inconsequential mumbler.
Merlinbeck’s wife Zdenka, however, had lost none of her fire; she sizzled with thwarted ambition. This evening, audaciously she came, escorted by two men in addition to her husband. Vogl admired her shrewdness. A single foreign escort might be dismissed as a lover, but the second German made this thought untenable. In any event, these two, with their unkempt beards and clothes so nondescript they bordered on the shabby, were unlikely candidates for romantic entanglement with the exotic, intoxicating Zdenka.
Zdenka introduced her Germans as Herr Instructor Himmelfarb and Herr Professor Barenberg, and offered no further explanation. Vogl watched Zdenka hold her host’s hand for an unexpectedly long time before turning to the countess, and saying a little too loudly, “My dear Eugénie, ravaging as ever! Forgive me … ravishing!”
“Good evening, Frau Merlinbeck,” Eugénie responded coolly. The ladies rested their fingertips on each other’s shoulders and kissed the air a small but noticeable distance from each other’s cheeks, parodying the manner of old friends.
Vogl next overheard Zdenka comment to her husband, “Of course I didn’t insult her, Carl. It was an old joke we shared from our time backstage.”
“Zdenka reached the peak of her powers as a chorus girl,” said Eugénie, somewhat less volubly to her husband. “She was well known to the men of Vienna.”
Though smiles punctuated this exchange, neither woman put forth significant effort to disguise their mutual enmity.
During the pre-concert reception Vogl experienced precisely three awkward moments. The first came when Diederich announced the entrance of Fraülein Schikaneder escorted by Herr Schober. To circumvent potential scandal mongers, Vogl wanted to treat Kunegunde as a total stranger, but she, all enthusiasm, said, “Herr Vogl, you told me this would be a grand occasion, but I never imagined how grand. The countess is even more beautiful than your description. How can I thank you enough?”
Fortunately, she and Schober were among the first guests to enter, so few people saw this exchange. Watching her stand by Schober for the next half-hour was unpleasant, but Vogl was powerless to intercede.
The next awkward moment made Vogl angry with himself. The arrival of Thomas, Lord Bellingham induced spasms of jealousy. Bellingham! The very man who escorted Eugénie from the theater and out of Vogl’s sphere that horrible night in September 1815. As in the past, Bellingham came with the entourage of the English ambassador. He looked older and stouter but no less resplendent in his evening clothes. Bellingham’s time with Eugénie in the old days was short. He soon surfaced among the multitude cast aside in favor of more promising prospects, but he had been first after Vogl. Irrationally, Vogl still blamed him for the destruction of his doomed relationship. How dare he return to Vienna? Did he hope to re-establish his ties to Eugénie? Unthinkable.
Vogl received no enlightenment from the correct, formal way Lord Bellingham and the countess exchanged greetings, or from the bow Bellingham gave him. Internally, he foundered between his memory and his imagination. Nonetheless, Vogl stammered in decent English and without noticeable anguish, “I am honored to see you again, Viscount.”
Another member of the British ambassador’s retinue captured Vogl’s attention because he was not British. Indeed, he wore an odd suit in the pale blue color and cut of a military uniform, which it wasn’t. An outrageous green sash displayed odd metallic studs that lacked the ribbons and insignia commonly found on medals. A complete absence of any facial hair, except for whiskers cut back so that they ended, absurdly, at the base of the man’s ears, made him seem uncivilized. In 1815, such people were ubiquitous; this man clearly came from that dying breed. He seemed unembarrassed and unimpressed, standing out among the more proper guests. He was announced as Peter Tagly, but when he introduced himself to Vogl directly, with a bow too deep for the occasion and an inappropriate clicking of the heels, he identified himself loudly as Pyotr Dmitrovitch Tagili. A Russian. That explained a great deal about the person, but not about his presence.
The final awkwardness came with the appearance of Captain August Millstein and his buxom wife Annie. They arrived late, although they were not highly ranked among ar
istocrats. They weren’t aristocrats at all. Annie was often called “the farmwife” behind her back. Millstein, however, was almost always seen standing on Baron Hager’s right side on public occasions. It was said that Millstein’s proximity to power proved that he almost instinctively understood all of his master’s wishes, particularly the unsavory, deadly ones.
Yet Vogl felt more than the instinctive chill produced in the room by the presence of a man who might possibly hold all the revelers’ lives in his hands. It was the realization that many of Hager’s associates could be spotted. The footman in the English ambassador’s retinue looked familiar. Vogl remembered seeing him, or someone uncannily like him, frequenting a bookshop outside of which “a terrible, fatal accident” once befell an outspoken opponent of Metternich. Several of the guests were introduced as clerks; yet these minor clerks did not carry themselves like clerks. Were they officers incognito? Even some of the women, presented as clerks’ wives, took on sinister aspects. Vogl, with a shudder, recalled a metal glint coming from beneath the shoulder straps of one of the gowns. How many clerks’ wives chose to carry concealed daggers?
“Herr Vogl, I have longed to tell you how much the Captain and I enjoyed you in Figaro last season.”
Vogl emerged from his fog long enough to say, “You are too kind, Madame Millstein.” Then, with great relief, Vogl detached himself from the line of hosts to locate Schubert. He fervently hoped that the night held only musical adventures in store.
Vogl knew where to find Schubert—in an underpopulated corner of the room far removed from the social center. At first he saw the back of Schober’s head. Working his way across the room, he next saw the lustrous red hair framing the flushed, animated face of Fraülein Rosa, who faced the room with unmasked awe. His search ended when he heard the composer say, “No more for me, Franz, I have to play.”
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