The Henchmen of Zenda

by KJ Charles

  “Which is?”

  He mentioned a sum.

  I whistled. “You pay generously.”

  “I pay for absolute loyalty. I would say also for the risks you will undoubtedly run in my service, but I imagine danger will be a draw rather than a disadvantage to you.”

  “You seem to know me well, considering this is our first meeting.”

  “I have had my eye on you for some time. I have a list of seven. Your name is third upon it.”

  “Really,” I said, somewhat stung. “May I know whose are first and second?”

  Michael smiled. He felt confident then that he had me, I suppose. “First is Bersonin.”

  “The Belgian?” I had not met him, but he was known in my circles for his tricks with strange powders and medicines that did little good to their takers.

  “Indeed. Second, Albert von Lauengram—you will not know of him, a countryman of mine, well connected. Then yourself, of course, and the Frenchman de Gautet.”

  I lifted a brow. “I see I am keeping good company.”

  “I had a Boer hunter in mind, a marvellous shot, but he proved too provincial in his outlook.” Michael gave a dismissive wave. “There is also Krafstein, another Ruritanian, and I have approached a countryman of yours, a man of interesting talents. He is a cricketer. I know you English enjoy that.”

  Freedom from cricket was one of the many reasons I was glad to be an exile. I prayed it would not be inflicted on me, as I would be forced to respond with violence. “So your attendance will consist of six gentlemen-in-waiting?” I asked.

  “That is my intention. I have a final candidate if the Englishman does not serve. Is your shoulder sufficiently recovered to ride?”

  “I dare say.”

  “Good. Papers will be delivered to you by the morning. You will come to me in Strelsau in two days’ time. You will not fail me. Failure in my service is harshly punished, just as success is rewarded. And do not forget this one thing . . .” He leaned forwards and beckoned me to do the same. I obeyed, and found my chin taken in a grasp so firm that the fingers dug into my flesh. “I can have you hanged at a snap of my fingers, whenever I choose, or I can reward you far beyond your imaginings. Your life is mine to do with as I please, and you will use it for me.” He released me as abruptly and smiled at me, or at my lack of violent response, with curling satisfaction. “You are welcome to my household, Detchard.”

  No courtesy for me in the duke’s service, I saw. I inclined my head. “I am Your Grace’s humble servant.”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “You are.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Michael was as good as his word. He usually was when it was to his benefit. Within a week, I was comfortably installed in his household at Zenda and finding out the true nature of the man I was obliged to call master.

  I must pause for explanation once more, since the geography of the country is relevant to my tale. Ruritania is not a large land, and boasts only one city: Strelsau, the capital and Michael’s ducal seat. Strelsau is a divided city, not unlike Edinburgh, with a New Town and an Old. The shining, stately New Town, dominated by the palace, was the king’s domain, where the upper classes strolled. The Old Town was picturesque but poor, a place of dark alleys and low, winding byways, and it belonged in heart to Michael, the placeless and resentful.

  Although Michael was Duke of Strelsau, he had only a large and luxurious townhouse there. His great palace, held in his father’s gift, was at Zenda, a small town fifty miles from the capital and about ten from the German frontier. Zenda is in the foothills of the greater mountains, the castle set on high ground overlooking the town at a little distance, and surrounded by large tracts of forest.

  The castle of Zenda will play a large part in my tale, and it is necessary to understand the layout, so I hope the reader has a greater patience for description than I usually do.

  The castle had begun life as a fortress in the sixteenth century, and still retained an imposing stone tower, surrounded by a deep and wide moat. In front of that now stood a handsome modern chateau, and this was Michael’s country residence. A broad and welcoming avenue led up to the front of the modern chateau; the only means of entry to the old Tower at its back was to cross the moat by means of a drawbridge. This had been rebuilt in recent years so that it was raised and lowered from the chateau’s side of the moat, not from the Tower. Thus, when the drawbridge was up, the old building became an unassailable and inescapable prison, since even if the people inside it jumped into the water, it was not possible for a man to climb out of the steep-sided moat unaided. The Elphbergs had turned a secure defensive retreat for themselves into a prison for others; this says a certain amount about both their confidence and their attitude to rule.

  Schloss Zenda is a magnificent blend of ancient and modern, and if the reader, unlike your humble narrator, is able to cross the Ruritanian border without risking execution, I should highly recommend a sightseeing trip. The chateau when I lived there was a fine house in the French style, with modern conveniences and costly furnishings. Gilt and mirrors, windows and broad hallways, painting and sculpture, grace and dignity. It reflected Michael’s public face, which smiled upon the world like a noble gentleman. Here Michael received guests, entertained visitors, and managed his household and his estates in a way that advertised how he would manage a kingdom. The staff were respectful but content, the maids pretty but untouched, the house magnificent but welcoming. One could not visit the chateau of Zenda without admiring its master.

  No casual guests visited the old moated building, and if the name of the Tower makes you think of the grim ancient prison that stands in London, it should. The Tower was medieval, not modern; dark and dank, not light and airy. It was a place of shadows and secrets, of ancient doors with heavy bars, of stone walls left bare because it was not a place of display, but one of truth—truth pulled out at the end of pliers or hot pokers, if need be. To dwell in the Tower was to understand Michael Elphberg, our duke of dark corners, and to fear him.

  The few servants admitted to the Tower were hand-picked for their loyalty and their silence. The run of the place was given only to Michael’s henchmen—his Five, as we were at the time of my arrival. We had rooms in the chateau but generally spent our leisure time in the Tower, where Michael liked to keep us. It was not unlike being a hound in a kennel.

  I should introduce my four colleagues. First and most obtrusive was Bersonin the poisoner, bald as an egg, with soft fingers and an ingratiating manner of speech. I do not have high standards, but Bersonin disgusted me at a deep and visceral level. He took a kind of cold, clinical pleasure in killing; he liked to watch pain and to inflict it; he thought about little else than what he could do to unwilling bodies. De Gautet, a Frenchman whom I already knew slightly, was a far better companion. He was an excellent swordsman, sported a waxed moustache that was in my opinion a greater crime than any he committed with the blade, and had no sense of humour, but he was tolerable. Lauengram, of a minor Ruritanian noble family, was a decent fighter and gave us a thin veneer of respectability thanks to his good birth; his countryman Krafstein was our quartermaster and pimp. His role was to keep the Tower comfortable and as such he procured girls (from over the frontier, well paid, and warned to accommodate Bersonin’s unpleasant tastes). He told me as much when I had been in the Tower just a few days, hailing my attention as I stood by the fire in the stone-walled room in which we dined or played cards.

  “Cold, Detchard?”

  Of course I was bloody cold; we were in a stone room in the shadow of the mountain in winter. “Not at all.”

  Krafstein smiled. “Perhaps I could assist you in keeping warm?”

  “I regret you’re not my type,” I told him, mostly out of ill temper, though it had the merit of being true.

  The smile didn’t falter. “Nor you mine, I assure you. If you would care to advise me of your preferences, I will ensure you have companionship to your liking.”

  “You might find my tastes d
ifficult to satisfy.”

  “I doubt that. Michael’s man is everyone’s master. Or, if you prefer not to be master in the bedroom, that can be arranged too.” I raised a brow. He smiled more widely. “Let us be frank. Boys, girls, both. Any age or type, experience or none. One who will give you all the attention you desire, or ones who are . . . disposable. His Grace is keen that your leisure time should be satisfactory, and that there should be no unpleasantness outside the walls of the Tower. That, we leave to Red Rudolf.”

  I had already heard of the prince’s unsavoury habits, and been warned that Michael tolerated no such thing in his own household. No Zenda innkeeper complained of a violated daughter, still less son, at the hands of Michael’s men; the punctilious chivalry he demanded of us all down to the stable boys was part of his quiet campaign for Ruritania’s love. I wondered how long it would last if he were crowned.

  “No unpleasantness outside the Tower,” I said. “And what about inside?”

  “Here, dear fellow, you may be as beastly as you choose, so long as it is with partners of my provision. Discretion is all. What may I do for you?”

  “I’m not that desperate yet,” I told him. “Thank you for your offer. There is no need to repeat it.”

  He cocked his head. “Permit me to be clear. The law in Ruritania does not forbid your pleasures, so long as the boy is over thirteen and can be persuaded not to cry rape—”

  “I don’t fuck children.”

  “—but good society expects discretion. Michael’s man may not prowl Zenda for boys, or even grown men. That is not a habit with which His Grace of Strelsau should be associated. And—kindly let me finish—Michael does not tolerate divided loyalty. Learn that, Detchard, and don’t imagine yourself striking up some romance with a townsman; it will not end well. If Michael asks you to cut your brother’s throat or your lover’s, you will do it. His Grace is a jealous god, and you are his.”

  “What an extraordinary speech,” I said. “Allow me to make one in return. I manage my own affairs; I shall never be sufficiently desperate to seek satisfaction from your hands; I am not here for romance. I dare say you are a very excellent procurer, as these things go, but I have no need for your services or your advice, and if you offer them again you will feel the toe of my boot. I trust I make myself clear.”

  Krafstein had gone rather pale. “Admirably.”

  “Then I bid you good day.”

  I have always had a knack for making friends.

  Possibly the foregoing may lead you to believe I have at least the virtue of abstemiousness. I do not. It is simply that I am not in the habit of doing what is good for me, and I had no interest whatsoever in the tepid satisfaction of Krafstein’s hand-picked whores. I prefer my excitements to be exciting, and if I inclined to women I should probably have pursued duchesses, or nuns, or the wives and daughters of the nation’s most skilled duellists. The prospect of sticking my prick in some whimpering guttersnipe whose only ambition is to be paid . . . faugh. That is no improvement on my own two hands.

  (I am requested to observe here that I don’t actually need both hands at once. That was not my implication, and you will kindly stop looking over my blasted shoulder.)

  As the reader will gather, I had not taken a liking to Krafstein, let alone Bersonin. De Gautet was not entertaining but he could give me a decent match on the practice field, and Lauengram was a reasonable fellow with whom one could drink. We never got the other Englishman, so I was spared the boredom of cricket.

  I had not expected my companions to be particularly congenial: men of our stamp rarely are. We were not permitted to fight one another except on the practice ground, so casual insults became a matter of routine instead of vengeance and quickly ceased to matter. We rubbed along with one another because Michael would have it so. We rode out with him, a proud retinue in the winding streets of the Old Town of Strelsau, a bodyguard in the New Town, since there was no more trust between the royal brothers than there was love. We talked to certain people on his behalf—those who might have spoken slightingly of his parentage, say, or those who were loud in their belief that the country should become a republic. We slouched in the shadows when he had delicate conversations with certain semi-official men whose German was of Berlin rather than Strelsau, and we discouraged the hangers-on and listeners with whom Rudolf plagued his brother, just as Michael did him.

  That was the most important article of Michael’s service: that we should loathe Prince Rudolf as much as Michael did. I found no difficulty in that, and raised my glass to his early demise with as much enthusiasm as any, because Rudolf was loathsome. One should never expect much of princes, but Rudolf was dissipated, self-indulgent, and what was worst, stupid. He treated his people with negligence bordering on contempt, and sometimes with those bright, sharp flashes of cruelty about which courtiers muttered behind closed doors. The old king knew of it, I dare say, but since his own right to rule came from his Elphberg blood, he could or would not declare his son’s to be unfit. The nobles did not wish to know, because the only alternative was the commoner Michael, and they did not have to know because Rudolf had not yet been sufficiently uncontrolled to hurt a girl of importance, or take a whip to a senator’s face instead of a shopkeeper’s. They told each other that marriage and kingship would settle him down, as though he were eighteen rather than thirty-two, and as if the combination of privilege, indulgence, freedom from retaliation, and drink would not have corrupted a far wiser man. I rode in attendance a few times when Michael met his brother, and saw quite enough of Rudolf to make me conclude that the world would be a better place without him.

  Michael didn’t order a murder. I had assumed that would be my purpose, but he was not so straightforward.

  “We can’t kill the fool,” he said one night—I think Bersonin had suggested some poison that would mimic the symptoms of liver failure. It was the depths of winter, and we dined in the Tower, for private speech. The wind whipped the ancient stone walls and rattled in the deep, narrow window slits. A fire roared in the great blackened hearth, and the five of us sat around the oak dining table with our master at its head. “If he dies, a portion of the country will blame me, however it is achieved. A fall from a horse, a sickness, or a duel—it will be put to my account, and the Red faction will rise against me.”

  Lauengram coughed delicately. “Not if you wed the Princess Flavia. She is dearly loved by the people, and the Senate.”

  “But I am not dearly loved by her,” Michael said. “My father could command her to marry me, but he is a sentimental fool and he has listened to her pleas. He would name me heir if Rudolf died, but he is too frightened to force the issue or even strengthen my hand by making Flavia marry me. The damned decrepit weak old man.”

  “Yet if Red Rudolf does not die,” Bersonin said, “he lives.”

  I refrained from throwing a piece of apple at him only because of the seriousness of the topic. De Gautet drawled, “Yes, that is evident.”

  “It is the heart of the matter. If Rudolf does not die he will be king, and if he becomes king, he will wife and father, and his child will be heir. So die he must. No?” (Bersonin was a Belgian, so I see no reason he should not have spoken better German than he did. Lauengram insisted that he simply liked to appear odd, and I can only say that if that was true, he must have been a singularly happy man.)

  “Rudolf must certainly die before he marries, for our purposes,” de Gautet said, meaning Michael’s hopes of kingship. “If he spawns a son, the game is—fini.”

  “To win he must marry,” Lauengram agreed. “But for him to be truly safe, his bride must be the Princess Flavia, and that is his problem. Until she becomes his wife, Flavia will be a threat to him. As an unmarried princess, she would be able to sway the Senate against him, should his madness progress to the point where he requires confinement. She could call for that, and even act as Regent, without incurring the, uh, the inevitable suspicions that would be cast upon our duke for making the same observation.
So he must marry her or be at risk.”

  “Could she not have him confined once they were married?” I asked.

  “In Ruritanian law, a wife cannot bear witness against her husband. It would be—not impossible, no, but very hard for her to enforce his confinement, and once he is king, who else would dare? No, if he can persuade her to take his hand, he will be safe.”

  “Unlike her,” I remarked. “I should not care to be at Red Rudolf’s mercy were I a woman.”

  Krafstein muttered something uncomplimentary. Michael hissed annoyance. “Cease this chatter, and be damned to talk of marriage. Listen. We do not kill Rudolf. Indeed, we shall watch his life with the tenderest care. We extend courtesies to him—not pretended love, which would fool nobody, but all that civility and custom demand. We build our duchy in such a way that no man can accuse us of higher ambition. You—all of you—will treat my brother’s adherents and name with the respect due to a future king, not out of love, but upon my command. Do you hear me?” He looked around, meeting our eyes one by one. “From this moment, you, though you remain my men body and soul, understand that Rudolf will be king. I accept my brother’s rule as his loyal servant. I kneel to kiss his hand.”

  He spoke those words of submission in a tone so chilling that I felt as though the room had darkened, as though he could put the lights out with the smothering force of his hatred. Nobody spoke for a long moment. Finally I asked, “And then what, Your Grace?”

  “And then, Detchard, we wait. We wait for the wedding, if it comes first, or my father’s death and the announcement of my brother’s coronation. We do not act until that day. But when it comes . . .”