Arcanum (35 page)

Thaler was deep in conversation with Messinger, discussing the water supply: nothing she could usefully contribute to, and they were still going strong when the Wagon Gate opened and they were within the castle walls.

Sophia had never been inside before, not even in the lower field where she was now. The white walls of the fortress glowed like ghosts above her in the reflected light, and she wondered if that had been the unseen presence she’d felt earlier.

Life behind the walls seemed little busier than in the town, whereas she’d always imagined intense activity: all the important people she knew lived lives of constant interruption. There were one or two sparks on the tower above her, and some of the windows glimmered, but otherwise they were unwatched, left to walk up to the next gate on their own cognisance.

“Mr Thaler, where is everyone?” she eventually asked while they waited for the Chastity Gate to creak aside.

Thaler blinked in the lantern-light. “My dear, they’re all dead.”

“Oh.” The soldiers who’d marched out to cheering and waving were being plucked clean by the crows. No wonder the place appeared empty: it was.

From there, they walked between two high walls, across a bridge, along another narrow passage and through a tunnel. Only then did the sky open out and the keeps and towers that had seemed so far away throughout her life suddenly come within touching distance.

The guard dispersed, heading towards the main building, leaving her, Thaler and the mayor in the company of a boy who took them slowly across the inner courtyard towards one of the high towers – slowly, because he was shielding a guttering candle with only his hand.

The mayor had to open his own door and let the servant through, who then went ahead, leading them up stairs and along a corridor. Feeling totally lost, Sophia managed to resist the almost overwhelming urge to peer down side routes or behind curtains, in case she was momentarily forgotten and couldn’t find her way back.

Then they finally arrived at what seemed to be their destination. The servant left, still carefully conserving his candle-flame, and it was just the three of them in some sort of anteroom. There were chairs and tapestries, and Sophia decided to sit and compose herself before her inevitable inquisition.

Thaler placed his lantern on a short round table that might have been a stool, and the mayor was content just to hold his.

“I don’t like it, Thaler. The whole place has gone to the dogs.”

“With respect, Master Messinger, it’s a little soon to be recruiting a new castle guard, especially considering what happened to the old one.” Thaler sat down briefly, before deciding that standing would be better. “And Prince Gerhard’s funeral is still to come.”

“I expected more, that’s all.” The mayor made a pretence at examining one of the wall hangings. “We’ve managed, haven’t we?”

“Did you ever get around to answering my request for armed militia outside the library?” asked Thaler, with more than a little coolness in his voice. “Whose lantern are you using to examine that Rheinmaiden? Whose idea was it to question the hexmasters directly?”

“And look where that got us. Gods, what are we going to tell Trommler?”

Sophia sighed. “Gentlemen, please.”

There was a slight movement to her left. She looked up and gasped. Thaler spun around faster than his size might normally allow, and the mayor actually jumped back.

“Apologies for keeping you waiting,” said Trommler. As he turned to acknowledge each of them, he was revealed more clearly. “Master Messinger, a pleasure as always. You must be Under-librarian Thaler. And the lady? I’m afraid I don’t know her, and I make it my business to know all who are in the castle walls.”

“It’s the Morgenstern girl,” said the mayor. “The bookseller’s daughter.”

“Is it indeed?” Trommler stood squarely in front of her and looked down his sharp nose at her. “Rise, child.”

When she stood, trembling, she was taller than him. “More than a girl, I think, Master Mayor,” he said, and nodded slowly, seemingly coming to some sort of decision. “Wait here, Miss Morgenstern. I will call you shortly. Gentlemen, if you will accompany me.”

The chamberlain went to the door at the end of the anteroom, and paused by Thaler’s lantern. He regarded it in the same way he’d inspected Sophia.

“Interesting,” was his only comment before picking it up by the chain. He opened the door, and the mayor strode through after him. There were lights, and voices, on the other side.

Thaler shrugged with an opened-handed gesture at Sophia, before slipping through the opening. The door was closed firmly behind him, muffling everything.

She had no idea how long she was supposed to wait. Trommler had scared her into obedience, at least for a while. She drew her knees up and laid her head on them, wrapping her legs with her arms. The voices next door started off calmly: Thaler’s measured tones, the mayor’s gruff barks, Trommler’s indistinct bass rumble, and a fourth man whom she didn’t know, whose voice was pitched higher than the others.

Even when she moved closer, she couldn’t make out what they were saying: the odd word here and there, but infuriatingly not enough to sustain the flow of the conversation. But then, quite abruptly, Thaler was shouting. He was being answered in calm, flat terms, but he was agitated, and wouldn’t stop.

Sophia moved away from the door: not only was her listening in vain, but she’d be unlikely to hear anyone approach, and she didn’t want to guess at the penalties for overhearing affairs of state.

She sat back down in the same chair as before, and closed her cloak around her. Soon, it wasn’t just the librarian raising his voice, but everyone. Uncomfortable and embarrassed, she bore it for as long as she could: eventually, she got up and stepped around the corner, taking her lantern with her. She could still hear them, though, so she moved even further away down the corridor.

Where she stopped, she found she was opposite a door ajar: not properly open, only a crack, but it was enough for her to hear the sounds of sobbing from inside. She looked up and down the corridor. Like the rest of the castle, it was woefully undermanned.

A choice, then. She could go back to the anteroom and suffer listening to the roar of full-throated argument happening behind the shut door. Or she could knock timidly on this open one and attempt to be of some use.

Sophia raised her knuckles to the frame, hesitated, then decided that nothing worse could happen than being told to go away. She was robust enough to take that, so she tapped at the wood and pushed slightly at the foot of the door with her toe.

The room beyond was almost dark. There were a couple of candles, and a low-burning fire. Her lantern added to the light, so that she could see a small figure slumped on the floor in front of the hearth. It was wracked with grief, shaking and moaning, curled in on itself in a tight little ball.

She lowered the lantern to the floor, knelt down next to it, and risked putting a hand out to rest gently but firmly on its shoulder.

The reaction wasn’t what she expected at all. She was suddenly wrapped by the tight embrace of an arm, a wet face pressed hard into the angle of her neck, a body squashed shuddering against her own.

Her hands flapped for a moment, then came to rest on the thin linen shirt. She could feel the individual bones that made up – his? her? – spine. Her own hair was mixed with theirs, and she freed one hand to push her long strands aside, revealing collar-length, almost-black hair. No German girl would have hers cut so short, so it must be a boy, then.

She had no brothers or sisters. Her mother had been a long time in the grave. No one to learn from, and no one to practise on. She did the best she could with what little she knew. She made shushing sounds, she stroked the boy’s hair, she rocked backwards and forwards, like she’d seen new mothers do to their babies.

It took a long time to quieten him, long enough that she started to get cramp in her folded legs and her back grew stiff. As he stilled and the quaking subsided, she took in the rest of the room over the boy’s head. She couldn’t see much without disturbing him, and most of the walls and furniture was in shadow.

But she could make out lots of decorative features: wood panelling, carved flourishes on the furniture, painted crests and shields on the plasterwork. Her eyes travelled up above the stone fireplace, and the yellow ornamental shield hanging there. The black panther emblazoned on it stared down at her, its red eyes alight and its red claws ready to strike at any unworthy touching the royal person.

Which, she realised with a gasp, meant her.

How had she got in unchallenged? How had she remained there for so long? Her heart raced like a downhill pebble, and she lost the ability to move, let alone talk.

He must have sensed the change in her, because he slowly and reluctantly slid his arms from around her back, though not letting go completely. He peeled his body away, and looked at her, gaunt and hollow-eyed.

“What? What is it?” There was a dirty loop of cloth hanging around his neck: a sling. And now she could see he held his right arm carefully. It wasn’t the only thing about him that was dirty, either. His clothes were stiff with dried mud.

“My lord. I’m sorry.” It was all she could manage. Felix I, Prince of Carinthia, all but sat in her lap.

He frowned, perhaps at her apology, perhaps because he didn’t recognise her. “Who are you?”

“I’m …” She had an opportunity to just flee. He didn’t know who she was. She could hide, and leave the castle, and he’d never find out. Except, except. It would never work. “Sophia Morgenstern, my lord, Aaron Morgenstern’s daughter. I came with Mr Thaler and Master Messinger, but they’re in with the chamberlain and having a huge argument over what the hexmaster wants us to do, I suppose, and they didn’t need to speak to me yet, and I didn’t like the way they were shouting so I walked down here to get away from them and then I heard you and your door was open and I didn’t know who it was and please don’t have me killed, my father has no one else to look after him since my mother died, just me…”

She had to take a breath, but then she’d have to stop talking and give him an opportunity to shout for help. Her voice petered out, and she hauled in so much air, she felt faint.

“Your mother’s dead? My mother’s dead too.” Felix looked at his hands. “And now my father.”

“Yes, my lord. I’m sorry.”

That seemed to rile him, but only for a moment. She didn’t know much about this boy-prince. Was he old enough for a Bar Mitzvah? That would make him a man, but even most of the Jewish boys were bigger than he was.

“Where are your servants?” she asked.

He looked blankly at her and attempted a shrug, which caused him pain enough to screw his face up, but not enough that he was going to let go of her.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They put me in here, and they left me. I think they’re arguing over me, as well. Last night, I…”

“Have you had anything to eat, my lord, or to drink?” She looked around, and she couldn’t see any empty plates, or even any full ones, picked at and ignored.

“No.”

“No one’s washed you, given you something clean to wear? Looked at your arm?”

“Shoulder,” he said, and added with just a hint of steel: “I killed the man who did that to me.”

“I should find someone who can help.” She wondered why he was still clinging to her. He was a German prince, she wasn’t anything but the shamefully unmarried Jewish bookseller’s daughter.

“But you are helping,” he said. “You’re the only one who has.”

“By accident, my lord.” There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek, mud from his sleeve re-wetted by his tears. “I shouldn’t have been able just to walk in here. I could have been anyone. A murderer, even.”

His grip failed, and he slowly lowered his right arm by gripping his forearm with his other hand. “You don’t look like a murderer.”

She didn’t move away, even though she was free. “Isn’t that the point?”

“Probably. Signore Allegretti would have beaten me for this, before.” He looked at her, and she at him. “How did your mother die?”

“She fell. She fell down some stairs because she was carrying too much, and she lost her footing. I wasn’t quite two.” It was something that had happened to someone else. She’d asked her father, and that was what he’d told her. She’d asked the same question every so often, hoping for more detail, but she always got the same bald explanation. She fell. She died. That was that.

She didn’t ask Felix what had happened to his mother; she knew the bones of the story already. She’d died giving birth to him, even though the hexmasters had been called. She’d been ten, or eleven when the mixed news had been called out around the town: joy at a male heir for Carinthia, sadness at the loss of one so young and beautiful.

He didn’t say anything, and she started to lose what frayed courage she had left. “This is wrong, my lord. I shouldn’t be here.”

“I command you to stay.” His head came up, his chin set.

It was her turn to surprise him. She laughed at him, and instantly he was both angry and nonplussed, full of boyish rage and nowhere for it to go.

But she’d surprised herself, mistaking the little princes she knew from Jews’ Alley with this real one. “I’m sorry. You are my earthly lord, and I am yours to command.”

Now he blushed, and it was good to see some colour in the prince’s cheeks. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just want you to stay. You’re …” and he looked away again without finishing.

The poor boy. “I can try and clean you up a little. If you want.” She suspected that this was as awkward for him as it was for her. She was used to waiting on her father, but not like this, and the prince was probably used to being waited on, but not like this either.

She got up from the floor and circumnavigated the room, seeing what was there, peering into chests and opening drawers. There were clean clothes, but made for someone much taller – the late prince, and surely she couldn’t dress the son in the dead father’s shirt and breeks? Did she have a choice? She didn’t know where the prince’s old rooms were, and she wasn’t going to wander around the castle trying to find them. There was a jug half-full of water, and a bowl, which she set close to the grate to warm, and she decided that, as a prince, he could probably afford to sacrifice a shirt or two.