‘Paris was besieged,’ said Stephen, ‘and Napoleon III was deposed.’
‘More to the point, the Second Empire of the French fell to Prussia,’ said Anna. ‘The entire balance of power in Europe changed. The French Empire was seen as a check to Prussian ambition. When it collapsed so utterly, it sent shockwaves through Europe. To a small independent country like Ostermark, the danger was especially acute. Everywhere we turned we saw small duchies and principalities like ours being gobbled up, subsumed into Prussia and Austria-Hungary without a shot being fired. Everyone was fearful that we would soon follow. And as we pondered how we might survive, a splinter group of Casimirites began to think they had found a solution.
‘Let me not deceive you: in the years since the death of the first Napoleon, our group had grown weak. In part, because our enemy had grown weak, for the study and practice of magic requires faith of a sort, and commitment to a way of life. Magical training had become less rigorous, and most of the magicians we found ourselves dealing with had dwindled into occultists and dabblers with a predilection for tormenting the weak and powerless. But if the spirit of the age was against them, it was against us, too. To be on guard, to watch and pray, to fight back against the depredations of the enemy with the limited weapons at our disposal; above all, to even care enough to want to do this: these are not the virtues of the times we live in. Most people would count our mission a folly, if they even believed in what we were fighting. And so, following the world rather than our own precepts, a number of Casimirites formulated a plan.
‘It was an evil idea, heartless in execution, and a curse to everyone whose life it touched, then and now. At that time, the heir to the Greitz family was Richard, then aged about twenty-six years. He had received all the usual magical training, was a member of the Queen’s Guard he was one day expected to become procurator of, and had besides a reputation as something of a philanderer. A young woman named Esther Trier was deliberately put in his way by this Casimirite splinter group. As they had planned, he soon seduced her, and she was admitted to his confidence and trust. Within a short time, again, as they had hoped, she became pregnant with Greitz’s child. But something happened then, which the splinter group had not planned for. Esther, who was very young, only seventeen or so, fell in love with Greitz. And he fell in love with her.
‘Imagine, then, this poor young woman’s dilemma. Exploited by her relatives; blindingly, desperately, achingly in love—as one can only be with one’s first love—is it any wonder that her loyalties began to tilt? Yet she was honest, and faithful to the people who had sent her to do this horrible thing. She returned to them to bear her child, taking with her the thing they had sent her to find: a piece of jewellery, antique and curious, a locket shaped like a many-rayed star, with diamonds on the front and the name Astrid engraved on the back.
‘The chief culprit was Dominick Barker, Bridget’s father-in-law, who had himself trained in magic as a youth and then apostatised. Evidently, more had remained of his early training than anyone had suspected, for he now revealed his true intentions. He and his companions took the star locket from Esther, and when her child was born—it was a little girl, who I am told looked very like her—they took her as well. The poor mother had not been told about this part of the plan, nor had she any clear idea of what they intended to do with the baby, except that it involved magic. She was naturally demented with fear and worry, and came to my late husband to beg for help. He set off with our son and several other family members in search of Barker and his companions. I remained behind in our house to look after Esther.
‘Hours went past and the search party did not return. I began to grow concerned, but Esther became hysterical. She had, remember, given birth only a few days before, and was at that stage when most women, even in the best of circumstances, feel anxious and emotional. I tried to remonstrate with her, but she was convinced something had gone terribly wrong. As things turned out, she was right, but at the time, I had no way of knowing what was happening. She threatened me with a poker and I let her go. It was the biggest mistake of my life, for she went straight to Greitz and told him everything.
‘Greitz had, of course, missed the star locket, for it was a magical talisman that had descended through many generations of his family. Over the years, their magical powers had somehow become bound to it, and much of his own personal power, tied to that unbroken line of magical activity, was dependent upon it. In fact, he kept it about his person at all times, and only someone as close to him as Esther could have stolen it. As soon as she confessed to him what she had done, Greitz understood everything. The locket was bound to his family; it could not be kept long by anyone not of his blood, so it was of no use to Barker and his associates unless they planned to destroy it. But when he learned that the splinter group had also stolen his newly born child, Greitz instinctively understood what they meant to do. Barker did not want to destroy the locket; he intended to preserve its power, no doubt with a view to using it himself in some future emergency. A child of Greitz’s could keep the locket in her own behest; she could even, if properly trained, put it to use. But Barker was still enough of a Casimirite to want to hedge his bets. Only in utter emergency would he contemplate its use; in the meantime, he wanted merely to keep the locket out of Greitz’s hands.
‘So, he split the locket. Broken in half, it was useless; he could send each piece to the utmost ends of the earth, where Greitz could never find them. And, since only someone of Greitz’s bloodline could safely guard it, Barker took Esther Trier’s newborn daughter, and, using the full limits of his magic, split her as well. Or rather, he turned one body into two.’
‘Me,’ said Estée, in a very small voice. ‘Me, and Sally Taverner.’
Anna nodded. Her brown eyes welled with tears. ‘I am so sorry, my dear. So sorry, and so ashamed.’
‘But my mother was Sophia. Sophia Trier. Everyone said how much I looked like her!’ As she spoke, Estée saw everything swim into focus. Her mother on the boat, dying of tuberculosis, entrusting her with the locket, crying out for forgiveness; the sister in Starberg whom she had quarrelled with so bitterly it might never be mended. Estée pressed her hands to her face, felt the hysteria rising within her. That Anna was telling the truth, she never doubted; that she was a sincere woman, a good woman, she never doubted either. It merely made the pain of what she was telling her harder to bear. ‘You’re saying…that my mother was not my mother. That my father was not my father.’
Bridget knelt swiftly beside her and took her hands, pressing them between her own. ‘No. Of course they were your parents, in every way that mattered. Did they not love you? Clothe you, feed you, pick you up when you fell down, and comfort you in your sorrow? These are the things that really matter, and you must hold on to them, Estée. When you needed them, did they ever fail you?’
Yes, they did fail me, thought Estée. My mother when she died and my father when he gave up the fight to survive; when he ceased to care. I can forgive them for these failings, but I can never forget that they abandoned me. And this, surely, is the ultimate abandonment: to be told that they did not even conceive me, that all I ever believed about myself is a lie.
‘It’s true though, isn’t it,’ she said to Anna. ‘That’s what you’re saying—that my real parents are my mother’s sister and this Procurator person, this Greitz?’
Anna hesitated. ‘Not exactly.’
‘But that’s what you just said!’ Estée shouted. ‘You said that I was the daughter of Esther Trier and Richard Greitz, and that Sally Taverner is my twin.’
‘You’re not twins, Estée.’ Stephen spoke in a very gentle voice. ‘There was only one baby.’
‘I know! One baby, that was split into two. Surely that makes us twins in any meaningful sense of the word?’ She looked at the three faces in front of her, saw the discomfort on Bridget’s, the sorrow on Anna’s, the expression on Stephen’s that was not quite anguish, but akin to something very like it. Was it love, perhaps? Es
tée could not say, but she could tell instinctively that they could see something she had failed to grasp. ‘Not—twins? Then what? What are we? Who are we?’
‘One of you is Esther Trier’s daughter,’ said Anna quietly. ‘I do not at present know which one. The other is—the body which Dominick Barker magically split from the child he stole. She is a copy of the original but that is all. She is flesh and blood, she lives, she thinks, she breathes. She has intelligence and emotions, hopes and dreams—but that is all. Everything that he could divide from the original, Dominick Barker gave her, his shadow child, his copy. But the crucial thing, that animating spark that people speak of as the soul, and that is more properly called the spirit; that immortal part of us that comes only as the gift of God—that Dominick Barker could not divide. It stayed with the original child. And when she dies, or when the star locket is rejoined or destroyed, the shadow child, the copy, will simply cease to exist.’
‘You’re saying I have no soul? That I don’t even exist?’ Estée burst into a flood of weeping. Tears poured down her face and the room disappeared into a blur. She became aware that Stephen was holding her, literally holding her up, for without him she would have collapsed and fallen from her chair. Her face pressed against the rough weave of his pullover; she smelled the damp wool and the wetness of his hair.
‘She didn’t say that, Estée. She only said that one of you was, that we don’t know which one. Don’t you understand? It could just as easily be Miss Taverner as you. Think of this: who would be most likely to get the real baby? The mother’s sister? Or some complete strangers from the British Legation?’ He looked at Anna. ‘That’s so, isn’t it? Miss Taverner’s parents knew nothing about this.’
‘Sophia Trier was certainly part of the splinter group,’ admitted Anna. ‘But I am afraid I have no way of knowing which baby she took. By the time Greitz and his followers found them, both infants had gone. Unfortunately, most of the splinter group had by that time been joined by the rest of the Casimirites, who you may remember had gone looking for Esther’s baby. They were trapped in a cellar, outnumbered. Greitz’s men killed them all. Including my husband, and my son, Anton. He was eighteen.
‘The rest of the story is simply told, I think. Esther and Greitz both still live in Starberg; she remains his mistress to this day. She owns a perfumerie in Quay Street, where the old Undercroft used to be. Bridget tells me her property opens onto its cellars. They are, I believe, a devoted couple. But Esther has never spoken to me since the day she walked out of my house; the day my son, my only child, was killed. Her hatred for the Casimirites is as profound as her love for Greitz. They have never had another child, by the way. I believe she is now barren.’
‘She wants me,’ whispered Estée. ‘Me—and Sally Taverner.’
Anna nodded. ‘Greitz wants you, too. You—the two of you—are his child too. He loves Esther, and family ties are very important to his kind. He also wants the star locket. When he lost it, his plans for Ostermark went spinning out of control. Within the year, his family lost the Procuratorship for the first time in over a hundred and fifty years. And ever since, Ostermark has continued to lose territory, bit by bit, a strip of land here, a disputed county there, annexed to one or other of our neighbours. Now the time has come for Greitz to fight for what he believes in: for the survival of Ostermark as an independent country, ruled by his kind, in accordance with their practices, a haven for magic, a dictatorship of the occult.’
‘From what I know of Prussia, I doubt their rule would be much of an alternative,’ said Stephen bluntly.
‘I do not dispute that for an instant,’ said Anna. ‘There are dark times coming, darker, I think than any of us can begin to imagine. But there will always be something—and someone—to fight against. The issue here is something far more fundamental than that. It is the ability—the right—to fight at all. To that end, Greitz must not get the star locket back into his possession. He has to be stopped. And we are the only people in Ostermark who can do it.’
CHAPTER TEN
When Sally got back to the apartment, the short winter’s afternoon was drawing to a close and it was virtually dark. The lights outside their building had been lit, and the commissionaire could be seen inside the doorway in his dark blue uniform and peaked cap. Just to be on the safe side, in case someone happened to be watching from a window to see her alight, Sally asked the cab driver to continue to the nearest corner. She paid him and walked back the last few hundred yards to the door.
She had planned to tell her mother she had been walking and gone further than she had intended, but when she entered the apartment she discovered Emily was not yet home. Sally went to her room and took off her outdoor clothes. It was cold in the closed-up room, but she was so upset by the day’s events she scarcely noticed it. In her overwrought state, the afternoon’s revelations seemed to have only one possible explanation. That she was not the true child of her parents, that she had somehow been adopted by the Taverners during their earlier posting in Starberg, and that Estella Merton must be her sister—her twin sister—was self-evident. But the sheer enormity of what this implied made it impossible for her to know which way she ought to proceed.
She felt tired, she felt overwhelmed, she felt betrayed. Most of all, though, Sally felt angry. She had disliked Estella Merton on sight, which was admittedly crazy when the dilemma was Estée’s as much as her own; and she felt furious with her parents for bringing her up to believe a lie. But the person her anger chiefly focussed on was Stephen Melhuish. She had disliked him from the moment she met him. He had insulted her at the opera, had been rude to her at the coffee house and, worst of all, he was his uncle’s nephew. Sally thought she knew now why her mother had so disliked George Melhuish. He had been in Starberg at the time of her birth, and must have known the truth about who she really was. And now Stephen knew too, and she could not bear that; could not bear that he knew her secret and had become involved.
Sally wept. An honest voice inside her head—for she was, at heart, a decent and fair-minded girl—told her that she was merely mimicking her mother’s prejudices, but she had to have an outlet for her anguish, and to hate her parents, or Estée Merton, was akin to hating herself. She was still slumped against her window, her face reflected dimly in the glass, when she heard the apartment door closing half an hour later. A few minutes passed, and then her mother appeared in the doorway.
‘Don’t sit in the dark, dear.’ Emily lit the gas and adjusted the jet. She looked at Sally and frowned. ‘Are you all right? You look very pale.’
‘Just tired. I went for a big walk this afternoon.’
‘Well, I hope you took Elena with you. It’s not a good idea to go out by yourself.’ Emily hesitated. ‘There’s no need to dress for dinner tonight. Your father’s still at the legation; he’s waiting for a cipher telegram from London. There’s no saying when he’ll be back. I’ve spoken to Elena and asked the kitchens to send up dinner on a tray.’
‘I’m not really hungry,’ said Sally. It was no more than the truth, but her mother looked at her sharply, so she added by way of explanation, ‘all this Ostermarkan food is too rich for me. It’s a wonder they’re not all as fat as pigs, don’t you think?’
‘A lot of them are,’ said Emily. She turned back to the door. ‘I’m going to have a bath now. I’m tired and very cold. Elena says the kitchens will send up some soup and chicken in about an hour.’
‘Very well.’ Pretending nonchalance, Sally picked up a book and began to read. A few moments later she heard Emily talking to Elena in her inadequate Ostermarkan, and then the bath began to fill in the adjoining bathroom. Sally waited until the bathroom door snapped shut, then slipped out of her bedroom and hurried along the corridor to the drawing room.
Since their apartment was not particularly large, the drawing room served several purposes. Concertina doors divided it from the dining room, and there was a chaise under the window where Emily liked to lie and read during the day. There was
also a small davenport desk, made out of walnut, which they had brought with them from Washington. Emily was wont to sit at it in the mornings and write her correspondence, and she also used it to store her bills, letters and other important documents.
Sally locked the door and sat down at the desk. It was a pretty thing with a carved back that lifted up to conceal supplies of notepaper and a pair of cut crystal inkwells; the writing slope was of inlaid leather stamped with gold, and contained pencils, bits of sealing wax and India-rubber, packets of calling cards and other stationery. The side drawers where Sally’s mother kept her correspondence and other papers were locked shut, but Sally knew where the key was kept. She dipped her hand into a blue and white Japanese jar, and within a few more seconds all three of the drawers were open.
The desk had been emptied on their departure from Washington and was not very full, which considerably simplified Sally’s task. The first drawer contained bills, neatly marked as paid in her mother’s flowing hand, the second a number of personal letters from friends and relatives in England and America. The bottom drawer contained various bits and pieces, including a rectangular pasteboard box which had originally contained chocolates. It was this that Sally had been looking for. She took it out and, kneeling on the floor, eased off the lid.
Inside were Emily’s private papers. In themselves, they were quite unexciting: a selection of share scrips, two assurance policies, her parents’ birth certificates and their marriage lines from the Paris Embassy, where they had married in 1867. There was also a small bundle of love letters from her father to her mother, tied up with a blue satin ribbon, but Sally had already read these, guiltily, on a wet afternoon in Washington three years before, and she knew they contained nothing interesting. What she really wanted was anything that pertained to herself. At the bottom of the pile she found it: her own birth certificate, the long form folded in four and stamped with an official-looking stamp.
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