Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  Glad of those strenuous years of ballet and fencing, I went into power walk mode, dodging around slower pedestrians like somebody on inline skates. Good workout, I decided after a few blocks, though not as good as a fencing match.

  Then I remembered the date, and my mood soured even more.

  Today was the championship tournament. The senior fencing team at UCLA would be there—everyone except me. Our coach had been disappointed when I’d announced that I wasn’t going, that I was leaving for Europe the day classes ended.

  My teammates had been surprised—some dismayed—but hardest to take was how my oldest friend, Lisa Castillo, had looked away, her expression closed. She didn’t actually say “Whatever,” but I’d felt it.

  I tried to explain, but how do you explain to someone who’s always regarded you as a bit flaky—incapable of practical goals—a sense of urgency that you cannot even define to yourself?

  To Lisa I was flaking out yet again and letting the team down. It had continued to bother me while I tramped fruitlessly through every Paris archive I could find. When I got on the train to Vienna, I started a letter to her and another teammate to explain, but I ended up at the train window, watching the Bavarian countryside roll by with its occasional glimpses of tiny ancient villages gleaming creamy gold against their emerald setting; Austria seemed another world and time away from the eternal sun of Los Angeles and Lisa’s goal-oriented energy.

  Modern practicality and old-world romance, that summed up Lisa and me. Living on the same block, Lisa and I had played together as kids. We’d shared rides through middle and high school when we both started fencing; she loved the sport for its precision, and I loved it because I could pretend I was Douglas Fairbanks Jr. She liked Tom Stoppard and the Coen brothers, while I’d rather rewatch Colin Firth’s Pride and Prejudice or Ronald Colman’s Prisoner of Zenda.

  She had planned out a life in investment stockbroking when she was twelve, to break the family blue-collar cycle; I’d bounced majors from French to German to linguistics to comparative literature, and I’d been about to change it back to German so I could research the origins of the fairy tales Gran had told me when I was small. None of those majors was ever going to boost my family out of our falling-apart little house in Santa Monica.

  The last thing Lisa said to me was, “Kim, I seriously hope you get whatever it is you’re looking for. But dude, you’re never going to find Mr. Darcy.”

  I walked even faster, until the hairpins holding up my bun began pricking my scalp at every step, and my hair threatened to come loose and fall down my back.

  Then I slowed. Why was I running, anyway? I walked into the nearest coffeehouse, ordered a delicious cold-coffee-and-cream Einspänner and sat with my back to a wall, glaring at anyone who came within ten feet of me.

  When I left, the feeling was gone.

  There was no news from the genealogists the next day, or the one after that.

  I’d nearly reached the end of my resources: if the genealogists found anything, they were going to have to mail it.

  At least I had the ballet to look forward to. But . . . what to wear? The afternoon of the ballet, I searched through my suitcase as if something appropriate had sneaked in when I wasn’t looking. Nope. Just my familiar LA jeans and tees, chosen for ease and comfort, but totally wrong for the Vienna State Opera House. I sat down on the bed and examined my meager stash of cash. If I stretched my once-a-day meal plan to an entire week, I could buy something nice to wear.

  Walking up the narrow old streets to Mariahilferstrasse, I got that feeling again! This time it was sharp, like a cold finger poking my neck.

  I plunged through the door of the nearest dress shop, throwing a fast glance over my shoulder as I ran. Was that the guy with the beard again, vanishing into a hat store across the street?

  Totally weirded out, I decided to buy something in that shop, if the prices weren’t astronomical, and then go straight back to my pensione until it was time for the ballet.

  The store had that distinctive aroma: part new carpet, part good fabric, and part zillion-dollar perfume that suggested expensive. And there I was in old jeans and a faded cotton top. Bracing myself for the inevitable rude treatment from salespeople who work in snobbish places, I assumed an air of confidence and waltzed in.

  Sure enough, a conspicuously affronted expression settled over the features of the woman who minced with measured pace toward me, but then her eyes widened and the downturned red mouth stretched outward into a dignified but definite smile of welcome.

  I said politely, in my most formal German, “I need something for the ballet tonight. Thanks.”

  She nodded, almost a bow, and in fifteen minutes I had exactly what I wanted: a lightweight, simple but well cut jersey dress in a cedarwood brown that matched my eyes. It was flattering, and—I reflected happily—it would roll up into a small sausage in my suitcase. Meanwhile the manager waited on me herself, to my amazement, with a manner of distant deference. Once (when I was in the dressing room and was pulling fabric over my head, so sound was muffled) I thought she addressed me by a different name, but then I wondered if she might be talking to someone else. At any rate I didn’t respond, and she didn’t repeat it.

  When I was ready to go she murmured something about an account in so discreet a voice I couldn’t hear her, but stopped when she saw the euros I held out. She stared as if she’d never seen money before, then took the proffered bills.

  Back at the pensione, I got ready, wearing my hair up in a chignon instead of the usual practical knot, and put on my heeled sandals instead of my sturdy walking sandals.

  I arrived at the Opera House to find that the pensione had kept their promise, bagging me a first-rate seat midway along the lowest balcony with an unimpeded view of the stage.

  I sank back in my plush seat and surveyed the ornate glory of the Opera House. Observing the muted colors and fine jewels of the gathering patrons, I let my imagination relax, and it promptly superimposed a vivid image: Edwardian gowns and slick-haired men with monocles and faultless tuxes or splendid military uniforms, the air heavy with the scents of musk and ambergris and heavy florals and beeswax candles. They exchange nods and fan flirts with other titled patrons, and after watching the curtain roll up, anticipate a cozy à deux supper afterward in a nearby palace. Or, if one were more daring, a very cozy à deux supper in a quiet and lamplit cafe . . .

  I landed back in the present when an elderly couple arrived in my row. We exchanged polite nods over the unoccupied seat next to me and I turned to the stage, relieved that that the single empty seat would guarantee my isolation.

  The lights dipped and I settled back contentedly—and a shadow moved on the edge of my vision.

  I glanced up as a man dropped into the seat next to mine. Ordinarily I would have glanced away again, but two things caught my attention. One, the way he took his seat. He didn’t plump down like a shuffling student collapses, he did it with an air of grace and proprietary negligence. Rather as if he owned the seat. Or the Opera.

  The second thing was his expression. He was looking directly at me. I met grayish blue eyes narrowed in humor and . . . irony? The shadows in the corners of his mouth, the slight lift to his chin signaled gotcha.

  I was instantly on guard. His expression altered to a reflective surprise that was almost as immediately veiled.

  Uh-oh. My glance had turned into a stare. Thought he recognized me, I decided, turning my attention firmly to the stage.

  The lights dimmed, and King Kong could have been sitting next to me for all the awareness I gave to anything but the ballet. I was caught up in the powerful enchantment generated by music and movement merged. Having studied dance since I was five, I was unable to watch passively; my soul went down to flit among the jetés tours and grandes, leaving my body to tense unconsciously until my toes were bunched in my sandals and my hands twitched in my lap.

  When the lights came up for the intermission I relaxed back in my seat, drawing a deep
breath.

  Then a light baritone voice at my side asked—in French, the familiar tu—what I thought of the ballet.

  I gave my grandmother’s French shrug, said something noncommittal, and he went on to ask if I would like to join him in a drink.

  The definite tone of familiarity was not intimate or insulting. It was more like recognition, which was too unsettling for me to feel anything but wary, and so I refused, again politely. But firmly.

  The exchange was brief, but I managed a fast check-out. He had a quantity of beautifully barbered collar-length thick dark hair, fine-stranded and glossy, a square face with classically refined bones, and he wore an expensive-looking dark suit. He’d turned slightly in his seat; a well-shaped hand lay negligently on the balcony. On that hand I saw a big, square-cut sapphire, glittering with the unmistakable bling of the Real McCoy. I perceived irregularities in the face of the stone—the carvings of an honest-to-historical-romance signet ring. The ring, his posture, even the marks of tiredness under his eyes and smudging his aristocratic cheekbones (The Smudge, I decided, of Dissipation) . . . he would have been perfect in Pelham black and ruffles.

  I cut my gaze away, but not before the thought hit me: Mr. Darcy.

  “You’re laughing,” he said in French. “What is it, my invitation or my accent?”

  His tone was only mock-insulted; a smile curved his lips, but his brows lifted slightly in question. Again, I got that sense that something was going on, and I had no clue.

  “Neither,” I said. “But you can speak English if you want.” His French was good, but his diction was more English than French.

  Sure enough, he went on in English that sounded like he’d been educated at Oxford or Cambridge as he made a comment about the performance, to which I readily replied. I was tempted by my surroundings (which I felt required some dash) to fake a British accent for the fun of it. But my courage failed me and I replied in my bland Los Angeles accent, until the lights dipped and I turned my attention back to the stage.

  Nothing marred my enjoyment of the rest of the performance.

  When it had ended, I clapped until my hands smarted as the principal dancers took bow after bow.

  When I stood up, I discovered that Mr. Darcy was gone.

  FOUR

  HIS IMAGE LINGERED. So, as I walked back to my pensione, the air soft and the lights twinkling in the trees, I let my imagination spin out a story that had to be more interesting than his real life as a lawyer or software salesman or insurance guy. I dressed him in Corinthian garb and imagined him gambling all night at White’s with Lord Alvanley and Charles James Fox, then, having either won or lost fifty thousand pounds—his reaction would be the same for both—he would get up from his table with that same cool air, and in the dim light of dawn embark on a curricle race up the Great North Road. Or a duel at dawn in the Place des Vosges in Paris.

  Next morning, the first thing I saw in the bleak light was my wallet. My flat wallet. I would never regret the ballet, or the dress (so I told myself) but I could only stay through one more night if I wanted to get to Scotland and tour Clan Murray’s old hangout.

  It was with a sense of defeat that I shoved my wallet into my jeans pocket and set out for one last sightseeing walk, stopping first to buy a few postcards. I wouldn’t waste the money at an Internet café to tell Mom and Dad that I’d failed as Lord Peter Wimsey.

  I found a bench along the flower garden outside the fairy-tale Gothic-spired city hall to write my cards. I still hadn’t finished those letters in my suitcase. The nice thing about postcards is, they’re shorter.

  To Lisa and Kara, I wrote, Hope you kicked ass at the tournament. My quest so far is kicking my ass. On Lisa’s I added, So I went to the ballet as consolation. And guess who I saw? Mr. Darcy. Too bad my name is not Elizabeth! The last card was to Mom and Dad. No luck so far, but this time I put a bloodhound on the trail right away. Another day of sightseeing, and if there’s no news, then I’m off to England, then Scotland.

  At least Blair Castle—which my dad had told me was the ancient home of the Murrays—surely hasn’t up and vanished, I thought in disgust as I wandered across the Ring, which had once marked Vienna’s medieval city wall.

  I found myself on the elegant Kärtnerstrasse and reflected on how baroque it was that the most exclusive street in Vienna—the Rodeo Drive of Austria—was named Graben, or “graves.” When I reached the ancient New Market area, lined with grand stone buildings, many with carved corbels and statuary, I was distracted by the distant rise and fall of men’s voices singing.

  The prospect of hearing Gregorian chant in an ancient stone cathedral drew me like a magnet. I found a mailbox and deposited the postcards still clutched in my fingers, then discovered I had reached the unobtrusive entrance to the Kaisergruft, the Hapsburg emperors’ crypts below the austere Kapuzinerkirche. Time to pay the Hapsburgs my respects, having admired their city.

  As I entered the royal crypt I left summer—time—behind. The air was cool, the light soft and gray. I thought I caught a whiff of incense as I slowly stepped in; the chanting had vanished, but this crypt was below the church proper.

  I was not alone. As often happens overseas, the other tourists were Americans, their LA voices out of place in this ancient stone vault.

  A family stood around as the father read to them from a guidebook. Crack, snap! That was a teenage daughter, bored eyes and tight clothes, cracking gum at her dad with intent. Two younger kids fidgeted and whispered behind a mother who hushed them crossly; the father’s voice droned on, mispronouncing all the ancient names.

  “Yeah, they’re all corpses!” The boy poked his sister in triumph. “Wonder if any of ’em are in glass, like that gross church where Richard the Lionheart was locked up.”

  The girl gave a small shriek. The parents hushed them as the older girl drawled with detached teen enjoyment, “Oh Gooooo-oood, Joshua, that’s grooo-ooss.” God and gross were full-on two-note words.

  As they shuffled by it felt like the timeless atmosphere closed in behind them, as the present swallowed them up.

  Then I stepped through an arch into the baroque splendor of Maria Theresia’s tomb. The silence here was resonant, or maybe it was the still air that only changes incrementally over the years. The giddiness sparkled at the edges of my vision as my gaze ranged over the tomb the empress shared with her husband, their carved semblances sitting atop the enormous sarcophagus, turned toward one another in eternal gaze as an angel watched over them; thrill zapped along my nerves. I stood a few steps from someone I admired—but 250 years created an impassable gulf.

  Yet when I blinked there was her stout figure, impressive in swaths of baroque dress, as she gazed on the unfinished, ornate casket, as she gave a short nod, then indicated the wall nearby, which had been hollowed out.

  No. There she wasn’t.

  I remembered my fourth grade field trip to the San Juan Capistrano Mission. The bus got lost on the windy street leaving, and we ended up overlooking the beach not far away. Excited to show off my knowledge, I pointed to the girl my own age in Acjachemen dress looking out over the sea, a row of kiicha huts overshadowed by elderberry trees lining a stream that tumbled down the rocks.

  The kids didn’t pay any attention, but the teacher said in that voice you learned early meant they didn’t believe you, “Very vivid imagination you have there, Kim! You may write a story about her for your trip report, if you like.”

  And when I got home and told the family, Gran asked, “Did anyone else see the little girl?”

  “No.”

  “Then she was not there. Aurelia Kim, if you make up little stories, people will not believe you when you do tell the truth.”

  Wasn’t that right around the time she stopped telling me those fairy tales about Fyadar and Xanpia—

  A noise, the scrape of feet, the murmur of voices broke into the memory. I leaned against a stone, the giddiness sharpening briefly to dizziness, then it was gone. The hollowed wall beyond the emp
ress’ gigantic sarcophagus was actually a narrow niche containing a plain coffin.

  Adjacent to the royal pair lay another plain coffin, remarkable only in its total lack of ornamentation. To my surprise it did not belong to Maria Theresia’s governess Gräfin Karoline Fuchs-Mollard, who I knew was the only nonroyal person buried in that crypt. It held another emperor—Maria Theresia’s heir, Joseph II.

  I stared at the plain casket surmounted only by a simple cross. Here lay the remains of a life of intense bitterness. He was an absolute monarch, brilliant and filled with enlightenment zeal, married to his beloved at a young age, yet he lost everything that mattered most. He wanted his epitaph to read “Here lies Joseph II, who failed in every undertaking.” At least he was spared the horrible death of his sister, Maria Antonia, renamed Marie Antoinette when she crossed the French border as a young teen.

  The sound of the American dad’s voice reading out loud snapped me out of reverie. I approached the narrow niche that I had thought a much larger space. Here I discovered the governess’ quietly elegant coffin with a heartfelt inscription by Maria Theresia. How powerful the empress was to have overborne tradition in order to include this woman among royalty. And how odd, my imagining a room beyond this narrow niche—

  “Awww, Dad, that’s gro-oss. Let’s gooo-oooh.” The kid’s whine echoed. The teenager’s opinion was rendered with an expert triple-snap of gum. But he said coaxingly, “C’mon, kids, only a couple more. This is history! Pay attention and you’ll get an A next year for sure!”

  I moved on, thinking about the trappings of empire weighting what was unmistakably human flesh. Was the most powerful of all the Hapsburg emperors, Charles V, interred here, or had Philip II buried him in the Escorial in Spain? The other tourists had moved in the opposite direction.

  Silence settled over the dim, austere alcoves as I continued my search, a silence which gently extinguished the sense of immediacy. Even my breathing was muted.