‘Ah.’ Here at last was the truth. Sally sat back on her haunches and unfolded the paper. She had seen it before, and had a vague recollection of its contents. Even so, she was unprepared for what she found inside. The document was not a birth certificate at all, but a certificate of baptism issued by the embassy chaplain in St Petersburg. It was a thorough document, naming the child and her parents, and her date and place of birth, but it was not what she wanted or needed. She had been born in Ostermark, not Russia, and St Petersburg was hundreds of miles away. In addition, it had been issued in April 1873, nearly four months after her birth.
The water started gurgling out of her mother’s bath: Sally had not realised she had taken so long. She hastily put everything back in the box. She felt upset and frustrated, and slightly panicked. She had been so sure the certificate would explain everything. There was, of course, a possibility that her true birth certificate lurked in a drawer somewhere else in the apartment, but she doubted it. If she was really determined to get to the truth, her next step had to be the original records at the legation chancery.
‘Sally? What are you doing in there?’ Emily’s voice sounded in the passage and the doorknob twisted back and forth. Sally jumped. She had forgotten that it was Elena’s job to empty the bath. Her mother was out and dressed much faster than she had expected.
‘Nothing.’ Sally shoved the chocolate box back into the drawer and locked it. The key tinkled as she dropped it back into the Japanese jar, and when she opened the door Emily looked at her suspiciously. She was wearing her nightdress and an opulent dressing gown and her damp black hair had been let down into a long, thick plait. Sally noticed that the streaks of grey showed more prominently than they did when it was up. She thought that Emily looked very tired and more than a little upset.
‘Mama? Are you quite well?’
‘Why did you have the door locked?’
There was no answer to this, or at least no convincing lie Sally could think of under pressure. She did not reply, and to her horror, her mother began to cry. Emily put a hand up to her face to dash away her tears, but they were running too fast and furiously for her to control.
‘Mama! Mama, what’s the matter?’ Sally reached out her arms and steered Emily to the chaise, and helped her onto it. A handkerchief protruded from her own sleeve; it was still damp from her own protracted fit of weeping earlier on, but she gave it to her mother, who clutched at it and worked it with her fingers.
‘I’m sorry. So sorry.’
‘What are you sorry for, Mama? What have you done?’ Sally spoke the question as forcefully as she dared, but Emily merely shook her head.
‘We should never have come back here. That woman, with her vile insinuations. And Melhuish is a monster.’ Emily almost spat out the minister’s name, and Sally saw her eyes were bright with anger as well as tears. ‘I hope he burns in hell for what he’s done.’
‘What has he done, Mama?’ Sally asked. It was too late now for caution; the question had to be asked, and asked directly. ‘Why do you hate him so much? Mama, you must tell me: what happened last time you were in Starberg? What happened when I was born?’
‘They’ve been talking to you, too!’
‘No. Nobody’s been talking to me, Mama, what do you mean?’ Now Sally was truly alarmed. She could not believe her meetings with Estée and Stephen had been overheard, but her mother seemed to know nevertheless. That she had thrown in her lot with outsiders, and worst of all, with Melhuish’s nephew, was a transgression Sally knew Emily would not easily forgive.
Emily grabbed Sally’s hand and clutched it so tightly the flesh went white.
‘Do you think they’ve spoken to your father, too?’
Sally moistened her lips. ‘W-who?’
‘John and Isabel Pritchard. They’re spreading stories about a girl who looks just like you. Isabel Pritchard says they saw her at the opera riot and that Melhuish has gone to look for her.’
‘Has he?’ Somehow, Sally doubted this, but Melhuish seemed to be such a dangerous topic of conversation she felt she could not tackle it with her mother in her current state. ‘Mama, who is she? Who is that girl, my double? Why does she look like me? I need to know, Mama. I need to know!’
A blinding thump knocked Sally to the floor. It took several moments for her to realise what had happened: that her mother had hit her so hard she had flown off the chaise onto the carpet. There was a sound of soft, hurrying footsteps, and bitter weeping. By the time Sally recovered enough to look up, the drawing room door had slammed shut.
Trembling, Sally hauled herself back onto the chaise. She was not much hurt, for Emily was not a strong or even a large woman, but she was badly shaken, and there was blood in her mouth where she had bitten her lip on her fall. Consequently the first and second taps on the balcony window behind her barely caught her attention. The third did. She swivelled on the chaise and tentatively pulled back the curtain.
‘Hello,’ said a voice, and a face looked in. Sally jumped with fright and almost screamed. A young man, wearing the uniform of the Queen’s Guard, was standing on the balcony. He had on a dark cloak and, underneath it, tight trousers and bare feet. The cloak was wet from the rain: he had obviously been waiting there some time.
‘I’ve come with a message from your mother,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’
Sally was so taken aback, she told him, yes.
In her Quay Street premises, Esther Trier sat alone in her sitting room with a cold cup of coffee. She was feeling extremely low-spirited. Her attempt to intercept Estella Merton and the Melhuish boy had resulted in the death of one of Richard’s young men, and she was not so hardened that she could contemplate this disaster without a terrible sense of guilt. Now Sebastian, whom she had sent to the legation in search of Sally Taverner, had not returned and it was nearly nine o’clock. She was worried for his safety and that of the girls, and deeply anxious about Richard’s reaction when he found out what she had done.
Esther was not a woman of action. She preferred to run her business and live her life as quietly as possible; if there were decisions to be made outside of her own immediate concerns she was normally happy to let others make them for her. But in this matter, above all others, she was determined to have her way. Esther had not forgotten that it had been her own mistakes that had precipitated this disaster; her own theft of the star locket, and her misplaced trust in Dominick Barker and his plans. More than anything else, it was the theft of the locket that she regretted.
After many years in Greitz’s company, Esther had a reasonably good understanding of how magicians thought and saw the world. She knew what Richard was trying to achieve. According to the values by which she herself had been raised these aims were repugnant; even by the lower standards of the world at large, there was nothing particularly honourable about the way her lover and his followers behaved. But now Esther knew what the star locket meant to Richard, and how badly its loss had affected his plans, she would have given almost anything to undo what she had done nearly sixteen years before. That Richard had forgiven her for this monstrous betrayal was something Esther could only marvel at. He had never reproached her, either then, or since. The fault, he had declared, was not hers. Esther knew that a magician of an earlier generation would not have let this stop him wreaking a most terrible vengeance. She also knew that the old magicians would have considered her lover pathetically weak for the way he had behaved, for even loving her in the first place. Revenge had been their meat and drink, their own will the lens through which they viewed the world, and anyone who thwarted it was to be dealt with, without pity or hesitation. Only family meant anything to them, and that because it was the medium through which their art was transmitted to the next generation.
Even their family life was like nothing Esther had previously experienced. In the early days, with her child gone, when there had been no one to cling to but Richard, she had hoped, Cinderella-like, for a normal marriage and home life. Greitz, she knew, cared l
ittle for the subtleties of rank and was openly contemptuous of most of the Ostermarkan nobility; he would not care that her father had been a mere notary. But she had been told in no uncertain terms that his kind never married unless there was something very particular to be gained from it, as there had been long ago when his ancestor Astrid Circastes had married Ostermark’s king. So Esther had, reluctantly, relinquished her bourgeois dreams and learned to be content with what she had; to turn one blind eye to magical activities she preferred not to know about, and another when Richard strayed, secure in the knowledge that they were bound in other ways, and that he would always return. If magic was about control, did she not then wield a kind of magic of her own?
It was some time after the clock struck nine when her anxious reverie was finally interrupted by the sound of feet on the stairs. There was a tap at the door. Esther started.
‘Come in.’
The door opened and, to her enormous relief, Sebastian appeared. He paused and Esther saw him smile.
‘I’ve brought someone to see you.’
He opened the door a little wider so Esther could see the figure standing beside him. It was a girl, or rather, a young woman in a fawn-coloured dress with dark red trim, and a fur-lined cloak with a hood. She looked cold, tired, and very uncertain, but it was clear that she recognised Esther, just as Esther did her. The girl said something that sounded like a question, but since she spoke in English, Esther did not understand a word of it.
Sebastian translated. ‘She wants to know if you are her mother.’
Esther burst into tears. ‘Yes,’ she said to Sebastian. ‘Tell her, yes, I am.’
Sebastian turned to the girl and repeated what she had said in English. The girl started crying, too.
‘She says you look so much like her,’ said Sebastian. ‘She says, that it is a very strange feeling. Only—you have blue eyes, and hers are brown.’
‘Tell her that her father’s eyes are brown, too,’ said Esther, and suddenly she was on her feet and they were embracing in a manner she had dreamed of for fifteen years.
‘Mama?’ said the girl, that word that was the same in every language, and which defied the need for translation. At that moment, it did not matter to Esther whether this one was the real daughter or not. She had her child in her arms, and it was in this position that Greitz found them an hour later when he arrived at the house. By then, the damage had been done and there was no turning back for any of them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘And now,’ said Richard Greitz, ‘we must decide what we are going to do next.’
They sat together, the three of them, in Esther’s sitting room. A litter of coffee cups and elegant supper dishes sat on the table behind them. Sally, who had failed to eat anything at home, had been glad when the meal had arrived, but she could not deny that the experience had had an air of unreality about it. To be seated at a supper table with two people she had never met before tonight, and yet to claim the most intimate of relationships with them, had seemed at first like something out of a play. But as the meal had gone on, she had begun to feel more comfortable. Esther was so kind and affectionate, and Greitz so suavely charming that it was difficult not to feel attracted to them. It was curious, too, how distant she now felt from Clive and Emily, whose behaviour earlier had caused her so much distress. Had she thought about this, Sally would have owned that this was very strange, for she and Emily had until recently been unusually close. But something about Esther—some inexplicable glamour—made her memories of Emily fade whenever she looked at her, and Sally was neither astute nor perceptive enough to ask herself why.
The truth was that by any estimation, Esther Trier was an extremely beautiful woman. Sally judged her to be no older than Laura Fakenham, which was to say, in her early thirties. Her colouring was pure Ostermarkan, with the fluffily dressed honey-coloured hair and bluegrey eyes typical of three quarters of the population; she had besides, a graceful figure, flawless skin, and from what Sally could see of them, very straight white teeth. Sally, who had never thought of herself as more than ordinarily nice-looking, was distinctly buoyed to think that this was the stock from which she had sprung, for there was no doubting that there was a very strong family resemblance.
About Greitz, she was much less certain. He sat opposite her now in a velvet-covered wing chair looking faintly amused, one foot, beautifully shod in a fine leather boot, resting on his other knee. Her father, Sally thought, was not a conventionally handsome man, but he had something else, a sense of presence that would have made it difficult to overlook him in any company. For the rest, he was of average height, with a good figure, a pale face, and expressive dark eyes. These eyes watched Sally now, as they had for most of the evening, from under a sweep of black hair flecked with grey. They gave little away, but Sally had seen the flicker of dismay that had passed through them when he had arrived to find her in Esther’s company, and in consequence she could not help feeling a little afraid of him.
He had recovered quickly enough, however, greeting her first in Ostermarkan, then in French, which Sally had learned as a child in Russia, and which she quickly discovered was their common language. After a shaky start—for she had only recently started speaking it again in Lausanne—she was pleased to find how quickly and fluently the words came to her. Then Esther—who had been silent at first—joined in the conversation. ‘How I wish we had tried this earlier!’ Sally had exclaimed ingenuously, and a glance had passed between the other two, a friendly, mocking look, such as lovers sometimes exchange when they know more than the rest of the company. Later, when she had learned more about Greitz’s abilities, Sally was to wonder whether they really had been speaking French, or indeed, any language she knew in a conventional sense at all.
‘This is a difficult situation,’ said Greitz, when the meal was over and they had drunk their coffee. ‘I own, my dear, I have been somewhat taken by surprise, finding you here this evening. However, now we understand each other a little, I am not sure that it is all working out for the best. I certainly hope so.’ He shot Sally a charming smile, and she felt a little reassured, but not much.
‘What am I going to tell Estée?’ she asked. The new weight of knowledge about their origins—bizarre, shocking knowledge which Greitz and Esther had given her—preyed heavily upon her mind. She had not yet had time to think about it properly, and part of her shied away from it, for the ramifications were too horrible. There was anger inside her as well, anger at the people who had done this to her and above all, to Estée. But that could be addressed later, too. For the moment, the bare facts were hard enough to hold onto.
‘If you will take my advice,’ said Greitz, ‘you will tell her nothing. The poor girl has suffered enough without this being added to her difficulties. Frankly, since she can do nothing about her predicament, I think it would be cruel.’
‘I wish I could see her,’ said Esther. ‘I wanted to bring her here, too. But Valentine frightened her and she ran away.’
‘She is with Melhuish’s nephew, is she not?’ said Greitz.
‘Yes,’ said Esther. ‘And, unfortunately, with Michael and Bridget Barker.’ These last names were spoken with such an intense expression of loathing that Sally could not but be taken aback.
‘Michael Barker’s father, Dominick, was the renegade behind the original spell that turned one child into two,’ explained Greitz. ‘In a sense, he was the architect of all our troubles. His son is affiliated with the Casimirites—what is left of them. They are only a handful now. I do not think we will find them much of a problem. The important thing is to find the other half of the locket.’ He picked up Estée’s star, which had been lying on the table throughout the conversation, and ran his fingers contemplatively over its edges. ‘Retrieving this from the pawn shop was straightforward enough, but we can do nothing with it unless we have yours as well. Do you know where it is?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Sally. ‘Before I wore it to the opera, it was kept in the legation
safe. After the riot I gave it back to—to my father.’ She felt awkward saying the word, but she did not know what else to call Clive, and Greitz let it pass without comment. ‘I think he asked Mr Melhuish to put it back in the legation safe.’
‘As it happens, I saw Mr Melhuish on Sunday morning and he did not have it then. I think we must assume he took the time before he saw me to do as your father asked. You will have to retrieve it, and quickly.’
‘Can’t you do that?’
‘It’s not quite that simple,’ said Greitz. ‘I have a certain amount of power, but it is very stretched at present, and there are limits to what I can do. Magic is like all human endeavours: it is hedged about with rules that must be followed. In the ordinary way of things, I would send Sebastian or one of the other guardsmen to the legation to retrieve the pendant. But they have no rights of access to the building; to work within its confines as they would need to do, someone in authority would have to invite them in. There is not much time to arrange that; furthermore, there are difficulties with the locket itself. I have told you it is a powerful talisman, and that it has been passed down through generations of our family. As a further protection, it can only be worn or carried with comfort by those of our blood. That means only you or I can safely retrieve it from the legation, Sally. And since you have more excuse to be found inside the building than I have, I strongly believe it should be you.’
‘Me?’
‘You’ll be quite safe,’ put in Esther. ‘Richard will see that you are protected.’
‘But I don’t know how to get into the safe.’
‘That much I can arrange.’ Greitz laid the plain half of the pendant down on the table at his elbow and leaned forward. ‘Sally, I realise this is disturbing for you, but until we have the whole locket, your future is in doubt, and so is Ostermark’s. In a very real sense, that locket is your inheritance. You were conceived to hold it in your keeping and I want to make sure that is precisely what you do.’
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