Star Locket

by Natalie Jane Prior

  ‘I understand,’ said Sally, after a pause. ‘Of course, I will help in whatever way I can.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Greitz stood up. ‘It is time we sent you back. Sebastian has left a simulacrum in your bed, but it will deceive nobody by daylight, and if you are to do anything useful tomorrow, you must rest. I will call for Sebastian to take you home; he will explain what you must do on the way.’ He reached over and rang a bell. A moment later, the three of them parted affectionately and Sally was gone.

  Greitz went over to the window and looked out into the street. A cab was pulled up and as he watched, Sebastian and Sally emerged from the house under an umbrella and drove off in it. He shook his head slightly, and drew the lace curtain shut.

  ‘What a beautiful girl.’ He turned and saw Esther crying softly on the sofa. ‘Don’t cry, my dearest. I know why you did it. I own, I wish you had not, but I do understand.’

  ‘I thought you would be angry,’ said Esther in a muffled voice.

  ‘Oh, I’m very angry.’ Greitz sat down beside her and put his arm around her. ‘I’ve been angrier than you can imagine for the last fifteen years. You do realise, Esther, if she turns out not to be the one, having met her—and having lied to her—will only make it harder?’

  ‘I tried to bring Sophia’s girl here too,’ explained Esther. ‘When I saw them together down in the street, I couldn’t help panicking. I know I should have sent for you. But you weren’t here, and I didn’t realise what was going to happen. Poor Valentine—’

  ‘Valentine got what he deserved,’ said Greitz curtly, ‘and it’s as well for him that he did, acting without my orders. As to what poison that old witch, Anna van Homrigh, is pouring into the other girl’s ears about you and me, my dear, I leave you to be the best judge. You know her much better than I do. Sooner or later, we are going to have to deal with her. But not before we find the other half of the locket.’

  Esther picked up the golden star from the side table where Greitz had put it. It felt slightly uncomfortable to her touch. After a moment she opened a carved box on the mantelpiece and laid it carefully inside.

  ‘Best not to leave it lying around,’ she said. ‘It will be safe in there until Sally fetches the other half. Do you know, until tonight I always thought it was Sophia who took my baby? Now, I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘They are the one girl, my love,’ said Greitz. ‘In all the important essentials.’

  ‘Not in all,’ said Esther. ‘Sophia’s girl has no living parents. Sally does. And whichever one turns out to be our child, for one at least there can be no happy outcome.’

  The rain was falling heavily and it was still dark when Estée awoke the following morning. At first, the unfamiliar surroundings confused her, and it took her a moment to work out where she was. Then she saw her folded clothes sitting on the chair beside the bed, and she remembered Anna van Homrigh wishing her goodnight. Estée screwed up her eyes and buried her head under the pillow, but other memories quickly followed and there was no escaping them.

  She did not doubt that Anna had told her the truth. Part of the reason for this was the undoubted integrity of the woman herself, but mostly it was because the explanation, bizarre though it was, was the only one that fitted the facts. Under the safety of the blankets, and with a rising sense of panic, Estée ran over what she knew of Sally Taverner’s life. Sent out of Ostermark as an infant, moving around from place to place, living in foreign countries, learning foreign languages. That she had come back to Ostermark now was only the last in a long series of parallels. It could not possibly be a coincidence. But if Anna van Homrigh was right, then who was Esther Trier’s real daughter? Estée reminded herself that her mother Sophia had been Esther’s sister. It stood to reason that Sophia would be the one to take her sister’s child. But then there was the matter of the birth dates, and the incontrovertible fact that Sally Taverner had been born three days before her. By the time she had finished running through this, Estée felt depressed to the point of despair. She got out of bed at last and put on her clothes, but the thought of going downstairs was just too much. She was sitting on the bedroom chair, looking dejectedly out of the window, when a few minutes later there was a tap at the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  The door opened and Stephen looked into the room. He was wearing the same black pullover and trousers Bridget had given him the night before, with the addition of a rough, ankle-length topcoat. Only his boots were his own. A not too careful observer might have taken him for a working man on his way to work.

  ‘I thought I’d better tell you I’m going now. Barker’s taking me back to the apartment. Mrs van Homrigh thinks it would look too strange if I disappeared.’

  Estée pulled her shawl around her shoulders. ‘It’s awfully early.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t sleep much. I’ve been up for an hour or so, talking to Mrs van Homrigh. About my uncle and—other things. She thinks that if Greitz has killed my uncle it’s probably because he sees him as a threat to his new position. Neither of us quite knows why, but it’s possible he knew something about what happened fifteen years ago, when you were born. Perhaps Miss Taverner can shed some light on that when we see her again.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ At this particular point in time, seeing Sally Taverner again was the last thing Estée wanted to do. She steered the conversation back to safer waters. ‘What was your uncle like? Not many people seem to have cared for him.’

  Stephen hesitated. ‘He was very good to our family. My father died when I was only three. He was a clergyman, and he left my mother with no income to speak of; she would never have managed without Uncle George’s help. He paid for my education, and my sister Mary’s. In a very real sense, we are his family.’ He chose his words carefully. ‘I know people didn’t like my uncle. There were other sides to his personality, sides he didn’t let us see. I suppose I’ve only really become aware of this since I’ve been here in Starberg and seen how things are run. A Minister of Legation spends as much as he earns. I know that now. I also know that my Uncle George always had money. Who gave it to him, I couldn’t say; but I know that he had other enemies besides Greitz and the Taverners.’

  ‘That sounds as if he was blackmailing people,’ said Estée.

  Stephen nodded reluctantly. ‘It’s possible. I think Mrs van Homrigh is right: that he did know something about the star locket. He was certainly at the legation with the Taverners fifteen years ago. He would have known a lot of what was happening. Anything else is speculation.’ A voice called impatiently from downstairs and he looked over his shoulder. ‘That’s Barker. I’m going to have to go now. But we’ll keep in touch—won’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Estée. ‘We will.’

  She did not say goodbye and as he left the room he saw that she had turned her face to the glass again, and was staring into the street.

  Stephen went downstairs feeling rather unsettled. His earlier conversation with Anna van Homrigh had explained some things about the Casimirites he had not perfectly understood, but while he had come out of it believing they were Estée’s best chance, he did not feel convinced of their ability to help. ‘Our numbers are much depleted,’ Anna had told him calmly when he had asked the direct question. ‘There are twenty-five of us in all, but only three in Starberg since Bridget’s brother was killed by Greitz’s men at the beginning of the year.’ These details had dismayed him, but he had thought it both unwise and ungracious to offer any comment. Instead, he had asked her to look after Estée in his absence. She had promised to do so to the best of her ability, and Stephen did not think he could have asked for anything more.

  He found Michael Barker waiting for him in the hall and they set off together into the rain-soaked Starberg morning. The rain had stopped. It was getting light, and the streets of the Old City were filled with working people on their way to factories and shops. Michael and Stephen joined them, avoiding the streets which, Michael claimed, contained the outlets to the underground tunnels used b
y Greitz’s men. He and Bridget clearly knew where many of these ran, but Stephen suspected that Michael was the sort who was not above pretending to know more about a subject than he actually did. He was grateful to the fellow for having saved his life. Though he wished he could have managed to do this without killing someone, and he had furthermore come to the conclusion that he did not like him.

  Since they had met, Michael had been at best, faintly belligerent, at worst, openly hostile. Stephen had heard some of the argument between him and Anna van Homrigh when Michael had come in very late the night before, having missed Sally at the apartment. If he had been in any doubt as to Anna’s leadership of the group it was dispelled by that snatch of overheard conversation. He could tell, too, that Michael had no liking for being disciplined, and that he was not especially repentant for what he had done on the embankment. That meant two things to Stephen: firstly that he had probably done it before, and secondly, that he was likely to do it again. It made him an uncomfortable companion, and they walked together in silence until the Old City gave way to the New, and the streets became wider and less congested.

  Michael, who had been taut and watchful the whole way, relaxed very slightly when they reached the apartment building next to the legation, though he kept his hand in his right coat pocket nevertheless. The commissionaire looked faintly disapproving as they entered. He did not trouble to tip his cap, but then, thought Stephen, this was the second time in three days that he had come home with a disreputable-looking stranger, and there was always his uncle’s reputation to go before him.

  ‘So,’ said Michael when they were safe in the apartment, ‘what are we going to do now?’

  ‘I think most of what Estée wants is in here.’ Stephen picked up a carpet bag with a red pattern on it. They had used it to bring her belongings back from Castle Street. It had been decided that Michael would take them back to Anna’s house in Young Devil Yard, for Anna had declared that was the safest place for Estée to stay. But Michael gave no sign of being ready to leave. Instead, he walked around the room, looking at the books, the furniture, the fittings, with a professional eye. He was judging what sort of man George Melhuish had been, thought Stephen, what were his tastes, his disposition, his failings. Michael stopped in the corner by the hookah and pointed a dirty finger at the wall.

  ‘The British Legation is next door, isn’t it? Can you get into it from this apartment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity.’ He sat down on the sofa and helped himself to a cigarette from the silver box on a side table. ‘Want one? No? Sit down, we need to talk. Have you any idea what the old van Homrigh woman is going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Stephen was confused. ‘What do you mean? She’s helping us, isn’t she?’

  ‘To a certain extent.’ Michael blew a cloud of smoke into the air and regarded Stephen for a moment through the haze. Reluctantly, Stephen sat in a chair opposite. ‘Bridget and I spend our lives helping people. Anna’s always finding some new attack or plan of Greitz’s that needs to be stifled. For his part, I doubt he finds her more than a minor irritation, but Anna takes it all deadly seriously.’

  ‘In this case,’ said Stephen, ‘it is deadly serious.’

  ‘I didn’t say it wasn’t,’ Michael returned. ‘You’re quite wrong if you think I underestimate Greitz. I know the damage he can do better than anyone. I imagine Anna told you what happened to my father?’ Stephen nodded, and he continued, ‘I was fourteen years old when he died, so there’s no love lost between Greitz and me. He murdered my father and fifteen other people in cold blood. Now he’s Procurator he’ll be aiming to bring others of his kind into Ostermark from all over Europe. That was what my father was trying to stop when he stole the locket and Greitz’s child. I don’t say for a moment he was right to do those things—God knows, he paid the penalty for his mistakes—but his motives were certainly well-placed. And I don’t intend to let Greitz get away with controlling Ostermark any more than he did.’

  ‘What’s the problem then?’

  ‘Let’s say, Anna and I don’t always agree as to method.’

  ‘Mrs van Homrigh’s methods seem to have worked so far,’ said Stephen. He did not like the way the conversation was tending. ‘She’s enormously knowledgeable.’

  ‘She’s also only one woman, backed up by Bridget and me, and perhaps three or four others across the country.’ Michael stubbed out his cigarette. ‘In their heyday, a hundred and twenty years ago, the Casimirites numbered nearly a hundred strong. For God’s sake, there were more of us than there were magicians. And if you’re going to work the way Anna wants to, you have to have those sort of numbers. She wants to sit up in her parlour, collecting bits of information here, bits there, praying for guidance as if she’s got some sort of direct telegraph to heaven, and then sending us out to do battle completely unarmed. That’s what they used to do, you know. Old Casimir Runciman had some weird religious conversion and became the most extreme sort of pacifist. No violence of any kind, no magic—well, I ask you, what does that leave you to fight with? Passive resistance and games of strategy will only take you so far; if it was left to me, I know what I’d do. A few sticks of dynamite in that damn cellar down by the river would see out most of our problems. But if I even suggested that, the old lady would have a stroke.’

  ‘So, what are you planning?’ said Stephen.

  ‘It’s not my plans you need to worry about,’ said Michael. ‘It’s what Anna intends to do if she gets hold of those two bits of locket. She knows Greitz’s power is tied up in it, and she knows he’s looking for it, too. If I understand my man, I’d say he probably already has your Estée’s piece. If he gets hold of the other half, he’ll put it back together and stopping him will be next to impossible. Given her resources and beliefs, if Anna wants to stop him there’s only one thing she can do. She has to find the two halves of the locket and destroy them. And when that happens, one of those girls—your Estée, or the other one, nobody really seems to know which—will simply wink out of existence, as if she never was. One locket, one girl, and we’re back to where we were in the beginning. My father, and those fifteen other Casimirites, will have died for nothing.’

  ‘And you?’ said Stephen. ‘What do you think?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘I don’t want Greitz to get the locket either. I could kill him, of course, but magicians are clannish and there’d always be someone else who’ll bob up in his place. It seems to me that whatever the rights and wrongs of what my father did, he had the right idea. Keep Greitz and the locket apart, and you’ll limit his power. Keep the locket in two pieces, and those two girls as far apart as possible, and you control the situation. Why else do you think one was sent to St Petersburg and the other to Canada in the first place?’

  A picture of Estée, miserably curled up at Anna’s window, came into Stephen’s head. He wondered briefly why Jonathan and Sophia Merton had brought her back to Starberg in the first place. Had it really been Sophia’s dying wish? Or had she been prompted by something stronger, by guilt perhaps, or fear, or even love? Already, Stephen was learning that love was a double-sided coin. He knew that Anna van Homrigh was trying to do the right thing. But he would not let Estée fall into nothingness. There was little enough he could do for her—but he could not let her perish. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What do we have to do?’ ‘We have to break into the legation and find the other half of that locket,’ said Michael. ‘Help me with that, and you can leave the rest to me.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sally slept surprisingly deeply after the dramas of the afternoon and evening and awoke unusually refreshed considering the shortness of her rest. In the dim grey light of a Starberg winter morning she yawned, stretched, and rolled over onto her side. The clothes she had worn the night before were folded on the hard chair beside her bed. Sally pushed back the feather quilts and got up, thrusting her feet into slippers and huddling into her dressing gown. A slip of paper protruded from the folds of the skirt on the chair. She
picked it up and read, in a neat sloping hand, a series of numbers: 10—27—16—4—2.

  It was the combination of the legation safe.

  Sally pulled fresh linen and stockings from the wardrobe drawer and proceeded to dress as quietly as possible. Her reflection looked back as usual from the bedroom pier glass, but this morning she regarded it with different eyes. The small mouth, the shape of the jawline, the colouring were all accounted for now; when she lifted her brush and began pulling it through her hair, she saw Greitz’s hands in the shape of her own. She had, she noted, always been rather proud of her hands, with their slender fingers and elegant nails. Sally pulled her hair inexpertly back into a sort of chignon, and pinned on her hat. The mark on her cheek had faded, and there was only the tiniest blemish to show where Emily’s rings had cut into the skin.

  Very quietly, for by now the servants would be about their duties, Sally slipped out of her room. Floorboards creaked, and her long skirts seemed to rustle inordinately loudly as she made her way along the passage, but nobody stirred, even when she opened the door and crept out onto the landing. At the last moment she remembered to grab an umbrella from the hall stand. Her heart pounding, Sally closed the door of the apartment and ran for her life down the stairs.

  When she had let herself out of the building and was in the street, she began to feel a little safer. The legation was a brisk ten-minute walk through respectable streets much like their own; it was cold and drizzling, and not properly light, though it was past six o’clock. The street lamps were still lit, and there was hardly anybody about, and when she reached the legation, she found it closed for business. Few of the staff would be found at their desks before half past nine at the earliest but, as Sally hoped, the Clerk of the Legation, Jellaby, was astir. He lived on the premises, and had opened the building for the two local women who cleaned the building. When Sally opened the wide door and slipped into the black-and-white tiled entrance hall, she found the three of them standing in a clump of buckets, brooms and wet dusters, holding a heated conversation with Jacob, the legation’s Ostermarkan doorman.