Circle of Shadows

by Imogen Robertson

  10 December 1784, Caveley, Hartswood

  HARRIET PUT DOWN HER pen and smiled, discovering that she was truly happy for the first time since James had died. Caveley was full of children. Stephen and Anne both seemed fascinated with their new cousin and Rachel was very happy to bring her baby to her sister’s home and walk her up and down the Long Salon, or coo to the infant on the lawn when the cooling weather allowed. She had called her Katherine Isobel. Clode was so happy he seemed to give off a glow, and if Rachel looked tired, she also looked very content. Her figure had filled out, and the softness in her face was that of a mother, rather than a girl.

  Mr Quince reported the children had studied assiduously the curriculum Crowther had set them before climbing into the coach in March. Susan’s French was much improved and the groom at Thornleigh Hall, who had thought her a rather timid rider, now boasted of her courage. Lord Sussex and Stephen had taken to wrestling and to the study of firearms and their use with all the enthusiasm one might expect from a pair of ten-year-old boys. Eustache and Anne were the best geography students, perhaps because Mr Quince had discovered they both liked drawing their own maps and colouring them in with the most vivid hues their paint boxes could provide.

  The family of Thornleigh Hall seemed to spend more time at Caveley than ever, but even such a profusion of company did not keep Crowther away. He would appear in the early afternoon and dine with them, then as evening became night would return to his own house and spend a few hours at his work. His housekeeper often complained of the price of candles.

  The news of Frenzel’s execution had reached them in September in a letter from Manzerotti. He also sent news – one could almost see his half-smile as he wrote – that the shaman Kupfel had met in Marseilles had left no trace behind him. He had an engagement in Paris and expected Pegel to join him there when he had done touring the continent with Florian. In their absence Frenzel’s lands were under the stewardship of Chancellor Swann, and the condition of the inhabitants appeared to be improving as a result. The Minervals were scattered, banished or denying all knowledge of the higher aims of the society. Herr Dunktal found sanctuary in Gotha and began to publish a series of booklets in his own defence and at the expense of his new patron. Later the same month, Michaels received a parcel with Mrs Padfield’s ivory puzzle ball wrapped in straw and wool. There was no note.

  The preparations for the Christmas celebrations were well under way. There was to be a party for the whole village at Thornleigh Hall. Crowther’s nephew Felix, his wife and child had been invited to Caveley and were expected every day, so Harriet had spent half of November in correspondence with various tradesmen in Pulborough and London to order the gifts she wished for her family and friends, and fill the house with enough provisions to feed them. She was sitting at her desk in the Long Salon, aware that her son and Lord Sussex were in the garden with her footman, William, cutting down holly branches to decorate the dining room and hall. Anne was skipping about their heels. She could see them through the French windows when she glanced up – a dumb show of excitement and seasonal cheer. Crowther was sitting on the settee some feet away reading the paper. A little distracted then, she opened her next letter rather carelessly. When she saw who it was from, she pushed the hair back from her face and read carefully.

  ‘Crowther?’ He looked up, and when she held out the letter, he crossed the room to take it from her and remained, standing at her side, while he read. Harriet turned again to the window. The children had laden William down with holly and were now chasing each other back and forth over the snow. She could hear their laughter. Stephen picked up his little sister in his arms and spun her about.

  12 November 1784

  Theo Kupfel to Mrs Harriet Westerman

  Karlstrasse, Ulrichsberg

  Dear Mrs Westerman,

  I take up my pen to tell you of the recent death of my poor troubled father, Adam Kupfel.

  Though his delusions remained to the end, I am glad to tell you that relations between ourselves improved greatly over the last months of his life, and he had even begun to teach me something more of the practical skills his strange obsession had taught him. Never the less, his continued search for the legendary stone of the Philosophers only increased in intensity after you departed Ulrichsberg. Indeed, though I cannot see how, he claimed to have been inspired by his acquaintance with yourself and Mr Crowther.

  An explosion at the workshop occurred on the evening of 1 November, and he was gravely hurt. There was time though for me to sit by his bedside and offer what comfort I could before he passed. It was then I first learned you had visited him in company with Mr Crowther the morning after the Duke’s wedding, and that you had realised it was my father who had poisoned Chancellor von Swann’s gloves. He thought the Minerval Glucke had bribed me into stealing his poison book, and typically of my father, went straight to Glucke rather than me. Glucke denied, quite rightly, any knowledge of the book or the poisons used to harm Mr Clode or paralyse Frenzel’s other victims, but in confusion of his denials revealed that I had been providing Chancellor Swann with certain malicious preparations, inspired by some of my father’s work. Glucke had told him, as he had told me, that Swann was acting always on the Duke’s behalf. I believed it. My father did not. He was in a bitter rage and decided to take his revenge on Swann at once.

  I am sure he regretted it immediately, and was grateful for the opportunity you gave him to right the wrong he had done. He told me that as he had chosen to heal that harm, you did not inform the authorities in Maulberg of his crime, but instead, Mrs Westerman, you urged him to learn to know better the son for whom he had taken such drastic actions. I thank you both from the bottom of my heart. I am a better man for having known my father, even for this short time.

  I still supply cosmetics of the finest qualities to the court, but have also begun a course of medical studies at the university so that I may use what I have learned to help my fellow men, as well as beautify them. Thus, though my father’s path and mine are quite different, our goals in the end became the same. To heal. Politics I have quite abandoned.

  Let me add this to my thanks for your kindness. In his final hours my father’s delusions were generous to him. He died convinced that in his last experiments he had discovered the Philosopher’s Stone, and succeeded in producing the source of a universal medicine. His laboratory was wrecked so no trace of what he thought he had found remained, but his last coherent words were as great a legacy, and I close this letter with them.

  ‘In the end it is love that will save us, that will make us live beyond our years. It is the first material of any cure, it is the salt and substance of life. It is where we long to be, and where we find who and what we are.’

  With my regards to you and your friends,

  Theodore Adam Kupfel

  Crowther replaced the letter on the desk, and Harriet said in a low voice, ‘How strange, it all seems so far away.’ She turned from the window and looked up at him. ‘Poor man, but there is a truth there, Gabriel, is there not?’

  ‘There is, Mrs Westerman.’ He let his hand rest briefly on her shoulder, and for a while they watched the children in silence.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Maulberg and all the people and places it contains are fictional. That said, Ulrichsberg and the palace owe a great deal to the city of Karlsruhe and the towns surrounding it. Leuchtenstadt borrows from Tübingen and Freiberg, and Oberbach is very like the lovely town of Gengenbach. Maulberg as a whole, in terms of its administration, court and ruler, borrows from a number of the smaller German states of the period, but most of all from eighteenth-century Württemberg. For an entertaining picture of the courts of the period, I recommend The Small German Courts in the Eighteenth Century by Adrien Fauchier-Magnan. Germania by Simon Winder is an excellent book and gives a vivid account of the fascinating cultural and political history of Germany, including the eighteenth century. The various titles and forms of address for nobility in use in Germany during that
century rarely have translations into English that are either elegant or accurate. For the sake of fluid reading I have opted for simplicity and approximation.

  Though the story of Antonia and the Minervals of Ulrichsberg is fiction, students of the Bavarian Illuminati will recognise the Minervals as a lightly fictionalised version of the same. Indeed, the lower ranks of the Illuminati were called the Minervals. The owl was their symbol and their motto was per me caeci vident. The Duke quotes directly from their literature as reported by the Abbé Barruel. I believe the Illuminati ceased to exist after they were dissolved by the Elector of Bavaria, Karl Theodor, in 1785, though their founder Adam Weishaupt, known as Spartacus, continued to write and publish, protected by Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. But to quote Magnan: The arrival of Napoleon, victorious on the German battlefield, administered the coup de grace to an association which for twenty-five years had spoken much about the interests of the people but had merely looked after its own.

  The history of the number, types, and cross-fertilisation of different secret societies on the continent during this period is fascinating and complex. Many considered themselves Freemasons of one sort or another. For a clear-eyed account of these I’d recommend J.M. Roberts’s book The Mythology of the Secret Societies. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s The Western Esoteric Traditions is a fascinating guide to the continuing cultural influence of the search for esoteric revelation. For a specific instance of an individual claiming magical powers, embraced by all classes, which is firmly rooted in the time and place of Circle of Shadows, I recommend The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro by Iain McCalman and you’ll see fiction staggers when it comes up against truth. The books Harriet consults from Herr Zeller’s collection are, mostly, real and include Splendor Solis, the works of Asclepius, and The Book of Abramelin. I have, like Beatrice, adapted and embellished some elements for my own ends.

  The writing boy automaton is the work of Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721–90). Look him up on youtube. The Al-Saids take their names from a real pair of brothers whose parents won the right to name a character in one of my novels in a charity auction in 2010.