by Alex Bell
The flight was a night-time one but I struggled to sleep. This was partly because Ben kept fidgeting in his seat beside me, clearly finding the cramped conditions uncomfortable. Being tall, there was barely enough room for him and his knees were wedged against the chair in front. I was cold, even with the thin aeroplane blanket clutched tightly around myself. But I didn’t overly mind not being able to sleep. With the lights dimmed and the only sound the soft hum of the engines, I found the flight strangely relaxing. Until we got to Germany I didn’t have to think about anything, I didn’t have to do anything. I could just sit there and let my mind go blank.
Eventually I did drift off, but I had only been asleep for a little while before I dreamt that I woke up, looked out of the window and saw a black swan sitting on the wing outside. The image jerked me awake and at once I lifted the blind to look out of the window, but there was just the dark night sky out there and no sign of any black swan on the wing. Unfortunately, my movement also woke Ben.
‘Can’t you sleep?’ he said quietly.
‘No. I’m cold,’ I said, not wanting to admit that it was the nightmare that had woken me.
‘Take my blanket,’ Ben said, picking it up off his knees and holding it out to me.
‘Oh,’ I said, taken aback. ‘Thanks, but you’d better keep it or you’ll be—’
‘It’s fine,’ Ben interrupted quietly. ‘Just take it.’
He sounded oddly weary, as if I was some kind of burden that he didn’t want and hadn’t asked for. So I took the blanket from him, mildly annoyed that he had somehow managed to make me feel guilty. With the second blanket over my knees I was instantly much warmer, which improved my mood slightly.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, for now that I looked at him properly he didn’t just look tired - he looked ill. I was scared of people looking ill now. I couldn’t brush it aside. Not when I knew that, sometimes, apparently healthy people simply died with no warning at all. He glanced at me and I hoped it was just the dim lighting in the cabin that made his eyes look so sunken in his face.
‘You must realise how impossible this is for me,’ he said.
‘What? Don’t you like flying?’
‘No, I meant this situation.’
I stared at him, taken aback. ‘Situation? If you mean Liam’s death and everything we’ve found out since, then of course I know how difficult it is for you because it’s about ten times more difficult for me!’
‘That’s not true at all,’ Ben replied evenly.
I knew he had parted from Liam on bad terms and that must be hard now, but it was his own fault for not making amends with him whilst he was alive. If his younger brother had meant that much to him then why did he never even try to repair the rift? Liam didn’t bear grudges, so I was quite sure that whatever had happened between them had been Ben’s fault.
‘Jasmyn—’ He began.
But I cut him off sharply: ‘You had a whole year to make up with Liam and you never so much as sent him a Christmas card!’
To my surprise, Ben looked as though he’d been slapped and I silently cursed my loose tongue. What I’d said was perfectly true but there was no point in saying such things now when they could only hurt and not make any difference anyway.
For a moment I thought he was going to say something but then he just shrugged, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes once again.
When we arrived in Munich we hired a car and booked two rooms in the Deutsche Eiche in the Old Town sector of the city. We were both tired from travelling and had eaten on the plane so we agreed to have an early night. The hotel was nice enough and reasonably priced but when I got to my room next door to Ben’s, I found that I still couldn’t sleep. So I took out my Violectra, plugged the earphones in and played for a while, sitting cross-legged on the bed. That was the beauty of an electric violin - you could play it anywhere and no one would be able to hear you. To anyone else it would look like I was playing a silent violin, for the music was only playing through my earphones. After half an hour I was much more relaxed but still didn’t feel ready to sleep, so I unpacked my laptop and made use of the Internet access in the room by reading about King Ludwig online.
Liam, and now Ben, had both referred to him as the Swan King, but as I read more about him I realised that most people called him the Mad King, for he was proclaimed insane shortly before he died. I found a photo of him as a young man just come to the throne - he was very handsome, with intelligent, gentle eyes. He may have looked like a dreamer but he certainly did not look mad . . . But then maybe one can’t always see madness in a person’s face . . .
I found a quote from the Empress Elisabeth - who knew Ludwig perhaps as well as anyone - saying: ‘The king was not mad; he was just an eccentric living in a world of dreams.’ I very much liked the phrasing she’d used.
Ludwig’s death was the strangest thing I read about and it was easy to see why conspiracy theories abounded over it. He was declared insane on June 10th, 1886, arrested and taken to Castle Berg south of Munich. On the evening of June 13th he asked to take a walk with Professor Gudden - the doctor who had declared him insane three days earlier. The doctor agreed and told the guards not to follow them. Five hours later, at 11:30 that night, the two men were found dead floating in Lake Starnberg. The king’s death was officially declared a suicide, despite the fact that he had been a strong swimmer and the water was only waist deep. And Gudden was found dead too - an inconvenient fact which seemed to have been quietly overlooked at the time.
But I found one website that said Ludwig hadn’t truly died when he’d drowned in the lake that day - the Fairy Tale King had escaped, the website claimed, straight into faeryland itself where he still dwelt to this day, far better suited to ruling the faery court than a human one.
I looked again at the photograph of the handsome young king - ‘an eccentric living in a world of dreams’ - and felt sorry that he should have come to such a violent end for, whether murder or suicide, forty-one years old was far too young to die.
The next morning, after a hasty early breakfast, Ben and I left the hotel to meet Adrian Halsbach. It seemed that he worked in a laboratory on the outskirts of Munich. I couldn’t imagine what part he played in all this, but I disliked the smell of the multistorey building as soon as Ben and I walked in through the front doors. It was too white and shiny and bright and the air was too stuffy. The whole place made my skin prickle and the warm air clogged in my throat.
‘What kind of lab is this?’ I muttered to Ben.
‘Cosmetics,’ he replied briefly.
We stopped at the reception desk and I was mildly irritated when the immaculately manicured woman behind it did a double take at the sight of me. The washed out, fluorescent lighting did nothing for my appearance whatsoever.
‘Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’ she asked, in a voice ringing with false cheerfulness - like nails on a blackboard.
‘Sprechen Sie Englisch? ’ Ben replied.
‘Of course,’ she said smoothly.
‘We’d like to see Adrian Halsbach.’
‘Is he expecting you?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll call down to the lab but he may be busy,’ she said sweetly, her hand reaching for the phone. ‘What’s the name please?’
‘Liam Gracey,’ Ben replied.
I gave him a sharp look as the receptionist dialled a number but he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head so I said nothing.
‘He can spare you a few minutes, Mr Gracey,’ she told us after hanging up the phone.
We were given visitors’ badges and asked to wait until someone came to escort us.
‘I had to lie about the name,’ Ben said to me quietly whilst we were waiting to one side, ‘otherwise he might not have agreed to see us.’
I nodded and, in another moment, a young man came to lead us down a corridor to some kind of observation room with large windows along one side of the wall that faced right into a laboratory. He left us there saying that D
r Halsbach would be with us shortly but I hardly heard him. I was too consumed with horror at what I could see going on in the lab. There were rows upon rows of cages containing rabbits, most of which had sections of their fur shaved away to reveal red, blistering skin where chemicals had been forcibly rubbed into them. As I stared in revulsion, I saw a man in a white lab coat drip dark liquid from a pipette into the pink eyes of a small albino rabbit that was being held in a vice with its eyelids clamped back, its paws and long ears twitching feebly in the iron grip.
‘My God,’ I said in disgust. ‘And you said this was a cosmetics lab?’
‘That’s right,’ Ben replied and I thought I heard disapproval in his voice. ‘They test lipsticks and perfumes here. Make-up is very important, Jasmyn.’ He caught my eye and gave me a small, tired smile. ‘Probably best not to look.’
A moment later, the door opened and the man in the white lab coat I had just seen walked inside. About fifty years old, he was tall and thin with grey hair and small, hard eyes.
‘I thought I made it quite clear, Liam, that I wanted nothing to—’ he began in a rather high voice with a thick German accent, but then broke off when he looked at Ben properly. ‘You are not Liam Gracey.’
‘No,’ Ben replied. ‘I’m sorry, but we had to make sure you’d see us.’
‘You’re his brother?’ Halsbach asked, obviously noting the physical similarities between them.
‘Yes. My name is Ben.’
Halsbach stripped off the white rubber gloves he was wearing - still stained with blood from the rabbit he had just been handling.
He dropped them in the bin by the door and then walked over to us.
‘Adrian Halsbach.’
He shook hands with Ben but when he held his hand out to me, I couldn’t bring myself to take it.
‘I’m not shaking your hand!’ I snapped, practically cringing at his proximity. ‘Not after what you’ve just been doing to that rabbit.’
Not helpful, I knew. After all, we wanted answers from him, so insulting him probably wasn’t the best way to start. But these were cosmetics laboratories, for God’s sake, and there were rabbits twitching and writhing in pain in the next room all for the sake of lipstick. It was outrageous.
‘One of the animal lovers,’ Halsbach said nonchalantly, but with an undertone of scorn. ‘Is there something I can do for you or am I going to have to call security?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Ben said, flashing me a warning look. ‘We just want to talk to you about Liam.’
‘I see,’ Adrian said, wandering over to the sink in one corner and turning on the tap to wash his hands. ‘And how is Liam?’
‘He’s dead,’ Ben replied calmly.
Adrian glanced over his shoulder at us, one eyebrow slightly raised. ‘Dead?’ he repeated, turning off the tap and reaching for a towel. ‘How did that happen?’
‘An aneurysm.’
‘Then what do you want to talk to me about?’ Adrian asked, not even bothering to offer the usual commiserations.
‘We want to know about what happened on the lake behind Neuschwanstein.’
‘I’m not sure that I know what you mean,’ Halsbach said evasively.
‘I understand that the three of you crept down there late one night.’
I frowned at Ben, for this was the first I’d heard of it and it irritated me that he had not mentioned it earlier.
‘Perhaps we did,’ Halsbach replied. ‘But it was a while ago now and my memory is not good.’
I realised he was fishing for a bribe as Ben drew a one hundred Euro note from his pocket and held it out to him. Halsbach grabbed it from his hand greedily.
‘Why did the three of you go down to the lake that night?’ Ben asked again.
Halsbach shrugged. ‘To steal one of the swans, of course.’
‘Why?’
Halsbach glanced through the window into his horrible lab and a small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘Liam said they were going to make us all rich. That the swans at Neuschwanstein and Ludwig’s other castles were actually magic swans.’
‘Magic swans?’ I said incredulously.
Halsbach gave me a cold look. ‘Yes, Fräulein, I know how it sounds. But he said that they turned into beautiful women at night - like the legend of the Swan Lake, no?’ He looked at Ben and said, ‘He was not a stupid man, your brother. And he seemed so convinced that I couldn’t help but be intrigued.’
‘Intrigued?’ Ben repeated, raising an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t greed that motivated you?’
‘A little bit of both, I should say,’ the scientist replied with a shrug. ‘We were going to bring the swan back here, cut it open and find out how they managed to transform between the two forms, and then sell the information to the highest bidder.’ An ugly gleam lit his small eyes. ‘It would have made us three of the richest men in the world.’
‘And yet here you are still toiling away with rabbits and cosmetics, ’ Ben said. ‘So what happened?’
‘Your brother - how do you say in English? - cocked it up, that’s what happened!’ Halsbach said bitterly. ‘When the three of us got to the lake there were just ordinary swans sleeping on the banks. Liam insisted there had been beautiful women there before. So he and Jaxon decided to take one of the swans anyway. They grabbed one and tried to get it into a sack but somehow - in the struggle - its neck broke.’ Halsbach shrugged. ‘So they tried to grab a second one . . .’
‘Yes?’ Ben prompted when he did not continue.
‘It didn’t work and we came home,’ Halsbach said. ‘That’s it.’
‘Please don’t lie to me again,’ Ben said quietly. ‘I’ve already heard this story once from Jaxon so I know there’s more to it than that.’
‘Jaxon!’ Halsbach sneered. ‘You can’t trust a word that man tells you. Unless you beat it from him, of course.’
He glanced down at Ben’s hands and I saw the sneer falter on his face when he noticed his scarred knuckles.
‘Just tell us what you saw,’ Ben said calmly, his hands disappearing into his pockets. ‘We can worry about which - if either of you - is telling the truth later.’
‘You won’t believe me,’ Halsbach protested.
‘Well, that’s our problem, isn’t it?’ Ben said. He took another hundred Euro note from his pocket and held it out to the scientist, who took it - albeit a little less eagerly this time.
‘Well, if Jaxon told you the truth then you’ll already know that as soon as they killed the swan a black horse appeared on the surface of the lake. With a knight on its back, dressed all in silver armour. We . . . tried to escape into the trees but Jaxon was the only one who got away. Liam and I—’ Halsbach folded his arms in front of his chest and avoided our gaze before continuing in an expressionless voice, ‘The knight dragged us into the water. He was huge - almost seven feet tall. There was no resisting him. He held us under the surface and almost killed us. But he brought us up at the last moment and leaned down to say something in Liam’s ear. Then he dropped us - half-drowned - in the shallow water, got back onto his horse and rode off into the forest.’ Halsbach spread his hands. ‘And that’s the truth of it.’
‘Assuming that you’re not insane yourself, what did the knight say to Liam?’ Ben asked.
‘I have no idea. When I asked him later he said he didn’t know. When I pushed him he got angry and said he’d been too preoccupied with drowning to take it in. He was in a foul temper after what had happened, angry with everyone, and he said he was going to have his revenge although I don’t know on whom. I don’t know if they ever tried again but I refused to have any further part in it. If it wasn’t for the knight I would have thought all this talk of magic swans was pure nonsense. And that’s all I know. Now don’t ever come to my place of work again.’
‘What about the object that was taken from Neuschwanstein?’ I asked. ‘Do you know anything about that?’
Halsbach frowned for a moment before saying, ‘If I remember
it right, Liam found something in the mountains that tipped him off to the fact that the swans were magical. There were plans to sell it but I wasn’t involved in them and I don’t even know what this thing was.’
‘Have you ever heard of anyone called Lukas?’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘What about Luke?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you, Fräulein,’ he said, looking at me with a contemptuous expression in his narrow eyes as if I were one of the poor animals in his lab. ‘What did you say your name was again?’
‘Jasmyn Gracey,’ I replied. ‘I’m Liam’s widow.’
‘Now that,’ he said, ‘does surprise me.’
‘And why is that?’ Ben asked stiffly.
‘Because Liam was an arrogant prick who always wanted the very best of everything,’ Halsbach replied with a nasty smile.
I flushed to the roots of my white hair at the insult. People might occasionally stare at me in the street but it had been a long time since I’d had to endure such playground-like gibes about my albinism. But my own shame was eclipsed by a hot, indignant anger on Liam’s behalf. Somehow, the fact that he was dead meant I just couldn’t bear to hear anyone say so much as a word against him. I was about to snarl an insult back at the scientist when Ben said steadily, ‘Say that again.’
Halsbach turned his gaze towards him and began with a smirk, ‘I said, Liam was an arrogant prick who—’ He didn’t get any further, however, because Ben hit him in the mouth. Either Halsbach had been utterly unprepared for it or Ben had put more force behind the punch than it seemed, for Halsbach went staggering back to crash into the table behind him, sprawling on the floor with one hand clamped to his bleeding mouth.
‘Be that as it may,’ Ben said calmly, without any hint of anger, ‘try to have some respect for the dead.’