Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  Then I remembered Alec saying that she rarely visited this country, and when she did go anywhere, she confined herself exclusively to her own set uptown. Meanwhile, my grandmother had been gone for well over half a century, my mother had never been here, so who could possibly recognize me?

  Reassured, I plunked the straw hat on my head, grabbed my wallet, and left to explore.

  The post office was small and cramped, but busy. From the cost of the inn (cheap by LA standards) I figured out how many euros I’d need for a week’s stay. Because I hadn’t had to pay for my pensione in Vienna, I was ahead. Not a lot, because of that pretty dress sitting in a field somewhere with the rest of my clothes. But a week would leave me enough to get me to Britain and my Scottish expedition before the flight home.

  The short, elderly proprietor glanced from my euros to my face and back two or three times, making me wonder if she thought I was a counterfeiter, but she changed the money politely.

  I lingered, thinking about writing a postcard home, but decided against it. Let them think I was still sightseeing somewhere in Western Europe until I got Gran’s whole story.

  So I left with a handful of mostly silver coinage, with a heavy gold piece and a scattering of coppers. The coins were curiously oldfashioned—not as sharp and shallow as modern, mechanically made coins. I wondered if these were produced by the knuckle-joint or lever presses of the mid-nineteenth century.

  As I dropped the coins into my purse, feeling their unaccustomed weight, I walked uphill, which I soon discovered was the local version of uptown. In this case, literally. The avenues broadened, the shops of the corbelled buildings with their tall Baroque windows appeared somewhat newer. Older streets seemed to form spokes leading to circular pocket parks. The grander streets were more square, framing geometric eighteenth-century parks. About two miles or so up the street the spire of a huge Gothic cathedral loomed above the roofs, and maybe half a mile beyond that I spotted the towers of what turned out to be the royal palace.

  Surely there was a royal archive.

  No, it couldn’t possibly be that easy.

  Still, my heart thumped expectantly, and I walked faster. The street emptied into a grand traffic circle with a huge fountain in the center of a brick-bordered flowering garden. The central statue was of a girl of maybe thirteen or so, one hand toward the sky, the other reaching down in benediction over the heads of tumbling children and small animals of various sorts. The sprays curved over the heads of these figures, an umbrella of water, obscuring their details, but it looked like there might be some mythological creatures among them: I was pretty sure I saw goat legs below a human back, but the figure was twisted away, obscured by the water. Nearby a wolfish or canine limb ended in fingers instead of a paw.

  The streets farther uphill afforded glimpses of grand houses, most built in the Baroque style so much seen all over the Danube regions, except that many of the newer ones had mansard roofs, like in Paris.

  Some of the older houses bore damage to decorative corbels and statues, testimony to the parsimonious years under the Soviets. A number of these were fronted by rickety scaffolding as repair work was done on the stone. Others looked subdivided into smaller apartments, judging from doors in odd places and added stairways, but all houses, poor and grand alike, sported well-tended flower boxes in the lower windows.

  Closer to the cathedral the houses were more impressive, most with walled-off gardens before them, the shops evoking an Enlightenment-era feel. Beyond these the road led to the great cathedral. I took in the decorated buttresses and six huge stained glass windows with an apostle depicted in each. Then I passed under a memorial arch with Roman numerals reading 1813 and emerged from it onto a main square.

  The afternoon was warm, and I had walked so briskly I could feel my head damp all around my hat’s brim, but when I gazed at the royal palace on the other side of the square with its impressive mosaic a chill roughened the skin on my arms.

  It seemed impossible that my grandmother, who had played the piano while I danced around in my mother’s cast-off high school prom dress, had been born and raised here.

  I moved to one of the benches set at intervals along the perimeter of the square and took in details: old people sitting in the sun on the benches, feeding pigeons or reading papers or talking; people coming and going from the four imposing columned buildings on either side of the square perpendicular to the cathedral and the palace.

  What I could see of the palace beyond those huge iron gates seemed deserted. Not so the cathedral at my left hand. Two lines of uniformed school kids came walking out, their sedate pace belied by little bounces, furtive nudges and grins, like kids everywhere. Adults flowed around them, going in and out.

  I debated whether or not to go in. I’d thought to ask to see church records, but as I stared at that large and imposing edifice I thought that surely someone had done that long ago.

  Of course someone had done that long ago. So why was I here?

  I turned back to the great square. A huge pinkish circle next to the fountain marred the brick patterns—a gigantic red hammer and sickle. Part of it had been laboriously scrubbed into an inoffensive pale red, and the rest had been unsuccessfully painted over by pinkish gray.

  At the other end of the square, the palace sat royally behind its fancy gate. Statuary-topped columns marked each end, one of the statues being a man with sword upraised and the other looked like some sort of huge bird. I’d thought the place deserted, but I made out flickers of movement between the iron bars and severely trimmed hedges.

  At the far edge of the grand gate, I’d missed a small iron door. “Small” comparatively—it was about the size of a garage door. It was guarded by a soldier in a blue uniform like the ones worn by the customs fellow I’d seen on the train.

  I hauled the dictionary from my pocket, constructed a sentence, hunted up possible words I might hear in answer, then I crossed the square.

  The soldier was a young man, his uniform a more military version of the trim blue tunic with red piping edging the high collar and cuffs, and a red stripe down the outer seam of his trousers above shiny black boots. His brown eyes were bored until he saw me approach him. Then he stiffened slightly. The shape on the front of his dark blue helmet resolved into a brass crest in the form of a stylized falcon.

  “Good day.” I smiled. “Are there tours of the palace?”

  “Sunday afternoons, when the Stadthalter is not in residence,” he replied, his brown gaze blank. “Two o’clock, here at the gate.”

  “Will there be a tour this Sunday?”

  He assented. I turned away, thrilled with my first real conversation in Dobreni.

  Okay, I could do this.

  Whether the records had been gone over a million times or not, I was going to see them for myself. Gran’s strange mutterings about a breach might mean Armandros, but it was more likely it meant her family. As for the “them” needing help, there wasn’t anyone here who needed rescue by me, except maybe Ruli, but Alec was busy with that. So, one thing for sure. I would find out as much as I could about Gran’s family through firsthand research, then take it all home to Mom.

  My first move was to find a place to start.

  Begin with the most obvious, the place royal weddings had to have happened: the cathedral. But the shadows had lengthened. More people were leaving the annex beside the cathedral than going in. Closing time.

  Okay, bright and early the next day I’d be first in line. Go from there.

  I returned to the inn, stopping to buy a newspaper—I loved the fact that it came out once a week—so I could get a better idea of word order, grammar, and modern terms than was afforded by the century-plus out-of-date preface to the dictionary.

  At seven I joined Madam and her family. They ate in a pretty dining room off the kitchen. High on the walls, a couple feet below the ceiling, a running motif of flowers and birds had been painted between thin borders about two feet apart; this proved to be characteristic of man
y Dobreni houses.

  The family was all shortish, dark-haired, sharp-boned. I was introduced to the two remaining daughters. Tania seemed to be a couple years younger than me. Anna, the oldest, Madam announced proudly—but with an expressive roll of the eyes indicating much labor ahead—was to be married Saturday.

  Madam’s husband ate placidly without speaking. And Madam’s father, called Grandfather Kezh, sat at the head of the table. He greeted me gravely with a few gargled words of unintelligible French.

  As I watched them passing dishes of good, pepper-seasoned freshwater fish, I thought, offices aren’t the only places for info. What about people?

  I could tell Madam was avidly curious about me. She had to be wondering what could bring a young woman alone to Dobrenica, but she was too polite to ask outright. After two or three broad hints, while I in turn was trying to figure out how to ask the questions I wanted to ask, the perfect excuse came.

  As Theresa politely asked me what I’d seen that day and how I like it, I leaned forward and said with a big smile, “Oh, I saw the square—very handsome—and the cathedral and the palace. Only the fronts, of course. I’ll go into them soon as I can. Bringing me to my purpose. I’m doing a study for my professor at the Sorbonne on the Dsaret family.”

  I listened as Theresa translated this, following which the entire family—except the father, who merely gave a grunt of mild interest—burst into amazed and delighted commentary.

  “And so—” I beamed round at them “—I wondered what is the best way to find anyone, anyone at all, who might have known the last Dsaret king and queen . . . or the twin princesses.”

  Score.

  Grandfather Kezh pursed his lips, and after some heavy, knitbrowed thought he rumbled a sentence, stopped himself, and addressed me in careful but clear German, “You must then be able to read the old tongue?” And when I nodded, he smiled. “Good, good. In those days, the people of rank, they all spoke German. I was in the stables. In those days they kept many horses. Sometimes I was in charge of the hunters up at Sedania, that was the royal lodge in winter. I had to learn German for the guests.”

  Madam clicked her tongue at this tangent, but Grandfather Kezh paused to take a sip of the dark liquid in his painted ceramic cup, then he went on imperturbably, “My good friend in those days was Tomasi Borescu. We worked together in the stables. Tomasi’s sister Stasja—ah, she was pretty! But I was promised to my good Adela. Stasja used to bring us sweet-cakes in the cold mornings—”

  “Papa,” Madam coaxed, with a look my way. “She does not want to hear about good Tomasi Borescu—”

  “No, no, Daughter, my point comes. Das Fräulein wishes for information about life then. I tell it.” He gave a nod of stately dignity. “As I say, Stasja, Tomasi’s sister, worked in the palace until she married Josip Ivaniev. She worked in the nursery, and she saw the princesses each day.”

  Madam threw up her hands and gave a gasp of pleasure. “Bless you, Papa! That is the truth.” She added something in rapid-fire Dobreni to her daughters, gesturing with enthusiastic goodwill.

  Anna turned then to me, and with a blushing, shy gravity that rather matched her grandfather’s, she said in heavily accented German, “My wedding, it is Saturday. You will honor us with your company?”

  Theresa added, “Old Grandmother Ziglieri, that was her name after her second marriage, she will come down from the mountain with the family. She will be there, and she likes to talk about the old days.”

  Madam chimed in with names of more people (some of whose connections with the Waleska family were tortuous in the extreme) who had in some way been associated with the royal palace, but there was no mention of the princesses. I pretended to take note of all these, and before we parted—me to go upstairs to work on the language—I accepted their invitation to attend Anna’s wedding on Saturday.

  That gave me a day to explore.

  After a good ballet workout the next morning, I set out. The sky was a jumble of layered clouds, some long and flat, some puffy. In LA it never rains, so I didn’t know what those meant. I armed myself with a sun hat, a sweater, and my dictionary before I set out on my exploration.

  Yesterday’s impressions resolved into more detail. I could see the different strata of history, the Baroque buildings built under the Hapsburgs juxtaposed with medieval ones, and with grand nineteenth-century edifices that presaged Art Nouveau. They all showed a curious blend of eastern and western motifs that was distinctly Dobreni.

  There was still war damage, left for decades, and the evidence of King Milo’s recent projects—big projects, like sewer expansion, and in some areas, electricity for what was obviously the first time.

  Here’s the weird thing. I sensed Alec’s presence everywhere.

  I kept thinking, only your imagination, Murray, but the atmosphere of the city reminded me of him—distinctive, even elegant in an understated way. It was Alec’s space.

  But not Gran’s. Oh, I believed the stories—at least, everything but Gran running off with the Wicked Armandros without benefit of marriage. I believed it intellectually, but I couldn’t get her into focus walking these streets, looking on these buildings.

  I walked to the cathedral, just to discover it was still closed. Then I wandered around the city center in search of a hall of records or some equivalent, and not finding that, I headed for the cathedral for my second try. Right about then—like in Vienna—I got that feeling that I was being watched.

  Last time it had turned out to be true.

  I turned away from the cathedral. Since I didn’t know who was following me, I wouldn’t know if they got up close enough to hear my questions if I went into the cathedral. I didn’t have Jason Bourne’s savvy at spotting tails, but one thing for sure: I didn’t want anyone hearing my business.

  So I slowed down, looking around, ho hum, see the boring tourist gawking, nothing else going on, nosiree Bob!

  The open marketplace in the old section of town and many of the tall, narrow, three- and four-story houses under their slanting roofs looked the same as they must have for the last eight hundred years. I wandered through several stores offering exquisite handwoven rugs and embroidered clothes and beautiful, complicated wind-up clocks that would have gotten my dad’s mouth watering. Most everything in those shops seemed handmade, or at most made by simpler machines—no tech toys.

  As I strolled around totally without purpose, I sneaked peeks over my shoulder from time to time.

  Nothing. No sinister minions in mirror-shades, no Emilio or Kilber.

  No Alec.

  Most of the traffic was on foot. I wandered the streets alongside soberly clad Hasidic Jews doing Friday marketing preparatory for Sabbath meals, and smocked shepherds and cowherds whose clothing had probably altered little in style since 1300. I had to be careful where I stepped because these latter were often driving small flocks down the streets to or from market. They were interspersed with people in much more modern clothes. There were Slavic-boned faces, and here and there the unmistakable imprint of the Mongolian nomads in wide cheeks and tilted eyes. Most of the people were dark, but not all; the pale-headed and light-eyed evidence of long-ago Northern incursions also went about their business, wearing combinations of modern and local dress.

  What I didn’t see was a cell phone. Not a single one. Even the young teens—a few boys wearing jeans, others in the Cossack tunics, girls in skirts of varying lengths, colors, and designs—walked along with hands free, talking to each other and not on the ubiquitous cell of the West.

  I’d reached a flower-filled park that fronted the Jewish temple when I felt that “watched” feeling again. I turned around sharply as the bells from the cathedral half a mile west started ringing a carillon that echoed from the towering mountainside above and back.

  Nothing.

  Just people hastening on their way, some casting appraising glances skyward.

  It couldn’t be the Ruli business again. The only people who knew her would either know where
she was, or were all over Europe searching for her.

  And it couldn’t be Alec—if for some wild reason he’d zoomed back home to Dobrenica, I couldn’t believe he’d slink around spying on me, especially after the whole Vienna mess. He’d come right up and ask me why I was there.

  I stepped inside a corner bakery, breathing in the vanilla-tinged aroma of fresh-baked bread. I bought a nut-studded apple tart and sat at a table hardly bigger than a Frisbee as outside, a brief but violent thunderstorm sent rain hissing into the street. The squall was over before I finished the pastry and licked the dusting of cinnamon from my fingers. When I left, the cobblestones steamed in the pale afternoon sunlight.

  I returned to the inn, feeling as if every step I took was marked by an unseen someone; on my arrival, I discovered the place was packed, mostly with relatives from the mountain heights come for the wedding. The common room was a roar of voices and clattering dishes; not until I made my way past them all did I feel safely lost in the numbers.

  When I tried right after lunch—the cathedral annex was closed again. I made it back to the inn just ahead of a sudden, violent thunderstorm that made it impossible to go out for a third time. I had to give up for the day.

  SIXTEEN

  SATURDAY MORNING, the Ziglieri family arrived among an impressive cavalcade of relatives. The men got to work shifting tables and benches about. Boys were sent to deal with pony traps and ancient cars. Girls helped Theresa and Tania to decorate the inn outside and inside with fragrant bunches of flowers and ribbon-tied boughs. Older women turned their hands to last-stage preparation of enormous quantities of food.

  I stayed out of the way, watching from the vantage of my window overlooking the courtyard and gardens until Theresa knocked on my door and shyly informed me that Grandmother Ziglieri wished to speak to me.