by Jessica Mann
Of course Artemis would not have been able to take her place as a Bessemer on her return to England. The von Horns would have been over there within days of her disappearance, looking for their treasure.
Once Waldemar found that she and her son were not to be traced, he announced their deaths. But then – perhaps they had been recovered, and had died. For the treasure had returned to Drachenschloss – or, if it had not, what was it that was due to be displayed in London?
It was easy to see why Artemis had eloped, and it would not simply have been for love of Philip Ehrenstamm. She must have feared another carriage accident like that in which her husband had died, or the one in which the Prince Consort had been injured; and she wished to protect her son. No doubt Artemis believed what her husband had told her, that an enlightened King, spurred by his English wife, would see that the restrictions on the rights of the children of morganatic marriages would be lifted. Artemis must have supposed that Waldemar feared being dispossessed and regarded Heinrich’s life as a threat.
When my son comes into his own again I shall return. Until that time, he is safer as Henry Lambert, a commoner, hiding from those who have stolen his birthright; and safer too, hidden by my sister and by my namesake at Stockwell, are those precious proofs that are his right, for of those, too, I believe my enemies would deprive me, dishonouring my name, and that of him who gave it to me.
Heinrich von Horn, Henry Lambert, could never have come into ‘his own’. Artemis could not know, nobody then could have guessed, that the enlightened Frederick William, after waiting thirty years for his throne, would die within weeks of ascending to it, having spent the whole of his career as the impotent, ignored opponent of his father’s reactionary regime. Murderous hotheads like Waldemar could afford to leave Vicky unmolested. Under Bismarck there was no time or place for liberalism, and among the many reforms that never took place, was the abolition of morganatic marriages and their consequences.
Artemis’s escape to England was followed by epistolatory silence. Perhaps she lived in England and was able to speak instead of writing to her sister. Very soon after the date of Artemis’s departure from Drachenschloss, Queen Victoria mentioned in her diary the presence of Prince Waldemar in England, and on the same day she refers to sending her personal physician, Sir James Clark, to call on Lady Clementine Bessemer to make sure that the ailment keeping her from court was not infectious. One may infer that Clementine was taking care to avoid Waldemar’s questions.
The next letter in the collection was dated two years later from a ship on which the Lamberts were crossing the Mediterranean.
The sea air and brilliant sunshine are indeed causing my wretched health to improve.
Artemis notes, amid her eulogies of the scenery and flora.
I breathe more easily, and it is some days since I have coughed blood. Henry thrives on the life at sea. How different is this happy childhood, in the company of two loving parents, and the affection of his two dear aunts, from our solitary life at Stockwell, strangers to our parents as we were. Henry makes friends with all the world, sailors, servants, other travellers, and he already converses in three languages.
Next comes an account of a day on the shore in Sicily, with much gushing emotion at the sight of a ruined temple.
My life in Germany is like a bad dream vanished with the dawn, and in the shared charge of the Huntress and her sister rest its waking traces.
Artemis’s language had become more flowery and high flown since she married her philosopher.
We shall live, dear sister, in the remembrance of those who loved us; that is what my husband teaches me.
Artemis died of consumption when the ship was somewhere between Cyprus and Palestine. Philip Lambert told Clementine that Henry would be his own son whose father’s care would never falter, and he closed his melancholy account of every cough and haemorrhage with warm expressions of fraternal devotion to Clementine Bessemer. Artemis’s body, he wrote, was committed to the water.
That was the end of Margot Ellice’s patchwork history. Tamara slid the papers back into the briefcase, and began to unfold the next document. She had been too fascinated by the story unfolding on those smooth grey pages to pay proper attention to what was going on in the hotel. Now she realised that the soothing murmur of cooking and eating in the distance was the background to fast, firm footsteps coming along the passage.
There was no room between the bedsprings and the floor for a human being. None of the tables was large enough for Tamara to be concealed below its dangling cloth. Moving quickly, she pushed the flap of the briefcase so that it would appear closed to a casual glance, and stepped into the central section of the large tripartite mahogany wardrobe. She cowered in pitch darkness among the suits and coats, and listened to the door of the room open, and masculine steps entering. Tamara could see nothing except a narrow line of light around the edge of the door. If he had come to fetch another jacket, or the anorak against whose smooth nylon Tamara was resting her cheek . . . steps came in her direction. I shall pass myself off as a practical joker, she thought; say that his friends had arranged for him to find me naked in his bed when he slid his toes down to that hot stone bottle. Or should I burst into song? In the London of the nineteen-eighties there are so many loony possibilities, from singing telegrams to iced cakes bursting open to reveal four and twenty singing black girls, that I ought to get away with it. If he’s middle-aged he should be pleased. If he’s young he might laugh. Otherwise . . .
The wood of the cupboard, like a sounding board, magnified the squeak when the left hand door opened, but the whole structure was so well made that it did not even tremble. Pinching her nose to avert sneezes, Tamara listened to a pair of shoes falling onto the ground, and another being lifted from the cupboard. She could almost hear the scraping of fabric as the laces were tied.
He shut the door and walked away. He paused. Had he noticed that his case was unfastened? No, he was leaving the room. The door slammed and its key turned.
When Tamara stepped out of her hiding place, she was surprised to find that she was still holding a couple of sheets of paper in her trembling hand. I used to be cooler, she thought, but with trained thoroughness paused to read them. One was a sheet of working drawings, a jeweller’s blueprint for the accurate reproduction of the Horn Treasure. Here was a plan for the crown, chalice, ring and sword, and the sketch of the completed objects seemed identical to that published in 1863. There was a signature in the corner, in tiny letters: V. L Volkersheim, 1917.
Tamara had read, but never quite taken in the extent to which it was possible for the rich upper classes in Britain and in Germany to live as though their world were not coming to an end over there in France’s trenches, during the first world war. That a jeweller could have supplied the materials, the skill and the time to create a replica of the Prince of Horn’s lost treasure in 1917 was a chilling little piece of evidence.
Waldemar must have known that the treasure was gone for good. Presumably he had done nothing more about it, apart from ceasing his family’s annual ceremony of worship in the vault, until his all-powerful Emperor had announced his intention of seeing it in 1917. Certainly those who had acquired that replica by conquest in 1945 could have had no idea that it was not the original treasure. It was probably a piece of secret information, handed down from father to eldest son in the family.
The last piece of paper was a sheet of foolscap showing a rough draft of a letter with many changes and erasures. Some sentences were in English, some in German. A crude deception foisted upon a credulous world . . . political advantage derived from fraud . . . expose the crude forgery now being forced upon willing dupes . . .
The contented sound of heavy eaters enjoying their coffee and brandy was floating up from the lounge. Tamara tidied her ruffled appearance, using some of the powder provided for women guests and the Prince of Horn’s comb. She re-locked the case on all its papers, and put it where she had found it on the chaise longue. On the st
airs she met an elderly American who had dined unwisely and too well, and she waited at their foot while the hotel’s owner crossed the hall and closed the door of his office behind him. She was sorry not to set eyes upon the Prince of Horn among the men clustered round the wood fire. He had presumably changed his shoes in order to go out, and none of the jovial, flushed diners could possibly be he. It was a pity. Tamara would have liked, just once, to see him.
Chapter Sixteen
In her parents’ house Tamara, the youngest of four children, would always be treated as such; cherished, teased, admired, but never taken quite seriously as an adult. Arriving there, she felt responsibility sloughing off, an agreeable immaturity regenerated. She did not really regret having refused Kim Rice’s pressing invitation to accompany him on a detecting trip. He wanted to trace the pedigree of the picture he had bought. Tamara had told him that she had to go home for a long weekend. ‘I shall miss you,’ he said, and she felt the tickle of excitement at the prospect of their next meeting.
It was not a woman who knew more than her family ever could about violence and deception who entered their large, untidy hall; it was not the secret agent who had once caused two terrorists to die in their own explosion who threw her coat onto a chintz sofa; not the outsider who had once kept a traitor from high office who called ‘Anyone at home?’ into the warm silence. The girl who rushed into her mother’s embrace was still dependent on that mother’s approval; she hugged a father she could bend to her will; she kissed a sister with whom she would always feel competitive and in whose older face she could see a prophecy of her own.
‘You girls are still absurdly alike,’ Mrs Hoyland said fondly, but Alexandra pulled back, shaking hair from her eyes, and said,
‘Not any more. I’m covered with wrinkles.’
‘What nonsense . . .’
But Alexandra had left the room. The change had been very recent, from the younger sister striving to emulate a glamorous elder, to Tamara’s new state, of being envied by Alexandra.
‘The children wear her out, poor thing,’ Mrs Hoyland said, and Tamara nodded. She might have had children herself by this time, if Ian Barnes had lived. Tamara’s mother and father noticed details of her appearance, as though from it they could guess whether she had yet found a replacement. Neither of them had ever said that they would like her to settle down to conventional life, in fact, far from it; for both had always been delighted by her academic successes and professional status, but she knew that they both hoped she would marry. Tamara herself had long since outgrown any rebellion against her parents’ standards. She too would have liked to get married and have children. But the men she had found since Ian’s death had not been imaginable husbands, and she knew that even Ian himself would have been a bad bet; only a fool would plan a peaceful life with a secret agent.
Kim Rice’s lover did not feel like a secret agent; archaeology, antiques and art, she thought alliteratively, would offer greater lifelong satisfactions.
Alexandra recognised the secret smile of a younger sister. She asked the question no parent would dare to put. ‘Who is he this time?’
‘Who?’ Tamara said.
‘Whoever it is that’s making you look like a cat that got the cream.’
Rob Hoyland was used to making peace between his children. He closed the book that Tamara had brought him, a long sought edition of one of David Lindsay’s esoteric fantasies, and said, ‘I have been hunting this for years. Where did you find it?’
‘I am afraid it’s a bit damaged. It’s from Jeremy Ellice.’
‘Ah yes, poor man. So sad about his sister.’
Rob Hoyland made room in the bookcase for his new acquisition. All the Hoylands bought books. They lay in piles on every table, and were stacked on window sills and beside every seat in the house, including the lavatory. They competed for wall space with the pictures, whose number increased with similar speed. The Hoylands’ house had been designed in the eighteenth century for a more formal pattern of life than that to which it had been adapted. Smaller rooms with separate functions had been joined together, so that the ground floor now consisted of a square entrance hall, furnished with seats and a mahogany table covered at most times of the year with flowers; at present it carried a dozen varieties of cyclamen. On either side of the hall were two very large rooms, one a library cum drawing room, the other a kitchen-dining-sitting room. Both were full of the choices of two catholic tastes, paintings, drawings, pottery, ornaments, oriental rugs, contemporary weavings and complicated mechanisms for playing music. Each item had been chosen for itself, and no limit had been set to the number of patterns or periods of manufacture. When the Hoylands were in a bad temper they complained that the place looked a mess. When they came home from the outside world, it felt like a sanctuary.
It was unprofessional of me to come home, Tamara thought, her mind slithering into contentment; I should have stayed in a commercial travellers’ hotel. She had never been able to concentrate on her work here, in spite of the parental encouragement, but had always returned to her university during vacations when she had to study.
‘I suppose you’re going to tell us you have been working hard,’ Alexandra said, settling her children round the table. She tucked one into a high chair, another onto a cushion, and took the youngest on her knee. ‘Wait until you have tried this game, then you’ll know what hard grind really is. It’s like a treadmill.’ But as she spoke her lips were nuzzling the soft nape of her baby’s neck. Tamara watched the combined exasperation and devotion with a painful kind of interest.
‘I can see that they take up all your time,’ Tamara accepted a plate from her mother. ‘What elaborate food. Weren’t you at work today?’
‘Mother doesn’t cook any more,’ Alexandra said. ‘The deep freeze gets filled by a freelance. It’s the modern equivalent of the kitchen staff.’
‘Sandra’s been busy, too; she’s organising an appeal to keep some pictures in the county,’ Rob Hoyland said.
‘Yes, you should be interested in it, Tara,’ Alexandra said in a more friendly voice. She gave herself and the baby alternate mouthfuls, occasionally pausing to redirect the middle child’s spoon. ‘Two Gainsboroughs and a Turner, they were sold at Sothebys to an American but we’re hoping to get an export licence refused if we can raise the cash to buy them back. They ought to be here in Devon, not even in London. The big national museums have enough loot, we need them here. Father should have done something about it at the time.’
‘My dear, you know we had to raise as much money as we could. I had no discretion in the matter. Only the pictures that the man from the National Gallery said were unimportant could be sold down here.’
‘That’s all very well, but James says –’ Alexandra’s husband was a lecturer at Bristol University. He was a man of startling good looks and equally startling dullness. Tamara had never yet found a single subject on which she could sustain a conversation with him for more than three minutes, although he was professionally concerned with conservation and the environment, both topics that interested her. Even when Alexandra quoted him Tamara’s ears almost involuntarily switched themselves off.
When her voice stopped Tamara said, ‘I didn’t know you had been involved in the sale at Stockwell, Father. I came across something the other day . . .’
‘We act for the beneficiaries.’
‘Parasites,’ Alexandra hissed.
‘Expatriates,’ her father said. ‘They both live abroad, a girl and a boy. You can’t blame them, Sandra, for not wanting to be bothered with removals.’
‘I still think it’s disgusting.’
Tamara noticed her mother’s anxious glance at Alexandra, quickly converted into the non-judgemental friendliness which is the accepted attitude of a mother towards her adult children. Olga Hoyland had tried to persuade Alexandra to get a part-time help and a part-time job, but Alexandra was committed to the idea that her finest achievement was to give the world her own perfect children, all well-adj
usted, clever and healthy as a certain consequence of having been cared for exclusively by their mother. ‘Do you really think my time would be better spent as a midwife to other people’s sloppy ideas? Editing their sloppy prose? I don’t see how you can even suggest it.’
‘Not as an alternative, as an extra,’ Olga Hoyland had said, but to deaf ears. Yet Olga knew what she was talking about. She was doomed to watch her daughter repeat her own mistakes. She had given up her work at the B.B.C. to look after her own children at a time, in a place, where mothers unquestioningly did so, and like nearly all professionally educated women of her generation, she suffered exactly the same agonies from displacement that would be considered with such serious sympathy in a later era when they were the lot of redundant men. At that time, housewives were expected to thrive on captivity, and it was only when Olga broke out and went back to work that she recognised that she had been a little mad in the preceding years. ‘I worried about the stupidest things, like whether I should wash the paintwork once a month or once a week, and whether there should be two or three choices of pudding at our dinner parties.’ Once she was sensibly occupied, the paintwork went unwashed and friends came to informal meals, while Olga watched her elder daughter become prey to the same obsessions that she had escaped.
Yet was Tamara in a better state? She could sense her mother’s anxieties about her too; so well-qualified and successful in an ideal career, but too thin, too taut, and involved in unspecified extra-curricular activities, about which she never spoke and her parents never asked, whose terrifying traces occasionally showed. Tamara believed that her father had some idea of her secret work for Department E. Passing behind her with a cheese board now, he stroked her yellow hair, and she turned her cheek quickly against his hand before he went on to his own place.
Tamara was usually intrepid, though she feared snakes, and being in huge crowds, but above all those, she dreaded the pain that harm to her would cause her parents. Spies shouldn’t have families, she thought savagely, and in fiction few did. Lovers, parents, siblings, children, all were human ties, weakening the trained resolve. Yet without them, would the spy be nothing more than a dangerous machine? Who is to do such work, if not those with something to lose? Qualms may be a necessary limit to ruthlessness.