by Sarah Rayne
The steps looked old – certainly as old as the house, if not older. They were slightly worn at the centre, and Michael was irresistibly reminded of the steps in Ayesha’s temple, in Rider Haggard’s She, worn by the constant use of one person only – the immortal Egyptian Queen who had walked up and down them for two thousand years.
He stepped through the doorway, expecting to be met by chill dankness, but although it was noticeably cooler, there were no scents of mould or packed-earth floors.
A thick stone wall enclosed the steps, but as he went down they opened up, giving a clear view of an underground room at the foot. And after all that it was a perfectly ordinary cellar, of the kind that most houses of a certain age had. There was a stone floor and plain, whitewashed walls. Massive timber joists and thick pillars appeared to underpin the floors above, and seeing them, Michael had a sensation of oppression from the rooms and walls directly overhead.
It was fairly dim in the cellar, but there was enough light from somewhere to see that Luisa was kneeling at what, after a moment, Michael recognized as a prie-dieu – a prayer desk, generally found in private houses for devotional use. In front of the prie-dieu was a small table with two candles in holders and a small crucifix. The candles were not lit, but a small oil lamp had been, casting sullen shadows over the room. Luisa’s head was bowed and her hands were clasped in the classic prayer attitude.
None of this was especially worrying, but it was faintly puzzling. Did Luisa regularly follow this eerie ritual? Did she unlock the door every night to let some shadowy figure in, then come down here? If so, it could explain why she had been so reluctant for Michael to spend the night here. But why, with the whole of Fosse House at her disposal and no one to question her actions, would she have a makeshift chapel in this chill, inaccessible room? Was it a remnant from the house’s past – perhaps with a religious connection? But it was at least four hundred years since any kind of religious oppression had held sway in England, and Fosse House did not seem old enough to have priests’ holes or secret chapels for Papist practices.
Still slightly concerned, Michael ventured down two more steps, which gave him a wider view of the cellar. As well as the prie-dieu there was a small writing desk with a chair drawn up to it; on its surface was a thick-bound book lying open, together with a second lamp, unlit.
In the far corner was a low table, half covered with a length of dark velvet. No, it was not a table, it was an immense oak chest, waist-high, iron bound, and with a domed lid. The velvet was bunched and creased, and it was possible to see that a thick chain with a padlock was wrapped around the chest. Michael had been thinking the cellar was not sinister, only rather sad, but seeing this chest and the heavy chain, he was aware of a dark unease. Why the chains? What was so valuable it had to be kept in an underground room and secured so firmly?
Luisa got up from the prie-dieu, bowed her head – again it was the classic gesture before an altar – then crossed to the desk and reached for the second lamp and the matches standing nearby. Michael was aware of a jab of apprehension as the match flared up, but Luisa’s movements were smooth and assured. She adjusted the funnel of the lamp with the ease of familiarity, then sat down. Reaching for the book, she opened it, picked up a modern biro and began to write in it. Diary? Journal? Whatever it was, her whole attitude was one of utter absorption and Michael thought he could have stomped down the staircase in spiked mountaineering boots without her noticing.
But whatever all this was, and however odd it seemed, it was nothing to do with him, and Luisa appeared to be all right. Michael went quietly back up the steps and closed the door softly. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed the half hour past midnight. He was wide awake, and the prospect of lying restlessly in the old bed was not inviting. Could he put in another spell of work? Yes, he could. And if he left the library door ajar he would be able to see and hear Luisa emerge from the cellar. He still had a nagging concern about her – which was absurd, since she most likely descended to that underground room on any number of nights, and appeared to have done so without any noticeable harm. But he would like to be sure.
The library was warm and friendly. Michael switched on the desk lamp, reached for his notebook, and opened the file containing the Charterhouse letter from Chuffy. That part of the file did not, however, appear to contain any more nuggets, and after a quarter of an hour of turning over the faded, dog-eared pages, he abandoned it, and picked up another one. The contents of this looked older, but most of the documents were in French, and Michael, aware of his imperfect knowledge of the language, sighed at the thought of struggling with more translating. Perhaps Luisa would let him take everything back to Oxford where someone in Modern Languages would most likely zip through the papers with contemptuous ease.
But on the first of the pages were three words that sparked his interest. Liège. Holzminden. And Leonora.
Those three again, thought Michael. Are they linked? Leonora’s certainly linked to Liège. But Holzminden seems linked to Stephen and can’t be anything to do with Leonora. Or can it? I’d better remember this isn’t an ancient mystery I’m uncovering, it’s just a fact-finding task. And it’s the Choir I’m supposed to be pursuing, with Leonora as a subtext.
Probably, the pages would only lead down a cul-de-sac, and most of the file would be on the lines of Chuffy’s letter, or a collection of dull missives from some French connection of the Gilmore family, which somebody had thought worth keeping. But Michael thought if he was going to be burning midnight oil while his hostess wrote up her journal below stairs, this would be as good a place to start as any.
The clipped-together pages with the reference to Liège and Holzminden were written in a graceful hand, but Michael saw right away that it was not a form of French that would be easy to translate. It did not seem to fit into the category either of straightforward French or of the Flemish form spoken in parts of Belgium – although he was not sure if he could differentiate one from the other. I can’t do it, he thought, torn between annoyance and disappointment. Then he looked at Leonora’s name again, which appeared several times on the first page, and he remembered the Holzminden sketch and Stephen, and the impression that there was something here worth pursuing gripped his mind again. He would make a stab at this letter, because, after all, he had managed a fairly respectable translation of the letter to Sister Clothilde earlier. If nothing else, he might be able to pick out a few phrases and see if it was worth going on. He reached for the French–English dictionary again.
Stephen’s letter had conveyed no sense of what Nell called a friendly hand from the past, but the letter in front of him felt different. Michael had the illogical impression that he might like the writer.
The opening sentence was relatively easy. It translated as, ‘I write this a little for myself but also for anyone who may one day read this, my own account.’
So far so good. Michael moved slowly down the page, making frequent use of the dictionary, at times finding it difficult to get at the meaning. French was not the writer’s native language, and at times he – it was certainly a ‘he’ – had not used or known the right word. But by the time Michael reached page two, the rhythm of the writing was starting to fall into place.
The carriage clock chimed one o’clock, but Luisa had not yet come back upstairs, and Michael thought he would stay with this odd, intriguing narrative a little longer. It was half-past one when he sat back and regarded the rough translation he had made so far. He had no idea if it could be believed or if it was some long ago attempt at a work of fiction. The places and the dates seemed genuine, although that did not prove anything, because how many novelists took a genuine historical event and hung their story on to it?
He began to read through his translation, double-checking some of the words against the dictionary. He had made several guesses and a few assumptions, and he had skipped some sections which appeared to be descriptions of irrelevant places or people, but in the main he thought he had grasped the gist of the narration.
After the initial opening sentence, the writing was vivid and a remarkable picture started to unfold.
Five
I must explain, from the very beginning, that I was never a small-time thief. I’ve always thought – and worked – in a large way.
I have never understood why people steal inferior items. It is just as difficult – and equally risky – to steal the cheap or the tasteless as it is to steal the valuable and the elegant.
So without wishing to appear conceited, I will tell you, my unknown reader, that I only ever stole the very best. Almost always I was successful in my work, and at times I was even quite rich. There were other times, of course. Times when I had to flee a house or a city – once an entire country – for fear of creditors. As well as creditors there are other unpleasant people – the English have the word bailiffs for them, and they are a disagreeable species who actually move into one’s home and summarily remove possessions to pay one’s debts. I always avoided the ignominy of actually coming face to face with them, but there were occasions when I only avoided it by resorting to such ploys as climbing out of a window, or pretending to be an uncomprehending servant of the household. Once I feigned sickness, although on that occasion I narrowly escaped being taken to an infirmary where God knows what could have happened.
So I have been poor and I have been rich, and I prefer infinitely to be rich, for I have a great fondness for the good things of life. Well-cut clothes, silk shirts, good food and wine and a comfortable – if possible, luxurious – house or apartment in which to live. I like dining in the homes of the wealthy and influential, and I also enjoy the company of ladies whose lives allow them – by which I mean give them enough leisure – to be beautiful. Here I should make it clear that although I have bought many lovely things and stolen many more, I have never bought or stolen ladies. The many enjoyable associations I have formed have been entirely of the ladies’ free choice. I will admit to having a weakness for raven-haired, porcelain-skinned ladies, preferably of impeccable lineage. But I am a gentleman and I do not give names.
This weakness, however, made my association with Leonora Gilmore all the more surprising and also unexpected, since Leonora possessed none of those attractions. A strange little creature, with a face like a pixie from some painting depicting a fantastical scene. I once arranged for what I like to call the transfer of a Hans Makart painting – I think it was called Titania’s Wedding Feast or something similar – in which one of the attendant sprites resembled Leonora so greatly, she might have sat as a model for the painting. She did not, of course; apart from the fact that Makart was painting long before Leonora was born, her own upbringing would have stopped her. I never met her parents, but I formed an opinion of repression and coldness.
I would have liked you, thought Michael, coming briefly up out of the narrative. Even though you were clearly a roaring snob and it doesn’t sound as if you had a moral to your name, whoever you were, I still think I’d have liked you. What your journal is doing in an English house in the twenty-first century though, I can’t imagine. But you knew Leonora – God knows how or where, but you did, and on that score alone I need to find out more about you.
He read on:
I have made something of what people would call a speciality in my work. The occasional painting, certainly, but more particularly the small and the exquisite. Silver snuffboxes, enamelled patch-boxes, jade figurines. Jewellery, of course. Icons, naturally.
One of my more cherished memories is of a visit to an exhibition of religious icons in Moscow. I had gone there in a professional capacity – which is to say I intended to liberate at least four of the choicest icons – and I had several discerning clients (I prefer to call them clients) eagerly awaiting them. None of the clients knew, not with any certainty, that I stole the objects they so greedily purchased, but most of them must have guessed. However, they all knew that if they were to inform the—
Michael had not been able to find an exact translation for the next word, but he thought it was a reasonably safe bet that it was intended to convey police, or the equivalent.
—it would have meant the end of their supply of jewellery and beautiful objects. More to the point, it would also have meant the end of my career and a sojourn in prison.
I found it very useful that in old Russia – by which I mean the Russia of the Mongols, the land of the Firebird – it had never been customary to sign icons. That often meant there was no provenance. My grandfather always held that if a piece did not have a provenance, then all that was needed was to create one for it, and the more exotic, the better. My father specialized in stealing jewellery, but my grandfather was a very good forger and he taught me something of the craft. He was also extremely skilled at replacing genuine artefacts with his own creations. If you’ve ever been in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, (although now we have to say Petrograd), and stood in front of a certain portrait with, let us say, Tzarist connotations … Let’s just say he fooled a great many people, my grandfather.
But that evening at the icons exhibition, as I walked through the warm, perfumed rooms, I overheard someone say to a companion, ‘A beautiful exhibition. Some very rare pieces.’
The companion replied, half serious, half jocular, ‘Let’s hope Iskander hasn’t heard about this evening’s display.’
The other man said, curiously, ‘Is that his real name?’
‘God knows. I’ve heard he has several aliases. They say he switches names to suit whatever villainy he’s currently engaged in. But whether he’s called Alexei Iskander or something else entirely, if he knew about tonight he’d have cleared most of the rooms inside ten minutes, and our exhibition would be over.’
I didn’t clear the rooms, but I did appropriate six icons, all of them beautiful, all of them highly valuable, although the speaker was wrong about the time it took me. It was a little under eight minutes.
And so I come to the real start of my story, which begins in the disastrous year of 1914.
1914. It’s almost like a milestone, that date. A dark, bloodied landmark jutting out of history’s highways like a shark’s tooth, warning the human race never to venture into that kind of darkness again. (I make no apologies for the extravagance or the emotion of that sentence; a man may surely succumb to emotion when describing the rising of the curtain on the most brutal, most wasteful war of all time.)
Censorship was still muzzling books and newspapers in Russia at that time, and thousands of people had no idea that Europe was a simmering cauldron, fast approaching boiling point. People in cities probably knew something of the situation, and because I was living in Moscow I suppose I knew as much as most of them – which is to say not very much at all. But I did know that the balance of power which several countries had striven to maintain was starting to crumble. That was hardly surprising considering the complexity of political and military alliances. If you pull out one strand of an intricate tapestry, the entire thing will unravel, and by the summer of 1914 several strands had been pulled with some force. I’ve never unravelled a tapestry (although I’ve acquired and sold a few most profitably), and I certainly never fully unravelled the tangled strands of Holy Alliances or Bismarck’s League or any of the Austro-Hungarian pacts.
I am still not entirely sure why I felt such a compulsion to become involved in those snarled strands. I wonder now if my profession had begun to bore me – even if it was becoming too easy. Perhaps I wanted a new challenge, or perhaps I simply wanted to be able, afterwards, to say that I had been part of it all, that I had been there amidst the tumult and the chaos, not exactly helping to make history, which would have been a massive conceit (even for me), but to witness history being made. Recording history for future generations. The more I thought about that, the better I liked it.
So I set about persuading several newspaper editors to take me on to their staff as a freelance war correspondent, because war there surely would be, even the optimists agreed about that. I explained to them tha
t I would be a highly suitable person to send to the troubled areas of Europe to write about the unrest. Not only was I able to write interesting and informative prose, I said, but I had travelled quite extensively. I had reasonable proficiency in French, I could make myself understood in German and I even had a smattering of English as well. ‘Smattering’ was something of an exaggeration there, but they accepted my claim, (fortunately without putting it to the test). What really clinched the matter, though, was that without actually saying so, I managed to convey that I had the entrée to a number of privileged houses. I do think I did that rather well, and if they ended up believing I dined at the Kaiser’s table regularly and was on intimate terms with several members of the Imperial Royal House of Habsburg, it was entirely due to their own naivety.
So a number of agreements were made. The financial remuneration varied from paper to paper, but on one topic the editors spoke with the same voice. That was the matter of the censorship laws. Did I understand I must not write anything that might be construed as seditious or subversive?
I did.
And would I give my word as a gentleman (ha!) that I would not write or imply anything that might be regarded as propaganda or likely to incite anarchy?
I said politely that my word could be considered to be given, and could be regarded as my bond.
In fact I have met many anarchistic and even revolutionary-minded people who make delightful and stimulating companions, although sometimes inclined a little to bigotry and fanaticism, and curiously averse to regular washing, as if they consider their ideals too high-minded to be bothered about soap and water. For myself, I had then, and have now, no particular animosity towards the Romanovs.
I did have considerable animosity towards the miserliness of some of the newspapers employing me, though. The travelling costs turned out to be paltry, barely enough for even the most basic of train journeys. Indeed, at one point I began to wonder if this entire scheme might as well be forgotten, but the compulsion to see what was happening in the world, to know about it at first-hand – to record it for others to read – still had me by the throat as viciously as a wolf in a winter forest.