The colonels had dispersed by the time Wéry returned to the commandant's house. So he took his leave of Knuds and departed from the citadel on foot. He walked slowly down the looping road from the citadel to the bridges. His boots roused little dry dust-clouds for the wind to fling in eddies and disperse over the hillside. His thoughts flew with them, and alighted nowhere.
Politics!
The nasty, little, petty-minded politics of Erzberg: Gianovi against Balcke; Canon Rother against the army; little boys in their sandcastles. Little boys with knives. Balcke is finished. That was a swift judgement. That was exactly what might be expected from someone who had not been with the army in those last days! And if there were few competent officers in the army of Erzberg, there would be one less when Balcke was gone. Wéry would be sorry. Balcke had been the first to take him seriously.
Bergesrode would not be sorry. He was one of the Ingolstadt set, and the Ingolstadt set hated Balcke, just as they hated Gianovi and anyone they suspected of swaying the Prince towards reform of Erzberg's ancient customs and institutions. The Prince kept Bergesrode in his office as a balance to his other advisers. So the lethal bickering penetrated right to the heart of the Prince's government. Squabbling makes you smaller. And paranoia makes you smaller still. Come ready to talk about the Illuminati. Hah. Rubbish. The obsession of a sick and backward-looking church . . .
Squabbling, and paranoia, and impossible demands. Find Illuminati in the city. Bring us the plans of Hoche. Stay out of French-held territory. (But yes, he must find a safe courier to and from the Rhine. Somehow, he must.)
And your ideas.
Because the French would come. Now or later, whether they evicted d'Erles or not, one day the French would come. There could be no real peace with such an enemy. His pulses beat with the thought of it.
Ideas, ideas. His idea was to fight. To oppose the French with a will that exceeded even their own. But Bergesrode knew that. The question he was asking was: how?
Defence had to have depth. When one line was breached, there must be another behind it, and another behind that, so that no attack could gain momentum. A serious fortress should be surrounded with lines of outworks and redoubts. But Erzberg could not be made into a fortress. That would take months, and vast sums of money. The French would be alert to it at once. They could be outside the walls in days.
So what could be done?
Build further lines within the walls? Pitch the fight inside the city?
He paused on the Old Bridge, looking out across the quays. The riverside was crowded. His eye rested on the folk loading barges, wheeling barrows, passing in the street. Glances were thrown in his direction, and a few frowns, but there were no hisses for a hussar officer this morning. They did not know about Balcke and Hersheim, yet. Nor did they know that this particular hussar was pondering a murderous fight for the city. It should be written on his face, like a mark of Cain. Fighting street by street while the city burns, the women are dragged from the cellars and the children hoisted on bayonets. Yes, all that. All that would happen, here on these chattering wharves in the breezy air. Once you have made the attackers fight their way in, they will show you no mercy.
And this was the voice of the enemy. It had been voiced in good faith – supposing Gianovi was capable of good faith – but it was the enemy nonetheless. Look at them, pity them. And for their sakes, do not oppose me. It was distraction. It was lies. The enemy offered every excuse for weakness. But truth was only truth if you were prepared to die for it.
And, he thought, it could be done.
They could fight for these streets. Look at the Coffee House Stocke, there. Or at this merchant's house, four-square at the end of the Old Bridge. Beneath its elaborate friezes of vines and fat cherubs, these were good stone Avails. Put loopholes in them, put oak shutters on those broad windows, and it would be a small fortress. No one could cross the river this way until it was taken.
Look at the Saint Christopher Chapel. A cannon in its doorway could sweep the length of the wharves . . .
It needed determination. Not fear. Fear was the corruption that had consumed the Republic: fear of émigrés, fear of the mob, fear of the Powers and fear of each other. No cause of his must go that way To do this – not just to contemplate it, but to carry it all the way through – Erzberg's leaders would be tested to the very limits of their will.
And it needed arms, powder and shot. Level eyes and level heads. Steady hands on the muskets. The defence would show no mercy either. And when they came on, with their banners and their bayonets – Bang! Bang! Damn you, bang! And the smoke clearing and the bodies writhing on the cobbles. And they would have learned, in Paris. They would have learned the price of betrayal!
His fists shook. His jaw was clenched. And he stood there, lost in his vision at the parapet of the Old Bridge, until his ear began to pick up again the clatter of the people on the wharves. The wind gusted, flapping his tunic, and his eye saw the brown swirl of the river once more.
It could be done, he thought. That was what he would tell Bergesrode at dawn tomorrow. It could be done if there was the will. And if they came.
He left the bridge. Moving swiftly now, he began to make his way upstream, skirting the narrow, gated street which was the city's Jewish ghetto, into the northern districts of the city. As he went he looked left and right, noting strong buildings, avenues of fire, killing grounds. There were many, he found – so many ways and places in which an attacker could be made to suffer.
Why in heaven's name did cities bother with walls at all?
It was in this frame of mind, intense and agitated, that he reached the Saint Lucia barracks where the hussars were quartered. He was moving so fast that he did not acknowledge the sentry's salute. He barely heard what the man had said to him. He had walked on five paces under the archway before his brain caught up with his ears.
'What? What did you say?'
'There's callers for you, sir.'
'Callers?'
'Two gentlewomen, sir.'
Gentlewomen! What in heaven . . . ?
'For me? You are sure?'
'Asked for you by name, sir.'
It must have been business of some sort. Here in Erzberg, no gentlewoman would call on an officer in his barracks for any other reason. But he could not think what business one could have with him, or indeed which, if any, of his scarce acquaintances in the city it could possibly have been.
'Did they leave a card?'
'They're still here.'
Still here!
Gentlewomen waiting in a barracks? God above, what kind of business could this be?
'Where are they?' he asked urgently.
'Don't exactly know, sir. Officers' quarters, I suppose.'
They were in the long room in the officers' block: two women in brown habits with their skirts spread wide on the stained and faded settees on which the bachelor officers would lounge and drink wine in the evenings. One he recognized instantly – it was Madame Poppenstahl, whom he had last seen in the little waiting room at Adelsheim. The other wore a veil. A black dress peeped out from under her habit. It was almost certainly one of the Adelsheim women – the daughter, he guessed, from her height. But with the veil and the dim light he could not be sure.
'And here he is,' cried Altmantz, looking up from an armchair. 'The lost sheep returns. Well, boy? Still got your commission, I hope?'
'Fortunately, sir, yes,' gasped Wéry. 'Ladies, I am at your service. And I regret – I bitterly regret – that you have had to wait for me. If I had known, of course I would have been here at once.'
'It is no fault of yours, sir,' said Madame Poppenstahl, as he bent over her hand. She turned, perhaps a little awkwardly, to his superior officer. 'And Baron . . .'
The colonel raised an eyebrow. Women like Madame Poppenstahl did not normally dismiss barons who had condescended to wait upon them.
'Baron, you have been most kind,' said the woman behind the veil. And it was indeed Maria von Adelsheim.
'Well,' said the Baron, gallantly levering himself to his feet. 'It – it has been a pleasure, but I have matters to attend to. I'll leave him to your mercies.'
'Sir . . .' began Wéry.
'Think nothing of it, boy,' said Altmantz. 'Only tell me what it was about afterwards if you can. I'm all agog.'
He left them, with the forced cheerfulness of a man who knew he was not in control of events in his house, and therefore behaved as if all events that occurred exactly suited him. The sound of his boots clattered away on the wooden boards and Wéry was alone with the two women.
They were alone, in the room where up to a dozen young unmarried men would sit of an evening, drinking and smoking and roaring at one another. There was dust in the air, ashes in the hearth, the smell of wood smoke and tobacco smoke and spilled wine. On a sideboard stood a row of decanters, full, half-full and near-empty. The furniture was shabby. Here and there the fabrics were torn, as if by some undisciplined cat. But it was no cat that had ripped the upholstery and picked at the carpet so. They were the marks of spurs.
'By your leave, ladies,' he said, feeling embarrassed by their surroundings, but also helpless. There was nowhere else in the barracks to take these two unexpected visitors. He perched on the edge of a settee that had been visibly deformed by generations of drunken hussars sprawling there and tipping bottles into their mouths.
He waited. Madame Poppenstahl was preparing to speak. Wéry understood that she was to do the talking, and also that she was not quite sure how to begin. He stole a glance at the woman in the veil, but he saw there only poise and silence. The outline of the face showed dimly behind the dark material.
What were they doing here?
'Once again,' he said, 'I truly regret that I was not here to receive you.'
'It is no fault of yours, sir,' said Madame Poppenstahl. 'But it was not possible for us, finding you away, to go and return tomorrow. Therefore we were obliged to wait.'
'I see,' said Wéry, blankly.
'We wish,' said Madame Poppenstahl, 'to acquire a passport.'
'A passport!'
'For a foreign gentleman to remain a month within the city. He will be travelling on private business and therefore it would be best if he had papers from our own authorities.'
Madame Poppenstahl looked at him, as though hoping she had said all that was necessary by way of explanation.
'But – but it is no part of my duties to issue passports,' said Wéry baffled. 'You would have to apply to . . .' He hesitated.
There was a new decree, Bergesrode had said. He struggled to remember the details. 'I believe . . . You now have to go to the office of the Prince, or the First Minister.'
'Alas, sir. Enquiries have already been made on our behalf in these quarters. We understand that it is impossible.'
Were they so innocent, these women?
'It should be perfectly possible. If the clerks in the palace have said it is not, it will only be because they were waiting for a bribe.'
Madame Poppenstahl's hands shifted in her lap. 'Sir, Lady Adelsheim has said most strictly that we should pay no bribes to the palace officials.'
Wéry could imagine Lady Adelsheim's opinions of the officials of Erzberg. For the most part, he shared them. He eased back a little in his chair and thought what advice he might give.
'A family of the Adelsheims' standing . . . Perhaps you should approach Gianovi himself?'
'Lady Adelsheim has said that we must not ask favours of Gianovi under any circumstances.'
Really!
'Why not?'
'She will not have it, sir. She says . . . She has no liking for him.'
He sensed her delicacy. The thing that would offend the knightly families of Erzberg most about Gianovi was that he was not one of them. He was a foreigner, ennobled by grace and not by birth. He owed no loyalty to any faction within Erzberg other than to the man who had employed him. And the same, at a much lesser level, was true for Wéry. There was no doubt that Lady Adelsheim would have her views on lowly and foreign-born army officers as well. If she had thought that her emissaries might approach him, she would have forbidden that too. But she had not.
'Who is it you want a passport for?'
'A Major Jean-Marie Lanard.'
'An émigré, madame? I do not know him.'
'He is an officer of the Army of the French Republic'
'What!'
No wonder they had not been able to get what they wanted!
Madame Poppenstahl returned his look with a frail defiance.
'But what you ask is most difficult,' said Wéry slowly.
Difficult? It was madness! Allow a revolutionary officer back into Erzberg? If there were even a possibility that the Prince would resist Hoche's demands?
He could feel the eyes of the veiled girl on him. He did not want to disappoint her. He very much did not want to. But really, it was best to be honest.
'I should explain . . .' he said. 'There is great alarm in the palace about the possibility that republican agitators may enter the city. I doubt if anyone less than the Prince would willingly sanction such a letter at this time.'
'We had understood, Captain, that you had become an aide to the Prince.'
Great heavens! They expected him to get the passport for them!
And they were not so innocent after all, were they? Clearly they knew he was not just a hussar officer. They knew he came and went from the Prince's offices. That was why they had come to him.
'That is accurate. But I fear that His Highness would hardly seek my advice on a matter such as this.'
Madame Poppenstahl was disappointed, but she was not put off. Some power greater than her natural diffidence was pushing her on.
'Truly not? I wonder if you do yourself justice, sir.' She shifted once more, awkwardly.
And then, as if she was not quite sure whether she meant what she was saying, she went on, 'Lady Adelsheim has said we were not to offer any rewards to the palace officials . . .'
Her voice trailed away as she saw Wéry's face change.
He could feel the muscles in his cheeks, set like stone. He was glaring at her, and he knew it, and could not help it. And yes, she was just a plain-thinking woman, trying to play palace games that she did not know how to play. Yes, this was probably the first time she had ever offered a bribe in her life. Yes, Erzberg was riddled with corruption. Of course it was.
But damn it! To have picked him! To think that he was as warped as they were – these princing, mincing aristocrats who thought themselves so fine and everyone else so base, and they did not see, because they could not allow themselves to see, how close on the precipice they trod!
Finished! he wanted to scream. You're finished, all of you! And be damned to you all and good riddance!
If he spoke, he would not contain himself. They would have to leave, and would never be able to support his presence again. And he nearly spoke. He nearly damned them both. And perhaps the only thing that kept him from speaking was the memory of the Adelsheim library, of what he had said there and by the fireside, and of how even so he had been forgiven.
At last there was a sigh, and the hands of the other woman lifted to put back her veil. The face of Maria von Adelsheim looked out at him from under it.
'I should be grateful if you would address me – Captain.'
He nodded grimly.
'You are rightly outraged, Captain, because we have approached you as if you were a palace time-server, and not as a gentleman and friend of my brother. I see now that it was very wrong of us. I can only plead that we have suffered so much disappointment in this today that on coming to you we have failed to give our suit the consideration it warranted. We are most abjectly sorry.'
For a child of an Imperial Knight to speak so to a commoner was not just unusual in Erzberg. It was almost unknown. Even in his rage he could see that.
He found his voice, at last. 'Do not – please do not think on it. I know how things are done in the palace. It was – I will not say it was a natural mistake but . . . It is better that we do not think on it.'
Her face was very pale, but her voice was steadier than his. 'You are merciful, Captain, and more so than we deserve. Truly we see so often that a victim becomes a villain. Yet we never imagine we will act so ourselves. Now Anna and I, thinking only that we were victims of tyranny, have committed villainy in our turn. I am ashamed. I wish you to know it.'
Tyranny? He frowned in incomprehension.
'Oh yes!' she said, exasperated. 'How is it that we are brought to wait in the Saint Lucia barracks, attempting to bribe one of the few men in Erzberg who cannot be bribed? I will tell you. It is because we dare not return to our tyrant and tell her that what she wills cannot be achieved!'
'Maria . . .' said Poppenstahl nervously.
'I know, Anna. I am being indiscreet and I should not be. But I would not wish the Captain to think that we do this to amuse ourselves! You have lived under tyranny, Captain. Have you ever lived under such as we? There is no guillotine in Adelsheim, no wheel, no hurdle, no flogging-stake. And yet I swear to you that we tremble at a word. "Anna, dear, we will need a passport. Go and get one, and don't allow any nonsense from those wretched people at the palace." So. Although even our cousin the Canon Rother said it would be impossible, nevertheless poor Anna must go, and must succeed, because my mother wills it. Do you see it, Captain? I wonder if you do.'
'Yes,' he said slowly. 'I see it.'
So they had been at their wits' end, trying to satisfy the monstrous Lady Adelsheim. Indeed, he could imagine it. It had been a rather good imitation of Lady Adelsheim's manner. He had recognized it at once.
At the same time he recognized something else – something suddenly and painfully familiar.
'Hey, Michel! Behold me! I am the Emperor Leopold. Tremble, you fellows . . .'
Were they all mimics, in the Adelsheim house?
'Yes,' he said. 'I do see it. Although – and I know you did not intend this – but I think that I saw your brother too.'
Her eyes widened in surprise. 'Alba?' Then she dropped them. 'Truly sir, I – I did not know I was so poor an actor.'
He waited, but she did not look up.
'I did not say that you were,' he said gently.
'No, but Albrecht. . .' Her brow furrowed.
He saw the grief on her face. He felt it in the way she fumbled for words. And he felt, too, how the name stirred in the mud of his own heart. For a moment he cursed himself. Yet he had not been able to help speaking of him.
'He did not command] she said at length. 'It was more that he inspired us. At least he was so to me. Even if it was the most ridiculous thing . . .'
She lifted her chin and looked at him again. And suddenly her face lit up in boyish exuberance.
'Maria,' she cried mannishly swinging her elbows in a pantomime of someone in a hurry. 'Hey, Maria! Attend to me this instant – I have a notion! Maria, you must attend. It is of the utmost importance. It is squirrels, Maria! Such beauty, such grace – nothing surpasses them! We will go out and catch a hundred, Maria. And we will have the kitchens place them in a dish, with pastry on top. And then we will invite the Machtings and the Jenzes to dinner, and when Father puts the knife in the pie – out they will come, hoppity hoppity all over the table and down the hall! Will it not be the merriest thing?
'And so,' she finished, dropping back into her normal voice,'so I must spend a long day in the woods with him, he up the trees, and I with a long-handled net waiting on the ground, and we did not catch one! Was he not so? Anna, do say.'
'Oh, he was very merry, dear, all the time.'
'Captain?'
'Yes,' said Wéry, smiling. 'Yes, he was.' A strange imp was stirring inside him. 'But also . . .'
A gentleman in conversation with a lady should not remove his eyes from her.
He certainly should not lie back full length on his battered settee.
He could not possibly lift his feet, booted and spurred and muddy, and prop them crossed one over the other, on the settee's sagging arm, as if no lady were present and he himself were a hundred miles away, in another time, inhabiting another body.
'Michel,' he said languidly, staring at the ceiling.
(His voice was too husky. That was nerves. Pause, and strengthen it.)
'Behold me, Michel . . .' (pause) '. . . I am furniture' (pause) '. . . and I am content.'
He could sense her leaning forward to watch him. Would she be shocked by what he was doing? Dear Heaven! What was he doing, imitating her dead brother for her?
But there was nothing for it now.
'I am becoming,' he went on,'Joinery. Yes, I feel sure of it. And cloth – a little threadbare perhaps. And better yet . . .' He smacked his lips with luxurious delight and whispered, 'Woodworm!'
She laughed.
She laughed, surprised, delighted, and the sound burst over him like applause. He felt elated. He felt a power growing in him. It was years since he had played this sort of game. But once there had been a time . . .
'Oh!' she cried. 'But was it not exact, Anna? Was he not just so? Captain, you have a talent! I declare it might have been himself.'
'He was the nearest I had to a confessor for four years,' said Wéry apologetically, as he righted himself. 'As to the passport . . .' he frowned in thought.
'Oh no! Do not let us think of it. But tell me – was he drunk when he said that?'
'Why, I do not recall,' lied Wéry.
'Then he was, I swear it! Were you, too? Were you drunk with him often?'
'Maria!' said Poppenstahl warningly.
'Oh no, Anna. The Captain will forgive us, I am sure. You do not mind, do you, Captain?'
There was no malice in her. Greed perhaps, for something of her brother that she could never have shared, but no malice.
'What I do recall,' said Wéry, 'was that he might be most merciless if I were – a little ill – of a morning.' He chuckled. 'He would visit me in my sickbed, stamp up and down, recite the Rights of Man at me, until I was fairly driven to get up and chase him away. "War on the cranium, peace to the corpus," he called it. You know the saying of Chamfort? "War on the castles" and so forth?'
'And you drove pigs through the tents of other officers together.'
'Well, I may have helped, but . . .'
'What villains you were!'
'Ah, but did he tell you about the bear?'
'Bear? No! What bear was this?'
'A dancing bear. A poor creature. Its master brought it to the camp with a halter around its neck and played on a drum for it to dance to. We watched. And then suddenly your brother said, "Aha! But now comes the deluge!"And he pushed the man into the ring, and said, "Now you, sir, will dance!" and he took the drum and gave it to the bear!'
'No!'
She was laughing aloud. And so was he.
'And – and the bear could not hold the stick. So he sat down with it, and put one arm around its shoulders . . .' He hugged an imaginary bear with one arm. 'And with the other hand he took the bear's paw and the stick and played the drum for it. And he cried to us, "Make the villain dance!" And someone drew his sabre, and the fellow danced, and – and the bear . . .'
He tried to imitate the bewildered look of the bear, watching the stick bounce up and down on the drum, and the girl laughed, and could not stop laughing, and he was laughing too at the memory.' . . . And at the end he – he p-paid the bear!'
And he did the bear's face again, looking at the purse in its paw, and the girl laughed again, and he was laughing too, and weeping a hot tear from his eye. And it hurt.
And it was good – unimaginably good. It was healing, like a massage of muscles that had gone stiff and cold for years.
'But – but was it not dangerous? The bear!'
'Very! I was sweating for him. But he was like that, was he not? Danger, and a joke, and something serious too. He meant it as a parable – an allegory of revolution. And I did not agree, for no man of any station is an animal, and we argued over it afterwards. But also we laughed. We laughed for days . . .'
'Maria,' said Madame Poppenstahl more urgently. 'Really I think we must not detain the Captain . . .'
He saw the older woman's look, and understood.
They were being too familiar. She was being too familiar with him. And yet he too was greedy for her company now. Greedy for more of this. He did not want her to go.
'The – ah – the passport,' he said.
'Oh no, Captain,' the girl exclaimed. 'You must not think of it. We did wrong to ask you!'
'It may be possible,' he said. 'I do not know but . . .'
He had their attention again.
'This officer you require it for. He is not here already, in the city, is he?'
'He has returned to Wetzlar to attend his General,' she said soberly. 'But he has undertaken to my mother that he will seek leave to come back, if we can obtain the permissions.'
'For what purpose?'
She hesitated for a moment. 'It may not be a purpose of which you approve, Captain. But I feel bound to be frank with you. He is the officer who carried the French parley to our troops before the action at Hersheim. We wish him to testify at an inquiry of the War Commission, for which we have petitioned. It is for my brother's sake. And for the other men who died.'
He let out a long breath.
This was impossible. He was supposed to be on watch for agitators. How could he help admit to the city a man whose word, true or false, could do more damage than a hundred rabble-rousers? And the man would be given an opportunity to speak against Balcke-Horneswerden – to do him as much damage as possible. If he owed anything to anyone living in Erzberg, it was surely to Balcke.
And yet he had already let her believe that he would help.
'You . . . want this very much, do you not?' he murmured.
She looked at him, considering. She had said he must not think of it. Now she must decide whether she would truly ask it of him.
'Yes,' she said slowly. 'Yes I do.'
'May I know why?'
'I – I believe I have already said . . .'
Words rose within him – words that he would never normally have considered, and had not known were true.
'Lady Maria,' he said. 'I am a man who hates. I know it. It is not good – although I believe that reason is with me. But I know how treacherous hate is. It does not admit – cannot admit – that there is reason, or good, or honour, in the one we hate. I do not ask you to tell me your thoughts. But I do ask that you consider why you want this man to come here.'
She looked at him levelly. 'You are . . . most frank, Captain. Tell me. Whom do you suppose that I may hate?'
'Perhaps it is Count Balcke-Horneswerden.'
'Oh,' she said, as if she had thought he would name someone else.
She considered it. Perhaps she nodded, slightly. But at length she said, 'What we seek is the truth about why my brother died, Captain. That is all.'
He spread his hands. 'So. Whose truth do you mean?'
'I do not believe there is more than one truth. To say otherwise is to be like Pilate, who demanded "what is truth?" of the Lord Our Saviour.'
'I have always felt that he had a point,' said Wéry.
He might also say that the various political factions in the city would all seek to use any testimony given to the Commission for their own purposes. But she would know that. He could guess how she might answer him . . .
In the end, she was here before him. He could not refuse her.
'Very well,' he said. 'You will have to remind me of your officer's name.'
'Major Jean-Marie Lanard.'
He repeated it to himself. Then he nodded. 'I will do what I can. At present, that will be nothing. In a week or a fortnight, it is likely that the Prince's decree will be less rigorously implemented, and there may be a chance. No, my ladies. Please remember, you have said that your Major Lanard has gone to assume other duties. He will not be free of those quickly and therefore it is best that we take our time.'
'Captain . . . I am grateful. And if there is anything we may do for you, I beg that you will name it.'
I beg that you will name it. He must have said those very words to her, on the steps at Adelsheim.
'I do not think . . .'
Suddenly he frowned. A thought had occurred. He looked at Anna Poppenstahl. 'Your relatives beyond the Rhine, madame. Do you have news of them?'
She blinked at the question. 'I have indeed. Although I fear their condition is a wretched one. My cousin Ludwig is well, but his state is much reduced by the war. The impositions of the French army are far heavier than any he had to endure from his former ruler. And his nephew Maximilian is not well, for he had high hopes of the Revolution when it began, and is much afflicted by how it has turned out . . .'
He listened, understanding that Madame Poppenstahl, although wishing him no particular ill-will, was determined to return the conversation to the ordinary polite gossip that was the only intimacy permissible with single young men such as him. And as he listened he tried hard not to betray that he already knew as much and more of Ludwig and Maximilian Jürich as she did. They would guess of course. Was this wise? He was not dicing with someone's honour, now, but with lives.
'Terrible!' he murmured. 'How you must wish to comfort them.'
'It is my earnest wish to visit them as soon as I may,' said the simple woman. 'When Lady Adelsheim is able to release me.'
'I see. But in the meantime are you able to correspond with your cousins, and perhaps send them little luxuries that they cannot now obtain in their territory?'
Madame Poppenstahl shook her head sadly.
'Letters may pass, although they may be opened. But not goods, unless they are stoutly accompanied. I declare the soldiers will steal anything bigger than a thimble.'
'Indeed,' sighed Wéry.
Of course letters were opened. That did not worry him. No censor or spy would make anything of the communications he was thinking of – so long as their destination could be disguised.
Maria von Adelsheim was watching him very closely. Had she already guessed what he was going to propose?
'Well,' he said, and acted a light laugh. 'If by chance you should open your letters and find within them something that is not after all for you, perhaps you would forward it on to me?'
'Why, I do not know how . . .' began the woman dubiously.
'Anna . . .' said the girl, and laid her hand on her chaperon's arm.
She had not taken her eyes off Wéry's face. She was weighing his words. She would be wondering what these letters were, that somehow could not come to him directly: these letters for an "aide" to the Prince. And she must be able to make guesses. She had understood what he was asking.
'So, Captain. We make something of a devil's bargain, I think,' she said at last.
'A fearful city is full of devils,' said Wéry. 'Let us try to be honest devils with one another.'
'Maria!' said Poppenstahl, alarmed at last.
Maria von Adelsheim was still watching him. She was trying to read the future in his face. Now she must decide.
'How will they know that they may pass these packages to us?' she asked.
'The next time you write to the Jürichs, send a man you can trust. Let him use my name in the hearing of the household. It will be enough.'
It crossed his mind that if he were truly being an 'honest' devil, he should speak to them more about the dangers – the possibility that if something went wrong their man might be arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, executed. But it would not do to frighten them. It would not do to have Poppenstahl running to Lady Adelsheim about the wild plan into which her daughter was entering. So long as the courier knew no more than he had told them, and did no more than he had said, it should be well.
'And for my part,' he said, 'I vow to you that I will do my best to obtain what you want. If it proves impossible, then I think it is better that none of us remember what has passed between us.'
'I hope – and believe – that it will prove possible, Captain. And we will do as you ask. No, Anna, I am sure this is the right thing. We will tell Mother that a nameless gentleman has undertaken to provide the passport in a few weeks' time, when the clerks will be less conscientious about this decree. All that he requires is that we be discreet. It is the best that we can hope for.'
'Now, Captain,' she went on, with a sudden brightness in her tone. 'I wish to trespass a moment more upon your courtesy. Tell me, for I have been longing to know, how you find this city as a home from home?'
I wish to trespass a moment more. That meant: After this topic I will leave. She had begun the ritual politenesses of departure. He was sorry. He did not want her to go. Ordinarily he had little time for small talk. Now, in her presence, he wished that he could fascinate, sparkle, juggle a dozen witticisms and conjure back that delighted laughter, so that she might stay a little longer.
'I grow fond of it,' he said. 'It is more fortunate in its weather than Brussels or Paris. The people are kind, the ladies clever as well as beautiful . . .' This last was an attempt to win another smile from her, but she made no sign.'. . . In their dancing as well as their looks,' he stumbled on. 'At the Prince's ball early this summer I saw a dance performed by the ladies alone. It reminded me very much of my home in the countryside of Brabant, which was where I last saw such a thing. I hope we will see more of it this season.'
'Oh, you mean the Lightstep?' she asked.
'I believe that was its name here, yes. In Brabant it was one of the May dances. The country women dance it as a charm . . .' He broke off, realizing that it would probably not be delicate to say what the charm was supposed to do.
She was looking at him. There was a mischievous smile on her lips. 'That is strange,' she said. 'For so do we.'
His heart thumped. Anna Poppenstahl, loudly clearing her throat, might never have existed.
'And it is apt, is it not?' she went on. 'To play with a man, after all, is to play with fire.'
'So . . . so it is sometimes said. Although I have felt it apt in another way. A dance has moves. It is a process. The dancers turn this way, turn that, but the end is already determined. The end of a courtship is of course not determined, but there is nevertheless an inevitability about it. The partners are expected to surrender to one another. If they do not, the onlookers would say that the courtship had gone wrong.'
Her eyes watched him pick his way along the very fringes of the impermissible. Why had he not seen before how pale they were? (Hey, Michel – have you ever looked at somebody?) They were pale and blue and clear. And why had he thought her jaw too heavy? It was beautiful and full, curving to the throat. He was beginning to blush. He knew it. 'Shall I . . .' he stammered. 'Er . . . Shall I see you dance it soon?'
Her eyes dropped at once. 'When I am out of mourning, of course.'
'Oh.' Idiot! Damned idiot! 'Of course. Forgive me.'
'There is nothing to forgive,' she sighed.
Her eyes strayed around the barrack room, recalling to her where she was, and why. 'Captain, you have been most kind . . .'
And now she was rising, and he was rising with her.
The women stopped in the door for Poppenstahl to rearrange Maria's cape. Poppenstahl bustled anxiously about her charge, as if by folding and patting the thing neatly enough into shape she might erase any trace of the conversation they had just had, with all its unfortunate trespasses. The girl exclaimed, 'It is all right, Anna. Really it is quite warm enough . . .' mingling amusement and exasperation. And Wéry remembered Albrecht's hand on his own shoulder, that first evening in Balcke's quarters, and his own voice gasping, 'I'm all right, I'm all right' as he stood still dripping with Rhine water among the ring of officers.
He felt no resentment towards Poppenstahl. She was only doing her duty as she should. He could even be sorry, now, that he had become angry with her at all. There was no harm in the woman, and much good. The very clumsiness with which she had offered her bribe showed that. And whatever influence the mother had had in the education of the young Albrecht and Maria, it would not be to Lady Adelsheim that they owed whatever humanity they had learned in their childhoods.
He followed them to the doorway and stood there as they stepped out into the sunlight of the yard. And for an instant the girl looked back, and caught his eye. She was smiling as she dropped her veil.
I'm a fool, he thought.
A fool, he thought again, as he paced the room where she had spent all those minutes in his company. And he was a traitor, too, to all the men who counted him a comrade.
He did not feel foolish. He felt . . . light. Lucky, perhaps: as if some hope or opportunity had opened somewhere, even if he could not quite think what it was or why his circumstances could suddenly be so much more promising than they appeared to be. His mind grappled cheerfully with the impossibilities of extracting a passport for an enemy officer from the palace. And – heaven willing – he might even have solved the problem of communicating with the Rhineland. A devil's bargain. Yes, but a good one, surely . . .
Baron Altmantz put his head around the door, learned that it had been 'about her brother mostly' and left muttering, 'Yes, of course, a good man. Such a waste . . .'
At last Wéry made his way up to his office. It was a narrow room of bare and dusty boards. The walls were plain whitewash. There were two small windows, a fireplace and the doorway to an even smaller room where he slept. The only furniture was his desk, his chair, and the cabinet in which he kept his unimportant papers.
The only decoration was a painting of the head of Christ, in agony upon the cross. It was small, in a plain frame, but in that sparsely-furnished room with the white walls the image jumped forcefully to the eye of anyone who came in.
In coarse strokes the artist had shown a face twisted in horrible pain. The mouth hung open in a silent howl, missing teeth and dribbling a dark fluid. The eyes rolled, and the whites showed strongly whenever the light outside began to fail. Wéry did not need telling that the artist had seen death for himself, or knew what it was to suffer agony. It was stamped on the canvas for anyone to see.
He walked up to it and peered at it closely. The background showed a landscape, peopled with allegorical figures, none of which seemed at all remarkable beside the tormented head. He studied them carefully, but in vain. There was nothing there that he had not found already.