Castle Rouge

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “That is certainly an ambiguous invitation.”

  “Oh, that is just the way they talk in the newspaper business. Most roundabout. The very next day I put on my best outfit, a chic little fur turban and a long, black, Russian silk cloak, and went to The Pittsburg Dispatch offices.”

  Irene had launched me on recollecting a key moment of my past. I could feel myself reverting to a raw, idealistic girl of twenty. Propelled by indignation, I had stood up in court at an early age to swear an oath and accuse my stepfather of brutality toward my mother in a shocking divorce action that saw me declared a “ward of the Armstrong County Court.” Yet six years afterward, it was still hard to stand up for myself to The Pittsburg Dispatch.

  “My, it was a big building. I had to walk up four floors to the editor’s office and was so out of breath when I got there I could only whisper. The newspaper office was large and filled with men in shirtsleeves and eyeshades, all busy about their tasks, all too important to cast me a glance or ask my business.

  “That very girl-blindness saw me unchallenged right to the office of the editor himself, Mr. Madden.

  “The office boy pointed out Mr. Madden, who was only a few feet away. I was so relieved I said, having regained my voice, ‘Oh, I expected to see an old, cross man!’”

  Irene laughed so hard and long that I couldn’t continue my account and fretted while she indulged herself. “Unintended flattery is always the best,” she finally sputtered out. “Do go on.”

  “Was he surprised to see me! But he called me ‘Miss’ and bade me sit down and asked me about my letter and my family and all. I spoke right up and told him how I had been supporting my mother and me. Why come all this way and not?

  “Well, Mr Madden was quite a jolly young man, and he asked me to submit an article on ‘The Woman’s Sphere.’ Of course I did. After that he asked me to do another article and what topic would I like? So I said, ‘Divorce.’”

  “You did not take the safe route even from the beginning.”

  “Not talking about divorce seemed more dangerous than talking about it, especially since my mother’s was one of only fifteen divorce cases in Armstrong County that year and only one of five brought by the wife.”

  “So an angry letter launched your career.”

  “No, a silly, wrongheaded column did. And I must say that Mr. Madden was ever so helpful to me, and even Mr. Erasmus Wilson, who was indeed an old man but not at all cross despite my taking issue with his column, for he was the ‘Quiet Observer’ and always very kind to me in person.”

  I paused, and had to add in all honesty, “Though they both said my style was poor and I could not write.”

  Here Irene shook her head. “The men are ‘generous’ enough to ‘let’ you do the work but must console themselves that you are not very good at it. Hmmm. It strikes me that your forthright writing style suits your subjects far better than their orotund pronouncements, from what you’ve quoted of them, and that you have indeed ‘conferred a favor’ on the journalism profession by joining it so energetically.”

  Her unexpected praise made me live up to my name again and blush like a stove, cherry-hot. I forgot my growing impatience with her indirect way of approaching puzzles, for I saw that she understood what I had been through to get where I am and that it took constant thought and struggle.

  Quentin Stanhope was not the only one sending cables from the station. I “paid” for my secret absence by sending stories back to the New York World, anonymous tidbits of my brief time in a maison de rendezvous, including chatty reports of Buffalo Bill’s encounter with the Prince of Wales and Sarah Bernhardt’s tea with the Baron de Rothschild and Bertie as well. I did not mention the hostess or purpose behind these last gossipy items, nor did I tell my bosses what story I was really pursuing, only that it would be a real “corker” if I could get it.

  With that fact preying on my mind, I glanced out the train window, surprised to see red tile roofs making a small mountain range below us.

  “The City of a Hundred Spires,” Irene said, her voice hushed.

  I did indeed spy several spires thrusting like decorative thorns from the lower ridges of the red roofs.

  “The last city in which I performed grand opera,” she added, her tone so low that it took me a moment to interpret the words. “A city I last visited with Nell and Godfrey.” These words were a whisper I had to lean nearly cheek to cheek with her to hear.

  She roused from the reverie with a sudden shake of her head, as if throwing off cobwebs of paralyzing memory.

  I jerked away, feeling I had crossed a forbidden threshold.

  “Prague,” she informed me in her ordinary, dispassionate voice, indeed a lecturer’s tone, “is the most interesting city in Europe. It is, in fact, the very navel of Europe, sitting as it does at the exact center of the continent.”

  “I have not heard much of it,” said I.

  She smiled at me, with pity. “I can’t decide whether Prague is blessed in that its virtues are hidden, or cursed in that the world so underestimates it and its people.”

  “Who are its people?”

  “Who indeed? The city is built on five hills and at the juncture of several races and three great world religions: Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. I list them in the order of their appearance on the world stage, so as not to play favorites.”

  “Isn’t Prague just a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire now?”

  “That is politics. I am talking about the soul of the city. You will see, when you have spent some time here.”

  “How much time are we to spend here? Don’t we need to catch up with Jack the Ripper quickly? If he has in fact come this way, which I don’t think is very likely.”

  “You can’t anticipate where someone will go unless you know where he has been.”

  “And you think Jack the Ripper has been in Prague? Just because Godfrey mentioned a brutally murdered girl in his letter? There are brutally murdered girls to be found the world over and most are not victims of Saucy Jack. Some say he has escaped to America. I’d be better off on home ground, chasing rumors, or in London, annoying Sherlock Holmes, than accompanying you on a pilgrimage to the scenes of your earlier triumphs and tender memories.”

  “Rumors don’t make for sensational revelations on the grand scale required by a daredevil reporter,” she said coldly. “And Sherlock Holmes will do more than express irritation if you interfere with his new investigations in Whitechapel.”

  “You overheard his last admonitions to me in the Paris hotel room,” I accused.

  “Is that a crime?”

  “You were…demolished at that time, in despair.”

  “I still had ears, and will use them.”

  “You said you would use me, whether I would or not. How?”

  She sighed. “I have become used to a companion, a wall off which my speculations can ricochet, even if it is a crooked wall. There would be much you could learn on this journey if you would be less impatient and more trusting.”

  “Patience and trust have gotten my kind nothing but abuse.”

  “And what is your kind?”

  “Female.”

  She shrugged, not arguing.

  “Here,” she said, “is my case for this journey. Red Tomahawk followed the Gypsy caravan east. The party then switched to a train from there. Going east. The party’s belongings were bulky enough to require passage in the baggage car. A girl was murdered near Neunkirchen, with similar wounds to the women in Paris.”

  “But…such travels do not seem the work of one man. Jack the Ripper was a single phenomenon.”

  “Was he?”

  “You’re saying the mad members of that strange cult killed the women in London? That it was a communal crime?”

  “Yes and no. I’m not sure yet, but I am certain that Prague is a key element in the puzzle. Godfrey was lured from this city into…what, we don’t know yet. Our prey in Paris scattered and yet headed in this direction.”

 
; “So Sherlock Holmes is wasting his time in London?”

  “I sincerely hope not. In fact, I am counting on him not wasting his time. I doubt that he permits that, anyway.”

  “Then why not join forces with him?”

  “Who says that I have not?”

  “But…he has no notion of it.”

  “Sometimes the best ally is the one who thinks he is completely independent.”

  “You speak in riddles and contradictions, like the Sphinx!”

  “The Sphinx. Part feline, part female. I am not offended.”

  “Will you ever be frank and open with me?”

  “When you are so with me.”

  “Oh! You are impossible.”

  “Thank you. Now that you have expressed your frustrations, would you like to meet the King and Queen of Bohemia?”

  “Really? The top royals? I could get quite a nice face-saving item from that and buy myself a bit more time to practice your ‘patience and trust.’ Will I have an exclusive interview? And do we have time to spare for a society-page jaunt?”

  “We can’t afford not to.”

  Why was I not surprised at the Prague station that our train was greeted by a brass band and a set of toy-kingdom soldiers in uniforms that made Quentin Stanhope’s quaint coat of many nations look restrained? In fact, I expected him to be lurking among the local color guard but couldn’t detect him.

  In moments we were escorted into a true Cinderella carriage—six white horses and four big gilded wheels. Then we were driven through the city streets past the populace’s wondering glances and up a steep road to a huge castle on a hill, from which protruded, of course, a quiver of truly towering spires.

  “The towers belong to St. Vitus Cathedral and a few other ancient churches that share the prominence with Prague Castle,” Irene said, still serving as travel guide.

  It was hard to tell what was wall and fortification and what castle or cathedral or palace. Irene told me that many buildings made up this man-made cliff-face of architecture dating back to the sixteenth century and as early as the tenth, although a great fire had destroyed almost all of the oldest sections four hundred years earlier.

  I was indeed impressed by this massive fortress on a hill…really, half a city by itself.

  Liveried footmen saw to our descent from Cinderella’s former pumpkin in Hradany Square and escorted us through the wrought-iron gates of two courtyards, one magnificent and filled with marching guards in uniforms that further paupered Quentin’s fanciful improvisation, the other modest and therefore older. A third courtyard confronted our party with the St. Vitus Cathedral.

  I say “confronted” because this enormous, towering stone edifice bristles with a lacework of decorative splendor in gilded wrought iron and stained glass and mosaics.

  By the time we had tramped past a fountain and up a flight of stairs into the castle proper, I felt like a girl who had gotten too much rich candy from Valentine’s Day admirers.

  Our footsteps echoed through rooms of marble and rare woods and gilt as we passed into an enormous chamber lined with forty-foot-tall pillars that dwarfed the furnishings of innumerable sofas and tables and chairs. It was even more lavish than the grande promenade room for the girls at the maison de rendezvous in Paris. The comparison made me realize just how fancy that Paris brothel had been and how cannily it catered to men like the one awaiting us before a fireplace mouth even taller than he was.

  At a distance, his height and girth reminded me of Bram Stoker. I wondered for a wild moment if the man I had met as “Bram Stoker” in Paris had been the King of Bohemia in disguise. Many royal persons in Europe traveled incognito.

  But as Irene and I approached our royal host, I saw that his fair hair was more gold than crimson and that, although he wore bristling side whiskers, it was not the full beard Bram Stoker cultivated.

  This man also wore military uniform, a magnificent ensemble of red-and-black wool so swagged with gold medals and braid that it made Quentin’s all-purpose uniform look a thing of poverty and pity.

  “Do I bow, curtsey, or swoon?” I hissed to Irene with my lips not moving as we approached His Royal Highness. The King of Bohemia was a far more handsome and formidable figure than England’s Prince Bertie!

  “He is Germanic, so formality is always welcome,” she answered, sweeping into a floor-dusting curtsey worthy of a Russian prima ballerina. She had opened the revers and drawn up the skirt flaps of Nell’s plain black “surprise” dress before we had left the carriage, so she now had some fine embroidered pink-silk “feathers” to flaunt.

  I followed suit as best I could in my prim, checked coatdress and matching cap, wishing I wore the furred turban and Russian silk cloak I had on my first interview at The Pittsburg Dispatch. While I don’t believe that clothes make the man, I do believe that being suitably well-dressed makes the woman more successful at whatever she undertakes. It is good to reassure the male sex that we are just women and too decorative to be taken seriously. When they don’t pay us more than superficial attention, we can get a lot more work done. At least I have always found it so.

  “Irene!” the King said in English, bending forward in his stiff attire to raise her upright. “You visit my city and country again in the guise of a busy and not-too-gaudy bird of passage, and your constant companion is also one who dresses for all business and no chatter.”

  “This is not Nell,” Irene said quickly, “but a young American friend we call Pink.”

  “Pink. Most extraordinary.” He gazed at me through narrowed blue eyes, as if not believing their testimony. “The other one was called—?”

  “Nell,” she reminded him again, patiently.

  “Nell. That’s right. Did you enjoy your musical welcome?”

  “I loved it! I felt almost like Sarah Bernhardt, although in only a small way. Only Sarah herself can feel like Bernhardt in a large way.”

  “I like your ways, whether small or large, far better than the Divine Sarah’s,” he said laughing, standing back to gesture to a pair of huge brocade-covered armchairs.

  We took our seats as he occupied a third gigantic chair.

  “And Clotilde?” Irene inquired as she drew off her gloves—pink, I saw, to match the interior trim on the surprise dress.

  “Ah, she will be here shortly. Much as she adheres to your every word and whisper, she does not wish you to spend too much time alone…without her.”

  For an instant I had thought the King was about to say “too much time alone with me,” but that couldn’t be.

  “You two are still inseparable then?” Irene asked.

  “Ah. How dare I not be devoted to my lady wife? She has been to school with a paragon and never lets me forget it.”

  I was certain that a great deal more was going on here than I might guess, but before I could determine what, I heard the click of a distant door, then the further clicks of shoes moving across marble floors.

  A thin pale woman approached us, her hair the white-gold satiny sheen of the far North. She was clad in a changeable green-lavender tea gown of exquisite design that could have only come from where we had last been, Paris.

  I rose with Irene and we curtsied again.

  Again a royal person reached out her hands to Irene and elevated her at once to her own level. “My dear Irene! I was delighted when Willie mentioned that you would be traveling through Prague. And my dear Nell—!” She turned to grasp my hands and extend me the same astonishing royal favor when her pale blue eyes blinked as if facing too much sunlight.

  “Why, Nell, you have changed—”

  “This is not Nell, though her mode of dress may be similar. This charming girl’s name is Pink and she is American, as I am.”

  The Queen’s almost invisible eyelashes flickered like falling snowflakes, seeming to melt off her face with the motion. “Not Nell. Yes. I can see that now. I simply expected—I’m so sorry, my dear.”

  I had the oddest impression then: that the King would hardly know Nell
if he fell over her and that his Queen had a deep and abiding attachment to her.

  Once again the Mouse from Shropshire had divided and conquered, or, rather, half-conquered.

  “And where is the ever-charming Godfrey?” Queen Clotilde inquired conversationally, sweeping to a proprietary place beside her husband. “I assume you have come here to join him, so why is he not with you?”

  For a moment Irene faltered. This simple social inquiry struck her like lightning and turned her to stone. For the long awkward seconds of a missed stage cue, Irene Adler Norton had no answer. Or perhaps she had too much answer.

  I was always quick with my tongue. “That is what we have come here to find out,” I said forthrightly. I have always been forthright, and I supposed that royalty could stand it as well as anyone.

  I glanced at Irene, who was still well and truly pale. “As you know, Your Royal Highnesses, Godfrey was visiting Prague on business. You may not know that he was called away and has mysteriously never been heard of since.”

  The King looked at once to Irene. The Queen instead eyed me with sudden, deep interest.

  “Godfrey? Missing?” she said. “He paid his respects at the Castle only a fortnight ago.”

  She seemed utterly unaware of how much could go awry in a fortnight, much less a day. Perhaps that is a condition of being a queen. On the other hand, Clotilde, royal or not, struck me as something of a dull Dora.

  “What may we do?” the King asked at once, still watching Irene with a strange blend of anxiety and expectation.

  I could see her stage persona reassembling after the shock of Clotilde’s unanswerably innocent question. Her breath was expanding her lungs, her chin rising as if she were preparing to sing…only now, simply speaking was a feat. To be standing here, among these people who were both powerful and ignorant, knowing what we knew of Paris and Jack the Ripper and Nell’s abduction and Godfrey’s frightening disappearance….