Star Locket

by Natalie Jane Prior

‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he was only interested in learning about magic so he could fight it. Once he had what he wanted, he went his own way, and never practised magic again. The magicians have never forgiven him for it. Even today, when he has been dead for over a hundred years, his name is anathema to them.’

  ‘I thought the Casimirites were not much of a threat,’ said Sally. ‘My father said so.’

  ‘It is true their numbers are greatly reduced,’ said Esther reluctantly. ‘But Richard was not entirely telling the truth. Anna van Homrigh has been a thorn in his flesh for many years. She has an uncanny capacity to anticipate what he is going to do, and, considering how small her resources are, she has caused him a great deal of trouble. That she should have tracked down Estella and tried to suborn her is entirely typical. I, for one, will be very glad when this matter is concluded.’ She stood up and went over to a cupboard, which she unlocked with a key at her belt. ‘Let’s forget the Casimirites for the moment. They are tiresome people, who have caused us all a great deal of heartache. You will be interested to see this.’ She took out a small leather-bound book with an elaborate clasp and sat down beside Sally on the chaise.

  Esther undid the clasp and Sally saw that the book was a photograph album, filled with cabinet-sized photographs of stiff, poker-faced Ostermarkans. They were all, apparently, relations, though Sally quickly lost track of who they were. There were photographs of her maternal grandparents, both dead in Esther’s teens, an achingly beautiful blond-haired baby, who proved to be an uncle lost in infancy, and sundry cousins, mostly Triers, with a scattering of Runcimans and van Homrighs. There were also pictures of Esther, one as a child, and several of her as a younger woman. She had indeed been extremely beautiful, and Richard Greitz, who appeared with her once or twice, was a striking man, though little of his energy was captured in the formal pose. Yet for every photograph in the album, there were many that were missing: either removed from their cardboard windows, or, in more extreme cases, completely ripped from the book.

  It seemed that anyone Esther disliked, or chose not to remember, was simply expurgated from the record of her life. Such casual destruction made Sally feel uncomfortable, for she could not imagine doing such a thing herself, and even less could she imagine herself showing such a defaced record to someone who was almost a stranger. She was too well-bred to comment, but when they reached a page where the photograph had been savagely cut in two, she could not suppress an exclamation.

  ‘My sixteenth birthday.’ Esther touched the jagged edges of the family grouping. ‘I always treasured this picture. It was the last one ever taken of my father. He died only three weeks later, very suddenly, of an apoplexy.’ She glanced at Sally, who was sitting in silence, unwilling to ask the obvious question. ‘You are wondering why it has been cut up. Perhaps it was childish of me, but I was so angry at the time I was scarcely in control of what I was doing. I cut her out, and threw her in the fire. My older sister, Sophia, the one who married the Englishman, Jonathan Merton.’

  Sally reached out and took the book. She looked at the photograph more carefully. It showed a teenaged Esther, dressed self-consciously in an adult crinoline that Sally guessed would already have been going out of fashion, standing behind a chair on which sat a tiredlooking man in his fifties. Another figure had obviously been posed beside her, for there were the remains of a woman’s sleeve and a hand on the father’s shoulder. Sophia Trier had been cut so savagely out of her sister’s life that the edges of the photograph were torn where Esther’s scissors had cut. Sally ran her fingers along the ragged edge.

  ‘Estée’s mother.’

  ‘No,’ said Esther. ‘Not Estée’s mother. I am Estée’s mother. And your mother. And you are my daughters. You cannot cut ties like that, whatever people may like to think.’ She took the album out of Sally’s hands and laid it shut on a nearby side table. A flicker of an image, half memory, half emotion, stirred in Sally’s head; she saw, or felt, the trickle of tears on her cheeks, and the pressure of warm arms sweeping her up and hugging her tight. When had it happened, that childish upset, so long forgotten? She had no way of remembering, but she did know that the woman whose love had touched her then was not sitting on the sofa now. And through the breach made by the memory, the little hole in a mental wall she had not even realised had been built inside her head, a question came, unbidden and unexpected.

  ‘If Sophia was your sister, why did she take the copy?’

  The words had scarcely left her lips when she saw her answer on Esther’s horror-struck face. ‘Oh, no,’ Sally whispered. ‘You mean—you don’t mean—’

  ‘My darling, it’s not that, I promise you!’ In an instant, Esther was in front of her, on her knees on the carpet, her soft hands enfolding Sally’s tightly. ‘Never, never would I lie to you. You are more than life itself to me; to have you here now is all I have dreamed of for fifteen years. You are my child; I swear, before God, it is so—’

  ‘But you don’t know, do you?’ Sally felt a scream of panic and anguish welling up inside her; it was almost more than she could do to keep it in. ‘You let me think I was the one, but you don’t know for sure. It might be Estée. In fact, it probably is Estée. Her mother was there; mine wasn’t; she was just some poor woman at the legation whose baby had died—’

  ‘Sally, my darling, believe me when I say we cannot know.’ By now, tears were pouring down Esther’s cheeks, and her beautiful blue eyes were red. ‘Your father: he has tried everything in his power to discover the truth, but he cannot. Everyone who was there at the time is dead. The only person who might have known was that vile man, Melhuish. My sister met him through the embassy, because her husband was English, and he told her he knew a couple being transferred out who wanted to adopt a child. But he always claimed he did not know which child they took, and I do believe him. He was nothing but a go-between, who was not worth a moment of my contempt—’

  ‘My mother was always afraid of him,’ said Sally.

  ‘Yes. Because he knew everything. If it had not been for the fact that he might have held some clue to what happened, Richard and I would never have suffered him as we have. If you only knew the money Richard has given him, over the years…oh, he had his uses, but all the same, it made me sick to think what he had been involved in. I could not bear to have the creature near me.’

  ‘And now he is dead,’ said Sally, ‘and if he did know for certain, he will never be able to tell us.’ Her mouth wobbled. ‘What am I to do? Oh, what am I to do?’

  ‘You must trust me.’ Esther reached for the handkerchief she had dropped on the side table and mopped at Sally’s tears, then her own. ‘I love you and I will do anything to protect you. Even if it means defying your father.’ Esther rose and went to the mahogany cylinder-topped desk which stood against the wall. There was the click of a key in a lock and the sound of a drawer being opened. A moment later, she was pressing a small hard object into Sally’s hand. ‘Here. Take this and you will control your own life. Even if the worst is true. Even if you are only a shadow.’

  Sally fingered the object in her hand. It was a small box with a marquetry lid. When she opened it a familiar shape fell into her hand, a many-sided gold star with a loop for a chain and a hollow interior. She flipped it over. A single word stood out against the gleaming surface.

  Astrid.

  ‘It means “star”,’ said Esther. ‘It was my baby’s name.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Estée. She stopped in the middle of the station platform, amid the scurrying passengers and porters with luggage on trolleys. ‘I can’t go through with this. It’s wrong, I have to stay.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ The sound of a train whistling its departure cut off Stephen’s reply. There were loud belches of smoke, the sound of pistons straining, and the clatter of carriage doors and windows. A man ran past them and jumped onto a carriage footplate, and around them relatives started shouting last farewells. This wa
s the line for Soderling, the station where the big international expresses stopped on their journeys across Europe. Stephen grabbed Estée’s arm and pulled her out of the rush.

  ‘What?’ he said again. ‘Estée, we agreed on this. You’re going to England, to see if you can find your father’s relatives. What are you talking about?’

  ‘I can’t do it,’ said Estée. ‘I’m sorry, Stephen. I can’t.’

  She pulled her arm from his grip and walked away from him across the platform. Stephen ran after her. There was a waiting room ahead of them, and she allowed him to usher her into it. It was almost empty, for the train had just left, and there was only an elderly couple in the corner, fussing over a parcel. Stephen put down the carpet bag containing Estée’s possessions and swung around to face her.

  ‘What’s the matter? We agreed we had to get you out of Starberg. There are only two direct trains a week; if you don’t go today, the next one doesn’t leave until Saturday. It could be too late then. We have to get you to Soderling this afternoon.’

  Estée shook her head. ‘It’s too late already. I see that now,’ she said. ‘If I go to Leeds, they’ll be able to track me down. Probably I’ll never even get there. In any case, after what happened to my father, I’m not prepared to put any of my other relatives in danger.’

  Stephen conceded the point. ‘All right. We should have thought of that. But we still have to get you out of Ostermark as quickly as we can.’

  ‘No. I have to stay. I have to see this out.’ Estée paused while the elderly couple left with their parcel. The door closed behind them, and she sat down wearily on a bench. ‘I’m sorry, Stephen. I know you feel this is the right thing to do, but the more I think about it, the more I realise it can’t work. Because of this.’ She put her hand to her neck and lifted the chain where Sally’s diamond star was hanging. ‘It doesn’t belong to me. It’s hers, and I can’t take it away with me. I have to give it back to Sally, and I have to get mine from Greitz. I don’t know why, I just know I have to do it.’

  Stephen felt the blood drain from his face. He sat on the bench in front of her. ‘I think you’re mad to even consider it,’ he said at last, when he could speak at all. ‘Estée, what’s wrong with you? Greitz has already killed your father and my uncle. If you try to get your star back—and you don’t even know for sure he’s got it—you’re putting yourself right in his hands. Do you really want to do that?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t,’ said Estée. ‘But I honestly don’t see that I have much to lose. If Greitz and Esther Trier want me, sooner or later they’re going to find me. Sally’s on their side, and they already have my half of the locket. If I look as if I’m joining them, I might just be able to persuade them to give it to me.’

  ‘That’s a very big “if”,’ said Stephen. ‘Anyway, what about Sally’s half? They know we’re looking for it, and sooner or later, they’ll have to guess that we have it. We know she’s on their side now. Are you really going to walk in there and hand it to them?’

  ‘Only if I get my own back in exchange, of course. You’d have to look after it for me while I negotiated with them. If I didn’t come back, you’d have to escape and take it back to Mrs van Homrigh.’

  ‘Estée. Stop this,’ said Stephen impatiently. ‘You can’t be serious. Do you imagine for an instant you’d get away with it? And even if you did, do you think I’d let you do it? What sort of contemptible fellow do you take me for? I’d—I’d hate myself forever.’

  ‘At least you’d be safe, though,’ said Estée. Her brown eyes looked up at his hazel ones, miserable and weary. ‘Not like my father. Or your uncle.’

  ‘You can’t make me safe,’ said Stephen. ‘It’s way too late for that. Besides, can you imagine what Mrs van Homrigh would say if I turned up at her house without you? I’m enough in her bad books already.’

  Estée smiled faintly. ‘I think she’d tell you what she thought.’

  ‘She already has told me what she thinks,’ said Stephen. ‘But—I do trust her, Estée. I do believe what she says about Greitz. He’s dangerous. And if you go to him, you’ll be doing exactly what he wants.’

  ‘I’d still do it,’ said Estée, ‘if I thought it meant he’d leave you alone.’ She sat for a moment, very still. ‘There’s another option. We can look for the locket without telling Greitz what we’re doing. Do you remember those men who attacked us on the river bank?’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to forget them,’ said Stephen, with feeling. ‘What of them?’

  ‘They came out of Esther Trier’s cellars,’ said Estée. ‘That means there has to be a way out of them onto the embankment. It seems to me that where they came out, we can go in. All we have to do is find the door. I know what you’re thinking,’ she went on hastily, before Stephen had a chance to interrupt. ‘It is dangerous. But the entrance has to be within two or three houses. It’ll most probably be one of those famous tunnels, and I’m sure if we look, we’ll find it. I wish I could think of another way, but I can’t. If you don’t want to come, I’ll understand.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’m not letting you go alone,’ said Stephen, aware that with these words he was casting sense and reason to the winds. ‘Come on. We’d better get a cab. We’ll leave your bag in the cloakroom.’

  They went out to the concourse and found a carriage. As they drove back across the river it seemed to Stephen that Estée’s spirits had markedly improved. He only wished he could say the same for his own. Part of him knew that she was right: now that events had been set in motion, Greitz would not be stopped whether Estée was in Ostermark or England. But there was a world of difference between dodging a magician and going to look for him. From the little he knew of Greitz, Stephen did not imagine he was a man who would care to negotiate with his daughter or anybody else.

  The cab dropped them at the end of Quay Street, near the New Bridge end of the embankment. The New Bridge was new no longer, for it was a hundred and sixty years old and in the process of demolition. Steps led down under its crumbling arches to the embankment path, where Stephen and Estée had been ambushed. This morning it was deserted. A keen wind blew from the river, biting their ears and noses and misting sprays of raindrops into their clothes.

  ‘There are some gratings here,’ said Estée, pointing to the pavement. ‘Do you think—’

  ‘We were further along the path when they came at us.’ Stephen looked up at the buildings on the street side of the path. ‘A hundred yards or so in that direction. I think these gratings must be drains. They’re too small for a grown man to climb out of, anyway.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Estée. She looked frustratedly along the path. ‘I just wish I’d been paying more attention to where we were when it happened. Can you remember hearing anything—the sound of a door closing or something?’

  ‘I wasn’t listening,’ said Stephen. ‘The first thing I heard was their footsteps.’ He stood for a moment, deep in thought under his umbrella. ‘The perfumerie was about halfway along the street. That long frontage must be the silk warehouse. Then I think there was an office—an attorney or something. That must make the perfumerie the whitewashed building, there.’ Estée suddenly gripped his arm. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘The roses. Look.’ She pointed to the tiny window boxes on the perfumerie walls. Crimson roses blossomed unnaturally in the December chill, where any normal flower would have shrivelled and died of cold. ‘She had them in the front as well. Red moss roses, the most delicate type. I thought at the time how strange it was to see them blooming in the middle of winter.’

  ‘Arrogant, too,’ said Stephen, ‘to think you can do something like that and not have anyone wonder about it. Though I suppose they don’t care. After all, magic’s not something people are particularly concerned about these days. What do you think they’re there for? Greitz’s idea of a lover’s conceit?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Estée, ‘but you know, those flowers were unnatural beyond just their wintry flowering. T
heir scent was incredible—the strongest rose fragrance I’ve ever smelled. And as we know, the scent of someone working magic is not very nice. Having a perfume shop is a remarkably good way of hiding that.’

  ‘Well. Let’s go and see, shall we?’ said Stephen.

  He walked purposefully along the path, past the silk warehouse and the attorney’s office, and then past the perfumerie itself. There did not appear to be any way in, other than an ordinary back door at street level. Stephen and Estée continued on for form’s sake to the end of the path, then turned around and walked back. On their third pass, Estée pointed to the lawyer’s office. At the foot of a spiral staircase was a small basement well or area. It was dank and unpleasant looking, and in the shadows of a corner was an iron gate. It gave the whole space a peculiarly gaol-like air.

  ‘It can’t be that simple,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ Estée led the way down the stairs. The area was so small they had to furl their umbrellas to stand comfortably side by side in it. The gate had no visible handle or latch, and when Stephen laid his hand to it, the metal was cold to the touch, even through his leather gloves. The air smelled faintly unpleasant, a musty smell of damp and river, overlaid with something more sinister and familiar.

  ‘No hinges,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not even a door.’

  ‘Not in a conventional sense, no.’ Impulsively, Estée handed Stephen her umbrella and took off her right glove. She reached out her bare hand and touched the gate with her fingers. At once it melted away into nothing and they were standing before an open passage.

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Estée. ‘It just didn’t look real to me, somehow. In any case, it seems as if whoever created the magic is quite happy for me to go in.’

  ‘As long as it doesn’t swallow me alive,’ Stephen joked, but it was less easy to feel flippant than to sound it. As he followed Estée into the darkness, his stomach was churning. His hand grasped hers automatically, and he felt her bare fingers pressing lightly against his gloved palm. After about ten shuffling paces forward, their eyes began to adjust to the poor light. At the end of the passage, some twenty paces from the entrance, they encountered another magical grille. It too opened at Estée’s touch, and they turned sharply left into a wider passage, punctuated at regular intervals by heavy wooden doors.