Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

  Ben shrugged. ‘Perhaps he took his German woman there.’

  ‘No. An affair doesn’t explain anything at all. There’s nothing supernatural about an affair. There’s nothing that could explain why black swans fell out of the sky at his funeral or that horse we saw on the Queen Mary or the bones and roses that were left behind—’ I broke off with a snort of amusement. ‘It’s typical of another man to jump to the conclusion of infidelity even when there is nothing to support it.’

  Ben shrugged. ‘I believe Liam had at least one mistress for the simple reason that that’s the kind of person he was - always wanting what he couldn’t have.’

  I stared at him incredulously. ‘He was your own brother,’ I said. ‘How is it possible that you hardly knew him at all?’

  ‘If there is a woman,’ Ben went on doggedly, ‘then we need to find her. She might know more about what Liam was doing here. He might have confided in her. When he was in Alpau he stayed in a guest house not far from here, just a few minutes down the road. These places are small and usually family-run so they’ll probably remember him, especially if he stayed at the same place every time. And they’ll be able to tell us if he ever took a woman back to his room or—’

  He broke off then, because I slapped him. Suggesting a mistress as a possibility was one thing but talking about it as if it were a certainty was another and I was too furious on Liam’s behalf to listen to any more of it.

  ‘Don’t talk about him that way, as if . . . as if he was no better than . . . than—’

  ‘No better than me?’ Ben suggested, raising a hand to the angry red mark on his cheek.

  ‘Yes!’ I snapped. ‘I’m sorry to say it so bluntly but it’s true. He was a better man than you, Ben! Whatever problems you have with your fiancée are one thing but Liam and I were entirely faithful to each other from the very beginning.’

  ‘Well, be that as it may,’ Ben said calmly, ‘now you see why I can’t talk about these things with you. If anything else occurs to my suspicious mind, I’ll just keep it to myself, shall I?’

  I wanted Ben to tell me everything he knew or suspected, but if he was going to come out with things like that then there really didn’t seem a lot of point in insisting he told me everything. The frustrating thing was that if he had known his younger brother as well as he should have done, then he would never have suspected him of infidelity to begin with. But for the entire ten months of our marriage, Ben hadn’t seen Liam, hadn’t even spoken to him.

  So how could he possibly presume to judge our life together and what it had been built upon?

  ‘You didn’t know him,’ I said in frustration.

  Ben just shrugged. ‘One of us didn’t know him, anyway,’ he replied calmly.

  ‘So am I to presume that that’s how you’re going to spend your day?’ I asked coldly. ‘Wandering around looking for a mistress who doesn’t exist?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Ben replied shortly. ‘And tonight I’m going back to Neuschwanstein after dark, so if you want to come with me then you’d better make sure you’re here at the guest house by about eleven o’clock.’

  Without waiting for me to reply, he pushed back his chair and stormed out of the restaurant. I returned to my own room, grabbed my bag and coat and then went upstairs, but paused when I arrived outside Ben’s door. My intention had been to ask him what we were going to do about the car for, of course, we only had one between us and it appeared we would be heading in different directions that day. My hand was raised to knock when I hesitated. He was the architect, he was the one with money, he was the one wanting to chase after some dead end. Why should I give him the chance to tell me to take public transport when I had my own car key?

  I dropped my hand and turned away from the door, deciding that it would be a question of first one to the car wins. I was dressed and ready to go, but Ben, from the sounds of it, was bad-temperedly throwing things around his room and swearing to himself.

  So I went straight out to the car and drove away towards Neuschwanstein before Ben could beat me to it. He could find his own way of trawling around the nearby guest houses and good luck to him.

  11

  Lukas

  The castle was only a ten-minute drive away. I parked at the car park halfway up the mountain and then had the choice of walking or getting a horse-drawn carriage to the top. I decided to walk as it was a cold morning and I wanted to warm up. Besides which I couldn’t really afford the luxury of a carriage ride.

  Neuschwanstein was no less striking up close than it was from a distance. It truly was the definitive fairy-tale castle with its tall spires and pale stones - crisp white snow upon its turrets and weighing down the branches of the mountain pines that surrounded it.

  I joined the English tour that was just starting and we walked through the grandly decorated rooms listening to the guide tell us about Ludwig and his sad life. As Ben had said, the swan motif was everywhere in this castle. I noticed the bird in paintings, fabric coverings, sculptures and even on flower vases.

  One of the other great mysteries of Ludwig’s life was the question of why he had never married, remaining a solitary and reclusive bachelor instead. He had come close once, the guide told us as we stopped in Ludwig’s neo-Gothic, sumptuously decorated bedroom full of rich oak, colourful paintings and golden chandeliers.

  She directed the group’s attention to a photograph of Ludwig with his cousin, Princess Sophie Charlotte of Bavaria, to whom he became engaged when he was twenty-one years old. The wedding date was set, a golden wedding coach was specially built and gold coins had been minted when Ludwig, suddenly and unexpectedly - without explanation - changed his mind and called the wedding off. He never considered marriage again and no one knew what had caused his change of heart. It obviously hadn’t been Sophie’s looks, for she had quite clearly been unusually beautiful and it was this that led to the rumours that Ludwig was gay, and that that was why he never married. One American tourist nearby me was self-importantly assuring the rest of his party that Ludwig had most certainly been gay and, suddenly, all this scandalous speculation seemed rather vulgar.

  The guide did not in any way lessen my discomfort when she explained that it was right here, in this very room, that the king was declared insane and removed from the throne, despite the fact that the doctor had never even examined him. He had been loved by his subjects - who had even attempted to protect him and prevent his deposition until he told them they could stand down and that he was prepared to leave if the commission wanted him to. Even today, the guide told us, the king was still affectionately known in Bavaria as Kini . . . I was startled by the name, for the last time I had heard it was at my grandparents’, talking to Luke about a black horse . . .

  The guide went on to tell us that as Ludwig left Neuschwanstein for the last time, he said to one of his trusted servants: ‘Please guard these rooms for me as a shrine. Don’t let them be profaned by the curious, because I have had to endure the bitterest hours of my life here!’

  She then added with a smile that, of course, thousands of people now visited the castle every year. Everyone laughed, but I felt uncomfortable as we continued our tour through the lavish rooms - like a common intruder thoughtlessly trespassing in a home that had once been so dear to somebody’s heart.

  It seemed sad that Ludwig had lived at Neuschwanstein for such a short amount of time before being forcibly taken away and drowning in a lake many miles from his beloved home. The guide told us that, even as a teenager, Ludwig had taken his responsibilities as king very seriously, but had quickly come to realise that the ideals of monarchy he aspired to simply didn’t exist in nineteenth-century Germany. That he was a figurehead and nothing more - certainly never intended to actually govern himself. And so he retreated to his lonely castles in the mountains where he could be left in peace.

  When the tour was over I was glad to get back outside to the fresh mountain air, stand at the veranda and look out towards the skyline of the Tyrolean Mountains,
beneath which lay the Alpsee Lake at the end of a short road set with pretty houses. Perhaps it was my own recent troubles that made me overly sensitive to such things, but I disliked hearing people gossip in such a way about the king and his loneliness. Perhaps the truth was that he had simply never met the right person, and that was why he had remained alone. I wondered what was worse - to have lived a completely solitary life like Ludwig or to have had someone really special who couldn’t stay with you . . .

  When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I took the path down to the lake. My feet crunched on the gravel and I breathed in the sweet mountain air, my breath misting before me. I don’t know why I felt so uneasy, for it wasn’t as if I expected to see anything out of the ordinary. I certainly didn’t expect magical swans to appear before my eyes or black knights to walk across the water . . . But still - there it was - that sense of dread . . .

  I forced myself not to slow my steps or drag my feet and, when I at last got down to the lake, I stood on the bank looking out across the perfectly still, flat water. Tall pines made white with snow stood all the way around it and stretched up the surrounding mountains, and I could see Hohenschwangau high above me to the right. There didn’t seem to be any swans on the lake though and suddenly it seemed impossible that Liam had been to this place at all, let alone that events had played out as Adrian Halsbach had described them to us - sneaking here in the middle of the night, killing a swan and then being half-drowned by a black knight in these very waters. I didn’t feel close to Liam here at all. I couldn’t imagine him creeping around the banks looking for magic swans. I suddenly felt that if he could see me now and knew why I was here, he would laugh at the absurdity of the things Ben had told me and the fact that I had believed them . . .

  But then, perhaps he wouldn’t laugh at all . . . perhaps he would be angry with me for listening to Ben - the man who, for whatever reason, he had felt so bitterly towards during the last year of his life . . .

  Suddenly I noticed white shapes on the water and realised that a couple of swans were now on the lake. Although they looked just as superior and majestic as every other swan I had ever seen, they did not look magical and the very suggestion that they were anything other than normal seemed suddenly absurd. I stepped to the edge of the water and crouched down to dip my fingers in. After a moment I straightened up, shaking my hand dry. As I looked at the swans, I realised that the last time I had seen white swans on water was when I had been feeding them with Liam, just minutes before he died. The recollection made me feel a little sick and I suddenly found I wanted to be gone from the lake.

  I turned away, but then stopped, for there was a man standing at the end of the path, blocking the way. Once again, the first thing I noticed about Luke was his height. Liam had been tall and so was Ben, but Luke must have been almost seven foot. I didn’t understand how I could have failed to hear him approach for there was surely no way he would have been able to step lightly enough not to make a sound on the gravel path. I was suddenly very aware of the fact that there was no one else at all around except for us.

  ‘You really shouldn’t touch the water,’ he said, breaking the silence at last. ‘You don’t know what lies beneath it.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded, finding my tongue and forcing myself not to take a step back and thereby give away the fact that I was scared.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ he asked, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a smile. ‘It wasn’t that long ago that we met.’

  ‘I know you’re not a stable-hand!’ I snapped. ‘Is your name even Luke?’

  ‘Near enough. It’s Lukas. Sorry about that. I just wanted to meet you, that’s all. I didn’t mean to cause you or your grandparents any anxiety.’

  ‘How did you find me?’ I demanded, a chill creeping up my spine at the reminder that he knew where my grandparents lived.

  ‘Kini told me where you were,’ Lukas said cheerfully, putting his hands in his pockets. ‘He’s pretty good at finding people.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ I said, secretly rather horrified that he seemed to have followed me all the way to Germany.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said quickly. ‘I just came to tell you something about . . . about Liam and the object he took.’

  ‘You knew Liam?’

  ‘Yes, I knew him,’ Lukas replied. ‘I can’t say I had any great liking for him, but I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘How did you know him?’ I snapped. I didn’t know or care why this stranger had disliked Liam and at any rate it seemed more a slur on his character than on my husband’s.

  ‘I met him here, of course,’ Lukas said, vaguely waving his hand to encompass Neuschwanstein and the surrounding area. ‘I’m afraid we had a . . . disagreement. Got off on the wrong foot. But none of that matters now. All I care about is the object that was taken.’

  ‘Are you looking for it too?’ I asked.

  ‘Not as such . . . but I want you to find it. Before Jaxon does.’

  ‘Why do you—’ I began, but he cut me off.

  ‘I’m sorry, but there really isn’t time. I’ve got to tell you something. ’

  I expected him to say something about Liam, or Jaxon, or Ben, or the mysterious object that had been taken, so I was surprised when, instead, he said, ‘Do you know why King Ludwig called off his wedding to Princess Sophie at the last hour?’

  The question seemed so absurdly irrelevant that it took me a moment to get my mind around it and I gave an impatient shrug in response.

  ‘He was in love with someone else,’ Lukas said evenly, his eyes not leaving my face.

  ‘Another man?’ I asked, remembering what the tour guide had said about Ludwig possibly being gay.

  ‘No. A swan. A magic one. You’ve seen Swan Lake, haven’t you? Swan by day and woman by night. Ludwig would never have found out if he hadn’t liked to come down to the lake in the middle of the night. But he did and that’s when he saw them in their human form. The problem is that swans and humans aren’t allowed to fall in love. It’s one of the Old Rules and the knights still enforce it even now. They’re sticklers for the rules, you see, whether or not they make any sense. So Ludwig wasn’t allowed to be with his swan princess. He tried to marry a human woman, but he cancelled the wedding at the last moment because he had these romantic ideas about what marriage should be and he didn’t want to marry someone he didn’t love.

  ‘The knights forbade them from seeing each other but she would sing to let him know where she was. So they took away her voice and left her mute. Swansong is one of the most powerful forms of enchantment there is. That’s what fell out of the sleigh. That’s what your husband found.’

  ‘How can someone possibly find the voice of a swan?’ I asked. ‘It’s not as if it’s something you can touch.’

  ‘But it is,’ Lukas replied. ‘It can be anything you want it to be. I’ve heard that it looked like a jewelled tiara when he found it, but Liam could have changed its appearance. It could look like anything now. Do you see why so many people want it? It’s like having a witch’s wand or a wizard’s staff. Swansong can be used to enchant anyone. That’s why it’s dangerous. That’s why it must never fall into the wrong hands.’

  I turned my head to glance at the two swans on the lake but my mind simply couldn’t accept the idea that at night they were anything other than ordinary birds.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Lukas said.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know who you are or where you’ve come from or how you’re mixed up in this. So I would be stupid to believe a word you say without proof.’

  ‘Jaxon knows what it is - he’s known for a long time and he’s looking for it too. You have to find it before he does. And you should stay close to Ben. Jaxon will come back if it occurs to him that you might know where the swansong is - if he isn’t here already.’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea where this thing might be, whatever it is,’ I said impatiently. ‘I don’t know why
people keep suggesting that I would. Liam never told me any of this - I’m the very last person who could find it.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Lukas replied evenly. ‘It’s the complete opposite, in fact. You might well be the only person in the world who can possibly find it now that Liam’s dead.’

  ‘If he was going to hide something,’ I said, ‘he would have put it in a bank. Surely that’s obvious to anyone?’

  ‘It’s not hidden in a bank,’ Lukas replied.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, Liam wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to see the swansong, whatever form it happened to be in. He’d have been too paranoid that they would be drawn to it and steal it. But, more importantly, it’s got to be hidden somewhere that’s certain to be deserted at night.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the swansong sings then. Not always, but sometimes. And if anyone heard it then they’d be able to find it.’

  ‘Well, in that case it’s probably hidden up in the mountains somewhere and I’ll never find it!’

  ‘Oh no. I’m sure he’s hidden it somewhere central. In case he ever needed it in a hurry. He wouldn’t have put it somewhere that would take days to reach. It may not be in England - in fact it probably isn’t - but I don’t think it will be very far away. And it won’t be difficult to get to.’

  ‘But if, at the same time, it’s supposedly far enough away that no one will hear it if it sings at night then that’s a contradiction,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, you would think so,’ Lukas said quietly, a gleam in his eye. ‘But your husband was very clever that way. I’ve no doubt he found the perfect hiding place. If you want to get to the swansong before Jaxon does - and trust me, you do want that - then go back to Neuschwanstein after dark.’ He gestured over his shoulder towards the white spires of the castle. ‘I have a strong suspicion you’ll find the trip very useful. Go tonight - don’t put it off. You don’t know how vital it is that you get to the swansong first. You don’t have to believe what I told you about King Ludwig if you don’t want to, but you must believe me when I say that if you don’t find the swansong soon, you’re going to lose someone else.’