Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  At last, the Pierce-Arrow sped through the gates of a Schloss, on the outskirts of Hamburg, and drew to a halt beside a row of wind-blown poplars. The Schloss itself was grey, sombre, and majestic, a North German castle built in the style of Hermann and Siegfried. Franzi opened the door of the motor-car for them, and they alighted on to a gravelled drive.

  With theatrically excellent timing, a tall man burst out of the front doors of the Schloss and came cantering down the semi-circular steps. His descent was wildly accelerated by five beige-coloured hounds whose leashes he was gripping in one white-gloved hand. Although Effie didn’t know this until later, he was dressed in the uniform of a captain of the Liebhusaren of 1815, the 1st Regiment of Prussian Hussars who had fought for Blücher at Waterloo – a dark blue frogged jacket with a red and yellow belt, a fur-collared pelisse slung over his left shoulder, and high black boots with silver spurs.

  The dogs panted and snuffled and strained madly at their leads, their feet sliding sideways in the gravel. But the man managed to tug them around to the motor-car, ‘Hier, Albrecht! Hier, Wagner!’ and to shout to Effie and her party at the top of his voice ‘Welcome to Castle Ahlbeck! Welcome!’

  Effie said, ‘Thank you,’ in a slightly amused voice. Franzi said, ‘Give me the dogs, sir,’ and made a considerable business of gathering up all the leashes. Then he loyally allowed himself to be tugged off by the five enthusiastic hounds to the far side of the Schloss, where there was a breezy grove of lindens, and an orchard, and long wet grass where, presumably, chaseable hares might be hiding.

  The tall man stepped forward now, bowed briskly, took Effie’s hand, and kissed it. ‘I am Karl van Ahlbeck! I am so delighted that you could come. You must consider my home to be yours.’

  In spite of his archaic fairytale uniform, or perhaps because of it, the Count von Ahlbeck looked both good-humoured and sensitive. He had a thin, long, intelligent face, with eyes that were as concentratedly brown as the head-feathers of a jaegar. His dark brown hair was cropped very short, but even when it was short it was attractively wayward, and he had a habit of pushing his hand through his hair to try to tidy it. He must have been thirty-five or thirty-six, Effie calculated, mostly by taking a mean between his boyish looks and energy, and the seriousness and formality of his behaviour.

  The dogs always want to greet anybody new,’ said the count. They have to have their little burst of hysteria, and chase the rabbits around, and drag poor Franzi through the mud. But after that, they will settle down.’

  They’re most unusual,’ said Effie. ‘And what a beautiful sandy colour they are.’

  ‘Ah, we call them pink,’ smiled the count. He offered her the crook of his arm, and led her towards the steps of the Schloss. They are Weimaraners, one of the most intelligent and loyal of breeds. Courageous, too. They have heart, and I always like my dogs to have heart.’

  He guided Effie through the massive oak doors into a galleried hallway with walls that were lined with hugh oil paintings of hunting scenes on the North German heathlands, and thicketed, right to the ceiling, with the horns of deer. There were dozens of pikes and swords and muskets hung up everywhere, and even the chandelier that was suspended on chains from the ceiling was made out of the wheel of a gun-carriage. There was a strong smell of dust, and dead hides, and wood-smoke.

  ‘I hope you don’t find this castle too gloomy,’ smiled Karl von Ahlbeck, his voice echoing around the hall. ‘It was built by my great-great-grandfather, as a place to display his hunting trophies, and to entertain his hunting and gambling friends. I don’t think he even allowed my great-great-grandmother through the front gates. That is why the place lacks the feminine touch. Well, it did, until you arrived, Miss Watson. I can see that the premises are considerably enhanced already.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Effie, a little unsurely.

  There was an echoing slam, and a hefty German woman appeared from a doorway at the far end of the hall, a massive-busted Valkyrie with her blonde hair tightly plaited into loops and rings, she was dressed in a voluminous black gown and a white lace apron, with a complicated white lace bonnet to match. Karl von Ahlbeck nodded, and said, This is Cecilie. Cecilie, you must come and greet Miss Watson! Cecilie will take care of you, and your servants, and provide you with anything you desire.’

  Cecilie curtseyed, as Mr Niblets was later to remark, like an elephant falling through the roof of a black circus tent. Karl von Ahlbeck said, ‘Cecilie speaks no English, I regret, but if you have any difficulty Franzi will help with translation.’

  Cecilie said, ‘Ihr Zimmer ist fertig, Fräulein Watson,’ and beamed with such Teutonic good-heartedness that Effie could do nothing but say, ‘Oh. Good.’

  The count gave Effie an hour to unpack and change before dinner. The room he had allocated her was enormous, its walls panelled in light oak and hung with tapestries, its windows overlooking the windy winter countryside towards Schwarzenbeck and Büchen. At one end of the room was a gigantic carved fireplace, bulging with oaken grapes and vine-leaves, and flanked and mounted by gilded huntresses in rippling robes. The grate was stacked with five or six hardwood logs, which crackled and burned with cheerful ferocity. At the other end of the room stood Effie’s bed, pillared in mahogany and draped in folds and folds of pictorial tapestries, on a theme which Effie could only interpret as a riotous but apparently futile medieval pig-sticking expedition. By the bed, on a carved chest which could have accommodated twenty small boys in a game of sardines, the Count von Ahlbeck had left for Effie a solid-silver box of pretty scented handkerchiefs, a dish of frosted peppermints by Horb & Ochsen of Berlin, and a slim leather-bound book of the poems of Theodor Storm. ‘Die grave Stadt, am graven Meer …’

  Tessie came bustling through the connecting door from her own bedroom, and said, ‘I’ve drawn your bath, Miss Watson. It’s an awful large bath, though! Almost as big as the ship we came on.’

  In the white-tiled, Byzantine bathroom, in a Brobdignagian tub, Effie was soaped by Tessie with cologne soaps by Farina Gegenüber; and as Tessie washed steaming hot water over her neck and her shoulders, she sang mock-opera at the top of her voice. ‘Il mio pensier … il mio pensier … ah … ah … ah … ah … aaaaAAAAAAHHHHH!’

  There was a hasty knocking a the bathroom door. It was Franzi. He said, The count said he had heard screaming. Is everything well, Miss Watson?’

  Effie dried herself in front of the fire in a warm Turkish towel the size of a bedsheet. Tessie laid out her clothes, a slim evening dress by Poiret in rust and cream, with a fur-trimed collar, and a rust silk-bow under the bustline. It had arrived from Paris only two days before she had left for Hamburg, and was still wrapped in tissue in its original box.

  While Tessie brushed her hair, Effie sat looking out of the windows of her room, towards the east. The snow had started again, falling pell-mell all over the sloping grounds of the Schloss von Ahlbeck, and blotting out the surrounding horizons of trees and heathlands. On either side of Effie’s window, the spires and turrets and balconies of the castle rose through the snow like an enchanted palace out of an early nineteenth-century fantasy, the kind of building where Rapunzel might have been imprisoned, or the Sleeping Beauty might have sighed away her years in the bewitched warmth of her bed, while outside the snow tumbled on to the battlements and the thorns grew thicker still.

  At seven o’clock, Franzi came to escort Effie down to dinner. Mr Niblets was already with him, stiff and uncomfortable in a grey suit that was as tight for him as his overcoat had been saggy. Tessie, of course, would be fed in the kitchen with Cecilie and the rest of the servants. Franzi said, ‘I trust you like your accommodation, Miss Watson.’

  ‘It’s very desirable, thank you,’ said Effie. ‘I feel as if I’m on the brink of the world.’

  ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, you are,’ said Franzi. ‘To the west is Lower Saxony, and northern Holland, and then the North Sea which will take you home to Scotland. To the east, you can see Schleswig-Holstein, and the Mecklenbu
rg, and then beyond that Pomerania, and Poland, and finally the wide freezing marshes of Russia. Yes, you are on the brink of the world!’

  Dinner had been laid out in the library, on a long oak table, beside a gently slumbering log fire. There was a silver tureen of fresh chicken and artichoke soup, crackling brown pig’s knuckles, smoked venison, caviare, red cabbage, and cheese. Karl von Ahlbeck had changed into a dinner-suit, with a white gates-ajar collar and a silk bow-tie. Effie thought, as he escorted her to her chair at the opposite end of the table, that he was almost too Byronesque to be true.

  ‘You have no idea how much pleasure your visit gives me,’ he said, as his whiskery servant filled his plate with soup. ‘The banking business is very dangerous but also very dreary at the moment. I usually have to deal with ranting nationalists or oily little Jews. I am not prejudiced against either one of them but I can assure you that they are equally tedious. Your visit has come like a ray of sunshine.’

  ‘I’m sorry that it has to be a business meeting,’ said Effie.

  Karl tore at his bread, and shrugged. ‘It can’t be helped. You and I are both bankers. We have to serve the world, just as much as the world serves us.’

  ‘That is the first time that a man has actually called me a banker,’ said Effie.

  Karl glanced up, chewing. ‘Well, isn’t it true?’ he asked her. ‘Your brother Robert said that I could do business with you. It’s bank business; therefore, to me you are a banker.’

  ‘I’m also a woman.’

  ‘Does that matter? What does it feel like to you, inside yourself? Do you feel you are any less of a banker because you are a woman?’

  Effie sipped her soup, and then laid down her spoon. ‘It’s most unusual of you to take this attitude. Most of the time, I’m treated with a great deal of suspicion. Very few men can understand how a woman can have a grasp of finance; and those who can understand it feel that I shouldn’t be doing it. I think they feel that it emasculates them, somehow – particularly if I happen to know more than they do.’

  Karl said, ‘Of course. You’ll have that reaction from almost every man.

  ‘But not from you?’

  ‘Sometimes. I’m a man in a man’s world. I expect a lady to behave like a lady, and I expect to treat her like a lady. No matter how clever you may be at your business, Miss Watson, you will never find me permitting you to go into dinner on your own, or opening a door for yourself. It is not my way. But, if you are clever with money, if you have a talent for business, then it would be both absurd and Pronkvoll of me not to recognise it, and to dismiss you as a flibbertigibbet simply because you are very pretty and wear a dress. Trousers are not a prerequisite for a skilful banker.’

  Mr Niblets let out a snickering laugh. Effie frowned at him, and he went pink, and cleared his throat, and applied himself conscientiously to his soup. Karl von Ahlbeck smiled at her, his brown eyes sparkling in the light from the candles on the table, and said, ‘I’m sorry if my English is amusing.’

  ‘There is nothing wrong with your English, count,’ said Effie. ‘It is better than the English of most Englishmen. I just think that Mr Niblets is over-sensitive to wit.’

  Karl said, ‘You are not as I had imagined you, you know.’

  ‘How did you imagine me?’ asked Effie.

  ‘I’m not sure now. The reality has already effaced the fantasy. But I believe I imagined you were going to be sterner … not so gentle. You are a true lady, and I suppose I thought that a woman who had decided to work as a banker must somehow be … tough, perhaps, as the Americans say.’

  Do you deal with Americans often?’ Effie inquired. The old whiskery servant poured her another glass of Schloss Vollrad, a dry and stylish riesling from the Rheingau. The fire lurched and showered sparks.

  ‘I deal with everyone and anyone,’ said Karl. ‘But, yes, I spend at least two months of every year in America. For this Turkish proposition I have been talking to Citibank and Morgan and Chase, among others, although I have finally made a satisfactory arrangement with the Baeklander Trust.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Effie, suddenly alert. ‘I thought it was entirely between Watson’s and the Deutsche Kredit-bank, and nobody else.’

  ‘My dear Effie, the Turks have been asking for something more than £20 million. If your brother Robert and I were to try to stump up money of that order, it would probably break us. But with a triumvirate of banks – Wastson’s, Baeklander, and Deutsche Kredit, we should be able to meet their needs – and eventually win ourselves back the highest of returns. It’s potentially a marvellous opportunity. It has its risks, of course, as all large loans must do. Look what happened to Barings when they tried to get involved in Argentina. But the three of us can give each other strength. Provided we remain completely loyal to each other – all for one and one for all, like The Three Musketeers – then we are cast-iron. Each of us can individually stand to lose £6.6 million, at a sharp pinch, but if only one bank out of the three were to pull out, and leave the other two to stand the losses, it would be disaster. Ten million would cripple Baeklander’s, and it would cripple me, and it would certainly cripple Watson’s. That’s why you are here today, Miss Watson: to assure me that Watson’s are completely committed to this loan, and to make me feel confident that Robert will honour her triumvirate no matter what the circumstances.’

  Effie looked at Mr Niblets. He had finished his soup, and was blinking from Effie to Karl as if he were watching a badminton tournament. Effie said, ‘Mr Niblets, did you know about Baeklander’s being involved in this?

  Mr Niblets solemnly shook his head.

  ‘Count von Ahlbeck,’ said Effie, ‘with whom did you do business at Baeklander’s? It wasn’t my brother Dougal Watson by any chance?’

  Karl von Ahlbeck shook his head. ‘Are you suspicious of your brothers? No, it wasn’t Dougal, although I did meet him briefly the last time I visited New York. He’s like you, isn’t he? Very like. But, no, I did business with Henry Baeklander himself. We’ve been friends for five or six years, ever since my father died, and I took over the bank myself.’

  He pushed back his chair, stood up, and walked around the table to stand next to Effie with his hands behind his back, his face serious and intent. ‘You know something, Miss Watson, we are in a frightening world. Yes, it’s true. The Kaiser may be Queen Victoria’s grandson, but he is desperate to widen the German Empire. To widen it, and also to pinion it. At the moment, as you know, our possessions are scattered insecurely across both sides of Africa, across a few Pacific islands, and around the China coast, and the only way in which we can safely hold them together is by patrolling the seas with our battle-cruisers, like the Scharnhorst, and the Gneisenau. We are insecure, as a fledgling empire, and so we have to be aggressive, and expansionist, and alarm people!

  ‘Of course, the British navy has responded to the strengthening of the German navy in kind. All those dread-nought battleships you have built! All those cruisers and torpedo-boats and submarines! We are racing each other at breakneck speed to build up the greatest national armories that the world has ever known. Our factories are turning out battleships and ammunition at full capacity. We sit here drinking fine wine. We laugh, and joke, and go hunting. In England, you have your regattas and your croquet. But both of our countries are hurrying inevitably towards war. Hurrying, rushing! That is, unless the banks can prevent it.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Effie. ‘How can the banks prevent war if war is inevitable?’

  ‘The banks can prevent war by demonstrating to the politicians that true prosperity comes through a worldwide alliance of capital. Think of this deal we are doing now – Germany, Britain, and America joined as one, to assist Turkey. The results will benefit Turkey, but they also benefit everyone else. The same kind of deal can be done to assist any country which seeks financial benefit. The alliances of the future will be based on the pound and the mark and the dollar, not on military strategy and political aggression. If this Turk
ish arrangement goes through satisfactorily, it will be a convincing demonstration to the Kaiser that capital can overcome national considerations; that the banks can be regarded as a kind of international super-government whose only commitment is to profit and to human welfare. He will understand that the German Empire can be strengthened without war.’

  Effie said, ‘Do you mean to say that the Kaiser actually knows about this arrangement?’

  ‘Of course, I talked to him in Berlin last week. He is awaiting the outcome of it with as much interest as anyone. If a British bank and an American bank are prepared wholeheartedly to support German interests in Turkey, then he will understandably feel much more secure, and less inclined to go to war to achieve his aims.’

  Effie didn’t quite know what to say. Robert had told her nothing of this before she left Scotland. She had assumed, as most people in Britain assumed, that the system of treaties and alliances which existed in Europe were sufficient to maintain at least a temporary peace. Britain was allied with France and Russia. Germany was allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy, and had been perservering in her attempts to woo the Ottoman Empire for years. The balance was uneasy, of course, but it was still a balance.

  Now Karl von Ahlbeck was telling her that unless she settled this arrangement between Watson’s and Baeklander’s and the Deutsche Kreditbank, there might very well be war.

  Karl sat down again. ‘I want to be truthful with you, Miss Watson,’ he said. ‘And this is the last serious thing I shall say all evening. Watson’s was the only British bank which I could persuade to enter into this arrangement, and to be perfectly honest I am still unsure that your brother Robert will keep his word to me. I need you to convince me that it will be safe to go ahead.’