Deadly Peril (20 page)

All this the valet kept to himself. He quickly washed his hands in the soapy bathwater, which gave him time to master his emotions, and caught sight of his ragged nails and scuffed knuckles. He who prided himself on his appearance and cleanliness as a gentleman’s gentleman had not had access to his grooming implements in so long he’d stopped looking at his hands. But what was this small upset compared to what his master was being put through? The sad state of Sir Cosmo made him want to sob.

“You are a sight for these sore eyes, my dear Matthias!” Sir Cosmo said with forced cheeriness, and stepped back to look his valet from head to toe. “Still feeding you I see. And treating you well, are they?”

“Yes, sir. And I, you—overjoyed to see you, that is. And you’re lookin’ mighty fine indeed, all things considered,” Matthias said buoyantly, trying to match his master’s cheeriness. But he failed miserably and turned away, forcing the lump of sentiment back down his throat as he busied himself shaking out then arranging on the bed frock coat, breeches, clean shirt, cravat, drawers and stockings. “Here, sir, let me help you on with this shirt. A fresh set of clothes will make you feel more the thing. Though I’d wished they’d let me shave you.”

“Ah! Yes, well, I wish
now
I’d let you shave me too, all those weeks ago,” Sir Cosmo confessed with a heavy sigh, but quickly followed this with a smile, as if this would lift the depression from his shoulders. “Still, if it wasn’t for this beard, I might not have had a visit from the Margrave. Did they tell you he came to visit me? Yes! I was being questioned and having my head plunged into a pail full of ice. I said to myself:
This is it! I’m not going to see tomorrow, or Emily, or Alec, or you, dear Matthias, ever again
. And then the Margrave arrives with an entourage. Imagine! My little room full of people…”

When Sir Cosmo’s voice trailed off, Matthias handed him a pair of linen drawers, asking quietly, “Why had the Margrave come to see you, sir?”

“No idea. To invite me to dinner I suspect,” Sir Cosmo said matter-of-factly, then gave a little nervous laugh. “Did you know he speaks English? Yes.
English
, Matthias. Surprised me so much I almost forgot to keep my eyes lowered. One minute everyone around me is speaking in German—which might as well be utter gibberish, for I can’t make it out at all—the next I hear my mother tongue, and spoken very well indeed. I almost went to pieces there and then. Not a sweeter sound have I heard in such a long time, until you, just now, dear Matthias…”

“The Margrave speaks English? That is a surprise.”

“Yes! Astounding, isn’t it? But that isn’t the most surprising thing about his visit,” Sir Cosmo continued as he tied the strings of his linen drawers. “I still don’t know what he looks like. I was ordered to keep my gaze on the floorboards at all times. On the floor! Odd sort of demand—not to be permitted to look at him. What is the point of wearing ermine and gold crowns, if the great unwashed, of which I was one until just now, can’t get to fawn and gawp at you? Makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with the chap. Is he horribly scarred from the pox or from battle? Perhaps he has only one eye or is his nose as bulbous as a gourd that one can only stare open-mouthed at the poor fellow? Do you have any idea as to his countenance?”

“No, sir. I suspect I’ll never have the privilege of seeing him, even from a distance,” Matthias told him evenly, unbuttoning the falls of a pair of velvet breeches before handing them over. “I’m now
quartered
—if you can call a cot in the corner behind the pots and pans that—in the scullery, where you’re blessed if you see daylight from one day to the next. But don’t you worry about me. I keep to myself and spend m’time polishin’ whatever needs polishin’.” He lowered his voice. “Which ain’t much these days on account of the silver being gathered up and melted down for the war, so it’s said.” He raised his voice again, adding with a sniff, “At least I don’t have to spend m’days like the rest of the poor sots, who are up to their elbows washing the grease off mountains of plates and bowls—it’s a stinking business, and brutal.”

Sir Cosmo looked up from tucking the billowing folds of his shirt into his breeches. His voice held a note of trepidation.

“You’ve not been-been—
mistreated
, have you?”

Matthias had not, but a beating was not the worst punishment meted out below stairs. He well remembered his first day in the kitchens, a stiflingly hot place with the temperature and humidity of a Caribbean island. An under-cook, a short bow-legged Frenchman, a deserter of the Seven Years’ War who now could never go home, gave him a simple warning—to keep his head down and stay well out of the way, and if given a command, obey it without question. He had then pointed out one of the cauldron stirrers, an old man with a crippling stoop. The under-cook told him the stoop was from the many beatings that had broken bones over the years. But still the pot stirrer couldn’t keep his opinions to himself and was forever cursing his lot in life. Finally, they cut out his tongue.

But the Frenchman told Matthias not to worry. Serfs weren’t killed. They just had a toe or a finger hacked off, or if they were particularly recalcitrant, like the cauldron stirrer, their tongues removed—nothing too drastic, nothing that could impede them getting on with their daily drudgery. So Matthias just needed to keep his mouth shut and his tongue would stay between his teeth!

“Matthias?” Sir Cosmo repeated his question, more anxious than before. “Have you been beaten?”

The valet shook his head free of grisly images.

“No, sir. Just put to work. I’m useful. And I do as I’m told. Which is the best way of keeping my head on my shoulders, and my tongue between my teeth.”

“Good. I would hate to think—I couldn’t go on if I knew you were being maltreated. I’m determined we will leave this castle alive, Matthias.”

“Yes, sir. We will.
All four
of us will. I have every confidence in Lord Halsey comin’ to our rescue, as you must, too.”

Sir Cosmo nodded, and let his chin drop, to concentrate on buttoning the six horn buttons of his falls, and so his valet would not see his ready tears. Incarceration had turned him as soft as runny egg. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for a nice soft-boiled hen’s egg and a slice of bread and butter! He knew mention of the number four was Matthias’s tactful way of referring to Emily and her companion Mrs. Carlisle. And he knew himself for a coward for not asking after them when Matthias had first arrived. But he could not bring himself to talk of Emily, because that led to wondering about how she was being treated. That Matthias had not mentioned the two women until now could only mean bad news, and so he was greatly relieved when his valet ended his anxiety.

“Sir, I have nothing to report about Miss St. Neots or Mrs. Carlisle. And as they say:
No news is good news
, isn’t it? Perhaps you’ll have an opportunity to enquire about them at dinner? They may very well be there, too. Mightn’t they, sir?”

“Yes. Yes. They might well be…” Sir Cosmo replied, wanting to believe this with all his heart, but knowing it for wishful thinking. He fidgeted with the waistband of his breeches, muttering to hide his embarrassment at the tears in his eyes, “These need better tailoring. A button or two moved…”

“Yes, sir. They do,” Matthias agreed. “The band was always a bit loose. I should’ve mentioned it at the time we took collection of the ensemble.”

It was a lie. The breeches had fitted perfectly upon first wearing. Usually the bulk of the shirt tucked in at the waist made for a snug fit, but not today. It was one thing for a shirt to hang more loosely than usual, that could be overlooked, but the breeches were so loose they looked to be made for another man. And they had been, the man his master had been before they’d set a foot in this bleak God-awful place. Matthias knew the waistcoat and frock coat would also be too large for his master’s emaciated frame, but it did not stop him holding wide the silk waistcoat with a cheerful smile. He next offered Sir Cosmo the cravat. But as there was no looking glass to aid in the tying of this article of fashion his master just stood there, staring at the strip of fine linen between his shaking fingers.

Matthias gently took the cravat from him, placed it about his neck and set to tying it. The tremor in his master’s hand would have put paid to tying the strip of linen with any expertise, so it was as well there was no glass.

“I did discover something that will be of interest to you, sir,” he said, to divert Sir Cosmo from his sartorial woes.

Matthias’s conspiratorial tone snapped Sir Cosmo out of his melancholia. He was suddenly all ears and eyes for his valet’s revelations. He glanced over at the guards—who were both dozing in a corner—then returned his attention to Matthias, who was carefully knotting the cravat under his hirsute chin.

“Yes? What?” Sir Cosmo hissed.

“You asked that I find out what I could about the
unspoken truth
,” Matthias said. “But as most of the fellows around me don’t see light, least of all know much at all, and none understand English, I thought I’d be having a spider’s chance in bathwater of finding out anythin’! But then, one day, one of the guards from the Margrave’s household regiment comes up to me. I thought I was done for. But no. He wasn’t there to beat me or arrest me. He’d heard I was an Englishman. A’course I didn’t correct his assumption. To these foreigners an Irishman and an Englishman, and for that matter a Scotsman, be one and the same. So this palace guard he takes me aside and tells me he was in a unit that fought with the British army in Flanders during the war just past… How does that feel, sir? Nice and snug?” he added, running a finger lightly along the edge of the folds of the cravat he’d tied under Sir Cosmo’s chin. “Not too snug, is it? Beggin’ your pardon, but it be rather more difficult to arrange the folds what with you having a beard—a very nice beard it is too, sir!”

Sir Cosmo smiled as he stretched his neck. “Thank you for saying so, but as soon as we are out of here, one of your first tasks will be to get rid of this unfashionable mange! You were saying about this palace guard who fought with us in Flanders… What did he want?”

“Nothing more than to spend time in m’company speaking English. I was relieved to hear him say so, and more than a little surprised he wanted conversational practice. He has dreams of running away to England. He’s heard so much about the place. Who wouldn’t want to run off home—our home—after living in this barbaric wasteland, is what I say.”

“Just so, Matthias,” Sir Cosmo agreed. “I have dreams of never leaving England again. And I won’t, once I get out of here.
Ever
.” He shook his head. “And if your friend manages to escape across the Channel, he’ll be mistaken for an Irishman, spending his time listening to you! No. Don’t move. Stay where you are. I think the knot still needs your attention.” Adding in a whisper as he fiddled with the lace of his cravat nestled in the ruffles of his shirt, “If you move away, and those two wake up, we might not have another chance to speak candidly. Your guard who speaks English—You asked him about this
unspoken truth
?”

“I did. But it’s not only what he knows, but how he knows it. He did something brave in the war, and for his heroism, Hansen—that’s his name—was promoted to the Margrave’s personal bodyguard. To cut the story short, one day I asked Hansen as casually as I could about this
unspoken truth
. And he told me—just like that—as if it was commonplace. I did wonder if that was because we spoke about it in English, so it wasn’t quite so shocking a transgression as if he’d told me in his native tongue. Oh, and there is the fact he said if I mentioned it to anyone, or blabbed it about it was him as what told me, he’d cut m’tongue out. And as that happens quite regularly around here, I knew his threat weren’t an idle one. Anyway, I thought it a fair deal, and shook hands on it.”

Sir Cosmo let out a bark of laughter at Matthias’s blasé attitude to such a threat, and instantly clapped a hand to his mouth to stop himself from laughing further, a furtive glance over at the guards, one opening an eye then instantly closing it and settling back to sleep, before saying in a much subdued tone,

“Well, that’s enough of an incentive to keep quiet, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Except I made no promise not to tell
you
. Hansen says the
unspoken truth
has been known to exist within the House of Herzfeld—that’s the Margrave’s family—for years. But it’s never spoken about openly—”

“Hence it’s known as the
unspoken truth
?”

Matthias grinned. “Just so, sir! Hansen says there’s bad blood in the House of Herzfeld. And those family members who have it in their veins can’t hide it.”

“Margrave Ernst—?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sir Cosmo frowned. “But how does it manifest itself? I mean, how does one know who has this bad blood and who does not?”

“His hair—”

“His—
hair
?” Sir Cosmo pulled in his chin. “What about his
hair
?”

“Sorry, sir. I meant his
lack of
hair. He—the Margrave—he doesn’t have any—hair—
anywhere
.”

“No hair?” Sir Cosmo was incredulous. “What do you mean: He doesn’t have any
hair
—
any
where?”

“Yes, sir. No hair. None on his head. None on his body. No eyelashes or eyebrows. None. He and his sister the Princess were born that way.”

Sir Cosmo slumped down on the small stool in the pool of light under the window. “Good—Lord… I’ve never—I’ve never heard anything like it. Have you?”

“No. But what with the fashion for wigs, it’s difficult to know who has real hair and who be bald. You could be hairless, sir, and who’d know, except those who attended on you at your toilette. Certainly the ordinary man would be clueless.”

“There is that I suppose…” Sir Cosmo conceded, unconsciously stroking his beard. “Still, even if a man shaves his head, or his wife doesn’t have but two hairs to hers, and both of ’em wear wigs, you’d still jolly-well know if they were without eyebrows and eyelashes!” Sir Cosmo gave a shudder and pulled a face. “Ghastly. Positively ghastly.”