Chapter Forty-nine
This late, the roads were deserted—but only of cars, carts, and human beings. In the first two miles, Holmes swerved to avoid a large mouse, two rabbits, and a cat. At the same time, our head-lamp bore witness to the motorcar’s heedless progress, with one spray of glistening blood and the freshly flattened shape of something within a drift of feathers. A car as heavy as the shooting-brake would sail blithely through anything smaller than a cow; for a motor-cycle, a rabbit was dangerous, and a large fox could kill us outright.
Our speed edged off.
“Don’t slow,” I shouted. “We can’t let him get away.”
He cocked back his head to call, “He doesn’t know we’re after him. He has no reason to hurry.”
Isn’t madness reason enough, I thought. But I shrugged down into the blanket and let the wind whip past. We were north of Brașov, therefore almost the exact centre of Roumania—a fact reflected on maps, with five roads coming together in the dot that was the town. Some of those were actual, metalled roadways, others largely aspirational, but since Bucharest was both the capital and the nearest city, its road would be well maintained. And it lay in the direction the doctor had chosen.
I spoke into his ear. “Will he stop at his house first?”
The motion of his shoulders indicated that he was no more certain of the answer than I was. But because the mansion was just off this road, we took the risk of coming to a halt at the drive and turning off the motor.
No lights showing, no dust in the air over the drive. No sounds of an idling engine.
Holmes kicked our motor back into life and returned us to the road.
At the outskirts of Brașov, again I uncurled from the relative shelter of his back to shout. “If the police department is open, we could ask them to wire ahead. Tell them a man is plotting to kill the Queen.”
He nodded, and slowed outside the building, but it was as dark as one might expect, from a small town in the still hours. He shifted up again.
“So,” I said. “Where is he headed?”
“To the Queen,” he called back.
“He said he was going to one of the borders.”
“ ‘If I cannot have it, neither will she.’ ”
“He’d choose trying to get at the Queen over making a clean escape?”
“I believe so.”
I clung to him as the sleeping town flitted past, and considered the possibility of second-guessing a madman. I’d thought that as we spoke with the doctor, he’d seemed to regain some balance—enough to suggest he would choose a life forward rather than a final act and a blaze of glory. After all, his resources were enormous, the world at his feet. All he had to do was slip away from Roumania, and give up Bran to his enemy, the Queen.
What was the man thinking, there on the road ahead of us? Was he consumed by the need for revenge and the end of things, or had he seen the appeal of acceptance and a life elsewhere? Or was he simply speeding through the night, as blindly unaware of options as he was of the rabbits that dashed under his tyres? Waiting for a sleeping bullock to loom in his head-lamps, or for the hands on the wheel to choose their goal…
Holmes was right: that all-or-nothing threat of his sounded more real than the idea of heading for a border. However, that still did not decide us.
“He knows she’s in Sinaia,” I told him.
He sat back, letting the engine slow. “Does he?”
“Pretty sure. He had passengers in the motorcar for a time, they were talking. But Holmes, that threat could be aimed at Bran itself rather than Marie.”
He drifted to a halt at a cross-roads, beneath one of the town’s street-lamps, and dropped his feet to the ground. There he sat, head bent, as deep in thought as I was.
Bran, or Marie? The Queen’s beloved doll-house, or a direct assault on a royal palace filled with guards?
If I cannot have it, neither will she could also mean burning the object of his desire to the ground.
Castle Bran. Yes, it had stone walls, a ridiculously steep approach, and the tiniest of windows overlooking the drive—from the outside, an act of pyromania would require fire-arrows or an aeroplane. But considering that most of the servants would be out searching for Gabriela, a man with a match could walk through the door with little difficulty.
I felt Holmes come to a decision, but he turned on the seat and shoved his goggles up so he could look at me.
I nodded. “Sinaia.”
He kicked the cycle into life again, and turned onto the Sinaia road.
As Brașov fell behind us, for the first time in hours, I spared a thought for Andrei Costea, well-bathed, but possibly growing hungry in our castle rooms. Should I tell Holmes what I’d learned? No, better not to toss out any more distractions.
The road climbed, though its surface was good. Better yet, here it was more forest than farmland. Fewer chickens and cats, fewer hen-houses to tempt predators, and wildlife more wary of engine noises than their more civilised brothers.
The drawback was, we saw no more bloody evidence of a motorcar’s passage.
Grimly, Holmes took us faster, then faster yet. I tucked my head down, hoping to keep my spectacles from blowing off in the wind and became all too aware that the cushion had vanished from underneath me.
Two or three miles after leaving Brașov, I felt him react to something. I straightened, trying to see over his shoulder. “What?”
“Head-lamps,” he said. “On the switch-backs ahead of us.”
Switch-backs were good. The road surface was excellent. A motor-cyclist willing to take risks could gain on a car on the back and forth, especially at night when any oncoming traffic would warn with its lights. I let go of the blanket, allowing the wind to rip it into the night, and used the hand to pat at the pocket of Holmes’ coat, to make sure I could find the revolver if I needed to. I then wrapped my arms around him and plastered myself to his back, going with his every lean and shift.
Our speed grew, terrifying and exhilarating. We clung to the road, leaning deeply left, and right, and left again, the surface closer to our knees with every turn.
The road hit its peak at Predeal, and started downwards, and I caught a glimpse of lights ahead—but…
Before I could speak, I felt Holmes’ body go slack with disappointment, heard the slight reduction of speed as his hand ceased its full push on the throttle.
We went past the War-era Renault as if it were standing still, and flew on.
The road grew straighter, and any slight upper hand we might have had now lost ground to the powerful engine of the shooting-brake. We joined a larger highway. Houses began to appear, and smaller lanes. A village, then another—and the occasional motor coming towards us, or ahead going south. We passed one of these, just before the town of Busteni, then another.
All of a sudden, Holmes reared back, setting the brakes hard and fighting to keep us upright. I had felt the shift of his muscles and reacted in an instant, but even so, his abrupt motion bashed my teeth and caught me off guard. We almost went down—if I’d been in his place, we would have—but he kept our wheels straight, and I felt the turn begin as soon as our flirtation with disaster was over. “Sorry,” he said, and circled to take us back to the turn-off he had spotted just moments too late.
We were now passing through a series of expensive, locked gates with groomed trees and the occasional glimpse of formal gardens. This must be Sinaia, the summer capital, where Bucharest moved when the weather grew hot.
It was a maze of small roads and drives, but Holmes seemed to know where he was going—or rather, to judge by the tension in his back, he had a picture of it by day, and was working to reconstruct the route by night.
Past some buildings, down a hill, across a stream—then lights appeared before us.
It could only be a royal castle, with sweeping entrance and guard house before a bulk that would contain hundreds of rooms—but in front of it stood the shooting-brake, driver’s door open and head-lamps burning. As the cycle came to a skidding halt beside it, two men in livery were just crossing the internal courtyard, visible through a pair of archways. I clambered off the metal seat, as stiff as if I’d been on a horse all day. Still, I was in better shape than Holmes, who was struggling to uncurl his hands from the grips.
“Holmes, one of us has to move fast. Can you distract the guards?”
“Take the pistol,” he said, then raised his voice to call in his plummiest of tones, “I say there, my good man, I wonder if you could help me? Terribly sorry, it’s ridiculously late, but I’m looking for a gent who—”
The two men emerged from the right-hand archway. I pocketed the weapon and took off to the left as fast as my limbs would carry me. Which fortunately was faster than two hefty men with boots, overcoats, and ceremonial pikestaffs.
They shouted, but I made it across the courtyard and halfway up the grand internal stairway before the younger of the two had reached the doors. I was in a hall of some kind—this level would be entirely public and formal, thus far from the family’s bedrooms—but as I glanced up, I was startled to see the sky above open galleries. Lights burned inside—not many, but enough to show me the stairs. As I launched up them, I began to shout.
“Guards! Protect your Queen! Stop the doctor—Ileana, it’s Mary Russell—Mrs Holmes—Ileana!”
The two guards were shouting and clattering behind me, Holmes’ voice joined the fray, and I was getting short of breath as I pelted along sumptuous corridors and grand stairways, shouting and cursing the solid sleep of the royal family. Where were the footmen—and how far had the doctor got?
Another set of stairs—and the living quarters at last, corridors with thick carpets and lined with busts and vases and paintings. One of the guards behind me was faster than I’d expected, I could feel him gaining on me and I thought of the gun, but who was I kidding, I wasn’t going to send bullets flying here—and then from ahead of me came a man’s shout. Halfway around a corner, I skidded on my heels and nearly went down, then ducked away from a large footman—who collided with the guard behind me in a pandemonium of curses, letting me dodge through the corner ahead of my pursuer.
Then everything happened at once.
On my first step inside the dim-lit corridor, I spotted a man with a doctor’s bag standing hand raised from knocking at a closed door. At my second step, a door across from him came open. My fourth step, Ileana came out from it, sleep-tousled, arms full of fluffy white dog. I opened my mouth to shout—and at my fifth step, the door in front of the doctor drew back, revealing the Queen herself.
“He took Gabriela!” I shouted, but that was my eighth step, and the doctor’s hand was shifting to straight-arm the Queen back into the room.
I pounded down the endless length of hallway, knowing I would never make it, unable even to pause and draw the gun—but then a white blur flew down the carpet, snarling and furious, to dive after the disappearing leg. The many-throated chorus of shouts was joined by screams, male and female, and the doctor reappeared, stumbling backwards, swatting at the white shape attached to the back of his thigh. Five more steps before I could tackle him—but I was ten feet away when a priceless oriental vase crashed down on his skull. He swayed, and collapsed.
The Queen and Ileana, wearing identical shocked expressions, looked from him to me. I slowed—only to go down under several hundred pounds of angry palace guard.