Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  “A tour?” I repeated, hesitating.

  “It’s free!” He smiled with easy humor. “And I know all the stories. Even the ones,” his sudden, rakishly lopsided grin invited me to share a joke, “we don’t tell the old parties who take the official tours.”

  I gave him the expected laugh, but I was thinking fast. Alec had told me this guy was a game player, and hinted that he was a troublemaker. I could blow off Alec’s opinion of Tony for various reasons, including our argument about whether or not Gran had married my grandfather before leaving the country. But it seemed stupid to totally discount Alec’s words when pretty much everything else he’d told me made sense.

  So . . . what to do? I looked at Tony, who leaned against the Volvo waiting, without making any further effort to coax, urge, or bully me into agreeing to his offer.

  He was a relative. So far, the only one beside his mother who seemed willing to accept me as a Long Lost. The worst I had observed about him was that he sounded like a typical rich slacker. So, if I go with him, what’s the worst that can happen? He drones on about local politics, or brags about how much he wins at horse races?

  I could sit through that, and smile, and nod, and after his tour was over, ask him to use his family influence to get me past the red tape so I could check the archives.

  It was the red tape that decided me.

  “That would be nice. Especially the juicy stories. What time?”

  “You choose.” He opened the car door with a flourish. “Earlier is better. If we get rain, the roads can turn into rivers.”

  “How’s eight?” I ventured, thinking of my other errand. Also, eight in the morning might show how serious his friendly intent was.

  He surprised me. “Eight it is.”

  “Got it.” I gave him the forefinger.

  He stilled, his gaze flicking from my hand to my face, then he grinned, and returned the gesture, with a whole lot more panache. “Good night.”

  Right before eight the next morning, I was trying to choose between my jeans—which would be practical—and my third dress, a full-skirted summer print with subtle patterns of leaves and twigs in shades of russet and gray. It was fine cotton, suitable for an interview, if I was able to get Tony to drive me to find Mina Hajyos. It was also comfortable, and anyway, I had no walking shoes.

  I was still dithering when a horn beeped a couple times out front. That had to be Tony a couple minutes early. I’d half expected him to blow me off.

  But a brief glance through an upper window revealed a sporty open red car and a tall blond guy, so I threw on the russet dress, jammed my feet into my sandals—and almost ran down Theresa, who had obviously been hovering outside my room.

  I caught myself up short.

  “Mam’zelle. I wish to apologize.” She wrung her hands. “For my rudeness yesterday.”

  “It’s all right.” For the first time I recognized how carefully she’d avoided ever using my name. Was gossip zinging around that I was Ruli von Mecklundburg in a disguise?

  I caught hold of her shoulders. “Theresa. It’s okay. Hey, I’ve got my own stuff I’m not talking about. Not anything against you or your family, it’s . . . sometimes, some things have to wait for the right moment. Seems you’ve got things, same as me.”

  She ducked her head, her cheeks flooding with color. “The right moment. Yes. Yes. Thank you.”

  “No thanks—” Another beep. “I have to run. Au revoir!”

  When I got to the bottom of the stairs I found Tony leaning against his car, tossing the keys on his hand as he chatted with Madam Waleska.

  Madam stood stiffly on her doorstep. In the daylight Tony looked even less like my idea of a count, with his tousled curly hair (that I bet his sister had wished she’d gotten, if hers was as straight as mine) and the eccentric clothes—a beautifully made shirt worn open over a black T-shirt and old jeans, the pants legs outside of what appeared to be handmade single-seamed riding boots. But the way Madam Waleska bowed each time he spoke reminded me of those invisible boundaries of rank that had nothing to do with personal worth.

  As soon as I appeared he broke off what he was saying and addressed me in French. “Good morning, Cousin! We’ve an excellent day for touring.”

  “Bon.” To Madam, I said in Dobreni, “I plan to be back in time for dinner.”

  This was as much to Tony as it was to her, if nothing else to establish limits to the day, but he didn’t respond as he opened the door of the sporty British Austin. Candy apple red, right-hand drive, convertible.

  As I settled into the left-hand seat, I pulled the ribbons of my hat down and tied them under my chin. Tony dropped into his seat without bothering to open the door and started the car. Soon we were bumping through the city at a brisk pace, the cobblestones rattling us thoroughly. The noise of that and of the engine prevented us from conversing much until we were beyond the limits of the city. A road wound up into the mountains past the quarry, and the car started the climb.

  The high cliffs and dramatic forested mountain folds were breathtaking to my Los Angeles eye, the air pleasant. I was glad I’d worn the long-sleeved dress instead of a T-shirt; despite the bright sun the shadows were cool.

  Almost at once we were enclosed in thick forest, but occasionally we broke free and were afforded spectacular views of the valley floor dropping away steadily below us. Tony drove carelessly, with one hand, and not very smoothly, but after a couple white-knuckled turns on my part he slowed down.

  “Sorry,” he called over the noise of the engine. “I’m so used to driving up and down these damned hills I don’t think about a flatland passenger’s nerves.”

  The remainder of the long steep climb up was done at a more sedate pace, punctuated by occasionally yelled identifications of buildings as we passed them. Finally the road leveled out enough for him to shift gear and reduce the grinding noise.

  “Problem with this car.” He smiled, tipping his head toward the engine as the wind whipped his hair across his face.

  “I’ve always loved convertibles.” At home, I—no. “Oh, it’s gorgeous up here. Where are we going?”

  “We’ll go by the Capuchin monastery. It’s quite old, and visitors always want to see it. The ruined Ysvorod castle as well. Then, not too far from there is the hunting lodge that used to belong to your family. Came to us through my mother, who made it over into a summer villa. We can have a picnic lunch on the grounds, if you’re hungry by then. From there, let’s see, shall we?”

  “Sounds great.” I settled back happily.

  There were no personal questions at all from him during the early part of the tour. We did not stop at the Capuchin monastery (which is still in use, and people wanting to see it usually make appointments ahead of time, Tony explained) but he drove me around it so I could see the ancient carved stone walls while he told me some stories about medieval Dobrenica.

  The ruined castle was mostly rubble, located near a poor village that was picturesque from a distance but up close reminded me of that farm I found on my wanderings after jumping off the train. Like plumbing and electricity were decades from arrival. We poked about the fallen castle walls, and Tony told me about the cache of arrows and grapeshot discovered there early in World War II, which had been promptly used against the Germans.

  “The arrows, too?”

  “Yes.” He gazed at the distant line of mountains that marked the western border of Dobrenica. “We hadn’t been invaded since the Thirty Years’ War. We used everything, old matchlocks and carbines, crossbows—those are actually quite lethal—to try to resist the Germans. Everything but boiling pitch. At the last, we blew up our own bridges and roads, but the Germans came anyway, and then forced our people to put up much better ones to their design. Which made it easier for the Russkis when they came from the other direction.” He jerked a careless thumb eastward.

  “Well, the Russians are gone, aren’t they?”

  “Not quite,” he said, smiling, but I sensed an undercurrent to his word
s. Before I could identify it he went on again, the undercurrent completely absent. “Ready? From ruins abandoned centuries ago to the modern luxury of Sedania.”

  “What’s that? Oh. The name of your summer villa.”

  “It was a hunting lodge, even if not much hunting was done there. Or hunting in the usual sense. Do you recognize the word? Corrupted Russian for zhelanie, desire—”

  “I thought it meant wish,” I interrupted.

  He laughed and addressed me briefly in Russian.

  “Not half as well as you do.” At school I—

  His indolent gaze crinkled with humor. “Wretched tongue, isn’t it? No wonder most of ’em are crazy. Anyway, the word became an idiom for ‘freedom’ for us. Damnedest irony in the fifties. When the lodge was built, the name meant easing the inhibitions, one might say.”

  “Tell me about ‘not quite.’ Aren’t the Russians gone?”

  “The Soviets are gone, but the Russians aren’t.” He smiled sideways and jammed the car into gear.

  For a time we climbed higher into the rocky crags, the engine roaring again. Then we crested a magnificent cliff like a rim of the world, and he slowed. “See that peak there, the squared one?” He pointed eastward.

  “Yes—I think so,” I squinted into the bright sunlight.

  “Mother Russia can be seen from that height.”

  He took off again. We were going mostly downhill. He continued to drive with his left hand, leaning his right elbow on the car door and his hand on his forehead to keep the sun and the wind-tossed hair off his eyes, so it was hard to see his face. He commented idly, “So you’ve an interest in Dobrenica, have you?”

  This was the perfect opportunity to broach my quest . . . but it was too perfect. I hesitated. He was friendly, but what did that mean? He didn’t seem too concerned about his missing sister as far as I could see. But I knew that appearances could be deceiving.

  I tried to match his careless tone, “Well, enough to visit it once.”

  The road abruptly narrowed. Spots of it were not paved and the turns, potholes, and dips into muddy water were frequent. But he drove it with undisturbed familiarity, and I gazed off into the distance, wishing I could have afforded a video camera to shoot these spectacular views.

  Presently he turned onto an old paved road lined with two rows of venerable chestnut trees for two or three miles, then we rounded a hill. A succession of flowering shrubs opened onto a square building with numerous tall, narrow windows and a mellow limestone front. The windows had carvings over them, and corbels at each corner.

  The drive was circular; the car rolled right up to the front, kicking up mud and gravel from the puddles left from yesterday’s rain, and then we stopped.

  “We’re here,” Tony said cheerfully, turning the engine off and leaving the keys in the ignition. “Ready for the grand tour? Oh, perhaps I should tell you, don’t mind old Madam Coriescu, the caretaker. The Gestapo was rather rough with her when she was a kid—thought she was running messages for the resistance. Which she was. She’s got a glass eye that’s pretty frightful.”

  “No problemo,” I said—belatedly noticing that we’d been speaking in English, not French. If he’d been testing me, I’d failed: I’d answered in my usual flat LA American.

  No reaction from Tony. “This way. Ah! Good afternoon, Nonni.” He went on in Dobreni to the old woman in the long black dress who peered out the front door.

  The elderly woman’s face was thin and lined, her short gray hair a bird’s nest. She grinned in delight at Tony, obviously glad to see him; the glass eye had yellowed with age. When we reached the doorway he leaned down to kiss the top of her untidy head. “Dear Nonni, this is Mademoiselle Atelier. We’re going to look through the house, then we’ll eat out in the courtyard. No, I brought food. Pedro packed a basket. We shan’t disturb your restful slumbers.”

  Madam cackled, bowed to me and to Tony, reached a gnarled hand up and patted him on the cheek, then vanished.

  Tony said, “She’s an old dear, but it’s her son who keeps the place up. And his boys, when they’re around. Now! The grand tour. The gallery lies directly through here, the scene of countless Dsaret drunken orgies—”

  “And von Mecklundburg orgies?” I added as we entered a high-ceilinged room with a huge marble fireplace at one end with a pair of splendid crossed swords mounted high. The white ceiling was edged all round with scrollwork and stylized floral patterns that seemed vaguely Byzantine. Directly below was a huge polished oak refectory table surrounded by high-backed wooden chairs. Satin pillows cushioned the hand-carved chairs, a crest carved high on each chair back.

  “Not here.” He lifted a shoulder. “This is Maman’s lair.”

  Tony pushed open the discreet wooden door at the back. We traversed a short hall and then walked into a gleaming white and copper kitchen. “Fairly modern kitchen, Pedro insists on that. He’s my mother’s chef. Trained in Paris.” He gave me a wry look over his shoulder. “Be sure to ask her if her chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu if you want points with my mother. Pedro goes with her everywhere. Breakfast room in here—”

  We entered an east-facing room with flowering plants in pots set in the corners. The ceiling here was lower, with a floral pattern all round the top of the walls.

  “Note the private entrance.” He lifted a brow in exaggerated suggestiveness as he opened a narrow door on the other side of the room, the door having been discreetly painted the same eggshell blue as the walls.

  We trod up a narrow staircase. All the rooms upstairs had wide windows, balconies, and the floral stripe around the walls. The huge main bedchamber was bordered with laurel leaves; I was beginning to see symbolic patterns. Laurel leaves—royal. No, imperial.

  The room itself was modern, the color a tasteful pale mauve. That, and the elusive vanilla scent of Jicky, an extremely expensive French perfume, brought Aunt Sisi to mind.

  There was a library, a music room, and more salons. Everything fully furnished.

  “Lovely,” I said as we walked down the mosaic-tiled front stairs.

  “Hungry?” was his reply.

  “Starved. What time is it?”

  “Midday.”

  “No wonder.”

  Tony brought from the car a wicker hamper covered with a pretty linen cloth and led me around the back of the villa to a blooming garden. Two low stone benches were shaded by an ancient oak. Here we sat down.

  “You needn’t be overly careful about crumbs,” he said, setting out linen-covered, wax-paper wrapped packages. “The storks like the critters that forage on Pedro’s bread crumbs.”

  “Storks?” I repeated, biting back the urge to say, I’ve never seen one.

  “That sounds strange?” He cocked a questioning glance at me.

  I shrugged. “Didn’t expect them here—oh.” I breathed as he unrolled a thin loaf of French bread that must have come out of the oven seconds before it was packed up.

  “Pedro gave me enough for ten stout-hearted men.” Tony extracted a slim wine bottle and a corkscrew. “I hope you’re not like Cerisette and Phaedra, existing entirely on salad greens and an occasional olive for indulgence.”

  “I like food,” I replied as he poured out a red Italian wine and handed me a glass. “I eat it up and work it off.” I thought with regret of how long it had been since I’d had a good bout with the blades. Doing ballet stretches and lunges each morning didn’t count as a workout. But I wasn’t going to talk about that, either.

  “Cheers!” He tipped his glass against mine, sipped. “Excellent.” He smiled broadly. “Let’s see what Pedro’s given us . . .”

  We had three or four cheeses for the bread, and two kinds of pastry with spiced meat filling, and several kinds of fruit. Then slices of a fragrant, moist lemon cake for dessert.

  Tony asked me about Paris as we ate, and I easily described what pictures had been playing, what plays I had seen written up in the papers; after his encouragement I admitted how plodding and dreary I’d found a
critically acclaimed postmodern play currently running in Paris, though I didn’t tell him I’d seen it put on by students at UCLA. “Not that it was bad. Just the opposite. But so smug! How do you get moral superiority out of saying there is no point to anything?”

  “Don’t tell Ruli.” He laughed, then finished his wine with a flourish. “Those plays never fail to send me to sleep when she or Cerisette bully me into going along.”

  I leaned back on my stone bench to stare upward through the interlaced green leaves and the mild blue sky beyond, while he started to pack up the remains. High above me an unseen bird warbled its song; bees hovered about nodding blossoms, their sound a krummhorn below the bird’s soprano recorder.

  It was time for a test or two of my own. “I’m sorry your sister’s missing. I hope she’s okay.”

  “Mmm.” He smiled absently as he folded the picnic cloth.

  “Must be hard on your mother. Especially with this wedding stuff coming up. She mentioned it the other day. Weird, to be planning a wedding without a bride around.”

  “Most of the planning she’s doing would serve as well for a state funeral.” His brows quirked. “They pegged you as a wild bohemian, the family wolves. So you’ve never met my sister?”

  “No.”

  “Where’d you meet Alec?”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I BLINKED AT HIM. “How’d you know we met?”

  “Give me credit for some observation.” Tony lounged back on his bench, eyes half shut. “They said everyone else jumped like a row of electrified crows on a wire when first they saw you. As did I. Alec not only did not react, but there was no uncertainty as to your identity. It’s never easy to sort out what he’s thinking, but that much was obvious. He knew you right off, and could have been forgiven for some doubt. Unlike me, he’s largely been spared Ruli’s company in recent years. Also,” he smiled as if telling a rare joke, “you knew him. And weren’t exactly chuffed to find him there.”